Something happened that moved the apostles from timid submission to fearless evangelicals.
"Do not be alarmed"
- Thread starter TheOriginalHappyGoat
- Start date
This is true. Don't remember the exact quote, but he says something dopey like "well who cares who knew him in the flesh, that means nothing"... And he was salty about not being an apostle In theory, however, the virgin birth would have very much helped his Christology. At least IMO. Not that I would have believed it though
That’s why many Lutheran churches are named St Paul. The simple fact of the resurrection was central to Luther’s view of Christianity, not the traditions of the Roman Catholics that imposed rules for access to salvation.
From a strictly historical point of view, we can't judge the historicity of the virgin birth itself, anyway, because it's miraculous, and objective methods can't test miracles. So even if we decide it's a very old tradition, that doesn't mean it happened. To your point about Paul, it's also telling that Mark doesn't know about it.This is true. Don't remember the exact quote, but he says something dopey like "well who cares who knew him in the flesh, that means nothing"... And he was salty about not being an apostle In theory, however, the virgin birth would have very much helped his Christology. At least IMO. Not that I would have believed it though
lol…”There is no God, but if you exist, you’re f#cking terrible at your job”. Signed, UncleMark.
@mcmurtry66 we have zero chance of getting a fair shake. Even God would get banned by Mark 🤣
Why does "did not include it" = "does not know about it"?
Why not conclude "the author wanted people to believe, so he left out the Virgin Birth/divinity of Mary because it would be too hard for people to accept, and told of the miracles performed by Jesus, because such miracles would be expected and accepted?" Especially if other religions included "virgin birth"?
Not arguing. Genuine question for "historicians."
Yes, poor wording on my point. I already made that same point about Paul. What I meant was, Mark's argument is strengthened by neither Paul nor Mark mentioning it, as they are two of the oldest sources in the NT.
That could be it, but the earliest writings (Paul), don't mention it. Paul is all in on the supernatural so you would think that he would mention it if he knew about it. Again, he knew James, Peter, etc. If they weren't squawking about it, perhaps it didn't exist.....
Miracles existed in all of Asia. That's a different thing than "Signs"
There's enough tradition to say that there was a true belief that people thought they saw Jesus post crucifixion. NOTHING about virgin birth outside of the typical mythos that pervaded greco roman mythology.
Wait: so the first writing that we know of was from Paul, who didn't know Jesus while he was alive and wasn't present at his crucifixion?
Correct. There are 13 letters from Paul in the NT--only 7 of which are considered written by Paul, and those date from 50-60 AD. After that, Mark, Mathew, Luke and then the next writing is likely from Josephus, then Acts in the second century. There is some debate about whether the Epistle of James somehow fits in between Paul and Mark because it seems to directly respond to Paul (James focuses on following law and doing good work, while Paul focuses on belief in Jesus to be saved). After the turn of the century, everything tends to be infinitely less reliable but does provide some context.
At a minimum, Paul "knew of" Jesus - he basically had a license to kill followers of Jesus. If his earliest surviving writing was from 60 AD, then he was writing 25-30-ish years after the crucifixion - and at a time when folks who did live contemporaneously with Jesus were still alive. (But would they have been laying low? Avoiding guys like Paul and Romans and other zealots?)
And the thing about dating even New Testament writings - the current dates can only assume we have the oldest scraps - but the other way to look at it is that "SO FAR we have found only the oldest surviving copies - it is likely there there were older writings that did not survive, or have not yet been found."
Just 20 years ago, folks were arguing whether the oldest scrap of Matthew ( “Papyrus 104”) would date to first century - maybe equal to or earlier than the oldest Paul. It is "accepted" as being mid-second century, and some folks still argue for first century. (It is written in Greek.).
End of the day - faith is faith. Certainty is not available.
The typical "best evidence" is cited as the lives of the Apostles - would YOU undergo crucifixion if all you had to do was say "OK, ya' got me - its all made up"?
Dating the texts has very little to do with the physical age of actual fragments. They can put an upper limit on the date of authorship, but they don't help much, because we don't have any originals, only copies of copies of copies. This is the same with any ancient text. Our earliest copies of Caesar's Commentaries come from the ninth century, but we know they were written 1000 years earlier than that.
People who lived in the early second century were already citing most, if not all, of the NT texts, so we know they were written and circulating by then, even if we don't have physical copies that old. For various reasons, we date most of them to the mid-to-late first century, with the possibility that a couple of texts were written in the very early second century.
