Choosing a faith

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I gave you evidence such as why would He tell them to head for the hills if it is about the end of the world

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Because there is no reason to run away if a gentile army is going to storm Jerusalem, murdering and raping the inhabitants? Jewish end-times prophecies do not fit with your ideas about “the end of the world”. As I’ve pointed out to you more than once.The only daft thing is Luke’s idea of waiting until the attacking army surrounds the city.

So, since no one buys into your ideas you get pissy? Again you failed to convince anyone that you have or ever had a valid, convincing argument. Maybe time to run away again and come back later wit the same stupid arguments.

Firstly, I wish you would tell me what my views of the end of the world are. It is my view that the end of humanity, at any rate, will be by a nuclear war, by our invention of a virus that can't be stopped or some other clever thing we will come up with. And I don't know the hour or the day either. As for theories about the end of the physical world is concerned I'm quite happy to leave that to science.Let's use the Matthew 24 account of what Jesus said. Here is the passage.

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15 “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’ spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand—
16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.
17 Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house.
18 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak.
19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers!
20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath.
21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.

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The first verse refers back to Daniel 9 and is about the destruction caused by war. Then he tells them to get out of town and quickly before there is no escape.He adds that it will be particularly hard for young mothers and hopefully it won't take place in winter.This is obviously about a war and not end times.As for Luke maybe we can cut him a little slack as he says when the army is surrounding Jerusalem and they should head for the hills, he does say that is for those who are in Judea which is a lot more than just Jerusalem.

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Firstly, I wish you would tell me what my views of the end of the world are

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I am going on what you say. You claim that there would be no point in running away from Jerusalem. Which is quite enough.

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The first verse refers back to Daniel 9 and is about the destruction caused by war. Then he tells them to get out of town and quickly before there is no escape.
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He adds that it will be particularly hard for young mothers and hopefully it won't take place in winter.
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This is obviously about a war and not end times.
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Which proves that you are still wilfully ignoring Jewish ideas about the end times. Which are full of war. As you certainly ought to know by now.

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As for Luke maybe we can cut him a little slack as he says when the army is surrounding Jerusalem and they should head for the hills, he does say that is for those who are in Judea which is a lot more than just Jerusalem.

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So it is only too late for the people who most need to run. That’s helpful.

I'm curious about what you think the Jewish ideas of end times were. I could be wrong but I don't think that they had a particular belief about end times as we think of them. They did have different ideas about a life after death.Also, they talked about the end of the age but that was simply about the end of the Roman age or era. I think you are kinda looking at this a bit too much in isolation. He did give a number of ways that they can see that this is coming so they will have plenty of warning.

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I'm curious about what you think the Jewish ideas of end times were.

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I think that the Zechariah quote was sufficient.
The Jews are attacked - and suffer - God intervenes to save them, and gives the Jews a preeminent place in the world. It’s the suffering of the first part that people would be running away from.Often you’d get the restoration of the Davidic line and the return of the Lost Tribes, too.

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Also, they talked about the end of the age but that was simply about the end of the Roman age or era.

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But that would not be in the Tanakh - even though Daniel has references to Roman intervention in the wars, Rome wasn’t seen as a threat. And off hand I don’t think any of the other books of the Tanakh mention Rome at all - most are too early anyway.

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I think you are kinda looking at this a bit too much in isolation. He did give a number of ways that they can see that this is coming so they will have plenty of warning.

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The instruction to run to the hills is explicitly linked to the armies surrounding Jerusalem, which is both obvious and late. If the Romans had installed pagan worship in the Temple - as Matthew and Mark say - that would have been a trigger for revolt, but one that would give time to flee. Of course that didn’t happen, hence the change.

You're providing the same already rebutted answer. When you say "we can observe", who do you think "we" is. It isn't you or anyone you know. "We" cannot be anyone who's been alive in the last 2000 years. What you have is stuff people wrote long ago about supposed events they did not witness and for which there's no evidence anyone witnessed.Instead of going off and finding some evidence, the best you can seem to do is say stuff along the lines of, "IMHO, I find it credible that there were many witnesses." It was Paul's efforts at founding churches in the Jewish diaspora that made Christianity a success, not anything about the stories he made up about his religion's main character. Without Paul there would be no Christianity. You can "IMHO" believe this, but there's no evidence for it and good evidence against it from Paul himself:

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¹¹I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. ¹²I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.
  —Galations 1:11-12

