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@3RU7AL
However, even if the prophecies were 100% authentic, they do nothing to authenticate the "divinity" of the Jesus.
The NT applies OT Scripture to Jesus regarding things that solely apply to God in the OT. Even passages in the OT suggest the one God as a plurality of Beings.
Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
The Lord Gives Dominion to the King.
A Psalm of David.
110 The Lord says to my Lord:
“Sit at My right hand
Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”
Isaiah 9:6 (NASB)“Sit at My right hand
Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.”
6 For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us;
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
And the government will rest on His shoulders;
And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
Not only this, but God makes a Mosaic covenant with Israel as recorded in the OT. Jesus makes an eternal covenant with the NT Israel as recorded in the NT. God calls Himself "I Am" in Exodus 3:14. Jesus uses the same term to refer to Himself in the NT. In Isaiah 45:23 God says that every knee will bow before Him, and in the NT we are told every knee will bow before Jesus and confess He is Lord. In the OT God is the One who heals. In the NT Jesus heals. In the OT God says that He will not give His glory to another. In the NT we are told that Jesus is returning to the Father and to the same glory that He shared before He came to earth. So, over and over we see what is applied to God and only God is also applied to Jesus.
Isaiah 45:22-24 (NASB)
22 “Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth;
For I am God, and there is no other.
23 “I have sworn by Myself,
The word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness
And will not turn back,
That to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance.
24 “They will say of Me, ‘Only in the Lord are righteousness and strength.’
Men will come to Him,
And all who were angry at Him will be put to shame.
For I am God, and there is no other.
23 “I have sworn by Myself,
The word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness
And will not turn back,
That to Me every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance.
24 “They will say of Me, ‘Only in the Lord are righteousness and strength.’
Men will come to Him,
And all who were angry at Him will be put to shame.
Philippians 2:9-11 (NASB)
9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
9 For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
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@3RU7AL
But in Mathew we read "They brought the donkey and the colt and placed their cloaks on them for Jesus to sit on." Quite clearly two animals. Not only that but jesus sits on them both - presumbly like some sort of circus act! It seems likely that Matthew didn't identify the poetic aspect and took Zechariah literally. In other words he wasn't a witness but adapted what he found in the old scripture to construct his tale.
Not so fast. While Matthew writes to a Jewish audience and presents a Jewish view of the Scriptures, noting fulfillment after fulfillment of the Jewish Scriptures, and sometimes quite literally interprets (Zechariah 9:9), the wording does not necessarily imply Jesus sitting on two animals but the reference could be to the cloaks which are draped over two animals. The cloaks were put on both animals and since the colt is unbroken the mother would be brought along too to placate or calm the colt. So, instead of sitting on two animals Jesus could be sitting on two cloaks which draped over two animals.
Glenn Miller summarizes the text well:
"So, the two-animal problem is not as ‘intractable’ as it might look like at
first, since all the elements actually fit together quite well—for both the narrative and for the fulfillment quote:
- The parallel in the Gospel of John shows that abbreviation of both narrative and fulfillment quote is legitimate for anauthor,and that therefore a reduction of mother-and-foal (in the event) to colt-only (in the gospel narrative) by other gospel writers is perfectly natural.
- Matthew uses all the standard terms for the animals, and these terms match the Hebrew of Zechariah perfectly.
- His description of the dual-action of mother-colt fits what we know of animal handling, festival proceedings, and basic practice of the period.
- His language is such that no one needassetthat Jesus straddled two animals!
- His use of Hebrew texts and parallelism elsewhere in his gospel shows us that he did not misunderstand Zech9.9,and that he would ‘know better’ than to try to foist a ‘dualist’ interpretation upon his Jewish readership!
- His could not have translated the Zechariah quote any truer or any more carefully, for proper communication to his readership.
- His use of the mother donkey in the story can be easily and naturally explained by the vividness of its impression upon him as an eyewitness—the visual image of the ‘colt, the son of a she-ass’ communicated the concreteness of God’s fulfilling His promises to Israel for hermessiah."
Right, the fact that these writers were aware of the significance of the prophecies, they were highly motivated to make them fit.Sort of a case of "self-fulfilling prophecy".
While you can claim "self-fulfillment" it becomes a lot harder to prove, in fact, in some cases impossible.
What you seem to be implying here is that these gospel writers made up a fictitious life to comply with prophetic fulfillment. If that is the charge it ignores extra-biblical accounts that confirm Jesus as a historical person and it also ignores the evidence that this was the case. So it is purely speculative and goes against the wealth of evidence we do have unless you can produce such evidence.
It also begs the question of why these people, this group of people claiming to be eyewitnesses or obtaining their information from eyewitnesses, would die for what they knew was a lie? We have, what appears in the gospels, to be people preaching about honesty and truth that would have to be (all the time) working against such principles. So such noble principles and teachings as the sermon on the mount would also be a lie.
The majority of the Jewish Scriptures (OT) speak of judgment or curses for not repenting. Their seeking after foreign gods and their idolatry is a punishable offense, so God speaks of bringing destruction and all the calamities written about in Deuteronomy 28 upon these people. He gives then a period of seventy heptads or 490 years until, 1) the Messiah comes and is put to death, 2) the destruction of the city and temple happens again, before the "end." End of what? Israel has no control over whether these things happen or not, such as "even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate” or " and as soon as they finish shattering the power of the holy people, all these events will be completed" or "for these words are concealed and sealed up until the end time" or "go your way to the end; then you will enter into rest and rise again for your allotted portion at the end of the age.” Every one of these prophecies applies to Daniel's people, a people in covenant with God, and that covenant relationship no longer exists after AD 70. How do you manufacture that? How do you manufacture the six specific prophecies of Daniel 9:24?
How do you manufacture a crucifixion, and Jesus, events that even those not believing the gospel accounts and are Jews write about? How do you manufacture His genealogy, that would have to fit with an Old Covenant people, and the genealogical records were kept in the temple, which no longer exists after AD 70? So, again, after that timeframe, there is no way of proving the roots comply with the genealogies.
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@keithprosser
I don't think it is neccessary to demonstrate that people are capable of being dishonest; it is neccesary to demonstrate people have clairvoyant powers.
We are speaking of God as the source, not humans. This seems to be the only thing that is avoided in the conversation. Would it be unreasonable for God to know the future in full detail?
You have been banging on about reasonableness. What is the more reasonable explanation - a spot of dishonesty or the gross violation of every known law of physics?
That depends on how you think this universe and life originated. How do you get laws of physics and laws of nature in the first place?
Why should laws continue to exist and why should they be sustained indefinitely? What say you?
Either way, you have to come up with an explanation of prophecy. Based on what is available and what is known, what is more reasonable? How does Daniel 9, written before the fall of Jerusalem, know these details? You say they were smuggled in after the fact. But we have writings dated before the fact. Hundreds of different prophecies predict the Messiah, people verify that Jesus is that Messiah. And the NT apostles go to their deaths proclaiming not only this but that He has been raised from the dead.
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@keithprosser
But predicting where the Messiah would be born, when, details of His life, and how He would die, instigated but not physically put to death by His own people but at the hands of the Romans. How do you predict this stuff?It's clearly impossible.
UNLESS God is behind the prophecy.
What is not impossible is for the evanglists to deliberately add or tweak their accounts to make it appear a 'prophesy' was fulfilled. Both Luke and Matthew would surely have been familiar with micah 5:2“But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah,though you are small among the clans of Judah,out of you will come for meone who will be ruler over Israel,whose origins are from of old,from ancient times.”M and L's nativity stories attempt to solve the problem that Jesus inconveniently came from Nazareth, not Bethlehem. When you note that all it takes is the gospellers could read and copy bits from the old scriptures into their stories it seems a lot less impressive!
First, where is this tapering noted as happening from early historic records? Please list your sources or admit you are speculating and from what we have available this is not reasonable.
Second, both Matthew and Luke state emphatically that Jesus was BORN in Bethlehem.
[ The Visit of the Magi ] Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying,
[ Jesus’ Birth in Bethlehem ] Now in those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus, that a census be taken of all the inhabited earth...
4 Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, 5 in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. 6 While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
4 Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David, 5 in order to register along with Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. 6 While they were there, the days were completed for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
Third, Joseph was from Nazareth, so his Son would possibly be registered as living there. But Joseph had to register in Bethlehem where it is CLEARLY stated that Jesus was born.
Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and family of David,
‘And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, Are by no means least among the leaders of Judah; For out of you shall come forth a Ruler Who will shepherd My people Israel.’”
Yes, both authors, knowing Scripture would be aware of the prophecy, thus they proclaim the prophecy is fulfilled.
Not only that but after fleeing to Egypt and returning Jesus' family takes up residence in Nazareth. Jesus learns His trade there.
and came and lived in a city called Nazareth. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophets: “He shall be called a Nazarene.”
So, even there prophecy is fulfilled.
Your argument is weak and not rational unless you have good supporting evidence, so what is it other than you speculating.
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@3RU7AL
Again, it does not list any prophecies/predictions except vaguely and that in regards to Groundhog Day. It gives no stats on the 100% accuracy rate that you cited in your previous post. It also describes how he uses the latest weather technology, yet how does he predict things that will happen years, decades, centuries in advance, and how would you verify he could since he lives in our day and age. And how do his predictions tell of the fall of a people or the specifics that would take place before this happened, sometimes hundreds of years before the fact?You're moving the goal-posts. You only stipulated,
I'm not moving the goal posts. I'm trying to establish the difference between what you cited as prophecy and Bible prophecy.
Show me a human/humans who has/have made hundreds of prediction before the facts that have come to pass.You never said, "inspired by a god" or "years and or centuries in advance" or "100% accuracy".
The Bible claims it. I make a distinction between the differences between what you call predictions and what the Bible authors wrote down and claimed inspired from/by God (God said). The Bible says God does not lie, so if these are God's words or revelation then they are 100% accurate. I gave you Daniel 9:24-27, Daniel 2, and Daniel 12 as test cases. Show the interpretation the Preterist uses is wrong or not reasonable and logical. You can't refute these prophecies reasonably or logically. That is my claim.
Really, if you're just going to change you criteria every time I give you an answer, this is going to be a very lolong conversation.
I'm not changing it. Biblical prophecy claims to be a revelation from God. It claims all Bible prophecy never had its origins by men but were inspired by God.
I mean, sea-level rise was predicted "years in advance" and "before it came to pass", does that count?
It is common sense if the temperature of the earth rises.
But predicting where the Messiah would be born, when, details of His life, and how He would die, instigated but not physically put to death by His own people but at the hands of the Romans. How do you predict this stuff?
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@Polytheist-Witch
Not what the Scriptures teach and where are you getting this information from? Are you making it up?No writer saw Jesus they all either wrote stories they heard or about believers.
