Giant Islam Discussion>.>

[mortify]

[quote name='Hassan' post='1604843' date='Jul 21 2008, 08:10 PM']I really have no problem with miracles in the Bible. I have never understood secularists acted like the idea an omnipotent God could cause a virgin birth was absurd.[/quote]

If there is no God, as they believe, a virgin birth would be impossible and therefore must be invented legend.

[quote]However the discrepancies are not simply different perspectives. Some are I suppose. Mark portraying a somewhat angry Jesus who's last words were "My God my God why hast thou forsaken me" while Luke depicts Him as a figure of almost unwavering calm who comforts the women on the way to crucifixion and who's last words are "Into your hands I command my spirit" is a different perspective. However I don't believe Mark reports the women going to the men and them seeing Christ risen. It's a somewhat dark Gospel. His last words are either a cry of desperation at being abandoned by God or quoting a Psalm describing a righteous man crying out to God in persecution and the women seeing an empty tomb and running away. That is a somewhat different picture.[/quote]

All "views" are inspired. One written gospel is not sufficient to do Christ justice.

[quote]But other things are outright contradictions. I admit that the smaller things are not to important to Christian theology. However the different perspectives seem to me to be more damaging. The seem, to me, to show a Christian community that is still, decades after Jesus’ death, trying to come to terms with who or what Jesus was. I don't think that is too much of a problem for Christians, I just find it odd.[/quote]

I think your over emphasizing their differences.
[quote]The only Jewish commentators I know of is Josapheus. I really don’t know any sources of Roman or Jewish authorship that really testify to the Christians claims in any major way. I would say that if you would use the standard that as we don't have any contradictory reports they must not have denied it then you must accepts the trouble with the argument. The Gospels report numerous extraordinary phenomena such as the dead rising, a man healing dozens of people, including a Roman official’s daughter, and the Resurrection of a crucified blasphemer. I do not know of any Jewish or Roman reports of these events.
This is the only quote I can find on Christ:[/quote]

Josephus and Tacitus confirm aspects of Christianity, but there are others as well. Check out www.tektonics.org

[quote]I think that is interesting however it was written 80 years after the fact, is rather vague, and makes a mistake regarding the Title of Pontius which I think suggests he was not well studied in the area. I don't mean to dismiss it, it is important. He also seems to confuse Jesus’ title as the Christ with his name. He doesn’t seem to put much credit in the Christians claims as he refers to them as "mischievous superstition"
I'm sorry I just don't see that claim as being firmly supported. There is some evidence. I'd be happy to look at whatever else you know of or see your response to what I wrote on Tacitus.[/quote]

Geez Hassan, here we have a Roman witness confirming the essence of the Christian message and you just sweep it aside?! You have a reference to the Crucifixion and possibly the Resurrection!

Tacitus was a renowned historian of his time and he did not make a mistake concerning Pontius Pilate's position, note the article: [b]http://www.tektonics.org/jesusexist/tacitus.html#tacproc[/b]

[quote]That is a very interesting question. I haven't any idea.[/quote]

The gospels record Jesus' disciples were at the Crucifixion, but I imagine the Muslims will say our texts are corrupt! It's an invincible argument because evidence is disregarded!

[quote]It seems a bit schizophrenic to claim he is both a coward and a warrior "prophet" considering the battles he fought I'd say calling him a coward is a bit much.[/quote]

Ultimately his self preservation prevailed. I'm not sure but I think for the most part he had his followers fight his wars, maybe I'm wrong.

[quote]As I understand it Ali was never to be in any danger. He was simply to lie there so the Quarish wouldn’t know Muhammad had fled until he was out of town.[/quote]

Of course he was in danger, the Quraysh were planning on spearing Muhammad as he slept in bed!

