The Gospel of Jesus is a patchwork of plagiarized material from non-Judeo-Christian sources

let us go from the top down shall we? Story: a fictional narrative shorter than a novel History:a branch of knowledge that records and explains past events The question was asked: What is original in the gospel story of Jesus, to make it worth even considering as a valid basis for the Christian faith? The question assumes (we know what that does) it's own answer in a sense that the story of christ is simply that a story. A story invented, and the pro expects me to show how the "story" is original. I say it is original not because it is a story but because the events described actually took place. I say that the New Testament provides a primary source first hand testimony of the story of Jesus Christ. The evidence's above show's that. Do we call the invention of cell phones un-original because star trek had a communicator we may of mimicked? I don't think so, I am sorry a story reflects reality but what can I do about that? Wouldn't real life events reflecting myths and legends just make those real life events so much more amazing? I ask that people after reading this might revisit the evidences above for the historical reliability of the bible. Ok so the pro has provided other myth's and stories that are similar to events that had taken place in the first four books of the New Testament. Wait a minute here. The book of Isaiah also talked about events that took place in the life of Christ. How old is the book of isaiah? "Tradition ascribes the book to Isaiah himself, but for over a hundred years scholars have divided it into three parts: Proto-Isaiah (chapters 1-39), containing the words of the 8th century BCE prophet and 7th century BCE expansions; Deutero-Isaiah (chapters 40-55), a 6th century BCE work by an author who wrote under the Babylonian captivity; and Trito-Isaiah (chapters 56-66), composed probably by multiple authors in Jerusalem shortly after the exile."[1][3][4][5]:pp.558-562 (this is from wikipedia but it should suffice with it's sources) This makes the book of isaiah 800 years old Like the new testament though how can we trust the book of Isaiah to be accurate? Well luckily thanks to the Dead Sea scrolls which were dated to have been preserved for nearly 1,900 years one of the scrolls found was the scroll of Isaiah "Of the 166 words in Isaiah 53, there are only 17 letters in question. Ten of these letters are simply a matter of spelling, which does not affect the sense. Four more letters are minor stylistic changes, such as conjuctions. The remaining three letters comprise the word 'light,' which is added in verse 11, and does not affect the meaning greatly. Furthermore, this word is supported by the LXX and IQ Is. Thus, in one chapter of 166 words, there is only one word (three letters) in question after a thousand years of transmission- and this word does not significantly change the meaning of the passage." (6) Gleason Archer states that the Isaiah copies of the Qumran community "Proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95% of the text. The 5 percent of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of pen and variations in spelling." (7) So what's the point of this? Well chapter 53 of the book of Isaiah is likely the clearest prophecy about Jesus. Based on our sources from wikipedia that portion of the old testament was written around 600 B.C this is where I will ask a question to the pro how do the details of those story's compare to the details about Christ in Isaiah 53 and how old are they also compared to the book of Isaiah? It does not disqualify the New Testament if events taken place in the first four books have been written down before it, in fact it just proves that they were truely prophecied events. Which makes them miracles and shows proof of divine intervention. Also I would like to ask why couldn't the Christian God reveal bit's and pieces of what is to come to other parts of the world? I ask you to read Acts chapter 17. Where the Apostle Paul makes it clear as long as people were looking for God which I now call the Christian God they were fine and that (Acts 17:30) "In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent." There isn't anything biblically recorded in detail I imagine about how God could of reached other parts of the world but that's because the Old Testament is a recorded history of the Jew's I'm sorry they didn't travel the world over though they did get around pretty good I would say. Well I have extra space this time so I will just highlight my major questions. Again thanks for this opportunity to debate this topic. * how do the details of those story's compare to the details about Christ in Isaiah 53 and how old are they also compared to the book of Isaiah? *Also I would like to ask why couldn't the Christian God reveal bit's and pieces of what is to come to other parts of the world? *Do we call the invention of cell phones un-original because star trek had a communicator we may of mimicked? I don't think so, I am sorry a story reflects reality but what can I do about that? Wouldn't real life events reflecting myths and legends just make those real life events so much more amazing? Oh, one more thing you may want to look into the first geneaology in Genesis predicts the birth and death of Jesus Christ to you should look into that it's cool and Genesis is old. It's hard to make up geneaology and I doubt Moses knew about Christ specifically. You have to line of the hebrew meaning of the names though to see it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.May, Herbert G. and Bruce M. Metzger. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. 1977. 2.http://www.haaretz.com... 3. Williamson, Hugh Godfrey Maturin, "The Book Called Isaiah" (Oxford University Press, 1994: ISBN 978-0-19-826360-9)pp.1-3 4.Lemche, Niels Peter, The Old Testament between theology and history: a critical survey, Westminster John Knox Press, 2008, p.96 [1] 5.Kugel, James L. (2008). "chapter 30: The Book of Isaiah(s)". How To Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now. New York, NY: Free Press. pp. 538–568. ISBN 978-0-7432-3587-7. 6. Geisler, Norman L. and william E. Nix. A General Introduction to the Bible. Chicago: Moody Press, 1968 7.Archer, Gleason. A Survey of the Old Testament. Chicago: Moody Press, 1964.