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Carbon Dating Shows Koran May Predate Muhammad
HughPickens.com writes: Brian Booker writes at Digital Journal that carbon dating suggests the Koran, or at least portions of it, may actually be older than the prophet Muhammad himself, a finding that if confirmed could rewrite early Islamic history and shed doubt on the "heavenly" origins of the holy text. Scholars believe that a copy of the Koran held by the Birmingham Library was actually written sometime between 568 AD and 645, while the Prophet Mohammad was believed to have been born in 570 AD and to have died in 632 AD. It should be noted, however, that the dating was only conducted on the parchment, rather than the ink, so it is possible that the Koran was simply written on old paper. Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Koran from heaven, as he claimed during his lifetime, but instead collected texts and scripts that fit his political agenda. "This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran's genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda, rather than Muhammad receiving a revelation from heaven," says Keith Small, from the University of Oxford's Bodleian Library. "'It destabilises, to put it mildly, the idea that we can know anything with certainty about how the Koran emerged," says Historian Tom Holland. "and that in turn has implications for the history of Muhammad and the Companions."
Update: 09/01 17:32 GMT by S : There was a typo in the dates used by the original linked article — in the press release from the University of Birmingham, the date range given for the parchment is between 568 AD and 645 AD, which overlaps more closely with Muhammad's lifetime. The dates and link have been fixed now in the summary. Historians say this new information highlights the uncertainty surrounding the emergence of such religious texts, rather than being a major upheaval.
Ooops.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Death threats.
"Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Quran from heaven, as he claimed during his lifetime..."
My brain died a little bit just from reading that.
Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Quran from heaven...
No, really?
Science debunks religion once again.
I am sure that this time those religious folks will come around...
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
ok first off, i am not islamist, fuck muhammed and fuck allah.
however, a. carbon dating is not that precise. as much as koran and muhammed is bullshit, this report is also bullshit. the shit could have been written in old paper, or simply the carbon dating maybe was not that precise.
we all know all the prophets including mohammed and jesus and david, ate some schrooms and climbed on the mountain and thought they were downloading some shit from god, but not true.
be modern, and dont believe in all this bullshit kids.
thank you
That 568 date is made up just to insult Islam. Nice work on the fact checking, slashdice.
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2015/07/quran-manuscript-22-07-15.aspx
Religion fiiiiiiight!!!!
"545 AD and 568"
1) This was a typo. It was between 568 and 645 AD.
Here's the original article:
http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/ne...
2) They dated the paper, not the ink. It was common to scrape and reuse paper. It also only dates the time the plant or animal died.
"545 AD and 568"
Can carbon dating be that precise?
The Daily Mail link has "Carbon dating found the pages were produced between 568AD and 654AD" which seems like a more reasonable range.
Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Quran from heaven, as he claimed during his lifetime
So are there actual scholars, I mean people who put facts before belief, who DO believe the divine inspiration story?
Are are those "scholars" merely religious functionaries whose "scholarship" is really just a form of theology?
Chop off Hands.
Kill atheists.
Overtax Jews and Christians, then kill them.
Kill Buddhists.
Kill Hinduists.
All the "relgion of peace".
Yeah, is not like chirstians have ever killed anybody, right?. All of this religion poiting to other religions is beyond stupid, they are all ways to control people. There are over 5000 gods being prayed on earth, but yours is the only real one... give me a break.
Hope you don't get shot or blown up by followers of the "religion of peace" for your work.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Go ahead, show me that a plurality of Christians believed that all non-believers should be put to death.
So it's more like the Bible, then?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
People believe what they want to believe – this will make no difference. While the carbon dating is somewhat ambiguous (and gives more than enough wiggle room for believers), this will similarly give those who don’t believe in Islam, the complete certainty this completely disproves Islam without any further consideration.
I myself do not believe in Sky-Faeries, and many here will rush to blame Religion for most of mankind’s woes (or perhaps more specifically Islam more than most) but the real problem is adherence to any ideological Dogma and cherry picking or distorting facts to fit your Dogma.
Don’t be expect to win any friends or converts by trying to push this down Islam throat as proof Mohammad is not divine. It will be seen as a Zionist/Christian/American plot to deceive the faithful.
Letter To Iran
Yeh...that's never happened in other religions, right Noah...er, i mean Ziusudra.
Most all religions are adapted from the beliefs that came before them, some more so than others. Christianity took parts of pretty much every religion around and cobbled itself together... then voted on which dogma it should use as a public face; its no real surprise that Islam did as well.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Pretty sure Muslims worldwide will claim these findings are offensive and disrespectful to Islam and as such we will put them aside and pretend they don't exist. Which is pretty much the modus operandi from the West for anything that might offend Muslims.
Chop off Hands.
Kill atheists.
Overtax Jews and Christians, then kill them.
Kill Buddhists.
Kill Hinduists.
All the "relgion of peace".
It seems the Media have done their job and you are appropriately terrified of the Other.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Where did the GP claim some other religion was better? What does the truthfulness of any religion have to do with the points GP made?
Muhammad did not receive the Quran from heaven... but instead collected texts and scripts that fit his political agenda.
Muslims will counter this claim by stating Muhammad was an illiterate, but that's probably not the case.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
So they set up double-blind studies where half the group is given a placebo prayer and the other half is given a real prayer?
Historically, it's very likely that Christianity has caused the most harm to human beings and humanity as a whole thus far.
If you think about the dark ages, witch hunts, torture during the inquisition, crusades, sanctions against unbelievers, such as expulsions and acquisitions of their assets, forced conversions, colonization, abuse and culture shock of natives...
Most of this bad Karma was accumulated in the early to late middle ages, until the age of enlightenment finally put a stop to most of it. Of course today you still have popes condemning contraceptives, abortion and other modern solutions to age old problems, which is still creating a considerable amount of hurt.
