Chili

A good question here is to ask: 'what is real' and what is not real, and here then eternal life is real and temporal life is not . . . from which follows that anything that dies is not real. To solve this problem we can just say "I AM" but since 'we say' "I AM" the problem is not solved since again the 'temporal' part in us is making that expression. So the answer to the question of 'real' here is found in answer to the riddle: "to be or not to be" and say "we are when we are not," (to be is not to be), and then we are real, which then also is just opposite to "cogito ergo sum," ("I think therefore I am," and so "we are when thinking does not belong to us").

Chili

Narnia may be both iconic and fantasy and so is real in part.

sotto voce

Let's be more generous. The NT is, in its own terms, merely the completion of the OT. The 'plot' started with Abram, in chronological terms, and starts in Eden, in psychological and/or cosmic terms. Now whether all of this long claimed chronology (not fiction), written over a millennium or more, reports actual events, nobody here has even attempted to dispute, except with rhetoric. It's all hot air, so far. Put up, or...

Sheshbazzar

The alleged 'new testament' is not a completion of the TANAKA. (There is no such thing as an 'old testament' )
What this so called 'new testament' is is a flagrant rip-off which was created by selective 'cherry picking' and by deliberately changing and perverting some TANAKA texts, while willfully disregarding and denying the validity of any TANAKA texts that could not be made to fit into this perversion.
This is an absolutely false and ridiculous statement.

mountainman

Quibble, 'Roman Catholic Nicaean Church'.


This was a novel event for the Roman Empire. Sales of the Greek Bible were on the up and up. The Platonists had to be grateful that Ammonius's Canon tables were appended to all publications. It was enough that there were two sections to the Bible. One was OLD and JEWISH (the Greek LXX) and the other was NEW and STRANGE (the Greek NT). The binding together of religion was at that time in Western History, a very serious manufacturing job in the imperial scriptoria.

sotto voce

Better late then never, eh.

Indeed, it was. It was a novel event for any empire. Never before had an empire been forced to recognise a popular movement. If one never opens a Bible, the dimwit crooks of Rome are evidence enough that Jesus was the Christ.

The 'Vicar of Bray' effect.

Rote-learning hypocrites were no doubt appreciative.

Nah. The new at last made sense of the old, then, as now. Far too much bloody sense, for the Roman Catholic Nicaean 'Church'.

The binding and burning of Christians was to be the keynote of the new religion, for centuries; until Bloody Mary died.

Diogenes the Cynic

it wasn't forced. One emperor was just trying to humor his convert mother. It was basically an imperial whim, a gift, not any kind of consession or surrender to anything. If Constantine had decided to be less nice to his mom, Christianity probably would have vanished into obscurity.

Christianity certainly benefited greatly, but only because it won a lottery, not because it won a debate.

sotto voce

A seventeen hundred year whim.

Diogenes the Cynic

No, just a 1700 year old unintended consequence.

sotto voce

That would be funny but for the deaths of martyrs.