How can we determine which parts of Scripture are true?

[Zelduck]

This is really a question for Christians, but since it doesn't assume the validity of the Bible, I think it belongs here rather than in the Theology, Doctrine, and Dogma section.

There have been multiple canons of Scripture. Books have been accepted and rejected for various reasons throughout Christian history. Books have lied about their authorship. Passages have been added and removed. Books were written in different times and different places by different authors and for different reasons.

So how can I have confidence in any particular verse, chapter, or book, that what I am reading is the inspired work of the Holy Spirit, and not the work of a man, no matter how pious?

What method ought I use to reliably determine what is and is not the Word of God? Has someone already done this for me, and if so, how can I tell if they didn't make a mistake?

[Divine Insight]

You suggest that Paul's writings are relevant to whether the gospels are worth considering to be true.

No, I haven't even remotely implied any such thing. You seem to be so extremely desperate to obtain some sort of support for your imagined ideas that you are willing to pretend that other people are saying things that might support your views when in fact they aren't.

I already explained this in a prior post. John Mark was too young to be noticed by people talking. Maybe he even went along with Jesus while Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane--as a youth (or as himself the writer) he did not count.
[skipped more yet of the same ilk]

And you accuse me of having nothing more than opinions to offer?

I think it's pretty clear that you have nothing but wishful thinking. It's also pretty clear that you have an extreme bias to conclude that the New Testament gospels have some foundation in truth.

But I have already shown that the Bible itself doesn't even support Christianity. You can't have a mentally and emotionally stable and trustworthy God so hating the world one moment that he drowns sinful humans in a Great Flood, and then turning around in the next moment and so loves the world that he has his own evil priests crucify his only begotten son as a sacrifice to save the world from sin.

The Bible overall is an inconsistent self-contradictory oxymoron.

Imagining that John Mark was so young that no one noticed him running around spying on private conversations of high ranking officials and priests isn't going to help the Bible anyway.

[Korah]

To refute your Post #131 I guess I have to quote again from your #129 I had quoted and even somewhat commended (as being on-topic for once). You argued therein that everybody knows that Paul wrote before the gospels, which assumes your unproven premise that nothing regarding the gospels was written before Paul wrote c. 50 A. D. Yet that leaves 20 years, the very time in which I argue most of my seven written eyewitnesses recorded their texts!

I have said again and again that proving the gospel sources early does not in itself prove Christianity is true, it just eliminates the usual banter that there were no eyewitnesses.

But it doesn't even do that.
In fact, I had already pointed out that Paul's writings came before the gospels. So everyone is aware that the Christian myths of Jesus necessarily had to predate the writings of the Gospels. ....
What you are attempting to claim is that this somehow proves that there must have been actual eyewitnesses. But that is totally incorrect.
Where have you proven that anything was actually an eyewitness account of anything?
....You haven't. All you have done is suggest that you believe that you can place the source of some content of the gospel rumors to a period of time earlier than when the gospel rumors were actually written.

It's bad enough that you say what you say over and over again, but you say wrong things over and over again and then deny that you said them! Or at least you deny the clear implications of what you say. Now that I have said many times that you say wrong things about me (largely because you DO NOT READ ME, I see you saying wrong things about what you yourself have said. I can't give you the benefit of the doubt that you have not read yourself, so do I have to assume you don't remember from one post to the next what you yourself have written?

[Divine Insight]

I see you saying wrong things about what you yourself have said.

Even if that were true it wouldn't help your arguments in any case.

I have never suggested that I have any problem at all with rumors starting with some guy actually refuting the teachings of the Old Testament, arguing with Jewish priests, and ultimately getting himself crucified over it.

I can accept that all of this may have actually happened and that the rumors began with those events. So I can grant the time frame that you propose for your supposed "eyewitnesses". I won't even argue with you on that point. And I never have.

My argument is that even if you could demonstrate that these people existed and believed themselves to be "eyewitnesses" that still doesn't make their claims true. We already know that people will claim to see things that they never really saw. Humans aren't all that dependable and cannot be trusted not to make things up. And this is especially true when it comes to religious and superstitious beliefs.

So, all I've been saying consistently throughout this thread are the following two things:

1. Your claim to be able to place the source of the rumors at the time of Jesus doesn't automatically give them credence for being true.

And

2. There are far greater reasons to reject the overall biblical stories in any case. And those reasons go clear back to the Old Testament.

In short, Korah, before you could even begin to give me a convincing argument for the New Testament you would need to convince me that the Old Testament is worth believing. And good luck with that.

Proclaiming that you can argue for reasons why the rumors of Jesus may have actually started with some actual person at the time of Jesus, doesn't do anything at all to establish the truth of those rumors.

