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[Newbie]

In religious history there are many occasions in which gods have spoken to humankind. Why aren't gods speaking to humans anymore?

[jimwalton]

I would say it's like this: it's not like a TV series like "The Simpsons", that can just go on an on, but more like a novel, or a painting. When humans became literate enough, and language and writing progressed to the point where it was reasonable, God spoke to literate people and they wrote down what he said. Over the course of the next millennium or so, he continued, to different people in various times and places, all writing down what he said, for posterity. It came to the point where the book was finished, so to speak, and he had said what he wanted to say, wrote the final chapter, and was done with it. Now we have the completed work, much like any other historical work of non-fiction, or a piece of art like the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It took time, but when everything was completed and the project had met its goal, it drew to a close. My question for you would be why do you want him to keep talking when you haven't taken the time to digest and understand what he has already said?

[Newbie]

Because without some confirmation, there is no reason to think that all those words recorded by all the religions in the world actually came from a god.

[jimwalton]

Let's suppose there is a God, and let's suppose he wants to communicate with the people he has created, and he wants whatever he said to last through history. That, to me, would necessitate writing of some form. Given that we are only recently in a technological age, writing on a physical object is the most reasonable choice. With the possibilities of writing on a physical object, there are two choices: he can write it himself and make it drift down from the sky, or rise up from the ocean or the earth, and everybody oohs and aahs except the guy in back of the crowd who says, "Looks like Joe's writing to me. Is this some kind of joke? How do we know God wrote that?" But even if a big hand reached out of the sky and handed it to people, anybody who wasn't there would say, "Yeah, right," and within about 30 years, there would be widespread doubt.

The other choice is to speak to people and have them write it down and tell people, "God told me to write this." Sure, some will ooh and ahh, but the guy in the back is going to start laughing again.

Ultimately, God chose Choice #2 so that humans could be part of the process of God's work in the world. It's better to include us in the communication process than to try to wow us with the big hand, which wouldn't have worked anyway.

But the same problem still exists. How do we know that all those words actually came from a god? It's only in the weight of evidence. Are they true? Are they true to humanity? Are they true to deity? Do they square with rational thought, reasonable logic, life as we know it? Do they help us through life? Do they teach us about God in a way that is supported by evidence? OK, so it's a matter of belief, just like if we believe what's been written about Alexander the Great. But if the writing has a prophecy that comes true, well, that gives credibility. If the writing talks about unknown people and events, and later we learn that stuff was true, well, that helps. That's how we know. Let's not make it magical and mystical. Let's make it logical and rational. And if the weight of evidence is enough to convince you, you'll be convinced. If you choose to be the guy in back who says, "Bah, humbug," that's your choice. But that's always a choice no matter what the evidence.

[Newbie]

God communicating with people "necessitates" writing? Huh?

If God wanted to communicate with people, I'm sure he could do better than dictating a book to desert nomads which even now has not been disseminated to all humans.

If God's plan was to communicate with people, that's like the worst plan ever. I can do better than that, and I don't claim omnipotence.

Regarding the rest of it, extraordinary claims require commensurate evidence.

Your examples that "give credibility" are frankly pathetic.

If an ancient text said that Alexander the Great was born of a virgin, was also a god, came back from the dead and flew into the sky, and the text also had ambiguous prophecies, and talked about real people and places, and it was "true to humanity" and blah blah blah, you wouldn't believe that text for a second.

You would require more substantial evidence, and you would be the guy in the back.

[jimwalton]

Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I didn't say that God communicating necessitates writing. I said writing was necessary if he wanted it to last throughout history to be read and re-read through time and across cultures. The Bible says God communicated through visions, miracles, prophetic utterances, audible voices, and visible manifestations. But the only reason we know about these things is because they were written down for us. That's what I meant.

