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Post by big_electron on Jan 11, 2010 23:17:55 GMT -5
I got into a debate with my dad, who is a Christian but hasn't attended church in even he doesn't remember how long. He brought up the analogy of telling something to someone, and by the time it comes out of the xth mouth, it doesn't sound like the original statement. How could we have that after 2000 years? That brings me to this point: we don't have an account by Jesus himself, Jesus said this. What we have is 'this apostle says that Jesus said this' and 'that apostle says that Jesus said that.'
MY QUESTION: If Jesus' message was so important, then why didn't he record it himself, so that people far away from him could have the original statement while he was alive, and keep the original statement after he died?
If such a book of Jesus were recovered in the future by archeologists, it might actually be an embarrassment to Christianity rather than help.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Jan 11, 2010 23:41:07 GMT -5
According to Fundies, God wrote the Bible and Jesus is God, so therefore, Jesus wrote the Bible.
*Brain implodes.*
Makes sense to me!
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Post by twinters on Jan 12, 2010 1:33:19 GMT -5
The point was that the Council of Nicaea was not an end-all 'vote', but instead the culmination of the rising ubiquity of certain books and nearly three centuries of early Christian commentary and scholarship. Maybe. Also, Jesus was trained in a Temple and hence was literate. No, that's historically inaccurate and religion doesn't even need to get involved. There was no discussion about the Bible at Nicaea as it relates to canon. While Constantine did indeed order the creation of 50 Bibles, that was independent of Nicaea. Nicaea was simply: 1. Rejection of Arianism 2. Agree on the day that Easter would be celebrated 3. Handle a schism that had occurred with the Melitian sect of Christianity 4. Decide if baptisms performed by clergy now deemed heretical still counted 5. Creation of the Nicene Creed There were also 20 or so canons or church laws that were established but none had to do with Bible authenticity, creation, approval or otherwise. Back to Jesus, in the Pericope Adulterae, which I absolutely agree is not in the original texts and is a later addition, Jesus is said to be writing on the ground (but never what he was writing). So unfortunately that's one of the key texts that would have "proven" if you will that Jesus could write. But again, Jesus is often portrayed as teaching in the Temple. One rather controversial element that I once presented is that Jesus was more than likely a part of the Pharisees or somehow associated with them. While many Christians would find that heretical in nature, it would easily explain why they were so often found in his company but also why Jesus so incensed the Sadducees who were ultimately involved with the crucifixion story. While there's no outright proof of such a claim, it's not outwardly outrageous either. Regardless, he would have been educated especially considering he would quote what is now called the OT.
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Post by ostravan on Jan 12, 2010 4:43:37 GMT -5
When "christianity" was manufactured at the request of Emporer Constantine, over 400 books were eliminated as they were considered "irrelevant". To include even some of them would blow the myth entirely, so a campaign of destroying all copies began. To the embarrassment of the fundies, some books survived.
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Cymraes
Junior Member
Dim marciau ffordd!
Posts: 63
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Post by Cymraes on Jan 12, 2010 6:21:41 GMT -5
It is possible that Jesus did not have time to write anything. If you follow John's Gospel, Jesus' ministry lasted barely 3 years (that is, John records Jesus going up to Jerusalem three times for particular annual festivals) before he annoyed the authorities so much they executed him. However if you take the Synoptic Gospels as giving a literal time-frame, it is plausible that his ministry lasted only a year if that (only one Passover is mentioned) before he was crucified.
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Post by Vypernight on Jan 12, 2010 7:58:31 GMT -5
Yeah, it's kinda hard to write with those nails in your hands.
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Post by Amaranth on Jan 12, 2010 9:10:57 GMT -5
Yeah, it's kinda hard to write with those nails in your hands. Oh sure, dude can walk on water, but not write on the cross?
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Post by Vypernight on Jan 12, 2010 9:51:16 GMT -5
Yeah, it's kinda hard to write with those nails in your hands. Oh sure, dude can walk on water, but not write on the cross? That's right. Walk on water; eater. Feed a room full of people with just some bread and water; child's play. Raise the dead; can do it with one arm tied behind his back. But writing with nails in his hands; that's as absrud as the idea that he disappeared and went to China for a few days!
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Post by Tiger on Jan 12, 2010 10:40:04 GMT -5
I got into a debate with my dad, who is a Christian but hasn't attended church in even he doesn't remember how long. He brought up the analogy of telling something to someone, and by the time it comes out of the xth mouth, it doesn't sound like the original statement. How could we have that after 2000 years? That brings me to this point: we don't have an account by Jesus himself, Jesus said this. What we have is 'this apostle says that Jesus said this' and 'that apostle says that Jesus said that.' MY QUESTION: If Jesus' message was so important, then why didn't he record it himself, so that people far away from him could have the original statement while he was alive, and keep the original statement after he died? If such a book of Jesus were recovered in the future by archeologists, it might actually be an embarrassment to Christianity rather than help. One argument I've heard is that Yahweh has been guiding the hands of everyone involved in writing or translating the gospels to ensure accuracy. It's how they rationalize dismissing every newly discovered text from the period of early Christianity that's completely different from the modern Bible.
