 | |  |  | | | | | | | | | | | | |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
| |
| Author |
Message |
sotexas_spi
B.V. VIP - Contributor
Joined: Jun 20, 2003
Posts: 4095
Location: Texas/SPI
|
 Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 4:23 am Post subject: Credibility of the New Testament & F.C. Beliefs |
 |
|
| |
What the majority of "Contemporary biblical Fundamentalist Christians" refuse to accept is that when it comes to the early evolution of Christianity, there are few, if any verifiable, documented “facts” surrounding their Bible. And as such, since there is little we can say with specificity that did actually occur in what is termed the “Holy Land” some 2,000 years ago, we can say with confidence that none of the four gospels that are included in the New Testament were actually written by anyone remotely associated with the biblical character, Jesus.
But zealous, devout Fundamentalist Christians refuse to accept this as “fact”.
Let’s take a quick look at these four gospels.
Ostensibly, the Gospel of Mark, (or at least the one referred to as the “Gospel of Mark” because there is no verifiable evidence that the apostle Mark wrote it., but it was a general practice at the time to accredit written documents to “people of note”), is believed to have been written at least 40 years after the “death” of Jesus.
What biblical Fundamentalist Christians refuse to understand is how those stories were passed from one person to another by word of mouth, over a 40 year period, without any written records to substantiate it.
Now…if one were to be investigating this (using proper investigating techniques), just how accurate would one consider such “hearsay” testimony, especially after 40 years of a primitive, uneducated, superstitious populace squatting around their campfires telling and retelling these stories, each time the story is embellished and given more “sensational” details as it progresses?
Of even more concern and consternation is the story of how those particular 4 “stories/gospels” actually were chosen to be included in the New Testament.
We now know that for the 200 years following the apparent writing of the Gospel of Mark, a great number of other gospels were written, each telling a different account of Jesus’ life.
As time passed and the Christian “movement” evolved and became more and more popular in remote areas and villages, the folk tales surrounding the life of the biblical character Jesus reflected the aspects and countanence as influenced by the different communities. (This is the nature of Man, it cannot be denied.) There were literally dozens of conflicting “gospels” circulating the area, more often than not, conflicting with the other gospels.
Now, back to the validity of the “gospels”; my comment that they could have suffered any number of rewritings is based on fact. How do we know this is “fact”? Because we now have the texts of Nag Hammadi, discovered in 1945 in the Jabal al-Tarif mountains of Egypt, near the town of Nag Hammadi.
These surviving 53 “texts” (known as the Gnostic Gospels) had their own versions of the sayings and precepts of Jesus and those very sayings and beliefs conflicted with those in the New Testament.
For example, one of those texts was the Gospel of Thomas. It admits to being a “secret” gospel. It even begins with, “These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which the twin, Judas Thomas, wrote down”. “the twin”…!? Also, in those same texts, was discovered the Gospel of Paul. This gospel candidly describes the intimate relationship of Jesus and Mary of Magdalene. (This is interesting, in light of the later letters and gospels Saul/Paul the Liar wrote.)
There is even a Gospel of Mary, (ostensibly written by Mary Magdalene), in which Mary is described as a devotee of Jesus as well as a leader in her own right of a Christian group.
Other gospels in the Gnostic texts are the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of the Egyptians, and another “secret” text, that of John. There is even a text called the Gospel of Truth, with obvious Buddhist implications.
And those are only a few of the conflicting gospels found at Nag Hammadi.
But what is interesting, and to the dismay of Fundamentalist Christians, is the familiar “essence” of those texts. Aside from giving credit of acts and words to the biblical character Jesus that are apparent and blatantly conflicting with the “accepted” gospels of the NT, those Gnostic Gospels rebuked the popularly held beliefs of the “virgin birth” and the “resurrection”, as believed by the Fundamentalist Christians.
