What was a reason to pay Judas?

[ESay]

Well I think that is the result of how the Bible is written and pieced together. Most of the 27 books of the New Testament are written by, attributed to, or about the Apostle Paul. Paul's mission was to spread the word to Gentiles across the empire while the other apostles focused on the Jews. Paul was a very educated man and he was very successful in his ministry so we have writings of Paul where for the others we don't. We ave letters that claim to be written by John, and Peter, and Jude, etc but the vast majority of scholars view them as pseudepigraphic. So in addition to having documents from Paul and none from the others, we also see Paul working with a much larger geographical area. Thus we get the illusion that Christianity didn't take hold in Jerusalem or Judea. But actually according to Acts it caught on very strongly among the Jewish population. Additionally, one of Paul's main responsibilities was to gather a collection for the converted Jewish population in Jerusaem. This pre-supposes that there was one as it makes no sense to gather a collection for a population that did not exist.

Look, I am not arguing that there were no followers among Jewish population. Unfortunately, I don’t have any statistics about how many Christ-followers were in Judea in the first decades after Jesus’ death. I think the number wasn’t high in comparison with a whole population, but it is only my own opinion. And the majority of disciples stayed at a home land, but they didn’t have much success there, did they? How can it be explained? Their abilities and knowledge were poor, they met with fierce opposition? I don’t know exactly, to tell the truth. But it is very suspicious that having Jesus’ miracles in their support, they didn’t get much.

 

[zaangalewa]

Blue,
you obviously have a problem reading and telling the truth.

A truth is it I don't know wether I'm Jew on my own or not. If one of my grandmothers was a Jew - what's possible because the nightmare Hitler in the german history forced the members of my family to be very creative. I love this idea - specially in every moment when I have to discuss with an antisemite - like you are one - who tries to give the illusion he speaks in the name of Jews. I enjoy it very much to be alive in such moments, when I see you dancing around your fire tearing the world in parts while I know: the child is on a save place, rumpelstiltskin.

1) you never posted links or refuted anything otherwise I would have asked for a brief summary since linking is lazy and disruptive and I never trust to click them.
2) Since I teach Jesus didn't exist

What about to study real history?

as a singular figure and that Rome created his image then it's Rome saing Jesus is Lucifer since they create his speach...did you not see the wizard of oz to know how that works?

No. The wizard from Oz was not important here in Germany when I was a little child. Catweazle - a wizard from England - was very popular in my youth here. The wizard I like most is Merlin. Mærlin remembers me to Ealhwine - a friend of Carl.

This is where you lie or are mistaking by not reading properly what I'm saying.

Sayings and sayings are different things. Hitler for exampole said a lot if a day was long and he lived many days - and not one word he spoke or wrote should someone take serios.

3) in understanding what I'm saying about creating his image previously showing where they plagiarize the OT

No one is able to plagiate the Old Testament because the Old Testament is an original. Its a summary of prechristian books from the jewish culture. If you found a problem tell me very concrete what your problem is and if we should had made a mistake, then I will inform the clerics of my church and within the next few hundred years they will find a solution for this problem.

we see they blunder everything they place Jesus in using the OT stories and verses.

Jesus was a Jew. Sure he used jewish textes. Jesus founded not a new religion - because of him a new religion was founded. What Jesus teached was the traditional jewish teaching - and it was also a new teaching - although it was since a very long time existing. Not only in the jewish religion but in the whole mankind. His message is written in the living flesh of the hearts. Take a sentence like this: "God comes to the world and will be executed like a criminal" ... Feel this sentence with your heart. ... Try to make other fantasies ... But deep in the beating flesh of your heart you "know"´: this is true - maybe not because you believe in god or you feel his warming light in your heart - but because you know human beings like yourselve and the darkness of the place where your spirituality lives. Unfortunatelly your fanatism allows you not to dance a can can out of the dark death of your underworld into the living light of his friendly eyes.

