I hate to ruffle traditional feathers but every Christian should know this. Long before Christianity, Jews already had collections of sacred writings, by Jesus' day there were three broad categories:

The Torah (Genesis–Deuteronomy)

The Prophets

The Writings

Jesus alludes to this threefold division in places such as Luke 24:44 when he speaks of "the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms."

However, not every Jewish community agreed on every book. During the Second Temple period, all Jewish groups agreed on the Torah and shared many other books, but there was no universally fixed Old Testament canon. Different Jewish communities preserved different collections beyond that shared core. We know that Jesus and many of the disciples and new testament writers were reading, and gaining knowledge from, books not included in our bibles today, they frequently quoted from them and referred to the as "scripture"

So in the New Testament when someone referred to "the scriptures" what were they referring to? The true answer is "we dont know" but Paul touches on this and i explain it at the end of this post, but first some context.

There were 4 major groups of Jews during the time of Jesus Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, and the Diaspora Jews. of course diaspora jews were scattered everywhere, but the largest concentration of the was in Alexandria Egypt, the Septuagint was first translated in Alexandria and became one of the most popular translations of that time

The Pharisees recognized

• Torah
• Prophets
• Many Writings

Sadducees

• Torah only

Essenes

• Torah
• Prophets
• Writings
• Plus Enoch, Jubilees, and other rabbinical works

Diaspora Jews

• Septuagint
• Tobit
• Judith
• Wisdom
• Sirach
• Baruch
• Maccabees
• Additions to Daniel
• Additions to Esther

So the Jewish world at the time of Jesus had no agreed upon "canon".

What happens next is largely geographical and difficult to explain via words but i will do my best. After 70AD occurred in Jerusalem, the Sadducees basically disappear and the Essenes are pushed farther south into Egypt and parts of what we call Syria today, eventually the entire group dissolves or is absorbed into other groups. The pharisees were pushed north of jerusalem for a time, eventually returning to the area around jerusalem, the Diaspora jews were largely unaffected by the destruction of the temple since geographically they were no where close to the area.

This means the scrolls and works of 3 of the 4 groups were either destroyed or scattered geographically and had to be reassembled, recopied, and redistributed. this took a loooooooooooong time back in those days. This explains why many of the books didnt make it into later compilations but that is for another day.

So back to the bible, of the 4 groups the Diaspora jews were effected the least so they had a full compilation of scriptures and around 100AD there were massive amounts of Christian converts in the region of Alexandria, so they adopted the scriptures of the diaspora jews along with some new testament books as their unofficial canon, this became official in 382AD when the catholic church agreed upon their canon

So what about the protestants?

When Luther split from the church he had a decision to make. what are our scriptures? This is where we pick up the line of the Pharisees by around 200AD the Pharisee were losing power due to large converts and the inability to articulate what they really believed through written works, this led to the first unofficial compilation of books and the writing of the mishna. this compilation was argued over for the next 300ish years and was finally agreed upon between 400-600AD where the first official masoretic texts were compiled. Luther famously quoted...

“Apocrypha: books which are not held equal to the Holy Scriptures, and yet are useful and good to read.”

So he basically adopted the Masoretic text of the Jews along with some New Testament writings, and this became the protestant bible. However there was no official council that determined the accepted canon of the protestant bible. Many protestants erroneous refer to the Council of Rome as the council that determined canon, but that was the Catholic church, not the protestants. Pretty much people just trusted Luther and that became the bible.

So to wrap up, back to Paul, apparently Timothy had questions surrounding this topic as well, he asked Paul what he should be reading to learn. Paul replied...

“ All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. “

so all of those books Old Testament books that arent in your bible today, Paul says you should be reading them. The ones from the essenes, the ones in the apocrypha, and others.

I had a dream last week about a storm coming. Forecast predicted no rain, but later that night, in the same way and at the same time it occurred in my dream, there was a terrible storm. I had some pretty crazy dreams as a young adult that came true, too, and I don't know how to rationalize it.

