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Post by Satori on Aug 17, 2004 15:01:11 GMT -5
Many contributors to this post (Christian and non-Christian) seem to take the view that the New Testament is the 'true' story of Jesus. How many of you actually know the history of the New Testament?
The New Testament as we know it today was, ironically, put together by a Roman Pagan - Constantine the Great. Constantine worshipped the Sun God via the cult of Sol Invictus ('Invincible Sun') of which he was the high priest, but he was concerned by the growing Christian religion and needed a way to keep it in check. In 325AD he decided to unify Rome under one religion - Christianity. Constantine simply backed the horse he thought would win.
He cleverly fused Pagan imagery with Christianity to create a hybrid religion that would satisfy both Pagans and Christians alike. Egyptian sun disks became Christian haloes; pictograms of Isis nursing her miraculously conceived son Horus became the blueprint for the Virgin Mary nursing baby Jesus. The Biblical Jesus story itself was based around the pre-Christian god Mithris, who was born on December 25th, was called the 'Son of God', died, was buried in a rock tomb and was raised 3 days later. Even the sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday in tribute to the Sun god. None of these so-called Christian 'truths' are recorded anywhere in Christian history before Constantine.
Constantine set about strengthening his new Christian religion at the famous ecumenical gathering called the Council of Nicaea. This was where the date of Easter, the role of bishops and the general structure of the church were established. Also, by a narrow vote, it is where Christ was elevated to divinity. Up until that point, Christ was merely a mortal, albeit a significant, influential and well-meaning one. This divine elevation helped to convince both Pagan and Christian followers alike that the new religion was not to be disputed as it was, in fact, the 'word of God'.
Constantine's underhand manoeuvres do not in any way diminish the real works of Christ - he was a great and powerful man of exceptional insight - but raising Christ to the level of divinity was essential if Constantine was to maintain a solid power base through his new religion.
Constantine then set about compiling the New Testament. From eighty or so gospels telling the story of Jesus he selected four for inclusion; he omitted the gospels that focused on Jesus' human traits and embelleshed the ones he included to ensure they focussed on Christ as a divine being. The other gospels were gathered up and burned, and anyone who chose to believe in them was labelled a heretic and punished appropriately.
Fortunately some of the gospels not included in the New Testament (the so called 'Gnostic Gospels') survived the censor and can be found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Coptic Scrolls, rediscovered in the 1940's and 1950's.
Thus came Chrisianity and the New Testament as we know it today. The vast majority of Christian scholars know the true history of their faith, but still feel that the mystical version put forward by Constantine is 'better' for the general masses - theology and history can quite happily be two different things. It comes down to politics in the end. Saying that Christ is the Son of God is a more convincing way to get people to follow a religion in the same way that saying Iraq has weapons of mass destruction is a more convincing way to get people to support an invasion of the country.
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Post by H-Zence on Aug 17, 2004 17:08:06 GMT -5
Satori, that was very informative. I've heard bits and pieces of that information in the past, but it all seems a lot clearer are now.
I won't, however, say I believe it just yet...I'll have to look into it some more.
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Post by joelhaldeman on Aug 17, 2004 21:29:11 GMT -5
And here I am going to Bible college, silly me
I would like to know where you found your "facts" and question why you believe this over all the other "facts" Because we all know that in the end it will come down to an argument of "well this man proved Jesus was a fraud" and "this man proved Jesus was and is real"
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Post by Satori on Aug 18, 2004 6:36:27 GMT -5
And here I am going to Bible college, silly me I would like to know where you found your "facts" and question why you believe this over all the other "facts" It's a matter of historical fact. Things come to light over time. In the same way that we now know Iraq did not have WMDs, we now know the history of the New Testament. History is written by the victors (in this case Constantine), but things we believe sometimes get proven to be different over time. It may yet turn out that Iraq has WMDs and that the NT has a different history, but we can only base our opinions on the facts at hand and make suppositions about everything else. It isn't recent fact either - it was certainly the 'formal' history of the NT taught when I was at University about 20 years ago. Jesus was no fraud. Jesus was, er, Jesus; a spiritual, religious and inspirational leader who - I believe - wanted to make the world a better place. Jesus never claimed to be the 'Son of God' - that claim was made on his behalf. If he claimed such grandiose things, then surely it would have been reflected in records before 325AD, around the actual time that Christ was alive. The oldest surviving complete text of the New Testament is the Codex Sinaiticus (about 350AD). The oldest partial texts - the Bodmer and Beatty Papyri and Papyrus 52 - date back to sometime between 100 and 200AD, but only contain bits of the Gospel of John. All of these texts are Greek, so the language and the date mean that they can't have been written by either Jesus or his disciples. The Catholic scholars' own take on the history of the NT is very dubious about its origins being at the time of Christ: The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history (Catholic Encyclopedia: www.newadvent.org/cathen/03274a.htm). The 'fraud' was instigated by Constantine, which was in itself based on works that will have lost much in translation. Religion can move on - there's no law against it! ============= You can read more about Mithras - the god whose story Christ's own was based upon here if you're interested: www.near-death.com/experiences/origen048.html
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Post by Satori on Aug 18, 2004 6:44:08 GMT -5
Satori, that was very informative. I've heard bits and pieces of that information in the past, but it all seems a lot clearer are now. I won't, however, say I believe it just yet...I'll have to look into it some more. And that's the way it should be. Religion is something to be 'discovered' not something to be merely 'accepted' just because someone who wears a pointy hat said so.
