New Testament scholarship

PostmodernProphet said:
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
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An all powerful God can come into this world in human form any way he wants to.

The Virgin birth narrative is only briefly mentioned once in two Gospels. And never comes up again.

John, Paul, Mark, Peter, James don't mention it.

If the virgin birth was so important, why do the other NT writers not seem to know anything about it?

There are Christians who do not take literally the virgin birth narrative, so you'll have to revise your two billion number downward.

Historical truth doesn't depend on what you believe
 
Cypress said:
An all powerful God can come into this world in human form any way he wants to.

The Virgin birth narrative is only briefly mentioned once in two Gospels. And never comes up again.

John, Paul, Mark, Peter, James don't mention it.

If the virgin birth was so important, why do the other NT writers not seem to know anything about it?

There are Christians who do not take literally the virgin birth narrative, so you'll have to revise your two billion number downward.

Historical truth doesn't depend on what you believe
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Each writer was addressing their communities, they may have borrowed from other sources, but it seems each writer addressed what interested or mattered to their followers.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
he did..........and he told you what it was........why the fuck do you call an all powerful God a liar...........
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Your god is a triune man god

1 Samuel 15:29
"He who is the Glory of Israel does not lie or change his mind; for he is not a man, that he should change his mind"

The Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, teaches that God is one and that it is heretical to claim that any man is God or part of God. Deuteronomy 6:4 states, "Hear Israel, the LORD is our God, the LORD is one".
 
Phantasmal said:
Each writer was addressing their communities, they may have borrowed from other sources, but it seems each writer addressed what interested or mattered to their followers.
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Yes, that's the typical fundamentalist Christian explanation, which really just amounts to conjecture.

As a secular armchair historian, I am interested in the question of why something so remarkable as a virgin birth is barely mentioned in the NT, and it's curiously not mentioned at all by the earliest Christian authors. That is even a question Bart Ehrman has asked.
 
Cypress said:
These are five widely accepted historical facts among scholars about Jesus.
Any interpretation of the key events of the New Testament has to be able explain these facts. I have about four hypotheses myself that might explain the facts.


1) The death of Jesus of Nazareth by Roman crucifixion around AD 30.

2) His internment in a tomb by a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin.

3) The discovery by a group of his female followers three days after the crucifixion that his tomb was empty.

4) Thereafter various individuals and groups of people experienced appearances of Jesus after his crucifixion and entombment.

5) The disciples came to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead.
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but all of this is pointless.

your focus should be the golden rule.

this is 'how many angels on the head of a pin' type shit.

how did you get so misdirected in your value hierarchy?
 
Cypress said:
Yes, that's the typical fundamentalist Christian explanation, which really just amounts to conjecture.

As a secular armchair historian, I am interested in the question of why something so remarkable as a virgin birth is barely mentioned in the NT, and it's curiously not mentioned at all by the earliest Christian authors. That is even a question Bart Ehrman has asked.
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Cypress, it isn’t just a fundamentalist Christian position, it is addressed by many scholars.

The authors were from different communities and the oral telling 30-100 after their occurrences tend to take on new details.
It is how oral tradition works, basic facts are retained in the story, but each community makes it their own.
 
Phantasmal said:
Cypress, it isn’t just a fundamentalist Christian position, it is addressed by many scholars.

The authors were from different communities and the oral telling 30-100 after their occurrences tend to take on new details.
It is how oral tradition works, basic facts are retained in the story, but each community makes it their own.
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I agree with you. have read that the Gospels differ largely based on which audience one is addressing. That Matthew wrote to a Jewish audience, Mark to a Roman-influenced audience, Luke to the Gentiles seems to be a common view as I understood it. But I've only read a little on the subject of the Gospel authorships.

It certainly helps things make more sense when one sees what one writer highlighted to the exclusion of something else which another highlighted.
 
Cypress said:
If the virgin birth was so important, why do the other NT writers not seem to know anything about it?
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I would think Matthew would rely on the virgin birth story since he may have aimed his writings at a Jewish-influenced audience who would be familiar with the Isaiahan prophecy (setting aside the bit about almah).

In essence it serves as a way to tie what came before to what came after. Kind of like the "tearing of the temple veil". A way to highlight not only that this seemingly revolutionary version of the Messiah was actually THE MESSIAH that they had always been expecting and this was not only how we know it was him, it also helps tie up this new formulation of atonement to God up in a bow using all the Judaic fabrics!
 
Phantasmal said:
Cypress, it isn’t just a fundamentalist Christian position, it is addressed by many scholars.

