Sins Of The Fathers (4)

Till gives a good summation of the facts in this debate in his second response in this post, which Ariel has repeatedly side stepped:

ARIEL

sub 1: As an aside, my reference to an already existing three  year famine is not NEEDED to advance my point. It is based  as follows. II Samuel starts with an introduction that God was  already angry. Therefore God was quoted as offering 7 years  of famine. That means a full 7 years. 3 already and 3 to come  (the 7th is because after 6 years of famine, the ground may  be ready to produce in the 7th but the field must be planted and the crop grown and harvested. Since the people are still  waiting for food in year 7 it is the 7th year of famine).  I Chronicles does not prelude by saying "And God was angry".

TILL
No, the Chronicler didn't say this. In fact, he said that Satan 
had moved David to take the census. This is consistent with 
the Chronicler's whitewashing efforts in which he cut out all 
of the dirt about David and tried to make him look like Mr. 
Goody Two Shoes.

Wanting To Believe In Miracles

by Kenneth W. Hawthorne
A letter I sent to a Church of Christ preacher about 7 years ago:

Christians make the claim that God came to earth in the flesh of a man, Jesus Christ. That he was born of a virgin, performed various miracles while on earth, died and about three days later came back to life never to die again, then forty days later ascended into heaven, and that all or much of this was miraculously foretold by God-inspired prophets in the Old Testament. These are all ontologically positive and distant claims that go against all conventional, community experiences. These Christian claims, therefore, bear an extremely high asymmetrical burden of proof. That means that before someone should believe these claims are actually true, the evidence presented would have to be so profound and so unequivocal that one would be forced to believe these claims instead of believing what he knows happens all the time--and go with something that, as far as his experiences, has never happened.

Unfortunately, what I've seen as evidence for these Christian claims is not even close to being sufficient for the type of claims made. The four Gospels are nothing but hearsay, written by biased, anonymous writers. Certain church "fathers" made a fanciful connection to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John being the authors--but no one really knows who wrote these book. These church fathers amount to no more than what you would consider denominational preachers today--yet you believe them on this essential matter--and would, today, be very skeptical of anything they had to say on the subject of religion. But even if Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were the actual authors they were biased and what they wrote amounts to no more than religious propaganda. None of the  disinterested, contemporary scientists or writers of the time Jesus is said to have lived record anything about Jesus, much less his miracles. Josephus does not qualify because it is obvious that his work has been tampered with concerning his mention of Jesus and is therefore flawed and unreliable. Alexander Campbell had this to say:

Evidence Problems

I don't believe that miracle claims can be proven by testimony, however, I would be a lot closer to belief in the miracle claims of the Bible if the testimony for these extraordinary claims had reliable, disinterested, independent, contemporary corroboration. But, alas, there is none to be had. From the Errancy Discussion list, May, 1998:

TILL
You're still missing the point entirely. Commonplace, ordinary events of the past were often corroborated by records left by various sources, but in the case of extraordinary or miraculous events, with which claims the Bible is filled, not a single disinterested, independent, contemporary source ever corroborated any of them. Biblicists rave about the fact that Luke knew geography, topography, social customs, historical persons, etc., etc., etc., all of which can be considered only commonplace information. Miracles, however, would have been so extraordinary that they would have received wide attention. In Acts 2:22, Luke had Peter saying to an audience that numbered into the thousands that "Jesus of Nazareth [was] a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know," so the claim was that such deeds as these were done in the open and were witnessed by many people. If that is so, then why is there no disinterested, independent corroboration of them? 

Authorship Of "Matthew"

From the Errancy Discussion list, 10-4-97:

MATT

The consensus of biblical scholars normally means 'higher criticism', something I am none too impressed with. The Gospel is attributed to the disiciple Levi ooopppsss sorry Nancy :) Matthew, if there is evidence to say otherwise then Let's hear it.

TILL

Well, how about this "evidence", Matt? Those critics whom you aren't at all impressed with have recognized that the author of "Matthew" used the gospel of Mark as his source, because over 90% of the gospel of Mark is embedded in the gospel of Matthew. If Mark really wrote Mark, then he was not an eyewitness to the events he wrote about, but if Matthew wrote Matthew, he was an eyewitness to most of the events. Why would an eyewitness have to rely on an account written by someone who was not an eyewitness in order to write a biography of Jesus?

