tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post2000829143734515567..comments2023-12-21T06:35:36.624-05:00Comments on Recursivity: God and Reason, Lecture 6: Who Was Jesus?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-59380379962808000502013-03-07T15:36:19.497-05:002013-03-07T15:36:19.497-05:00Regarding the question of the execution of Yeshua ...Regarding the question of the execution of Yeshua ben Josef of Nazareth, how does Prof. Brodhead know that the Muslim position is incorrect? The Muslim position is that Yeshua was not the man on the cross, it was Judas Iscariot and that Yeshua left town traveling perhaps to Damascus.SLCnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-60182632464670362042013-03-06T17:22:38.373-05:002013-03-06T17:22:38.373-05:00The Book of Mormon
Follow links to
"Testimon...<a href="http://www.lds.org/scriptures/bofm?lang=eng" rel="nofollow">The Book of Mormon</a><br />Follow links to<br /><br />"Testimony of Three Witnesses" (who claimed to have seen the golden plates and the angel who delivered them, heard the voice of the Lord, etc.)<br />Oliver Cowdry<br />David Whitmer<br />Martin Harris<br /><br />and "Testimony of Eight Witnesses" (who claimed to have seen and handled the golden plates)<br />Christian Whitmer<br />Jacob Whitmer<br />Pter Whitmer, Jun.<br />John Whitmer<br />Hiram Page<br />Joseph Smith, Sen.<br />Hyrum Smith<br />Samuel H. Smith<br />Reginald Selkirknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-90378643228717703352013-03-06T16:59:05.524-05:002013-03-06T16:59:05.524-05:00A Christian blogger summarises the Greco-Roman ref...<a href="http://www.lcwym.com/2012/10/did-Jesus-exist.html" rel="nofollow">A Christian blogger summarises the Greco-Roman references to Jesus</a><br />and gets it wrong.<br />An even briefer summary:<br />Josephus, born 37 AD<br />Tacitus, born 56 AD (erroneously reported as 14 AD by Matthew Clayton)<br />Pliny the Younger, born 61 AD<br />Mara bar-Serapion - unknown, except for a single letter dated after 73 AD, and probably not referring to Jesus at all<br />Suetoniusm born 69 AD<br />Lucian, born 125 AD<br />Celsius, second century<br /><br />And, as mentioned already, the few references in Josephus are highly suspect as being doctored by Christians. One of them is probably a reference to a Jesus other than Jesus H. Christ. (Jesus is the Greek form of Yeshua, a derivative of Joshua. It was at the time a popular name among Jews. Josephus mentioned twenty different Jesuses in his lengthy writings.)<br /><br />Imagine someone today writing a new book about John F. Kennedy, who died 50 years ago. One of your first question would probably be, did they make good use of the primary sources? But most certainly, you would not mistake it for a primary source.Reginald Selkirknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-57830467077886095952013-03-06T16:41:48.611-05:002013-03-06T16:41:48.611-05:00"He then presented many passages from the New..."<i>He then presented many passages from the New Testament that showed that Jesus claimed to be the son of the Christian god.</i>"<br /><br />This is not an adequate treatment. There are also many NT passages which portray Jesus as not the Son of the Christian God. An honest treatment would have to deal with all such references and sort out why one set of references are to be preferred over others. This is apologetics, not scholarship.<br /><br />"<i>The tomb: all 4 gospels report an empty tomb</i>"<br /><br />But this is not documented in an secular sources, and the 4 gospels are certainly not independent.<br /><br />"<i>Also, secular sources don't challenge the fact that the tomb was empty</i>"<br /><br />You give too much credit by calling it a "fact." It is an element in a story. Reginald Selkirknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-43814243889556096862013-03-06T16:35:10.382-05:002013-03-06T16:35:10.382-05:00Jihadist Battlefield Miracles
"Part of my tal...<a href="http://onwarandwords.wordpress.com/2010/02/26/jihadist-battlefield-miracles/" rel="nofollow">Jihadist Battlefield Miracles</a><br />"Part of my talk discussed how the jihadists believe that God is on the battlefield with them, not merely protecting them, but actively taking part in combat. I mentioned that stories abound about God shooting down American fighter planes with lightning bolts, about God sending ravenous beasts to the battlefield to eat the enemy, and other such miraculous events."<br />...<br />"Prof. David Cook wrote an article several years ago about how some of these sorts of stories manifested themselves in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. He characterizes them as part of a “disconfirmation” process that the jihadists use to come to grips with their setbacks."<br />Reginald Selkirknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-69596131073364720822013-03-06T16:31:41.591-05:002013-03-06T16:31:41.591-05:00The Signs of Allah the Most Merciful Ar-Rahmaan in...<a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/4572493/Miracles-in-the-Afghan-War" rel="nofollow">The Signs of Allah the Most Merciful Ar-Rahmaan in the Jihad of Afghanistan</a><br />(miracles in the Afghan War)<br /><br />This book was written by Shaykh Abdullah Azzam during the Afghan-Soviet Jihad in the 1980's. It deals specifically with first hand accounts of the miracles that occured during this Jihad. Shaykh Abdullah Azzam writes, 'These incidents…<br /><br />Similar miracle tales were circulated by the Taliban after the more recent Afghan war. Miracle tales are not rare, and not exclusively Christian. Christian apologists must explain why early Christian miracle tales are to be accepted as reliable accounts when they do not accept miracle tales of other religions.<br />Reginald Selkirknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-62274860955149281542013-03-06T16:21:56.808-05:002013-03-06T16:21:56.808-05:00Jesus in Josephus