What part of that are you not understanding?

[Korah]

I see you saying wrong things about what you yourself have said.

Even if that were true it wouldn't help your arguments in any case.

Well it's progress that that you are able to acknowledge that some of your statements may not be refuting me after all.

I have never suggested that I have any problem at all with rumors starting with some guy actually refuting the teachings of the Old Testament, arguing with Jewish priests, and ultimately getting himself crucified over it.

Except that you were insisting they could not have started before Paul wrote 20 years later.

I can accept that all of this may have actually happened and that the rumors began with those events. So I can grant the time frame that you propose for your supposed "eyewitnesses".

Then we are agreed.

I won't even argue with you on that point. And I never have.

Whoops! Back to Square One.

My argument is that even if you could demonstrate that these people existed and believed themselves to be "eyewitnesses" that still doesn't make their claims true. We already know that people will claim to see things that they never really saw. Humans aren't all that dependable and cannot be trusted not to make things up. And this is especially true when it comes to religious and superstitious beliefs.

I never disagreed with this.

So, all I've been saying consistently throughout this thread are the following two things:
1. Your claim to be able to place the source of the rumors at the time of Jesus doesn't automatically give them credence for being true.

Agreed, not automatically.
And then some parts irrelevant to my case for eyewitness accounts about Jesus in the New Testament..

Proclaiming that you can argue for reasons why the rumors of Jesus may have actually started with some actual person at the time of Jesus, doesn't do anything at all to establish the truth of those rumors.
What part of that are you not understanding?

Uh, that it DOES DO SOMETHING--Not enough for you obviously, but let's leave it to other readers to DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES whether it does something "to establish the truth of those" [reports]

[Divine Insight]

Except that you were insisting they could not have started before Paul wrote 20 years later.

You keep misstating what I've said. I never said that they could not have started before Paul's writing. On the contrary, I said they would necessarily have had to have existed prior to Paul. Before Saul became Paul he was supposedly persecuting "Christians". Therefore, Christianity must have existed in some form prior to Saul even becoming Paul.

This is self-evident.

This is also why I have pointed out that you aren't suggesting anything new.

Like I say, I have no problem accepting that there was an incident that gave rise to rumors. I have no problem believing that this incident involved someone having been crucified.

If archeologists or historians could prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that some guy was crucified by nailing him to a pole, and that this was even incited by Jewish priests appealing to Pontius Pilate, I still would have absolutely no reason to believe that this guy was the demigod son of the creator of this universe.

On the contrary, this would just confirm my suspicion that there actually was an event that sparked these rumors.

However, as it stands there isn't even any evidence to support that this much happened. Therefore people who argue that the whole thing could have been entirely fictional still have a valid argument.

I just don't personally need to go that far. You could prove to me that some guy named Jesus was crucified for blaspheme and I still would have no reason to believe that he had anything to do with any God.

[Wootah]

You suggest that Paul's writings are relevant to whether the gospels are worth considering to be true.

No, I haven't even remotely implied any such thing. You seem to be so extremely desperate to obtain some sort of support for your imagined ideas that you are willing to pretend that other people are saying things that might support your views when in fact they aren't.

I already explained this in a prior post. John Mark was too young to be noticed by people talking. Maybe he even went along with Jesus while Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane--as a youth (or as himself the writer) he did not count.
[skipped more yet of the same ilk]

And you accuse me of having nothing more than opinions to offer?

I think it's pretty clear that you have nothing but wishful thinking. It's also pretty clear that you have an extreme bias to conclude that the New Testament gospels have some foundation in truth.

But I have already shown that the Bible itself doesn't even support Christianity. You can't have a mentally and emotionally stable and trustworthy God so hating the world one moment that he drowns sinful humans in a Great Flood, and then turning around in the next moment and so loves the world that he has his own evil priests crucify his only begotten son as a sacrifice to save the world from sin.

The Bible overall is an inconsistent self-contradictory oxymoron.

Imagining that John Mark was so young that no one noticed him running around spying on private conversations of high ranking officials and priests isn't going to help the Bible anyway.

Moderator Warning

Hi DI,

Please refrain from ad hominems against other members and only debate the ideas
- You seem to be so extremely desperate to obtain some sort of support for your imagined ideas
- I think it's pretty clear that you have nothing but wishful thinking.
- It's also pretty clear that you have an extreme bias ....

Please review our Rules.

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[Korah]

[Replying to post 135 by Divine Insight]
I guess I should stop replying to you until you give some evidence you have read anything of substance from my seven long quotations. Even when you back off from your misstatements, you don't admit you did misrepresent me. You then state some obvious fact about Saul/Paul and state that this proves I have not said anything new. You seem not to have read enough of me to see how much is new.