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@3RU7AL
Historical evidence of the Jesus is moot.That is your personal opinion and is a result of your worldview bias.Historical evidence of the Jesus makes it credible the teachings could come or are based on what he said, not that the texts are accurate/true.
Provided He is not who He claimed to be. If He is God and Man then what He says (My words will never pass away) will be true.
There is historical evidence of Siddhartha, does this make Buddhism true?It makes it credible the teachings could come or are based on what he said, not that the texts are accurate/true.Again, the problem with religions is that each one is contrary to the other in some major understanding of God/gods/lack of gods, Thus, logically only one, if you grant any is true to what is.And if there is no ultimate revelation from God what makes your views any truer than any other view, after all, you are a limited, subjective, relative person? In other words, why should I value your personal opinion or preference?I've never suggested that any of this is merely "my opinion", I have instead, repeatedly harped on logical coherence and epistemological limits.
Based on your limited knowledge and your coherency of any given thing. So why should I trust your opinion because you think what you say is more logical?
There is historical evidence of Joseph Smith, does this make Mormonism true?No. The book is contradictory to the Bible in which it recognizes as from God also.I'm sure the Mormons have a litany of apologists who would gladly explain "the correct interpretation" to you.
I have read it and I find it nonsense, both it and its claims, which are inconsistent in relation to the Bible.
There is historical evidence of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, does this make Scientology true?No, Scientology is a cult that has been exposed by its inconsistencies.Are you absolutely certain those supposed "inconsistencies" are not simply "incorrect interpretations"?
There are many articles on the Net that expose the inconsistencies.
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@3RU7AL
If that is the case, I have the exact same question. Why did the "YHWH" wait so long to write anything down?Except for the Ten Commandments, what is it you are claiming God wrote down?The inspired "word of god".I'm asking why the "YHWH" waited until the bronze age to communicate its message.
Because God wanted humanity to experience life without Him and the consequences. Yet He was in communication with some throughout this period.
I'm asking why the "YHWH" didn't just send down one or more of its "holy hitmen" along with a "talking donkey" to "communicate with" or otherwise "reason with" the leaders of all those supposedly false religions?
I don't know, but people have a way of justifying their wrongful actions and ignoring correction. God punished the world during Noah's time and promised not to go there again.
Couldn't the "YHWH" have popped little "holy assassins" and "talking donkeys" down to earth in order to "reason with" the misguided followers of Ahura Mazda?Why? Everything needed for salvation had been revealed through His covenant people and by Jesus.The followers of Ahura Mazda lived centuries before the Jesus was even born. How exactly were they supposed to know about Jesus?
God gave witness of Himself through the nation of Israel. These other religions, do you really think they were interested in God? They probably showed the same interest that many atheists do today, scorn and unbelief.
Nothing else needs to be said. You have what is needed for salvation. The teachings of Zoroastrianism is contrary to the Hebrew Bible and the NT. That means something does not ring true somewhere.The fact that Zoroastrianism is contrary to the Hebrew teachings does nothing to validate or invalidate either the Hebrew teachings or Zoroastrianism.
True, the verification or lack thereof comes from the teachings and evidence from the teaching.
It also lends some credibility to the idea that Abraham's concept of god and heavenly hosts was very likely shaped by this pre-existing religion.Or their religion by his and those before him, but they corrupted the belief.Based on what? Wouldn't you need some historical basis for this perfectly bald assertion?Once you understand the original you are better able to recognize counterfeits.Based on what? The same that you are basing your assertions of Abraham on, your assumption, but more, the biblical account itself that teaches against gods as anything other than human constructs. The historical basis would be the Scriptures themselves.You can't use your own scriptures to validate your own scriptures.
That is like saying you can't use science to verify science. The Scriptures provide many external pieces of evidence of what they communicate. Supposing (for your benefit) that the Scriptures are from God, then is it reasonable to think I can get something more authoritative from other sources?
You are assuming that these religions are being borrowed from rather than the other way around.You are assuming that Christianity is being borrowed from, even before it existed in the first place.
Christianity is a progressive carryon of Judaism. What is contained in the OT or Hebrew Scriptures is made known more fully in the NT.
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@Polytheist-Witch
Not true. There are 19 extra-biblical accounts from historians and others that treat Jesus as a historical person, as do the various eyewitness accounts, the early church fathers and others.The only accounts are in myth. Nothing in any historical record.
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@3RU7AL
For example, if Democritus said, "There will be a terrible storm in two weeks time" and, verily, it came to pass exactly as he predicted, and then Democritus said, "Your wife will become pregnant and will bear a son" does this mean that Democritus is divinely inspired?No. The predictions above are nothing out of the ordinary.What?! Are you kidding me? People went insane for this stuff in ancient times.People prayed and begged and offered sacrifices and rituals to any god they could find to ask them for a son.People literally thought Democritus was a living god because he could predict the weather.
And how accurate was his weather reports and what evidence do you have to verify your assertions?
Plus, these are only two predictions that are commonplace.They are only commonplace NOW because we have SCIENCE.The Bible has hundreds and hundreds of prophecies and many of them are not normal, plus they are very specific.By "not normal" do you mean "unbelievable"?Most of them are not very specific.
No, by not normal I mean the general everyday kind of thing like the weather or whether the sun will rise or not. What I mean is the depth of the prophetic utterances, the many specifics regarding them, like how Someone will die, where They will be born, when He would come, and many matters of His life, plus the life of Israel in relation to Him.
Would you, personally, drop everything and worship the great and powerful Demo?No. But the OT prophecies are not so general. Take Psalms 22, Zechariah 12:10, or Isaiah 53 for instance. Two of these speak of the act of crucifixion long before the act was known or common. All three contain specifics about what happened on the cross, as reported by the eyewitnesses.Are you suggesting that the Jesus was the only human being in history that was ever crucified?
No, not at all. What I am getting at is the Messiah would come at a specific time in history and would be put to death before the fall of Jerusalem. This Person would be put to death in a particular manner that is not used as a form of death after a certain period of history and by a specific people (the Romans). So, the Messiah would meet all this criterion and more.
The qualifier, "when properly interpreted" is an awesome loophole.If you don't think there is a proper way of interpreting it provides a loophole. But do you really believe that? Are you understanding what I am saying? If you are you are correcting interpreting what I have said.You don't have to convince me. There are literally thousands of so-called Christian denominations. Each one has their own "correct interpretation".And don't forget that even stock traders can go on a hot streak, but, by law, they still need to inform the public that, "past performance is not a guarantee of future results".Therefore they correctly interpret the signs that they work with. So what.The point is that, simply because someone makes a series of accurate predictions, this does not mean that they will always make accurate predictions, and in-fact, they are more likely to make an inaccurate prediction because of "reversion to the mean". Thusly, "past performance is not a guarantee of future results".
The biblical prophecy is over and the evidence is most reasonable they came about as prophesied. Hundreds and hundreds of prophecies.
You not only have prophecies, but you also have every OT and NT writing speaking and revealing Jesus Christ, in the OT in a typology and shadow. Have you ever studied that aspect of the Bible?I've never heard of this "typology and shadow". Is it anything like Kabbalah Numerology?
The OT has a description of a physical people, worship system, and land that have a greater meaning in pointing to a specific Person in history, Jesus Christ. So these people are a shadow or reflexion of a greater person, Jesus Christ. I can give you a trillion examples if you like, but take for instance Moses and the Exodus. Moses, in Deuteronomy 18:15-18; counter with Acts 3, says that God would raise up a prophet like him that the people are to listen to and follow.
So, as Moses leads his people out of Egypt, the land of bondage, during a forty-year exodus to the Promised Land, an earthly country, so Jesus leads His people out of bondage to the Promised Land, the heavenly country, during a forty-year period (AD 30-70). I can list perhaps twenty to thirty comparisons between the two exoduses. And many historical figures are pictures, types in the OT as a shadow of a greater truth, David for example. There are many things about David and promised to David that is fulfilled in Jesus Christ, like His kingdom. That is why many asked if Jesus was He who was to come as the son of David (Matthew 9:27). Abraham about to sacrifice his Son is a picture of a greater truth of what was coming. Descriptions of the latter days point to Jesus and what He would do, etc.
The Bible is a unity. It covers specific topics, not the whole of human history, just what is relevant in God's dealings with humanity. It concerns sin and separation of humans from God and God's solution. It deals with two very specific covenants and the way God relates to His covenant people.I'm pretty sure none of that makes it any more likely to be true than any other religious belief.
That is because you don't understand how intricately united and deep prophecy is.
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@3RU7AL
Not according to the definition of what constitutes evidencePlease make your preferred definition of "evidence" explicit.
I listed it earlier. I just used standard dictionaries including legal dictionaries. You can also use historical, and philosophical definitions on the subject.
Standard Dictionary
Definition of evidence
(Entry 1 of 2)
(Entry 1 of 2)
1a: an outward sign : INDICATION
b: something that furnishes proof : TESTIMONY specifically : something legally submitted to a tribunal to ascertain the truth of a matter
b: something that furnishes proof : TESTIMONY specifically : something legally submitted to a tribunal to ascertain the truth of a matter
2: one who bears witness especially : one who voluntarily confesses a crime and testifies for the prosecution against one's accomplices
***
Legal
evidence
n. every type of proof legally presented at trial (allowed by the judge) which is intended to convince the judge and/or jury of alleged facts material to the case. It can include oral testimony of witnesses, including experts on technical matters, documents, public records, objects, photographs and depositions (testimony under oath taken before trial). It also includes so-called "circumstantial evidence" which is intended to create belief by showing surrounding circumstances which logically lead to a conclusion of fact. ***
Historical Evidence
Accounts of the past are derived from historical evidence. Historical evidence can take a variety of forms. Among the most important types of historical evidence are primary sources. Primary sources consist of original documents, artifacts, or other pieces of information that were created at the time under study.
Philosophical Evidence
In epistemology, evidence is often taken to be relevant to justified belief, where the latter, in turn, is typically thought to be necessary for knowledge.
Philosophical Evidence
In epistemology, evidence is often taken to be relevant to justified belief, where the latter, in turn, is typically thought to be necessary for knowledge.
In the philosophy of science, evidence is taken to be what confirms or refutes scientific theories, and thereby constitutes our grounds for rationally deciding between competing pictures of the world.
In philosophy, evidence has been taken to consist of such things as experiences, propositions, observation-reports, mental states, states of affairs, and even physiological events, such as the stimulation of one's sensory surfaces.
In philosophy, evidence has been taken to consist of such things as experiences, propositions, observation-reports, mental states, states of affairs, and even physiological events, such as the stimulation of one's sensory surfaces.
Scientific
Test results and/or observations that may either help support or help refute a scientific idea. In general, raw data are considered evidence only once they have been interpreted in a way that reflects on the accuracy of a scientific idea.
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@3RU7AL
Wow, I was wondering when you might ask me this... Let me introduce you to, Tom Skilling - https://www.facebook.com/pg/TomSkilling/posts/What is it you want me to glean from this link since I receive a popup that wants me to give my name and email address which I refuse to do. I am not a member of Facebook.Please list some of the specifics.
