__siru__@discuss.tchncs.de
on 28 Sep 17:50
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Not a particularly informed comment, but I always figured because people started getting scared of the Christian god, so they started turning towards other religions. As a consequence, the Christian church needed to figure out how to make Christianity a bit more approachable, so the new testament and forgiveness were created.
HenriVolney@sh.itjust.works
on 28 Sep 18:51
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There were no Christian before Christ. They were Jews, as was Jesus.
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
on 28 Sep 17:52
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its almost like the whole thing is an amalgam of thousands of texts edited and repurposed across thousands of years by human beings with various motivations.
bigfondue@lemmy.world
on 28 Sep 18:39
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The religion of the Israelites wasn’t even monotheistic at first. Yahweh was one of many gods.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 28 Sep 19:55
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And Christianity isn’t technically monotheistic either, as it has the trinity of God, Christ, and the Spooky Spirit… errrm… I mean Holy Ghost.
And trinitarianism specifically is basically just a reason to wage wars. I was raised in a trinitarian denomination and I still mostly consider myself Christian but I can't reconcile my morals with waging literal wars over fucking metaphysics.
its_prolly_fine@sh.itjust.works
on 28 Sep 21:35
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It really is tho. The 3 are the same thing. Different parts/names of one entity. Probably wasn’t originally, but def is now
Shiggles@sh.itjust.works
on 28 Sep 22:44
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Depending on the exact denomination of Christian. There is no big difference between how many christians view satan and how polytheistic religions view some of the less nice gods.
Cassanderer@thelemmy.club
on 29 Sep 07:34
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Does not make sense to me, but that bit was not doctrine until 350 ad.
but no evidence of pre-Israelite Yahweh worship among the peoples of the ancient Levant has surfaced
That’s because the israelites were the worshippers of Yahweh
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
on 30 Sep 01:22
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Yeah see this is how I know you’re not serious. The author of that article isn’t “some guy”, he’s an incredibly respected and accomplished historian and archaeologist, specializing in ancient near-east civilizations. And you couldn’t be bothered to read past the first paragraph. You don’t want to have an actual discussion about this.
This is history. History works different than other sciences. You cannot just claim that it’s common knowledge/scholarly accepted that yahweh originated in a pantheon because one scholar puts forward a theory on it, which most scholars reject (but they get dismissed because they are “biased”)
History isn’t replicable and observable like chemistry, physics or biology
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
on 30 Sep 14:48
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Absolutely, definitely, totally, 100% incorrect. Just because I only provided one source does not mean that that’s the only source available claiming that Yaweh originated in a pantheon. To suggest that is laughably disingenuous, and more proof that you’re not approaching this discussion seriously or with honesty.
History isn’t replicable and observable like chemistry, physics or biology
Your close-minded definition of “history” isn’t, because it doesn’t allow you to update and believe new things based on new scientific discoveries and evidence. It’s stagnant, stuck in the past, rigid, and unwilling to change.
Wikipedia is a source of sources. You can scroll down to the bottom of the damn page and view the original sources if you really need the originals. No, you’re just using this as an excuse. Fuck off. Everyone can see right through this.
Lol. Meanwhile here you are, policing what people provide as evidence because you only accept something that supports your worldview. You should be a wiki moderator apparently… oh wait, they actually have standards.
Wikipedia is a source, even in academics. It isn’t a primary source. If you’re going to be pedantic, you could at least have the decency to be correct.
Repeating this doesn’t actually address anything I said though. Presumably you can’t actually engage with what was said because you have no standing.
Then check the sources listed under that wiki article.
If you couldn’t be bothered to look up something as simple and undisputed as this, then it’s really silly to make a stand with “Wikipedia isn’t a source”, it just makes you look like a bad troll.
What do you mean “undisputed”. The whole pantheon thing is a historical reconstructed theory, not a fact. You’d find millions of people who’d dispute a claim as absurd as pre-messianic Judaism not originally being monotheistic.
Now yes, the israelites have practiced polytheism several times. The Bible records this. But the Christian religion has always been monotheistic.
Yep, undisputed. Except by religious zealots who resort to bad faith arguments when some of their cultist beliefs are not accepted as fact by non believers, but on those subjects, those people aren’t taken seriously by anyone except others from their cult, so yes, pretty much undisputed.
You’re acting as if there’s actually solid evidence for this theory. There really isn’t. We know polytheism existed, that doesn’t mean it was necessarily the origin. Heck, there are even hindus today that claim to worship Jesus. Does that mean that Jesus originated in Hinduism? No.
That isn’t even remotely analogous to this situation.
One easy way to know it’s the origin is to recognize that every religion is an evolution of other religions on the area. The others are polytheistic. It would only be reasonable to assume Judaism originated from the same practice, and we can observe similarities between Judaism and local religions of the time and find they share some aspects, implying they have the same origin. That origin being polytheistic.
And yet they persist, so it’s almost like it’s not quite that simple either, eh? Funny how the devil stays in the details, no matter which side you lean
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com
on 28 Sep 18:46
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absolutely correct. humans have been scamming humans since inception, and the best methods last the longest.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 28 Sep 19:54
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The book of Job is literally written in different parts in entirely different dialects that were spoken hundreds of years apart. The opening and ending is from the older dialect, and written much like a folktale. The middle is newer and written much more like an epic poem.
Even the a single book of the Bible comes from numerous sources.
