“Standing up for righteousness”
A press release from the presumptiously-named Christian Voice calls for all Christians to boycott the Co-op bank for its ethical stance against homophobia.
Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said today: “The decision from the Co-operative Bank fits a pattern where politically-correct bully-boys try to attack Christian organisations, Christian symbols, the Bible, and in the case of Jerry Springer the Opera and BBC2, even the person of our Saviour.”
It quotes from the Co-op letter which gave CV the bad news, and includes Green’s retort:
Standing up for righteousness is what we do. In fact you could say there are dozens of such pronouncements in my own book “The Sexual Dead-End”, which was published in 1992.
Green is clearly still quite proud of this book, which includes the allegation that 20% of gay men regularly have sex with live gerbils.
Explaining the reasons for CV choosing the Co-op bank in the first place, the press release goes on,
At the time, there was no mention by them that people who believe that homosexual acts are sinful would not be welcome. We feel let down, frankly, and the whole business has left a sour taste in the mouth.
Snigger.
We are now calling upon Christians who bank with and shop at the Co-op to withdraw their business until such time as this bank’s unethical and discriminatory attitude changes. Clearly, and on their own admission, the Co-op is not the bank for those who honour the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
There you go.
June 27th, 2005 at 12:39 am
As I said elsewhere
In my view, Green is guilty, and the Co-op is also guilty.
Both seem to want to be in the business of trying to be holier than thou, and doing what they can to shut people up. Green is trying to shut up the BBC and anyone else who “offends” Christianity. The Co-op, for whatever reason is trying (indirectly) to shut up Green, and using its power to try and achieve that.
Green wants to shut up people, but he isn’t very happy when people want to shut HIM up, by some means. The Co-op bank, really ought to know better.
June 27th, 2005 at 3:23 am
The Co-op are really worried about the CV boycott. No, I’m kidding. The reaction from their customers appears to have been excellent.
June 27th, 2005 at 7:42 am
It’s wrong to say the Co-op wants to silence Green. All it’s done is told him where he can deposit his bank account. All companies have policies on the question of whom they do business with. There were mass boycotts of South African companies, a gesture that eventually helped to end apartheid. While it would be morally iffy to do business with companies that supported an apartheid regime, no one ought to say that someone who believed in apartheid should not be allowed to voice his/her opinions. If I wandered into my local Co-op with a banner saying ‘Wogs are Scum’, I’d expect to be evicted. The Co-op Bank has merely evicted Mr Green’s bank account.
June 27th, 2005 at 8:58 am
I expect this has been asked before, but …
Whom does Stephen Green represent, other than his own form of religious blackmail and the sound of his own voice?
He claims to represent a pressure group, with a loud presence, but how many actual members?
June 27th, 2005 at 9:15 am
Green is very coy about the size of his membership. The only article to put a figure on it in recent months is one from the Observer, which says “under 1,000″. But the number of supporters you have is irrelevant when you are speaking on behalf of “Almighty God”.
June 28th, 2005 at 11:02 am
Well - exactly. Even if there were only one member, s/he could still be right and the others wrong. Headcount never has determined truth and never could - nobody could believe it does. Christianity has more followers than any other philosophy, but does that make it true? Of course not. Its truth (if there is any) is founded on quite other grounds.
June 28th, 2005 at 1:59 pm
That’s absolutely right christoher, but having a tiny membership does give the lie to the name Christian Voice, with its implications of speaking for all christians. There’s over a billion christians in the world. his membership is clearly below a thousand, which means that he speaks for less than 1 millionth of the worlds christians (or a microchrist, if you will)
June 28th, 2005 at 2:58 pm
Dr Shell wrote:
” Its truth (if there is any) is founded on quite other grounds. ”
Be assured.
There isn’t any.
June 28th, 2005 at 4:18 pm
Hi Shaun
We can speak of small topics in few words or big topics in many. To try and cover big topics in few words only shows a lack of appreciation of the complexities. Im sure I am guilty of this too sometimes.
Hi Tom - your statistics are semi-accurate.
If by ’speaks for’ you mean ‘is the mandated representative of’ you are right.
If you mean ‘expresses the position of’, then you are currently wrong, since, internationally speaking, all the geographical areas full of Christians are full of orthodox/biblical Christians.
June 28th, 2005 at 5:56 pm
But Christopher, Shaun’s statement was (fundamentally) correct. There is (essentially) no truth in christianity.
Fair enough there may have been a Jesus who is the fellow described in the non-fantasy bits of the nu testament, but he cannot have been the son of god, for there is no god. Given that the inherent basis of christianity is about worshipping and following the teachings of the son of god (who also was god in human form), then there is no fundamental truth behind it.
June 29th, 2005 at 12:25 am
Jesus didn’t have enough to say about modern life to be the son, of an omnipotent, all knowing deity, for whom time and space is his to command. Modern life, in the form of travel, communications, (virtually instant across the world) current medical knowledge, is so far removed from anything remotely conceivable in His time, it was competely BEYOND his human imagination. If he really was the Son of God, he would know about, and have lots to say about modern things, and the way they interact with our lives. He’d have been able to discriminate between what he thought was wrong, and what was truly wrong. He would have been well aware of the misery imposed on others in His name, and would have condemned it in advance, to ensure it did not happen.
2000 years, and he ain’t shown yet…
We kept the seat warm, and the table’s set…
June 29th, 2005 at 12:29 am
Another fish head in the dustbin
Another loser in the queue for the soup kitchen
Another reason for a visit
We think you’d better come down
Another nigger on the woodpile
Another honky on the dole
Another trip from off the 15th floor
The greatest story ever told
Was so wrong, so wrong
’cos you promised milk and honey
With an everlasting life
And we listened with our ears closed
And a blindness in our eyes
But we heard them as they nailed you
And we saw you crucified
The second coming of the holy ghost
We need a pocketful of miracles
Two thousand years and he ain’t shown yet
We kept his seat warm and the table set
The second sitting for the last supper
Another guru in the money
Another mantra in the mail
An easy way from rags to riches
God’s little acre’s up for sale
The time is right for ressurection
We think you’d better come down
The church don’t ring with hallelujahs
You haven’t been for so long
So long, so long
Two thousand years and he ain’t shown yet
We kept his seat warm and the table set
The second sitting for the last supper
Kevin Godley and Lol Creme with 10CC
June 29th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
Crumbs, Shaun, I thought it was only religious ppl who ascribed exaggerated worth to sentiments that were accompanied by beguiling, reinforcing music. The poetry is good, but neither the music nor the quality of the poetry can make up for lack of historical understanding. Popular songwriters who have done any appreciable research into the historical data in question are rare indeed.
Tom - Im not sure of how you are defining ‘Son of God’. In the days of Jesus, all sorts of wonderworkers, kings, angels etc had this title. Jesus, uniquely, was given the definite article: ‘The Son of God’. But since we are obviously not talking of biological sonship, then it’s not clear which particular definition of ‘Son of God’ you are denying.
Various elements combined to give Jesus the title ‘Son of God’:
(1) his use of ‘Abba’ for God, something previously unknown;
(2) the amount of time he referred to God as ‘Father’ - proportionately more than any other Jewish thinker;
(3) reflection on the Cross suggested to some that Jesus played the role of Isaac and God that of Abraham: hence, the ‘only Son’ language.
(4) It is also something of a default title: the highest that can be ascribed to a human being without actually calling them ‘God’.
The quasi-biological formulations came later, and are not part of the New Testament. (Same goes for trinitarian theory - albeit it is usually based on some New Testament basis.) Even the ‘begotten’ in the Creed is based on a mistranslation of ‘monogenes’ in John 1.18, which means ‘unique’/'one of a kind’ / ‘one and only dear’: it’s a strong and emotional way of expressing uniqueness: compare Isaac’s relationship to Abraham, and Jephthah’s daughter’s relationship to her father in the book of Judges.
‘God’ language is also used of Jesus - in fact, many times in the New Testament. I would estimate that 500 verses in the New Testament assume some kind of divinity for Jesus. Preposterous, one might think - until one realises that one wouldn’t either recognise divinity if one saw it, or easily be able to define it if asked. Those who say ‘X is obviously not divine’ are talking as though they have lunch with gods every day of the week, and so can easily recognise who is and ins’t divine. But since the word ‘divine’ doesn’t equate either to ’supernatural’ (and Jesus was in any case supernormal), or to ‘able to create out of nothing’, or to any other word, there is a problem in defining it.
There’s also the problem that in the world of Jesus all sorts of humans were honoured as divine: miracle workers like Apollonius of Tyana; emperors like Augustus; legendary heroes like Romulus (I think Im right in saying). To fail to speak of Jesus as ‘theos’ (god) would suggest he was somehow lesser than these.