But what really concerned and worried the F.C. groups, was that while there are references to Jesus and his apostles, the basis of the “message” of the biblical character Jesus, was that one should come to know oneself within their own convictions, and to do so was to “know God”. Essentially, their message was that by looking inward to find the source of ones’ joy, sorrow, love and hate, one would discover “God”. In a vague way, what I’ve said all along….”God” is within us all….”.
Now…because of the political climate of the region, early versions of Christianity were illegal. But if Christianity was to endure and evolve, its’ basic theological foundation needed some sort of organization.
Because of the numerous conflicting gospels floating around, the movement risked being split by the different, unorganized groups. The movement was in need of single leadership. However this could never be accomplished as long as the different communities had their own versions of beliefs and their own “gospels”. But towards the coming of the 3rd century, some semblance of a “single” hierarchy began to form. What came of this developing “power structure” were 3 “ranks” of power…bishops, priests, and deacons.
That “power structure” claimed to represent the majority of the Christian movement and assumed the position that they were the only authentic representatives of the “One True Faith”.
Not to be misunderstood, please, it is not my intent to claim they were zealous, power hungry individuals. Actually, while quite ambitious in their struggle, they were brave, well intentioned people. I don’t doubt that they feared daily that without some sort of organisation and constant, accepted stringent rules and rituals, the Christian movement would fade and disappear.
One must remember the plight of those early Christians. They risked mistreatment and harassment on a daily basis, and sometimes even death. Without some sort of solid structure and order, the grassroots movement of Christianity would not survive.
However, the movement did slowly, but surely gain some ground. Then about the year 180, the Bishop of Lyons, a man by the name of Irenaeus, was able to bring about a single, consolidated belief. He singularly ruled that there could be only one “true” church, having only one set of beliefs and rituals, any other beliefs were to be rejected as heresy. His canon was simple and manifest, there was no salvation outside the “true Church”. Followers of this “true Church” would be “orthodox” or “straight thinking” and the church would be “catholic”…meaning “universal”.
In making such a ruling, Irenaeus was in effect banning the continuation of the writing of gospels by anyone outside of the new “true Church”, mandating instead, that there to be only 4 “true gospels”. As his basis for such a ruling, he made the strange argument that since there were “4 corners of the Universe” and “4 principal winds” so then there should be only 4 gospels.
Irenaeus wrote 5 volumes titled “The Destruction and Overthrow of Falsely So-Called Knowledge”, using them as a platform to condemn any other existing gospels as blasphemous, and in their place decreeing that the 4 gospels we are familiar with today as the “definitive” chronicles of “Gods’ Word”, and as such are “infallible and inerrant”.
The Gnostic Gospels had obvious, conflicting aspects that the “accredited” 4 gospels did not, or rather the 4 accepted gospels had aspects the Gnostic Gospels did not, such as….passion narratives.
The newly authorized dogma of the “true Church” spoke of the crucifixion and the “resurrection”. These were linked to a “fundamental” ritual of the new church in the ritual of the Eucharist, the “Last Supper”.
But there is a flaw in this concept. In the earliest known version of the first gospel of the new church, the Gospel of Mark, there is no mention of the “virgin birth” nor the “resurrection”.
The original Gospel of Mark ends with the tomb being found empty and some sort of mysterious young man informing some women that Jesus was waiting for them in Galilee.
Terrified, the women run away and for some unknown reason, tell no one. To which raises the question….how did Mark or whoever wrote “his” gospel find out about it in the first place?
That is how the original Gospel of Mark ended. However, some 50 years later, in the Gospel of Matthew, and then the Gospel of Luke ten years after (*chuckle*), we read of the appearances after the “resurrection”. These convoluted changes were added to Mark’s “original” gospel, and that original gospel itself was rewritten.
Now we fast-forward about 200 years to the year 367. It was about this time that the 27 books that we now know as the New Testament were finally agreed upon. And by the end of that century, good ole Christianity evolved into the “officially approved religion”. And thereafter, owning or possessing any of the banned texts was heretical and a criminal offense.
