Historicity of the Bible

earthless

Apothe0sis wrote: »

earthless wrote: »

Apothe0sis wrote: »

earthless wrote: »

Apothe0sis wrote: »

earthless wrote: »

Having a discussion on matters which people hold their beliefs in (either one way or the other) will generally include claims which you can deem to outlandish. But they are not made to derail a thread, but to convey a thought.

This is a discussion about the semantics of the term Christian, not the historicity of the Bible. I'd quite like to get into a discussion regarding biblical historicity, but this isn't the thread for it. I'm just registering my stunned disapproval of your statements.

Also:

The walls of Jericho

Did you harp on those that made the original comments regarding biblical historicity? I must have missed those. I was simply answering their questions and providing my input on the topic they brought up.

Heartlash did not strike me as referring to Biblical Histority so much as the interpolative nature of the Gospels, which is not controversial and can be considered a fairly compelling argument.

Yours on the other hand, IS controversial and is not directly related to my interpretation of Heartlash's argument, nor this argument regarding the semantics of 'Christian'.

I see your bias and raise you one. ;-)

I have no idea what you are talking about - my bias does not effect my assessment. It is a fact, acknowledged nigh universally withing the historical and archaeological community that the Gospels are interpolative - that is to say, are not the product of the authors we attribute them to and have have been copied and altered from a prior document (namely the 'Q' document, 3 Gospels reproduce large portions word for word), they are clearly not reliable first-hand historical testimony (they refer to events that occured when Jesus was alone, and to his private thoughts). As such, we do not have a known-to-be-reliable record of the teachings of Jesus Christ. As such, the definition which rests on following Jesus' teachings rests on shaky grounds at best.

Whether or not the documents have been altered in between their production and the present day is pretty much irrelevant.

Ah, I was sitting here wondering how long until someone pulled out the Jesus Seminar (one of my most beloved professors is a senior fellow with them) play book. The whole idea of a Q gospel is based on the concept that the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are so similar, that they must have copied from each other and/or another source.

I won't go into explaining what the Q gospel is because I am sure you full well know what it is already. Like all lies about the Bible, this one is full of inaccuracies. First, no evidence whatsoever has even been found for the existence of a Q Gospel. Not even a single manuscript fragment of Q has ever been found.

None of the early church fathers mentioned anything that could have been the Q Gospel. Second, there is strong evidence that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke were written between A.D. 50 and 65, not after A.D. 70, as claimed by the Q gospelists.

Many of the early church fathers attributed the Gospels to the Apostle Matthew, John Mark, and Luke the doctor. Third, since the Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they were written by actual eyewitnesses of Jesus and/or close companions of eyewitnesses of Jesus. Therefore, it is natural that we should expect many similarities.

If the Gospels record actual words spoken by Jesus, we should expect the eyewitnesses to report Jesus saying the same things. Finally, there is nothing wrong with the idea of the Gospel writers using the other Gospels as sources. Luke states in Luke chapter 1 that he used sources. It is possible that Matthew and Luke used Mark as a source. It is possible that there was another source in addition to Mark.

So, if Matthew, Mark, and Luke did not use a “Q” document, why are their Gospels so similar? There are several possible explanations. It is possible that whichever Gospel was written first (likely Mark) – the other Gospel writers had access to it.

There is absolutely no problem with the idea that Matthew and/or Luke copied some text from Mark’s Gospel and used it in their Gospels. Perhaps Luke had access to Mark and Matthew and used texts from both of them in his own Gospel. Luke 1:1-4 tells us, “Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. Therefore, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good also to me to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught.”

With all that said, what it boils down to is this - the idea of a Q Gospel is an attack on the inspiration of Scripture. Those who promote the Q Gospel concept do not believe the Bible is inspired and so they do not believe that the Gospels were written by the Apostles and their close associates.

They do not believe it is possible that two or three authors could use the exact same words without using each others' writings as sources. Most importantly, they completely reject the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God helping the Gospel writers to accurately record the words and works of Jesus Christ.

But now you have really derailed the thread. Shame on you. ;p

ElJeffe

Due to some unfortunately whimsical thread-naming on my part, the scope of what Apo (who requested this be split to begin with) wanted was completely buried in crap.

This thread is for debating the historical accuracy of the Bible. It's not for arguing about evolution, or abortion, or astrophysics. It's for arguing about the accuracy of the Bible from a historical and archeological standpoint.

templewulf

ElJeffe wrote: »

It's for arguing about the accuracy of the Bible from a historical and archeological standpoint.

I suppose my comments on Documentary Hypotheses still stand?

If they do, I'll further them and say that in the case of the New Testament, Jesus' oneness with the Trinity was basically decided on by coercion of Emperor Constantine of early church patriarchs. Let's also not forget that ol' Consty had a habit of deifying people like his father Constantius in order to consolidate power.