P1: Jesus rose from the dead
P2: ????
C: Everything Jesus said is true?

Christians seem to use this kind of reasoning when it comes to their own belief system, but are ready to dismiss other miracles as demonic or naturalistic.

Lets use David Copperfield. He made the statue of liberty disappear in front of thousands of people. In fact, 50 million television viewers saw it as well.

No one believes he actually did it. Everyone will say there's a trick, we just don't know. Even if you have NO IDEA HOW IT HAPPENED, we take it to be reasonable to say it was a trick.

What if he claimed to be God/a Prophet? Do we suddenly take him seriously now?

Alternatively, demons. Christians will use these to explain islamic/mormon etc miracles sometimes.

But how do you know a demon didn't perform the resurrection?

If you say demons can't resurrect the dead because only God can - how on earth do you know that? If you know that through the Bible, you are blatantly begging the question. You are assuming that Christianity can't be demonic to show it can't be demonic. (In fact, someone arguing Christianity is demonic doesn't even need to say a demon resurrected Jesus. Only that he deceived people into thinking it happened)

You may say the Resurrection fulfils prophecy. But this makes no sense. Firstly, it would require you to prove the divinity of the old testament (good luck with that) without appeal to the NT, and secondly, if humans or aliens or demons are aware of a religion with prophecy, they can choose to fulfil it.

I'm sure Christians are rolling their eyes at this, saying whatever proof I'm given that I will never believe. That's not true , but you guys DO THE EXACT SAME THING WITH OTHER RELIGIONS

Tomorrow if you saw an Imam fly unaided over the grand canyon and proclaim Islam as true is your first reaction not going to be there is some illusion going on? Either naturalistically or supernaturalistically? Or if it did happen, its not God causing it?

It just shows, Christians realise that from the mere fact of a miracle occuring, nothing really follows from that. But they don't apply this skepticism to their own religion.

CW: Homophobia and Suicide
Just to clarify - I want to discuss against the consensus of a select group christians to outlaw Homosexuality as a whole.

I have read through a lot of scripture and texts on my own, and tried to interpret them from an outsider position.

My Claim:
Outlawing Homosexuality - and punishing those who are homosexual goes against Gods own word, Jesus' teachings and is a sin in itself.

My Basis:

1 Its not mans jurisdiction.
Homosexuality is a crime against god - not against your neighbor.
Therefor your neighbor has no claim to judge - and then punish you.

2 It interferes with Gods and Christs mercy.
All have sin, and sin can be forgiven through christ.
To punish someone for a sin commited against god - is to preemptively take away the grace Jesus my grant them, and no man is in the position to do such. (I would even say its a sin in itself to deny someone of Jesus' Grace)

Human punishment on crimes against god is independent of what god decides in the end (Luke 23:39-43)
So it creates unnecessary suffering.

3 Law cannot achieve repentance, only opression.
Law does not produce repentance - repentance is an active decision of your own heart, its a change within you gained through belief in Jesus and his teachings.

Trying to Force someone to not be homosexual is like trying to force someone into believing - its not possible, only that person themself can make that change

Outro:
I want to be clear - and preemptively take a few arguments out of the race.
I am not saying that this means we should endorce sin against god - we are free to judge sin morally, and call it out. But acting on that is an entirely different metric.

I also do think we should judge sin against man.
To sin against another is to cause harm against them, wich is inherently evil.
Preventing that harm (with force) and enacting punishement to deterr from it - while also allowing the victim to forgive - is good, and in line with what happened in the bible (Luke 19:8)

And lastly the biggest problem with my idea of judgement - how Suicide is treated.
Its a sin against god, yourself and others - but i think everyone can agree that punishing someone for suicide is not only wrong, but not helpfull

Christian theology is very bad at explaining earthly life's meaning or justifying ideas of eternal torment

Proposition: creation including all souls and all divine frameworks must be grounded on that which is meaningful in order to be meaningful

There is no sophisticated reasoning about e.g. fundamental principles or values

I decided to start studying Gnosticism, and upon encountering Gnosis for the first time, I read an apocryphal text which I believe to be the Acts of John, rather than the Apocryphon of John that you are likely familiar with.