Then of course you also also have fundamentalist christians, such as the "God Hates Fags" nutjobs, dishing out a sizeable portion of distress to some people, even today.
I think Islam still has some catching up to do if it wants to reach christianity's accumulated level of harm. But I have to admit that current Islamists are trying pretty hard at the moment. If they go on like this, they might catch up in only a century or two.
To sum up: Book of hateful, evil, misogynistic bullshit found to have been copied from an earlier draft of hateful, evil, misogynistic bullshit.
I think the fact that the pages of the Koran do not glow with unearthly swirling lights or set fire to the hands of un-believers is a better indicator it did not come from heaven.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I wonder how many people will die over this revelation?
I'm impressed at how few comments are mod'ed up for this one.
I haven't commented in a long time, but the reporting on this subject is heavily biased to support the pre-determined conclusion that the manuscript predates Mohammed (pbuh). The Daily Mail is guilty of this (shock! horror!) and so is the summary with its strategic "typo".
From the Mail article, Carbon dating places the manuscript between 568 and 645AD, while Mohammed is thought to have lived between 570 and 632AD. Most intelligent persons would take a quick glance at those dates and be able to dismiss the headlines outright. The range on the dating is nowhere near precise enough to make such a bold statement which is obviously meant to be inflammatory.
Also, as others have rightly stated, the dating is for the parchment, not the ink itself. It is perfectly possible for the parchment to have been produced and not been used for a length of time. Writing paraphernalia was extremely precious at that time; they may have been saved for something important.
Finally, while it is correct that the FULL Quran was not compiled in written form until after the prophet's death, and was primarily stored in memory of the followers, that does not preclude writing completely! The discovered script contains only a couple of chapters, and is not a complete version.
tl;dr: inaccurate and sensationalist headline and reporting on results which may actually point to the opposite.
Well, in absence of scientific evidence, if you just read the thing and have to decide between:
- The guy made it up to fit his political agenda
- The guy got it from a superpowered entity
Honestly, there's no way you can find the later simpler and more plausible. Especially after reading that part where men are allowed to marry up to four wives except the prophet who could marry as many as he wanted...
But it is always cool to have scientific evidence when you can get ones.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Muhammad had horrible handwriting so Allah had to ghost write it for him and all he had lying around was a decades old ream of paper.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
You have got to remember theologist are also scholars. So that some scholars believe that jesus/mohamad/price rama existed or received divine documents or whatnot is not far fetched. but usually historian if they do their work correctly relying only on evidence will not (in their papers) describe the miracle or anything else supernatural as having a basis in reality even if they truly believe it. I say usually because sometimes they make books making a case for the miracle too (IIRC bart Ehrman for example). But mostly what you will get from historian is only "X existed" and no judgement call on the supernatural stuff.
So basically it is not a surprise to read the sentence which amde your brain "die a little". just think scholar in the more generic sense.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Right, because you should judge an entire people by the behavior of a minority.
Catholics tolerate and commit child molestation. So if there is going to be a cleansing of dangerous religions, let's at least include ones that have been directly harming us for decades.
... that a key tenet of the Muslim faith is that the Koran is the unaltered word of God. This belief is perhaps even more immutable than the proscription against the iconography of Mohammed which has led to so much violence. Do not expect these findings to be accepted or go down lightly in the Muslim world.
Which is why the Orthodox Christian (e.g. Catholic) Old testament contains more books than the Hebrew Bible.
I thought it was because their signal-to-noise ratio was lower.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Amazing that all the posts are not AC.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Really? This would come as a surprise to all the Jews READING the Torah in their synagogues at the time of Christ.
"...could rewrite early Islamic history."
Good luck with that.
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Um, no. No portion of the Old Testament was an oral tradition at the time of Jesus. As a matter of fact, the New Testament tells us that Jesus read from the book of Isaiah. There are manuscripts which are copies of various Old Testament books which still exist today which were written before Jesus.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The flying spaghetti monster is NOT going to like this.
Dead Sea Scrolls. Ever heard of them? They include a fair chunk of the Tanakh ("Old Testament" to Christians) written down as much as 400 BCE (before the birth of Jesus). The Ketef Hinnom silver scroll from Jerusalem dates from 600 BCE, and is clearly part of a long established written tradition. The Israelites/Jews were writing down their religious history for a thousand years before the Christians (we have religious inscriptions in Hebrew that are that old).
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
The articles are clear about the fact the parchment is from during life of Mohammad. The writing of the document would have happened *much* later. Makes sense considering scarcity of parchment in the region at the time. This feels like another anti-Islam piece.
If the book was written between AD 568 and 645, known with 95.4% accuracy.
And Muhammad lived between AD 570 and 632, known to the best of our records on his life.
Then we know that the book is either created sometime before Muhammad's birth or after his death or anywhere in-between!
It's not scientific to assume the book is older than Muhammad. The results only confirm that the book may have existed during his lifetime, when the believers of Islam asserts that the first written version did not appear until decades after Muhammad's death.
Palimpsest.
Even if the carbon dating is right, all we know is the sheep (or goat) on which it was written died before Mohammed was born.
Bad science journalists! No biscuit!
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
From what I have read on this subject, the dating does relate to the parchment (papyrus), not the ink. The type of script used on the papyrus in question is apparently evidence that the text that is visible was written much later, likely written over the top of earlier writings (papyrus was scarce and hence re-used). This is not challenging to orthodox Muslim beliefs. Still it is a fascinating subject that highlights a vulnerability of Islam. If there emerges text that is identical or very similar to text in the Koran and that text is proven to have been written before Muhammad, then that will be a real head spin for most Muslims. It would prove that the text was not revealed to Muhammed after all but was actually already in circulation. It may be that a uniform religious text was gathered together at the time from existing material by the new Arab empire for political purposes. The story of Muhammad may have been a massive embellishment on a kernel of an idea (political leader and warrior who preached a faith). Most knowledge of Muhammad is drawn from hadiths (a collection of sayings and stories of the prophet) that were only compiled much, much later (around 300 years later). There are many contradictions in the hadiths, providing evidence of different stories being spun for political expediency by competing political operatives. This is a view suggested by Robert Spencer in his book "Did Muhammad exist? ...".