Again, it does not list any prophecies/predictions except vaguely and that in regards to Groundhog Day. It gives no stats on the 100% accuracy rate that you cited in your previous post. It also describes how he uses the latest weather technology, yet how does he predict things that will happen years, decades, centuries in advance, and how would you verify he could since he lives in our day and age. And how do his predictions tell of the fall of a people or the specifics that would take place before this happened, sometimes hundreds of years before the fact?
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@3RU7AL
Your very oldest and most accurate transcripts are from "The Dead Sea Scrolls" and the overwhelming majority of that goldmine does not support the modern christian viewpoint.There is both Masoretic text and Septuagint text found in the caves. With the book of Isaiah, there are only a few minor transmission errors until the earliest full Masoretic text is found. This shows the great degree of care taken in copying the text from generation to generation. The Christian copyists were not quite as careful, but we have more manuscript evidence from an earlier timeframe than any other ancient manuscript evidence.The Masorah - from 900 CEThe oldest extant manuscripts date from around the 9th century.[3] The Aleppo Codex (once the oldest-known complete copy but now missing the Torah) dates from the 10th century. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the Masorah.
Yet, we have the OT and NT that date to the fourth century at the time of Jerome that uses the same text.
Recent discoveries from the Dead Sea Scrolls, however, suggest that there were several different versions of many biblical books in the Second Temple period. Some of these versions differed only slightly from each other, but some versions were very different. After the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple by the Romans in 70 C.E., Jewish groups dispersed across the ancient world, preserving these versions of the Hebrew Scriptures in their communities. One of these groups preserved the texts that would later become the Masoretic Text. Others are preserved in versions such as the Septuagint, the earliest Greek translation.
In the 10th century C.E., the ben Asher scribal family of Tiberias produced a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible that Maimonides, a famous Jewish scholar, declared to be the best known version of the sacred text. Soon after, the Tiberian Masoretic text and its particular version of vowels and annotations became the standard, authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible for rabbinic Judaism. The most important Masoretic medieval manuscripts are the Aleppo Codex, which dates to the 10th century C.E., and the Leningrad Codex, which dates to 1009 C.E.
The Masoretic Text is the version held as authoritative and used liturgically in most synagogues today. The Catholic Church since the time of Jerome (fourth century C.E.) and most Protestant Christian churches use this version as their source text for modern translations.
In the 10th century C.E., the ben Asher scribal family of Tiberias produced a manuscript of the Hebrew Bible that Maimonides, a famous Jewish scholar, declared to be the best known version of the sacred text. Soon after, the Tiberian Masoretic text and its particular version of vowels and annotations became the standard, authoritative text of the Hebrew Bible for rabbinic Judaism. The most important Masoretic medieval manuscripts are the Aleppo Codex, which dates to the 10th century C.E., and the Leningrad Codex, which dates to 1009 C.E.
The Masoretic Text is the version held as authoritative and used liturgically in most synagogues today. The Catholic Church since the time of Jerome (fourth century C.E.) and most Protestant Christian churches use this version as their source text for modern translations.
Dead Sea Scrolls - from 300 BCEDead Sea Scrolls (also Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish religious, mostly Hebrew, manuscripts found in the Qumran Caves in the West Bank near the Dead Sea.[1] Scholarly consensus dates these scrolls from the last three centuries BCE and the first century CE.[2][wiki]
Some of the works found within date back further, some say to the eighth century BCE according to one site on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The earliest translation of the Hebrew Bible is the Old Greek (OG), the translation made in Alexandria, Egypt, for the use of the Greek-speaking Jewish community there. At first, just the Torah was translated, in the third century B.C.E.; the rest of the biblical books were translated later. The whole Hebrew Bible was likely translated into ancient Greek by the middle of the second century B.C.E.
We now know from discoveries in the Dead Sea region that these alternate Hebrew versions were circulated alongside the versions that became the MT. It is not clear that one Hebrew version was preferred over the others. In any event, the OG translators sometimes chose versions very similar to those later chosen for the MT version, and other times the translators chose versions that were very different.
At the time the Bible was translated into Greek, there was no MT or any official or authorized Bible in existence. There were merely multiple editions of many scrolls of various perceived levels of sacredness.
So, the Septuagint may very well have been translated from a purer form that the Masoretic texts. It is debatable. Regardless, Jesus, or at least those who quote Jesus used the Septuagint in many NT passages.
But the point is that Christians have the Hebrew Bible, (OT) by the 350's CE in preserved writings.
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The NT eyewitness accounts describe how the Roman's fought over His garments, how He was pierced by a Roman spear. They tell how Jesus said His kingdom was near, even right at the door. They tell how Jesus' or God's kingdom, the kingdom of heaven is not a physical kingdom but a spiritual kingdom. It is most reasonable to understand that kingdom coming into its own once the old covenant with Israel is fulfilled in AD 70.
Hebrews 8:13
13 When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
13 When He said, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. But whatever is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to disappear.
Even during the writing of Hebrews with no mention of an already destroyed temple and many descriptions of the OT ritual system and many warnings of soon coming wrath, the author makes the point that the old is becoming obsolete and will soon disappear. That happened in AD 70.
So, the prophecies fit a specific time frame and they are not vague. I could go on and on tying Daniel and the OT to the NT times of Jesus. For instance, Revelation is another NT writing that is focused on the Old Covenant people. There are more references to the OT than any other NT writing. Some have listed around 289 citations or quotes to the OT Scriptures, some have identified and explained more. Many of these prophecies tie quite specifically to Daniel. And the time references in Revelation are specific to a particular period of history, before Jerusalem fell and what was to happen when it fell. The references to the Great City, Babylon can be no other city other than Jerusalem and this can be very convincingly demonstrated. The references to the kings can very convincingly be traced to Nero during the Roman occupation of Israel. The whole Revelation speaks of judgment on these Old Covenant people.
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Psalm 22:16-18: “Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones; people stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.”This could literally be anyone who was crucified.
Do you know of anyone else that claimed to be the Jewish Messiah that was crucified while crucifixion was still used???
The Roman's used crucifixion. It would have to take place during the time of the Romans, per Daniel 2 and the fourth kingdom. There are numerous reasons why this is most reasonable to believe, one of which is the Daniel 9:24-27 passage. Daniel is speaking of his own people. Who are Daniel's people? They are an old covenant people. That people no longer live under the OT economy after AD 70. Thus there can be no Messiah after this time frame.
Notice the audience of address and the time frame for the Messiah:
Seventy Weeks and the Messiah
24 “Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the transgression, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for iniquity, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy and to anoint the
most holy place.
25 So you are to know and discern that from the issuing of a decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem until Messiah the Prince there will be seven weeks and sixty-two weeks; it will be built again, with plaza and moat, even in times of distress. 26 Then after the sixty-two weeks the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined. 27 And he will make a firm covenant with the many for one week, but in the middle of the week he will put a stop to sacrifice and grain offering; and on the wing of abominations will come one who makes desolate, even until a complete destruction, one that is decreed, is poured out on the one who makes desolate.”
This prophetic passage is loaded and would take ages to elaborate on in detail but I will give you an outline of the time frame and audience of address.
1. "Your people" and "your holy city" refers to Daniel and his people and city, Jerusalem (as made clear later in the text). Daniel is in a covenant with God, which is made clear from the breaking of that covenant in Daniel 9:1-26.
2. There is a list of six things that would take place at this time, and the NT identifies all of them as fulfilled in Jesus. For instance, "to finish the transgression" suggests the transgression will continue up to the appointed time. It also suggests that God will again judge these people for their transgressions and put an end to them. Another for instance, "to make an end to sin." What was required under the Mosaic Law for the sins of the people? It was an animal sacrifice administered by the High Priest on the Day of Atonement. Where do you see that happening today? Where do you see the Levitical Priesthood performing this ritual today? Where is the sacred temple? They are all gone, disappeared in AD 70. The NT says a better sacrifice has been made, one that is pleasing to God since it addresses sin once and for all, whereas the sacrifice of animals could never do this. (Hebrews 9:11-28)
28 so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.
28 so Christ also, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time for salvation without reference to sin, to those who eagerly await Him.
So, sin is done away with IN Christ, it is ended with Christ, for those who believe.
I could go on and explain the fulfillment of all six conditions but I think you see what I'm getting at.
3. After the time frame specified the Messiah will be killed, but notice the order, it is not after the city and temple are destroyed, but BEFORE. Thus the NT timeline is in line with this prophecy.
4. The Prince to come (i.e., Titus for he was not yet Ceasar or king) would destroy the city and temple. This prophecy ties in with Daniel telling the king what will happen in LATTER days:
28 However, there is a God in heaven who reveals mysteries, and He has made known to King Nebuchadnezzar what will take place in the latter days...40 Then there will be a fourth kingdom...
The Divine Kingdom
44 In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.
44 In the days of those kings the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which will never be destroyed, and that kingdom will not be left for another people; it will crush and put an end to all these kingdoms, but it will itself endure forever.
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Ok, but does that mean, that hypothetically speaking, if you were convinced that some other religion (Judaism) had older and more reliable texts than yours (Christianity), that you would then convert? That is the crux.Not if the very texts you read speak of a Messiah that would come to the people and the people do not exist in covenant after AD 70. Not if your Scriptures describe a Messiah coming before Jerusalem is once again destroyed. Not if these NT authors appealed to your very OT scriptures and showed you how they all apply to Jesus, and were willing to go to their deaths proclaiming the Messiah had come, was put to death and had risen from the dead and to repent before the coming judgment that God continually warned these OT people would come if they did not repent and turn to them, then they crucify the Sent One, the Deliverer, as Moses forecasted.If the "evidence" is incontrovertible, why are the experts on the matter (the Jews), who have been diligently and rigorously studying this stuff for thousands of years, not convinced?
Some are. I worked with Jews for Jesus in Toronto on one of their campaigns during the 1990s.
The NT authors were largely Jewish.
The NT was written first with the Jew in mind.
The Jews were looking for a Messiah to rescue them from Roman oppression, not One that would save them completely from their sins. They did not see the suffering Servant applying to the Messiah.
Throughout the NT gospels, Jesus identifies the hardness of their hearts in acknowledging their Messiah because He did not fit their expectations. Yet, He most definitely is the only One who can fulfill the prophecies.
The site is confirming not denying the Messiah.
Regarding Jesus’ birth—Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” Isaiah 9:6: “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” Micah 5:2: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.”This could be literally any child. Even in the story, Joseph himself was not convinced that Mary was a virgin. This is unfalsifiable.
The NT authors identify these verses as referring and applying to Jesus.
There is a discussion about the word for virgin we could have, but I don't want to do the leg work right now. Glenn Miller (Christian Think Tank) has done a lot of work on this issue, as has J.P. Holding (Tektonics) and James White (Alpha and Omega Ministries).
