“For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
What is it that draws someone to the Gospel? A whole number of different things. Some are pretty good reasons. Others aren’t quite so good or reasonable, but thankfully the destination is ultimately more important than the path as long as you do indeed wind up in the right place. One of the most powerful draws to the Gospel historically has been the promise of God’s love as expressed through the substitutionarily sacrificial death of His Son, Jesus. This assurance that God values your life even more highly than His own is a pretty potent one indeed. As the apostle Peter put there, Jesus was willing to lay down His life in order to make it possible for you to get to God. The latest entry in what has become one of the most Gospel-soaked film franchises in recent memory offered up a picture of what this is like in one of the most powerful recruitment scenes I think I’ve ever seen. Let’s talk for just a few minutes today about the most recent adventure for super spy Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning.
Ethan Hunt is back! Okay, he’s been back for a while, but I just don’t have time to watch movies like I used to. But he’s back! And this time he’s on a brand-new adventure, but one that builds nicely on the larger story of the franchise dating back really to the fourth film in the franchise which is when the story finally hit its stride. This time, Hunt is on the…hunt…for a rogue AI platform which is given the very ominous name, the Entity. The Entity is an AI platform that was developed by the United States as a cyber weapon.
Somehow the platform gained sentience, downloaded it’s source code into a Russian AI system whose physical location was aboard a stealth submarine, and tricked the crew into attacking a phantom target which resulted in their being struck by their own torpedo and destroyed. In the explosion, the sub and its crew were destroyed, but the special container housing the source code for the entity remained intact. This took it out of the hands of the US government, but now it is seeking to be found by a former IMF agent, Gabriel, who has gone bad for some purpose that is not yet clear. Now all the world’s governments and mercenaries looking to score a really, really big payday are trying to figure out how to get their hands on it so they can control it. With the Entity’s help…somehow…from the floor of the Arctic Ocean…Gabriel manages to stay a step ahead of everyone trying to get their hands on the key that will unlock its location. Everyone, that is, except Ethan Hunt. It was a film written for the modern day with our growing reliance on but lingering leeriness of artificial intelligence as it continues to grow more and more sophisticated.
The Entity functions kind of a like a super weapon, but not one that is necessarily concerned with bombs and bullets. Through a manipulation of digital signals like social media and intelligence leaks since it apparently has access to all the information on the internet…all of it…it is able to turn public opinion on a dime. Anyone can become a hero or a villain if it decides they should be so. This first part of what will be a two-part story (with part 2 scheduled to be released next summer), is all about the Entity’s is trying to get physical control of itself into the hands of Gabriel, again for reasons that are currently unknown. Because it recognizes that Hunt with his relentless commitment to antiquated concepts like liberty and justice for all, and his silly devotion to the value of human life will conclude that destroying it is better than giving control of it to any individual or government, it does everything it can to stop and destroy him.
Hunt is accompanied by his usual team, Luther and Benji. His most recent love interest and occasional member of the team, Ilsa, plays a role too, but she is tragically killed in a fight with Gabriel (yes, that is a spoiler, but in the context of the film, you really could see it coming from a mile away). She is quickly replaced as a team member, but not love interest, by Grace, a thief who was hired by Alanna, the arms dealer from Mission Impossible: Fallout, to get her hands on the key so that she can sell it to the highest bidder. Grace is in way over her head with her assignment, something she gradually realizes as the stakes become higher and higher. But when Hunt invites her to be a part of the solution to the problem she has helped to create, she joins up and winds up riding off into the sunset (so to speak) to play what will likely be a significant role in part two next summer.
From a filmmaking standpoint, this may have been the best Mission Impossible movie yet. After Fallout, that was a pretty high bar to clear, but Tom Cruise and crew leap over it with room to spare. The movie brings all the normal fare we have come to expect from the franchise: gripping plot, great characters, more twists and turns than you can almost keep up with, disguises aplenty, and a whole parade of heart-thumping action sequences. The cinematography was outstanding, and the all-practical effects locations around the world were stunning. And at 61, Cruise can still absolutely do all the things he could do when the first film in the franchise released in 1996 and he was just 34. He looks a bit older than he did then, but the character has grown with the franchise and so that really is just another point in its favor. All in all, you should most definitely find a way to see this movie if you haven’t.
The thing that most captured my attention, though was the scene in which Hunt officially recruits Grace to join his IMF team. The scene unfolds after Isla’s emotional death. The team has regrouped back in their headquarters and Grace is struggling with the role she played in Ilsa’s death and the obvious grief the team is experiencing over the loss. Luther, who has become the wise grandfather-type figure for the group, assures her that it wasn’t her fault and that Ilsa sacrificed herself so that Grace could live. Grace then asks if there’s anything she can do to help. This is where things get really interesting.
Luther reveals their knowledge of the broader events and of just how much danger Grace is in now that all the relevant players in the plot know who she is and, worse, the Entity does too. They tell her she has three options: prison, death, or “the choice.” The choice is to join their team “and be a ghost.” They don’t sugarcoat the dangers involved in making the choice nor the costs that will be involved. It will be a total life commitment on her part.
When Grace struggles with the idea of making the choice, she asks a pretty important question. When will I get my life back? The dialogue from there is powerful.
Luther: What life? I mean it, Grace. What life? I lived that life. We all did.
Benji: Nobody’s making us do this, Grace. We’re here because we want to be.
Grace: I tell you what, I’ll give you a one-off. I’ll help you find the key and your friends wipe my slate clean. New name, little bit of walking-around money…
Luther: You’ll be dead. Without a team, your life won’t be measured in years or even months.
Benji: It’ll be measured in hours.
Grace: But if I stay, I’ll be safe. You’ll protect me, is that it?
Luther: Yes.
Hunt: No. I can’t promise you that. None of us can. But I swear…your life will always matter more to me than my own.
Grace: You don’t even know me.
Hunt: What difference does that make?