Of course I am not Muslim and I maintain the right to question faiths or any other dogma or body of thought.
God created it a few centuries before, then left it in a cave for Muhammad to find it. The prophet was merely pointed to it.
A perfectly scientific explanation.
Most scholars don't think that the Talpiot Tomb has anything to do with Jesus. For exampel, Géza Vermes says the arguments for the Talpiot tomb are not "just unconvincing but insignificant" (see the Wikipedia page). Also, Christian theology does not depend on whether or not the shroud of Turin is real.
I'm not muslim, but even the summary notes a perfectly reasonable explanation - the parchment could be an old one. And frankly, I'm skeptical that the carbon dating is that precise; carbon dating depends on a lot of assumptions that can easily be false in specific circumstances. (Yes, radioactivity decreases at a fixed rate... but you have to make BIG assumptions about its starting value.) So while this article makes for a good headline, the current actual evidence is rather worthless.
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
I think the general idea is that the Christians really aren't, on a large scale, killing people today. Just because someone's done something in the past makes it okay to do it today? I'm not sure I follow that logic. What were you getting from there and how did you use rational thinking to come up with that reply?
I see you knocked the snot out of a strawman, that's pretty good. I am not sure what made you assume they were Christians. I know a few folks who still claim to be Christians and they're pretty nice people. Then again, so aren't the Muslims that I've met.
So, yes... What was your reply's point? I fail to comprehend how wrong behavior in the past justifies wrong behavior today. To quote your own post, "...give me a break."
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
One is the codification of an multi-millennium-old text written down from an even older oral history (e.g. The Great Flood) that has no claim to being anything else.
The other is a specific text written in a much, much more recent era - a text that was claimed to have been written directly on word from the Almighty, dictated right then and there.
As for your second claim, Christianity sprang from Judaism, and does not (indeed, cannot) claim otherwise. The "every religion around" myth tends to fall apart with even the smallest amount of research that doesn't involve Facebook memes or coffeehouse pontification.
Oh, and the Council of Nicaea (that 'voted on' thing you refer to) was a final and formal attempt to winnow out the texts which were unprovable or obviously falsified to fit an agenda (that agenda usually being Gnostic or Nestorian in origin); it was done primarily to prevent (okay, fend off) splintering and adulteration of scripture (and until Martin Luther showed up and altered the text/composition, managed to do that reasonably well. )
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
There's a bizarre train of AC posts asserting that anyone who's not virulently anti-Muslim is a communist. This is very odd, and can't be the product of a well-informed healthy mind.
As it happens, I am not a communist. I also do not subscribe to your opinion that the Quoran (is the the "Book of Hate" you mention?) explicitly promotes "the evil stuff" you've noticed that some Muslims are committing. These groups are not actually liked, admired or even approved of by all Muslims across the world, but there are doubtless many who do, and these are the ones you choose to see. You can feel free to pick and choose your facts to suit your worldview, but I need to stand up and say I don't agree with you.
Posting non-AC. Not everyone's scared.
Oh arse
"Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Quran from heaven, as he claimed during his lifetime, but instead collected texts and scripts that fit his political agenda."
Despite all the jokes they make about the place (think of it as their New Jersey), the British are going to miss Birmingham.
used by religious fanatics and control freaks to troll the simple minded out of their money
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
It's one thing to have a general sense that there might be a higher being that has influenced traditions through history. Some may think that's a silly idea, but it's general enough that you don't lose your sense of reality if someone disproves some factual aspects of your beliefs that you rely on heavily. Even within Christianity, I think that a lot of what we're taught to believe was made up long after Jesus' death. There are a lot of Christian concepts that I just don't think are all that critical, like original sin and the virgin birth. I can even imagine believing in Jesus having divinity without the need for his sinlessness or a resurrection. Sound crazy? It's hard to separate the core of Christianity from all the cruft that came later. The core of the religion is one of forgiveness. People do bad things. If you recognize that you did wrong, admit it, and resolve to change your ways (repent), then you will be forgiven. None of that changes if you dismiss any of these traditions I mentioned. I also admire the Christian Jesus (who may be an amalgam of real historical people) as a great philosopher and counter-cultural rebel.
However the written form of Koran known to humans was the revelations as recorded by Abu Bucr. If there were versions of written documents that pre existed Koran it would cause a stir and most Muslims will just ignore the finding and whatever else needed to be ignored.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I mean, hold on a second. Slashdot links to an article that copies from another article a report of carbon dating of "545-568" for a piece of parchment from a codex of the Qu'ran. People in this thread immediately act all smarmy about religious folks and their crazy beliefs. Some even claim historians will "just give you the facts" or some horsecrap. Here's what a historian does: A. Looks at article. B. Follows link to article they stole that from. C. Follows their link to the article they stole it from. D. Hits a paywall and goes to Wikipedia. E. Finally gets the point: two bifolios of a really old Qu'ran were discovered (by Alba Fedeli) in a Birmingham codex, Radiocarbon analysis (by the University of Oxford's Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit) dated the animal from which the parchment came to between 568-645 with 95.4% confidence -- in other words, there's a 19 chances of out 20 that the animal was alive when Mohammad was. The verses were copied onto it sometime after the animal was killed. This should all be backed up by consulting the sources linked in Wikipedia, but I'm doing this for an internet rant, thank you very much. So, guess what? If you actually study the sources, you find that 1) no "scholar" has produced a coherent argument using this evidence as the key proof that the Koran predated Mohammad, 2) Antetexts are an entirely different matter, 3) plenty of people are willing to blindly follow their faith on this matter. Most of those seem to be those who proclaim the loudest about the superiority of "science" without having any knowledge of what "science" is and a fundamental confusion of what constitutes faith and what constitutes reason. Hint: if you believe it, 'cos you read it on the interwebs and it matches what you think of the world, it ain't reason.