This includes placing him into the OT accounts of
Rabbi Yohoshua Ben Chananiah who spoke of resurrection teachings.

Please antisemite - I'm not a fly and you are not a chameleon.

Was Chana a town or was this Yshua (Jesus) visiting his father nicknamed Chana in the NT?
Why does Yeshu son of mary the figure used for portions of the Jesus myth teach of Egyptian underworld paradise in death he learned when fleeing to Egypt,

He was a baby in this time - a completly normal baby like every baby.

and not resurrection teachings yet Jesus the icon created is opposite teaching life in "returning" (hashev) to life not life in death?

And what means this? Has this to do with anything? Jesus was for example an innocent victim of death penalty. The USA is as far as I know a nation with a regress in the question of death penalty. Why not to fight against death penalty?

 

[HaShev]

It's hard to know the figures because
1) he's not singularly historical, so no historical records exist.
2) they refuse to narrow down and pick a historical christ figure out of the bunch that make up his image.
3)therefore how many Hanotzrim existed, Nazarenes existed,Yehudites, and followers of Theudas existed, and how many followers of Benjamin the Egyptian, and John the Baptist followers, but to call these cults a collective Christian is probably a word that had yet to exist or at least be used for one singular messianic cult.

 

[BluePhantom]

Well I think that is the result of how the Bible is written and pieced together. Most of the 27 books of the New Testament are written by, attributed to, or about the Apostle Paul. Paul's mission was to spread the word to Gentiles across the empire while the other apostles focused on the Jews. Paul was a very educated man and he was very successful in his ministry so we have writings of Paul where for the others we don't. We ave letters that claim to be written by John, and Peter, and Jude, etc but the vast majority of scholars view them as pseudepigraphic. So in addition to having documents from Paul and none from the others, we also see Paul working with a much larger geographical area. Thus we get the illusion that Christianity didn't take hold in Jerusalem or Judea. But actually according to Acts it caught on very strongly among the Jewish population. Additionally, one of Paul's main responsibilities was to gather a collection for the converted Jewish population in Jerusaem. This pre-supposes that there was one as it makes no sense to gather a collection for a population that did not exist.

Look, I am not arguing that there were no followers among Jewish population. Unfortunately, I don’t have any statistics about how many Christ-followers were in Judea in the first decades after Jesus’ death. I think the number wasn’t high in comparison with a whole population, but it is only my own opinion. And the majority of disciples stayed at a home land, but they didn’t have much success there, did they? How can it be explained? Their abilities and knowledge were poor, they met with fierce opposition? I don’t know exactly, to tell the truth. But it is very suspicious that having Jesus’ miracles in their support, they didn’t get much.

Well there are no statistics about how many Christ-followers were in Judea in the first decades after Jesus' death. We can take some guesses from some Biblical accounts, but as we have already established, they are not reliable historical documents. A lot of people today think that Christianity spread like wildfire. That's probably not the way it went down. Christians were being strongly oppressed by Jews who saw them as heretical and Rome wasn't of much assistance to their cause. It probably spread far more slowly than modern Christians would like to believe.

 

[ESay]

Well there are no statistics about how many Christ-followers were in Judea in the first decades after Jesus' death. We can take some guesses from some Biblical accounts, but as we have already established, they are not reliable historical documents. A lot of people today think that Christianity spread like wildfire. That's probably not the way it went down. Christians were being strongly oppressed by Jews who saw them as heretical and Rome wasn't of much assistance to their cause. It probably spread far more slowly than modern Christians would like to believe.

And my explanation of this slowness – there were no miracles and people considered the new teaching simply as one more teaching of a little-known prophet who proclaimed things which were beyond widespread views. And only when years passed, when there were no witnesses of his real life and his life became full of miracles with the help of his followers, more and more people get to believe that he was the only Saviour, God in human form who was able to bring justice in this world.

Well, thanks for the discussion; it was very interesting for me. Though, it was not a discussion, but rather a conversation between poor student and professor.