She was in a position because of the choices she had made that her life was not on a track to end well. In fact, the rest of them understood perfectly well that her end without their help was going to be short and merciless. At best she would be killed quickly by a bullet. At worst…well…it would be worse. Their offer to her was to join them in their efforts to stand against the evil that was threatening the whole world. Making this choice meant giving up everything about her and committing herself to an entirely new path forward. She would still be herself, but at the same time her break from her past was going to have to be complete. And if she joined them, they weren’t going to guarantee that the dangers she was facing would go away. In fact, they might get even more dangerous as picking sides makes you a target. What they could guarantee her, though, was that they would hold up her life as more valuable than their own and act likewise. This commitment on their part didn’t have anything to do with who she was or what was in her past. It had everything to do with the fact that they valued all life, and that this devotion went double for the lives they considered their primary responsibility.
The Gospel echoes in this scene were just too loud to ignore for me. This is the offer God makes to each one of us in Christ. It is the offer that is extended through the church to those who are considering whether or not to join. Your life apart from Christ is not on track for a good end. With Him, the dangers of the world won’t go away, but you have the commitment that your life will always matter more to Him than His own. He’s already demonstrated this to be the case on the cross. He’s already put His money where His mouth is and invites us to follow Him in light of that. In the church, when it is working like it was designed, you have a group of people who are more committed to your life than to their own. They can do this freely and without fear because of their trust in Jesus’ own commitment to them.
What the Gospel offers us, though, is even better than this. All Hunt could offer Grace was the hope that he was going to have her back no matter what; that he would lay down his life for her if such a thing was in his power. Once his life was forfeit, though, she was back to on her own. In the Gospel, we have the hope that even should our lives end in this world before Christ returns to claim what is His, there is another life waiting on us that will last forever, and will be completely free from all the things that make this one hard. All the sacrifices we make in this one with that one in mind will only serve to make that one all the sweeter. Being a part of the church, being a part of the kingdom of God, really does matter. It really is worth it.
Hollywood doesn’t often give us very good or compelling pictures of the Gospel. In fact, it usually gets the Gospel devastatingly wrong. The Mission Impossible franchise, though, keeps hitting the nail just nearly on the head. I’m excited for the next entry to see how the adventure continues.
The Nexus 
Fallout wasn’t just my favorite MI but favorite action movie period. Haven’t seen Dead Reckoning yet but I’m looking forward to it.
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It’s even better.
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Out of interest, so I can read a different pov, which scholars do you turn to / recommend when you are confronted with the evidence the Petrine corpus is forged?
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Well, I don’t actually think there’s any real evidence Peter’s letters are forged, but in order to best respond to questions about it, Blomberg’s work on the historical reliability of the New Testament is going to be the first place I’ll turn.
His book, The Historical Reliability of the New Testament is probably the best one on the question of reliability and authorship out there. There aren’t many scholars who know the subject as well as he does in the world. He’d be too humble to admit that, but it’s true all the same. If you want to steel man the Christian position in order to make sure you’re engaging with and countering the very best arguments and not worst ones, I’d start there. Honestly, if you’re interested, and if I can order something from Amazon that can be shipped to you (I’ve never actually tried to order something from them that had an international-to-me destination), I’d buy you a copy. The church is gracious to give me a budget line for things like that.
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Amazon don’t ship here but thanks for the offer. I might scratch around.
Why don’t you accept the consensus or someone such as Ehrman?
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Bummer. Well, if you are interested, I’d ship you my copy. I can get another one.
In short, because I think they’re wrong. Having examined the issue, I think their evidence is weak and the case for reliability is much stronger.
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It’s okay, I found an online commentary and am reading as I type.
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Is it a worthwhile source? Who’s the author?
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https://www.evidenceunseen.com/bible-difficulties-2/nt-difficulties/1-2-timothy-titus-philemon-hebrews-james-1-2-peter/introduction-to-1-2-peter/#_Toc134016450
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That looks about right to me in terms of the arguments in favor of Petrine authorship. Granting all of the “of course I would” caveats, that strikes me as a pretty serious and compelling case including numerous references to ancient sources. How do you react to these arguments? Convincing at all, or not particularly persuasive?
By the way, does that site have an introduction on the Gospels like that? I was actually reading that in my ESV Study Bible (which is pretty much the best there is in terms of the thoroughness of its notes and the supplementary material on understanding Christianity well in the back). The intros there note that while, yes, there are no direct authorial attestations in the Gospels themselves, early church witnesses report Matthew and John at least are the authors of those books including one whose teacher that he cites as his authority on the question knew John personally which lends quite a lot of credibility to his argument. I’d be curious if that site says something similar.
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I should say that I just skimmed the intro. I didn’t do any reading in the commentary itself.
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I did some poking around on that website. From my perspective, there’s a LOT of good stuff there, to which I would feel very comfortable giving my stamp of approval in terms of properly representing my perspective. I haven’t looked at everything as there’s a lot of stuff there generally, so don’t that take as a blanket endorsement of everything, but I’ve skipped around a bit and haven’t found anything I don’t like yet. Since we’ve talked about it so many times, I found their article on the Flood interesting. They basically conclude that while they generally accept a global flood (and they give reasons for that), it could have also been just a local one, and that doesn’t take away from the reality of the story at all. Check that one out as you are scoping around there. They address the question of slavery as well, and do so pretty thoroughly. The article making a cumulative case for Christianity is worthwhile as well. These arguments may not ultimately be convincing to you, but at least they are presenting the best version of at least the ones we’ve talked about and that I’ve look at so far.
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I haven’t read past the post on Peter.
The only thing that caught my attention was the possible explanation that the writer could have learned to write in the years since the ministry of the supposed character Jesus of Nazareth and the time when the epistles were written. And ibvioudktbvefjrecgecwaz crucified upside down.
Perhaps he dictated his epistles during this time to an amaneunsis?
Although I suspect he would have got a nosebleed from all the blood rushing to his head.
The rest….
Oh, and bear in mind as there is no evidence whatsoever for the character Jesus of Nazareth as described in the gospels then the likelihood of there being a bunch of dumb as damp bread apostles traipsing all over Galilee after him is about the same as me suddenly getting caught in a snowstorm on this glorious, sunny Monday morning as I enjoy a relaxing breakfast on my stoep while gazing over the valley and watching a pair of Rock Pigeons munch away on the berries of the large palm tree in my garden.
