David Henson

Surprise, surprise! An actual point about the subject of the Bible!

You said Noah was blatantly stolen from the Enuma Elish?

Prove it.

Nero's Boot

Yup. Read up on a fellow named Gilgamesh.

--some funny ancient Mesopotamians wrote a big story about ol' Gilgamesh NB

Nero's Boot

Oh, and here's a hint: Utanapishtim! (I hope I spelled that right!) Oh, oh! And a snake stealing immortality from early humanity! And even an ark!!!!!

--seriously, the Sumerians invented that whole cycle of stories long before the Israelites NB

arnoldo

Why wouldn't the New Testament writers use greek concepts such as the Logos to increase the impact of their message or have copies of their writings translated into Greek for widespread distribution? If there are any Greek experts out there it would be interesting to have some commentary on the greek text below.

arnoldo

Does anyone believe Christianity was rather a Roman invention?
Copies of the New Testament were written in Greek which doesn't necessarily mean the autographs were also written in greek.

Again, it's better that the copies of the NT were written in Greek to reach a wider audience.

mountainman

Dear arnaldo,

From the perspective of political history the christian empire was a roman invention of constantine , in the same manner as was the Zoroastrian/Masdaean empire a Sassanid Persian invention of Ardashir: both were implemented by means of a centralised state government run by an autocrat. The problem is to determine the status of the universal church of the Logos prior to the fourth century, in terms of canonical authority, or if you prefer, apostolic and/or divine authority.

We have no Non-Greek autographs to face Occam's razor.



The Greeks needed to be converted from Zeus! It was time.


Best wishes,


Pete

Toto

The culture of the Roman empire was Hellenistic

This is non-responsive. Let me repeat: this passage and the rest of that link do nothing to answer the question "why does everyone assume Jewish links when the New Testament is written in Greek?"

Clivedurdle

Let's look at this - do we need to study the history of the idea of conversion?

xii Oxford Dictionary of Classical Myth.

I see a process involving the following

Lucian recognises an "oriental cult". We are looking at a local myth with primarily Greek and Persian roots growing in a Jewish culture.

Twelve is very important, probably as a rewrite of the Olympian gods.

In the same way as bacteria are extremely promiscous in swapping genes, so are cults in swapping ideas.

This one brings together a particularly deadly set of genes, and much like the evolution of photosynthesis led to the production of oxygen that led to the death of many anaerobic species, the virus xianity killed off the older true gods in favour of heirarchical power systems - originally a Persian idea.

Was Baptism the critical idea? Jesus is obviously a character to make real the idea of the Christ, a messenger of the gods.

The Persians eventually won the battle of Marathon.

Lucis

we all have to go through the 12 labors before we can become like hercules
we all have to go through the 12 signs of the zodiac
one sign lasts 2160 years
it's a big clock
and beyond that clock there are bigger signs which last 25920 years and so on ad infinitum

twelve hinduism: http://hinduism.iskcon.com/practice/304.htm

twelve apostles? more liek twelve EVERYTHING. 12, 24, 1440 minutes, 12x12, 666

DCHindley

According to Otto Neugebauer, a very well respected scholar of astronomy as it relates to ancient history, the ancient Israelites and even the Egyptians were not very interested in the zodiac at all, and had no devoped astronomical abilities or knowledge until Roman times, and that too was by influence of the Romans, who learned pretty much all they knew about astronomy from the Greeks, who in turn learned from the Babylonians.

In spite of any presumed Babylonian influence on Judaism during the captivity, astrological influence seemed to be little if any. You'll notice that most of what is claimed to be foreign influence on Judaism is actually Persian (mainly eschatology and some symbolism such as the festival of lights, through Zoroastrianism) or Hellenistic. The astronomical section of Ethiopic Enoch (1 Enoch), and the more developed astronomical book of Enoch found in Aramaic among the DSS, use forms of the horizon system that are fairly crude and show little knowledge of the advanced state of knowledge exhibited by the Babylonians or even their Greek successors.

I am referencing Astronomy & History: Selected Essays (or via: amazon.co.uk) (all by Neugebauer), Springer-Verlag, 1983.

DCH