The Christian Hedge Around the Law

[sealybobo]

This is directed primarily at sealybobo based on a side conversation on a different thread, but it's an open topic for discussion

In the early 1st Century CE there were four main political parties (so to speak) in Judea. You had the Zealots who were concerned with preserving the royal Davidic line and were pissed that Caesar was calling himself the king over the Promised Land. They were also very militant, what we might call "terrorists" today. You had the Essenes who were concerned with the sanctity of the holy land. They were pissed that the land itself was under pagan occupation. Their solution was to withdraw to communes. There were the Sadducees who were concerned with the Temple and dealing with Rome. Daily life wasn't as important to them. And there were the Pharisees who were concerned with keeping Torah in everyday life.

The Pharisees were very strict because there were things in the Law that were vague. The Law said not to work on the Sabbath, for example. Well what is work? If you are doing something you enjoy but it causes physical exertion is it work? What about cooking? What if you enjoyed cooking? Is that work? So what they did was to build a "hedge around the Law". The hedge represented the loosest possible definition of something and the theory was that if you didn't cross the hedge you would go nowhere near breaking the Law. So as far as cooking, even if you enjoy it, it's better not to take the chance. This is why some Jews do absolutely nothing on Sabbath except sit there and twiddle their thumbs. I have a friend of mine who is Jewish and he tears off toilet paper and stacks it up on Friday morning, because tearing the toilet paper off the roll might be considered work by God.

It's important to understand that the other three parties were not nearly as strict in their interpretations. But after the Second Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Pharisees were all that was left. The Zealots were all dead from the war. Rome had taken an absolute stranglehold on the land and were ruling it far more powerfully than they had before so the Essenes lost their influence. The Temple was destroyed and Hadrian (I think it was) erected a statue of himself on top of its ruins as a sign that it would not be returning. So the Sadducees were out. So the Pharisees were all that survived and with them came their strict interpretations.

In early Christianity after the 1st century, what we had was a bunch of converts to the religion, many of which were converted Jews that were used to Pharisaic interpretations and so the hedge around the Law came with them. When we think of issues like impure thoughts being sinful, masturbation being sinful, or contraception being sinful, etc. These are not things that are supported by much in the way of actual 1st century Christian writings. Most scripture simply refers to "immoral thoughts". Well here we have the same problem as 'what is work'? Now we have 'what is immoral?' Christians in the 2nd century took on the Pharasaic tradition of the hedge around the Law and did the same thing. Anything even remotely considered immoral was the hedge and as long as you didn't cross the hedge, you were safe.

These traditions and interpretations were strengthened by later works such as The Shepherd of Hermas, wherein an impure thought once in your entire life wouldn't just fuck you for all eternity, it would fuck your entire family too. Over the centuries, these books were either not included or were thrown out of the canon and became apocryphal so people stopped reading them, but the traditions associated with them stuck. This is why you will see very conservative Christians today rail about impurity and masturbation and the sinfulness of it all. The problem is the Bible doesn't say that. You may have heard someone say "The Bible says that it is better to plant your seed in the belly of a whore than spill it upon the road....so there" Well guess what? That's not in the Bible. Search for it all you want...it aint there. That is an interpretation from later Church leaders, perhaps centuries later, that developed into tradition, but it is not supported by scripture. It represents the hedge around the Law.

The point is that many atheists don't understand what the Bible really says and what it is talking about. I can forgive that because they are not Christian so why would they care? But there are a lot of Christians who don't know either and that's a big problem. It seems to me that if one views the Bible as the inspired word of God and wishes to follow it accurately, they might want to find out what it actually says.

you forget that I was a Christian for at least half of my life? I read the Bible and I agree I didn't read all the angry stuff in there but you're here conservative Christians preach about. but you gotta realize that even your interpretation or spin on the Bible in Christianity is just as much nonsense at the basic root of your premise. I find it amazing that's so much written history from the Greeks and the Egyptians and everywhere else in the world including Rome has such a well documented history and as far as I'm concerned not a thing survives from Jesus's day. I think the Bible was written hundreds of years after the supposed event.to me what it sounds like you're doing is telling me how your particular spin on religion from your particular cult just has a better spin on the story. no offense you seem like a nice guy but ultimately do you believe Jesus Christ was the son of God? Jesus of Nazareth? you believe that story literally?

Well your concept about the books in the New Testament being written several centuries after the fact flies totally in the face of scholarship. I am not talking about Christian belief. I am talking about atheist and/or agnostic scholars and even they concede that the New Testament books were written in the 1st century CE just a few decades after the death of Jesus. So you are not only arguing against people of faith, you are arguing against secular scholars on that one.

I have explained my belief about Jesus to you more than once. I see no need to go over it all again.

As far as little surviving from Jesus' day. Why does that surprise you? The assumption that there would be is the result of completely rejecting history. We don't have historical accounts for the overwhelmingly vast majority of people from antiquity. The ones we do know about were mostly kings or members of the aristocracy. We don't have anything from Socrates either. So why would you be surprised?

I'm reading all this history of the Greeks 500 years before Christ documented history. this great event with this son of God came down such a huge moment in history and talking I think my brother went to the Shroud of Turin? that's all? you have these books somewhere where I can see and authenticate that they were written 2000 years ago? Or is it possible the Catholic Church wrote the Bible? you saying you can show me the book of Luke and John and that John and Luke penned or authored those books?

 

[sealybobo]

maybe this cult started collecting their thoughts eighty years after Jesus giver take 20 years

 

[HaShev]

about the historical nature of the crucifixion it would nice to be able to see if those things are attested by other independent sources. If they are, we can be more confident about their historical nature and if they are not...well it just might be something the author made up and tossed in and if that is the case, well...then that's on the author of Matthew

First off Matt did not write Mathew as the church has admited, because a Jew would know Hebrew gender and would not mistake Micah 5 for being about a town (Bethlehem).
A Jew would also not use those verses clearly about lineage
(Bethlehem Ephratah is a person )
and claim it falaciously as a town one is born out of.

Secondly there is independent sources that I have been sharing over and over.
The Talmud which records historical Rabbis recorded the Mentor Rabbi of Yeshu son of Mary of 100bc thus also records why this Mentor Rabbi shuned his student Yeshu for coming back from Egypt scaming people with Benny Hinn like sorcery tricks and forbidden teachings. It records his punishment for his crimes as being STONING AND HANGING ON PASSOVER, Which is the type of punishment they handed out back then.
The NT also accounts this as slew (stoning) and hanging in Acts 5:30 Acts 10:39
Acts 13:29 1 Peter 2:24
The reason you have 2 types of execution is the same reason you have 2 jobs, 2 hometowns, 2 blames, new changed names for him and his apostles and new birthdate...all these things occur when converging many figures into one new icon.