And as far as dissing the desert nomads, it turns out that many of the people responsible for writing down what God is claimed have said are quite intelligent people. Genesis 1, regardless of what you think of the content, is spectacularly written, filled with rhythm and balance, astounding numerological sequences, and poetic art. So also many of the Psalms, the words of prophecy, and the stories of Jesus. They count among some of the finest literature known to history. The Jewish scribes who transcribed the scrolls were unparalleled in history for their discipline and rigor. You too quickly, thoughtlessly, and without justification, marginalize them as country bumpkins.

"If an ancient text said that Alexander the Great was..."

If it was a legend that grew up over the years, with no eyewitnesses to confirm, to writings to present the evidence, but just a Robin Hood kind of story, of course not. But if there were thousands of witnesses, written records from reliable sources who were there, written during the time when other eye-witnesses could rebut or confirm, and the evidence presented was both substantial and credible, I guess then it would be a different matter. That's actually what is claimed. As far as more substantial evidence, I don't know what more you'd expect than thousands of by-stander witnesses, reliable writers, physical and historical evidence, and reliable transmission of the written records.

[Newbie]

"The Bible says God communicated through visions, miracles, prophetic utterances, audible voices, and visible manifestations. But the only reason we know about these things is because they were written down for us."

Right. God stopped communicating directly, for some awfully convenient, unverifiable reason. His divine plan was to continue his communication with humans through a series of texts that were selected by multiple committees with disagreement on which books should be included (a disagreement that persists today), plus the numerous translations, each more humanly subjective than the last, the interpretation of which has resulted in the splintering of Christianity into thousands of disagreeing subgroups.

I don't know how else I can say -- this plan is not a good plan. This plan is so inept, so utterly stupid, that it would be an insult to any god who actually existed and had the ability to give visions, miracles, audible voices, etc.

"And as far as dissing the desert nomads, it turns out that many of the people responsible for writing down what God is claimed have said are quite intelligent people."

The same people who occasionally worshiped golden statues as gods?
The same people who cut off the foreskins of slain enemies and presented them as dowry for a bride?
The same people who murdered the women and children of rival tribes and raped the surviving virgins and enslaved the rest?
The same people who ritualistically bashed with rocks the brains of witches/pagans/sluts/people who picked up sticks on the Sabbath?
And you are so impressed by their transcendent command of... languages I doubt you can speak... that you call these people, "Smart"?
I don't get it. All I see is ancient barbaric mysticism. Their supposed creative writing abilities are relatively meaningless to me.

"But if there were thousands of witnesses..."

Are you referring to a few lines in an ancient text? Or thousands of individual affidavits?

If I type "A million people saw me fly", and someone 2000 years from now digs it up on a hard drive, this comment does not count as compelling evidence that a million people saw me fly. Keeping that in mind, please present compelling evidence that there were thousands of witnesses.

"...written during the time when other eye-witnesses could rebut or confirm..."

Why would rebutting eye-witnesses change what is written down on a scroll?

"...reliable writers..."

Please present evidence that the Bible's authors were reliable. In most cases we don't even know who they were.

I don't think you're taking my hypothetical seriously. So study some other ancient or modern religions which claim contact with God or gods. Check out the many kings and rulers (Julius Caesar, for example) who were deified as immortal gods after they died. Look at cults, gurus, shamans... And as you're learning about these things, crosscheck their sources with your checklist of credibility.

For instance, Sathya Sai Baba was a Hindu guru that convinced millions of people that he was divine and could perform miracles. Understand that there are thousands upon thousands of verifiable, living people who claim to be eye-witnesses to his miracles (as opposed to a single text claiming that there are thousands of eye-witnesses, none of whom can be named). Do you believe their claims?

Thousands of verifiable, living people have claimed that they were abducted by aliens. Jim Jones convinced nearly a thousand people to drink cyanide. David Koresh convinced many that he was the second coming of Christ. Marshall Applewhite convinced people that there was a spaceship behind Haley's comet, and on and on and on...