VanPastorMan
Hall of Famer
This type of decision by the church when Christianity was proclaimed to be the official religion of the Empire to bring pagans into the church without truly putting their faith in Christ is one of the things which lead Martin Luther to proclaim, "Sola Scriptura" which means in areas of faith and practice in the church one must check it out through Scripture alone. Of course we don't have the Easter bunnies in scripture. But I will admit that watching my grandson searching for them is a lot of fun.
Yeah, I don't care to argue whether what they were writing is true or not. We aren't going to agree on that. I'm just fascinated by the timelines, the dating techniques, etc.
I agree with you on the faith is faith thing, and certainty. That is prevalent in most aspects of life.
Good Thread ! I've enjoyed learning.
This is not sarcasm, I am totally sincere.
This is not sarcasm, I am totally sincere.
VanPastorMan
Hall of Famer
My sermons this past Sunday was from 1 Corinthians 15:1-10. I preached one point in the Sonrise Service and one point in the regular service. In that passage you get what is believed to be the first Christian Creed that we know of. I made the point that conservative and liberal scholars all agree that the early church believed and promoted this creed. So the doctrines of the substutional death of Christ for sin, His death on the Cross, burial in a tomb, and the resurrection were all believed in. I don't know if you have ever heard this before but one of the keys to dating the New Testament books is to first look at the book of Acts. This book was the second written by Luke who is the author of the Gospel of Luke. Notice at the end of Acts Paul is alive and not been killed by Nero yet. Also notice that there is no mention of Jerusalem being destroyed which happened 70a.d. by the Romans under General Titus. So if Acts was written before this then that means the Gospel of Luke was written before that. Most scholars agree that Mark's Gospel was written first so you can see that the dates of these writings would be even further back.
A few things:
1. Paul doesn't give two craps about the historical jesus. Not one lick. Second, we know Peter, Andrew, James, etc
I don't know that Luke wrote Acts or Luke, but I would suggest that a great deal Acts is a whole lot of mythology has several contradictions to not only Paul but Luke. On the myth side, all the simon magus stuff.
I've never seen anyone credible who dates Luke or Acts to that early of a time frame. Colin Hemmer was the last guy I read who tried to do that, and he was resoundingly rebuffed for poor scholarship.
I agree with you though on 1 Corinthians 15:1-10--very clearly Paul has heard this tradition, and one that likely come within 3-5 years after the claimed resurrection. Definitely a tradition that had finally been put to writing.
Wait. They’re saying Joseph never got any?? 😳
Yea, but we all know.... If in a fox hole, facing shear death.... Coach is hittin that donkey. With his large penis (hahaha... SURE coach).
Well look it up then, pastor. I took religion classes AND Roman culture and I know how this went down.
The bunnies part will take you one minute to google, unleash you have set your personal settings on “child proof.”
Me too. I’ve figured out I missed a lot of learning opportunity while at IUB. My mind was so scarred by the religion I was raised in that I missed a chance to learn about the bible and religion without the twisted man made rules I was raised with.
VanPastorMan
Hall of Famer
What exactly are you disagreeing with me about? Pagans had their fertility religions. I think we both agree this was the case. Do we disagree that Christianity at the start did not believe in the Easter Bunny? If you really think believers in Jesus believed this early on then you are wrong. When Constantine declared Christianity as the official religion was when non biblical doctrines came into the church. This is not to say there weren't heretics along the way. But the church denounced heretical teaching before Rome took over.
VanPastorMan
Hall of Famer
If you look at both of the introductions of Luke and Acts it is apparent that the same person wrote them. Also the author knew specific details about the region. So he was not someone who wrote centuries later but was a part of the current culture. I believe it was Dr. F.F. Bruce a renounced archeologists who said that he used the book of Acts as a road map. If the author said a town or city was in a certain place Bruce would then dig and find it. The church early on alluded to Dr. Luke being the author of these books. Why would you disagree with them about this? Now another thing to consider is that the author of Acts was actually a part of what was going on Notice in Acts 16:10-18, Acts 20:4-21:19, Acts 27:1-28:30 you will see pronouns such as We,Us,and Our. This shows that the Author was with Paul during these journeys.
So whoever was with Paul wrote this book and he wrote and lived in the 1st Century during the events which took place. He even participated.
Now what exactly is your concern with the story of Magnus and the supposed contradictions you see?
The man is seriously discussing the subject matter in this thread. Don’t understand the dismissiveness and contempt you show him.
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