They accept the global flood?
Rflmao😂
Good grief!
“What did they feed the lions, Mother?”
“The floating bodies of drowned sinners, of course. ”
Big band theory. Sheldon Cooper and his Mother.
You people slay me.
🤦🤣
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Well, there’s “no evidence whatsoever for the character of Jesus of Nazareth as described in the gospels” if the Gospels are not historically reliable. If they are, then there is more and better evidence for Him than pretty much any historical figure during that period…or any of the periods before Him. And, as we’ve talked about, I think the case in favor of historical reliability is much stronger than the case against it. It does sound like a pretty Monday morning there, though.
I take it you reject the explanation that Peter learned to write? Out of curiosity, what are your grounds for rejecting it? What about the rest of the arguments there in favor of Petrine authorship did you not find convincing?
And you laugh at the Flood comment, but you didn’t actually read the post. At least they’re not YEC folks. I never watched Big Bang Theory, but we have thoroughly enjoyed Young Sheldon. I’m sad it’s ending after this season.
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But the gospels are not historically reliable any more than the tales in the OT.
You asserting you believe they are without providing concrete evidence simply illustrates your bias and credulity, largely based on indoctrination and cultural influence.
Virgin births, a ridiculous census, swearing at a poor fig tree? Whatever next?
Each and every point has been addressed by highly qualified critical scholars and historians.
Unfortunately ( for you) such beliefs have no more validity than those of our friend Ishmael in Saudi Arabia telling you how Islam is the Numero Uno religion and Mohammed the last prophet.
The only way you will convince a skeptic is to provide the evidence you claim exists to demonstrate the veracity of your claims.
Faith is a non starter.
Revelation also.
Going on and on about Worldview without stepping up to the plate and presenting genuine evidence and universally accepted historical facts is simply going to get you squiffy looks.
*Noah and his ark( not me).
I did read most of the extended piece on the Flood while munching my omlette, until I was called away.
It is even more ridiculous than I first imagined.
God closed the door to the Ark ‘cos the gang plank was huge. Really?
Jesus wept, the garbage some people write let alone believe.
I explained why I rejected the Peter Explanation. As everything else seemed pretty standard and has been refuted by critical scholars I didn’ t pay them much attention.
It was the one I mentioned ( learned how to write Greek) I found a little interesting.
As the Divine JC is a narrative construct then Senor Gatekeeper is going to be similar.
Anyway, we have no clients for the rest of the day so I am going to put on scruffy gear and go potter around dans le jardin until it gets too hot.
T’ra
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What other arguments do you have against historical reliability beyond those? Of those three, only one of those (the question of Luke’s census) is not a worldview-dependent argument, and thus doesn’t carry much in the way of actual weight on the question. If your argument against reliability mostly just boils down to the fact that you reject the miracle reports, then what you’re really saying is that you don’t believe in God and thus the Gospels can’t be historically reliable. That’s not much of an argument, and it’s one that says much about your position and very little about the Gospels themselves. On all of the points where there is the actual possibility of uncovering archaeological evidence pointing in the direction of historicity, the case for reliability is overwhelmingly stronger than the case against. Luke’s census is one of those thorny questions that remains, but critical scholars have to give so much attention to that because there really aren’t many other points they can score.
You note that “each and every point has been addressed by highly qualified critical scholars and historians.” That honestly doesn’t mean very much here. Each and every one of those criticisms has been addressed by highly qualified believing scholars and historians. Critical scholars don’t believe in the first place and so find reasons to justify their unbelief. Of course, you’ll say those believing scholars believe in the first place and so find reasons to justify their belief. But that’s just the point. You’ve got one set of biased observers squaring off against a different set of biased observers. So then, what does the actual evidence show? Ah, but things get tricky here because, once again, evidence has to be interpreted, and worldview plays a critical role in that interpretive process.
So, yes, as much as you don’t seem to like the fact, worldview matters. A lot.
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What archeological evidence?
Are you smoking your socks?
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Well, start here…
https://www.bethinking.org/is-the-bible-reliable/archaeology-and-the-historical-reliability-of-the-new-testament
I found the first couple of paragraphs a nice summary of the question. The summary of some of the archaeological evidence runs on for quite a ways. I think the Shroud of Turin part at the end is pretty questionable, personally, but I didn’t have much problem with the rest.
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Sorry, I haven’t time to read all this.
But that crap Strobel mentions about Nazareth has been debunked years ago
It is a fraud.
The bloke who found it, his name escapes me ( Jerry something, I think. An evangelist from the States. )
And Stobrk again? For the gods’ sake the guy is a humungous arsehat.
Albright? Really?
What about any of the rest I read up to that point confirms the reliability of the gospel tales?
If you read an Ian Fleming novel does this mean the exploits of James Bond are historical fact?
You need to learn what historical reliability of the gospels really means and stop pandering to this apologetic drivel.
Go to go…
Bye.
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How do we establish the historical reliability of any ancient document? We look at the names and places that are mentioned in the document and see if we can verify their existence through archaeology. You are once again leaning in the direction of a standard that renders vast swaths of our knowledge of the ancient world totally unreliable. If you want to do that fine, but you’ll disappoint a whole bunch of secular historians who have spent their lives studying the ancient world and feel like they have a pretty good idea what happened back then.
The names and places mentioned in the New Testament have consistently been affirmed by archaeology. There has not ever been an archaeological find that contradicts anything in the New Testament (or the Bible as a whole for that matter). That doesn’t mean that everything has been actively confirmed (it has not been), but nothing has been able to be rejected because of an archaeological find.
Given that, your conclusion on the matter of historical reliability seems to be entirely dependent upon your rejection of the miracle reports. That’s a worldview-dependent rejection, and not an evidentiary one. You don’t believe in the existence of a supernatural God and so therefore those parts must be historically unreliable. And, since those parts aren’t reliable, the whole thing is unreliable. That’s a bad argument. And it’s not one rooted in any kind of evidence to the contrary. You have faith in that conclusion just like you describe (accuse?) me of having faith in the opposite conclusion.
