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Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

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Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#101

Post by baddox »

olavk wrote: post #72
baddox wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The three L argument is aimed only at people who believe in the historicity of Jesus, as well as that he was a great spiritual leader, but who belief that there are also other paths to spiritual enlightenment or salvation. It obviously carries no weight to people who don't believe Jesus was a historical figure, or who believe he was a liar or a lunatic.

Among historians it is generally believed that there was a preacher called (something like) Jesus which was crucified by the Romans. But looking at the only available sources (the Gospels) it is not even clear that he claimed to be the Messiah. The gospels are clearly written by people who believed him to be the Messiah, but the quotations directly attributed to Jesus are quite ambiguous regarding the "divinity" of J…

I don't know, he seems pretty obviously divine in all the gospels. As for him claiming to be divine, I don't really understand the argument, because if we would assume that a report that he claimed to be divine is accurate, why wouldn't we assume that a report of clearly divine actions and attributes is accurate?

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#102

Post by lotharbot »

xerophyte12932 wrote: post #69
nocman wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. My views are not based on any "leap of faith". A "leap of faith" implies that a person is believing in the absence of any evidence -- and that is by no means true of me. Eyewitness testimony is used every day in courts of law. It is one of the most common forms of evidence used to determine the truth about things that happened in the past. I am convinced that the New Testament contains multiple eyewitness account…

I apologize if what I said offended you in anyway, but in my opinion you still need that leap of faith to believe that not only all those eye witnesses were telling the truth, but also that the accounts recorded over 2000 years ago are still preserved the way they were. But frankly all this discussion is moot considering that if you believe in an omnipotent god, all other things should come naturally. I mean if a Bei…

> "leap of faith to believe ... the accounts recorded over 2000 years ago are still preserved the way they were."

It's not so much a leap of faith as a study of manuscript integrity. The field of study is called "textual criticism". I can't do it justice in a single Hacker News comment, but you can find fairly substantial scholarly books and articles on the subject.

When it comes to the New Testament, one of the keys for analysis is the multitude of spread-out manuscripts. They have subtle differences from each other, like spelling mistakes (which help us trace lineage -- the same spelling error often appears in later copies from the same source), but the core stories are extremely well preserved -- not changing from early to late manuscripts, or from region to region.

It's also worth reading through the other writings of the early church, from the first 2 centuries, which extensively quote/reference those same accounts.

The sum total of the evidence is that the current version of the Biblical accounts of who Jesus was were written within about 30 years of his death and well-preserved from that time period onward.

(There's also what we call "higher criticism", which looks at how the contents of the text correspond to known history etc. That also establishes the gospels as written ~30 years after Jesus' death. My favorite oddball data: statistical distributions of the names in the gospels compared to names uncovered in archaeological digs -- the common names are correct for first century Palestinian Jews, not Egyptian or Greek Jews.)

There are definitely leaps of faith involved in Christianity. "Does my book of Matthew match the first century book of Matthew?" is not one of them.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#103

Post by lotharbot »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #100
lotharbot wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John is the "in your face" gospel -- it leads with the conclusions. The other three are more like "come along for the journey" -- they walk you through the process of the disciples coming to understand Jesus. There are divinity claims all over those gospels, but they're more subtle. For example, early in the gospel of Matthew, Jesus quotes the Old Testament saying "You are to worship the Lord your God and serve only…

But he wasn't writing the gospels. So we don't know what he intended, only what the reporter wrote down. And they were in the storey. So the possibility of slant is clear.

sure -- but we know the reporter wrote down divinity claims, even in the earliest gospels.

Keep in mind the Lord-Liar-Lunatic argument is aimed at those who claim "Jesus is a great moral teacher" based on the things Jesus is quoted as saying. Jesus is quoted as making divinity claims, many of which are obvious if you have good knowledge of Hebrew scriptures and religious practices. The "Legend" option (Jesus didn't really say those things) is still open, but that makes it harder to claim anything about the value of Jesus' moral teachings.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#104

Post by bgilroy26 »

zkhalique wrote: post #21
danabramov wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a very common argument, indeed. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_birth_of_Jesus >The word "virgin" in Christian translations is disputed. The Hebrew word is "עלמה" (almah), which scholars agree means a young woman of child-bearing age, "but has nothing to do with whether she is a virgin", and the context of the passage makes it clear that Isaiah has in mind events in his and Ahaz's near future. Th…

I am actually not sure that the author of Matthew wrote in Greek. While we may not know the original language in which the gospel of Matthew is written, it is written for a Jewish audience and seems to be one of the most colorful, with e.g. many dead saints coming back to life, begging the question of why no one else bothered to write about this stuff. In any event, if this did indeed happen then it's another example…

If you are plugging in the colloquial meaning of the word lust, the sayings don't make a lot of sense because in the US in 2015, there are few public limits on lustful gazing.

It takes a classical understanding of lust for the classical interdiction to make sense:

https://www.google.com/search?site=&source=hp&ei=9aidVJHyC8O...