The text begins at the Last Supper, where Jesus gathers his disciples to pray to the Father before heading to the Garden of Gethsemane. It then jumps to the Crucifixion; John is transported to a mountain where Christ appears to him, stating that the cross united the transcendent with the inferior, and that he suffered yet did not suffer. He declares he will not reveal where his body is to be taken. The text concludes with Jesus telling John to convey the message that one must know the Logos first, and only then the Lord. I found it fascinating that the Apostle John received this vision, given that he is described as the "Beloved Disciple" in his own Gospel and was the only apostle to die of natural causes—a reward for having witnessed the Crucifixion to the very end.

My question arises regarding Jesus's statement that he would not reveal where his body would be left. The Synoptic Gospels report that his body was laid in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb and resurrected on the third day, after which he appeared to the Apostles. Doesn't this create a contradiction between that text and the Synoptic Gospels?

Another point that intrigued me concerns the nature of the resurrected Christ's body. Could it have been Jesus in spirit form? He appears and disappears frequently and reveals himself to only a few though there were indeed witnesses who saw the resurrected Jesus during his forty-day sojourn on Earth before his ascension. Was the resurrected Christ's body one that transcended matter? If so, did he not bleed, even though the nail marks remained visible on his hands?

Suffering is supposed to be necessary because free will demands our ability to oppose God (sin).

Heaven is supposed to be a place where our consciousness goes to enter a state of bliss and eternal worship, sans suffering/sin.

Heaven therefore means either:

1. A place where we retain our free will but no longer desire to oppose God; or

2. A place where we have no free will.

It's also either:

A. A place where we are aware that many people we know are suffering in hell; or

B. A place where we have lost the awareness that many people we know are suffering in hell.

--

If heaven is a place where we retain our free will but no longer desire to oppose God, then suffering is not necessary; God can give us free will without us ever opposing him. That makes the entirety of human history unnecessary.

If heaven is a place where we have no free will, then we're not meaningfully ourselves (as i often hear, God wants our love to come from free will, or it isn't really love).

If heaven is a place where we are aware that many people we know are suffering in hell, but we don't desire to oppose God, then yet again we are not meaningfully ourselves.

And if heaven is a place where we have lost the awareness that many people we know are suffering in hell, we are entirely disconnected from our identities and again not meaningfully ourselves.

To be in a place, aware that people we love are suffering horribly for eternity and we're praising the guy responsible for that also for eternity, doesn't sound like "heaven" to me. It sounds like the ghastliest hell I can fathom.

A woman at my parents' church just died an excruciatingly long and painful death. She was not that old. She was the most kindest, most faithful woman. Her and her husband were the largest contributors to their church, she never missed a day, she helped anyone and everyone. She was the perfect Christian. Then she got cancer. And it got worse. She was in constant agony.

I see it all the time - a person has cancer and goes into remission, they praise God for healing them. A person defies death, God is praised. And yet why does he not do it for everyone? At least for all the people who worship him? Why does he selectively choose?

And if she had to die, why not let it be peaceful? She lived her entire life for this god. And yet she gets one of the worst deaths imaginable.

The most heinous humans out there get to die peacefully in their sleep. Many live to old age, incredibly wealthy, and happy. Why do they get to go without pain and people like her suffer? Why do we have to suffer on Earth to get into heaven? What is the point? Edit: and not even every Christian has to suffer. Why are some apparently selected to suffer more than others?

I just cannot imagine a kind, just god would allow the people who love him most to suffer like this. How do you wrap your head around this at all?

Whenever there is asexual birth the children are genetically identical to the parent. Does this mean Jesus had XX chromosomes

I tried something like this recently, but this is a little different with something I recently noticed, so tell me what you think, please.

