Your asking the wrong person smiles.

Why do you ask? Are you looking for an answer to your question.

Has anyone seen Expelled with Ben Stein.

Love is the greatest good. Tell that to someone who just lost their child. I hope your joking.

Smiles you raise good questions. One thing God does not show us in the New testament is His mirth. I am sure He did laugh, but I believe God intentionally left this out of the New Testament. So often laughter has to do with mockery. You raise a good question, why does the New Testament never say, "And Jesus laughed". I suggest you read G.K. Chesterton's book Orthodoxy. You would love it.

We are unable to save ourselves. Christ did not have to save himself because he was God. He was unable to sin. Sin is what seperates us from God.

For instance in Joshua 6:21

When Joshua comes to Jericho, Joshua is simply carrying out the commands of God given through Moses. In fact, the same account which tells of the massacre of the inhabitants of Jericho also tells of God's command to carry out that massacre (Joshua 7:12).

Why does God insist on total destruction or "herem"? Is it because God doesn't want His "favorites" to share the land with anyone? No. A few hundred years before, Abraham was His "favorite." Yet Abraham never possessed any of the land, nor did He tell Abraham to destroy any of the inhabitants of the land. Why? God tells Abraham the reason: "In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure" (Genesis 15:16). The inhabitants of the land (called the Amorites or the Canaanites) had not yet reached a level of depravity that required their removal.

God is not partial. When Israel reaches the same level of immorality, He will treat them in exactly the same way. Leviticus 18:24-28 says: "God said to the Israelites, 'Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways, because this is how the nations that I am going to drive out before you became defiled. Even the land was defiled; so I punished it for its sin, and the land vomited out its inhabitants. But you must keep my decrees and my laws. The native-born and the aliens living among you must not do any of these detestable things, for all these things were done by the people who lived in the land before you, and the land became defiled. And if you defile the land, it will vomit you out as it vomited out the nations that were before you.'"

So Joshua's war of total destruction is a final judgment of God against these nations. God has always reserved this right of judgment. Those who object to it here would object, no doubt, to the Flood (Genesis 6-7) and to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19). Modern man does not believe that anything that he does is worthy of death. But the Bible has a different view. It teaches us that God as the Moral Judge of the universe and that sin is not just a preference, but active rebellion against God.

Yet isn't this situation in Joshua different from the Flood and the destruction of Sodom in that human beings -- rather than the elements of nature -- are the agents of destruction? No doubt this is true. But the idea that God uses people to carry out His judgment is found throughout the Bible. King David, as God's sub-regent, promises to eliminate the wicked in his nation (Psalm 101:8). Rulers of state are required to carry out God's moral laws and punish those who do evil (Romans 13:4).

When Israel is sent into the land of Palestine to destroy the Canaanite nations, the nation is like a child sent to get his own paddle. Israel is being graphically taught its need to obey Yahweh, who indeed is the God of the whole earth. And God takes His duties seriously! Israel is warned that failure to remove this cancer of wickedness would eventually bring her own infection with sin and hence, their own judgment (Deuteronomy 7:1-6, 20:18).

The book of Joshua actually keys its notion of success to this practice of herem. Jericho (6:17,21), Ai (8:1-2, 26-27), the kings and cities of the southern region (10:25-40), and Hazor and its allies (11:8-14) all receive this radical judgment of extermination.

At Jericho, Israel is warned that if she does not practice herem, she herself will be herem -- under God's judgment (6:18)! This warning went unheeded, however. Achan and his family decide against practicing the ban, when it comes to some costly items found in Jericho. Because of Achan's sin, Israel fights without Yahweh's help in their next battle. Thirty-six men perish... and Joshua is absolutely devastated (see Joshua 7:6-9). Why is Joshua so emotionally strained? Is thirty-six a high number of men to lose in battle? Apparently it is in Yahweh's wars. We search in vain in the rest of the book of Joshua for mention of other casualties.



Critics of the Old Testament's claim that God ordered the killing of whole tribes in Canaan typically neglect the reason expressly stated in the Old Testament: those tribes were depraved beyond redemption (Gen. 15:16; Lev. 18:21-30; 20:2-5; Deut. 12:29-31; etc.). According to the Old Testament, the Canaanites and other tribes in the land widely practiced child sacrifice, incest, bestiality, and other behaviors that almost everyone in history, including today, rightly regard as unspeakably, grossly immoral. If this explanation is even acknowledged, critics often claim that it is a later theological justification for Israel's displacing those peoples from the land. Even many mainstream biblical scholars make this claim.

This was a covenant people who God revealed himself to and no one else.

Alot of your presuppositions about Christianity are wrong.

I do not see what the big deal is about this mans theory?

