Beach_MU

As far as the whole faith vs works debate you need to consider the audience that is being addressed. In other words, for example, James addresses an audience that was at one extreme and claimed that since faith is all that is needed for salvation then there is no need for works, so James explained the necessity of works, not for salvation but simply because it's the right thing to do. Paul on the other hand was addressing an audience that believed that salvation was gained through good works. It would be the equivalent to if you were talking to a person that believed that they should always work 24 hours a day to make money. You would probably talk to them about taking time to relax, right (I hope)? Let's say you have another person who is lazy and never works. To the second person you would probably advise that they should work. Does the advise contradict itself in these two cases? No.

Radcliffe Emerson

Read "The Bible Unearthed" by Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman, "Excavating Jesus" by John Dominic Crossan, and the books about Jesus by the Jesus Seminar. They discuss many things that contradict the biblical accounts.
Do some research at the library or on the net about other religions such as the Egyptians, or Babylonians and others before the Jews and check out the similarities in the stories.
I just started searching on my own for stuff and found many things.
For example, the trial and crucificion. The Romans were many things, but one thing Pontious Pilate absolutely would not do would be to crucify someone because the crowd wanted it. If he put Jesus to death, the Jewish crowd had nothing to do with it. He also would not have freed a murderer on a holiday like the bible suggests he did with Barrabas. In fact, each time the Barabbas tale is mentioned in the bible, the events are changed slightly.
The crucificion. If Jesus was crucified as a criminal, like the account suggests, noone would have been allowed to take his body off the cross and lay it in a tomb. Romans did not allow criminals to be removed from the cross, the bodies stayed on the crosses until they rotted away.
The resurrection. In one account, Jesus appears to Mary. In the next account, he appears to Peter and the beloved disciple. One story says he appeared to over 500. It also says the dead got out of their graves and walked all over Jerusalem, yet no other account from that time says anything about dead people walking around. If dead people got up and walked around, there would be far more than just one person talking about it.
Jesus only stayed a day or so, then ascended into heaven in one account, yet in another, he stayed for 40 days. Which is it?
Matthew mentions Jesus going into a synagogue in Galilee.
No 1st century synagogues have been found anywhere in Galilee.
The Egyptians did not use slaves to build the pyramids or monuments, yet the OT claims the Jews were slaves. Egyptian evidence indicates the Jews lived in Egypt freely like all the other people living there.
The Jewish concept of one god does not appear in Jewish history at all until AFTER a Pharoah tells Egypt there is only one god, the sun god. A coincidence?

Also, the summer minister at my Universalist Unitarian church is/was an ordained Methodist minister. He went to seminary at two colleges that I've mentioned in other threads on the boards. I'll have to look them back up. Another guy at my UU church went to the seminary also for another Protestant denomination. Both were flat out told in their classes these stories are myths, but not to tell the congregations that because they don't want to hear that the Christian sagas are myth.

Radcliffe Emerson

Not to mention the fact that there are NO stories about Jesus at all yet that can be dated to the actual time of his life, and among early Christians there were no teachings at all about the virgin birth, eternal hell, or having to believe in the Trinity and Jesus being raised as Son of God, or God in the flesh. Those teachings do not emerge as part of the church until the late 4th/early 5th century. The council of Nicea did decide on that in 325 ce, because Constantine forced them to decide that Jesus could only have one truth about him, yet we're supposed to believe in the Trinity now because men voted on it? The one passage in the King James version in 1 John that is now used to support the Trinity does not exist in any manuscript prior to the 11th century by one account, 15th century by another. How can the inspired word of God be edited 1000 years later to support a man-made concept?

In the sayings in the Gospels attributed to Jesus himself, he refers to himself as the Son of Man, which simply means "human being." Not Son of God. That was tacked onto his legend after he died.

