New Testament scholarship

Judaism and Christianity aren't required to prove anything to anybody. that;s the problem the pagans and deviants have; Christians simply don't care about your issues or your demands. The disparagers are irrelevant and aren't important to their faith and theology., is all. Orthodox Jews don't even consider goyim to even be human, just animals out there that God uses to punish or reward them.
 
EdwinA said:
Judaism and Christianity aren't required to prove anything to anybody. that;s the problem the pagans and deviants have; Christians simply don't care about your issues or your demands. The disparagers are irrelevant and aren't important to their faith and theology., is all. Orthodox Jews don't even consider goyim to even be human, just animals out there that God uses to punish or reward them.
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^^^
Admits he cares so he must not be a Christian.
 
Yakuda said:
I agree and in matters of faith it's even more tenuous

Some would argue otherwise even if they are wrong

That depends on what you decide to accept.
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Tenous is a loaded word.

There are different kinds of truth. None approach the certainty of mathematical truth. But in a certain rhetorical sense there is historical truth, scientific truth, moral truth, philosophical truth, spiritual truth, ethical truth.

I have learned just as much from the Baghavad Gita, the Daodejing, the Dhammapada as I did from my college physics and calculus textbooks.

As for historically reliable data, the NT and the Hebrew Bible are tenuous and spotty for sure.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Protestants run a gamut of being pretty mellow to looney toons like Evangelicals. All of them acknowledge the virgin birth but don't have statues of Virgin Mary (a reason they call Catholics idolators) nor place as much emphasis on it the Resurrection.

Agreed about both Paul and the gospel of John as being the most prominent views pushed in modern American Christianity.
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I think a virgin birth is preposterous.
But most of us tend to believe in miracles of one sort or another. Atheists tend to believe that something burst into existence out of nothing, and that rational mathematical order randomly emerged out of chaos.
 
Phantasmal said:
The Virgin birth is far more important to Christian theology than you are giving credit. It establishes the Divinity of Jesus which is a major tenet of Christianity.
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There's even the possibility that the prophecy in Isaiah which supposedly "predicted" the virgin birth may have been a misinterpretation of the hebrew word "almah" which apparently can mean an unmarried young woman, not necessarily a virgin (although it would be strange for the time to have one without the other one would assume).

It's just interesting that the parthenogenesis part takes on a bigger meaning than it actually may have been intended to.
 
Yakuda said:
Suspicious? Why it is suspicious?
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POSSIBLY because it is due to a misinterpretation of the word "almah" in the Isaiahan prophecy.

Also: because parthenogenesis is not that common in primates so if one finds oneself asking whether a "miracle" could possibly have a bland normal explanation then this might be that point.

Doesn't mean the virgin birth COULDN'T possibly have happened but it certainly is EASIER to explain than a miracle.
 
Cypress said:
I think a virgin birth is preposterous.
But most of us tend to believe in miracles of one sort or another. Atheists tend to believe that something burst into existence out of nothing, and that rational mathematical order randomly emerged out of chaos.
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Agreed.
No miracles, only odds. Pure atheists are an aberration. Most atheists are simply anti-Christian and do have spiritual beliefs.
 
Cypress said:
Tenous is a loaded word.

There are different kinds of truth. None approach the certainty of mathematical truth. But in a certain rhetorical sense there is historical truth, scientific truth, moral truth, philosophical truth, spiritual truth, ethical truth.

I have learned just as much from the Baghavad Gita, the Daodejing, the Dhammapada as I did from my college physics and calculus textbooks.

As for historically reliable data, the NT and the Hebrew Bible are tenuous and spotty for sure.
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Truth is truth. Putting a qualifier in front of it destroys truth. It's like "social" justice. It's not justice at all

Anyone who thinks the Bible is historically reliable data,. completely misses the point of the Bible.
 
Yakuda said:
Truth is truth. Putting a qualifier in front of it destroys truth. It's like "social" justice. It's not justice at all

Anyone who thinks the Bible is historically reliable data,. completely misses the point of the Bible.
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There is a clear distinction between ontology (ultimate truth) and epistemology (what the human mind can know).
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Agreed.
No miracles, only odds. Pure atheists are an aberration. Most atheists are simply anti-Christian and do have spiritual beliefs.
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I saw a podcast with the prominent atheist Sam Harris, and he said the problem with being a materialistic naturalist is that you can look in awe at the night starscape, or you can be moved by a sunset all you want, but it's not really spiritual and it's never going to solve any problems or provide any meaning. It sounded to me like he was advocating the adoption of religious values from the ancient scriptures and just stripping away the religious language and context.
 
Cypress said:
I saw a podcast with the prominent atheist Sam Harris, and he said the problem with being a materialistic naturalist is that you can look in awe at the night starscape, or you can be moved by a sunset all you want, but it's not really spiritual and it's never going to solve any problems or provide any meaning.

It sounded to me like he was advocating the adoption of religious values from the ancient scriptures and just stripping away the religious language and context.
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Agreed the appreciation of beauty is not necessarily spiritual. IMO, it's the realization there is something greater than oneself that is spiritual.

IDK, but agree much can be learned from religious texts after stripping away all the religious trappings.
 
Cypress said:
I wouldn't call the virgin birth a widely accepted fact, like the five facts I listed.

The virgin birth is not well attested at all. It only makes a brief appearance in two Gospels, Mathew and Luke, and these two Gospels do not appear until the 80s AD - making them late additions to the body of textual evidence. That is suspicious.

The Virgin birth does not appear and is never mentioned in the earliest Christian sources Paul and Mark, nor in the independent attestation of John.
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as I already stated, 2 billion people don't agree with you.......
 
Cypress said:
But I think you could remove the story of the virgin birth from Luke and Matthew and it wouldn't fundamentally affect Christian salvation at all.
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that's why I consider you ignorant of Christian beliefs........a non divine Christ may be sufficient for an atheist, but divinity is fundamentally necessary to Christian doctrine
 
Daylight63 said:
POSSIBLY because it is due to a misinterpretation of the word "almah" in the Isaiahan prophecy.

Also: because parthenogenesis is not that common in primates so if one finds oneself asking whether a "miracle" could possibly have a bland normal explanation then this might be that point.

Doesn't mean the virgin birth COULDN'T possibly have happened but it certainly is EASIER to explain than a miracle.
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The word Almah has been mistranslated by most Christians as “virgin.” In truth, this word means "young woman." Additionally, the definite article (Ha-ה) means "the" and indicates that the prophet is speaking about a specific woman who he can point to. Interestingly when Matthew quotes this passage he not only mistranslates “young woman” as “virgin” but, to deflect the reference from a specific woman standing before Isaiah, he intentionally mistranslates “the young woman” as “a virgin.”

The Hebrew word for virgin is “betulah” and refers to a woman of any age “who was never intimate with a man”
 
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