Edit:
I don't mean to say that Constantine's willy-nilly apotheosis conclusively disproves Jesus' divinity, but it certainly raises an eyebrow as to whether church-approved materials have gone unmolested.

Hacksaw

Cutting Enoch out of The Bible was a mistake: it's gained far more credibility than it deserves as a result.

Salvation122

We just fucking did this

Wonder_Hippie

Jersualem would be little more than an entry in a list of minor Fertile Crescent monarchies if not for the bible. I kind of wish it was that way.

Hacksaw

Salvation122 wrote: »

We just fucking did this

That's how it works in this forum, Sal; we never actually do anything original, we just recycle the same debates over and over and over. It's kinda like the universe in that way: big bang -> big crush -> repeat

RiemannLives

Since the aptly named earthless feels content with copy-and-pasting large swathes of content from his website I will do the same. Only I'm just pasting a few of my bits from the last few threads on the subject on this board. All are by myself of course.

I strongly disagree with the claims that:
1) Any part of the new testiment other than half of the letters of Paul were written prior to the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE (and the the man was writing letters here, messages to his friends and aquaintences, not divine scripture)
2) That the author for any of the NT other than the aforementioned authentic letters of Paul is known at all.

All of the gospels make reference to the destruction of the Temple. But more importantly all of the gospels in structure and tone are attempting to construct a version of the Temple religion of YHWH where the Temple itself was utterly destroyed. That is their purpose and the theme that runs throughout.

I agree that most scholars of the Q hypothesis are bunk. There is a lot of bad scholarship in this area. But only because they take their argument too far. Q is not a physical document and even if it did exist (big if) there is no way to reconstruct it. It is a thought experiment to examine the areas of overlap and contradiction between the different parts of the NT. Because although it is tempting to think of the NT as a multiple source problem it is not. It is a single source that has gone through a common editorial process.

I implore anyone reading this thread who is interested in the subject to look into some of the real scholarship on the subject. Oxford University Press is a great source that publishes many fine historians. I especially recomend Dr Elaine Pagels if you are interested in Gnosticism and Dr. Donald Akenson for an absolutely masterful look at the origins of the Gospels. I can't recall the author but I also highly recomend "The Earliest Christian Artifacts" for a fasinating look at the actual physical manuscripts (or more often scraps thereof) which have survived to the present day. Also "The Christians as the Romans Saw Them" (again, cannot recall the auther at the moment). I'm not at home so a fuller bibliography is not possible at present (writing from memory here).

Just remember that eathless is espousing one very narrow view of Christianity and one not at all well received in actual scholarship. The matter of dating any Gospel prior to 70 CE in particular is a view only held by a tiny minority (in my rather extensive reading on the subject) and generally only those who are arguing from Faith rather than scholarship.

Where to begin (at least so as I am not sitting here for hours)?

For those who are interested in approaching the formation of both Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism through a more rigorous historical approach there are a couple basic things to get your brain around. The most important is that from 66-73 CE there was a massive war in the Roman province of Judea. The Roman Legions were, of course, victorious and in 70 CE Jerusalem was besieged and essentially leveled. This included the spiritual and physical hub of all forms of the Yahweh faith (including the followers of one Yeshua of Nazareth): The Temple. In its incarnation at the time Herod's temple was probably the largest and most impressive religious structure in the known world. More than that it was the spiritual center of all forms of the Yahweh faith. I cannot in a few sentences here possibly convey just what a shock the destruction of the temple was. It is truly a miracle that any form of the Yahweh faith survived at all, let alone that two different forms would grow and flourish out of The Destruction. In terms of its influence on the development of Christianity the only event which possibly matches The Destruction in its influence is the Resurrection itself. A spiritual universe had come to an end.

But this creates an enormous dilemma for anyone interested in actually trying to figure out what Yeshua of Nazareth believed or taught. With the exception of the letters of Saul (greek version: Paul) which seem to be authentic (only about half of them, the rest being written much later and assigned to Saul) all of the new testament is post 70 CE. Each of the gospels, in its own way, is an attempt to construct a Temple religion in a world in which the Temple no longer exists in a physical sense. The formation of Rabbinic Judaism is a different solution to the same problem.

So, Yeshua lived in one spiritual world, the authors of the gospels in another. In terms of authorship no-one knows who wrote any of the new testament (again, with the exception of the few authentic letters of Saul). The names Mark, Matthew, Luke, John were assigned to the anonymous gospels in the late 2nd century. While it seems possible that whoever wrote Luke may have also been involved in the creation of The Acts of the Apostles it is far from certain and it doesn't tell us anything about who that person was. In terms of which order the gospels were written in, this is also far from certain. The majority of scholars find Mark to have been written first (though it is still definitely post 70) but even among this group there are different theories. While all of the gospels are post 70 CE, there is no hard reason to date any of them to any particular time between 70 CE and probably the revolt which occurred in many Roman cities around 115 CE (as it is exactly the kind of thing they would have mentioned). It is vital to not fall into the trap of assuming that because a given source is about earlier events (or is more detailed) that it is in fact written earlier or based on better data.

