-Jay-

Or it could be a collection of fictional stories that were never intended by their authors to be considered factual, and have been misconstrued by later generations.

Or it could be mythological embellishments added to the basically true but purely human activities of a charismatic apocalyptic prophet. (As an analogy, do you believe that George Washington really threw a coin across the river or chopped down a cherry tree?)

Or it could be a collection of metaphorical stories intended to be understood as political and/or social satire and commentary during times when overt political commentary might have gotten the authors thrown in jail.

You're not using your imagination here. There are many different possibilities along the continuum from "Absolute truth" to "total lie".

regards,

NinJay

-Jay-

It was the tall guy...

arnoldo

Your right, Jesus could have been an alien love child, an ascended master, an archetypal christ consciousness, Satan in disguise, a hypnotist, or a time traveler such as portrayed in the following book: Behold the Man. (or via: amazon.co.uk)

Johnny Skeptic

Did the ancient Canaanites have the right to occupy the land that the Jews drove them out of?

Did Christian nations have the right to conquer the largest colonial empire in history by far under a single religion by means of persecution, murder, and theft of property? The victors ofter warred among themselves for the spoils of victory, most recently Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands.

If Jewish and Palestinian history had been reversed, and Hitler and other parties had persecuted Palestinians instead of Jews, would the U.N. have voted to give the Palestinians control of Jerusalem and a grossly disproportionate amount of land per capita like the Jews got?

WWJD4aKlondikeBar

You speak of things that you do not know. I will admit that I am playfully embellishing the sinister intent of Greek scribes of whom I myself know nothing about, but I do assert the fact that the real number of the beast (as "real" as anything can be in an allegorical book of folk tales and sheep-herder sci-fi) is most certainly NOT 666.

The oldest known copy of the book of Revelation, which says "chi, iota, stigma" (616) [God damn those evil atheist scientists at Oxford for using multi-spectral imaging on old papyrus and blowing the lid off Biblical inerrantcy] was "written" (scribed, actually) during the reign of Domitian (81-96 AD), but the majority of modern scholars agree that the lost original was more likely written in 68 or 69.

When Nero killed himself, Rome went through a tough and chaotic period. I suppose that's as good a time as any for some crazy, drunken plebe to write an apocalyptic rant and call it divinely inspired. Later, Saint Irenaeus simply misunderstood the original number to be a typo, completely missing the fact that everyone who was all pissed off about Nero's brutality and tax policies had changed it to "chi, xi, stigma" or 666.

I guess now arnoldo has to lie to himself and make believe that Irenaeus' clerical error was also divinely inspired? Apologetics is so much more difficult than research and science because you have to remember so many lies!



I debate because Charles Perrault didn't write 'Le Petit Chaperon rouge' with evil intent to claim false moral authority over people. You obviously have the ability to form sentences and type on a keyboard, so I refuse to believe that you are stupid enough to think that the "fairytale" of religious memes don't do real harm in the world.

I mean, a person who doesn't see that kind of plain truth would be like someone who dedicates their life to something that they don't even understand. What was the first half of my post about again?

-Jay-

Cute. The point is that when you attempt to turn this into an all-or-nothing binary choice, you're committing one of the classic blunders. (The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia...)

regards,

NinJay

Johnny Skeptic

If Muslims one day became the majority in the U.S., and passed laws that are based upon the Koran, which they would, would you waste your time debating the Koran? I assume that you would. Many fundamentalist Christians support or oppose the passage of legislations based solely upon the Bible. It is immoral support or oppose the passage of legislations based solely upon the Bible, the Koran, or any other religious book. If fundamentalist Christians actually believed in "live and let live" like they pretend they do, I would not debate them. Since all of my best friends are Deists or liberal Christians, obviously, I do not oppose religion, only the abuse of religion.

I invite you to visit my thread at http://iidb.infidels.org/vbb/showthread.php?t=238648 at the MF&P Forum. It is about the issue of allowing openly homosexual people to join the U.S. military. If you visit that thread, you will see that 24 countries allow openly homosexual people to join their militaries, including Britain, Israel, and Canada. The main difference between the policies in those countries and the U.S. is that the U.S. has a much larger percentage of fundamentalist Christians than those countries do.

If fundamentalist Christains would stop trying to be bullies, they would have a lot less enemies. If the New Testament was true, Jesus was definitely not a bully. It is no wonder that when a Christian minister asked Gandhi what he had against Jesus, Gandhi basically said "Oh, I love your Jesus, it is just that so few Christians are like him."

The ways that Christians typically act today, and typically acted in the past, is some of the best evidence that Christianity is a false religion.

gregor

OT - Your statement about an earlier date being accepted by a "majority" is probably wrong, I believe (although admittedly not having conducted a survey). Burton Mack (WWTNT) points out the conventional thinking of authorship during Domitian, but argues (persuasively I think) for an original writing during Trajan's reign (98-117).

Sheshonq

Uh, wrong. As usual.

The question of historicity has nothing to do with whether 4th century copies are the same as original manuscripts.

You might want to avoid chiming in on a discussion when you don't understand what the topic is.

Sheshonq

"Fact"?

Care to prove this "fact"?