 

[BluePhantom]

This is directed primarily at sealybobo based on a side conversation on a different thread, but it's an open topic for discussion

In the early 1st Century CE there were four main political parties (so to speak) in Judea. You had the Zealots who were concerned with preserving the royal Davidic line and were pissed that Caesar was calling himself the king over the Promised Land. They were also very militant, what we might call "terrorists" today. You had the Essenes who were concerned with the sanctity of the holy land. They were pissed that the land itself was under pagan occupation. Their solution was to withdraw to communes. There were the Sadducees who were concerned with the Temple and dealing with Rome. Daily life wasn't as important to them. And there were the Pharisees who were concerned with keeping Torah in everyday life.

The Pharisees were very strict because there were things in the Law that were vague. The Law said not to work on the Sabbath, for example. Well what is work? If you are doing something you enjoy but it causes physical exertion is it work? What about cooking? What if you enjoyed cooking? Is that work? So what they did was to build a "hedge around the Law". The hedge represented the loosest possible definition of something and the theory was that if you didn't cross the hedge you would go nowhere near breaking the Law. So as far as cooking, even if you enjoy it, it's better not to take the chance. This is why some Jews do absolutely nothing on Sabbath except sit there and twiddle their thumbs. I have a friend of mine who is Jewish and he tears off toilet paper and stacks it up on Friday morning, because tearing the toilet paper off the roll might be considered work by God.

It's important to understand that the other three parties were not nearly as strict in their interpretations. But after the Second Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Pharisees were all that was left. The Zealots were all dead from the war. Rome had taken an absolute stranglehold on the land and were ruling it far more powerfully than they had before so the Essenes lost their influence. The Temple was destroyed and Hadrian (I think it was) erected a statue of himself on top of its ruins as a sign that it would not be returning. So the Sadducees were out. So the Pharisees were all that survived and with them came their strict interpretations.

In early Christianity after the 1st century, what we had was a bunch of converts to the religion, many of which were converted Jews that were used to Pharisaic interpretations and so the hedge around the Law came with them. When we think of issues like impure thoughts being sinful, masturbation being sinful, or contraception being sinful, etc. These are not things that are supported by much in the way of actual 1st century Christian writings. Most scripture simply refers to "immoral thoughts". Well here we have the same problem as 'what is work'? Now we have 'what is immoral?' Christians in the 2nd century took on the Pharasaic tradition of the hedge around the Law and did the same thing. Anything even remotely considered immoral was the hedge and as long as you didn't cross the hedge, you were safe.

These traditions and interpretations were strengthened by later works such as The Shepherd of Hermas, wherein an impure thought once in your entire life wouldn't just fuck you for all eternity, it would fuck your entire family too. Over the centuries, these books were either not included or were thrown out of the canon and became apocryphal so people stopped reading them, but the traditions associated with them stuck. This is why you will see very conservative Christians today rail about impurity and masturbation and the sinfulness of it all. The problem is the Bible doesn't say that. You may have heard someone say "The Bible says that it is better to plant your seed in the belly of a whore than spill it upon the road....so there" Well guess what? That's not in the Bible. Search for it all you want...it aint there. That is an interpretation from later Church leaders, perhaps centuries later, that developed into tradition, but it is not supported by scripture. It represents the hedge around the Law.

The point is that many atheists don't understand what the Bible really says and what it is talking about. I can forgive that because they are not Christian so why would they care? But there are a lot of Christians who don't know either and that's a big problem. It seems to me that if one views the Bible as the inspired word of God and wishes to follow it accurately, they might want to find out what it actually says.

you forget that I was a Christian for at least half of my life? I read the Bible and I agree I didn't read all the angry stuff in there but you're here conservative Christians preach about. but you gotta realize that even your interpretation or spin on the Bible in Christianity is just as much nonsense at the basic root of your premise. I find it amazing that's so much written history from the Greeks and the Egyptians and everywhere else in the world including Rome has such a well documented history and as far as I'm concerned not a thing survives from Jesus's day. I think the Bible was written hundreds of years after the supposed event.to me what it sounds like you're doing is telling me how your particular spin on religion from your particular cult just has a better spin on the story. no offense you seem like a nice guy but ultimately do you believe Jesus Christ was the son of God? Jesus of Nazareth? you believe that story literally?

Well your concept about the books in the New Testament being written several centuries after the fact flies totally in the face of scholarship. I am not talking about Christian belief. I am talking about atheist and/or agnostic scholars and even they concede that the New Testament books were written in the 1st century CE just a few decades after the death of Jesus. So you are not only arguing against people of faith, you are arguing against secular scholars on that one.

I have explained my belief about Jesus to you more than once. I see no need to go over it all again.

As far as little surviving from Jesus' day. Why does that surprise you? The assumption that there would be is the result of completely rejecting history. We don't have historical accounts for the overwhelmingly vast majority of people from antiquity. The ones we do know about were mostly kings or members of the aristocracy. We don't have anything from Socrates either. So why would you be surprised?

I'm reading all this history of the Greeks 500 years before Christ documented history. this great event with this son of God came down such a huge moment in history and talking I think my brother went to the Shroud of Turin? that's all? you have these books somewhere where I can see and authenticate that they were written 2000 years ago? Or is it possible the Catholic Church wrote the Bible? you saying you can show me the book of Luke and John and that John and Luke penned or authored those books?

The books from the Greeks have the same problems as the Bible manuscripts. There are very few of them from antiquity. Almost all of them are copies from centuries later. We don't have any original manuscripts of any Greek writing. The shroud of Turin was shown to be a fake years ago.

No I can't show you the originals of Luke and John. The originals are gone. The problem is that you assume, apparently, that other originals have survived. No they haven't, brother. The copy of the Iliad or The Republic you read is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy......just like the Gospel of Mark.

 

[BluePhantom]

maybe this cult started collecting their thoughts eighty years after Jesus giver take 20 years

Well like I said. Argue with secular scholars who recognize seven letters of Paul written by him within 20 years of the death of Jesus. These are not Christian apologists. These are guys like Bart Ehrman and Bruce Metzger...atheists/agnostics who agree that those texts were 1st century texts. Don't listen to me. Listen to your own peeps

 

[sealybobo]

This is directed primarily at sealybobo based on a side conversation on a different thread, but it's an open topic for discussion

In the early 1st Century CE there were four main political parties (so to speak) in Judea. You had the Zealots who were concerned with preserving the royal Davidic line and were pissed that Caesar was calling himself the king over the Promised Land. They were also very militant, what we might call "terrorists" today. You had the Essenes who were concerned with the sanctity of the holy land. They were pissed that the land itself was under pagan occupation. Their solution was to withdraw to communes. There were the Sadducees who were concerned with the Temple and dealing with Rome. Daily life wasn't as important to them. And there were the Pharisees who were concerned with keeping Torah in everyday life.

