>>18530045
>>Moses goes up alone on a mountain
>>comes back with stone tablets with laws that everyone has to follow now
>>says he got them from God
>>oh okay then

Actually, in Exodus 20 God gives the 10 commandments in front of millions of Israelites and they all hear his voice and beg them to stop talking to them because they were too afraid.

When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Tell the Israelites this: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have spoken to you from heaven: Do not make any gods to be alongside me; do not make for yourselves gods of silver or gods of gold.

>>18530062
God's "voice" was thunder and lightning?

>>18530074
Yes, God's voice is loud like thunder.

These are the commandments the Lord proclaimed in a loud voice to your whole assembly there on the mountain from out of the fire, the cloud and the deep darkness; and he added nothing more. Then he wrote them on two stone tablets and gave them to me.

When you heard the voice out of the darkness, while the mountain was ablaze with fire, all the leaders of your tribes and your elders came to me. And you said, “The Lord our God has shown us his glory and his majesty, and we have heard his voice from the fire. Today we have seen that a person can live even if God speaks with them. But now, why should we die? This great fire will consume us, and we will die if we hear the voice of the Lord our God any longer. For what mortal has ever heard the voice of the living God speaking out of fire, as we have, and survived? Go near and listen to all that the Lord our God says. Then tell us whatever the Lord our God tells you. We will listen and obey.”

The Lord heard you when you spoke to me, and the Lord said to me, “I have heard what this people said to you. Everything they said was good. Oh, that their hearts would be inclined to fear me and keep all my commands always, so that it might go well with them and their children forever!

>>18530093
That's pretty cool. He should do that kind of stuff more often. Must have been thousands of years since we got anything like that.
When I see thunderstorms over mountains I don't even connect it to anything divine anymore.

>>18530107
>When I see thunderstorms over mountains I don't even connect it to anything divine anymore.
One must always be on awe of God and wonder in amazement like a child before him.

Are you perhaps implying these things did not actually happen?

>>18530203
What if she is?

>Mary Magdalene
>prostitute by profession
>hangs out with Jesus and his 12 unmarried male friends all the time
>described as one of Jesus' closest followers
It was nice of Jesus to get her back on the right track. Kept her around out of the goodness of his heart.

File: angel_moroni_gives_plates(...).jpg (312 KB, 1200x1328)

312 KB JPG

Next you tell me Joseph Smith wasn't actually given golden tablets by the angel Macaroni

>>18530309
why doesnt he have a halo?

>>18530062
>Actually, in Exodus 20 God gives the 10 commandments in front of millions of Israelites and they all hear his voice and beg them to stop talking to them because they were too afraid.
Maybe he was just being too loud and Moses came up to get him to speak softer

>>18530792
Doesn't God have a sound engineer? I guess the heavenly host was still a little shoddy in the bronze age.

>>18530045
>>years later in another country some guys claim to be his disciples and write down his life story
They claimed to be His disciples immediately in the same country where they were known to be His disciples and only wrote it down years later
>>a bunch of people say they saw him after his death, just like Elvis
Did all those people who saw Elvis collectively stay with him for over a month, speaking with him and dining with him, and then collectively witness him ascend into heaven?

>>18531381
>They claimed to be His disciples immediately in the same country where they were known to be His disciples and only wrote it down years later
All four were written in Greek
Mark: probably written in Rome around 60-70 AD
Matthew: likely in Antioch, 80-90 AD
Luke: probably Achaia, Greece, 80-90 AD
John: Ephesus, 90-100 AD

> collectively stay with him for over a month, speaking with him and dining with him, and then collectively
My aunt claimed she had a wild weekend with Elvis down in Nevada. The story became wilder and wilder over the decades.

>>18531392
>Mark: probably written in Rome around 60-70 AD
>Matthew: likely in Antioch, 80-90 AD
>Luke: probably Achaia, Greece, 80-90 AD
>John: Ephesus, 90-100 AD
Source: the priests of secularism
Except for John the Gospels were written before the destruction of the temple, and Matthew was the first written. Where they were written is largely unknown, but also immaterial.
>My aunt claimed she had a wild weekend with Elvis down in Nevada. The story became wilder and wilder over the decades.
So some random individual made up some wild story over decades? Doesn’t seem consistent with the consistent, collective testimony of the apostles.

>>18531411
>Except for John the Gospels were written before the destruction of the temple, and Matthew was the first written.
Textual analyses is a thing. The language, writing style and the target audiences indicate they were written in those places I have listed.

>Where they were written is largely unknown, but also immaterial.
It's not immaterial since it is unlikely they were written by the actual apostels. The authors never identify themselves in the texts.
The attributions come from Papias and Irenaeus in the 2nd century.

>>18531449
>The language, writing style and the target audiences indicate they were written in those places I have listed.
How do you know who the target audience was? At best, these things would give you an educated guess of where they were written.
>It's not immaterial since it is unlikely they were written by the actual apostels
Source: the priests of secularism
>The attributions come from Papias and Irenaeus in the 2nd century.
Who themselves knew it from people who knew and were themselves the original students of the apostles. Irenaeus learned it from Polycarp, who was the disciple of John.

>>18531449
>>18531452
The Gospels bear significant internal evidence of being eyewitness testimonies, e.g. John’s knowledge of the pool of Bethesda, which he could know nothing about if he was a foreigner from a much later time. And the testimonies of the early church fathers concerning their attribution is significant external evidence, Justin Martyr calls them the “memoirs of the apostles”. There is no reason to doubt the traditional attribution, only unreasoned unbelief.

>>18531457
>John’s knowledge of the pool of Bethesda, which he could know nothing about if he was a foreigner from a much later time.
NTA but couldn't someone have known about it if they happened to visit Jerusalem at some point in the second century, even if they weren't from there? From wikipedia it looks like the Emperor Hadrian built a temple to Asclepius (god of healing) and Serapis over the best candidate for the pool of Bethesda in the 2nd century, so any earlier healing association would've been maintained. In fact from https://melkite.org/faith/sunday-scriptures/mystery-of-the-pool-at-bethesda and the wiki page, it's thought to have been a pagan sacred place even in the first century, and it was just outside Jerusalem until Herod Agrippa expanded Jerusalem to include it in the mid 1st century, so John saying "Now in Jerusalem there is a pool..." might only be implying knowledge of the location of the pool in Jerusalem after the expansion, not before the expansion when it would've been outside Jerusalem.

>>18531411
>>18531452
>>18531457
You have no understanding of basic biblical scholarship.

>>18531591
In Jerusalem means within the city and its environs.
>>18531615
Not an argument

>>18531457
>John’s knowledge of the pool of Bethesda, which he could know nothing about if he was a foreigner from a much later time
Rather than there being a foreigner called "John" who pretended to be an apostle, it's more likely the gospel of John is a collection of oral stories about Jesus that got collected by the local Christians in those foreign cities like Antioch and Rome.
The "John" as an apostle authorship was slapped on later in order to give the gospel more credibility. Early church fathers tried to unify the faith by creating a unified scripture and they picked the most popular and coherent gospels from around the Roman empire, where early Christians were congregating.

Christian sects kept making up new gospels that didn't make it into the new testament by the way. We have quite a few from the 2nd century. Early christians seemed to have a vivid imagination.

>check out my fanfic collection about jesus