Lord,Liar or Lunatic

[sin_is_fun]

This is one question often asked by believers. "Either Jesus is lord,or liar or lunatic.Which view do you support?"

This question appears downright straight forward.It gives only 3 options.But the question is actually not straight forward and innocent as it appears.

The common man will hesitate a lot to say Jesus was a liar or lunatic..So then only the third alternative remains.

But I consider this question to be wrong.Why?

1.It doesnt include the other options.That is "Jesus never said those words"/"jesus never existed"/"He was misquoted"

Now these option changes the question to "Were the gospel writers liars,lunatics or true historians"?

There is no justification in asking the lord liar or lunatic question about jesus.Had he written a book we can ask that question.But he never wrote any book.What we have is "Reports on his words".So we have to question the genuineess of that report first before questioning the truthfulness of the speaker's words.

So the question should be "Were Matthew,mark,luke and john liars,true historians or lunatics?"

On further inspection we should still refine this question.Because this question implies that

1.Matthew,mark,luke and John existed
2.They wrote the supposed portions of Bible.
3.we have them exactly as they reported.

Bible passed on as oral traditions for some time.45- 95 A.D. The New Testament was written in Greek. The Pauline Epistles, the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Luke, and the book of Acts are all dated from 45-63 A.D. The Gospel of John and the Revelation may have been written as late as 95 A.D.

So now the question becomes

1.The people who heard bible,memorized it and passed it to others did so without any change in its text for many years.Yes or no?

The theory of chinese whispers comes to my mind.When 20 people are in a room and we say a sentence to one person and if he passes it to others secretly, the statement that emerges from the last person will be totally different from the initial statement.They will be totally different.

when one sentence changes like this what about a whole book?

So the "Liar,lord or lunatic" is a wrong question according to me.

What do you all think?

[perplexed101]

1.The people who heard bible,memorized it and passed it to others did so without any change in its text for many years.Yes or no?

before i address this i would like to see the other christians' response to your post sin.

[sin_is_fun]

before i address this i would like to see the other christians' response to your post sin.

I too am awaiting replies from our friends.

[Cephus]

Ah yes, the Trilemma. Yet another false dichotomy argument (or trichotomy in this case, I suppose). It's been soundly trashed many times before, but it's always fun to see people try to defend it.

What's next? Pascal's Wager?

[Uncaged]

Hi, sin is fun,

Great questions these........

O.K. Lets have a look at the four Gospels.....Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

When I first seriously delved into the Bible some 8 years ago, (after being agnostic for decades) one of the first things I noticed was that all the four Gospels were......well.......... slightly different.
Different in tone....and....in some places, actually slightly different in content. An example would be the four accounts of the crucifixion.
In one Gospel the two criminals who were crucified along with Jesus BOTH slagged Jesus off, in another.....one comes to Jesus's defence. In one Gospel, a Roman soldier is qouted, in another he is not mentioned. etc: etc:
Now at first, I thought, it can't be true, because the four Gospel writers all say something slightly different. Then I began to think otherwise, because in a way, it kind of proved to me that there had been no collaboration between the four writers and that they had got their information from four separate sources..
Imagine if you will, four witnesses all stood in a different place who are witnesses to a car accident. if all four witness statements said exactly the same thing, then I would begin to feel very suspect that all the witnesses had somehow 'collaberated' and therefore, that their 'evidence' was suspect. In reality, if the four witnesses to the accident were all viewing the accident form a different place, then we would expect their testimonies to be all be slightly different. Same story, differnet 'angle' on things. Strangely it was the diffrences or 'mistakes' (as a non believer might put it) in the four Gospels, which actually got me to thinking that the four writer were in fact telling the truth.

Uncaged

[Tilia]

So now the question becomes

1.The people who heard bible,memorized it and passed it to others did so without any change in its text for many years.Yes or no?

It was probably the other way round. If the events in the Bible occurred, many thousands of people would have been witness to the ministry of Jesus, not all of them friendly to it. It would have been that collective lore that was distilled into the gospel accounts, Jesus' extra-ordinary personal claims being prominent in it. Many would have known if there had been significant changes included in those accounts. The Jewish authorities, in particular, would have disputed errors relating to themselves, and discredited the whole New Testament, had they been able to. It would certainly have been impossible to simply invent the character called Jesus. Once those accounts were written, copyists could have made relatively accurate copies, which again in the early years would have been subject to widespread authoritative scrutiny.

What is unique about the Bible is that no other ancient document has nearly as many extant manuscripts. This is partly because Christianity was very popular, but it may well be because believers insisted on reading and hearing the stories of Jesus 'first hand' from the gospellers, and not a second-hand version that may have been easily distorted by the unscrupulous; and it is precisely those against whom the gospels are directed. So the actual words of Jesus, translated (though indeed he may have spoken much in Greek), may have been preserved over the years with particular accuracy.

One might ask if anyone would make up the 'hard' sayings of Jesus, and his self-descriptions, and ask ourselves if ordinary humanity could generate them. We know from non-Biblical sources that Christianity was persecuted from an early stage, and the question arises of whether people would willingly suffer martyrdom for a belief they had made up, with no obvious advantage to be gained in this world.

[sin_is_fun]

It was probably the other way round. If the events in the Bible occurred, many thousands of people would have been witness to the ministry of Jesus, not all of them friendly to it. It would have been that collective lore that was distilled into the gospel accounts, Jesus' extra-ordinary personal claims being prominent in it.

But we cannot be sure every extraordinary claim was made by Jesus,can we?Maybe he said "I am prophet" but people said "He called himself as god".Such exaggerations of his claims are also possible.When collective lore is recorded it hardly has high credibility.