The point of this aside is to hammer home two points: 1) The authentic letters of Saul are the only bits of the new testament for whom the author is known and which occur prior to The Destruction and 2) the writers of the gospels (whoever they may be) lived in a very different world than Yeshua of Nazareth. While Saul never met Yeshua himself and had a very different mission he did have ample opportunity to interact with the "pillars" of the Jerusalem community: Yacov, Peter (Cephas) and John son of Zebedee. Yacov (aka: James) in particular, as one of Yeshua's surviving brothers, was the head of the Jerusalem community and pre 70 the single most important figure in the Yeshua faith. Possibly after a falling out with Peter (depends on some uncertain dating of the debate in Antioch) Saul was summoned to Jerusalem and eventually hammered out a deal to allow him to continue his mission (Saul pays them a hefty sum on money and they let him preach to the gentiles). It is important to note that at this meeting Saul's teachings were considered sufficiently valid by the family and surviving disciples of Yeshua. Thus, despite never having met him and only really giving a damn about Yeshua as a post-resurrection cosmic figure, Saul seems to have been considered acceptably knowledgeable by those who were in a position to know.

The point I am hovering around here is that the gospels were written towards a very specific goal: somehow find a way to survive in the new post-destruction era. And towards that end they are works of pure genius. Each melds together various symbols from second-temple Judaism into the figure of Yeshua to create Jesus-The-Christ. But as sources for the historical Yeshua, they need to be read carefully. There was a definite need post 70 to minimize the importance of the now destroyed Jerusalem church and Yeshua's family (all the nonsense about Mary being a perpetual virgin and Yeshua not having any brothers / sisters were a late 6th century addition). There is also a growing anti-jewish (and anti-pharisee) sentiment from one gospel to the next. This is because at the same time that Christianity was starting to form as an entity distinct from the rest of the Yaweh faith Rabbinic Judaism was forming from the remnants of the Pharisees. As Christianity became more distinct it came into more conflict with these groups.

It is vital to recognize that this anti-jewish sentiment was a post destruction phenomenon. Saul was most certainly a devout and halachially strict Judaist. Everything that he said about Yeshua (and what can be gleaned from the gospels) indicates that he too was well within the boundaries of what was acceptable for a second-temple Judaist. On at least one topic (divorce) Saul disagrees with Yeshua's interpretation of the 613 commandments in that he finds Yeshua to be too strict (moreso even than in the laws of Moses). Yeshua himself is never recorded as having preached to gentiles and in fact makes several statements to the effect that his word only matters for other Judaists. This is why, for example, an issue which is a big deal in Saul's mission (circumcision) is never mentioned by Yeshua: he took it for granted that everyone he preached to or cared about already was.

Damn, I've already gone on a lot longer than I intended and I haven't even touched on the incredible diversity of late second temple Judaism. Anyway, I hope that those of you who are interested (especially those who may disagree with any of the above) will check out the books I mentioned. Those are good as a starting point but there is a vast amount of fascinating material on the subject. In the last 60 years or so more new source material (Qumran, Nag Hamadi, Dead Sea Scrolls etc...) has been discovered than in the last 1000 combined. It is very much a living field.

A very good example of how the dogma associated with the new testament has changed over time is the virgin birth story and the deification of Mary. In the NT itself, Jesus has several siblings (several named brothers and unnamed sisters) and the virgin birth story does not appear in two of the gospels or in Paul's letters* and at at least one point Paul seems downright hostile to the idea. The idea of Mary as a perpetual virgin developed during the 5th-9th centuries.

*This is especially telling as the authentic letters of Paul are the only bits of the NT where the author is known and which were written down prior to 70 AD. Despite never having met Jesus, Paul at least lived in the same world as him and met and extensively talked with his brothers. The authors of the gospels were, in time, on the far side of 2-3 generations and a major war which the Jews lost (and hard). Everything in the gospels is overshadowed by the destruction of the Temple and the complete change it wrought on all of the branches of the Yahweh faith.

In terms of manuscripts, there exist a few fragments of the NT dating back to the late 2nd century. You don't find long chunks of text or whole books still around from before the late 3rd / 4th. The dead sea scrolls are documents from the time well before the birth of christ. There have recently (eg: in the last 50 years) been some interesting finds related to the NT (such as a lot of Gnostic materiel from Nag Hamadi) but they are all well into 3rd century or later.

