Is the Bible trustworthy

@whodey said
So a text that was written a few decades after the fact by a possible eye witness and corroborated by other texts written by other possible eye witnesses is no more believable than a text written by only one man 500 years after the fact?

Really?

Pauls's writing [22 books?]and whoever-the-guy-was' writing [Revelation] are no more or less convincing than Muhammed's writing and none of it strikes me as having anything supernatural going on.

@whodey said
Let me ask you something, if Jesus were in front of you and raising people from the dead or healing them, would you believe in him or just assume it was all a ruse?

Well, I don't believe in Benny Hinn, for example, and he supposedly performs "miracles" in front of people.

The essence of your thought exercise is 'If you believed in Jesus [for whatever reason], would you believe in him'?

Try something different.

@whodey said
So to conclude, either the gospels were written to match the prophetic time frame that points to Jesus, it was just all made up, or the prophesy is correct.

Made up. The stuff that convinces you, on this front, to me is evidence of it being authored and assembled by people pretty well-versed in ancient Hebrew mythology and theology and also in prevalent pagan ideas.

@fmf said
Pauls's writing [22 books?]and whoever-the-guy-was' writing [Revelation] are no more or less convincing than Muhammed's writing and none of it strikes me as having anything supernatural going on.

When did I mention Paul?

So you are saying that eye witness accounts, or possible eye witness accounts, are no more believable than one person some 500 years later?

Very well.

@fmf said
Made up. The stuff that convinces you, on this front, to me is evidence of it being authored and assembled by people pretty well-versed in ancient Hebrew mythology and theology and also in prevalent pagan ideas.

So Jesus never existed and was not put on a cross for blasphemy. Everything he did and said was made up.

Very well.

Jesus was made up to fit this prophesy centuries prior such as Isiah 53


Who has believed our report?
And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

2
For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant,
And as a root out of dry ground.
He has no [a]form or [b]comeliness;
And when we see Him,
There is no [c]beauty that we should desire Him.

3
He is despised and [d]rejected by men,
A Man of [e]sorrows and acquainted with [f]grief.
And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.



4
Surely He has borne our [g]griefs
And carried our [h]sorrows;
Yet we [i]esteemed Him stricken,
[j]Smitten by God, and afflicted.

5
But He was wounded[k] for our transgressions,
He was [l]bruised for our iniquities;
The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,
And by His stripes[m] we are healed.

6
All we like sheep have gone astray;
We have turned, every one, to his own way;
And the Lord [n]has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.



7
He was oppressed and He was afflicted,
Yet He opened not His mouth;
He was led as a lamb to the slaughter,
And as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
So He opened not His mouth.

8
He was taken from [o]prison and from judgment,
And who will declare His generation?
For He was cut off from the land of the living;
For the transgressions of My people He was stricken.

9
And [p]they made His grave with the wicked—
But with the rich at His death,
Because He had done no violence,
Nor was any deceit in His mouth.



10
Yet it pleased the Lord to [q]bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.

11
[r]He shall see the labor of His soul, and be satisfied.
By His knowledge My righteous Servant shall justify many,
For He shall bear their iniquities.

12
Therefore I will divide Him a portion with the great,
And He shall divide the [s]spoil with the strong,
Because He poured out His soul unto death,
And He was numbered with the transgressors,
And He bore the sin of many,
And made intercession for the transgressors.

So the account of Jesus in the gospels not answering his accusers and being from the tribe of Jesse and being bruised and killed for us etc. was made up to fit this prophesy.

Ok, but why would God pick a righteous man to torture and kill?

It seems unprecendeted in scripture.

Yet it pleased the Lord to [q]bruise Him;
He has put Him to grief.
When You make His soul an offering for sin,
He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days,
And the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His hand.

@whodey said
So Jesus never existed and was not put on a cross for blasphemy. Everything he did and said was made up.

He may well have existed. Or he may have been a kind of composite figure. If he was executed, then he was executed by the Romans, which means it wasn't for blasphemy. We will never know what he said: only what was attributed to him decades later.

@fmf said
Well, I don't believe in Benny Hinn, for example, and he supposedly performs "miracles" in front of people.

