Summations Only

Silly stuff, actually,

quote:

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Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed [are] they that have not seen, and [yet] have believed

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What's the point of Jesus words's to doubting Didymus here? Was Jesus actually praising Thomas and mocking those who had simply believed Mary's account?

What points of Christianity are supported by dozens of writers?

Interesting answer. So it is then necessary to consider the Bible as a complete work, contrary to your assertion that doing so impedes using the Bible as evidence?

Phat, I don't understand your question. Is what a necessity?

Perhaps the answer to this seeming contradiction is simply to think of God more in the way a Calvinist would. In a universe where everything is pre-ordained, men simply write the scripture God would have them write. If under such thinking, all of the evil men do is predestined by God, surely their Biblical writings are as well.

For a real challenge, try to spin this story in a way that makes sense under Calvinist doctrine.

I think you dost protest too much.Is it your view that, God did not order Saul to kill the men and women, children, infant and suckling, and all of the cattle of the Amekilites? In your view God did not express displeasure when King Agag and some of the best cattle were spared?What is your view of 1 Samuel 15?

Who told you this?

Do you think "recognized by many scholars" is enough to convince believers that those texts are forgeries? Most scientists think disagree with the description of creation in Genesis. Does that convince fundamentalists that the Bible is wrong?Yes there is some dispute about the authorship of some of the Pauline epistles. But if you want to accuse people of ignoring forgeries you need to do a mite better than just pointing to controversy.

After some discussion in another thread that involved a little less forthrightness, it was quite refreshing to find this acknowledgement from you. I hope you'll stick around a bit. I'm interested to see your evidence.Edited by NoNukes, : No reason given.

You maintain? You're going to need to do better than that. An issue, yes. But not evidence of a forgery. In order to make that case, aren't you assuming that Jesus was actually able to make real prophetic statements? Is that a viable argument? Not the tradition I understand. I have no idea when Paul died. Define scripture. I don't see any issue here. There is no particular process for writings to become scripture other than a recognition that the writings speak the truth about Jesus or God. I don't interpret those words as requiring Peter to be illiterate. And even illiterate people are capable of dictating a letter.Surely there is better evidence than this.

Yes, but this is your argument.Quite frankly, the presented argument in totality is not very persuasive. And if you get past that obstacle, I'm just going to join jar and GDR in asking what the point is. That's not all that persuasive either.

I have to agree with you. We cannot say anything about the motive of a potential forger without knowing their identity. And we can say that Paul had a reputation based on Acts and Corinthians that someone might want to draw on to improve their own credibility.Or not. We just cannot say.

No, ringo. It is not related. This is yet another instance where people misapply Occam's razor. Dismissing the possibility that a document may not be genuine or that the author has pure motives when you know nothing regarding its source is not scientific. The question of authenticity must be foremost.If a document is indeed a forgery, that's reason enough to question the motive of the author. While you need not look for guilt behind every tree, there is nothing paranoid about holding a forgery to increased scrutiny.How do you 'infer' innocence when you have absolutely no evidence at all regarding motive? What you are actually asking is that we 'assume' innocence.Well in a court of law, we assume the defendant is innocent. But we don't assume that every document he offers into evidence is the truth. Neither the law nor Occam's razor requires that.

People have some fairly silly ideas about the Bible, and they will struggle or deny any indication that their ideas are wrong. I have no problem believing that there are folks who cannot accept a Gospel according to John that is not authored by John.But that kind of thinking is just too simplistic. For one thing, John is not the only person who could legitimately write a Gospel according to John. Anyone who had access to sources detailing John's experiences could write such a thing. Is it really the case that if John is a biography rather than an autobiography, that the gospel is lie or a forgery? Is John even written or presented as an autobiography?What in the gospel according to John is only believable if the gospel were written by John?