The Pharisees were very strict because there were things in the Law that were vague. The Law said not to work on the Sabbath, for example. Well what is work? If you are doing something you enjoy but it causes physical exertion is it work? What about cooking? What if you enjoyed cooking? Is that work? So what they did was to build a "hedge around the Law". The hedge represented the loosest possible definition of something and the theory was that if you didn't cross the hedge you would go nowhere near breaking the Law. So as far as cooking, even if you enjoy it, it's better not to take the chance. This is why some Jews do absolutely nothing on Sabbath except sit there and twiddle their thumbs. I have a friend of mine who is Jewish and he tears off toilet paper and stacks it up on Friday morning, because tearing the toilet paper off the roll might be considered work by God.

It's important to understand that the other three parties were not nearly as strict in their interpretations. But after the Second Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Pharisees were all that was left. The Zealots were all dead from the war. Rome had taken an absolute stranglehold on the land and were ruling it far more powerfully than they had before so the Essenes lost their influence. The Temple was destroyed and Hadrian (I think it was) erected a statue of himself on top of its ruins as a sign that it would not be returning. So the Sadducees were out. So the Pharisees were all that survived and with them came their strict interpretations.

In early Christianity after the 1st century, what we had was a bunch of converts to the religion, many of which were converted Jews that were used to Pharisaic interpretations and so the hedge around the Law came with them. When we think of issues like impure thoughts being sinful, masturbation being sinful, or contraception being sinful, etc. These are not things that are supported by much in the way of actual 1st century Christian writings. Most scripture simply refers to "immoral thoughts". Well here we have the same problem as 'what is work'? Now we have 'what is immoral?' Christians in the 2nd century took on the Pharasaic tradition of the hedge around the Law and did the same thing. Anything even remotely considered immoral was the hedge and as long as you didn't cross the hedge, you were safe.

These traditions and interpretations were strengthened by later works such as The Shepherd of Hermas, wherein an impure thought once in your entire life wouldn't just fuck you for all eternity, it would fuck your entire family too. Over the centuries, these books were either not included or were thrown out of the canon and became apocryphal so people stopped reading them, but the traditions associated with them stuck. This is why you will see very conservative Christians today rail about impurity and masturbation and the sinfulness of it all. The problem is the Bible doesn't say that. You may have heard someone say "The Bible says that it is better to plant your seed in the belly of a whore than spill it upon the road....so there" Well guess what? That's not in the Bible. Search for it all you want...it aint there. That is an interpretation from later Church leaders, perhaps centuries later, that developed into tradition, but it is not supported by scripture. It represents the hedge around the Law.

The point is that many atheists don't understand what the Bible really says and what it is talking about. I can forgive that because they are not Christian so why would they care? But there are a lot of Christians who don't know either and that's a big problem. It seems to me that if one views the Bible as the inspired word of God and wishes to follow it accurately, they might want to find out what it actually says.

you forget that I was a Christian for at least half of my life? I read the Bible and I agree I didn't read all the angry stuff in there but you're here conservative Christians preach about. but you gotta realize that even your interpretation or spin on the Bible in Christianity is just as much nonsense at the basic root of your premise. I find it amazing that's so much written history from the Greeks and the Egyptians and everywhere else in the world including Rome has such a well documented history and as far as I'm concerned not a thing survives from Jesus's day. I think the Bible was written hundreds of years after the supposed event.to me what it sounds like you're doing is telling me how your particular spin on religion from your particular cult just has a better spin on the story. no offense you seem like a nice guy but ultimately do you believe Jesus Christ was the son of God? Jesus of Nazareth? you believe that story literally?

Well your concept about the books in the New Testament being written several centuries after the fact flies totally in the face of scholarship. I am not talking about Christian belief. I am talking about atheist and/or agnostic scholars and even they concede that the New Testament books were written in the 1st century CE just a few decades after the death of Jesus. So you are not only arguing against people of faith, you are arguing against secular scholars on that one.

I have explained my belief about Jesus to you more than once. I see no need to go over it all again.

As far as little surviving from Jesus' day. Why does that surprise you? The assumption that there would be is the result of completely rejecting history. We don't have historical accounts for the overwhelmingly vast majority of people from antiquity. The ones we do know about were mostly kings or members of the aristocracy. We don't have anything from Socrates either. So why would you be surprised?

I'm reading all this history of the Greeks 500 years before Christ documented history. this great event with this son of God came down such a huge moment in history and talking I think my brother went to the Shroud of Turin? that's all? you have these books somewhere where I can see and authenticate that they were written 2000 years ago? Or is it possible the Catholic Church wrote the Bible? you saying you can show me the book of Luke and John and that John and Luke penned or authored those books?

The books from the Greeks have the same problems as the Bible manuscripts. There are very few of them from antiquity. Almost all of them are copies from centuries later. We don't have any original manuscripts of any Greek writing. The shroud of Turin was shown to be a fake years ago.

No I can't show you the originals of Luke and John. The originals are gone. The problem is that you assume, apparently, that other originals have survived. No they haven't, brother. The copy of the Iliad or The Republic you read is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy......just like the Gospel of Mark.

I can go to Greece and see statues made of Apollo that were made 2,000 years before Christ I see no statues of Christ from 2000 years ago. maybe 1500 years ago. I also believe that the Moses Ten Commandments story the discrepancy between when it was written is like a difference of 1500 years or fifteen thousand years I forgot but the point is he knows when all these books were written and by whom. thanks George Michael sang if you gotta have faith

 

[sealybobo]

maybe this cult started collecting their thoughts eighty years after Jesus giver take 20 years

Well like I said. Argue with secular scholars who recognize seven letters of Paul written by him within 20 years of the death of Jesus. These are not Christian apologists. These are guys like Bart Ehrman and Bruce Metzger...atheists/agnostics who agree that those texts were 1st century texts. Don't listen to me. Listen to your own peeps

where do they keep these texts?

