Gamera

This would be the sociology of these texts. An interesting subject, but I suspect the well would run dry pretty quickly and Fox might be out of job. Let's face it, the reason bible studies exist at the levels they do involves to some extent the agon between the skeptics and the apologists. It gives the academic debate a resonance you just don't get in Sankrit studies.

Nazaroo

Its fun to have these thought experiments, if only to dust off the cobwebs of endless re-analysis. But it doesn't hold up. Could you say the same thing about Easter, Halloween, Robert Burns day? Rememberance Day?

Sure a child can sum up Rememberance Day in front of a crowd of War Amps, and bring a sentimental smile to a WWII survivor. But its hardly adequate to describe WWII, nor would it be acceptable to any veterans or family.

What about the Holocaust? Should we, could we sum it up in a few black&White photos and a cute poem?

the 'gospel' has to be a summary of *something*. It can't just stand by itself unless you are a self-deluded Roman Catholic ritualist mystic on absinthe.


Here you may have more credibility with a few points. But this is just the historically inevitable application of the human mind to what were originally simple statements of fact and beliefs carried on and developing out of the past.

Gamera

It's not a summary. It's a narrative. Some narratives are long. Some short. Depends on the purpose of the narrative. The gospel narrative, like I say, is rather short and has been preached on street corners for centuries, without the aid of crib notes.

mountainman

Blatantly advertised gospel narrative crib notes
were published with the Constantine bibles, c.331 CE.
(See "the Eusebian Canon Tables")

That the NT had been preached on street corners for
centuries before Constantine is indeed an assertion
made in the publications under Constantine, but that's
about all it can be determined to be -- an assertion
in the literature published by a military supremacist
at the zenith of his supreme and absolute power.

Nazaroo

What you are calling a 'narrative' is still just a summary, something that takes a 14 year old 2 minutes to recite in your own words.

Sure some 'narratives' are short, like Aesop's Fables. But even those are longer than a catechism, and each Fable only covers a single idea or moral.

The point isn't that you can have an esoteric religion *without* an extensive and dramatic political struggle and a 'world war', because sure you can: the rites of Bachhus or the worship of woodnymphs.

The point is that the Christian 'narrative' (and its even shorter catechism[s]) really IS a summary, a summary of an extended series of life-shattering and country-splitting political struggles that had roots in Herod the Great's era (10 B.C.), and ended on Masada (120 A.D.), after what was essentially a 'world-war', or a genocide.

What gave Christianity its importance and popularity, was its basis in a vital political and religious struggle by a people for survival against an unholy invading foreign Empire.

Without history, and a life and death struggle of a people living inside a corrupt and crumbling system, Christianity is meaningless and worthless. People don't engage in massive movements over a few cute fairy-tales.

Fairy-tales are merely the disguise, the envelope in which to hide the political poison meant to bring down a government. All the classic nursery rhymes were originally sarcastic political commentary, anonymously written and spread by grassroots rebellion against bullshit 'authority'.

The revolution of Christianity is no different than the French Revolution.

Nazaroo

Your insight is spot on here. Catechisms, Liturgies, 'Canons' are summaries of lengthy and complicated stories that have an extended history spanning years.




Your critiques of Constantine would be more effective if you avoided exaggerations.

Sure Constantine highjacked Christianity and tried to mold it into a tool to rule, but he ultimately failed to tame the beast.

Sure Constantine was a despot, but like all despots, even the zenith of his supreme and absolute power was an open joke. Just look at how by listening to one gossiper and schemer, he murdered his own son, and boiled his queen to death too, to cover his bumbling folly.

People must have stood by agast at his impotence, not his greatness. Even the fawning Eusebius couldn't put Humpty together again.

Don't exaggerate the power of despots. Even George Bush is a fucking bumbling stupid clown, and he wields far more power than Constantine ever did.
Like all 'leaders', Bush has quickly brought the USA to its knees and humiliated the entire 'Empire' so carefully built by previous generations. In one term of office, Bush has done more to ruin the greatness of the USA and British Commonwealth than a thousand Ghandis.

And thats just what leaders do. Put their foot in their ass.

Hex

So ... No one studies Aristotle or Plato or Aeschylus or Aelianus Tacticus or Confucious or Sun Tsu or the rest anymore because they weren't 'inspired texts'? :huh:


I -wasted- my college years ...

spin

Face it, Hex, what good is Aristotle or Plato? Will Confucius or Sun Tzu put food on anyone's table? You woudn't find stormin' Norman digging through Aelianus. You'd use your time better if you got into six sigma. You don't need to read the bible. You just need to know that it's worth reading.


spin

Malachi151

Hmm... and somehow when people here state that Biblical scholarship is not on par with other fields of studies, especially the physical sciences, we have people (claimed atheists even) who strongly disagree....

aa5874

This is mind-boggling. Christians, as the name implies, are followers of the Christ. The Gospels contain the prophecies, the birth, the life, death, ressurection and ascension of Jesus Christ and you say that Christians don't need the gospels. Gamera you have lost it. There is nothing about Christianity or Jesus Christ that resides in anyone's heart, Jesus Christ does not reside in the heart of the Hindu or the followers of Shintoism or any other.