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Christians here are forever saying, "Jesus said...." and "Jesus promises us..." and "Jesus wants us to...." and "Jesus proved he was the Messiah by...." and endless other maxims which they regard as axioms ("statements or propositions which are regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true).The truth is
WE HAVE NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER JESUS SAID ANY OF THE THINGS ATTRIBUTED TO HIM IN THE GOSPELS! PERIOD!
I mean I cannot make it any plainer than that. Jesus died in 30-33 CE. Nothing he said during his brief ministry (John's gospel says 3 years--the synoptics say 1 year so we can't even get agreement on that) if it even was written down--which we have no proof it was--but even if it was written down during his life it hasn't survived. So we have no record AT ALL of his actual words.
So what HAVE we got?
We have some epistles from Paul (who doesn't even show up in the historic record) but Paul doesn't quote a single word spoken by Jesus anywhere in his epistles. Everything Paul has to say comes from his own ideas about how he thinks Christianity should function.
And we have four gospels written ANONYMOUSLY by writers 60-100 years after Jesus' death who didn't speak Aramaic obviously because the gospels fragments that have survived are all in Greek.
What does this tell us?
It tells us that the people who wrote these gospels did not live in Palestine, did not speak Jesus' native tongue and could never have heard Jesus speak.
So if we have NO RECORD outside the gospels of Jesus' words then where do the writers of the gospels get their source material from?
From nowhere. Everything is made up from their imaginations.
There are attestations by fundamentalist scholars that stories of Jesus were circulating around the Mediterranean for decades. This may be true. But to assert that everything Jesus said in the gospels is...well...."GOSPEL" is to take a leap of logic comparable to taking a leap at the moon.
Ever play the game of telephone, where you start a short speech at one end of a chain of people and see what it sounds like at the other end of the chain? The end result sounds only vaguely similar at best like the beginning, right? And this is just over a period of 10 minutes! Now try to imagine these anonymous trying to reconstruct Jesus' words over a span of half a century to a century after Jesus spoke!!!!!!!
Utterly ridiculous to even assume they could get anything right over such a long stretch of time. And yet Christians are adamant these are Jesus' words EXACTLY as he spoke them!!!! Astonishing!
Take Jesus' farewell discourse in John which covers 4 long chapters from 14 to 17. No one has bothered to count the number of words because I googled "number of words in Jesus' farewell discourse" and got no results. But it has to be somewhere between 1500 and 2000. And we're expected to believe that 100 years after Jesus spoke this gigantic sermon, the writer(s) remembered it word-for-word 100 years later using no notes, no records, no nothing as reference??????????
I mean this notion defies all coherence, logic and reality. Yet Christians are unable to comprehend this obvious idiocy--preferring instead to invent fish tales to explain it--
"Ohhh, the gospels were written by the apostles who wrote as the Holy Spirit dictated Jesus' words to them!"
Sheer lunacy!
So to conclude:
There isn't a single word spoken by Jesus in the gospels that can be authenticated. They were all made up out of the imaginations of the ANONYMOUS GREEK writers writing a full HALF-CENTURY to a CENTURY AFTER Jesus died.
Let's put away this notion once and for all about Jesus being a wise man and the son of God. We have no idea who or what he was. He doesn't show up anywhere in the historic record until some controversial passages by Josephus circa 95 CE, and these are believed to have been planted in the text by Eusebius in the 4th century.
That's it. End of story. Everything Jesus might have spoke has been lost to time forever.
If any Christians here have ANY extra-Biblical references that record even a single word Jesus spoke I'd love to see it. Until then, if you're honest, just admit we don't know anything Jesus actually spoke because we have no historic record of it. And, no, gospels written 100 years after Jesus by anonymous writers who never heard him speak does NOT constitute a legitimate reference!
IMO, there could be some bits and pieces and nuggets in the Bible that are the true words of Jesus; however, the miscegenation of Bible has been so bad that it’s hard to completely separate truth from lies.
It’s like, you have dropped a drop of urine in a glass of clean water.
You could say this about any book or article written before recording was possible.
Indeed, one could. And indeed we should. It isn't said often enough about the Bible.
Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCardinals
IMO, there could be some bits and pieces and nuggets in the Bible that are the true words of Jesus; however, the miscegenation of Bible has been so bad that it’s hard to completely separate truth from lies.
