During this Spring Fertility Festival, let's all remember... - Page 3

Hmm, I don't think we disagree about this except for the part about the Gospels being written "by" people who witnessed the events. I think everyone agrees that we don't know who wrote any of the Gospels, and that they were written many decades after Jesus' life. It's very possible that some of the authors were born and grew up and wrote the Gospels all after Jesus died. Or that they were already adults during Jesus' lifetime, and wrote in their old age. Who knows?

The only one we know for sure is Paul, who wrote the earliest New Testament books, and certainly lived during Jesus' lifetime. But of course he did not directly witness anything, and didn't write much about events during the life of Jesus anyway.

In any case, I can't find any sources for whether the date of Jesus' crucifixion is considered historically reliable, so perhaps it's just assumed to be accurate.

That's funny. Usually I try to stay out of BR's Grinchy holiday threads, but this is interesting.

So when Paul - whom you are certain lived during that time - mentions Luke the physician accompanying him in his accounts, we're not supposed to believe that the book written by Luke was written by a contemporary of Paul?

Hi Frank. Did Paul refer to the author of the Gospel of Luke? He refers to a Luke, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't have referred to a Gospel that hadn't yet been written, let alone compiled into a single volume with Paul's writings.

As with the titles of all the Gospels, the name Luke was not in the Book of Luke itself. (That's in contrast to the writings of Paul, which clearly reference himself throughout.) The name Luke is in the title only, which was given by those who compiled the New Testament rather than the author himself. I know it's true that Acts does refer to Paul, and Acts is assumed to be written by the same author as Luke, so it's possible that it's the same Luke. But as far as I know, it's commonly agreed that we don't know who wrote Luke/Acts, just like it's commonly agreed that we don't know who wrote the other Gospels.

And I believe that's not some crazy Da Vinci Code-like theory, but is conventional wisdom and part of the seminary training of all but independent/evangelical preachers (who probably don't have formal seminary training in most cases). But if you have additional information I'd be interested in hearing it.

Maybe we can constructively derail this thread.

He refers to Luke as the 'beloved physician'. I'm always fascinated by the idea that, for many liberals, the Bible is assumed to be the only source for information like this. Many, many early church letters did survive, as did the other 'gospels' that were not considered canon when Bible was compiled. I'm not a historian either, but no-one of note that I know of disputes the fact that the person mentioned in Paul's letter was Luke, who was said to have compiled the double-set of what is called the Gospel of Luke and Acts.


Luke set out to do a Ken Burns documentary of the beginnings of the Christian church, while Paul was fleshing out doctrines and writing guidelines for early churches he planted. It's expected that one would seek to leave his name out of it entirely, and the other would choose to lay out his identity and credentials for his mission.

I understand that the names were left off the Gospels, which makes them probably a fair bit more authentic than a lot of the contemporary letters that surfaced after them which seemed to try to make their authors famous. It should be noted that the early church literally guarded the Gospels with their lives, and that people in the second century genuinely believed without a doubt that the Gospels were written by those for whom they are named.

When being openly hunted for your beliefs, a Community doesn't tend to take such matters lightly.

I do understand that the 'longer' ending of Mark may not be written by him. Mark is the earliest Gospel written, and the disciple (who is again mentioned by Paul) could have fallen sick or been imprisoned or killed before completing it. To my mind, that doesn't invalidate it as God's Word anymore than knowing that Moses did not write every word of his five books. It's been awhile, but I know without the long ending Mark ends with a strange word choice, leading the reader to believe that it was not meant to be the actual ending of the book.

If it was written by a contemporary [and again, no-one questions it's the earliest Gospel] it's not historically invalid either. This isn't like that shroud that seems to have showed up all of a sudden in the 13th century.


Now there's no reason to dismiss the training of most Evangelical preachers. There are some great Evangelical Theological Seminaries. I understand your feelings about Charismatics, but the long ending of Mark doesn't introduce any exclusive theology that can't be justified elsewhere.

Jesus did say that his disciples would do greater miracles than He did, and picking up snakes seems rather tame on that scale. I have no problems with miracles in the modern day, I just need to see verification, just as Jesus sent the healed lepers to be observed by the priests.

But Charismatics do need to buckle down and do some serious theological work sometimes, instead of always looking for the next big thing.