 

[BluePhantom]

And my explanation of this slowness – there were no miracles and people considered the new teaching simply as one more teaching of a little-known prophet who proclaimed things which were beyond widespread views. And only when years passed, when there were no witnesses of his real life and his life became full of miracles with the help of his followers, more and more people get to believe that he was the only Saviour, God in human form who was able to bring justice in this world.

Certainly possible. According to our life experience it would be the most reasonable explanation. But that's what separates faith from history and science. Faith is based upon that which contrasts our life experience.

Well, thanks for the discussion; it was very interesting for me. Though, it was not a discussion, but rather a conversation between poor student and professor.

I think you give me far too much credit, but I enjoyed the conversation as well.

 

[BluePhantom]

Well there are no statistics about how many Christ-followers were in Judea in the first decades after Jesus' death. We can take some guesses from some Biblical accounts, but as we have already established, they are not reliable historical documents. A lot of people today think that Christianity spread like wildfire. That's probably not the way it went down. Christians were being strongly oppressed by Jews who saw them as heretical and Rome wasn't of much assistance to their cause. It probably spread far more slowly than modern Christians would like to believe.

And my explanation of this slowness – there were no miracles and people considered the new teaching simply as one more teaching of a little-known prophet who proclaimed things which were beyond widespread views. And only when years passed, when there were no witnesses of his real life and his life became full of miracles with the help of his followers, more and more people get to believe that he was the only Saviour, God in human form who was able to bring justice in this world.

Well, thanks for the discussion; it was very interesting for me. Though, it was not a discussion, but rather a conversation between poor student and professor.

Just one final thought about miracles. It is important to understand what history and science can demonstrate and what it can not. When we deal with history, we are dealing with probabilities. Historians use a variety of criteria in order to determine the likelihood that an event took place. So, for example, the probability that the Siege of Stalingrad took place is very high because we have records and eyewitnesses that support that event. The further back into antiquity we go, the fewer sources we have to apply to the criteria and thus the probability becomes less and less as a natural consequence of time.

Science also deals with probabilities. So let's take walking on water. We can go to the Sea of Galilee and have 1,000 people attempt to walk on it and calculate the odds of someone doing so successfully. We would expect that success rate to be extraordinarily low. We could then calculate the probability that anyone has walked on water and again it would be infinitesimally low. But what we cannot do is use that to say it has never happened because it is impossible to reconstruct the precise environment of an isolated historical event.

Let's apply this to a real world situation. Let's say we wish to calculate the odds of using an Earth-based radio telescope to detect a signal that originates from deep space. We want this signal to be 30 times louder than standard 'space noise' and we want it to broadcast at a frequency of 1420 MHz which matches the electromagnetic radiation spectral line of hydrogen. Pretty specific criteria. So we point our telescope in 1,000 different directions and we are not surprised to discover that we do not find it a single time. So we can use that to calculate that the probability of finding that in space is extraordinarily low. But we cannot use that to say it has never happened because, in fact, it has happened. It has happened exactly once in our recorded history according to our technological ability to perform the experiment. It is what is known as the 'Wow! Signal' which originated in the constellation of Sagittarius on August 15, 1977.

Now we can go further and say 'ok well let's look for it again at that exact location'. In fact, astronomers have looked for it again ever since more than 1,000 times and it has never been re-discovered. But, we cannot use that data to say the Wow! Signal never happened because it clearly did happen. So all we can do is shrug our shoulders and say 'we don't know what the hell it was. Whatever it was, it seems to have been an isolated event where the probability of it happening was ridiculously small.'