by Richard Carrier
"Now tha...<a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/2946/" rel="nofollow">Jesus in Josephus</a><br />by Richard Carrier<br />"Now that the world has ended, my peer reviewed article on Josephus just came out: “Origen, Eusebius, and the Accidental Interpolation in Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200” in the Journal of Early Christian Studies (vol. 20, no. 4, Winter 2012), pp. 489-514.<br />...<br />My proof of that is pretty conclusive. But this article also summarizes a sufficient case to reject the Testimonium Flavianum as well (the other, longer reference to Jesus in Josephus), in that case as a deliberate fabrication (see note 1, pp. 489-90, and discussion of the Arabic quotation on pp. 493-94). And I cite the leading scholarship on both. So it’s really a complete article on both references to Jesus in Josephus..."<br />Reginald Selkirknoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-79592928416512362172013-03-06T12:03:21.644-05:002013-03-06T12:03:21.644-05:00Prof. Brodland has won teaching awards at UW and h...<i>Prof. Brodland has won teaching awards at UW and his presentation was (like others in the series) well-done and easy to follow.</i><br /><br />At my university (University of Toronto) that's all you need to get a teaching award. It doesn't seem to matter whether what you teach is accurate or not. Style trumps substance every time. <br /><br />I assume the same standards apply at Waterloo? :-)Larry Moranhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05756598746605455848noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-68436678066201218712013-03-06T10:03:09.582-05:002013-03-06T10:03:09.582-05:00Good points about the Mormons, Diogenes. I made t...Good points about the Mormons, Diogenes. I made the same points in my more recent post.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-45525635834790847502013-03-06T09:59:31.383-05:002013-03-06T09:59:31.383-05:00Not really relevant. Those who claimed to have see...<i> Not really relevant. Those who claimed to have seen the risen Jesus were often killed for this belief, but such threats did not deter them.</i><br /><br />Mormon prophet Joseph Smith said an angel showed him golden plates and a mob mudered him for it. It does not make his story true or even plausible.<br /><br />Smith had sworn depositions from I think 13 eyewitnesses who swore they saw the golden plates. This is far more evidence than we have for Jesus' resurrection. <br /><br />In the early days Mormons were murdered for their beliefs. Doesn't make the books of Mormon and Moses into non-forgeries.<br /><br />Ditto Adventist prophetess White. Skeptics warched while she had an out of body experience and went to Saturn, coumting its moons. People lie and people die, who knows why.Diogeneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15551943619872944637noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-31733711309532507462013-03-06T05:41:00.288-05:002013-03-06T05:41:00.288-05:00(I take it that calling a source a "fabricati...<i>(I take it that calling a source a "fabrication", rather than "containing fabricated parts", implies that there was no existing passage about Jesus in Josephus before Christians got to it)</i><br /><br />Please don't read more into it than what I said. My use of "fabrication" was just intended to mean that some parts were made up, or existing parts were changed, in order to make the evidence seem stronger.<br /><br />And, Anonymous, just go read the article on Flavius Josephus's work mentioned by Luke. I note that skeptical sources mention additional reasons to question Josephus. Most Biblical historians seem to be Christians and are therefore much less likely to be skeptical of such sources.<br /><br /><i>Should we discard all historical sources that are not contemporary? </i><br /><br />You have an unfortunate tendency to take what I say and exaggerate it beyond recognition. I said nothing about "discard[ing]" anything. It is simply a fact, though, that human memory is extremely unreliable, and studies show that in recording events even as little as a few years after the events will likely introduce substantial errors. So we can reasonably be much more skeptical of testimony that is written 15 or 30 or 45 years after alleged events, especially when the testimony is about (in the words of Ambrose Bierce) "things without parallel".<br /><br /><i>What do you mean by "early"?</i><br /><br />I had in mind early meetings where the books of the Bible were made canonical.<br /><br /><i>What do you mean by "actual reports?"