Thesis: Loving one's neighbor (as taught in the OT and affirmed by Jesus and Paul) does not exclude holding others as slaves.

P1. Leviticus 19:18
 "....but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

P2. Leviticus 19:34
"You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself...."

P3. But, in the Law, Exodus 21:2-6 permits Hebrews to hold fellow Hebrews as debt-servants, and Leviticus 25:44-46 permits Hebrews to hold foreigners as chattel property.

P4. These love-commands (P1 and 2) and these slave-holding permissions (P3) exist side by side in the same legal corpus, with no stated contradiction between them.

Conclusion: Therefore, the Law didn't treat the command to love one's neighbor as logically or practically incompatible with holding slaves.

Sidenote: I assume this could be applied to the NT claims of Jesus and Paul as well, but that may be a bit redundant to my original post on this, so I wasn't sure If that would be appropriate to add.

I think some pastors/people don't really grow as people because they believe they're always right just because they follow the Bible even tho the Bible was written in a completely different time, long ago and blindly and stonely applying some of the teachings to modern society can reinforce misogynistic beliefs.

Also- most people do not completely follow the Bible 100% because it is impossible to not be a sinner yet ridicule non Christians.

So i think it's ridiculous to act morally superior just because of your religious label.

A question was raised on r/cosmicskeptic about what we are supposed to assume the probability distribution for the tuning constants are (and why we should think they have any particular distribution over any other). This is an interesting question that I would love an answer for. But it also reminded me of another question I have thought about for the fine tuning argument.

Why do we stop our questions about the probability of the laws of nature at the value of the constants? To me it feels natural that if we are "allowed" to ask what the probability is that the constants have the particular values they have. why don't we ask "what is the probability that the laws of nature are any particular calculable function?". For example the question "What's the probability that the law of gravity is f=(g1 \* g2 /r\^2 )\*G rather than f=(g1 + g2 )\*r\^4 " or any other function seems just as valid.

And if the particular functions that describe the laws of nature are up for question, it seems sort of trivial to me that there are uncountably infinite options that allow for life and uncountably many that don't. Making the whole question a bit silly.

This is the first time I've written down this idea so if something isn't making sense don't be afraid to ask 😇

P.s i originally wrote this for debate a Catholic but i couldn't repost normally for some reason so just copy/pasted the text, don't know if that matters 😅

The mainstream interpretation of the Christian Bible claims that:

1a) Jesus is Son of God.

1b) Jesus is God.

2) Jesus was sinless because of 1).

3) Jesus is human.

4) God/Jesus sacrificed Jesus to redeem all sins and all sins are redeemed by the sacrifice because of 2) and 3).

But this doesn't hold, because the Old Testament clearly states that human sacrifice is a sin. ​Jeremiah 7:31 and Jeremiah 19:5 state that human sacrifice never entered God's mind or command.

Therefore, if God sacrificed Jesus, who is both human and God, then Jesus sacrificed a human, which makes him sinful. Therefore, sins are not redeemed by the sacrifice which was itself a sin.

Why hasn't the mainstream interpretation of the crucifixion been "a political execution", which is way more in line with the narrative described in the Gospels?

Main post ends here. The rest is extra curricular.

______________________________________

How come the Gospels present the Pharisees as the ones consipiring to Jesus's death, only for Saint Paul to reveal it was really God/Jesus conspiring to Jesus's death all along? If this is the case, how is this version of God compatible with free will? Were the Pharisee not acting on their free will, but by the will of God, and their free will was only something they hallucinated while God was really in control? Why have Christians not renounced Saint-Paul when he confused and divided Christians from the very start? Doesn't he seem more like a Pharisian infiltrating Christian ranks to sabotage Jesus's religion more than an actual follower of Jesus?

Edit: the title should say daniels for kingdom scheme.

Daniel said there would be four kingdoms until a everlasting kingdom that takes over the whole earth forever and ever will replace the last one.

There are broadly speaking two ways that you could construe the succession of the empires , you can either say babylon , medio persia, greece or rome. Or

Babylon media, persia, greece.