So the same thing can be argued about the miracles of Jesus. We can calculate that the probability of them occurring are insanely small and we can use our life experience to draw conclusions of belief, but we can not scientifically or historically demonstrate that they did or did not happen because they are isolated events in history, just as the Wow! Signal was

Wow signal - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

 

[ESay]

Just one final thought about miracles. It is important to understand what history and science can demonstrate and what it can not. When we deal with history, we are dealing with probabilities. Historians use a variety of criteria in order to determine the likelihood that an event took place. So, for example, the probability that the Siege of Stalingrad took place is very high because we have records and eyewitnesses that support that event. The further back into antiquity we go, the fewer sources we have to apply to the criteria and thus the probability becomes less and less as a natural consequence of time.

Science also deals with probabilities. So let's take walking on water. We can go to the Sea of Galilee and have 1,000 people attempt to walk on it and calculate the odds of someone doing so successfully. We would expect that success rate to be extraordinarily low. We could then calculate the probability that anyone has walked on water and again it would be infinitesimally low. But what we cannot do is use that to say it has never happened because it is impossible to reconstruct the precise environment of an isolated historical event.

Let's apply this to a real world situation. Let's say we wish to calculate the odds of using an Earth-based radio telescope to detect a signal that originates from deep space. We want this signal to be 30 times louder than standard 'space noise' and we want it to broadcast at a frequency of 1420 MHz which matches the electromagnetic radiation spectral line of hydrogen. Pretty specific criteria. So we point our telescope in 1,000 different directions and we are not surprised to discover that we do not find it a single time. So we can use that to calculate that the probability of finding that in space is extraordinarily low. But we cannot use that to say it has never happened because, in fact, it has happened. It has happened exactly once in our recorded history according to our technological ability to perform the experiment. It is what is known as the 'Wow! Signal' which originated in the constellation of Sagittarius on August 15, 1977.

Now we can go further and say 'ok well let's look for it again at that exact location'. In fact, astronomers have looked for it again ever since more than 1,000 times and it has never been re-discovered. But, we cannot use that data to say the Wow! Signal never happened because it clearly did happen. So all we can do is shrug our shoulders and say 'we don't know what the hell it was. Whatever it was, it seems to have been an isolated event where the probability of it happening was ridiculously small.'

So the same thing can be argued about the miracles of Jesus. We can calculate that the probability of them occurring are insanely small and we can use our life experience to draw conclusions of belief, but we can not scientifically or historically demonstrate that they did or did not happen because they are isolated events in history, just as the Wow! Signal was

Wow signal - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Well, I couldn’t help but give my answer to your previous post.

It seems I haven’t outlined properly my point of view.

Look. I completely agree with that what you wrote above. And I don’t rule out completely the point about the miracles’ existence. The miracles may well have taken place. But what the most confuses me is that the miracles passed unnoticed. I will explain.

I am completely aware that there weren’t contemporary means of gathering and distributing information. But how is it possible that no one except of the evangelists tells us about them (the miracles). Imagine yourself at that situation. You live in a village; you cultivate your land and breed the cattle, as do the bulk of your neighbours. And one fine day your village see a teacher who is able to do miracles – he walks along the water; he heals your neighbours; he raises the dead. And he does such things not only in your village, but also in the others villages around the country. Don’t forget about rumours which spread across the country and exaggerate things. Furthermore, after all these miracles have been done, there come even more miracles – he physically resurrects, comes to his disciples, and eventually physically ascends to the sky! And all these things were seen by scores of people! And considering that, can you imagine that there is no other evidence, except of Gospels, even in a form of folklore? Can it be possible that you and your neighbours overwhelmingly rejected the teacher and his teaching and called him a liar? I can hardly believe in it.

But what do we see instead? Only four men tell us about all of that. The teaching is spreading everywhere, but not in your country, not among witnesses of the teacher. What is that? Another miracle?

 

[BluePhantom]

Just one final thought about miracles. It is important to understand what history and science can demonstrate and what it can not. When we deal with history, we are dealing with probabilities. Historians use a variety of criteria in order to determine the likelihood that an event took place. So, for example, the probability that the Siege of Stalingrad took place is very high because we have records and eyewitnesses that support that event. The further back into antiquity we go, the fewer sources we have to apply to the criteria and thus the probability becomes less and less as a natural consequence of time.