Concerning Jesus' ministry and death—Zechariah 9:9: “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”This could literally be any person riding a baby donkey who claimed to be a king. The Jesus didn't even qualify as a king, the Jesus was never a head of state.
Sure He did. The promises God gave to King David apply to Jesus. This can be demonstrated with a bit of work.
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@3RU7AL
What does this have to do with the biblical God?It means that Nanna the Moon god is an older religion than Judaism. It also begs the question of why the "YHWH" would have been hiding-out up to this point.Have you ever considered that these religions were castoffs of the true faith that was proclaimed from Genesis 3 onward, that borrowed or corrupted these ancient accounts?If that is the case, I have the exact same question. Why did the "YHWH" wait so long to write anything down?
Except for the Ten Commandments, what is it you are claiming God wrote down?
The Gospels I would argue were written down fairly soon after the events, within a forty year time period. There are many internal indicators this is the case. One of the major references to late dating is the statement from Irenaeus which is very questionable as to its meaning, as brought forth by many biblical scholars and their points bear consideration when you consider the internal evidence, which is largely ignored.
For instance, have you considered how many time references there are in the NT?
Have you considered the many, many warnings, none of which have taken place or spoken of in the past tense?
Have you considered the many references to an existing temple and worship system still in place? Do you understand the significance of this?
Do you understand that the Messiah was prophesied to come to an OT people, that is a people in covenant relationship with God?
How can that relationship be fulfilled after AD 70?
Couldn't the "YHWH" have popped little "holy assassins" and "talking donkeys" down to earth in order to "reason with" the misguided followers of Ahura Mazda?
Why? Everything needed for salvation had been revealed through His covenant people and by Jesus. Nothing else needs to be said. You have what is needed for salvation. The teachings of Zoroastrianism is contrary to the Hebrew Bible and the NT. That means something does not ring true somewhere.
Yet Abraham turned to the biblical God from idols. So what?It also lends some credibility to the idea that Abraham's concept of god and heavenly hosts was very likely shaped by this pre-existing religion.Or their religion by his and those before him, but they corrupted the belief.Based on what? Wouldn't you need some historical basis for this perfectly bald assertion?
Once you understand the original you are better able to recognize counterfeits.
Based on what? The same that you are basing your assertions of Abraham on, your assumption, but more, the biblical account itself that teaches against gods as anything other than human constructs. The historical basis would be the Scriptures themselves.
You are assuming that these religions are being borrowed from rather than the other way around.
Psalm 115:4 (NASB)
4 Their idols are silver and gold,
The work of man’s hands.
The work of man’s hands.
Isaiah 2:8 (NASB)
8 Their land has also been filled with idols;
They worship the work of their hands,
That which their fingers have made.
They worship the work of their hands,
That which their fingers have made.
In that day men will cast away to the moles and the bats Their idols of silver and their idols of gold, Which they made for themselves to worship,
Shall I not do to Jerusalem and her images Just as I have done to Samaria and her idols?”
[ Message to Egypt ] The oracle concerning Egypt. Behold, the Lord is riding on a swift cloud and is about to come to Egypt; The idols of Egypt will tremble at His presence, And the heart of the Egyptians will melt within them.
They will be turned back and be utterly put to shame, Who trust in idols, Who say to molten images, “You are our gods.”
Every man is stupid, devoid of knowledge; Every goldsmith is put to shame by his idols; For his molten images are deceitful, And there is no breath in them.
Are there any among the idols of the nations who give rain? Or can the heavens grant showers? Is it not You, O Lord our God? Therefore we hope in You, For You are the one who has done all these things.
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@3RU7AL
There is no proof Jesus ever lived.It is not a reasonable statement. There is lots of proof. Nineteen extra-biblical sources from antiquity mention Jesus and some of these sources confirm some of the events of Jesus' life, such as the crucifixion and that His follower's believed He was resurrected.Historical evidence of the Jesus is moot.
That is your personal opinion and is a result of your worldview bias.
There is historical evidence of Siddhartha, does this make Buddhism true?
It makes it credible the teachings could come or are based on what he said, not that the texts are accurate/true.
Again, the problem with religions is that each one is contrary to the other in some major understanding of God/gods/lack of gods, Thus, logically only one, if you grant any is true to what is.
And if there is no ultimate revelation from God what makes your views any truer than any other view, after all, you are a limited, subjective, relative person? In other words, why should I value your personal opinion or preference?
There is historical evidence of Joseph Smith, does this make Mormonism true?
No. The book is contradictory to the Bible in which it recognizes as from God also.
There is historical evidence of Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, does this make Scientology true?
No, Scientology is a cult that has been exposed by its inconsistencies.
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Wow, I was wondering when you might ask me this... Let me introduce you to, Tom Skilling - https://www.facebook.com/pg/TomSkilling/posts/
What is it you want me to glean from this link since I receive a popup that wants me to give my name and email address which I refuse to do. I am not a member of Facebook.
Please list some of the specifics.
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@Polytheist-Witch
Yes it is. There is no evidence that Jesus was a real person who lived on Earth. Period. I believe all kinds of stuff about my gods too. They don't walk around on Earth just like Jesus.
Not according to the definition of what constitutes evidence, so your statement is very unreasonable. You are in denial. You misrepresent the facts we have available. We have accounts from the time period that speak of an actual Person.
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Look, ok, let's say that, just between you and me, every prediction of the holy scriptures is the very face of perfection.That still means absolutely zero regarding any other untestable claims.For example, if Democritus said, "There will be a terrible storm in two weeks time" and, verily, it came to pass exactly as he predicted, and then Democritus said, "Your wife will become pregnant and will bear a son" does this mean that Democritus is divinely inspired?
No. The predictions above are nothing out of the ordinary. Plus, these are only two predictions that are commonplace. The Bible has hundreds and hundreds of prophecies and many of them are not normal, plus they are very specific.
And then, if Democritus said, "Everyone should get together and build a temple to the goddess Demo and bring peace offerings to her daily, especially wine, for the goddess Demo absolutely loves wine and it puts her in a good humor so she doesn't send earthquakes and foreign invaders and stuff that you don't like."Would you, personally, drop everything and worship the great and powerful Demo?
No. But the OT prophecies are not so general. Take Psalms 22, Zechariah 12:10, or Isaiah 53 for instance. Two of these speak of the act of crucifixion long before the act was known or common. All three contain specifics about what happened on the cross, as reported by the eyewitnesses.
Show me a human/humans who has/have made hundreds of prediction before the facts that have come to pass.Wow, I was wondering when you might ask me this... Let me introduce you to, Tom Skilling - https://www.facebook.com/pg/TomSkilling/posts/He has made literally thousands of accurate predictions before the facts have come to pass.
I'll check it out and get back to you.
How does a human know so many things in advance?I have no earthly idea, therefore TOM SKILLING MUST CERTAINLY BE DIVINELY INSPIRED, you can't prove me wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!It is not normal nor can it be demonstrated with complete accuracy, except I claim from the Bible when properly interpreted.The qualifier, "when properly interpreted" is an awesome loophole.
If you don't think there is a proper way of interpreting it provides a loophole. But do you really believe that? Are you understanding what I am saying? If you are you are correcting interpreting what I have said.
And don't forget that even stock traders can go on a hot streak, but, by law, they still need to inform the public that, "past performance is not a guarantee of future results".
Therefore they correctly interpret the signs that they work with. So what.
You not only have prophecies, but you also have every OT and NT writing speaking and revealing Jesus Christ, in the OT in a typology and shadow. Have you ever studied that aspect of the Bible?
The Bible is a unity. It covers specific topics, not the whole of human history, just what is relevant in God's dealings with humanity. It concerns sin and separation of humans from God and God's solution. It deals with two very specific covenants and the way God relates to His covenant people.
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The point here is that I care about as much as YOU DO about the accuracy of Hindu prophecy. Because, even if Hindu prophecy was 100% accurate, it would still not convince you to change your beliefs. Accurate predictions are made by mortals every day of the year. IT PROVES NOTHING. People thought Democritus was a GOD when he proved he could predict the weather. Ancient people were quite unskeptical.You made the claim that these ancient religions were equivalent.They are all unfalsifiable (based on unknowable claims that are beyond our epistemological limits) AND logically incoherent.
I would agree with that statement for the most part with the exception of the Bible being logically incoherent and unreasonable. I understand its reasonableness.
There is not much specific to Hindu prophecy, whereas the biblical prophecy is very specific.So exactly when is the Jesus going to return to Earth?
Physically? I do not believe He will. I believe AD 70 was His Second Coming. He told His generation, the ones He came to that all prophecy would be fulfilled within their lifetime.
Luke 21:20-24 (NASB)
20 “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near. 21 Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those who are in the midst of the city must leave, and those who are in the country must not enter the city; 22 because these are days of vengeance, so that all things which are written will be fulfilled. 23 Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people; 24 and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
First, Jesus is addressing His disciple, specifically "Peter and James and John and Andrew were questioning Him privately" when He was sitting on the Mount of Olives - hence, the Olivet Discourse (Mark 13:3). The personal pronoun "you" refers to the audience of address, the disciples.
20 “But when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then recognize that her desolation is near. 21 Then those who are in Judea must flee to the mountains, and those who are in the midst of the city must leave, and those who are in the country must not enter the city; 22 because these are days of vengeance, so that all things which are written will be fulfilled. 23 Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing babies in those days; for there will be great distress upon the land and wrath to this people; 24 and they will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations; and Jerusalem will be trampled under foot by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.
First, Jesus is addressing His disciple, specifically "Peter and James and John and Andrew were questioning Him privately" when He was sitting on the Mount of Olives - hence, the Olivet Discourse (Mark 13:3). The personal pronoun "you" refers to the audience of address, the disciples.
Second, they will see/understand the surrounding of Jerusalem by armies (the Romans) will result in her desolation. Any covenant person would recognize that God is bringing judgment with desolations, as promised in Deuteronomy 28 with curses for disobedience (Leviticus 26:34; Deuteronomy 28:16, 20, 24-25, 32-33, 45, 48, 49-51, 52, 54, 56, 61, 63-64). In fact, throughout the gospels, Jesus brings up the theme of the curses. The Olivet Discourse is littered with these references and they are easy to demonstrate. These 1st-century people would understand the references immediately.
Third, the passage is significant to them with phrases like "these are the days of vengeance" that were spoken of by the prophets in fulfillment of all things written. "all things which are written" referred to the OT or Hebrew Bible, since the NT was in the process of being written down and distributed to the churches in the 50s and 60s before the fall of Jerusalem. In fact, not once in any NT writing is there a mention of an already completed judgment or temple destruction. This is highly significant since the whole OT economy and sacrificial system revolved around the temple and temple worship.
Fourth, Jesus makes it plain that the wrath of God is coming against them. The curses of disobedience are soon to be felt.