The authors were from different communities and the oral telling 30-100 after their occurrences tend to take on new details.
It is how oral tradition works, basic facts are retained in the story, but each community makes it their own.
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Scholars like Bart Ehrman say that the literary attestation for the virgin birth is minimal, and it's suspicious that it's never even mentioned until much later writings in the 80s AD.
 
PostmodernProphet said:
because some gnostic tells me to?........don't make me laugh............
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A virgin birth is truly extraordinary, truly unprecedented, and it is legitimate to ask why only two authors briefly mention it, why it never comes up in the earliest Christian writings, and why Paul, Mark, John, Peter seem unaware of it.
 
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Cypress said:
Anything's possible.

Scholars like Bart Ehrman say that the literary evidence for the virgin birth is minimal, and it's suspicious that it's never even mentioned until later writings in the 80s AD.
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Every myth has little evidence for the supernatural events, Jesus the Man, who lived and died was turned into Jesus the Messiah. We don’t have the original works, so scholars can only deduce what was original band what was added.

The Churches’ holy literature was chosen for this effect. Jesus, born of the Virgin, suffered, died, was buried, resurrected and ascended into Heaven. He is the Messiah who will come, again.
 
Phantasmal said:
Every myth has little evidence for the supernatural events, Jesus the Man, who lived and died was turned into Jesus the Messiah. We don’t have the original works, so scholars can only deduce what was original band what was added.

The Churches’ holy literature was chosen for this effect. Jesus, born of the Virgin, suffered, died, was buried, resurrected and ascended into Heaven. He is the Messiah who will come, again.
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Then there's also the fun topic of "Diabolical Mimicry" used by the early Church fathers to justify why there were so many commonalities between the Jesus story and many earlier pagan dieties (Dionysus, Mithras, Osiris...)

In some sense I find the potential utilization of earlier myths to alter the events of the story about a new diety to make it seem more "viscerally real" would be to leverage ideas that earlier writers may have used. (And in this case I'm NOT saying the writers of the gospels per se, but perhaps the oral tradition that helped carry the story the couple of decades to the first of the synoptics to be written out)

It's kind of like when art historians look closely at a painting and by looking a the brush strokes you can see how the painter built up the final image. It's actually kinda NEAT!

And the funniest part of the whole Diabolical Mimicry explanation was how ad hoc it seemed to be. Almost as if they needed to leverage a "satanic superpower" for the sake of the plot of the movie. "So in this scene we'll have Evil Dr. Morpheus use his time-travel ray to go back in time and....".
 
Phantasmal said:
Every myth has little evidence for the supernatural events, Jesus the Man, who lived and died was turned into Jesus the Messiah. We don’t have the original works, so scholars can only deduce what was original band what was added.

The Churches’ holy literature was chosen for this effect. Jesus, born of the Virgin, suffered, died, was buried, resurrected and ascended into Heaven. He is the Messiah who will come, again.
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You're right.

That's why I think the Virgin birth story can be written off as myth, in contrast to the five generally agreed upon facts I put in the OP. I believe these five facts are agreed upon by consensus among the broad spectrum of scholars, from skeptic Bart Ehrman to Christian apologist William Lane Craig.
 
Daylight63 said:
I would think Matthew would rely on the virgin birth story since he may have aimed his writings at a Jewish-influenced audience who would be familiar with the Isaiahan prophecy (setting aside the bit about almah).

In essence it serves as a way to tie what came before to what came after. Kind of like the "tearing of the temple veil". A way to highlight not only that this seemingly revolutionary version of the Messiah was actually THE MESSIAH that they had always been expecting and this was not only how we know it was him, it also helps tie up this new formulation of atonement to God up in a bow using all the Judaic fabrics!
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A virgin birth is truly extraordinary, totally unprecedented, and it is legitimate to ask why only two authors briefly mention it - why it never comes up in the earliest Christian writings - and why Paul, Mark, John, Peter seem unaware of it. That just seems like common sense to question the minimalist nature of the literary attestations.

The simplest explanation to me is that the Virgin birth is a later legendary account added to the corpus.

It requires more fancy dancing to explain why Paul, Mark, John, Peter, James just decided to ignore mentioning such an extraordinary and unprecedented event
 
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Cypress said:
A virgin birth is truly extraordinary, totally unprecedented, and it is legitimate to ask why only two authors briefly mention it - why it never comes up in the earliest Christian writings - and why Paul, Mark, John, Peter seem unaware of it.
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Is there anything credible about the story of Jesus. Beyond he said stuff.
 
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