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I am not sure what you mean exactly, but the canon was written by Athanasius of Alexandria long before the council agreed to it. He in fact coined to word canonization for them. The council debated it seems for some length on Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation only to finally agree with Athanasius. Oh there is more to it then just this and even a schism I think came of it. But the council eventually just rubber stamped what was set out before hand.That's what I'm getting at actually- I do think there was more to it all than just rubber stamping, and I would LOVE to have been a fly on the wall for the debate you reference, as I think it was a lot more heated than any historical document infers. A lot of stuff was "lost" during and afterwards that I think should not have been.
I think you might be missing the point. Irenaeus started the canon in around 200. Shortly thereafter Origen came up with a few extra books to add. Athanasius then canonized these same books as the only books to use in 367. It was approved not as you seem to think with the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which dealt more on the Arian question and not on canonicity, this rather was done from the Synod of Hippo in 393. It was “rubber stamped” a second time by Council of Carthage, which dealt with many basics of how the Church would be run, I think this was sometime in the 400’s.
The Roman Catholic Church did not even say that it was a closed canon though, until the council of Trent in 1546.
A story showing a moral reason for things. Some of which might be historical some of which maybe allegorical.
Amen!!! Of course, the literalists will claim you're blatantly ignoring God's own words that way. Of course, to the allegorist, the literalist is missing the main point.
Even for people who accept some degree of allegory, how do you decide? Most liberal churches view YEC and Noah's Flood being non-literal allegory. But what about immaculate conception -- the RCC holds it as literal truth; the Eastern Orthodox tradition as allegory. Thomas Jefferson went far enough to call all supernatural elements allegorical, all historical details irrelevant, and only plain morals worthwhile; he thereby ended up with a much-abridged "Bible." I consider salvation through Christ itself, and the very existence of God, as allegory (albeit ones with a potentially useful moral), but that brands me irreconcilably as "not a Christian." How do you decide? Because if some things are indeed literal fact, then all opinions, as one Paizo Contributor points out, are not equally valid.
Do we therefore accept Paizo's implied stance* that the entire thing is literal? Do we go with the herd and shift our views to conform with majority or with the Pope's decrees? Do we take a Jeffersonian or Gersenian stance?
And even if we then agree on which things are allegory, how do we decide upon what morals should be extracted from them? Obviously everyone in this thread agrees that stoning disobedient children is not a literal moral that one should follow. But what about having no other gods? Does that imply that there ARE other gods (a literal reading)? Or just that you should disbelieve the other ones (figurative)? Or is this just a commercial advertisement ("No gods satisfy you like YHWH, so why not sign up now?") inserted into a convenient gap in the programming, as I tend to view it?
No, your assessment would be...x and y are similar, therefore they copied each other but weren't careful on getting all the facts straight.
x and y are the same, therefore they copied each other and were careful about getting all the facts straight.In either case, it's little more than a conspiracy, right?
Not exactly. My general opinion on the matter is that gospel writers, canonical and otherwise, were engaging in devotional activity rather than history. They have differing worldviews which reflected what of the surely many stories about Jesus they decided to include or omit, and which versions they preferred. Certainly their work was also shaped by the situation and politics of their own churches and those of influence around them. (This is essentially my restatement of the old line that each gospel was written in different contexts for different audiences.)
Orthodoxy was eventually selected from all these diverse strains and then imposed, sorry, largely by force. Early Christianities were quite diverse and grouping them as is sometimes conventional into a proto-orthodox Pauline line, a Jewish line, and a Gnostic line is a useful generalization but can obscure just how things went. My impression is that the early churches had little to no central governance, and certainly no ability to enforce particular theologies on others. Stories about Jesus passed by word of mouth, which was about as reliable then as now. Those discontent with some element of the locally official theology could just set up their own church, rather like happens today in American protestantism.
So then, harmonies and contradictions in the gospels:
When passages are verbatim or near verbatim, as happens often in the Bible, it's obvious evidence of copying. It doesn't tell us the events depicted happened or not, but it does mean we can't consider them independently attested. Where the accounts differ beyond the ability to reasonably reconcile, we must accept that one or both are in error. Perhaps someone invented things that helped grind their particular axes or stick needles in the eyes of others. (When Thomas is poking around Jesus's hands is a clear swipe at docetism, for example.) This is how it normally works in myth-making.
I've no doubt that the authors considered themselves to be writing the, to use the ironic expression, gospel truth. John (I'm pretty sure this is unique to John, but it's been a while.) certainly thinks docetism's claim that Jesus was not bodily resurrected but rather was a kind of spirit being or apparition is not the truth so when he sits down to write his own gospel he takes pains to include a story or two about how the disciples literally went up and touched Jesus. I likewise have no doubt that the docetists had stories about how the disciples went up to touch Jesus and their hands went right through or whatever. Neither donned a black cape, twirled a mustachio, laid a lady on the train tracks, and laughed about how they were going to con everybody.
Which is the truth? The stories themselves can't tell us. We can try to prefer the older ones, so far as we can tell what is older, since they would presumably be closer to the source material. But that neglects that people can be mistaken about things and it can take a while for errors to be corrected in the public mind. So it might be that the older texts contain errors which are rightly purged from the later. (Mark rather notably doesn't seem to be very aware of the geography of Palestine and has Jesus taking rather strange directions in his travels. Matthew seems to know better and his account corrects these.) The later texts might also contain embellishments not attested in the original. Absent something external to the texts, we can't tell with much confidence. We have that in the plain geography for the issue aforementioned, but most of the events depicted in the gospels are so minor, so obscure, that even if they happened just as said we would expect little to no evidence of them to survive.
It's not that the contradictions or harmonies are necessarily a product of conspiracy. I do think that Luke and Matthew had knowledge of Mark, but that's the position of the experts in the field too. That they had this knowledge and still decided they needed to write their own gospels suggests they considered Mark insufficient. It appears to have both lacked things they believed and considered important and included things they thought the opposite of, though these are much fewer.
Separately I'm not sure that Matthew and Luke are really independent of each other. They do have a fair number of very closely copied pages, which may come from a separate and now lost source, or one of the two might have simply had access to the other. The consensus is that a separate source, Q, existed but is lost to us. It may never have been written, being rather a collection of sayings passed on verbally. Some of those did eventually get written down and survive. We know the early church placed far more emphasis on oral tradition over written and oral tradition, unfortunately, is known to be quite unreliable. People are fallible. They remember hearing things they did not, mishear things they did, and so begin passing on errors almost immediately.
