It's amazing to me just how knowledgeable Bart is about Christianity. Every question that Sam asked Bart was just ready to go. He even studied Greek and a a variety of other languages just to learn to understand the text. I'm not a religious person myself but I have a lot of respect for that dedication and scholarly work. Very interesting podcast.

@adrianrosswelsh2384

3 жыл бұрын

@John-Paul Hunt your comment does not make sense.

@kingofdetroit358

3 жыл бұрын

Christianity is basically never suppose to exist...Bart Erham is the greatest bible scholar...Pagananity is the true name

@MrSmithla

2 жыл бұрын

Ehrman is on the receiving end of massive criticism due to no other cause than his rejection of his earlier-life beliefs. I find his reaction to this, pure, neutral scholarship. All you’ll hear from Ehrman is, “I don’t believe that, but here’s what the documents say, here’s what the accounts say, here’s what the original Greek language manuscripts say and, best we know, what they’re intending to convey.” I have never heard him speak against faith as a methodology for engaging with the texts nor against any individual or group of the faithful save the fundamentalist/overly dogmatic segments of the faithful, though he pokes a little bit of fun at the Appalachian snake-handlers, pointing out the description of one being truly saved entails being safe from the venom of serpents as not being present in the oldest manuscripts.

@topdog5252

Жыл бұрын

Absolutely. This was really interesting to me.

It's always a breath of fresh air to listen to Bart Erhman.

I just discovered Dr. Ehrman via Wondrium last week, and I’m OBSESSED (sorry for dropping the o word), but the history of Christianity and Jesus FASCINATES me, being a recovering southern Baptist. I just KNEW that Sam must know him. I can’t wait to listen to this!!

When I think about Christians gathering in groups to argue over the details of the afterlife...I picture a scenario identical to one of fans of Star Trek arguing over how the transporter device works.

@superfarful

3 жыл бұрын

Except star trek is fun and against slavery and racism

@ednaceola7876

3 жыл бұрын

That's good

@connorgoss7489

2 жыл бұрын

I say this all the time, even if Jesus rose from the dead and is God. Presbyterians, Catholics, orthodox, and seventh day Adventist all have four different views of the afterlife when historically speaking there was only one Jesus. In other words someone made some shit up.

@StennMathis

2 жыл бұрын

@@superfarful Who would you rather follow, Jean Luc Piccard or Jesus? Given Jean Luc won't perform miracles but you bet he'd get you out of sticky situations! Mr Worf..?

@Bronco541

Жыл бұрын

Picard, a thousand times and ways more, anyday

Thank you, this podcast was very important for me. I'm so happy to embrace the truth and leave unfounded beliefs.

@BigfootJudy

3 жыл бұрын

Pumped for you! Welcome to the team!

@LordJeffries

2 жыл бұрын

This discussion also kicked off my deconversion. I think I might have arrived where I am regardless, but this got me thinking about the foundations of my beliefs, and I found them lacking

I really like Bart Ehrman,he always have brilliant insights into the genesis of christianity.

The truth is that most modern "christians" make a choice to avoid any real intellectual scrutiny of their religious beliefs.

@cutwagman

3 жыл бұрын

The truth is that most Atheists avoid Christian testimonies because they simply prefer living in a world where they won’t be judged by God when they die. They figure they can get everyone else to agree to their view. Thats why they don’t live and let live. They don’t say that you can believe in Jesus but I don’t. They don’t say that you have your opinion and they have theirs. They actively try to divide you from your own core belief. They don’t simply have a non-belief they try to make you into a fool for believing. They don’t WANT you believing. That doesn’t make them atheist that makes them Anti-Christian. And THEY don’t go after the Muslims just the Christians. They hate you and don’t want any detractors to spoil their dream state.

@richardalexandergastelum6037

3 жыл бұрын

Your post is probably the most intellectual dishonest thing I’ve in a while. Thank you for embodying the the very thing the previous post was trying to convey.

@richardalexandergastelum6037

3 жыл бұрын

Just to clarify, I’m responding to state Of the art guy

@billscannell93

3 жыл бұрын

@@cutwagman How is the weather in that parallel universe of yours? Sam Harris is a frequent, harsh critic of Islam, and has gotten in deep trouble with the PC Police over the issue. Haven't you seen his famous encounter with Ben Affleck on the Bill Maher show? It is true some people identify as anti-theists, not atheists, because they think religion is bad for individuals, bad for society, bad for human progress, and also that the indoctrination of children is a form of abuse--all of which I heartily agree with. Theists' conception of what it means to 'believe' something is entirely different from atheists'. The only reason we believe anything is evidence. We have no cherished, sacred 'beliefs' we scramble to defend against all evidence, logic and reality. Everything is open to questioning, no belief is too holy or tangled up in our emotions to debate and learn the actual truth about. So, you see, what you call 'dividing you from your core belief,' we call, 'winning an argument about what is actually real.' This is the sane, adult way of facing reality. I don't know what you are complaining about, anyway. Even Biden, de facto leader of The Cult of the SJW, is himself very Catholic. (For that matter, even the SJWs themselves will go well out of their way to 'respect your beliefs.')

@garyjaensch7143

3 жыл бұрын

@@richardalexandergastelum6037 the worst intellectual dishonesty I have seen, comes from the ABC. fancy saying houris are raisins!!! kzread.info/head/PLf-d0LviJevewso1O0qIkZQ2OTAIjf2zp

That second last question brought me to tears! i was a christian and now i'm not. i'm afraid to say that i might be an atheist cuz i'm afraid my mom might find out this is me. hahahaha. She'd have a heart attack. But do you have any idea how it feels to realize after having lived almost your entire young life and dreamt only of finding ways sincerely to give my PHYSICAL life to convert the people i love to christianity, suddenly realize all of it is a LIE... a "LIE"!!!! ...if you've seen the movie The Matrix, where keanu reeves pulls the plug from behind his head and he vomits for a while: i have felt like this numerous times over the past few years! Took me a while to realize that my best friend Jesus Christ isn't real.

@emilianosintarias7337

3 жыл бұрын

Sorry man. mythology is still meaningful though. there is so much truth in fiction, that is the secret of literature. And we really still are called to a cause, to help others and get the world in order

@johnybrokeit

3 жыл бұрын

@@emilianosintarias7337 Well said! There are blurred lines though, and some are blatantly said to be truth but are lies... and what's crazy is that these "truths" are the basis for the entire religion to be true or false and they have to be "guarded" and insisted upon forever for the sake of that religion (despite them truths being possibly false; like Jesus' rise from the dead on the 3rd day). How to decide what is truth and isn't depends on the people who raise us as kids I guess. It all sincerity, Christianity has had a huge positive influence in me choosing to help others and put others first. So you're right, they kind of trick u into becoming a better version of a human being haha :) Good Principles :)

@geoffreygeoffrey4879

3 жыл бұрын

Well written! I got drunk only once.....to vomit out my family and its evil religion (Baptist).

@geoffreygeoffrey4879

3 жыл бұрын

Alejandro Perkadel There's truth in the mythology of the Bible's genocide, child sacrifice and slavery (including sex slavery)?! Actually, there is...the god of the bible is an evil bastard !!!

@OhManTFE

Жыл бұрын

Congrats man. As Morpheus would say, "Welcome to the real world."

this is a bit laborious to get through, because it is long and information dense, but if you can follow it closely, its fascinating. love sam Harris, he's OG for sure

I really enjoyed hearing this! Thanks, to both of you, Harris and Ehrman.

Great conversation. Congratulations. I follow both for a while. I would like to see Sam also talking with a renowned mysticist! Thanks

Love these two

Great talk - I learned!

As far as the concept that contradictions in the New Testament could be evidence of veracity when a scene in the story conflicts with the message - novels, movies, plays and all sorts of fictional works have plot holes and contradictions, but that doesn’t prove they are factual. "I don’t believe that the gods engage is such unholy relationships, nor have I never believed this story about gods tying up their parents in chains and I won’t believe it now. Nor can I ever believe that one god is the lord of another. A god, if he is a real god, is in need of nothing. These are just miserable tales made up by poets." - Euripides - Herakles

@soslothful

3 жыл бұрын

One may not have contradictory claims about a single event. One claim, or both, must be mistaken. In the example of the time of Jesus' crucifixion, Jesus was either crucified on the day of preparation for Passover or the day after Passover, not both. One account is wrong.