Anyway, the point is that:
1) There is not any way to tell if something about Jesus dates from an oral tradition with its basis in fact that was later written down in the gospels or was in fact made up during the writing of the gospels (70-110 AD or so). Note that after the gospels the Acts of the Apostles came another generation later and Revelations is of course total BS made up looong after the fact.

2) There is not any way to tell if something that was authentic when written down circa 70-110 was not changed later until you start finding fragments and manuscripts that still exist. This is a period of anywhere from 100 - 200 years depending on the passage.


I thought that James Cameron thing was such a load of crap. Because finding a gravesite that may have belonged to the (possibly) real figure Jeshua of Nazerith who became (via the Greeks) Jesus the Christ tells us nothing of real interest. What would be a big deal (an perhaps a really big deal) would be finding any authentic written materiel related to christianity from prior to 70 AD (other than the letter of Paul of course).

Another interesting look at change over time in christianity (besides the above Mary is a woman who has a baby -> Mary is a virgin who has a baby -> Mary is a perpetual virgin -> Mary is essentially a demigod / Mediatrix) is the view of other Jews.

This is a much shorter and less reliable picture but still worth looking at. Usually looking at the NT as anything but a single document is a mistake, as every part of it has gone through a common editorial process over time, but looking at the view of fellow Jews from the earliest pieces (letters of Paul) through the later ones (probably Mark followed by Mathew then Luke then John, but no way to be really sure) one sees a rapidly escalation feeling of anti-jewish sentiment.

From the letters of Paul where Jesus and his brothers (and especially Paul himself) are halachially strict devout Jews of a particular branch (one of many, many different kinds of Judaism in the late second temple period) then skipping ahead a couple generations to the time the gospels were written where christianity and rabbinic judaism (which itself came about in response to the same conditions as christianity: the destruction of the Temple and the Jewish War in general) have become competitors for the legacy of the Temple period. They are competing for the same converts and some of the same stories change from book to book to be more and more stridently anti jewish.

Edit: Another interesting similar thread is the views of Jesus (again, as unreliably reported as they are) on preaching to the gentiles. It seems pretty clear to me that he was only interested personally in preaching to other Jews. The sets up nearly all of the background to Romans. Paul, despite Jesus' surviving brothers finding him a bit weird for wanting to do so, is allowed to preach to the gentiles as long as he pays a whopping ass pile of cash to the family-run church in Jerusalem. Paul was thus often very concerned with topics (circumcision, eating with gentiles etc...) which Jesus seems to skip over for the simple reason that they never would have occured to him. Anyone he was interested in preaching to would have already been circumsized / be a halachially strict Jew.

Salvation122

Hacksaw wrote: »

Salvation122 wrote: »

We just fucking did this

That's how it works in this forum, Sal; we never actually do anything original, we just recycle the same debates over and over and over. It's kinda like the universe in that way: big bang -> big crush -> repeat

Yeah but we did this like last week

Fencingsax

Salvation122 wrote: »

Hacksaw wrote: »

Salvation122 wrote: »

We just fucking did this

That's how it works in this forum, Sal; we never actually do anything original, we just recycle the same debates over and over and over. It's kinda like the universe in that way: big bang -> big crush -> repeat

Yeah but we did this like last week

Abortion time!

shryke

Fencingsax wrote: »

Salvation122 wrote: »

Hacksaw wrote: »

Salvation122 wrote: »

We just fucking did this

That's how it works in this forum, Sal; we never actually do anything original, we just recycle the same debates over and over and over. It's kinda like the universe in that way: big bang -> big crush -> repeat

Yeah but we did this like last week

Abortion time!

I think priests should be allowed to abort babies born to gay couples, to keep the couple from getting married.

JamesKeenan

To be fair, the last thread focused more on the veracity of the bible in the context of science (astronomy, evolution).

This thread is about history and archeology. More boring topics, in my opinion, but I just love science.

On topic, Sodom and Gomorrah meant burned and scorched. Now, I'm not hip to the latest archeological findings, but have these cities ever been found?

And they mean 'burned' and 'scorched.' Which quite coincidentally, matches exactly to the fate of each village. This doesn't necessarily disprove the story, but it certainly hurts the literalists' views.

Hacksaw

Salvation122 wrote: »

Hacksaw wrote: »

Salvation122 wrote: »

We just fucking did this

That's how it works in this forum, Sal; we never actually do anything original, we just recycle the same debates over and over and over. It's kinda like the universe in that way: big bang -> big crush -> repeat

Yeah but we did this like last week

Make religion thread -> go over same arguments over and over and over -> lock thread -> repeat

It is the order of the universe, Sal.

shryke

JamesKeenan wrote: »

To be fair, the last thread focused more on the veracity of the bible in the context of science (astronomy, evolution).