Wouldn't that be awesome.

In-jokes are extremely fun.

I don't know, but I can't get around the fact that Paul's writings are thought to be from 50 years earlier than Luke.


you used the term 'disciple' for Mark - I assume you mean 'evangelist?' or are you just using the term disciple generically?

Anyway, no it doesn't invalidate the rest of it in any way, at least not to me, but I don't believe it's God's word. And it does make me wonder - when people do talk about the Bible being God's Word, which Bible are they talking about? There are many early manuscripts of each book and they're all different from one another. There are mostly minor differences, but sometimes even minor differences have large implications, and there are also some big differences like the Mark ending. That doesn't bother you, and it's not going to bother most religious scholars or mainline seminarians, nor most religious people throughout history. But it doesn't fit well with modern literal views which seem to rest on some kind of perfection and inerrancy.

I am deeply disappointed that you people apparently do not watch Community.

I didn't get it, sorry.

Yes, I was using that generically.


When I was young, a Muslim uncle of mine started badgering me one day about the "50,000 errors in the Bible." I had no idea what he was talking about. Later on, as I studied the issue more closely, I came to understand that he was looking at every change in spelling and punctuation as an "error". Which, as I'm sure you'll agree, is absurd. Just because the original U.S. Bill of Rights spells Congress as "Congrefs" does not mean an error was made in translation. Word meanings, spellings and punctuation standards change over time.

When we're discussing the Bible, the same rules as other threads should apply. If you are going to contend that Paul's writings are 50 years older than Luke's, or that there are differences in early manuscripts, I need to see a source for it and a description of these differences. Otherwise, I'm just shadow boxing, and that's not a whole lot of fun.


Community is a sitcom on the verge of being cancelled, and their latest episode is a mockumentary in a PBS/Ken Burns style. It's a hilarious use of the format, by some obviously very talented writers.

I agree that probably 95% of those errors are too minor to matter. Obviously they didn't have PDFs at the time, and copying by hand results in little mistakes. But 1) It does make it really clear that the Bible as we know it today is the product of imperfect man, and that rather than one perfect Bible there are instead a whole bunch of copies of copies of copies, all slightly different, and 2) even if only 5% of those 50,000 errors are important, that's a helluva lots of important errors, mistranslations, and the like.

To use a famous example of a translation problem, the Gospels have the virgin birth, of course. But the authors were reading a translation of the Old Testament that had a prophecy that the Messiah would be conceived by an "almah" (in Hebrew) which the Gospel authors read in Greek as "virgin," but is better translated as "young woman." In effect, the virgin birth in the Gospels was an attempt to fulfill a prophecy that had never actually been made. If that's true, I'd say that's pretty damn important.

And again, this is only a problem for people who view the Bible as the inerrant, direct word of God. If you're like most mainline and Catholic theologians today and throughout history, you instead see the Bible as man's imperfect attempt to write about something they don't fully understand. If it has the odd mistranslation and flaw, so what? It seems to be only a recent, and mainly North American view that the Bible has to to be absolutely perfect.


Sure, I just thought we were pretty much on the same page on that stuff, based on your previous posts. Some of this stuff is difficult to cite on the internet, but usually wikipedia has the basics: that Paul's writings come from about 50, and that Luke comes from 75-100.

I'm literally running out the door right now, but I can quickly answer this one.

The prophecy (and almost every authority, Jewish or Christian regards this scripture as Messianic) says that the "almah", with give birth to a child.
It is true that the word can mean either virgin or young woman.

But a prophecy that a young woman will give birth to a child is not really a prophecy. It's an everyday occurrence.
Even in Isaiah's time, old women didn't tend to have babies.

The passage only makes sense if Isaiah is predicting something unusual about the Messiah. And the Gospel of Luke (whomever you believe it to be written by) quotes Isaiah to make the case for Christ's authenticity, meaning that Jews living 1900 years ago understood the word to be correctly translated as referring to a virgin.

Catholics. Sheesh.

For the record, those are two different doctrines, and one of them isn't anywhere in the Bible.

Frank - it would be pretty silly for me to try to convince you that Jesus was born the old-fashioned way. I'm just trying to show that what looks like a minor translation issue can sometimes actually have pretty significant implications.