Assuming there is a divine being, a big assumption to make, then it is not a great leap to go from there to accepting divine inspiration.
Assuming your questions are not rhetoric then, in order...
Possibly.
Probably.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Caused? This was the religion of their time. I highly doubt whoever was in power would of behaved well if they were following another religion. Also your comment shows a poor understanding of other cultures and religious beliefs and how they were used to manipulate people.
love is just extroverted narcissism
First, no, they believe that the parchment may have been made between those times.
Second, this is carbon dating, and we are talking about drama involving a couple decades.
From most to least likely, as best I can tell:
1- The carbon dating is off by a couple years. This is extremely likely, especially given that Islamic events *mostly* take place in the light of history (with the typical religious spin regarding their accuracy, of course). They did not date the ink itself, something that the scientists point out but gets lightly treated in media.
2- The parchment, a very valuable and frequently reused substance, was around a few years before being written on. This assumes that the carbon dating is totally accurate. Remember this isn't the difference between something being ten million years old and some guy claiming the earth is 4k years old- this is not a very long time at all. Nor is it like from 200 AD or anything, either.
3- Some parts of the Koran predate Mohammad Since this is just a very small part of the Koran, this is the most interesting claim, but neither is it as the headline is spinning it. While Muslim fundamentalists will fight this conclusion, they have a pretty reasonable leg to stand on- so far, at least. Even if they are wrong and parts of the Koran were repurposed to back some new militant religion, is that really that surprising to the rest of us?
Certainly interesting, but nowhere near as impactful as the headlines sound on this.
Also note, their p is that 5% thing- they are 94.5% sure, meaning they are wrong 1/20th of the time. That means that out of all the 95% confidence claims, 1/20 are wrong- and those would always be the most sensational.
Hey, speaking of sensational, why is the link to daily mail? This is all over the net, is that the best source?
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07...
Also, I'm still not sure what dates are being claimed- each article seems to have slightly different ranges?
Anyone who thinks carbon dating is precisely accurate to within 2 years on such a small sample doesn't understand carbon dating.
This is not true, actually. The Torah and Prophets were written down on scrolls stored in the temple and synagogues, both Old and New testament mention numerous occasions where people read from the scrolls, found old scrolls, wrote down what happened etc.
And if an earlier manuscript was found that dates to between 545 AD and 568, that's probably more relevant to discuss right now.
That IS Arabic, a very old form of it that didn't use the dots we use nowadays to denote say a Ba from a Ta or a Nun
> Some scholars believe, however, that Muhammad did not receive the Quran from heaven
science.slashdot.org LOL
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
A Jihad on you, and a Jihad on you..... Dammit I need a Jihad on my self. Jihads for everybody!
All religions fall apart as made up crap once they are investigated.
Except Cthulhu... you cant take my great destroyer from me!
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
the old testament is worse. most of that was written in babylon and reads like a broken telephone version of old sumerian stories that date back thousands of years prior. even the symbols go back to ancient sumer and iran
Caused? This was the religion of their time.
I don't understand what you mean by this.
Also your comment shows a poor understanding of other cultures and religious beliefs and how they were used to manipulate people.
Sure, the powerful will almost always use their power to shape their world, and religion is a nice means to move the masses. But I find it difficult to imagine any other religion having caused quite as much damage as Christianity, which in its basic form incites bad conscience for many human drives and that advocates repent and corporeal punishment, among other things. I mean, which other religion worships a bloody, crucified dead man that was practically tortured to death? I find many things about Christianity are inherently violent to the point of being macabre. Enter a cathedral in catholic Spain and you are likely to find carvings or paintings of martyrs and the violent ways in which they died, which is regarded as something worth of admiration. During mass you eat "the body of christ" and drink "the blood of christ". I mean... Jesus!
For sure, you also had guys like the Aztechs, which conducted blood rituals and sacrificed hundreds of captives to their gods in a single day. But Christianity also "wins" simply thanks to its scale and global reach. No other civilizations have had quite the influence and global impact as the christian ones.
Name precise years of Muhammad? They only have estimate. Then they admit they have not tested ink. Im no religious person but that seems to be some serious we must prove something false methodology. Seeing that at best the result is a bounty on the scientist maybe they should have actual proof its not just old paper while admitting it could just be old paper. Funding getting low?
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Where did the GP claim some other religion was better? What does the truthfulness of any religion have to do with the points GP made?
Yeah, you'll see, every religion is the same, criticizing one and only one, is stupid.
How long until the copy goes missing or the library gets burnt down?
If scholar just means "one who studies", then obviously anyone who studies a religious text for a long time BECAUSE they're a believer is by definition a scholar. I don't think that's what you mean.
If we change "scholar" to "scientist", it's quite clear that scientist is not synonymous with atheist. Pew research found that "just over half of scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God, while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power". Besides, many would say that science requires repeatable experiments, and many truths simply aren't repeatable (e.g., history).
- David A. Wheeler (see my Secure Programming HOWTO)
Because anything that differs from their dogma must be killed.
Not much different than christians a few hundred years ago. Not much different than the current christians tendency to ignore or call it satan's lies anything that differs from their views.
Ignorance.... Come on... A few THOUSAND years ago the Christian religion got hijacked by politics in an effort to control the masses, with very important and lasting results: The protestant reformation and The United States of America, the home of religious freedom. Like it or not, this country was populated by a bunch of generally CHRISTIAN European protestants who where trying to escape religious and political oppression. Eventually this oppression followed them here and as fate would have it, the USA was born.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
actually people killed people on any imaginable ground or without one so this cannot be an argument for anything.
