Thread: Bible 101

Originally Posted by kerux

You can't find one single verse in the entire Bbile to support his contention that a person who does those things is a Chrisitan. Not one.

thats cos he was a Jew.

Kerux: I might well roast in a hot place even though this post is made without malice or intent to offend, but do you accept it as a possibility that the father of Christ was non other than a Roman soldier, possibly Panthera? Either that, or his biological father was another man, not divine, not a worker of miracle, and neither able to prevent death nor produce a triangle with more or less than three sides.

You seem to be evading certain truths in your distorted quest for truth; for example, there was nothing divine about Jesus until the Council of Nicea, in 325 CE, where his divinity was decided, on a show of hands, after which it was proposed and thereafter declared that he would be known to have been born by virgin birth.

I stand to be corrected on this one because much is lost to history and this is in serious academic contention, but evidence suggests that the biblical town of Nazareth did not even exist in the first century CE. So where did the Nazarean come from? Where was he born? Note also if you really care, that Josephus narrates a Roman military campaign in that region, but does not mention Nazareth, not once, and the town is not even briefly mentioned in any other records made during and before the fraudulent virgin birth. The only firm evidence of human habitation in Christ's time in that area, apart from what is believed to be the equivalent of one-horse-one-family scraping at the earth, would have been caves, but as you persist in demanding truth as opposed to frivolous faith or fiction, you might concede as fact that Jews (Christ was one, believe it or not) would never live in caves because that is where they traditionally buried their dead. Quite simply, it is unlikely if at all possible that Christ came from a Nazareth that could not have been inhabited in his time as a town. Try DOING some research, instead of raising your flag whenever you have nothing to say!

If you really bothered to follow more than his biblical life story, you will find many horrendous if not shameful parallels preceding his existence. For example, Tammuz, the god of Sumerian and Phoenician teachings, was born of a virgin, died with a wound in his side and, after three days rose from his tomb, leaving it vacant, with the entrance rock rolled aside. Some people believe it significant that Bethlehem was the ancient centre of a Tammuz cult.

Then we have Agni, Balder, Krishna, Hercules, Samson, Jonah, Osiris, Bacchus, Mithra, Hermes, Buddha, Quetzalcoatl, Codom, Prometheus, Zoroaster, Perseus, Laotse, Fo Hi, Horus and Rameses, all gods which had gods for fathers, and each of their mothers were virgins; almost all of their births were announced by stars with voices declaring that a blessing had come to earth. All are said to have fasted forty days, and nearly all worshipped by wise men; all met a violent death. Tyrants sought to destroy each in his infancy, and all are said to have been born in December, coincidentally on the 25th day of the month. All rose from the dead.

With whatever trace of respect remains, you appear to hold the Bible to be immutable as it stands, the indisputable word of God of which not one word may be altered; as if councils such as Nicea had not ever occurred, and as if there do not exist alternative gospels which have been willfully suppressed; if so, for you and people like you, nothing has ever been or can ever be added to it or subtracted from it, because it must by implication contain all the knowledge necessary for individual salvation.

Chill out!

By the way, evidence suggests Christ was actually born in early autumn, his birth announced as the 7th January in an effort to obliterate a pagan feast of that date by gilding it with a Christian myth. Later, in the 5th century, some 400 years after his death, the date was changed again, and again on a show of mortal hands, because the Winter Solstice and an important Mithraic celebration that was menacing to Holy Fathers, occurred on the 25th of December.

Basically this is an argument from silence, there are four major points

1. Josephus never mentions Nazareth, and apparently it isn't mentioned in any other records of the day. Josephus even documents a military campagin that the Romans into the very vacinity of Nazareth and yet no mention of it.
2. Apprently some claim that the only evidence of human habitation from Christ's time would have been caves in the area, but Jews would never live in caves because they used caves to bury people, and as there are graves near by they would never live in graves or near dead bodies
3. The geography is wrong. Apparently there is no cliff near the Synagague which Jesus might be thrown off of as is seen in Luke.
4. It is always pointed out that a popular website of an excavation of Nazareth calls it a "single family farm."

http://www.geocities.com/Metagetics/Nazareth.html

I. The Argument from Silence

A Argument from silence is never proof of anything.


An argument form silence is no proof at all. Yet this is the basis of the first Skeptical argument. Josephus doesn't mention Nazareth. But that's because he was not writting a travel logue. He had no reason to mention it, it was a very small and unimportant village; almost a bump in the road, that does not prove that it didn't exist.
Nazareth was a tiny bump on the road. It was only four miles form a major city (Sarapis) but it was so small only about 35 families lived there and shared a single family farm, a dray farm, subsisting on only rain water. It was a tiny insignificant place so there is no reason why it should be mentioned.

Originally Posted by keda

By the way, evidence suggests Christ was actually born in early autumn, his birth announced as the 7th January in an effort to obliterate a pagan feast of that date by gilding it with a Christian myth. Later, in the 5th century, some 400 years after his death, the date was changed again, and again on a show of mortal hands, because the Winter Solstice and an important Mithraic celebration that was menacing to Holy Fathers, occurred on the 25th of December.

Quite possibly correct. Again, your statement above supports my contention that Christianity is not a religion and doesn't need the approval of men.

