sotto voce

Is that pure research; or pure irritation?

aa5874

Rodney Stark used Acts of the Apostles, a most blatant source of fiction, to do his analysis.

How long can we be inundated by the ABSURD opinion of so-called Experts????

Come on!!! It was the Holy Ghost that started the Jesus cult in Acts when it entered a house with the disciples like a "tornado" or a "hurricane" on the day of Pentecost when 3000 people were converted.

The ACTUAL dated evidence suggest the Jesus cult STARTED perhaps 100 YEARS after the day of Pentecost in Acts.

And further, it is virtually impossible to know the magnitude of the Jesus cult in the 2nd century BECAUSE it was a SECRET association.

See "Against Celsus" 1 It is virtually impossible to produce any credible statistics on the Jesus cult population in antiquity when they were operating in secret.

sotto voce

The purpose of the gospels was to record in permanent form what was already widely known via oral transmission. One effect of the record was to evangelise, because of the inherent nature of the message common to all the gospels. It is impossible to read even one gospel and be unaware of that message. No human being can read very far into a gospel without feeling a personal challenge. This is inevitable, because existential. No human being, a biological organism relying on material and energy from this planet's resources, can resist it, because existence is inherently moral. It is impossible to be neutral about any one gospel. It is either good news, or bad news.

However, evangelisation was originally oral. It is probable that usually, it still is. Most evangelicals indicate that they became Christians through personal example, not by reading a gospel, or even by listening to an evangelist. This, in an age of high literacy and common availability of gospels. It is even more likely that the gospel was 'caught, not taught' in an era when literacy was low, writing materials expensive, and the news was spread by word of mouth.

But the gospels were also for those who accepted and were to accept the challenge; the church, both present and future generations. They were to act as resource, and proof text, among the churches' own loyal membership; and for apologetic purposes, particularly where false teachers, generally abundant, were present, in society, or even inside a church. That is still true, of course.

Sheshbazzar

Yes. because 'shibboleth' is emphatically NOT 'Greek'.
And cannot even be written nor even transliterated with the Greek alphabet.
Many 'Hellenist', like those Ephraimites of old, through pride and arrogance, also fail to meet that challenge of Judges 12:6

These things of old, were all written for ensamples unto us, that we might learn from them, through their failings.

The number that fell at the testing of the shibboleth is given as forty-two thousand.
Not an insignificant number, as forty-two is the number that signifies the exaction of Divine Judgment. In this instance being multiplied a hundredfold.

Do you comprehend why the Greeks and other nations change and alter the pronunciation of the Name of that Hebrew and Jewish Saviour to 'Iēsous' or 'Jesus'?

The rationale is exactly the same as it was with those proud Ephraimites of Judges 12,
being; We are more numerous, stronger, and better favored than these few and old Hebrew speakers, therefore our word and our pronunciation is 'good enough' and will 'serve' well enough, and will prevail.
And so it did -for a season. -until the day that they came down to that Jordan, and thought to pass over under their altered and adulterated 'password'.
The forty and two thousand that fell in that place also thought "it really doesn't make any difference" what manner of word we speak, or how we by our traditions may choose to pronounce it."

Men have now endured near two-thousand years of a whoring, corrupt and vile religion practicing their avarice, murder, and extortion under what is nothing other than a degenerate sibboleth of a name; that of that anti- Messiah 'named' by the degenerate.

These religious whores have corrupted, and still willfully corrupt the words of the ancients with their 'versions', and for this they shall NOT ever be permitted to pass over nor enter into that Promised Land, but dying at their own 'word', they perish to inherit their rightful place in the fires of the Valley of Hinnom.

Art thou an Ephraimite? If you shall say; 'No'.
You may be damned sure that your tongue WILL betray you.

sotto voce

Along with many other words, whose meaning is of interest.

Sheshbazzar

It is also noteworthy that in Judges 12:6 the Gileadites clearly told the Ephraimites, (who were after all fellow Israelites,) exactly how to pronounce the required password.

This still takes place amongst spiritual Israelites every single day, in nations all over the world, and in every language in which the Bible is taught.
But just as then, spiritual Ephraimites are in the majority, and refuse to 'get the message' or to amend their 'traditional' manners of speech, even when the difference is explicitly pointed out to them.
What they got, they have now sold for so many years, they have exchanged any trace of genuine love of truth, for their dominance and arrogance.

outhouse

true


each gospel we have represents a different pagan romans geographic location's culture's interpretation of the oral tradition regarding said jewish jesus.

Tigers!

But it is entertaining to watch people tie themselves into gordian knots over them.
(Of which this thread is an example.)

I just love the love I can feel.

Duvduv

It would appear that despite the similarities between GMatt and GLuke, the way GLuke rearranged the Sermon on the Mount suggests that his source for the material did not show the Sermon as a single body of text, but rather as unconnected aphorisms, which is why his is not the way GMatt had it. Or perhaps the Sermon was never more than unconnected aphorisms and GMatt did the novel thing by organizing them into a single sermon block.

Here are the verses from GMatt followed by the corresponding ones in GLuke. Unfortunately I don't know how to arrange the text in two tables alongside each other.

http://www.milligan.edu/administrati...on/rewrite.pdf
Mt. 5:1 Setting of Sermon on Mount
Mt. 5:3-12 Beatitudes
5:13 Salt of the Earth
5:14-16 Light on a Stand
5:17-20 On the Law & Prophets
5:25-26 On Reconciling
5:31-32 On Divorce
5:38-42 On Retaliation
5:43-48 Love Your Enemies
6:9-15 The Lord’s Prayer
6:19-21 Treasure in Heaven
6:22-23 The Good Eye
6:24 Two Masters
6:25-34 Do Not Worry
7:1-5 Do Not Judge
7:7-11 Ask, Seek, Knock
7:12 Golden Rule
7:13-14 Two Ways
7:15-20 Known by its Fruit
7:21-23 On that Day
7:24-27 House Built on a Rock

Lk. 6:17 Setting of Sermon on Plain
Lk. 6:20-23 Beatitudes
Lk 14:34-35 Salt is Good
Lk 8:16; 11:33 Light on a Stand
Lk 16:16-17 Law and Prophets
Lk 12:57-58 On Reconciling
Lk 16:18 On Divorce
Lk 6:29-30 Turn the Cheek
Lk 6:27-28;32-36 Love your Enemies
Lk 11:1-4 Lord’s Prayer
Lk 12:33-34 Treasure in Heaven
Lk 11:34-36 The Good Eye
Lk 16:13 Two Masters
Lk 12:22-32 Do Not Worry
Lk 6:37-42 Do Not Judge
Lk 11:9-13 Ask, Seek, Knock
Lk 6:31 Golden Rule
Lk 13:23-24 Two Ways
Lk 6:43-45 Known by its Fruit
Lk 13:25-27 On That Day
Lk 6:47-49 House Built on a Rock

James The Least

They were written as addenda to the Septuagint, read as scripture in a Gentile church populated initially by ex-converts from Diaspora Judaism. The general concept was to write something that kind of sounded like Daniel or Isaiah but clearly vilified and dehumanized the Jews. Best way to do that was to have them execute the savior and deny his resurrection, and blame not just the High Priest, but the entire Jewish race. It was a fable, and people originally knew it was a fable, but it expressed what the church needed, a justification for non-Jews using what were widely known as Jewish scriptures.

They were not written to "document the life of the historical Jesus before the oral history was forgotten." They are strictly polemical and theological propaganda.