T.L. Winslow

Hi,

I just posted a new page on my website reviewing George Moore's old (1916) novel 'The Brook Kerith: A Syrian Story', along with a few comments on the Swoon Theory, as Christian apologists call it.
This book is, I think, out of print, and I hope somebody reprints it. It's a good pleasant read, after all. I like the way it turns the big bang of Christinsanity into a quote ordinary whimper.

Ciao,

T.L. Winslow, Fiction Author www.tlwinslow.com

[URL edited - Mike]

[ September 03, 2001: Message edited by: turtonm ]

Toto

Hi T.L.

If you make sure that there is a white space before and after your URL, it will automatically turn into a link:
http://www.tlwinslow.com/brookkerith.html

Just don't put '(' in front, or any punctuation after it, or the link will not work.

Thanks for reviewing this work, but it is a work of fiction. I don't think anyone takes the "swoon" theory seriously, because no one outside of strict fundamentalists thinks that the Gospel account of the crucifixion is based on real history. The debate now is between those who think Jesus was a mythological construct, and those who think that there was a person behind the myth, although they are not sure we know anything about him.

That said, your web site is incredibly annoying. There seemed to be at least 2 pop up boxes with flashing graphics on each page. I realize that you're trying to get some economic return for your work, but it was extremely off putting.

Nomad

LOL!

Where do you come up with this stuff Toto? Are the Catholics strict fundamentalists? Am I? Is every Christian on these discussion boards? Do you actually know how to distinguish between more than two dogmatic, and equally absurd positions?

The mythicists case has been trounced on these boards so thoroughly I haven't seen anyone try to defend it in months. Would you care to give it a try?

This was too funny, and I assume you were not trying to make such a sweeping statement, but you really should check how your posts sound before offering them.

Nomad

Toto

Nomad: I have dipped into Layman's favorite source, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus by Jon P. Meier, and his take is that there was a person there, but we will never be sure of many of the facts about him.

This seems to be the summary of academically respectable historical researchers with even a slight bias towards Christianity - that belief in Jesus comes from faith and not historical proof.

I don't want to rehash the mythicist debate, but if you think that you won, you are living in a delusion. The debate rages on in more specialized lists.

[ September 03, 2001: Message edited by: Toto ]

rodahi

Nomad: The mythicists case has been trounced on these boards so thoroughly I haven't seen anyone try to defend it in months. Would you care to give it a try?

This certainly qualifies as an erroneous "sweeping statement," replete with hyperbole. Fortunately for all of us, Nomad's opinion is nothing more than, well, Nomad's opinion. (And, for the record, Nomad believes that Jesus of Galilee not only existed, but was born of a virgin. To this point, he has not provided a shread of evidence to support his belief.)

The existence of Jesus as a historical figure from Galilee in the first half of the Common Era continues to be debated. See Robert M. Price's Deconstructing Jesus, Alvar Ellegard's Jesus One Hundred Years Before Christ: A Study in Creative Mythology, James M. Robertson's Pagan Christs, G.R.S. Mead's Did Jesus Live 100 B.C.?, John M. Allegro's The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Christian Myth.

Each thinking person should read as much as possible about this issue and draw his/her own conclusions.

rodahi

Nomad

Since the above statement could be applied to virtually any ancient historical figure, I don't see why anyone would dispute it. My point was a larger one, in that you think the mythicist position has sufficient merit to be offered here. As I said, I haven't seen anyone do so in months (in fact, pretty much since Earl Doherty and I last debated the subject back in May. See The Jesus Puzzle Debate.

I would invite questions and comments from those interested in such a discussion on this particular forum, though I am well aware that you do not wish to do so yourself Toto.

Actually, the starting position is that Jesus existed as surely as individuals like Paul, Cicero, Hannibal, Brutus, Homer and a host of other ancient historical individuals existed. Those that challenge such a position are welcome to try. Thus far they have not been considered to have made their case (being charitable).

Yes, and we are both well aware of how protected those lists happen to be. As for what I think about who has won any debates on the topic, I will leave that to the members to decide for themselves. As I said previously, I welcome those that do wish to make the case that Jesus was a mytholigical construct. I only ask that they do so here. For now, I am content with the fact that we have not had to rehash such a tired discussion for quite some time.

