5 ms·

1. Primary sources dated as close as 22-25 years and as late as 70 years after the event of Jesus' death and resurrection. 22-25 years is still a very long tim

1. Primary sources dated as close as 22-25 years and as late as 70 years after the event of Jesus' death and resurrection. 22-25 years is still a very long time before any written records emerge. And it's eveb longer before John emerges, the real gunslinger of the gospels when it comes to miracles and religion. The gospels we have are not primary sources anyway - their authorship is very dubious. 2. Thousands of transcribed copies in several ancient languages, from different locations and periods. That doesn't make it historically accurate, it just means lots of people read the stories. 3. Many manuscript fragments with early dates, e.g. the earliest, the John fragment (Papyrus P52) at the John Rylands Library in Manchester in England, dates from as early as 125 AD. As far as I remember this contains a non-interesting 2 or 3 line passage from John. It does support the claim though that some portion of John was written before 100 years had passed after Jesus' death. 4. Multiple independent accounts of eye witness testimony including hostile sources. Barely. Compared to many other historical figures Jesus gets a shockingly low hit rate from historians. The evidence points to him probably existing, but little more than that when it comes to his deeds. Who outside the gospels (gnostic and otherwise) talks about him? I think it's literally just a couple of passages from later historians. NO contemporary sources mention Jesus at ALL, unless you think Mark/Matthew/John were written by their namesakes. 5. Biographical accounts written as history. Only Luke was written as a history and that's because he was commissioned to. He did not meet Jesus. He is a third-hand source at best. 6. The evidence and weight of the incidental accounts, the New Testament letters, which contain numerous historical details, facts, references and mutual understanding, taken for granted and mentioned in passing. I agree Paul was a real person who witnessed real events and wrote about them. Shame he appeared to be slightly insane, made dozens of unverifiable claims regarding Jesus and never actually met the man. 7. The disciples are frequently portrayed in a negative light in the gospels. By Paul? Probably jealous. By the gospel writers? They had an axe to grind. 8. The testimony of women is relied on at various key points in the gospels, something which a 1st century fraud would not likely have included. This is new to me, source? 9. Integrity of the eye witnesses under intense pressure and scrutiny and brutal persecution. Most of the original apostles died horrific deaths, refusing to recant what they saw and heard (1 John 1). In contrast, the Watergate scandal lasted all of a few days before the group fell apart. This no more verifies the truth of the gospel than it verifies the truth of the Qu'ran, the Talmud, or the mythical lost writings of the cult of pythagoras. 10. Many accurate geographical and political references, often of a very technical nature (e.g. various political offices and ranks, shipping navigation, climates, architecture). They did get this right, yes. It was definitely written in the first few centuries BC. > In summary, Christianity is an historical claim about an historical person, Jesus of Nazareth. Anyone is free to investigate these claims for themselves, according to the historical method. The bible can be used as a historical source for historical facts. It can't be used as historical evidence for the truth of Christianity, it just doesn't hold up when you look at the claims in detail, look at the authorship, the motivations of the authors or the other contemporary sources. But christianity doesn't need to be verified by historical documents anyway - isn't that the point? Faith and whatnot.