You'll find that the criteria you claim gives credibility to your religion, if applied elsewhere, would give credibility to many, many fantastical and ridiculous things which we surely both agree are completely fictional.

[jimwalton]

Yeah, I agree it's hard to know what to say. Your knowledge of the Bible, its claims and methods of transmission, seems quite under-researched.

"His divine plan was to continue his communication with humans through a series of texts that were selected by multiple committees with disagreement on which books should be included (a disagreement that persists today), plus the numerous translations, each more humanly subjective than the last..."

Even the newspapers you read, news magazines, and internet articles are often a series of texts selected by multiple committees, but in so sense do you consider them to be unreliable because of the process. They are only unreliable if the information in them is untrue, not due to the process of transmission. The process of transmission can often be a "checks and balances" system of verification that helps them to be more reliable. And as far the numerous translations, it would make more sense to talk about the 5800 manuscripts and pieces that exist and have been studied hundreds, if not thousands, of times over, to assure us that the documents we have in our hands are reliably matching to the original documents to a degree of better than 98%, a factor that is equalled by no other ancient document of any type or source. If you check the facts of document transmission, you would know that the Bible is nothing of the sort that you are accusing.

"the same people who..."

Who erected the pyramids, Stonehenge, the hanging gardens of Babylon, who invented science, mathematics, philosophy, and writing. You know, every village has its idiots, but it has its scientists and philosophers too. Just because you can name a few stupidities doesn't mean they were all brainless barbarians. And I don't have to speak their languages to respect their accomplishments. You really have a chip on your shoulder. All you see is "ancient barbaric mysticism," which tells me you are missing the brilliance and glories of some of their ancient cultures and what they were able to accomplish with the tools at their disposal.

"If I type "A million people saw me fly", and someone 2000 years from now digs it up..."

Oh, I agree. That's why it's particularly stunning that people turned to Jesus by the thousands upon thousands within months of his resurrection. People who lived in that city, who had seen him and heard him teach, and had watched him die. Remember, this was an era in Greece and Roman, as well as Israel, that was religiously skeptical and hardened in their ways. Greek philosophy was strong; Jewish, Greek, and Roman education (for those who qualified) was excellent. This is historic evidence that Christianity spread like wildfire on the heels of Jesus' life, among people who were eyewitnesses to his life. The movement started in Jerusalem, right where he was. It's historically verifiable.

"Please present evidence that the Bible's authors were reliable."

1. For the most part, they were eyewitnesses of the events recorded.
2. 8 or 9 of the New Testament writers were people who travelled with Jesus or were eyewitnesses to his life. Primary sources always have more potential veracity than secondary sources.
3. The new Testament writers show credibility in that they did not expect Jesus to rise from the dead, included material that reflected badly on themselves, wrote accounts from different perspectives to show they weren't in collusion. In both testaments, many facts have been archaeologically and historically verified

Your mention of Sathya Sai Baba is interesting. Certainly an interesting man, worthy of investigation. History is replete with people such as him, and Jesus was another one. Both may have performed great wonders and truthful teachings. The difference would be the claim and the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead. That's what needs to be investigated with scientific rigor to weigh the evidence and either confirm or prove to be false. To me the evidence of Jesus, the Bible, or whatever Christians believe, should be subjected to the same kind of logical, scientific, legal investigation as any other kind of information, whether in the newspaper, dug up from archaeology, or passed by word of mouth or word of internet. Nobody's claiming (well, I'm not) that the Bible get some kind of backstage pass that doesn't get examined. One of the differences between Christianity (including the resurrection) and other religions is that Christianity is historical. The teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. are philoso-theological teachings often of a mystical/ethical nature. But Christian is set in space and time history, presenting a type of evidence that is (or was) empirically verifiable. This openness to falsification is the general mentality of the whole Bible—the same qualification common to all historical evidence. When Moses was asked, "How can we tell the difference between true and false prophets?" he answered, Use your eyes and your brains, look for empirical proof, and that's how you'll know. The same mentality is in the New Testament, when Luke wrote, "This is stuff you have all seen and were eyewitnesses to. None of this was done in a corner (Acts 26.25-26). Use your eyes and your brains, and that's how you'll know."