GandalftheBlack@feddit.org
on 28 Sep 23:57
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Not just single books. Single chapters.
fredofredo@lemmy.world
on 28 Sep 18:05
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Maybe because JC was a great guy and a lot of people believed in what he had to say. So, in order to benefit from his fame and gain the trust of his past and potential future followers, there was a gathering a hundred or so years after his death where they chose suitable accounts of his life to include in the book called the new testament. Accounts like the ones later found in the Nag Hammadhi texts and “gnostic gospels” were excluded because they undermined the authoritiy of the church and the power of priests to be the only ones to interpret the will of God.
The simple answer is that the gospel wasn’t working as well as it had been, so they had to change it up to continue attracting people. Cults are basically popularity contests, and you can’t win if you’re scaring everyone away.
neidu3@sh.itjust.works
on 28 Sep 18:13
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I guess they did some market research between the two testaments
PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
on 28 Sep 18:11
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I have studied this topic academically, a little bit. My answer:
The people who wrote the old testament lived in a world that was almost unfathomably dangerous and difficult compared to today’s first world. Death, disease, starvation, natural disasters, the collapse of whole towns and settlements, unexplained daily suffering for which there is not even an explanation let alone a cure, were constantly present. If you’re in that place, and you believe there’s a God who’s in charge of it all, there is absolutely no conclusion to come to other than he’s a real son of a bitch.
I definitely believe that Jesus had some kind of genuine religious inspiration, that a lot of what he was teaching was for-real insight about life. The stuff about forgiving your enemies, living for good works through action and how it really doesn’t matter what you say or what team you’re on, trying to build a better life by caring about people around you, taking care of the sick and injured, even if they are beggars or prostitutes or foreigners or otherwise “bad” people in your mind simply because of their circumstances, seems pretty spot on to me. It was 100% at odds with the religion of the day, pretty much as much as it is with modern religion. What Jesus actually said does obviously have “spiritual” and supernatural elements also, but it is also focused to a huge extent on what you as an individual can do, and a sort of alignment towards the greater good and a calling for humanity, as opposed to this wild half-Pagan mythology about a capricious and bad-tempered God who might kill you at any instant.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 28 Sep 20:10
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I like this reasoning a lot, however:
#2. In terms of there being a real-life Y’shua, AFAIK it’s hard to know if such a person ever really existed in the first place, or if they were in fact more of an amalgamated ‘King Arthur’ / ‘Robin Hood’ type, very much inspired by earlier legends & mythology, and greatly elaborated upon in later years, via oral traditions, before finally being documented hither & tither by various writers scattered around the region.
AFAIK there is no archeological evidence whatsoever for that exact person’s existence, and no contemporaneous writing from the time, describing his life.
PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
on 28 Sep 20:12
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In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart D. Ehrman wrote, “He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees."[13] Richard A. Burridge states: “There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more."[14] Robert M. Price does not believe that Jesus existed but agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars.[15] James D. G. Dunn calls the theories of Jesus’s non-existence “a thoroughly dead thesis”.[16] Michael Grant (a classicist), “In recent years, ’no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus’ or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."[17] Robert E. Van Voorst states that biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted.[18] Writing on The Daily Beast, Candida Moss and Joel Baden state that, “there is nigh universal consensus among biblical scholars – the authentic ones, at least – that Jesus was, in fact, a real guy."[19]
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 28 Sep 20:22
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Which is fine as far as it goes, yet does very little if anything to address the body of the above concerns.
While “Jesus” likely had something to do with an actual person who once lived, nailing down the details of his life and history seems highly problematic from a scholarly & historical POV, and as for embellishment, amalgamation and distortion… all such things are highly possible, and even highly likely, AFAIK.
bitcrafter@programming.dev
on 29 Sep 01:00
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You are thinking about this the wrong way. From the scraps of information that we do have, which includes volumes of work by Jesus’s followers, there are two extremes one could take: we know absolutely nothing about Jesus or whether he even existed, or we know absolutely everything about Jesus. I agree that the later extreme is wrongheaded, but surely treating it as a binary choice so that the only other possibility is that we can say nothing at all about Jesus is also wrongheaded.
You might argue reasonably, of course, that his followers cannot be trusted, so we can learn nothing from their writings. This is not true, however, because if nothing else we can learn from the editorial choices that they made; for example, when a Gospel goes out of is way to explain a detail that would have been embarrassing to contemporaries, this actually provides potential evidence that this detail was true and widely known at the time so that it needed to be explained, because otherwise it would just have been left out.
At the end of the day, scholarship is essentially about weighing probabilities rather than certainties, and good scholars do not pretend otherwise.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 13:42
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You are thinking about this the wrong way.
I consider that a terrible way of framing things, and then to make matters worse, you propose only a binary set of conclusions.
Please do better then that if you want to debate fairly.
Thank you.
bitcrafter@programming.dev
on 29 Sep 14:32
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It must be very convenient to be able to declare victory in a discussion without hanging to present an actual argument. 😉
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 14:46
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Except for the fact that… I did indeed present multiple arguments, and the fact that at no point did I ‘signal victory?’
But then you’re making up new standards of evidence for historical characters, and only applying them to Jesus.
All evidence points to a jew who, under roman occupation, organized a political and religious movement around his person with a message so powerful that it immediately started replicating. Otherwise, how can we explain the sudden outflow of missionaries from Galilee ? Whose message were they spreading, which travelled as far as Asia and Ethiopia with relative unity and consistence ? What reason do we have to doubt that a revolutionary mystical prophet such as Jesus existed (they were legion at the time in that region), and why should we subscribe to some more exotic, laborious explaination ?
