offa

Toto, sir, I'm glad we got that out of the way. I appreciate all of your critique's and responses. I am in no way offended and I hope that you accept my apologies in retro-respect. Keep up the good work.

Myself, I cling to the knowledge (not belief) that Jesus Christ lived and died ... shit and pissed ... and put his clothes on. He was born about 7 b.c.e. and died a few years (max about five) before the start of the "War against the Jews" or what ever you want to call it in c. 70.

I have yet to see any proof that the gospels were written after 100 A. (and not before). All that is out there are theories. The carbon dating is flawed (like a ten day weather report in Ohio). We have way too many ifs.

The little children should be taught that Mary got screwed by Joseph and she had seven children. The moon is not made of cheese and that religion is driven by greed.

offa

Diogenes the Cynic

How is it that Paul wrote about the crucifixion 20 years before it happened?

Clivedurdle

Using OP hat!

The NT feels like a very sophisticated product of Rome, Greece and Egypt, so where did all the "back to basics" propaganda come from?

Is it this funny word "truth"?

So what if 95% were illiterate, the people who got it written down were not, and literacy or not does not correlate with sophistication. The society then had a long historic (possibly made up) tradition, reinforced through ritual and a priesthood.

Does the pastoral slant to the teachings mislead us to thinking - oh peasants - when actually it is akin to our golden age pastoral fantasies like Beethoven?

Chili

Yes but the camel image includes the necessity of simple belief as cargo (as if it were unleavened bread) and that must be put to the test with the courage and will of a lion so it may become the gateway to the oasis we set out for. I call it the gateway to show that beyond the simple belief lies the oasis of abundance.

I included the parable to show that the "simple belief" of mystery religions as cargo is most unlike an "intellectual hotbed of religious thought."

Chili

Well offa, I, too, believe in the historical Jesus but, as with every saint, we need to wait a hundred years to let the skeletons die, so to speak, or the Jews would have never crucified him -- which in the end was the best thing they ever did. Now, whether the crucifixion was a real life physical event or not is another story, just as the Virgin birth was actually not a physical birth from a real life virgin but was just a rebirth story that was incipient from an Immaculate Conception that led to the perfect perception of the nature of things relating to human metamorphosis. Nevetheless, they are real and perhaps more real than the world of illusion we know that exists outside of Eden.

I think it is important to recognize that if they say that we humans do not understand because we are banned from Eden we must step into their shoes and try to explain the story from their perspective. To do this we must first remove all literal meanings from the words that they used to describe this supernatural event for which there are no words possible inside Eden and therefore they cannot be wrong. I guess there is no convention inside Eden and therefore no proper definition for the meaning of words (or none of us would know what they meant).

THX1138

[rant]
This kind of crap irritates me because the first Christians were not "Bible believing" as there was no "One Big Bible" under One Big Cover. As late as the Reformation, there was no definitive list of "official" books of the Bible.

While it may seem odd today, Martin Luther's claim that the book of James should be tossed out as unscriptural, it wasn't so unusual back then since there the canon wasn't yet set in stone.

The first Christians had no "Bible" & it was centuries before such a thing even existed. When Paul refers to "The Scriptures" he's referring to what the Christians call the "Old Testament" - & even among Jews this was not set into stone until after the sacking of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

Individual churches had different codices which included many books of the Bible of today & these lists didn't always match up.

Sola scriptura is a notion that was developed during the Reformation as a substitute for the authority of the Vatican in the west. Sola scrptura was a foreign notion for centuries prior to the Reformation.

And another pet peeve: People quoting the last line of Revelation, something to the effect of "No one shall add or take away one jot or tittle from this book." Many historically ignorant Christians will make the silly assumption that this means "The Bible" when in fact it is referring to the book of Reveletion & the prophecies it contains. And to add irony to that, the book of Revelation was doubted as being scriptural for centuries!

No matter how you slice it, the first Christians were not sola scriptura protestants. ARGH!!!
[/rant]

J

CX

The entire protestant movement from the beginning has been predicated on a particular doctrinal stance that is not outlined anywhere in the bible nor evidenced anywhere in the historical record. Sola Scriptura is a thoroughly modern invention. Protestant theology is not divergent enough from catholicism and eastern orthodox theology to fall under any primitive theology apart from the proto orthodox on which catholicism and eastern orthodoxy are predicated. Certainly modern protestantism bears no resemblance to any of the alternative xian groups that existed in the first few centuries of the common era.

CX

Check the weather channel. We're going to get overnight lows in Hell below freezing this week.

Chili

Of course it does but not in its expansive theology that emerged after the Reformation. Remember here that the Catholic Church called it witchcraft wherein bundled bible passages made the 'vehicle' that allowed them to soar throught midheaven . . . and midheaven 'it' was after the premature awakening of the child within, which itself already was the problem for the Children of Israel and Moses as their leader.

Once aloft, Sola Scriptura was the justification needed for this semi elevated spirituality which became at once the means and the end without any further spiritual growth except in the refinement of its recipe by the various brewmasters that came aboard.

The basic difference remains the fact that when Jesus said "Let me solemly assure you, if you do not eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood you have no life in you." To this they responded with "This sort of talk is hard to endure" and parted company as follower of Jesus in Jn.6:66.

Let me be clear and blunt here to say that there can be no such thing as a Christian religion and everything that was Christian and religious was a form of witchraft for the simple reason that there can be no such thing as "belonging to freedom."

Clivedurdle

I do Tai Chi in an Anglican Church - don't ask -and at the break looked at the welcome to this church leaflet - that claimed Anglicanism is not Protestant but some kind of regionally based(I paraphrase the actions of Henry VIII) catholic church!

Has anyone told all the Protestants that they are not Biblically based?!?!