What's wrong with the church today?

jmick

jmick

Active Member
Originally Posted by YearOfTheNick
http:///forum/post/2771429
What do you mean by "contemporary accounts?" Wouldn't that take a 2100 year old person?

Seriously though, what are you looking for?
You should know what contempory means. It means I want work that was written during the time Jesus lived, not after.
 
1journeyman

1journeyman

Active Member
Originally Posted by Jmick
http:///forum/post/2771438
You should know what contempory means. It means I want work that was written during the time Jesus lived, not after.
Jmick, the entire NT is a contemporary account. As are the numerous first century churches that appeared.
I can understand someone not believing the Bible. I'm not trying to argue that. I am, however, pointing out the NT books were written within the time of eyewitnesses.
 
jmick

jmick

Active Member
Originally Posted by 1journeyman
http:///forum/post/2771471
Jmick, the entire NT is a contemporary account. As are the numerous first century churches that appeared.
I can understand someone not believing the Bible. I'm not trying to argue that. I am, however, pointing out the NT books were written within the time of eyewitnesses.
How long after the death of Jesus was the first book written? How could it be that something as grand as the resurrection of Jesus would not have been captured at the time it happened and why did it take 20-50 years after to be written down? Furthermore, how can it be that are ZERO writings about jesus during the time he lived...according to various writings in the bible he had large followings.
You may not believe it but I actually want to be proven wrong on this but so far I haven't seen a bit real real proof. I doubt any of these accounts would even hold up in a court of law because they'd be deemed hearsay.
 
yearofthenick

yearofthenick

Active Member
Originally Posted by Jmick
http:///forum/post/2771438
You should know what contempory means. It means I want work that was written during the time Jesus lived, not after.
Contemporary means a lot of things to Christians. The first thing that came to my head was contemporary music (modern-day worship) as opposed to traditional music (hymns and such). When I think contemporary, I think of what is current. But after consulting Merriam-Webster, I get what you mean by contemporary being of the same time period.
I'm looking for references to back what we're saying. Give me a little time to give you some web references. I'm searching not only for the validity of these accounts, but also the amount of them.
However, I really need to help bring into perspective that nothing is truly contemporary... you're expecting a standard that simply does not exist. Many of the scrolls we use to paint the picture of history were written tens and even hundreds of years following the acounts taking place.
If you wanted something to prove to you that an account was written the following day/week/month and rejected a longer time frame than that, I fear you may have to throw everything you believe about History out the window.
 
salty blues

salty blues

Active Member
Originally Posted by Jmick
http:///forum/post/2771504
How long after the death of Jesus was the first book written? How could it be that something as grand as the resurrection of Jesus would not have been captured at the time it happened and why did it take 20-50 years after to be written down? Furthermore, how can it be that are ZERO writings about jesus during the time he lived...according to various writings in the bible he had large followings.
You may not believe it but I actually want to be proven wrong on this but so far I haven't seen a bit real real proof. I doubt any of these accounts would even hold up in a court of law because they'd be deemed hearsay.
Well you might ponder this. Your avatar depicts Bush as the anti-Christ. If you truly believe in an anti-Christ, then by definition one would need to acknowledge the existence of Christ. One could not logically exist without the other.
 
yearofthenick

yearofthenick

Active Member
Originally Posted by Jmick
http:///forum/post/2771504
How long after the death of Jesus was the first book written? How could it be that something as grand as the resurrection of Jesus would not have been captured at the time it happened and why did it take 20-50 years after to be written down? Furthermore, how can it be that are ZERO writings about jesus during the time he lived...according to various writings in the bible he had large followings.
You may not believe it but I actually want to be proven wrong on this but so far I haven't seen a bit real real proof. I doubt any of these accounts would even hold up in a court of law because they'd be deemed hearsay.
As for the writings of Jesus' life, there are very many. Most notably, the first four books of the new testament are like the biography of Jesus. Four very credible "books", Matthew, Mark, Luke, John... credible enough to be copied hundreds of millions of times and in countless languages, also used by many philosophers, anthropologists, and archaeologists as they study those times. The accuracy has been proven in many fields of study.
 
