There is no evidence that extra terrestrial intelligenct life exists in the universe…nor is there sufficient evidence to establish that it doesn’t.

As far as I can tell, evidence, as yet, does not play a significant role in answering the question of whether or not their are aliens.

[end of logic]

I choose to believe that their are aliens.

In a similar way, evidence has nothing to say about miracle claims (with the exception of claims that are currently testable)…like creation in 6 days, and the flood of the entire earth.

[I choose to believe in some miracles, in and out of Judeo-Christian religion]

I think in each of these cases logic takes us to a neutral place. We then choose.

Brian

I found your post useful but I am not drawn to the miracles as the key to the issue. (Partly Jesus himself did not seem to emphasize the significance of the miracles.)

I find miracle claims to be a dead-end street in this type of discussion. If you know exactly what miracle claim is going to be made and can control the given situation for scientific testing you will be able to test whether or not the event occurs. In all other cases, as you suggest, there will be no way of verifying the claim.

So you’re forced to move to the question of probability. This is entirely unhelpful. For all but the simplest of these miracles, they are proposterously unlikely. Only problem is that they are claims of the miraculous.

It doesn’t matter that a virgin shouldn’t conceive and hasn’t conceived in any verifyable situation. The claim is that this was an entirely unique event that was the result of a super-natural cause.

So “likelyhood” is irrelevant.

AS I see it we would then be forced to consider the logic of miracles. Why and when would a miracle fit into a logical universe as we understand it? This is theological question. If theology is assumed to be bunk, there’s not much point in pursuing the question.

Brian

I think the Google translation you found stems from the fact that there is uncertainty regarding the ancient Hebrew name “Jair” in the Old Testament. It appears, that there are two different words transliterated as J-A-I-R in our English Bibles (see the following list: http://net.bible.org/search.php?search=jair&mode=&scope ) The more common of these derives from the root meaning “God enlightens” ( http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=02971 ) or possibly the Hebrew root for “forested” ( http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=03265 ) . However, there is one concordance I found (unfortunately not online) that does link the “Jair” in 1 Chr. 20:5 to the Hebrew root for “awake”. Perhaps this is where Price is deriving his claim? Nonetheless, I have not able to find any site online that interprets the Greek name “Jairus” as meaning “he awakens”. Let me know if you can find other support for the etymology of the Greek name.
I think a more important issue is whether this “allegorical name” argument is a legitimate one given the fleixibility that Price is willing to accept in what the names mean and what constitutes a clearly allegorical name. For instance, in the case of Zaccheus, all sources indicate that this name derives from the Hebrew “Zachariah” meaning “pure” (http://net.bible.org/strong.php?id=2195), not from the Aramaic “zakki”. So we would have to argue that Luke, writing to Greek-speaking Gentiles, is inventing the entire story of Zaccheus based on the fact that Zaccheus’ name sounds like a word meaning “to give alms” in a foreign language not spoken by Luke’s readers (and possibly not spoken by Luke himself!). Or take the case of Jairus. Technically, even if his name did mean “He will awaken” (which I think it clearly does not), doesn’t it strike you as odd that it is his daughter, and not he himself, whom Jesus raises? If this story has been invented as a pure allegory, shouldn’t it be Jairus who is raised? Or shouldn’t his daughter be the one named “Jairus” or the feminine equivalent?
There are 70 individuals given personal names in the Gospels and Acts. Given the flexibility that Price allows in what constitutes an “allegorical name”, I am surprised that he can only find four! After all, Jesus comes to the aid of Lazarus by raising him from the dead and Lazarus’ name mean “whom God helps”! And blind Bartimaeus, who would have been defiled by his blindness in a culture that viewed sickness as a punishment for sin, has a name which derives from the Aramaic word for “defiled or polluted”! Etc, etc… I think it is very eary to read any historical work (try it with the names of the U.S. presidents!) and to construct a huge number of these “allegorical names”, but again that says more about our creativity than about the allegorical content of the material.
Interestingly, there is a more recent analysis of the names of the New Testament which I think is a more rigorous to approach the proper names in the gospels. In “Jesus and the Eyewitnesses” Richard Baukham analyzes the frequency (i.e. how often they appear) of male and female proper names in the New Testament and compares them to what we know about the frequency of male and female proper names in Palestine and outside of Palestine from other sources (other ancient documents, inscriptions, tombs, etc…). He concludes that the distribution of proper names in the New Testament matches very well with what we know of Palestinian Jewish names but does not at all match the distribution of names in the Jewish diaspora outside of Palestine (Click on the link below and look at the data tables in Chapter 4)
http://books.google.com/books?id=ybOa_w8PCcQC&dq=jesus+and+the+eyewitnesses&printsec=frontcover&source=bn&hl=en&ei=Zqn1SqrBB5Gb8AartfDzCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CBUQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=proper%20names&f=false
I think this data makes it very difficult to claim as Price does that the names in the gospels were created centuries later due to some kind of allegorical significance.
I’m glad you’re reading the essay and would be happy to discuss other issues as they come up.
-Neil