From Isis Unveiled by H. P. Blavatsky -- Vol. 2 Theosophical University Press Online Edition
“WE must not forget that the Christian Church owes its present canonical Gospels, and hence its whole religious dogmatism, to the Sortes Sanctorum. Unable to agree as to which were the most divinely-inspired of the numerous gospels extant in its time, the mysterious Council of Nicea concluded to leave the decision of the puzzling question to miraculous intervention. This Nicean Council may well be called mysterious. There was a mystery, first, in the mystical number of its 318 bishops, on which Barnabas (viii. 11, 12, 13) lays such a stress; added to this, there is no agreement among ancient writers as to the time and place of its assembly, nor even as to the bishop who presided. Notwithstanding the grandiloquent eulogium of Constantine,* Sabinus, the Bishop of Heraclea, affirms that "except Constantine, the emperor, and Eusebius Pamphilus, these bishops were a set of illiterate, simple creatures, that understood nothing"; which is equivalent to saying that they were a set of fools. Such was apparently the opinion entertained of them by Pappus, who tells us of the bit of magic resorted to to decide which were the true gospels. In his Synodicon to that Council Pappus says, having "promiscuously put all the books that were referred to the Council for determination under a communion-table in a church, they (the bishops) besought the Lord that the inspired writings might get upon the table, while the spurious ones remained underneath, and it happened accordingly." But we are not told who kept the keys of the council chamber over night!
To read the rest, you might visit this link
Copies of other, conflicting texts were confiscated and burned or destroyed. (or as is now widely believed, many are still archived in the extensive Vatican library).
However, the Gnostic Gospels, those discovered in earthen ware jars almost 6 ft. tall, were spirited away and hidden in the caves near Nag Hammadi, those “heretical” texts which do not depict Jesus in any “supernatural” way. Those texts were prohibited for the simple reason that they depicted the biblical character Jesus as a nomadic philosopher who advocated a lifestyle free of materialism and a genuine acceptance of his fellow Human Beings.
According to the Gnostic Gospels, he wasn’t here to save the world from sin and eternal damnation, he came to be a guide to spiritual understanding. But…to the dismay of Iranaeous and his gang, the belief that someone can attain “enlightenment” without the “Church”, must have had them crapping in their pants. They, the hierarchy of the “true Church” would no longer be needed. The mentor/teacher and the disciple/student could become equals!!
But those 4 canons of the New Testament say that Jesus was the Christ…the “Saviour”…the “Son of God”! Fundamentalist Christians, as well as Orthodox Jews are adamant in their belief that the “separation” of Man from God is a rift that is unbridgeable.
And yet the Gnostic Gospels contradict this. To the writers of those Gnostic texts,
self-knowledge is the real knowledge of God; the “self” and the “divine” are one and the same.
Even more-so, they described the biblical Jesus as a teacher….a free-thinking teacher. In their beliefs, Jesus was simply a “Man”, but a “Man” to follow, or rather, one to emulate.
But Iranaeous and his cronies could have none of that. Jesus had to be the “Son of God”…he had to be “unique”…he had to be the only “way” to salvation. In their minds, if you didn’t want to go to Hell, you “had” to believe Jesus was the “Way” and you “had” to follow the law of the “true Church”.
So…in essence, everything that today’s Fundamentalist Christians believe and have believed since the time of Iranaeous, all the rituals they practice…none of it was what the biblical Jesus and his “true” disciples really believed.
It’s all a fairy tale, a smorgasbord of stolen myths and legends, as well as rituals from other religions..from the “resurrection” to Christmas.
“Faithful”, stalwart F.C.’s argue over the subject of the plagiarizing of earlier myths and legends being incorporated in the “Jesus Myth”. But how does one ignore evidence? For example, an engraving in the Temple of Luxor in Thebes, Egypt, that would seem to indicate a “Nativity” scene.
This is just one of many ancient engravings/evidence that predate the Jesus character.
But you have to give Iranaeous and the founding fathers of the “true Church” credit….they hung in there. Besides being controversial, the Bible has been a “best seller” for nearly 2000 years. Unfortunately things got out of hand when Unbelievers began being massacred for choosing to not believe in something “different”.
