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OT: Rebelious reopening of locked topic 26-Aug-2010 At 10:09:28 PM dave h.

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In reply to Sarah Gara

Is it rational to believe in the miraculous?
The answer depends on your assumptions. If the universe is a godless one devoid of anything which could be described as supernatural, of course belief in the miraculous is irrational.

If you believe in the God of the Bible (IE one who created the universe by speaking it into being), then it requires no great leap to suppose that such a God could intervene if He saw fit to.

If you think what Jesus said was unclear, I suggest you try reading the New Testament for yourself. You'll get the 'vibe' of it for sure. It beggars belief that you can have all that formal education on this subject and still entertain doubts as to what Jesus meant by that.

Faith does come into it to be sure. But faith is not blind.

Re evidence for Jesus - I'll disregard the Bible for the sake of argument, even though mainstream historians use it as a text (of course that does not mean they accept everything written in it).

When considering the extra-biblical evidence that's available it's important to remember that Jesus was, despite the influence He has had in the 2000 years since he walked the Earth, a relatively marginal figure in his day. According to the Bible He was a public figure for about three years. We don't know a lot (anything??) about any other first century Jewish artisans of humble origins. Secondly, ancient historical sources are the ultimate game of pot luck, given that we only possess a tiny amount of the material that would have been written in Jesus' lifetime. The minister at my church wrote this on the subject:

"By a chance discovery of some ancient Greek letters written on papyrus we happen to know about the plight of a certain second century BC tax official named Dionysius son of Zoilus. One evening while strolling home from a recently opened public bathhouse, poor old Dennis was mugged by a certain Philon and friends (ironically, Philon means ‘love, friendship’). In his letter, Dionysius describes his utter humiliation, and he implores the city guard (who also happens to be named Philon) to arrest the thugs and investigate the case. It is a delightful, random portrait of life in ancient times.

But contrast this intimate snapshot of a lowly bureaucrat with the fact that we do not possess a single such personal letter from Emperor Tiberius, who ruled the Roman world from AD 14-37. Such is the unpredictability of historical evidence."

Anyway as it turns out there is extrabiblical material which alludes to a Jesus called the Christ, his followers, and his crucifixion. Some extra-biblical sources are:

- Tacitus, who writes in Annals, book 15: "...Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome..."

- Julius Africanus (a 3rd century historian), who cites Thallus. Thallus wrote history in the first century.

Africanus writes: "On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun...Phlegon records that, in the time of Tiberius Caesar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the sixth hour to the ninth - manifestly that one of which we speak."

This is consistent with the Biblical account of an earthquake (Matt 27:51) and darkness (Matt 27:35 says "from the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land.").

Discussion of more sources is here.

>I think god provides a nice secure mindset for people I wishI could belive it.
"...seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you..."