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If the pronoun "he" refers to Luke, and if the "who the account is about" part refers to Zechariah, then you're not making any sense in seeing a "factual basis." There's nothing in it to assume anything factual at all, including the existence of Zechariah.Let me make sure I understand you correctly. You see the reference to a specific person, Zechariah, as a "factual basis." But every piece of fiction and non-fiction that includes characters refers to specific people. If you really see a "factual basis" in that passage then you have serious reasoning problems that leave you unable to separate fact from fiction. No wonder you're so often frustrating. And you think the amount of detail in an account is a "factual basis"? Then I guess "The Hobbit" and all the subsequent books have a factual basis, too.Even worse for you, the details in the Luke account are impossible for him to have known. He was given the account by someone else, and if Luke believed that the angel Gabriel was being quoted accurately at length then he's kind of gullible. And ask yourself how Zechariah recalled the exact angelic words nine months after he supposedly heard them. You're piling implausibility upon implausibility and following it with, "IMHO, I believe it credible."The truth or veracity of historical events is established by independent accounts that confirm one another and by archeological artifacts. We've been over this. It's just life doing what life does, selecting from imperfectly reproduced life. Mindless evolution can produce change in any aspect of life, including brain function. There is no objective evidence for your beliefs about the origins of empathy, and it wasn't even much evident as a quality of the celestial in the OT.--Percy

Yes I agree. The Jews had hoped that Yahweh would return, possibly with the use of a messianic figure who would be anointed by Yahweh and lead them against their enemies, whoever they might be. Certainly. It could also have applied to whatever age or era you want to mention. It could be the Babylonian, Assyrian or even the Hasmonean eras. In this case it was the Romans. I'm not clear on your point. What change are you referring to? The Romans surrounded Jerusalem as a result of the revolution.

I note that you don’t admit that there is a clear reason to run away given Jewish views. A fact already proven when you made the claim before.

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I'm not clear on your point. What change are you referring to? The Romans surrounded Jerusalem as a result of the revolution.

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It’s right there in the quote. Mark and Matthew say to run when the Romans start pagan worship in the Temple - which would have almost certainly provoked a revolt. Luke says that the sign to flee is armies surrounding Jerusalem which would not have happened until the Romans mobilised their forces to respond to the revolt (at the earliest).

Firstly it is only your view that none of the NT was written by eye witnesses. As I have said earlier Richard Bauckham wrote a large 700 page book on the subject and doesn't agree that eye witnesses were involved in writing the Gospels. It of course is not proof but it is someone who as an historian has spent considerable time and energy on the subject and disagrees with you.Also, and again, I wasn't offering the fact that many people believed what was in the Gospels as evidence of their accuracy but only as evidence that they were written to be believed. That is conjecture to fit your belief. We only know what happened with Paul. We don't know what would have happened without him. C'mon, you make these bold assertions. There were numerous places that Paul never made it to where Christian communities formed. Sure, he is talking about his road to Damascus experience but he also spent considerable time with the apostles in Judea. You keep insisting that I understand the Bible in the way you seem to want to insist that I do. I did merely say that I believe that this story was given to Luke from some source but that does not make it factual. In my view it has a very legendary feel to it and is very likely the case that it is a legend that grew up around the birth of Jesus and John. There is no objective evidence for your beliefs about the origins of empathy either. There is only the fact that we can be observed, although very unevenly, in cultures around the world. Actually, in the OT there are many instances where Yahweh promotes empathy. However, I agree that there are many cases where the writers have Yahweh commanding the polar opposite of that.

If you're not going to address the questions raised about the reliability of Tacitus as a source about Jesus then you shouldn't be citing him.--Percy

From the Forum Guidelines:

5. Bare links with no supporting discussion should be avoided. Make the argument in your own words and use links as supporting references.

The reasons for this rule is these common occurrences:

1. Citations often don't say what people think they do.
2. People often don't understand their own citations.
3. The cited references are sometimes long, leaving it impossible to know which part was being referenced. GDR recently referenced an entire book.

Asking that people express the argument or information in their own words reveals whether any of these issues is a problem.--Percy

Bauckham is a Christian theologian he has no advanced degree in History. He does apologetics not History.

One definition of apologetics is that it's making up excuses for religion, explaining problems away. A bit harsh, but all too often true.It's supposed to be about harmonizing religious beliefs with contradictions or conflicts both internal and external (eg, when a belief contradicts reality). Ideally, that contradiction is only apparent, only seems to exist because there's something that you don't understand, in which case apologetics explains why that contradiction/conflict is only apparent and does not actually exist. One simple example would be that a person didn't understand what his religion actually taught and so came to a faulty conclusion that his religious leaders had lied to him. For example, many believers hold beliefs that are not actually part of Doctrine (eg, that all the books of the Bible had been written in the order in which they are printed, which is not true) and have a crisis of faith when presented with the truth. In such cases, having the truth explained to them and showing that the belief they had held would show the conflict to only be apparent. That form of harmonization would be a proper use of apologetics.IOW, explaining what actual Doctrine is and showing truthfully how there's no conflict between it and reality would be the proper function of apologetics.
For example, showing that there evolution no more conflicts with God than gravity or the Pythagorean Theorem does. And I view such use of apologetics as proper and necessary.However, there are also many cases where that contradiction/conflict does actually exist, in which cases apologetics takes a sharp and hard left turn to the Dark Side. That is when apologetics starts just "making up excuses", abandoning education for dreaming up rationalizations for false beliefs. That is not harmonizing, but rather just flat-out lying. And that is the realm of "creation science".That is why apologetics has such a bad reputation and deservedly so.

If you want to and have time, bump: Message 1334