It’s like, you have dropped a drop of urine in a glass of clean water.
You are right; there could be. For a long time, I thought that the Gospels did at least contain a LOT of what Jesus actually said. Nowadays I still think that there is a true story at the bottom of the Gospels, and it might even be 80% true as to what Jesus did. But I now doubt that a single word put into the mouth of Jesus is what he actually did say.
I've always heard people say, don't mess with the Bible. It's thousands of years old, take from it what you will, but I wouldn't be pushing the issue. I don't think you will be changing anybody's mind at this point anyway, people are pretty much rooted in their belief and what they been taught as a young person. Just say what you have to say, but don't force the issue, let people make up their own minds about it.
Couldn't put it better myself. in fact there's no better way of making people reject the Bible than getting them to read it. It's amazing how often it turns out that Christian believers don't read the Bible or know what's in it. They only seem to know what Christian apologetic Authorities tell them.
And therein lies the problem. That's why we goddless bastards have to explain to them, not only what is in the Bible that the Preachers never tell them, but to explain the implications in ways they might not think of themselves.
After all, how many would read the Agony in the garden and wonder..."How did they know what Jesus said, if they were all asleep?"
On the other hand many have asked the question, and apologists may come up with the Campfire stories apologetic - the disciples told each other the stories after Jesus had risen and for this one where No disciples saw it, Jesus told them later on(see the opening of Acts). That of course means that the 'they didn't know' excuse for contradictions doesn't work. But this is the problem with ad hoc apologetics - they often contradict. It's a drawback in coming up with excuses but really being unable to get the whole thing in one's head, because, if the did, they would SEE that it makes no sense. So they have to argue with their eyes shut, so to speak.
It's all good fun, and clearly, it does work and half of the unbelievers used to believe, once.
Christians here are forever saying, "Jesus said...." and "Jesus promises us..." and "Jesus wants us to...." and "Jesus proved he was the Messiah by...." and endless other maxims which they regard as axioms ("statements or propositions which are regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true).The truth is
WE HAVE NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER JESUS SAID ANY OF THE THINGS ATTRIBUTED TO HIM IN THE GOSPELS! PERIOD!
I mean I cannot make it any plainer than that. Jesus died in 30-33 CE. Nothing he said during his brief ministry (John's gospel says 3 years--the synoptics say 1 year so we can't even get agreement on that) if it even was written down--which we have no proof it was--but even if it was written down during his life it hasn't survived. So we have no record AT ALL of his actual words.
So what HAVE we got?
We have some epistles from Paul (who doesn't even show up in the historic record) but Paul doesn't quote a single word spoken by Jesus anywhere in his epistles. Everything Paul has to say comes from his own ideas about how he thinks Christianity should function.
And we have four gospels written ANONYMOUSLY by writers 60-100 years after Jesus' death who didn't speak Aramaic obviously because the gospels fragments that have survived are all in Greek.
What does this tell us?
It tells us that the people who wrote these gospels did not live in Palestine, did not speak Jesus' native tongue and could never have heard Jesus speak.
So if we have NO RECORD outside the gospels of Jesus' words then where do the writers of the gospels get their source material from?
From nowhere. Everything is made up from their imaginations.
There are attestations by fundamentalist scholars that stories of Jesus were circulating around the Mediterranean for decades. This may be true. But to assert that everything Jesus said in the gospels is...well...."GOSPEL" is to take a leap of logic comparable to taking a leap at the moon.
Ever play the game of telephone, where you start a short speech at one end of a chain of people and see what it sounds like at the other end of the chain? The end result sounds only vaguely similar at best like the beginning, right? And this is just over a period of 10 minutes! Now try to imagine these anonymous trying to reconstruct Jesus' words over a span of half a century to a century after Jesus spoke!!!!!!!
Utterly ridiculous to even assume they could get anything right over such a long stretch of time. And yet Christians are adamant these are Jesus' words EXACTLY as he spoke them!!!! Astonishing!
Take Jesus' farewell discourse in John which covers 4 long chapters from 14 to 17. No one has bothered to count the number of words because I googled "number of words in Jesus' farewell discourse" and got no results. But it has to be somewhere between 1500 and 2000. And we're expected to believe that 100 years after Jesus spoke this gigantic sermon, the writer(s) remembered it word-for-word 100 years later using no notes, no records, no nothing as reference??????????