Prayer Problems

From the mailbag section of *The Skeptical Review*, May-June, 1994. A Christian reader of TSR tells Farrell Till that she's praying for him. An excerpt from Till's reply:

...As for the prayers she is uttering for me, I wish I had a nickle for everyone who has told me he is praying for me. There must be thousands of people out there praying for me at any given moment. So I wonder when we can expect to see any results from all these prayers. God wants all men to be saved: "This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our saviour, who would have all men to be saved, and come to the knowledge of the truth" (1 Tim. 2:3-4). Therefore, if the Bible is truly the infallible word of God, as Mrs. Kaley no doubt believes, then she must agree that God certainly wants Farrell Till to be saved. So I see a dilemma for her when this scripture is considered in conjunction with 1 John 5:14-15: "And this is the boldness which we have toward him, that, if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us: and if we know that he heareth us whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions which we have asked of him." Now please notice that this passage does not say that if we ask anything according to God's will, he may hear us and grant it; it flatly says that we can know that he hears it and will give us what we ask.

From this, I can only conclude that the New Testament promises that God will hear and grant the prayer of any Christian who asks ANYTHING in accordance with God's will. So since it is obviously God's will that Farrell Till be saved, then why haven't the many prayers on my behalf been answered? I once presented this dilemma to a Baptist preacher who had told me that he was praying for me. His response was that I am not dead yet, so there is still the possibility that I will yet be "saved." I suppose that he is technically right, but if I should die without returning to my former beliefs--and I really don't believe there is even a remote possibility that I will return--would this not constitute logical proof that the Bible is not inerrant?

Miracle Claims

Farrell Till  discusses miracle claims with Theo, a Christian apologist. From the Errancy Discussion list, 7-25-99:

TILL
This shows how very little you know about historiography. Historians do not automatically assume that an ancient document is telling the truth unless there are reasons to suspect otherwise. The information in ancient documents is subjected to very rigorous methods of evaluation to try to determine if there are sufficient reasons to accept the information as historical fact. What serious historiography would accept as historical fact that the emperor Vespasian healed a blind man and a man with a withered hand, just because both Tacitus and Suetonius reported that he did in their historical writings? I'm afraid you have been reading too many Josh McDowellian apologetic works.

THEO
Mr. Till, in your debate against Norman Geisler, you seemed to insinuate that we were to evaluate the evidence in the NT by the laws of jurisprudence used in the courtroom. You claimed that since the NT testimonies of the Resurrection of Christ are not(sic) eyewitness testimonies, then we are to reject them as hearsay.

What About Scientific Foreknowledge in the Bible?

From *The Skeptical Review*, July-August 1990:

by Farrell Till
Any challenge to the Bible inerrancy doctrine will sooner or later encounter the scientific-foreknowledge argument. "If the Bible is not the inspired word of God," the inerrancy spokesmen ask, "then how do you explain the many examples of scientific foreknowledge in it?" The claim implied in this question is that men writing in an age of relative ignorance indicated in various passages of the Bible that they understood scientific truths that were completely unknown at the time. The response the question seeks is that these scientific facts could not have been known to Bible writers without God's having revealed them during the verbal inspiration process. They see this as a compelling argument for the inerrancy doctrine.

A basic problem with this argument is the same as the one found in the familiar harmonious-content, unity-of-theme, and fulfillment-of-prophecy arguments so often presented in the Bible's defense. It is based more on speculation, imaginative interpretations, and wishful thinking than on verifiable facts. As I write this, I am engaged in a written debate with a Church-of-Christ preacher who, in trying to use this argument, threw a volley of speculatively conceived questions at me in his second affirmative manuscript. How did Moses know of woman's seed being involved in the conception of children, (Gen. 3:15)? How did Isaiah know in his day that the earth is round, (Isa. 40:22)? How did Job know that the earth rests on no material foundation, (Job 26:7)? How did Moses know that life is in the blood (Gen. 9:4), when medical science didn't know it until a late date? How did David know of the moon's bearing witness (Ps. 89:37) to the sunlight on the other side of the earth? How did David know that there are paths in the seas (Ps. 8:8) long before oceanography and Matthew Maury's work found it so?

These are the questions exactly as he fired them at me. Not once did he take the time to explicate scripture references to show reasonable proof that the writers meant what he was interpreting them to mean. He just tacked the references onto his questions as if this alone were enough to establish that the writers had intended the meanings he was attributing to them. Any verbal communication, however, whether oral or written, must be interpreted before it can be understood, and this is doubly true of written statements. 

What Have These Sheep Done?

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1999 July/August. This article is absolutely devastating to the biblical inerrancy doctrine:

by Farrell Till

One of the most puzzling tales of the Bible is told in 2 Samuel 24 and 1 Chronicles 21. Yahweh or Satan (depending on which account you want to believe) "moved David to number Israel" (v:1). Since biblical inerrantists argue that the Bible is completely free of errors, we will assume that in some sense Yahweh moved David to number Israel. One would think that if Yahweh moved David to number Israel, Yahweh would have been pleased if David did as he had been "moved" and took the census, but if you think this way, you are reasoning like a rational person, and Bible stories aren't necessarily rational. In fact, they many times tax the imagination of those who try to find rationality in them.

