Thread 18124984

Anytime I read articles/search up things all I see is "scholars agree this wasn't written by/this person didn't exist" etc. to the point where I wonder who the fuck they think actually wrote the bible? According to them, there's evidence that Paul didn't even exist, that none of the apostles exist, none of the people in the bible exist, no one knows any author of any book and there's no proof of anything ever happening in the book. At this point do they think the bible was even written by humans? Seems like a lot of time and effort to put into being a scholar only to be a hyperskeptic who sums everything up to "nah that didn't happen. At what point are you just a bible scholar actively looking to discredit anything from the bible? Because every wikipedia page 10 words in will hit you with SCHOLARS DON'T THINK THIS IS REAL or some form of that

(((Scholars)))

It's no coincidence the majority of scholars are secular.

>>18124984 (OP)
This is what is generally agreed upon, at least with the New Testament
>Jesus of Nazareth was a real historical figure
>He was some kind of preacher who lived and died roughly as it's believed, and was crucified by Pontius Pilate
>His followers after his death experienced some kind of mystical experience
>Paul was real, and his Epistles (the Hauptbriefe, anyway) are the earliest Christian writings extant
>The Gospels were written decades after both the Crucifixion and Paul's death because the original Apostles were dying/dead, and the Second Coming hadn't happened yet, and they needed to start formulating things
This is, generally, the basics. There are a lot of people that disagree on the details but that's essentially the consensus.
>t. knower

Christxican meltdown.

Yeah, I noticed that too. When people devote their lives to actually understanding what the Bible means instead of thumping it on the heads of retards, they're kinder, more compassionate, more progressive, more secular, more civilized and don't believe the silly nonsense about talking snakes and floating zoos. Almost like Christianity is actually complete bullshit.

>>18124984 (OP)
the bible was jewish fairytales taken too far, we don't need to be told zeus and aphrodite or hercules or cecrops don't exist we just know because people were more sensible about the greek myths.

>>18124991
Wouldn't the fact that Christ still hadn't returned despite saying he would by the end of their lives be sufficient to just give up on it? Were they just coping because they realized they'd wasted their lives and decided to instead perpetuate the bullshit to infinity?

>>18124984 (OP)
i think you're stumbling upon fringe.
>Paul didn't even exist, that none of the apostles exist, none of the people in the bible exist, no one knows any author of any book and there's no proof of anything ever happening in the book
no serious scholar thinks this, not even a consensus position.

>>18125025
People believed literally in those "myths" until Christians forcefully stopped them by banning their cults.

Religion becomes myth when people stop believing it's real. That's the only distinction. There is no difference between someone in the modern day believing marvel or harry potter characters are real vs. old religions where people believed their own made-up characters were real. Most common people in the ancient world believed Zeus was real and the Iliad really happened. Only intellectuals were like "You know what, some of this seems like bullshit..."

>>18125029
>Were they just coping because they realized they'd wasted their lives and decided to instead perpetuate the bullshit to infinity?
Literally what happens with every single doomsday cult.

>>18125029
Something like that. Religions and cults rarely die when their prophecies fail to come true. There's still millions of Mormons despite all the failed prophecies of Joseph Smith. Believers always come up with some cope about why the prophecies are actually happening later than originally predicted and move on.

>>18125029
I don't know. What is certain is that there was a prevalent belief within the Early Christians (as evidenced by Paul's epistles, Gospels, and the Revelation of John) that the Second Coming was imminent. The way that Paul speaks about the Eschaton is not in some vague "it will be soon, some time in the future, we don't know" but a genuine conviction that it will be happening within his lifetime.
>Were they just coping because they realized they'd wasted their lives and decided to instead perpetuate the bullshit to infinity?
Who knows? It's hard to say what the genuine belief at the beginning even was. There seemed to have been a huge divorce between the more Judaic faction led by James (Jesus' brother) and Peter with Paul and his side. The stories of a physical resurrection don't off until the writing of the Gospels. Paul never mentions a physical resurrection and seems, rather, to imply that Christ came back in some kind of spiritual form.

I think you should not underestimate the power of belief, though, especially in regards to "apocalyptic" end-times cults.

>>18125041
>>18125042
Adding onto >>18125045
The thing you also have to remember is that the "Christian" movement sprung out of an apocalyptic cult in of itself. John the Baptist and Jesus were trying to "force the end times" by deliberately attempting to trigger a prophecy. It's possible that they believed that they were dual messiahs (priestly and kingly) who would usher in the Son of Man (the Israelites as a whole) to seize control of Israel and overthrow not only the Romans but the whole world system and wipe the board clean. After John the Baptist died, it seems as though Jesus kicked things in gear.

This is just my own personal hypothesis, but it's probable that Jesus instigated some kind of civil disorder on Passover when he rode in on a donkey, deliberately trying to make himself the King of Israel. He provoked a riot and was executed for this.

