tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2324573067259123464.post4989892632091691034..comments2022-11-06T01:58:22.375-06:00Comments on The Secret Wireless: Why the Resurrection is the Only Answer that MattersJoshuahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12486895740291453415noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2324573067259123464.post-67096256610887443392014-02-13T15:02:00.479-06:002014-02-13T15:02:00.479-06:00Give me a good reason to lie about something that ...Give me a good reason to lie about something that will get me crucified. By all historical accounts no Christians from the Apostolic era gained anything from what they preached. To the contrary, all but one died a martyr's death. Joshuahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12486895740291453415noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2324573067259123464.post-15752338500570276072014-02-12T08:21:20.643-06:002014-02-12T08:21:20.643-06:00They all did? How do you know the motivation of e...They <i><b>all</b></i> did? How do you know the motivation of every person who transmitted stories about Jesus in the decades after his death? Prevarication is a common human shortcoming. Where did their immunity come from?VinnyJH57https://www.blogger.com/profile/17954441753543764706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2324573067259123464.post-43180975047937742842014-02-12T07:48:55.282-06:002014-02-12T07:48:55.282-06:00Because they all lacked one significant thing: a r...Because they all lacked one significant thing: a reason to lie.Joshuahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12486895740291453415noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2324573067259123464.post-35729965538004678332014-02-10T20:32:39.040-06:002014-02-10T20:32:39.040-06:00Can you imagine trying to figure out the truth abo...Can you imagine trying to figure out the truth about Joseph Smith if your only sources were biographies written by Mormons several decades after his death? The only reason that historians can write about Smith with any degree of confidence is because we have lots of contemporary source material from people outside the Mormon movement, non-Mormons who dealt with Smith and his followers and ex-Mormons who left the movement.<br /><br />For Christianity, we have no information from anyone outside the movement until Jospehus writing sixty years after the death of Jesus. Why should I trust the accounts of Christians writing decades after the fact any more than I would trust similarly dated accounts written by true believers in any other religion?VinnyJH57https://www.blogger.com/profile/17954441753543764706noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2324573067259123464.post-68666123663872295862014-02-10T08:30:26.793-06:002014-02-10T08:30:26.793-06:00Our sources for Jesus are far better, and far more...Our sources for Jesus are far better, and far more numerous, than other ancient documents. The only way this is even questionable is if you throw out the Gospel record based upon some bias against them rather than looking at their historical grounding. Again, we can have as much certainty as any other historical event of the same time period. I am not asking non-Christians to trust Christ as their savior. That takes the power of the Holy Spirit. I am asking them to grapple with the fact that you cannot discount the life of Jesus without calling into question every single historical event prior to the invention of the video camera. Joshuahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12486895740291453415noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2324573067259123464.post-74794790533021567312014-02-08T10:02:57.440-06:002014-02-08T10:02:57.440-06:00The problem of course is that all ancient history ...The problem of course is that all ancient history is subject to considerably more uncertainty than that which is more recent. Literacy rates were low, historiography as we know it today was non-existent, and only a small fraction of what was written survives. Even if our sources for Jesus of Nazareth were as good as those for other ancient persons (which I do not think they are), we shouldn't imagine that we can have any certainty about the details of what he did or said or thought about himself.VinnyJH57https://www.blogger.com/profile/17954441753543764706noreply@blogger.com