 

[sealybobo]

and I guess it really doesn't matter when this cult started writing their stories down

 

[BluePhantom]

This is directed primarily at sealybobo based on a side conversation on a different thread, but it's an open topic for discussion

In the early 1st Century CE there were four main political parties (so to speak) in Judea. You had the Zealots who were concerned with preserving the royal Davidic line and were pissed that Caesar was calling himself the king over the Promised Land. They were also very militant, what we might call "terrorists" today. You had the Essenes who were concerned with the sanctity of the holy land. They were pissed that the land itself was under pagan occupation. Their solution was to withdraw to communes. There were the Sadducees who were concerned with the Temple and dealing with Rome. Daily life wasn't as important to them. And there were the Pharisees who were concerned with keeping Torah in everyday life.

The Pharisees were very strict because there were things in the Law that were vague. The Law said not to work on the Sabbath, for example. Well what is work? If you are doing something you enjoy but it causes physical exertion is it work? What about cooking? What if you enjoyed cooking? Is that work? So what they did was to build a "hedge around the Law". The hedge represented the loosest possible definition of something and the theory was that if you didn't cross the hedge you would go nowhere near breaking the Law. So as far as cooking, even if you enjoy it, it's better not to take the chance. This is why some Jews do absolutely nothing on Sabbath except sit there and twiddle their thumbs. I have a friend of mine who is Jewish and he tears off toilet paper and stacks it up on Friday morning, because tearing the toilet paper off the roll might be considered work by God.

It's important to understand that the other three parties were not nearly as strict in their interpretations. But after the Second Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Pharisees were all that was left. The Zealots were all dead from the war. Rome had taken an absolute stranglehold on the land and were ruling it far more powerfully than they had before so the Essenes lost their influence. The Temple was destroyed and Hadrian (I think it was) erected a statue of himself on top of its ruins as a sign that it would not be returning. So the Sadducees were out. So the Pharisees were all that survived and with them came their strict interpretations.

In early Christianity after the 1st century, what we had was a bunch of converts to the religion, many of which were converted Jews that were used to Pharisaic interpretations and so the hedge around the Law came with them. When we think of issues like impure thoughts being sinful, masturbation being sinful, or contraception being sinful, etc. These are not things that are supported by much in the way of actual 1st century Christian writings. Most scripture simply refers to "immoral thoughts". Well here we have the same problem as 'what is work'? Now we have 'what is immoral?' Christians in the 2nd century took on the Pharasaic tradition of the hedge around the Law and did the same thing. Anything even remotely considered immoral was the hedge and as long as you didn't cross the hedge, you were safe.

These traditions and interpretations were strengthened by later works such as The Shepherd of Hermas, wherein an impure thought once in your entire life wouldn't just fuck you for all eternity, it would fuck your entire family too. Over the centuries, these books were either not included or were thrown out of the canon and became apocryphal so people stopped reading them, but the traditions associated with them stuck. This is why you will see very conservative Christians today rail about impurity and masturbation and the sinfulness of it all. The problem is the Bible doesn't say that. You may have heard someone say "The Bible says that it is better to plant your seed in the belly of a whore than spill it upon the road....so there" Well guess what? That's not in the Bible. Search for it all you want...it aint there. That is an interpretation from later Church leaders, perhaps centuries later, that developed into tradition, but it is not supported by scripture. It represents the hedge around the Law.

The point is that many atheists don't understand what the Bible really says and what it is talking about. I can forgive that because they are not Christian so why would they care? But there are a lot of Christians who don't know either and that's a big problem. It seems to me that if one views the Bible as the inspired word of God and wishes to follow it accurately, they might want to find out what it actually says.

you forget that I was a Christian for at least half of my life? I read the Bible and I agree I didn't read all the angry stuff in there but you're here conservative Christians preach about. but you gotta realize that even your interpretation or spin on the Bible in Christianity is just as much nonsense at the basic root of your premise. I find it amazing that's so much written history from the Greeks and the Egyptians and everywhere else in the world including Rome has such a well documented history and as far as I'm concerned not a thing survives from Jesus's day. I think the Bible was written hundreds of years after the supposed event.to me what it sounds like you're doing is telling me how your particular spin on religion from your particular cult just has a better spin on the story. no offense you seem like a nice guy but ultimately do you believe Jesus Christ was the son of God? Jesus of Nazareth? you believe that story literally?

Well your concept about the books in the New Testament being written several centuries after the fact flies totally in the face of scholarship. I am not talking about Christian belief. I am talking about atheist and/or agnostic scholars and even they concede that the New Testament books were written in the 1st century CE just a few decades after the death of Jesus. So you are not only arguing against people of faith, you are arguing against secular scholars on that one.

I have explained my belief about Jesus to you more than once. I see no need to go over it all again.

As far as little surviving from Jesus' day. Why does that surprise you? The assumption that there would be is the result of completely rejecting history. We don't have historical accounts for the overwhelmingly vast majority of people from antiquity. The ones we do know about were mostly kings or members of the aristocracy. We don't have anything from Socrates either. So why would you be surprised?

I'm reading all this history of the Greeks 500 years before Christ documented history. this great event with this son of God came down such a huge moment in history and talking I think my brother went to the Shroud of Turin? that's all? you have these books somewhere where I can see and authenticate that they were written 2000 years ago? Or is it possible the Catholic Church wrote the Bible? you saying you can show me the book of Luke and John and that John and Luke penned or authored those books?

The books from the Greeks have the same problems as the Bible manuscripts. There are very few of them from antiquity. Almost all of them are copies from centuries later. We don't have any original manuscripts of any Greek writing. The shroud of Turin was shown to be a fake years ago.

No I can't show you the originals of Luke and John. The originals are gone. The problem is that you assume, apparently, that other originals have survived. No they haven't, brother. The copy of the Iliad or The Republic you read is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy......just like the Gospel of Mark.

I can go to Greece and see statues made of Apollo that were made 2,000 years before Christ I see no statues of Christ from 2000 years ago. maybe 1500 years ago. I also believe that the Moses Ten Commandments story the discrepancy between when it was written is like a difference of 1500 years or fifteen thousand years I forgot but the point is he knows when all these books were written and by whom. thanks George Michael sang if you gotta have faith

Sealy, why would anyone make a statue of Jesus 2,000 years ago? Christianity was an emerging religion that suffered extreme persecution from the Romans and Jews until Constantine. Who the fuck would be crazy enough to build a statue of him and get their asses killed as a result? Look at history, dude. Jeez

 

[BluePhantom]

maybe this cult started collecting their thoughts eighty years after Jesus giver take 20 years

Well like I said. Argue with secular scholars who recognize seven letters of Paul written by him within 20 years of the death of Jesus. These are not Christian apologists. These are guys like Bart Ehrman and Bruce Metzger...atheists/agnostics who agree that those texts were 1st century texts. Don't listen to me. Listen to your own peeps

where do they keep these texts?