But only in a Hellenistic context. In a Jewish context calling him ‘God’ or ‘god’ proved to be another kettle of fish. This situation is reflected in John’s gospel (esp. chapters 5, 10). This gospel defends the existing (possibly instinctive) worship of Jesus as divine by positing Jesus’s oneness with God in being and action. He proves this by doing creative works (various miracles) such as only God could do.
June 29th, 2005 at 3:57 pm
Jesus calling god father does not show at all that he is the son of god. If he genuinely believed he was the son of god, then all it shows is that he was a seriously deluded, possibly mentally ill individual, there being no such thing as god.
June 29th, 2005 at 4:47 pm
you’ll note that i too used the definite article.
christianity is based on the flawed belief that jesus was the son of god, fathered by the holy spirit and given birth to by mary, previously a virgin. he died for our sins and then rose again on the third day, coming back to life as zombie jesus, with the strength of many men (to roll the stone out of the way).
Correct me if i’m wrong, but that’s essentially the crux of it. And it’s this belief in the supernatural, rather than following of his teachings that makes christianity a religion rather than a philosophy.
Fair enough, you personally may choose to see him as a human, whose teachings you follow, with the fantasy bits as just that, but that certainly ain’t catholicism, nor most other christianity, neither
“his use of ‘Abba’ for God” - does this mean that female and camp male australians are the direct descendents of god?
June 30th, 2005 at 3:45 pm
I wasnt arguing for Jesus being the Son of God. I was indicating how that title came to be used of him.
The title is not necessarily inaccurately applied to him, given that everyone agrees we are not speaking of biological sonship anyway.
The resurrection is a separate question. There are all sorts of positive circumstantial arguments for it. There is only one good & powerful negative argument against it known to me: the obvious one that such things do not and cannot physically happen. There is also a negative circumstantial argument for it: namely, that none of the alternative scenarii proposed so far have been all that plausible. This is the sort of debate I enjoy, so if anyone has a good alternative scenario I would be pleased to assess it.
June 30th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
Alternative scenario 1: the gospels are a mixture of fact and fiction. The resurrection story is one of the fictional bits.
July 1st, 2005 at 10:44 am
So far so good - but what Im asking for is an alternative scenario for what did happen instead, rather than an assertion that something didnt happen.
July 1st, 2005 at 11:34 am
Alternative scenario? Righto: The jesus who was crucified was eaten by worms and his bones eventually crumbled into dust.
Admittedly the worms hypothesis is highly flawed, since he wasn’t interred in the british sense. It was more likely to be bacteria. Given that it’s quite warm in the middle east around easter, he may even have exploded with the build up of gas if his holes were plugged, you never know.
July 1st, 2005 at 1:08 pm
This begs the following questions:
(1) The gospels talk of a specific individual called Joseph of Arimathea who asked Pilate for permission to bury the body. How do we account for this?
(2) Given that the body must then have disappeared (since all agree that it did) who do we account for that?
(3) If the authorities took it, why did they not then produce it?
(4) If the disciples took it, why were they willing to die for the sake of a lie?
(5) If the disciples took it, why were their lives transformed so that illiterate fishermen became movers and shakers in the Mediterranean world?
July 1st, 2005 at 1:19 pm
(1) The gospels talk of a specific individual called Joseph of Arimathea who asked Pilate for permission to bury the body. How do we account for this?
(2) Given that the body must then have disappeared (since all agree that it did) who do we account for that?
This really does beg the question (in the logical sense). We are questioning the veracity of the gospel stories. Yet all your questions assume as their premise the veracity of the gospel stories.
Tsk tsk. From a self proclaimed logician as well.
July 1st, 2005 at 1:53 pm
No - that’s a misunderstanding. I am assuming nothing - Im not assuming the truth of the stories nor the falsehood of the stories.
You on the other hand are assuming the falsehood. Some arguments for this position are in order.
July 1st, 2005 at 2:05 pm
The body must have disappeared because all the gospels agree that it did?
That looks like a rather large assumption to me - the assumption that whatever the gospels agree on must be true.
July 1st, 2005 at 2:30 pm
Not just (a) because they agree, but also (b) because the subsequent career of the disciples and rise of the church on the basis of the resurrection would then make no sense, unless the disciples were totally dishonest. In which case, they would not have had the strength of mind to be martyred.
July 1st, 2005 at 2:39 pm
All that was necessary for the disciples to have the “strength of mind” to be martyred (if indeed any were - there is scant reliable evidence for this too), was the belief that Christ had been resurrected and that they would be too.
Never heard of anyone martyring themselves because of a religious belief? Quite a common occurence, even today.
July 1st, 2005 at 3:16 pm
What evidence was their belief based on? If they fled from him at the Cross (and if they didnt why would they make up a detail so demeaning?) then what caused them to believe in the resurrection later?
July 1st, 2005 at 3:40 pm
Belief does not have to be based on evidence. If you think people believe something only when they have good evidence for that belief, then you have a very poor understanding of human nature.
July 1st, 2005 at 3:49 pm
Agreed, totally. But considering that they believed the opposite at the time of Jesus’s death (granted that the embarrassing detail of their flight would not have been invented - why would they needlessly embarrass themselves by saying something that was not true anyway?), they will have needed evidence in order to change their minds.
July 1st, 2005 at 4:36 pm
Why?
July 1st, 2005 at 11:30 pm
Jesus’s body disappeared? My ass. It was probably stolen by some disciple who figured it won’t rot because it’s holy… preposterous notion? No more so than the statement that it rose to heaven.
These were simple people. In today’s society if a body gets moved there’s evidence left that we can detect. And let remember that they (the followers) WANTED to believe that this was all true. Lots of people believe that Michael Jackson was guilty, even though the jury decided otherwise. Take any modern miscarriage of justice - oftentimes people continue to beleive on side or the other because it suits them - even when all the empirical evidence says otherwise.
If I believe the God’s a china teapot orbitting the sun and has told me to murder all Christians I’ll get locked away. However, take away the murder aspect and I’m just a harmless loony.
But wait - who’s to say that God isn’t a china teapot? There’s no evidence (empirical or otherwise) to prove that. We have now way to see it; no way to measure God’s gravitation effect. If I believe it - does that make it true?
Now consider this: is this notion of a china teapot any more absurd than believing in a 2000-odd year old text written and edited by a bunch of self-obsessed, deluded and power-hungry mages?
These are the people who recorded a virgin birth with no way to tell if the so-called virgin really was virgo-intacto; that men rose from he dead - without any way to detect death until the corpse starts to rot; that would proclaim that a woman had visions of god - without any knowledge of pyschosis?
These are people who have forced their beliefs on millions of us by force or coercion. Fear them, follow them and agree with them or be censored. Don’t use contraception (make more Christians); don’t be gay (make more Christians); spread the word (make more Christians).
And when it goes a bit pear-shaped like the overpopulation and AIDS crisis in the third-world; or you create a monster like Voodoo (yes, Christianity combined with ancient mysticism did that) - just claim it’s the will of some dude who works in mysterious ways. Pass the buck!
Well I’m a humanist and the buck stops here!
July 3rd, 2005 at 10:03 am
Hi Marc
It’s a matter of proper historical enquiry. Our proposed scenario must fit in (a) with the surviving evidence, (b) with the historical background, and (c) with logical probability.
One can take the scientific-hypothesis approach: simply propose a theory, test it against such tests as a-c, and see which one comes out best.
July 3rd, 2005 at 11:44 am
To continue…
You are so right when you say that ppl often ‘believe’ what they want to believe. That is a reality which I come up against every day. In proper debate, ppl don’t even know what they believe until they have first examined and debated the evidence. Even then, all their beliefs are merely provisional.
What Im trying to do is find a believable alternative scenario for the resurrection. There are plenty of questions that haven’t yet been answered:
(1) Where is the evidence that the Joseph of Arimathea story is a fiction? People may want to believe that, but the issue is not wants but evidence. In its favour we have 4 documents, not all necessarily dependent on one another. We have the name of a specific person whose existence and deeds could have been confirmed or disconfirmed by his associates and family at the time all of the 4 gospels were written (around 70-85 AD). We have the name of his town of origin. It is not the first town one would choose if one were making the whole thing up. We have details about the tomb: it was ‘new’ and ‘cut out of the rock’. What specific evidence is there against this account?
(2) If Jesus’s body was stolen, it was stolen either by his friends or by his enemies. His enemies could have produced it in evidence, but never did. His friends became considerably stronger characters afterwards, whereas if their lives had been built on a lie they would have become considerably weaker characters.