Your passionate dislike for Strobel and other apologists, though, continues to be a source of amusement for me.
Enjoy the rest of your day in the garden!
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The name of that archaeologist/pastor – he was an ordained Baptist minister- who supposedly found the Caesera Inscription was Jerry Vardeman.
It was a fake.
He was the bloke who claimed to have discovered micro letters on a Roman coin that spelled the word Jesus.
The bloke was a rank fraud.
So much for evidence of Nazareth.
Do you know what Bagetti found when escavating the supposed location?
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I hadn’t heard about Vardeman. Claiming to find micro letters on a Roman coin spelling Jesus is dumb. I agree with you there.
Were the rest of those archaeological finds similarly bunk? Have there been any archaeological finds that have explicitly contradicted anything in the New Testament? I follow it a little bit, but don’t honestly know the answer to that. I certainly haven’t heard of any, but I would think something like that would be proclaimed from the rooftops if it had been found.
Bagetti found that Nazareth was a podunk town, yes? Help me see why that’s relevant in particular. Nathaniel’s reaction when learning Jesus came from Nazareth per John 1 was essentially, “What on earth of significance could have come from Nazareth?” Also, the people there were small-minded enough that when Jesus preached a message they didn’t like, they tried to throw him off a cliff in response. Seems like a podunk town to me. And I’ve spent 15 years pastoring in podunk towns.
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Bagatti found some pottery but nothing to indicate there was any habitation during the time the character Jesus would have been alive.
Draw your own conclusions.
What cliff? Smh.
Research the geography of the area claimed to be where Nazareth existed.
What specific finds are you referring to?
And how do they validate any historical reliability for the tales in the gospels?
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It would have been in the vicinity of Nazareth, not necessarily IN Nazareth. It’s kind of like when I tell people I’m from Kansas City who don’t know anything about the geography of Missouri, when I’m actually from Independence. Gospel authors do that a few times.
It looks to me like Bagetti’s view, while respected, is not universal. Ehrman seems to accept Jesus came from Nazareth, and Ken Dark apparently argues that the view that Nazareth was uninhabited at the time of Jesus “archaeologically unsupportable.”
And I was talking about the other finds mentioned on that page. Are others of those hoaxes? How do we determine any ancient documents to be historically reliable? We examine the people and places mentioned and then see if archaeologists can find any ancient scraps that mention them. If we do, we count those in their favor. If we find things that contradict a historical claim, we count those against them. When archaeologists find many things that support ancient historical claims, historians typically extend the benefit of the doubt to places we haven’t found anything yet. Or, to put that another way, we have faith that ancient documents are generally historical on the evidentiary basis of the places we have proven. That’s pretty standard ancient historical method.
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Dark found nothing of any village.
The tombs?
And gLuke states Nazareth was a town then he calls it a city.
Neither description could possibly be mistaken for a small community of a few houses.
No doubt a lot of the regional archaeology corroborates places and certain people mentioned in the gospels.
Why wouldn’t this be likely?
Pilate, Herod, etc..
But as I wrote before, does the mention of people and places in an Ian Fleming novel mean that James Bond and his exploits are historical fact?
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You’re dealing with two different kinds of literature there. Fleming was consciously writing fiction, and not even particularly historical fiction. The Gospel authors don’t give any literary indications they thought of themselves as writing anything but history.
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As Matthew and Luke were not independant accounts having used Mark as a template they could hardly be claimed to have been writing history but rather plagiarizing Mark and then adding their own material.
If the writer of GMark was writing history then the account would have at least some independant corroboratation.
Of course we know there is nothing.
So the best we can say of GMark is it is historical fiction, a piece of theological dogma designed to convey a theological message.
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Theological biography is the typically assigned genre. And they both used Mark extensively, yes, but they organized the material differently and for different ultimate storytelling purposes. Continuing to call them forgeries is a modern complaint foisted upon ancient documents looking for a reason to reject rather than engaging with the actual texts seriously. It’s just not a serious argument against historical reliability. How many other ancient documents that are considered historically reliable have the kind of independent corroboration you are looking for?
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I did not say they were forgeries. Anonymous, yes. And they do contain forgery/ interpolation. The long ending of Mark, women caught in adultery are just two examples.
Matthew definitely plagiarized Mark. There is no argument here.
Both Matt and Luke use Mark as a source/template.
Mark is nothing but a theological treatise for a gentile audience and the others simply build on this.
Any independant corroboration would be a start, but there is nothing.
So they are not historically reliable but they are historical fiction.
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I meant plagiarism. Brain fart.
What other ancient historical documents from that era or before have the kind of independent corroboration you are demanding of the Gospels? If they don’t have it, by how much is our actual knowledge of the ancient past reduced because of it?
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But gMatt and gLuke do plagiarize Mark.
There is no argument here.
Why should we use other documents to justify the gospels?
When we consider the fantastic, larger than life material of the gospels why would we not expect corroboration?
If you go through Mark it is quite plain the tale is not historically reliable on the least.
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The last part is a perspective-driven critique. I think it is. You think it isn’t. That’s irrelevant.
The plagiarism charge is a modern one, not an ancient one. There’s no evidence that such a thing was even considered as far as a critique by ancient critics of Christianity. They didn’t consider Matthew and Luke using large portions of Mark to be problematic at all. It certainly is meaningless as far as the question of their historicity goes. If you use a modern lens to analyze the ancient world, you aren’t going to understand much of it.
As for the middle point, you’re making my point from earlier that your rejection of historicity is primarily worldview driven, not evidence based. You are rejecting it primarily on the basis of the miracle claims. You can do that, but it’s not a good argument.
My other point, and why I constantly point toward comparisons is that you are using a standard for evaluating the Gospels that you wouldn’t and couldn’t use for any other ancient historical document in terms of evaluating their historicity without having to jettison a great majority of what we know about the ancient world as not actually known. If the standard you are using here can’t apply evenly to other ancient historical documents, that’s a problem with your standard, not the particular document you are analyzing.
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If the last part is perspective driven it is because so many claims can be tested for their historicity and they all fail from an evidentiary perspective.
