Re: I'm not trying to troll and do not want anyone to consider..

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It falls into several categories. Obviously it is not

Jan 6, 2022, 5:38 PM

an experiment, like, "Prove water is made of hydrogen and oxygen." It's like courtroom evidence: Did Stagger Lee actually shoot Billy?

What you have to work with are documents that describe an event. What is under question is whether those documents are (1) intended to be accurate and (2) if yes, actually accurate? To establish #1 one looks at authorship, intent, effect on the writer, actions of the writers and others around them, etc. To establish #2 one looks at corroboration, actions of people at the time, etc. One also looks at circumstances that either impact or are impacted by the claimed events (for instance, if the claim is that Helen of Troy was a real person, one might look at the actual actions of those who would kidnap her or try to rescue her. Nothing seems to have happened. And of course we know she was not a real person.)

I will be happy to discuss this with you if you like. I'll tell you up front that I will not skip around chasing whatabouts. Whatabouts are fine, and legit, but only after the case has been made. We'll do it step by step, and the total case can get quite detailed, as it should be. The discipline/process of vetting historical documents for accuracy is well known, and it can be, and has been applied to the New Testament documents. It is actually a fun thing to look at, but it is not a 500 word essay.

I'll start with a very tiny thing: The atheist blogs make all sorts of untrue claims, one of them being the often heard, "You can't use a document to prove itself. Christians use the bible to prove the bible". I am sure that happens, and when it does it should be called out as such. However. the NT is not a document. It is a collection of over 25 separate documents, written by 8 or 9 authors, written over a span of about 40 years, on several continents. If a person writes in one document he saw X, and another person writes in another document he saw Y, and Y couldn't be true unless X, the authenticating questions one then asks are the ones above, and if the answers are good you have corroboration. If you then put those two documents into the same collection, you don't invalidate the corroboration by doing so.

Of course there is corroboration from outside the New Testament: I was just pointing out that there is a lot of misinformation out there being disguised as sophisticated skepticism.

Anyway, let me know where you want to start.

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but guessing no one wants that today - so I'll just say this and move on:

I understand the concern about differences in the accounts, but to me they don't affect the sincerity or accuracy. I cant address them all without listing them and creating many paragraphs, so I'll just say that generally, when two different people are telling the same account, differences in detail are a sign of strength rather than weakness. In assessing two accounts, differences in detail are expected, lack of them in suspicious. If you and I drive to Denver, and later write about it, one of us might say we stopped in Raton and stayed at a Holiday Inn there, and other might say we stopped at a Holiday Inn, then the next morning drove through Raton to get to Denver, placing that hotel 50 miles apart. Someone hearing that would say, "Yep, they went to Denver."

So, should a minor difference invalidate the account? The proposal is not - at least not by most Christians - that God dictated to the authors, by rote, the accounts and personal letters. This is therefore not a case of "If there is a mistake then it's false because God can't make mistakes." If someone wants to take that stance, fine, but it is not the proposal.

Some, I think most, of the differences are reasonably reconcilable, but some indeed might be mistakes in the retelling.

Finally, the writers were either honestly recording the events as they remembered/compiled them, or it's a made up story. So, they are writing it down and they can't get the story straight? And during the first couple of centuries no one seemed to notice this? And the same people who claim that the NT has been "altered" over the centuries also claim that whoever did the altering didn't straighten out a thing like that? I'm not saying you are claiming this, but I have heard many skeptics, within a space of a minute, claim that the current accounts don't represent the originals, and that the differences in the account invalidate them. They altered them to make them sound good, but they couldn't get two stories out of four to agree? C'mon, dude.

That last paragraph is not about you. Just remembering past fun conversations with others.

I'm not trying to troll and do not want anyone to consider..

I regard the Bible as a work of fiction. But that does

Re: I regard the Bible as a work of fiction. But that does

Sounds like the choice you made was a good one for

God condemns people to hell by not revealing himself

Sin condems people to hell.

I think that passage is referring to the continual demand

What evidence of the resurrection is there?***

It falls into several categories. Obviously it is not

So you are saying...

Right. Some people will agree to only what hits them between