The question is not whether Jesus’ story was embellished and distorted, because it was, with 100% certainty. But then that’s true of everything we know from that time period. We have 0 archeological evidence of most historical characters existence, only hearsay and unreliable testimony. But we don’t doubt their existence because the alternative would have to be far fetched and contrived to fit the evidence.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 13:50
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But then you’re making up new standards of evidence for historical characters, and only applying them to Jesus.
Absolutely false, right from the get-go, Bob.
(hmm, “gecko..?,” but anyway)
The whole point of what I said above is to understand things from an historians and archeologists’ POV. You know– the ones who generally try their best to strictly adhere to known facts & reality?
Such criteria is commonly applied to virtually EVERY significant figure in history, Bob. So then, are you actually (haha) asking for a special exception for someone possibly known as Y’shua ben Josef during his lifetime, who later got turned in to an almost impossibly, legendary figure by political, financial and religious institutions…?
You know, that “Jesus Christ” figure, later whitewashed in to being a tall, pale Euro-type dude, and not the actual short, Semitic dude which he almost certainly was. (if he ever existed in the first place)
I sure hope not, anyway, because that would not be the “Bob” we all know and love.
Such criteria is commonly applied to virtually EVERY significant figure in history
That is simply not true. There’s a lot of historical figures from Antiquity for whom we have zero archeological evidence, it’s kind of the norm in fact. Literary evidence is fine if it can be corroborated from multiple independent sources. If we go by your standards then Socrates and Pythagoras are not historical figures, neither is Tacitus, or Hannibal, or most people who were not kings and did not have steles or coin to their name.
Y’shua ben Josef during his lifetime, who later got turned in to an almost impossibly, legendary figure by political, financial and religious institutions
A couple centuries before his embellishment by the roman state, the so-called Jesus movement was flourishing and started to expand in pretty much every direction. The existence of this movement is abundantly attested in independent sources from very distant places.
Are you saying this movement did not exist and the sources that attest to it are not reliable ? Are you saying there was a movement but it wasn’t founded by a guy named Y’shua ben Josef from Galilee ? Why would that be ? Do you think they lied, or forgot the name and origin of their founder ? I understand the idea but what would be the point, and how would those various sub-groups, some of which were very distant geographically, have coordinated their lie so perfectly ?
At one point Okham’s razor says the most probable thing is that a guy named Y’shua from Galilee did indeed start a religious movement. It’s happened before, it’s happened again, why would this specific occurrence need an esoteric explanation ?
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 17:49
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Looks like you tried to reply to my actual response, and then sort of went all Gonzo-weird ness for motivational purposes?
I honestly don’t understand the point here and your sarcastic mode makes the whole experience tedious and confusing.
You seem to be arguing that Jesus shouldn’t be considered a historical figure, for reasons that somehow do not apply to other historical figures, but you don’t wish to engage with actual discussion on the matter. I’m at a loss here and suspect you may be experiencing a critical shortage of slack.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 18:10
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Again– a very whitewashed theory.
So what you’re telling me there is that you didn’t actually read it there, Bob?
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 18:06
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Wow, it is as if you need something to be true, in the deepest sense, in order to validate your life?
Dude– and THAT’S the part I always try to confirm. Live your life!
Enjoy our silly, mutual existence, if you can!
WE ARE HERE F0R A LITTLE WHILE, and also we like our animal friends et al.
The ride will be over soon, my friend. So let’s enjoy…
Yeah well fuck those platitudes you must have me mistaken for a 13 year old on TikTok.
I don’t see how baiting a conversation then refusing to partake in it is “living your life” but hey good job Kerouac you’ve got this
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 18:14
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Hahaha… now there you go!
Now THAT’S the way we do things, mate! XD
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 18:22
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At one point Okham’s razor says the most probable thing is that a guy named Y’shua from Galilee did indeed start a religious movement.
Haha, and later on, some group of assholes tried to make hay with the original guy… to the extent that whatever he might have actually said (remember the Gnostics?) to the message of bullshit “Christianity?”
I think you may have personal feelings against christianity mixed up with the historical stuff and it doesn’t make for interesting discourse.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 23:35
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Sorry for giving that impression, mssr.
What I know for sure is that absolutely everyone in life forms a belief system in order to sort out reality.
Me, it’s not so much that I dislike ‘Christians’ in any particular way, as much as the fact that I don’t like seeing others push people around via their ‘wrong’ beliefs, and so forth…
bitcrafter@programming.dev
on 29 Sep 23:37
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Hey, at least you tried! 😉
(And don’t think too harshly of the other poster; we were all 14 once, after all!)
bitcrafter@programming.dev
on 29 Sep 16:42
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All evidence points to a jew who, under roman occupation, organized a political and religious movement around his person with a message so powerful that it immediately started replicating. Otherwise, how can we explain the sudden outflow of missionaries from Galilee ? Whose message were they spreading, which travelled as far as Asia and Ethiopia with relative unity and consistence ? What reason do we have to doubt that a revolutionary mystical prophet such as Jesus existed (they were legion at the time in that region), and why should we subscribe to some more exotic, laborious explaination ?
I think that it is worth noting that the person who did most of the successful evangelizing in the beginning that led to the explosion of the movement was actually Paul, who had his own message that wasn’t quite the same as Jesus’s apostles–in fact, he started spreading the message without talking to them first because he figured that he already knew everything that he needed to know, which led to conflict that required Acts to work really hard to make it seem like they were all on the same side all along.
