Hitch is dead

I have given a rational for how I understand the Bible.How about you tell us how you see the Scripture as it really is. I understand through the message of Jesus. It isn't that complicated. Jesus Himself refutes much of OT teaching. Frankly, sometimes my understanding of Jesus has been exactly what I don't want to hear. It is simply what I believe to be true.

Except that it's now accepted that Mark wrote his stories from a compilation of hearsay and myth.

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Most scholars date Mark to AD 65-75.[3] They reject the traditional ascription to Mark the Evangelist, the companion of the Apostle Peter, which probably arose from the desire of early Christians to link the work to an authoritative figure, and believe it to be the work of an author working with various sources including collections of miracle stories, controversy stories, parables, and a passion narrative.[4] It was traditionally placed second, and sometimes fourth, in the Christian canon, as an inferior abridgement of what was regarded as the most important gospel, Matthew.[5] The Church has consequently derived its view of Jesus primarily from Matthew, secondarily from John, and only distantly from Mark.[6] It was only in the 19th century that Mark came to be seen as the earliest of the four gospels, and as a source used by both Matthew and Luke.[6] The hypothesis of Marcan priority (that Mark was written first) continues to be held by the majority of scholars today, and there is a new recognition of the author as an artist and theologian using a range of literary devices to convey his conception of Jesus as the authoritative yet suffering Son of God.[6]

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And the development of the resurection story over time is very obvious.

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Christians of Mark's time expected Jesus to return as Messiah in their own lifetime — Mark, like the other gospels, attributes the promise to Jesus himself (Mark 9:1 and 13:30), and it is reflected in the letters of Paul, in the epistle of James, in Hebrews, and in Revelation. When return failed, the early Christians revised their understanding. Some acknowledged that the Second Coming had been delayed, but still expected it; others redefined the focus of the promise, the Gospel of John, for example, speaking of "eternal life" as something available in the present; while still others concluded that Jesus would not return at all (2 Peter argues against those who held this view).[62]
Mark's despairing death of Jesus was changed to a more victorious one in subsequent gospels.[63] Mark's Christ dies with the cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"; Matthew, the next gospel to be written, repeats this word for word but manages to make clear that Jesus's death is the beginning of the resurrection of Israel; Luke has a still more positive picture, replacing Mark's (and Matthew's) cry of despair with one of submission to God's will ("Father, into your hands I commend my spirit"); while John, the last gospel, has Jesus dying without apparent suffering in fulfillment of the divine plan.[63]

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Gospel of Mark - WikipediaIt's all an obvious fabrication for a purpose. How intelligent people can think that this stuff is evidence of anything other than a attempt to create and maintain a mythology is beyond me.

I agree with GDR. Put up or shut up. Enlighten us. What *is* it? Your answer will show your true colors.

The following is a summary of the work of Richard Bauckham a Cambridge professor who has done a massive amount of research of the ancient documents and shows the strong evidence that the narrator of Mark was a disciple of Peter, as confirmed by Papias and Polycarp.
Eyewitness Testimony That is only true in the sense that theologians from the 1st centruy until now are still working out what it is that we should take away from what God did in resurrecting Jesus. However, from the beginning it was understood that God had resurrected Jesus. The earliest Christian writings that we have are Paul's Epistles and He is very clear that God resurrected Jesus. Paul wrote this about 53AD.

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12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. 15 More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.

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As far as Christ coming again is concerned there are a number of ways of looking at that. Firstly I agree that many of the early Christians were expecting Him to come again sooner rather than later. It really isn't very clear though. Jesus often referred to Himself as the Son of Man. This is clear reference to Daniel 7 where we have one like a Son of Man "coming" to the Ancient of Days. In a sense that is a second coming and the texts can be construed that way. Personally I'm not concerned about when ,and I even concede that it might simply be that Christ comes again to us individually when we "shuffle off this mortal coil".Also the call from Jesus on the cross of "My God My God why have you forsaken me" is as that wiki article has done misconstrued what Jesus meant. The writer of that wiki article takes it out of context. It is the first line of Psalm 22. The Jews that were at the cross would understand that He was drawing their attention to that psalm, which they would all be familiar with. When we go down to vs 24 the psalmist has written this.

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24 For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.

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In other words Jesus is saying to them that even in His darkest hour when it looks like He has been forsaken, He hasn't been. God is with Him in His suffering.Edited by GDR, : typo

And the following is strong evidence that the anonymous author of Mark (who never claims to have even met Peter) was not a disciple of Peter. Papias also never met any of the apostles and got his 'information' from oral traditions. It's an edifice built on speculation and hearsay.It's a long and scholarly article - and I think pretty fair. I'm no biblical scholar and I now know more about this squirming nest of conjecture that I really want to. It's clear that there's no reason at all to believe any particular version of the historicity of the bible stories.Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels » Internet Infidels

I see the Bible as 66 books - give or take, depending on the canon. The God depicted in the New Testament is not more accurate than the God depicted in the Old Testament. The alien overlord, if it exists, may or may not resemble any of the gods depicted in the Bible. There is certainly no valid rationale for choosing one personality over another. And yet He said Himself that that was exactly not what He was doing. I don't buy that.