Fifth, they will fall by the edge of the sword. For futurists, where do we see the sword used today?
Sixth, the judgment is to THAT land and THOSE people - Jerusalem and Judea. You have to seriously butcher the context to apply it to another land or other people. The audience of address is obvious.
Seven, we know when Jerusalem was surrounded by armies and when the city was once again destroyed in fulfillment of Daniel 9:24-27.
Matthew 23:35-37 (NASB)
35 so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
Lament over Jerusalem
37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.
35 so that upon you may fall the guilt of all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. 36 Truly I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation.
Lament over Jerusalem
37 “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, the way a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were unwilling.
Again, the personal pronoun "you" is used in regards to a specific people, the religious leaders, and teachers of the Law, and that generation. The Jews themselves are guilty of shedding the blood of the prophets and those sent to them. So "all these things" are being applied to them.
Truly I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place.
Again, Jesus is speaking to a specific people and a specific generation in regards to the judgments coming, a 1st-century people.
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The modern scholarly consensus is that the Torah has multiple authors and that its composition took place over centuries.[21] This contemporary common hypothesis among biblical scholars states that the first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch was composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE (the Jahwist source), and that this was later expanded by the addition of various narratives and laws (the Priestly source) into a work very like the one existing today. [wiki]
I already included biblical verses on how the records were passed down from generation to generation until they were codified by Moses and possibly those he used to help him. I.e., Genesis 5:1.
In a similar way the Jewish Torah ITSELF claims to be like, super super old, even older than the universe, but the oldest actual copy (original manuscript) we have is...
Yes, it does, like the genealogies that were passed down and trace humanity to Adam and Eve. (see link above).
University of Bologna Professor Mauro Perani announced the results of carbon-14 tests authenticating the scroll's age as roughly 800 years old.The scroll dates to between 1155 and 1225, making it the oldest complete Torah scroll on record.[LINK]
Interesting! Not that old.
Based on these fact alone (age and multiple copies), do you believe the Epic of Gilgamesh is true?I'm going to hazard a guess of "no".True, in what sense? Obviously, it is a legitimate record from the time since it is carved in stone. It is also based on a historical king, confirmed by archeologists. The rest of the story seems to be clocked in legend and myth.Ok, so when Enki (a.k.a. EA, the god of water, knowledge, and creation) tells Utnapishtim (Noah) to demolish his house and build a boat to save his family from the super top secret scheduled flood... THAT'S JUST A RIDICULOUS MYTH?
Many ancient records contain creation and flood accounts which makes you wonder if they borrowed from a common source that was corrupted over the years as they departed from the true account. Many ancient beliefs around the world contain such accounts that, because of oral tradition before the written accounts, have been corrupted.
It sorta seems like you're saying, "how accurately something was copied has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the inherent truth value of the original teaching".
I'm saying the OT or Hebrew Bible, having many authors, is one cohesive and unified account that deals with common themes and deals mostly with a specific people, Israel and how it relates to God.
Not really. Making predictions does not, itself, mean anything at all. What you need is a RELIABLE SYSTEM OF MAKING PREDICTIONS THAT IS INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIABLE. Making some number of accurate predictions without revealing your methods "oh, I had a dream or vision or heard a voice" - is less than meaningless.1. I challenge you to show me biblical predictions/prophecy that are wrong from what I gave you (Daniel 2, 9, 12).2. Nostradamus' prophecies are too ambiguous. You can make them into anything.3. History is a verifier of biblical prophecy.Let's just say for the sake of argument, that Daniel 2, 9, 12 is 1000000000000000000% accu-rat.Does this fact alone lend any credibility to any of their beliefs about GODS? Not really. Making predictions does not, itself, mean anything at all.
If it is 100% accurate then, since it claims to be a revelation of God speaking to Daniel, it would confirm it is God's revelation.
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@3RU7AL
Your pursuit of specific names and dates and copies is a misguided red-herring.No, what I'm getting at is how accurate the transmission of the teachings from the founding/founder of the religion or earliest evidence of it. With lots of manuscripts from different time periods, you can follow corruptions in the text. The closer to the original text usually means the better chance it was copied accurately.You make an excellent point.However, how accurately something was copied has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the inherent truth value of the original teaching.
Not necessarily. If these author's and then scribes believed what they received what was from God they would take extra care in its transmission. And the trouble they took is definitely painstaking. Prophecy is an internal truth. We know the OT was written before the NT and we know from the Dead Sea Scrolls some of these manuscripts and fragments dated back centuries before the 1st-century. Now, these manuscripts contain prophecy concerning Jerusalem and its destruction. They speak of the New Covenant, the judgment of these people, etc.
Your very oldest and most accurate transcripts are from "The Dead Sea Scrolls" and the overwhelming majority of that goldmine does not support the modern christian viewpoint.There is both Masoretic text and Septuagint text found in the caves. With the book of Isaiah, there are only a few minor transmission errors until the earliest full Masoretic text is found. This shows the great degree of care taken in copying the text from generation to generation. The Christian copyists were not quite as careful, but we have more manuscript evidence from an earlier timeframe than any other ancient manuscript evidence.However, how accurately something was copied has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the inherent truth value of the original teaching.
Again, not necessarily. We know that what was said centuries before the events and how these events played out in history is accurate, so we can trust prophecy as truthful. Now, if you can prove that these prophecies have been added after the fact, which is not reasonable and I don't know of reasonable evidence for such speculation (such as early documents where their prophecies are not recorded, or extra-biblical sources saying something was added) you have no credible source to verify your claims.
Not only this but names, places, events from other sources other than the Bible confirm biblical history. So we have a truth verification there.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an ancient writing that we have multiple, independent original manuscripts of, that very closely corroborate each other.Original usually implies one. Someone writes the original and others copy from it.Thanks, more hair-splitting.
It makes sense that the more documents from an early period, close to the source, the more verification you have that what is said is accurate and trustworthy in its transmission.
By "original" I mean the actual paper and or clay tablet and or inscribed bone or shell that was written on by people of ancient times.
And I agree that something written in stone has a better chance of surviving that something written on parchment or
sheepsskin.
This would be in contrast to a writing about a supposed (or claim of) older teaching, like when Plato speaks of Atlantis.Plato doesn't offer any original manuscripts from actual Atlantians. He just makes a claim, and writes it down.According to the Midrash, the Torah was created prior to the creation of the world, and was used as the blueprint for Creation.[3] The majority of Biblical scholars believe that the written books were a product of the Babylonian captivity (c. 600 BCE), based on earlier written and oral traditions, which could only have arisen from separate communities within ancient Israel, and that it was completed by the period of Achaemenid rule (c. 400 BCE).[4][5]
The Midrash was written centuries after Jesus and it would include traditions and beliefs that cannot be confirmed.
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@Polytheist-Witch
It is not a reasonable statement. There is lots of proof. Nineteen extra-biblical sources from antiquity mention Jesus and some of these sources confirm some of the events of Jesus' life, such as the crucifixion and that His follower's believed He was resurrected.There is no proof Jesus ever lived.
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@3RU7AL
Abraham did not grow up christian.Abraham was born and raised in Ur of the Chaldees, which is in modern Iraq, near Nasiriyah in the southeastern part of the country. Joshua 24:2 says that Abraham and his father worshiped idols. We can make some educated guesses about their religion by looking at the history and religious artifacts from that period.What does this have to do with the biblical God?It means that Nanna the Moon god is an older religion than Judaism. It also begs the question of why the "YHWH" would have been hiding-out up to this point.
Have you ever considered that these religions were castoffs of the true faith that was proclaimed from Genesis 3 onward, that borrowed or corrupted these ancient accounts?
Yet Abraham turned to the biblical God from idols. So what?It also lends some credibility to the idea that Abraham's concept of god and heavenly hosts was very likely shaped by this pre-existing religion.
Or their religion by his and those before him, but they corrupted the belief.
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@3RU7AL
They are all older than Abraham (late 6th century BCE). Does it matter how old they are? Would you abandon your religion if the dates were ancient enough? Is that your primary criteria?Yes, it matters. The transmission, the additions, the corruptions all play into it. The more manuscripts we have the better the comparison between texts.Ok, but does that mean, that hypothetically speaking, if you were convinced that some other religion (Judaism) had older and more reliable texts than yours (Christianity), that you would then convert? That is the crux.
Not if the very texts you read speak of a Messiah that would come to the people and the people do not exist in covenant after AD 70. Not if your Scriptures describe a Messiah coming before Jerusalem is once again destroyed. Not if these NT authors appealed to your very OT scriptures and showed you how they all apply to Jesus, and were willing to go to their deaths proclaiming the Messiah had come, was put to death and had risen from the dead and to repent before the coming judgment that God continually warned these OT people would come if they did not repent and turn to them, then they crucify the Sent One, the Deliverer, as Moses forecasted.
Abraham did not grow up christian.Abraham was born and raised in Ur of the Chaldees, which is in modern Iraq, near Nasiriyah in the southeastern part of the country. Joshua 24:2 says that Abraham and his father worshiped idols. We can make some educated guesses about their religion by looking at the history and religious artifacts from that period.What does this have to do with the biblical God?It means that Nanna the Moon god is an older religion than Judaism. It also begs the question of why the "YHWH" would have been hiding-out up to this point.Yet Abraham turned to the biblical God from idols. So what?It also lends some credibility to the idea that Abraham's concept of god and heavenly hosts was very likely shaped by this pre-existing religion.
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@3RU7AL
So my question is how reliable is the transmission of these religious texts as opposed to the biblical texts? Obviously the greater number of texts (for comparison) and the earlier the text the more close to the original data, and the less chance of transmission errors.Are you Jewish now? You seem to be suggesting, based on your stated criteria, that the age and number of preserved Jewish manuscripts somehow lends 100% credibility to the Christian belief system.
I am one of Abraham's children by faith. There is a physical Israel and a spiritual Israel.
The true experts, the Jews themselves, would strongly disagree with this conclusion.
They also denied Jesus was/is their Savior. He is the only Jew who could ever fit the bill. The Messiah was promised to an Old Covenant, a Mosaic Covenant people. That people no longer lives according to the covenant they agreed to (Exodus 24:3, 7). The Mosaic laws of worship and atonement can no longer be followed as stipulated.
However, all of this "historical accuracy" is completely beside the point.
Jesus quoted from the Septuigent. He saw it as valid.
If we had reliable historical evidence that the author of the Book of Mormon "really existed" would that mean that their teachings are more likely to be "true"?I'm pretty sure it doesn't.
When there are over 300 hundred messianic prophecies that fit Jesus I think it is very reasonable to believe His teachings are true. When what is applied to God in the Old Covenant is applied to Jesus in the New Covenant, I think it is reasonable. Joseph Smith did not claim to be God. Joseph Smith did not claim he would rise from the dead in three days. Neither did any other founder of a major religion, nor did they equate themselves to God, in which the Scribes and Pharisees took up stones to stone Him because they understood the claim, per the NT writers.