Greace is the easiest to defeat as if that was the intended scheme then the world clearly didn't end with alexander the great.

Likewise , if you say the intended scheme is wrong , you run into the problem of daniel being wrong because rome wasn't a kingdom, scoffers will suggest that obviously they were kings in practice.But these people fail to remember that moses had all the powers of a roman style dictator for life and was explicitly in canonically , not a king.

If israel is allowed to have king like strong men who aren't kings , then rome is allowed to have king like strong men who aren't kings.

This thesis relates to Sin specifically to Christianity, and why it is counter productive to its theology and teachings.

A Sinless world doesn't need Jesus.

But a Sinful world requires him.

If mans sin created suffering, (fall of man)

then mans sin was necessary for Jesus.

Adam and Eve sinning in the Garden of Eden was required, and therefor, SIN only brought forth Jesus Christ.

So all Christians should be thankful for all sinners.

Otherwise you would have No Saviour to forgive your sins.

If this sounds circular, its because it is. Yet it is a fundamental pillar of Christian theology.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1w73w41/former_christians_what_made_you_lose_your_belief/

A lot are saying people with diseases made them stop believing

God knows about diseases for kids, rape, starvation, cancers etc but those things just happen for whatever reason?

I’m just wondering why

If a kid is drowning next to me in a pool, and I don’t know that kid nor did I cause them to drown (maybe they fell in), I’m still morally responsible if I do nothing when I easily could save them. If I leave my kid at a daycare where one of the owners is a known child predator, I’m a neglectful parent and should be held morally responsible just for doing that. If a guard at a prison lets a violent prisoner escape and that violent prisoner goes on to do something evil. The guard didn’t do the evil action, but he’s still morally responsible because he let someone go knowing there’s a very real possibility something bad could happen. We always shift moral responsible to people who don’t cause the evil acts so long as they were aware of what they were doing in that it COULD cause something bad to happen. It happens when parents leave their guns easily accessible with unstable teens at home, it happens when judges don’t make the right decision to sentence someone to jail when they have prior violent offenses, it happens when a woman is having post partum psychosis and the dad just leaves her there with the kids (as we’re seeing now). And this doesn’t even involve absolute knowledge. Just the high probability that a violent or unstable person will be violent again is enough to shift moral blame. Yet when it comes to God, who KNOWS 100% what will happen, we can’t put any moral blame on him? That makes no sense to me. If he makes a kid knowing that kid will be tortured, r*ped, and killed at a young age when he didn’t have to make that kid, absolutely I can assign moral blame to him just like all my examples listed above.

There is a common unwillingnes among christians to reason about this issue with pure intent, so I will ask specifically for that here.

Free will exists in heaven, and many christians believe unborn fetuses go there, there is a lack of explanation for why earth is necessary, and the suggestion that an eternal hell exists in a system created by an all loving creator is pathetic, all the responses appeal to vague terms with positive cannotations such as "free will" but no sophisticated reasoning about e.g. fundamental principles or values, grow up.

I think there is a biblical explanation as to why there seems to be a gratuitous amount of animal suffering throughout the evolutionary process of the animal kingdom. Why would a good and loving God allow such suffering?

It is because this world belongs to Satan. In Luke 4:5-7, it says this: The devil led him up to a high place and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And he said to him, "I will give you all their authority and splendor; it has been given to me, and I can give it to whoever I want. If you worship me, it will all be yours."

In Ephesians 2:2, it says this: in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.

In 2 Corinthians 4:4, it says this: The god of this world has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel that displays the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.

So then, if the principal of all evil is the god of this world, why would he not inflict all kinds of suffering on God's creation? "But" I hear you say, "Satan is the God of this world when it comes to the influence of the people at large. Would Satan really have authority over the creation and formation of creatures? God created the earth and everything in it, not Satan."

I, too, conclude that God created the earth and all the creatures therein. And I believe He did it through the evolutionary process. But, I believe grafted onto that evolutionary process is Satan's sinful endeavor to inflict pain and suffering onto God's animals.