Your blanket denial of historicity makes this once again an off-topic post of no help to determining which parts of Scripture are true.

[Elijah John]

[Replying to post 135 by Divine Insight]
I guess I should stop replying to you until you give some evidence you have read anything of substance from my seven long quotations. Even when you back off from your misstatements, you don't admit you did misrepresent me. You then state some obvious fact about Saul/Paul and state that this proves I have not said anything new. You seem not to have read enough of me to see how much is new.

Your blanket denial of historicity makes this once again an off-topic post of no help to determining which parts of Scripture are true.

Moderator Comment

Please do not announce your intention to respond to another participant in any way, just do it quietly, and if you think it is necessary, make a report.

Also, accusing another of "denying history" is a matter of opinion, not necessarily an established fact.

Please review the Rules.


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Moderator comments do not count as a strike against any posters. They only serve as an acknowledgment that a post report has been received, but has not been judged to warrant a moderator warning against a particular poster. Any challenges or replies to moderator postings should be made via Private Message to avoid derailing topics.

[Korah]

Adding to my earlier reply to D.I., I soon established a rationale for accepting all seven of my gospel eyewitness candidates as verifiable, piggy-backing on Richard Bauckham's well-regarded 2007 apologia for eyewitness testimony behind the gospels, using his principle of inclusion:

Uh, that it DOES DO SOMETHING--Not enough for you obviously, but let's leave it to other readers to DECIDE FOR THEMSELVES whether it does something "to establish the truth of those" [reports]

I've done much further writing about Gospel Eyewitnesses, but below I'm posting what seems most suitable for Christian Forums:
Hypothesis: For each section of the gospels proposed as from an eyewitness, near the beginning or end the name or an identifying feature will appear. (This seems closely related to the principle of inclusio enunciated by Richard Bauckham in Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006).) To give it a name of its own for my purposes here, call it the Alpha and Omega principle.
Result: Seven true positives, and two false positives (Mary and Philip)
There would be no magic in the number seven as those who left written eyewitness records about Jesus, would there? Even assuming that seven is the perfect number of completeness, there would be no evidence for it, would there? Maybe there is.
Relating to the seven eyewitness sections proposed, for each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual). On closer inspection this turns out to occur at least twice, of which two book-end the text in question. :
The best recognized source is the Passion Narrative. After long attributing this to Peter, I now see John Mark as the author. His name Mark is attached to the start of that gospel, and he is often considered to be the young man who fled away naked in Mark 14:51-52. The beginning and ending identifications are weaker here, so the evidence needs doubling? Fine, this is paralleled in the Gospel of John in which he may be the disciple known to the High Priest (John 18:15-16). As he may also be the author of the P-Strand I derived, he may have accompanied the Pharisees who went to see John the Baptist (John 1:24). If so, the basic list he inserted into John runs from first to last: John 1: 20-21, 24-28, 35-37, 42-44; 7:40-49; 9:13-17; 11:46-50, 55, 57; 12:18-22; 20:11b-14, 16-17.

The Signs Gospel is usually seen as a source, and I name Andrew as it author, named at John 1:40. His name occurs often thereafter in narrative sections of the first twelve chapters up to the end at John 12:21 (2 times). Scholars also think that the original ending of Signs has been shifted to John 20:30-31 to conclude a later edition of that gospel. This covers from the baptism of Jesus to the Resurrection, truly an Alpha and Omega.
For each of the eyewitnesses, I can usually find his name in the texts he wrote (or he can be identified as some distinctive individual). On closer inspection this turns out to occur at least twice, of which two book-end the text in question. For Nicodemus, for whom I have given the argument that he wrote the Johannine Discourses while Jesus was still alive, his name appears in John 3:1 at the very start of these. At the end, Nicodemus brings spices to anoint Jesuss body, John 19:39. The text he actually wrote was sayings only, so his name only appears in text that brackets his writings.
As for Peter, the source for Ur-Marcus, his name turns up from the first when his brother Andrew finds him (John 1:40). Acts 15:7-12 records his speech. He is the most-named apostle, helping to identify material attributable to him in both the Synoptics and Acts. Limiting the purview to the gospels, however, Peter still turns up at the end at the Sea of Tiberius, John 21:23.
During Jesuss life-time the Apostle Matthew may have written Q and later the associated Twelve-Source that underlies gMark as well. If so his name turns up almost at the start of his eyewitness portion of gMark, his call by Jesus at Mark 2:14. His name only occurs again in the naming of the Twelve, but this gospel concludes abruptly at 16:8 in a section most likely from the Twelve Source that can be shown to continue into much of the ending of gMatthew, or at least Matthew 28:16 with the word eleven denoting Matthew among them. The Twelve-Source may underlie part of the Acts of the Apostles, and the name Matthew is included there along with the other ten remaining apostles (Acts 1:13).
Last to write, but still active on my interpretation (and thereby) becoming Bishop of Jerusalem in 62 CE, is the eyewitness I discovered, Simon. He is one of the two disciples seeing the resurrected Jesus on the road to Emmaus (Luke 2413-35) according to Origen and my reading of Luke 24:34. The name Simon also comes at the start of the Lucan material as Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7:36-50). If he is not to be identified with this Simon, he still may be (as a family member) the source for the Infancy Narrative starting up Luke 1 and 2. I see him as the author of Proto-Luke.