@TheJohnnyCalifornia

3 жыл бұрын

@@soslothful True - those contradictions don't lend any credibility either. I was referring to the section where he mentioned the story of Jesus telling his apostles, including Judas, that they would be kings in the afterlife, though were he really a god, he would have known Judas would betray him. That's essentially due to the narrative nature of the gospels where the author does not want to reveal the "twist" rather than an inconsistency proving that it must've happened. A better example though is the story of the nativity in Bethlehem. Jesus, if he existed, would have actually been born in Nazareth, BUT the prophecy of the coming Messiah at the time was that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem. Therefore, the Christians needed to come up with a story that explained that even though he was raised in Nazareth and his family lived in Nazareth at the time he was born, he was actually born in Bethlehem. If the story was entirely fictional, they would have simply said he was born in Bethlehem. So the fact that the nativity story exists and is demonstrably false (there was no census and no requirement people had to return to their hometowns or any indication of mass temporary travel at the time), the fact that the authors felt they needed such a story indicates that there must've been a Jesus of Nazareth who actually existed.

Two great voices today.

@theevolvingman1718

3 жыл бұрын

No kidding!!! Two very important minds talking. Got to love this.

@cullenarthur8879

3 жыл бұрын

I agree. I really like both Sam Harris and Bart Ermann.

Really appreciate listening to the studied

This was a great interview. I always find it interesting and insightful to hear what Bart Ehrman and Sam Harris have to say.

@svenred6eard757

3 жыл бұрын

Yes. I really like Ehrman, he is my go- to guy for all things to do with the bible. I have learned a lot from watching his lectures. He is a real expert on the subject.

Great conversation.

Bart and Sam are great! 👍

Absolutely fantastic talk

This is so captivating!

God bless

Learned so much during this video

That was a great interview

Where can i find the Heaven's Gate podcast?

Sam you nailed it mate.

@naasduplessis855

2 жыл бұрын

I had the exact thought in mind

Is it possible to get a transcript of this?

Aba’s “white super straight CEO” started to sound like Bill Clinton towards the end 😂

To believe the fires of hell is beyong belief!!

Christianity is not asking Jesus into your heart. Just like everything else, there are false versions of everything. Asking Jesus into your heart is not even in the Bible just to start.

Crawling on the planet’s face. Some insects call the human race. Lost in time, lost in space and meaning.

As long as it says in god we trust on money. The year of our lord (2021) is in place. God bless america remains a theme. Officials are sworn in with hand on bible. Etc etc. Each generation will be stuck explaining these things to children. The government will plant the seed even if others won’t.

How gullible one has to be...to put faith in ancient hearsay. To say it's proven.

im kinda confused... i need to listen to this more and more

I don’t mean to offend any Christians that might be reading this, but why does no one mention the fact that Jesus and his disciplines may have been psychotic and/or Jesus was a con man?

@hussainiqbal9623

2 жыл бұрын

Hello Alex. I hope you are in good health. I would like your opinion about the Buddha. I am an Ex-Muslim Atheist. However, I have noticed that many Atheists tend to be against all religions and consider all of them to be nonsensical. I became an Atheist at the age of 14,but I have extensively studied the Buddha's teachings and have realized that his teachings are overwhelmingly about spirituality like meditation,enlightenment,spiritual practices etc. He also was not a con or something like that. I personally do not believe in any supernatural things like Karma,heavenly realms or whatever. However, I do hold his other teachings like meditation,spirituality in a very high regard. What is your opinion about this?

Bart is such a badass.

Jesus (whichever version you prefer) is a symbolic metaphor for spiritual and intellectual enlightenment, not an actual person as it is commonly portrayed today. Whichever religion, whether it involves for instance central characters like Jesus or his depictions from earlier mythologies, i.e. Mithras, Zeus, Osiris or even Krishna (in that order);- they all derive from and encode ancient astronomy relating to the relative positions and movement of the shapes and names of constellations in the sky, planets, moons and obviously the center of it all - the sun.

Know thyself. Believe only in what you do. Live from your gut...Are sentiments that have aided me in the real world more than any scripture! After years of being a baptized fundamentalist christian I realized one thing. Jesus followed nobody, in the book he was very much his own man. Buddha followed nobody, he was very much his own man and lived by his own rules. Mohammed was very much his own man, he stuck to his guns and apologized to nobody. So for me, ALL religious people have completely missed the point by following another and not living from the inside out.

@TaylorTrask

2 жыл бұрын

This comment is criminally underrated

Is it possible to take courses Bart teaches? I missed where he teaches.

@shanejohns7901

3 жыл бұрын

``He is currently the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.`` (Wikipedia)

@janepellegrino8144

3 жыл бұрын

@@shanejohns7901 thank you

@vercingetorix3414

3 жыл бұрын

@@janepellegrino8144 He also teaches several courses on Christ, Christianity and the New Testament at the Teaching Company.

@outofbluepills

3 жыл бұрын

The Teaching Company no longer goes by that name. Now, it's called The Great Courses.

why are the holly books have stop being written.... in other words why their stories endend centuries ago and are not still continuing their story ???

When is Sam gonna do video for his podcast

👍

I was born an atheist. I never bought into all that nonsense. Unfortunately, my family was catholic so I had to do the whole charade... baptism,(of course I didn't have a choice), went to mass which I hated, and then the first communion at the age of 12 y/o. After that I said... enough, not more b.s. For lack of a better word... thank god....😂

By the time Sam gets to the end of a question, I've forgotten what the question was.

Jesus reappearing after the resurrection is easily explained. bible scholars say Jesus had an identical twin, namely Thomas Didymus, where Didymus means twin in ancient greek, and I think Thomas means twin in aramaic or something like that. the disappearance of the body I heard was that Josephus requested the body, and took it away. there are then 2 alternative scenarios: 1. Thomas pretended to be Jesus after the ressurection, 2. They crucified Thomas and Jesus reappears pretending he was the twin who was crucified. 1. is more likely, because bible scholars say Thomas moved to India, where he formed his own branch of christianity, you might have noticed that a lot of indian christians have Thomas as surname, they are from that branch. there is a 3rd explanation, which is when Jesus was bearing his cross, trekking to the crucifixion, some guy offered to help, and it is possible Jesus snuck away, and that guy got crucified instead! The romans removed all bodies from the crufixes who were still alive, so whoever they removed was still alive. if it was someone else crucified and now in the tomb, it was probably Jesus who removed that body before people realised the mistake, and then easy to reappear as "resurrected". The story of the doubting Thomas is just a cover story, a scare tactic to stop others doubting. Muhammed also said that the resurrection was via an identical twin. the use of identical twins is used a lot by stage magicians, there is a film based on this called "the prestige". I think all rabbis are atheists, and they propagate the myth of the messiah and jehovah. Paul was of rabbinical descent, so he knew the gig of propagating the myth, and I think he just created a new myth around Jesus. His knowing 500 who witnessed the resurrection is just more myth, like santa's list of all kids who are naughty and nice. All men of the church are atheists, who propagate the myth. There is no historical evidence whatsoever that Jesus existed, Paul saying he knew James could be an overt myth. I could say I knew Scooby who was Jesus cousin. there is a saying that "none so gullible as those who want to believe". Jesus never said he was crucified for man's sins, it is Paul who invented that idea. The jews had a ritual of atoning for their sins by sacrificing a lamb. Paul decided that the crucifixion was a final ritual of atonement, this is the origin of Jesus being called the lamb of god. Paul's conversion on the road to Damascus is his own myth. A lot of preachers pretend they used to be atheists and then the found Jesus! in fact all of them are atheists who never found Jesus and dont believe in Jesus, but they propagate the myth of Jesus, and the myth that they converted after being atheist. in fact in most cases, they began as devout christians, who then went to divinity school and got converted to atheism, and then decided to propagate the myth of Jesus. You honestly shouldnt waste any time on the bible, its a barbaric book, filled with activities that long ago were abandoned. with the internet and smartphones we are in a different era. Buddhism is a much better philosophy, where the Buddha said salvation comes from ethics not from belief. it doesnt matter what you believe, its how you behave that matters. You've never seen god or Jesus, so any idea you have on such is outright imagination and conjecture and myth!

@jayk8756

7 ай бұрын

I could be wrong as I’m an atheist but isn’t there proof Jesus existed? I think we have historical proof of Pilot writing about Jesus.

32:40 "to the benefit of all humanity" no! only to the benefit of the righteous part of dunya!

Sorry but I'm mostly interested in how these stories were portrayed in art. At 1:26:27, he says that Paul was a "young person". This is the first time I've ever heard this. All of the apostles with the exception of John the Evangelist are depicted in art as basically, old and with beards. In addition, Paul is always bald in Medieval Art (another sign of age). So I'm not sure where he got that Paul was "a young person" at the time of the events.

@SKILLIUSCAESAR

Жыл бұрын

Medieval artists are credible sources on the appearances of people who died long before?

Every Christian and church perishiners who go to church blindly who yet have not read the Bible cover to cover who will literally stake every they own that the Bible is true and will argue with you till the death in social media comments need to listen to this video ASAP!

Lol I actually went to the church he went to.

No housekeeping? What a jip.

