Bart Ehrman, an atheist scholar, argues: "Jesus’s disciples were lower-class, illiterate peasants from remote rural areas of Galilee, where very few people could read, let alone write, and let alone create full-scale compositions." Some skeptics expand on the argument: Because Jesus' followers were lower-class, illiterate peasants, no educated person would believe the claims of Jesus, and therefore Christianity isn't true.
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In archaeology, a bulla (plural bullae)
is a clay seal used when documents or goods were transferred from one person to
another. The sender would put a small piece of wet clay over where the item
would be opened, then press in a signet to seal the item and ensure it's
authenticity. An unbroken seal would let the recipient know the item wasn't
tampered with. A more modern equivalent would be a wax seal on a formal letter
or invitation.
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If you haven't read What Types of Questions will be on this Blog? Part 1, you may want to start there. I had intended to list some of the topics I want to research in that post, but the post started getting a bit too long, so I decided to split it into two parts. Actually, since I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to write one post a week, splitting the long post into two shorter ones seemed like a good idea; now I have one less to write.
The list of questions I've written...
The first article post I ever posted was titled Domain Registered, since I had just registered the domain BibleQuestions.info. In it, I have some examples of the types of questions I want to research, and my motivations for deciding to use a blog format to keep track of my research.
My second blog post I titled What is Apologetics?, and I discussed why Christians should be able to talk about their...
I had originally planned on writing an article titled "How did December 25th Become Christmas?", but I found wildly conflicting information. The Bible doesn't indicate when Jesus was born, so there are many different opinions on how that date was chosen. Rather than possibly give incorrect information, I thought I'd ask a more fundamental question: Should Christians celebrate Christmas?
Some people may be...
Pastor and theologian Rainer Riesner concludes in his doctoral dissertation Jesus as a Teacher the disciples could have received Jesus's teachings orally, and passed those lessons on to others without corrupting the message.
In the "Telephone" game, people start by sitting in a circle. One person makes up a sentence and whispers it into the next person's ear, and the second person whispers what was heard into the third person's ear, and so on. This process continues until the last person says the sentence out loud, and the person who started the game says the original sentence out loud. Usually the sentence get changed during the game, and the starting sentence and ending sentence...
I copied this
analogy about truth from the book I Don’t Have
Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek:
Easygoing Americans are more apt to believe that no religion is the truth. This sentiment is often illustrated by the favorite parable of many university professors: the parable of the six blind men and the elephant. This is where each blind man...
Last weekend I visited Saint Meinrad Archabbey, in Saint Meinrad, Indiana, for a long weekend to relax and get some work done on BibleQuestions.info. The church at the Archabbey has numerous stained glass windows, but there are eight windows I want to focus on, because they show examples of beatitudes. These eight stained glass windows were made by Francis X. Zettler in Munich, Germany, when the church was completed in...
I've heard Greg Koukl from the Christian organization Stand to Reason use an analogy he calls "Aunt Sally's Secret Sauce" to show how the New Testament was likely transmitted in the early church.