jorangreef 11y ago
I won't go into any detail to reply to you further, other than that your points are simply inaccurate. I think your conclusion sums it up: "But christianity doesn't need to be verified by historical documents anyway - isn't that the point? Faith and whatnot." Since you understand Paul to be "slightly insane", let him answer your question: "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead." - 1 Corinthians 15:14-15
- louhike 11y ago
  "I won't go into any detail to reply to you further, other than that your points are simply inaccurate." You cannot be taken seriously by refutting his arguments just saying those are innacurates without giving a single explanation other than pointing that he is biased because he does not believe in Jesus (even though you are obviously biased too).
  - dkhenry 11y ago
    From his willingness to post on an internet forum about his faith and about the historical record of the Bible, I imagine this isn't his first time having such an argument, and anyone who has presented and defended their faith in _any_ forum, but especially on the internet, knows that the argument generally is a waste of time. We can re-hash out the centuries of debate about Jesus here on this thread, but do you think it would change anyone's mind ?
    - cholantesh 11y ago
      In my experience, it can and has, but a few anecdotes aren't really that meaningful, I guess.
      - PakG1 11y ago
        The issue is that this is HN. I'm an avid Christian myself, and can surmise that jorangreef probably really knows his stuff. But HN probably isn't the place for this kind of thing. On the Internet, I've met very few atheists or skeptics who really are able to play equally on the same playing field. Oh, if we debate physics and whatnot, sure, they often do great. But that's a completely different playing field. Debating historicity of scripture is very different from debating origin of the universe, just like how ice hockey is completely different from beach volleyball. And besides, if you know your Hebrew, you'll also know that a lot of atheists and skeptics likely misinterpret scripture when it comes to origin of the universe, so that debate is actually a moot point; but that's OK, so do many Christians who don't know Hebrew. It's like two people who are arguing about how to grill a steak when what they're actually doing is boiling eggs. But they're convinced they're grilling steak. It makes absolutely no sense. Anyway. My point is that although having this debate may have an impact on people (hey, can't disagree with you on the possibility), I imagine that if we went all-out to have a debate on faith-related topics, it would not be appreciated by the HN community. The HN community is not here to debate faith. As much as I'd like that, being an avid Christian myself, I have to respect that the community is here to discuss cool technology, software, trends, business, and the odd quirky, geeky factoid/story. This falls under quirky and geeky. But if it turns into an all-out debate about faith, I imagine it will no longer be seen as quirky and geeky cool. It will be seen as an annoyance. I can't speak for jorangreef, but I imagine his feeling is similar to what I felt when I saw some comments about death. Here's a thread in which I discussed death, and we actually had a really good back-and-forth where we both tried to be really open-minded: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10136438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10136438 Here's another thread where I wanted to participate, but I didn't, because right away the tone of the poster told me that the discussion would not be productive. His tone was hyperbolic, overly emotional, and absolute: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10371259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10371259 When you get the feeling from a poster's tone that he's not going to be open-minded about stuff, why stir the pot? It's not productive. If anything, it starts to get trollish. And trolls aren't appreciated on HN.

jorangreef 11y ago

I won't go into any detail to reply to you further, other than that your points are simply inaccurate. I think your conclusion sums it up: "But christianity doesn't need to be verified by historical documents anyway - isn't that the point? Faith and whatnot." Since you understand Paul to be "slightly insane", let him answer your question: "And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead." - 1 Corinthians 15:14-15

louhike 11y ago
"I won't go into any detail to reply to you further, other than that your points are simply inaccurate." You cannot be taken seriously by refutting his arguments just saying those are innacurates without giving a single explanation other than pointing that he is biased because he does not believe in Jesus (even though you are obviously biased too).
- dkhenry 11y ago
  From his willingness to post on an internet forum about his faith and about the historical record of the Bible, I imagine this isn't his first time having such an argument, and anyone who has presented and defended their faith in _any_ forum, but especially on the internet, knows that the argument generally is a waste of time. We can re-hash out the centuries of debate about Jesus here on this thread, but do you think it would change anyone's mind ?
  - cholantesh 11y ago
    In my experience, it can and has, but a few anecdotes aren't really that meaningful, I guess.
    - PakG1 11y ago
      The issue is that this is HN. I'm an avid Christian myself, and can surmise that jorangreef probably really knows his stuff. But HN probably isn't the place for this kind of thing. On the Internet, I've met very few atheists or skeptics who really are able to play equally on the same playing field. Oh, if we debate physics and whatnot, sure, they often do great. But that's a completely different playing field. Debating historicity of scripture is very different from debating origin of the universe, just like how ice hockey is completely different from beach volleyball. And besides, if you know your Hebrew, you'll also know that a lot of atheists and skeptics likely misinterpret scripture when it comes to origin of the universe, so that debate is actually a moot point; but that's OK, so do many Christians who don't know Hebrew. It's like two people who are arguing about how to grill a steak when what they're actually doing is boiling eggs. But they're convinced they're grilling steak. It makes absolutely no sense. Anyway. My point is that although having this debate may have an impact on people (hey, can't disagree with you on the possibility), I imagine that if we went all-out to have a debate on faith-related topics, it would not be appreciated by the HN community. The HN community is not here to debate faith. As much as I'd like that, being an avid Christian myself, I have to respect that the community is here to discuss cool technology, software, trends, business, and the odd quirky, geeky factoid/story. This falls under quirky and geeky. But if it turns into an all-out debate about faith, I imagine it will no longer be seen as quirky and geeky cool. It will be seen as an annoyance. I can't speak for jorangreef, but I imagine his feeling is similar to what I felt when I saw some comments about death. Here's a thread in which I discussed death, and we actually had a really good back-and-forth where we both tried to be really open-minded: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10136438 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10136438 Here's another thread where I wanted to participate, but I didn't, because right away the tone of the poster told me that the discussion would not be productive. His tone was hyperbolic, overly emotional, and absolute: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10371259 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10371259 When you get the feeling from a poster's tone that he's not going to be open-minded about stuff, why stir the pot? It's not productive. If anything, it starts to get trollish. And trolls aren't appreciated on HN.