But regardless, it is peculiar that people seem to think that starting a widely successful cult is a particularly hard thing to do if the founder has enough charisma (and luck), given that all you have to do is look around at the numerous modern examples. For example, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness was founded in 1966 by a guy banging drums in New York, and has since grown into a huge movement with hundreds of dedicated temples. So it is far more plausible that this is what happened in the case of Christianity than that some other more complicated process synthesizing the existence of a fake founder.
Yeah i don’t understand what’s so controversial here. This time and place was home to a million apocalyptic militant movements, and Jesus’s just was the most successful of his generation.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 28 Sep 20:32
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Whoops; apologies.
I borked up my last reply-comment, and so deleted that, and re-created from scratch.
Maybe he existed… but only as a common human and all the supernatural things were added later.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 13:40
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As I see it, there’s pretty much a landslide of evidence, from almost every studied angle, that points to what you just postulated.
PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 13:53
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Oooohhhh
I mean, yes, obviously. It all of a sudden makes the other commenter’s steadfast insistence against me make sense, if they thought that I meant this person actually existed who could do real life magic tricks and came back from the dead and he still watches to see if you’re masturbating.
Yes, I was talking about the historical figure, not the superhero. I thought that went without saying but maybe not.
(Edit: What the heck, their original argument is clearly saying that they think there’s no evidence that the historical figure existed. But whatever, we got there in the end, I guess.)
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 14:06
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(Edit: Also I think it is dishonest of them to edit their comment…
Dude, I did nothing of the kind.
Wow, it’s almost like you managed to copy-paste the known fact that the body of Christian scholars agrees that someone existed, later known as “Jesus,” and then seemingly couldn’t deal with a rebuttal upon your notion of ‘that clearing up everything.’
So now you’re getting weird about the fact that I had to re-do my comment, simply because I responded to the wrong commenter at the time? So, did not see my rebuttal at all? Did you not see my attempt to explain that?
Go ahead, tho– consider this your opportunity to fairly reply to what I said above. Sound good?
EDIT: Hahaha, instant downvote!
PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 14:27
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Yeah, I realized after that you were talking about archaeology up in your original reply to me, not in the pre-editing version of some other comment. Sorry about that, I had already edited my comment to take out the accusation (within 5 minutes of originally posting it.)
I pretty much agree with this comment of yours. I have absolutely no reason why that would mean we have to continue to bicker. I do think that comment is pretty firmly in contradiction to your earlier statements ("King Arthur / Robin Hood"), but whatever, I see no profit at all in us having a dispute about that part of it.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 14:52
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Yes, but why are we ‘bickering’ in the first place, and why the need to accuse me of re-editing a comment? (which never happened)
What you are seemingly trying to tell me here, “PhilipTheBucket,” is that you’re not really able to countenance the actual arguments I’m making above.
Now would you say that’s a fair or unfair statement? If unfair, could you give me some facts & reality-based reasons as to why not?
PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 15:06
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why the need to accuse me of re-editing a comment? (which never happened)
You edited this comment after I posted my reply to it which talked about archaeology. I thought you’d edited the comment to remove mention of archaeology, but I was wrong, that mention came from this comment of yours.
But then, I realized I’d been wrong, and retracted the wrong thing I’d said, and apologized about it. Not sure how you even managed to see my wrong accusation within the ~2 minutes or whatever that it was on Lemmy, but in any case, my bad.
What you are seemingly trying to tell me here, “PhilipTheBucket,” is that you’re not really able to countenance the actual arguments I’m making above.
Now would you say that’s a fair or unfair statement? If unfair, could you give me some facts & reality-based reasons as to why not?
I don’t know how to upload an image within a comment in Piefed. Presumably it’s not that hard and I’m just thick. Anyway, please in the meantime enjoy this ASCII art of a sea lion:
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 15:16
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Congratulations!
Not only do you manufacture stuff that never happened, but you’re about as disingenuous a religious creep as I’ve ever encountered, so far upon the FV.
Hehe, the ‘donkey-ears’ fit well, amirite?
bitcrafter@programming.dev
on 29 Sep 16:45
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EDIT: Hahaha, instant downvote!
For the record, the downvote was from me, and it was because you are being an ass.
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 17:29
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Do you mean, being just like you… my fellow freakazoid? :D
Maybe he existed… but only as a common human and all the supernatural things were added later
Lets consider that jesus did exist and did someone have a cure for leprosy. Why didn’t he give that cure to everyone??? We still have leprosy today, kinda proves he didnt have the cure. But again lets say he did and he only gave it to a couple people, not a very godly thing to do, to withhold that cure from the entirety of humanity.
Maybe he cured a strong headache (maybe some herbal remedy) but they grew the anecdote and he ended up “curing leprosy”.
fluffykittycat@slrpnk.net
on 29 Sep 09:23
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One Theory I like is that the Jesus we know is an amalgamation of multiple Messiah figures that were walking around around that time, one of them was the basis for the religion and then other stories about those other Messiahs were folded in over the years
JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 14:12
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Almost like every lauded, ‘perfect’ figure across history?
In fact, “The Messiah” is a concept that certainly goes back long before some dude allegedly named “Y’shua” was branded that way.
Now, modern humans being ~300Kyrs old, I would guess that it’s not just an ancient fixation, but even endemic to our very species… our very way of hoping and wanting and longing for a return to ‘the good times,’ directly embodied via mythological figure.
a lot of what he was teaching was for-real insight about life
yaaa cept for the fact that most if not all the things ‘jeebus’ supposedly said were said in older books already. So there is nothing new in the new testament, they stole all of it from older books like code of hammurabi and then invented a character to say the things.