The essence of your thought exercise is 'If you believed in Jesus [for whatever reason], would you believe in him'?

Try something different.

I as well don't believe in Benny Hinn.

But I believe in Jesus.

I would then presume that you would simply label Jesus another Benny Hinn and walk away, like most did.

Conversely, Benny has a pretty big following

Interesting, isn't it?

@fmf said
He may well have existed. Or he may have been a kind of composite figure. If was executed, then he was executed by the Romans, which means it wasn't for blasphemy. We will never know what he said: only what was attributed to him decades later.

So then Jesus did come in the time frame of the prophesy of Daniel?

What exactly are you saying FMF?

@whodey said
When did I mention Paul?

It was me who mentioned him. I did so because he's another entirely unconvincing source for a huge slab of the Bible.

@whodey said
So then Jesus did come in the time frame of the prophesy of Daniel?

That's how the mythology has been shaped, yes.

@whodey said
So you are saying that eye witness accounts, or possible eye witness accounts, are no more believable than one person some 500 years later?

I have no reason to believe that the accounts you believe in are eye witness accounts. I have no reason to believe figures like Paul and Muhammed and the writer-of-Revelation who based their writing on dreams/visions that only they say they had.

@whodey said
What exactly are you saying FMF?

I am saying "exactly" what you can see written in my posts.

@fmf said
I am saying "exactly" what you can see written in my posts.

Well on the one hand you question the calendar of Daniel pointing to the time of Jesus as questionable due to the fact that Jesus was all fictional to fit the prophesy, the only way it could be disproven, but then seem to give credence that Jesus was crucified for blasphemy?

Do I have this right?

@fmf said
Pauls's writing [22 books?]and whoever-the-guy-was' writing [Revelation] are no more or less convincing than Muhammed's writing and none of it strikes me as having anything supernatural going on.

We learn about Paul in Acts written by the author of the gospel of Luke

Here is what Wiki says.

Acts and the Gospel of Luke make up a two-part work, Luke–Acts, by the same anonymous author, usually dated to around 80–90 AD.[2][3] The first part, the Gospel of Luke, tells how God fulfilled his plan for the world's salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the promised Messiah. Acts continues the story of Christianity in the 1st century, beginning with Jesus's ascension to Heaven. The early chapters, set in Jerusalem, describe the Day of Pentecost (the coming of the Holy Spirit) and the growth of the church in Jerusalem. Initially, the Jews are receptive to the Christian message, but soon they turn against the followers of Jesus. Rejected by the Jews, under the guidance of the Apostle Peter the message is taken to the Gentiles. The later chapters tell of Paul's conversion, his mission in Asia Minor and the Aegean, and finally his imprisonment in Rome, where, as the book ends, he awaits trial.

Luke–Acts is an attempt to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah of the Jews came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church; the answer it provides, and its central theme, is that the message of Christ was sent to the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it.[1] Luke–Acts can be also seen as a defense of (or "apology" for) the Jesus movement addressed to the Jews: the bulk of the speeches and sermons in Acts are addressed to Jewish audiences, with the Romans serving as external arbiters on disputes concerning Jewish customs and law.[4] On the one hand, Luke portrays the Christians as a sect of the Jews, and therefore entitled to legal protection as a recognised religion; on the other, Luke seems unclear as to the future God intends for Jews and Christians, celebrating the Jewishness of Jesus and his immediate followers while also stressing how the Jews had rejected God's promised Messiah.[5]

Again, Paul is corroborated, just like Jesus, by other witnesses.

Who is a witness to Mohammad? In fact, what prophesy tells us to look for such a supposed prophet as Mohammad to rewrite all the holy texts?

@whodey said
Well on the one hand you question the calendar of Daniel pointing to the time of Jesus as questionable due to the fact that Jesus was all fictional to fit the prophesy, the only way it could be disproven, but then seem to give credence that Jesus was crucified for blasphemy?

Do I have this right?

If the bit about him being crucified is true, then it was not for blasphemy, not if the bit about the Romans executing him is true. The Romans executed countless thousands of people for sedition. The 'fulfilling of prophesy' thing doesn't hold any water with me.