July 3rd, 2005 at 3:56 pm
There you go begging the question again. Using Joseph of Arimethea and the “empty tomb” to argue for the veracity of the resurrection story is like using Dorothy (the homely girl from Kansas) and the Yellow Brick Road to argue for the existence of the Wizard of Oz. They are part of the same story - and the earlilest Christian writings (the epistles of Paul) don’t mention either of them.
July 3rd, 2005 at 5:32 pm
Within ancient Jewish thought (or msot other thought, in fact), how is it possible to have a resurrection without an empty tomb?
Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? How are you defining ‘resurrection’?
Re: Wizard of Oz: Can you name one scholar who classifies the gospels’ genre as fiction?
While you are on Paul, one can cross-check historical details from Paul with those from Acts.
This means Acts is -to that extent- historically based.
But Acts is only the 2nd part of a 2 volume work. Are you saying that the first part is fiction and the second more historical?
Then again, Luke is the final gospel to be written. If it is historical (or as historical as Acts is, which Paul’s writings tend to confirm) how much more historical does that make the other 3 gospels?
The gospels and Acts are full of historical characters. Where are the historical characters in The Wizard of Oz?
That’s why Im confused about how you arrived at the ‘Wizard of Oz’ comparison in the first place. It’s not one that ever surfaces in the scholarly world, and that world is a mixture of Christians, atheists, agnostics, Jews, etc etc.. And while the scholarly world is not 100% open-minded, a given scholar is committed by his/her profession to be open-minded in a way one does not find in non-scholars.
July 3rd, 2005 at 5:43 pm
Much of the Gospels is quite clearly fiction, especially the resurection story….. it is not actually possible for a man to die and to come back to life.
July 3rd, 2005 at 6:16 pm
The purpose of the Wizard of Oz analogy was not to suggest the 100% fictionality of the gospels (we are only talking about the resurrection stories anyway). The purpose was to demonstrate the circularity of your reasoning.
Turns out it was hardly necessary, when you do such a beautiful job of it yourself:
Within ancient Jewish thought (or msot other thought, in fact), how is it possible to have a resurrection without an empty tomb?
Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?
LOL. First you say “if there was no resurrection, how do you explain the empty tomb?” - to which the reply is “what empty tomb? That’s part of the same story.” Then, to argue for the reality of the empty tomb you say “how can there have been a resurrection without one?”
Don’t you make yourself dizzy thinking like that? Or is that how all Christians think in “the scholarly world”?
July 3rd, 2005 at 6:22 pm
Don’t you believe it!! In the 1960s and 1970s there were all sorts of people who argued for the resurrection without believing in an empty tomb. They called it ’spiritual resurrection’.
No - my point was that you cited St Paul. You said, quite rightly, that Paul’s documents are probably the earliest in the New Testament. Paul is always going on about the resurrection (Acts 17.18 suggests that his two favourite words were ‘Jesus’ and ‘Resurrection’).
So if the very earliest Christian writer is brim-full of the Resurrection… [you complete the sentence].
July 3rd, 2005 at 6:37 pm
..but doesn’t mention Joseph of Arimethea or “the empty tomb”… [you complete the sentence]
July 3rd, 2005 at 9:38 pm
Joseph of Arimathea?
Contrary to the propaganda on this thread, no such place name has been discovered. In fact, John has several towns whose existence has not been confirmed.
There is lots of stuff on the Bible at http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/christ.htm
http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/mirc1.htm takes the methods Christians use to analyse the Koran and the Book of Mormo and sees if they are applicable to the Gospels.
http://stevencarrwork.blogspot.com/ gives us the Alpha Challenge, which asks how God managed to forsake God on the Cross, when there is only one God.
It also asks how Jesus became a life-giving spirit, according to Paul.
The Christian answers on the page are pretty pathetic.
July 3rd, 2005 at 9:41 pm
And, of course, it is a lie that the disciples were prepared to die.
And even according to the Bible, they were *not* transformed by any resurrection, not even when they saw Moses and Elijah, and not when they saw Jesus.
They went back to fishing. (as you would when you saw God returned from the grave
Matthew 28:17 says that they still doubted. Clearly apologetic spin to cover up the fact that it was known that were not transformed.
July 3rd, 2005 at 10:29 pm
Interesting stuff there, Steven. No such place as Arimathea? That would cast some doubt on the existence of this Joseph fellow. And Shell - you made up the stuff about the disciples being transformed? So much for the “scientific-hypothesis approach”.
We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.
July 3rd, 2005 at 10:57 pm
I’m curious, Mr Shell. Do you claim the bible is historical fact - and if so, which bits? Old or new testament? The bible is arguably the most edited and re-imagined book on the face of the Earth. History (and the bible has some basis in history or historical events) is written by the winners.
Take a for instance: if Hitler and his Nazis had won WWII, we’d all be speaking German (probably not having this argument) and would know horrible dread tales of the vicious English concentration camps. The jews wouldn’t exist and we’d all be blonde-haired and blue-eyed. History from a Nazi perspective would be a very different history to the one we know today.
The same is true of the bible, only its editors are rather more liberal with the truth. We really don’t know what happened to Jesus when he was a kid or a young adult! We know he was probably born, was probably nailed to a cross by the Romans but that’s about it. He might, for all we know, have been as camp as a bunch of boy scout leaders. But this doesn’t suit religious shcolars - it doesn’t sit well with ancient teaching so you’d just paint over that. If you look really closely, we have no testable historical record other than the various bible that Jesus even existed as described; or indeed at all. He may be a mere compilation of many figures around about that time.
As for resurection… *if* the body dissapeared there is more likely a worldly argument for this; and the same applies equally to this laughable notion of a virgin birth. (Try and pull a trick like that today and you’ll be laughed out of Dodge.)
So maybe the body mumified in the heat, as seems likely, and the spirit ascended to heaven - that’s a good explanation because it totally removes any possible observable proof. It’s all smoke and mirrors - anything that can’t be proven must be divine; but in my book, divine == bullsh*t. I read somewhere that someone witnessed Jesus ascending to heaven. Ahum. There are more reasonable ways to explain this; creative writing comes to mind, but it could equally be plain lies put about to save face or pehaps (and this is pushing it) a shared psycosis/hypnosis; such things are not unheard of.
Over the centuries, the established church has become well-known for air-brushing out whatever it doesn’t like or aplogising for what it can’t cover up centuries later; Spanish inquistion anyone? Or how about the crusades? Very Christian that - nipping overseas to chop up people who don’t agree with you.
A long time ago, this country was once a happy, non-Christian place. Sure, we weren’t beyond killing each other, sacking neighbours or raping the odd young maiden. We were even fettered by our own idiotic multi-theistic notions. So how did the Christians get into power? By invading, and that’s exactly what these snake-oil salesmen are trying to do again. And when they do, they’ll just re-write history all nice and happy-clappy as if we were all too happy to embrace THEIR way of thinking.
Even modern bible Scholars can’t seem to make up their mind about some so-called facts. 666 (as popularised by Holywood) has now been interpreted several different ways.
Then just look at the poor bastards dying of Aids and starvation through overpopulation in the third world and tell me that one man hasn’t got the power to help stop its interminable rise. But he won’t. He won’t because his way makes more little Christians and there’s strength in numbers, no matter what the cost in pestilence, disease and agonising death.
If this wonderful invention you call Jesus was alive today do you think we’d take him seriously? And if we did, do you honestly think he’d tell us it’s better to have more children than you can feed than teach the children how to feed themselves.
Furthermore, if I were a Christian, I know I’d be a better one than Stephen Green whose name should appear beside any decent definition of homophobia, because I don’t judge my gay friends as sinners. Your own Jesus states “not to judge others lest ye be judged also.” or words along those lines; yes, any idiot can write pseudo-scripture.
The whole point about this rant is simple: Christians have an untestable hypothesis based on a book which has been subject to myriad revisions and editions steered as much by politics as by faith. For practically every argument the book puts up, the same book has a counter argument if you can be bothered to find it. Men guided by God? More likely men guided by greed for power; for if you control a man’s (notional) soul you control the man.
This, I expect, is true of the Alpha Course. More smoke and mirrors to scare the crap out of people and then give them an answer to make them feel better. This is the same despicable boilerplate dispensed by so-called mediums who claim to talk to the dead, only Alpha sugar-coats it. Neither of these life-after-death answers stands up to any intelligent scrutiny; any more than any biblical events do. We’re 2000 years smarter, and still just as scared of dying. The thing all religions fear more than anything is someone finding a cure to death, because if death is not inevitable, what else is there to fear?