You would think that since Jesus was to preside over hell that he would have spoken of it in detail

I learned a lot about Buddhism and Taoism but couldn't relate to their modern beliefs before I became a Christian because the life of Jesus actually makes a lot of sense to me and many Asians as well. Asian religions such as Taoism, on the other hand, spend a lot of time talking about the world of spirits and a hierarchy of fake gods. Both Buddhism and Taoism believe in the same thing as Christianity that love, telling the truth, and sacrifice your body when necessary are among the highest values in the universe.

@danielreynolds1632

2 жыл бұрын

But eternal hell is not cruel and unusual punishment and is perfectly just? At least in Buddhism one goes to hell until the negative karma they accumulated in life is used up- aka punishments actually fitting the crime...

@danielreynolds1632

2 жыл бұрын

There are lots of spirits in Christianity as well, including lying spirits that God used to deceive people...you know, because he is the embodiment of absolute truth. :D

@kwamecharles6037

Жыл бұрын

@@danielreynolds1632 😂😂

I would like to hear more about the Gnostics in this context.

@multispeciesangler

3 жыл бұрын

A Gnostic may have several different views. One may be that neither of these guys said anything at all about what the gospels say. Or what any of the texts that they mentioned say. Jesus is alive today but that has nothing to do with christianity. There aren't any doctrines associated with what Jesus said in the text. That's just imaginations and interpretations gone wild.

@paradigmprimeproductions1008

3 жыл бұрын

To clarify, I would like to hear the gnostic texts of old analyzed this deeply

@duskrider1724

3 жыл бұрын

A Tim Freke interview might be a good place to start. kzread.info/dash/bejne/h3qdurxpZZS1hKw.html&ab_channel=GrahamHancockDotCom

In an ancient world that respected nothing but material power, along came Jesus saying there's something more important. Ehrman's latest convincingly delineates that Jesus was necessary for society's evolution.

@kpllc4209

3 жыл бұрын

The Stoics and other Greek Philosophers were saying the same thing Jesus was hundreds of years earlier.

@hvalenti

3 жыл бұрын

Ah but did they EXEMPLIFY it? Purportedly, Jesus did. That's why we are still living the benefits of it. In terms of historical consequence, beyond deontological principle, Jesus was the vessel to deliver our current history. Amen.

@kpllc4209

3 жыл бұрын

@@hvalenti Philosophers didn't rely on stories, stories are more powerful.

@hvalenti

3 жыл бұрын

All philosophies are based on stories. Camus, Nietzsche and many others have great quotes on this.

@hvalenti

3 жыл бұрын

All of philosophy is a story. All philosophies are created by stories.

The ignorance of Bart and Sam Harris on keys aspects of Christianity baffles me and I can’t even tell if it’s just a blind eye that’s being turned. I would really like to have a conversation with them.

@bubbafowpend9943

5 ай бұрын

Yes, one of the most lauded biblical scholars of our time is "ignorant" of christianity, but some internet random has it alllll figured out.

Can you please Interview Sadhguru Sam?

The accuracy of oral tradition for important texts seems irrelevant for AD 30. There was a long tradition of writing and scholarship at that point. Herodotus was writing down very detailed histories in 430 BC! So if it was really important and historical, why was it left to Mark to write it down in AD 70 and why did he write it in Greek? Saying it was preserved as an oral tradition until Mark is BS.

@HkFinn83

3 жыл бұрын

There’s nothing to suggest Herodotus was unchanged. Edit, also Jesus was not from the same culture as Herodotus. Comparing apples and oranges.

@Sinleqeunnini

3 жыл бұрын

Don't commit the fallacy of presentism. History (as significant narrative) is not found in the events themselves but rather synthesized afterwards. No one left anything to Mark. Various groups of followers of Jesus did their own thing, including the Q community. No one felt the need to write a sacred text initially because they were Jews, Gentile converts to Judaism, or in close contact with Jews, and for everyone involved the Jewish scriptures were all they needed. The Sayings tradition was an early motivator for writing down a document preserving Jesus' sayings as well as a basic theology drawing on the Hebrew Prophetic tradition and incipient Messianism. Later, as other communities run into competing teachers or congregation members saying things that seem to go beyond what worship leaders feel is acceptable, they start writing their own in-house text to delimit the version of Jesus they want to stand by. That's likely how Mark got written. Mark was likely writing in Rome or Syria, so writing in Greek is natural. Some things in Mark certainly do reflect the experiences of the original followers of Jesus, and some do not.

@shankz8854

3 жыл бұрын

Because the early christians and apostles were probably illiterate. It would’ve been possible to create a written record, but it was very common to have an oral tradition. This is not surprising. It was written in Greek because this was the lingua franca of this part of the Roman Empire.

@shankz8854

3 жыл бұрын

@@Sinleqeunnini well said - best YT comment I’ve read in a while. Probably been on the wrong channels for too long haha

@Sinleqeunnini

3 жыл бұрын

@@shankz8854 Because the early christians and apostles were probably illiterate M: Not true. Paul was quite literate, as were many of the members of the early congregations to various degrees. . It would’ve been possible to create a written record, but it was very common to have an oral tradition. This is not surprising. It was written in Greek because this was the lingua franca of this part of the Roman Empire.

Can anyone tell me " what u think of Christain Prince "?

@thescorpiuslibra1676

3 жыл бұрын

What u think of Christian Prince

Get Richard Carrier on.

Jesus didn't die. You forgot that a friend brought Healing & Healing herbs & spices which they used.

Hi Sam, I love your show. If you would like to call angels coming to my rescue unbelievably as mercy then I will sync with that and me and the Lord took a walk together in my time in need my story brought me back to faith in proof that God loves me and all

Another point.... 16:00: Harris brings up a standard atheist retort - Hume's statement that no testimonial of a miracle should be accepted unless the testimony or testifier is of such a character that its falsehood would be more of a miracle than the miracle relayed. Granted - makes perfect sense. But, is there ever a situation where this can even conceptually be the case? Can any testimony be of such a quality? Of course this criterion can never be met, but not necessarily because all miracles are fictitious (though of course they are... ahem, statistically speaking). Imagine for a moment that a miracle did happen.... The criterion immediately breaks down. Well, I suppose I'm missing the point, which is, assuming that, even if a miracle did happen, no miracle testimony should be enough on its own for the miracle to be believed, without extraordinary evidence. Yes, I suppose that's really the point - extraordinary claims, extraordinary evidence - no testimony is ever enough to warrant belief alone... unless it meets this criterion, which it can't.

@lwouisYT

3 жыл бұрын

I mean you make it sound like a complex situation... Stories from thousands of years ago about resurrection seem like a clear low quality evidence situation. Now to show how it's quite easy to have modern actual "miracle", think about the northen lights (aurora borealis). The phenomenon is of the likes of what religions talk about. Crazy cool lights in the sky; must be god sending us a sign. This was and is still today witnessable. It is accessible to study and analysis, and has been. As a result you can open a science book and learn how this happens, when, what are the fundamentals building blocks at play, etc. Anything worth attention, and not obvious dodgy stuff had and is studied, and lots of literature surround it. There is no philosophical dilemna here about how it's impossible to prove anything. Black holes, big bang, these are insane phenomenon that exist in reality and can be analyzed and proven to exist

@unnilnonium

3 жыл бұрын

@@lwouisYT I'm just saying, suppose a _real miracle_ actually happened - not something a primitive would call a miracle but modern science can understand. No testimony _of said miracle_ can meet Hume's criterion. That's all. So, Hume's criterion is just another way of saying no testimony of a miracle can ever be believed, and miracles are impossible... the language seems to disguise that it's really a philosophical argument that miracles are impossible, instead of a criterion that could be met by a real miracle. Why everyone seems to think I'm always arguing that nothing can be proven is a mystery to me. It's just a statement about the philosophical weight of Hume's criterion and nothing else. Somebody is making it sound like a complex situation, but it isn't me, lol. Thanks for the response! Incidentally, I just discovered how to make _ITALICS! GOD_ it makes writing so much clearer. Just put an underscore before and after the word or phrase. _How very knowledge!_

@Sinleqeunnini

3 жыл бұрын

Poor Harris. Like a timid child still getting all caught up psychologically about the issue of miracles in sacred texts. The man's clearly uneasy when it comes to the Abrahamic traditions, and he can't get any bearing on them save to apply his single lens of ahistoric, scientific naturalism, which oscillates between the notion of the supernatural and the material. Some guys really are still stuck at square one in terms of wisdom....

@unnilnonium

3 жыл бұрын

@@Sinleqeunnini Are you sure you listened to the podcast? You're responding to this one? And, are you sure you didn't want to just start your own string? Boy, he sounds all psychologically caught up all right. He's downright apoplectic. And poor Ehrman just acting like a psychologist trying to keep him on the rails. "...oscillates between the notion of the supernatural and the material." What specious nonsense. Do tell us, what does square 2 look like?