Science also deals with probabilities. So let's take walking on water. We can go to the Sea of Galilee and have 1,000 people attempt to walk on it and calculate the odds of someone doing so successfully. We would expect that success rate to be extraordinarily low. We could then calculate the probability that anyone has walked on water and again it would be infinitesimally low. But what we cannot do is use that to say it has never happened because it is impossible to reconstruct the precise environment of an isolated historical event.

Let's apply this to a real world situation. Let's say we wish to calculate the odds of using an Earth-based radio telescope to detect a signal that originates from deep space. We want this signal to be 30 times louder than standard 'space noise' and we want it to broadcast at a frequency of 1420 MHz which matches the electromagnetic radiation spectral line of hydrogen. Pretty specific criteria. So we point our telescope in 1,000 different directions and we are not surprised to discover that we do not find it a single time. So we can use that to calculate that the probability of finding that in space is extraordinarily low. But we cannot use that to say it has never happened because, in fact, it has happened. It has happened exactly once in our recorded history according to our technological ability to perform the experiment. It is what is known as the 'Wow! Signal' which originated in the constellation of Sagittarius on August 15, 1977.

Now we can go further and say 'ok well let's look for it again at that exact location'. In fact, astronomers have looked for it again ever since more than 1,000 times and it has never been re-discovered. But, we cannot use that data to say the Wow! Signal never happened because it clearly did happen. So all we can do is shrug our shoulders and say 'we don't know what the hell it was. Whatever it was, it seems to have been an isolated event where the probability of it happening was ridiculously small.'

So the same thing can be argued about the miracles of Jesus. We can calculate that the probability of them occurring are insanely small and we can use our life experience to draw conclusions of belief, but we can not scientifically or historically demonstrate that they did or did not happen because they are isolated events in history, just as the Wow! Signal was

Wow signal - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia

Well, I couldn’t help but give my answer to your previous post.

It seems I haven’t outlined properly my point of view.

Look. I completely agree with that what you wrote above. And I don’t rule out completely the point about the miracles’ existence. The miracles may well have taken place. But what the most confuses me is that the miracles passed unnoticed. I will explain.

I am completely aware that there weren’t contemporary means of gathering and distributing information. But how is it possible that no one except of the evangelists tells us about them (the miracles). Imagine yourself at that situation. You live in a village; you cultivate your land and breed the cattle, as do the bulk of your neighbours. And one fine day your village see a teacher who is able to do miracles – he walks along the water; he heals your neighbours; he raises the dead. And he does such things not only in your village, but also in the others villages around the country. Don’t forget about rumours which spread across the country and exaggerate things. Furthermore, after all these miracles have been done, there come even more miracles – he physically resurrects, comes to his disciples, and eventually physically ascends to the sky! And all these things were seen by scores of people! And considering that, can you imagine that there is no other evidence, except of Gospels, even in a form of folklore? Can it be possible that you and your neighbours overwhelmingly rejected the teacher and his teaching and called him a liar? I can hardly believe in it.

But what do we see instead? Only four men tell us about all of that. The teaching is spreading everywhere, but not in your country, not among witnesses of the teacher. What is that? Another miracle?

I see what you are saying, but you have to remember a few things. First the only real evidence of a miracle healing or something like that which would survive to the modern day is a written account. One of the problems was that the literacy rate in ancient Judea among the peasants was really low and it was the peasant class that was following Jesus. Some estimates put it as low as 3%-5%. So things didn't get written down because very few people could read or write. Even the disciples themselves were almost certainly illiterate (although conservative Christians will squawk in opposition to that) and the gospels were written by other people who were educated. Second, there were concerted efforts by the power players in Judea to eradicate Christianity. These efforts included execution for blasphemy and heresy so being in possession of Christian literature was a pretty risky proposition in the early to mid 1st century CE. The last thing the power players wanted was evidence of a miracle act that would support the idea of the divinity of Jesus. One would think, in fact, that if Jesus really did raise someone from death, that the Sanhedrin would have sent someone to kill them real fucking fast to get rid of the evidence. Third, there were many more gospels than just the four that are in the Bible. Some scholars put the number as high as 50 but I generally count somewhere between 30 and 40. Most were written later but there were more accounts than just the Biblical gospels. They just never made it into the Bible for various reasons.