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I am not sure what you mean exactly, but the canon was written by Athanasius of Alexandria long before the council agreed to it. He in fact coined to word canonization for them. The council debated it seems for some length on Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation only to finally agree with Athanasius. Oh there is more to it then just this and even a schism I think came of it. But the council eventually just rubber stamped what was set out before hand.That's what I'm getting at actually- I do think there was more to it all than just rubber stamping, and I would LOVE to have been a fly on the wall for the debate you reference, as I think it was a lot more heated than any historical document infers. A lot of stuff was "lost" during and afterwards that I think should not have been.
There is a lot of historical and cultural context that has been lost in the translations of the translations of the ancient texts.
Yeshua bin Yoseph, for example, was not born in a manger. This is a mistranslation. Yoseph had returned to Bethlehem not only for the census and taxes, but also for the Festival of Sukkot. As in Hebrew tradition, this should have only been a men's experience and the women and children would have stayed in the inn instead of the Sukkots, or sacred tents, outside the city. Unfortunately, in this particular instance, what most likely happened was that the inn was full so Miriam stayed with Yoseph in the Sukkot. The word Sukkot, or Suka, has been mistranslated as manger.
Several mistranslations can be found when looking at the original Aramaic of the New Testament. I forget the specific verse, but when Yeshua says "It is easier for a camel to enter through the eye of the needle than for a man to enter the kingdom of heaven" (or someting like that), the word camel is actually a mistranslation due to a writer's error (either a jot or a tiddle) of the word 'rope'. For some reason the Biblical translators think the Eye of the Needle is refers to some gate in Jerusalem.
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A story showing a moral reason for things. Some of which might be historical some of which maybe allegorical.Amen!!! Of course, the literalists will claim you're blatantly ignoring God's own words that way. Of course, to the allegorist, the literalist is missing the main point.
Even for people who accept some degree of allegory, how do you decide? Most liberal churches view YEC and Noah's Flood being non-literal allegory. But what about immaculate conception -- the RCC holds it as literal truth; the Eastern Orthodox tradition as allegory. Thomas Jefferson went far enough to call all supernatural elements allegorical, all historical details irrelevant, and only plain morals worthwhile; he thereby ended up with a much-abridged "Bible." I consider salvation through Christ itself, and the very existence of God, as allegory (albeit ones with a potentially useful moral), but that brands me irreconcilably as "not a Christian." How do you decide? Because if some things are indeed literal fact, then all opinions, as one Paizo Contributor points out, are not equally valid.
Do we therefore accept Paizo's implied stance* that the entire thing is literal? Do we go with the herd and shift our views to conform with majority or with the Pope's decrees? Do we take a Jeffersonian or Gersenian stance?
And even if we then agree on which things are allegory, how do we decide upon what morals should be extracted from them? Obviously everyone in this thread agrees that stoning disobedient children is not a literal moral that one should follow. But what about having no other gods? Does that imply that there ARE other gods (a literal reading)? Or just that you should disbelieve the other ones (figurative)? Or is this just a commercial advertisement ("No gods satisfy you like YHWH, so why not sign up now?") inserted into a convenient gap in the programming, as I tend to view it?
...
How does one decide? Well there are several views and thoughts on it. Is it all allegorical? Is it all literal? I find both extremes highly distasteful for a number of reasons.
The main one is that they both have missed the point, each story whether allegorical or literal is there for a reason
. A second one is that most people seem to disregard a main fact about the Bible. It is not a book, but rather a collection of books. Some books have to be read with different view. As a RC scholar once said, “You can tell that some of the books of the Old Testament are an attempt to give some historical basis for things, others such as the book of Jonah, well it smells a bit fishy to me.”
It could also be you just need to take a step back on it all and try to calmly see things from another perspective. I do not see things in your point of view. I do try, however.
* I also see it as tacky but yeah what can you do.
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So do you feel that all the authors felt that they saw or experienced something that they all felt was important enough to record for future generations?
Let me try to clarify. (Although, knowing my track record, I'm sure to fail here.)
You have said that there is little to no documentation that Jesus existed. (At least outside of "biased" sources.)
You have said that the same kinds of stories that surround the Jesus stories abounded at that time period. The implied message here is that Jesus followers were just adding on known myths to their version.
You make it sound like these other story writers had an agenda and therefore the gospel writers must have as well. But it's not clear to me what you feel that agenda is.
I'm trying to figure out what you think that "point" is for them to have written this stuff down. Someone asked how this was different than Odysseus. To my knowledge, no one claimed to have walked with Odysseus and wrote about it later because they felt it was important enough to remember for all time.
So, why do you think that Mark felt it important enough to write this stuff down? Why do you think it was important enough for Matthew and Luke to clarify and add to what was written down? Same thing for John. You imply that it's not really a conspiracy, yet you also imply that these people completely mythized (is that even a word) a marginally historical person -- someone who they claimed to have walked with and experienced -- and their net gain in doing so was ....? Even to the point that Paul bought the whole thing hook line and sinker.
So why do you think that we even have these documents we have?
I do not see things in your point of view. I do try, however.
Ultimately, we all have to live together on this rock for now -- afterlife or none. So what you've outlined is, pragmatically-speaking, just about the most moral thing we can possibly do, regardless of which books (or lack thereof), or which parts of those books, we choose to believe.
Still one of the most sexist stories I've seen in the bible to date.I've got a new question, and this one is for the Christians:
How do you guys feel about the story of Samson?
Is the Bible telling the literal truth about his long, flowing locks?
Yup. His hair got him chicks, and then the wrong kind of chicks, and ultimately the only way he could repair his relationship with God was to sacrifice himself, since he;d put himself and his nation in harm's way with his sin.
Chicks are evil, man.
Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs) is the best. The author had a thing for breasts.
Schneerson Lives!
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Song of Solomon (or Song of Songs) is the best. The author had a thing for breasts.Still one of the most sexist stories I've seen in the bible to date.I've got a new question, and this one is for the Christians:
How do you guys feel about the story of Samson?
Is the Bible telling the literal truth about his long, flowing locks?
Yup. His hair got him chicks, and then the wrong kind of chicks, and ultimately the only way he could repair his relationship with God was to sacrifice himself, since he;d put himself and his nation in harm's way with his sin.
Chicks are evil, man.
That is an understatement.
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Continuous habitation of a single site for nigh unto forty years would leave traces. The Bible helpfully names it for us, and that we haven't found those traces is hardly for lack of looking. You're comparing highly mobile nomads to what amounts to a single migration which hung up just short of its destination for a few decades. In that time the ancient Jews were de facto settled. (Just like they had been in Egypt per the Bible, in fact.) You're comparing apples to oranges.