Mass killing people for a reason has been done too and the reasons have been plenty religious, political, economic etc
Humans mass kill humans because they 'think' that such killings have some utility for them. Each particular party in a mass killing has to be fought and power taken off it, usually efforts to do so are bloody and difficult. In a sense an ideology as strong as to convince people to mass kill other people binds them together and makes them survive even harshest of punishments. Which is a problem for the rest of course. The only conclusion that I can draw from this is that society has to be prepared to act if a groups of such individuals emerge because it is inevitable that they do.
Actually I toyed with buying a bunch of properties as the Church of the Green Grass Vapors. All properties would be named after Egyptian, Greek and Roman god, and maybe some Hindu gods for good measure. Have regular open worship with tenants and claim tax free. That would be fun.
you haven't met many (or any) then
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Anytime you have a bunch of people that will all believe in an invisible father figure you will have issues.
No sir I dont like it.
"The Christian Old Testament was compiled and codified before the Jewish Bible." - can you provide a citation for that claim?
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Actual conclusion: paper that a particular copy of the Qur'an was written on *might* be older than Muhammed himself. I don't see many Muslims apostatizing over that.
I see some people mentioning the Shroud of Turin. The infamous carbon dating of it was actually done on a corner that was not part of the original relic; there was a fire in the Middle Ages, and its caretakers repaired it with a piece of cloth they had. The carbon dating confirmed that. Unfortunately most journalists ran with the erroneous conclusion that the sacred artifact itself was scientifically confirmed to be a forgery, which it wasn't.
Um, no. The Old Testament was an oral tradition at the time of Jesus. The Christians were the first to write it down and compile a book. The later the Jews did the same. Which is why the Orthodox Christian (e.g. Catholic) Old testament contains more books than the Hebrew Bible.
Oh for Pete's sake... How much ignorance can there be?
The OLD Testament was in existence LONG before Christ was alive, IN WRITTEN FORM based on the existence of copies of the text and their content. FEW knowledgeable scholars would question the existence of the OT in largely it's current form in 30 AD. Tradition says the bulk of the OT was canonized by the Jewish people by 600 BC, with parts being translated into Greek as early as 300 BCE. So saying the OT was written AFTER Christ's life is largely unsupportable by facts. The content of the OT is unchanged from the Jewish scriptures, with only a few books which some believe should be included which are not historically part of the Jewish scripture. This was written by JEWS not Christians.
Now the NT WAS written after Christ's life, but was complete within the first 100 years with the writing of "The Revelation of John". The collection of books included in the NT was settled by about 200 AD/CE and although some have claimed to have "The lost gospel of..." from time to time, they are not properly included in the Bible. This part of the bible WAS written by Christians, many who where converted Jews and who referenced the OT extensively.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Really? This would come as a surprise to all the Jews READING the Torah in their synagogues at the time of Christ.
Or the guys that translated the Torah into Greek about 300 years before Christ... (See The LXX...)
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The article and summary are bogus.
The parchment carbon dating gives a range on when the animal (sheep, goat, camel) died, not when the actual writing was done. But it does establishe an "parchment made no later than X" and a "writing can't be earlier than Y" scenario.
Muhammed died in 632 AD, and the parchment is dated up to 645 AD (latest). So it is most likely a copy written by a companion of Muhammed, possibly in his lifetime, or shortly after.
What this dating refutes beyond a doubt are the now discredited theories about Muhammed being a mythical figure, and the Quran invented in the late 7th century. For example, the Hagarene theory by Crone and Cook and the Nevo-Koren Crossroads to Islam theory are untenable now. This manuscript is earlier than all these theories claim.
It is written in the Hijazi script with no dots or diacritics. This script originated in Hijaz (Arabian Peninsula west coast), and was dominant in the few decades following the death of Muhammed, before the Kufic script dominated (from Iraq). The amazing thing is that I can read most of it, almost 14 centuries later!
By the way, I contacted Dr. David Thomas, one of the researchers, to ask if the ink was carbon dated, or just the parchment. He said just the parchment, so as not to affect the writing. I also asked if this was a palimpsest (older parchment that was washed and written over at a later date), and he said that it is not, since there are markings that show in that case.
So, this is as early a written copy as can be.
The interesting part is that the 645 AD date pre-dates the standardization of the Quran that was done around 650 AD by the 3rd successor to Muhammed, Caliph Uthman. Research shows minor variations, but nothing significant.
Here is his full reply:
In later emails he says that Fedeli's thesis is due to be published soon.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
How to complain about the articles that are totally misleading? for example: consider an article submitted by timothy Carbon Dating Shows Koran May Predate Muhammad 304. If you will check the date of the parchment in the original article it is AD 568 and 645, on the other hand the date given in timothy's article is 545 AD and 568. This typo in date changes the meaning of the news, probably misleading entirely... The dates from original news speaks exactly opposite of the title submitted by timothy Also who will take the responsibility of spreading wrong information? original article link: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/ne...
So it isn't Christianity that causes it, just being religious (a form of insanity in my book). I would recommend the 'golden bough' if you are interested in this type of thing. Most of the core of Christianity is a modernization of pagen themes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
love is just extroverted narcissism
jeez, don't trust that racist xenophobic rag to get anything correct
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Ha ha... How insightful....
There IS a bit more to this you know. You are jumping to the final question but you haven't investigated and answered the preliminary questions yet.
I'll give you a hint... If you want to argue the point with me, you need to go back to the start and argue the virgin birth, death and resurrection of Christ, which is going to require you to understand a good bit of history and the theology which pre-dates Christ. You see, Christ is the key to it all, past, present and future, so go after that issue and not straight to the sarcastic comments.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Not put to death, but non-believers do deserve to be eternally tortured.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Perfectly legal if you meet 4 of 12 fuzzy criteria from the IRS. See the John Oliver show for recipe.