That's the case with this story about David. He conducted the census just as Yahweh had "moved" him to do, but for some reason known only to Yahweh and the Gleason Archer type of "apologists" who entertain us with verbal gymnastics that supposedly explain biblical discrepancies, Yahweh was ticked off after David had done exactly what he had been "moved" to do, and so he sent Nathan the prophet to call David on the carpet for taking the census (2 Sam. 24:12). That wasn't really necessary, because David had already realized that in doing what Yahweh had "moved"him to do, he had somehow sinned. That's what the inspired word of God says: "But afterward, David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people" (v:10). Why taking a census would be a sin, especially after God had moved David to do it, is anyone's guess. Well, not anyone's guess, of course, because the professional "apologists" like Gleason Archer, Norman Geisler, John Haley, etc. were apparently blessed with special insights that enabled them to know that the Bible didn't really mean what it plainly said. Just read their books, and you'll find all of the answers if you can stop laughing long enough to read them all the way through.

The Temple Vessels

From the Errancy discussion list, 6-13-97:

The Bible teaches that when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, he cut into pieces all of the vessels of gold in the temple.

2 Kings 24:13 He carried off all the treasures of the house of Yahweh, and the treasures of the king's house; he cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple of Yahweh, which King Solomon of Israel had made, all this as
Yahweh had foretold.

But did Nebuchadnezzar really cut into pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple? At a feast that Belshazzar prepared for a thousand of his lords, he "commanded to bring the GOLDEN and silver vessels that Nebuchadnezzar his father [who wasn't really his father] had taken out of the temple that was in Jerusalem" (Daniel 5:1-2). Verse 3 says that "they brought the GOLDEN vessels that were taken out of the temple that was in Jerusalem," and the
king, his lords, and his wives and concubines drank from them. Ezra indicated that when Cyrus issued his decree to allow the captives to return to Judah, he gave them the vessels to take back to Jerusalem with them.

Ezra 1:7 King Cyrus himself brought out the vessels of the house of the LORD that Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from Jerusalem and placed in the house of his gods.
8 King Cyrus of Persia had them released into the charge of Mithredath the treasurer, who counted them out to Sheshbazzar the prince of Judah.
9 And this was the inventory: GOLD basins, thirty; silver basins, one thousand; knives, twenty-nine;
10 GOLD bowls, thirty; other silver bowls, four hundred ten; other vessels, one thousand;
11 the total of the GOLD and silver vessels was five thousand four hundred. All these Sheshbazzar brought up, when the exiles were brought up from Babylonia to Jerusalem.

So one passage says that Nebuchadnezzar cut to pieces the vessels of gold in the temple, and two other passages say that he didn't.

Farrell Till

Silence Of Contemporary Writers

The following is Chapter Two of John Remsburg's *The Christ*, published in 1909:

Silence of Contemporary Writers.

Another proof that the Christ of Christianity is a fabulous and not a historical character is the silence of the writers who lived during and immediately following the time he is said to have existed.

That a man named Jesus, an obscure religious teacher, the basis of this fabulous Christ, lived in Palestine about nineteen hundred years ago, may be true. But of this man we know nothing. His biography has not been written. E. Renan and others have attempted to write it, but have failed—have failed because no materials for such a work exist. Contemporary writers have left us not one word concerning him. For generations afterward, outside of a few theological epistles, we find no mention of him.

The following is a list of writers who lived and wrote during the time, or within a century after the time, that Christ is said to have lived and performed his wonderful works:

Josephus, Philo-Judaeus, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Arrian, Petronius, Dion Pruseus, Paterculus,[25] Suetonius, Juvenal, Martial, Persius, Plutarch, Justus of Tiberius, Apollonius, Pliny the Younger, Tacitus, Quintilian, Lucanus, Epictetus, Silius Italicus,

Statius, Ptolemy, Hermogones, Valerius Maximus, Appian, Theon of Smyrna, Phlegon, Pompon Mela, Quintius Curtius Lucian, Pausanias, Valerius Flaccus, Florus Lucius, Favorinus, Phaedrus, Damis, Aulus Gellius, Columella, Dio Chrysostom, Lysias, Appion of Alexandria.

Enough of the writings of the authors named in the foregoing list remains to form a library. Yet in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ.