Of course scholars don't think that the Bible was written by the actual magical kings, superheroes and fanatics that it says in the text. Fucking retards used to think that Moses wrote the book of Exodus even though he fucking dies in it.
Until you dig up a copy of some of "the Books" that is 200 years older than any of the (new testament) ones we have, the assumption is that they were written down after the events had turned into legends and passed around. This is not a valid basis to assign authorship.
Your options are goofy magic, folk religion and stupid rationalizations on one hand or academic rigor on the other. Easy.

>>18124984 (OP)
It is mostly creating conspiracy theories about 2,000 years ago without any evidence to back it up.

It also takes as an assumption that miracles are impossible, so you end up with something very biased.
The theory that the Gospels were written after 70 AD have as their basis that "Jesus couldn't actually predict the destruction of the Temple as he is portrayed to be doing in the Gospels, so they were written after 70 AD, when the Temple was destroyed"

And you have people writing things like this

>The Gospels were written decades after both the Crucifixion and Paul's death because the original Apostles were dying/dead, and the Second Coming hadn't happened yet, and they needed to start formulating things
They have zero evidence of this. You would think there would be documents about people concerned about the second coming not happening, but there is nothing. It is all based on the Gospels and Epistles, but instead of taking the traditional interpretation they get conspiracy theories.

Heck, even if you take the 70AD date for the Gospels, you had someone like John who lived until 100AD.

And John's Revelations which is maybe the youngest material of the New Testament is identical in theological content on the Second Coming to the early materials.

>>18125054
>The thing you also have to remember is that the "Christian" movement sprung out of an apocalyptic cult in of itself. John the Baptist and Jesus were trying to "force the end times" by deliberately attempting to trigger a prophecy. It's possible that they believed that they were dual messiahs (priestly and kingly) who would usher in the Son of Man (the Israelites as a whole) to seize control of Israel and overthrow not only the Romans but the whole world system and wipe the board clean. After John the Baptist died, it seems as though Jesus kicked things in gear.
You have zero evidence for this

>>18125077
>>18125079
You have zero evidence for anything you say. You presume that all of these authors (who alternate between line-for-line forgeries or straight up contradictions) were who the 'tradition' says they were. The only reason why you use these Gospels at all is because a bishop in Lyons at the end of the 2nd century thought four was a nice round number.

There's no proof that Jesus predicted anything. He obviously didn't fulfill what the Messiah was supposed to do. Jews never thought that a Messiah was going to literally be God. On the other hand, there's ample proof via the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran that Jesus was either actively or subconsciously trying to fulfill their own prophecies of the Teacher of Righteousness. He, or the Gospel writers (whichever you prefer), were pesher-reading Isaiah and Daniel and thinking it was him/Jesus.

>>18125077
>It also takes as an assumption that miracles are impossible
This isn't restricted to the Bible. Historians always assume magic is not real.
Grow up.

>>18125077
So much is wrong with your post but especially
>it makes the assumption that miracles are impossible
It's just standard methodological naturalism, which you yourself would probably demand for any religion that wasn't your own. It doesn't assume miracles are impossible but limits its approach from identifying whether something is miraculous due to not being testable.

>>18125085
>There's no proof that Jesus predicted anything. He obviously didn't fulfill what the Messiah was supposed to do.
You have zero evidence of this

>Jews never thought that a Messiah was going to literally be God.
Yes, that's true. Even the Apostles didn't at first, until a certain point


>On the other hand, there's ample proof via the Dead Sea Scrolls found at Qumran that Jesus was either actively or subconsciously trying to fulfill their own prophecies of the Teacher of Righteousness. He, or the Gospel writers (whichever you prefer), were pesher-reading Isaiah and Daniel and thinking it was him/Jesus
You have no evidence of that.

>>18125085
>You have zero evidence for anything you say. You presume that all of these authors (who alternate between line-for-line forgeries or straight up contradictions) were who the 'tradition' says they were. The only reason why you use these Gospels at all is because a bishop in Lyons at the end of the 2nd century thought four was a nice round number
???
My text was about Bible Scholarship. I don't think I was inaccurate about it.

>>18124984 (OP)
>According to them, there's evidence that Paul didn't even exist, that none of the apostles exist, none of the people in the bible exist, no one knows any author of any book and there's no proof of anything ever happening in the book.
Nobody says these things, except maybe Richard Carrier idk. You're just triggered because people don't 100% buy into traditional Christian claims.

>>18125129
>no body says these things
Richard Carrier does
Robert M. Price also says Paul is just a "literary construct" and none of the Pauline epistles were written by him (see: The Amazing Colossal Apostle).

>>18125104
Would you agree that a study that has as an assumption that the supernatural is false and God is not real will be useless for Christians who do believe that God is real and that there is a supernatural? That they shouldn't really take those studies as the truth or be influenced by them, given their assumptions?