I disagree with your opinion that this is comparing apples to oranges. In my opinion, the Scythians are one of the best relevant comparison to the Hebrew period in Exodus. As such, they are an excellent test for the claims of archaeologists...which in this case, is that if 600,000 people live a nomadic/pastoral existence for a period of 40 years in a certain region...that there will be evidence found of these common, every day people.
If you are looking in the right places. Since we have but the barest idea of where said places are, it is all but impossible to do so.
Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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So, why do you think that Mark felt it important enough to write this stuff down? Why do you think it was important enough for Matthew and Luke to clarify and add to what was written down? Same thing for John. You imply that it's not really a conspiracy, yet you also imply that these people completely mythized (is that even a word) a marginally historical person -- someone who they claimed to have walked with and experienced -- and their net gain in doing so was ....? Even to the point that Paul bought the whole thing hook line and sinker.
So why do you think that we even have these documents we have?
I listened to an audio lecture on Late Antiquity recently, and am thus an expert on that subject. One of the themes of the lectures was how, upon discovering literacy, a culture's origin story would be recorded with some...recordation biases. For example, the Francs (I think) had an origin story that involved them being the descendants of Troy. Why? Because the Trojans were once Romans (or something like that). By having an origin story linked to Troy, the Francs could claim additional legitimacy to interact with (and eventually, rule in the stead of) the Romans. The scientific record (of which I have no knowledge) shows that the Francs were in no way related to the Trojans.
Similarly, there are a large number of histories written in the period which show some pagan ruler who suffers a loss and then converts to Christianity (frequently along with a gazillion of his people). Again, while there may be evidence that such rulers either tolerated or perhaps even converted to Christianity, there is not any evidence of these mass gatherings where everyone found Jesus. Further, there is often evidence of such rulers tolerating or promoting paganism as well. These histories were written after the rulers were dead and designed to show the nation's ties to the dominant religion, and the facts were adjusted accordingly.
I find the Bible to be consistent with this pattern. There are multiple passages that go to great length to establish that a particular prophet de jure had blood ties to Jesus/Abraham/etc. I suspect that these ties were manufactured after the fact (or perhaps, at the time of the ascendene of) a particular ruler to increase the ruler's legitimacy.
The story of Jesus can fit this narrative as well. Those who wrote about him had an incentive to enhance his claims to divinity because, as followers of Jesus, it enhanced their own claims to divinity/righteousness.
Under this view, the Bible is largely a tool of propaganda, designed to link its writers to God directly (in the form of a living, breathing human no less). The various clarifications are simply products of different cultures/audiences who needed the message to be tailored to them to find it more persuasive, thereby granting power to the preachers of the Bible and their followers.
I don't think you need a conspiracy to support the mythologizing of Christ, you just need to look at how other cultures record their history/origin myths.
Thanks for the clarification Moff; it’s very helpful. So then, in we go.
So do you feel that all the authors felt that they saw or experienced something that they all felt was important enough to record for future generations?
I was going to say yes, but I’m not sure that both points are equally so. I hope you’ll forgive me if I split the question in three:
Did the first generation or so of Christians feel they had experienced something of great supernatural significance?
I would certainly agree that the founders of any new religious movement have genuine experiences and feelings that they consider supernaturally significant, just as people today do whether they come in at the ground floor or not. I do not deny that religious experiences exist and happen to people. I believe, rather, that they are mistaken about the origins of such experiences. So to answer in short now that I’ve done the long: Yes, but just like everyone else had. We can say the same things about the first generation of Christians as we can about the first generation of Muslims.
Were there eyewitnesses among the authors of the three canonical synoptic gospels?
I don’t think so. It’s not impossible that there were, but the weight of facts tilts against. I’m sure you know the stories attached to the authors’ names, but the gospels are actually anonymous. That the Gospel According to Mark is called that is a matter of traditional religious folklore, just like the story that he was a secretary of Peter’s. It certainly doesn’t declare itself as such. Wikipedia has a summary of how the story has come down to us.
Personally I don’t entirely dismiss the case that Mark wrote Mark, but I don’t think it’s entirely airtight either. More details here.
Certainly, at least to my recollection, the authors of the synoptics do not claim they were personally present in their narratives. Some readers conjecture that they were, but I think it would be very strange if a gospel author was present and did not think to point the fact out. Surely that would lend further credibility to their work. “I was there. I saw it with my own eyes. I walked with the Lord.” That wouldn’t persuade an unbeliever, but believers wrote the gospels for other believers.
Did the authors of the synoptic gospels have access to eyewitness testimony?
I just don’t think this is knowable with the texts we have. Having it, of course, doesn’t make them perfectly reliable. Lacking it doesn’t make them perfectly unreliable. The best way to know that would be for the texts to both claim to be the words of eyewitnesses and to have something external to them, something like Josephus, which agreed on the matter in terms that made it clear he was speaking from knowledge and not passing along just a story he’d heard told.
Now clarifications :)
You have said that there is little to no documentation that Jesus existed. (At least outside of "biased" sources.)
You have said that the same kinds of stories that surround the Jesus stories abounded at that time period. The implied message here is that Jesus followers were just adding on known myths to their version.
You make it sound like these other story writers had an agenda and therefore the gospel writers must have as well. But it's not clear to me what you feel that agenda is.
All sources are biased, but we would expect sources from within the faith to be more biased than others. It’s reasonable to doubt them on things which would have been extremely important points of dogma to them, just as we would doubt a Greek historian who told us that Ares came down and kicked a few heads in to turn the tide of a battle.
Religious texts, by their very nature, are going to be full of this kind of thing. Religious texts that are still popular and important in our culture today must be treated with special care, as being human we can’t help but be inclined somewhat towards them due to our upbringing. It’s easy to be objective about some dead religion from some other culture, but one that is at least passively imbibed as our own? That takes more work and, unfortunately, the people studying the texts tend, with some exceptions, to be the most favorably inclined towards them as they’re largely priests and ministers.
Stories like Jesus’s story are very common to the era and area. In a broader sense, many of Christianity’s distinctive traits in both the theological and narrative sense are not foreign to the milieu. Sons of gods who die and are reborn, who are savior figures, and who are somehow godlike themselves, persecuted, etc, are not unusual. I don’t mean to say that every detail of Jesus’s story is cribbed from other guys, but it is a kind of organic outgrowth of the religious environment of the time and place.
I'm trying to figure out what you think that "point" is for them to have written this stuff down. Someone asked how this was different than Odysseus. To my knowledge, no one claimed to have walked with Odysseus and wrote about it later because they felt it was important enough to remember for all time.
