Simple question?

Seems pretty easy to disprove the Resurrection if Jesus' body was still on the cross? Wonder why they just didn't point that out? You might also want to check a couple of things like how much historical information we have about the Roman practice of crucifixion and when the few documents we have were written. Next take a look at the context of Pilate and his role in the crucifixion of Jesus and the tension with the Jewish authorities. You still want to go with this theory that Jesus was never taken down from the cross? Seems more than a bit fishy to me.

Quote: FrGamble

Seems pretty easy to disprove the Resurrection if Jesus' body was still on the cross? Wonder why they just didn't point that out? .

Who didn't point that out. There is
not a single book in the NT written
by anybody who was at the crucifixion.
The gospels were written 35 and 40
and 55 and 60 years afterwards.

By then all they had were stories
of stories of stories of stories to
the n'th degree. Do you know there are
books of the NT that were not
accepted that have Jesus flying
thru the air like a bird or Sally
Field in the Flying Nun? They
have him doing all kinds of
nutty stuff.

When the first gospel is 4 decades
after the event, and not written
by anybody who was there, what's
fact or fiction. And you know there
has to be a ton of fiction. Couple
that with the fact we have no original
NT manuscripts. The newest one is
from 200AD, a copy of a copy of a copy
to the 10th power. Get 10 of those
copies and no 2 of them are alike.

So yeah, I'll take forensic historical
evidence like Ehrman presents any
day over the total unreliability
that's the NT. Again, it's what
drove Ehrman out of the religion, the
fact that the NT is mostly a sham.

Saw this silliness on Twitter:

The New Testament has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to its manuscript tradition. There are over 3,000 manuscripts of the Greek NT averaging about 450 pages. Plus over 2,200 lectionary manuscripts used in liturgies in the ancient Church. Plus hundreds of quotes from the 1st century of the NT from the Church Fathers. Plus 10s of thousands of translations of the Greek into Old Latin, Old Syriac, and many other languages. These manuscripts are dated from the beginning of the 2nd Century and there is even fragments of Mark's Gospel that date from the 1st century. It is important to look at these amazing numbers in comparison to other ancient texts. There are 1,000 times more manuscript data than the average Greco-Roman author. Also the NT manuscripts date mere decades from the original text while no classical author has a manuscript that is less than 500 years after the author wrote! There are lots of variants as can be expected from hand copied texts. Of these variants a whopping 75% are spelling and grammar errors, then there are some minor translation differences involving synonyms, some non meaningful omissions where a word or two are missing in a manuscript but are present in 100s of others, and less than 1% of these variants are what are called "meaningful and viable" and of these variants none of them are in regards to any important texts that form a foundation of central and important beliefs.

So you can see that if you are serious about forensic historical evidence you simply have no choice but to accept the NT as the most well attested and most accurate writing of the ancient world by leaps and bounds. Dare I say the evidence we have is almost miraculous. It is the opposite of unreliable to anyone who seriously studies this issue. If you really had read Ehrman or desire to read it with me you would know this as he concedes in multiple times and in multiple debates he has had. Your exaggerations and silly comments about what your opinion is regarding the reliability of the NT are about as valuable as a colander is for holding water.

Most of the above information can be confirmed by this link to an interview with Daniel Wallace at this link: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/an-interview-with-daniel-b-wallace-on-the-new-testament-manuscripts/
In that article is also some more links to more materials you can research. Thank you.

Quote: FrGamble

if you are serious about forensic historical evidence you simply have no choice but to accept the NT as the most well attested and most accurate writing of the ancient world .

You really need to get more exposure
to non Xtion NT historians. Ehrman
says 99% are Xtions and have a huge
bias. How do you suppose Bart Ehrman
became one of the most respected
NT historians in the world. By lying
and making things up and ignoring
facts? Not hardly.

I'm diving into Ehrman, just ordered
6 of his books and watching him on
Utube at least as hour a day. There
are a couple hundred hours of him
lecturing.

