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[Newbie]

"As false teachings spread, the church was forced to define what was considered authoritative..."

Indeed. Those "teachings" turned "false" pretty quickly, didn't they?

Consider all the Gnostic and apocryphal books, and how stories about Jesus were so very quickly exaggerated into contradictory doctrine, and even sheer ridiculousness -- stories about Jesus battling dragons, or using his magic powers to kill his enemies as a child. I see these stories as no more incredible than the other stories told about Jesus, but in this case, they are stories which we both believe are total fiction. Where did those stories come from? Do you mean to tell me that first century scroll-writers would take purportedly-true written events and write fiction based on them like fan-fic? Well I never!

There were dozens of Jewish messiah claimants in that part of the world around that time (that we know about because writings about them happened to survive). That the story of a few of them would prove more popular than the rest is hardly surprising.
Nor does it seem extraordinary that one story, more popular than all the rest, might be standardized as dogma by popular religious authorities. But this agreement among cult leaders regarding which scrolls would be accepted dogma of the cult, does not serve as evidence beyond itself.

If supposedly "true" stories about Jesus were so quickly exaggerated into dragon-battling fiction within decades...
And if those supposedly "true" stories, written earlier, were written decades after the events they describe...
Written by authors you cannot even identify beyond appeals to "tradition" and "early church authority"...
How do you know that the earliest manuscripts, among those selected as canon by early religious authorities, are actually "true"? Could those canonical stories have been similarly exaggerated as those outside canon?

Ever seen a Christian "tract"? A tract is a piece of short-form literature meant to define and assert a particular view, bearing many similarities to what we understand as "propaganda". Keep in mind that "The Bible" as we understand it today, is simply a collection of religious pamphlets or "tracts", selected by committee.

Is it so unbelievable that a popular "messiah" was executed by the Romans, and his followers invented fanciful stories about him coming back to life and flying into the sky, and these stories were recorded into tracts, some of which were rejected by religious authorities as being blatant lies, but the others confirmed by religious authorities as absolute truth?

But why would you trust ancient religious authorities to tell the truth? Are there not many religious authorities who have been mistaken, or even lied?

"While the gospel of Matthew is anonymous in its content, the early church fathers were unanimous in attributing it to Matthew."

Why are you so intent to point to the "widespread" and "unanimous" agreement of the early church authorities as if it's an argument? It's not. It's irrelevant. Is it not possible for many respected men to agree and still be wrong? Is this not a common theme throughout history?

"Christianity, set in narratives of space and time, sets itself as the only verifiable religion."

That whole paragraph is ridiculous, and that's the entirety of a response I'm willing to dignify.

"You want primary sources of historical verifiability by people who weren't there but received the information second-, third- or fourth-hand."

Yeah, primary sources are nice.

That anyone would would accept fourth-hand information as true is absurdly credulous. Again, keeping the Gnostic books in mind, and how quickly stories were exaggerated in that culture, why would you believe second-hand accounts? Why believe first-hand accounts of anonymous people?

"Imagine you could travel back to Palestine in the first or second century, and you met a man there who told you about "The Messiah" named "X" who had lived decades earlier, who performed magic, healed the sick, and even came back to life..."

What if there was a burgeoning religious movement surrounding this figure, the authorities of which all agreed on a particular, standard set of scrolls to define who he was and what he did and said...

And if contemporary historians confirmed this by including short references to this person and his followers who call themselves "X"ians...

Is any of this compelling evidence to believe that this fantastic story is true?

"None were eye-witnesses, because the writers who were eyewitnesses were published in the Bible, but you won't accept those."

I'm talking about the story of Jesus. You just got finished admitting that the authors of three of the four Gospels were anonymous, and Mark was verified as the author according to "tradition". How do you know any of them were eyewitnesses to the events they wrote?

How can you confirm the validity of a written document when you don't even know for sure who wrote it?

