ninetailschris said:
Scoobes said:
ninetailschris said:
Jay520 said:
DaRev said:
Nope, truth is truth, there cannot be more than one truth, truth either agrees with truth or its not true or all the truth. You don't have to study every religion, pal, just study the true one. If you think the true one is, e.g. Islam, then go study that, which I'm sure if you did, WITH AN OPEN MIND you would run into some untruths. Christianity on the other is truth, study that WITH AN OPEN MIND, and I'm sure if you did you you will only find truth. Truth it is better to love your fellow man, truth!
Now, because Christianity is truth, there is no need study anything else, because you have already found the truth, so why look for it somewhere else? E.g if H2O = Water or E = mc2, why you going to look for that truth again, when you already found it?
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Okay, a few questions.
1.) There are untrooths with Islam? How Do you know? Have you studied Islam to know if its true or not?
2.) If you have studied Islam, then what are the untrooths of Islam?
3.) I have studied Christianity with an open-mind and I think its false. Therefore, can I safely say Christianity is false?
4.) What if I study another religion with an open-mind and find that religion is true? How would I be able to know for sure?
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1. The problem with Islam unlike The bIble is that it has things that directly go against historal truths on certain events. For example, in islam it says Jesus didn't die on cross. This is historial proven to not be true by scholars and historians. A man of name Jesus Christ of Nazareth was in fact killed on cross from reports. we even know who was the person that killed him on the cross EXACTLY.
2. The problems is that Islam Scholars themselves will admit that they haven't done any real research into the origins of the Islam. PLUS it known that Islam leader Muhammad got his information on Jesus YEARS LATER from actual events. Muhammad also got his source from third hand person basically hear-say.
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To be fair, similar arguments can be made against Christianity. The bible as it currently is was collated in 325AD. There were many more texts that refered to Jesus but these were disregarded by a group of fallible humans with their own bias 325 years after he died. This is not even taking into account the material that may have been lost in translation. For instance, the virgin birth may not be as miraculous as orginally thought as the Hebrew word translated to "virgin" could also be used to mean "young woman".
The 4 gospels in the bible are also estimated to have been written 60-100 years after Jesus' death meaning a big gap in first hand knowledge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Acts_of_the_Apostles#Historicity
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_reliability_of_the_Gospels
Every Religious text has inconsistencies with historical and archaelogical consensus. Singling out Islam when the bible contains inconsistencies is just plain wrong.
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60-100 years isn't hard to lose track with because it can easily be passed from one generation to the next. This is why scholars don't question is it reliable as people at the thing. The society at the time was a collectivist/low-context society they were train were rasied to never mess up on quoting and to be able to send the message for years. 60-100 years is very easy for the type of society it was. You're viewing them as your society were we can't remember anything and write everything down is common mistake with people who don't look into the societies.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJpBKmeLW_Y&feature=plcp
^ Suggest you watch and try to absorb what I'm saying.
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Every Religious text has inconsistencies with historical and archaelogical consensus. Singling out Islam when the bible contains inconsistencies is just plain wrong."
You just make a claim...but didn't give an example? I'm not going to agree to claim obviously so give me example in Christianity. I already know about others so don't bother with the Islams/Hindu/ etc because I can tell you why there not reliable as the bible.
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They were in the link I gave you:
Acts 5:33-39 gives an account of speech by the 1st century Pharisee Gamaliel, in which he refers to two first century movements. One of these was led by Theudas (v 36) and after him another was led by Judas the Galilean (v 37). Josephus placed Judas at the Census of Quirinius of the year 6 and Theudas under the procurator Fadus[26] in 44-46. Assuming Acts refers to the same Theudas as Josephus, two problems emerge. First, the order of Judas and Theudas is reversed in Acts 5. Second, Theudas's movement comes after the time when Gamaliel is speaking.
In Bible scholarship, the sole reference to Theudas presents a problem of chronology. In Acts of the Apostles, Gamaliel, a member of the sanhedrin, defends the apostles by referring to Theudas:
"Men of Israel, be cautious in deciding what to do with these men. Some time ago, Theudas came forward, claiming to be somebody, and a number of men, about four hundred, joined him. But he was killed and his whole following was broken up and disappeared. After him came Judas the Galilean at the time of the census; he induced some people to revolt under his leadership, but he too perished and his whole following was scattered." (NEB, Acts 5:36-8)
The difficulty is that the rising of Theudas is here given as before that of Judas of Galilee, which is itself dated to the time of the taxation (c. 6-7 AD). Josephus, on the other hand, says that Theudas was 45 or 46, which is after Gamaliel is speaking, and long after Judas the Galilean.
