From: kiledal@lisp.cs.psu.edu (Erik Kiledal)
Subject: Re: The Historical Jesus 
Organization: Penn State Computer Science
Date: Fri, 10 Apr 1992 06:42:27 GMT

In the posting by Roger Squires with the subject "The Historical Jesus", 
Squires writes about the New Testament. After having read what he has
to say, I am left with very much the same feelings I have when I have
read Creationist literature: "Does this person know what he is talking 
about?", "Has the person bothered to study the primary literature, or
just studied criticism that fits his belief system?".

[deletions]

Roger:
>Ok.  First let me say that I have been perusing five or six different
>texts on the NT, and all of them agree with the above paragraphs.
>Let me itemize what I think are the important points this author makes:
>        1) The Gospels are not eyewitness accounts.

Roger, pick up your Bible (I assume you have one?), look up the Gospel
according to John, chapter 21, verse 24. This is near the very the end 
of the book: "This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who 
wrote them down. We know that his testimony is true." (NIV). John the
apostle, an eyewitness, wrote this gospel. From the commentary of the
NIV Study Bible, Zondervan Bible Publishers, 1985, p. 1591: "The author
[of the Gospel according to John] is the apostle John, "the disciple
whom Jesus loved" (13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7,20,24). He was prominent
in the early church but is not mentioned by name in this Gospel -- which
would be natural if he wrote it, but hard to explain otherwise...Early
writers such as Irenaues and Tertullian say that John wrote this Gospel,
and all other evidence agrees (see Introduction to 1 John: Author)".

From Introduction to 1 John: Author, p. 1905: "The author is John son of
Zebedee (cf. Mk 1:19-20) -- the apostle and the author of the Gospel
of John and Revelation [John, the eywitness and apostle thus wrote
5 books of the NT]...The earliest identification of him comes from the 
church fathers: Irenaues (c. A.D. 140-203), Clement of Alexandria 
(c. 155-215), Tertullian (c. 150-222) and Origen (c. 185-253) all 
designated the writer as the apostle John. As far as we know, no one
else was suggested by the early church".

1 John 1:3 "We proclaim to you what we _have seen and heard_..."
(underlining mine).

It does not end here, the letters of Peter were written by the
apostle (an eyewitness) Peter. He identifies himself in the very
beginning of 1 Peter "Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ...".

The letter of James was most likely written by the brother of Jesus, how 
much closer can you get?

The list goes on, these are just some examples. The authors of large
parts of the NT were eyewitnesses.

I am not going to get into much more the rest of what you have written now, 
if you would like, we could take this discussion to an appropriate 
newsgroup and discuss this in greater detail. I simply wanted to point out 
some obvious errors. 

Roger:
>You say that the OT is devoted to setting the stage for the coming of
>Christ, and that when he finally did appear, there was evidence that
>he was who he said he was, because he fulfilled a lot of prophecies.
>I could read this statement of yours in two ways:

[useless interpretation 1) deleted]

>        2) Taking all the miracles as related in the NT literally and
>objectively true, we match them up against the OT prophecies.  Well, I
>am not an OT scholar, and don't have a list of these prophecies at hand;
>perhaps YOU can provide such a list that I could research.  Specifically,
>I would like to know how specific these prophecies are - are they general
>statements or do they refer to specific events in the NT.
 
First of all, the prophecies in the OT are not generally about miracles. 
About the time just before Jesus died (the same day?), more than 30 
prophecies about him were fulfilled. These are very specific, and concern 
things that were far beyond his control. One example (I will try to give you
as many as I can later):

Zechariah 12:10 "...They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and
they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child" (This is the word
of the LORD)

More than 500 years later John, the eyewitness apostle, writes:

John 19:34 "Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus' side with a spear,
bringing a sudden flow of blood and water". The "instead" refers to
instead of breaking Jesus' legs (to hasten death) which was normally
done (this fulfills another prophecy that his (the Passover Lamb's) bones 
will not be broken (Exodus 12:46; Num. 9:12; Psalm 34:20).

Roger: 
>I would be willing to grant you that there was an actual person named
>Jesus who was crucified in Palestine...

Roger, what are you going to do about the fact that Jesus died for you?

Erik Kiledal				| kiledal@cs.psu.edu
The Norwegian Institute of Technology   | "Nietzsche is dead" 
Computer Science			| - God
 
>Roger Squires
>rsquires@cyclops.eece.unm.edu



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