[ July 29, 2002: Message edited by: Radcliffe Emerson ]

[ July 29, 2002: Message edited by: Radcliffe Emerson ]</p>

Radcliffe Emerson

double posting removed

[ July 29, 2002: Message edited by: Radcliffe Emerson ]</p>

Radcliffe Emerson

There are some good details on the similarities in other religions being posted over in the thread

For you Jesus Myth Critics and Historical Jesus proponents

You might look at a couple of things in there also.

Beach_MU

I think you should be a little more critical of your sources before you make an claims of fact. I'm not going to say that any of the archaeological evidence you quote is invalid but you must understand that it is incomplete and strongly biased. There is an article by the Biblical Archaeology Society (which granted is also biased somewhat) that openly reputes and corrects both Herzog and Finkelstein's findings. The URL of the article is:
<a href="http://www.bib-arch.org/bswbBreakingIllSpecial2.html" target="_blank">http://www.bib-arch.org/bswbBreakingIllSpecial2.html</a>

I encourage you to read it and draw your own conclusions from it but it seems to suggest that while there isn't archaeological to prove every detail of the Bible, there also isn't any evidence that completely disproves the Bible either. In the article (in case you don't have the time to read all of it):

Instead, Herzog begins to contradict himself. He admits that "many [Egyptian] documents do mention the custom of nomadic shepherds to enter Egypt during periods of drought and hunger and to camp at the edges of the Nile Delta." This suggests that it is at least plausible that the Israelites (or the Israelites in formation) were among these groups. And Herzog fails to mention that the Egyptians tell us that these shepherds (and others) came from Asia and that they settled in precisely the area where the Bible tells us the Israelites settled.

The article I think correctly summarizes the implications of archaeological evidence and both Herzog and Finkelstein's findings:

A few final comments about archaeological evidence: It is minute compared to what we don't know and is subject to change tomorrow. True, some archaeological facts are closer to certainty than others. But it is not always easy to identify one from the other. Take Jerusalem as an example. Herzog correctly points out that very little has been found from the period of the supposed United Monarchy. Admittedly this is a problem, especially because Jerusalem is easily the most excavated city in the world. The so-called City of David, south of the Temple Mount, has been a particular focus of such modern archaeological giants as Dame Kathleen Kenyon and the late Yigal Shiloh. Despite their efforts, however, they failed to discover a major city wall that has been discovered only in the past couple of years by Ronny Reich and Eli Shukron. This wall has been preserved to a height of 15 feet. It is very close to the Spring Gihon where we would expect archaeologists to dig. Yet Kenyon and Shiloh (and others) missed it. Reich and Shukron have also found two or three major towers that protected the spring in about 1800 B.C. that previous excavators failed to find.

I mention this not to fault them and not because it disproves anything Herzog has said, but simply to suggest that the archaeological picture is never complete and is often revised.

Beach_MU

I must say that does slightly surprise me but that still as far as I'm concerned doesn't prove anything except that those two people were unfortunate enough to be taught by someone who doesn't necessarily know what they're talking about. Just because someone teaches at a seminary doesn't mean they are infallible and always correct. There are many scholars, such as Herzog and Finkelstein, who take a small piece of evidence that doesn't definitively prove anything and draw conclusion after conclusion upon it. They then draw conclusions based on their conclusions which began with an incorrect or unwarranted assumption.

Beach_MU

I apologize that I haven't responded to everyone of your points on this matter but I can only address so many things at once. As far as this particular "contradiction" (or whatever you want to call it) I already responded to/explained this point back on page 2 on July 26, 2002 at 05:57 AM. Feel free to make any comments on that post.

Vorkosigan

I'm surprised that immediately after arguing that historical accuracy is so important that you would claim that Christianity or "right-wing Christianity", as you would probably define any group that believes the Bible to be the infallible word of God, has so incredibly destroyed our nation.

I didn't say "destroyed." I said "transformed the political scene." That transformation is entirely negative in its character, but I simply pointed out the negative attributes of legalist Christainity, while leaving the conclusion to the reader.