CatpainTypo@lemmy.world
on 28 Sep 18:22
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The Old Testament is a bunch of books, letters, poems, historical and legal documents. That when read tell the story of the Jews and their relationship with God and the world over a couple of thousand years. They reflect the culture in which they were written. Many of the documents were written during wars where the writer is convinced God is on their side. There are many prophesies especially in Isaiah which point to Jesus. So when Jesus arrives and fulfills the prophesies some of the Jews follow Jesus but many powerful leaders are awaiting a different, more normal king figure and they are comfortable as they are so choose not to follow.
The New Testament is written in a time of relative stability during the longtime invasion by the romans. The writers of those letters and books, some of whom are eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. (Almost unique in historical documents) take a different stance to who God is. But they don’t all agree. Basically Bible means library.
A nitpick, none of the gospel writers were eyewitnesses, the documents were written long after Jesus was gone. They are interpretations of stories passed down, and all four gospels have different takes on events. So the phrase "gospel truth" is very ironic in its definition.
Not only that, Jesus doesn't fit the requirements for the prophesied Jewish Messiah, to the best of my understanding. He may well be the Christian Messiah, but no one else is under any obligation to accept or reject anyone else's religious beliefs.
PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social
on 28 Sep 20:03
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Most modern scholars think that none of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses.
It’s a little bit academic (har har) anyway, since they all went through so many layers of translation often by people with specific agendas that the modern English versions can’t really claim to be “authentic” to the originals anyway, but regardless of that they almost certainly weren’t written by those specific disciples of Jesus (even if you accept the events described in them as semi-authentic.)
Relative stability? Buddy I don’t know where the hell you got that notion from. When was it stable exactly? During the Jewish revolt? That extremely bloody time?
dontbelievethis@sh.itjust.works
on 28 Sep 19:57
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Why don’t you look it up? At the same time you can go go ahead and look up why the time period we’re talking about was extremely unstable. That same instability largely why Christianity comes about in the first place.
Jesus did not fulfill prophecy in any confirmable way, it seems like some of the contradictions between the scriptures exist because different authors made up new stories to attempt to have jesus fulfill prophecy.
Figuring out which, if any, of the gospel stories are true is an impossible task.
There are more than a few disrespectful answers here, but if any of these ppl talked to someone who honestly believed, they’d be more inclined to tell you to investigate the new covenant
Am a Christian atheist ftr–just feels bad to see so many accept convenient lies over the honest truths of a worthwhile series of stories (wether they factually happened is of little to no value in the pursuit of truth, no?)
you don’t believe in any of the supernatural stuff
Correct. It feels beyond a little silly to pretend there is any kind of entity in control or overlooking the unfolding of events that is reality or what we mean by reality. I will admit, the ‘god in process’ theories are fun and maybe insightful to some degree but nothing worth putting faith in just yet.
are just about the better teachings of Jesus? Aka a Jefferson bible take?
I’ve heard of this, but I just now researched it. Seems interesting, but it is certainly not what I’m speaking to at all afaict
shawn1122@sh.itjust.works
on 28 Sep 18:48
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The old testament is essentially Judaism which is an ethnic religion. There is no marketing needed because it is a religion for a specific group of people from a theoretical single lineage. There is no need for God to be accepting or patient since the goal appears to be unify and keep people under control during times of great strife.
Christianity is a universal religion ie. it tries to create new followers. If you’re a religion that is trying to grow your following, you need to have a message of openness and acceptance.
MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world
on 28 Sep 19:22
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It’s because the Old Testament is actually just the Torah, rearranged and edited to fit the beliefs of what was once a sect of Judaism. That sect branched off when they decided that Jesus Christ was their Messiah, then progressively became more open and split away from the rest of Judaism and became their own religion.
That might be a bit oversimplified, but that’s really the gist of it. Jesus made a new covenant with god, which was meant to replace the old one, chronicled in the New Testament; but the old covenant was kept in as background, becoming the Old Testament.
I was reading a scholar’s book and one of her central themes was that there are clearly two gods in the Bible. It was really dry reading, couldn’t finish.
Some argue that there are even more! I’m definitely not an expert on this one, but I remember something about Yahweh being the god of some town or village that then somehow got absorbed into the old testament god when tribes and traditions consolidated, and then new testament god is just a completely different animal. I’m probably getting something wrong, so don’t quote me.
Seems clear early Jews believed in multiple gods. There’s more than a couple passages in the Old Testament talking about gods, plural. I would think singular vs. plural would make the translations, and even if you changed the passage to singular god, it wouldn’t make sense or need to be stated.
“You shall have no other gods before me.”, comes to mind.
the only "um akshually" I would even bother adding to this is that the Torah / Pentateuch is just the first five books of the Tanakh, which is the best / closest approximation of books that later became the Christian old testament. The Tanakh also includes the Prophets (Nevi'im), and the Writings (Ketuvim). There's also a few books in there that the council of Nicaea (the council of og old Catholic dudes who decided which books were true or not) chose not to include. Also relevant is the Septuagint which was the first translation from Hebrew into a mainstream language (which at the time was Koine Greek) which is relevant because that specific translation has had a profound effect on translations since, which really hammers in that concept of "a translation of a translation of a translation of-"
MightBeAlpharius@lemmy.world
on 28 Sep 21:27
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Yeahhhh… I took a class on the history of the Bible, but that was about a decade ago, so I’m spotty on some of the details. Thanks for fleshing it out, though - I knew my take was probably missing something!
