He never ...

[Country17]

Bingo Squirt, I'm in your corner....I especially like the section about the media, if they were then like they are now it would be a whole different ball game. Love ya.

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Originally Posted by pladecalvo

In your dreams girl!!!!!

you're right lol I wasn't lol God was lol

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Originally Posted by Country17

Bingo Squirt, I'm in your corner....I especially like the section about the media, if they were then like they are now it would be a whole different ball game. Love ya.

it's nice to have someone in my corner, especially when that someone is you, it would be nice to have a birth certificate and a death certificate but we don't, if we did, it wouldn't be faith ... I love you too sweetie and thank you ... *big hugs*

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archaeology's repeated affirmation of the New Testament's accuracy provides important corroboration for it's reliablity, this is in stark contrast with how archaeology has poved to be devastating for Mormonism, although Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church, claimed that his Book of Mormon is "the most correct of any book upon the earth" archaeology has repeatedly failed to substantiate it's claims about events that supposedly occurred long ago in the Americas, upon inquiry to the Smithsonian Institute about whether there was any evidence supporting the claims of Mormonism, it was said in unequivocal terms that it's archaeologists see "no direct connection between the archaeology of the New World and the subject matter of the book", as authors John Ankerberg and John Weldon concluded in a book on the topic, "in other words, no Book of Mormon cities have ever been located, no Book of Mormon person, place, nation or name has ever been found, no Book of Mormon artifacts, no Book of Mormon scriptures, no Book of Mormon inscriptions ... nothing which demonstrates the Book of Mormon is anything other than a myth or invention has ever been found, however, the story is totally different for the New Testament, McRay's conclusions have been echoed by many other scientists, including prominent Australian archaeologist Clifford Wilson, who wrote, "those who know the facts now recognize that the New Testament must be accepted as a remarkably accurate source book."

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now that we have heard powerfully convincing and well reasoned evidence from the scholars, we need to turn our attention to the decidedly contrary opinions of a small group of academics who have been the subject of a whirlwind of news coverage, in recent years the news media have been saturated with uncritical reports about the Jesus Seminar, a self-selected group that represents a minuscule percentage of New Testament scholars but that generates coverage vastly out of proportion to the group's influence, the Seminar's publicity-savvy participants attracted the press by voting with colored beads on whether they thought Jesus said what the gospels quote him as saying, a red bead meant Jesus undoubtedly said this or something like it, a pink bead meant he probably said it, a gray bead meant he didn't say it but the ideas are similar to his own, and a black bead meant he didn't utter these words at all, in the end, they concluded Jesus did not say 82% of what the gospels attribute to him, most of the remaining 18% was considered somewhat doubtful, with only 2% of of Jesus' sayings confidently determined to be authentic, craving controversy and lacking the expertise to scrutinize the Seminar's methodology, journalists devoted fountains of ink to the story, then the Seminar published The Five Gospels, containing the 4 traditional gospels plus the questionable gospel of Thomas, with Jesus' words color-coded to match the group's findings, Flip through it and you find expanses of black type but precious little in red, for example, the only words in the Lord's Prayer that the Seminar is convinced Jesus said are, "Our Father", we want to go beyond the headlines and to unearth "the rest of the story", we need to know if there was any credible evidence to refute these troubling and widely publicized opinions, were the Jesus Seminar's findings solidly based on unbiased scholarly research, or were they ill-fated testimony: well meaning but ultimately unsupported?

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people pick up a magazine or newspaper, read the conclusions of the Jesus Seminar, and assume that this represents the mainstream of New Testament scholarship, is that really the case? no, that's not the case, is it possible that the impression is an accident? the Jesus Seminar certainly portrays itself that way, this is one of it's most irritating facets, not just to evangelicals, but to other scholars as well, if you look at their book The Five Gospels, they give "7 pillars of scholarly wisdom" as if you must follow their methodology if you're going to be a true scholar, but alot of scholars, from a wide spectrum of backgrounds, would have serious reservations about one or even most of these pillars, and the Jesus Seminar calls it's translation of the Bible "The Scholar's Version" - well, what does that imply? that the other versions aren't scholarly? here's the truth, the Jesus Seminar represents an extremely small number of radical-fringe scholars who are on the far, far left wing of New Testament thinking, it does not represent mainstream scholarship, and ironically, they have their own brand of fundamentalism, they say they have the right way of doing things, period, in the name of diversity, they can actually be quite narrow ...

Gregory A. Boyd PH.D.

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at least participants in the Jesus Seminar have been very up-front about their goals, haven't they? they're explicit in saying they want to rescue the bible from fundamentalism and to free Americans from the "naive" belief that the Jesus of the bible is the "real" Jesus, they say they want a Jesus who is relevant for today, one of them said that the traditional Jesus did not speak to the needs of the ecological crisis, the nuclear crisis, the feminist crisis, so we need a new picture of Jesus, as another one said, we need "a new fiction", one of the twists is that they're going directly to the masses instead of to other scholars, they want to take their findings out of the ivory tower and bring them into the marketplace to influence popular opinion, and what they have in mind is a totally new form of Christianity, the idea of a new Jesus, a new faith, a new Christianity, is intriguing, so what about this Jesus that people from the Jesus Seminar have discovered, what's he like? basically, they've discovered what they set out to find, some think he was a political revolutionary, some a religious fanatic, some a wonder worker, some a feminist, some an egalitarian, some a subversive - there's alot of diversity, but there is one picture that they all agree with: Jesus must first of all must be a naturalistic Jesus, in other words, whatever else is said about him, Jesus was a man, like any other man, maybe he was an extraordinary man, maybe he tapped into our inherent potential as nobody else ever has, but he was not supernatural, so they say that Jesus and his early followers didn't see him as God or the Messiah, and they didn't see his death as having any special significance, his crucifixion was unfortunate and untimely, and stories about his resurrection came later as a way of trying to deal with that sad reality