@Sinleqeunnini

3 жыл бұрын

@@unnilnonium Are you sure you listened to the podcast? M: I sure did (or most of it, at least). You're responding to this one? M: Ain’t no other around… And, are you sure you didn't want to just start your own string? M: I may have done that as well… Boy, he sounds all psychologically caught up all right. He's downright apoplectic. M: In a broad and metaphorical sense, he certainly is…. And poor Ehrman just acting like a psychologist trying to keep him on the rails. M: No. Ehrman is actually 'encouraging' the bad beliefs…. "Oscillates between the notion of the supernatural and the material." What specious nonsense. M: I do believe you do not know either of these men…. Do tell us, what does square 2 look like? M: Too vague and subjective a question…..

Living forever would get boring.

@aheroictaxidriver3180

3 жыл бұрын

No, it won't.

@reallydoe2052

3 жыл бұрын

Think about it it could be more interesting worlds than this🤷‍♂️so maybe never boring but I get your point like forever is umm FOREVER so I get it

And people spend their precious lives debating this sort of mythology as if it’s fact? Makes MAGA look sensible!

And even if our Good News is veiled,it is veiled to those who are perishing. In whose case the god of this world (satan) has blinded the minds of the unbelieving,that they might not see the light of the Good News of the splendor of Messiah,who is the image of God.

What....! Bart Said ( 1:06: 48 - 56 ) WE are RESTRICTED to christain EVIDENCE! ????? Why?

@paulkelly1162

3 жыл бұрын

He does not mean that in any theological, philosophical, or normative sense. Bart simply means that there is not much information on Jesus beyond the biblical writings. We are “restricted to Christian evidence” only in the sense that the Christians were the only ones who were interested in Jesus enough to write about him.

At about 1:02:00 Bart Erhman says that he is certain that Jesus (first of all, existed, and) actually said that, to paraphrase - the 12 disciples would each be the rulers of his future kingdom - because no later Christian creating the story would have Jesus include Judas as one of the would-be ruling disciples, because of his betrayal. He then goes on to expound on the "criterion of dissimilarity" and that biblical scholars use this as a sort of metric to judge the historical accuracy of an event. But, surely every single work of fiction, if read as though one did not know whether or not it were a work of fiction, would produce zillions of examples of dissimilarity. Yet these works are not historically accurate, um, at all. I understand the logic he uses, but isn't it obviously flawed in this way? I mean, clearly Gandalf would have just asked the Eagles to take the ring to the mountain immediately if the goal was to destroy the ring. You see, in the clearly fabricated passages, the Eagles always show up just when it seems hopeless, and end up saving the day - when Gandalf and the 13 companions of Thorin were trapped in the fir trees in the wolves' glade - when Frodo and Sam are stuck at Mt. Doom after the ring's destruction.... Obviously someone constructing the events later would want the ring to get to the mountain as quickly as possible.... Therefore, Frodo's journey is more likely to be historically accurate. No, it's a more interesting story when we know that Judas is going to betray Jesus and Jesus seems not to know (yes I remember Jesus' prediction later). This is called irony. Can't these things just be literary techniques? I don't mean to be sharp or flippant - Bart Ehrman is a damn genius. I love Ehrman. But surely....

@bastianbarx1509

3 жыл бұрын

Haven't heard this podcast yet, but i'vre read some of Ehrman's books, and yes, his logic is often completely flawed when it comes to the question historicity of Jesus. For instance, in Jesus interrupted he claims that no jew would invent a crucified messiah, and that no jew would think psalm 22 was about the messiah. But that's ridiculous. First of all, how can he know what all jews back then thought? He don't and he can't. Secondly, obviously some jews did invent a crucified messiah, because the first christians were jews, and we wouldn't have christianity today if some of them didn't think a messiah was crucified. Doesn't matter if Jesus' really was real or invented. It's logical fallacies like that. Even thought he knows of all the discrepancies and forgeries etc. in the new and old testament, he just can't seem to be able to let go of the idea, that there is a historical kernel in them. Although everything about these books scream that they are literary works of pure fiction and not history.

@m0cker184

3 жыл бұрын

They could be literary techniques. The reasoning behind attributing degrees of plausible historicity to different passages is that historians believe the early surviving christian texts to be compositions using various sources. Unlike the Lord of the Ring with a single source for the text (the authors imagination), the early christians texts showed evidence of multiple sources. The clearest example is that Matthew and Luke incorporate most passages of Mark (in many occasion using the same phrasing as Mark, suggesting they had the text to copy from) and share information between them that is absent in Mark. This similarity in information has led scholars to suggest a text that has not survived to the present day, but from which the authors of Matthew and Luke took the information they share. Furthermore, there is information in Matthew and Luke which is unique to each text, suggesting that each has access to other sources of information (oral, textual or their fabrications). The evidence for different sources is the reason for trying to assign degrees of historical plausibility to different passages in a text. In the case of "criterion of dissimilarity" a contributing factor is that the texts seem to contain contradictions, and some of these contradictions seem to be related to the time and place they were written. The reason to believe texts changed with time and place, is that Luke and Matthew both use passages from Mark, but also passages not found in Mark. When a passage that is not in Mark seem to contradict passages found in Mark, it is taken that the one in Mark is older and closer to the historical events. There are passages from Mark than Matthew and Luke copy word for word, but also passages where they change the text slightly (like the beatitudes). These slight changes scholars believed are due to the local realities of the communities for whom the text was written (each text was written for a community and not planned to be compiled in an official bible a century later). These evidences of communities altering the older texts to fit their local understanding, leads historians to believe that passages that contradict the later beliefs of the early christian churches were too well known to be altered. If these early communities show other places in the text were they change some words to better fit their current understanding, historians believe this can be evidence that the texts that were not modified were well know in the early churches through oral transmission or from other textual sources that have not survived (it's been hypothesized that some of these lost texts could have been collections of Jesus sayings, this hypothesis was proposed before the Gospel of Thomas was discover, which itself is a collection of Jesus sayings). So a passage were Jesus declares that in the coming kingdom each of the 12 would be a ruler, would be dissimilar and embarrassing to the early churches since many of these communities preach an imminent end to the world based on their belief in the prophetic powers of Jesus. That the prophet the early christians were preaching about made the obvious incorrect prediction that Judas would be a ruler, it must have been a source of embarrassment for the early church. Why not change it if there is evidence of them changing other passages to fit their local understanding? Historians believe it is plausible the saying was well know in the early churches and this makes it older than the texts that contain it. In broad strokes, Historians are not dealing with one work from the past written by one author, instead they are dealing with multiple texts written in different places and times that shared texts and oral traditions with each other, and from the pieces trying to find out what is plausible to trace back to historical events and which are clearly later alterations to fit local beliefs. A more appropriate comparison than a text of literature like The Lord of the Rings would be The Iliad and The Odyssey. Both ancient retelling of events that have come down to us filled with fantastical elements and imagined details, but that had enough historical information in it, that historians were able to use it as a guide to find the archeological site of Troy. The passages that speak of the gods and Olympus are of such low historical probability that they can safely be categorized as fiction, but the passages describing the sea routes and landmarks that lead archeologist to find the ruins of Troy, those could be said of high historical plausibility. Biblical historians are trying to do something similar. In the end, I find historians arguments compelling and tend to agree with them since I find their explanations for how the texts came to be the way they are, more plausible than just fiction writers from the first century.

@unnilnonium

3 жыл бұрын

​@@m0cker184 thank you for an intelligent discourse. Literally, the only difference between a work of fiction and a non-fictional work is that the events in a non-fiction happen to coincide with events in reality. Therefore, the style or construction of the writing cannot logically be used as a criterion to determine its veracity. If we believe that a testimony is more likely to be believed if it admits of something embarrassing, then every murderer would know that they will be more likely to get off if they testify that they "couldn't have committed the crime, because at the time of the murder, they were embezzling money from their grandmother while snorting meth off of a prostitute's ass." In other words, if you want your story to be believed, then intentionally place dissimilarities in it. Not that I think the writers of the scriptures actually were so strategic. The Iliad and the Odyssey really are works of fiction. I don't recall if either has such a reference, but, it is not inconceivable that precisely the same sort of literary construction that lead archeologists to the location of Troy could have been used to describe the location of Mt. Olympus. 2000 years from now, when historians look back at all of the fan fiction, spin-offs, testimonials of people 1000 years from now who swear that Gandalf came to them in a dream of revelation, etc. will be faced with the same problem as Bible historians today. They will wonder if The Lord of the Rings has a kernel of reality on which it is based, and they will point to maps that people are creating today, that show that Middle Earth is basically Europe, and then wonder which other elements are historically accurate. Frodo's journey will be determined to be more likely to be historically accurate by the same criteria. Bible historians really do believe that the myths of Zeus, Osirus, Krishna, etc. are works of fiction, and don't believe that there are real people that these characters are based on, nor that they actually said anything, though I am sure there are many examples of exactly the same sort of dissimilarity used to judge the truth of Jesus' sayings in them, and these ancient religions are constructed of just the same piecemeal oral traditions and literary scraps as the Bible.