Writing later than most of the others, but still an eyewitness, was the Apostle John as the main Editor of the Gospel of John. His name is in the title. For John in the text itself, John the Baptist comes up early, but always as simply John. This could indicate an author not needing to give further identification about a John who was not himself. In any case, the editorial insertions I recognize (following Howard M. Teeple) begin in John 1 and continue through John 21. If we assume he was also the Beloved Disciple, then he is written about in the very ending; John 21:20-23.

But could this process be carried on and on? Might there be other names we could associate with an occurrence at the beginning and end of relevant sections? There are not actually very many other names to consider. James is one. The last instance is Mark 10:35, with still six more chapters of Mark to go. The first occurrence does fit, in Mark 1:19. Im setting it aside as not close enough a parallel
Finally, I encounter two that dont fit. There is inclusio, but they are not eyewitnesses. The name Mary does appear at first and last. Shes in the start of both gMatthew and gLuke. She is present at the Cross (John 19:25) and in Acts1:14. She is named at Luke 1:27, and concluding this section we read at Luke 2:52, His mother stored up all these things in her heart. Shouldnt we have an eyewitness text from her also? I guess Luke 1 and 2 would fit? Eight eyewitnesses? And yes, it fits. Practically everything could have been known to Mary except Luke 1:1-4. Personally, I had never given much thought to Mary as having written an eyewitness record; just that Luke had gotten good information from her. This story goes back three decades before the rest of the gospel narratives, leaving more time for legendary accruals, however. The scholarly literature on these two chapters is heavily weighted to the Roman Catholic side, as elegantly reviewed by Raymond Brown in Birth of the Messiah (1999). He has lots of doubts about historicity of Luke 1 and 2. As for any eyewitness claims, he dismisses this on page 575, that the Lucan infancy narration came from Mary has been deemed untenable from the start (1B)

(The above link to Amazon gives the largest preview I have ever seen. Of course the book is 750 pages. Highly recommended.)
Another name that gives a false positive is Philip. His name appears basically wherever the name Andrew appears. Did both of them write eyewitness accounts spanning the same sections of narrative? The best that can be made of this is a reinforcement of the Muratorian Canon that a team of apostles wrote gJohn, and that Andrew is a better choice as the writer because the name Philip appears over a chapter beyond the relevant section (in the Farewell discourse, John 14:8, 9).
Close, we might say, with seven true positives, two false positives (Mary and Philip. For ordinary purposes that might serve, but here Im seeking confirmation from God that He ordained these seven eyewitnesses and no others. Since Im using names in the first place as my primary identifiers of eyewitnesses, its not saying much that the same name appears more than once, and that the primary occurrence is at the start of the section.
So my hypothesis is not confirmed in exactly the way I wanted it. My seven eyewitnesses are confirmed, but something equally meaningful may apply to the other two. The name Philip in paralleling Andrew may indicate he also had a part in writing gJohn, maybe in tying the Signs Source together with the rest of gJohn by his name getting into the Farewell Discourse at John 14:8, 9. As for Mary (aside from the old standard that women dont count), there could be good reason(s) to emphasize her under the Alpha and Omega principle.
http://www.christianforums.com/t7594923/ at Post #9

[Korah]

[Replying to post 139 by Korah]
My Post #139 was too lengthy to get attention, but let me abbreviate it and stress its importance. I went into detail drawing from Richard Bauckham's 2006 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. Well, it has not been forgotten. Its attack on the Consensus may be becoming the new consensus. Even in 2012 it was reviewed by Christoph Stenschke in Religion & Theology 19:
Bauckham's "largely persuasive alternative to the current critical consensus [is] more plausible than many of the hypotheses which he questions. [Bauckham] does not specifically state....a New Testament Introduction" (p. 154)
nor an "interpretation of the gospels. However his well-argued 'Jesus of testimony' " (155)
may serve as a platform for what I have been posting in this thread, that there are seven written eyewitness records as sources in our four gospels.