Historical Jesus, Biblical Jesus

[JesseB]

So no Paul was not in a position to know a damn thing, he was not eyewitness to the events. His account is entirely based on hearsay, or possibly drug induced or schizophrenia induced visions. He didn't even convert until  after Jesus supposedly died.

Your first sentence is obviously false. He knew all the characters and spend years with them--including two stints in Jerusalem. Barnabas--high ranking early leader vouched for him in Jerusalem and was his mentor in Antioch for years. All this BEFORE his missionary journeys and the writing of his epistles.

As for the 500 bit, I thought you claimed Paul said it, I may have gotten a bit confused in the mess of claims however. Doesn't matter if paul said it however the 500 "eye witnesses" are a claim unless you can dig up 500 accounts from actual fucking eye witnesses. Thus you can not claim it is an eyewitness account or personal experience. 

Paul related the early church teaching that Jesus appeared to more than 500 --many of them still alive. I never claimed I heard from 500 witnesses. Paul would certainly have met many of these people. Paul believed this fact. I believe Paul (and have never heard a good reason not to). It is as simple as that.  Hearsay, yes. Evidence nonetheless. Actually, according to ancient historical standards, pretty good evidence.

P2 in your claim is also false, it could not be verified as all if it was written after the fact. Supposedly Jesus was already dead. Funny enough the Romans kept good records about who they killed and had no record of the event, thus it couldn't even be verified then that Jesus died let alone lived. There were a number of street preachers who did get killed sharing the name Yeshuwa but you don't want any of them to be your Jesus, what they preached you would consider blasphemy so.... Bit of a problem there dude.

Your first sentence is confused. Everything about anything is written after the fact. The "Roman Record" counter argument presupposes that we have anywhere close to a fraction of the roman empire documents. Do you think we have anywhere close to a fraction of the roman empire's documents?

Also it's important to remember that the NT has a whole lot of factual errors and contradictions from historical figures out of place, to Jesus supposedly being in multiple places at the same time. Including accounts of his birth which supposedly took place with his non magical parents in two places at the same time.

A "whole lot" huh. How many would you say? Are the actually important facts or are they the facts like I got the date wrong or the you don't go through that town to get to that other town? Exactly what do you think that proves?

I have no idea what you are talking about with Jesus' birth.

Also one last point, every single one of the gospels are plagiarized off the first one, and none of them were written when the people alive during the supposed events could have reasonably still been alive. So at best you have haresay of actual events recorded in the bible at worse you have one made up account and a dozen or so plagiarized copies of the account dressed up to look pretty and renamed under different apostles for events that never happened.

Plagiarize is a pejorative term in an attempt to mischaracterize the gospels without actually making any points. It would seem that Matthew and Luke had Mark on hand when they set their account down. They had a different audience and a different emphasis and takes on things. There is also a significant portion of material that is in the other gospels that is not in Mark. What about Q? Why not mention that? I'll tell you--it's evidence that the stories were written down WAY before you want the stories to be circulating.

Ah, dating. I wondered when that would come up. Why are the later dates preferred by the atheist scholars? This is important. You probably think there is some secret formula the wise scholars know when something was written. Well, it's not that. Because it was clear that Jesus predicted the destruction of the temple in Mark 13. Why is that important? Well, if the gospel was written before the destruction of the temple, then that creates a problem for atheist scholars and their pet theories because Jesus predicted a huge event. So it MUST have been written after. That's it. That's the reason. How about that for letting your bias direct your scholarship!

I'm going with the early dating--because it actually is better reasoned. As you pointed out, Luke wrote Luke/Acts as a two volume set.  Luke finished Acts before Paul's death in 67. You don't forget to mention the death of one of your main characters in your report. So if Acts was done before 67, how long before was Mark written? At least a few years--It had to get circulated and copied because both Luke and Matthew had to "plagiarizer" it. I think sometime in the 50s is a good estimate. Well, look at that! There are three gospels all written well within the lifetime of eyewitnesses--in fact, all written within the lifetime of every single important character in the story.

1. A personal account requires you to have a personal experience. Even if this guy met the other people involved and relayed stories from them what he's done is relay hearsay. Now if he approached it like an actual historian would and said hey I met this fellow and they said this. It would be a second hand source, better than hearsay worse than personal experience.

You're simply trying to ignore the fucking point. Paul's account is worthless. He wasn't there, he doesn't know, that's assuming it's not just  a total fabrication to begin with. At best he's a guy that had an experience he interpreted as religious read some books, liked them, wrote his own fan fiction of their accounts and rolled with it. AT BEST.

Seriously I get why you love the classical arguments, you've never bothered to keep up with the things we've learned about history past the 1800's.


2. The 500, paul wasn't fucking there. He wasn't a christian until AFTER Jesus died. So the entire account is either a forgery, a fabrication, or a lie. Pick one. His own admission puts him in the church after all of the events that took place. If you bothered to read your fucking bible you'd realize that it sounds a hell of a lot like a guy tried to write himself into his own fanfiction.

That Paul isn't a contemporary of Jesus is pretty well known and established even in Christian circles dude

"The conversion of Paul the Apostle, was, according to the New Testament, an event in the life of Paul the Apostle that led him to cease persecuting early Christians and to become a follower of Jesus. It is normally dated to AD 33–36." Holy fucking shit dude. how many times are you going to ignore the fact that this right here demonstrates you have a big fucking problem with your claims about his testimony. He didn't meet those people, he didn't see anything, and he didn't claim to have interviewed 500 people. He wrote it as if he himself was there when he fucking wasn't. This is a problem dude. How the fuck do you keep ignoring this.

"I'm going with the early dating--because it actually is better reasoned. As you pointed out, Luke wrote Luke/Acts as a two volume set.  Luke finished Acts before Paul's death in 67. You don't forget to mention the death of one of your main characters in your report. So if Acts was done before 67, how long before was Mark written? At least a few years--It had to get circulated and copied because both Luke and Matthew had to "plagiarizer" it. I think sometime in the 50s is a good estimate. Well, look at that! There are three gospels all written well within the lifetime of eyewitnesses--in fact, all written within the lifetime of every single important character in the story.?
-No you're going with whatever date backs up your preconceived notion. Show us how your dating makes sense. What are the methodologies are you using to arrive at this conclusion. I'm sticking to the general consensus because I'm not an expert in this field. That said I've heard the justifications before and found them reasonable. If you want to change my mind, do so. But with the mental gymnastics you've been displaying thus far I have little confidence in your ability to do so.

The gospels are mostly plagiarized right down to the word usage and phrases, then modified, and further modified over thousands of years by Christians more than happy to commit fraud and forgery in Jesus' name. That you would claim otherwise show's how uninformed you are. Now I get it, I'm schooled in digital forensics, I'm trained to know an authentic work from a fake. You are not. The people who realized these documents aren't sound are also, you are not. Combined with the fact that you refuse to listen to any contemporary apologist or biblical scholar, or historian that wasn't born in the 1800's it's unsurprising you're having difficulty understanding this. I can't help you if you refuse to fucking due your due diligence. 


I bet you're going to claim there's no major contradictions in the bible. Like say, where baby Jesus was supposedly born. Eh? How bout the fact that census didn't happen back then the way the bible claims (kinda a big deal), and that we know no such census took place. It is a story, a fabrication. There's two such stories based on this fabrication and they can not both be facially accurate. That you don't know what I"m talking about is further evidence you never bothered to read your fucking bible. Hell I was aware of this contradiction since I was a young child.