Philo was born before the beginning of the Christian era, and lived until long after the reputed death of Christ. He wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ is said to have existed on earth. He was living in or near Jerusalem when Christ’s miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre occurred. He was there when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He was there when the crucifixion [26]with its attendant earthquake, supernatural darkness, and resurrection of the dead took place—when Christ himself rose from the dead, and in the presence of many witnesses ascended into heaven. These marvelous events which must have filled the world with amazement, had they really occurred, were unknown to him. It was Philo who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although this Word incarnate dwelt in that very land and in the presence of multitudes revealed himself and demonstrated his divine powers, Philo saw it not.

Josephus, the renowned Jewish historian, was a native of Judea. He was born in 37 A. D., and was a contemporary of the Apostles. He was, for a time, Governor of Galilee, the province in which Christ lived and taught. He traversed every part of this province and visited the places where but a generation before Christ had performed his prodigies. He resided in Cana, the very city in which Christ is said to have wrought his first miracle. He mentions every noted personage of Palestine and describes every important event which occurred there during the first seventy years of the Christian era. But Christ was of too little consequence and his deeds too trivial to merit a line from this historian’s pen.

Justus of Tiberius was a native of Christ’s own country, Galilee. He wrote a history covering the time of Christ’s reputed existence. This [27]work has perished, but Photius, a Christian scholar and critic of the ninth century, who was acquainted with it, says: “He [Justus] makes not the least mention of the appearance of Christ, of what things happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he did” (Photius’ Bibliotheca, code 33).

Christ's Real Existence Impossible

The following is Chapter One from John Remsburg's 1909 classic, *The Christ*:

by John Remsburg

The reader who accepts as divine the prevailing religion of our land may consider this criticism on “The Christ” irreverent and unjust. And yet for man’s true saviors I have no lack of reverence. For him who lives and labors to uplift his fellow men I have the deepest reverence and respect, and at the grave of him who upon the altar of immortal truth has sacrificed his life I would gladly pay the sincere tribute of a mourner’s tears. It is not against the man Jesus that I write, but against the Christ Jesus of theology; a being in whose name an Atlantic of innocent blood has been shed; a being in whose name the whole black catalogue of crime has been exhausted; a being in whose name five hundred thousand priests are now enlisted to keep

“Truth forever on the scaffold,

Wrong forever on the throne.”

Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus of humanity, the [14]pathetic story of whose humble life and tragic death has awakened the sympathies of millions, is a possible character and may have existed; but the Jesus of Bethlehem, the Christ of Christianity, is an impossible character and does not exist.

From the beginning to the end of this Christ’s earthly career he is represented by his alleged biographers as a supernatural being endowed with superhuman powers. He is conceived without a natural father: “Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When, as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost” (Matt. i, 18).

His ministry is a succession of miracles. With a few loaves and fishes he feeds a multitude: “And when he had taken the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and brake the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before them; and the two fishes divided he among them all. And they did all eat, and were filled. And they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments, and of the fishes. And they that did eat of the loaves were about five thousand men” (Mark vi, 41–44).

Is It Anti-Semitism?

From *The Skeptical Review*, 2000 July/August:

by Farrell Till

Soon after the May/June issue was mailed, I received the following e-mail comment from Sol Abrams, whose articles have appeared in TSR.

Your article on the front page of the current issue which I received today was excellent and right on target. You are 100% correct in your statement that the atrocities committed by Moses, Joshua, David, Gideon, etc. were surely equivalent to the holocausts committed by the Nazis and Milosevic. I also pointed that out in my article, "Milosevic and Moses: Innocent or Guilty?" (TSR, September/October 1999, p. 11). It really amazes me that people who practice the religion of Judaism, who are very intelligent and rational in their everyday lives and in politics, have a complete blind spot when it comes to the so-called "Holy Torah," which in fact, not just my opinion, is the book of the five B's: Barbarism, Bestiality, Bigotry, Bloodshed, and Brutality.

Although I have never asked him, I have always assumed from his name that Mr. Abrams is ethnically Jewish, so I was glad to see that he had understood the intention of my article and did not see it as an ethnic slur.

A Legacy Of Human Sacrifice?

The following is from *The Skeptical Review*, Jan-Feb 2000:

by Farrell Till

The incineration of animals to appease the anger of the gods was an ancient barbaric belief that seemed to be almost universal. We know from reading the Bible that animals were sacrificed to Yahweh with the understanding that this was something that he not only wanted but had specifically commanded under pain of severe penalties if his various sacrificial commands were disregarded. The nations around Israel--Babylonia, Persia, Assyria, Egypt, Greece, Rome--also practiced religions that required animal sacrifices. Cultures far removed from this region, such as the Meso-American tribes, also offered animal sacrifices to their gods.