I think your point is well taken. If these miracles did happen then one would think it would have generated an immediate and large following and there would be some evidence to support that. But, in fact, that may not actually be the case because of the state of society at the time.

 

[zaangalewa]

It's hard to know the figures because
1) he's not singularly historical, so no historical records exist.

If A is not A then A is not A? Sure. I never studied the methodology of historical research. So don't ask me why scientists of history know why Jesus is a real persons and why Laotse is a kind of sum of different persons. Anyway for someone who reads what Jesus said or who reads what Laotse said this makes not really a big difference.

2) they refuse to narrow down and pick a historical christ figure out of the bunch that make up his image.

They? Ah "we" - the holy catholic church. And what did we do exactly? We wrote what Jesus said into a book with the name bible? Sure - if not we whoelse? ... And what said Immanuel Kant to this criminal theme? “I believe that the existence of the Bible is the greatest benefit to the human race. Any attempt to belittle it, I believe, is a crime against humanity.”

3)therefore how many Hanotzrim existed, Nazarenes existed,Yehudites, and followers of Theudas existed, and how many followers of Benjamin the Egyptian, and John the Baptist followers, but to call these cults a collective Christian is probably a word that had yet to exist or at least be used for one singular messianic cult.

I guess I have first to read the millions of pages atheists wrote about their spiritualiy before I'm not able not to understand what you not said. What for heavens sake are you speaking about?

 

[aris2chat]

It's hard to know the figures because
1) he's not singularly historical, so no historical records exist.

If A is not A then A is not A? Sure. I never studied the methodology of historical research. So don't ask me why scientists of history know why Jesus is a real persons and why Laotse is a kind of sum of different persons. Anyway for someone who reads what Jesus said or who reads what Laotse said this makes not really a big difference.

2) they refuse to narrow down and pick a historical christ figure out of the bunch that make up his image.

They? Ah "we" - the holy catholic church. And what did we do exactly? We wrote what Jesus said into a book with the name bible? Sure - if not we whoelse? ... And what said Immanuel Kant to this criminal theme? “I believe that the existence of the Bible is the greatest benefit to the human race. Any attempt to belittle it, I believe, is a crime against humanity.”

3)therefore how many Hanotzrim existed, Nazarenes existed,Yehudites, and followers of Theudas existed, and how many followers of Benjamin the Egyptian, and John the Baptist followers, but to call these cults a collective Christian is probably a word that had yet to exist or at least be used for one singular messianic cult.

I guess I have first to read the millions of pages atheists wrote about their spiritualiy before I'm not able not to understand what you not said. What for heavens sake are you speaking about?

muppets are coming back to ABC this fall

 

[zaangalewa]

... Christians were being strongly oppressed by Jews who saw them as heretical ...

Jews never opressed Christians. What you call Christians were Jews. Jews had problems with Jews - what kind of problems I don't know exactly, but the expression "Christian" came later. It's not a joke that we started after the shoa to call Jews "our older sisters and brothers". It was always in history wrong not to do so - but no one thought about before. Paul for example changed his position (from Saul to Paul) - and became in this way the most important founding father of the christian religion - specially for the heathens - and today he's maybe the most hated Christian in the world. And it are not Jews who hate Paul, but often "Christians" and "Muslims" who hate Paul. Strange - specially if someone knows what Paul really said. The words of his "song of love" should normally go directly without any detour in every heart of all spiritual people in the world.

-----

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
-----


-----

 

[zaangalewa]

It's hard to know the figures because
1) he's not singularly historical, so no historical records exist.