</i><br /><br />I struggled with that sentence, rewriting it multiple times to try to make the meaning as clear as possible. Obviously I did not succeed! Let me try again: we do not have 500 reports! We do not have 500 individual pieces of paper by 500 authors of the time, testifying that they saw Jesus after he was killed. All we have is Paul's claim that there were 500 witnesses. Is that clearer?<br /><br /><i>Not really relevant. Those who claimed to have seen the risen Jesus were often killed for this belief, but such threats did not deter them.</i><br /><br />Who, specifically? Let's have a list of this occurrence which is claimed to be "often". <br /><br />As for "claimed to have seen the risen Jesus", memory is a very malleable thing. (I have a personal story I could tell you.) Once one person claimed to have seen Jesus risen, other people would not want to have been left out. See a shadowy figure in the mist one morning? Suddenly, you're in the club, too! And repeat the story often enough and pretty soon you believe it.<br /><br /><i>Why didn't they get a historian? </i><br /><br />Because, in my opinion, the goal is not to present a fair and balanced summary of evidence, but to engage in Christian evangelism. In order to achieve that, pretty much any good speaker will suffice. Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-16371859448752506532013-03-06T00:41:02.449-05:002013-03-06T00:41:02.449-05:00Jeff, thanks for sharing your own hearing-loss epi...Jeff, thanks for sharing your own hearing-loss episode. What a priceless moment during the question period. Here is <a href="http://intelligent-falling.blogspot.ca/2013/03/god-and-reason-part-6-who-was-jesus.html" rel="nofollow">my perspective</a>.Jeffhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15115112001151182281noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-19386388919459329492013-03-05T22:00:37.590-05:002013-03-05T22:00:37.590-05:00I'm enjoying this series. Was this the last le...I'm enjoying this series. Was this the last lecture?<br /><br />A few comments:<br />* "Civil Engineering professor Wayne Brodland". Why didn't they get a historian? <br /><br />* "Where is the evidence that Prof. Brodland has explored Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and so forth with equal research that he has done on Christianity?". I think the important thing is not equal research but sufficient research to have good reasons for not being a Buddhist etc. I assume you've investigated evolution more than ID, but still have good reasons to reject ID.<br /><br />* "There are a handful of extra-Biblical sources, and not one is contemporary." Define "contemporary". Within a few years? Within living memory? Should we discard all historical sources that are not contemporary? <br /><br />* "Some of these extra-Biblical sources are widely acknowledged to be Christian fabrications, such as certain passages in Josephus." That's not quite correct, so far as I know. Christian editing, sure, but not compete fabrication from scratch. (I take it that calling a source a "fabrication", rather than "containing fabricated parts", implies that there was no existing passage about Jesus in Josephus before Christians got to it)<br /><br />I'm not an expert on this, either, so here's wikipedia: "The general scholarly view is that while the Testimonium Flavianum is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it is broadly agreed upon that it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus with a reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate which was then subject to Christian interpolation." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus). Also, there is information in these sources that isn't in the New Testament, e.g. the death of James, the brother of Jesus. <br /><br />* "there would have been great pressure at early church meetings to suppress any such documents, if they existed." What do you mean by "early"? Because Christians clearly had no power to suppress anything for quite a while, arguably until Constantine the Great, 300 AD. They wouldn't have any power to suppress Jewish reports or Roman reports. If "the body was removed by enemies of early Christianity, fearing that the resting place would become a shrine", then a report of such would not be able to be suppressed by Christians for a few centuries. Still, your point about "we have so few documents from that time and place" is a good one.<br /><br />* 500 witnesses, "a claim that is not substantiated by the actual reports". What do you mean by "actual reports?".<br /><br />* "Most of the people "willing to die" probably did not experience the resurrection themselves but were simply told about it by others, and believed it." Not really relevant. Those who claimed to have seen the risen Jesus were often killed for this belief, but such threats did not deter them. Doesn't prove it's true, as the Jim Jones example shows, but it does make the "they just made it all up" hypothesis rather unlikely.Luke Barneshttp://lukebarnes.info/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-78531612443700758282013-03-05T21:40:04.762-05:002013-03-05T21:40:04.762-05:00Can you back up your claim that "Some of thes...Can you back up your claim that "Some of these extra-Biblical sources are widely acknowledged to be Christian fabrications, such as certain passages in Josephus". What references can you give?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com