The origin of the practice is probably forever lost in antiquity. Perhaps the idea began when the first humans lived together in one place and was then taken abroad as the adventurous ones migrated to other parts of the world, or perhaps the belief that gods could be appeased by burning animals in tribute to them was an idea that developed independently in cultures that were completely isolated from one another. Regardless of its origin, the sacrifice of animals in homage to the gods was an idea that obviously had wide acceptance.

Probably from the idea that the gods could be appeased by animal sacrifices, some religions evolved to include human sacrifices. We can only surmise how that this practice developed, but it isn't hard to imagine that primitive people who superstitiously believed that the gods could be appeased by killing animals in tribute to them could have eventually come to believe that a higher order of sacrifices would be even more pleasing to their gods. Regardless of how or where the idea of human sacrifice originated, it did become a common practice in primitive religions.

A Basic Logical Axiom

From the Errancy Discussion list, 7-26-99:

THEO
Then why does Till always complain that he shouldn't have 

to  prove that Jesus didn't rise from the dead?  If it is so easy, 

why does he not then do it?  Is it because he cannot?  

TILL
Theo, any rational person could show that it is so unlikely 

that fairies exist that the possibility that they do exist 

doesn't deserve even a measure of serious consideration, 

but,  of course, no one can prove absolutely and beyond all 

doubt that fairies do NOT exist.  The same can be shown 

about the resurrection of Jesus, but since I am not the one 

asserting that he rose from the dead, I really have no 

responsibility to prove that he did NOT rise from the dead.  

Do you feel any responsibility to prove that the angel Moroni 

did NOT appear to Joseph Smith? I don't think you do. 

You just can't seem to grasp the logical axiom that says he 

who asserts must prove, so when you issue demands that 

those who don't believe in your resurrected savior-god prove 

that  Jesus did NOT rise from the dead, to rational people, you 

come off looking as foolish as someone demanding that the 

nonexistence of fairies be proven.

Farrell Till

How Did The Apostles Die? (4)

From the Alt. Bible. Errancy discussion group, 6-5-99:

The Apostle Peter

GOODGUY
I think you have been looking in the wrong places for your "apostle data". (if you have looked at all) I would like you to start simple with the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Youll find that the British Scholar Herbert Workman describes Peters death. How does one look past the Encyclopedia Britannica when in the midst of research? 

TILL
Goodguy doesn't know that general encyclopedias, especially in religious matters, often present only what is popularly believed? It would have helped the discussion if he had stated what he "knows" to be the historical facts about the death of Peter, but since he didn't, I'll have to discuss Peter without the benefits of Goodguy's expertise on the subject. In his listing of the apostles below (which I will eventually get to), Goodguy stated that Peter was crucified. I assume that he also accepts the tradition that he was crucified upside down. The only problem is that Goodguy is again wandering around in the area of Christian tradition, and the traditions about Peter are the same as the traditions about the deaths of the other apostles: they are rooted entirely in biased sources.

Even Goodguy's own source (*Encyclopedia Britannica*) acknowledged early in the article about "Saint Peter" that "(t)he sources of information concerning the life of Peter are limited to the NT: the four gospels, Acts, the letters of Paul, and the two letters that bear the name of Peter" (Vol. 9, 15th Edition, p. 330). In other words, what is known about Peter has been derived from biased sources; there are no disinterested sources that mention this man who was presumably the cornerstone apostle of the church. Traditions about Peter are another source of information, of course, but traditions are... well, traditions are traditions, and the various traditions about the apostles and the manners in which they died are so varied and so contradictory that no rational person can consider them sources of reliable historical information. Many of the traditions about Peter concern his alleged ministry, martyrdom, and interment in Rome, all of which are not the least surprising in view of the early movement to make Rome the headquarters of the Catholic Church. What better way to strengthen the claim that the church should be centered in Rome than to have this as the place where the chief of the apostles lived, preached, and died the death of a martyr? 

Goodguy's own source said of the traditions about Peter's tenure in Rome, "It is probable that the tradition of a 25-year episcopate of Peter in Rome is not earlier than the beginning or the middle of the 3rd century. The claims that the church of Rome was founded by Peter or that he served as its first bishop are in dispute and rest on evidence that is not earlier than the middle or late 2nd century" (p. 332). In dispute? Is Goodguy's own source telling us that the traditions about Peter's tenure in Rome are so unreliable that they are actually "in dispute"? Let's notice also that Goodguy's source uses the word "tradition" in the quotation cited above. That word "tradition" keeps popping up in everything that I read about the life of Peter, and I never seem to find any solid evidence from disinterested secular sources that would make the existence of Peter and the experiences that tradition assigns to him historically reliable. Certainly, traditions that developed two centuries after the death of a person cannot be considered historically reliable. 