The stronger people believe in an afterlife the less they fear death; a fact demonstrated on a daily basis in Iraq today. This, I suspect, is the true price of mortality.
Well, I have a life of sorts, so it’s back to it.
July 4th, 2005 at 1:26 pm
Hi Marc
On ‘revisions and editions’, we are fortunate that there are about 30 times as many manuscripts surviving of the New Testament as of any other ancient book. That means that the text of the New Testament is presumably the most accurate of any ancient book,since we can draw up a family tree of manuscripts and work from there.
You mentioned that you read somewhere that Jesus’s ascension into heaven was witnessed. This comment does show that your knowledge of the New Testament documents is a bit vague. That being the case, you are not yet in a position to comment on them as you do above. What say you read through the 4 gospels and then come back to me? Supposing you know any other ancient books (Homer, Virgil, or whatever - or even some parts of the Old Testament) ask where you think the gospels fit in on the fact/fiction spectrum.
Anyway, must dash - off to do a bit of Spanish inquisitioning (my daily pastime, in common with the rest of the Christians in this country).
In all seriousness - do get back to me on this if you wish.
July 4th, 2005 at 6:18 pm
Sadly, the very number of the NT manuscripts shows that Christians were perfectly willing to change the stories of the Last Supper, crucifixion and resurrection to suit their own personal agendas.
See http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/reli2.htm for copious documentation.
And surely the NT does say the ascension was witnessed acts 1.
Acts even claims that Stephen died for a vision of the resurrected Jesus in Heaven (although nowhere in the speech is it suggested that Jesus did not go straight to Heaven after he died)
July 5th, 2005 at 11:35 am
Hi Steven-
Exactly: both Luke 24 and Acts 1. Marc was vague about this, which is why I suggested he has a good read.
The very fact that we have so many MSS makes any such changes irrelevant, because the more MSS one has, the easier it is to construct a family tree and eliminate the MSS with later changes and additions. This would be easy even if we had just 1000 MSS - with 25000 it’s comparatively a doddle. It’s generally the case that any change which a naughty scribe makes cannot possibly affect all other MSS the world over. How could it? Consequently, such changes are easliy rooted out.
An easy way to see this is to compare translations. All translations of the New Testament are made on the basis of MSS in the original Greek. The translations will come up with the same sense the vast majority of the time. There will, of course be plenty of times that they differ from one another because the Greek itself is ambiguous. Or because they prefer a different modern-English rendering, while still assuming the same Greek original. Almost every New Testament translation will highlight exactly the same disputed verses in footnotes. This gives one some idea of how many verses are disputed. Even then, the possible senses/readings have usually been narrowed down to just two.
Textual criticism is quite a science. The obvious example is that if cheating has gone on in an assigment, the teacher who knows any principles of textual criticism will always be able to draw up an accurate family tree of who has copied from whom. There are so many micro-signals that give the game away. Such a teacher can easily highlight what is a change and what is an addition. And such a teacher can easily identify which script is the most original.
July 5th, 2005 at 11:57 am
To bring us back to the discussion - ie the veracity of the resurrection stories - this is where we stand. Your two main arguments in favour have been answered:
1) Citing Joseph of Arimethea and the empty tomb is no good because it is circular reasoning; there is no evidence for either outside the (later) resurrection stories themselves - indeed, as Steven points out, there is no evidence that a place called Arimethea existed.
2) Pointing to the “transformation” of the disciples as evidence is no good either, because it appears you simply made this up (or perhaps repeated it, ready made-up by someone else).
July 5th, 2005 at 6:25 pm
Again, you are quite correct that we can see what are later changes to the text.
so bye bye Son of God in Mark 1:1, Jesus being comforted by angels, the Eucharistic formuala in Luke, visit to the tomb in Luke…..
etc etc
See http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/reli2.htm for details.
It is pointless saying that the text is reliable, when the reliable reveals how much Christians were prepared to add.
July 5th, 2005 at 6:27 pm
Of course, the fact that we have no evidence of a place called Arimathea does not mean that there was no such place.
However that would have been true in the 1st century as well.
People finding things about the stories that they could not check out, would not assume that they were false.
July 6th, 2005 at 11:06 am
Hi Monitor-
unless they had good knowledge of Palestine? If Mark was making up a fictitious character (and it’s important that you present one positive piece of evidence in favour of this before taking up such a stance) then why would he choose to make that fictitious character come from an obscure place?
One might equally well argue that the fact that Arimathea is hard to identify is evidence of good close first-century knowledge (not that there is any dispute that Mark was written by 75 AD anyway). Who would mention such a name (or the name Dalmanutha, equally unidentified, in Mark
The transformation of the disciples is based on the data that:
(a) they deserted Jesus and were not present at his death (this can scarcely be a lie, since they would not make up a version of history that was simultaneously untrue and reflected badly on themselves for no reason);
(b) they recovered to lead a movement that transformed the Mediterranean world within a generation, despite their lack of education.
What it is important that you provide is detailed points / argumentation to show that these points are incorrect and/or that some alternative scenario is better evidenced.
Steven-
Precisely my point: the angel in the garden, the ‘Son of God’ (Mark 1.1), the visit to the tomb in Luke - these are just the sort of examples I had in mind when I said that the things that appear as alternatives in the footnotes to NT translations are the same every time. Count them - they are not very many, which is why ppl tend to end up citing the same examples.
My provisional conclusion is that the first of the three which I mentioned is inauthentic, and the other two are authentic. But I am not fully confident about the authenticity of either: I just find it more than 50% likely. The last of the three is one of a class called ‘Western non-interpolations’.
The eucharistic formula in Luke is bound to have been altered by someone who knew another formula better. The problem then is to work out which of the two versions was Luke’s own.
A high percentage of the smaller gospel discrepancies can be accounted for by scribes conforming one gospel to another (usually Matthew). In doing so, they thought they were being faithful in the sense that they were getting back closer to the original Jesus. This was far more important to them than the integrity of the text of one particular gospel.
July 6th, 2005 at 5:12 pm
As the resurrection story contains elements contrary to the laws of nature, the rational default stance towards it is skepticism. Therefore it is not up to the skeptic to prove that any particular part of that story is untrue, but rather it’s the believer who has the burden of proof. Yet you persist in circularly reasoning from J of A (a non-supernatural element admittedly, but part of the same story nonetheless) to evidence the truth of the resurrection.
As for the allegedly transformed disciples, you appear to be assuming that they wrote the gospel stories - a rather large assumption.
Never mind. Here’s an alternative scenario for you, as you’ve been asking for one for so long.
Cognitive dissonance is a common psychological phenomenon - especially among religious believers. When someone you believe to be the messiah is suddenly and humiliatingly executed, that comes as quite a shock. It would be natural for the more devoted followers to construct a scenario which would allow them to continue to believe. The case of a 17th century Jewish “messiah” Sabbatai Zevi is an illustrative example. He amassed a large following before shockingly converting to Islam, at which point many followers deserted him - but others constructed an elaborate apologetic to allow them to continue believing. The case of UFO cult leader Marian Keech in the Skepdic link above is another example.
So, there’s Jesus hanging dead and decomposing on the cross (the Romans did not allow burial of victims of this most humiliating punishment). What do his believing followers think? “He can’t be dead. He’s not dead! He had to die to save us. Now he’s gone up to heaven and he’ll come back soon!”. Having convinced themselves of this, they go about proselytising with renewed enthusiasm (just like Keech’s followers did after the UFO no-show). The story spreads, and gets embellished - as stories do. Eventually, 45 years (a couple of generations) later - by which time no one can prove any different - the story of Jesus has developed into a full blown physical resurrection, with added nativity tale of wise men and virgin birth.
The scenario is more probable than the “it really happened” scenario for the following reasons:
1) it fits with known human psychology
2) it fits with the written evidence (no J of A or empty tomb in the earliest Christian writings)
and, most importantly
3) it fits with the laws of nature.
Now, gentle readers, observe the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance in action as Dr Shell strives to demonstrate his belief that the physical resurrection actually happened is more plausible than this scenario.
July 6th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
Transformed the Mediterranean world within a generation?
Hardly.
And Paul does not know these disciples as leaders, with the exception of 3, and one of the people he names , James, had not been a disciple.
It remains the case that Christians altered the text to suit their own private agenda.
Almost everywhere. For example, the early manuscripts have 20 different sayings about divorce, making it impossible to reconstruct what was original.
July 7th, 2005 at 3:11 pm
Hi Steven-
There are 6 mistakes here:
(1) You say’: ‘The *early* manuscripts have 20 different sayings about divorce’-
No: the early MSS have no more, and no fewer, sayings about divorce than any other MSS.