jeanheckle

jeanheckle

Member
Originally Posted by Jmick
http:///forum/post/2771504
How long after the death of Jesus was the first book written? How could it be that something as grand as the resurrection of Jesus would not have been captured at the time it happened and why did it take 20-50 years after to be written down? Furthermore, how can it be that are ZERO writings about jesus during the time he lived...according to various writings in the bible he had large followings.
You may not believe it but I actually want to be proven wrong on this but so far I haven't seen a bit real real proof. I doubt any of these accounts would even hold up in a court of law because they'd be deemed hearsay.
What about Josephus?
http://www.bede.org.uk/Josephus.htm
 
jmick

jmick

Active Member
Originally Posted by salty blues
http:///forum/post/2771648
Well you might ponder this. Your avatar depicts Bush as the anti-Christ. If you truly believe in an anti-Christ, then by definition one would need to acknowledge the existence of Christ. One could not logically exist without the other.
No worries, I don't think Bush is the anti-christ I just needed a new avatar.
 
yearofthenick

yearofthenick

Active Member
Originally Posted by YearOfTheNick
http:///forum/post/2771643
If you wanted something to prove to you that an account was written the following day/week/month and rejected a longer time frame than that, I fear you may have to throw everything you believe about History out the window.
Here's a good source for you with compiled sources and comparisons...
http://www.creatingfutures.net/validity.html
Most interesting to me was this statement:
Author No. of Copies Time Span
Caesar 10 1,000 years
Plato (Tetralogies) 7 1,200 years
Tacitus (Annals) 20 1,000 years
Pliny the Younger (History) 7 750 years
Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum) 8 800 years
Homer (Iliad) 643 500 years
New Testament Over 24,000 25 years
Basically the idea is that if you believe Caesar existed, then you should DEFINITELY believe the accuracy of the bible.
 
jmick

jmick

Active Member
Originally Posted by YearOfTheNick
http:///forum/post/2771733
Here's a good source for you with compiled sources and comparisons...
http://www.creatingfutures.net/validity.html
Most interesting to me was this statement:
Author No. of Copies Time Span
Caesar 10 1,000 years
Plato (Tetralogies) 7 1,200 years
Tacitus (Annals) 20 1,000 years
Pliny the Younger (History) 7 750 years
Suetonius (De Vita Caesarum) 8 800 years
Homer (Iliad) 643 500 years
New Testament Over 24,000 25 years
Basically the idea is that if you believe Caesar existed, then you should DEFINITELY believe the accuracy of the bible.
Yes, but with all of the above mentioned people there are artifacts, writings and coins with their image from the time they lived that prove they existed! All I would need to believe 100% that Jesus did exist was something other then 2nd, 3rd, 4th hand information.
I'll even provide you a link... http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html
 
stdreb27

stdreb27

Active Member
Originally Posted by Jmick
http:///forum/post/2771746
Yes, but with all of the above mentioned people there are artifacts, writings and coins with their image from the time they lived that prove they existed! All I would need to believe 100% that Jesus did exist was something other then 2nd, 3rd, 4th hand information.
I'll even provide you a link... http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html
If Jesus never existed. This brings up an interesting and potentially humorous question.
Who made him up, and why?
 
jmick

jmick

Active Member
Originally Posted by stdreb27
http:///forum/post/2771752
If Jesus never existed. This brings up an interesting and potentially humorous question.
Who made him up, and why?

That's a great question!
Would it be to fulfill the prophesies in the old test? Were ideas from Greek and Roman myths taken to create this person to be the figure head/face of a new religion?
 
yearofthenick

yearofthenick

Active Member
there weren't any coins that had Homer's face on it. And how could you expect to see coins and artifacts of a man who was basically homeless and had no belongings? Caesar was a King... he led the known world at the time... he was the one who decided to create currency, and he was the one who chose to have his face imprinted on it. It's hard to dig up artifacts of Jesus when there are none... Jesus had no possessions, and the only things you could potentially tie to him were simple things like nets and bowls. There was no golden crown, no mighty currency, nothing... not even a body. But all we do have is overwhelming amount of written evidence to help validate Jesus' life. That's all we can show.
I checked out your link, and it's interesting to me that the person who wrote that site compares Jesus to Zeus and leprechauns. I don't think Jesus falls into the same class as Zeus/leprechauns because there aren't tens of thousands of written accounts like there WAS with Jesus. It's not a good comparison at all.
Also, The books in the bible are most accurate because historians have hundreds of different accounts to compare them to. If there's a book or written acount that is kind of out there and doesn't have any foundational connection with other books, it's generally considered to be fake... the estimate of 24k copies all tell a strickingly similar story... however, what is not included in that statistic are all of the additional stories/scrolls that were found and didn't seem to make sense.
To make a long story short, they separated truth from fiction by referencing them all together. If there was a single copy that didn't make sense or didn't jibe with the rest of them, it wasn't considered to be accurate, because there were no other copies to help support it's story. The link you showed uses these maverick scrolls as fact... I would tend to believe what hundreds of copies say in unison as opposed to a rogue copy, wouldn't you?
 