Sealy? Are you drunk or something? I just said there are no original texts. They are dated to the first century because of whet they refer to, the word used, the rhetoric used, etc. If there is a text that talks about the existence of the Temple it was obviously written prior to 70 CE when the Temple was destroyed. If it refers to the destruction of the Temple it was obviously written after that. The Epistle of Barnabas is dated between 70 CE and 135 CE because it refers to the destruction of the Temple and the rebuilding of the Temple. That means it was written after 70 CE when the Temple was destroyed but before 135 CE when Hadrian built a massive statue of himself on the Temple mount and decreed that the Temple would never be rebuilt.

This really isn't that hard

 

[sealybobo]

you forget that I was a Christian for at least half of my life? I read the Bible and I agree I didn't read all the angry stuff in there but you're here conservative Christians preach about. but you gotta realize that even your interpretation or spin on the Bible in Christianity is just as much nonsense at the basic root of your premise. I find it amazing that's so much written history from the Greeks and the Egyptians and everywhere else in the world including Rome has such a well documented history and as far as I'm concerned not a thing survives from Jesus's day. I think the Bible was written hundreds of years after the supposed event.to me what it sounds like you're doing is telling me how your particular spin on religion from your particular cult just has a better spin on the story. no offense you seem like a nice guy but ultimately do you believe Jesus Christ was the son of God? Jesus of Nazareth? you believe that story literally?

Well your concept about the books in the New Testament being written several centuries after the fact flies totally in the face of scholarship. I am not talking about Christian belief. I am talking about atheist and/or agnostic scholars and even they concede that the New Testament books were written in the 1st century CE just a few decades after the death of Jesus. So you are not only arguing against people of faith, you are arguing against secular scholars on that one.

I have explained my belief about Jesus to you more than once. I see no need to go over it all again.

As far as little surviving from Jesus' day. Why does that surprise you? The assumption that there would be is the result of completely rejecting history. We don't have historical accounts for the overwhelmingly vast majority of people from antiquity. The ones we do know about were mostly kings or members of the aristocracy. We don't have anything from Socrates either. So why would you be surprised?

I'm reading all this history of the Greeks 500 years before Christ documented history. this great event with this son of God came down such a huge moment in history and talking I think my brother went to the Shroud of Turin? that's all? you have these books somewhere where I can see and authenticate that they were written 2000 years ago? Or is it possible the Catholic Church wrote the Bible? you saying you can show me the book of Luke and John and that John and Luke penned or authored those books?

The books from the Greeks have the same problems as the Bible manuscripts. There are very few of them from antiquity. Almost all of them are copies from centuries later. We don't have any original manuscripts of any Greek writing. The shroud of Turin was shown to be a fake years ago.

No I can't show you the originals of Luke and John. The originals are gone. The problem is that you assume, apparently, that other originals have survived. No they haven't, brother. The copy of the Iliad or The Republic you read is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy......just like the Gospel of Mark.

I can go to Greece and see statues made of Apollo that were made 2,000 years before Christ I see no statues of Christ from 2000 years ago. maybe 1500 years ago. I also believe that the Moses Ten Commandments story the discrepancy between when it was written is like a difference of 1500 years or fifteen thousand years I forgot but the point is he knows when all these books were written and by whom. thanks George Michael sang if you gotta have faith

Sealy, why would anyone make a statue of Jesus 2,000 years ago? Christianity was an emerging religion that suffered extreme persecution from the Romans and Jews until Constantine. Who the fuck would be crazy enough to build a statue of him and get their asses killed as a result? Look at history, dude. Jeez

yeah that's a good point. and I have decided that I don't need to squash all religion. if religion would evolve into what you speak of then I would not be against it. its not for me but I can see your points and I can't prove your dad's not true and why would I want to try? other than I think it's bad for people but not if it evolves into what you speak of

 

[sealybobo]

let me know when it evolves into what you speak of because brother you're rare

 

[sealybobo]

and maybe if you converted more Christians into your way of thinking religion wouldn't be such a bad thing. let me know when that happens

 

[Derideo_Te]

So the best thing to do is avoid fretting about those contradictions and simply realize that one source says one thing and another source says something else. Usually, it's because the author is trying to make a theological point

Hmmm!

So let's see if we can decipher the theological point in this contradiction by the same author.

Whosoever shall say Thou fool, shall be in danger of hellfire.
- Matthew 5:22

Ye fools and blind.
- Matthew 23:17

Both statements are Matthew quoting Jesus. In one we have Jesus saying calling someone a fool means going to hell and in the other we see Jesus calling people fools.



Serious mixed message going on there WRT to the immortal soul of Jesus and it's ultimate destination from a theological point of view.

Matthew 5:22 is talking about getting right with yourself and God before bringing your offering to God. It is saying if you harbor ill toward your brother by calling him names it is you who will have ill will in your heart and be apart from God's best. Matthew 23:17 is saying essentially don't be a ding dong and misunderstand. Seriously...take a few verses before and after the few words you quote and the meaning is quite clear

Understood, but now you are crossing the line by saying that you must take the contextual word of God as opposed to the literal word of God.

There are a great many who believe only the literal word of God can be believed because it is too easy to change the context to suit whatever you want it to be. And to be fair, there are more than enough examples of people exploiting the bible for that very purpose by coming up with their own contextual interpretations.

Just to follow up DT, this is another reason why scholarship is so important. There are so many things that have been changed or added to scripture over the years that it can be very difficult to know what is accurate and what isn't. I would have to look more closely at the verses you quote but there are a lot of things like Jesus turning win into water. Well that is only told in the Gospel of John. It's spoken of nowhere else, not even in the apocrypha that I know of. So according to the criterion of multiple attestation, that one is a bit iffy. Now (lets take an easy one) the crucifixion. Well that's attested all over the place. It's spoken of in John, Mark, the Q Gospel, the epistles of Paul, the apocrypha, Josephus...hell we have lots of independent sources talking about the crucifixion. So we can be more confident about the historical nature of the crucifixion than the water and wine story. That's not to say the water & wine story didn't happen. Only to say we should be less confident about it based solely on that specific criterion.

So as far as the use of mOre in Matthew 5 and Matthew 23, it would nice to be able to see if those things are attested by other independent sources. If they are, we can be more confident about their historical nature and if they are not...well it just might be something the author made up and tossed in and if that is the case, well...then that's on the author of Matthew and not Jesus. Follow me?