@m0cker184

3 жыл бұрын

​@@unnilnonium I see your point and I think it's a point historians deal with in their work. The bigger question is what can be known from the past to have happened. The answer to this question is a spectrum in which one extreme would be that there is nothing that can be know to have happened in the past (everything that has survived could have been imaginative fiction writing) to the other extreme of everything that was said to have happened in surviving textual form , really happened in the past (like some fundamentalist beliefs that the creation story in genesis is literally true). In this type of conversations about what can be known from the past, I think each individual lands somewhere in this spectrum and the evidence or arguments to move his position, would depend on their initial answer to what can be said to be know from the past to have happened. Setting that aside, one consideration is that not all texts that have survived from the past are equal and historians do not treat them the same way. A parallel to your example (of a text like LOTR surviving thousands of years and later historians taking fan fiction as corroboration for the historicity of Frodo and his journey) would be the surviving texts that have come down to us about Greek Mythology, one could take the Library of Apollodorus as the primary text and compare it to Ovid's Metamorphosis (taken as fan fiction) to determine the historicity of the mythological characters. But the evidence we have is that no Historian today does that, texts like the Library of Apollodorus and Ovid's Metamorphosis are not study under the same light or criteria as other ancient texts like Plutarch's Lives o Pliny the Elder texts. I submit that in a thousand years books like LOTR will be treated by future historians the way present day historians treat with The Library of Apollodorus. Historians are trying to reconstruct what is likely to have happened in the past based on the evidence that has survived. Going back to the first point, each person will land in a different spot in the spectrum of what can be said to be likely or less likely to have happened. But for the second point (not all texts being equal), there are other surviving texts that can share light into how texts in the ancient world survived and got put together. An example that come to mind is the Buddhist Suttas. The Suttas are the surviving texts that contain the oldest know Buddha sayings and stories. These also show evidence of containing older passages than others within, and historians used comparative tools to try and figure out what can be said of their composition history and if anything in them can be said to trace back to historical events. In the case of the suttas, these were written hundreds of years after the time the historical figure lived, and pretty much everything they contain about the Buddha's life could be consider total fiction. I think these fit better your argument that one possibility is that all of it is fiction. My view is that biblical texts have a higher probability of containing information that traces back to a historical figure than the suttas, one reason for this is that they were written at a time were there were still living witnesses to the events. This is not to say that the biblical texts are eye witness accounts (they are not), but I am thinking about texts like the letters of Paul that mention James the brother of Jesus as a known figure in the Jerusalem church. If Paul made up Jesus whole cloth, why would he mention speaking with Jesus brother in his correspondence with other christians in a way that assumes the readers knew James or knew of him? I see the "criterion of embarrassment' as a tool to identify possible patterns in the construction of the texts. In themselves each example of embarrassment could be explained otherwise, but taken together is a plausible explanations for some of the contradictions in the text. Other examples of Embarrassment that I find persuasive are the Crucifixion and the Baptism. The Crucifixion is a problem for the early christians since they proclaim that Jesus was the promised jewish messiah, but to anyone in the early churches that knew James (as Paul letters imply some did) would ask how could James brother be the messiah if it was known that he was crucified by the romans? There is evidence from different surviving texts that the beliefs and understanding around the crucifixion and it's meaning was evolving and disputed in the early christians communities. It seem plausible that later Christology ideas (about how Jesus being crucified is actually part of God's grand scheme) were the early christians believers tying themselves into knots, trying to reconciled the belief that Jesus was the messiah and the known fact at the time that Jesus had been crucified. From the texts there is evidence that the early christians believed the end of times would occur during their lifetimes, if that is the case, why invent a messiah that came and was crucified just to come back a few years later? Why not just proclaim that the end times were near and that people should repent (basically what John the baptist and his followers were proclaiming)? The baptism is a problem for early christians that wanted to proclaim Jesus as the Messiah because there is evidence that baptism was an act perform by a teacher who was seen as superior to a student that was seen as subordinate. Why would the early christians added to the texts when it showed Jesus in a position of subordination to a teacher? If I am not mistaken, john the baptist is mentioned by historical records outside the biblical texts, showing that he was a well known teacher of the area at the time (in Josephus i think). Historians postulate that the reason the baptism is recorded in the texts is similar to the crucifixion, because it was a well known fact at the time. One can imagined the early christians communities that proclaimed Jesus as the messiah having to answer how could he be sent by god himself, when it was known that during his life he went to John for teachings and submitted himself to be baptized by him? A curious detail is that the baptism is recorded in multiple early texts but there is variations in the account, the evidence points to a marked direction of less and less importance given to John's act, the newer the version of the telling. Showing a tendency to downplay John's role in the later retellings. I ended up writing more than anticipated, in the end, historians have taken into consideration your points and deal with a lot more complexity in sources than your analogy implies. But ultimately there is an element of guess work that is just a reality of the discipline of history, to which your points allude. Cheers.

@joeypeterson9198

3 жыл бұрын

unnilnonium not a good comparison as using the Eagles was specifically discussed and dismissed at the Council of Elrond as they would have drawn Saurons attention.

(83)For-Truth

I like it that Bart Ehrman doesn't use 'woo-woo' language like Deepak Chopra, not does he go off-the-chart philosophical like William Lane Craig or Muhammad Hijab.

@johnnastrom9400

2 ай бұрын

Chopra is not a Biblical creationist. Please do a little research.

@wRAAh

2 ай бұрын

@@johnnastrom9400 Muhammad Hijab isn't a biblical (whence the capital letter?!) creationist either. What's your point? Anyone ever told you you're a condescending, non-contributing burden?

Great stuff. Christianity equates to elaborate fiction, even though many persist to embrace this utter nonsense as factual. Scary.

@billscannell93

Жыл бұрын

I'm glad someone else in the comment section thinks so. I enjoyed the talk and like Ehrman, but when they started talking about the rapture and how Christians imagine the nature of the soul, my brain just kept saying, "What an unbelievable load of bologna."

Interesting conversation but I’m still puzzled as to how you date the writing of the gospels to be after 70 AD. Most scholars will say it’s because Jesus speaks of the fall of the second temple which occurred around 70 AD. Are you insisting that the son of god couldn’t predict the future?

@SKILLIUSCAESAR

Жыл бұрын

Yes, that’s exactly what they said

@danieldbdb

Жыл бұрын

As a historian I say also yes. They put their personal beliefs before the matters. So if they don't believe in prophecies, or ressurrection, they automatically will try to date the texts after that time. Also the skeptics, in search for explanations for the hundreds of prophecies of the Old Testament Jesus fulfilled (which are proved to be written before his birth), will try to say it was made up by people or himself to self-fullfill it, which is grossly historically inconsistent due to the lack of controversy between all sides involved. This defense mechanism the skeptics use to protect their beliefs in jeopardy is called rationalization.

@schmetterling4477

8 ай бұрын

@@danieldbdb Just because somebody believes something doesn't make it true. Historians are not interested in beliefs. They only care about facts. It is a fact that the bible writes about resurrection. That does not make it a fact that resurrections happened. Would you like some Harry Potter magic with that? Same thing. ;-)

@johnnastrom9400

2 ай бұрын

@@danieldbdb -- NO response from you.

@danieldbdb

2 ай бұрын

@@johnnastrom9400 what response? The bible is a book about history and theology, extremely accurate. From the historical method everything matches: the narratives, the places, the writers, the lack of dissent. And even Jesus' enemies or those who didn't like christians wrote that he made signs and miracles, considered him a sorcerer, a prophet, or the Christ.

You need to have Richard Carrier on to deal with Bart's historicism.

Can bart explain why there is no archaeological evidence ever discovered that the egyptians kept slaves, there was no exodus, and thr story of moses mirrors the epics of gilgamesh, written 1000s of years before.

As much as I enjoy Sam’s interviews- I am a bit skeptic here for not considering the Martyrdom of St.Stephen in these discussions. It is being widely accepted by scholars that, in the year 36 CE (36 AD), Stephen the Martyr was stoned to death by non believing Jews in Jerusalem for defending his faith in Jesus - and Saul (who later became known as Paul) was the Roman officer who was in charge of recording his death. This is assumed to be just 3 years away from the believed death and resurrection of Jesus. In a historical sense, 3 years is like real-time. Historically, no other movement has closer than this record- I agree, the Acts of apostles was written not in real time- But, that is the case with most historical writings- As long as the writings were available during the time when contemporaries have got a chance to hear about and refute those claims- then we have to atleast give this writing some credible ratings. Whether to believe in Jesus or not is each person’s choice- However, people of high stature like Sam cannot ignore such known details to paint suspicion on the belief of a group of people is the height of intellectual dishonesty. Peace to all who are reading this- (Not an expert of anything)

I feel like Jesus had to have to psychedelics

Incredibly frustrating to listen to as nearly every syllable of the first word spoken after a pause is chopped off

@vercingetorix3414

3 жыл бұрын

Not on my version. It must be your system.

