What difference does it mean if Jesus existed or not. Your not going to change minds here on this Forum one way or another. So making post about secondary issues is irrelevant here.
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Wow, AB. You figured that out all by yourself?... Astounding.... *shocked look of awe*
That`s why I take the Agnostic position here, After examining the pros and cons of Jesus existence I just can`t say one way or the other. I been playing the devils advocate for some time here' I try to make the conversation interesting with giving a more balanced view of things. But I have had limited if any success I never wanted to convert anyone here. I was just trying to widen the discussion. That`s all.
And you told many lies in doing so. That destroyed any credibility you may have had. Even with this post it comes across as totally insincere or were you really trolling all this time...as you say here?
Oh he is sincere (IMO). He does this every few months. He undergoes a transition from theist to atheist (and changes his name). Then back again (changing names again). He has done this so many times here I've lost count. Sometimes (in hindsight) there appear to be hints in his posts that signal the coming change. I wonder if he is about to change now. Each time he changes he refuses to address questions about the change and continues as if nothing happened. It is so strange, that for a long time I was convinced it was more than one person using the same account. I no longer believe that; I believe he is sincere, just very "confused".
OH, FUCKING BULLSHIT AG! What a fucking lie. "Playing Devil's Advocate" my ass! You don't expand the view. You damn sure try to narrow it. You admitted that you watch FAUX NEWS 24/7! You can't get more narrow-minded than that! You have NEVER taken an agnostic point of view!
Let's see...Hmmm..., I'll just "pretend" to be something I'm not to stimulate conversation and open people's minds! So, I'm on an atheist forum, just how would I go about doing that? Oh, I know, I'll be a complete ASSHOLE and proselytize preach and denigrate everyone that doesn't agree with me. I'll never provide any proof...EVER. That should get the ball rolling.
So that was your "cunning plan" Hmmm? Fucking stupid!
Oh, and I almost forgot, you change your profile and your moniker at the drop of a hat. You claimed to be agnostic, then atheist, the devout christian. Next, you'll stick a broom up your ass and claim to be a cat!
That's why he (AB) always gets the disagree button, don't deny it...
i doubt that I'll be wrong..hahah..
The real issue is whether or not it is moral to send people to hell for not following their idea of Jesus.
Sapporo,
That's actually more of an Islamic idea than a biblical one. According to the biblical fairy tale when a person croaks he either goes to the sea, to death, or to hell. Even Yeshua went to hell. No one spends eternity in hell. On Judgment Day everyone makes bail from the sea, death, and hell. At that point some may get into the golden cube called New Jerusalem while others will get thrown into the lake of fire along with hell and death. There is no more hell. The lake of fire is not hell. It's called the second death. Only the devil, the beast, and the false prophet are tortured forever in the lake of fire.
In the Islamic fairy tale when a person dies he stays dead until Judgment Day when he's resurrected. He then either gets his own sea shell paradise with a harem and a herd of cute boys or gets tossed into hell. Most of the women end up in hell. In the Islamic hell people will be tortured forever.
So whether it's intended or not most people believe in the Islamic version of hell rather than the biblical version of hell. The biblical version is temporary and not eternal.
Matthew 13:41-42 says that Jesus will cast everything that offends him into a furnace of fire where there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth. I find what the bible says about what hell is and who goes there and for how long to be confusing, but I would have thought at the very least, Christ is said to torture his earthly enemies for at least a finite amount of time, and then possibly eternally kills them (although that aspect seems to be contradicted at times)?
Sapporo,
The furnace of fire is more similar to the lake of fire than it is to any biblical description of hell. So if a person ends up in either one it will be because Yeshua's minions will have tossed the person into it.
My theory is that since the Bible was written after the Koran that the writers incorporated some of the ideas from the Koran into the Bible. That's why there is so much confusion about the biblical hell.
Umm the bible was collated some 400 years before Mohammed....and the vulgate edition we base the modern bible upon some 250 - 320 years before the Qu'ran was first promulgated.
Wait, you think the qur'an was written before the bible?
Sapporo,
Despite the propaganda no one can produce a legitimate original Bible written before the year 692.
The original weighed 75 pounds. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-tyne-27372773
Which despite our previous discussions on another forum does not mean that Islam influenced that early surviving copy of Jerome's Vulgate. That's a fallacious conclusion.
I have already supplied evidence of the Catholic Christian belief in hell long before the transcription of the Qu'ran in even its earliest form. ( See Augustine of Hippo quote from the 4th Century CE)
It is unlikely in the extreme that portions were added to three direct copies of the Vulgate, produced in Northumberland, England, as a gift for the Pope in 692.
If you have evidence of the Islamic additions then please display them here or you have yet another fallacious argument viz: "There is only one complete copy of the Vulgate bible extant, copied in 687-692, therefore it includes islamic text." A non sequitur and an argument ad ignorantum.
Come on Diotrephes you are better than this...