[quote]He was strangled until his eyes bulged Abu Bakr chastised the attacker and shamed him to letting Muhammad go. Also a man attempted to smash his head with a rock while Muhammad was praying when (from what I gather) a vision of a stallion camel frightened him away. I know of a few assassination attempts (assuming the reports are accurate) and his people were sometimes beaten and forced to flee.[/quote]

I remember the story about the stone, I'm not sure when it occurred. As for the chocking, there are reports that Muhammad was squeezed, mocked, and ridiculed while in prayer, but I don't imagine this was anything too serious.
[quote]I'd certainly say it is the same story. I thought you were claiming it was a quotation or near quotation.[/quote]

I'm amazed Hassan, you don't think that qualifies as plagiarism? It certainly does!

[Hassan]

I'll get to the posts here soon.

sorry for the delay

[mortify]

Take your time buddy, i'm enjoying the break

[Hassan]

[quote name='mortify' post='1607464' date='Jul 24 2008, 01:08 PM']Take your time buddy, i'm enjoying the break [/quote]


I'm sorry. This is just so large that it takes me a long time to respond once I get started. I'll see what I can do.

[Hassan]

[quote name='mortify' post='1605021' date='Jul 22 2008, 12:33 AM']God bless you Hassan, this is becoming a long discussion, which is fine but for the night Ill have to limit myself to this post!
I honestly don't know what the literacy rate was back then, it's clear however, that the early Christians weren't a bunch of mindless copying machines. They were competent enough to realize the importance of using a codex instead of a scroll, and although many probably weren't at the level of a Roman scriptorum it's not that difficult to copy text, though naturally some errors creep in. The important thing to remember is that Christianity is not a religion of the book, it's a religion of the Church, and the Bible is a tool the Church uses for various purposes.[/quote]


It is not "some" errors. As I said, there are numerous errors in all the texts.

It actually it quite difficult to copy text, particularly if you are barely, if at all, literate, the writing is continuous, and small differences in letter can make a huge difference in meaning. Current Gospels of Mark say Jesus took compassion on the leper who visited him, the earlier versions say Jesus was angry with the leper. Does Hebrews claim that "God became flesh" or "Who became flesh".

And you are correct, they were not mindless. They were not impassioned copying machines. The were believers who had passionate opinions of the subject and at times tried to alter the texts due to "inspiration" or a conviction that the text they are copying was transcribed incorrectly and they are simply correcting an error. We see this in the second century when tensions were beginning to mount between Christians and Jews and some scribes started to alter texts to make it appear Jesus was handed off not to Roman Soldiers but Jews.

[quote]It's important to understand this because it's important to understand the teaching has not changed. Our Faith in the Divinity, the Crucifixion, and Resurrection has not changed.[/quote]

Yes it has. Origen was later declared a heretic, however in his day he was a strong force in "Orthodox" Christianity (look at his understanding of Jesus’s relation to the Father). The numerous Christianities had vastly different ideas, yet there was disagreement even within the "orthodox" movement. Was it Christ's death that atoned for sins? Did one need to keep the Jewish laws to be saved? Was Jesus created by the Father? Were the “Prophecy” of individual members considered authorities? Was Christ more human that divine? Was Christ equal with the father? At the time of Origen there was no fixed understanding of the "trinity". Or the exact nature of Christ.


[quote]There's really only so far you can go. A scribe might be able to change the wording to emphasize a certain doctrine that the Church already believes, such as transcribing, "the Mother of Jesus and Joseph" instead of the "the parents of Jesus" but there's not way a whole section about Jesus being crucified and then resurrected can be added in without objection, unless this is what the early Church believed.[/quote]

And I am not aware of any Christians who denied these key events. However did Jesus really suffer? Was he really crucified? Or did he simply appear to suffer to satisfy wrathful Yahweh and bring humanity to the "true" God? Small changes make a huge difference.

[quote]This is one of the reasons the belief in the Virgin Birth of Christ must have stemmed from a Apostolic origin[/quote]

Yet apostolic origin was something itself that entered into the mind of the Church later.

,[quote]but it would have been very difficult to time to have elapsed and then people suddenly accepting such a difficult teaching.[/quote]

compared with being told a Jewish Palestinian carpenter needed you to eat his flesh and drink his blood to be saved, I don’t think a virgin birth is to much to accept.