(2) You say: ‘The early manuscripts have *20* different sayings about divorce’:
The divorce passages in the NT total six, not 20. The six are as follows:
Mark 10.1-12, Matt. 5.31-2, Matt. 19.12, Luke 16.18, 1 Corinthians 7.10-16,27, Romans 7.2-3.
(3) Paul knows about the twelve apostles. He refers to ‘the Twelve’ in 1 Corinthians 15. He meets with them all in Acts 15.
(4) You are saying that anyone Paul does not name explicitly in one of his surviving letters he does not know about. Conclusion: he did not know about any of the Roman emperors, or about Alexander the Great.
(5) Take all the ancient writings in existence. For which of them are we least able to obtain the original texts? Answer: those for which we have the least manuscripts.
For which of them can we best obtain the original text? Answer: For those which have the most surviving manuscripts.
There are 30 times as many MSS of the New Testament as of any other ancient book. That means that our chances of obtaining the original text of the NT is (by that criterion) 30 times better than it is for any other ancient book.
Another criterion is how close to the date of composition the earliest MSS are. NT MSS begin from less than 100 years after composition - ie a better figure than we have for 90+% of ancient writings - only things like inscriptions really compare favourably with this figure.
Of course, you are right that some scribes made alterations. But they didnt just alter the NT: they altered every book. The NT is no different from any other book in this respect.
Or, rather, it is different in one way: that because we have so many MSS we are better able in the case of the NT to form a family tree that shows us which bits are additions and which bits are not. This is more difficult for all the other ancient writings, for which we have fewer MSS.
It’s this ‘family tree’ point which Im not sure you’ve fully grasped.
(6) The growth of Christianity was pretty spectacular. Acts 17.6 mentions that Christianity’s enemies describe the Christians as having ‘turned the world upside down’ / ’caused trouble all over the world’. These first-century testimonies are the best we have available to us.
July 7th, 2005 at 3:36 pm
Hi Monitor-
Answers awaited:
(1) Do you think there was any such place as Dalmanutha? Mark 8.10 refers to it - but no-one knows where it is. Which scenario do you think is more likely? - (a) he made the name ‘Dalmanutha’ up, even though his other place-names are of known places, cos he liked the sound of it. It sounded poetic, even though it didnt exist, and even though he could easily have put a known place-name in its place. (b) His knowledge of Palestine was, naturally, better than that of first-century non-Palestinians (let alone yours or mine) - therefore he knew Palestinian places that others didnt know. I find (b) likelier. If you find (a) likelier, then go ahead and give your reasons. But if (b) is indeed likelier for Dalmanutha, it’s also likelier for Arimathea.
(2) Im not sure about where you got the idea that I thought the Twelve wrote the gospels. I heard this idea in ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ (which probably says it all). I dont think any of the four gospels were written by any of the Twelve. My opinions are fairly typical among NT students:
(a) Mark was quite likely (and our sources are early here) written by John Mark the companion of Peter and Paul, cousin of Barnabas, who will have been a young boy in Jerusalem at the time of thc crucifixion. The early church stayed in his house (Acts 12), and he will have known the Twelve, Mary etc.. Date: early 70s.
(b) John was written by an eyewitness disciple (John 1, 21, 1 John 1) called ‘the Elder John’, who was not the same as the more famous son of Zebedee. Date: about 75.
(c) Matthew was written by a Jewish Christian scribe. It is well possible (judging by our earliest source, Papias, who was an adult around the year 100 AD) that Matthew the tax-collector, one of the Twelve, made an original collection of Jesus’s words and deeds in Aramaic. But that was not the guy who wrote the gospel of Matthew, which is heavily dependent on Mark. Date: around 80 AD.
(d) Luke must probably have been written by Luke the companion of Paul - by a process of elimination, only two other possible candidates present themselves (as I remember): Titus and Tychicus. We can see which journeys he accompanied Paul on by reading Acts. Date: around 85 AD (any later and he would have been unfeasibly old).
Luke was a co-traveller of Paul. Paul was almost exactly the same age of Jesus. Luke used all three other gospels, so is the final gospel. Consequently all the gospels were written in the lifetimes of near-contemporaries of Jesus. But none of them were written by any of the twelve apostles. Jottings of the apostle Matthew may have been a source of Mark’s gospel, but that is better attested to have been instead a reflection of the preachings of Peter.
(3) Which context in Paul’s letters ought he to have referred to Joseph of Arimathea? I cant find any context where J of A would have been relevant.
(4) It’s impossible that Paul could have distinguished between resurrection and empty tomb: they imply one another. What sort of ‘resurrection’ (in the mind of a first-century Jew) would leave the tomb full?
(5) Cognitive dissonance is a goodie, but I do feel that sociologists use it as a bit of a panacea. It’s a heads-I-win, tails-you-lose philosophy. The reason one can never prove cognitive dissonance is that it is unfalsifiable. Sometimes in life (let’s say, 30% of the time, on average) things do turn out as we hope. For the cognitive-dissonance advocate, this can’t happen, since every time hopes or predictions seem to be (or are claimed to be) fulfilled it’s nothing but an instance of cognitive dissonance. But in real life, they quite often are fulfilled.
I agree with you about the burden of proof. I regard the resurrection as an especially interesting case because despite intense speculation over 2000 years, a convincing alternative scenario hasnt yet emerged.
July 8th, 2005 at 3:42 pm
no convincing alternative scenario has emerged? The scenario that we have now is just so convincing isn’t it? Men coming back from the dead, it happens all the time!
Where’s your rationallity now Christopher?
July 8th, 2005 at 4:54 pm
As you know, I didnt say that was fully convincing. I have at least twice mentioned that ‘it is the sort of thing that just doesnt happen’ is the strongest (in fact, almost the only) argument against it.
What I did say was that no convincing alternative has emerged.
When people reconstruct historical events, it is generally possible to come up with a reconstruction that makes sense of the data. That is not so in this case, which is one of the things that makes this case so interesting.
July 8th, 2005 at 5:09 pm
The simple fact of the matter is that the resurection, by which I mean a human being being dead, then being alive a few days later is impossible. It can not have possibly happened like that. If we take the highly questionable stance that the Gospels describe a real event, then you have to look at the cases of “zombies” that occur in parts of the developing world, especially in Haiti where Voodoo is prevalent. The accepted scientific explanation for these, where an indivdual is reported dead then turns up alive, is that the locals didn’t have enough knowledge to distinguish between death and very faint life signs.
The resurrection can be explained in this way, but the events just after the ressurection, detailed in Matthew can not be explained like that.
Matthew 27:52: The tombs also were opened, and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised.
Matthew 27:53: After his resurrection they came out of the tombs and entered the holy city and appeared to many.
Here Matthew is saying that more than one person was raised from the dead. We can assume that these people were defintely dead, and probably for some time. This bit is clearly fantasy, and thus can we really take the rest of the gospel seriously on the whole resurection issue?
July 8th, 2005 at 10:20 pm
Whatever you think of cognitive dissonance, it remains an observable fact that when devoted believers are confronted with strong evidence which contradicts their beliefs, they try to rationalise their way out of the problem so that they can continue believing. We see this time and time again.
Your interesting but largely irrelevant reply to my alternative scenario is a case in point. What is so implausible about the disciples rationalising the sudden and ignominious death of their messiah by telling themselves that his spirit lived on and that he would return triumphant in the near future. This was news they would have been keen to spread. And, hard as it may be for you to believe, stories have a habit of “developing” in the retelling over the years.
It seems quite reasonable to me to assume that, just like the rest of those crucified by the Romans, Jesus rotted on the cross.
July 9th, 2005 at 12:24 pm
Hi Andrew-
Matthew 27.52-3 I have commented on, on a previous post. Matthew is trying to be comprehensive and therefore includes folk legends: the coin in the fish’s mouth, Peter walking on water, Pilate’s wife’s dream, and these (as you put it) ‘zombies’. He is writing 50 years after the events and therefore cannot check them out - he gives them the benefit of the doubt. You are right to doubt the historicity of this particular story.
It’s not accurate to say that this is how ‘the gospels’ tell the story. One of the four tells it this way, and Matthew is only the third to be written anyway.
Hi Monitor-
I too have observed cognitive dissonance at work: e.g. the JWs grew after 1975. I have also observed it failing to operate where a sociologist would expect it to operate: e.g. discredited evangelists tend to lose support, not gain it. Heads-I-Win-Tails-You-Lose theories are bound to be of limited value. I believe strongly in cognitive dissonance. I also believe equally strongly that it is a theory which can sometimes be bandied about to explain various phenomenta which it does not in fact fit.