Yes, but you are opening a door here you might not want to open. Since there is nothing, anywhere, that is allegedly the first hand writings of Jesus himself then it means that you are dealing with a phantom rather than a real person. In essence Jesus is whatever the writer du jour wanted him to be at that particular point in time. I am sure you can see that is going.

Instead let's take it from another angle. If the accounts of his youth are accurate Jesus was capable of reading the scriptures for himself and it would be no stretch to assume that anyone who can read can also write since they go hand in hand so to speak.

Now what if Jesus was merely the figment of the imagination of some story teller around that time? He needed to make a living so he invented this character, a kind of superhero, and made up all of these stories about him. Over time, as happens with most stories, things get embellished while others fall by the wayside.

Writers will do that, they will have whole chapters here and snippets there and take parts out and rework them and edit them over and over again.

If that scenario is feasible then it explains a whole lot of the conundrums and contradictions. The original author of the Jesus superhero character might never be known but others came after him and added their own chapters.

Star Trek and Star Wars are full of imaginary characters but entire cults of them now exist around the world. There are bloggers and people who write fan fiction around them. Who knows what status Captain Kirk or Han Solo might have in 2000 years from now?

So yes, opening that door takes us out onto a very slippery slope indeed.

 

[Statistikhengst]

This is directed primarily at sealybobo based on a side conversation on a different thread, but it's an open topic for discussion

In the early 1st Century CE there were four main political parties (so to speak) in Judea. You had the Zealots who were concerned with preserving the royal Davidic line and were pissed that Caesar was calling himself the king over the Promised Land. They were also very militant, what we might call "terrorists" today. You had the Essenes who were concerned with the sanctity of the holy land. They were pissed that the land itself was under pagan occupation. Their solution was to withdraw to communes. There were the Sadducees who were concerned with the Temple and dealing with Rome. Daily life wasn't as important to them. And there were the Pharisees who were concerned with keeping Torah in everyday life.

The Pharisees were very strict because there were things in the Law that were vague. The Law said not to work on the Sabbath, for example. Well what is work? If you are doing something you enjoy but it causes physical exertion is it work? What about cooking? What if you enjoyed cooking? Is that work? So what they did was to build a "hedge around the Law". The hedge represented the loosest possible definition of something and the theory was that if you didn't cross the hedge you would go nowhere near breaking the Law. So as far as cooking, even if you enjoy it, it's better not to take the chance. This is why some Jews do absolutely nothing on Sabbath except sit there and twiddle their thumbs. I have a friend of mine who is Jewish and he tears off toilet paper and stacks it up on Friday morning, because tearing the toilet paper off the roll might be considered work by God.

It's important to understand that the other three parties were not nearly as strict in their interpretations. But after the Second Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Pharisees were all that was left. The Zealots were all dead from the war. Rome had taken an absolute stranglehold on the land and were ruling it far more powerfully than they had before so the Essenes lost their influence. The Temple was destroyed and Hadrian (I think it was) erected a statue of himself on top of its ruins as a sign that it would not be returning. So the Sadducees were out. So the Pharisees were all that survived and with them came their strict interpretations.

In early Christianity after the 1st century, what we had was a bunch of converts to the religion, many of which were converted Jews that were used to Pharisaic interpretations and so the hedge around the Law came with them. When we think of issues like impure thoughts being sinful, masturbation being sinful, or contraception being sinful, etc. These are not things that are supported by much in the way of actual 1st century Christian writings. Most scripture simply refers to "immoral thoughts". Well here we have the same problem as 'what is work'? Now we have 'what is immoral?' Christians in the 2nd century took on the Pharasaic tradition of the hedge around the Law and did the same thing. Anything even remotely considered immoral was the hedge and as long as you didn't cross the hedge, you were safe.

These traditions and interpretations were strengthened by later works such as The Shepherd of Hermas, wherein an impure thought once in your entire life wouldn't just fuck you for all eternity, it would fuck your entire family too. Over the centuries, these books were either not included or were thrown out of the canon and became apocryphal so people stopped reading them, but the traditions associated with them stuck. This is why you will see very conservative Christians today rail about impurity and masturbation and the sinfulness of it all. The problem is the Bible doesn't say that. You may have heard someone say "The Bible says that it is better to plant your seed in the belly of a whore than spill it upon the road....so there" Well guess what? That's not in the Bible. Search for it all you want...it aint there. That is an interpretation from later Church leaders, perhaps centuries later, that developed into tradition, but it is not supported by scripture. It represents the hedge around the Law.

The point is that many atheists don't understand what the Bible really says and what it is talking about. I can forgive that because they are not Christian so why would they care? But there are a lot of Christians who don't know either and that's a big problem. It seems to me that if one views the Bible as the inspired word of God and wishes to follow it accurately, they might want to find out what it actually says.

Actually, that's not quite true, but you get two gold stars from me for trying.

The 613 Commandments (Mitzvoteem) are clearly layed out in the Tanakh and then extrapolated upon in a number of sage commentaries: the Mishnah, the Gemarrah and the Talmud.

And yes, these commentaries have been altered with time.

There was a time when orthodox Jews were so worried about the no work thing that, in the case of rain on Shabbat, after 15 drops were to have fallen upon a Jew on his way to Shul (Temple, Synagogue), according to Mishnah, he would have to stop and go no further, because with the 16th drop he would suddenly be carrying a "burden", which is part of the definition of "work". Nowadays, even the most orthodox of Jews pay no attention to this and realize how utterly ridiculous the proscription was. Most also consider the most mundane of things, like wipings one's ass, as not being work, but a necessary function of living. "Work" was supposed to mean the hard labor that people went through, realizing that with the entrance of the Shabbat Bride every Friday at Sundown, "work" was supposed to cease. But does it ever? When a Rabbi is giving a sermon at Kabbalat Shabbat, is he not also working? When a Chazzan sings a long cantillation of one of the 19 core Brachot from the Avodath Hakodesh, is he not working? Hell, I have even seen orthodox Jews walk into Shul on Shabbat with tablets in their hands, tablets that of course run on battery power and have to be turned on and off. Is that not "work"? Some of them read from Torah and Haftorah from a tablet these days. Is not picking up a prayer book (Siddur, Machzor) in order to read from it, "work"?

So, what you say about the Pharisees is not really that accurate at all.

But it is true that there was a major "Verspaltung" in Jewish society during the time of the Roman occupation, a phenomenon that often happens in occupied lands.

So, "hedge" is really the wrong word to use.

Are you even aware of how the Conservative and Liberal wings of Judaism were born, in the USA, circa 1903?

Hint: it had to do in part with shrimp. Yes, shrimp.