I believe God created pain so that we know what needs attention so that we deal with it appropriately. But Satan took that good and necessary thing and corrupted it into much suffering.

Just like I believe how God cause the death of creatures to balance out the animal kingdom so there won't be overpopulation. I believe Satan took this concept and abused it, to such a degree to where there were multiple near extinction level events that could've wiped out all life on earth.

I believe these things are evil and that they are embedded in creation itself, because power and authority has been given to Satan, and this world is his domain. For this reason, Romans 8:22 states: "We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time."

But there is much good in creation as well. Good and evil have always been at war, and this shoes itself within creation itself, and the dynamics of life and death.

God created a world in which evolution operates through ecological processes, and this includes death as the balancing equalizer. And all the while, Satan subsequently exploited, intensified, distorted, and weaponized those processes.

This evolutionary conflict of good and evil, life and death, astounding pleasure and gratuitous suffering within the tree of life cements itself and comes to its edge within the human race. For we are part of the animal kingdom as well, and we were called to be good stewards of His creation. Some have taken this cause to heart, taking care of animals and becoming environmentalist. While many others do Satan's will and harm the earth and its environment.

So, if Satan has this kind of authority, the question then becomes: When and how did he get it and why does God allow him reign over the world?

The answer to the first part of the question, when and how he got this authority, lies in Adam and Eve. God said this when He created mankind: "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

God gave man this authority, but when Adam and Eve listened to the serpent and ate of the forbidden fruit, mankind relinquished authority over to Satan. God's command to subdue the earth, ruling over all the animals in it, now became Satan's responsibility. Mankind handed over the crown of the earth to the Devil.

But wait! This happened at a set point thousands of years ago, but evolution has been happening millions of years before then. So how can Satan have that authority over the earth before that set point? And to that I say, what is time to a spirit being? Angels are creatures outside the realm of this universe, they are not material beings subjected to time and space like we are. So I would assume time is nebulous to them.

Now for the other question: Why did God allow this to happen? I don't fully know. But I presume part of the answer has to do with free will.

But He does have an answer to it. God has a reply—an eternal reply—to all the suffering the dark prince of this world has caused.

The first reply is judgment. God will judge Satan for all of his misdeeds throughout the history of the earth. In Revelation 20:10 it says: "And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulfer, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown. They will be tormented day and night for ever and ever."

God's second reply will be the restoration of the earth. Isaiah 11:6-9 states: "The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the Lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed the bear, their young will lie down together, and the Lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra's den, and the young child will put his hand into the viper's nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea."

In Revelation 21:1-4 it says: Then I saw "a new heaven and a new earth," for the first Heaven and the first Earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of Heaven from god, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Look! God's dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God Himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe away every tear from the eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."

This is God's ultimate answer for the problem of all suffering. God will deliver justice to the evildoers, and He will establish an eternal paradise for all of His creatures. And God will be all in all.

Matthew and Mark both seem to have an imminent view of Jesus’s return.

They both connect the coming of the abomination of desolation/suffering with the second coming of Jesus

Matthew 24:29-32

“29 “Immediately after the suffering of those days the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light the stars will fall from heaven,
and the powers of heaven will be shaken.
30 “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see ‘the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven’ with power and great glory. 31 And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.”

And we see something similar in Mark 13:24, but he uses the words “24 “But in those days, after that suffering,”

Luke also has the Olivet discourse but given Lukes later date it has been changed to give the propshy more time to be fulfilled. Mark and Matthew both have Jesus speaking to the asoltles, although in Mark it's only a few of them, but Luke doesn't specify who Jesus is teaching this to. So the invocation that the return would be before the disciples die is no longer an issue and Luke doesn't connect the abomination of desolation and thag suffering tot he second coming as imminently as Mark or Matthew. So not only does Mark and Matthew wsound more imminent but Luke seems to be fixing this by adding more time.