Been there. Done that.Now YOU get down off your arrogant high-horse and give us a valid rationale for choosing the cute-and-cuddly God of the New Testament over the war criminal of the Old Testament.And then you can give us a valid rationale for throwing out most of the New Testament too. As I have said many times: it is what it is; it says what it says. Why are you still in the dark about that?

I actually agree with this.I just go a few more steps.With this information, and the following:
-how (un)reliable we know eye witnesses are
-how reality-ignoring we understand religions can be
-how "my-way-or-the-high-way" we understand religions can be
-how we know the speed of which the hope of "a saviour" can flourish through an oppressed population
-everything we know about mob-mentality
-everything we know about history's ability (or lack-of) for "fact-checking"
-everything we know about story-telling
-everything we know about how stories-to-embellishment-to-myths were major/popular historical tools
-everything we know about how the game "telephone" works...how can anyone read anything in the Bible (or any other ancient religious or even folk-lore-related text) and say "Yup - this happened, no doubt."I understand this doesn't show "it didn't happen."
But to be convinced it did happen - with all we know about how humans operate - pushes the boundaries of credibility (for me.)

That sounds like a great starting point. The key to the whole thing is the resurrection. It is similar to the accounts of witnesses to any occurrence such as a car accident. They may disagree on the details but they all agree that the accident occurred. Some of the accounts around the resurrection are inconsistent, but there is no disagreement about their assertion that the resurrection happened. Agreed, but in this case there is no evidence that there was anyone who had considered even the possibility that anyone would be resurrected as an individual within their time. Here is a quote from John 11.

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23 Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again. 24 Martha answered, I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.

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They believed that there would be a general resurrection, presumably for Jews anyway, at the end of time. The idea of resurrection in the middle of human history had never been considered as far as we know from all the records. Lazarus of course was resuscitated as a mortal into a finite life, whereas resurrection was about being raised into a renewed and eternal physicality. I suppose, but in this case it meant that there was a major downside of following Jesus, as besides being ostracized by your community it could mean torture and death. Look what happened to Jesus and Stephen. I suppose that you could use the heaven and hell argument, but that would only resonate if you were prepared to believe something that was completely outside of the expectet. Also of course all the early Christians had to leave the faith that they had been born and raised in, as well as accept a new life style that emphasized mercy, peace and love in the midst of living under the thumb of a brutal and life threatening Roman regime. Agreed, but in this case Jesus as saviour wasn’t at all like what a saviour was supposed to be. A saviour was to lead them and drive the Romans out of the promised land. Jesus is telling them to love their enemies. How do you think a saviour like that would have been received in Nazi occupied areas in 1942? I haven’t seen a lot of mobs going around telling people to love their neighbours and even their enemies. There are those at the time that some of the eye witnesses were still alive that claimed to have done much fact-checking. For example, Luke, Papias and Polycarp. Certainly it has been difficult over the centuries for historians to do much fact checking and as a result Christianity took on a lot of Latin and Hellenistic thinking, which involved both the theology and the position of the church. Recently however, with the discovery of material such as the dead sea scrolls there is more information available and even more specifically is the fact that there is such a wealth of material instantly available for scholars to work with on the internet. Here is an interesting article about ancient documents that came out a couple of years ago. Secrets Hidden in Ancient Manuscripts There is nothing there specific to what we are talking about but it is an example of how we are continuing to have a better understanding of ancient times. There is certainly many on both sides of this issue that are engaged in historical fact finding. There are certainly legendary accounts of events in the Bible but I contend that the resurrection does not have the kind of feel to it. I would agree that the nativity stories do have a legendary feel, so I have a much more tentative belief about that. I can’t disagree with that, but that usually happens over longer periods of time. NT accounts were being written and circulated while there were still eye witnesses to confirm or reject them. However I do agree that there is a strong likelihood of embellishments in the Gospels. IMHO there isn’t much of that going on in the NT. I think that the evidence favours the belief that John was written by an eye witnesses, and that the other books were written by either eye witnesses or individuals that had direct contact with eye witnesses. I don’t think that I have suggested that anyone can, nor can anyone say that nope — this didn’t happen, no doubt. I remain convinced that the essential element of the NT, which is that God resurrected Jesus into a renewed and physical form of existence, is historical. I can’t say that it happened — no doubt . However, Christianity makes sense of my life and the world I live in, in a way that nothing else does. ..and it doesn’t show that it did. Again IMHO, I suggest that if the disciples wanted to keep the movement that Jesus started going and so created a legendary account around it, that this isn’t at all what they would have come up with. Firstly, in spite of what some on this forum have claimed there is no personal motivation for them to do that. Their leader had died a humiliating death at the hands of the enemy. (Paul even has to write that he wasn’t ashamed to preach a crucified messiah.) It would have taken the collusion of many in order to pull it off, and it would have meant having their accounts perfectly in line with each other.As you agreed, they believed that God had resurrected Jesus, and it would be something very difficult to believe without having overwhelming evidence.
Cheers

Mark doesn't directly claim to have been a disciple of Peter but the evidence points that way. We have this from Papias.