Consider the state of the world today. In the high-tech, sophisticated world of today, many are still living in a world of fantasy. For the most part, they are no more superior than those itinerant nomads and shepherds of 2000 years ago.
Christians, Muslims, and Jews are willing to go to war…to fight to the death to defend those much abused and misinterpreted words in the Bible.
But you have to stop and think…to realize…what are those stories based on, simply myths and legends that go back thousands of years.
Think about it…if you believe the Old Testament, Abraham, at the age of 175 years, fathered a child. In today’s world should people’s lives be governed by a compilation of unfounded fantasy?
It is a documented fact that many of today’s Christians, Muslims and Jews have no idea that their religions have common roots, those of the patriarch Abraham…the real founder of monotheism and the concept of Yahweh/God as the god of Israel.
It’s amusingly ironic, in a way. In the book of Genesis, God sends Abraham to “heal” the division among Men. God told Abraham that all cultures, all languages, “all” of Mankind was one big “family”, all before the one “god” who maintains all of “creation”.
But, along the way, the message was distorted.
The sad part of it all is that all 3 religions say they “believe” in God…the “One” god…the God of Abraham. But once pride and prejudice and differences over what truly represented God got in the way, things began to fall apart.
Consider….Judaism got its’ beliefs from Moses, their “prophet”, whose roots can be “traced” all the way back to Abraham and Isaac.
But just a few hundred years later, you have a Jewish prophet or sage, who proposes a new set of beliefs…a version of the religion of Abraham.
Then…a couple of hundred years later, along comes a prophet call Mohammed. Mohammed makes the claim that he, not Jesus, is the true messenger of God, or in this case, Allah. And Moses, and then Jesus, were imposters. Mohammed says he can bring the “fold” back to the original revelations of Abraham, but as spoken by Ishmael,… and you now have Islam.
The Christian leaders of the time regarded Islam as a heretic religion….not new or different, but heretical.
After the death of Mohammed, differences between the Shi’ites and Sunnis, over who should be the rightful successors, split Islam. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Now you have the righteous Christians claiming that the Jews are followers of a incomplete revelation of God’s desires; and Muslims disparaging Christians in no less than the same argument.
The interesting thing is, that both Christians and Muslims hold Jesus in the highest regard, but Muslims believe Jesus to be an archaic messenger.
The case has been argued that most of the historical conflicts thru-out history were because of religion and this argument has it detractors. Those detractors posit that politics and greed are to blame. While politics and greed are indeed part and parcel of those conflicts….at the root of it all, beneath it all, religion has been the catalyst that breeds the intolerance and hatred. And it is religion that prevents us, Mankind, from attaining our “potential”.
Religion prevents us from reaching the truth about who/what Mankind has become. Religion inhibits Mankind from accepting or comprehending what science has taught us and can still teach us. This is accomplished by forcing us to accept responsibility for our actions.
Those barbaric, primitive nomads of millennia ago were fearful peoples. They needed a religion to help them justify and understand the mysteries of life and death. They needed the “comfort” of a religion to help them thru times of drought and floods and in general…the unknown.
Today…we no longer need “that” kind of religion. In fact, we don’t “need” religion anymore.
We live in a world where one can pick up a cell phone the size of a credit card and call the other side of the world.
We live in a world where we can send remote-controlled cars to Mars.
We live in a world where scientists can create life in a test tube.
If we would separate ourselves from those ancient superstitions and admit who and what we really are and how far we have come…consider the possibilities.
We have to accept the potential of what we are capable of, rather than rely on an invisible, esoteric, and fickle deity that, ostensibly, is going to come down from the heavens and fix everything.
(Now…what part of my post is incorrect or taken out of context? Where have I misinterpreted history? Please point out my mistakes or errors.)
