Freethought Nation

Lecture - Dr Peter Williams - New Evidences the Gospels were Based on Eyewitness Accounts


Are you convinced? Lets hear what you think.

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2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

So name statistics means Jesus is the son of God?

Josephus is offered up as evidence.




http://www.centralwesleyan.org/peterwilliams

There is pdfs of some of his powerpoint notes used in a seminar here. A brief look at one showed the usual apologists argument that atheists killed more than religious folk, ie Stalin, Mao etc.

Edit -

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Q&A session afterwards.



The question at 3:17 :

Q: All 4 gospels appear as sophisticated theological treatises, full of old testament allusion, well developed narratives and a plethora of discernable motifs. How did untrained ordinary men produce these documents? (add some waffle about god preparing the ground for these ideas)

A: With God's help.

This guy shoots himself in the foot the first 5 minutes into it.

I haven't been able to find the time to go over this series, so I appreciate everyone else doing it. Does he actually have any "new evidence?" Sounds exactly the same as always: typical Christian apologetics.

I'm currently working on a monograph about Josephus's Testimonium Flavianum as part of my Christ Con revision. Believe it or not, mainstream scholarship has now made its way solidly back to the "Partial Interpolation Theory," in which much of the TF is considered "authentic" to Josephus's original.

One relatively recent scholar whose work is much ballyhooed by Christian apologists and partial interpolationists is Dr. Alice Wheeley, who contends for the entire TF being genuine, with only the sentence "He was the Christ" changed to "He was called the Christ" or "He was believed to be the Christ." Thus, apologists are now citing her as evidence that the TF is correct and therefore Jesus was a historical figure. I have addressed her contentions.

In any event, again, it doesn't sound like any "news" is going on here with these videos.

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Why suffer from Egyptoparallelophobia, when you can read Christ in Egypt? Try it - you'll like it:

Boy they are not going to let go of that are they?

Oh god give me strength bashes forehead on desk

this guy starts with the CS. Lewis chestnut "Lord Liar or Lunatic" trilemma, what about a fourth option, couldn't he be a literary personification of an aspect of the human psyche?

it's like saying, Popeye? he can only be sailorman, strongman, or Olive Oil lover, and no-one shouts out He's a cartoon character you moron!?!?!

new evidence my foot, sheesh!

then he gets into name percentages?!?!?!?

it's just insultingly dumb from start to finish.

That's what I thought. I was sent this video by someone who found it "convincing" and who had moved towards evemerism after watching it.

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Why suffer from Egyptoparallelophobia, when you can read Christ in Egypt? Try it - you'll like it:

Dear Acharya,

This guy is not worth your time and I see that others have handled your light work.

A few observations;

He guesses that the name Jesus being gone from later texts suggests they were far removed from Jesus’ time nut early Gnostics, such as Basilides, did not use the name Jesus (He calls him Caulacau which has a Gematria value of 888, like Jesus). Also many others never heard of Jesus, such as John the Baptists follower named Apollos of Alexandria

He says the names of Jesus’ family were all common, an uncommon name and uncommon names of family members would give a tinge of historicity as he claims that the authors must have been more than remotely familiar with the area. Why would we not expect Greek authors to be familiar with common Jewish names? Later on the zealot says “The Gospels have the Pattern of names we would expect if they are reporting what real people said and did. The pattern would be too complex for an ancient forger to produce”—Ok, if you says so! But there have been better constructed accounts that have been proved to have been fabricated.
“Nazarean” (NZRN=ZRMN, a Buddhist monk, also, like manes, nazar was a name for rebels, see. Thundy on Buddhist sources to the passion) .

He claims that “Christ” was a later name for Jesus, in which case he must maintain that the occurrence of Christ in the gospels are all later additions

He holds up a line from mark where a stranger says to Jesus “Son of David” but it is Matthew who offers the fabricated genealogy

He says that name Jesus being “dis-ambigious” would not be necessary “that would have been necessary at the time {of Jesus} and completely unnecessary a hundred years later”

He says that there is no teaching directed to the Gentiles, exactly what we would expect from Hellenizers! “ I have not come for the righteous”

He claims that the apocryphal gospels don’t have that many locations so they are not as authentic as the four gospels. It is well known that the four gospels were worked over

He claims that the early church did not teach in parables, he should study up on the Therapeutae and Essenes who not only had parables but spoke allegorically like Jesus. While he is at it he may want to study up on the followers of Serapis who were called Christians, they too used parables and allegory.

He also fails NT geography, a knowledge of trade routes and he failed to remember that the Greeks and Romans of this time began to make geography central, how else could they conquer the world without first knowing their backyard?. The whole Levant and Egypt were being taken by the Romans from the Greeks. The Romans took over the trade routes to Egypt and Asia and besides Greco-Roman settlements in the general area there were others such as the Hellenized Scythian traders and soldiers at Scythopolis.

LMAO!!!

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The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

He starts with C. S. Lewis? The dude who wrote "Myth Became Fact" or something like that? Give me a friggin' break! I ripped that article to shreds in a C. S. Lewis class I took, not just in class, when the prof asked if we were convinced, but in the subsequent paper she asked us to write. I wish I had an hour to go over the video, but quite frankly, given he started with C. S. Lewis, it seems it would be a waste of my time.

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Mriana

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