July 22, 2008

The Bible isn't proof

"Sorry, I can't examine the claim because the Bible account is pure hearsay...particularly with the fabulous claims."

"The reason I don't believe in ANY supernatural beings is because there is no evidence for their existence."

Are you claiming Jesus and the apostles and/or disciples didn't exist at all? They were made up figures? Your logic is flawed.

One example:

You have heard of Julius Caesar and I am sure you believe that he existed right? Well there were 10 manuscripts of antiquity that explained who he was as we know him today. 10 that is it, in one language, everything we know today about him came from just those 10 manuscripts, with the earliest one dating to 1,000 years after the original autograph

By contrast, the New Testament antiquity of the Bible (with all its information about Jesus) was claimed to be written between 40 A.D. and 100 A.D. The earliest known copy is from 130 A.D. and there are 5,000+ known copies in Greek, 10,000 in Latin and 9,300 in other languages.

"There is no body of ancient literature in the world which enjoys such a wealth of good textual attestation as the New Testament.

Homer's Iliad, the most renowned book of ancient Greece, is the second best-preserved literary work of all antiquity, with 643 copies of manuscript support discovered to date. In those copies, there are 764 disputed lines of text, as compared to 40 lines in all the New Testament manuscripts. 8 In fact, many people are unaware that there are no surviving manuscripts of any of William Shakespeare's 37 plays (written in the 1600's), and scholars have been forced to fill some gaps in his works. This pales in textual comparison with the over 5,600 copies and fragments of the New Testament in the original Greek that, together, assure us that nothing's been lost. In fact, all of the New Testament except eleven minor verses can be reconstructed outside the Bible from the writings of the early church leaders in the second and third centuries AD." (Bible Manuscripts)

You believe that Caesar existed and a real person but not Jesus, hmm. But again your presuppositions will determine if you will accept documented historical proof or not. I perfectly understand that there is always someone that loses on the other side of truth but I have said many times to others that it takes far more love to confront then to ignore the situation, perfect love is a constant confronter. So I confront with love.

bit.ly/Bibleisproof