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Post by cailinban on Jan 12, 2010 14:15:09 GMT -5
I found Twinters' post to be very interesting - thank you for that.
I have to tell you though, that the Catholics argue, vehemently in my father's case and in many others' too, that they were the true Church all the way from Peter. Not that they popped up in the 300s.
Also, the Catholics have a different canon, as do the Eastern Orthodox Churches, i.e. 3 different canons including the Protestant.
Also, none of this explains why Jesus, if his message was so important, didn't write it down but left it to strangers who never met him to do. And not only write down his message, but write it in a way that could not be misunderstood.
Given what's at stake here, i.e. our eternal salvation/damnation, that oversight is nothing short of criminal.
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Post by big_electron on Jan 14, 2010 7:32:55 GMT -5
I have to ask:
What exactly is Arianism? I've heard of it before, but never knew exactly what it is.
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Post by MaybeNever on Jan 15, 2010 4:36:12 GMT -5
Basically the idea (posited by a priest named Arius) is that Jesus and God were not the same entity, but distinct with Jesus as a lesser being created by God. This went against the idea of the trinity in which the two are the same and separate, and sort of co-existed. It was deemed heretical, but it was one of the major rifts in the church and helped define some of the political and foreign actions of the late Roman Empire and the Byzantines as they sought to crush the belief. They had limited success, as I understand that Sir Isaac Newton, among others, was an Arian or something like it.
Obviously it has no connection to Nazi Aryanism.
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Post by twinters on Jan 18, 2010 18:04:28 GMT -5
When "christianity" was manufactured at the request of Emporer Constantine, over 400 books were eliminated as they were considered "irrelevant". To include even some of them would blow the myth entirely, so a campaign of destroying all copies began. To the embarrassment of the fundies, some books survived. Constantine had little to do with Christianity in the grand scheme of things. Yes, he probably converted which then made it fashionable for the elite and rich to also convert. Prior to Constantine, Christianity was in the realm of the poor and lower middle classes throughout the Empire. While there were certainly the occasional upper class individual involved, it wasn't until Constantine converted that it blossomed. However again, your argument is wrong. Theodosius was the one that sanctioned Christianity as the official state religion more than 50 years later. Constantine had nothing to do with which books were included or excluded. Eusebius very well documented (before Constantine) which books were considered canon, which were disputed/being investigated and which were outright rejected. Take The Gospel of Thomas which was the longest surviving non-canonical Gospel - everyone knew by the late 3rd century that it was a pseudograph and appeared far too late (around 150) for it to be legitimate. The Gnostic texts weren't even prevalent within the Empire proper and were largely relegated to sects in or around Alexandria and sections of what we now call Syria. The Council of Nicaea had no recorded or documented discussions regarding the Bible, it's books or the canon status of other works. Constantine likewise had no say in the matter or insomuch as history never once records anything to that point. Once Theodosius made Christianity the state religion (giving rise to the Roman Catholic Church) is when the true purge of heterodoxy began. Regardless, by that time (Eastern and Ethiopian churches aside), the 27 books that make up the NT were already in use. The Eastern church replaced Revelation with the Apocalypse of Peter and the Ethiopian Church still used The Shepherd of Hermes and The Book of Enoch. If you want to attack the canon status of the NT within modern Christianity, then you should start with John, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John and Jude. At least then there's a leg to stand on.
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Post by Random Guy on Jan 18, 2010 22:36:58 GMT -5
As I recall, Hebrews, James, and Revelation were also some of the more debatable ones; Hebrews due to its authorship being unknown, James placing an uncomfortable amount of emphasis on "good works", and Revelation being difficult to understand and easy to misinterpret (big surprise there, huh?).
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Post by twinters on Jan 19, 2010 3:18:55 GMT -5
As I recall, Hebrews, James, and Revelation were also some of the more debatable ones; Hebrews due to its authorship being unknown, James placing an uncomfortable amount of emphasis on "good works", and Revelation being difficult to understand and easy to misinterpret (big surprise there, huh?). Hebrews was written by a companion/disciple of Paul, that much is pretty universally assumed but it was clearly not written or dictated by Paul. If you want to get people in a tizzy, suggest it was written by Lydia as there is some internal evidence of a feminine voice being used in the text. More than likely it was written by Sylvanus but there's not a lot to go on for the hypothesis. James is a pseudograph just like 2 Peter. There's really little question to that. It appears too late to be from either the Apostle James or from Jesus' brother James. The book makes no mention to a family relationship with Jesus and because the author does not focus on Jewish customs or rites, it's highly unlikely that it is the same James that Paul refers to when speaking on Jewish Law. But yeah, the whole works things (James 2) really gets some panties in a wad. Revelation was really only rejected by the Syriac and Eastern churches. The Alexandrian (Western), Roman, Jerusalem and Ethiopian Churches all had Revelation as canon by the mid-to-late 3rd century. The question was (mostly) on authorship, was John of Patmos the same as John the Apostle/Evangelist? Only the most ultra-conservative will make that argument. The language used is wholly different from the Gospel of John. But there are some theological points that did make it disputed or put it into a "second class" of books in the 2nd and 3rd century.
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