Absence Of Evidence

From the the Alt. Bible. Errancy discussion list, 4-22-03

DGM
Was it not Carl Sagan who said: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence"?

LK
Absence of evidence means there is no evidence to believe it's true. I'll give you a simple test so you can prove this too yourself. File in court that Bill Gates owes you a million dollars. Go to court and when they ask for evidence tell them, "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." see how quickly your case is dismissed.

TILL
Depending on the claim, however, absence of evidence can be compelling evidence against the claim. If, for example, someone should claim that an asteroid struck Sikeston, Missouri, last week, the absence of any evidence of such an impact would be compelling evidence that this did not happen. In the same way, absence of evidence of extraordinary claims in the Bible, such as the midday darkness during the crucifixion, is evidence that this event did not happen.

Biblicists like to talk about archaeological discoveries that confirm the accuracy of the Bible, and there have been some discoveries that corroborate SOME of the information in the Bible. However, the discoveries have confirmed only ordinary events. I have never heard of an archaeological discovery that corroborated any of the numerous miraculous claims in the Bible, yet if all of these events happened, surely there would have been some evidence left of their occurrence.

Farrell Till

Jesus's Promise To Come Back Soon, 2000 Years Ago

The following is from the Alt. Bible. Errancy discussion group
April 22, 2003:

Gray:
Oh, in the 10 or 15 places where Jesus promises to come back real soon now, like in the life times of his believers. Surely you aren't ignorant of this, too, are you? Why don't you show a sliver of honesty and quote those "difficult" passages for us and explain them away?

DGM:
Jesus never made such promises. He never said in THEIR time.

TILL

Matthew 24:29 "Immediately after the suffering of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven will be shaken.

30 Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see 'the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven' with power and great glory.

31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

32 "From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.
33 So also, when you see all these things, you know that he is near, at the very gates.

34 Truly I tell you, THIS GENERATION WILL NOT PASS AWAY UNTIL ALL THESE THINGS HAVE TAKEN PLACE.

A God Who "Really Care(s) About Others"?

"People who really care about others use their strength to help and protect them." ~ a comment about the Aurora, CO movie theater murders, July 20, 2012.

If it should be expected that people use their strength to help and protect others, what should be expected from an almighty God? Certainly not allowing the vast majority of people to suffer for eternity, MT 7:13-14, when he could have prevented it.

Kenneth W. Hawthorne

Archaeology And Biblical Accuracy

From *The Skeptical Review*, 1998 / March-April:

by Farrell Till
Has archaeology proven the historical accuracy of the Bible? If you listened only to biblical inerrantists, you would certainly think so. Amateur apologists have spread this claim all over the internet, and in a letter published in this issue, Everett Hatcher even asserted that archaeology supports that "the Bible is the inerrant word of God." Such a claim as this is almost too absurd to deserve space for publication, because archaeology could prove the inerrancy of the Bible only if it unearthed undeniable evidence of the accuracy of every single statement in the Bible. If archaeological confirmation of, say, 95% of the information in the Bible should exist, then this would not constitute archaeological proof that the Bible is inerrant, because it would always be possible that error exists in the unconfirmed five percent.

Has archaeology confirmed the historical accuracy of some information in the Bible? Indeed it has, but I know of no person who has ever tried to deny that some biblical history is accurate. The inscription on the Moabite Stone, for example, provides disinterested, nonbiblical confirmation that king Mesha of the Moabites, mentioned in 2 Kings 3:4-27, was probably an actual historical character. The Black Obelisk provides a record of the payment of tribute to the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III by Jehu, king of the Israelites (2 Kings 9-10; 2 Chron. 22:7-9). Likewise, the Babylonian Chronicle attests to the historicity of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, and his conquest of Jerusalem as recorded in 2 Kings 25. Other examples could be cited, but these are sufficient to show that archaeology has corroborated some information in the Bible.

The Logical Aburdity That Is Christianity

The New Testament teaching that most of humanity will be among the lost, Mt 7:13-14, should be a teaching that gives Christians a lot of concern. But not for the reasons you might think. Currently the world population is about 68.5% non-Christian and few of these billions will ever become Christians. Obviously, Christian efforts to evangelize these billions of people are not getting the job done. Logically, this puts Christians in an an absurdly ridiculous position. From the Errancy Discussion list, 4-29-97:

Izz

Such a Lord, who murders innocent babies, is not good. God is not good. Of course, the story is a myth, it never really happened. That is besides the point. God, as described in the Bible, makes Hitler look saintly. Unfortunately, Hitler was real, but, thank God, God isn't. Still, how can you Christians worship a God who murders babies? Don't you people have any morals? Its bad enough you believe in God; what's worse, you are blind to his evil nature. You people worship an imaginary baby-killer.