stdreb27

stdreb27

Active Member
Originally Posted by YearOfTheNick
http:///forum/post/2771767
there weren't any coins that had Homer's face on it. And how could you expect to see coins and artifacts of a man who was basically homeless and had no belongings? Caesar was a King... he led the known world at the time... he was the one who decided to create currency, and he was the one who chose to have his face imprinted on it. It's hard to dig up artifacts of Jesus when there are none... Jesus had no possessions, and the only things you could potentially tie to him were simple things like nets and bowls. There was no golden crown, no mighty currency, nothing... not even a body. But all we do have is overwhelming amount of written evidence to help validate Jesus' life. That's all we can show.
I checked out your link, and it's interesting to me that the person who wrote that site compares Jesus to Zeus and leprechauns. I don't think Jesus falls into the same class as Zeus/leprechauns because there aren't tens of thousands of written accounts like there WAS with Jesus. It's not a good comparison at all.
Also, The books in the bible are most accurate because historians have hundreds of different accounts to compare them to. If there's a book or written acount that is kind of out there and doesn't have any foundational connection with other books, it's generally considered to be fake... the estimate of 24k copies all tell a strickingly similar story... however, what is not included in that statistic are all of the additional stories/scrolls that were found and didn't seem to make sense.
To make a long story short, they separated truth from fiction by referencing them all together. If there was a single copy that didn't make sense or didn't jibe with the rest of them, it wasn't considered to be accurate, because there were no other copies to help support it's story. The link you showed uses these maverick scrolls as fact... I would tend to believe what hundreds of copies say in unison as opposed to a rogue copy, wouldn't you?
The way they transcribed them was quite amazing. They had to write one letter at a time, literally letter for letter. Not even word for word. The sameness of the scrolls it quiet amazing.
 
jmick

jmick

Active Member
The link I used was nothing more then to prove the existence of Caesar.
I have a simple question for you. The Jesus depicted in the bible could perform amazing miracles, drew massive crowds and rose from the dead. How is it that there is not one record from the time he lived that mentioned him? Why is it that everything written about him is years later and often 2nd or
3rd hand information?
Also, if many Christians are so certain that he actually existed why are they always looking for proof...shroud of Turin, box of jams and so forth?
http://members.tripod.com/rationalre...th_history.htm
 
yearofthenick

yearofthenick

Active Member
Originally Posted by Jmick
http:///forum/post/2771790
The link I used was nothing more then to prove the existence of Caesar.
I have a simple question for you. The Jesus depicted in the bible could perform amazing miracles, drew massive crowds and rose from the dead. How is it that there is not one record from the time he lived that mentioned him? Why is it that everything written about him is years later and often 2nd or
3rd hand information?
Also, if many Christians are so certain that he actually existed why are they always looking for proof...shroud of Turin, box of jams and so forth?
http://members.tripod.com/rationalre...th_history.htm
Dude we're going in circles. I thought i explained to you already that regardless of 2nd or 3rd hand, the scrolls are extremely accurate... far more accurate than the scrolls found written about Caesar... I know he's got coins, yada yada.... but if you look solely at the scrolls and compare them, its very interesting to me that some 24k people felt a much higher urgency to write stories about Jesus (<25 yrs) instead of only 10 people writing about Caesar est. 1,000 years after his reign. Doesn't that mean something?
 
yearofthenick

yearofthenick

Active Member
Originally Posted by Jmick
http:///forum/post/2771790
Also, if many Christians are so certain that he actually existed why are they always looking for proof...shroud of Turin, box of jams and so forth?
Why do people look for Noah's Ark? Why do people look for the Ark of the Covenant? Same reason. People believe enough in the scriptures to spend millions on the search for these artifacts.
Look at it this way: If you were really excited about something, wouldn't you want to dig up everything you could find about it? Asking that question is like asking why people want to learn greek so they can study these scrolls in their original form... it's because people hunger and thirst ofr knowledge... imagine the way history would change if Noah's Ark was found... that's why a lot of people look. It's why I would look.
 
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