Bro Igzy, you overload me. (post left at bottom)
If I get you right you are saying something like, Jesus made such an impact on the world, and it's history, that, Jesus must have come from supernatural sources, and has to have been, and is, God's special son.
In other words, I guess, or to put words in your mouth, Jesus wasn't born of Joseph and Mary, and Jesus wasn't even born of a woman. Jesus IS the SON of God, so Jesus HAD to be BORN of God.
I think I've read about some early Christians that made such claims. I think they came to be called Docetists. They thought Jesus was really really God, so much that he only appeared to be human.
You talk about fiction. Apparently, Jesus made such an impact on the world that people feel extremely compelled to make up fiction about him. There's lots of early evidence of wild stories made up about Jesus. Lot's of fiction. And we're still doing it today.
That's what we're trying to sort out: which is fiction and which is not fiction about Jesus.
For example. You brought up the Old Testament prophecy about Jesus being born of a virgin. Is that fiction or not?
You may have missed it, but we've gone around and around about how that was a mistranslation of the Septuagint. And it's also clear that when Is. 7:14 is taken in context that it's speaking of the times in which it was speaking in, not something 800 yrs from then.
So have we even today bought into a fiction?
That, I think, is what Timotheist is driving at.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Igzy
zeek,
If you are going to doubt the validity of the Bible then all bets are off, because the Bible says a lot of things for which the only evidence is the Bible.
Here's how I look at it.
No one has been able to prove that anything the Bible claims is false. That's pretty amazing for a book written over a period of 1500 years by over 35 writers from all walks of life.
This Bible prophesizes of and then witnesses to the appearance and life of Jesus. Here's the linchpin with me. No one could have made up this character. The way he lived, the way his spoke, the things he said. He had to be a real person. This person, as recorded, witnessed to the validity of the OT scriptures, which prophesized that he would be born of a virgin.
In other words, there is internal consistency in the history coupled with the fact that the existence of this person Jesus cannot be explained without bringing a world beyond ours into the picture. You cannot explain Jesus without eventually considering that he must have been the Son of God. You cannot explain his existence even as a historical figure as simply a fabrication.
You cannot even explain his existence as a fictional character. Fiction is full of fantastical characters: Gods, spirits, faeries, gnomes, wizards, demons, aliens, and people from other dimensions. You can take all the concocted dialogue from all the characters ever imagined and edit them down to the most profound sayings their creators and writers dreamed up for them and they would not hold a flickering candle to the blazing light of what Jesus said. Now, explain why that is so; and how a motley group of disciples concocted them while running for their lives. You can't even explain how a bunch of monks modifying the Bible could have done it. You cannot make a case that Jesus and the things he said were concoctions. Jesus could not have been invented by the mind of man. He is real and from some other place beyond our world. That must be conceded.
Now this person witnessed to himself and validated the book that foretold his coming as the child of a virgin. Good enough for me.
Your skepticism makes sense if you are dealing with things of men. But you aren't. You are dealing with something beyond your intelligence. That was my original point. If you could come up with some solid evidence that the virgin birth did not happen, that should be considered. But that's not what this is about. There is no such evidence. There is just skepticism and an insistence on looking at everything through a natural lens, even if it is plain it cannot be viewed that way. You are stubbornly insisting on analyzing Jesus (aka God) through the same lens you would analyze the guy down the street. Big mistake.
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