I mean this notion defies all coherence, logic and reality. Yet Christians are unable to comprehend this obvious idiocy--preferring instead to invent fish tales to explain it--
"Ohhh, the gospels were written by the apostles who wrote as the Holy Spirit dictated Jesus' words to them!"
Sheer lunacy!
So to conclude:
There isn't a single word spoken by Jesus in the gospels that can be authenticated. They were all made up out of the imaginations of the ANONYMOUS GREEK writers writing a full HALF-CENTURY to a CENTURY AFTER Jesus died.
Let's put away this notion once and for all about Jesus being a wise man and the son of God. We have no idea who or what he was. He doesn't show up anywhere in the historic record until some controversial passages by Josephus circa 95 CE, and these are believed to have been planted in the text by Eusebius in the 4th century.
That's it. End of story. Everything Jesus might have spoke has been lost to time forever.
If any Christians here have ANY extra-Biblical references that record even a single word Jesus spoke I'd love to see it. Until then, if you're honest, just admit we don't know anything Jesus actually spoke because we have no historic record of it. And, no, gospels written 100 years after Jesus by anonymous writers who never heard him speak does NOT constitute a legitimate reference!
Dr. Bart Ehrman did a lot of research on it and his presentations are based on not his gut feelings but what he has found in history.
You could say this about any book or article written before recording was possible.
This is true (or, for those of you raised with Luther's Catechism... "This is most certainly true").
The difference is, there aren't many people running around telling us "In the Iliad, Homer tells us that we should..." or "These were the final words of Cleopatra, and they prove her divinity." Nor are they claiming tax exempt status to study the unrecorded, unsubstantiated words of Nebuchadnezzar... or seeking to have the imagined lessons of Alexander the Great embedded into school curricula... or creating federal holidays to celebrate the mythical birth of Socrates... or forcing their children to memorize the supposed words of Leif Erickson... or.......................
Well, you get the point. There aren't many (any?) other places in our society where we allow the unrecorded, unsubstantiated, very-likely-fabricated words of any ancient figure to have this kind of clout and influence and unquestioned status. As Transponder suggests above, there isn't any reason the Bible should not be held up to the same kind of scrutiny and validation as any ancient (or modern) source.
This is true (or, for those of you raised with Luther's Catechism... "This is most certainly true").
The difference is, there aren't many people running around telling us "In the Iliad, Homer tells us that we should..." or "These were the final words of Cleopatra, and they prove her divinity." Nor are they claiming tax exempt status to study the unrecorded, unsubstantiated words of Nebuchadnezzar... or seeking to have the imagined lessons of Alexander the Great embedded into school curricula... or creating federal holidays to celebrate the mythical birth of Socrates... or forcing their children to memorize the supposed words of Leif Erickson... or.......................
Well, you get the point. There aren't many (any?) other places in our society where we allow the unrecorded, unsubstantiated, very-likely-fabricated words of any ancient figure to have this kind of clout and influence and unquestioned status. As Transponder suggests above, there isn't any reason the Bible should not be held up to the same kind of scrutiny and validation as any ancient (or modern) source.
Very good. In fact a surprising number of these arguments point or flag up the privilege that Christianity awards itself, by comparing it with other beliefs.
Compare the Bible with the Iliad, Jesus with Santa, God with Vishnu and prayer in school with praise of the Three Jewels and 10 minutes Vipassana meditation.
The apologists (I can recall one or two last week) can argue the greater valie or validity of Christianity, but such claims do not stand up under Scroot. Scroot is the reason we are here.
I've always heard people say, don't mess with the Bible. It's thousands of years old, take from it what you will, but I wouldn't be pushing the issue. I don't think you will be changing anybody's mind at this point anyway, people are pretty much rooted in their belief and what they been taught as a young person. Just say what you have to say, but don't force the issue, let people make up their own minds about it.
I'm not so sure. I know MANY people who have changed christian denominations. And a fair number who have changed to an Eastern religion or are at least strongly influenced by it.
Beyond just me, numbers of people who are changing religions, or at least their attitudes toward religions can be documented.
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You could say this about any book or article written before recording was possible. 