>>18125108
It does assume miracles are impossible. Hence the 70AD dating. Or saying the feeding of 5,000 people was symbolic, etc

>>18125148
Yes, magic believers should indeed assume magic is real. If you happen to believe magic in general, I don't find it the least bit surprising that you would assume historical accounts talking about magic are true.

>>18124984 (OP)
I'm not a Biblical scholar and haven't really dove into the weeds of biblical scholarship, but based on what I can tell from people like Dan McClellan (A Scholar of the Bible and Religion™) they believe that the Bible was divinely inspired, but still nonetheless written by people who are capable of making mistakes, misremembering, having personal agendas, and mistranslating verses. They still think the Bible, in a broad sense, may have metaphysical inspiration, but the people responsible for writing such inspiration down are still physical and thus need to be held to the same standards as any other physical documentarians. In this context they basically see the Bible as a largely impressionist work of literary art, and that there is still truth to be found within the Bible but it requires extrapolation based on what we know about how it was written in context.

The "dispassionate scholar" archetype has been a disaster for academia.
We need people who think their field of expertise is cool and real.

>>18125158
But surely, you would agree that the results of scholarship that presupposes the supernatural is not real shouldn't be taken by Christians?
For example, we shouldn't need to agree that the Gospels were written after 70AD, since we are allowed to believe that Jesus could make accurate predictions.

>>18125171
Sure, there's no reason for people who believe magic is real to believe a historian who says reports of magic are not to be believed.
I don't know what you mean by "are allowed to believe". Who is either allowing or not allowing you to believe things? How is such a thing enforced?

>>18125160
There are many kinds of Bible scholars. There are Christians who believe in the traditional interpretations. There are militant atheists who believe the Bible is the least reliable book in the world and that whatever is not attested elsewhere is false ("if Paul is not mentioned elsewhere, he didn't exist"). And there are others.

And the methods are faulty. For example, before the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the mainstream view was that "John is too sophisticated in theology and words to have been written by 100AD, so it was written much later". But it turned out the DSS had texts similar in language and theology to John.

>>18125129
>>18125136
Carrier is very much on the "Paul exists" side
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/37123
>He wins on priors. He wins on likelihoods. Jesus wins on neither. So I just don’t buy the idea that Paul didn’t exist. Yes, his existence is not a slam dunk. But everything we do have favors it.
He isn't a universal "no one exists" advocate.

>>18125178
>Sure, there's no reason for people who believe magic is real to believe a historian who says reports of magic are not to be believed.
Or in conclusions reached due to this assumption, right?

>>18125182
The Dead Sea Scrolls also point to the "prophecies" that Jesus was fulfilling/thought he was fulfilling/his followers thought he fulfilled weren't the typical Isaiah-Daniel apocalyptic Messiah, but rather the Qumran's adherence to dual Messiahs (John the Baptist as the Priestly, and Jesus as the Kingly.)

>>18125204
Yeah, sure. There's every reason for magic believers to believe in conclusions that contain magic rather than those that don't.

>>18125223
Exactly. We are in agreement.
In some seminaries they taught otherwise... they taught atheistic Bible scholarship.
Tell me, what do you think about the seminary directors that did this?

>>18125235
I don't give a shit.

>>18125239
Come on, anon. We are not even in disagreement here. Don't you think the seminary directors that did this were not really thinking too hard?

>>18125247
I'm telling you my honest thoughts on the matter. I don't care, it's not something that interests me. It could be that they have other reasons than what you've presented here. It could be that they don't believe in magic either. It could be that they are being blackmailed by satanic freemasons.
As for me? I don't care.

>>18125247
>>18125261
So what do you two believe anyway? I assume one of you is a Christian, and the other...obviously not.

>>18125261
We have discussed this far. Let's go a little further. I'm not trying to trip you up or anything like that. This is not something kind of trap.
From a "magic believer" point of view, would you say they were competent in creating future "magic believing advocates"?

>>18125266
I'm Christian, but...
What kind of idiot trains future priests in a kind of scholarship which presupposes that the supernatural is not real. What's their problem? Are they atheists in disguise? Or did they just want to show others how modern and liberal they were? Or are they too stupid to realize that we shouldn't follow the results of something that supposes our faith is false?

>b-but the l-liberal L-lutherans and our atheist brothers won't take us seriously if we don't accept this...
FUCK YOU, YOU ASSHOLE. YOU RUINED THE EDUCATION OF PRIESTS FOR YOUR EGO

Anyway, yeah, I'm Christian.

>>18125266
Vernonian
>>18125269
I don't care, but I think Islam and Asian folk religions are probably more successful at producing more magic believers.