I agree with you that our country has plenty of problems but I don't think it is as a result of Christianity. Things such as the incredible divorce rates are certainly not the result of Christianity which teaches that such an act is wrong.

[url=http://www.barna.org/cgi-bin/PageProduct.asp?ProductID=66]Christians are more likely than non-Christians to divorce[/b] from Barna.org, the Christian polling group. The lowest rates of divorce are found among atheists, agnostics and freethinkers.

I think it's the result of our politically correct society which finds it's roots so deeply in post-modernism suggesting that the most horrible thing to do is to tell someone they're wrong.

This is a caricature of post-modernism. Take a gander at Harvey's The COndition of Postmodernism and get back to me with a more informed perspective.

In any case, if you look around the US, the areas with the highest crime rates, the highest divorce, out-of-wedlock births, abortions, suicide, violence, intolerance, racism, lowest teacher pay, lowest worker and environmental protection, etc etc.....are the most Christian.

This is the same as saying there is no absolute truth no matter how you look at it. Christianity has had more positive impacts on our nation and world than probably any other religion through the establishment of universities and hospitals (both of which were started by Christians) along with many other things.

Positive actions certainly -- but the vast majority of charity functions are carried out by non-legalist Christians, Christians who believe in the Church of Love rather than the Church of Law. Evangelicals/Literalists are much less likely to perform services like this. For example, when I was in Kenya, the Catholics, Lutherans and Methodists ran schools, orphanages and hospitals. The evangelicals came in, got their money, and went home.

Do not confuse the issue. Christians of moderate and non-legalist variety continue to be vital and progressive members of society. Christians of the Church of Law support intolerant, reactionary and authoritarian politics, and do not carry out many charitable projects.

If you're looking for someone to blame all the wrongs that others have done to you in your life I don't think Christianity is at the root of them.

Once again, you have wildly overreacted. I merely adduced reasons for the opposition to a specific form of Christianity.

Granted there are some who claim to be Christians who aren't, but those are probably the people who suggest that the Bible isn't the ultimate authority rather than those who do.

Perhaps. But I've found that Christians who claim that the Bible is the "ultimate authority" tend to be the most intolerant and exclusivist. Such attitudes are incompatible with pluralist, secular democracy.

And as far as violence, if two of us is any indication, I think it would probably be fairly easy to conclude that you are certainly angrier and more violent than I am,

Speaking as a former Peace Corps volunteer, I can only conclude that you have been inhaling something inexpensive and toxic.

so to suggest that Christianity is violent demonstrates and lack of understanding about what Christianity actually teaches.

What Christianity teaches is absolutely irrelevant -- and more to the point, hotly disputed among Christians. Many Christians believe Christianity teaches intolerance and violence toward the heathen and the heretic, from Saint Augustine to modern-day legalists like Christian Reconstructionists and Pat Robertson.

The relevant issue is not doctrine, but how Christians behave. And about that there is no dispute -- legalist Christians, who hold to some form of Biblical literalism, can be described using the adjectives I used above.

Vorkosigan

[ July 30, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

PTET

Read "<a href="http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/34.3/cargill.html" target="_blank">Ancient Israel in Western Civ Textbooks</a>" by Jack Cargill, in The History Teacher (May 2001).

Professor Cargill discusses the findings and opinions of a wide range of scholars. He notes that the overwhelming opinion of archaeologists is that the Bible is not a reliable source for the history of ancient Israel.

The article you cited by Hershel Shanks ends with the ludicrous straw man that Finkelstein and Herzog somehow claim that the Bible is historically worthless.

The fact is the available evidence shows, beyond reasonable doubt, that the origins of Isreael provided in the Bible are mythical rather than historical. Thay may change in the future with further finds: but are we to suspend our judgment and the scientific method in the meantime simply because the Bible claims that it is inerrant?

Whatever happened to treating the Bible like any other book? ;&gt;

<a href="http://dreamwater.net/ptet" target="_blank">PTET</a>