The disciples didn’t just tell themselves his spirit lived on. From the very first, the central message included resurrection, i.e. a dead body returning to life. This is the case, for example, with the message which Paul heard from the apostles (presumably Peter and James) in or around 37 AD (7 years after the crucifixion) - see start of 1 Corinthians 15. Jesus died, ‘was buried’ (with all the implications of that: our earliest evidence is that his body was buried, and by a named and identified individual).
Paul also speaks in the same context of an appearance of Jesus to 500 people at one time. They all hallucinated the same thing at the same time? Someone dressed up as Jesus and played a trick? He says that most of these people are still alive at the time of writing (54-5 AD) - and they can therefore be consulted on the matter.
But the same applies to all the rest of the story as well. At the time of writing there were hundreds of eyewitnesses alive who could confirm or deny anything.
July 9th, 2005 at 1:27 pm
500 people saw Jesus at the same time. Were they all hallucinating? Maybe not. Were they mistaken? Yes. The guy was dead. He could not possibly have been alive, unless the scenario I poroposed is the case.
But if Jesus was 100% dead, he was dead, and could not possibly have come back to life. To say that the resurection story is fact is the height of irrationality.
You are also ignoring the perfectly logical position that people just made the story up. Paul speaks of an appearnce to 500 people. Who’s to say Paul hasn’t made that up for dramatic effect? Much of the Bible is clearly fiction after all.
July 9th, 2005 at 1:46 pm
(a) Paul is simply reproducing a list of appearances which was handed down to him; (b) he knows the individuals in question well enough to know that a few of them have now died, but more are now living than are dead; (c0 if the 500 were all simultaneously mistaken, what is a believable alternative scenario?
‘Much of the Bible is clearly fiction’: It is only fundamentalists that lump all the Bible together in one dollop as though every part of it were the same. This is not a book - it is a library, written over a period of 1000 years or more.
July 9th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
It didn’t happen. Perfectly believable, much more so than believing that a dead man can appear to 500 people.
July 9th, 2005 at 2:03 pm
What’s the problem with saying much of the Bible is clearly fiction?
Parts of the Gospels are clearly fiction:
Virgin Birth: Fiction
Miracles without explanation: Fiction
Bloke dieing and coming back to life: Fiction
July 9th, 2005 at 4:35 pm
‘It didnt happen’ is not an alternative scenario - the question is what *did* happen.
There is no problem at all with saying much of the Bible is anything, so long as we’re not saying ‘the whole Bible is’ any one genre.
‘Fiction’ is not a category in use in the first-century, to my knowledge. Fiction also overlaps with various different genres, so we need to be more specific:
(a) *Legends* (ie orally transmitted accounts of significant happenings, family histories etc);
(b) *Novels/novellas* - fictional accounts in a real-life setting;
(c) *Myths* - supernatural characters and supernatural deeds;
(d) *Fables* - animal and plant characters, a moral at the end.
Why do I, and most others, class the gospels as closest to history/biography?
Because the ancient books they most resemble (Plutarch’s ‘Lives’, biographies by Lucian, various ‘Lives’ of Alexander the Great, Xenophon’s Memorabilia & Cyropaedia, various Jewish writings) are history and biography. See Richard Burridge, ‘What are the Gospels?’ (Cambridge, 2nd edition 2004).
The above-named books and also classic ancient histories (e.g. Herodotus) are not necessarily averse to including tales of very remarkable happenings. Things that we would call supernatural.
So the fact that a narrative includes ’supernatural’ accounts does not make it untypical of ancient historical or biographical writings.
July 9th, 2005 at 5:30 pm
At no point have I said the entire Bible is fiction.
But much of it is, which is why I don’t take it seriously.
What is your scenario for the resurection Christopher? Did Jesus die and then come back to life? If yes, how is this possible?
July 9th, 2005 at 7:20 pm
That’s the thing - much of history (maybe the majority) is made up of one-offs.
One thing is for sure - we can’t answer the ‘how’ question. We can say that the balance of our evidence points that way. As you might say: ‘all history is for it, and all reason is against it.’. But, of course, history and reason overlap. It is only by empirically observing what sort of things happen in history that we know what to classify as ‘reasonable’ in the first place.
The raw data of history/observation is therefore the primary raw material, and ‘reason’ and ’science’ are just a distillation of our historical/observational findings.
If reason were primary, we could say categorically: ABC can happen, XYZ cannot. But we can’t. We can’t always impose our own patterns on the raw data of the universe: they are often too complex and surprising for that. The raw data always has to take precedence over imposed ‘natural laws’.
This is partly what I mean when I say that dogma is the enemy of scholarship. Scholarship, or proper science, seeks to observe exactly what happens, without any preconceived ideas. Whereas dogma imposes set patterns, even where these patterns do not actually exist. If we follow dogma, science/study never advances. If we follow strict observation, then it can advance.
100 years ago it was a philosophical dogma (and to all intents and purposes, a scientific dogma) that ‘All swans are white’. We know better now.
If resurrections happen, they are not only awfully rare, but also hard for us to explain. But if there are instances where the historical data points to a resurrection, historical / observational data by its very nature has a claim to precedence over dogmatic claims that ’such things cannot happen’. We do not always know what can and cannot happen - we only know what generally does happen. Which is not much help in the present instance, since the disciples ‘knew’ just as well as we do, from their own experience, that people, once dead, stay dead.
July 9th, 2005 at 7:36 pm
How is it possible for an individual to die and come back to life? No case in particular, just generally.
Of course it is not possible, so all logic says that the resurection story is just that; a story.
July 9th, 2005 at 10:41 pm
There you go again with your circular reasoning. We are questioning the truth of the resurrection stories, and you are assuming the truth of the resurrection stories in order to argue for them. This seems to be a bit of a mental block for you.
“Paul says he was buried”, “Paul says he appeared to 500″. So what? Did he name the 500? How do you expect this to be disproved? Chap comes along and says “Hey, I was one of the 500 - and I didn’t see anything”. Then he can’t have been one of the 500.
No plausible alternative to the physical resurrection? OK - Jesus didn’t rot on the cross. Even though that is what usually happened to the crucified. The disciples didn’t try to rationalise the sudden death of their messiah. Even though that is what usually happens in such cases. The story they propagated wasn’t embellished as the years went on.
Even though that is what usually happens.
Much more plausible that a dead man came back to life and floated up to heaven. Hmm - you wouldn’t be letting what you want to believe to get in the way of deciding what most likely happened, are you? Naa.. surely not.
July 10th, 2005 at 1:15 am
Mr Shell, you dismiss me to go and read your stories - which I won’t. I have neither the time nor the inclination re-read a book I spent a year boring myself whitless with over 25 years ago. Therefore when I allude to reading something it’s because I’m writing in a weblog and don’t think it absolutely necessary to cross-reference the orginal text.
Then you largely ignore my most persausive points; even when others pick up on them.
I don’t think anyone else has mentioned (so far) that the four gospels recorded in your bible are the ones selected from many now presumed lost or destroyed. Numbers in the tens have been mentioned, but I guess we’ll never know. The Catholics are very fond of burying anything that doesn’t agree with them - even now; so it’s reasonable to assume that anything they didn’t agree with in the gospels didn’t make it to the final cut. Like I said, history is written by the winners and you guys have historically murdered yourselves into some very persuasive positions.
Moreover, in the time of the supposed Jesus, there was no idea (or law come to that) of copyright. It’s most likely, and scholars far smarter than I am have pointed out, that the gospels were simply copied and embelished. If I could be arsed with your sanctimonious self-importance, I would go and dig up the list of errors where they don’t agree, but I’m sure others will delight in doing that.
The gospels that you have were written some years after the dude got nailed to a big bit of wood and probably tossed out with the garbage. The Roman’s didn’t have tombs, those crucified would be left out for the animals to pick at. This (widely accepted) disparity alone reinforces the assertion that the gospels had never actually met the man and were record second-hand accounts. Second-hand information can’t be trusted.
I’ll ask you once again: this Bible you hold so dear and everyone else here sees as so much fiction. Explain how or why:
* Adam and Noah (as two examples) lived for hundreds of years - Adam 930, Noah 950;
* If your god later installed a limit of 120 years - why people have outlived that figure;
* Noah got all the animals of the world on the Ark *and* fed them *and* stopped the predators killing the smaller creators *and* cleaned up after them all, and so on;
* The water in the Ark flood got to within feet of the highest mountain when there simply isn’t enough water on the whole planet;
* That the bible mentions in several places that the Earth is flat when we know it isn’t;
* That Jesus was born of a virgin when we have no way to verify it (any more than it would be be entirely practical then). Yes, virgins can get pregnant - but not without an addition of sperm at the right moment.
