> While hard evidence for Moses is wanting, there has been an intriguing discovery of a statue that possibly mentions him, though that writing is highly disputed. But we all know that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. New discoveries are made every day.
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> Again, you are too quick to jump to conclusions. First of all, our information about Quirinius comes from Josephus, a source quickly and uniformly spurned when talking about other aspects of Jesus and the Gospel record, but blindly accepted when it goes against the Gospel records. It's a double standard, and hypocritical.
> Acts 5.37 mentions the census of AD 6, while Quirinius was governor of Syria. There is a record of a periodical 14-yr census in Egypt that goes back to AD 20, 14 years after the one we know about in AD 6. It's not at all implausible to assume a census in 8 BC. The Deeds of the Divine Augustus reveals that Caesar Augustus himself ordered a census in 8 BC —one that from the record sounds empire-wide in scope.
A careful analysis of Luke 2 also helps. We know Quirinius was a governor of Syria from AD 6-9, but Luke uses the term hegemon (general for "leader" or "ruler"), not governor. The title is important because Luke is very precise in the titles he uses for public officials. According to Tacitus, before Quirinius was governor of Syria, he was doing military expeditions in the eastern provinces of the Empire, with some evidence that he was a co-ruler (hegemon) with the then governor of Syria, Quintilius Varus. This could be the position to which Luke refers. 2nd, Luke specifies that this was the first registration, which would indicate there were at least two such censuses (and we know of the one in AD 6). The exact idea of “first” (πρώτη, Lk. 2.2) is not certain, however. It seems reasonable to assume Luke's idea is that there was more than one registration under Quirinius. It is the first of a series. This could be a previous one to AD 6 to which Luke refers. 3rd, the definite article doesn't occur with “This was (the first)” in v. 2. The text just says, “This was proete…” This grammatical form often points to something previous in time. It could possibly indicate the earliest or earlier of the possible references—in other words, one before the known one of year 6. 4th, the verb Luke uses in Lk. 2.2 is ἐγένετο (NIV: “that took place”), a term that is subject to a variety of possible meanings. Perhaps a straightforward alternative translation is warranted: “This census took place before Quirinius was governing Syria.”
> In other words, it’s not as clean as the critics would have one believe.
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Also, the Romans never once issued a decree that required people to go back to the place lf their birth. That would be a massive disruption. There is simply no record of that kind of census happening, and the Romans kept extensive records of such things.
> The mention of only one animal doesn't require that there was only one animal. If I'm at a party and I say, "Sean and Emma were there," I am not implying they were the only ones there, but rather that they were the two who mattered to me. For the other Gospel writers, the donkey Jesus actually rode on was the one that mattered to them.
The reason Matthew (he made the mistake, not Mark, my apologies on the error) erroneously includes both a horse colt and donkey foal is because he misreads a prophesy from the OT (Zechariah 9:9). The original prophecy has the Messiah riding into Jerusalem "on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey). Clearly the author means one animal. Matthew mistakenly inteprets it as meaning two, so he is forced to write two in for Jesus to satisfy OT Messianic prophecy. Mark never mentioned another animal, and Luke never did either, which is especially telling given that both Luke and Mark drew from the same source, Q. Luke was simply smart enough to recognize Matthew's error and not repeat it. Your explanation is nothing more than handwaving.
> This is incorrect. Jesus never predicted or said he would be returning within the lifetime of the disciples.
Matthew 16:28, Matthew 24:34 are both predictions of imminent parousia. Matthew 24:34 is especially hard to reinterpret to be metaphorical considerong the greek word here is temporal and means quite literally THIS CURRENT GENERATION. I'll tag the expert u/koine_lingua here, but safe to say you are very very wrong here.
> The two accounts have many elements in common, referring to the same event, and some elements in distinction, showing their particular reason to writing. The two don't contradict.
Yes they do. Matthew and Luke have Herod the Great being king of Judaea during Jesuss birth. However, Luke ALSO has Quirinius as governor of Cyria at the time of Jesus birth, which is impossible because he wasn't in power until 9 years after Herod's death.
The genealogies are completely different as well. I've seen apologists claim that one is a maternal line and one paternal, but this makes no sense because ancestry was traced patrilineally. Also there simply isn't any reason to believe it is matrilineal. Especially since both are traced through Joseph, not Mary.
> Actually it is not. He died by suicide by hanging, as Matthew says. it was a common literary motif in ancient literature to describe the death of the wicked in very gruesome details. These were literary conventions to speak of the wickedness of the person, not the details of his death.
> 2 Maccabees 9.5-7, 9-10, 28 describe the death of Antiochus Epiphanes as follows: “But the all-seeing Lord, the God of Israel, struck him with an incurable and invincible blow. As soon as he stopped speaking, he was seized with a pain in his bowels, for which there was no relief, and with sharp internal tortures – and that very justly, for he had tortured the bowels of others with many strange inflictions. Yet he did not in any way stop his insolence, but was filled even more with arrogance, breathing fire in his rage against the Jews, and giving orders to drive even faster. And so it came about that he fell out of his chariot as it was rushing along, and the fall was so hard as to torture every limb of his body…and so the ungodly man’s body swarmed with worms, and while he was still living in anguish and pain, his flesh rotted away, and because of the stench the whole army felt revulsion at his decay.... so the murderer and blasphemer, having endured the more intense suffering, such as he had inflicted on others, came to the end of his life by a most pitiable fate...” King Joram (2 Chr. 21.18-19): “And after all this the LORD smote him in his bowels with an incurable disease. In the course of time, at the end of two years, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great agony.” When a friend of hated Tiberius Graccus died, Plutarch wrote, it is said that his “dead body burst open and a great quantity of corrupt humours gushed forth, so that the flame of the funeral pyre was extinguished.”
> Acts is not telling the method of death, but only metaphorically describing his wickedness.
You aren't addressing my question at all. Matthew has the priests of the temple by the field, while Acts has Judas himself by it. Matthew specifies that they bought the potter's field to fulfill a prophecy from Jeremiah: "Spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him that was valued, whom they of the children of Israel did value; And gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord appointed me." However, this is actually a misquote from Zechariah 11-12-13. So hear you have an inconsistency sandwhich. Matthew disagrees with Paul on what happened, names the wrong book of the OT in quoting prophecy, and completely bungles the original prophecy from Zechariah. It isn't a good look.
Also, Acts has Judas purchasing a field with his silver, while Matthew has him cast down the silver in the temple. So clearly a lot of explaining is required here.
> 2000 years ago the division of the OT was different than the division we know today. And it was common practice to call a set of books by the name of one of the books it contained. The Pentateuch (Torah) was called “Moses”. The writings were labeled as “Psalms” or “David”. The same goes for the prophetic writings. They called them “Isaiah” and “Jeremiah”. That is to say that Matthew refers to the prophets as “Jeremiah”. Mark, by the way, did the exact same thing. In the first chapter of his gospel he refers to the book of Malachi using the label “Isaiah”. In brief, “Jeremiah” and “Isaiah” served as a label for all the prophets. By the way, whoever takes a look at the Tractate “Bava Batra” in the Talmud will notice that the sages had the same habit of labeling books.
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> In other words, you're wrong about ALL these accusations. Some more research would help you in your pursuit of truth, much more than these casual toss-offs without having done the homework.
On the contrary, the issue is you are working backwards from your conclusion and adjusting and reinterpreting the evidence whenever it doesn't add up. Most of your responses are hand waving and simple conjecture, especially in regards to Biblical contradiction and error