Resurrection (Alward rebuts Carter)
Ed Tyler etyler@truman.edu
Thu, 04 Feb 1999 08:19:21 -0600 (00918159561, 4.1.19990204081432.00a28390@pop.truman.edu)
At 10:31 PM 2/3/99 -0800, Farrell Till wrote:
>At 03:44 AM 2/4/99 +0000, Joseph Crea wrote:
>>Hello, Farrell!
>>
>>At 06:26 PM 2/3/99 -0800, Farrell Till wrote:
>>>At 05:36 PM 2/3/99 -0500, Jason Carter wrote:
>>>>A
>>>>>CREA
>>>>> And, of course you can provide reliable documentation or other
evidence
>>>>>to support your claims that the apostles "...died defending the death and
>>>>>resurrection of a crucified peasant", right?
>>>>
>>>>CARTER
>>>>Yes I could,
>>>
>>>TILL
>>>You can? Oh, good, then let's see it.
>>>
>>>CARTER
>>>>but I am wondering, have YOU ever read any history at all
>>>>concerning the apostles and early Christians that is backed up by
>>>>evidence rather than theory?
>>>
>>>TILL
>>>No, I haven't. That's why I'm eager to see yours, but I don't want to
>>>encourage you too much on this issue. It will just give you an excuse to
>>>run off to another thread and hide from the issues you are already evading.
>>>
>>>CARTER
>>>> Because right now, I am laughing at how dumb that question is.
>>>>
>>>
>>>TILL
>>>I suspect if Carter could present any real evidence of apostolic martyrdom,
>>>he would be sending it to us instead of laughing.
>>
>>CREA
>> As far as I'm aware, the only independent reference to the martyrdom of
>any
>>apostle seems to be that of James, the brother of Jesus as reported in
>>Josephus' __Antiquities of the Jews__ XX.ix.1. Of course, this is of but
>>small comfort to Carter who would have us believe (if I'm not misreading his
>>posting) that ALL the apostles died martyr's deaths.
>>
>
>TILL
>Carter's postings have indicated that he is the type of amateur apologist
>who hears something from a Josh McDowellian source and passes it along
>without bothering to verify it. We see this so often from Christians who
>are new to the list that I think it would be a good idea to prepare a file
>of generic answers to often-used apologetic arguments so that we can just do
>a search for them and send them back to the list. It would save a lot of
>time that we now spend recomposing answers that we have already given to
>biblicist claims like this one about the apostles.
>
Ed
Farrell, you've got a crystal ball. As you'll note from Carter's response
under the subject "Martyrs" this is almost precisely what he did. He also
cited early Christian apologists like Eusebius.