I know this goes with the other paragraph that follows, but a small point here. Claiming connections with and descent from various figures in myth is one of those things that’s extremely common in the milieu. Alexander clearly thought he was a god and ruffled some Greek feathers by insisting upon it. The custom was at the time more associated with the hated Persians he’d conquered. Julius Caesar claimed he was a son of Venus. Octavian insisted on being called Son of a God. Divine kingship, and divinely-sanctioned kingship, are as old as Egypt and Sumer. A century or two after, a Roman emperor cracked a last joke on his deathbed. He said he thought he was becoming a god.
So, why do you think that Mark felt it important enough to write this stuff down? Why do you think it was important enough for Matthew and Luke to clarify and add to what was written down? Same thing for John. You imply that it's not really a conspiracy, yet you also imply that these people completely mythized (is that even a word) a marginally historical person -- someone who they claimed to have walked with and experienced -- and their net gain in doing so was ....? Even to the point that Paul bought the whole thing hook line and sinker.
The gospels come after Paul’s letters, chronologically. Paul was writing around in the 50s. The most likely range of dates for Mark is 70-75. As you know, Paul spends a lot more time on theological intricacies and church management than he does on recounting stories of Jesus’s life.
(I can talk a little bit more about the dating issues if you’d like, but only to scratch the surface a bit. They can get pretty arcane.)
I think that Mark and the other gospel writers are products of a time, a generation and change after Jesus would have lived, when there’s increasing friction between the proto-Christian communities and the Jewish community. The Romans have just wrecked Judea and razed the temple. They believe the end of the world is at hand, probably from traditions that Jesus said it was happening in the lifetime of his contemporaries who are now rather old and due to the political and religious tumult.
They’re kind of on the ragged edge, people in crisis who are concerned with the fact that the world seems to be ending. But they have a message they want to get out. The written word transmits more faithfully than oral tradition, though the movement tends to prefer the oral tradition. People who can claim to have known and walked with Jesus are long in the tooth, surely dying at a steady rate. Perhaps all those who were generally accepted to have done so are already dead, either from age or the general violence of the times. If ever there was a time to get things down in writing, it was then.
Why writing? To codify. To manage. To include what they think to be the true message and exclude what was untrue. I’m not sure that any of the authors knew Jesus. (Rather the opposite.) But they’re trying to preserve what they consider memory of him. Where do they get the stuff from?
Oral tradition of course. People get together and tell stories, which change a little in every telling.
Collections of sayings and specific teachings. Some of these have survived in part as sayings gospels, which we’ve uncovered again in the past century.
Specific narratives that tell parts of Jesus’s story. The passion narrative is surely one. Perhaps also the nativity, and parables would be easy to pass here too. These might have been written, unwritten, or a mix.
Mark gets there first, at least among the canonicals. Matthew and Luke both apparently know Mark, but put their own expansions, emphases, and spines on him. That they did so clearly means they don’t think Mark was entirely sufficient. They don’t acknowledge him as such, but there’s too much shared material for it to have been happenstance. These are much the same reasons that the non-canonical gospels would have been written.
Why would people mythologize a marginal historical person? I’m not completely sure they did. My position is actually that the quest for the historical Jesus is problematic because any guy we found wouldn’t be the one the people looking wanted and the methods for finding him are pretty bad.
But why do it, if in fact they did? The same reasons anybody would. Washington Irving lied flagrantly, making up all kinds of stories about George Washington and Columbus. Scientologists have published biographies of L. Ron Hubbard that get pretty wild. They do these things as devotional acts. They do them to teach. Irving wanted to teach values like honesty so he gave us stories about how honest Washington was. Since Washington was already widely admired, a kind of folk hero, grafting his name to a story about honesty gives it more weight. In the same way, teachings not uncommon among rabbis of the time could easily migrate into the mouth of Jesus. They movement already existed, but each writer was trying to shape it into what they considered the correct form.
As for Paul buying the whole thing, I’m not studied enough to say with any confidence what Paul bought. He seems, and I don’t say this to be needlessly hostile, to have some pretty serious issues. John Shelby Spong thinks he was gay, knew it, and thus believed himself worthy of death. Certainly Paul’s attitudes on sex are extremely strange in a Jewish context, though not necessarily a Gnostic one. Celibacy, and asceticism in general, are not major elements of Judaism. They are however, not foreign to the kind of Platonism Paul might have picked up from the Greek education we’re told he had.
Paul tells us he was a persecutor. Maybe he had an attack of conscience that happened in the right circumstances for a conversion. People do convert between religions for all kinds of reasons, which I’m sure we both know can be very personal, very silly, or some combination.
Paul ends up traveling around doing, well, largely his old job. I don’t say that he’s persecuting people still, but he does travel around giving instructions to religious communities on how to do things right. Persecution has the same theoretical function: to keep people on the “right” path. At some point he dies, or becomes infirm enough that he can’t continue. By this time Paul and his ideas are widely circulated among prominent churches. He may have founded some of those himself, going with his innovation on preaching to the gentiles and leaving aside many Jewish rules. (There’s another side to that. At the same time as the Christianities are moving away from the Judaisms, the Judaisms are moving away from the Christianities. The split is often acrimonious.)
By the time the gospel writers are going to work, the Pauline tradition is probably one of the most prominent and successful in terms of raw market share. They may adopt it, or parts of it, as a pragmatic matter in order to help spread their understanding of Jesus’s life. They may sincerely believe it.
But here’s the thing, really: Everybody I’ve referenced believes they’re preaching the truth. Each of them is convinced that their theology, their understanding of Jesus, their understanding of Judaism is right, their understanding of the church is right, etc. They are not committing fraud in the sense that we’d see it, where they with guilty minds and for their own profit alone deceive others. They’re doing religion, just as the rabbis were doing in the Talmud, as the neo-Platonists were doing, and as people of all cultures have done. They’re trying to set the record straight, reconstructing the truth from what’s available to them.
Some of what they say is surely myth. Some of it is surely mistaken. People in our literate times are quite capable of confusing Marx with the US Constitution. In a time of less literacy and less education in general it would be almost trivial for something that sounds like Jesus ought to have said it to turn into something Jesus said. How would we distinguish? How do we slice away the mistakes and find the man underneath it all? The methods the historical Jesus scholars use are, well, pretty bad. I discussed a few previously. Specifically, they’re extremely deferential to and forgiving of the text, to a degree that we would not be with anything but the paramount religious work of our culture.
