Thursday, March 27, 2008

thought of the day.90

C.S. Lewis said Jesus must either be Lord, Liar, or Lunatic,
dishonestly leaving out the most probable option—Legend.
Posted by at

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

What of the over 500 witnesses who saw Jesus after he resurrected? What of John, Mark, Luke, Matthew and their gospels which are historical records of what happened? What of non-Christian historians such as Josephus who wrote about Jesus? Are all of their accounts fiction, or what? How do you dismiss those?

April 14, 2009 at 2:58 PM
john evans said...

First you have to understand that not a single historian living at the time that Jesus is said to have lived records a single thing about a Jesus. Not one.

Doesn’t the fact it is such a nice round number give you pause? This was simply a story. No one knows who wrote the gospels. We do know they were written many decades after Jesus supposedly lived. Mark being written first, followed by Matthew Luke and then John wrote last. Paul wrote before the gospels were written. The names Matthew, Mark Luke and John were simply given to these works to give them authority. This was a common practice. Josephus’ small mention has been proved to be a forgery.

April 14, 2009 at 3:06 PM
Anonymous said...

But of course no one living AT THE SAME TIME as Jesus would have recorded him. After all, no major historian is going to record you or me in his history book unless we die having made a huge impact on the world, right? No one writes about George Washington, Thomas Edison, while they're still in their childhood. They start writing about them either after they die or after they do something major.

So if Jesus' "something major" was accomplished when he died and came back to life, I think that maybe the major accounts of him might come a few years later? Like a couple decades?

April 15, 2009 at 8:09 AM
john evans said...

You don’t think all of Jesus’ miracles mentioned a note by contemporary historians? The dead rising from the graves and descending on the town sure seems like newsworthy stuff to me. But nothing is said by anyone outside the bible...hmmmm.

April 15, 2009 at 8:15 AM
john evans said...

sorry that should have merited not mentioned.

April 15, 2009 at 8:30 AM
Anonymous said...

I don't even know what you mean, "The dead rising from graves and descending upon the town." I don't recall any mention of that in the Bible. Sounds more like your version of a zombie movie.

April 17, 2009 at 5:46 PM
john evans said...

It does sound like a zombie movie, huh? Crazy stuff. Wonder if they went back to their old houses and asked if they could sleep there. Did they die again at some point? How did they eat if they were just bones? Did they scare the hell out of everyone? Did war break out between the zombies and the living? Surely such an event would make big, big news. But not a word of it outside the bible. Suggests it is just an imaginative story, huh?

Matthew 27:51-53

April 17, 2009 at 5:59 PM
Anonymous said...

Wow! I never caught that part of the Resurrection! That's really cool!

I don't know why or even IF it isn't in other documents. I haven't read many if any of the historical documents from that time period.

I do know that that's really cool. Could you imagine if, say, the 16 year old you mentioned came back to his parents? That would be so awesome. :D

April 18, 2009 at 1:41 PM
john evans said...

It isn’t in other historical accounts because it didn’t happen. I certainly wouldn’t want to see a horribly decomposed love one, would you really want to? They probably couldn’t talk since they would have had their tongues eaten by worms and such. Not a pretty picture. Interesting that not only does this remarkable story not appear in non-biblical accounts of that time but it doesn’t even appear in the other gospels. The writer of Matthew must have been smoking something when he wrote that.

April 18, 2009 at 2:39 PM

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