I've been getting back into Christianity lately for a variety of reasons but I've also been doing a lot of research into the history and philosophy and whatnot and reconciling:
that outer sphere of what all these different people over the centuries have written and decided to include or exclude from their various compilations and what motivated them morally or especially politically to do so
vs
the inner sphere of my own lived experience with what does and does not make the world a better place and what motivations exist in the modern day to practice or interpret those centuries of texts in one way or another
and honestly it's actually been really interesting from an academic perspective as well. It's a fascinating combination of history, language, culture, and even what influences it's had on the sciences over time like I recently wound up learning some stuff about early geometry and the ways metaphysical interpretation of mathmetical concepts have affected the architecture of churches.
and that actually led me to creating this gif of how Metatron's Cube is constructed using basic geometric concepts with a compass and straightedge. The animated circles were specifically programmed in FMS logo it was a really fun way to spend my weekend.
homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world
on 28 Sep 19:44
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RobotToaster@mander.xyz
on 28 Sep 19:54
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This is one of the reasons Gnosticism exists. In the gnostic interpretation the God of the old testament was the demiurge, while the snake is identified with God or Jesus.
It depends where you read. There is fire and brimstone in the new testament. Revelation is a book that doesn’t hold back and we see a wrothful God of judgment. But then there stories of Josiph and his brothers, or the book of Daniel, shows that there is forgivness in the old testament as well.
jbrains@sh.itjust.works
on 28 Sep 20:21
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It made sense to scare people into being reasonable. That was the Old Testament.
Once they acted less stupidly, it became safer to let people be as they are. That was the New Testament.
Fiction usually has highs and lows. Unfortunately all the authors wrote under pseudonyms, and multiple editors went through the plagiarized stories, some books were left out, and the consistency is just a mess. Not to mention the terrible translations.
Your local Library most certainly has better Fiction books that are very well written and highly entertaining.
bizarroland@lemmy.world
on 28 Sep 21:58
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He’s very much not.
I mean, using Jesus to recontextualize the Old Testament God definitely misses the mark. Jesus was here on a mission of mercy to cross the boundary between the sinful ape and the rising angel, and to bring as many people along with him as he could.
But once you’re grafted into the tree of Judaism through Christianity, you still have to abide by the rules of Judaism (with the exception that foods are no longer verboten or whatever).
Jesus was an incredibly stern man who was very rigid and inflexible on his views because he had the eternal viewpoint.
He refused to perform an exorcism for a Samaritan woman’s daughter who was half Jewish because she wasn’t full Jewish even though she was perfectly faithful until she made such a hue and cry that she publically shamed him into it.
He would snap at his own friends if they said the wrong thing or failed to understand something because he didn’t effectively communicate it to them so that they would understand at the same level he did.
And I don’t hold any of these actions against him, he was on what should be the most important mission in all of human history, right?
But the modern Christianity teachings of Christ where he’s like buddy Jesus and he’s just a happy-go-lucky, I love everyone peace, love, and harmony dude is absolutely not the way he’s actually represented in the Bible by his closest followers.
It was not out of the realm of normalcy for him to do things like beating the fuck out of a temple full of salespeople.
But once again, the sheer stress of his every moment, the fact that if he told a lie, if he felt lust, envy, greed, selfishness, anything that even approximated a sin, it would destroy all of humanity, and himself in the process, must have been so stressful, that in a way, I believe it was a mercy that he died so young.
If Jesus had had to stick it out into his 80s, I don’t know.
Maybe he would have fallen along the way.
bitcrafter@programming.dev
on 28 Sep 22:02
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Keep in mind that most likely the historical Jesus was just one of many apocalyptic preachers going around telling people that, within the lifetime of some present, God was going to come down and vanquish evil once and for all, so one had better be prepared and be on God’s good side when this happened. (Incidentally, the Romans probably could not have cared less about this; it was when they got word that he was claiming to be an earthly king–which may have been how Judas actually betrayed him–that they got seriously pissed and executed him because they had a zero tolerance policy for that kind of thing.)
You can see imminent apocalypse theme in the epistles where John Paul writes that there is no real point making big life changes like getting married since the world is going to end any day; amusingly, when this did not happen, they needed to start coming up with alternative policies, and so other letters start to set down rules which thematically contradict the earlier letters, but it turns out that there are other things about these letters that make them different too so I’m many cases they are considered to be forgeries. (Obviously this is an oversimplification of the academic research!)
(Also, it’s also worth noting that John Paul and the apostles had really different notions of what Jesus was all about, and part of the whole point of Acts is to paper over these differences and make it seem like they had all been past of one team all along.)
Finally, it is worth pointing out that there were a lot of texts floating around in the same genre as Revelation, so it was not all that unique and it almost did not make it’s way into the Bible, but the Church Fathers thought incorrectly that the John who wrote it was the same as the author of the Gospel of John; if they had known that these were two different Johns, then the Left Behind series would never have been written (amount other consequences).
So in conclusion, be very wary of trying to read a lot of significance into the New Testament as a whole because it was not a unified document written with single purpose.
Edit: Gah! I wrote John above when I meant Paul. How embarrassing!
TheJesusaurus@sh.itjust.works
on 28 Sep 23:33
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The old guys message wasn’t working anymore, the age of Pharos and godkings was done. You couldn’t just mass execute people anymore, everyone was really woke and PC.
The ruling class needed to revamp the religious arm of the machine that enslaves us all to get with the times or there were going to keep being problems.
You know how corporate media are, it’s easier to sell a sequel.