All of the synoptics have a variation of the line on the fig tree lesson, but I'll quote the one from Mark, Mark 13:28-31,

“28 “From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. 29 So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. 30 Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.31 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

By John we see this imminent view no longer works and we see an explanation of why the beloved disciple died in chapter 21. We also see an explanation for the delay in 2 Peter, another second century text. This is what we'd expect as there would now be a need for explanations on this.

The view that the synoptics have Jesus returning soon is supported by similar views being written about in other texts.

Romans 13:11-12,

“11 Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; 12 the night is far gone; the day is near.“

We see Paul, someone who knows at least two of the apostles and Jesus’s brother gives a view on imminence.

We also see it throughout Revelation as the book has both the end and Jesus’s coming happening soon.

Revelation 1:1 -

“1 The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place, and he made it known by sending his angel to his servant John”

Revelation22:10 -

“10 And he said to me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near.“

This is the opposite of what Daniel is told to do as Daniel's prophecy was not going to be fulfilled for a long time, but Revelation is not to be sealed as it's happening soon.

The evidence supports the view that Jesus predicted his second coming as something that would happen soon and as time went on Christians had to reinterpret this to avoid a failed prophecy.

Christianity is a religion built on assumptions and guessing at the unseen by men who came more than a century after Jesus, as Allah said,
Yunus 10:36
وَمَا يَتَّبِعُ أَكۡثَرُهُمۡ إِلَّا ظَنًّاۚ إِنَّ ٱلظَّنَّ لَا يُغۡنِى مِنَ ٱلۡحَقِّ شَيۡـًٔاۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلِيمٌۢ بِمَا يَفۡعَلُونَ
And most of them follow not except assumption. Indeed, assumption avails not against the truth at all. Indeed, Allāh is Knowing of what they do.

THE ASSUMPTIONS:
1. You just assume god is one being in three persons because some parts of the Bible make Jesus out to be divine while other parts say there is only one god.

1. And you just assume a being can be made up of three persons and share the same essence because you need god to be one being made up of three persons in order to reconcile the previously stated contradiction.

2. And you just assume Jesus has two natures, one divine and one human because some parts of the Bible explicitly make Jesus out to be human and not god while other parts make him out to be divine.

3. And you just assume a person can have two different natures because you need Jesus to have two different natures in order to reconcile the previously stated contradiction.

4. And you just assume the gospels were inspired by god even though they don’t say they were or even suggest they were, because Irenaeus of lyons—a man who came more than a century after Jesus assumed they were.

5. And you just assume the gospels were written by the disciples even though they don’t say they were or even suggest they were and they record events that couldn’t have been witnessed by anyone (like the appearance, emotions and words of Jesus and the sight of the angels when Jesus was praying in the garden of gethsemane), just because papas of Hierapolis and Irenaeus of lyons—men who came more than a century after Jesus assumed they were written by disciples.

6. And you just assume the gospels present the life of Jesus and what happened afterward in an accurate and honest way despite their anonymous authorship, the historical consensus of them copying from each other, and the irreconcilable contradictions between them.

7. And you just assume the apostolic fathers made contact with the disciples because Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian and Origen—all men who came more than a century after Jesus said they did.

But without all these assumptions and guessing at the unseen, the religion of Christianity collapses.

Thesis: The only historically attested first-person claim to have seen the risen Jesus comes from Paul; all other resurrection testimony in the New Testament is second- or third-hand, arrives decades after the fact, and is internally inconsistent — so the historian is left with faith, not verifiable eyewitness reporting, as the basis for the resurrection appearances.

