From: rpitts@emperor.gatech.edu (Richard Pitts)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: Re: I'm God.
Date: 29 Sep 92 18:45:57 GMT
Organization: CERL-EE, Georgia Institue of Technology

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:
|>My, Steve disproved my whole post. :-)
|Oh, you're too kind! ;)

I like this response better.

|>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"
|>|>
|>|>[1]Why I Believe the Bible:
|>
|>|Jesus later predicted the (re)destruction of Jerusalem in Matthew. But
|>|Matthew is based on the earlier Mark which makes no mention of this
|>|prophecy. Scholars place the writing of Matthew after 70AD. Again,
|>|it's easy to be a prophet after the fact.
|>
|>It is easy to be a critic anytime.
|>
|>Again, being written after the fact does not disqualify the writing.
|>Whether the scholars can date the writing prior to AD 70 or not still
|>does not make the events that occurred 30 years prior any less true.
|
|The question is why dosen't Mark (possibly written before the destruction
|of Jerusalem) have this prophecy while Matthew (written after the
|destruction and clearly based on Mark or an earlier version of Mark)
|does? Just wondering! :)

Mark 13 is the parallel account of the event.  It may not be in as much
detail, but it is very close.  The fall of Jerusalem and many things to
come are in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  

|>|>[2] The Stones Cry Out
|>|>And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if 
|>|>these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately 
|>|>cry out. Luke 19:40.
|>|>
|>|>[Examples of Biblical critics proven wrong by Archaeology]
|>|
|>|Disproving a detractor does not mean you've provided any proof
|>|for your case.
|>
|>Correct, but it adds weight to the argument. How would you propose
|>to prove it? If one can show a steady string of independently
|>supported points, then you have a good case - you know you can
|>have a mathematically `continuous' function that has a finite set
|>of discontinuities.
|
|I disagree. This is neither a proof of your claim nor a valid argument
|for it. You wouldn't want me, in my debate with you, to list 1000
|times where I've proved someone else wrong, would you? Unless you are
|making the same arguments that have been proved wrong before, this
|would be irrelevant!

Giving many point that were proven false or true is a step in 
establishing the continuity of something - that is establishing 
whether it is true or not.  That is what a lawyer does in court.
When you can reproduce the events, you look at the evidence.

|>It was once said that for a city seemingly as large as Jericho that no
|>group or person could walk around it seven times in one day, but the
|>archeaologist have found that Jericho was a much smaller city and so
|>could be circumferenced seven times in one day.
|
|I never made this argument!

It was presented to show that modern day knowlegde is still growing
and in multiple cases it has so grown and then confirmed the Bible's
view, whereas before the know information 'contradicted' it.

|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?

| - The problems with a global flood I just mentioned.
|
| - Archeologists are almost certain that camels were not domesticated
|   before Israel came to the promised land. The Bible states
|   Abraham had camels (Gen 24:10). The first plausible use of
|   camels is the Midianite invasion (Jud 6:5).
|
| - The city of Ai destroyed by Joshua (Josh 8:3) appears to have
|   long been a ruin at the time of the destruction of the other
|   Caananite cities (Jerico, etc.).
|
| - The destruction of several cities attributed to Joshua appears
|   to have taken longer than the lifetime attributed to Joshua
|   in the Bible.
|
| - The Bible appears to mention Hittites too early and in the
|   wrong locations.
|
| - 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.

|>|illustrate an important truth. There are "historians" like Lawson who
|>|are not above distorting history in order to prove their own beliefs.
|>|This is precisely where most of the "evidence" for the historical Jesus
|>|comes from.
|>
|>Most? What about the rest of it?
|
|The rest of it is what you see in the Bible and other works rejected by
|the church fathers. But I doubt that you would want to claim many of
|these rejected works are genuine since they either contradict the
|others or they don't fit Christian's views of Christ.

Understood.

|>|>One reason we know this is that the Bible 
|>|>tells us, but more than that we have support from the 
|>|>following secular historians and writers of antiquity: 
|>|>Tacitus, the Roman historian; Suetonius; Pliny the younger; 
|>|>Epictetus; Lucian; Aristides; Galenus; Lampridius; 
|>|>DioCassius; Hinnerius; Libanius; Ammianus; Marcellinus; 
|>|>Eunapius; Zosimus. 
|>|
|>|I wouldn't accept any statement from J. GilCHRIST Lawson without
|>|checking first! His claim of "support" for the Jesus story may only be
|>|confirmation of historical figures mentioned in the gospels (such as
|>|Herod or Augustus Caesar!).
|>
|>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.

|>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.  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?


|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                --|-- 
                        -|-  |  -|-
                         |   |   |
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc