I'll leave you to drool over "world renowned author and speaker" Richard Carrier's

oh, would that be the Richard Carrier that has a doctorate in ancient history from Columbia University!

i believe i read a book of His once, it was very good, in fact i recommend it to you

youkrst wrote:alleged?

anyway, i think i can help on this matter of the last words problem.

the writer of "Matthew" thought it might be nice to have Jesus' quote Psalm 22:1 as his famous last words thus making it clear to the readership just who was being crucified in this story.

the writer of "Luke" had a cooler hand and so He thought it might be nice for Jesus famous last words to be a quote of Psalm 31:5, same reason, different verse.

I think I provided a reasonable explanation showing there is no contradiction. Of course "It is finished" is not found in any psalm that I know of.

It reads very naturally to me in it's historic context and other sayings from the cross don't look mechanically borrowed at all and don't have O.T. precedents.

Jesus obviously knew the O.T. well and the two expressions are appropriate and understandable in the circumstances.

The other objections are against the supernatural, but of course the whole point is that he was both human and divine and effecting and finishing God's promised redemptive purpose.

Just to respond to D.B's megaphoned question. Mark got his account from Peter. I don'tknow why the traditional attestations of authorship are rejected but it's pointless just repeating the same arguments over and over on these things.

Do you go with Carrier and Doherty's thesis Youkrst? It is a bit nuts,lets be honest.

Flann wrote:Of course "It is finished" is not found in any psalm that I know of.

no, but i gave you a clue what might account for it.

In order to understand how three different versions of the last words of Jesus could have originated, it must be kept in mind that in ancient tragedy the death of the hero was not acted on the stage. It took place offstage and was narrated by a witness, after the dying yells of the hero had been heard from backstage. This explains why John, who based himself on the written text of the tragedy (which omitted most stage directions) does not mention any yells, whereas these are impor­tant to Mark and Luke who saw the tragedy performed. John, who had before him the text of the tragedy, quoted accurately what must have been the last words of Jesus according to Seneca. One can be reasonably certain that these last words were peractum est, because this was Seneca’s favorite way of marking the climax of a tragedy.

Flann wrote:I don't know why the traditional attestations of authorship are rejected

it's because assertions without evidence are easily dismissed by a rational mind with no psychological investment in taking mythology literally.

Flann wrote:Do you go with Carrier and Doherty's thesis Youkrst?

sure do, but it's not about Doherty's thesis, it's about you and me and how we make sense of the insensible.

Carrier and Doherty are two guys that might help if we read them.

Flann wrote:It is a bit nuts

no it isn't, but i'll tell you what is

noun
noun: delusion; plural noun: delusions

an idiosyncratic belief or impression maintained despite being contradicted by reality or rational argument...

Flann wrote:lets be honest.

_________________________________________________________

BTW: did you ever call in to "the atheist experience"?

So here you go youkrist, proof that Peter gave Mark his biographical data, from Chapter 14:

[32] And they came to a place which was named Gethsemane: and he saith to his disciples, Sit ye here, while I shall pray.
[33] And he taketh with him Peter and James and John, and began to be sore amazed, and to be very heavy;
[34] And saith unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death: tarry ye here, and watch.
[35] And he went forward a little, and fell on the ground, and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him.
[36] And he said, Abba, Father, all things are possible unto thee; take away this cup from me: nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.
[37] And he cometh, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, Simon, sleepest thou? couldest not thou watch one hour?
[38] Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation. The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak.
[39] And again he went away, and prayed, and spake the same words.
[40] And when he returned, he found them asleep again, (for their eyes were heavy,) neither wist they what to answer him.

I trust you see the problem with my assertion. Then there is this from Chapter 7:

[15] There is nothing from without a man, that entering into him can defile him: but the things which come out of him, those are they that defile the man.
[16] If any man have ears to hear, let him hear.
[17] And when he was entered into the house from the people, his disciples asked him concerning the parable.
[18] And he saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth into the man, it cannot defile him;
[19] Because it entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out into the draught, purging all meats?
[20] And he said, That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.

According to Paul, Cephas once ate non-kosher and then stood in opposition to eating non-kosher food and Paul had to rebuke him. Yet here is Jesus saying that the idea of kosher is bullshit. Peter gives this info to Mark as words spoken by Jesus but does not himself follow it. Was Peter's orignal eating of non-kosher food because of these words he supposedly relayed to Mark? No, in Acts, despite supposedly knowing these words of Jesus, Peter requires a vision from god telling it's okay to eat non-kosher. Even stranger, when Paul rebukes Peter, he does not mention the words of Jesus with which he could have shamed Peter.

Me bullshit detector is about to burn the battery out!

such a good paragraph i just have to quote it!

DB Roy wrote:According to Paul, Cephas once ate non-kosher and then stood in opposition to eating non-kosher food and Paul had to rebuke him. Yet here is Jesus saying that the idea of kosher is bullshit. Peter gives this info to Mark as words spoken by Jesus but does not himself follow it. Was Peter's orignal eating of non-kosher food because of these words he supposedly relayed to Mark? No, in Acts, despite supposedly knowing these words of Jesus, Peter requires a vision from god telling it's okay to eat non-kosher. Even stranger, when Paul rebukes Peter, he does not mention the words of Jesus with which he could have shamed Peter.

Me bullshit detector is about to burn the battery out!

youkrst wrote:Flann wrote:
I don't know why the traditional attestations of authorship are rejected




it's because assertions without evidence are easily dismissed by a rational mind with no psychological investment in taking mythology literally.

Hi Youkrst. The problem is that all the evidence we do have in relation to authorship ascribes them to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. And there is no evidence for any other attribution of authorship.

The author of John's gospel obliquely identifies himself as the apostle John. Now if he was not in fact the author and an eyewitness as claimed,then of course it's a complete fraud.

And yet these are recognized early by Christians as authentic. Would they not have known if in fact it was a fraudulent invention?
The problem with the mythicist view is that all first century Christians have to suffer from collective amnesia to accept this alleged fictional invention and revision as authentic.

You have some sort of theory that someone is using a Greek theatrical model to create a fictional story. But how then do the other gospels have essentially the same story which are not based on Greek theatrics?

It's these kinds claims that are made without any historical evidence supporting them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qL3CQzye3PE

youkrst wrote:DB Roy wrote:
According to Paul, Cephas once ate non-kosher and then stood in opposition to eating non-kosher food and Paul had to rebuke him. Yet here is Jesus saying that the idea of kosher is bullshit. Peter gives this info to Mark as words spoken by Jesus but does not himself follow it. Was Peter's orignal eating of non-kosher food because of these words he supposedly relayed to Mark? No, in Acts, despite supposedly knowing these words of Jesus, Peter requires a vision from god telling it's okay to eat non-kosher. Even stranger, when Paul rebukes Peter, he does not mention the words of Jesus with which he could have shamed Peter.

Me bullshit detector is about to burn the battery out!

D.B. doesn't want to talk to me anymore, but still wants to sling out his imagined killer arguments against the gospels and Christianity.

These are invariably based on his misunderstanding of these texts which I have repeatedly corrected. It's the same here.

He can believe what he likes,and I'm not going to keep on constantly correcting his misconception and misunderstanding of these texts.

Flann wrote:all the evidence we do have in relation to authorship ascribes them to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

perhaps you will have to present this "evidence".

because when i google it i get

At this point scholars can state with a greater or lesser sense of confidence that a book was written by:

1. the person who is named in the book,
2. someone else, who has been identified,
3. someone who has not been identified, but who has also written particular other texts, or
4. an unknown author.

Most of the New Testament books, other than Paul's writings, fall into the last category.

Figuring out the authorship of the Gospels stands to be nearly impossible. The Gospels as some finalized collection of the Story of Jesus aren't mentioned in Paul's Epistles. What was to become the Catholic Church does not mention the Gospels by name or content until roughly 150CE, when Justin Martyr mentions several unnamed writings on the life of Jesus, in his First Apology. The Gospels are not mentioned by name until 180 CE in Irenaeus of Lyons's book On Heresies.

Flann wrote:And there is no evidence for any other attribution of authorship.

then let us both freely admit that at this point neither of us knows who wrote them!

________________________________________________________________________________

now let me say i find this paragraph from DB Roy to be excellent!