This thread is about history and archeology. More boring topics, in my opinion, but I just love science.

On topic, Sodom and Gomorrah meant burned and scorched. Now, I'm not hip to the latest archeological findings, but have these cities ever been found?

And they mean 'burned' and 'scorched.' Which quite coincidentally, matches exactly to the fate of each village. This doesn't necessarily disprove the story, but it certainly hurts the literalists' views.

Did those words take on those meanings before or after the events supposedly took place?

Qingu

According to a prophecy in Ezekial 26, the city of Tyre will be beseiged by Nebuchadrezzar. God says "I will make you a bare rock; you shall be a place for spreading nets. You shall never again be rebuilt."

Tyre today—God sure is taking his sweet ass time

Biblical archaeology in action! Though to be fair, Nebuchadrezzar did beseige Tyre. Christians also like to claim that Alexander the Great fulfilled the prophecy when he built a causeway to the island stronghold by "scraping the rocks" of the mainland or something.

ElJeffe

Would anyone else like an infraction for thread-shitting? I'm in a groove now, so I really don't mind.

JamesKeenan

shryke wrote: »

JamesKeenan wrote: »

To be fair, the last thread focused more on the veracity of the bible in the context of science (astronomy, evolution).

This thread is about history and archeology. More boring topics, in my opinion, but I just love science.

On topic, Sodom and Gomorrah meant burned and scorched. Now, I'm not hip to the latest archeological findings, but have these cities ever been found?

And they mean 'burned' and 'scorched.' Which quite coincidentally, matches exactly to the fate of each village. This doesn't necessarily disprove the story, but it certainly hurts the literalists' views.

Did those words take on those meanings before or after the events supposedly took place?

As I understand it, before. Long before. Otherwise I wouldn't have brought it up. I'm not stupid!

Just very, very ignorant. I'm working to correct that, little by little, though.

shryke

JamesKeenan wrote: »

shryke wrote: »

JamesKeenan wrote: »

To be fair, the last thread focused more on the veracity of the bible in the context of science (astronomy, evolution).

This thread is about history and archeology. More boring topics, in my opinion, but I just love science.

On topic, Sodom and Gomorrah meant burned and scorched. Now, I'm not hip to the latest archeological findings, but have these cities ever been found?

And they mean 'burned' and 'scorched.' Which quite coincidentally, matches exactly to the fate of each village. This doesn't necessarily disprove the story, but it certainly hurts the literalists' views.

Did those words take on those meanings before or after the events supposedly took place?

As I understand it, before. Long before. Otherwise I wouldn't have brought it up. I'm not stupid!

Just very, very ignorant. I'm working to correct that, little by little, though.

Allegorical then, I guess.

YodaTuna

JamesKeenan wrote: »

On topic, Sodom and Gomorrah meant burned and scorched. Now, I'm not hip to the latest archeological findings, but have these cities ever been found?

No, there are possible sites, but no definitive answer if they are either of those cities. And, as far as I know, none of the sites under consideration have ever been show to be burnt down or destroyed by some other catastrophe.

RiemannLives

YodaTuna wrote: »

JamesKeenan wrote: »

On topic, Sodom and Gomorrah meant burned and scorched. Now, I'm not hip to the latest archeological findings, but have these cities ever been found?

No, there are possible sites, but no definitive answer if they are either of those cities. And, as far as I know, none of the sites under consideration have ever been show to be burnt down or destroyed by some other catastrophe.

I totally agree with the sentiment (that the story Sodom and Gomorrah is a myth) but it is incredibly difficult to match up descriptions that old with physical sites. Look at the difficulty with Troy for example. Far more famous and widely recorded but only recently has a site been found that seems fairly likely (and it's not a sure thing).

Hermann Gunkel argued in "Legends of Genesis" (to very briefly paraphrase, the book is public domain so look it up online and read the original for yourself! It is well worth it) that the stories of the old testiment were based on oral traditions about the origin of tribes and traditional placenames. In the stories an entire people or tribe is represented by a single character. And the mannerisms and fate of that character was a memory of an important time in the history of that entire people.

The myths and stories were created to explain why various places had names whose actual origin was forgotten or why some tribes were powerful or enslaved.

emnmnme

But who has the most interesting creation story? The Greeks, with their baby eating Kronos? The Lakota, with their exploding snake bits creating the stars? Ymir's bones being assembled into mountain ranges by Odin or did nothingness equal existence like Taoists believe?

When you look at them all, the Bible has the best creation myth by far.

EDIT: I take that back. From wikipedia -

"Scientologists believe an alien called Xenu (also Xemu), pronounced , was the dictator of the "Galactic Confederacy" who, 75 million years ago, brought billions [8] of his people to Earth in DC-8-like spacecraft, stacked them around volcanoes and killed them using hydrogen bombs. Scientology holds that their essences remained, and that they form around people in modern times, causing them spiritual harm."

