"Theist": is a Transitional Form In Human Cultural/Cognitive Evolution

To show that "there are no facts in the Bible," Pro argues that "Mark was not created until decades after the death of Jesus Christ, it is not a first hand, on the spot witness account, neither are those women witnessing the tomb of Jesus, if it existed." But "Almost all biblical scholars agree that the New Testament documents were all written before the close of the First Century. If Jesus was crucified in 30 A.D., then that means the entire New Testament was completed within 70 years. This is important because it means there were plenty of people around when the New Testament documents were penned, people who could have contested the writings. In other words, those who wrote the documents knew that if they were inaccurate, plenty of people would have pointed it out. But, we have absolutely no ancient documents contemporary with the First Century that contest the New Testament texts." http://www.google.com... "Thucydides, who wrote History of the Peloponnesian War, lived from 460 BC to 400 BC. Virtually everything we know about the war comes from his history. Yet, the earliest copy of any manuscripts of Thucydides" work dates around 900 AD, a full 1,300 years later! The Roman historian Suetonius lived between AD 70 to 140 AD. Yet the earliest copy of his book The Twelve Caesars is dated around AD 950, a full 800 years later"It is well known in historical circles that the closer a document can be found to the event it describes the more credible it is. The time span for the biblical manuscript copies ...are all within 350 years of the originals, some as early as 130-250 years and one even purporting to coexist with the original (i.e. the Magdalene Manuscript fragments of Matthew 26), while the time span for the secular manuscript copies are much greater, between 750-1,400 years! This indeed gives enormous authority to the biblical manuscript copies, as no other ancient piece of literature can make such close time comparisons." http://www.google.com... So to reject any of the Gospels because they were written thirty or forty years after the events would mean that to be consistent, Pro would have to reject all the documents of the ancient world, because their copies are much further removed from the times of which they speak than the Gospels. He says Mark was not an eyewitness, so what? He was a contemporary who was alive in the time of Jesus, and no eyewitness has ever disputed his account. Matthew who was an eyewitness does support his account. (Matthew 24:36; Mark 13:32) From 60-130 AD, numerous church fathers record that Mark was Peter"s interpreter, and Peter did know Mark, calling him "my son." (1 Peter 5:13) Peter was indeed an eyewitness, so Mark does have eyewitness backing from what he said. http://www.google.com... It would have been impossible for those early disciples to invent stories about Jesus while the eyewitnesses were still alive, and be believed by so many, with no trace of anyone arguing against these facts. If Jesus was buried in an unmarked grave as Pro suggests, then where is that historical account of the true place of his burial? This myth hypothesis has two layers: the first layer is a non-miraculous Jesus was not buried in the tomb, and the second layer is Jesus as we have him in the Gospels. Problem is, historians have never discovered that first layer. Pro imagines this first layer out of thin air. Multiple attestation, lack of legendary embellishment, embarrassing features of the narrative, use of proper names, public knowledge of the burial and the tomb's location, are all key features historians use to verify the credibility of historical documents, and the story of the empty tomb passes every test. Pro thinks the disciples concocted stories about Jesus, but this is very unlikely because (1) not even one single Christian ever admitted under bribe or torture, that the resurrection was their conspiracy. Even when they denied Christ and worshipped Caesar, they never let that cat out of the bag because it was never there. (2) The disciples" character argues strongly against this. Their faults are not hidden in the Gospels, not even Peter"s denial of Christ three times or the twelve abandoning Jesus on the night of his arrest. (3) The fact that it was women who found the tomb empty is embarrassing and thus unlikely to be an invention considering the low status given to women as witnesses by the Jews. You can find plenty more reasons elaborated at http://www.google.com... Its hard to see why Matthew would invent Roman guards whom his audience of people contemporary with the events, especially his Jewish opponents, would immediately recognize didn"t exist. Outright lies are a feeble refutation, so why would they invent guards when no guards were around who claimed to be stationed at a tomb? And why would the Jews respond that the guards fell asleep, necessitating Christians to develop another lie that they were bribed? It seems that if the guards at the tomb were a fabrication, the polemic Matthew records wouldn"t have taken the course it did. In fact, as a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin which condemned Jesus to death, Joseph of Aramathea is unlikely to be a Christian invention. Surely they would not invent a story where its one of Jesus" enemies who does what is right by Jesus by taking his body to the tomb. Pro says the Romans used to throw criminal bodies into unmarked graves, but not always: "Roman prefects like Pilate, in fact, often allowed crucifixion victims to be buried. Cicero, for example, mentions a governor in Sicily who released bodies to family members in return for a fee (In Verrem 2.5.45), and Philo writes that on the eve of Roman holidays in Egypt, crucified bodies were taken down and given to their families, "because it was thought well to give them burial and allow them ordinary rites" (In Flaccum 10.83-84). In addition, as Crossan has pointed out, the famous case of Yehohanan, the crucified man whose skeletal remains were found in a family tomb at Giv'at ha-Mivtar, proves that a Roman governor in Jerusalem had released the body of a crucifixion victim for burial. Finally, the Gospels' assertion that Pilate "used to release for them one prisoner for whom they asked" (Mark 15:6 par.) is also relevant here, for it shows that during the first century CE one could plausibly tell stories of Roman judicial clemency, especially around religious holidays. Thus the fate of Jesus' body in Roman hands should not be regarded as automatic. The occasion of Jesus' death was a Jewish holiday, and Pilate was not in the process of suppressing a revolt, but rather simply trying to protect public order." "(WHERE NO ONE HAD YET BEEN LAID," The Shame of Jesus' Burial, Byron R. McCane) My opponent quotes Justin Martyr out of context, but Justin goes on to say in chapter 23 that 31 that the pagan copied Old Testament prophecies about Christs and applied them to their non-existent gods; so it was the pagans copying the Bible, not the other way around. I'll be happy to reply to the rest of Pro's arguments next round.