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@BrutalTruth
You begin by accepting that either God or chance (that is the presupposition) and you build from thereThis statement alone defeats literally your entire argument. You don't begin a belief system with an assumption.
Scientists do just that.
Why are you an atheist?
How do you not understand how insane that is? An assumption is exactly the same as ignorance.
And of course, you are not ignorant of God. You have made a number of assumptions about Him already, and not only of Him but of yourself.
It is a belief taken without knowledge. AKA faith. Wow dude. You seriously believe you can know something because you assumed it?
That is you painting my belief. I don't believe in God because there is no evidence. I believe in God because everything I see speaks of Him.
I can't even... the sheer stupidity of that statement baffles me to the point of being unable to articulate a response. If that were true, then i could assume the moon is made of milk, and build an entire factual philosophy of life based on that. You seriously need help.
Again, you are trying to paint me as the loony here.
I can't continue this with you. You deny the most simplistic, basic things that even children grasp as a part of human reality. There's just no reasoning with you man. I can't believe I used to think you were intellectually honest. You're literally the opposite. No way man.
Or, perhaps it is with you who is not grasping God because you saturate your life in secular culture, except when you go into churches to mock and dispute our faith? Why are you so concerned about setting us straight about God? Why does it matter?
You will not trust God because you don't want to, so you get the desire of your heart, no evidence for God. God must conform to you. Why is that? What you don't like you will not discuss. Perhaps it is you who is not being honest? Whether you like it or not, you are here because of one of a very few possible reasons (since you confess to being a philosopher).
1. There is no reason because chance is your maker. (A-theist - no God, but perhaps you as the master of your fate)
2. You are here because a necessary Being created you. (Theist - God)
3. This is all an illusion. (Your mind is all that is and all that matters and you create and battle with yourself because you are lonesome)
4. Who cares? (Whatever "happens" happens and you just live your life that way until the time comes when something unpleasant happens)
What is reasonable in these four positions or if you can think of others, insert them?
What makes sense to you? What rings true? Nothing? Nothing to you who is BrutalTruth.
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@3RU7AL
Not quite. When you use a personal pronoun like "you" and "your" it becomes an ad hom directed at the person.Dude, your car is dirty.Dude, your logic has an error.Just because I said "your" doesn't make this a personal attack.
It does when there is a slight against the PERSON and when instead of addressing the point addresses the person.
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@3RU7AL
I have checked other beliefs when I was younger (i.e., Zen Buddhism, New Age teachings, Confucianism), plus others since (Islam, Atheism, J.W.'s, Mormonism, Wicca/Paganism, Bahaism), to engage with others, and the factual nature of prophecy and the unity of the Bible rings true, among other considerations. Prophecy is very reasonable. If Christianity is true then all else is false because of the biblical claims. I don't have to check out every other religion because they say contrary things.Sure, you don't really have to do anything you don't like.But if you claim "Christianity is more logically coherent and has better historical sources and more reliable prophecies than EVERY OTHER RELIGION" then you need to provide specific examples.
How many times do other religious beliefs mention people, places, events, that are confirmed by history?
How many make hundreds of prophecies on one Person, the Messiah that are reasonable to belief fit only one Person in history and that can be demonstrated to have happened to a reasonable degree?
How many make hundreds of specific prophecies about a specific people that come about, many of which are confirmed by history?
If you claim "Christianity is good enough for me, YOU CAN'T PROVE ME WRONG" then you are making a naked appeal to ignorance.A is better than B on these specific points.A is better than C on these specific points.A is better than D on these specific points.You can't just say, A seems good and since A says "all others are wrong", it must therefore be true.Not only, but also because there are over a thousand (ostensibly) Christian denominations, and some of them believe that only their members will go to heaven.This is a non-trivial problem.
It is not whether it is good enough for me (who cares but me) but whether its truth claims are reasonable, logical and can be confirmed to a reasonable degree.
Your steel-man is, "the YHWH has spoken to me personally, and I feel its love in my heart". Just like Saul of Tarsus. Bullet-proof logic.
The bulletproof logic is that God confirms His presence through His word, and by His Spirit. His word demonstrates His love for humanity. Prophecy verifies His word is the truth, as well as biblical unity and its revelation of Jesus Christ on almost every page of both testaments, plus many other pieces of evidence that check with what we know of history regarding peoples, places, events, as said earlier.
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@3RU7AL
The evidence is roughly equivalent for each, they all have ancient writings and prophecies (that are confirmed by the writings).Again, you never answered my original question. I'll add another question. How many ancient copies are found from each of these three and when do they date back to?Your pursuit of specific names and dates and copies is a misguided red-herring.
No, what I'm getting at is how accurate the transmission of the teachings from the founding/founder of the religion or earliest evidence of it. With lots of manuscripts from different time periods, you can follow corruptions in the text. The closer to the original text usually means the better chance it was copied accurately.
Your very oldest and most accurate transcripts are from "The Dead Sea Scrolls" and the overwhelming majority of that goldmine does not support the modern christian viewpoint.
There is both Masoretic text and Septuagint text found in the caves. With the book of Isaiah, there are only a few minor transmission errors until the earliest full Masoretic text is found. This shows the great degree of care taken in copying the text from generation to generation. The Christian copyists were not quite as careful, but we have more manuscript evidence from an earlier timeframe than any other ancient manuscript evidence.
The Epic of Gilgamesh is an ancient writing that we have multiple, independent original manuscripts of, that very closely corroborate each other.
Original usually implies one. Someone writes the original and others copy from it.
Based on these fact alone (age and multiple copies), do you believe the Epic of Gilgamesh is true?I'm going to hazard a guess of "no".
True, in what sense? Obviously, it is a legitimate record from the time since it is carved in stone. It is also based on a historical king, confirmed by archeologists. The rest of the story seems to be clocked in legend and myth.
I have no idea what your personal standard of evidence are. Although I have a strong feeling that you would not accept prima facie, a writing that said something like "and then the prophet said, in 200 years there will be a war" and then in the same document, "and it came to pass, exactly 200 years later, that there was a war". If you want some examples of ancient contradictions and specific rationalizations,Take for instance Daniel 2 and the four kingdoms or empires that are easily discernable by their descriptions and later mention of two of them. Then Daniel 9 speaks of six conditions that would take place within a specific period of time in which a Messiah would be killed and THEN the city and sanctuary would be destroyed with details of wars and desolation. The reference is AD 70 when all this happened. Copies of Daniel were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls dating back 200 years before AD 70. Or take Daniel 12 in which all prophecy concerning Daniel's people would be fulfilled.Here's the problem you're missing.A lot of people make a lot of predictions. Most of the predictions are wrong, a few of them are right. WE FORGET ABOUT THE WRONG ONES. Nobody catalogs every idiotic failed prediction of ancient times. Literacy was extremely rare in the bronze age and it was both time consuming and expensive to keep records of anything. This means there is always a SAMPLE BIAS when it comes to predictions (and other writings in general). WE OVER-EMPHASIZE THE ACCURATE ONES. Edgar Cayce and Nostradamus are famous for the uncannily accurate predictions. Does this fact alone lend any credibility to any of their beliefs about GODS? Not really. Making predictions does not, itself, mean anything at all. What you need is a RELIABLE SYSTEM OF MAKING PREDICTIONS THAT IS INDEPENDENTLY VERIFIABLE. Making some number of accurate predictions without revealing your methods "oh, I had a dream or vision or heard a voice" - is less than meaningless.
1. I challenge you to show me biblical predictions/prophecy that are wrong from what I gave you (Daniel 2, 9, 12).
2. Nostradamus' prophecies are too ambiguous. You can make them into anything.
3. History is a verifier of biblical prophecy.
How is the information equivalent? Do you know anything of Hindu prophecies and how they relate to human history to date? I don't see anything specific there. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_eschatologyThe point here is that I care about as much as YOU DO about the accuracy of Hindu prophecy. Because, even if Hindu prophecy was 100% accurate, it would still not convince you to change your beliefs. Accurate predictions are made by mortals every day of the year. IT PROVES NOTHING. People thought Democritus was a GOD when he proved he could predict the weather. Ancient people were quite unskeptical.
You made the claim that these ancient religions were equivalent.
There is not much specific to Hindu prophecy, whereas the biblical prophecy is very specific.
Show me a human/humans who has/have made hundreds of prediction before the facts that have come to pass. How does a human know so many things in advance? It is not normal nor can it be demonstrated with complete accuracy, except I claim from the Bible when properly interpreted.
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@Polytheist-Witch
No I am not. There is no evidence anything in religious text actually happened. Any other statement is a lie.
Sure there is. Your statement is not true.
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@BrutalTruth
I admit we both start from presuppositions in building our worldviews (atheists and Christians)I assume nothing, because I'm not the one claiming to know how the universe began.That being said, I'm going to prove you wrong with one very simple sentence in response to the above quote:A presupposition is a position taken from a premise rooted in assumption, and an assumption is quite literally the opposite of knowledge, therefore, by your own admission, you do not know how the universe began.End of debate. You lose.
Presuppositions are the starting point, but the evidence and affirmation is a different matter. You begin by accepting that either God or chance (that is the presupposition) and you build from there. Atheists live their life as if God does not exist in their denial of Him and by not seeking Him. Their worldview confirms such beliefs. When they live like this they tend to accept things that conform to this subconsciously.
So, you are affirming a disjunct; that is you are making the false assumption that because you start from a particular position, a presupposition, there is no knowledge or evidence to be had for the position. And the evidence for God as Creator is reasonable and logical when you consider the alternatives.
Deductive reasoning, or deduction, starts out with a general statement, or hypothesis, and examines the possibilities to reach a specific, logical conclusion, according to California State University. The scientific method uses deduction to test hypotheses and theories. "In deductive inference, we hold a theory and based on it we make a prediction of its consequences. That is, we predict what the observations should be if the theory were correct. We go from the general — the theory — to the specific — the observations,"
For deductive reasoning to be sound, the hypothesis must be correct. It is assumed that the premises, "All men are mortal" and "Harold is a man" are true. Therefore, the conclusion is logical and true. In deductive reasoning, if something is true of a class of things in general, it is also true for all members of that class.
Inductive reasoning is the opposite of deductive reasoning. Inductive reasoning makes broad generalizations from specific observations. Basically, there is data, then conclusions are drawn from the data.
Abductive reasoning usually starts with an incomplete set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible explanation for the group of observations,... It is based on making and testing hypotheses using the best information available.
***
Deductive reasoning starts with the assertion of a general rule and proceeds from there to a guaranteed specific conclusion. Deductive reasoning moves from the general rule to the specific application
Inductive reasoning begins with observations that are specific and limited in scope, and proceeds to a generalized conclusion that is likely, but not certain, in light of accumulated evidence. You could say that inductive reasoning moves from the specific to the general...