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Post by Areopagite on Aug 18, 2004 22:57:29 GMT -5
Hey Satori, I'm quite busy with my last few days of work and getting ready for college, but when I get the time, I'll post a response to what you've said. I've heard the same thing before since I've done quite a lot of research on the so-called "facts" from the Da Vinci Code, Elaine Pagels, the Jesus Seminar, as well as the contents of the Gnostic gospels (I own all of them). You're assertions are dead wrong, and I'll explain why as soon as I can.
Also, just so you know, Jesus declares his divinity multiple times in the four Gospels (which I might add were written around 20 to 30 years after Christ's death, unlike the Gnostic "gospels" which were written over 120 years after Christ's death).
For example, Matthew 26:63-66
63 But Jesus kept silent. And the high priest said to Him, "I adjure You by the living God, that You tell us whether You are the Christ, the Son of God." 64 Jesus said to him "You have said it yourself; nevertheless I tell you, hereafter you will see 'The Son of Man sitting at the right hand of Power', and 'coming on the clouds of Heaven.'" 65 Then the high priest tore his robes and said , "He has blasphemed! What further need do we have of witnesses? Behold, you have now heard the blasphemy; 66 what do you think?" They answered, "He deserves death!"
Now since this was written by one of Jesus' disciples shortly after His death and affirmed by the other apostles, I'm gonna say that its a better testimony of events than the "Gospel of Thomas" written in 160 A.D. for example by someone who could not have possibly been Thomas. Also, if Jesus didn't claim to be God, why did the Jews demand His death? They killed Him because they felt He had blasphemed God since He had claimed to be God!
I can't wait to post my answers for the rest of what you have addressed, Satori.
P.S. To Joel, I wasn't aware that you were going to Bible college! I am as well! Where do you plan to attend college at?
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Post by Satori on Aug 19, 2004 2:15:24 GMT -5
Also, just so you know, Jesus declares his divinity multiple times in the four Gospels (which I might add were written around 20 to 30 years after Christ's death How do you figure that? Even the Catholic church has the earliest Christian documents at around 100AD ('The Epistle of St. Clement to the Corinthians') and certainly there hasn't been anything found in Hebrew/Aramaic. If it existed before that it did so in oral tradition alone (and I don't deny that's possible). Okay, but there's little point quoting a book that we're disputing the authenticity of until we have proven that authenticity in the first place. What I'm trying to promote discussion on here is the authenticity of the New Testament as the story of Christ as opposed to the 'real' story of Christ.
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Post by joelhaldeman on Aug 19, 2004 21:28:22 GMT -5
Areopagite: Im going to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago
to the rest, ill read and respond later
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Post by Shiggy on Aug 30, 2004 2:22:43 GMT -5
I think that if God is real it makes no sense that we have such an infuriatingly difficult time accessing His "word" which is supposed to be easily available. It just doesn't make sense logically because the Bible says that the Word of the Lord is changeless. The fact that the translations have had their meaning changed seems in conflict with Christianity's very assertions.