I must admit that all I’m really feeling up for in this discussion is a la carte responses to specific points as I get to them. Hopefully that will be of some interest to you…

First, I’m sure you’re WAY more experienced (read, this is my first attempt) at biblical referencing, study, history, etc. than me, so bear with me as I dabble. I’ll try to address your direct challenges to Price’s arguments in the order I encounter them in reading through your essay. I’ll try not to skip or gloss over anything, but the honest answer to a lot of them may be “I have no prior knowledge, and have found no worthwhile references from which to comment on this.” And I’ll just get to them as I get to them, even if that’s very slowly.

Alright… So as far as I can see, after a bunch of initial setup and framing of the discussion, the first direct challenge you make is:

["Because Price doesn’t cite any of his sources for the etymology of these names, it’s unclear where his information comes from, but based on the sources listed above, it seems that declaring these narratives fictitious based on the names of the characters is unwarranted."]

First, I think it’s worth noting that there’s no requirement for the base literal translations of these names to show these definitions if the names/words were ever used in this way at a relevant time in history. I’m not going to look into any such arguments, but I think it’s legitimate to consider that, for instance, a term meaning “victor of the people” could easily have been used to reference a king, even if that was not the strict denotation.

Specific names in question:

Martha, Nicodemus: I’ll leave these alone. You conceded the one, and the other is close enough IMO.

Jairus: 1 Chr. 20:5 refers to Elhanan the son of Jair, and the Hebrew word used is יָעִיר (http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt25a20.htm) which, when plugged into a Hebrew-to-English translator tool, yields “wake” (http://translate.google.com/?hl=en#)

Zacchaeus: I an environment where Aramaic, Hebrew, Greek, are all playing off each other, I really don’t think it seems like too much of a stretch to relate “zakkay” from a language of origin to “zakki” in the language they characters in the stories are commonly speaking. That’s often how allegorical names are handled in today’s literature… a word sounds like or rhymes with another word or brings to mind a certain association, whatever the strict etymology.

Proof? Of course not! but this is about recognizing a pattern. If many examples are obvious, and many others fit somewhat, they all help to display the pattern. Just as Jesus reportedly spoke in parables, MANY of the stories in the new testament sound like simplistic parables with names and events and other factors all lining up just so to convey a lesson.

Hmmm… next section’s gonna take some more thought. Ta Ta for now.

Jesus of the Bible was a socialist? Surely you jest. Or do you simply mean the idealistic philosophy of social concern that masks the reality of Socialism as it exists politically?

Can you imagine Jesus calling on the pharisees to come enforce the ‘correct’ subjective analysis of what actions would be most merciful, and to punish those who didn’t comply?

Jesus was said to be friends with tax collectors and said to render unto Caesar what was Caesar’s, but surely both of these accounts should be interpreted as illustrations of how forgiving he was; he was EVEN a friend to tax collectors; he was trying to draw a contrast between the moral code he was espousing and the coercive government of man.

I’m just having fun, and don’t think for a second you’re speaking of Socialism with a capital “S”, but I just find it truly remarkable that “socialist” and “pacifist” could ever be lumped into one character description. If all Socialists ever did was publish educational pamphlets on how we might treat each other better, I’m sure I’d quite like them.