Ignorance and the Bible
- Thread starter domer76
- Start date
There you go again. I didn’t say they would drop. I questioned the idea that they would be any better in places like Galilee than they were in Judea 600 years earlier.
Your mental gymnastics are astounding.
The fact still remains, one that you try to divert from, is that the gospels are anonymous and the names associated with them didn’t come along until the late 2nd century.
If literacy stayed the same, then your agreeing with the study I posted that literacy rates in Judah were substantially higher than the one to three percent literacy rate that had been making the rounds.
I don't see you making a case for anything. Your just posting complaints about what I write.
History records that Hellenization was a great period of the expansion and flowering of Greek civilization, Greek culture, Greek intellectual traditions. The historical context gives me reason to believe literacy and intellectual life flowered during Hellenization.
Paul and Matthew in particular seem to be generally aware of Greek Platonic and Stoic thought.
Luke and Paul weren't even from Galilee.
If your just going to guess that literacy stayed the same, or even if it got worse, it would be nice if you have a chain of logical inferences to believe that, rather than just guessing.
One last time. Galilee is not in Judah.
Luke, Mark, John, Matthew and Paul never knew Jesus, saw Jesus, talked with Jesus, heard Jesus. The names associated with the 4 gospels didn’t come along until about 180 CE.
Quit diverting
Three of the most important authors in the New Testament weren't even from Galilee, so I can't believe I let myself get trapped in some banter about literacy rates in Galilee.
Paul was from a Roman province in modern day Turkey, and by tradition Luke was from the Roman province of Syria, and Mark was from a Roman province in North Africa.
It's very possible they were anonymous. But that line of thinking requires one to believe the Bishops from the second century were lying.
And you would also have to explain why church bishops allowed two totally obscure and low-ranking Christians who never saw Jesus (Mark, Luke) be the authors of their most important sacred scriptures. It makes no sense. It would have been more authoritative and created a bigger splash if they just claimed the apostles James, Andrew, or Phillip were the authors of these canonical gospels.
Bishop Pappas died in 130. When he identified the authors of the New Testament, it must have been written sometime before 130 AD. That is really not that long after the gospels were written.
Last edited:
More rubbish and strawmen. It's obvious you're too stupid to find the answer. If you knew anything you wouldn't have embarrassed yourself with babbling these stupid claims you read somewhere and run around parroting.
lol quit projecting.
I might be the only poster on this thread acknowledging the validity of views other than my own.
I have yet to see an atheist make a clear statement that atheism might be wrong, or openly state that it's very possible the early church bishops knew exactly who wrote the gospels
Really? Because literally all I see from you is continued misrepresentation of other people's points, demonization of alternative viewpoints and strawmen fallacies.
Then you clearly don't understand implicit atheism.
That took a long time for you to confess.
Let me explain it to you:
It is up to YOU to provide the proof that God exists. Not me to provide reason to believe it or not. Mine is merely a lack of belief. There is nothing I need to do to support this.
But part of implicit atheism is that if sufficient evidence arises I am in a position to reanalyze what the evidence is and make a decision.
You're the only person on here who appears to need a "Statement of Faith".
You have an agenda, allow yourself to indulge in hyper-skepticism, and selectively apply standards to Christian authors you would never apply to any other authors of antiquity.
There is no surviving eyewitness testimony for Alexander the Great. The oldest surviving account we have of him was written 400 years after Alexander died.
The late first century and early second century Bishops Papias, Polycarp, Ignatius either knew an eyewitness, or they knew people who knew the eyewitnesses, or they knew people who knew people who knew the eyewitnesses.
That's exactly the kind of witness reporting Herodotus was doing.
It doesn't get much better than that in the academic discipline of ancient history.
Because I have read the Bible and know that Paul was NOT a direct witness of Jesus?
And further: why can't you debate a point without somehow making the other side skeevy, agenda-driven, militant atheists like Stalin?
You are pathologically incapable of debate. You should really consider dropping off JPP. This is not your lane.
What’s wrong, Festus? Don’t like those two choices? It’s one or the other, Rufus. Which one?
You know the “somewhere” I read these claims? One was Luke. One was Matthew.
Now, fucktard, deny that as well.
Yes, that is an example of you having an agenda. You are selectively applying a standard to a Christian author that you would never apply to other authors of antiquity.
There are no surviving eyewitness accounts of Alexander the Great, and what we have recorded about him was written 400 years after he lived.
Herodotus never met or witnessed any of the Persian emperors or battles he wrote about. His Histories is about people and events he only has secondary sources for.
If is uncontested that Paul knew at least three of the eyewitnesses, Peter, John, Jesus' brother James. Your free to make the case all of them lied to him, or he just fabricated what they told him.
Just stop with the juvenile "strawman". Again, you are the only person calling these folks "liars" and "morons". Stop it.
Stop calling Christians and Jews names. It's getting hard to read your posts.
Luke was not a disciple.
I've tried to explain that multiple times.
Not a disciple, not an apostle, not an eyewitness. Neither was Mark.
For anyone who claims to be knowledgeable about the Bible, it's unfathomable why they wouldn't know this.
The fact that the church identified a gospel after an obscure, low-ranking Christian if it wasn't true doesn't make a lot of sense. They could have given it instant authority and made a huge splash claiming it was written by one of the disciples, aka Andrew, James, Phillip.
LOL
What a sad fucking excuse for a “Christian” you are. Gmark77 asked if you could explain Biblical contradictions and you challenged him to find one first.
I gave you a simple, straightforward one immediately and all you can do is stammer and stutter.
Don’t worry, you’re in good company with many “Christians” who also don’t know shit about their own holy book. Or, if they do, cherry pick and ignore the problems.
Once again, literacy in Galilee isn't that important of an issue, and it's almost irrelevant. Three of the most important authors of the New Testament were not from Galilee. Paul, Luke, and Mark were from Roman provinces in Asia Minor, Syria, and North Africa
You are selectively applying a standard for Christian authors that you never apply to any other authors of antiquity. We have no surviving witness testimony of Alexander the Great, and what we do have about him was written four centuries after he died. There are numerous figures from ancient history we don't have direct eyewitness testimony for.
You can't really learn anything in adequate detail by Googling for five minutes.
The evidence is reasonably good that Bishop Papias writing around the turn of the first and second century identifies several authors of the Gospels.
That is only about 20 to 30 years after they were written.
Even the atheist New Testament scholar and noted skeptic Bart Ehrman wrote that we have to take Papias' reporting seriously, though we will never know for sure.
You keep saying I'm wrong, but then you don't make a rational case for why you are right based on sound reasoning.
You haven't explained why you so consistently and selectively apply the standard "if it's not eyewitness testimony it doesn't count!" to only Christian authors, but not to other authors of antiquity