We would insist on more rigor essentially anywhere else. It’s not controversial to suggest the Sumerian Kings List is full of stretchers inserted for religious and propagandistic purposes, but that’s because the Sumerians are all dead. To say the same thing about the Bible is to provoke frequent outrage, even though the Bible replicates the most characteristic propaganda of the Kings List: greatly inflating the lifespans of cultural founding figures in order to grant them extra importance.
So why do you think that we even have these documents we have?
Separate from the question of why they were written, or why people circulated them, we have these documents because they’re the ones that became orthodox over time and thus great effort went into preserving and copying them. We have them because the people paying the copyists wanted to preserve them more than they wanted to preserve other documents.
That’s especially sad when it comes to classical works of science, many of which we know only from offhanded references or fragments. A few survive only as palimpsests. Much will surely never be recovered, a fact which bothers me a lot. We have the incredible luxury to live in a world of printing presses and printers, cheap paper, cheap ink, and widespread literacy. It’s one of the most important factors in how we’ve come to know so much more about the world than our ancestors ever could.
Fatal...provided we accept as true the premise that archeology can pinpoint the existence of several hundred thousand people living a nomadic/pastoral existence in a 40 year time window with certainty.
Having just written a rather long post, I'm going to try to zero in on the point of contention here. If you maintain that the ancient Jews were carrying out a nomadic/pastoral existence for forty years, you have already rejected the Exodus account. The book says they spent thirty-eight years at the oasis of Kadesh Barnea.
That's not the act of nomads, but the act of a settled people. If you think otherwise, you are very confused.
Also it seems the Scythians aren't so hard to find after all.
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RPG Superstar 2013
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On the first count, Jesus is a failed messiah by the Bible’s own terms. I didn’t make them up. By the time he became worm food as we all do, he’d failed entirely. Insisting that the check is in the mail and he’ll come back “someday” is doing the same thing that the Chabad Lubavitch people are doing with their messiah. If you accept it for one you must accept it for both. If you reject them as obviously throwing up a theological house of cards to hide the obvious fact that he failed to deliver on what the messiah is supposed to deliver, you must accept the same of Jesus.
On the second point, I gave you quotes from all four gospels with Jesus making it clear that he does know, and listing a specific timeframe. This is just not honest of you.
Actually, I am not that interested in your gesture of "following me around". I predicted that you would ignore any reposnses and jsut say the exact same thing over and over again, and that's what you've done. You continually ignore context and the whole of scripture, to say something about a verse, that doesn't address what you need it to to make your point. It was Jesus who said "No one knows but the Father, not even me." He said that. I told you Jesus talks over and over again about the Kingdom being on earth as the church bears fruit by sharing the good news. I also mention two people that saw out of this world and into the next one. Ergo, comments that people still alive would see the Kingdom of Heaven meet both standards. Jesus was very very clear that the Kingdom he intended to claim as Messiah was NOT an earthly kingdom. The religious leaders at the time wanted someone to kick Rome out and rescue them. But of course, the whole point of occupation was that the Jews had turned their backs on God. it occurred over and over again in Hebrew history. And of cours,e prophecy about the Messiah clearly indicates he will be rejected by his own people, he will die, and our sins will be placed onto that sacrifice. TO the extent he was crucified, he acomplished the foretold purpose of Messiah. You arguemtn that he failed hangs on the idea that he wasn;t a success if he didn't come back and take over. But the Bible never says that will be true of Messiah, and he never claimed he came back for that purpose. You want your point to be valid, but you've no interest in testing it against scripture. You pick a few verses about Christ accomplishing an end, but then you've defined that end in contrvention to what Messiah was prophecied to be.
In the context that Jesus did not accomplish what messiah was supposed to, you are willfully dead wrong. Now, if you jsut want to say he had no divinty, he died, and without resurrection he's a failed savior, great. The debate isn't about whether he failed but whether he was God and arose. You aren't gonna believe that no matter what. Just stop saying he failed as Messiah, if your defense is he claimed 'x' and didn't accomplish it, because you fundamentally don't understand the Messiah's purpose. The whole reason I went all 'brief history of time' in that long post was to illustrate the the purpose of the Messiah from the beginning was exactly to meet prophetic predictions, sufer, die, and bear our penalty. That's it. Mission accomplished.
I would really appreciate it if, while completely ignoring my posts, you would not refer to me as dishonest. I'm telling you you choose not tounderstand scripture. I pointed out to you that Jesus' testimony is that no one knows when the second coming is, and Jesus didn't give anyone a time. You can't connect the words 'coming back' with a time. You can connect his references to the establishment of the church - the 'kingdom' he came to install to share salvation with the whole world. Find a textual critic or commentator that says "scholars think this might be a reference to a date of his return". But please don't say "I gave you verse that said he was coming back before everyone died. I've told you you were wrong about that several times already, and I don't think I can come up with a new way to say it.
Once again you are simply ignoring the Bible’s clear words and making up your own to avoid the fact that Jesus turned to...
See? There you go again. I didn't make up or ignore anything. I am defining those passages for you because you won't read them for anything other than what Samnell needs them for. You aren't attentive to the context of Jesus discussion of the kingdom he intended to set down on earth as ditinct frmo the kingdom the pharisees taught people he'd come back to rule. You are ignoring Jesus' admonition that NO ONE knows when. Can you please study this issue a bit, and get to know what the man was talking about, or refrains from accusing people of making up the terms of a book they devote years of their life to studying? In any event, you ought to back off the language about lying and dishonesty, as this is supposed to be civil and constructive dialogue.
You don't have to back off that language. You can have this conversation wth someone that will let you call them a liar, if you can find one.
...
This disappoints me Kirth. People are well aware I am not a Paizo employee. Anyone that gets all psyched because an author has both a contributor tag and an opinion needs help. I'm not even sure I can get rid of the contributor tag by switching names. It seems silly for people to need that sort of sensitive coddling. My contributor tag 'contributes' nothing to this conversation, and no one can seriously complain about my throwing it around for extra weight, or whatever.
I suppose people trying to write an adventure or two could just not be active on the boards or involve themselves in serious conversations about relevant matters.
It's ridiculous, but out of curiosity, we'll see if the tag goes away when I post under an alias.
Yay. What an awesome conversation, that this has to be addressed.
Actually, I am not that interested in your gesture of "following me around". I predicted that you would ignore any reposnses and jsut say the exact same thing over and over again, and that's what you've done.
Mr. Pot, I have urgent information about your pigmentation.
I'm done. If you're not prepared to accept what you say are the words of Jesus are the words of Jesus, there's no hope of meaningful conversation with you. That being determined, again just as before, I've said all that required saying and supported my position without recourse to theological rationalizations made after the fact.