There are several arguments put forward to solve this problem. The 18th century theologian John Gill wrote "Some think Josephus is mistaken in his chronology, and then all is right." Another argument is that the author of the Book of Acts used Josephus as a source and made a mistake in a reading the text, taking a later reference to the execution of the "sons of Judas the Galilean" after the rebellion of Theudas as saying that the rebellion of Judas was later; however there is disagreement as to whether the author(s) of Luke used Josephus.[6] Other explanations are that he was referring to a different revolt by another Theudas, or that he mistakenly transposed the two names.[7]
Acts 2:41 and 4:4 - Peter's addresses
Acts 4:4 speaks of Peter addressing an audience, resulting in the number of Christian converts rising by 5,000 people. Professor of New Testament Robert M. Grant says "Luke evidently regarded himself as a historian, but many questions can be raised in regard to the reliability of his history […] His ‘statistics’ are impossible; Peter could not have addressed three thousand hearers [e.g. in Acts 2:41 without a microphone, and since the population of Jerusalem was about 25-30,000, Christians cannot have numbered five thousand [e.g. Acts 4:4]."[27]
Grant's estimate of the population of Jerusalem relied on an influential study by Jeremias in 1943.[28][29] However, Grant does not mention that Jeremias calculated a far higher population figure for festival seasons such as passover, at which he calculated Jerusalem would contain up to 125,000 pilgrims.[30] Furthermore, the lower estimate of Jeremias is significantly lower than the lowest of the moderate to high estimates made by Wilkinson in 1974 (70,398 under Herod the Great),[31] Broshi in 1976 (60,000),[32] Maier in 1976 (50,000, with three times that many during festival seasons),[33] and Levine in 2002 (60,000-70,000).[34] Accordingly, Cousland notes that "recent estimates of the population of Jerusalem suggest something in the neighbourhood of a hundred thousand".[35]
Estimates for the number of Christians in the Roman empire by the end of the 1st century range widely from 7,500,[36] to more than 50,000.[37][38]
Acts 6:9: The province of Cilicia
Acts 6:9 mentions the Province of Cilicia during a scene allegedly taking place in mid-30s AD. The Roman province by that name had been on hiatus from 27 BC and was re-established by Emperor Vespasian only in 72 AD.[39]
Acts 21:38: The sicarii and the Egyptian
In Acts 21:38, a Roman asks Paul if he was 'the Egyptian' who led a band of 'sicarii' (literally: 'dagger-men') into the desert. In both The Jewish Wars[40] and Antiquities of the Jews,[41] Josephus talks about Jewish nationalist rebels called sicarii directly prior to talking about The Egyptian leading some followers to the Mount of Olives. Richard Pervo believes that this demonstrates that Luke used Josephus as a source and mistakenly thought that the sicarii were followers of The Egyptian.[42][43] The hypothesis that Luke-Acts used Josephus as a source is rare.[citation needed]
Acts 10:1: Roman troops in Caesarea
Acts 10:1 speaks of a Roman Centurion called Cornelius belonging to the "Italian regiment" and stationed in Caesarea. Robert Grant claims that during the reign of Herod Agrippa, 41-44, no Roman troops were stationed in his territory.[44] Wedderburn likewise finds the narrative "historically suspect",[45] and in view of the lack of inscriptional and literary evidence corroborating Acts, historian de Blois suggests that the unit either did not exist or was a later unit which the author of Acts projected to an earlier time.[46]
Noting that the 'Italian regiment' is generally identified as cohors II Italica civium Romanorum, a unit whose presence in Judea is attested no earlier than 69 CE,[47] historian E Mary Smallwood observes that the events described from Acts 9:32 to chapter 11 may not be in chronological order with the rest of the chapter but actually take place after Agrippa's death in chapter 12, and that the "Italian regiment" may have been introduced to Caesarea as early as 44 CE.[48] Wedderburn notes this suggestion of chronological re-arrangement, along with the suggestion that Cornelius lived in Caesarea away from his unit.[49] Historians such as Bond,[50] Speidel,[51] and Saddington,[52] see no difficulty in the record of Acts 10:1.
Acts 15: The Council of Jerusalem
The description of the 'Apostolic Council' in Acts 15, generally considered the same event described in Galatians 2,[53] is considered by some scholars to be contradictory to the Galatians account.[54] The historicity of Luke's account has been challenged,[55][56][57] and was rejected completely by some scholars in the mid to late 20th century.[58] However, more recent scholarship inclines towards treating the Jerusalem Council and its rulings as a historical event,[59] though this is sometimes expressed with caution.[60]
Acts 24: Paul's trial
Paul's trial in Acts 24 has been described as 'incoherently presented'.[61][page needed]
Acts 15:16-18: James' speech
In Acts 15:16-18, James, the leader of the Christian Jews in Jerusalem, gives a speech where he quotes scriptures from the Greek Septuagint (Amos 9:11-12(Amos. Some[citation needed] believe this is incongruous with the portrait of James as a Jewish leader who would presumably speak Aramaic, not Greek. A possible explanation is that the Septuagint translation better made James's point about the inclusion of Gentiles as the people of God.[62] Dr. John Barnett stated that "Many of the Jews in Jesus' day used the Septuagint as their Bible".[63] Although Aramaic was a major language of the Ancient Near East, by Jesus's day Greek had been the lingua franca of the area for 300 years. It is also possible that James quoted Amos in Aramaic at the Jerusalem Council, but when Luke wrote it down he used the Septuagint translation since nearly all Christians outside Palestine used it as their bible.[citation needed]
Just from this small selection of examples we can see that even with a low context culture where oral information and communication should be highly detailed, inaccuracies (resulting from the writers experiences/bias or just gradual modification of second hand material/info with time) made it through.
Your assumption that lower context cultures must accrue and remember more information is just false. In the modern era the US is considered one of the lowest context cultures whilst Japan one of the highest. When it comes to recalling information accurately I'd give the nod to the Japanese. There are many other factors, education being one of them. Do you really think the people of that day were particularly well educated?