If A is not A then A is not A? Sure. I never studied the methodology of historical research. So don't ask me why scientists of history know why Jesus is a real persons and why Laotse is a kind of sum of different persons. Anyway for someone who reads what Jesus said or who reads what Laotse said this makes not really a big difference.

2) they refuse to narrow down and pick a historical christ figure out of the bunch that make up his image.

They? Ah "we" - the holy catholic church. And what did we do exactly? We wrote what Jesus said into a book with the name bible? Sure - if not we whoelse? ... And what said Immanuel Kant to this criminal theme? “I believe that the existence of the Bible is the greatest benefit to the human race. Any attempt to belittle it, I believe, is a crime against humanity.”

3)therefore how many Hanotzrim existed, Nazarenes existed,Yehudites, and followers of Theudas existed, and how many followers of Benjamin the Egyptian, and John the Baptist followers, but to call these cults a collective Christian is probably a word that had yet to exist or at least be used for one singular messianic cult.

I guess I have first to read the millions of pages atheists wrote about their spiritualiy before I'm not able not to understand what you not said. What for heavens sake are you speaking about?

muppets are coming back to ABC this fall

ABC? ... Ah got it: American broadcast company ... TV in the USA. Hopefully their way starts not with a first frog under their feet.

 

[BluePhantom]

... Christians were being strongly oppressed by Jews who saw them as heretical ...

Jews never opressed Christians. What you call Christians were Jews. Jews had problems with Jews - what kind of problems I don't know exactly, but the expression "Christian" came later. It's not a joke that we started after the shoa to call Jews "our older sisters and brothers". It was always in history wrong not to do so - but no one thought about before. Paul for example changed his position (from Saul to Paul) - and became in this way the most important founding father of the christian religion - specially for the heathens - and today he's maybe the most hated Christian in the world. And it are not Jews who hate Paul, but often "Christians" and "Muslims" who hate Paul. Strange - specially if someone knows what Paul really said. The words of his "song of love" should normally go directly without any detour in every heart of all spiritual people in the world.

-----

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
-----


-----

Well first off, Paul didn't change his name. Saul is how is name is pronounced in Aramaic and Paul is how it is pronounced in Greek. It's the same name, just different languages. When speaking to Gentiles he refers to himself as Paul because he is writing in Greek. When dealing with Jews he refers to himself as Saul because now he is speaking to them in Aramaic.

Second, don't get caught in semantics. When they started calling themselves "Christians" is irrelevant. Those who converted to accept Jesus were Christians regardless of what they were called at the time. And yes they were highly oppressed by the Jews. Go back and read Acts.

 

[HaShev]

BluePhantom,
that simply is not true.
Just as Jesus, Salome, Judas, John, Peter so to is Paul a converged character based on many.
Fact: it was Apollonius of Tyana called Pol who lived ib Tarsus where that Syria and window story came from predated accts.
Also your own NT has the other Paul used to create the new image and it's ironically a verse in acts where Saul comes in contact with this Sergius Paulus called Paul who had an Elymas (maggis) nsmed Bar(son)Jesus with him who ssul called the son of the devil.
So here we have Saul condemning Paul and his
Benny Hinn like con artist barJesus.
Saul is made Paul as a method Rome used to swallow up it's enemies and to convert Jews to this masked form of Baal worship.

 

[HaShev]

muppets are coming back to ABC this fall

Oh cool, so are you and your grumpy friend Zaang still on the balcony?

 

[zaangalewa]

... Christians were being strongly oppressed by Jews who saw them as heretical ...