>>18125281
I've been having a multi-board discussion over this but my view is that Biblical scholarship and the belief in Christ itself is weighed down by the unnecessary baggage of the Old Testament, which has been welded onto the Gospels and the Epistles for no reason other than cultural ties within the original Christian community. It's abundantly clear that Christ was not their Messiah, but rather OUR Christ. Marcion, in my view, was right to excise it. Although wrong to deny the physical Resurrection. You can't have everything from everyone.
>>18125285
>Vernonian
I've never heard of this.

James Kugel's lectures on the Four Core Assumptions are the last thing that really blew my mind in bible scholarship

>>18125296
>it's le...cryptic
>it's le...relevant
>it's le....consistent
>it's le...divinely inspired
How the fuck did this blow your mind?

>>18125079
Do you know what a hypothesis is?

>>18125311
An unfounded hypothesis with zero evidence

what books can I read to learn about Christianity's doomsday cult origins?

>>18125350
This is just a baseless theory

>>18125350
Read the actual Gospels and Epistles. It's clear that Jesus, the initial early followers, Paul, and everyone within early Christianity believed the Second Coming was right around the corner.

>>18125321
The evidence in this case would clearly be the stories we got about John the Baptist and Jesus

Why do they call it "Christianity" when it was created by Paul? Shouldn't it be called "Paulianity"?

>>18125370
Except this is not how this has been interpreted for 2000 years, including by the first generations of Christians

>>18124984 (OP)
What they don't tell you is the vast majority of bible scholars are atheists who go to school to learn theology from a fellow atheist. Don't believe me? Go to their subreddit r/academicbiblical or whatever. All the "official scholars" are all staunch atheists who demand 100% proof of anything in the bible or it's not real and needs to be discredited.

They're taught to use science as a philosophy on reading and studying the bible. "I need proof or it's fake" instead of asking "does the overwhelming evidence point to this most likely did occur?"

We all know why they do this. Because "proving" something can easily have its goal posts moved (okay you proved it but i need HARDER evidence than just that!). Also the vast majority of them are taught or outright don't believe in any divinity around the bible which immediately discredits them.

>>18124990
>high IQ People who study the Bible aren't fundamental Baptists
Yeah. Really makes you think.

>>18125473
>What they don't tell you is the vast majority of bible scholars are atheists
How is that surprising? Do you think people who study Hellenic religious texts are pagans? lol

>>18125473
Yeah. They don't go from a neutral position, but with a very biased one.

>>18125496
Because a fairly large percentage of the population is Christian.
It is surprising that a larger percentage of people in an area are atheists going out to disprove the religion than religious people themselves.
The average atheist should care far less about the Bible than the average Christian.

I'm not a Muslim and my interest in the Quran or in "trying to prove the Muslims wrong" is zero.

>>18125473
>>18125496
Hm....
https://ehrmanblog.org/how-do-we-know-what-most-scholars-think/
>Dr Ehrman, You have repeatedly stressed that most of the New Testament scholars are Christians, so I wonder if you were referring to the evangelicals or if even among the critical scholars there is a large number of Christians?
>Yes, even for critical scholars, most are Christian (though not evangelical)

>>18124984 (OP)
They hate God which is why they lie about the Bible. Not hard to figure out, certainly not worth writing an essay about.

>>18125545
Credos can't think properly or are possessed by demons so they don't tend to be scholars of the bible. That's why can can't touch holy translations like the NSRV and have to read demonic copies like the ESV. You can actually see them suffer when they are forced to hold a copy of the NSRV. Untranslated editions cause them to combust.

>>18124984 (OP)
Most existent ancient text of all, gapping the rest by an untouchable margin. There nothing to talk about other than that, only work to be done but bums with their mere words could never.

>>18125540
Atheists are higher IQ and more educated. You can't possibly expect some fundamentalist snake handling freak to pursue tertiary education AND then work in academia.

>>18125623
>atheists are higher IQ and more educated
Closing your mind to the possibilities of anything outside of your own world view is extremely narrow minded and low IQ. Your beliefs are based off of a truth claim that you yourself make, that you know there's no god or higher power.

>>18125302
Because I didn't know that they were post facto assumptions tacked onto the original material

>>18125642
Total wordbabble nonsense. There is no other way to read the Scripture except literally. If you don't, you're risking the Fire.

>>18125637
Nobody cares about your copes and appeals to Baba Yaga. I am talking about actual reality where atheists are overrepresented among university graduates and the more fundamentalist Christian denominations are massively underrepresented.

>>18125623
>>18125637
>>18125648
You are arguing the Bible (you can't. It is the inerrant Word of God and is meant to be read literally, unerringly.) You're both going to burn.

>>18124984 (OP)
haha OP I love froggo XD

>>18124984 (OP)
>At what point are you just a bible scholar actively looking to discredit anything from the bible? Because every wikipedia page 10 words in will hit you with SCHOLARS DON'T THINK THIS IS REAL or some form of that
There are many people who are paid to exclusively do this. They are paid by people who claim to be Jews and are not.