No there is not a bit more, you believe is some , the minutiae of your religion has no bearing on whether or not it's a good idea to have faith in something you can not prove.
I take no issue with moral codes etc etc but frankly ascribing some deity as the reason for following them is scary. If you want to be a good person figure what good is for yourself and be that person.
No sir I dont like it.
Really? I have to argue the points you want to argue about, and not rank stupidity of your position?
Ok:
- Virgin birth. For fucks sake that means nothing. It's pathetically easy to impregnate a virgin. Shit, one hand shandy or a bit of suck with no swallow and the means are readily available. Of course, we're assuming that she was actually a virgin at all.
- Death. Yeah, people die. Get over it.
- Resurrection. Yeah, people historically were quite bad at telling whether someone was dead or not. This is why bells were put onto coffins. Did some bloke die, wake up from his coma and lever the rock away from his tomb, walk outside and go 'fuck me it's bright here?' Probably.
Of course, we're also already ignoring the other stories of the time which contradict the currently recognised bible, we're ignoring the big rewrite that happened a few hundred years later and we're assuming that any of it is fucking true in the first place.
That's a lot of assumption. It's easier and more reliable to assume you're an idiot.
Parts were written down, by heretics.
...where "heretics" means "people whose beliefs are inconvenient to their rulers".
Is there anyone with a scientific background, who believe wholeheartedly, without a doubt, that the angels came from the sky and dictated holy scriptures of any widely popular religion to any of the so-called prophets ? Of course, all of them, Moses, Jesus and Mohammad and some lesser known and to a certain extent, self-proclaimed prophets were nothing more than motivational speakers, who put multiple pieces of common sense information into the same text and peddled it as "holy scripture". And doing the right thing by any religion's book is the right way to live. I am not talking about kill-all-jews-and-christians beliefs of some ku-ku believers of Islam, the believers of jews-are-the chosen-children-of-god crap or you-can-not-do-anything-right-by-god-unless-you're-catholic crowd. I am talking about the principle of living by the golden rule, which at the end all religious texts suggest. And if Mohammad has collected Koran from older sources, what difference does this make ? Does it diminish the value of the teachings ? We all know the prophets are smidgen above the snake oil peddling charlatans. So ??? Big deal... Tempest in teapot in my never so humble opinion.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
I'm not "giving Islam a free pass". As I said, if current Islamists keep it up, their atrocities will overtake those committed by Christianity "soon", on a historical scale.
Also, you seem to reduce all my points to a contrast of the crusades vs. jihad. The crusades are just one of my points.
The "expert" video you link at is a bit ironic considering that in the middle ages, during Islamic expansion, Islam was in general way more tolerant, progressive and enlightened in the arts, sciences and treatment of other religions than we (christians) were. And yes, Islam expanded and there were wars. So? The Mongols also expanded via war. So did the Japanese, and the Nazis, and the Roman empire, and the Aztechs, and the Persians, and the Greeks, and the Chinese red army, and...
Powerful empires made wars and expanded. Religion is just one of many reasons to do so. Not sure what this has to do with anything.
The University of Birmingham Library burned to the ground today...
Yep, you are ignorant about the necessary theology and facts... I suggest you read "Evidence that Demands a Verdict" before you proceed in ignorance here.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The article is clickbait. The carbon dates match Muhammad's life quite unremarkably. I would like you fucktard /. editors to stop posting stupid ass stuff like this. If I want to see idiocy, I'll go check my facebook newsfeed.
Proverbs 21:19
I suggest you read something other than propaganda before exposing your own ignorance further.
I don't give a flying fuck whether Jesus existed or not. I just wish people would stop brainwashing small children, making immortal threats and using violence to impose their beliefs on others.
How about that?
Never said I could prove it, only that the arguments being used to disprove it are naïve and ignorant of the known facts. I was appealing to one's intellectual interest in the topic in an attempt to get some independent investigation of the facts and theories done before proceeding to debate the topic.
You see, It's not about trying to mentally arm wrestle folks into submission to my perspective, but keeping everybody honest about how they came up with their perspective. I think may folks just made up their mind and don't really care what the evidence so they remain ignorant. I say this because they don't argue the real issues that lead up to their conclusion, nor do they know how they arrived at their conclusion and how to support it.
Ignorance is not a bad thing if you've never had a chance to investigate and learn about something and admit that you don't know. It's willful ignorance that is bad. You don't go bury your head in the sand because you've made up your mind.... And YES, I do practice what I preach in this... If I don't know, I don't know and I admit to it. If I want to argue some point I don't know, I go out and investigate before making up my mind. That goes for religion as well as my professional career.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
No, it can't. No one who believes in supernatural events will be swayed by scientific evidence. At best, it shows that god works in mysterious ways, at worst, that science is flawed, or that science is anti-religion by trying to discredit holy prophets. There is no shortage of mental gymnasts among the faithful.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I suppose I'm guilty of brainwashing my kids in your mind... However, the rest does not even remotely describe me or my faith.
You see, it's not MY religious duty to make you follow the law, the very law I've failed to follow myself. How can I even condemn you for failing to follow the law if I'm not able to myself? The Bible clearly says that judgment of sin awaits even if you don't believe it will. It is your choice to believe or not. God makes it clear that he will honor YOUR choice, if it be sin and punishment or life is entirely up to you.
So if God isn't going to force this issue, how is it even remotely my place to do so? In my view this is between you and Him and has nothing to do with me. It's like we are two children and God is the parent. You are doing something wrong, and all I can do is warn you about the punishment to come.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Did APK ever get on meds?
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
It's worse than that. The Koran contains stories that are based on common at the time mis-translations of the Jewish books.
Just like the book of Mormon, it contains proof of being the work of men, by virtue of the mis-translations included.