 

[Derideo_Te]

Is this to say that religion is creating the same entrenchment and intolerance as political identity or is it to suggest that entrenchment and intolerance is a characteristic of modern society that is bleeding into any and all aspects of one's identity? What do you think?

First off let me say that I am an Independent because I refuse to have to make excuses for lying politicians of any kind. No party owns my allegiance. My loyalty lies with We the People first and foremost and the yardstick I use to measure politicians is how far they are from doing what is best for We the People. No, I don't trust what they say, I look at how they voted and who was paying them for those votes.

Getting back to your question about religion going the way of politics. If anything that is reversed. Religion was divisive long before politics. I would go so far as to say that politics was the means of bridging the gap between religious beliefs in the past. For example look at the suspicion that was on JFK that he would be beholden to the Pope rather than the nation.

As for today's division how much is religion driving the political division that we observe? God, guns and gays are the 3 whips used to drive the far right to the polls. How much of that political division is based upon the "moral majority" poisoning the political well by claiming the "family values" high ground and demeaning anyone who didn't side with them? And it worsened after 9/11. The religious divide became angry denunciations that anyone who didn't support the invasion of Iraq was an Islamic terrorist lover.

So what do I think?

I see overreach on one side being a pendulum that is swinging back the other way now. Gay marriage would still be a couple of decades away except for the overreach in the 1990's that ignited the spark to unite gays. That overreach had the political dimension of DOMA driven by the religious dimension of the moral majority and family values. They pushed the pendulum of public opinion too the far right and now it has swung back to the far left and they are outraged about the law of unintended consequences.

And yes, that law trumps God's law because We the People get to make our own laws. The current foaming at the mouth will continue until it eventually becomes boring and stale and no one will care anymore. Where are those who rose up to ban alcohol who were marching in the streets and demanding that change must happen to rid the nation of the demon of drinking? In the history books where they belong as a lesson in overreach that fails.

Today we are at the end of another of those failed overreaches in my opinion. I can see a future where this kind of dissent is considered to be old fashioned and mocked for what it was. Any attempt to legislate morality is doomed to failure. We the People value our freedom too much to allow others to tell us what we must do.

 

[BluePhantom]

This is directed primarily at sealybobo based on a side conversation on a different thread, but it's an open topic for discussion

In the early 1st Century CE there were four main political parties (so to speak) in Judea. You had the Zealots who were concerned with preserving the royal Davidic line and were pissed that Caesar was calling himself the king over the Promised Land. They were also very militant, what we might call "terrorists" today. You had the Essenes who were concerned with the sanctity of the holy land. They were pissed that the land itself was under pagan occupation. Their solution was to withdraw to communes. There were the Sadducees who were concerned with the Temple and dealing with Rome. Daily life wasn't as important to them. And there were the Pharisees who were concerned with keeping Torah in everyday life.

The Pharisees were very strict because there were things in the Law that were vague. The Law said not to work on the Sabbath, for example. Well what is work? If you are doing something you enjoy but it causes physical exertion is it work? What about cooking? What if you enjoyed cooking? Is that work? So what they did was to build a "hedge around the Law". The hedge represented the loosest possible definition of something and the theory was that if you didn't cross the hedge you would go nowhere near breaking the Law. So as far as cooking, even if you enjoy it, it's better not to take the chance. This is why some Jews do absolutely nothing on Sabbath except sit there and twiddle their thumbs. I have a friend of mine who is Jewish and he tears off toilet paper and stacks it up on Friday morning, because tearing the toilet paper off the roll might be considered work by God.

It's important to understand that the other three parties were not nearly as strict in their interpretations. But after the Second Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, the Pharisees were all that was left. The Zealots were all dead from the war. Rome had taken an absolute stranglehold on the land and were ruling it far more powerfully than they had before so the Essenes lost their influence. The Temple was destroyed and Hadrian (I think it was) erected a statue of himself on top of its ruins as a sign that it would not be returning. So the Sadducees were out. So the Pharisees were all that survived and with them came their strict interpretations.

In early Christianity after the 1st century, what we had was a bunch of converts to the religion, many of which were converted Jews that were used to Pharisaic interpretations and so the hedge around the Law came with them. When we think of issues like impure thoughts being sinful, masturbation being sinful, or contraception being sinful, etc. These are not things that are supported by much in the way of actual 1st century Christian writings. Most scripture simply refers to "immoral thoughts". Well here we have the same problem as 'what is work'? Now we have 'what is immoral?' Christians in the 2nd century took on the Pharasaic tradition of the hedge around the Law and did the same thing. Anything even remotely considered immoral was the hedge and as long as you didn't cross the hedge, you were safe.

These traditions and interpretations were strengthened by later works such as The Shepherd of Hermas, wherein an impure thought once in your entire life wouldn't just fuck you for all eternity, it would fuck your entire family too. Over the centuries, these books were either not included or were thrown out of the canon and became apocryphal so people stopped reading them, but the traditions associated with them stuck. This is why you will see very conservative Christians today rail about impurity and masturbation and the sinfulness of it all. The problem is the Bible doesn't say that. You may have heard someone say "The Bible says that it is better to plant your seed in the belly of a whore than spill it upon the road....so there" Well guess what? That's not in the Bible. Search for it all you want...it aint there. That is an interpretation from later Church leaders, perhaps centuries later, that developed into tradition, but it is not supported by scripture. It represents the hedge around the Law.

The point is that many atheists don't understand what the Bible really says and what it is talking about. I can forgive that because they are not Christian so why would they care? But there are a lot of Christians who don't know either and that's a big problem. It seems to me that if one views the Bible as the inspired word of God and wishes to follow it accurately, they might want to find out what it actually says.

Actually, that's not quite true, but you get two gold stars from me for trying.

The 613 Commandments (Mitzvoteem) are clearly layed out in the Tanakh and then extrapolated upon in a number of sage commentaries: the Mishnah, the Gemarrah and the Talmud.

And yes, these commentaries have been altered with time.

There was a time when orthodox Jews were so worried about the no work thing that, in the case of rain on Shabbat, after 15 drops were to have fallen upon a Jew on his way to Shul (Temple, Synagogue), according to Mishnah, he would have to stop and go no further, because with the 16th drop he would suddenly be carrying a "burden", which is part of the definition of "work". Nowadays, even the most orthodox of Jews pay no attention to this and realize how utterly ridiculous the proscription was. Most also consider the most mundane of things, like wipings one's ass, as not being work, but a necessary function of living. "Work" was supposed to mean the hard labor that people went through, realizing that with the entrance of the Shabbat Bride every Friday at Sundown, "work" was supposed to cease. But does it ever? When a Rabbi is giving a sermon at Kabbalat Shabbat, is he not also working? When a Chazzan sings a long cantillation of one of the 19 core Brachot from the Avodath Hakodesh, is he not working? Hell, I have even seen orthodox Jews walk into Shul on Shabbat with tablets in their hands, tablets that of course run on battery power and have to be turned on and off. Is that not "work"? Some of them read from Torah and Haftorah from a tablet these days. Is not picking up a prayer book (Siddur, Machzor) in order to read from it, "work"?