Conclusions reached by the inductive method are not logical necessities; no amount of inductive evidence guarantees the conclusion. This is because there is no way to know that all the possible evidence has been gathered, and that there exists no further bit of unobserved evidence that might invalidate my hypothesis.
Abductive reasoning typically begins with an incomplete set of observations and proceeds to the likeliest possible explanation for the set. Abductive reasoning yields the kind of daily decision-making that does its best with the information at hand, which often is incomplete.
***
You have attached yourself to an atheist position because you think that if it is not a fact that you can see or confirm through your mind there is no knowledge of it being true. But the words of the Bible offer many confirmations of what is reasonable to believe, just as you using your mind seems to confirm to you whether something is reasonable or not. Seeing something as fact is not the only way we know something, per a priori reasoning. We know the laws of logic exist because we could not make sense of anything without using them. They do not depend on you or me for their existence, nor on us seeing them.
Can facts change?
Facts previously considered true may come to be considered false if new criteria, methods, or technology emerge. For example, the definition of planet was recently revised. Experts agreed that Pluto did not conform to the new accepted criteria. At that point, the statement, "There are nine planets in our solar system" became false. Even if a factual statement is demonstrably false, it remains an objective claim on a factual matter.
A statement is a factual matter even if you can only imagine a method by which it might be verified.
https://www.butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/thinking/claims.html
https://www.butte.edu/departments/cas/tipsheets/thinking/claims.html
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@Polytheist-Witch
The religions may be older but how reliable is the information we have of these religious texts?All religious texts are myth and of equal standing.
Again, you are making an assumption. Proving it becomes a much more difficult task.
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@3RU7AL
The evidence is roughly equivalent for each, they all have ancient writings and prophecies (that are confirmed by the writings).What is the earliest manuscript of these three religions?They are all older than Abraham (late 6th century BCE). Does it matter how old they are? Would you abandon your religion if the dates were ancient enough? Is that your primary criteria?
Yes, it matters. The transmission, the additions, the corruptions all play into it. The more manuscripts we have the better the comparison between texts.
10 oldest surviving documents - https://listverse.com/2013/11/10/10-oldest-surviving-documents-of-their-type-in-the-world-2/
It does not tell me much.
Abraham did not grow up christian.Abraham was born and raised in Ur of the Chaldees, which is in modern Iraq, near Nasiriyah in the southeastern part of the country. Joshua 24:2 says that Abraham and his father worshiped idols. We can make some educated guesses about their religion by looking at the history and religious artifacts from that period.
What does this have to do with the biblical God?
Ur of the Chaldees was an ancient city that flourished until about 300 BC. The great ziggurat of Ur was built by Ur-Nammu around 2100 BC and was dedicated to Nanna, the moon god. The moon was worshiped as the power that controlled the heavens and the life cycle on earth. To the Chaldeans, the phases of the moon represented the natural cycle of birth, growth, decay, and death and also set the measurement of their yearly calendar. Among the pantheon of Mesopotamian gods, Nanna was supreme, because he was the source of fertility for crops, herds, and families. Prayers and offerings were offered to the moon to invoke its blessing.
Yet Abraham turned to the biblical God from idols. So what?
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@3RU7AL
We have original writings on clay tablets dating from 2100 BCE of the Epic of Gilgamesh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_GilgameshI'm asking for the earliest actual manuscripts retrieved from each.They are all older than Abraham (late 6th century BCE). Does it matter how old they are? Would you abandon your religion if the dates were ancient enough? Is that your primary criteria?
The religions may be older but how reliable is the information we have of these religious texts?
Before Abraham, the biblical records were passed down from generation to generation and compiled by Moses.
[ Descendants of Adam ] This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day when God created man, He made him in the likeness of God.
These are the records of the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God.
[ Descendants of Noah ] Now these are the records ofthe generations of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah; and sons were born to them after the flood.
[ Descendants of Shem ] These are the records of the generations of Shem. Shem was one hundred years old, and became the father of Arpachshad two years after the flood;
Now these are the records of the generations of Terah. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran; and Haran became the father of Lot.
So before Abraham, the records were passed down from generation to generation and codified by Moses.
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@3RU7AL
The earliest Hindu texts are from approximately 1000 BCE. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Hindu_textsThe earliest Zoroastrian texts are from approximately 2000 BCE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZoroastrianismThe earliest Chinese mythological texts are from approximately 3000 BCE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_mythology#Shells_and_bonesAre you saying there are manuscripts from these time frames???Figure it out. (IFF) you believe that the older the text is, the more "true" it is, the Christian scriptures (codified in 325 CE) are not at the top of that list.
Hinduism is recognized by some as the oldest religion in the world, followed by Judaism.
But the earliest written Hindu religious texts are hard to determine. Wikipedia dated the text from between 1500-500BCE. Some date the text to 7000BCE. The dating of extant manuscripts is so bazaar when trying to find out over the Internet because of the dates ranging all over the place. I can't find when the earliest manuscripts are found. And just because they have an early date how well are they transmitted through the centuries? And the closer to the original manuscripts we find manuscripts the better chance that the manuscripts have not been corrupted.
The first of the oldest surviving religious texts, the Pyramid Texts, was composed in Ancient Egypt.
1700–1100 BCE
The oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed. [But when is the earliest manuscript found]
1250–600 BCE
The Upanishads (Vedic texts) were composed, containing the earliest emergence of some of the central religious concepts of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
8th to 6th centuries BCE
The Chandogya Upanishad is compiled, significant for containing the earliest to date mention of Krishna. Verse 3.17.6 mentions Krishna Devakiputra as a student of the sage Ghora Angirasa.
6th to 5th centuries BCE
The first five books of the Jewish Tanakh, the Torah (Hebrew: תורה), are probably compiled.
600–500 BCE
The earliest Confucian writing, Shu Ching, incorporates ideas of harmony and heaven.
300 BCE
The oldest known version of the Tao Te Ching was written on bamboo tablets.
140 BCE
The earliest grammar of Sanskrit literature was composed by Pāṇini.
100 BCE–500 CE
The Yoga Sūtras of Patañjali, constituting the foundational texts of Yoga, were composed.
250
Some of the oldest parts of the Ginza Rba, a core text of Mandaean Gnosticism, were written.
c.350
The oldest record of the complete biblical texts (the Codex Sinaiticus) survives in a Greek translation called the Septuagint, dating to the 4th century CE.
c.850
The oldest extant manuscripts of the vocalized Masoretic text, upon which modern editions are based, date to 9th century CE.
(But earlier manuscripts of OT biblical books have been found in Qumran dating to the beyond 200BCE, speculations even to beyond 800BCE for one.)
Veda, (Sanskrit: “Knowledge”) a collection of poems or hymns composed in archaic Sanskrit by Indo-European-speaking peoples who lived in northwest India during the 2nd millennium BCE. No definite date can be ascribed to the composition of the Vedas, but the period of about 1500–1200 BCE is acceptable to most scholars.
Due to the ephemeral nature of the manuscript material (birch bark or palm leaves), surviving manuscripts rarely surpass an age of a few hundred years.[43] The Sampurnanand Sanskrit University has a Rigveda manuscript from the 14th century;[44] however, there are a number of older Veda manuscripts in Nepal that are dated from the 11th century onwards.[45]
So my question is how reliable is the transmission of these religious texts as opposed to the biblical texts? Obviously the greater number of texts (for comparison) and the earlier the text the more close to the original data, and the less chance of transmission errors.
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@BrutalTruth
You say atheistic scientists assume a scenario and build evidence from it. When it comes to explaining the origins of existence, you're more or less right(I say more or less because they're more like educated guesses than assumptions, but still). However, in order for your "evidence" to make sense, you have to assume your god exists. So, in other words, you do the exact same thing.
Thanks for the admission!
I admit we both start from presuppositions in building our worldviews (atheists and Christians) but to claim, as some do, that it is not based on evidence to just plain false. And as I have said all along, the Christian faith is a reasonable faith. It is based on reason and evidence although many do just take a leap. Some science uses deductive reasoning and some uses inductive reasoning. It is the same with us.
Take away the wishy-washy scenarios and basically, two remain, God or chance. I ask, which is more reasonable? Would you rather build on something reasonable or something irrational and illogical, since it is reasonable to believe you are here due to one of these two scenarios, and one is from a reasoning Being?
If your god does exists, then your evidence makes perfect sense.
Again, thanks for the admission.
However, if your god doesn't exist, your evidence is the stuff of psycho babble.
The resurrection is another area beside prophecy that has multiple written eyewitness accounts as evidence that are most reasonable.
This is why you're not supposed to make assumptions. Evidence based on assumptions equates to nothing more than speculation and imagination. I know you'll never admit that, even though it's true. That's fine. You Christians cling to your delusions like a life line. No amount of proving your arguments false will change your mind. One needs to be interested in finding truth to be willing to change their beliefs. I've literally never met a theist of any kind willing to do that.
On the contrary, many reluctantly came to faith after investigating the evidence thoroughly, such as C.S. Lewis. Lee Strobel was another one. They were not delusional. They knew what they were doing.
What you keep seeming to forget is that humanity is here for one of a very few reasons (creation or chance), and only one is from reasoning Being.
Whether you want to brush this under the carpet or not is your choice, but it is not insignificant if you are wrong.
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@3RU7AL
For example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB3g6mXLEKkI'll answer these alleged contradictions when I get some spare time.Let me help you out - http://tektonics.org/film/gameshow.html
Problem solved!
The point isn't about whether or not the contradictions can be rationalized.The point is that all ancient texts have similar contradictions AND similar rationalizations.
No, the point is that for a large amount of the claimed contradictions I see on these threads, the person making the claim isolates a Scriptural verse or takes it out of context.
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@3RU7AL
(IFF) the "YHWH" was the first and only "thing" to exist,(THEN) everything that is created or shaped by the "YHWH" MUST BE MADE FROM PIECES OF THE "YHWH".False analogy. Is what you create, say a painting, you (a piece of you), or is it an expression from you?False analogy. I am not a god. I am not the first and only "thing" to exist.
Both you and He create things. The difference is He is omnipotent and omniscient and you are limited in your ability to create.
Imagine for a second that you are god, and you pop into existence.
God does not pop into existence. He always is. Someone eternal does not have a beginning or end.
You look around and there is nothing, just you, all alone.You then decide, hey I should make some stuff.Do you go to the store and buy some art supplies?No.Because there is no store.You are going to have to make things out of yourself.
Another false analogy. God is able to speak things into existence.
First,
3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.
Second,
When you create something from your mind you don't leave a piece of it on the canvas. You don't leave your finger or foot in the painting.