You know what, we’re going for a kind of apple vibe, we’re literally just going to call this thing “THE BOOK”.
Everyone will step into line after we nail a few to boards and stuff
The new testament is just old testament fan fiction. By that reasoning all these newer religions like Mormonism are fan fiction based on other fan fiction… and Im sure I dont have to tell anyone how loony tunes Mormonism is.
DreamAccountant@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 00:29
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It’s all fiction. Different fiction from different people at different points in history. It was even re-written at certain points in history, to conform with (then current) ideas and morality.
Why doesn’t it all make sense put together? It’s fiction written by many, very different types of people with completely different ideas.
StrongHorseWeakNeigh@piefed.social
on 29 Sep 00:49
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In the gnostic belief it is just two different gods.
Bakedtaint@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 00:50
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God a bitch
rikudou@lemmings.world
on 29 Sep 01:03
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Because it’s all fake. Everyone who actually reads it finds way too many inconsistencies.
That’s because it underwent some serious transformations across the millennia. Yahweh started as a storm god (basically Thor of Canaanite religion). Back then each nation in the religion had their own patron god and guess which god did the Israelites happen to have? Good old storm god Yahweh.
Over centuries the religion evolved and among Israelites Yahweh slowly took on attributes of other gods, mostly El (the all-father and creator of the universe) and Baal. First the other gods were degraded and monotheism was required, even though other gods were known to exist (you might remember the whole “jealous of other gods shtick” even though the rest of the Bible says there’s only one god).
Then the other gods were slowly edited out of the Bible, though some remains persevere (the aforementioned jealousy of other gods, some gods are even mentioned by name). If the gods couldn’t be removed because the story wouldn’t make sense, they were mostly changed into angels or other mythical beings.
It’s pretty funny rereading the Bible with this knowledge, you can clearly recognise which parts were the original Yahweh-the-storm-god and which used to be El-the-actual-creator by how he behaves in the story. When he’s all jealous, rageful and angry, it’s mostly based on the original Yahweh.
Anyway, that’s basically what Old Testament is - a bunch of edits of much older religions. IIRC Yahweh precedes even the Canaanite religion, so it’s a really old and grumpy storm god.
Now, New Testament is something else entirely, that was basically just slapped onto Judaism to have some legitimate and widely recognised vessel. Unlike the other edits, it didn’t evolve naturally over time, it was just violently slapped onto the Old Testament.
Fun fact: try finding Satan anywhere in the old testament. You won’t. Satan has been retrofit on multiple characters, but neither is mentioned directly as Satan, devil or really anything. The most famous one, the snake in the garden? Just a snake (which checks out with older religions where animals had a lot of influence). Then some morons come and say “actually, that snake was the grand adversary.” The concept of a grand adversary wasn’t really common in older religions, there usually wasn’t a Satan-like figure. Compare for example with Greek, Roman or Norse gods.
So, in conclusion, the Bible is a horrible mess of edits that were made so the religion would serve the needs of the time they were introduced in. IIRC the Israelites were having some trouble with their neighbours back when Yahweh got the promotion, so having a strong sense of nationality would really help in keeping the nation together. New Testament is even more obvious because it didn’t even really try to fit with the rest. They just tried to retrofit a few things and called it a day.
Well, this got longer than I planned, but I really like the topic and I don’t think you can do it justice in two paragraphs. If anyone’s interested, do some research, it’s honestly fascinating! For example, what’s the connection between Dionysus and Yahweh? That would be a homework for ya!
Cassanderer@thelemmy.club
on 29 Sep 07:27
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You just taught me as much bible as I have ever learned, last lesson being south park raining frogs.
I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 13:05
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Fun fact: try finding Satan anywhere in the old testament. You won’t.
What about the Book of Job? That was all about a bet between God and Satan to make Job suffer. Like, I’m sure he was still an edited deity from another religion. But he’s straight up referred to as Satan, right there in the Old Testament, which seems to be the exact thing you’re claiming can’t be found.
I meant the character, not the name, I perhaps worded it poorly. Satan in this context is meant in the “accuser” sense. As in it’s a role in a divine court, not an entity. Anyone could be the “satan” for the specific case, it’s not a person, but a role.
BuboScandiacus@mander.xyz
on 29 Sep 14:02
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I guess you’re referring to Dan McClellan. I’ve consumed a lot of his content via YouTube and his podcast.
It generally seems like a pretty impartial, critical analysis of the data, rather than speculation. But given that he has dominated my understanding of the data I recognize I’ve got a pretty big blindspot. Where would you point me to refute the view that the bible seems to be a source that has been heavily edited to remove its polytheistic origins?
I could point you to another video about the Yahweh pantheon by the same guy.
The Bible hasn’t been heavily edited. There isn’t much proof for this, notably, no original “unedited” documents. Yahweh was worshipped in a pantheon though, and the Bible records this. But it’s the writings of a monotheistic sect.
Numbers 25:1–3:
While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.
Judges 2:11-13 ESV
[11] And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. [12] And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. [13] They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth.
Judges 3:5-7 ESV
[5] So the people of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. [6] And their daughters they took to themselves for wives, and their own daughters they gave to their sons, and they served their gods. [7] And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth.
Judges 10:6 ESV
[6] The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. And they forsook the Lord and did not serve him.
The archaeology is basically just backing it up that there were instances of Yahweh being worshipped alongside other gods.
So the Bible hasn’t been edited- it documents this happening.