Consider the ridiculous Garderene demon exorcism and the suicidal swine episode for one. You will have to research the geography to understand why, not to mention the name changes as the tale is retold.
Whether plagiarism was considered permissible or not considered at all in ancient times is irrelevant. GMatthew plagiarized Mark. Period. There is no debate. The evidence is there in black and white.
As they copied Mark then their lack of historical reliability falls foul because of Mark’s lack of historicity. That’s simply common sense.
I reject it on the same grounds that historians reject it. Lack of evidence.
Just as they reject other religious texts that come up short for the same reasons. And you can moan about the miracle angle til the cows come home as far as I’m concerned. Your objections cut no ice with me or any genuine historian alive or dead.
When you accept miracle claims from every other religion then you might have grounds to complain.
And the above paragraph covers your last objection as well.
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Not particularly. You’re using one standard for the Scriptures, and a different standard for other ancient historical documents. If you applied the one standard to the other, you could claim very little as actual ancient historical knowledge.
And, yes, whether a modern charge of plagiarism was considered relevant in ancient times is absolutely relevant. If it didn’t bother them, if that kind of writing was considered normal and acceptable, then our criticizing it is just chronological snobbery and a meaningless complaint.
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Historians apply the same standards to all such documents.
And while historians acknowledge there are historical elements, certain places people etc, the critical view of historians is the gospels are not historically reliable. Got to feel for those poor pigs, right?
Snobbery? Lol! I see.
Oh, well. At least you are finally acknowledging, albeit by going round and round the ( burning) bush Matt and Luke are not ‘according to them’ but are in fact in large part plagiarized.
That’s at least something. Not much, but I’ll take it.
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And here I always thought it was a mulberry bush ;~)
Matthew and Luke are “according to them,” but they used large sections of Mark as a jumping off point since those stories were already written down. There was no reason to reinvent the wheel on those places. Both Matthew and Luke also add much of their own material as well.
And you put your adjective in the wrong place. The view of critical historians is that they aren’t historically reliable. Scholars who don’t believe in God in the first place and therefore reject miracle reports on those grounds find that the Gospels are historically unreliable. That’s about as surprising as discovering that scholars who do believe in God and are thus willing to accept miracle reports tend to find them to be reliable. Citing scholarly consensus here just doesn’t make much difference in the overall argument. When the rejection is largely based on an eschewal of the supernatural, and results even in small part from a double standard, the overall case is rendered much weaker.
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There is no reliance on the supernatural regarding the charge of plagiarisim.
That fact of plagiarism is established.
If there was no point in “reinventing the well” than all they had to do was mention the fact of Mark in their own gospels.
They didn’t, which suggests that, they were initially not intended to be part of a collective and were likely written/ designed for different audiences.
By the way, out of interest are your arguments those taught as part of the general apologetic defense?
The miracle claims are only part of the reason scholars reject the gospels regarding their historical reliability.
The rejection of Acts is for similar.
reasons.
You reject Ken Ham and his YEC nonsense because his claims are not only risible in the extreme but are completely without the support of evidence.
Critical scholars reject the claims of historical reliability of the gospels on similar grounds. No evidence.
Examples :
The portrayal of Pilate for example is ridiculous and becomes even more so with each gospel.
The geography of the region is inaccurate strongly suggesting the author of Mark, for example, is unfamiliar with the area and likely never visited it lived there.
The census and the ensuing farcical donkey ride to Bethlehem.
Crucified victims were left on the cross to rot.
There is no evidence of a tomb and no reason to consider Pilate, who was known for his brutality, would kowtow to a Jew and consent to a convicted supposed rabble rouser being removed from his ‘cross’ to be buried in a rock hewn tomb.
The mere idea is risible.
If you insist on bringing the supernatural into the argument then the onus is on YOU to provide evidence to demonstrate the veracity of your claims.
Don’t expect scholars or historians to do your work for you.
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Well, like we’ve talked about before, the number of places where the Gospels have been proven historically accurate in the historical claims they make leads me to the conclusion that it is reasonable to extend the benefit of the doubt to those places where hard archaeological evidence hasn’t been turned up yet. That is a position of faith, yes, but I’m convinced it is a reasonable position to hold. Craig’s book addresses several of those issues you raise there. I really wish there was a way I could get a copy of it into your hands to read. My offer still stands to ship my copy to you if you’re interested.
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Clever!
You didn’t directly address a single point in my comment.
One could be forgiven for thinking you had run out of reasons for not acknowledging the reality of what the gospels really are.
Nobody is arguing against what archaeology has established as fact.
The gospels use these things to try to add realism and credibility
Again, this is called Historical Fiction.
Thanks again for the offer. But no thanks.
I can get all the apologetics I’m able to stomach just by hopping onto the internet /YouTube.
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I’ll forgive you for that :~) You just haven’t managed yet to make a compelling case with points I haven’t already seen refuted or at least responded to sufficiently to lead me to conclude anything other than that my position is still the more reasonable one than what you are laying out. Historical fiction wasn’t a genre that existed in the ancient world the way it does today, and nothing about the Gospels smacks of the kind of mythological tales that were common at the time. Even in some of the most sensational miracle accounts (stilling a storm for instance), the details are far more subdued than myths typically were. And the most important miracle story of all is so understated that this is often counted as a mark against the reliability of the account. The alternative explanations for why the Gospels authors wrote the stories they did in the way that they did just don’t make any sense, especially given the time frame in which they were writing.
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As each thread progresses you sidestep or ignore more and more points raised.
The term historical fiction may not have been used or understood back in the day but this doesn’t mean the term cannot be applied to the gospels.
In fact they suit the term very well.
Your entire approach is based on faith, underpinned by indoctrination in one form or another which is why you must reject any challenge to the position the gospels are an accurate historical record of events.
As there is no evidence to support the evidence of the resurrection of the Bible character Jesus of Nazareth then your claim of reliability is without foundation or merit.
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As we have talked about many times before, as long as you see things only through the lens of the worldview beliefs you bring to the table, you won’t be able to see or understand anything else. We’ll just keep going round and round on the various matters we discuss. It’s why you keep coming back to things like indoctrination can be the only possible explanation for why anyone would believe like I do. It’s all you have as a complaint.