But don't you dare mock the prophets and sacred texts of anthropogenic global warming alarmism.

From what I know about Jesus, the New Testament and the early Church, it would be nearly impossible to convince me that the Virgin Birth didn't happen.

But my last post wasn't aimed at you. Just expressing myself as I read through the piece you had linked to.

There is a difference between believing that Jesus was born of a virgin through the power of the Holy Spirit, and believing that Mary was somehow granted "perpetual virginity" after she had her other children, for no apparent reason other than Catholics needed to invent something to argue about.

The Virgin Birth was necessary to establish Jesus' legal claim to paying the penalty for Original Sin outlined in Genesis. Even atheists understand the point, even if they claim Adam and Eve did not exist.

The "perpetual virginity" of Mary is a crazy Catholic doctrine that has no basis in scripture and only serves to exalt Mary to a higher status than anyone else in the Bible used to accomplish the Lord's purposes. Jesus explicitly rejected this idea (Matt 12:48; Luke 8:21) and everyone else should as well.

Perpetual virginity is an idea that Catholics share with Islamic suicide bombers. Nice company there.

Reading comprehension problems? I specifically noted that atheists don't believe it's real.


Wrong. The need was for Christ to be conceived without Original Sin, thereby being a perfect sacrifice untainted by sin (like a Passover lamb without spots and blemishes.) Does anyone care whether the lamb's mother had spots? No.

Sin entered the world through the sin of one perfect man, and mankind could only be redeemed through the death of an equal sacrifice (i.e. another perfect man).

So Jesus had to be conceived without sin, and being born by the power of God without a human father (legal inheritor of Adam's original sin) accomplishes that. Whether you believe it or not, that is the general Christian explanation of why Jesus came and died.

If you can present an explanation as to why it would be necessary for Mary to be conceived without sin to accomplish the purpose she was given, I'd love to hear it.


Can you (or anyone else) please explain to me what a "perpetual virgin" is, and why it would be necessary or desirable to be one?

Seriously, the only two instances of this idea I've ever heard are in Catholicism and Islam.
Does any other religion teach that "perpetual virginity" even exists?

No, I'm not. The Wiki link accurately points out it's a doctrine believed by the Catholic Church.

The Virgin Birth, the Immaculate Conception and the Perpetual Virginity of Mary are three different theological ideas.

I'm saying the first is scriptural and necessary to the Bible's redemption story, and the other two are beliefs by Catholics that Evangelicals believe have no impact on the story of the redemption of mankind.

Why would it be necessary for Mary to have been born free of original sin to birth Jesus?
Why would she have had to remain a virgin after Jesus had already been born?


The only reference to perpetual virginity I've ever heard in Islam is the reward for suicide bombings.

If perpetual virginity is a mainstream tenet of Islam, that's news to me. The Quran says that Jesus was born of a virgin, but to my knowledge does not say that Mary remained a virgin perpetually or that she was untainted by original sin. Can you tell me where it says those things?

No wonder you're an atheist. That reeks of the kind of human logic that probably led to the adoption of those doctrines in the first place.

The basic problem is that it's human logic, which leaves room for an awful lot of unknowables to account for.

Does the Bible say anywhere that housing a sinless being requires another sinless being?

As I mentioned, when the Lord commanded the Passover sacrifice to foreshadow the coming of Christ, did He tell the Israelites that the spotless lamb to be sacrificed had to come from the womb of another spotless lamb?

You're the one always looking for evidence BR. And I'm just saying there's no evidence in the Bible that the Immaculate Conception or the Perpetual Virginity of Mary are required for the redemption of mankind to take place.

If you disagree, just show me anyplace in the Bible they can be justified.

Nice try on the deflection. I'll pass on the too-easy 'Denier' comment.

But you are the one who claimed that Immaculate Conception was a requirement for the Incarnation just seven posts up.

Please show me where the Bible says or implies this.

Paul for your information was a Jew whose original name was Saul.Then he turned against his own kind to be with Jesus your savior not mine.

 

 

Not exactly sure what you are trying to say here, but Paul simply believed that Jesus was the promised Messiah who had come to fulfill the Bible's prophecies, and would return again to complete them in full.

Looking forward to Southern Hemisphere Yule June 21st! Also Yule Moon on Monday.

 

Happy Summer Solstice to you Northerners!