>>18125648
Maybe because fundamentalists are retarded and obviously wring about their own texts? Lay led splits from Christianity tend to be comically retarded. It's important to realize that the reformation was lead by the clergy of Northern Europe, but Anabaptists were a lay movement.

>>18125685
You're literally going to burn in Hell forever.
https://www.enjoyhell.com/

If you get to the bottom of any belief it doesn't hold up. Christianity is finished

>>18125645
The assumptions were agreed upon to rationalize and explain away problems in the text. All four are required to maintain the modern understanding of what the Bible "means" and they were early enough to influence the New Testament. But they were artificially applied.

>>18125696
>denying the inerrant Word of God and denying that the Holy Spirit organized it
Enjoy Hell, reprobate :)

>>18125085
Do you have nothing better to do than lie all day? If you really believe what you're saying, why do you even care so much that you keep writing all these posts? Why exactly are you on here talking about this stuff and saying things about Christianity that are absolutely not true and that you have zero proof for? Where's even the motive? Unless maybe you're being paid to do it. Being paid to spread FUD, try to sow confusion and just spew whatever lies you can come up with that have no substantiation. You're pathetic, anon.

>>18125705
You sound like someone who can't recite the Nicene creed.

>>18125701
So if the text literally recognizes the existence of other gods, there are literally other gods?

>>18125178
>I don't know what you mean by "are allowed to believe". Who is either allowing or not allowing you to believe things? How is such a thing enforced?
There are scholars who say that because a Gospel predicts the destruction of the Temple, that by itself combined with the fact that it really happened somehow "proves" that it had to have been written afterward, and in their mind you aren't allowed to question this.

>>18125715
The text does no such thing. Enjoy burning along with the Gnostic-Marcionist freak in here.

>>18124984 (OP)
Most of the people mentioned in the New Testament were illiterate fisheman. Someone else wrote it under their authority. It doesn't take away from the divine inspiration if someone else wrote it down.

>>18125473
The biggest problem with these kinds of people calling themselves "bible scholars" is the fact that they often pretend to be Christians. They are lying and intellectually dishonest false Christians.

>>18125726
>Denying the traditional authorship
Flames just got hotter. Tick tock.

>>18125528
The biggest part of their intellectual dishonesty is the posturing as being "scientific," "neutral" or "impartial," when the exact opposite is the case. These people have already assumed metaphysical materialism, and they are sneaky about hiding the fact that they're injecting that totally unproven a priori presupposition into every thought they express.

>>18125729
Where does it say in the Bible who the authors were?

>>18125728
>"All these "Bible scholars" are just a bunch of filthy staunch atheists!"
>"...Actually, they say they're mostly Christians."
>"And that's the worst thing about them!"
Lol.

>>18125736
For what it's worth, you're responding to a troll.

>>18125740
I just said they were false Christians. Are you able to read, anon?

>>18125746
I'm just observing the flow of conversation

>>18125749
So you stand corrected then.

>>18125736
They tell you in the text or in the title. Or do you think the Bible has errors (in which case: burn forever)
>>18125742
>Bearing false witness
Flames just got hotter :)

>>18125756
>They tell you in the text or in the title
It's not in the text, the titles were added centuries later by tradition.

>>18125753
About what?

>>18125762
The Bible is the Word of God breathed by the Holy Spirit and this entirely inerrant. You're going to burn forever in the lake of fire along with the Gnostic and Atheist in this thread.

>>18125765
I accept your concession.

>>18125399
This is not about interpreting what Jesus are saying in the stories
This is about explaining why we got the evidence (stories about Jesus)

>>18125784
Flames just got hotter. Tick tock :)

>>18125029
>Wouldn't the fact that Christ still hadn't returned despite saying he would by the end of their lives be sufficient to just give up on it?
Well, no, because, one, they saw Jesus come back to life after having been murdered, a sure seal of divine approval, and, two, because Jesus never actually said his return would lead to the end of the world, only to the destruction of the temple, since the verses these false claims are based on are from the Olivet Discourse, which literally begins with just that same claim about the temple:
>Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
The confusion arises because Jesus is then asked three distinct questions:
>Tell us (1) when will this happen, and (2) what will be the sign of your coming and (3) of the end of the age?
And the Discourse seemingly answers all three at once with no clear demarcation, but since the temple was indeed destroyed within that generation, the imagery of worldwide catastrophe it uses can't possibly be literal, especially since the imagery is borrowed from other parts of the OT where there such imagery had a metaphorical import, see, for example, Isaiah 19:1-2 or Jeremiah 4:13-14.

The three parables that immediately follow this section also strongly suggest that Jesus wasn't talking about the literal end of the world. All three are about being prepared and include such verses as "my master is staying away a long time...", "the bridegroom was a long time in coming", and "after a long time the master of those servants returned...".

Don't mistake the easy arrogance of skeptics for confidence. Don't place the potential loss of the greatest thing possible, being a child in the Kingdom of God, on such people. Read both sides and decide for yourself, dear Anon.

