JESUS FREAK

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
Here's Luke actually saying he wasn't an eye-witness:

Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the events that have been fulfilled among us,
2
just as those who were eyewitnesses from the beginning and ministers of the word have handed them down to us,
3
I too have decided, after investigating everything accurately anew, to wri ...[text shortened]... ite right, it's unreasonable of me to ask you to substantiate your claims. My humble apologies.

Ok, leave Luke out of it - it leaves the other three as first-hand witnesses...

I wouldn't want to bore you with quotes from "Thomas" and I certainly won't waste my time trying to persuade and dig up my evidence on his 'gospel'.

I've read extensively on the validity of the gospels, and the various arguments for and against them and read some of "Thomas" which was obviously written for the point and purpose of trying to discredit the early church. Right now, I'm too busy to be stuck arguing semantics and having to back it all up with various sources sure to be attacked in turn.

Originally posted by RatX

Right now, I'm too busy to be stuck arguing semantics and having to back it all up with various sources sure to be attacked in turn.

For what it's worth...

"Robert Kysar writes the following on the authorship of the Gospel of John (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 3, pp. 919-920):


The supposition that the author was one and the same with the beloved disciple is often advanced as a means of insuring that the evangelist did witness Jesus' ministry. Two other passages are advanced as evidence of the same - 19:35 and 21:24. But both falter under close scrutiny. 19:35 does not claim that the author was the one who witnessed the scene but only that the scene is related on the sound basis of eyewitness. 21:24 is part of the appendix of the gospel and should not be assumed to have come from the same hand as that responsible for the body of the gospel. Neither of these passages, therefore, persuades many Johannine scholars that the author claims eyewitness status. "

I've read extensively on the validity of the gospels, and the various arguments for and against them and read some of "Thomas" which was obviously written for the point and purpose of trying to discredit the early church.

You reason the same way as David C.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
For what it's worth...

"Robert Kysar writes the following on the authorship of the Gospel of John (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 3, pp. 919-920):


The supposition that the author was one and the same with the beloved disciple is often advanced as a means of insuring that the evangelist did witness Jesus' ministry. Two other passages are ad ...[text shortened]... purpose of trying to discredit the early church.[/i]

You reason the same way as David C.[/b]

Why waste time on somebody that's closed their mind around the four gospels ?

That's not getting you anywhere, since you've heard it all before.

Originally posted by Bosse de Nage
For what it's worth...

"Robert Kysar writes the following on the authorship of the Gospel of John (The Anchor Bible Dictionary, v. 3, pp. 919-920):


The supposition that the author was one and the same with the beloved disciple is often advanced as a means of insuring that the evangelist did witness Jesus' ministry. Two other passages are ad ...[text shortened]... purpose of trying to discredit the early church.[/i]

You reason the same way as David C.[/b]

The horror! I'm arguing as Davie!!! Ok, I skipped something there... The Obviously - The author of TGOT claims to be the twin brother of Jesus, starting off by trying to discredit the foundation of Christian belief. The rest of the book is consistent in trying to discredit the true gospels.

Why the apocryphical books of the new testament were rejected:
1. None of them enjoyed any more than a temporary or local recognition. 2. Most of them never did have anything more than a semi-canonical status, being appended to various manuscripts or mentioned in tables of contents. 3. No major canon or any church council included them as part of the New Testament. 4. The limited acceptance enjoyed by some of these books is attributable to the fact that they themselves attached to references in canonical books because of their alleged apostolic authorship (eg. the gospel of Thomas, or the Acts of Paul).

When it comes to the validity of John -
Some 19'th century liberals attempted to dispute John's authorship, claiming the book was written 300 AD, but this idea was overturned by the discovery of papyrus fragments of John's Gospel dating from early in the second century. It has been confirmed by far more sources that it was John "the beloved", who wrote this gospel on the isle of Patmos after AD 70.

This conflict in authorship you point out is making a mountain out of a mole-hill...

Originally posted by frogstomp
Why waste time on somebody that's closed their mind around the four gospels ?

That's not getting you anywhere, since you've heard it all before.

Yes, those who believe in the gospels are a group of ignoramuses; closed-minded dimwits who have not had the enlightenment that we enjoy. It's sad, really. The obscure writings that clear this whole thing up will be the gospels of tomorrow. Their validity can't be questioned, because they question the validity of what can't be questioned.

Yes, don't waste your time...

Originally posted by RatX
Yes, those who believe in the gospels are a group of ignoramuses; closed-minded dimwits who have not had the enlightenment that we enjoy. It's sad, really. The obscure writings that clear this whole thing up will be the gospels of tomorrow. Their validity can't be questioned, because they question the validity of what can't be questioned.

Yes, don't waste your time...

Indeed, I have spent enough time in here.

Originally posted by frogstomp
read that in context and unless you can meet His test, shush.

Agreed.

Originally posted by AThousandYoung
Agreed.

