farmermike said:
Dunkerly was addressing the reltive ease with which we accept the existence of other hitorical personalities and the "knee-jerk" incredulity with which we approach Jesus of Nazereth. Often we try to guage a historical personality by records of birth and death. The Bible tells us little of the date of Jesus birth, only that Herod tried to kill him as an infant in Bethlehem during a census that forced Mary and Joseph to go and be counted there. That should be all we need to know if we can trust Gospel truth.
From here...
Consider, for example, the description in Matthew of the flight of Joseph and his family to Egypt to escape Herod's infanticide spree, in fulfillment of two prophecies:
<blockquote>When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. "Get up," he said, "take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him." So he got up, took the child and his mother during the night and left for Egypt, where he stayed until the death of Herod. And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: "Out of Egypt I called my son." When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: "A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more." (Matthew 2:13-18) </blockquote>
Nowhere else in the New Testament is this trip to Egypt recorded. Likewise, Herod's order to kill all the male infants around Bethlehem, which would seem to be a fairly major event, is not reported elsewhere in the Bible, nor by secular historians of the time. Worse still, the trip to Egypt and the need to hide from Herod seem to be contradicted by Luke's account (Luke 2), which says that the 8-day-old Jesus was shown publicly in Jerusalem and suggests that Joseph and his family then remained in Nazareth for at least 12 years. Because Matthew was clearly aware that the events he recounted, if true, would seem to fulfill prophecy, coupled with the fact that these rather major events were not mentioned by other biblical authors, raises the question of whether Matthew might have embellished his account of the little-known early life of Jesus.
Herod the Great reigned from 37 BC to 4 BC. Matthew suggests that Jesus was born maybe 6 or 7 BC. There was a Roman census in 6 AD maybe that's what Luke is referring to. Christian scholarship guessed it as in the middle, missing both Herod's reign including the imaginary infanticide and the census.
Except for one Gospel account no other record, Roman, Jew, civilian, refers to the infanticide of Herod. Perhaps you know of one, I can't find any. You'd think the Jews would have documented this atrocity in their own writings seperate from the need to add more stature to a Messianic cult figure by drawing a parallel to Moses birth. In short, the gospel truth is, we don't know when or if Jesus was born. But I can assume he was. The story of the Roman, Panthera, impregnating young Mary makes more sense than the angel myth. But it renders her a virgin once removed.
The story of Jesus' death and especially the myth of resurrection is equally challengable even from using only Gospel accounts. The early Christians embellished the tales of his birth and death to obscure the reality and promote the myth. It is these very embellishments that threaten to turn the existence of the man Jesus into a myth - to say nothing of the claim he is the son of god.
The reference to creating the wicked (those who deliberately reject God) for the day of destruction is widely advertised in the Bible. Good and bad co-exist. Choice exists. Consequences exist.
Good and evil were descriptions made for an imperfect God. One that was jealous of other Gods. For the perfect God the universe unfolds according to His plan. There is no evil except as part of God's good plan. Better yet, there is no good or evil - there is only the whim of God and the perception of humans. The God of the old testament is not evil, He is to the human mind disturbed to the point of being megalomaniacal.
Stumbled over another worthwhile quote that I'd be interested in hearing your perspectives on: James Russell Lowell, U.S. Minister of State for England at a banquet over a century ago where Christianity was being attacked by scoffers. He said: "I challenge any skeptic to find a ten square mile spot on this planet where they can live their lives in peace and safety and decency, where womanhood is honored, where infancy and old age are revered, where they can educate their children, where the Gospel of Jesus Christ has not gone first to prepare the way. If they find such a place, then I would encourage them to emigrate thither and there proclaim their unbelief."
This is such a strange quote. There have been several cultures before Christianity and after that survived for generations in peace, safety and decency. Generations of fathers taught their sons to hunt and provide for their families and tribe. Since most early cultures had few who lived to old age those who did were revered elders. Most cultures celebrate having children and this was women's greatest gift to the tribe or family or group. Women are honored more in societies that have not been told by a deity that men are above them, or they were created as an afterthought and tricked men into sin.
Besides that, Lowell's challenge is so lame. If you find such a place why don't you go there then. NOT Let's document the find. NOT I'd like to see it in operation. NOT This would mean something big. NOPE. If you find it, proving my blind bias, You know what I'll tell ya, "Git the Hell outa Dodge. I don't wanna see ya." All you have posted is an example of Christian closed-mindedness.
Does anyone feel physically ill? If so, I think you can better understand Dunkerly's proposition that you really wish Jesus had never lived, evidenced in the resulting cry,"Then He wasn't God." There is no God. I can't fit Him into my paradigm without blowing it all to smitherenes: A position which would make more sense if you knew whence you came and whither you were going.
I am as perplexed by this weirdly expressed thought as Dr Adequate. It seems to say that if we are sick we can better understand Dunkerly. I hope you start to feel better soon, Karen. I do agree with your ending thought.... 'There is no God' makes more sense to those who know whence they come and whither they go. 'There is a God' is an expression of hope, more than knowing, of the whence and the whither.