I'm sure the same would be true of the Jewish and Christian books, but their predecessor books aren't readily available.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"This gives more ground to what have been peripheral views of the Koran's genesis, like that Muhammad and his early followers used a text that was already in existence and shaped it to fit their own political and theological agenda,
Same with Christians. They just attach themselves to the Old Testament in the belief that this enhances the legitimacy of the books they chose to call the New Testament (there are plenty of other books from that time hanging around the Vatican that they excluded). Never mind that the message in the Old Testament is often very different from the New. The Old Testament God was a real wanker much of the time.
soylentnews.org
There are no facts in dispute so nothing to debate, religion is an opinion at best a tool to control others at worst.
No sir I dont like it.
... going from "the parchment this Koran is on is older than the prophet" to "the Koran pre-dates the prophet" is literally jumping lightyears to a conclusion.
There are no facts in dispute so nothing to debate, religion is an opinion at best a tool to control others at worst.
So, I say you are unaware of the facts and you say there are no facts in dispute.... You do see the logical disconnect there right?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Was anyone shocked by that one? Anyone?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Spoken like someone truly brainwashed by dogma.
Christianity/Catholicism is based not only on Judaism (the entire old testament), but also on the resurrection myths from Egypt, the "eating of the dead" rituals from early Egypt (as well as numerous other civilization/religions/belief systems) which is ultimately the basis for the schism with Judaism. In addition, it scavenged all sorts of localized myths from everywhere it went in Europe, adopting aspects so as to be able to integrate other cultures easier.
Judaism, of course, is based on earlier religions from Akkadians, Sumerians, and most likely the Indus valley (as well as some we don't even know about, lost to time). Those religions most likely had many aspects based on what came before them. A new religion, untethered to the past would be a rare oddity.
Nicaea was, for all intentional purposes, the creation of the Jesus myth.... as well as the murder of anyone who disagreed with going along with it. Martin Luther did change the the religion (although given recent events, i'd say the change was temporary) as he was at odds with the Pope/church being the only source of divinity, and thought God should be held as that. He also, in opposition to what a lot of US "christians" seem to think now, you couldn't use money to buy your way into heaven. Be that as it may, his actions were to shift focus from the pope/church back onto God. Nicaea, on the other hand, created THE myth of Jesus that was to be the foundation for the whole religion, then murdered anyone that didn't toe the line.
You have epitomized the problem with (a lot of) religious people... your blind faith to your dogma blinds you to reality of what has happened in history, and what is happening now. You know what your preacher tells you, but you don't know about your churches history, and typically you don't even bother knowing what's in your "holy books;" you rely on your preacher to tell you what to believe.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The fatal problem with the Koran is that it was heavily edited by Uthman, who then ordered all competing copies destroyed. Some copies that survived this show significant editing. So we have something delivered by a "prophet" who did no miracles except the "miracle" of the Koran itself... which was such a "miracle" it had many early variants that took political bludgeoning by a non-prophet to attempt to whittle down to one variant.
Contrast this with the Christian texts. The church was a persecuted organisation for nearly 300 years after its founding. It had no authority to wipe out competing variants en-mass until around the year 800 at the earliest. In modern days, what this means is that we have thousands of complete or partial texts from the times the church had no or extremely limited political power that were lost and then rediscovered in modern times. Any intentional editing would easily be caught, as it is in the Koran, but textual critics don't find that. They find the usual spelling errors, word substitution, word order changes and the like that you find in any document from that pre-printing press age.
When the documents of the New Testament were compiled together into one volume, after circulating as independent documents before that, no effort was made to edit or harmonize the accounts. Many apparent contradictions exist to the casual reader that are only resolved with a little research into the cultural context, historic context, and standards of writing of the day. While this makes it easy for critics to invent contradictions out of whole cloth, it's also a data goldmine for historians. Eyewitness testimony virtually always agrees on the major details while differing on the minor details.
The benefit of these minor details added off the cuff can be shown to be true or false.
When Jesus is stabbed with a spear after death, blood and water poured out. Why would water pour out of such a wound? Well today we know why. Jesus was going into hypovolemic shock from the beating he sustained before being crucified. This causes fluids, but not blood, to build up in the body around the heart and lungs. So when stabbed through the heart and lungs, a mixture of blood and what would appear to be water would spill from the wound. In the 1st century the only way you would know that is if you saw it happen. You would have no idea WHY it happened of course.
In the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, workers are offered a Denarius for a days labor in the Vineyard, which we now know through archaeology was a typical days wage in Pre-70AD Judea. No Google, how may people would know the days wage for for unskilled labor 700 miles from where you live now 40 years ago unless you actually lived there?
The book of Acts is fascinating to read from the perspective of a historian because it has so many details.
The Gospels are also great reads because of the sheer incompetence of the disciples before the resurrection. If YOU were making up a religion would YOU put in your scriptures YOU committing even half of the screw-ups that the disciples got themselves into? They completely fail to understand major teachings on many occasions. Jesus calls Peter Satan. The male followers of Jesus hide in fear while the women followers go to and discover the empty tomb. They then fail to understand the meaning until he appears before them and verbally slaps them about. You have passages where large numbers of followers LEAVE after Jesus makes a statement. You have Peter denying that he was associated with Jesus during the trial. (Yea, that makes a great recruitment story, Peter is the leader of the church, the first pope, and right there you have him cowering and running away and in general being a complete incompetent.) That's not a good story to make up, but if it's what really happened then it is good history.
When I went through my period of doubt earlier in my life, looking at Islam and Christianity, the difference is that Islam depends on the text itself, whil
Brian Booker writes at Digital Journal that carbon dating suggests the Koran, or at least portions of it, may actually be older than the prophet Muhammad himself, a finding that if confirmed could rewrite early Islamic history and shed doubt on the "heavenly" origins of the holy text.