What do you mean "people"? There was huge debate on almost everything in the early Christian community.

[quote]We don't just look at quotes but their source. Even Muslims have the concept of isnad, or a chain of narration. I mentioned St Polycarp in my original post. He was martyred around mid second century at the age of 80 or so, there was a lot of supernatural events surrounding his execution that were recorded by eyewitnesses but it's not important to get into, what is important is that St Polycarp personally new St John the APOSTLE.[/quote]

I have heard this before, in a book I read for my senior project in High School I looked at the chain. I never saw any actual historical evidence for this, or the extent to which Polycarp knew John.

Moreover weren’t the Gospel's authored anonymously?

[quote]St Ignatius of Antioch, another person I mentioned, wrote one of his letters to St Polycarp, so they new each other, and St Polycarp was also known by another great saint, St Ireneus, who defended the authority of John's Gospel. (He actually quoted Polycarp's saying that the same John that rested his head on the bosom of Christ is the same John that wrote the Gospel). The whole point of this is that it's not simply quotations, and YES St Polycarp and these other figures do quote from the NT books and they also paraphrase from them. These men were so family with them that at times they just went according to memory.[/quote]

Yet some of those very men seemed to take non-canonical books as inspired as well.

[quote][b]Are their any direct quotes from the Gospels in the earliest Christian writers? That would be very interesting.[/b]

YES!

Click here: [b]http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/0136.htm[/b]
It's St Polycarp's letter to the Phillipians. You'll notice some things he quotes, and other things he paraphrases. In both cases the Catholic Encyclopedia was convenient enough to cross reference them to the biblical books. Notice how the Saint quotes from the gospels, epistles, and even the books the protestants reject (i.e. Tobit)![/quote]

So Polycarp didn't actually make those citations?



[quote]I don't want to comment too much about the commentary because I'm not sure what the regulators will think. Sufficient to say I'm amazed it got an imprimatur!
It's recorded in Islamic tradition, unfortunately I have some of the story wrong. The woman who kept Abu Bakr's compilation was Hafsa, the daughter of Umar and wife of Muhammad, and she refused to have it destroyed when Uthman made his "official" text. It wasn't destroyed until she died, and it was done so out of fear it might cause future quarrels.

Here is part of the account here: [url="http://www.livingislam.org/fiqhi/fiqha_e27.html"]http://www.livingislam.org/fiqhi/fiqha_e27.html[/url]

I didn't get a chance to spell check so pardon all errors.
Glory be to Christ,
Mort[/quote]

That's fine. I find it strange that you got this from an Islamic source yet it is supposed to undermine the authenticity of the Qur'an?

I got a book recently, "In Search of the Original Koran" I will read that however I really don't want to go into Qur'an textual authenticity as I know very little on the subject. I'll look at whatever you have to say on it though.

[Hassan]

[quote name='mortify' post='1605028' date='Jul 22 2008, 12:47 AM']Yes, which means "fighting" is not metaphorical.[/quote]


I don’t understand why you stick with this. I reported three common responses. I said I did not put stock in the metaphorical interpretation both because that is not what the Arabic suggests and because that does not fit the context of the Surah.

[quote]Furthermore, it serves as precedent to attacking Christians and Jews until they are subjugated.[/quote]

Sure. But the Gospel of Mathew helped continue the rather savage anti-semitisim that rose with the early orthodox Christian community. And has long helped set a precedent for claiming the Jews had Jesus’ blood on them or they were God killers. As I recall it wasn’t until the 1960's that the Pope finally said were are all responsible for Christ’s death.

I don't think that this unfortunate interpretation should be used to define Christianity as an entire entity. Similar I think (in fact know) Surah 9:29 can be used to justify attacking People of the book. However that is not the necessary interpretation as I have reference before.