You Christians have murdered and threatened your way across Europe and the wider world in much the same way as Islamic extremists are trying the same with their own warped ideas. You scare the crap out of little children with your stories of hell-fire and then offer the carrot of (totally improvable) everlasting life for the small price of following you. That’s mental torture in my book and it’s why I have no truck with your bullshit - how dare you preach peace to anyone when your brothers have the blood of millions on their hands.
I rather doubt your saviour would condone that sort of behaviour - and yet, I can live a moral life!
In short, I wonder why any of us are wasting our virtual breath with
you since whatever you don’t have an answer for you simply ignore.
July 10th, 2005 at 11:44 am
Im taking a break from my Attila-the-Hun-esque rampaging across Europe and the wider world in order to address Marc’s points:
Now, you will notice that I have confined almost all my comments to the New Testament. All that you say about the Old Testament may well be true, but it has no relevance to what we are saying about the New.
A few points:
(1) ‘The Romans didnt have tombs’ - but Jesus was not crucified in Rome, but in a country where they did use rock-hewn tombs.
(2) On any estimation, all four gospels were written within the lifetimes of those who had been alive at the time of the crucifixion. The earliest, Mark, is not considered by any scholar to have been written more than 45 years after the crucifixion.
(3) Any book that bores you witless you are unlikely to have read properly. You will have been too bored to read it properly.
(4) This thing about the gospels lost and destroyed makes me think you have been reading ‘The Da Vinci Code’, or perhaps ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail’. Am I right? The idea puzzles me, since I have never been able to find any mention of more than 15 other gospels (plus 3 or 4 fragments, and a few ‘infancy narratives’), none of which was written anywhere near the lifetime of Jesus.
It is a finding of no relevance that there are other gospels. You or I could write a ‘gospel’ today, and then there would be one more gospel. The only relevant thing would be if there were other early gospels.
This is an interesting topic - and I will give you the complete list of ‘other gospels’ if you like.
How do we know when to date the different gospels? In about 5 different ways:
(a) When do other writings say they were written?
(b) When were their authors alive? - if known.
(c) What is the latest historical event they refer to?
(d) What are their textual interrelationsips with other writings? Who is using whom?
(e) What thought world do they reflect? For example, anything with ‘Gnostic’ ideas in (as most of the ‘other gospels’ have) must be second century or later.
(5) On copyright: yes! You are quite right that the gospels used one another. Mark was used by Matthew and Luke; Matthew and John were used by Luke. This means they are not fully independent of one another. Whereas the first gospel written (Mark, or whatever) must be more or less independent of any other writing.
I think the most interesting thing in your post is the issue of ‘canon’ - which writings were included in the NT, and when. The list of books we find in around 200 AD (in what we call ‘the Muratorian Canon’) was more or less the same as our current list of 27 writings. The prophetic movement called Montanism (around 170 AD) was one of the factors that forced the church to be strict about what did and what did not count as scripture.
As I say, this is a fascinating topic, and if you wish to discuss the history of the wholc ‘canonising’ process, let’s do so.
July 10th, 2005 at 11:50 am
Hi Monitor-
Didnt fully understand your last posts:
‘Paul says he was buried’ - that much is an undeniable fact. It neither assumes nor ‘dis’assumes the resurrection.
‘Paul says he appeared to 500 ppl’ - that much is also an undeniable fact.
There’s unfortunately no alternative to making the best use we can of the best evidence that remains to us. And 1 Corinthians 15 is the best and earliest evidence. If any historian was trying to untangle a knotty problem, looking for all the clues he could, and ignored the best and earliest evidence available, what could one say about his methodology?
July 10th, 2005 at 12:44 pm
Christopher, you still have not given a rational explanation for how it is possible to die and come back to life. Until you can, the resurection story must be assumed to be a myth.
July 10th, 2005 at 11:31 pm
It appears Christopher’s arguments are as knowledgable as his absurd claims that the early scribes did not alter the sayings on divorce.
The early manuscripts have some twenty different sayings about divorce.
I list just a few of them.
All of them are different versions of the same passage :- Matthew 19:9 They give different teachings about whether a man can remarry or whether a man can marry a divorced woman.
Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Ephraemi, Codex Regius Whoever divorces his wife, except for fornication, and marries another commits adultery.
Codex Purpureus Petropolitanus Whoever divorces his wife , except for fornication, makes her an adulteress and the person marrying a divorced woman commits adultery
Here there is no prohibition on a man remarrying, but there is a new prohibition about marrying a divorced woman.
Freer Gospels, Koridethi Codex Whoever divorces his wife , except for fornication, and marries another commits adultery and the person marrying a divorced woman commits adultery
Both prohibitions have been combined
Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus (Original Version) Whoever divorces his wife , except for fornication, and marries another makes her an adulteress and the person marrying a divorced woman commits adultery
The prohibitions on a divorced man remarrying has been removed , but the part saying ‘makes her an adulteress’ has been added.
And Mr. Shell thinks the Gospels are evidence?
July 10th, 2005 at 11:45 pm
It really is amazing how much lying mendacious propaganda Mr. Shell has swallowed and regurgitated.
I have no respect for liars. None whatsoever.
That is all Christianity is based on (as indeed is Mormonism)
Acts 15 does not say Paul met 12 apostles, for starters. It just says ‘the apostles’ and gives no details, because there were none to be given.
He has no evidence at all for his big lie that Matthew was written by a Jewish scribe.
See http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/gosp1.htm for a demolition job on this claim that the Gospels were eyewitness stuff.
He is LYING anout the Muratorian canon. It is not evidence for what he is saying.
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/muratorian.html
There is no way this can be definitively dated.
‘ Luke described briefly “for” most excellent Theophilus particular [things], which happened in his presence, as he also evidently relates the death of Peter (?) and also Paul’s departure from the city as he was proceeding to Spain.’
Shell is quoting the Muratorian Canon as evidence, when it claims Luke relates the death of Peter?
he Epistle of Jude indeed and the two with the superscription “Of John,” are accepted in the General [Church] — so also the Wisdom of Solomon written by friends in his honor. We accept only the Apocalypses of John and of Peter, although some of us do not want it to be read in the Church.
Two letters of John, not 3.
Apocalypse of Peter, Wisdom of Solomon? Why is Shell claiming the Muratorian Canon is evidence of the truth of what he says?
Did he think that nobody would check out what he was saying?
Doesn’t he know that sceptics read what he says and investigate whether he is telling the truth or not?
July 10th, 2005 at 11:58 pm
Shell writes ‘… not considered to have been written more than 45 years after the crucifixion.’
Gosh! That is convincing. Not more than 45 years after.
And the Koran was written by a genuine eyewitness - Muhammad.
After all , he was there, so what should historians like Mr. Shell make of the eyewitness claims to have seen the Angel Gabriel.
Quite simple. If a claim is made by an eyewitness and written down during the lifetime of the eyewitness, then Mr. Shell will reject if (because that is an Islamic claim)
However a claim that the Angel Gabriel visited Mary in about 4 BC, not written down until after 62 AD, and by somebody who could not possibly have been there.
Well, Mr. Shell finds that totally convincing.
Because it is in the Bible, and Mr. Shell believes anything written in the Bible, even when it comes from the pens of people who (like the author of 2 Peter) believe in talking donkeys.
July 11th, 2005 at 12:02 am
Shell writes ‘The story they propagated wasn’t embellished as the years went on.’
Even he says that Matthew used Mark, and Matthew adds guards at the tomb, a resurrection of the saints, adds more people at the tomb, adds bribes in secret conversations that nobody could have witnessed etc etc.
Hoe many embellishments would you like?
The first reference (Paul’s) doesn’t even mention any details. He says Jesus became a life-giving spirit and gives no details about tombs or visitors on the third day.
And Shell can write bare-faced lies like ‘The story was not embellished as the years went on….’
[NOTE FROM MONITOR: It was actually me who made the "story was not embellished" statement, not Shell.]
July 11th, 2005 at 12:08 am
Shell writes ‘Matthew and John were used by Luke.’
Huh? Where does Luke use John?
Luke probably used Josephus.
See http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/lukeandjosephus.html
The evidence is incredibly convincing.
Shell’s criterial of thought worlds and using of details etc puts Luke after Josephus’ Antiquities , ie after 95 AD.
July 11th, 2005 at 1:39 am
You follow the Bible Shell: you can’t just cherry pick from it. It’s either a historical record or it isn’t; it’s a pack of lies, misinformation and a worthless pile of shit or it isn’t.
We can’t rely on anything in the old testament - and since the NT is built on that foundation, we can’t take anything there for granted - no matter how scholarly we are.