Dr. Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He completed his undergraduate work at Wheaton College and earned his M.Div. and Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary.

Professor Ehrman has written or edited 27 books, including four best sellers on The New York Times list: Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why; God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer; Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know about Them);and Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. Professor Ehrman also served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature, Southeastern Region; book review editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature; editor of the Scholars’ Press monograph series The New Testament in the Greek Fathers;and coeditor-in-chief for the journal Vigiliae Christianae.

Professor Ehrman received the John William Pope Center Spirit of Inquiry Award, the UNC Students’ Undergraduate Teaching Award, the Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty, and the Bowman and Gordon Gray Professorship (awarded for excellence in undergraduate teaching).

You really need to be exposed to some other NT scholars. Do you think Ehrman doesn't have a bias? Are you listening to any other scholars. Maybe watch a debate between David Wallace and Ehrman. Read sone Raymond Brown, Scott Hahn, James Dunn, N.T. Wright, Brant Pitre, Robert Hutchinson, Carl Olson (a really effective dismantling of Ehrman), and Richard Longnecker. This is just a small list I would be happy to give you more. If You haven't read or heard of these scholars I think you can be sure your opinion will be one-sided, warped, and unbalanced. However, I am glad you are interested in Ehrman, there is no doubt he is brilliant and in his own way has a love for Jesus and the Scriptures. He understands there is no text in human history more important than the NT and has a belief in God in his own way. Hopefully he will inspire you to actually study the formation of the NT and learn more than his outdated and debunked scepticism will give you.

Quote: FrGamble

You really need to be exposed to some other NT scholars..

There's a lot of debates on Utube
with Ehrman and Xtion NT scholars.
He usually eats their lunch because
he has facts and they have a lot of
speculation and a huge amount
of faulty stringing things together
to make a point. At least when Ehrman
speculates, he has a lot of sources
to back him up. The so called Xtion
scholars got away with murder before
Ehrman and others like him came
along.

In the last 40 years tools have been
developed for information gathering
that were unavailable before. This
has allowed for the examination of
massive of amounts of data and the
ability to paint a very realistic picture
of what really happened in the past.
The scholars before then did a ton
of guessing and because they were
all biased, it always went on the side
of the Church.

Ehrman's books are best sellers because
he bends over backwards to be unbiased.
He says all the time that he's not saying
none of the events in the NT happened,
he's saying from a forensic historians
perspective they probably didn't. They
are religious in nature and not to be
taken as something that literally happened.

Wow Bob you sound like quite a fan and there is so much I hope you learn from Ehrman. You say he bends over backwards to be unbiased maybe you could do the same. You say he doesn't definitively discount the events of the NT that might be a good thing to learn too. I think as you continue reading you will learn just how important the historical person of Jesus Christ is and have the same awe and respect for Him that Ehrman has. Just remember that as you rightly gush over him you are only at the tip of the iceberg when it comes to NT scholarship. Maybe eventually you can read or watch what other great and world renowned scholars have to say.

A simple Paws for amusement



He brings his fleas for confession.

Quote: FrGamble

You say he bends over backwards to be unbiased maybe you could do the same. .

I'm an atheist, of course I'm biased, are
you kidding? And you're just as biased
in the other direction. And I'll
always be 'at the tip of the iceberg'
with NT scholarship because I just
don't care enough about it. Urban
legends are not something I run my
life on. I'd much rather investigate
the real science and real investigations
going on in kids who remember past
lives. Jesus is long dead, these kids
are in the here and now remembering
they were butchers and bakers
and candlestick makers just a few
years ago. And science is verifying
they're telling the truth. How cool
is that.

And sobering. It explains people like
Helen Keller and babies born with
no arms. That's just this time, this
incarnation. Next time you'll be just
like everybody else. It's also
sobering because it makes you slow
down and look around. If I have to
come back and do this again, I want
a peaceful existence, not some silly
religious dogma that thinks this is
a one shot deal and you better do
things exactly right.