[mortify]

Salaam Hassan,

[quote name='Hassan' post='1608548' date='Jul 25 2008, 05:18 PM']It actually it quite difficult to copy text, particularly if you are barely, if at all, literate, the writing is continuous, and small differences in letter can make a huge difference in meaning. Current Gospels of Mark say Jesus took compassion on the leper who visited him, the earlier versions say Jesus was angry with the leper. Does Hebrews claim that "God became flesh" or "Who became flesh".[/quote]

I can't really comment on the difficulty of copying if one is illiterate, I would think it's a matter of thoroughness, however you do seem to be assuming the majority (all?) of copyists were illiterate.

With regards to your examples I'd look at them if you mention their location in the bible. I will say for now that even if such "alterations" can be reasonably shown to be real, they don't alter our understanding of Jesus. It's not like the Divinity of Jesus rests on a verse in Hebrews.

[quote]And you are correct, they were not mindless. They were not impassioned copying machines. The were believers who had passionate opinions of the subject and at times tried to alter the texts due to "inspiration" or a conviction that the text they are copying was transcribed incorrectly and they are simply correcting an error. We see this in the second century when tensions were beginning to mount between Christians and Jews and some scribes started to alter texts to make it appear Jesus was handed off not to Roman Soldiers but Jews.[/quote]

Well that's interesting Hassan but apparently this "corruption" was not wide enough to affect *all* copies of Scripture, not sure it can be documented that a majority of Christians ever believed that JEWISH soldiers crucified Christ. I think it's important to understand that these errors, if indeed true, affected not the Scripture itself, but *particular* copies.

Now I'm not really sure how we know that these copysists changed things because they fealt themselves inspired or because they believed the original was incorrect, this is simply speculation.

[quote]Yes it has. Origen was later declared a heretic, however in his day he was a strong force in "Orthodox" Christianity (look at his understanding of Jesus’s relation to the Father). The numerous Christianities had vastly different ideas, yet there was disagreement even within the "orthodox" movement. Was it Christ's death that atoned for sins? Did one need to keep the Jewish laws to be saved? Was Jesus created by the Father? Were the “Prophecy” of individual members considered authorities? Was Christ more human that divine? Was Christ equal with the father? At the time of Origen there was no fixed understanding of the "trinity". Or the exact nature of Christ.[/quote]

Have you been reading Bart Ehrman? Seems like a point he would make. The existence of other opinions, even false ones, does not mean the Faith has changed, at least not in the sense you are trying to suggest, or that the answers to these questions were unknown.

Going back to St Ignatius' letters, he *explicitly* calls Jesus *GOD* and this was back in 110 AD. But how can this be, isn't God one? The answer is yes. If God is One, and the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, then the only solution is that God is One in Three Persons. This concept existed since the beginning, and even St Clement's Letter (96 AD) has some of the earliest trinitarian formulas, calling on the Three Divine Persons.

Many heresies, if not all of, at least of the early ones rejected one of two doctrines: the humanity of Christ or the Divinity of Christ. The Church's responses to these was to simply reject what was false and affirm what was always believed. Perhaps they instroduced certain terms not mentioned in the past, but substantially the faith was the same. Prior to the declarations a Church scholar might have used numerous ways of trying to prove aspects of the Christian faith, some of them may have been restricted afterwards to prevent misunderstandings.

[quote]And I am not aware of any Christians who denied these key events. However did Jesus really suffer? Was he really crucified? Or did he simply appear to suffer to satisfy wrathful Yahweh and bring humanity to the "true" God? Small changes make a huge difference.[/quote]

The first question is why would someone deny it? Isn't it reasonable and natural to accept that Jesus suffered on the Cross? What would make someone believe differently? Well, there were certain groups in the ancient world that combined their religious beliefs with certain Christian ideas, and in this particular case I'm referring to the gnostics. They believed in a dualism between body and soul, and that the body and all matter is EVIL because it entraps the soul. This obviously led them to falsely declare a substantial difference between the God of the OT and the God of the NT, the former being EVIL because He created matter! So some gnostics believed Jesus didn't have a body, he was pure spirit acting like a human. Others believed the Soul of Christ separated from His body on the Cross, so that only the material vessel was crucified. And still other gnostics believed that Simon's soul was placed into Jesus' Body!