Third,
A god is something that acts in the place of God. Thus, as Jesus said to the Jews:
John 10:33-35 (NASB)
33 The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to beGod.” 34 Jesus answered them, “Has it not been written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken),
33 The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to beGod.” 34 Jesus answered them, “Has it not been written in your Law, ‘I said, you are gods’? 35 If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken),
The biblical definition of a god is something that takes the place of God, a false idol. Hence, the Ten Commandments forbid creating a graven image or worshiping other gods for they are not God.
Exodus 20:3 “You shall have no other gods before Me.
4 “You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth.5 You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children, on the third and the fourth generations of those who hate Me, 6 but showing loving kindness to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.
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@3RU7AL
It might be that the moon snuck down one night and scooped up all the evidence so therefore you are right. Do you understand anything outside of your playground rhetoric?That is an ad hom. It implies that my answers are childlike and rhetorical. It avoids answering the question I asked you. So, it attacks the man rather than the question.It appears to be a mild characterization of your rhetoric specifically and not of you as a person.It would be similar to someone saying something like, "these atheists don't even know what basic logic is" or "atheists just deny the reality of my god because they won't admit how biased they are", or something like that, which I would consider more of a genuine expression of exasperation rather than a "personal attack" or "insult".
Not quite. When you use a personal pronoun like "you" and "your" it becomes an ad hom directed at the person.
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@3RU7AL
1. Are Vishnu, Marduk, or Pangu the same god, and if so what is said about them should not be contradictory?All three are 100% mutually exclusive. All three of them are unfalsifiable.Are they reasonable and what evidence do they give to their reasonableness since you brought up the subject and now want me to do all the bull work?The evidence is roughly equivalent for each, they all have ancient writings and prophecies (that are confirmed by the writings).
Again, you never answered my original question. I'll add another question. How many ancient copies are found from each of these three and when do they date back to?
2. Do you believe the descriptions of these gods contain contradictions?It is difficult to write thousands of pages of ancient text without at least a few logical contradictions. But I'm certain, that just like the Jews and the Muslims and the Christians, they have many detailed and scholarly excuses for any apparent conflicts.List a few that we can discuss them since you are certain.I have no idea what your personal standard of evidence are. Although I have a strong feeling that you would not accept prima facie, a writing that said something like "and then the prophet said, in 200 years there will be a war" and then in the same document, "and it came to pass, exactly 200 years later, that there was a war". If you want some examples of ancient contradictions and specific rationalizations,check out this short clip - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB3g6mXLEKk
Take for instance Daniel 2 and the four kingdoms or empires that are easily discernable by their descriptions and later mention of two of them. Then Daniel 9 speaks of six conditions that would take place within a specific period of time in which a Messiah would be killed and THEN the city and sanctuary would be destroyed with details of wars and desolation. The reference is AD 70 when all this happened. Copies of Daniel were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls dating back 200 years before AD 70. Or take Daniel 12 in which all prophecy concerning Daniel's people would be fulfilled.
Is this a new one or the same one from a previous post? I see you answered it for me in a future post.
As I said before, I do not defend the reasonableness of any other god but the Judeo-Christian God.Forget about the "YHWH" for a second. Start from scratch. The evidence is roughly equivalent for each, they all have ancient writings and prophecies (that are confirmed by the writings).How can you claim that the "YHWH" is "more reasonable" than other gods if you don't even know anything about other gods?
How is the information equivalent? Do you know anything of Hindu prophecies and how they relate to human history to date? I don't see anything specific there.
I have checked other beliefs when I was younger (i.e., Zen Buddhism, New Age teachings, Confucianism), plus others since (Islam, Atheism, J.W.'s, Mormonism, Wicca/Paganism, Bahaism), to engage with others, and the factual nature of prophecy and the unity of the Bible rings true, among other considerations. Prophecy is very reasonable. If Christianity is true then all else is false because of the biblical claims. I don't have to check out every other religion because they say contrary things.
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@3RU7AL
(IFF) they are unfalsifiable claims (THEN) their truth value cannot be either confirmed or denied. This is our epistemological limit.The coherence and correspondence of what is said can be checked out to their reasonableness. If they make prophetic utterances the quality and quantity of those statements can be checked out as to the falsifiability of the claim.When is the earliest recoverable document/manuscript from each religion found? Do you know the answer?The earliest Hindu texts are from approximately 1000 BCE. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Hindu_textsThe earliest Zoroastrian texts are from approximately 2000 BCE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZoroastrianismThe earliest Chinese mythological texts are from approximately 3000 BCE - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_mythology#Shells_and_bones
Are you saying there are manuscripts from these time frames???
Then you say, "I don't believe in any of these fake gods because anyone can write an ancient book and their prophecies are too vague".Then I say, "I don't believe in the YHWH because anyone can write an ancient book and their prophecies are too vague".I say give me the evidence that you believe makes these three gods believable as opposed to Yahweh so I can dispute your claims.Forget about the "YHWH" for a second. Start from scratch. The evidence is roughly equivalent for each, they all have ancient writings and prophecies (that are confirmed by the writings).
I'm asking for the earliest actual manuscripts retrieved from each.
Then you say, "TLDR, I'm not reading thousands of pages of ancient texts about any of these fake gods because it would be a waste of my time and it doesn't matter if the text says it is true or not because of course it will say it is true, that's what anyone would expect it to say, even if it was totally fake".Then I say, "TLDR, I'm not reading thousands of pages of ancient texts about the YHWH because it would be a waste of my time and it doesn't matter if the text says it is true or not because of course it will say it is true, that's what anyone would expect it to say, even if it was totally fake".I asked for the reasonableness of these gods and you avoided the proof or evidence. I am quite willing to discuss the reasonableness of the biblical God and I have offered to demonstrate that He is reasonable to believe as opposed to your three gods.The evidence is roughly equivalent for each, they all have ancient writings and prophecies (that are confirmed by the writings).
What is the earliest manuscript of these three religions?
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@3RU7AL
I mean, if EVERYTHING was INTENTIONALLY directed by an omnipotent being, then that would be pretty "f'd-up", right?I mean, if the "YHWH" could convert the evil oppressor, Saul of Tarsus into an instant saint by scaring the bujesus out of him with a holy messenger angel, doesn't it seem that the "YHWH" would have or could have done the same thing to at least hundreds if not thousands of others, like, you know Stalin or Pol Pot or Torquemada or Richard Dawkins?I don't believe in gods, I believe in one God.God has given what is necessary for salvation yet human beings are stubborn and want to follow their own desires as Romans 1:18-20 points out.Ok, so Saul of Tarsus wasn't stubborn enough to fully exercise his own free-will? Saul of Tarsus was just casually capturing and torturing Christians?
And God showed him the error of his ways. Then, when Saul realize he was persecuting the God he served he repented and turned to Him.
Richard Dawkins, Stalin, etc., have volition and they chose to ignore and suppress the knowledge of God. Here is what Romans 1 has in common:I get it now, Saul of Tarsus lacked "volition". I guess he was just lucky that the "YHWH" made him into a puppet.
He repented when shown the error of his ways. He used his volition.
When you ignore God, suppress the knowledge of Him, disrespect Him, do not seek Him, He lets you go your own way.Saul of Tarsus was not "seeking the YHWH". That's why it took a holy hit man and a talking donkey to change his mind.
He was seeking God, and God revealed Himself. Until that point Saul did not grasp the full extent of who God was, Father, Son, and Spirit.
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@3RU7AL
It might be that the moon snuck down one night and scooped up all the evidence so therefore you are right. Do you understand anything outside of your playground rhetoric?
That is an ad hom. It implies that my answers are childlike and rhetorical. It avoids answering the question I asked you. So, it attacks the man rather than the question.
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@3RU7AL
For example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB3g6mXLEKk
I'll answer these alleged contradictions when I get some spare time.
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@3RU7AL
You listed three religions that have contradictions to them concerning their gods, so logic dictates they cannot all be correct if any are. Now you are off on another tangent that has nothing to do with the questions I asked you. Here they are again:Just because competing hypotheses are logically mutually exclusive, THIS DOES NOT MEAN that any one of them is necessarily "TRUE".
That is true, but it certainly means that they all can't be true and possibly none of them are true. That is my contention.
1. Which is true since logically they all can't be right? (they are contrary beliefs about gods)(IFF) they are unfalsifiable claims (THEN) their truth value cannot be either confirmed or denied. This is our epistemological limit.
The coherence and correspondence of what is said can be checked out to their reasonableness. If they make prophetic utterances the quality and quantity of those statements can be checked out as to the falsifiability of the claim.
When is the earliest recoverable document/manuscript from each religion found? Do you know the answer?
2. What is it you want me to gather from these links? (about these specific gods?)I am placing you in the atheist seat.
- You say, "the YHWH is real and true because ancient book says so and prophecy came true".
I say, "the Marduk or Ahura Mazda or Brahman is real and true because ancient book says so and prophecy came true".
- Then you say, "I don't believe in any of these fake gods because anyone can write an ancient book and their prophecies are too vague".
Then I say, "I don't believe in the YHWH because anyone can write an ancient book and their prophecies are too vague".
I say give me the evidence that you believe makes these three gods believable as opposed to Yahweh so I can dispute your claims.
- Then you say, "TLDR, I'm not reading thousands of pages of ancient texts about any of these fake gods because it would be a waste of my time and it doesn't matter if the text says it is true or not because of course it will say it is true, that's what anyone would expect it to say, even if it was totally fake".
Then I say, "TLDR, I'm not reading thousands of pages of ancient texts about the YHWH because it would be a waste of my time and it doesn't matter if the text says it is true or not because of course it will say it is true, that's what anyone would expect it to say, even if it was totally fake".
I asked for the reasonableness of these gods and you avoided the proof or evidence. I am quite willing to discuss the reasonableness of the biblical God and I have offered to demonstrate that He is reasonable to believe as opposed to your three gods.
Here are two more questions:1. Are Vishnu, Marduk, or Pangu the same god, and if so what is said about them should not be contradictory?All three are 100% mutually exclusive. All three of them are unfalsifiable.
Are they reasonable and what evidence do they give to their reasonableness since you brought up the subject and now want me to do all the bull work?
2. Do you believe the descriptions of these gods contain contradictions?It is difficult to write thousands of pages of ancient text without at least a few logical contradictions. But I'm certain, that just like the Jews and the Muslims and the Christians, they have many detailed and scholarly excuses for any apparent conflicts.
List a few that we can discuss them since you are certain.
As I said before, I do not defend the reasonableness of any other god but the Judeo-Christian God.
For example, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RB3g6mXLEKk
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@3RU7AL
It is your belief that because no evidence has been found for some events recorded in the Bible that it is a fiction, yet many other events are proven by archeological evidence. You pick and choose only the points the boost your belief and you try to make this event a falsity yet you never consider the other possibilities, a few of which I pointed out.And more insults and ad hominems.There don't appear to be any insults or personal attacks in the text you quoted from disgusted.Please explain what you mean.
In reference to which post? You left out what I was responding to, so how many posts ago was this?
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