Nomad

T.L. Winslow

Duh, don't bother. Here's why. The Bible is fiction. For example, the Book of Ezekiel was written long after the Jews had been taken into captivity by the Babylonians, then backdated to construct a fairy tale prophet who Jehovah sent to warn his stiff-necked "bride" in advance that they were bad and were going to be punished. The Babs are actually described as Big J's arm. Big J then sent in the Persians to conquer the Babs, complete with a leader, Cyrus, who Big J anointed as a messiah to free the Jews, which he did. Thus, Big J used two nations to punish and then later free the Jews to go back to their land after it had been "cleansed" and they had "served their time". Notice that Cyrus was a real historical person, because he was not sent to warn people in advance, but only to carry out the parole hearing after the judgement. Of course, the mysterious secretive members of the Big J cult wrote the Bible texts after it had all really happened, then backdated them to make their Big J look omniscient. This is the essence of Bible-think. The entire Bible is an attempt to prove Jehovah exists via fiction, the hook being that because he sends prophets in advance to warn his people of things he's going to do to them, then does them, he's both compassionate and just. Back in those days, using backdated fiction to win the war against other god cults was probably a great secret weapon, while all along, from our modern viewpoint, it's a bunch of backdated baloney written by mysterious and anonymous writers who go to great pains to cover their tracks and really are, to put it bluntly, NUTS. In the weltanschauung of these nut-cases, since only Big J can see the future and then make it happen (the meaning of the word Jehovah is I Make It Happen), that makes the Bible the self-sufficient witness of Jehovah, all anybody needs as they try to shove it up peoples' anuses, or to accept it gladly up their anuses without complaint. That "fixed" those other god cults, who didn't use the hi tech device of written scrolls, but did themselves in with inferior technology, namely, idols, graven images, and clay tablets. Yes, the Bible was a case of hi tech winning over lo tech back around 500 B.C.

But time went on, and hundreds of years had elapsed before anything so bad had happened to the Jews that they needed to invent a backdated prophet to warn them in advance, launching a new sacred scroll. Then, the Romans moved on in...

The Romans were bad. They got fed up with
the Jews, and decided to stamp them out.
Now, after the Romans kicked the Jews' ass in a final way in A.D. 70, assuring that the Jewish religion was permanently exterminated (the temple was destroyed, along with genealogical records, so that nobody could atone for his sins anymore by sacrifice, or even prove he had a right to be a priest and do the sacrificing) it would only be a matter of time before what remained of the Jehovah cult would produce new books for the Bible claiming that Big J had sent a prophet long before in order to warn his dickhead "bride people" that they were bad, really bad, and that this time they were so bad he was, like Ahnuld in Total Recall, calling it a divorce. To Big J cultists, it was impossible for Romans to kick the holy presence of Big J out of his own temple by any physical means, and therefore, Big J had to have evacuated in advance on his own. Therefore, Big J had to have not only sent a prophet, but a final prophet, who was his son, and whose death caused Big J to "get outa there" and call it quits with the Jews and their temple; remember the part about the temple curtain being rent in twin? That person was Little J, Jehoshua, or "Jehovah is Salvation Itself" (TM).

I suppose you'd call it a leap, but it's not, it's a logical certainty that Little J couldn't have been a real person! It wouldn't fit in with all the fictional persons that lay before him in the Book of J: Isay-ja ("the salvation of Jehovah"), Ezekiel, Daniel, et al. And the story of Little J couldn't even have been made up until after A.D. 70, since the destruction of the Temple wasn't made certain yet. A million Jews were killed and 90 thousand went into slavery, and somehow the poor Romans were deluded into thinking they had stamped Judaism out, but had failed because they left the secretive Jehovah cult writers intact somehow, and the rest is... you know the rest. Or do you? Obviously to me, all the "little people" in the gospels were made-up, and so were his Twelve, and thus Paul is suspect also, and the entire Book of Acts is suspect as having come from the same cave of nowhere that the Big J cultists were holed up in. The last work of these cultists was the Revelation of Jesus himself, as given by a messenger he supposedly sent to one of his fictitious disciples John; it of course predicts a final return of the last prophet, where Big J will be proven to be real because yippity yahoo kayay the Roman Empire, Babylon the Great, all the old bad Jehovah-rejecting empires will be destroyed and Big J's people will rule the world forever. (After 2K years, it's getting kind of old, this boob who left his people in the lurch for so long that it doesn't even matter anymore whether he returns, he was so cold and cruel for so very, very long But did it ever have such a long range goal? After this literary missile was launched, the Romans never knew what hit them, as the Jews Struck Back, and destroyed the Evil Empire at last. I think its Mission: Impossible was pretty much accomplished. Too bad the warhead kept armed and active. Now how do we disarm it?

Summing up, Jesus is a ficitional person, NOT a myth -- no, a deliberate, cold, calculated fiction, palmed off as fact, with all the tracks cunningingly covered up, which is a big difference from a myth, which grows up willy-nilly among innocent boobs, who started out presumably with a kernel of fact at least To correct Herbert Cutner, Jesus wasn't a man made into a god, nor a god made into a man, but a fictional man made up to promote the Big J agenda. I know only the truly enlightened can 'get' me, but there it is. There's nothing to debate, only a work of art to appreciate. Read my fiction works and see me grow in art as I attempt to equal my teacher...

Ciao,

T.L. Winslow, Fiction Author
"The world's greatest genius" (TM) www.tlwinslow.com

ecco

TLW,

HeckOvASite. I read the excerpt from Salvation Day: The Fire of Michael. You are indeed an odd one.

Would I be correct in assuming you are female?

For the rest of you, do take a look at TLW’s site (when you have some time to kill).