mg01

Volumes of books have been written by real people to other people about aliens, bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster. That doesn't mean any of them exist.

Skeptics often claim Scientology was fabricated by L R Hubbard. Although it contains some pretty bizzare things, other religions tell stories of talking animals. Scientology doesn't have talking animals. No one would ever make up the claims of Scientology.

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temporalillusion

I wonder if the OP knows that a good number of the letters attributed to Paul likely weren't written by Paul. So I would add to the list:

Letters from Jews/Hindus/Muslims pretending to be someone else to each other talking about their God.

storytime

Isn't your point the same as Mountainman's, and origin of Christianity going to the penmanship of Eusebius?

IamJoseph

I see Christianity emerging out of a Roman guile, backed by the Greeks. I am pretty certain it will be proven one day, and that it had absolutely nothing to do with Jews. Obviously, Europe's pre-christian peoples were not stiff-necked and accepted what was ordered them by the rake. I know that none demanded proof and the NT was forbidden for a 1000 years in early Europe: which means they got their beliefs via firey preists - inculcated via belief but not by any evidences.

IamJoseph

And they all wrote in Latin too - with not a shred of evidence of any contemporary documents. An amazing feat.

storytime

And from what I read in "the bible", the Jews got their orders the same way, from their priests and rabbi's. How many Jews in those days would have had copies of their scripted stories and and interpretations of their laws? I would guess only the hiarchy of priests, who told the Jewish citizenry what to believe. In fact of the OT story,(not that it is actual fact), the children of Israel begged Moses to speak for them because they did not want the responsibility of thinking for themselves. So what did Moses do? He chose apt men to be instructors[priests] in teaching the Israelites. And when the priests said "jump", the Israelites said "how high".

IamJoseph

Clever Rabbis - they introduced the DAY and WEEK unto humanity in Genesis, but were so modest they never put their names down. Perhaps you can enlighten which Rabbi/s, when and where! :wave:

storytime

Well, it really doesn't matter which Rabbi's when and why as they adopted and adapted from existing calendars of "time" and thought to improvise their own and then claim they were the original time keepers. The only cleverness that developed was the hoax they contrived to fool a lot of people.

semiopen

On a related note, it was considered to be improper (maybe immodest) to reveal your name.

Apparently much or most of the bible is pseudepigraphical.

Pseudepigraphy

There can be some argument as we go back in time because the distance makes things obscure, but certainly the gospels are clearly not the work of the original disciples.

Judaism is the same way. This is maybe most clearly demonstrated in the Zohar, which the religious claim was written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai in the second century CE. This has been convincingly disproved by scholars who know Aramaic, notably by Gershom Scholem, who place it in 13th CE century Spain, where it actually appeared. Similar proofs of the Torahs origin in Judea after the fall of Israel in 722 BCE have been done based on the Monarchic Hebrew it is written in.

mountainman

The Hebrew Bible aka the Old Testament aka the LXX or Septuagint
was a collection of books preserved in the Greek language, perhaps
most "recently" during the Second Sophistic by the pagan Origen.

Like innocent bystanders, these books were hijacked,
and physically bound together with the New Testament Canon
in the rule of Constantine, and in direct response to his orders.

There is no prior mention in all of history for the binding together
of these two separate series of books - (the old and new). This
binding together appears entirely novel to the epoch of Constantine.


You do not really know this at all. What if the history of the opposition
to Christianity at that time was suppressed by the ruling class? Who were
the heretics of the fourth century? Were the heretics of this epoch simply
those who in fact did stand up and ask for proof that this new god was the same as the old gods?

Constantine and the orthodox sought to argue that Jesus had
the same essence as the old Hellenistic conceptions of divinity.
However all those who groaned to find themselves Arian insisted
for generation after generation after generation for centuries that
Jesus was not the same essence -- rather just SIMILAR in essence to the old Hellenistic conceptions of divinity.


Plato's republic tells us that there were rulers, the common people,
the army (or warrior class) and the "Guardian Class". The Hellenistic
empire was strong despite the Romans through the 1st and 2nd and 3rd
centuries, and even managed to have a revival in literature (100-250)
called "The Second Sophistic". It was still strong when Constantine appeared.

The guardian class were selected from the priests and administrators
of the huge diverse network of temples and cults - a mixing pot of old
religions. These people were the academics. They were mathematicians,
geometricians, astrologers, philosophers, and ascetics.

This entire class savagely obviated c.324/325 CE by Constantine.
It was a momentous political, social and traditional upheaval.
It was replaced by a new (Platonic) Guardian Class - the BISHOPS.
Tax-Exempt spies for Constantine, personally appointed by Constantine.

At that time, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum was first drafted
by Eusebius in his "Historia" on account of the books of the heretics.
Those vile stinking heretical creatures who refused to believe in the
glory of the new imperially supported God?

And what about that vile Julian?
The Bishop Cyril of Alexandria says:

but none as went far as Julian,
who damaged the prestige of the Empire
by refusing to recognize Christ,
dispenser of royalty and power.

he composed three books against the holy gospels
and against the very pure Christian religion,
he used them to shake many spirits
and to cause them uncommon wrongs.

It was not a matter of believing in Jesus.
It was a matter of believing what the emperor declared support for.
Why go up against the emperor?
It was a matter of the majesty of the emperor.
The torture of the upper classes became a reality.
If you went against the emperor's edicts you were dead.

Nobody could read. They were all told.
The word came ---- From the Top.
But there was a new Top in the world.
And the New Top destroyed the Old Tops.


No matter what way we look at it,
we are dealing with a 4th century emperor cult.
The history of the NT Canon in the first 3 centuries, and
indeed whether the NT canon existed prior to Constantine,
is really a secondary issue.