From: rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: I'm God.
Date: 1 Oct 92 17:04:09 GMT
Organization: CERL-EE, Georgia Institue of Technology

In article <1992Sep30.193215.16465@linus.mitre.org> szobell@mitre.org (Steve Zobell) writes:
|In article <69360@hydra.gatech.EDU> rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts) writes:
|>In article <1992Sep29.143239.23634@linus.mitre.org> zobell@lute.mitre.org (Steve Zobell) writes:
|>|In article <69250@hydra.gatech.EDU> rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts) writes:
|>|>In article <1992Sep28.192927.23673@linus.mitre.org> zobell@lute.mitre.org (Steve Zobell) writes:
|>|>|
|>|>|In article <69165@hydra.gatech.EDU> rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts) writes:
|>|>|>Summary of Dr. D. James Kennedy's book "Why I Believe"
|
|[On cases where the Bible and Archeology disagree]
|
|>|OK, here is what I remember from reading "The Bible as History" by
|>|Verner Keller:
|>
|>I ask as a whole, where did Keller get his reasons for saying he
|>has the right view?
|
|You obviously haven't read his book! ;) Read it.  He provides his

No, I haven't read the book.  

|references if you want to check them out.  By the way, Keller is not

If you want to give some, I'll look at them, but give some where the
Bible and other books agree and disagree.

|trying to disprove the Bible, he is only writing about how the Bible
|compares to other history and Archeological findings.  He's perfectly
|willing to show cases where there is agreement!

Good.  

|>| - The Bible states that Pharoh Neco went against the King of 
|>|   Assyria in II Kings 23:29. A fragment from Mesopotamia 
|>|   translated in 1929 shows Neco went to help the King of Assyria. 
|>|   NOTE: The NIV has correctly changed this passage.
|>|   Could someone with an NIV Study Bible look this up. I'm
|>|   interested if they used anything outside of Biblical sources
|>|   to help with this passage.
|>
|>I have no problem with correcting translation errors, here is 
|>an obvious case where it needed to be done.  The KJV is not 
|>perfect.  However, this error is not detrimental to the Bible as a whole.
|
|You will accept non-Biblical sources as corrections to the Bible?

No.  Is the reason that the NIV 'changed' becuase something contradicted
the OT Hebrew or because something gave a better understanding of
the Hebrew or because older autographs were found?

|Why not change the flood story also.  After all, Noah could not have
|known how much of the world was flooded!

Noah, by experience probably didn't know, but that doesn't exclude 
revelation knowledge, much like that of the Creation, where NO MAN
was around early on and yet we have it documented.

|[About historical "proof" of Jesus:]
|
|>|>Many of these are support for the historical figure and that is
|>|>a fair amount of the argument - agian with this historical proof,
|>|>what happened to Jesus' body? It seems to have disappeared like
|>|>the Bible says.
|>|
|>|Good joke! Trying to pass the lack of a body as evidence of Jesus.
|>|Look, here's a tomb with no one is in it, must have been Jesus' tomb!
|>
|>He was a historical figure and if his body was around, don't you think
|>the early church leaders would have made a shrine out of it, but
|>God planned to avoid such a problem - Jesus rose from the dead and
|>ascended into heaven - he is not on earth today, but he is returning.
|
|I think it would have been quite an embarrassment for them to have
|Christ's body.  I doubt they would want to advertise it!  Didn't Tom

It would be an embarrassment, but it would have been advantageous for
the Jewish leaders to have it, correct?

|Robins write a book about this?  Sorry, lack of a body is not proof
|for your argument of a historical Jesus.

I didn't offer it as a proof.  I said if the body was around the 
early disciples would/could have made a shrine out of it.  The Bible tells us
that they didn't know Jesus was going to rise from the dead, until
after he did and after he explained it all from the Law, Prophets and Psalms.
Why would they have taken the body?  They thought they knew he was 
dead for good and their hope was gone.  

|[About the letters of Pilate:]
|
|>|>Could you cite some real historians?
|>|
|>|OK, but I don't think you will be happy about opening up this one! :)
|>|They only show that early Christians were more than willing to make
|>|up stories about Christ and pass them off as history.
|>
|>Thanks for the cites - they by giving some level of support to the 
|>actions of the leaders show that other people knew of the leader's 
|>actions.  
|
|I'm sorry, I don't understand what your are saying!  Who is the
|"leader" you're talking about?  

The leaders were the Jewish leaders - sorry for the ambiguity.

|Are you saying that you are actually willing to accept this
|bad-Christian-propaganda-disguised-as-history?  I would really advise

Only as far as they give some evidence that Jesus existed and did
seemingly the same thing as the Bible says.

|against it!  You obviously haven't read them! ;)  I'm sure any

No, I haven't read them, but I knew their accounts were not as glorious.

|knowledgeable Christian scholar (including the Catholic Church but
|apparently excluding Dr. D. James Kennedy) will distance themselves as
|far as possible from this crap!

The information is enough to substantiate the major events the Bible
records about Jesus' life.

|>Again, if these cites had been exactly and as gloriously 
|>as stated as in the Bible, would you not have said they were Christian 
|>writings and so discounted them for being biased?
|
|They tended to sound exactly like the Bible!  Do you imagine that a
|letter from Pilate in a seventh century manuscript is more or less
|plausible because it sounds exactly like the Bible?

Why would they (Roman?) have something like this???  Much less the
reference I had, claimed that the information came from Pilate's
own archives.

|>|I'm reading from "The Lost Books of the Bible" compiled by Dr. Frank
|>|Crane.
|>| [citations deleted]

|-- Steve

Sincerely,
Richard Pitts

-- 
rpitts@cerl.gatech.edu       |    
Atlanta, GA                --|-- 
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