Subject: Re: Music, religion, etc.
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Date: Tue Jan 18 2000 - 15:12:34 EST
In a message dated 1/18/00 2:28:26 PM Eastern Standard Time,
jjv@caesun.msd.ray.com writes:
> As for history, I don't really think you can rely too much on the bible
> to be at all accurate this way from an external perspective. The first
> book of the bible wasn't written until 300 CE or so. They didn't have all
> the fancy scientific techniques we have to verify knowledge. They didn't
> have computers to help research, or carbon date things. Instead they had
> verbal and the scant written record of all this to go from. Can you
> imagine what we'd think of anyone today who was writing about early
> colonial US and was using no sources other than hersay? By Darwin, please
> tell me we learned from Orwell something about history.
Dude..where are you getting your facts about the Bible? I've read
scholarship across the spectrum here and No One - not liberals, not
fundamentalists, not rationalists -- date any of the New Testament books as
late as 300 AD. Some date Revelation late 2nd century, I think, but that's
about it. . .the most recent scholarship I've read about Matthew says that
the Aramaisms present in the Greek text make it look like a translated
document -- like it was written in Aramaic then translated into Greek. That
could make it Very early.
Luke claims to have been compiled from eyewitness reports, John was
supposedly written by an eyewitness (it claims to have been), Matthew has no
internal claims to authorship, but the earliest church fathers (prior to the
mid second century AD) attest that it was written by Matthew (an eyewitness),
while Mark is often associated with Peter, another eyewitness.
>
> > >From here I would argue to the external. I would say that there's a
real
>
> > problem in denying the historicity in that the ethical system presented
is
>
> > unrivaled in western thought, and that the type of people that would
> > consciously record a false history (liars) or unconsciously (stupid and
> > superstitious) seems an odd context for such an elevated moral teaching.
>
> Think Fable. That pretty much answers your problem. Has nothing to do
> with lying, just fiction. And yes, I admit, though it has its problems,
> Christianty is a pretty good moral system. The best part about it is that
> it is unassailable. You can't argue with it at all. That's the nice
> trick about religion it completely destroys moral relativism.
>
> -jay
I mentioned Fable :) That's what I meant by myth. I meant a textual
analysis of sorts -- seeing if the Gospel texts were using the conventions of
myth or the conventions of historical documents (for the period).
Depends on what religion you're talking about too. Religions based on the
Vedas have a somewhat different morality that's every bit as consistent with
its view of the universe as Christianity. Totally different (ok, not
totally, but in some areas, certainly), equally unassailable.
Jim
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