Wait. So that the antiChristian Roman empire turned into the Holy Roman Empire, was ruled eventually by the Catholic Church, doesn't indicate people accepted Christinaity in sufficient numbers to go from martyrs to pontiffs? The numbers of Christians slaughtered in the Holy Land ot in Turkey when Islam swept through doesn't indicate large numbers of people got saved? The transition of pagan churches to combined, nonorthodox Chrisitan churches, and ultimately to evangelical centers in Ephasus, Laodicaea, Corinth, Galatia, and Rome doesn't speak to any significant level of conversion?
I mean, one at a time and all, but it would seem clear the evidence is there to suggest a pretty wild fire going on in terms of Christianity spreading.
I am curious which major prophet tied himself specifically to the lineage of Abraham for self-aggrandizing purposes. I assume there's an example. I am not trying to sound combative, although having to post without my name has me a little on edge. I am just interest in knowing which examples drive you to this conclusion.
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So then, in we go.
And so you did. ;-)
Thank you for your post. Some I knew about (Paul's letters coming before the gospels for starters), some I didn't, and some I disagree with (mostly some of the conclusions). But in the end, I at least appreciate knowing a little more where you're coming from and some of the information you've provided.
Actually, I am not that interested in your gesture of "following me around". I predicted that you would ignore any reposnses and jsut say the exact same thing over and over again, and that's what you've done.Mr. Pot, I have urgent information about your pigmentation.
I'm done. If you're not prepared to accept what you say are the words of Jesus are the words of Jesus, there's no hope of meaningful conversation with you. That being determined, again just as before, I've said all that required saying and supported my position without recourse to theological rationalizations made after the fact.
Erm. So you are saying Jesus DID NOT say he didn't know the time, and that he DID NOT preach about a different kind of kingdom and that he DID NOT point out his job was to come and die. I mean, that was my unanswered assertion, right? You said Jesus claimed he was coming back before everyone died, though that language is not in the Bible, and I have very specifically explained to you what his language said, including the language - you might have missed this before - that he didn't know when his return was appointed.
I agree there's some repetition in my posts. Because I have the same unanswered response to your unchanging claims. Faced with your information about Exodus, I promised I'd look into it. Faced with refutation of your cherry-picked verses that don't claim as you need them to, you are not willing to so engage. How could I respond any differently?
And it's not after the fact. Stop that. Matthew 24:36 is in the same Bible you pulled your few abused verses from. The words that describe Christ being born in Bethlehem, or being crucified, or being the sacrifice in our palce are older than the NT. When Christ dies on the Cross, he says "It is finished." His job was done. It could not be more clear. I didn't yank some random verses out of my butt after trying to figure out how to beat Samnell's expert use of scripture. You were wrong immediately and I corrected you immediately.
I know you believe Christians are just willfully blind folk dependent on some sort of holy crutch to get through life. I know something in you is desperate to believe that all Christianity is based on some barbaric, hypocritical paradigm replete with the greatest evils in history. And yet, right here, you have been shown to be categorically inaccurate about your assumptions. You probably won't continue this conversation, but if you join a new one, recall that you don't even once look for what people really believe or what the Bible really says. Just like slavery, a few verses down, the act you describe as Hebrew slavery is outlawed and punishable by death, but your position does not move. Even clear facts from people you choose not to respect don't move you. So whatever it is about people of faith that evokes that reaction, it's too bad. Because you didn't get so smart about other things by being that guy.
Gonna take a while to get used to this tag thing.
So then, in we go.And so you did. ;-)
Thank you for your post. Some I knew about (Paul's letters coming before the gospels for starters), some I didn't, and some I disagree with (mostly some of the conclusions). But in the end, I at least appreciate knowing a little more where you're coming from and some of the information you've provided.
Any time. This stuff is a bit fun to me so delving back into it is no great chore.
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RPG Superstar 2013
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Despite claims that we have no idea who wrote a given book or whatnot, we do. There are exceptions: the perspective a flawless Greek of Hebrews leads som to believe it was written by Luke, the theological approach and focus on 'selling' Christ to the Jews has some people believe it was written by Paul. No one really knows. But most books we do know, with very little debate. The exclusion of noncanonical books from the Bible came from factors like: high probability of pseudonyms for authors, false claims to be a more famous author, wildly divergent content, or a book showed up in weird circles much much later.
There wouldn't be a gospel according to Judas, since Judas took off and hanged himself after the crucifixion. Even if he journaled notes on life with Christ, they wouldn't be organized into useful form.
The gospels and epistels were mostly written a few years after the resurrection, with only a few copies held or circulated until the effort to copy and distribute them was undertaken. When a gospel or even a potentially authentic document like the other two corinthian epistles showed up (this is an example, I am not saying we have the other two corinthian letters), the standard bible was pretty much compiled.
Note that a document not being canon doe not mean we cannot read it. I think every Christian should read the Apocrypha to get an understanding of history and thought leading up to the birth of Christ.
Despite claims that we have no idea who wrote a given book or whatnot, we do. There are exceptions: the perspective a flawless Greek of Hebrews leads som to believe it was written by Luke, the theological approach and focus on 'selling' Christ to the Jews has some people believe it was written by Paul. No one really knows. But most books we do know, with very little debate. The exclusion of noncanonical books from the Bible came from factors like: high probability of pseudonyms for authors, false claims to be a more famous author, wildly divergent content, or a book showed up in weird circles much much later.
There wouldn't be a gospel according to Judas, since Judas took off and hanged himself after the crucifixion. Even if he journaled notes on life with Christ, they wouldn't be organized into useful form.
The gospels and epistels were mostly written a few years after the resurrection, with only a few copies held or circulated until the effort to copy and distribute them was undertaken. When a gospel or even a potentially authentic document like the other two corinthian epistles showed up (this is an example, I am not saying we have the other two corinthian letters), the standard bible was pretty much compiled.
Note that a document not being canon doe not mean we cannot read it. I think every Christian should read the Apocrypha to get an understanding of history and thought leading up to the birth of Christ.
The latter part is a HUGE assumption. It would make more sense to say that anything he wrote might have been destroyed by his understandably angry contemporaries. Just because he's Judas doesn't mean he simply sat around picking his nose waiting patiently to betray Jesus- he could have been a prolific writer, even going so far as to outline reasons for what he did. That said, we'll probably never know.
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Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I don't care enough to discuss the topic further with you Helt. Samnell has made points regading the topic far better than I could and you've ignored or dismissed them. You also mischaracterized my point entirely, and I'm not interested on discussing the unrelated and incoherent point you raised.
