Yes, I agree completely about the genealogies, which is why I argue that the long generations are not actual people, but their direct line. Which could explain why only 14? generations lived between David and Jesus.

As I said, I need to read it more carefully, I'm getting there and I'll take note of that.

John, off the cuff, and please remember i've only read the NT once, during the middle of last year, this is what I wrote about Luke, if you'd like to comment:

http://rationalisingthebible.blogspot.com/2010/09/new-testament-gospel-of-luke-birth-of.html

Look in the archives on the right, under September 2010, if you feel inclined to critique.

As I said, my first run through was with the idea of just pointing out what a load of rubbish it was, so that early writing is full of errors and misconceptions.

Agrippina wrote:I think you want me to die of boredom before Christmas. I've only just looked at Jesus's genealogy and it's all wrong, 3 generations to a century, he was born in sometime around 1BCE/CE and if you use that (Herodotus's calculation not mine) calculation, Abraham lived around 300BCE.

I suspect those genealogies are even more worthless than the other bits...

NamelessFaceless wrote:

CaveatLector wrote:...Theophilus just means "beloved of god" or "friend of god".

It's not an uncommon name, actually. Even in pre-Christian times (information about Theophilus the geographer can be found on "teh [sic] wiki"). There's no reason to believe that Luke is addressing the 2nd century bishop. For my part, I agree with the scholarly consensus that claims it's a general address to whatever "friend of god" might be reading it. It wouldn't exactly be a novel way to start a work like Luke-Acts this way.

For those wondering about dating, Irenaeus refers to Luke as the author of Acts and claims he was a companion of Paul (for what it's worth). We also have a text of Acts dating to the 2nd century which contains a Latin preface that pinpoints Luke's death at 84. Some people also point to the fact that Paul is still alive at the end of Acts (assuming that Luke would have narrated his execution otherwise), but I'm not overly convinced by that.

EDIT: **Realized as I was about to drift off to sleep that a citation for Irenaeus would be helpful. The references is in Adv. Her. 3.1.1. if my notes are correct.**

I think most scholars also agree that the author of Luke was probably not really "Luke" or even a companion of Paul. I've been reading a lot of Bart Ehrman lately and in his book Forged he discusses how 'Luke' was assigned as the author of gLuke and Acts. It was basically through a process of elimination. Ireneaus (IIRC) reviewed all the letters that had been attributed to Paul (some of which are now believed to be forgeries) to find names of Paul's companions, then he eliminated ones that the author of gLuke could NOT be for whatever reason (they had abandoned Paul, were already named in the book, etc.) and Luke was the last man standing. However, Ehrman believes the author of Luke was actually NOT a companion of Paul because he got so many of the details of Paul's life and beliefs wrong. However, since several passages in Luke jump into the first person (the 'we' passages), Irenaeus assumed that whoever wrote must have been there.

However, Ehrman also says that gLuke was probably written around 95 CE, but I've yet to see a discussion on why he thinks that. He usually just says "for a variety of reasons . . . ." I'd really like to see a more in-depth discussion on this.

It'd be helpful to have these reasons so we can get a feel for how confident we should be in the dating of these texts.

Agrippina wrote:Also considering that the lifespan of the average person at that time was still below 50, with 50 being really old, people who were adults during Jesus's life would have been either very old, or no longer alive. I still think that there were no eye-witnesses alive anymore.

Sorry, have been suspended so couldn't respond to this immediately.

Are you unaware of such things as variance and standard deviation? Yes, the average lifespan was way shorter back in those times - but the variance and standard deviation and similar measures of distribution were way higher.

Part of the reason the average lifespan was so short was the very high infant mortality, and already that gives a very high deviation.

Certainly, one reason that contributed this short average lifespan also was the prevalence of armed conflict. Israel of the time, of course, was ravaged by one rather major such at 70CE.

We can expect, actually, that some people even in that era did live to ages like 80.

The chances, then, that someone who had seen Jesus (if such a guy existed) alive did live to tell the tale all the ways off in the 90s CE are not as infinitesimally small as just looking at the average life span would imply.

z8000783 wrote:Welcome back, can we get on where we left off now?

John

Yes, of course. Trying to catch up. So much has been posted that needs debunking, though ...

Zwaarddijk wrote:

Agrippina wrote:Also considering that the lifespan of the average person at that time was still below 50, with 50 being really old, people who were adults during Jesus's life would have been either very old, or no longer alive. I still think that there were no eye-witnesses alive anymore.