[Newbie]

Was the Bible assembled out of many books into a collection of fewer books by church committees?

Was there disagreement about which books should be included in canon?

Is there still disagreement between denominations of Christianity as to which books should be included in canon?

Are all translations equal? Can one translation be more accurate than another at conveying the intended spirit of the original text?

These are all simple Yes/No answers and even the most basic investigation of Biblical scholarship will inform you that the answer is yes, in all cases.

"That's why it's particularly stunning that people turned to Jesus by the thousands upon thousands within months of his resurrection. People who lived in that city, who had seen him and heard him teach, and had watched him die."

Please demonstrate the historicity of this with any non-Biblical primary source.

"For the most part, they were eyewitnesses of the events recorded."

Please name these eyewitnesses.

"8 or 9 of the New Testament writers were people who travelled with Jesus or were eyewitnesses to his life."

Please name these people. Don't you realize that the church arbitrarily assigned authors to the Gospels in the second century? And that the earliest manuscripts we have are anonymously authored? That even some of Paul's letters were probably written by someone other than Paul?

"The teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. are philoso-theological teachings often of a mystical/ethical nature. But Christian is set in space and time history, presenting a type of evidence that is (or was) empirically verifiable."

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Christianity isn't mystical/ethical? Pagan religions are not "set in space and time history"? Unless you can offer a dynamite clarification, I am judging that word vomit.

"This is stuff you have all seen and were eyewitnesses to."

Please name these eyewitnesses and present non-Biblical, primary sources that demonstrate their historical existence.
(The reason that you haven't specifically named any eyewitnesses or presented any non-Biblical, primary sources is because you cannot -- they don't exist)

[jimwalton]

Thanks for the reply. I'm enjoying the conversation with you.

> Was the Bible assembled?

Yep. The Protestant church accepts identically the same OT books as the Jews had, and as Jesus and the apostles accepted. They were considered to have their source in God.

In the early part of the 2nd c., no one had even attempted to assemble the books that we call the New Testament, as far as we know. They were known works, and were quoted from, but no lists or assemblage. All we have are many quotes. As false teachings spread, the church was forced to define what was considered authoritative, much like a room full of editors in any newsroom today would gather and verify sources for truth. Other people, such as guy named Marcion, threw out the whole OT along with other recognized writings, so church leaders started compiling lists. The earliest list is from around 180 AD, but there are various lists. Several books appear on all lists: the 4 gospels, Acts, 13 letters of Paul, 1 Peter, and 1 John. No list disputes the authenticity of these books. The writings were examined and assessed on three criteria: authenticity (written by an apostle or a close associate of an apostle) of authorship and not forgeries, recognition by churches everywhere, and conformity to standards of doctrinal truth. By the end of the 2nd century, there was widespread agreement over the authenticity and authority of the books we now recognize.

>Is there still disagreement?

Only in that in 1546 the Roman Catholic Church, at the Council of Trent, added the books of the Apocrypha to their Bibles.

> Please demonstrate the historicity of this with any non-Biblical primary source.

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/christians.htm: Tacitus: "Accordingly first those were arrested who confessed they were Christians; next on their information, a vast multitude were convicted, not so much on the charge of burning the city, as of 'hating the human race.' "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_cent ... ristianity, particularly footnotes 4 & 5.

> Please name these eyewitnesses.

For one, there is actually strong evidence that Moses was indeed the writer and/or compiler of the first 5 books. The author of Joshua is unknown, though Joshua as author is not out of the question. The authors of the other history books is unknown. Ezra and Nehemiah may have written parts of the books attributed them, also giving "eye-witness" status to them. David is widely considered to have written more than 70 of the Psalms. As far as the books of the NT, Matthew and John were both eyewitnesses who traveled with Jesus. Luke accompanied Paul on his trips, making Luke an eyewitness to much of what is recorded in Acts.