@jacksonreeves27

3 жыл бұрын

This often happens with certain bluetooth devices

Was Paul a descendent of Cleopatra? Paul was the wicked priest in the dead Sea scrolls. He persecuted the Essenes not the Christians. Paul was the first Christian.

@matthewkopp2391

Жыл бұрын

I think it is a very wild hypothesis to think he was a descendant of Cleopatra being that the Ptolemy were notoriously inbred and Paul was Jewish. But it is very possible that Paul’s forebears could have worked for the Ptolemy, because Paul was a Roman citizen and the aristocratic class transferred citizenship under Roman rule. It is also possible that Paul’s form of Judaism was favored by the Greeks and Romans a type of Henotheism vs strict monotheism. Similar to Philo. So there may be a Ptolemaic connection but not a relative.

Preterism believe that his coming happend on Jesus generation

Why is the Bible written in Greek originally if Jesus lived in the Middle East?

@cononiconium5059

3 жыл бұрын

Because they used to speak Greek there, as it was the lingua franca of the Roman Empire.

@kellycushing2904

3 жыл бұрын

@@cononiconium5059 Thank you

@shankz8854

3 жыл бұрын

@@kellycushing2904 we’ve got Alexander to thank for that.

@TheMrpalid

3 жыл бұрын

Because authorship was not from Jesus followers rather unknown authors from a ruling, elite class who distorted and corrupted Jesus’ message

@rashidaquil5284

3 жыл бұрын

@@cononiconium5059 Jesus spoke Aramaic and some Hebrew

If you don’t believe in something like the possibility that God can create things whole then you’re not going to believe anything

@bubbafowpend9943

Жыл бұрын

How does that make sense? I don't believe in a god yet I believe in everything that can be verified. Very strange statement.

@schmetterling4477

8 ай бұрын

That is correct. I do not believe anything that isn't backed by facts. God is a lot of things, but it is certainly not backed by any facts. ;-)

Jesus is God

I believe in God (intelligent life) but man-made religion is very limited.

It has always been about control and cultism !

There's plenty of well-known ancient historians who wrote about Jesus, one of which being Luke who also wrote a gospel. There are about 42 documents saying something about Jesus, a lot of which are not positive of Christianity. Some historians also account for Jesus' miracles recorded in the gospels or just that Jesus was famous for miracles that they claim are illusionist tricks or sorcery. An example is a record from Thallus in the 50's A.D. mentioning the darkness that occurred during Jesus' crucifixion and attempting to explain it as a solar eclipse. Africanus, who quoted this record about 2 centuries later, mentioned that an eclipse wouldn't be possible because it happened during the Jewish Passover when the moon is full and diametrically opposite from the sun. Both of these historians' records only survive as quotes in other records, like one by Eusebius, from what was still left of their work during the time. Tacitus, born 56 A.D., wrote in his Annals in 116 A.D. that Christians were killed for saying Jesus was resurrected. He wrote, "Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular". Suetonius, born 69 A.D., wrote in 122 A.D., "After the great fire at Rome . . . . Punishments were also inflicted on the Christians, a sect professing a new and mischievous religious belief". The only way that many people would believe that Jesus was resurrected was if they actually saw him. Even his most devoted listeners doubted his resurrection until they saw him and some even after, or didn't immediately recognize him. The same culture that wanted Jesus to be executed, with the accusation of apostasy and sorcery is not going to suddenly change their minds about him and invent stories in agreement with his claims that they had hated him for. None of them could have hallucinated him either, because neurological research has shown that shared hallucinations don’t happen because people’s thoughts are too varied. Hallucinations also can't happen when you aren’t expecting to see the image or have no care to. Paul on his way to Damascus saw and heard Jesus, and Paul was with other people who too heard Jesus but didn’t see him because they turned away, because the light of Jesus was so bright that it blinded Paul. Again multiple people seeing the same thing that they didn't expect. The Talmud records that Jesus was arrested for accusation of apostasy and sorcery and that no one defended him in his trials. Simply knowing the culture of his time is enough to deduce that the converts were reporting a real encounter. It's recorded that one of the disciples touched Jesus after he appeared to them and that he ate. Paul records having met about 500 witnesses. These new testament accounts are consistent with Josephus and the Roman historical records about Jesus and the teaching of his resurrection. The only known forgery recording Jesus is of an account by Josephus, born 37 A.D., but historians know that Josephus wrote an original that Christians later altered. There is a copy of it in another language, older than most other copies, that has none of the Christian praise in the interpolation. He wrote, "At this time there was a wise man called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. Many people among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive. Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have reported wonders. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day". www.namb.net/apologetics/resource/josephus-and-jesus/ Josephus also recorded Jesus, in his book, Antiquities in 95 A.D.,"...and brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James". There is no alteration of that account. We have earlier evidence for Jesus than most other ancient people, recorded by historians who were alive when most of the witnesses of the events still were. Records of Augustus, Tiberius, Hannibal and Nero weren't made until much later after their lives. A few other such historians were Emperor Trajan, born 53 A.D.; Pliny the Younger, born 61 A.D.; and Phlegon, born 80 A.D.. Most other ancient people weren't recorded until a century or more after the events, including kings and emperors, and they aren't disputed either. Most non-Christian historians don't deny Jesus was real. it's mostly the miracles that are controversial, but with no evidence inconsistent with them, just skepticism that miracles can even happen. The reason Roman emperors had miracles attributed to them was because of threats to anyone who did not record those stories, like with Alexander, because they wanted a more glorified reputation. Most of those records of the Emperors weren’t written until centuries later anyway. reasonsforjesus.com/26-powerful-reasons-why.../ No one who ever wrote about Jesus was ever questioned by anyone about if he actually existed. People who knew anything about Jesus would be around to say how accurate these claims were that were being recorded. There were plenty of people who hated his teachings who would have loved to refute that he was real, but he was seen by too many people. There are over 5000 copies of the new testament in its original language and over 24,000 total, all of which are mostly consistent with each other and modern translations. The earliest copy still around is dated to before the third century. The only differences are the story of Jesus and the prostitute not being in the oldest copies and textual variants. The second best-preserved document is Homers Iliad, with only over 600 total copies, and the earliest being 300 years after the original. We know the New Testament was completed before the second century because Clement of Rome and Ignatius of Antioch quote it in the late first century. The gospels are the earliest of the New Testament. www.str.org/w/-misquoting-jesus-answering-bart-ehrman tccsa.tc/articles/ica_stones.pdf

@nextworld9176

3 жыл бұрын

Thanks for those details. I'll look for them. You say there is no evidence against miracles. But the very name "miracle" means it can't happen in the physical natural world. PHYSICS is pretty strong evidence. I note that not a single soul, no one, ever says "I met Jesus." No one ever said, "So, Jesus and I were walking and talking the other day..." All references to Jesus are either 2dnd or 3rd hand, or contained in a miraculous vision.

@ericbreaux6124

3 жыл бұрын

@@nextworld9176 Physics can’t test for any otherworldly powers, so it can’t be evidence against miracles. Many Bible believers expected physics to be consistent and able to be rationalized because it was made by an intelligent creator. Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, Louis Pasteur, Galileo Galilei, as well as many priests in medieval times discovered many physics and revolutionized the development of science from biblical teaching. Uniform experience is how anyone can know if something happens that physics has no influence over.

@nextworld9176

3 жыл бұрын

@@ericbreaux6124 It is the Christians who make an extremely incredible claim without any evidence whatsoever. They say, first, that a 3000 year old book written by a Canaanite scribe contains the secret to the universe's creation. (The Buddhists must be impressed!) An invisible sky god who existed before time began and who is everywhere at all times, knows everything and controls everything, suddenly made a bazillion tons of matter and energy come into existence by breathing The Word. Then God said "Let us make man in our image." which makes me wonder: who was He talking to? Then he impregnates a poor Jewish virgin teenager without her permission and tells her the boy will be named Jesus or Elijah and be from Bethlehem or Nazareth. Then this boy grows up to perform miracles and gets executed. On the cross, Jesus either is totally in control of things and not only happily dies "i commend my soul" or he is absolutely dumbstruck and disappointed "Why have you forsaken me?" Then, poof, we are told (there being absolutely no witnesses) that he beamed up into Heaven. To which science responds: You know, we USED TO KNOW nearly nothing about the universe, and so "god" was the answer to all our gaps in knowledge. Now, we are learning more and more about the universe, and "god" seems to be used as the answer to a few things left over. I see a trend here. Don't you?