Actually, modern scholarship has come to the conclusion that the four gospels are actual attempts by the disciples to write biographies of Jesus life.

David Aune, a specialist in ancient literature, concludes that "no parallel to them is found in Graeco–Roman biography."{6} Rather the resurrection narratives, like the gospels in general, are to be interpreted within a Jewish context.

That may be but these myths were not circulating in first century Palestine.

"Parallels in the history of religions influenced the dating of the resurrection on the third day.{29} In the hey-day of the history of religions school, all sorts of parallels in the history of other religions were adduced in order to explain the resurrection on the third day; but today critics are more sceptical concerning such alleged parallels. The myths of dying and rising gods in pagan religions are merely symbols for processes of nature and have no connection with a real historical individual like Jesus of Nazareth. {30} The three-day motif is found only in the Osiris and perhaps Adonis cults, and, in Grass's words, it is 'completely unthinkable' that the early Christian community from which the formula stems could be influenced by such myths.{31} In fact there is hardly any trace of cults of dying and rising gods at all in first century Palestine. It has also been suggested that the three day motif reflects the Jewish belief that the soul did not depart decisively from the body until after three days.{32} But the belief was actually that the soul departed irrevocably on the fourth day, not the third; in which case the analogy with the resurrection is weaker. But the decisive count against this view is that the resurrection would not then be God's act of power and deliverance from death, for the soul had not yet decisively left the body, but merely re-entered and resuscitated it. This would thus discredit the resurrection of Jesus. If this Jewish notion were in mind, the expression would have been 'raised on the fourth day' after the soul had forever abandoned the body and all hope was gone (cf. the raising of Lazarus). Some critics have thought that the third day reference is meant only to indicate, in Hebrew reckoning, 'a short time' or 'a while'.{33} But when one considers the emphasis laid on this motif not only in the formula but especially in the gospels, then so indefinite a reference would not have the obvious significance which the early Christians assigned to this phrase."

"With regard to the resurrection narratives in particular, Fales's theory resuscitates the old religionsgeschichtliche Methode of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries. Scholars in comparative religion at that time ransacked ancient and contemporary mythology in the effort to find parallels to various Christian beliefs, and some even sought to explain those beliefs on the basis of the influence of such parallels. The resurrection narratives and even the disciples' coming to believe in Jesus' resurrection were thought to be explained through the influence of myths about Osiris (a.k.a. Tammuz, Adonis) or divine–human figures like Hercules. Apart from his general sociological theory of myths, Fales does not appear to add anything new to this old story.

The religionsgeschichtliche approach to the resurrection soon collapsed and is today almost universally abandoned, primarily for two reasons: (1) The supposed parallels were spurious. The ancient world was a virtual cornucopia of myths of gods and heroes. Comparative studies in religion and literature require sensitivity to the similarities and differences, or distortion and confusion inevitably result. Some of these mythological figures are merely symbols of the crop cycle (Osiris, et al.); others have to do with apotheosis by assumption into heaven (Hercules, Romulus); still others concern disappearance stories, which seek to answer the question of where the hero has gone by saying that he lives on in a higher sphere (Apollonius, Empedocles); others are cases of political Emperor–worship (Julius Caesar, Augustus). None of these is parallel to the Jewish notion of resurrection from the dead. With respect to the resurrection narratives, David Aune, a specialist in ancient literature, concludes that "no parallel to them is found in Graeco–Roman biography."{6} Rather the resurrection narratives, like the gospels in general, are to be interpreted within a Jewish context.

With respect specifically to the empty tomb narrative, what putative parallel to such an account will Fales find in ancient mythology? The closest would probably be apotheosis stories such as told by Diodorus Siculus. As Hercules climbs up on his funeral pyre, lightning strikes and consumes the pyre. No trace of Hercules is to be found. The conclusion: "he had passed from among men into the company of the gods."{7} Now the empty tomb story is essentially different from such a myth. The resurrection is not the transformation of the man from Nazareth into God. "The notion of deification," says Aune, "is totally alien to the Synoptic Gospels."{8} Rather what we have in the empty tomb story is not apotheosis, but the Jewish idea of resurrection. The literary key to the story is the angel's words, "He is risen! He is going before you into Galilee." (Mk 16. 6–7). If this were an apotheosis story, the angel would say something like, "He has passed from the realm of mortal men and become like God."{9} The empty tomb story is thus illustrative of the general point that once one sees how the gospel narratives are naturally at home in Judaism there is no reason to ignore this immediate context and reach further to putative pagan parallels.{10}

(2) There is no genealogical connection between pagan myths and the origin of the disciples' belief in Jesus' resurrection. Orthodox Jews knew of these pagan myths and found them abhorrent (Ez. 8. 14–15). Thus, even though Philo (Life of Moses 2. 2888) and Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 4. 8, 48 § 326) are willing to call Moses a divine man because of his great virtue and good works, they reject any attempt to immortalize or deify him. According to Hengel, Jewish belief in the resurrection of the dead actually served as a prophylactic against the pagan myths:

The development of the apocalyptic resurrection–, immortality–, and judgment–doctrine in Jewish Palestine explains why–in a contrast to Alexandrian Judaism–the Hellenistic mystery religions and their language could gain virtually no influence there. Insofar as the apocalyptic Hassidic piety took up the question of the fate of the individual after death, it answered that basic question of human existence, which arose in a more elementary way in Hellenistic times and abetted the spread of the mystery religions from the second century B. C.{11}
Therefore, we find almost no trace of cults of dying and rising gods in first century Palestine.{12}

Moreover, as Hans Grass observes, it would be "unthinkable" in any case that the original disciples would come sincerely to believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead just because they had heard myths about Osiris!{13} Fales seeks to avoid this knock–out punch by claiming that the disciples did not really believe that Jesus was risen from the dead; this myth was in reality a statement about social structures (sociological theory of myths). But this move is surely the reductio ad absurdum of Fales's reconstruction. As Gregory Boyd aptly writes,

If anything is clear from Paul's writings, it is that he and his audience held deep convictions about the story of Christ…They believed it was true. Now one can certainly argue that they were wrong.…But we need seriously to question whether anyone 2,000 years [later] is in a position to assume that their fundamental motivation for believing their story was not what they thought it was. Such an approach constitutes a presumptuous, speculative psychologizing of the evidence.

If we had independent compelling evidence that these early Christian communities were creating myths to justify their social program, that would be another matter. But no such evidence is available. The fact that what Paul and his audience believe may not fit into the naturalistic worldview cannot itself justify the presumption of telling the apostle and his audience what they were 'really' doing.{14}

The New Testament expectation that in light of Jesus' resurrection the general resurrection of the dead was imminent, Paul's energetic disquisitions in response to the Corinthians' sceptical question about the general resurrection, "With what kind of body do they come?" (1 Cor. 15.35), as well as the portrayal in the apostolic sermons in Acts of the resurrection as a literal event verified by witnesses, show that belief in Jesus' resurrection was a historical claim, not a disguised social theory. We have every reason to think that the disciples and the churches they founded believed that Jesus was literally risen from the dead."

"Fortunately, the main stream of New Testament scholarship has been moving in a much different direction than the left–wing fringe represented by the Jesus Seminar. Gone are the days when Jesus was treated like a figure in Greek and Roman mythology. Gone are the days when his miracles were dismissed as fairy tales based on stories of mythological heroes. Gone are the days when his empty tomb and resurrection appearances were written off as legends or hallucinations. Today it is widely agreed that the gospels are valuable historical sources for the life of Jesus and that the proper context for understanding the gospels is not mythology, but Palestinian Judaism. It is widely agreed that the historical Jesus stood and spoke in the place of God Himself, proclaimed the advent of the Kingdom of God, and carried out a ministry of miracle–working and exorcisms as signs of that Kingdom. I find it tremendously gratifying to see that the movement of New Testament scholarship as a whole is in the direction of confirming the traditional understanding of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels. In particular, my own research concerning Jesus’ resurrection has convinced me more than ever that this was a historical event, verifiable by the evidence. The Christian can be confident that the historical foundations of his faith stand secure. You can bet your life on it."

"Well, the reality turns out to be much different. Their claim to have 200 scholars in the Seminar is grossly inflated: that figure includes anybody who in any way was involved in the Seminar’s activities, such as being on a mailing list. The real number of regular participants is only about 40. And what about the scholarly credentials of the members? Of the 74 listed in their publication The Five Gospels, only 14 would be leading figures in the field of New Testament studies. More than half are basically unknowns, who have published only two or three articles. Eighteen of the fellows have published nothing at all in New Testament studies! Most have relatively undistinguished academic positions, for example, teaching at a community college. According to Johnson, "The numbers alone suggest that any claim to represent ‘scholarship’ or the ‘academy’ is ludicrous.""

I do not even think the Jesus seminar (far left) believes that Marry was raped. I do not know of any Scholar that does.

R. T. France, a British New Testament scholar, has written,

"At the level of their literary and historical character we have good reason to treat the Gospels seriously as a source of information on the life and teaching of Jesus.... Indeed many ancient historians would count themselves fortunate to have four such responsible accounts [as the Gospels], written within a generation or two of the events, and preserved in such a wealth of early manuscript evidence. Beyond that point, the decision to accept the record they offer is likely to be influenced more by openness to a supernaturalist world view than by strictly historical considerations."

Presuppositions of the Jesus Seminar.

http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/rediscover1.html