> Don't you realize that the church arbitrarily assigned authors...

While the gospel of Matthew is anonymous in its content, the early church fathers were unanimous in attributing it to Matthew. Recent arguments against his authorship are logical ("if he were an eyewitness he wouldn't have to make extensive use of someone else's material"). Even so, Matthew remains the best educated guess as its author. There is no specific reason to doubt that he could have been the author.

The Gospel of John, likewise, is anonymous, but there is a substantial body of evidence that the disciple was the writer. The gospel was universally accepted as canonical, and that's significant also. No theory is without its challengers, but John is by more than a lap the front runner.

Traditionally the young man of Mark 14.51 is identified as Mark himself, putting him close to Jesus at a very important event, which makes it possible he was at other events.

While Luke was not an eyewitness of Jesus, as far as we know, it is strongly believed that he interviewed eye-witnesses (Lk. 1.2), especially Mary, for his gospel. And he was certainly an eyewitness to the journeys of Paul.

> I have no idea what that's supposed to mean. Christianity isn't mystical/ethical?

One of the characteristics of Christianity is that it is both rational/intellectual as well as mystical/ethical. For instance, many of the traditional religions of Africa are mystical: full of orgies, chanting, ecstasy, and spells. By contrast, philosophies and religions such as Stoicism, Hinduism (asceticism, setting aside natural things to achieve Nirvana, etc.), and Buddhism are just for the mind, and are mostly ethical writings, as is Islam, mostly. The Muslim has to trust in a private encounter that Mohammad had—an encounter which is historically unverifiable. Buddhism and Hinduism make no claims of events in history that can be investigated. You either adopt their philosophy or you don't. There is no objective way to test them. But what I'm referring to is that the truth must be both for the children and the adults, the "savage" and the civilized, the mind and the heart, space and time as well as philosophical and theological. Christianity, set in narratives of space and time, sets itself as the only verifiable religion. Jesus lived publicly, he was killed publicly, he is reported to have appeared in public settings, and people who saw him told others what they saw. That's what I meant.

If I decided to start a religion, true or false, I wouldn't make claims to recent historic events that didn't happen, because those claims could be tested. I also wouldn't give details about times, places, and the names of people involved. I also wouldn't invite people to investigate the claims. If I were going to make up a religion, I would make sure all the visions and teachings were beyond testing so I could say, "Oh, just believe." But Christianity is set in space and time history, presenting a type of evidence that is (and certainly was) empirically verifiable. That's what I meant. I hope that helps, and that you are able to hold back your nausea. : )

> Please name these eyewitnesses and present non-Biblical, primary sources

This is so odd. It's like asking, "Tell me all about the riots in Egypt this month, but don't give me information from anyone who was there or who saw it. I'll only accept evidence from people who weren't there who can corroborate what the supposed eye-witnesses are saying." To me that doesn't make sense. You want primary sources of historical verifiability by people who weren't there but received the information second-, third- or fourth-hand.

Tacitus (AD 55-120), in Annals, (xv.44) says, "Christus, the found of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate." Josephus, in Antiquities (xviii.33), has a paragraph about Jesus, his teachings, his followers, and his death and resurrection. Seutonius and Pliny, both from the early 2nd century, both mention Jesus. Thallus, in 52 AD, is quoted from as to have written about Jesus, but none of his original writings exist. In the Letter of Mara Bar-Serapion (sometime after AD 73) references the deaths of Socrates, Pythagoras, and the "wise king," whom scholars consider to be referencing Jesus. None were eye-witnesses, because the writers who were eyewitnesses were published in the Bible, but you won't accept those. Sorry this has been so lengthy, but I hope it helps.