DB Roy wrote:According to Paul, Cephas once ate non-kosher and then stood in opposition to eating non-kosher food and Paul had to rebuke him. Yet here is Jesus saying that the idea of kosher is bullshit. Peter gives this info to Mark as words spoken by Jesus but does not himself follow it. Was Peter's orignal eating of non-kosher food because of these words he supposedly relayed to Mark? No, in Acts, despite supposedly knowing these words of Jesus, Peter requires a vision from god telling it's okay to eat non-kosher. Even stranger, when Paul rebukes Peter, he does not mention the words of Jesus with which he could have shamed Peter.

i am familiar with all the scriptures DB is referencing in this paragraph and i find it a masterful exposition.

i also find it a little embarrassing for you that you fail to apprehend the import of DB's paragraph.

you see Flann i think your faith has done you a great disservice in stopping you from seeing things more as they are.

Flann i think you are unwise to base your life on an interpretation of a story that runs something like

God raised Jesus from the dead literally, and if I Flann don't believe that my faith is in vain!

i look at all sorts of possibilities and if i were to be proven wrong then i would say, no biggie, it was just one of many interesting ways of looking at an old story.

indeed i present very little as fact, most of what i present is just a way of looking at things.

you on the other hand have to be right, because if you are not your faith is in vain.

if i blaspheme the Holy Spirit it is comedy

if you blaspheme the Holy Spirit you have never forgiveness...

see the difference?

what you present as an article of faith must be factually correct or your faith is in vain...

i have so many metaphors in my basket that you could vaporise half of them and i'd still have enough to last several long lifetimes.

you have the truth of god

i have poetic images that edify, instruct, entertain and release energy in me.

you have Satan to contend with

i have an open universe to explore.

you have a silly faith based on a misreading of an ancient mythology

i have as much as is available to me of the sum total of all people of all times

you have the denotation

i have the connotation

does all this make me better than you? in no way

it just makes me freer.

i am free to ignore a stupid old windbag like Jehovah and the black hooded crows who forge manacles for the mind in the name of Jesus no less.

a Jesus whom, should they prove exists, would be a bad joke at best.

Flann i dont know why i talk to you, i think it is love.

it certainly is not to learn anything except how hard it is to let go of a mistake that has bonded with your sense of self.

perhaps you can prove me wrong...

tell me what would it be like if we were right and you had got it wrong, what would change for you if it turned out the Jesus story was mythology.

youkrst wrote:now let me say i find this paragraph from DB Roy to be excellent!



DB Roy wrote:
According to Paul, Cephas once ate non-kosher and then stood in opposition to eating non-kosher food and Paul had to rebuke him. Yet here is Jesus saying that the idea of kosher is bullshit. Peter gives this info to Mark as words spoken by Jesus but does not himself follow it. Was Peter's orignal eating of non-kosher food because of these words he supposedly relayed to Mark? No, in Acts, despite supposedly knowing these words of Jesus, Peter requires a vision from god telling it's okay to eat non-kosher. Even stranger, when Paul rebukes Peter, he does not mention the words of Jesus with which he could have shamed Peter.




i am familiar with all the scriptures DB is referencing in this paragraph and i find it a masterful exposition.

i also find it a little embarrassing for you that you fail to apprehend the import of DB's paragraph.

you see Flann i think your faith has done you a great disservice in stopping you from seeing things more as they are.

There are a number of issues raised here Youkrst,which are not easily answered in a few lines. Paul gives a great deal of time and space to the subject of the relationship of Christians to the law in Romans and Galatians.

Reams have been written on this, and then the subject of the inspiration of scripture is another which requires considerable study.
To begin with inspiration, it is central to the undoubtedly super-naturalist view of the many N.T. authors that the holy Spirit is actively involved,and nowhere more so than in the early church as described in Acts.

It does not originate from human will as Peter says, but nonetheless they are human agents used by God with different personalities and vocabularies.


So it can include human investigation as Luke describes in his gospel,with the idea of divine superintendence. Luke's method is important in grounding the events in eyewitness testimony,and he also says that others had already set in order a narrative of these events, even before he did.
At the same time God is not dependent on human testimony. When the prophet Isaiah looks into the future in his prophetic messianic passages, he's not required to take a time machine into the future to observe that future history enacted.

So questions of how Peter or John would know certain things such as about conversations they may not have directly heard, overlook the clear supernatural nature of Christianity, and the emphasis on the reality of the activity of the holy Spirit.

It's important that most often they are direct witnesses as John says at times in his gospel,but the holy Spirit is not constrained by human limitations to total access to direct knowledge.

Now of course a naturalist can deny the existence of the spirit of God, but that's not the view of any of these biblical authors.
The second question of the relationship of Christians to the Mosaic law and how this evolved in the early church is even more complex, so I'll attempt to address that in another separate post.