Indeed! Cross me and thou shalt be eliminated!!! No answer may be given to my perfection. My words are faultless and set in stone...😞

Originally posted by Canadaguy
Ya I like the words and actions and deeds of Jesus. But I don't go to church or identify any denomination. I like to keep it personal.

It's cool.It grows.Today.Tommorow.Everafter.No problem.

Originally posted by RatX
The horror! I'm arguing as Davie!!! Ok, I skipped something there... The Obviously - The author of TGOT claims to be the twin brother of Jesus, starting off by trying to discredit the foundation of Christian belief. The rest of the book is consistent in trying to discredit the true gospels.

Why the apocryphical books of the new testament were rejected:
1. ...[text shortened]... r AD 70.

This conflict in authorship you point out is making a mountain out of a mole-hill...

You accused David C of being a close-minded bigot; it should bother you. As for the "obviously"...being nothing more than a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, the gospel of Thomas does not attempt to discredit anything at all.

You've totally ignored the power struggle within the early Christian church.

Why papyrus fragments dating from the second century should confirm John-the-beloved's authorship defeats me.

Anyhow...I'm not learning anything from this discussion...I call it a day.

(I'll leave you with this:

F. F. Bruce writes: "'Jesus the living one' probably means 'Jesus the ever-living one'. It is common form in Gnostic Gospels to represent the esoteric teaching or gnosis which they contain as delivered by Jesus to his chosen disciples during his appearances to them after he was raised from the dead. But there is no esoteric flavour about the sayings collected in the Gospel of Thomas; many of them can be paralleled from the canonical Gospels (especially Luke) and many others are of the same matter-of-fact order. Perhaps it was not the sayings themselves but their interpretation in the circle from which the Gospel of Thomas came that the compiler regarded as 'secret'. As for the threefold name Didymus Judas Thomas, Didymus is the Greek word for 'twin' and is used in the Gospel of John (11.16; 20.24; 21.2) to explain Thomas, which is the Aramaic word for 'twin' (t'oma). In Syriac Christian tradition he is identified with the 'Judas not Iscariot' who belonged to the company of the Twelve: in the Old Syriac Gospels the question of John 14.22 is said to have been put to the Lord by 'Judas Thomas'." (Jesus and Christian Origins Outside the New Testament, p. 112)

Originally posted by Omnislash
I just don't understand people who need to proselytize, especially the purported Christian. Christianity is a theology deeply rooted in a personal relationship with god. While this is facilitated by communal worship, the core of the faith lies with the individual. The scriptures do indeed speak of sharing the message, stating a believer should be compelle ...[text shortened]... eir own minds on the matter…… and wouldn’t God want it that way? 😉

Pax Vobiscum,
Omnislash

Christianity is a theology deeply rooted in a personal relationship with god. While this is facilitated by communal worship, the core of the faith lies with the individual.

I beg to differ here. Yes, Christianity is a theology which, at its root, calls for a personal relationship with God. But the Christian community is not merely a facilitator or enabler for this relationship; it is also, paradoxically, a focus point for this relationship. Christ's vision of mankind did not merely consist of individuals finding their own salvation in isolation; he strongly bound them to each other so that salvation was as much a communal quest as it was individual. This is even clearer when you look at the Early Church.

I fail to see how this simplistic message of sharing the message is interpreted into intrusively fervent dogmatic propaganda pushing.

Often, I fail to see it too. But maybe, for every four persons turned off by the aggressive evangelisation, there is one person at a low point in their lives who really needed someone to take the initiative and reach out to him/her.

To use the business analogy, there is a fine line between marketing and intrusion.

But, overall, I agree with the sentiment of your post. Duly rec'd.

Originally posted by RatX
Yes, those who believe in the gospels are a group of ignoramuses; closed-minded dimwits who have not had the enlightenment that we enjoy. It's sad, really. The obscure writings that clear this whole thing up will be the gospels of tomorrow. Their validity can't be questioned, because they question the validity of what can't be questioned.

Yes, don't waste your time...

That's very platonic of you.
Do you believe in abstracts then?

Originally posted by RatX
Yes, those who believe in the gospels are a group of ignoramuses; closed-minded dimwits who have not had the enlightenment that we enjoy. It's sad, really. The obscure writings that clear this whole thing up will be the gospels of tomorrow. Their validity can't be questioned, because they question the validity of what can't be questioned.

Yes, don't waste your time...

As the philosopher David Stove has argued, the modern tendency toward hyper-skepticism seems largely to be the result of a massive overgeneralization from a mere handful of cases where common sense turned out to be mistaken. Another philosopher, Michael Levin, has given a name to the peculiar form this error in reasoning has taken in modern thinking: the "skim milk" fallacy, the fallacy of assuming, in the words of Gilbert and Sullivan, that "things are seldom what they seem, skim milk masquerades as cream," so that common sense can in general be presumed to be wrong.

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