Paul writes:

If this life were all of existance, you might have a point; however Christians believe that we are primarily "spiritual" creatures made in the image of God (Gen. 1:26). This life is not all that matters. How cruel it would have been to preserve all of those babies of hard-hearted idolaters to mature and become like their parents only to lose their souls in eternity; but a loving and merciful God now has in his care the souls of those innocent children.

TILL

According to this logic, God should see that the children and babies of all sinful people are killed before "the age of accountability" so that this loving and merciful God could have in his care the souls of "these innocent children"? What made the Amalekite children so special that God wanted to "preserve" them any more than the children of other idolatrous people? We know from archaeological discoveries that Aztecs and Incas were idolatrous nations, who even sacrificed children to their gods. Why didn't Yahweh "preserve" their children so that they wouldn't have grown up to be like their "hard-hearted" idolatrous parents?

This "explanation" of the many Yahwistic massacres recorded in the OT is simply a last-ditch effort to explain a problem that is completely incompatible with both the biblical inerrancy doctrine and the claim that God is loving and merciful. If for some reason the Amalekites, Midianites, Canaanites, etc., had to be ethnically exterminated, there was no reason at all to massacre the children and infants too. Why couldn't they have been brought back as captives, adopted into Hebrew families, and reared in the way that Hebrew children were? That way, they would not have grown up to be "hard-hearted" idolaters, any more than the Israelites themselves were at times hard-hearted idolaters (but that's another story). I'd like to hear Paul's "explanation" of this.

Farrell Till

Jesus: History Or Myth?

The following is from *Losing Faith In Faith*, by Dan Barker:

Jesus supposedly lived sometime between 4 BC and 30 AD, but there is not a single contemporary historical mention of Jesus, not by Romans or by Jews, not by believers or by unbelievers, not during his entire lifetime. This does not disprove his existence, but it certainly casts great doubt on the historicity of a man who was supposedly widely known to have made a great impact on the world. Someone should have noticed.

One of the writers who was alive during the time of Jesus was Philo-Judaeus. John E. Remsburg, in The Christ, writes:

"Philo was born before the beginning of the Christian era, and lived until long after the reputed death of Christ [ca. 15 BC-50 AD, kwh]. He wrote an account of the Jews covering the entire time that Christ is said to have existed on earth. He was living in or near Jerusalem when Christ's miraculous birth and the Herodian massacre occurred. He was there when Christ made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. He was there when the crucifixion with its attendant earthquake, supernatural darkness, and resurrection of the dead took place—when Christ himself rose from the dead, and in the presence of many witnesses ascended into heaven. These marvelous events which must have filled the world with amazement, had they really occurred, were unknown to him. It was Philo who developed the doctrine of the Logos, or Word, and although this Word incarnate dwelt in that very land and in the presence of multitudes revealed himself and demonstrated his divine powers, Philo saw it not."

There was a historian named Justus of Tiberius who was a native of Galilee, the homeland of Jesus. He wrote a history covering the time when Christ supposedly lived. This history is now lost, but a ninth-century Christian scholar named Photius had read it and wrote: "He [Justus] makes not the least mention of the appearance of Christ, of what things happened to him, or of the wonderful works that he did." (Photius' Bibliotheca, code 33)

The Invisible Man And Wet Paint

Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure.
~ George Carlin 

How Did The Apostles Die? (3)

From Alt.Bible.Errancy discussion group, 6-5-99:

The Apostle Andrew

TILL

Goodguy's list indicates that the apostle Andrew was crucified, so let's look at the reliability of this tradition, which, I will emphasize, is only a tradition. Earlier today, John Phipps posted on the Errancy list a copy of a message that he sent to Goodguy in which he asked why Goodguy seems so eager to accept traditions about the apostles but not the many other traditions that originated with the Catholic Church. The assumption was that Goodguy is not a Catholic, and so his position on the apostles seems inconsistent with his rejection of other traditions (unless he is a Catholic and buys the whole ball of wax). At any rate, the traditions about the fate of the apostle Andrew, as we will see, are steeped in Roman Catholic lore. The traditions are inconsistent and even contradictory, but for the most part they do agree that Andrew was crucified. In *The Search for the Twelve Apostles,* McBirnie sees this one thread in the traditions as evidence that Andrew did die by crucifixion. In this respect, McBirnie is arguing the same way that biblicists do in the matter of inconsistencies in the resurrection narratives in the gospels. They all agree that Jesus rose from the dead, and so somehow that is supposed to constitute reliable evidence, even though the narratives are otherwise riddled with inconsistencies. 