Christ wasn't born in December, Scripture clearly shows that. Christmas has nothing to do with the Christianity of the Bible.

It's a Roman Catholic/pagan holiday.

Originally Posted by kerux

...Argument from silence is never proof of anything.

Yet the rules appear to change when your impertinent flag is raised, unaccompanied by any text, as your response to fair argument, right?

B Joesephus doesnt' mention it, but it is mentioned in Antqiuity.

Two mentions in antiquity
"Despite the Hellenization of the general region and the probability that Greek was known to many people it seems likely that Nazareth remained a conservative Jewish village. After the Jewish war with the Romans from AD 66-70 it was necessary to re-settle Jewish priests and their families. Such groups would only settle in unmixed towns, that is towns without Gentile inhabitants. According to an inscription discovered in 1962 in Caesarea Maritima the priests of the order of Elkalir made their home in Nazareth. This, by the way, is the sole known reference to Nazareth in antiquity, apart from written Christian sources... (next paragraph) Some scholars had even believed that Nazareth was a fictitious invention of the early Christians; the inscription from Caesarea Maritima proves otherwise." Paul Barnett[BSNT], Behind the Scenes of the New Testament, IVP:1990, p.42:


Ibid

Probably had a flying start.

Originally Posted by kerux

The is my warning to others that BS has been excreted.

Then surely you should add it to every single post you make!

Originally Posted by kerux

The quotes you make are fine, except they do not answer the question.

The quotes answer your question. You just don't understand the answer.

The answers are spiritually discerned.

I'd like to remind you of what you stated yourself: quotes need to be studied in the context of the text they're taken from.
Please consider that few members here are familiar enough with the bible to make sense of the quotes you like to pull instead of placing an argument in your own words.

This thread could be an interesting subject, but I find the insincere enquiries and the spurious arguments on both sides rather tedious.

Originally Posted by stroller

This thread could be an interesting subject, but I find the insincere enquiries and the spurious arguments on both sides rather tedious.

True enough but it's still a better read than that so-called 'holy' book, the Quran...

Each is 'holy' for some, of general or academic interest for a number of people, for others just tedious after the first few pages.

Originally Posted by stroller

Please consider that few members here are familiar enough with the bible to make sense of the quotes you like to pull instead of placing an argument in your own words.

This thread could be an interesting subject, but I find the insincere enquiries and the spurious arguments on both sides rather tedious.

damn - and i thought i had been reasonably sincere in my arguements.

i'm offended Stroller.

Nothing wrong with the bible, koran or any other holy text, fine stories each one and they've even been turned into dozens of movies. The problems begin only when people start taking them seriously.

Originally Posted by kingwillyhggtb

the bible is a series of scriptures with mulitple authors sometimes transcribed by memory years after the events in question. sometimes the oral tradition survived several generations b4 being written down.

(has anyone eva played chinese whispers at school?)

so the bible is a human construct and therefore liable to misinterpretation, misinformation and incorrect 'facts' adn thus not to be taken at face value.

OK THATS ANSWERED THEN. THREAD CLOSED

I concur. (Sorry, couldn't green you.)

Uncovering Jesus' world

Besides the copies of the Old Testament scriptures, the Dead Sea caves also contained other kinds of writings, including commentaries on the Bible, a plan for rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem, fanciful writings about Adam, Eve, and other Old Testament characters, and writings about a coming war between the forces of Darkness and the forces of Light. Many refer to a Righteous Teacher and a coming Messiah who will save the faithful.


Together they give us a picture of how the Jews who lived at Qumran between 200 B.C. and A.D. 70 lived and thought. Having discovered their library, we can compare their sacred writings to those of the New Testament, which would have been composed after A.D. 50.


Interestingly, the comparison has knocked down some long-cherished liberal theories about the New Testament. If we take Bultmann's claim that the Gospel of John is Greek, and therefore foreign to how Jesus would have really taught, we find today a respected expert like Edwin Yamauchi of Miami University writing: "John's Gospel, once considered by critics to be late and Hellenistic (Greek), is now shown by the Qumran parallels (in the Dead Sea scrolls) to be the most Jewish of the Gospels."


Rudolph Bultmann, needless to say, would find this hard to swallow, since John focuses on the divine nature of Christ—that before he was born in Bethlehem he was "with God, and was God." This was "Greek thinking" at its worst, Bultmann believed, and because Jesus was Jewish, he wouldn't have accepted this description of himself, much less taught it to his disciples.


Now the Dead Sea scrolls show how wrong Bultmann was—Jesus was a Jew of his day, and there is nothing anti-Jewish with John presenting him as God incarnate."



Ibid



Oops! Betcha didn't read about this one in any of your Anti-Jesus literature.




Bible 1 Critics 0

Nobody gonna take on the evidence presented by the Dead Sea Scrolls that refutes the 'chinese telephone' BS we saw posted earlier?

An Atheist Manifesto

quote:

"Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend."

linky here

You mad at God or the Devil?

God didn't bring evil into the world.

^ I think you are wrong there Kerux.

God made Man, the biggest of all evil.

i'm not mad at anyone. i just thought that the site makes some very intelligent points without the necessity of flagpoles with "bullshit" written on them.