I was engaging Moff, who has been a wonderful messenger of his faith and has impressed greatly upon me. He manages to be faithful without being dissmissive and close-minded.
I have not had the same experience with you, and see no point in continuing.
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I was engaging Moff, who has been a wonderful messenger of his faith and has impressed greatly upon me. He manages to be faithful without being dissmissive and close-minded.
Thank you. I was actually looking for an answer from Samnell (and got it). With your response, I have mixed feelings on it, but a lot of that comes from my own lack of knowledge -- hence the reason for the question to Samnell. I knew that he would provide plenty of "food for thought".
...Anyone that gets all psyched because an author has both a contributor tag and an opinion needs help. .
"Personally find it kind of tacky" is a long way from "gets all psyched," so either you're not referring to me, or you're intentionally misrepresenting things. Since you claim so vociferously not to be dishonest, I'll assume the former.
I was engaging Moff, who has been a wonderful messenger of his faith and has impressed greatly upon me. He manages to be faithful without being dissmissive and close-minded.
Damn straight.
Gospel According to Samnell 1:1
"There's this dude on the Paizo boards going by Moff Rimmer and he rocks."
RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32
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I was engaging Moff, who has been a wonderful messenger of his faith and has impressed greatly upon me. He manages to be faithful without being dissmissive and close-minded.Damn straight.
Gospel According to Samnell 1:1
"There's this dude on the Paizo boards going by Moff Rimmer and he rocks."
I find this sentiment quite agreeable. I'm not a believer. I was, now I'm not. However, I've spoken to a lot of people about faith and I've never heard anyone say, "I was in this argument over the veracity of Christianity and the guy really convinced me with his logic and rhetoric!" (I'm not saying these people don't exist, but I've never met one.)
It seems to me that if you're going to convert someone, you're far more likely to do it through actions rather than words. When you behave in such a way as to embody the beliefs you're trying so hard to convince others of, you serve as a much more compelling argument than trying to resort to logic in matters of faith. Because, let's face it, logic and faith are in two separate spheres. I always particularly liked Kirkegaard's supposition that you do not believe because of the evidence, you believe in spite of the evidence. You must take that leap of faith, or your faith is meaningless.
Thank you, Moff, for providing a good example of a person of faith behaving in an excellent and admirable way.
The latter part is a HUGE assumption. It would make more sense to say that anything he wrote might have been destroyed by his understandably angry contemporaries. Just because he's Judas doesn't mean he simply sat around picking his nose waiting patiently to betray Jesus- he could have been a prolific writer, even going so far as to outline reasons for what he did. That said, we'll probably never know.
Totally agreed that he could have been preparing his text and it just showed up decades later, but again, by that point, a canon had started to form. Certainly, important reading for the early chrch included coduments written before Christ died or was even born, the NT quotes books in the Apocrypha.
"Personally find it kind of tacky" is a long way from "gets all psyched," so either you're not referring to me, or you're intentionally misrepresenting things. Since you claim so vociferously not to be dishonest, I'll assume the former....Anyone that gets all psyched because an author has both a contributor tag and an opinion needs help. .
Guess I'll apologize for my hyperbole. I just think it's silly to even mention. Does anyone think I claim to represent the company or anyone else by posting here? No.
But hey, insofar as I can get used to it, I'd rather take a few minutes over the next few dozens of posts to make sure no one ever needs bother with that complaint again. But I won't be very good at it for a while, cause I already screwed itn up once today.
As what I hope is my last post in this thread, I'll coment on the fascinating last few comments.
Sebastian made the comment that there's no evidence of mass conversions in the early church. My very specific response was 'the shift from kill the Christians to Holy Roman Empire wasn't a clue?', and his retort was "I don't want to talk to you about this. Your point is unrelated and incoherent."
He also says I didn't respond to Samnell. Weird. Samnell said Christ failed as a Messiah because he didn't come back with this huge kingdom yet. I said that wasn't what Messiah came for. Samnell ignored that and provided verses saying Jesus promised he was coming back within a specific time frame. I explained, with context, that Christ never said those things. He referred to an earthly church doing God's work on a number of occasions. He referred to his mission as being crucified. He said "It is finished" when the work was completed. He made the statement "Not even I know when I am supposed to return".
I might have missed it, but I didn't see a single post where Samnell responded to these things. I saw him say "just cause you don't like what your Bible says doesn't mean you can jsut make stuff up. He used the word liar. He called me intellectually dishonest. But then the posts become about how I am dismissive and closeminded. For defending my faith while being called a liar? Guess it's time to walk away in bewilderment. I thought I was providing the exact evidence from the Bible to demonstrate Samnell's use of scripture didn't support his case.
So I get that some folks won't agree, but I walk away not understanding how one guy with the specific arguments, who even grants he'd like to study one guy's perspective more, is the close minded one. The whole thing just makes me sad. I give up, having been called a liar and told the most important figure in history was a failure, by someone who didn't respond to me and doesn't understand the verses he quotd to make his case. It sucks.
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I said that wasn't what Messiah came for. Samnell ignored that and provided verses saying Jesus promised he was coming back within a specific time frame. I explained, with context, that Christ never said those things. He referred to an earthly church doing God's work on a number of occasions. He referred to his mission as being crucified. He said "It is finished" when the work was completed. He made the statement "Not even I know when I am supposed to return".
See, now, your responses would have held a bit more weight had you provided verses. Samnell provided what, six or seven verses which you then turned around and said "nu uh, Jesus didn't say those things you directly quoted from the bible.". So, how about it, how about some verses where Jesus says "Not even I know when I'm supposed to return." specifically Then. perhaps we can draw some logical conclusions about where those passages occur in the bible and their historicity(whatever that is.)
All in all, I'd say this has been a fascinating discussion.
See, now, your responses would have held a bit more weight had you provided verses. Samnell provided what, six or seven verses which you then turned around and said "nu uh, Jesus didn't say those things you directly quoted from the bible.". So, how about it, how about some verses where Jesus says "Not even I know when I'm supposed to return." specifically Then. perhaps we can draw some logical conclusions about where those passages occur in the bible and their historicity(whatever that is.)
This is a little nitpicky, but I think the historicity of a passage or text would only pertain to its provenance. Our complete copies of ancient documents are almost always quite late, with the oldest still extant manuscripts often being from the medieval period. (The Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi library are obvious exceptions.)
But that doesn't mean that the Bible or Cicero or whatever was secretly assembled in a brilliant conspiracy headquartered inside a volcano in the south of France, circa 1100. We have many surviving fragments from earlier. In addition to the texts themselves, we have the works of many authors who antedate our oldest complete manuscripts which demonstrate knowledge of the works, up to and including direct quotations. Certainly the works cannot be dated to later than when other writers are quoting from them.