These beliefs are clearly ridiculous and have no part in the true revelation, but how do we know this for sure? For one thing Jesus is a Jewish Messiah coming to fulfill Judaism, it's only natural for His message to be in some sense an extension of what was before. The gnostics rejected what was before and even declared it evil. Also, we have a LARGE body of writing against them by those who really did succeed the Apostles. St Ignatius in fact emphatically defends the humanity of Christ in numerous places throughout his letters. But who was St Ignatius? He was the THIRD bishop after St Peter in Antioch, in other words, he is himself a successor of an Apostle old enough to have met Apostles and learned from those conversed with other Apostles!

So I have no reason to doubt the reality of Christ's agony on the Cross.

[quote]Yet apostolic origin was something itself that entered into the mind of the Church later.[/quote]

Well this is simply not true. In Acts of the Apostles it's clearly shown that the Apostles felt an innate call to have someone replace the office of Judas. Apostolic succession as an argument was used by many early Christians as an argument against heretics who were trying to introduce foreign ideas into the deposit of faith, it's like the Islamic concept of ISNAD with the exception of dealing with live humans instead of memorized words.

[b]compared with being told a Jewish Palestinian carpenter needed you to eat his flesh and drink his blood to be saved, I don’t think a virgin birth is to much to accept.[/b]

I'm really not sure what would have been easier to accept, certainly many departed Jesus after He said they would have to consume His flesh for salvation, but consummation goes hand in hand with sacrifice. After an animal was offered in atonement the burnt offering was actually consumed. If you read back in Exodus regarding the Passover, consummation of the Lamb was REQUIRED. So if Christ is the Lamb of God, it would be natural to think we consume His Flesh as well.

Hope you didn't mind me explaining about about that, but ultimately your points seems to be, "they accepted the eating of His flesh, so why not the Virgin Birth!" to which I only say they accepted both because of their Divine origin in revelation, and not theological opinion.
[b]
What do you mean "people"? There was huge debate on almost everything in the early Christian community.
I have heard this before, in a book I read for my senior project in High School I looked at the chain. I never saw any actual historical evidence for this, or the extent to which Polycarp knew John.[/b]

Well let's start with the fact St Polycarp was Bishop in Asia Minor and was executed around 150 AD in his late 80s. That means he was born somewhere around the late 60's and raised Christian, how do we know? During his trial, which is recorded in the account of his martyrdom, he seems to imply he was either baptized as an infant or as a child because he said, "I have proclaimed Jesus Lord for 80 years, and I will not stop now," (I'm paraphrasing, I don't recall the exact age though it was in the 80s, and this account is available online.) This information is important because St John is said to have lived until 98 AD, and that he resided in Asia Minor. This makes St Polycarp's contact with St John totally possible and reasonable. The rest is the witness of Asia minor recognized St Polycarp as a witness to John, his recorded words by some who knew him, such as St Ireneus, and holy tradition. I really have no reason to doubt St Polycarp's contact with St John the Evangelist.

[b]Moreover weren’t the Gospel's authored anonymously? [/b]

If that were the case we wouldn't have names attached to them, would we?

[b]Yet some of those very men seemed to take non-canonical books as inspired as well.[/b]

Which men? What non-canonical books? Where were they quoted?
[b]
So Polycarp didn't actually make those citations?[/b]

The idea of intellectual property wasn't around in St Polycarp's time so he didn't need to reference his sources

[b]That's fine. I find it strange that you got this from an Islamic source yet it is supposed to undermine the authenticity of the Qur'an?[/b]

Yes, it's in their own records, the originals were burned most probably because they were different, including Abu Bakr's collected manuscript. Muslims will obviously spin these details.

[b]
I got a book recently, "In Search of the Original Koran" I will read that however I really don't want to go into Qur'an textual authenticity as I know very little on the subject. I'll look at whatever you have to say on it though.
[/b]

I don't have too much to say on it, it's level of preservation doesn't change my opinion on it. There are differences between manuscripts and even the various ways or reciting Qur'an affects what words are pronounced.


Pardon any spelling or grammar errors, I didn't review my post because of time!


Christ is King!
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