Eusebius claimed that the apostle Andrew was "chosen" of the Saviour to preach in Scythia (*History of the Church,* edition previously cited, p. 107), which was located in the Crimean region. Eusebius, however, made no mention of the manner of Andrew's death, although in the same paragraph he refers to the martyrdom of both Peter and Paul. The paragraph mentions Thomas and John and the places where both preached but says only that John died at Ephesus. One must wonder why, if he was aware of excruciating deaths that they had experienced, Eusebius didn't cite the details of the deaths of Andrew and Thomas. This paragraph begins Book 3 after which Eusebius had just ended Book 2 with a discussion of Neronian persecution in which both Peter and Paul had died. It would seem that if Eusebius had known of the horrible fates of other apostles, he would have mentioned them too. However, the paragraph that begins Book 3 specifies only that Peter and Paul had died as martyrs but says nothing about the ways that Thomas and Andrew had died. Curious indeed! Could this possibly mean that Eusebius, who was born about A. D. 260, was unaware of any traditions about how Thomas and Andrew had died? Eusebius referred to Thomas two other times in this work (pp. 66-67, 72-73) but only to mention that Thomas was sent to preach in Edessa. No reference is made to the manner of his death. Eusebius mentioned Andrew nowhere else in his "history of the church." 

This doesn't mean that no traditions existed about Andrew and his manner of death. McBirnie claims that "(a)nother strong tradition places his [Andrew's] ministry in Greece" and that there, "according to the tradition, he was imprisoned, then crucified by order of the proconsul Aegeates, whose wife Maximilla had been estranged from her husband by the preaching of St. Andrew" (edition previously cited, p. 80). Yet the Russian Church claims Andrew as its patron saint largely on the strength of Eusebius's claim (just mentioned) and an apocryphal work "The Acts of St. Andrew and St. Bartholomew," which claims that Andrew was a missionary to the Parthians, who occupied a region now included in Northern Iran and the southern part of the former Soviet Union. 

Edgar Goodspeed cited another tradition that put the ministry of Andrew in Ephesus in Asia Minor (where the apostle John allegedly wrote his gospel). Goodspeed said that tradition put Andrew in the mission field of Scythia but that the "Acts of Andrew, written probably about A. D. 260, describes his labors as taking place chiefly in Greece or in Macedonia, where his martyrdom occurs at Patras as described in his Acts" (*The Twelve,* John C. Winston Company, 1967, p. 99). 

McBirnie said of these conflicting traditions, "Now it would seem, at first glance, that these three traditions are contradictory. But perhaps they are mutually complementary. After all, Andrew had to minister *somewhere* in the world, and if he did not die in Jerusalem it is very possible that he went to Asia Minor to be with his old friend John. Or if for a while he went beyond Asia Minor to Scythia, that too is reasonable..." (p. 81). McBirnie rambled on, stringing together more possibilities and "could-have-beens," but the end result was an attempt to argue that we can't let ourselves be distracted by inconsistencies in the traditions about Andrew. Most of the traditions say that he was crucified, and so why not accept that? 

Other traditions about Andrew show the folly of accepting as historical facts claims that have nothing to support them but religious traditions. One tradition alleged that the Apostle Matthias (who was chosen in Acts 1 to replace Judas) was captured by cannibals, and Matthias was sent to rescue him. After a long voyage, he arrived at Matthias's place of detention and secured his release by converting the entire population of cannibals. As far as I know, this tradition gives no explanation for why Matthias had not been killed and eaten by the cannibals before Andrew could arrive on the scene to bring about his release, but religious traditions almost always have annoying holes in them like this. I suppose that Christians like Goodguy have conditioned themselves not to be bothered by such trivia. 

Various traditions about relics from Andrew's life and ministry have circulated in the Catholic church, and as recently as 1964 Pope Paul VI returned to the Episcopal See of Patros, a skull reputed to be Andrew's, which had been sent to the Church of Saint Peter for safekeeping after the Turks had invaded Byzantium in A. D. 1460. Other relics of Andrew include pieces of his cross, pieces of rope with which he had been secured to the cross, and other bones. 

It is on the basis of such nonsense as this that people like Goodguy rhapsodize that men like Andrew were willing to die for their faith in the resurrection of Jesus, and I have just barely touched the many conflicting traditions about Andrew. I have been unable to find any disinterested accounts of Andrew's ministry and death. If Goodguy knows of any, perhaps he will send them to us. 

Farrell Till