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Post by Satori on Aug 30, 2004 14:04:25 GMT -5
I think that if God is real it makes no sense that we have such an infuriatingly difficult time accessing His "word" which is supposed to be easily available. It just doesn't make sense logically because the Bible says that the Word of the Lord is changeless. The fact that the translations have had their meaning changed seems in conflict with Christianity's very assertions. Well people often put a different slant on God's Word depending upon what they're trying to achieve. History will stand testament to the amount of bad things that have been done 'in the name of God'. But that's not what I'm getting at here. What I'm trying to open discussion about is the historical accuracy of the New Testament as Jesus' word. I believe that cross-referencing it with other historical documents of the time shows that the NT doesn't, in fact, represent the 'true' story of Jesus, but rather a misrepresentation first promulgated by Paul and later tainted further by Constantine. This in no way detracts from the value of Jesus as a key figure in religious history - that fact is clear from virtually all historical documents of the time - it is just that the Biblical story of Jesus has been warped by many people for their own ends. It is not just a matter of mistranslation, although that's part of the problem with all historical documents and the Bible's no exception.
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Post by Areopagite on Aug 30, 2004 20:26:58 GMT -5
I think that if God is real it makes no sense that we have such an infuriatingly difficult time accessing His "word" which is supposed to be easily available. It just doesn't make sense logically because the Bible says that the Word of the Lord is changeless. The fact that the translations have had their meaning changed seems in conflict with Christianity's very assertions. Why is there difficulty in accessing the Word? Go to a bookstore and buy a Bible if you don't have one! To suggest though, that the translations change the meaning of God's Word is completely false. The meaning doesn't change at all, the words do. For example, on translation might say: Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, "This is a difficult statement: who can listen to it?" another translation might say: On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" The words are different but they have the same meaning. The first translation was a literal translation, unlike the second translation. Sometimes translating Greek causes sentences that are just hard to understand in English since the syntax is different. Other translations make it easier to read for some people, however, the meaning of the Word is not changed at all.
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Post by Areopagite on Aug 30, 2004 20:40:17 GMT -5
But that's not what I'm getting at here. What I'm trying to open discussion about is the historical accuracy of the New Testament as Jesus' word. I believe that cross-referencing it with other historical documents of the time shows that the NT doesn't, in fact, represent the 'true' story of Jesus, but rather a misrepresentation first promulgated by Paul and later tainted further by Constantine. Unfortunately, I still haven't gotten around to responding to your earlier thread, Satori. I will get to it eventually though, once I find some more time, because it requires a long post. I am interested though that you cite Paul as having misrepresented the 'true' story of Jesus. If this was the case, wouldn't the other apostles say "hey wait a minute, we were there, and that didn't happen!" ? Well perhaps we should look then to see what Peter, one of the leaders of the group, said about what Paul said. 2 Peter 3:14-1614 Therefore, beloved, since you look for these things, be diligent to be found by Him in peace, spotless and blameless, 15 and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation; just as also our beloved brother Paul, according to the wisdom given him, wrote to you, 16 as also in all his letters, speaking in them of these things, in which the untaught and unstable distort, as they do also the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction. What a ringing endorsement! Peter equates Paul's letters with the rest of Scripture! So if the 'distorted' Christianity was created by Paul, Peter must be in on it too! Wow, what a conspiracy theory. So, to be dead honest, I can even begin to imagine where you feel evidence that Paul distorted the gospel of Christ exists. Please enlighten us all.
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Post by Shiggy on Aug 30, 2004 23:26:01 GMT -5
Why is there difficulty in accessing the Word? Go to a bookstore and buy a Bible if you don't have one! To suggest though, that the translations change the meaning of God's Word is completely false. The meaning doesn't change at all, the words do. For example, on translation might say: Therefore many of His disciples, when they heard this said, "This is a difficult statement: who can listen to it?" another translation might say: On hearing it, many of his disciples said, "This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?" The words are different but they have the same meaning. The first translation was a literal translation, unlike the second translation. Sometimes translating Greek causes sentences that are just hard to understand in English since the syntax is different. Other translations make it easier to read for some people, however, the meaning of the Word is not changed at all. When I said "accessing" the word, I meant accessing accurate versions of it, not dodgy yokel-english versions of it. Don't try and tell me that the different wordings mean EXACTLY the same thing - in the quote you just gave, "who can listen to it?" and "who can accept it?" DO have slightly different meanings and, as a result, the number of possible interpretations increases exponentially, clouding any unified, "true" meaning there was to begin with! I've always hated it so much when people in Bible studies I go to have different "versions" of the Bible and they DO, in fact, differ significantly. I suppose you may accuse me of being picky, but I think that in the case of a sacred text like the Bible, people should be extremely careful how they change it. Maybe the quotes you gave don't contain any significant differences to you, but to me they are a very worrying example of how such things could change HEAPS over time - you only gave examples of texts from the same time period; as successions of more and more translations are made, it becomes like Chinese whispers and the original meaning is lost. I see this as a very serious problem with Christianity - the progressive alteration of what should be sacred texts.
