Soyeong: Faith, like trust, does not exist on its own, but is always in someone or something. If you have faith that a safety harness will keep you secure, it makes no sense to say that it was your faith that made you secure and not the object of your faith.
Yes. But imagine a difficult task at hand. Having faith that the task can be completed raises chances that you will complete it considerably. And this context it makes no difference if you have faith in yourself ("I can do this") or faith in some god ("God will help me do it").
Soyeong: I completely agree. People can inaccurately perceive events, so it doesn't mean the events happened, but I think there is nevertheless still good reason to treat them as eyewitness accounts and work from there.
You can work from the premise that the eyewitnesses did not "lie". That they think what they say is true. But that doesn't mean it really happened as stated. And you always have to keep this in mind for every single detail. This is a problem inherent in all historical sources, not just the Bible.
toxicTom: Well it helps to find things and date them. Sometimes it help not find things that should be there. Like finding and identifying a place that the OT talks about but finding no trace of jewish culture whatsoever. Or finding out that the place is there, said events happened, but it was blown out of proportion by the storytellers.
Soyeong: You’re going to have to be more specific. Archeology strongly confirms many of the things in the OT,
such as this list of 50 people. Let me quote Ze'ev Herzog from the Tel Aviv University:
This is what archaeologists have learned from their excavations in the Land of Israel: the Israelites were never in Egypt, did not wander in the desert, did not conquer the land in a military campaign and did not pass it on to the 12 tribes of Israel. Perhaps even harder to swallow is that the united monarchy of David and Solomon, which is described by the Bible as a regional power, was at most a small tribal kingdom. And it will come as an unpleasant shock to many that the God of Israel, YHWH, had a female consort and that the early Israelite religion adopted monotheism only in the waning period of the monarchy and not at Mount Sinai.
You can also take a look at the statements of Professor Israel Finkelstein and Zahi Hawass.
Soyeong: In a similar way, most of the details they have in common are superficial because they are integral to what we would expect from a flood narrative. If they were to survive the flood, then a small group would need a way to escape it, so a boat makes sense. They would need time to build it before hand, so there would need to be advanced warning. The flood would kill the livestock, so they would need to be brought on board.
On the other hand, most of the details that are not integral to the story are different, such as with the gods fighting and plotting against each other, the reason for the flood being that humans were so noisy that the gods couldn’t sleep, the top-heavy cube, the time it took to build it, and the length of the flood. Gilgamesh is much more elaborate and extravagant, so Moses’ account is more historically reliable.
So we have to agree to disagree, just like with the "dying-rising-god". For you the differences, well, make all the difference. For me the similarities are more striking.
But I challenge you to read at least some of the flood myths from around the world. You can start here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_flood_myths This list contains only a fraction of them. I have a lot of compilations of myths and fairytales from different cultures. Nearly all of them have contain some form of great flood, and it's almost always the same story basically.
Soyeong: The themes are different because they aren’t even the same genre.
The genre is religious myth.
Soyeong: Luke was a first rate historian ...
By what authority?
Soyeong: ...and you’re not going to find an introduction like the above in front of any other stories about other gods. Jesus was presented an actual person who interacted with actual people in history.
Well many historical novels that use a narrator have an introduction like this. The characters in those also interacted with actual people in history.
Also: see eyewitness accounts and reliability.
toxicTom: Will have to look further into that. Got it from somewhere that Jesus' legs were not broken at explicit request. But maybe you're right.
Soyeong: John was the only Gospel to mention the subject, so wherever you heard it from would have to be from outside the Bible.
No, I admit you're right. I mixed this one up with the prophecy that his bones would not be broken (Psalm 34:19-20).
But why is John the only one mentioning this?
Also, what were Jesus' last words?
Luke: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."
Mark: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
John: ""It is finished."
High quality eyewitness accounts? I would presume something as important as "last words" would be more coherent.
toxicTom: Well the thing is, how I gather it, they already had spices, and then went to get more. Why didn't they brinf enough in the first place?
Soyeong: Again, I don’t see where it talks about them not bringing enough spices.
According to John, Nicodemus brought spices for the burial (75 pounds!). According to Mark, Matthew and Luke the women brought more spices on sunday morning.
Soyeong: ... outside Judaism, nobody believed in resurrection. The afterlife involved getting out of the body into some spiritual realm or realm of the mind, but to come back physically is rather disgusting.” – N. T. Wright
This is simply BS. There are resurrection stories to no end in the old myths.
Soyeong: It’s not that I’ve disregarded all the parallels to dying-rising gods, but that you have neglected to show any.
You may take a look at the works of Martin Hengel, Barry B. Powell and Peter Wick.
toxicTom: Well rebels were persecuted all over the world for different reasons and still many groups found enough people to even make an overthrow in the end.
Soyeong: If a group has a cause that someone already believes in, then they might be willing to join in spite of the persecution, but persecution itself is not a motivating factor to join that group.
Other than Nero blaming the Christians for arson in 64CE (they were probably an easy target then), there was no widely spread and organized persecution until about 250CE, when the movement already hat gained considerable momentum and was a power factor. The height of the persecution was around 303. And in 306 Christianity was made totally legal by Constantine.