Pax Vobiscum  |
|
_________________
Tis a shame when one's delusion becomes their reality.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
| Author |
Message |
Nesaie
B.V. Info-a-holic
Joined: Aug 04, 2005
Posts: 10412
|
| Posted: Fri Nov 30, 2007 1:13 pm Post subject: Re: Credibility of the New Testament & F.C. Beliefs |
|
|
| |
| sotexas_spi wrote: |
Consider the state of the world today. In the high-tech, sophisticated world of today, many are still living in a world of fantasy. |
But, I thought you called this enlightenment? 
| sotexas_spi wrote: |
The case has been argued that most of the historical conflicts thru-out history were because of religion and this argument has it detractors. Those detractors posit that politics and greed are to blame. While politics and greed are indeed part and parcel of those conflicts….at the root of it all, beneath it all, religion has been the catalyst that breeds the intolerance and hatred. And it is religion that prevents us, Mankind, from attaining our “potential”. |
Wars are fought for resources. Religion is the tool to get the masses to die for the government lead wars. |
|
_________________
Soma: All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.
Have you had your Soma today? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Author |
Message |
sotexas_spi
B.V. VIP - Contributor
Joined: Jun 20, 2003
Posts: 4095
Location: Texas/SPI
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 2:01 am Post subject: Re: Credibility of the New Testament & F.C. Beliefs |
|
|
| |
| Nesaie wrote: |
| sotexas_spi wrote: |
Consider the state of the world today. In the high-tech, sophisticated world of today, many are still living in a world of fantasy. |
But, I thought you called this enlightenment?
| sotexas_spi wrote: |
The case has been argued that most of the historical conflicts thru-out history were because of religion and this argument has it detractors. Those detractors posit that politics and greed are to blame. While politics and greed are indeed part and parcel of those conflicts….at the root of it all, beneath it all, religion has been the catalyst that breeds the intolerance and hatred. And it is religion that prevents us, Mankind, from attaining our “potential”. |
Wars are fought for resources. Religion is the tool to get the masses to die for the government lead wars. |
Not all are "Enlightened" by new technologies, they simply "accept" it as part of "progress".
As for your last comment...as stated in my post "...beneath it all, religion has been the catalyst that breeds the intolerance and hatred."
Pax Vobiscum |
|
_________________
Tis a shame when one's delusion becomes their reality.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Author |
Message |
Nesaie
B.V. Info-a-holic
Joined: Aug 04, 2005
Posts: 10412
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 5:16 am Post subject: |
|
|
| |
| So, enlightenment comes from technology? |
|
_________________
Soma: All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.
Have you had your Soma today? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Author |
Message |
sotexas_spi
B.V. VIP - Contributor
Joined: Jun 20, 2003
Posts: 4095
Location: Texas/SPI
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 7:21 am Post subject: |
|
|
| |
| Nesaie wrote: |
| So, enlightenment comes from technology? |
Are you nitpicking??
There is no "one" form of Enlightenment. That reference was simply an example as referring to your comment.
SHEESH!! Do I gotta 'splain everything?? 
Pax Vobiscum |
|
_________________
Tis a shame when one's delusion becomes their reality.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Author |
Message |
Nesaie
B.V. Info-a-holic
Joined: Aug 04, 2005
Posts: 10412
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 3:46 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| |
| sotexas_spi wrote: |
| Nesaie wrote: |
| So, enlightenment comes from technology? |
Are you nitpicking?? |
No. I merely question.
| greeney2 wrote: |
There is no "one" form of Enlightenment. |
Define your words. Wouldn't it be fair when language is used to communicate ideas to first define the intent? Or at least the definition? Why confuse crap?
| sotexas_spi wrote: |
| Do I gotta 'splain everything?? |
Yes. |
|
_________________
Soma: All the advantages of Christianity and alcohol; none of their defects.
Have you had your Soma today? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Author |
Message |
Neal51
B.V. Info Seeker
Joined: Jul 06, 2007
Posts: 2726
|
| Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2007 4:01 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
| | | | | | | |
| |
blocks-left.jpg
blocks-left.jpg
blocks-left.jpg
|  |
Online Stats: 