Medopine

I like Eyptian creation myth better

Golden Yak

emnmnme wrote: »

But who has the most interesting creation story? The Greeks, with their baby eating Kronos? The Lakota, with their exploding snake bits creating the stars? Ymir's bones being assembled into mountain ranges by Odin or did nothingness equal existence like Taoists believe?

When you look at them all, the Bible has the best creation myth by far.

Whoa, hold on.

Odin crafting the world from the flesh of a titanic frost giant is way cooler than God just blinking stuff into existance. Greek and Norse creation myths and the like just seem less likely now because we can verify that they're clearly not true - there's not a dude underneath the planet holding it up, it's not a flat disc sitting on top of elephants and fish or whatever.

All of those are way cooler than simply crap popping into being.


Now, if by 'best' you mean 'more plausible', then yes. Bible creation myth is a lot harder to fact check than the story that we're dwelling on one of nine planes bound by Yggdrasil, ringed by the world serpent Jormungandir.

JamesKeenan wrote: »

shryke wrote: »

Did those words take on those meanings before or after the events supposedly took place?

As I understand it, before. Long before. Otherwise I wouldn't have brought it up. I'm not stupid!

Just very, very ignorant. I'm working to correct that, little by little, though.

Hang on, if those names meant 'Burned' and 'Scorched' *before* those places were, well, burned and scorched... why would people name their homes after two of the worst things that could possibly happen to said homes?

Windbit

The Biblical Creation story does seem to be the least ridiculous one.

Biblical Creation Story: Omnipotent God creates everything and has complete control.

Greek Creation Story: A giant bird named Nyx lays a cosmic egg that eventually hatches to reveal Gaia, Uranus, and Eros. Eros makes Gaia and Uranus fall in love, they give birth to new gods, one of which, Kronus, eats his own children. Zeus grows up and leads the young gods in a war against the old gods. The new gods win and start creating the world on Gaia. Prometheus made humans, and Epimetheus made animals.

The Bible's relatively mundane creation story does make it seem more plausible.

khain

Golden Yak wrote: »

JamesKeenan wrote: »

shryke wrote: »

Did those words take on those meanings before or after the events supposedly took place?

As I understand it, before. Long before. Otherwise I wouldn't have brought it up. I'm not stupid!

Just very, very ignorant. I'm working to correct that, little by little, though.

Hang on, if those names meant 'Burned' and 'Scorched' *before* those places were, well, burned and scorched... why would people name their homes after two of the worst things that could possibly happen to said homes?

Wikipedia wrote:

The name “Sodom” is probably related to the Arabic sadama meaning 'fasten,' 'fortify,' 'strengthen' and Gomorrah is based on the root gh m r which means 'be deep,' 'copious (water)'

Not exactly sure where some one came up with scorched and burned.

Golden Yak

Are there any monotheistic religions with really outlandish creation myths? None spring to mind... It seems like once people start figuring out things like the Earth being round and it going around the sun, we start to lose all the far out stuff.

Another way to keep the followers, I guess. Only a matter of time before people start saying "The sky is totally not a huge naked blue chick" and "There's no way that sun is a burning chariot." Easier to say there's only one God and he takes care of all the stuff in nature we used to have a hundred different gods for. Harder to prove there's not.

emnmnme

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creation_myths

Spartacus O'Mally

Golden Yak wrote: »

Are there any monotheistic religions with really outlandish creation myths? None spring to mind... It seems like once people start figuring out things like the Earth being round and it going around the sun, we start to lose all the far out stuff.

Another way to keep the followers, I guess. Only a matter of time before people start saying "The sky is totally not a huge naked blue chick" and "There's no way that sun is a burning chariot." Easier to say there's only one God and he takes care of all the stuff in nature we used to have a hundred different gods for. Harder to prove there's not.

Cheaper, though.

More efficent too.

One God means one temple, not a whole slew of shrines and temples for every little God of wine and debauchery.

RiemannLives

Windbit wrote: »

The Biblical Creation story does seem to be the least ridiculous one.

Biblical Creation Story: Omnipotent God creates everything and has complete control.

Greek Creation Story: A giant bird named Nyx lays a cosmic egg that eventually hatches to reveal Gaia, Uranus, and Eros. Eros makes Gaia and Uranus fall in love, they give birth to new gods, one of which, Kronus, eats his own children. Zeus grows up and leads the young gods in a war against the old gods. The new gods win and start creating the world on Gaia. Prometheus made humans, and Epimetheus made animals.

The Bible's relatively mundane creation story does make it seem more plausible.