To apply a modern idea to ancient texts doesn’t help you understand them. You’re holding authors to a standard neither they nor any of their contemporaries used in evaluating their work. That’s just a silly thing to do.
And are we back to the no evidence for the resurrection debate again? We’ve talked at length about the evidence for the resurrection. You’ve simply rejected it.
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As you are indoctrinated and rely wholly on faith then you will simply refuse to recognise that your arguments hold no water.
It fascinates me that you reject YEC on the grounds of no evidence and evidence which flatly refutes the idiotic claims of YEC, yet refuse to acknowledge the blatent hypocrisy of your own position which has no evidence for its own claims.
Your worldview embraces miracles.
Yet you reject miracle claims from other faiths. More hypocrisy.
There is no evidence for the resurrection, merely unsupported claims.
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And round and round we go…
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And when the likes of YEC is raised you have no defense against the charge of hypocrisy, so you hand wave.
Isn’t hypocrisy regarded as a sin?
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Where is the hypocrisy? I don’t think their understanding of the scriptures or the relevant scientific data are correct. So, I don’t agree with their position.
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But your understanding of the scientific data is not correct either, yet you refuse to acknowledge this fact. That’s the hypocrisy.
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I don’t think my understanding is incorrect, though, and have explained why. We disagree on that point. And as much as you can cite scholars who support your position, there are scholars who support mine as well. And though you’ll assuredly argue yours are correct and mine are obviously wrong, I’ll argue the same. We’re at a stalemate.
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Of course you don’t think your understanding is incorrect. Neither does Ken Ham. This is the point you are unable to grasp which is where the hypocrisy lies.
So by what standard must we regard as the best way to establish fact?
How about scientific evidence?
The HGP for example has provided irrefutable evidence that it is not possible the characters Adam and Eve could possibly have been the initial progenators of the human race. No such bottleneck in human evolution never occurred.
You only partially accept this scientific fact and are holding out for the Genesis narrative to pan out.
The Noachian Flood and the Exodus and Conquest narrative are also myth and scientific evidence has demonstrated this beyond any doubt. Yet you dispute evidence for both.
This is where you are a hypocrite.
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You place great faith in the fact that the scientific discoveries you cite (and understandably so) won’t ever be shown to be correct as far as we understand now, but further information reveals to be incomplete. If I were you, I would no doubt place the same faith there because we have to place our faith in something. Humanity has always done so, even absent a belief in God.
The difference is that I place my faith in the fact that even those places in the Scriptures that present scientific understandings suggest are in error will yet be shown to be accurate and true. I do this on the basis of the fact that it has happened before several times on a variety of historical claims made by the Scriptures as we have talked about before.
For my money—granting that’s not very much—the comprehensive case for the truthfulness of the Christian worldview vastly surpasses the case against it in terms of reasonableness. Thus I hold the position I do. Some of it is rooted in the positive evidence for it. Some of it is rooted in negative evidence and arguments against alternative views. Some of it is rooted in faith rendered reasonable (to me, which, again, I know isn’t worth much to you) by these other things. And some of it is rooted in what I’ll call supernatural experience which I understand means even less to you, but which is the thing that ultimately drives so many millions of believers to remain committed even in the face of what seems to be contradicting evidence in the world around them.
My position in all of this is very consistent. From the standpoint you’re starting from it doesn’t look like it, and if I were you, I’d probably think the same—indeed, how could you not? But all that charge reveals is that you don’t understand my position very well at all. You have down several caricatured versions of it, but you’ve never really experienced the real thing to know any different. I certainly don’t blame you for that, and again, would likely feel the same way if I were in your shoes. And before you say it, I know that sounds like so much nonsense to you. I can’t help that. You just don’t understand what it looks like from this side, so of course it does.
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You are, once again, not directly addressing the issue of your hypocrisy and are simply using faith to justify YOUR position while rejecting Ken Ham’s.
You reject the science that has refuted the Noachian Flood, while rejecting the version Ken Ham holds to. On it’s face this is absolutely hilarious!
Seriously, the gang plank was so large that Yahweh had to close it?
Oh, my word!
🤦
And you have the audacity to assert I am making a caricature version of your position?
Do you truly not hear yourself when you subscribe to such idiocies as Yahweh closed the Ark ‘cos the gang plank was too big?
Have you honestly no inkling of how you make yourself come across as a raving nutcase?
You accept the Exodus narrative when every scrap of scientific, archeological and historical evidence refutes the tale as nothing but geopolitical foundation myth that even Rabbis reject.
You are absolutely a hypocrite and your hubris and blatent smug arrogance in the certainty of your position makes on occasion Ken Ham look good.
Take a few moments and try to evaluate the things we have discussed over the day.
Just think for a few moments what the gang plank example tells most rational. individuals about your state of mind?
Next, try to put aside your blinkers faith/worldview for just a few moments, take on the mantle of secular humanist and consider the effects on any child who has been indoctrinated to believe they will be spending eternity in abject terror if for any reason they reject Yahweh as their savior.
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Your entire perspective is rooted in the argument that there is not a supernatural God who occasionally interacts with the world He made in miraculous ways. I reject that argument for a host of reasons, some we’ve talked about, some we haven’t yet. If that God exists, practically all of your arguments here vanish like the morning dew.
Let’s take the gang plank you’ve latched onto as an example. If there exists a supernatural God, believing He closed up a gang plank of a really big boat before a supernatural act of judgment (which, if this God exists as I have described Him to be, isn’t nearly the problem you make it out to be through a secular lens) doesn’t even require you to break a mental sweat. If there exists a supernatural God, all kinds of things are on the table that sound like nonsense if that proposition isn’t true.
I am convinced of the truthfulness of that proposition for a variety of reasons including the Kalam cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from fine-tuning, and so on and so forth. I apologize if my confidence comes off as arrogant or smug. I certainly don’t intend that. That being said, I do find how much my confidence in the truth claims of the Christian worldview gets you riled up pretty humorous.
