Quite the contrary. As a matter of a fact, I'd say I've struck your nerve, given the fact you're making all these claims and telling me to study more when you're not giving me evidence.

You get me actual quotes from these historical texts, links to websites with these texts, etc. and I'll admit I was wrong.

Now, getting this thread back on the rails, what does everyone else think about the History Channel's horrid programming.

Either you are the kiddo here, or you never went very far in education. Which is it?

-S

Done arguing. See my post above yours. Time to get the thread back on track.

Actually, since history and general knowledge is on my side, why don't you get me 'disproving' information? I took history, and any professor would chew you up about now.

-S

Even the military channel is getting crappy.

I don't understand this. We have about a million specialized cable channels. There is, or can be, a cable channel for every possible subject.

History channels should stick with historical programs. If it aint about dead guys it aint history :lol:

Military channels should stick with military programs.

These specialized channels are for focused viewers. I think all these channels need to remain focused to their original charter.

If necessary, start new channels if there is a new focus. There might be a market for the Military Historical Food channel who knows?

I'm not gonna help you solve your problem or ignorance of history, but I will start you on your journey:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacitus

Don't rely on Wiki though. It's not even accepted in college as a valid source.

-S

Okay, here we go. We have much evidence of Caesar's existence, including books written by him, which are considered by most scholars to be authentic. Tacitus' passage on Jesus is there to explain to his Roman readers who the 'Christus' is that Christians believe in. It doesn't claim to be an eyewitness account, and he never claims to have interviewed any eyewitnesses. The same is true of Suetonius and Josephus. There are no official records in existence of Jesus' trial and death, and especially resurrection - just historians repeating what they heard from Christians. Remember that at this time the Romans considered Jews-and Christians-to be athiests, because they didn't believe in the Greek/Roman pantheon. The only thing any of the writers at that time tried to do is explain to a wide audience what the new sect believed. And, given the way they thought, they might have believed it as well. But that doesn't make it 'evidence'.

As to your earlier statement about only 5% of the world being athiest: that doesn't include the millions of 'believers' who don't really believe, but follow the crowd, or give lip service; and it doesn't cover the agnostics who aren't sure what they believe. There are athiests who sound like what the conservative Christians call them - a 'Godless Church', and there are athiests who simply say "I'm sorry, I don't see it". There are as many varieties of nonbelievers as there are of believers.

I'm with Stealth Hunter: there is enough evidence to conclude that Jesus of Nazareth lived and died, but as to the major events as described in the Bible? None.

Lets examine your statements:

Truly, if one discards the Bible as being unreliable, a non-historical work, then he must discard almost all other literature of antiquity by using the same standards. Consider for instance that there are now more than 5,300 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Add over 10,000 Latin Vulgate and at least 9,300 other early versions (MSS) and we have more than 24,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament in existence today.

No other document of antiquity even begins to approach such numbers and attestation. In comparison, the “Iliad” by Homer is ranked in 2nd place with only 643 manuscripts that still survive. The first complete preserved text of Homer dates from the 13th century!

No reputable scholar would doubt the historicity, authenticity, or relevance of Homer’s works, yet they would be apt to state that the Bible is unreliable based off of personal opinion and/or preconceived biases instead of sound reasoning and documented evidences to the contrary.

Interesting, no?

-S

I already know about Cornelius, and let me say the exact words that he wrote:

“Christus, from whom the name [Christian] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus.”

I'm going to lay my argument that Jesus never existed to the side for the moment and ask you where the proof is that Jesus was the son of God. So... where's the proof? If this is in fact Jesus that they're talking about and not some other self-proclaimed prophet who was said to have been a messenger of God (which is all Christ translates to), where is the proof?

I'm going to admit that your argument that he did exist is quite swaying... but it confirms none of the events in the Bible. I'm still skeptical of his existence due to the lack of details on his life and there's also the fact that Cornelius' statement doesn't say "Jesus" anywhere in it...

Then by using the stadards of my above post, all other lives in the history of the world are of the same value - 0.

-S

I repost my post:

Yet that really doesn't prove anything. Just because something is widely accepted by the majority of humans, that doesn't make it true. The Bible also said the sky is a solid, the Earth is flat, the stars are painted onto the sky and earthquakes can shake them from their place, but we know none of that is true. People also once said that the universe was the center of the universe, but that's not true either.

Homer's work is nothing more than a story, and even then we don't have the original. We have a "copy" of the original, and even then his story has been changed to adapt to so many things (including a song version) over the centuries that we might not even have the original.

We've got a preserved work and we have a very strong idea when and where it came from, but people are still arguing about Homer's existence entirely. Some say it was a group of ancient scholars that actually wrote the story, not a blind Greek man living like a hermit on some forsaken island out in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea.

Yes, you represent the 5% that believes in nothing, and its quite obvious. Let me guess, you fall into the same catagory that thinks we never made it to the moon.

But your reasoning for discounting the bible is the same. How do you explain its overtake of the romans a couple hundred years later? A cancer? Hahahaha! Go back to your hole and re-bury yourself. I believe you when you tell me the world is flat, really! Just go away! :D The flat world society sees you as a prize!

-S

No.

While "no one doubts the historicity, authenticity, or relevance of Homers works", neither does anyone believe that the events therein happened as described. No one believes that the Gods directly influenced the battles described, or that Achilles wore magic golden armor with pictures that moved, or that Aphrodite picked up her son Aeneis and held him over her head to save him when he was cornered, or that she personally rescued Paris from being killed by Menelaus and transported him in a black cloud to his bedroom.

Homer's books are accepted as real insofar as they are genuinely ancient documents, but they are certainly not historical records, nor does anyone claim them to be. If you're comparing the Bible to Homer, I have to agree with you.

As for thousands of copies of different manuscripts existing, that only shows that hundreds of scholars who believed them made lots of copies. The earliest manuscripts of the Gospels are datable to, at the very best, seventy-to-one hundred years after the events described. Paul's letters are the earliest datable manuscripts, and even they are at best forty years after the fact. And that doesn't address the other Gospels that were rejected after much debate and argument more than two hundred years later. Up until that time they were accepted just as much as the 'accepted' ones. It could be argued that the Church Fathers who indexed and finalized our present Bible were guided by God, but it can just a easily be argued that they simply kept the ones that agreed with their beliefs at the time and threw out the rest.

Well, as described by Lady Jane:

The historical reliability of the bible should be tested by the same criteria that all historical documents are tested under:
1- Bibliographical Test (An examination of the textual transmission by which documents reach us.)
2- Internal Test (Literary critics still follow Aristotle’s dictum that “…the benefit of the doubt is to be given to the document itself, not arrogated by the critic to himself.”)
3- External Evidence Test (Do other historical materials confirm or deny the internal testimony provided by the documents themselves? I.e. confirmation by archaeology.)

And until that is done, I don't agree with you, nor does most of the world. This is in reference to the acuraccy of the text.

-S