In the first few centuries CE one of the main points of contention between Greek or Roman philosophers and the creation story in Genesis was its claim of God creating the universe from nothing. This view (creation from nothingness) was completely alien and absurd to them. They were quite willing to entertain any number of different versions of God(s) creating in the sense of shaping or forming pre-existing matter but the idea of creation from nothingness was appalling. Galen in particular profoundly disagreed with this principle: That matter could be created rather than changed from one form to another. An idea that recently has once again become in vouge I might add.

RiemannLives

Golden Yak wrote: »

Are there any monotheistic religions with really outlandish creation myths? None spring to mind... It seems like once people start figuring out things like the Earth being round and it going around the sun, we start to lose all the far out stuff.

Another way to keep the followers, I guess. Only a matter of time before people start saying "The sky is totally not a huge naked blue chick" and "There's no way that sun is a burning chariot." Easier to say there's only one God and he takes care of all the stuff in nature we used to have a hundred different gods for. Harder to prove there's not.

By the time of the empire the religion of the Roman world had become essentially monotheistic. At least if you can consider trinitarian Christians "monotheistic" than the more educated Romans certainly were. Their view was of one God with many names and avatars. The Olympian gods, the gods of the Egyptians etc... were all divine beings as manifestations or servants of the one god. EG: Essentially the same spiel as the trinity / angels.

Edit: And it was their hammering on the obvious absurdities of Christianity (for example, Celsus writing his refutation of Christianity then a generation later Origen in turn trying to refute Celsus) that pushed the first real philosophical thinking about Christianity. The attempt, two hundred years after the fact, to give it some real theological underpinnings.

_J_

ElJeffe wrote: »

This thread is for debating the historical accuracy of the Bible.

Matthew 1:15-16
Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

Luke 3:23
Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli,


I hope it isn't historically accurate, because if it is they have some splainin' to do.

Spartacus O'Mally

Suppose they were all science fiction novels?

Jesus Christ could have been a time traveller from the Future (ie: Heaven), sent to the past by his Father (ie: God, exercising complete control over temporal paradox), thereby undeniably proving his own existence. All that's needed is for Christ return sometime in the Future (ie: Heaven), to reaffirm the temporal paradox that granted God this undeniable proof of his existence.

Modern technology would seriously look like magic to people even 2000 years ago.

Greek Creation Story: A giant bird named Nyx lays a cosmic egg

Spaceship dropping off some suspended animation cocoons on Earth? What?

Yeah.

It all reads much better as science fiction... or at least science fantasy.

RiemannLives

Oddly enough, one of the first (known) critics of Christianity who had actually studied the gospels and teachings about Jesus (that is Celsus) takes it as a well known fact that Jesus was the son of Mary and a soldier named Panthera and that Mary had been abandoned by her husband for her adultery.

Its an odd little anecdote but amusing nonetheless. There were plenty of obviously spurious stories circulating about this new cult at the time (see the letters Pliny wrote to the Emperor Trajan where he mentions Christians) and this is probably just one of many.

HF-kun

RiemannLives wrote: »

Edit: And it was their hammering on the obvious absurdities of Christianity (for example, Celsus writing his refutation of Christianity then a generation later Origen in turn trying to refute Celsus) that pushed the first real philosophical thinking about Christianity. The attempt, two hundred years after the fact, to give it some real theological underpinnings.

If you want to quote Christian criticism, I highly suggest someone better than Celsus. The fact that Celsus quotes radical or downright false Christian beliefs instead of ones that were traditional and widely accepted is cause for concern right off the bat. Origen's rebutal was extremely well written and applied logic and reasoning in comparison to Celsus' generous use of prejudice. In fact, the only reason that most of Celsus' criticism still exists today is because it was quoted so extensively by Origen himself.

Not to mention the fact that Celsus very openly admits much of his arguments are based off of one anti-Christian Jew. I've only read pieces of Origen, but I've read all of Celsus' The True Word. It can pretty much be summed up in "christianz are st00pid, lolz!" Although I admit, his observation that total pacifism would be impossible for Christians if they were to ever gain political power was pretty astute.

EDIT: _J_, you seemed to have missed the "so it was thought" portion of that quote from Luke. Plus, terms like father and mother could denote non-biological relationships just as much back then as they do today. Paul referred to other Christians as brothers, and there are examples of two people being referred to as cousins, when it was pretty obvious they were not the children of each other's uncles or aunts.

EDIT2: RiemannLives, your first statement is also refuted by Celsus. Who believes that different areas, both tangible and intangible, are governed by different gods.

Qingu

emnmnme wrote: »

But who has the most interesting creation story? The Greeks, with their baby eating Kronos? The Lakota, with their exploding snake bits creating the stars? Ymir's bones being assembled into mountain ranges by Odin or did nothingness equal existence like Taoists believe?

When you look at them all, the Bible has the best creation myth by far.