>>18125793
Go back to TikTok, tick tock :^)

>>18125789
You still got zero evidence for your schizo theory

>>18125812
*sounds of fabric tearing*

>>18125735
Exactly. They should at least be honest and show their assumptions.

>>18125740
There are some that are clearly atheistic but who claim otherwise.

>>18125736
In the title. Where in the Platonic titles is it said that Plato wrote them? Or in the books by Xenophon?

>>18125726
Matthew was not illiterate. He was a tax collector. He needed to be literate due to his job.
Mark was Peter's secretary.
Luke was a Greek Doctor. He didn't meet Jesus personally in his life, but met many witnesses.
John was the only one who was a fisherman before, but when he wrote his Gospel he was an old man who had been a Bishop for decades...

>>18125849
We literally have all the same evidence
I just got a different explanation for why we have it

>>18125877
It could also be easily explained by the holy spirit giving them superpowers to speak and write in Greek

>>18125892
Enjoy Hell

>>18125893
How is he wrong through?

>>18125762
>It's not in the text, the titles were added centuries later by tradition
The attribution to the traditional authors is much older than that and authorship has always been unanimously agreed even in geographically distant regions.

If you follow your way of thinking, you will doubt the authorship of every ancient book.

>>18125896
Tick tock :)
>>18125899
Flames just got hotter.

>>18125885
We really don't. Let's remind everyone of your trash.
Your theory is
>The thing you also have to remember is that the "Christian" movement sprung out of an apocalyptic cult in of itself. John the Baptist and Jesus were trying to "force the end times" by deliberately attempting to trigger a prophecy. It's possible that they believed that they were dual messiahs (priestly and kingly) who would usher in the Son of Man (the Israelites as a whole) to seize control of Israel and overthrow not only the Romans but the whole world system and wipe the board clean. After John the Baptist died, it seems as though Jesus kicked things in gear.

There is zero evidence of this schizo theory. You don't have a single disciple or document claiming this. The Gospels don't portray this. The Pauline letters don't portray this. Some critics even complained that Christians were too apolitical and pacifist.

Your schizo theory is baseless trash without a single shred of evidence and you should be ashamed for trying to push this.

>>18124984 (OP)
because actually reading the bible in detail and taking notes on its content and comparing it to other records of the time makes you realize its very unlikely for it to be divinely inspired

>>18125877
Nowhere do the texts claim to be authored by Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

>>18124984 (OP)

Same people who try to persuade us that T-Rex was a scavenger (that was covered in feathers, optionally).

They dislike anything masculine and exciting for some reason.

There's an expression, "pots not people", that aptly describes their attitude to history.

Oddly enough the only exception they grant to that theory is Adolf Hitler, because he was a racist I guess. I mean I'm not a big fan of Hitler but that's one case where you actually *could* make the case that his role in history as a single influential individual has been overstated.

>>18125892
Yes, that's a good argument, considering what happened on Pentecost, when they were able to speak many different languages.
Saying they couldn't speak Greek is not really true, after what happened there.

>>18125916
Let's take a moment to appreciate the fact that you're calling his theory schizophrenic while your theory is that a dude walked on water, replicated food like in Star Trek and transformed water into wine.

>>18125924
Nowhere in the Shakespeare plays it is claimed they were written by William Shakespeare. I guess we don't know who wrote them either. Or Bacon, Marlowe or De Vere wrote them.
"You can't really expect someone from his social class to know so much about Ancient Rome or English nobility"

Interestingly, the methods used by those Shakespeare authorship conspiracy theories are very similar to yours.


The same thing for Plato and Xenophon. I guess Plato and Xenophon didn't write their works.

>>18125942
His name is literally written on the plays, dumbass.

>>18125924

That's true of basically every book ever written, moron. And songs. Basically the only exception is Craig David.

It's called the Gospel of John for a reason.

>>18125925
>same people who try to persuade us that T-Rex was a scavenger
I doubt either group has much overlap, made worse by the fact neither theory for T-Rex common place anymore, especially by people who actually do research on fossils for a living

>>18125951
By the standard of critical scholars and that anon, no it isn't.
The name of Shakespeare is not in the internal text. He never says "I, William Shakespeare, wrote this play and..." in the main body of the text.

>>18125968
No but they've done the evil work of seeding that doubt in people's minds. It's only the onslaught of actual evidence that stopped them.

Like in this case if Jesus Christ and the Apostles had a second coming (not saying they will, but if) then this type of historian would still be casting doubt and aspersions on the Bible's authority and authenticity, until the last possible moment (perhaps when the dead rise).

>>18125981
Yeah and I just told you that this is an irrelevance because nobody ever does that.

Name some popular books where the main body of text states that I, JK Rowling (or whomever), wrote this story.