Old man shouts ...,
As I've said many times, there is no original authentic copy of Jerome's Bible. It's human nature that in order to sell a lie to come up with phony "evidence" that doesn't exist. So since the Bible was produced around the year 692 the con men had to create an imaginary version. So they came up with a character named "Jerome". Of course that wasn't his real name because "J" words didn't exist at that time.
Since there was no modern communication systems like we have now it was easy for the scammers to pull off the con. They just made a lot of stuff up that no one could verify. And if someone questioned it he was killed. And even today both atheists and believers believe the lie that ancient characters wrote the fairy tale in its current format. The brainwashing has been very effective.
You are right in your assertion that the letter J wasn't used until the 9th Century CE, he was, as you know, Eusebius Hieronymus, commonly later referred to as Jerome after canonisation.
His life and work is not in doubt as there are numerous references to him and his translations of the Psalter and other works throughout his own lifetime and those independent records still exist.
You are also correct that "the bible" was not presented as a single volume as it is today but as a series of the testaments and Old Testament books. The presentation of a single volume as you say was incredibly unwieldy and weighed far too much for every day Church use.
I am sorry to rain on your parade but there are numerous fragments of those early Vulgate texts which have been compared to the 692 version. They all coincide with the 692 copy to a much greater degree than your theory would allow.
In the course of centuries of rival coexistence, the Old Latin version and Jerome’s Vulgate tended to react upon each other so that the Vulgate text became a composite as is the 692 version. Other corruptions (noted in over 8,000 surviving manuscripts) crept in as a result of scribal transmission.
Again your assertion of Islamic influence on a text to be presented to the Pope as early as 692 (which meant it had to be commenced at least 3 - 5 years before the due date) who was using and familiar with both the Old Latin and Vulgate versions would have reverberated throughout the Catholic world. A very unlikely scenario for a multitude of reasons in addition to the ones I have stated.
What makes very interesting reading is the introduction of Arabic versions of the Vulgate in the Jewish and Christian communities of the late 7th Centuries which suggests that the reverse form of corruption could have occurred about the time of Uthmanns attempt to codify the various versions of the Qu'ran that were in circulation in the 650s CE.
Your conspiracy theory is interesting but have you hard evidence? If not Hitchens Razor applies.
You might want to have a read of these volumes, they are available in pdf and on request from some libraries: A variety of opinions on Jerome are in F. X. Murphy,A Monument to Saint Jerome (1952), David S. Wiesen, St. Jerome as a Satirist: A Study in Christian Latin Thought and Letters (1949) See also Jean Steinmann, Saint Jerome and His Times (1959).
I told you I was an old geezer, this is a reading list from when I was actively seeking the origins of our modern bible.
Old man shouts ...,
Thanks for the information, which is a classic defense of the status quo. I'm going with human nature, which is that people will produce a ton of BS to sell their con. I agree that there might have been various manuscripts floating around the ancient world but it's illogical to believe that there was anything in existence before the 700s that would qualify as the Bible. They simply didn't have the technology or the writing skills.
When you read the Bible you see that it flows as one continuous seamless story similar to all of the other epic English literature. The English wrote the story in a committee comprised of story tellers, artists, and writers. Of course they relied upon the oral stories that everyone was familiar with but they wrote the story at one time. And their version of the story is the basic one that we use today. They produced the master copies.
One of the hints is the book of Revelation which uses veiled language to describe the muslim conquest of Jerusalem. The beast, false prophet, and devil refer to Islam, Mohammed, and the caliph.
As I've said before, there are no original authentic Bibles earlier than the one written in England in the 690s. And if you see one than claims to be you can easily prove that it's a fake.
Remember, most people don't know anything about world history, the Bible, or their favorite ethnocentric Middle Eastern Jewish or Arabian religious fairy tale. The just accept what they're told without a second thought.
Revelations is perhaps one of the best collections of prophecies ever; in that it is so vague the reader can make it fit any situation they want. You want it to refer to Islam, so that is how you see it.
"classic defense of the status quo": actually its called scholarship and research. I could have dismissed you arguments as "delusions of a conspiracist " but I have attempted to give you evidence and citations to refute your postulations.
"I'm going with human nature," some concrete evidence would be an asset Hitchens razor again.
"The English wrote the story in a committee comprised of story tellers, artists, and writers." Evidence please..who was on this committee? England did not exist in the 7th Century, A competing lot of Kingdoms was the British Isles. The Abbey records of this time where the Tome was copied from the Vulgate texts are fairly complete, perhaps you should have a look and see if there are records of this 'meeting'?
"Book of Revelation" is commonly accepted to refer to the destruction of Jerusalem in the 1st Century. The only disagreement is whether it was written post or prior to the destruction of the temple. As this book is referred to by Polycarp and other sources in the mid Second Century it could not refer to any Islamic influence.