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#105

Post by jobposter1234 »

lotharbot wrote: post #102
xerophyte12932 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I apologize if what I said offended you in anyway, but in my opinion you still need that leap of faith to believe that not only all those eye witnesses were telling the truth, but also that the accounts recorded over 2000 years ago are still preserved the way they were. But frankly all this discussion is moot considering that if you believe in an omnipotent god, all other things should come naturally. I mean if a Bei…

> "leap of faith to believe ... the accounts recorded over 2000 years ago are still preserved the way they were." It's not so much a leap of faith as a study of manuscript integrity. The field of study is called "textual criticism". I can't do it justice in a single Hacker News comment, but you can find fairly substantial scholarly books and articles on the subject. When it comes to the New Testament, one of the keys…

For those wondering about sources, Wikipedia has a solid article on the dates in the bible, and seem to settle on about 50 CE as the original authorship dates. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible]

Totally ignorant question, but what year is accepted as the official death for Jesus?

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#106

Post by JoeAltmaier »

lotharbot wrote: post #103
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But he wasn't writing the gospels. So we don't know what he intended, only what the reporter wrote down. And they were in the storey. So the possibility of slant is clear.

sure -- but we know the reporter wrote down divinity claims, even in the earliest gospels. Keep in mind the Lord-Liar-Lunatic argument is aimed at those who claim "Jesus is a great moral teacher" based on the things Jesus is quoted as saying. Jesus is quoted as making divinity claims, many of which are obvious if you have good knowledge of Hebrew scriptures and religious practices. The "Legend" option (Jesus didn't r…

Well the 'obvious' thing is what's at issue. Because he (apparently) didn't refute other's claim of his divinity isn't a sure bet that he was devine - that's a very indirect thing and nothing obvious about it.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#107

Post by lotharbot »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #106
lotharbot wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure -- but we know the reporter wrote down divinity claims, even in the earliest gospels. Keep in mind the Lord-Liar-Lunatic argument is aimed at those who claim "Jesus is a great moral teacher" based on the things Jesus is quoted as saying. Jesus is quoted as making divinity claims, many of which are obvious if you have good knowledge of Hebrew scriptures and religious practices. The "Legend" option (Jesus didn't r…

Well the 'obvious' thing is what's at issue. Because he (apparently) didn't refute other's claim of his divinity isn't a sure bet that he was devine - that's a very indirect thing and nothing obvious about it.

It's very obvious if you're as familiar with Hebrew scriptures as Jesus seems to be.

The claim in Matthew 7 is much more explicit to modern readers -- Jesus is discussing how people will get into heaven or not based on his say-so.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#108

Post by lotharbot »

jobposter1234 wrote: post #105
lotharbot wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "leap of faith to believe ... the accounts recorded over 2000 years ago are still preserved the way they were." It's not so much a leap of faith as a study of manuscript integrity. The field of study is called "textual criticism". I can't do it justice in a single Hacker News comment, but you can find fairly substantial scholarly books and articles on the subject. When it comes to the New Testament, one of the keys…

For those wondering about sources, Wikipedia has a solid article on the dates in the bible, and seem to settle on about 50 CE as the original authorship dates. [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dating_the_Bible ] Totally ignorant question, but what year is accepted as the official death for Jesus?

> "what year is accepted as the official death for Jesus?"

There's some disagreement, but in the research I was doing this morning the most commonly accepted date I found was April 7, 30 AD. (Other common dates are March 25 or April 25, 31 AD.)

Interestingly enough, this provides the source for the date of Christmas. There's an old tradition that says Jewish prophets always live a whole number of years, so their death and conception are the same date, putting their birth date 9 months later / 3 months earlier. The two dates being celebrated in the 2nd century church were December 25 (based on the March 25, 31 AD date) and January 7 (based on April 7, 30 AD). We now call those two dates "Christmas" and "Epiphany". You can find these dates discussed by Sextus Julius Africanus (160-240 AD), Irenaeus (in Against Heresies, 180 AD), and Hippolytus (commentary on Daniel, 204 AD).

Rumors about hijacking a pagan celebration date started several centuries later, by Jacob Bar-Salibi in the 12th century. He probably got his causation backwards -- the Dec 25 celebration "Sol Invictus" was a result of emperor Aurelius' decree in 274 AD, meaning it took a date Christians had already been celebrating a century earlier.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#109

Post by lvs »

philh wrote: post #6

I think what surprises me most about this is that the Boa produced only female offspring. Per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZW_sex-determination_system - humans have XY chromosomes, with XX female and XY male. Boas have ZW chromosomes, with ZZ male and ZW female. I'd expect parthogenesis to produce unviable WW offspring, and viable ZZ ones. But WW turns out to be viable, and ZZ either doesn't happen, or isn't viable.…

If this article is meant to have some seasonal relevance, then we can only conclude from genetics that Jesus was a woman.

Re: Virgin births in animals are no longer rare

#110

Post by cbd1984 »

joshuahedlund wrote: post #82
cbd1984 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I understand, 'legend' means there is a kernel of history there, but it's been so crusted over with stories that it's impossible to recover. The word 'myth' is used when it's all fiction. So the 'legend' position would be "There was a heretical Judean Jew named Joshua son of Joseph who may well have given a sermon on some mount and was very likely crucified, but beyond that we are in no position to say anyt…

What was the motivation to lie? One common argument is that nearly all of Jesus' closest disciples were martyred and would have had no motivation to die for something they knew to be a lie.

So the people who were martyred wouldn't have died for nothing, perhaps.

Why were there martyrs to begin with? Well, why did people drink the poison at Jonestown?

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