Originally posted by knoledgesponge
Well if you look at it totally seperated from faith in that the New Testament is the inspired word of God, it is using circular reasoning to use scripture to back up scripture. I guess that is why Jesus is famous for saying "Blessed are they are believe without seeing".
Although most bibical scholars accept these as prophecy, how does anybody really know what Jesus said in his last hours? Crucifiction is death by pain and suffocation so he couldn't of had enough breath to yell something. We are forced to take New Testament writers at their word, and given that the New Testament was written around 50-60 AD this was probably oral tradition...not to mention I think it would have gone into history if people were really coming back from the dead at the same time as the temple veil was rent...
Christ died around 33AD. James, Mark, Matthew, Luke, Acts, and 1 Peter are believed to have been written by AD 65--there is of course debate about the exact dates, James is placed in my reference as AD 45-50, 1 Peter at around AD 64.
So what makes you think this was probably oral tradition? If James, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and Peter were the same age as Christ, it is very likely some of them would have surely have survived to age 65--this is within the age range of a human lifetime. James was probably written within 12-17 years after Christ died. If some of the disciples were in their late teens or twenties, then all of the NT books could have been written within the lifetimes of those who actually witnessed Christ's ministry and the crucifixion.
I can't give you solid proof that the above people wrote the books attributed to them. It has been lost, just as much 2000 year old proof has been lost.
So, how do we know that men wrapped their feet in rags because they didn't have shoes at Valley Forge? We don't have photos, no one is still alive that can testify to that fact, and that's only around 230 years ago. Sure, people wrote about it, but how can we prove that the people who said they wrote about it are the actual people who wrote about it?
We can't know unless we count on written descriptions and accounts left by others. People who did not have the ability to take photos, and who we cannot call back to testify that "Yes, I did write this and it is true." There are books written about the event, but many of these were probably written years later.
Add nearly 1800 years, and the problem of verifying the facts increases. Ye old family legends that "great-great-great-great-grandpaw" served with Washington would be likely be lost. Little by little, more original documents are lost to human carelessness, accident, fire, whatever.
I have researched parts of my family back into the 1100's. How do I know the records are true? They might have lied. I can't ask the guy who recorded it, so it might have just been oral tradition.
Church registers in Pewsey England from the 1300's that show how my family's surname came about could be made up for some ulterior purpose. I can't interview the people who wrote the stuff. The births and marriages might have been recorded years later by people who never knew or met the actual people they wrote about.
If we are to know anything of the past, then we have to take those who recorded it at their words, particularly the further we are from the time of the even.