h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This article is so full of inaccuracies and errors I don't know where to start - so I'm not going to bother.

If anyone would like to read a more sensible discussion of the likelyhood of some of the events in the New Testament try "Who Moved the Stone" by Frank Morison.

Frank was a non-Christian Lawyer who decided to examine the evidence for the gospel stories in context using his legal skills. When he started he says that he was open minded but expected to find that there was no or little evidence to back up the claims. Instead by the time he had finished his research, applying only a legal and logical analysis of the facts that we know for certain - he was convinced it was true.

Read the book or better still the Bible and make up your own mind

Mel

I've read the Bible. I've made up my mind. And if I were you, I wouldn't put all of my faith in one book on the subject to answer all of your questions. Read a bit more in the area, and you'll find all of the glaring inconsistencies in Mr. Morrison's work.

Hi Colonel,

Glad to hear that you have done lots of reading in this area. I have too.

I take it you've read the "Who moved the Stone" book then? Which bits did you think were inaccurate?

Have you read " Evidence that demands a verdict" by Josh McDowell too?

What did you make of the recent BBC documentary (not sure if you are UK based or not) which examined the evidence for the stories of Jesus (from a Historical and archeological standpoint) and came to very different conclusions to your article?

I'm not British, so I don't get the BBC. As for that "Who Moved the Stone" book, I have not read it, but I am confident that, should you choose to highlight any of his points, I can find evidence to contradict it. I've actually tried to read Christian apologies, but my eyes glaze over every time. One can only read so many fallacies before one throws the book at the wall in disgust.

I am well read in the subject, but I'm sure that you and I have read far different literature. I'm sure you haven't read Dan Barker's "From Preacher to Atheist", a personal account of an evangelical minister who rejected Christianity because it failed to offer a valid explanation of itself. I'm sure you haven't read Thomas Paine's "Age of Reason", the first work that debunks Christianity, although written from a Deist perspective. Nor would I expect you to have read the many historical books on the Knights Templar, which, for some reason, always end up evolving into historical examinations of the roots of Christianity.

But then again, I believe we've engaged in the "appeal to authority" fallacy enough for this forum...

I have read the "who moved the stone" book. And I'm afraid there's one glaring problem with it. What it does, is it assumes that the Bible is true and accurate and undistorted, and goes on to show that, therefore, Jesus must have died on the cross and risen again on the third day {or the fourth day} and yada yada yada.

The big fallacy is, of course, that if you're not a christian you're unlikely to be convinced that the bible is 100% accurate. Come to that, many christians are happy to agree that the bible isn't 100% accurate too. Which, for me, puts a socking big hole in the argument.

My advice to ice cream fanatic would be too pick an inaccuracy of the Colonel's at random, and challenge the Colonel on that. If you can show that this piece is incorrect, then it casts doubt on the validity of the whole entry....

That's quite a challenge that MyRedDice has made, and one that I am quite willing...



... to accept.

Speaking as an Anglican priest, I have to say that "Who moved the Stone," interesting though it is, is generally dismissed by most recent scholars who are not extremely conservative.

The Bible = ta biblia = THE BOOKS, not "The Book".

Many authors - at least three hands in Isaiah, for example.

My OT lecturer began his course with the words, "The Bible is not the Word of God. It is the word of sinful man." I would want to add that sinful men were valiantly grappling to understand the Person they believed created the Universe, entered the world in Jesus, etc.

For a better understanding a of REASONABLE belief, try the new book by Geza Vermes, "The Many Faces of Christ," published by Penguin Books in the UK. He is Jewish. He became an RC priest, and then went back to Judaism. Although I wouldn't agree with him that we have to "ditch" the fourth gospel, the epistles & Revelation and rely on a critical understanding of Mark, Matthew, Luke and Acts, I would go a long way with his method and understanding of Scripture. Careful sifting can reveal a "real" Jesus (at least to some extent) unencumbered by later glosses - and still worthy of worship.

I've come to rely on Geza Vermes to some extent, although he leans to conservative interpretations (one of the reasons I have chosen his translation of the Dead Sea Scrolls, as his interpretations can be an effective balance to some of the crazier ideas about them), and I can definitely see the merit in discarding the epistles and Revelations. Paul is a complete outsider to early Christianity. He never hears the teachings of Jesus personally, and he comes from the wrong cultural background to truly understand them. And as for Revelations, well, it speaks for itself.

I wouldn't discard John as readily, however. I get the feeling that he wants to get rid of that one simply because it is so out of character with the other three. Well, the other three are somewhat related, but that's because we know they've come from a similar source, which we call Q. We also know that the author of Matthew had access to the gospel of Mark, because it reads like a plagiarism in many respects. But just because Matthew, Mark, and Luke are all somewhat similar mythologies about Jesus, doesn't mean we should throw away another. As far as I'm concerned, they're all equally invalid.

Interestingly the earliest books of the new testament, and therefore those most likely to reflect early Christian theology are the letters of Paul, and possibly Revelations, all written before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. The gospels, on the other hand, are probably 2nd Century, show signs of later tampering, and probably reflect the interests of an increasingly vertical church heirarchy.
Given that this is the case the failure of Paul to make any reference to the actual life of Jesus is distinctly odd.