No offense but this is utter nonsense.

The Bible's creation story is simply a whitewashed rendition of the earlier Babylonian creation myth. Marduk, like Yahweh, creates the world by dividing the chaotic waters into discernable parts. He calls light into being by speaking. And humans are created from clay (with a little blood from a dead god mixed in) to be the worker-slaves of the divine powers.

Marduk also has a pre-creation battle with a watery enemy, the sea goddess Tiamat. This should also sound familiar. The psalms and Job mention Yahweh battling a watery nemesis as well. (See Psalm 104, for example).

There is very little in the Bible that stands out from the nascent mythology of the time it was written.

Qingu

RiemannLives wrote: »

Windbit wrote: »

The Biblical Creation story does seem to be the least ridiculous one.

Biblical Creation Story: Omnipotent God creates everything and has complete control.

Greek Creation Story: A giant bird named Nyx lays a cosmic egg that eventually hatches to reveal Gaia, Uranus, and Eros. Eros makes Gaia and Uranus fall in love, they give birth to new gods, one of which, Kronus, eats his own children. Zeus grows up and leads the young gods in a war against the old gods. The new gods win and start creating the world on Gaia. Prometheus made humans, and Epimetheus made animals.

The Bible's relatively mundane creation story does make it seem more plausible.

In the first few centuries CE one of the main points of contention between Greek or Roman philosophers and the creation story in Genesis was its claim of God creating the universe from nothing. This view (creation from nothingness) was completely alien and absurd to them. They were quite willing to entertain any number of different versions of God(s) creating in the sense of shaping or forming pre-existing matter but the idea of creation from nothingness was appalling. Galen in particular profoundly disagreed with this principle: That matter could be created rather than changed from one form to another. An idea that recently has once again become in vouge I might add.

First of all, were the Greeks and Romans truly unfamiliar with creation ex nihilo? Isn't this basically the same idea Aristotle proposed when he talked about the "first mover"?

Secondly, the Genesis creation myth, despite what centuries of Christian exegesis might claim, does not say anything about creation ex nihilo.

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God* swept over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.

Read that passage carefully (I am using the NRSV translation). When God begins creating the earth, the waters are already there. Just as a sculptor "creates" a sculpture by molding a formless lump of clay into recognizable parts, so does Yahweh with the formless waters. Again, this is no different than Marduk "creating" the world by molding the corpse of the ocean goddess Tiamat, or Prajapati dismembering the Cosmic Man and rearranging his parts into Creation in the Rg Veda.

Also, speaking light into being is a magical incantation. Marduk does the same thing, and many magical (magical here in the sense of The Golden Bough, not Wicca) deal with such incantations as well.

As far as I can tell, the Jews didn't have any conception of creation ex nihilo until they met the Greeks and became familiar with Aristotle's ideas about a first mover. Christianity, with its revision of the Jewish creation myth (the Word) is the result of this cross-pollination.

emnmnme

_J_ wrote: »

ElJeffe wrote: »

This thread is for debating the historical accuracy of the Bible.

Matthew 1:15-16
Eliud the father of Eleazar, Eleazar the father of Matthan, Matthan the father of Jacob, 16 and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

Luke 3:23
Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli,


I hope it isn't historically accurate, because if it is they have some splainin' to do.

What? Jacob = Heli?

Incenjucar

Qingu wrote: »

There is very little in the Bible that stands out from the nascent mythology of the time it was written.

It's basically a Harry Potter of myth.

Few if any original ideas, and lots of random mashing together of what's popular, but it gets the butts in the seats.

Church

Incenjucar wrote: »

Qingu wrote: »

There is very little in the Bible that stands out from the nascent mythology of the time it was written.

It's basically a Harry Potter of myth.

Few if any original ideas, and lots of random mashing together of what's popular, but it gets the butts in the seats.

There are a lot of stories in the Bible that are also found in the lore of other cultures. A good example would be the "Great Flood". I think that, for the most part, this is because the stories are based on things that actually happened, not just stories being "borrowed" from cultures.

DarkPrimus

Church wrote: »

Incenjucar wrote: »

Qingu wrote: »

There is very little in the Bible that stands out from the nascent mythology of the time it was written.

It's basically a Harry Potter of myth.

Few if any original ideas, and lots of random mashing together of what's popular, but it gets the butts in the seats.

There are a lot of stories in the Bible that are also found in the lore of other cultures. A good example would be the "Great Flood". I think that, for the most part, this is because the stories are based on things that actually happened, not just stories being "borrowed" from cultures.

There's a simple reason for all ancient cultures having flood myths; that being of course that they were all situated next to a body of water that would flood from time to time.

Church

So you don't think it possible that, for a time being, a great deal of the earth was flooded in some sort of globally catastrophic event?