>>18125994
That's not in the main body of the text. That's in the title page. All ancient manuscripts of the Gospels we have who have the part where the name of the author would be do have their traditionally attributed names.

The argument by critical scholars is that the Gospels were internally anonymous because they didn't start with something like "I, John Mark, disciple of Peter wrote this Gospel for..."

In the sense they use for the Gospels, Shakespeare is internally anonymous. So is Plato, for example.
He never named himself in his works.

>>18126018

So is, like, every author.

WTF are critical scholars smoking if they think this signifies anything.

If the "real" authors wanted to perpetuate fraud that badly, whilst naming the author in the title of that gospel they could also have inserted a line of internal text such as you described.

I dunno, maybe if they were fraudsters they fucked up by assuming that nobody as fuckheaded, boring and presentist as critical history scholars would ever exist.

>>18125996
But that's the argument for Gospel anonymity.
By their standard (see >>18125924)
, Harry Potter is also written anonymously because JK Rowling doesn't name herself on it.
There were some ancient authors that did this but they were a minority and not for the kind of biography the Gospels were supposed to be.

>>18126029
They are hyper skeptical.
For instance, they believed there was no such a thing as the Pool of Bethesda, since John was the only source about it.
Until archeologists found it...

>>18126033

Well all I can say is that this argument is very unconvincing.

And adding to what I already said, I agree with the OP of this thread that "if Paul didn't write his gospel, who did?" is a strong argument in favour of the idea that he did write it. Because there's no reason for anyone else to have written that shit, if they weren't actually there witnessing Jesus, and not much reason to have made it up centuries later either.

What these historians want is for people to feel a general sense that they are being "unscientific" when the Bible is discussed in any sense at all. Just a Pavlovian response with no actual historical justification, clearly the Bible exists and is a very old document, fraudulent and fabulous or otherwise. A bit like how biased "race does not exist" scientists don't like the fact that black people are faster sprinters than anyone else, but to deal with that blatant fact they just cloud the issue with irrelevant tangents (like race being clinal) to make you feel guilty for pointing it out.

>>18126018
>the Gospels were internally anonymous because they didn't start with something like "I, John Mark, disciple of Peter wrote this Gospel for..."
No, it's because they were not originally titled "Matthew, Mark, Luke, John", these were titles added later for convenience. Nowhere does it say "By Luke" etc.

Also (having been critical of "critical scholars" in this thread) I'll add that I have a series of personal experiences that directly contradict orthodox beliefs of a kind I shan't specify but are very real and serious. And I've seen and heard people try to cover this stuff up, blatantly. So I think little of this general kind of person and their style of mendacity.

>>18124984 (OP)
A bunch of priests in the Jerusalem temple, mostly.

>>18126051
Yeah.
When I found out what they meant by "internally anonymous" my first reaction was "are they serious"?

>>18126054
>Nowhere does it say "By Luke" etc.
It is said in the Title, where you would expect they would be for this genre. All fragments we have that have the title part do have the attributions.

>>18126078
>It is said in the Title
There was no "Title". It was added on later.

>>18126106
Says you. With no evidence, by the way.
The manuscripts we have do have the title.
Would you say the same about Plato and Xenophon too?

>>18126121
>The manuscripts we have do have the title.
Which manuscripts? The ones copied by monks?

>>18126130
No, the ones written by Dawkins supporters.
Who in the hell do you expect to make copies of the Gospels? Roman Pagans?

>>18126136
So which century are we talking about?

>>18125762
This. Even the "books of Moses" got there titles 1,500 years after they were supposedly written by him, and they somehow feature an account of his death.

>>18124984 (OP)
Most Bible scholars actually hate the gospel and re-interpret the doctrines to confirm their beliefs in vaccinations and gender "affirming" care.

>>18125916
Why the fuck would Paul's letters be documenting Jesus' internal motivations?
You're such a fucking retard

>>18126139
2nd century.
Do you have anything earlier than that where the title area would be but without the title?
Because you are adamant on your theory.

Where do you get your certainty?

>>18126154
Well, you can scratch Paul of the list, if you believe he knew nothing about Jesus, if you want to. But where is the evidence of your theory? Where are the documents?
Paul didn't know Jesus' motivations, but you did?
Paul was closer in time and knew personally people who were pretty close to Jesus.

>>18126159
Show me your second century manuscripts, Anon.

>>18126164
Paul thinks Jesus is God, not a a failed Apocalyptic Prophet
I would not expect for any Christian to explain Jesus' motivations in these terms

>>18126169
Say no more f a m
https://www.academia.edu/7968729/The_Earliest_Manuscript_Title_of_Matthew_s_Gospel_BnF_Suppl_gr_1120_ii_3_P4_

Now, please tell me where your certainty that they had no titles and that they were added later came from? Where are the manuscripts without a title?

>>18126175
Everything prior to around 180AD, when Irenaeus gave them those titles (prior to that, they were untitled scrolls).