Jews never opressed Christians. What you call Christians were Jews. Jews had problems with Jews - what kind of problems I don't know exactly, but the expression "Christian" came later. It's not a joke that we started after the shoa to call Jews "our older sisters and brothers". It was always in history wrong not to do so - but no one thought about before. Paul for example changed his position (from Saul to Paul) - and became in this way the most important founding father of the christian religion - specially for the heathens - and today he's maybe the most hated Christian in the world. And it are not Jews who hate Paul, but often "Christians" and "Muslims" who hate Paul. Strange - specially if someone knows what Paul really said. The words of his "song of love" should normally go directly without any detour in every heart of all spiritual people in the world.

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If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
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Well first off, Paul didn't change his name. Saul is how is name is pronounced in Aramaic and Paul is how it is pronounced in Greek. It's the same name, just different languages. When speaking to Gentiles he refers to himself as Paul because he is writing in Greek. When dealing with Jews he refers to himself as Saul because now he is speaking to them in Aramaic.

Second, don't get caught in semantics. When they started calling themselves "Christians" is irrelevant. Those who converted to accept Jesus were Christians regardless of what they were called at the time. And yes they were highly oppressed by the Jews. Go back and read Acts.

Give me please an example for the oppression of the jewish sect what will overtook one day the expression "Christian". How (if at all) tried the mainstream to bring this sect under control?

 

[BluePhantom]

Give me please an example for the oppression of the jewish sect what will overtook one day the expression "Christian".

Huh? I don't even know what that means

 

[zaangalewa]

Give me please an example for the oppression of the jewish sect what will overtook one day the expression "Christian".

Huh? I don't even know what that means

More simple: Jews separated themselve in two parts - the mainstream and the sect what later overtook the name "Christians". Christians gave not themselve the name "Christians" - they were first called from others "Christians". You said the mainstream of the Jews opressed this jewish sect ("Christians" in your eyes). I asked you now to give me an example. The reason: I don't know what you call "opression" in this context. All Jews were under the pressure of the Romans in those days. Saul=Paul for example had the legal status "Citizen of Rome" - his cultural background was "greek" and "jew". He brought this sect of the Jews under pressure - but without him no Christian would exist. You reduce this very copmlex process into a simole ¿antisemitic? "Jews opressed Christians" statement. So give me please an example what you are thinking about concrete in this context. What do you call "opression"?

 

[BluePhantom]

Give me please an example for the oppression of the jewish sect what will overtook one day the expression "Christian".

Huh? I don't even know what that means

More simple: Jews separated themselve in two parts - the mainstream and the sect what later overtook the name "Christians". Christians gave not themselve the name "Christians" - they were first called from others "Christians". You said the mainstream of the Jews opressed this jewish sect ("Christians" in your eyes). I asked you now to give me an example. The reason: I don't know what you call "opression" in this context. All Jews were under the pressure of the Romans in those days. Saul=Paul for example had the legal status "Citizen of Rome" - his cultural background was "greek" and "jew". He brought this sect of the Jews under pressure - but without him no Christian would exist. You reduce this very copmlex process into a simole ¿antisemitic? "Jews opressed Christians" statement. So give me please an example what you are thinking about concrete in this context. What do you call "opression"?

I am not sure where you are getting your understanding of history. Judea was a Roman province but I would argue that in Judea, the Jews put far more pressure on the Romans than vice versa. The Romans had about 5,000 troops to attempt to control over a million Jews. The Romans didn't keep massive amount of troops in the interior of the Empire. They were on the borders. Trust me...Pontius Pilate had to bend his knee to Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin just as much as they had to bend to Pilate.

As far as Paul's Roman citizenship..it is referred to in Acts but Paul himself never claims it in his letters. It could be that he was a Roman citizen and it could be that he wasn't. Christianity would also have existed without Paul but it would have been a small sect of Judaism instead of a major world religion. Paul spread Christianity to Gentiles where the apostles were concerned with the Jews. Without Paul it would not have spread to the extent it did but it would have probably still survived.

As far as "what is oppression?" Well I don't know...stoning people to death, jailing them, and running them out of town seems pretty oppressive to me. According to Acts, it was the Jewish Sanhedrin that did that and not the Romans. You really need to read your Bible more.