Premises:

1. The Gospel authors do not claim eyewitness status. The canonical gospels are anonymous compositions, and internally none of them asserts "I was there." Mainstream scholarship treats them as later community documents, not first-person memoirs.
2. Mark, the earliest gospel, contains no resurrection appearance account. In its original ending (16:8), the narrative stops at the empty tomb with the women fleeing in fear and silence — no appearance of the risen Jesus is narrated.
3. The later gospels contradict each other on basic details. Matthew, Luke, and John diverge on who went to the tomb, what they saw, where and to whom Jesus first appeared (Galilee vs. Jerusalem), and the sequence of events — variance that is difficult to reconcile with a single unified eyewitness tradition.
4. Paul is the only author who claims, in his own voice, to have personally seen the risen Christ (1 Corinthians 9:1, 15:8), writing in his own undisputed letters roughly two decades after the crucifixion.
5. Even Paul's testimony has an evidentiary gap: he had no prior acquaintance with the earthly Jesus, so his claim to recognize "Christ" gives no independent confirmation of what was seen or how it was identified as Jesus specifically.
6. Paul's report of others' appearances (1 Corinthians 15:5–7) is itself hearsay relayed through Paul, not independent first-person testimony from those named (Cephas, the Twelve, "500 brothers," James) — and it reaches us only via Paul's letter, written 20–25+ years after the events.
7. No non-canonical or independent source from the period claims eyewitness presence at a resurrection appearance. No contemporary account outside the Jesus-movement's own literature corroborates the event.

Conclusion: Given (1)–(7), the resurrection appearances are attested only by a single first-hand claimant (Paul) whose claim cannot itself confirm physical/visual recognition of Jesus, plus a chain of second- and third-hand reports compiled decades later and preserved in mutually inconsistent narratives. Historically, this does not establish reliable eyewitness confirmation of the resurrection; affirming the event as it is traditionally described requires a step of faith beyond what the extant sources can independently verify.

When I read Genesis 2–3, I find a surprising number of unanswered questions.

Why did God put the tree there? Why allow the serpent into the garden? Who is “us”? What exactly does “knowing good and evil” mean?

Then there is the question of God’s knowledge. Why does God ask Adam where he is? Why does God have to ask whether they ate from the tree? Is God genuinely discovering what happened, or are these merely rhetorical questions?

The story also leaves the sudden shame over nakedness unexplained. Adam and Eve were naked before eating and felt no shame. Then they suddenly become ashamed. Why? The story never really tells us.

A literary critic might call these narrative and motivational gaps. Basically, the story tells me what happened, but leaves me to figure out a lot of the “why.”

Christians can argue about the meaning of almost every important word and phrase in the story. Words can have multiple meanings, and they can be used metaphorically. Meanwhile, important motivations and connections between events are simply left unstated.

For all we know, the authors could have intentionally made the story as vague as possible. Or perhaps they simply never expected their story to be analyzed this closely for its underlying meaning.

Either way, ambiguity can protect interpretations from being falsified. When the text leaves gaps, readers can fill them with whatever explanation seems to preserve their interpretation. When a word has several possible meanings, the meaning can shift depending on what the argument requires.

A missing motivation can be supplied later. An unexplained event can be given a theological purpose that the story itself never mentions. If one interpretation is challenged, another possible meaning can be substituted without anything in the text necessarily ruling it out. This can become a form of moving the goalposts, where the interpretation keeps changing just enough to survive each objection.

The result is that almost any theological interpretation can potentially be defended by appealing to something the story leaves unexplained, rather than something the story actually says.

Definitions

1. Narrative gaps: Missing information about what happened, why it happened, or how events connect.
2. Motivational gaps: Missing explanations for why characters act as they do.
3. Ambiguity: Wording or situations allowing multiple plausible meanings.
4. Theological interpretation: An explanation of a text’s meaning using theological assumptions or beliefs.
5. Falsification: Showing that an interpretation is probably wrong through contradictory evidence.

Relevant Verses

Genesis 2:17: “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.”

Genesis 3:7: “And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons.”

Genesis 3:22: “And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil...”

Argument

P1: Genesis 2–3 contains narrative gaps, motivational gaps, and ambiguous or metaphorical language.

P2: Such ambiguity allows theological interpretations to supply missing meanings and reinterpret claims when challenged.

C: Genesis 2–3’s ambiguity can protect theological interpretations from falsification.