Post by unknownPost by unknownGood you should bring this up. One point some have made is that as
witnesses their accounts have minor differences we can know they were not
rehersed or edited later.
In a court it would be expected that witness accounts for the same event
would change as each saw or experienced it accordingly. If all details
were exactly the same the court would think collusion was afoot.
What would an "impeached part" be for example?
" I will grant it is not important which gospel is lying about what was
When do different recollections become a lie? 4 different witnesses can
have as many accounts about the same event. Variation does not mean a lie
nor that the event did not occur.
There can be only one truth. If you claim different memories then you
are at my last conjecture the contents of all of them are due to
senility and Alzheimer's. Once memories are faulty nothing said is
trustworthy. When I was a kid the joke was the boy asking, What did you
do in the war, Daddy. It is amazing how many won it single handedly. Of
course people were polite and those were not called lies either.
The absence of substantive agreement is not variation.
To be honest you have to approach the gospels as though you never heard
of them or the religion and thus have no expectations or presumptions.
They have to sell themselves. And you, having no other knowledge, do not
make excuses or explain away obvious problems. Without preconceptions
you would not want to believe.
Post by unknown" You may read the descriptions of the discovery of the empty tomb and
decide which of the three are lying for yourself. If the case were a simple
bank robbery and the testimony as to who did it was this varied I doubt the
case would ever be brought to court. There would be different robbers, a
different number of robbers, a different sequence of events, different
third party witnesses (aka angels) who did different things including a
giant angel. Try getting a giant angel testimony admitted in court."
You make my point. When collected the recollections of who was there and
who said what to whom varied. All point to it having happened, the tomb
was empty.
As I noted, Mark does not. Resurrection was obviously added by someone
else. Mark remembers no resurrection. That makes Mark the only credible
narrator and makes the other three liars no matter how you look at it.
One cannot misremember what never happened.
Post by unknownBut it is not a court but history. Even modern history with documentation
still suffers from the same problem of different recollections. The angel
bit is irrelevant and points more to motivation then wanting to understand
the nature of the gospel accounts.
Angels are relevant. If no angels than liars. If trying to sell the
product like used car salesmen then also liars.
As to court, I was asked about impeaching then gospels. I did so. Court
testimony is about facts in evidence.
Post by unknown" Far from minor the resurrection is the lynchpin for all of Christianity
and to discover at least three "authoritative sources" are liars gives the
lie to the entire story. If three are lying, why not all four? Given at
least three people are lying about this resurrection thing the simplest
explanation is that all four are lying."
Now the silly season is upon us. It was the event having happened not the
variation in the recollections of it. It is a common example used in law
school to stage a fake crime event then ask for accounts from those
present. Almost without fail they will vary even when collected just after
it happened. Were they lying and the event did not occur therefore?
You want to believe. You start from the assumption there really was a
resurrection and then explain away the problems. Yet if you had no
preconceptions then these stories would be the only thing you had to
judge whether or not it was a real event.
You have Mark who testifies there was forgery in his name and knows of
nothing worth mentioning after burial. You have three others who can't
get their story straight. You call witnesses from the city and ask if
they saw dead prophets walking around town. You ask if they saw a giant
angel.
You as an unbiased, unprejudiced party would clearly reject the claim
of resurrection as multiple fantasies or multiple perjurers.
Post by unknown" I guess technically Mark isn't lying because he is silent on a
resurrection so we have the later addition to Mark and more fluid additions
to the other gospels meaning we can dismiss the entire resurrection thing
as a lie told by three liars.
Of course you can say they were written decades later and memory is
fallible but then every word of every gospels can be written off as
senility and Alzheimer's. You can't make up ad hoc excuses for everything.
Every explanation has to apply to everything else one might get the idea
one is impervious to facts."
It seems you are making up the ad hoc excuses to declare each a "lie"
because there is consistantly variation in recollections.
What if we were to do the same for say alexander the great? If we use the
same grounds you propose, all accounts were "lies" because the variation
and problems of sources of the accounts is greater by far and in spades.
Please do the same to Alexander and show me how it is any different. I
know of no one making any extraordinary claim for him like walking on
water or rising from the dead or healing the sick. If there are any I
have no problem declaring them liars.
You can't play the game of trivial versus significant. There can be
lots of disagreement on trivial things but if on says says he conquered
Egypt and another says he did not then the latter is lying, not
mistaken, not suffering a failing memory, no excuse at all.
--
If ego were a weapon Israel would rule the world.
-- The Iron Webmaster, 4436
http://www.giwersworld.org/holo3/ a12
Fri, Oct 04, 2013 12:43:00 AM