@ericbreaux6124

3 жыл бұрын

@@nextworld9176 The trend I see is atheists using selective information from lazy research that they try to compensate for with slander. Cananites are not the ones who wrote the Bible, it was Israelites. You’re at a bad start if you couldn’t even get that commonly known detail correct. Canan was ordered to be executed for refusing to cease their pagan worship and child sacrifices, after being given 400 years to do so. Every religious tradition had multiple gods with limited power subject to nature like everything else. They were taught to have brought order from chaos in primordial conflicts. God is the only creator taught to be transcendent and in complete control of how the universe works. That’s not an idea someone could have learned from other religions. The “us” in Genesis refers to the trinity of God. You act like you got the Bible all figured out and don’t even know one of the most basic teachings of Christianity. A creator is consistent with a consistently functioning universe that can be predicted. This is why most people who revolutionized scientific discovery were believers of the Bible. Science shows that effects need causes, or science wouldn’t be possible. That’s the opposite of there being no evidence for God. He explains everything, not a little. Science was expected by a belief in God. Anyone can say there’s no evidence for God using selective information. Mary had no problem being pregnant with Jesus. She wasn’t in a poor condition for that, drama king. She was quite happy to be the mother of our savior. God doesn’t need permission for anything. Jesus’ statement “Why have you forsaken me” was a reference to a prophecy in Psalm. He was giving context for the situation. There were over 500 witnesses, which is consistent with the records of Tacitus, Josephus and Suetonius, who all recorded that soon after Jesus’ crucifixion many people claimed he was the messiah. Christianity spread faster than how fast the Romans and Jewish priests could hunt and kill Christians. Care to waste my time trying to school me with more cliched rants I don’t care about?

@nextworld9176

3 жыл бұрын

@@ericbreaux6124 My humble attempt at regurgitating scholarly knowledge tells me that the peoples who came to be known as the Israelites and Judeans shared heritage with the Canaanites who preceded them in the lands we call Palestine and Phoenicia and Syria. The Canaanites highest god El gave his name to Israel. As cities and kingdoms merged cultures through a thousand years, one of the second-tier gods, Yahweh, originally a “storm” god, was credited for battle victories and came to be worshipped by the metalsmiths-the makers of weapons. Later, Yahweh inherited El’s wife and some other females, then, when the Jews became fully monotheistic, he became the only god, the creator of the world and the national protector of Israel, the destroyer of entire cities and armies, the one who destroyed all mankind with a flood, and the god who ordered Saul’s army to complete the victory over the Amalekites by killing off all the women and children to complete a genocide. Probably you will stipulate all that, as it is just basic Jewish history. But you go too far when you introduce the Trinity a few thousand years too early. You also make an assumption about science, that the universe has an intelligent yet uncreated creator. That’s a shitload of an assumption. I say only that we don’t know what happened at the moment of the Big Bang. You say “my own sense of logic requires a creator-god, therefore, a creator god is proven! No. If you insist on the old Canaanite/Israelite/Christian mythology, then fine, you can worship anything you like. But don’t pretend there is anything logical or scientific or even historic in your assumptions. Saying there were witnesses to his death and then saying many people believed is not the same as saying he rose up. See how quickly you jump to a completely unsupported conclusion? You said, “God explains everything.” OK, again, you have a lot of common with the ancients, the Flat Earthers, and Heaven’s Gate.

In regards to minute 45ish discussion on an appartment contradiction as to the day of christs death. The gospels as you say, were written some 40-60 years after jesus actual death. The fact that the dates are wrong legitimises the story even more. And also indicates the books were real human recounts, how many times have you missed your wifes marriage anniversary? Or birthday?

@masterchief5195

3 жыл бұрын

"I agree with mainstream scholarship on the historical Jesus (e.g., E.P. Sanders, Geza Vermes, Bart Ehrman, Dale Allison, Paula Fredriksen, et al.) that Jesus was a FAILED apocalyptic prophet. Such a hypothesis, if true, would be a simple one that would make sense of a wide range of data, including the following twenty-one (or so):" ex-apologist: On One of the Main Reasons Why I Think Christianity is False (Reposted) exapologist.blogspot.com/2007/10/one-of-main-reasons-why-i-think.html?m=1 historyforatheists.com/2018/12/jesus-apocalyptic-prophet/ Majority of Scholars agree: The Gospels were not written by Eyewitnesses - Escaping Christian Fundamentalism www.google.com/amp/s/lutherwasnotbornagaincom.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/majority-of-scholars-agree-the-gospels-were-not-written-by-eyewitnesses/amp/

@masterchief5195

3 жыл бұрын

@UCoXdxr7F4I20jWvC_AlKGUg What about it? Jesus was a failed end times preacher that had stories made up about him after he died by gospel writers who never met him and tried to shoehorn him into the role of the Jewish messiah when he wasn't. It's Jewish mythology.

@george1521

3 жыл бұрын

You seem certain, without real proof.

@ryanfinnerty6239

3 жыл бұрын

@@masterchief5195 no more valuable or close to a “god” than madmen like rasputin and Zoroaster

“Yeah that’s right”

If there is no Hell, then there is no justice. It means that the wicked can choose to do evil without consequences if all that happens to them is annihilation. What is the point of making sacrifices and standing up against evil if those who do wicked and persecute you are not punished ?

@aheroictaxidriver3180

3 жыл бұрын

Good and evil are just labels. Like the picture on a can of beans.

@kartikmann_

3 жыл бұрын

There's still the theory of Karma and Reincarnation.

There is no evidence for 99.9% of the Roman Empire - LOL 😂

Saying I’m “transphobic” because I wouldn’t date a trans-person, I’d like saying I’m homophobic because I wouldn’t date a man.

Bart is confused. The problem with belief is that it is tenuous. Why it is tenuous is because it is not knowing. Only knowing is valid, and comes from a personal experience of reality. So Bart believed, he did not have a personal authentic experience of reality, he only had a belief in reality, which has now changed to its opposite. Being knowledgeable is not knowing; being knowledgeable is having mental or psychic information about something. Knowing is being one with something, Bart was not one with Christianity, he was a believer in Christianity. He was never a Christian in the authentic sense of knowing, so that he is not one now is no more than a change of belief, which as stated above is tenuous. Only knowing from personal experience is authentic and Bart, operating from belief, not deep personal experience, changed his belief. Nothing new here.

At first glance, the examples Bart shared are challenging, and I'm very grateful he brought them to my attention. I'll definitely research these more thoroughly. However, Sam did let his disposition towards the materialistic paradigm cloud his reasoning. Let me illustrate:- Sam contends that the gospel writers only had word of mouth testimony from a generation and a half after Jesus' death, then labels the biblical account 'rumours of rumours' See @46:40. But that is a presumption that is not reasonable at all. Yes, most scholars can agree that the current archaeological record contains biblical parchment that can be safely -and conservatively- dated to around 40+ years. But Remember, Bart and like-minded scholars do not have a monopoly on objectivity. There are many other learned scholars that are also rational and objective -and based on facts- contend an earlier dating of the writings. Contrary to Sam's 'rumours of rumours' contention, it is far more likely that there were more writings available in the first century than the writings that have survived 2000+ years. In fact it is inconceivable that we have all the records that were ever written at the time. That's just common sense, isn't it? He commits the 'argument from Ignorance' fallacy by presupposing a vacuum of 40+ years of silence. This is at the very least unreasonable. Sam uses his JFK example to imply that during the initial 40+ years after Jesus' death, that no one personally knew any witnesses, nor acquaintances of witnesses. But how probable is this in reality? To quote, (paraphrase) Hume, "It would be absolutely miraculous" if no one knew anyone who was a witness, or -at the very least- an acquaintance of a witness. What Jesus said and did were not hidden in a corner! He changed the then world; the Greek, Roman and Arabian cultures, and millions contend he still does today by personal encounters. Remember N≠1. Should we ignore this overwhelming dataset because we personally have no empirical experience? No, It is also far more likely, (reasonable, logical and less miraculous), that people knew witnesses or at the very least friends and acquaintances of witnesses. How could such a clever man miss these obvious points? Could it possibly be that one of modern time's greatest proponents of rationality is allowing his personal world view bias to muddy his rationale and polemicize his discourse? That would be logical, after all, Sam is only human. All the best.

@tmjewel

2 жыл бұрын

What Jesus allegedly said and did were hidden in a corner. Have you read Mark? Jesus changed the world only as a religious figure. The world of 1st century Judea was entirely unimpacted by his ministry. He is not mentioned in any independent account or letter whatsoever. The Christian writings from that time that didn't survive were lost probably because they depicted a view of Jesus that ran counter to orthodoxy...