The bible’s editors chose to include all the crap about Adam and Eve, Noah and co (OT); all of it. They equally included the Virgin birth and physical resurrection which a lot of high-ranking clerics accept are likely fable! Remember, these people *believe* in the great sky fairy; they’re not skeptics like me.
And what’s all this crap that you people keep spouting about the “good news”. Good news? It’s nearly 2000 year old news - hardly “new”, now is it?
So how factual is it? We don’t really know. It’s full of so-called miracles attributed to Jesus; but we don’t really know for sure that Jesus actually did anything that miraculous. In fact miracles (like all good magic) only remain a mystery until someone explains them.
The virgin birth is a great example. Even assuming that someone verified that Mary *was* a virgin it’s entirely possible that during some innocent fooling some of those dastardly spermatozoa got loose and did the nasty deed.
It’s written that Jesus raised several people from the dead, including the stinking corpse of Lazarus. (He would have been a bit pongy in that heat after three days, but that detail is not mentioned.) Peter and Paul are said to have raised people too. Also, when Jesus did his levitation act, supposedly dead people emerged from their tombs. Can we take ANY of this at face value?
Remarkably perhaps, this hasn’t happened since. (Unless you count the routine revival of heart patients.) It’s interesting to note also, that minutes after the heart stops brain death begins to occur. The act of re-starting the heart using CPR or those marvellous shock machines is actually quite difficult. Moreover, patients revived in this way are rare and those who are almost always suffer extensive, irrecoverablr brain damage.
Dead people stay dead, but 2000 years ago death could not be easily defined; any more than someone could really be said to be dying so absolutely. Even now people get so ill, even (medical) doctors are convinced they will not survive - yet sometimes they do. These events are not miracles, they just prove that even MDs don’t know everything.
Mental illness, so widely accepted these days could be interpreted in a number of ways - all of which are of entirely earthly origin.
People who see things now are having hallucinations - knowlegable people accept this (and good medication makes the visions go away). Even religious visions can be attributed to brain malfunction (from a bang on the head to using psychotropic drugs - even lack of sleep!). Non-Christians, for instance, don’t see images of the Virgin Mary; they see whatever is in their psyche. Of course, if a handy Christian happens across them their vision *must* be Christian.
If I believed everything I read in books, I’d think ghosts and the tooth fairy were real. I find the Bible an anachronism.
Where is Jesus now? He’s dead. He’s been dead for nearly two millenia and he ain’t coming back. We’re in deep shit and we’re been in pretty deep shit for an awful long time. We’re buggering with nature and exploting the planet (for non-religious reasons) and letting millions suffer humiliation, hunger, pestilance and death for the sake of *Christian* dogma.
So where’s your precious saviour now? According to your take, about two millenia ago, your god was so bloody worried he sacrificed his own begotten son for our sins.
You Christians have plundered 75% of it and it’s no damn better.
Where is this creator god when the whole world is falling apart. The Romans had nothing on us. We’re killing the planet, not pissing off a few dudes in funny cloaks by feeding their mates to the lions (a loose analogy). On a strictly global scale, I’d think that your god would be a might bit worried and want to intervene. According to your book, he’s done it loads of times in the past; every time we really stepped out of line in fact. Yet for two millenia nothing; not a jot.
You use birth control, (nothing happens); take the lord’s name in vain (nada); sexually abuse a few dozen kids (still nothing); commit genocide on a massive scale (again, nothing).
Hell’s bells - what does it take to get this guy’s attention? Not only is there no evidence for an, all-powerful omnipotent god, there’s absolutely masses of evidence against one.
Morals good: blind faith, dangerous delusion; and self-delusion at that.
July 11th, 2005 at 5:55 am
Shell writes ‘ecause the ancient books they most resemble (Plutarch’s ‘Lives’, biographies by Lucian, various ‘Lives’ of Alexander the Great, Xenophon’s Memorabilia & Cyropaedia, various Jewish writings) are history and biography. See Richard Burridge, ‘What are the Gospels?’ (Cambridge, 2nd edition 2004).
The above-named books and also classic ancient histories (e.g. Herodotus) are not necessarily averse to including tales of very remarkable happenings. Things that we would call supernatural.
So the fact that a narrative includes ’supernatural’ accounts does not make it untypical of ancient historical or biographical writings.’
Does Shell believe these books when they have supernatural elements about , say, Alexander the Great?
Of course he doesn’t.
Can he name one miracle in pagan literature that he accepted happened?
July 12th, 2005 at 10:22 am
I’ve come up with a way that jesus could have raised the dead. If he was actually the emperor from star wars, then he’d've been able to do that shooting electricity from his fingers thing. As long as it was within a few minutes of death, then they’d be largely fine.
July 12th, 2005 at 11:11 am
Hey Steven
I liked your website, particularly the emphasis on the OT background for the gospels. That is my line of study, and I share the same emphasis.
John is used by Luke mainly in the passion narrative (wherein Luke is often as close to John as he is to Mark), and also for the fishcatch and sundry other details. See the writings of Barbara Shellard and Mark Matson.
Shellard agrees with you on Luke and Josephus. I have not studied the links enough to judge. The fact that both link Judas the Galilean (or the sons of Judas) with Theudas was unconvincing to me. They are the sort of pairing one would naturally speak of in the same breath. What you say about the links being ‘incredibly convincing’ certainly overstates the case. It’s a subject I would like to look into in more detail.
On the Muratorian Canon, you are reproducing what I have already said: it corresponds to our NT except in a handful of cases. Details like two rather than three letters of John are not of enormous significance. There is a good chance that 2-3 John were written at the same time and to the same church. These letters are only a few lines long anyway.
On miracle: Im not sure there is any such concept in the ancient world. Even the Bible speaks of ’signs’, ‘wonders’, ‘mighty works’, but not of miracles. The word ‘miracle’ can only be used by ppl who think that there are laws of nature preventing certain things from happening (ie post-Enlightenment ppl).
Of course, it’s a difficult subject since all sorts of strange things do happen.
Examples: A crustacean which was an ornament on someone’s mantlepiece started moving around after a decade. There are testimonies of ‘dead’ people coming back to life - sometimes in good health - after a few days. I agree with you that defining ‘life’ and ‘death’ is hard, but obviously there are still some things that puzzle the scientists. There are bound to be.
There were all sorts of travelling healers in the world of Jesus, and even Josephus agrees that Jesus was one of them. They were perceived to heal. Jesus was perceived to heal every individual in long lines. What actually happens is beyond our knowledge.
‘It’s either a historical record or it isnt’ - this is generalisation of the year. The Bible is a library full of many diverse books. It can’t all be lumped into one. Just think of all the different genres - poetry, song, proverb, folk-legend, aetiology, history, epistle, biography, apocalypse, prophecy….
What you say about the Bible’s editors is incorrect. The editors of the OT were a different bunch from the editors of the NT. One lot were Pharisees (in the final instance - there were earlier editors too: priests etc.) and the other lot were Christians.
What you say about Lazarus is incorrect. The detail about him being ‘a bit pongy’ is explicitly mentioned in John 11.39.
Monitor is right about my not saying the stories were unembellished. Matthew is a classic example of embellishment of Mark. The mass-resurrection I have already dealt with twice. But of what relevance is that, when one can simply go back to Mark, with his links with Peter (see fragments of Papias). There is some possibility that Mark dates to within 10 years of the crucifixion - this is the view of, for example, the humanist writers Maurice Casey and James Crossley. It is not my view, though I cant disprove it.
The infancy narratives are a very interesting one. Luke twice writes: ‘But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.’. One of Luke’s closest contemporaries and coworkers was Mark, in whose house/community Mary was staying at the time of her death.
Acts 15: you are correct. What makes you think that Paul met only a few of the Twelve? ‘The Apostles’ most naturally refers to all of them as a body, or more or less all of them. We dont know - that is just the most natural meaning. See too 1 Corinthians 9, which shows he is familiar with their modus vivendi.
Death of Peter and Paul’s departure for Spain - tantalising. Unlikely to be accurate (unfortunately). Not relevant to teh list of books, which is a separate question.
The variants on Matthew cannot comprise ‘20 different sayings’. Everyone would agree that it is the same one saying (or viewpoint) of Jesus that is in question. It is, rather, 20 different scribal variants. One can easily pass this over and just go back to Mark (and Paul).
Why did the scribes make the variants? To suit their own views (or get out of a tight personal corner). Does this affect our knowledge of what the original reading was? No - not usually. Because of the family tree principle. It’s this family tree principle which I would like to discuss with you - or indeed anything else that takes your fancy.