Umm, I actually have doubts about the "heavenly" origins of anything. Did someone actually write the above in a scientific paper? What test result would have confirmed the "heavenly" origins of that book? Those researchers seem to assume that the C-14 dating period should have started the moment that Koran was "handed" to Mohammed. That would imply that this heaven/god thing makes books out of carbon fetched from living things or the upper atmosphere, at the moment it hands them down to us. That would be kind of pedestrian, wouldn't it? Shouldn't He have instant access to all the carbon resources of the universe? Like, if He made the Koran out of carbon fetched from the Martian atmosphere or from some stellar core, there would be no C-14 in that, so C-14 dating would give "infinite"/undefined results.
In the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard, workers are offered a Denarius for a days labor in the Vineyard, which we now know through archaeology was a typical days wage in Pre-70AD Judea. No Google, how may people would know the days wage for for unskilled labor 700 miles from where you live now 40 years ago unless you actually lived there?
For hundreds of years in medieval Britain a day's wage was a penny. I doubt things changed any quicker in Jesus's time. It's really not all that extraordinary.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
You are doing something wrong, and all I can do is warn you about the punishment to come.
And what exactly is he doing wrong other than refusing to believe in something for which you can provide no evidence?
(If you do have evidence, I'd love to see it).
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I have told you before, I don't post AC, I post as Coren22 every time I post. I don't log out, I don't check the post anonymously box, I post as me.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
LOL, you really are a head case huh?
I said I couldn't disprove ALL of your points. But there are many points of yours that are completely false, like your false sense of winning arguments.
You still have yet to prove the point that your shitty hosts file program is somehow better than virus scanners, ad block, DNS, and proper use of a computer, but that has always been true.
There was no talking behind your back there, I responded to your insanity again, and you replied with more of it.
The sky is blue
APK is annoying
Hosts files solve a very small subset of computer problems.
I CHALLENGE you to disprove ALL of my statements, otherwise you are admitting that hosts files are garbage!
Now lets see how you like it.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
People believe what they CHOOSE to believe.
Dispute ALL of my points or stop responding. Run Forrest Run indeed, that is what you are doing.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Remote DNS? Who the hell uses remote DNS?
I have a local caching DNS, or use the router's built in DNS, why would I setup a remote DNS?
Dispute ALL my points or admit that you are wrong!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
So the sky is blue, you failed to dispute ALL my points, therefore I am right! (this is the logic you are using, I am making a point).
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The sky is blue
APK is annoying
Hosts files solve a very small subset of computer problems.
I CHALLENGE you to disprove ALL of my statements, otherwise you are admitting that hosts files are garbage!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
That post does not refute a single one of my comments, so refute them ALL or admit you are wrong.
The sky is blue
APK is annoying
Hosts files solve a very small subset of computer problems.
I CHALLENGE you to disprove ALL of my statements, otherwise you are admitting that hosts files are garbage!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
The collective works of the New Testament aren't based on earlier books. They are based on a collection of oral traditions. The Torah dates back to the origin of written language.
Might want to read up on the council of Nicia. Where the new testament was edited by a politically appointed committee.
Old version of the books aren't common, but they are common enough to see that edits were made for consistency in the four official gospels.
They still haven't released the dead sea scrolls. Because the differences between them and modern versions would cause all kinds of strife.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Step 1: Write Qu'ran
Step 2: Distribute Qu'ran
Step 3: ???
Step 4: Prophet...
Still waiting for that answer.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Koran568 AD and 645 Mohammed 570 AD and 632 AD According to the time windows described in the article, it is entirely possible that the particular Koran analyzed was transcribed during or after the lifetime of Mohammed. So, what is shocking about that? This evidence basically agrees with the mainstream Muslim traditions that the Koran was transcribed late in Muhammed's life.
either:
* Jesus is God, but is evil...
* Jesus is God, but is not all powerful...
* Jesus existed but was just a man...
* Jesus is a syncretic myth...
There are some possibilities that you missed. This one, for example:
* God is a good experimentalist, and like all good experimentalists, he rarely intervenes with the way things play out in his creation/experimental system. He sits back and passively observes, for hundreds or thousands of years at a time, and Jesus is the product of "Ok, I'm tired of the dynamic that the most intelligent carbon units have gotten into; let's see what happens if I have one of them teach some ethical principles to the others."
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
If our decomposed remains remain on Earth, they'll be vaporized when the sun becomes a red giant. http://www.universetoday.com/1...
As far as I know, that prediction is compatible with all religions.
I choose to believe that my atoms will return and be the substance known as stars eventually.
That long-term view is a more pleasant way to put it than the short-term outlook some atheists state: "We're going to be nothing more than food for worms."
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
Some may say it's faith....
Get up!
Mod this up as informative. This is all true from I've learned as well. The OT was written on scrolls at the time, many feet long, and stored in the synagogs. The Jews had scholars that would copy and duplicate the scrolls by hand. When ever new ancient scroll fragments are recovered (like the dead sea scrolls), current theologians and scholars compare what is found to the existing versions of what they have, to see how accurate they are, and if any changes had been made along the way through the duplication process. Very little changes have occurred from the oldest fragments, to the newest, especially not major changes in content. In fact, it's been found that it was impeccably transcribed and copied, with great effort to keep the original content without alterations.
It's also true, that Jesus, and others in the NT were referenced as going to the synagogs and reading directly from the scrolls of the OT. Basically, the OT was the bible of Jesus's time, since He was the NT.
The NT was completed while most of the eye witnesses of Jesus were still alive, meaning if any deliberate lying, or exaggerations took place in the writing of the NT, the original crowds of eye witnesses would have been around to contest it. Which is also why Christians take the claims made in the NT as historical, since it was written by eye witnesses, to the generation of people that also included eye witnesses. Yes, it was written after the fact, (rather than the apostles walking around with a pen and paper at the time), but that is how most historical documents of that time were created.
You probably meant Nikaia (Greek) or Nicaea (Latin).