@DavidKnowles

2 жыл бұрын

​@@tmjewel In a KZread comment is almost impossible to have a fair and balanced conversation on this complex and potentially emotionally loaded topic because the consequences affect the foundation of our world view and behaviour. Most of us are susceptible to the bias of an ideological agenda, but I'll try to be even-handed. Bart is a biblical expert and historical scholar. Bart, as well as most scholars, are in no doubt as to the existence of a historical Jesus. In Bart's book "Did Jesus Exist?" Bart soundly refutes the arguments that early storytellers invented Jesus. Bart's doubts lie elsewhere. As to your point, Jesus is "not mentioned in any independent account". Perhaps you are not aware of the writings of Romano-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus? What about Tacitus, Suetonius or Pliny? However, your actual presumption is that the documents compiled into the New Testament are not independent and therefore to be rejected. What you are actually doing is committing the fallacy of 'special pleading' because every one of Julius Caesar’s biographies was written by Roman admirers, every significant source on the life of Socrates was written by his own students (or his students’ students), etc. That is the most common pattern in ancient works. It's our duty to strive to remain objective and apply the same standards to the bible we apply to all other historical documents. I believe Bart does this. In the New Testament, we have a compilation of six independent primary sources. Just because they happened to be gathered into a single volume 200 years later doesn’t mean that they are not independent sources. As you read through the four gospels, the book of Acts, and the letters of Paul, it is immediately clear that few, if any, of these authors were familiar with each other's work. Most of the authors wrote in different decades, from different communities, with different theological presuppositions, and drawing on (at least some) sources that the other authors did not have. Being fair and objective is incredibly difficult. I wish every success in your personal search for truth.

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it"

@neilzientek

3 жыл бұрын

K

@ManosNat1

3 жыл бұрын

How do you know all these things?

@JC_inc

3 жыл бұрын

Saying simple sh!t with a lot of mixed words.

@ashleysalinas9489

3 жыл бұрын

Quoting the Bible to a scholar of the Bible? Lol

Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.

@shanejohns7901

3 жыл бұрын

Enoch knew Jesus?

@vercingetorix3414

3 жыл бұрын

Jw. That us from the gospel of John, written some 65 years after Jesus died. None of the 3 earlier gospels report him as saying that. They all forgot to include his most important teaching? And if he actually said that, that makes it true? If I said that about myself, would you believe it?

Marshall Applewhites religion is more real than christianity...n Christians missed the spaceship to heaven in 1997...Marshall Applewhite is the son of god

Sam should interview someone respectable from the Christ Mythicist camp, like Richard Carrier or Robert M Price. They don't claim to know that Jesus never existed, only that we have some reasons and evidence to doubt.

@vercingetorix3414

3 жыл бұрын

Matt, they are the ONLY "respectable" (to use your word) mythicists. Neither has the erudition or depth of knowledge as Dr. Ehrman. (Do you notice that Bart Ehrman never writes as "Dr. Ehrman", while Carrier insists on "Dr. Carrier" in ALL of his works?)

@drawn2myattention641

3 жыл бұрын

@@vercingetorix3414 Wikipedia gives a large list of Mythicists, past and present, some no doubt "respectable". The vast majority of Phd. Bible scholars work at Christian colleges or seminaries that require implicit or explicit (written) creedal commitments as a condition of employment. This must have some chilling effect on those who might otherwise identify as Mythicists. And if you're claiming that Carrier is arrogant, I agree. But how does this affect the soundness of his arguments?

@vercingetorix3414

3 жыл бұрын

@@drawn2myattention641 You are wrong that the "vast majority" of PhD biblical scholars work at facilities which require a credal pledge. That is simply not true. What is true is that the vast majority, indeed virtually all, of those scholars who work at the institutions which do not require .conformity, agree that JC probably existed. That does not make it true, of course. Carrier and Price are the only living scholar mythicists I could find on Wikipedia and Carrier is not a biblical scholar, Price is.

@vercingetorix3414

3 жыл бұрын

@@drawn2myattention641 Also I agree that Carrier is incredibly arrogant and annoyingly so, but that in no way diminishes or refutes his very cogent arguments.

@drawn2myattention641

3 жыл бұрын

@@vercingetorix3414 My point is that the vast majority of such scholars work at places that explicitly or "implicitly" require a creedal commitment. I refer you to the informal, but suggestive survey by David Fitzgerald. On the other hand, state and secular colleges have largely closed their Bible studies departments. That just leaves the few remaining state/secular institutions that still teach Bible studies, and any impossibly(!) liberal Christian facilities elastic enough to countenance Mythicism. Of course, it's true that most of the few secular Bible scholars (like Bart) accept the historical Jesus, but that was not my point.

Hey Sam you say ask me anything but you are sealed in a bubble like the cone of silence...

One core irony in this talk being that Mark wasn’t even original. Luke being the original from which all others were spun. But what a fantastic tissue of lies arises out out theism :-)

It's so sad to see such a prominent scholar such as Ehrman slipping a naive fellow like Harris the occasion disastrous take on the historical Jesus. That's because Ehrman himself is letting his fundamentalist background still haunt his views. Jesus wasn't waiting around for the violent Final Judgment to come before his group of followers would inherit the Kingdom of God. The whole reason Jesus left John the Baptizer's movement was because he became convinced the god of Israel was not violent and subjugating the way John still believed. Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God was pretty much to be implemented right now on earth, in a a counter-cultural community based on radical inclusivity, equality, and compassion, challenging the dominant social values that taught exactly the opposite. The power of that community is ultimately what drew people into the fold in the early centuries, what made it different from all the other competitors for one's worship in the ancient Roman empire (including Judaism). This is something Ehrman himself has still not realized. His God is the God of the fundamentalists. His Jesus is theirs, just as is the Kingdom, and it leads him to make may bad calls in his scholarship that are reflected even in his personal philosophical reflections on Christianity. Many atheists like Zizek and Chomsky adopted the right take on the Christian tradition long ago. It's too bad Ehrman will now just confirm Harris in his own sorry attitudes to the Abrahamic traditions beyond their already insipid narrowness.

@shankz8854

3 жыл бұрын

You seem awfully sure of a man and his ministry that we have pretty poor records of. You’ll notice Harris and Ehrman don’t say much definitively. That is, they sound a lot more careful about conveying the lack of absolute confidence in what they’re saying than you.

@amadeoquiroz6751

3 жыл бұрын

Ass hole!

@thekatocat

3 жыл бұрын

Totally agree w shankz. I got no skin in the game . Never heard of erhman prior to this. Attacking the the man by saying he is biased is not recognizing the potential for your own biases

@shankz8854

3 жыл бұрын

@John Texas Ehrman never says anything 100%. He always says “history isn’t about what definitely happened in the past, it’s about what *most probably* happened.”

@shankz8854

3 жыл бұрын

@John Texas The existence of the historical Jesus Christ is the mainstream view amongst NT scholars - Ehrman is in the majority here. I agree that the evidence is poor, but I still think there probably was a historical Jesus and I’ve been an atheist my entire life.

Incredible! One can get a Phd in nonsense!

@patrickwalsh8913

3 жыл бұрын

Theology is nonsense. What Bart Ehrman got a P.hD. in is not nonsense, it's history and the study of ancient manuscripts. It's actually a very useful and very fascinating field.

The evidence for Jesus' existence is in Flavius Josephus' writings

@erimgard3128

3 жыл бұрын

Well...that's a start, but it's not very strong evidence. He has one lengthy passage about Jesus which is almost universally agreed to be a fraudulent insertion by a later scribe. Then he has a passage where he talks in length about the execution of James by Ananus ben Anunas. That passage has one sentence that briefly mentions James was the brother of Jesus, and Jesus had people who called him the Christ. Unfortunately, this was all written down about 60 years after Jesus allegedly died, and Josephus wasn't even alive at all during Jesus' life. This is all second or third or fourth-hand information. And it doesn't really tell us much about who Jesus was in history. If you believe in mythicism as the sole origin of the Jesus narrative (I tend not to), 60+ years is frankly plenty of time for a story to gain followers, regardless of whether or not it's main character is real.

@erimgard3128

3 жыл бұрын

I'm well aware and clearly already stated that in the exact post you're replying to? I'm just saying Josephus alone is not the standard by which people measure the historical Jesus. Because he's not.

@yaelfeldhendler6280

3 жыл бұрын

@Patrick Skywalker YHW is a verb in Hebrew it means I was, I am, I will be the God of existence.Josephus is a good historian of the period, some excerpts were faked by Christian scribes

@yaelfeldhendler6280

3 жыл бұрын

@Patrick Skywalker It's not true, a false traduction by Christians, no evidence of child sacrifice by Hebrews and later Jews.The historical Jesus is not in the Gospels.He didn't found Christianity