And, yes, if you start a child out by exposing them to only secular, humanistic assumptions about the world (an exposure you would call indoctrination if the focus was Christianity, but somehow don’t when it is a topic you support), and present the caricatured, incomplete picture of the Gospel you’ve been throwing around, there are some Christian doctrines that can seem pretty unnerving.
If you start with a better (and more accurate) picture of God including the reasons why He exists (as a set of wonderful children’s books by WLC do…I included that just to see if I could make you spit your coffee when reading it ;-), the doctrines you have so much trouble imagining sound a whole lot more reasonable.
And if that still doesn’t answer the charge of hypocrisy, I guess all I can say is that the charge comes off as so patently absurd that I don’t feel the need to try much harder than I already have to refute it.
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Once again, you assert I consider your god does not exist?
Seriously, how many times must you be told?
I lack belief in your god, Yahweh and all others based solely on the complete lack of evidence.
Provide evidence and we can look at it.
The rest of your comment is, sadly, a perfect illustration of one who is so steeped in supernaturalism that it really is not the worth the effort of a reply.
You would be better off chatting with Ken Ham
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Right. You reject all evidence and argument in favor of His existence and so you operate under the assumption that He does not. That lack of belief has framed out literally every argument or observation you’ve made the entire time we’ve been in dialogue.
As for the rest of my comment, along with literally everything else I’ve said to you, it rests on the foundation of my belief in the existence of God. If that counts as “steeped in supernaturalism” to you, then I guess I’m guilty. But even your reflection that my position comes off as “steeped in supernaturalism” just underlies the point I’ve already made. The non-existence of God is the only frame of reference you have for engaging on issues that, as I’ve said over and over, only make sense within the frame of reference that He does exist. As long as you maintain that frame of reference, it’s all going to sound like so much nonsense.
As I have said and did before, I find things like the Kalam cosmological argument to offer very compelling reasons to accept the existence of God as a reasonable and right philosophical proposition. If you’re waiting for some kind of empirical, scientific evidence that proves God’s existence to give the idea any kind of serious thought, you’re just going to have to keep on waiting. As we have talked about before, science doesn’t prove or disprove God. That’s a philosophical question. You can interpret scientific data as helping to support or removing support from the proposition, but your interpretation is necessarily going to be influenced by the presuppositions you bring to the table, a fact that cuts both ways.
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Wrong. Scientific evidence has refuted every major foundational biblical claim.
That fact you have yet to deal with in any semblance of honesty.
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I’m sorry you’ve bought into that idea. Let’s take the resurrection as an example. The only real scientific evidence that could categorically refute that claim is the producing a body that could be proven to be Jesus’. Everything else is a presuppositionally determined engagement with a set of data.
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Let’s start with Adam and Eve. HGP has refuted any such notion and as this is obviously myth then there was no garden and no original sin Therfore no need for a savior.
That you would even consider trying to justify the big gang plank on Noah’s ark is, quite frankly ridiculous and makes you no better than Ken Ham. In fact it makes you out to be a bloody idiot, so there really seem little point in even bothering to engage you on the nonsense of the resurrection.
Maybe when you are able to behave with a bit more common sense?
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If by “no better than Ken Ham” you mean that I believe in God like he does, then I suppose I’m right on his level. Your mockery of this one point is entirely predicated on God’s not existing. If there is a God, the issue is resolved instantly. Challenges from skeptics on points like this are just silly. That you keep coming back to it makes me chuckle every time.
As for the second part of the first point, the reality of sin or whatever else you feel better about calling all of the terrible things people do in ways both big and small is demonstrable by simply looking around or reading a newspaper. Humans have always had a sense that things are not like they’re supposed to be. This is why creation myth after creation myth has pointed back to a time when things were better than they are now in some way. We’ve always understood that humanity is broken in some way. We’ve also always imagined a day when things are going to be better than they are now so we don’t get overwhelmed by the hopelessness of our seeming to be stuck on stupid as a species. Well, what do you call it when we are broken and can’t seem to fix ourselves no matter how hard we try? I call it a need for a Savior.
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“Creation myth after creation myth. “
I think we are beginning to zero in on your problem.
Do you see it yet?
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Nice try, but no.
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In actual fact, yes.
You can’t possibly consider creation to be anything but a myth?
Or are you that arrogant you meant every other creation tale besides Christianity?
Perhaps it’s a subconscious thing with you?
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As you have insisted when you’ve tried making that charge in the past and we talked about it then, it’s only arrogance to claim you’re right and everybody else is wrong if you’re wrong about that. So, just like you are confident that you aren’t arrogant to hold the position you do regarding religion, I’m equally confident that I’m not guilty of any charge of arrogance in the position I hold here. As long as you keep assuming on the non-existence of God, these matters will continue to look just like they do to you.
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Again, more deflection.
As I mentioned in the earlier reply…. You admitting to the creation myth is at the heart of your problem, and this is what you need to deal with.
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I appreciate that you are convinced this is the case, I really do. But ultimately, the real issue is your unwillingness to acknowledge the existence of God. Everything else flows from there. Until you get to that point, none of the rest of it will make sense. But then that’s actually something Paul pointed out a very long time ago. Twice. I’ll keep praying toward that end.
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I am willing to acknowledge the existence of your god, Yahweh. The moment evidence has been provided that confirms he exists I will a knowledge this fact.
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Are you willing to consider any evidence that is not empirical? We are, after all, dealing with the question of the existence of a supernatural being. Expecting the kind of empirical evidence you have seemed to singularly demand in the past isn’t going to get you very far.
There is no scientific evidence that irrefutably proves God’s existence any more than there is any scientific evidence that irrefutably disproves it. The question is what kind of lens you are using to evaluate the evidence.
Personally, I think there are several features of creation (i.e., data) that are best interpreted as pointing toward the reasonableness of the conclusion that God exists. These include the fine-tuning of the universe, the coming into existence of the universe in the first place (how ironic that the idea that the universe began with a “Big Bang” was originally vigorously resisted by the secular scholarly world at the time because of what they saw as the obvious theistic implications of such a thing, but is now broadly accepted as obviously true…yet another one of those places where the secular scholarly world once concluded that an idea which rings with obvious harmony with the Genesis account of creation was obviously false until further evidence proved it was nonetheless true), the presence of incredible amounts of information in DNA, the astronomical odds against proteins folding by chance, the otherwise unexplainable evidence of life at all, and so on and so forth.