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the Jesus Seminar paints itself as being on an unbiased quest for truth, as compared with religiously committed people who have a theological agenda, but that's not what's really going on, the participants of the Jesus Seminar are at least as biased as evangelicals, maybe even more so, they bring a whole set of assumptions to their scholarship, which of course all do to some degree, their major assumption - which, incidentally, is not the product of unbiased scholarly research - is that the gospels are not even generally reliable, they conclude this at the outset because the gospels include things that seem historically unlikely, like miracles - walking on water, raising the dead, these things, they say, just don't happen, that's naturalism, which says that for every effect in the natural or physical world, there is a natural cause, isn't that the way people typically live their lives? should we be looking for supernatural explanations behind everything that takes place? everyone would agree that you don't appeal to supernatural causes if you don't have to, but these scholars go beyond that and say you don't ever have to, they operate under the assumption that everything in history has happened according to their own experiences, and since they've never seen the supernatural, they assume miracles have never occurred in history, here's what they do: they rule out the possibility of the supernatural from the beginning, and then they say, "now bring on the evidence about Jesus", no wonder they get the results they do! we shouldn't appeal to the supernatural until we have to, yes, first look for a natural explanation, we do that in every day life, a tree falls - ok, maybe there were termites, now, could an angel have pushed it over? well, we wouldn't go to that conclusion until there was definite evidence for it, but we can't grant a tremendous assumption that we know enough about the universe to say that God - if there is a God - can never break into our world in a supernatural way, that is a very presumptuous assumption, that's not a presumption based on history; now we're doing metaphysics, there should be a certain amount of humility in the historical investigation to say, "you know what? it is just possible that Jesus Christ did rise from the dead, it's just possible that his disciples actually saw what the gospels say they saw", and if there's no other way of accounting adequately for the evidence, let's investigate that possibility, that is the only way to give the evidence a fair hearing

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to come up with their conclusion that Jesus never spoke most of the words in the gospels, members of the Jesus Seminar used their own set of assumptions and criteria, but are these standards reasonable and appropriate? or were they loaded from the outset, like dice that are weighted so they yield the result that was desired all along? there are multiple problems with their assumptions and criteria, for instance, they assume that the later church put these sayings into the mouth of Jesus, unless they have good evidence to think otherwise, that assumption is rooted in their suspicion of the gospels, and that comes from their assumption that the supernatural can't occur, historians usually operate with the burden of proof on the historian to prove falsity or unreliability, since people are generally not compulsive liars, without that assumption we'd know very little about ancient history, the Jesus Seminar turns this on it's head and says you've got to affirmatively prove that a saying came from Jesus, then they come up with questionable criteria to do that, now, it's OK for scholars to use appropriate criteria in considering whether Jesus said something, but the idea that if Jesus doesn't meet these criteria, he must not have said it, is a negative kind of conclusion that can be a problem, let's talk about some of the specific criteria they used, one is called double dissimilarity, this means they can believe Jesus said something if it doesn't look like something a rabbi or the later church would say, otherwise they assume it got into the gospels from a Jewish or Christian source, the obvious problem is that Jesus was Jewish and he founded the Christian church, so it shouldn't be surprising if he sounds Jewish and Christian! yet they've applied this criterion to reach the negative conclusion that Jesus didn't say a whole lot, then there's the criterion of "multiple attestaion", which means we can only be sure Jesus said something if it's found in more than one source, now, this can be a helpful test in confirming a saying, however, why argue in the other direction - if it's only found in one source, it's not valid? in fact, most of ancient history is based on single sources, generally, if a source is considered to be reliable - and we would argue that there are plenty of reasons to believe that the gospels are reliable - it should be considered credible, even if it can't be confirmed by other sources, even when Jesus' sayings are found in 2 or 3 gospels, they don't consider this as passing the "multiple attestation" criterion, if a saying is found in Matthew, Mark and Luke, they consider that only one source, because they assume that Matthew and Luke used Mark in writing their gospels, they're failing to recognize that an increasing number of scholars are expressing serious reservations about the theory that Matthew and Luke used Mark, with this line of thinking, you can see why it's extremely difficult to prove multiple attestation, the point: loaded criteria, like weighted dice, inevitably bring the results that were desired from the beginning

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one approach taken by naturalistic scholars has been to look for parallels between Jesus and others from ancient history as a way of demonstrating that his claims and deeds were not completely unique, their goal is to explain away the veiw that Jesus was one of a kind, for example, there were ancient rabbis who did exorcisms or prayed for rain and it came, so some scholars have said Jesus was merely another example of a Jewish wonder worker, do those parallels hold up? actually, the parallels break down quickly when you look more closely, for one thing, the sheer centrality of the supernatural in the life of Jesus has no parallel whatsoever in Jewish history, second, the radical nature of his miracles distinguishes him, it didn't just rain when he prayed for it; we're talking about blindness, deafness, leprosy and scoliosis being healed, storms being stopped, bread and fish being multiplied, sons and daughters being raised from the dead, this is beyond any parallels, third, Jesus' biggest destinctive is how he did miracles on his own authority, he is the one who says, "if I, by the finger of God, cast out demons, then the kingdom of God is among you" - he is referring to himself, he says, "I have been annointed to set the captives free", He does give God the Father credit for what he does, but you never find him asking God the Father to do it - he does it in the power of God the Father and for that there is just no parallel, this goes right along with the different way Jesus talked about himself - "all authority has been given to me", "honor me even as you honor the Father", "heaven and earth shall pass away but my word will not pass away", you do not find rabbis talking like this anywhere, any parallels with wonder-working rabbis are going to be very very stretched