IamJoseph

LOL. I think a better analogy of the Gospels forgetting about a holocaust under its nose is like the NYTimes not mentioning 9/11 on 9/12. The Gospels never forgot to curse Jews in every page though. The correct path to reasoning is to imagine if you were villified - this is how christians will be tested - how they act at such teachings.

J-D

dog-on didn't say that Paul wrote what is in the Gospels. As far as I know, nobody says that Paul wrote what is in the Gospels. dog-on's reference to 'what we find in Paul' is a reference to the Pauline Epistles, not to the Gospels. The Gospels came later, just as dog-on says.dog-on wasn't agreeing with any of the content in the Gospels, only offering a theory about where it came from. Even you must agree that the content of the Gospels came from somewhere.

J-D

Your imaginings about European school teaching are completely irrelevant: I went to school in Australia, not in Europe, and I did not study any of the history we are discussing at school. What I say is based on my own reading in both primary and secondary sources. You have still not produced any reference, primary or secondary, which says that either Caligula or Nero issued a decree that anybody who did not worship the emperor's image should be crucified. Many Jews were indeed killed in rioting in Caesarea during Nero's reign, but not because they refused to worship Nero's image. The Romans massacred Jews on more than one occasion, as well as massacring many other people, as all imperial powers have done, but the detailed version you give of events is bosh.

J-D

Better how?What nose?The Gospels are not and do not try to be newspapers. They're supposed to be biographies. They are not accurate biographies, but failure to mention information unrelated to their subject is not a relevant criticism.September 12 comes after September 11; the 30s come before 70.That's not literally true, and even if it's intended as hyperbole only, it represents an unjustifiably selective reading. There are some passages which are stridently anti-Jewish, but there are others with a contrasting flavour. There's also considerable difference between the Gospels. In particular, there are negative references to 'the Jews' in John which are not found in the Synoptics.I don't have to imagine it. I have been vilified, on this board and elsewhere, including by you. As a matter of fact, I've been vilified most often by people who thought my remarks in other discussions were unreasonably pro-Jewish or pro-Israeli. But in those discussions I was doing the same thing I'm doing in this one--not arguing for or against any people, but arguing for accuracy and against error.Since I am not and never have been a Christian I see no relevance in this remark.

IamJoseph

The issue prevails: we have equally no evidence of the epistles.

The lack of alternative evidence says the Gospels was written by Romans and Greeks between the 2nd and 3rd C. The lack of evidence of any Hebrew documents [Jews never wrote scriptures in Latin] - also affirms that conclusion.

IamJoseph

Its only the most relevant factor of the Gospels, which depends totally on a conspiracy theory and deicide: Christianity goes belly up when those charges are proven false. How is the contrasting actions by Jews in 70 CE not relevant - does it gel with the Gospels or its reverse? There is blatant reason why the Gospels omitted what it could not erase from history - it would just collase in a heap if this was said alongside Mark and Mathew.




That's what I do also. But the Gospels is not merely anti-Jewish, it is akin to reading mein kampf - my first reaction when reading bits of Mathew. And the entire history of the church vindicates this scripture as the prime causer of antisemitism and the mass murder of millions since day one. We have two large religions, both emerging more or less together, in the same vicinity, with the same claims against the Jews - but also being totally contradictory to each other - here, if the Gospels comes undone - both religions fall by a domino effect, because the latter condoned parts of the Gospels. what can be more insane than such an insanity, which has quagmired some 3 B people in its net of falsehoods passed on via 'belief'?

IamJoseph

That's not correct. In Australia, the NT is studied as if it was history, and real history of what occured in 70 CE is omitted. HOWZAT!? applies.


In Ceasar the entire town was wiped out, because a group of Hellnists complained to Nero the Jews refused to worship a Roman emperor. This is what caused the war. Denial here is aligning with the Gospels' version of history.


I gave a correct account. While Rome is responsible for massacres everywhere she set foot, the nations did not have a problem with image worship as did the Jews, and this is also the singular cause of their experiences with Europe. The emerging church continued the Roman decree against the Jews, and this doctrine continues today.

The issue is that today's believing christians and muslims have no way of undoing these doctrines - they fall into an abyss with no place to go. This is the result of attaching belief in God with villifications of another - they become mutually exclusive factors in the belief. So if a christian rejects deicide and Jews born of the devil - they think they cannot believe in God or ever get salvation anymore.

J-D

I don't know what you mean by that. Obviously we have evidence of the existence of the epistles. If you mean there's no evidence of their authorship, that's another matter.Even if you are right about this, it doesn't contradict or disprove anything that dog-on actually said.

J-D

The Gospels describe events which are supposed to have happened in the 30s. Large parts of the account they give are not credible, but the fact that they don't talk about what happened in 70 is irrelevant. Since there is no God, there was never any human incarnation of God. This was true before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 and would still be true even if that destruction had never taken place. The reason the Gospels don't mention the sack of Jerusalem is that they say nothing about anything which happened or was supposed to have happened in 70. It's not necessary to know anything about the events of 70 to know that Christianity is false.Christianity is false for reasons independent of anything it says or doesn't say about the Jews. In fact, most fundamentally, Christianity is false for the same reason that Judaism is false, namely, because there is no God.

PapaverDeum

Couple of problems here. The NT gospels and Epistles were originally written in greek. They were later translated into Latin.

However, the Alexandrian Jews did translate their scriptures into greek. That work was called the Septuagint. You are correct inthat the Jewish scriptures were writtne in Hebrew(which is a dialect of Canaanite) and Aramaic (which was a Babylonian language?). By the time of the second temple period, Hebrew was not in common use. It was only used in religious rituals. Judeans and Gallileans spoke Aramaic as their common language of commerce. The Hebrew language was by this time ancient and had fallen out of use by due to circumstance (the Babylonian exile) but also because by this time it lacked the expressiveness and sophistication of the Greek or Aramaic languages.

Also, there is something in Josephus about a decree of some sort of Caligula and something else about Nero. But I do not believe that IAJ has the facts exactly correct. I would have to dig this up in Josephu's WAR.

But, The bit about Vespasian and Titus, their concubines and massive crucifixions almost seems like Josephus borrowing from the Alexander Janus story for literary effect. Still, for this time and place this would not surprise me.

Also, I've read in at least one analysis of Josephus that he greatly exaggeratted the numbers in his Jewish War. I seem to remember that Michael Grant in his "Jesus" book estimated the population of greater Jerusalem to have been about 200K in the early first century.(I' can look up that ref when I get home this weekend)


(speculation) I had always thought that perhaps Christianity might have originally been created as a more universal form of Judaism(less the penis mutilation and the kosher requirements).. Perhaps their thinking was that because the JUdean revolt(s) against Rome had failed so miserably that they imagined that god had abandoned the Judeans, and thought that Rome was now the favored kingdom.
(and Why not, the Jews in their entire history have never accomplished even a fraction of what Greeks and Romans had, in terms of building, philosophy, language,
literature, trial by jury, legal systems, democracy, etc,etc).

I personally cannot imagine this. For me the god of the Tanakh reads like an evil tyrannical bastard, unworthy of worship.

Personally I would worship Caligula anyday over that piece of dung they call a god in the Tanakh.

Not ot meantion that at least Caligula was a real person. Yahweh was just a figment of Jewish imagination.