Sorry, have been suspended so couldn't respond to this immediately.

Are you unaware of such things as variance and standard deviation? Yes, the average lifespan was way shorter back in those times - but the variance and standard deviation and similar measures of distribution were way higher.

One of the reasons I want to learn more about maths.

Part of the reason the average lifespan was so short was the very high infant mortality, and already that gives a very high deviation.

Certainly, one reason that contributed this short average lifespan also was the prevalence of armed conflict. Israel of the time, of course, was ravaged by one rather major such at 70CE.

We can expect, actually, that some people even in that era did live to ages like 80.

The chances, then, that someone who had seen Jesus (if such a guy existed) alive did live to tell the tale all the ways off in the 90s CE are not as infinitesimally small as just looking at the average life span would imply.[/quote]

I'm aware of that.
I did a long thing about it on another thread. It gives a definite member of his family being born during the exile, which can be dated. As I said to you earlier today, I forget stuff. I'd have to read it again to figure out why I said this. But this is exactly the sort of thing I need to get right with the research i'm doing. I can't just make statements like the one above and get away with it. Not if I want to make a reasoned argument, So bear with me.

On the topic of 'who wrote the bible' here's a brief article on the 'documentary hypothesis':

Vridar
2011/12/25
Who wrote the Bible? Rise of the Documentary Hypothesis

— Neil Godfrey

This post looks at the rise of the dominant scholarly hypothesis that the Old Testament came together through the efforts of various editors over time collating and editing a range of earlier sources. The structure and bulk of the contents of the post is taken from Philippe Wajdenbaum’s discussion of the Documentary Hypothesis.

http://vridar.wordpress.com/2011/12/25/ ... more-22998

Thanks, I've put that in my reading list.

Agrippina wrote:Thanks, I've put that in my reading list.

Here's part two of the series:

A central theme of the criticisms of traditional views of the Bible from most of these authors has been to point out the circularity of consensus arguments for the datings of the various biblical works. Another has been to reject the assumption that the biblical works should be accepted as reliable historical sources or frameworks for historical narratives without external confirmation. Whereas archaeology was once a tool to flesh out the “truth” of the Bible, it was now being thought more valid to study the archaeology of Palestine in the same way as archaeology is employed to uncover the history of any other civilization: understand the remains in their own right and only secondarily seek to see where the literary work best fits within what we learn from those finds.

http://vridar.wordpress.com/2012/01/08/ ... ypothesis/

Sounds like there's a movement to make study of the bible into a real historical project.

That's more or less what I'm trying to do, in a very simple way (if I live long enough to read the 200+ books on my reading list).

What is the point of this thread? Even now, we live in a world where most of the words attributed to people are presented by other people, via a visual/audial/written format. The intent is always to provide the point-of-view of a particular person. Even now, in these days of advertising-expertise when titles are acknowledged to be almost as important as the content, you can find autobiographies of persons not produced by those persons, which just use the person's name as the title of the book/article/documentary/film etc.. Yet, such works are not instantly discarded when it is discovered that the person-of-focus did not produce the actual work himself. So, what is the actual point of this thread?

jamest wrote: Even now, in these days of advertising-expertise when titles are acknowledged to be almost as important as the content, you can find autobiographies of persons not produced by those persons, which just use the person's name as the title of the book/article/documentary/film etc.. Yet, such works are not instantly discarded when it is discovered that the person-of-focus did not produce the actual work himself.

They would be instantly discarded if they described their subject as a divine being who had a hotline to God and wrought miraculous acts before breakfast every morning. They would be instantly discarded, and both the ghost-writer and his subject utterly disgraced, if they then attempted to use his status as a divine being as a political weapon to be used against those who denied his divinity, as routinely happens with biblical figures.

jamest wrote:What is the point of this thread?

The point is to increase our knowledge of the real world.

Even now, we live in a world where most of the words attributed to people are presented by other people, via a visual/audial/written format. The intent is always to provide the point-of-view of a particular person.

This bolded claim is just plain wrong - sometimes the intent is to misrepresent someone.

Even now, in these days of advertising-expertise when titles are acknowledged to be almost as important as the content, you can find autobiographies of persons not produced by those persons, which just use the person's name as the title of the book/article/documentary/film etc.. Yet, such works are not instantly discarded when it is discovered that the person-of-focus did not produce the actual work himself.

Certainly it should make a difference if so-and-so actually did say or do the things attributed to them.

So, what is the actual point of this thread?

The point of the thread is to discover the truth as far as we are able.

Is that wrong?