You reiterate a point in agreement, there is no no 'complete bible' extant prior to the 692 edition, however, a quick course in Early Church Practise 101, will quickly acquaint you with the fact that many many copies of the (now) accepted gospels that make up the Vulgate NT and hundreds of other versions peppered the church landscape . The councils of Nicea eventually decided on the texts that would make up the standard (official) versions, These were all in Classical Latin and formed the basis for the later Vulgate.One of my citations pointed out we have over 8000 texts and manuscripts as well as the Classic Latin texts from prior to 692 against which that version of the entire Vulgate/Classical has been checked.
"Remember, most people don't know anything about world history, the Bible"....agreed, but then most of us who actually take the time to do some research don't just make stuff up about it either.
If you have some genuine groundbreaking research to back up your ideas then please state them otherwise it is opinion and valueless. Interesting but with no basis to pursue..
@Old Man:
I know you are kind of new around here, so I thought I'm share this "blast from the past" for your benefit (make sure you follow the link and read the post/thread if you have time):
Thanks I was looking for that after you referenced it,,,but duh me doesn't just think of finding on the profile...gettin'old,!
Btw I just love your interjections. Crisp, to the point and minimal verbiage unlike my verbal diarrhoea!
Nyarlathotep,
jew | Origin and meaning of the name jew by Online Etymology Dictionary
https://www.etymonline.com/word/jew
http://www.overlordsofchaos.com/html/origin_of_the_word_jew.html
Why are Jews called Jews? - Archaeology - Haaretz.com
https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/why-are-jews-called-jews-1.5410757
"In the following centuries, several variations appear: Ive, Iewe, Iew and more. Eventually, in the 17th century, the letter J appeared in English as a way to distinguish between i pronounced as we do, which comes from Germanic sources (e.g., island) and those of French origin, pronounced like a soft G. Since "Jew" fell into this latter category, it began to be spelled with a J. The first known instance of this spelling is in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's comedy of manners "The Rivals", in 1775: She shall have a skin like a mummy, and the beard of a Jew."
What is your fixation with the letter 'J'? It proves nothing whether the alleged christos was in fact Yeshua bin Josef, Iesu, Iesas, or whatever. We now accept Jesus as an acceptable form of translation it does not affect the allegations of his existence.
Similarly with the origin of the Jews as "Judeans" it makes not a jot of difference as you are conveniently forgetting the Diaspora which caused the "sons of Judah" ( By that I mean the later meaning of Jewry) to settle all over the globe. That we now lump them together as "Jews" . That includes Samaritans and Ethiopean Jewry as well as the later schisms and sects of Judaism that litter the aisles of Abramaic religions.
Changes in meanings are commonplace and words are as elastic as the societies that use them. The fact that one letter came to displace others and the antecedents can be traced back to the same meaning as approximates today.
Here's an example; is there a difference between 'jail' and "gaol"? Etymologically. there is no difference yet the spelling has changed. The pronunciation is the same.
Old man shouts ...,
It's been my observation that some self-professed atheists are the most voracious defenders of the biblical fairy tale. I think it's hilarious how they vociferously defend it while claiming to dismiss it.
Defend something that exists? Why not? That I think the content is a lot of bollocks and cruel in most of it does not affect the fact of the bible's existence.
The evolution of the bible (texts) is clearly traceable from the third century, It has undeniable provenance to the present day. To pretend otherwise is fantasy.
Is it the infallible word of a god? No. That can be proven in a myriad of different ways that have evidence to back up the claim.
Promoting conspiracy theories that do not fit facts or provable history are common, think "Holocaust deniers", "Elizabeth 2 isn't really Queen of England" "Lizard People in the White House" ...oh wait...nah...fantasies.
Your habit of confusing assertion and linguistics with historical fact is just an attempt to make history fit your fantasy. It doesn't work. If you have provable evidence or even a theory with some hard core evidence then I will entertain your ideas.
Just because you took the name Diotrephes (Nourished by Jupiter) does that mean your alter ego does not exist?
That is the kind of evidence you are asking us to swallow.
It wont work on the calibre of people I have seen here in my short time.
The thing is, I don't even need to check your sources or consider your arguments. We've all seen the word Jew used in documents before the time you said it was first used. Therefore something must be fundamentally wrong. Either:
I'm going with B since if A is true, your arguments are even more insane since they rely on not A (they rely on history).
Nyarlathotep,
Really?
I produced several links to support my conclusion. Can you produce some to support yours, other than the Bible or the Koran?
Let's take a quick look at your sources. Hmmm overlordsofchaos.com what a weird domain name, let's check it out:
Well I will say that does give us some real clues why your ideas sound so crazy.
@Nyarlathotep
I visited those links as well...but I couldn't even bring myself to copy that dumb ass shite...Kudos for stifling your gag reflex long enough to dirty your "CTRL/C" and "CTRL/V" keys.
If you lived closer I would volunteer to come and clean your keyboard. Or at least send TM..he likes that cleaning/polishing type stuff.
@Old Man Re: Keyboard cleaning
I would love to help with the cleaning, but only if I'm allowed to wear my skimpy little French maid outfit. (I stole it out of Scarecrow's dressing room during the filming. Complete with feather duster and spiked high heels.)
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