>>18126054
I was always under the impression that the apologetics stance on the titles were the provenance of the oral history that the gospels were writing down. The apostles had schools/communities around them and some people wrote the stories as told to them by the apostles. The apostles are always in third person in the gospels aren't they? In English the titles are usually translated "The gospel according to x"
It seems like a perilous road to go assuming that any book with someone's name in the title means it was definitively written by that person. We've got gospels attributed to Mary Magdalene and Judas Iscariot after all.
Are there Christians who believe that John the apostle wrote the gospel of John in his own hand?

>>18126222
>Are there Christians who believe that John the apostle wrote the gospel of John in his own hand?
Yes, they unironically think that the modern edit where it says "The Gospel according to St. John" means it was literally penned by St. John, and written as such.

>>18126222
>>18126270
>denying the Word of God
Flames just got hotter. Enjoy Hell.

>>18126215
Well, show me those pre-180 scrolls without the title in the beginning or end.
By the way... there is something older than Irenaeus than that, that does name the Gospels. It is called the Muratorian Fragment.

And again, you need to show some evidence for your theory that you asserted with 100% certainty.

>>18126222
They were always believed to be written by the traditional authors. In the case of John, Irenaeus was a direct disciple of Polycarp who studied under John and knew the Apostles.

Not sure if he wrote by hand or if he had scribes.

>>18125148
>It does assume miracles are impossible
Look up what methodological naturalism is.

>>18126152
Nothing in the Gospel says you can't be trans. You need Paul's letters for that, and even those are vague. Seems like they actually liked eunuchs, just not homosexuals.

Are we talking about OT scholars or NT scholars ITT btw?

Written by a devout Catholic.

>>18126365
How does he reconcile with his faith the fact that the canannites I mean Israelites used to throw their kids into bronze bulls for Yahweh?

>>18126429
Those flames just got much hotter. Enjoy Hell, you fully deserve it. Tick tock.

>>18126429
I suspect "jews continually failed to properly worship yahweh" is probably not a hard statement for a catholic to make.

>>18126449
So a cope to deal with the fact that he worships the whitewashed Jewish human sacrifice god, who came from the same pantheon that Carthage worshipped before pre-catholic Rome wiped it off the face of the earth.
>>18126441
Christians constantly blabbering about how everyone they hate and disagree with is gonna burn in hell forever is a nice demonstration that you still worship the demonic human sacrifice-by-fire god.

>>18126469
Hotter still. Keep going, get that furnace white hot. :) Termite.

>>18126479
Very Christian of you, your religions ancient and “lost” esoteric rite of worship is showing.

>>18126492
You, 500 quintillion years from now. :)

>>18126469
>a cope
AKA theology.

>>18126496
Christianity isn’t even original on this, the unknown Jews who wrote the Bible obviously just ripped off Plato’s Myth of Er in that you are judged after death over how virtuous or viceful you are, with the viceful either going through just 1,000 years of trials/punishment before reincarnation or thrown into Tartarus forever. Either way the fact that this is introduced in the same pages of the Republic as the Noble Lie demonstrates that the whole idea is obviously a way to trick retards (you) into behaving here on earth over fear of eternal damnation. Not sure if it’s working.

>>18126346
>Nothing in the Gospel says you can't be trans.
All trans are sodomites. All sodomites are child molesters, which is how sodomy spreads. The Lord condemned those who would offend children, saying that it were better for them that a millstone were hanged around their neck than what's actually in store for such people.

"But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea."
(Matthew 18:6)

>>18126501
Enjoy hell

>>18126492
NTA but why do atheists think this is some kind of gotcha? The whole point is not tolerate evil and God literally said nothing about condemning evil to hellfire. Of course you know exactly what I'm getting at here. Figure it out.

Permitting theology here under the guise of the historical discussion of religion has made this board unusable. Just /x/ but worse.

>>18125077
miracles don't happen, though.

>>18126650
BRAAAAAAAAAAAAP

Most scholars believe Paul, Peter, and James (the brother of Jesus) existed at the very least. They are not certain he had 12 disciples or if they wrote anything down (it's unlikely the were literate). When you are trying to understand a book that was written by dozens of anonymous authors thousands of years ago you are always trying to assign probabilities based on all the available evidence.

>>18125925
it's Yutyrannus that was covered in feathers, T-rex was probably mostly featherless (like how the largest mammals lack fur)
also I want a pet Yutyrannus

>>18126635
>people who cut their dicks off, or their balls off, or chemically castrate themselves, also somehow all molest children
doubt

>>18125077
>Jesus couldn't actually predict the destruction of the Temple as he is portrayed to be doing in the Gospels, so they were written after 70 AD, when the Temple was destroyed
This is true, but it's not the only reason why scholars date the gospels late.

Based.

>>18127182
If they think that by doing so, that somehow makes them something they are not, then yes they are definitely sodomites.