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Out of interest, how many examples can you cite where a religious claim has debunked a scientific claim?
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You didn’t answer my question. We can play the “ignore the point and take things off in another direction” game another time.
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Question? Are you referring to the lens nonsense again?
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No, I asked a question that you didn’t answer. In fact, you fairly well ignored most of everything I had said in that last post and asked a question of your own which, if I answered, was going to have us running off in a different direction. I simply wasn’t willing to do that. Are you willing to consider non-empirical arguments that point in the direction of the reasonableness of the premise that God exists, or are you limiting the extent of your consideration to empirical evidence only?
Also, it looks like your question there got posted twice. For the sake of not having a duplicate post, I’m going to delete the duplicate I didn’t respond to. If something goes haywire, I just wanted you to know what happened on my end. As always, I’m going to try to keep things on the level.
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On a related note, as you have now acknowledged creation is a myth( as per your previous ” creation myths” comment) how do you square away belief in your god, Yahweh?
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You misunderstood me. That may be my fault. I spoke of creation myths generally. All cultures have stories about how creation came into existence. This particular one simply happens to have the benefit of being true. That’s not the same thing as saying it is literal, of course, but it is true.
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No, I didn’t misunderstand.
Granted while some creation myths might seem more elaborate than the Christian one it has no more evidence to support it than any other.
It is telling, though that you would refer to your belief as a myth.
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So then you did misunderstand me. Thank you for confirming that.
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Stop with the petulance for goodness’ sake. You aren’t twelve years old.
You were the one who wrote Creation myths ( plural) but you didn’t catch your ‘Oops!’ moment when you unthinkingly included YOUR Christian creation myth in the mix.
As the saying goes… “No backsies!”
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I was careful in my original response that sparked this latest tangent. I didn’t say anything I feel the need to take back. But I did use a word that you felt like you could jump on and parade around like you caught me in admitting something I didn’t mean to admit. I tried to explain as much before, but you insisted that you knew what I meant better than I did, so I poked back a little bit.
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Wong again. You used the all encompassing term creation myths.
As you have no evidence to separate your creation myth for every other then you simply got caught with egg on your face. At least be man enough to acknowledge this fact.
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I’ll confess that I find it humorous that you are insistent that you know what I meant by a particular comment I made better than I do and even when I have told you that I didn’t mean what you insist I must have meant. There’s goes that faith reflex again on your part. You know, you would make a really committed believer if you ever got that faith pointed in the right direction.
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I am not insisting I know what you mean but rather the fact you used the all encompassing term creation myths without realizing your creation myth is included in this scenario.
It was a gaffe and you were left looking silly.
What is humorous is the way you are indulging in some sort of pretzel logic to extricate yourself rather than just acknowledging the fact.
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You’re still doing it. I used a phrase to mean something specific. You’re insisting that because it is normally used in another context or to mean something else, that I could have only meant that and so, “Ah ha!” you’ve got me. You’re making an assumption. If you were dealing with an ancient text, you could have a debate about that. But you’re debating with the one who actually said it, and are insisting you know what he meant in spite of his telling you repeatedly now that he didn’t mean that. You can keep insisting otherwise, but it’s just not getting you anywhere.
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Again, you used the phrase creation myths.
I know you obviously were not referring to your religion. That was the Oops moment.
That you are filled with so much hubris you would exclude your religion’s creation story is what I find very funny.
That you failed to distinguish and simply wrote creation myths makes your hoop jumping exploits to try to explain yourself even funnier.
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There was no “oops” moment. If you want to keep insisting there was, I obviously can’t do anything about that, but it won’t change the fact.
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So, it was hubris, then?
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I’d probably go with something more along the lines of faith, but, sure, we can go with hubris if you’d like.
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Aah..faith.
🤦
I refer you to Mark Twain.
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Hey! I just found out a group of folks from my area are actually in your neck of the woods this week. Want me to see if the group of them can stop by the bakery and visit? They’ll fly out of Johannesburg in a few days. I think they’re in the southern part of the country right now.
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We don’t have a shop. We run our business from our property and we bake strictly to order, so there is ‘nothing to see’ ( no product on display to buy) I’m afraid.
We have just come off a hectic weekend that included pulling an all-nighter on Saturday! Hence the relatively quiet Monday.
However, if your friends want to order a cake they are more than welcome and they can phone in, or text and the call will be returned. I can’t guarantee anything and best make it quick as we normally require two weeks notice for most cakes and I know we have already have orders booked from Thursday.
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I’m not sure what kind of mission work they’re doing, but sounds like there may not be time to get an order in. I wish I’d have known they were going there sooner. I could have gotten my order in for a blank cake and send the book along to you. The pastor of the church they came from is a friend, but I don’t know any of the people who actually went. Oh well.
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I mentioned it to the crew and they were doubtful. I am not always party to what orders come in so I have been warned never to commit unless I run it by them first.
Where exactly are they, do you know?
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Looks like they were in Port Elizabeth a week ago. I’m not sure where they are now. Yes, it’s good to listen to your team :-). I don’t know that I could get them a message fast enough to give you guys time to do anything anyway. Oh well. Next time.
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PE is on the coast and a long way from Jo’burg.
Did they convert many atheists?
, 😉
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Yeah, it looks like they flew from one place to the other. Don’t know on that second one. I’ll look for stories when they get back. If I hear any good ones, I’ll pass them along 🙂
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Crucified upside down… Typos again.. Sorry. The antics of the Rock Pigeons distracted me. ( Any excuse, right)
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Ftr, you already know a I do not consider the NT in general to be historically reliable.
NonethelessI, I will research Blomberg’s views.
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This I know, but I do, so I’ll keep operating on that basis while you keep operating on yours. I’m okay with that. We both know how to properly caveat the other at this point 😉
And my offer to send the book your way still stands.
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Again, thanks for the gracious offer, but I’m sorted. Yay the internet!
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Glad for it. And, yes, that’s a pretty marvelous tool.
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