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The Elder also said this, Mark, being the interpreter of Peter, whatsoever he remembered he wrote accurately, but not however in the order that these things were spoken or done by our Lord. For he neither heard the Lord, nor followed him, but afterwards, as I said, he was with Peter, who did not make a complete [or ordered] account of the Lord’s logia, but constructed his teachings according to chreiai [concise self-contained teachings]. So Mark did nothing wrong in writing down single matters as he remembered them, for he gave special attention to one thing, of not passing by anything he heard, and not falsifying anything in these matters.

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Papias also wrote the following.

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I shall not hesitate also to put into ordered form for you, along with the interpretations, everything I learned carefully in the past from the elders and noted down carefully, for the truth of which I vouch. For unlike most people I took no pleasure in those who told many different stories, but only in those who taught the truth. Nor did I take pleasure in those who reported their memory of someone else’s commandments, but only in those who reported their memory of the commandments given by the Lord to the faith and proceeding from the Truth itself. And if by chance anyone who had been in attendance on the elders arrived, I made enquiries about the words of the elderswhat Andrew or Peter had said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or Matthew or any other of the Lord’s disciples, and whatever Aristion and John the Elder, the Lord’s disciples, were saying. For I did not think that information from the books would profit me as much as information from a living and surviving voice.

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Well your article does show that you can make a case for either POV.Your account makes an interesting point when in it contrasts the accounts of what happened to Paul after his conversion. The writer contrasts Acts 9:19-23 with Galatians 1:16-19. My reading is that the accounts do in some ways differ they were written for two different purposes and so they come out differently. In Acts,(written in most scholars opinion by a companion of Paul), was simply giving an account of what transpired when Paul was converted. In Galatians it is Paul himself who is essentially establishing his credentials as an apostle in saying that his understanding of Jesus came directly from the risen Jesus, and that his initial knowledge was not from the other apostles. Both accounts agree that at least later he did meet with at least Peter and James.This was a major change in Paul's beliefs and his life. He essentially had to repudiate all that he had stood for and leave the life where he was moving up the ranks, to a life largely consisting of hardship, torture and imprisonment. It would have taken a lot to have him make this change. Maybe we should give serious credibility to what he claims happened to him that caused him to make the changes that he did.

I'd humbly suggest that there are valid reasons. The idea that we should love one another goes back to Leviticus. The 10 commandments aren't so bad either. So, even in the first books in the OT we can see evidence of a deity that calls us to love others. Then we have the books where various prophets tell their leaders that God is ordering them to commit ovarious atrocities including genocide. The OT is full of accounts about false prophets. I suggest that it is pretty clear that not all the false prophets got weeded out, and that the various leaders accepted the advice of some of these false prophets. (I think in many cases the false prophets said what the leaders wanted to hear and the leaders accepted the words of the prophets that said what they wanted to hear.)As I've said in other places I see the Bible as the progressive understanding of God and His nature and His desires for how we live our lives. This of course climaxes Biblically in Jesus.Also of course I understand God's nature from the belief that God resurrected Jesus, then I can look at Jesus to understand the nature of God. Not really. He says that He came to fulfill the laws and that all the laws were based on love of God and neighbour. He radically changed the law on divorce, rejected the teaching of an eye for eye, essentially discarded the sabbath and food laws and replaced Temple sacrifice with a call for mercy. Believe me, I can look back on my life and at the things I screwed up when I went with what I wanted. In some cases the Christian understanding that God forgives when we repent doesn't cut it when I have trouble forgiving myself.

The idea that we should love one another goes back to the Olduvai Gorge - and before that. You conveniently ignore the occasions when God committed atrocities all on His own - the Flood, for example. And usually pretty clear about pointing out which ones were false. There's no indication that the ones advocating atrocities were false.

What do you mean by rational? Last night I was at church and literally felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. I was crying profusely, something I never do. God is not simply a character in the book. But I will never convince you. Perhaps He can. But in the interests of debate and our ongoing discussions, I will attempt a valid argument for you and jar...when I get the time.

Rationale.A set of reasons. A logical basis. No. You felt "something" that you interpreted in the way you have been taught to interpret things. That's figurative, not literal. That's an empty statement and unconnected to anything else in your post.

Of course. I was merely pointing out that it was in the Hebrew Scriptures and not original with Jesus. Jesus was referring to that reading from Leviticus. Gimme a break. Do I have to go through all of the egregious commands in the OT every time it comes up. I have already pointed that out numerous times already. Yes, the OT has God commanding and committing acts of genocide as well as commanding public stoning for offences as minor as picking up firewood on the Sabbath. Rather than having to go through this all again here are links to two posts of mine in conversation with Faith addressing that issue. Message 1 and Message 5