Many would have known if there had been significant changes included in those accounts. The Jewish authorities, in particular, would have disputed errors relating to themselves, and discredited the whole New Testament, had they been able to.

Jewsish authrities always did that.They did discredit new testament and punished christians.

It would certainly have been impossible to simply invent the character called Jesus. Once those accounts were written, copyists could have made relatively accurate copies, which again in the early years would have been subject to widespread authoritative scrutiny.

maybe he existed but did not call himself as God.Writing accurate copies doesnt arise unless copies are written.Until then they circulated as oral traditions.

What is unique about the Bible is that no other ancient document has nearly as many extant manuscripts. This is partly because Christianity was very popular, but it may well be because believers insisted on reading and hearing the stories of Jesus 'first hand' from the gospellers, and not a second-hand version that may have been easily distorted by the unscrupulous; and it is precisely those against whom the gospels are directed.

We talk about innocent chinese whipser style changes.For example maybe jesus said "you can reach god through me" and when it is transmitted orally one person says "you can reach the only god through me" but the listener misunderstands it as "you can reach god only through me".

small unintentional error.But see the dramatic twist in meaning.

We know from non-Biblical sources that Christianity was persecuted from an early stage, and the question arises of whether people would willingly suffer martyrdom for a belief they had made up, with no obvious advantage to be gained in this world.

Maybe they believed jesus was messiah and not God.They still could have died for that belief.

[sin_is_fun]

Hi, sin is fun,

Now at first, I thought, it can't be true, because the four Gospel writers all say something slightly different. Then I began to think otherwise, because in a way, it kind of proved to me that there had been no collaboration between the four writers and that they had got their information from four separate sources..

Uncaged

I agree with you.But even if 4 people see the same incident and tell truthfully what happened, their statements will differ.Even if they lie their statements will differ.So we cannot come to any meaningful conclusion from this.

[Curious]

We know from non-Biblical sources that Christianity was persecuted from an early stage, and the question arises of whether people would willingly suffer martyrdom for a belief they had made up, with no obvious advantage to be gained in this world.

What about the people who died with David Koresh or many other cults. How many Christians or muslims have become martyrs? Both views cannot be totally correct, but both have people willing to die believing that their view is the correct one.

[Tilia]

It was probably the other way round. If the events in the Bible occurred, many thousands of people would have been witness to the ministry of Jesus, not all of them friendly to it. It would have been that collective lore that was distilled into the gospel accounts, Jesus' extra-ordinary personal claims being prominent in it.

But we cannot be sure every extraordinary claim was made by Jesus,can we?

No. We cannot be sure of anything like that as we can be sure about the square on the hypotenuse. We each come to our own conclusion.

Maybe he said "I am prophet" but people said "He called himself as god".

But that is not what he said, as reported. He called himself 'the Son of Man' very many times. And he was reckoned to fulfil prophecy rather than make it.

Such exaggerations of his claims are also possible.

Are they likely, though? Who was selling newspapers?

When collective lore is recorded it hardly has high credibility.

I think the reverse is true. It is the opposite of the 'Joseph Smith phenomenon' that gave birth to the Book of Mormon.

Many would have known if there had been significant changes included in those accounts. The Jewish authorities, in particular, would have disputed errors relating to themselves, and discredited the whole New Testament, had they been able to.

Jewsish authrities always did that.They did discredit new testament and punished christians.

They did not, because they could not. They would have dearly loved to deny the resurrection, but they set a guard on the tomb, almost as though Jesus had made them do it.

It would certainly have been impossible to simply invent the character called Jesus. Once those accounts were written, copyists could have made relatively accurate copies, which again in the early years would have been subject to widespread authoritative scrutiny.

Writing accurate copies doesnt arise unless copies are written.

You presumably mean original accounts. Most of the New Testament was written by c. 65 AD, imv, when there were still very many alive who remembered Jesus in the flesh.

Until then they circulated as oral traditions.

That is misleading. There were many fresh memories, not ancient tales without known origin. In any case, oral tradition can be very accurate, being much less susceptible to the tampering of written deposits having few or no copies.

What is unique about the Bible is that no other ancient document has nearly as many extant manuscripts. This is partly because Christianity was very popular, but it may well be because believers insisted on reading and hearing the stories of Jesus 'first hand' from the gospellers, and not a second-hand version that may have been easily distorted by the unscrupulous; and it is precisely those against whom the gospels are directed.

We talk about innocent chinese whipser style changes.

People do not generally whisper; and in this case, there were many more sources than one. There were twelve eye-witnesses of the whole of Jesus' ministry set apart to act as a reservoir of dependable fact about Jesus, as well as the thousands of partial witnesses, and Chinese whispering was nothing to do with this. The suggestion could hardly be more inappropriate.

For example maybe jesus said "you can reach god through me" and when it is transmitted orally one person says "you can reach the only god through me" but the listener misunderstands it as "you can reach god only through me".

Perhaps; but a multiplicity of hearers is unlikely to be wrong; and the version of this saying that is actually in the Bible makes very good sense with the rest of the Bible; the Bible so very often confirms itself, and often in a fascinating and compelling way. That is one reason for scholars giving the Bible so much attention.

We know from non-Biblical sources that Christianity was persecuted from an early stage, and the question arises of whether people would willingly suffer martyrdom for a belief they had made up, with no obvious advantage to be gained in this world.

Maybe they believed jesus was messiah and not God.

The messiah had to be God, if Old Testament prophecy was correct.

They still could have died for that belief.

Jesus would still be Messiah, though.