And still not worth the time to engage.
Were I more vigilant about that, I'd partake in fewer arguments.
Were I more vigilant about that, I'd partake in fewer arguments.
And still not worth the time to engage.
Samnell, thank you for your well reasoned and articulate arguments. I believe in scepticism, critical thinking, and (secular) humanism. I tend to avoid words like Jesus hater used by doug for while I don't believe in the supernatural associated with religion the basic message of be nice to each other is something I do believe is a beneficial part of religions.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32
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I tend to avoid words like Jesus hater used by doug for while I don't believe in the supernatural associated with religion the basic message of be nice to each other is something I do believe is a beneficial part of religions.
See, that's my issue with Christianity; that "be nice to each other" isn't the basic message. It's part of the basic message, which also includes "...and do whatever this 5,000 year old book of the myths of a tribe of desert nomads says." And the Bible itself is so contradictory, so full of advice that applied to desert nomads 5,000 years ago, but is unhelpful now, that it drowns out the be nice to each other portions. If Christianity would drop the Old Testament, that would make things easier to swallow, but they insist that it's all or nothing, which spoils the halfway decent portions that do exist. Prohibitions on what you can eat, what clothes you can wear, how to kill your children when they talk back to you and which slaves are acceptable to own in the eyes of God make the rest of it less appealing, especially when there are so many people who believe the book is literally true without ever having read it.
I much prefer Thomas Jefferson's version of the Bible, which took out all the supernatural parts and just kept in Jesus' advice on how to live a good life. Much less contradictory and much more relevant as a document.
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I tend to avoid words like Jesus hater used by doug for while I don't believe in the supernatural associated with religion the basic message of be nice to each other is something I do believe is a beneficial part of religions.
See, that's my issue with Christianity; that "be nice to each other" isn't the basic message. It's part of the basic message, which also includes "...and do whatever this 5,000 year old book of the myths of a tribe of desert nomads says." And the Bible itself is so contradictory, so full of advice that applied to desert nomads 5,000 years ago, but is unhelpful now, that it drowns out the be nice to each other portions. If Christianity would drop the Old Testament, that would make things easier to swallow, but they insist that it's all or nothing, which spoils the halfway decent portions that do exist. Prohibitions on what you can eat, what clothes you can wear, how to kill your children when they talk back to you and which slaves are acceptable to own in the eyes of God make the rest of it less appealing, especially when there are so many people who believe the book is literally true without ever having read it.
I much prefer Thomas Jefferson's version of the Bible, which took out all the supernatural parts and just kept in Jesus' advice on how to live a good life. Much less contradictory and much more relevant as a document.
And like many before you, you simply have missed the point.
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RPG Superstar 2013
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See, now, your responses would have held a bit more weight had you provided verses. Samnell provided what, six or seven verses which you then turned around and said "nu uh, Jesus didn't say those things you directly quoted from the bible.". So, how about it, how about some verses where Jesus says "Not even I know when I'm supposed to return." specifically Then. perhaps we can draw some logical conclusions about where those passages occur in the bible and their historicity(whatever that is.)
All in all, I'd say this has been a fascinating discussion.
I guess I'd think that's a fairer point if anyone had said "Wow, I'm not sure I buy it, but that makes sense. Do you have those verses?" then I could respond with:
Matthew 24:36 (no one knows)
Matthew 11:12 (the work of the Kingdom has already been in progress, and is under attack)
John 19:30 (It's finished. I did what I came to do.)
Luke 33:37 (It was said I'd be counted with the sinners, and the things that were predicted about me are nearing their finish)
John 17:4 (I brought You glory here on earth by completing the thing You sent me to do)
Ephesian 4:12 (our ongoing work is to build up the church)
Collosians 4:11 (me and a few other Jews say hello, they are partners in the ongoing work of the Kingdom)
Acts 17:3 (Paul explains the work of the Messiah was to die and be resurrected, which marks Jesus as the Christ)
Daniel 9:26 (In [about] 430 years, the Messiah will be killed, and it will not appear to have accomplished what people think, and then the Temple will be destroyed)
Mark 15:38 (At the moment of Christ's death, the temple veil separating the priesthood from the Jew was torn in two)
Mark 13:2 (See this Temple? Before long, no stone will be left on top of another. It will be destroyed and rebuilt by my work.)
Isaiah 53:1-12 (The work of Messiah is to take our sins on himself, to be rejected and beaten and killed like a sacrifice)
Zechariah 12:10 (They'll reject the messiah, and pierce him, and in so doing, pierce God, who will mourn Him like an only son)
And more. But the possibility of my claims were wholly ignored by the repetition of the claims I countered, without engaging at all. Moreover, I did reference books, I did quote Christ, and none of it received a response. Samnell proceeded forward by reiterating the same claim: "But he said he was coming, and knew when it would be, and didn't So he failed."
And I guess Sebastian is right: i don't get his point. Because I thought his point was there's no evidence that Christianity swept across the known world in a very short period of time. To be fair, I only thought that because he said "
Again, while there may be evidence that such rulers either tolerated or perhaps even converted to Christianity, there is not any evidence of these mass gatherings where everyone found Jesus"
I get that you believe that the Bible was writen after the fact, and so connects the church to the work of Christ, or changes the names to appear historical. But an early church started by folks who knew him died establishing the faith, so they must ahve felt really convicted about it, and the faith overtook an Empire in a very short amount of time. Also, the documents of the early church describe masses of people getting saved and baptized by the thousands on several occasions. The fact that Rome converted to Christianity means the faith gained momentum at some point, yes?
I realize you don't have to respond, I'm just pointing out I get your point, and you ignored my response. Doing that while saying it's pointless to talk to me because I ignore peoples' arguments is uncalled for.
Alright, I responded because I was asked to provide verses that meant something to my argument. I hate giving up when I see folk ignoring arguments and proceeding to the personal stuff, but I guess I'll let it die if that's where we're gonna stay.
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Then by all means, share the point I have missed.
And like many before you, you simply have missed the point.
Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
It goes beyond just being nice to one another. All else is but pointing to this. Honestly most religions come out much the same. From Buddha to Confucius, to some George Carlin routines.
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RPG Superstar 2010 Top 16, 2011 Top 32
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Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
It goes beyond just being nice to one another. All else is but pointing to this. Honestly most religions come out much the same. From Buddha to Confucius, to some George Carlin routines.
Honestly, if that WERE the sole piece of Christianity, I would be a Christian again in a heartbeat. But it's not and it doesn't pretend to be.