So, what you say about the Pharisees is not really that accurate at all.

But it is true that there was a major "Verspaltung" in Jewish society during the time of the Roman occupation, a phenomenon that often happens in occupied lands.

So, "hedge" is really the wrong word to use.

Are you even aware of how the Conservative and Liberal wings of Judaism were born, in the USA, circa 1903?

Hint: it had to do in part with shrimp. Yes, shrimp.

I think perhaps you misunderstand (or I wasn't clear). I am not saying the Pharisaic view is commonplace in modern Judaism. My friend who stack up toilet paper is a very extreme example. That's not what I believe to be the modern norm. What I meant was that after 70 CE, the Pharisaic view was all that survived and so their view was the direction Judaism went for a while. Certainly, it did mellow out over the centuries. So my comments were designed to be specific to say 100 CE - 400 CE and specifically in regard to how it affected Christainity

 

[BluePhantom]

So the best thing to do is avoid fretting about those contradictions and simply realize that one source says one thing and another source says something else. Usually, it's because the author is trying to make a theological point

Hmmm!

So let's see if we can decipher the theological point in this contradiction by the same author.

Whosoever shall say Thou fool, shall be in danger of hellfire.
- Matthew 5:22

Ye fools and blind.
- Matthew 23:17

Both statements are Matthew quoting Jesus. In one we have Jesus saying calling someone a fool means going to hell and in the other we see Jesus calling people fools.



Serious mixed message going on there WRT to the immortal soul of Jesus and it's ultimate destination from a theological point of view.

Matthew 5:22 is talking about getting right with yourself and God before bringing your offering to God. It is saying if you harbor ill toward your brother by calling him names it is you who will have ill will in your heart and be apart from God's best. Matthew 23:17 is saying essentially don't be a ding dong and misunderstand. Seriously...take a few verses before and after the few words you quote and the meaning is quite clear

Understood, but now you are crossing the line by saying that you must take the contextual word of God as opposed to the literal word of God.

There are a great many who believe only the literal word of God can be believed because it is too easy to change the context to suit whatever you want it to be. And to be fair, there are more than enough examples of people exploiting the bible for that very purpose by coming up with their own contextual interpretations.

Just to follow up DT, this is another reason why scholarship is so important. There are so many things that have been changed or added to scripture over the years that it can be very difficult to know what is accurate and what isn't. I would have to look more closely at the verses you quote but there are a lot of things like Jesus turning win into water. Well that is only told in the Gospel of John. It's spoken of nowhere else, not even in the apocrypha that I know of. So according to the criterion of multiple attestation, that one is a bit iffy. Now (lets take an easy one) the crucifixion. Well that's attested all over the place. It's spoken of in John, Mark, the Q Gospel, the epistles of Paul, the apocrypha, Josephus...hell we have lots of independent sources talking about the crucifixion. So we can be more confident about the historical nature of the crucifixion than the water and wine story. That's not to say the water & wine story didn't happen. Only to say we should be less confident about it based solely on that specific criterion.

So as far as the use of mOre in Matthew 5 and Matthew 23, it would nice to be able to see if those things are attested by other independent sources. If they are, we can be more confident about their historical nature and if they are not...well it just might be something the author made up and tossed in and if that is the case, well...then that's on the author of Matthew and not Jesus. Follow me?

Yes, but you are opening a door here you might not want to open. Since there is nothing, anywhere, that is allegedly the first hand writings of Jesus himself then it means that you are dealing with a phantom rather than a real person. In essence Jesus is whatever the writer du jour wanted him to be at that particular point in time. I am sure you can see that is going.

Instead let's take it from another angle. If the accounts of his youth are accurate Jesus was capable of reading the scriptures for himself and it would be no stretch to assume that anyone who can read can also write since they go hand in hand so to speak.

Now what if Jesus was merely the figment of the imagination of some story teller around that time? He needed to make a living so he invented this character, a kind of superhero, and made up all of these stories about him. Over time, as happens with most stories, things get embellished while others fall by the wayside.

Writers will do that, they will have whole chapters here and snippets there and take parts out and rework them and edit them over and over again.

If that scenario is feasible then it explains a whole lot of the conundrums and contradictions. The original author of the Jesus superhero character might never be known but others came after him and added their own chapters.

Star Trek and Star Wars are full of imaginary characters but entire cults of them now exist around the world. There are bloggers and people who write fan fiction around them. Who knows what status Captain Kirk or Han Solo might have in 2000 years from now?

So yes, opening that door takes us out onto a very slippery slope indeed.

Well i think if we are going to embrace reality we have to walk that slippery slope. Is it possible that Jesus never existed and was simply made up as mythicists claim? Well it's possible...anything is possible...but it is unlikely for a lot of reasons. A very simple one is that the Apostle Paul knew James, the brother of Jesus, so if Jesus didn't exist I imagine James would have been aware of that and clued Paul in. There is also the criterion of multiple attestation, the criterion of embarrassment, etc that all point to the historical existence of Jesus.

But who was the historical Jesus? We all know who the Jesus of theology was, but who was He really? That's a tough question to answer. Certainly, some stories were invented about Him. All one needs to do is look at the 50 or so gospels that didn't make it into the Bible and the other apocryphal writings to discover that there is a whole lot of shit made up about Jesus. So when a contradiction exists, these criteria can sometimes be helpful in determining what is more likely and what is less likely to be accurate

 

[TrinityPower]

Jesus as a person of every day dude is difficult. Many things like he really liked dates for dessert and he hated sand in his sandals are things that, when someone is written about are not included as terribly important. The main identity of Jesus is what was his message? What did he have to say?

 

[HaShev]

Blue Phantom,
James being seemingly an a.d. era figure means his brother would have been The Christ Theudas who's apostles were martyrs. James and Paul seemingly disagree with each other claiming each was worshiping another christ then they. That doesn't make Jesus really existing it means Theudas used for a minute part of his story did.
And note Just as Jesus is a converged figure so to is the image of Paul converged which is why Saul changes names, because Saul is actually not Paul at all.