[jimwalton]

I've appreciated this conversation, and you obviously have done quite a bit of thinking about it. Your comments are very sincere, and you've got a great grasp of the issue. As you know, I really have nothing else for you. To date, the autographs have not been discovered, and who knows if we would know they were the autographs even if something was found. It might give us an earlier manuscript, but it wouldn't change the debate much. A man named Jesus most likely (according to Gospel records and the accounts of a few other contemporary historians) existed in a small country in a corner of a large empire. He was spurned by the religious authorities, so there's no likelihood they would write about him, and he was executed as a criminal by Rome, so there's no likelihood they would write about him either. A movement grew up around him (according to Gospel and historical records), and great teaching and miracles were attributed to him by those who supposedly knew him. What he taught and did was allegedly done in public arenas and witnessed by many people, some of whom believed and some of whom didn't. Anonymous written records started showing up a half a century later, and they weren't assembled into a single volume until centuries later. You're right—that's the history, and I can't add to it or change it.

For me, there are a few loose ends that make me give "validity" more weight.

1. According to tradition (that nasty word again!), all 11 of his disciples were martyred (with the possible exception of John). I know it's always possible to find someone who will die for a cause like this, but that all 11 of them let themselves be killed for a story they knew to be false doesn't make sense. Somebody would-a squealed. During Watergate, the conspiracy held together until there was the real threat of imprisonment. Then the whole thing fell apart like a house of cards, very quickly, with fingers pointing, plea bargaining, and singing a whole different tune. We see the same thing in American politics, such as the current IRS scandal. Cincinnati is quick to say "Washington made us do it!", and Washingtonians are pointing fingers at each other. Yeah, send one to the electric chair and you'll hear a choir of confessions. Nobody wants to die for a lie. That all 11 apostles let themselves be killed is r-e-a-l-l-y odd. There's something much deeper happening.

2. I don't discard the time significance as much as you do. If we're talking about a 50-year span, that's like, say, the Vietnam war. Lots of people are around who were there. If I'm writing about someone who lived 50 years ago, say, Jimi Hendrix, there are still plenty of people around who knew him, worked with him, gigged with him. And if you want to go 50 more years, it's a like a person now saying, "My grandfather fought in WWI. He told me stories about it." Those stories can be verified by others whose grandfather was in WWI, and by newspaper accounts. Now, we don't have any newspapers from Jesus, but we have the writings of people who said, "Yeah, my dad knew him. He's the one who wrote that." And there's unanimity on it. 2000 years later, many skeptics say, "That's a bunch of baloney." I guess it just comes down to what a person chooses to believe. On both sides people would say the weight of evidence is in their favor.

3. Well, what about the stone carvings of what a particular Pharaoh did? We know that they trumped themselves up and wrote whatever made them look good. No pharaoh wrote, "Yeah, I was stupid and make a military mistake and lost half my army." Even though it might be true, they would never write it. To me it's interesting that the gospel writers wrote about stupid stuff they said, mistakes they made, misjudgments, misunderstandings, and plenty of rebukes from Jesus. I mean, these guys tell how they doubted that somebody could come back from the dead ( a pretty normal and predictably thought), except that it was the main claim of evidence that Jesus was who he said he was. Instead of writing that Jesus slayed dragons, they wrote "I got hot-headed and chopped off a guy's ear when I was scared out of my wits. Jesus calmly healed him." Who writes like this? Nobody does, unless they think they're telling it the way it was. It's just things like this that make me go "hmmm...."

4. You know, I've read and heard a bunch of the midrashic stories written by Jewish scholars and storytellers that have been accumulated through the centuries and millennia alongside the Tanakh. The best of the best of the best still don't compare to the stories Jesus told, one after another. There is something unearthly about the answers he gives, his responses to people, and the stories he tells. Good authors can tell a good story or two. Good editors can assemble collections of them. But for them all to come from one guy—in my opinion, nobody could make this stuff up. There's a quality there, in my opinion, that is over the top. Something deeper is happening here.

Well, thanks for listening. We know the heroes of history and stories that surround them—people like Abraham Lincoln and Alexander the Great. But the stories of Jesus are different from that. And I know fantastic stories are told about a lot of people, but a few stand out: Ulysses, Achilles, and Hercules, for instance. But the story of Jesus is even different from those. It has a whole different character to it. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_Chri ... _mythology. As I started out saying, I don't know what else to say. You know that mountains of work have been done on the historicity of Jesus and grappling with the reliability of the documents about his life (http://www.amazon.com/Jesus-Eyewitnesse ... 0802863906, especially pages 5-11, as one example.) And here's a very informative 10-minute YouTube video if you are truly interested in the topic. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=292NTf1cCNw)