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Post by Satori on Aug 31, 2004 2:57:28 GMT -5
I am interested though that you cite Paul as having misrepresented the 'true' story of Jesus. If this was the case, wouldn't the other apostles say "hey wait a minute, we were there, and that didn't happen!" ? They did exactly that. Have you read Acts? Acts is generally thought to have been written in the last quarter if the 1st Century AD. The author is someone called 'Luke' who may or may not be the same Luke that wrote the Gospel, although most scholars seem to think that the fact that both are written to someone called 'Theophilus' is too much of a coincidence for it not to be the same Luke. Acts is basically the story of Paul, how he began as one who ' worked for the total destruction of the church' [Acts 8:3] and supposedly converts after a 'light from heaven' knocks him from his horse and Jesus speaks to him. He abandons his old name of Saul and becomes the Paul who is often credited as being one of the major figures in forming the early church. He causes a bit of a rumpus amongst the local followers of Jesus and gets exiled to Tarsus to keep him out of the way. Supposedly he preaches in exile there for some time, but his missionary work doesn't meet approval with the church leaders in Jerusalem (led by James, Christ's brother) as he doesn't support the strict adherence to the Law that Jesus preached ('... the man who infringes even one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be considered the least in the Kingdom of Heaven [Matt 5:17-19]). As a result of his teachings against Jesus' word he is ordered back to Jerusalem for a telling off [Acts 15] and the schism between James (who knew Christ personally) and Paul (who didn't) widens. And it is basically Paul who begins the idea that Jesus was more than a mortal (eventually ratified by vote at the Council of Nicaea) in order to compete with the other dying and reviving Gods that existed in the Middle East at the time. Paul is not daft - he fully understands the power of religious propaganda; the need to turn a man into a God echoes his Roman upbringing (they turned their Emperors into Gods). Paul acknowledges that he is defining a different Jesus to the one that was known personally by James; he claims the community in Jerusalem are talking about ' another Jesus' [2 Corinth. 11:3-4] and throughout Galatians he expresses his dislike for James' original movement and its adherence to the Law. Paul is now, in essence, promoting his particular image of Jesus rather than the words of Jesus as actually understood by those that met him. Paul keeps getting called back to Jerusalem to answer for his transgressions from the original teaching and eventually it boils over [Acts 21:28] and a mob tries to finish him off. He is saved in the nick of time by some Roman guards who - for reasons not properly explained in Acts - decide to do a rare thing and interfere in the Jews' business and they drag him off in chains. They carry him off to the fortress where he is due to undergo interrogation and torture as a trouble maker, but Paul invokes his immunity to this as a Roman citizen and escapes punishment. Acts then seems to tail off and there is no reliable documentation about what happened to Paul after he was carted off by the Romans. What is clear to athiests, agnostics and Christians alike is that Paul preached a different Jesus to the one that James preached, yet he had never met Jesus. The Pauline view was eventually to become 'the standard' and it is pertinent to ask why this happened and how this became the philosophy used by the church today. I could go on, but won't for the moment. I have a house full of books, papers and theories on this stuff! ------ On another note, you'd be surprised exactly what can be lost in the translation of documents. Philologists struggle with this constantly. You also have to remember that we're often translating translations that took place hundreds (if not thousands) of years ago when far less was know about the roots of languages and other philological principles.
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Post by joelhaldeman on Aug 31, 2004 20:16:13 GMT -5
except they have the greek and hebrew versions of the bible which have been writen and rewriten many times until that gutenburg guy inveted that printing press maybe you should research the process these monks went through to make copys of the bible, very impressive then they found the dead sea scrolls and they compaired them to the versions that had been writen and rewriten and found out that they were incredibly accurate
you can access the original bible, learn greek, in fact you can buy a greek or hebrew bible in the bookstore nearest you
but if that isnt good enough for you then i guess you wouldnt be satisfied unless you went back in time and looked over pauls shoulder as he wrote his letters or matthews as he wrote his account of jesus' life
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