I know he blocks people if he decides they are not engaging productively. Like in the video you linked InspiringPhilosphy says that: when Jesus knew the doubters wondered “who can forgive sins but God”… InspiringPhilosphy insists that they were talking about God the father, but trinitarian belief didn’t exist at the time of the composition of the gospel of Mark right? I suspect Dan lost patience with the retrojection of Trinitarianism.
The Bible hasn’t been heavily edited. There isn’t much proof for this, notably, no original “unedited” documents.
These are the first three edits that come to mind: Pericope of the women caught in adultery is absent from all early manuscripts if the gospel of John. Johannine comma being absent from all Greek manuscripts (except for the forgery from like 1000 years later), short ending of Mark. Also the pseudepigraphal letters of Paul, are editing in a sense.
Yahweh was worshipped in a pantheon though, and the Bible records this. But it’s the writings of a monotheistic sect.
What is monotheism? Is it compatible with belief in the power of rival gods like in 2 Kings 3:27?
That recording in Mark is Jesus teaching Trinitarian belief.
I also said “heavily” edited. A story here in there added in isn’t heavy editing. The Johannine Comma existed for a period of time but isn’t in modern bibles except maybe a footnote. Even the woman caught in adultery comes with a disclaimer, as well as the ending in Mark.
2 Kings 3:27
Then he took his oldest son who was to reign in his place and offered him for a burnt offering on the wall. And there came great wrath against Israel. And they withdrew from him and returned to their own land.
[5] And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven.” [6] Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, [7] “Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” [8] And immediately Jesus, perceiving in his spirit that they thus questioned within themselves, said to them, “Why do you question these things in your hearts? [9] Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? [10] But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the paralytic— [11] “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” [12] And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”
By saying “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” was a divinity claim. Because the scribes were correct - only God can forgive sins.
Sin is a transgression against God. So only God is in a position to forgive that.
Psalm 51:4 ESV
[4] Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
This is written by David despite the fact he committed adultery.
2 Samuel 12:9, 13 ESV
[9] Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.
[13] David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.
If someone were to wrong me, would my child be able to forgive them? Nope. I’d have to forgive.
the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins
He says the son of man has the authority to forgive sins. If he is trying to explain that he is god, he is doing a terrible job. To me it seems like he is saying “you think only god can forgive sins, I’ll show you you’re wrong”
If someone were to wrong me, would my child be able to forgive them? Nope.
You’re saying that your omnipotent god can’t authorize someone to forgive sins on its behalf?
Whenever Jesus did directly claim to be God, they tried to kill Him.
John 8:58-59
Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple.
John 10:30-31
“I and the Father are one.” The Jews picked up stones again to stone him.
John 8 starts with the pericope of the women caught in adultery, one of the edits I mentioned…
Do you know what John 10 doesn’t say?
The father and I and the holy ghost are one, and three, but most of the time one. 3 persons, one being. Like why didn’t he try explaining it to someone that wouldn’t try to kill him, and that was writing things down…
It was explained to me by someone I know who I trust. I would have to ask them or go looking. Unfortunately I haven’t been in contact with them so that’s not much of an option for the foreseeable future. As I said it is my understanding,
I was led to believe this isn’t really something to argue about as there were entire books that no longer exist in modern versions. This was about 15 years ago and you are the first person to challenge that assertion I’ve made since then. (It isn’t something that has come up all that often to be fair)
The assertion I’ve generally heard is that it’s quite close. Like some things are worded differently to the masoretic text which we used before it (although other manuscripts were right anyway) but no doctrine changes.
You hear the likes of Bart Ehrman claim all these things about thousands of textual variants- most of them are simply spelling errors.
daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 29 Sep 07:24
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Why Hulk can defeat Wolverine in one comic but in the next one gets obliterated by someone weaker?
C0untWintermute@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 00:51
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Hulk’s power level has no upper limit. Wolverine can heal, sure. But if Hulk smashes him down to atoms, and smashes those atoms together, it’s gonna be a long healing process.
Never heard of that. Hulk is very strong for sure but wolverine is also “very strong”.I don’t think smashing something to atoms is only a matter of force It should also be abiut size
The old testament was all about acting a certain way and laws, laws, laws. The new testament says just try your best to love and respect each other. In theory anyways. Humans be humaning though and human nature trumps religion every time.
Full disclosure Im an atheist. The answer ive been given before is something along the lines of ‘after jesus died and did his whole thing, part of the deal with jesus dying is now mankind and god enter into a “new testament” and now the new one supersedes the old one’, but thats a very rough paraphrasing.
How any of this makes any sense is beyond me. God killed himself for himself to have himself stop hating us…?
KneeTitts@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 15:43
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How any of this makes any sense is beyond me
In religions nothing makes sense and thats the entire point. All religions are a basically a gullibility test, and they only want the ones who Fail that test to be in their cult. Its been like this for thousands of years.
There’s a Jesus quote about specifically this. Here’s the first search result.
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished” (Matthew 5:17–18).
That’s the convenient quote that conservatives can point to when they still want to enforce old testament shit. For instance, claiming to follow Leviticus when they’re being homophobic, rather than going with their homeboy’s forgiveness and loving the sinner.
Wow, this comment section… Yikes. Without getting deep in the weeds, testament means covenant. It was god’s new agreement with man. In layman’s terms, matthew 1:1 starts out like, “here’s the deal man”.
No argument here. Literally. I have no dog in any respective race. Figuratively.
And I would imagine that the community “no stupid questions” is not intended to be a repository of questions exclusively for SME’s. As I understand it is an open forum to ask unspecified questions judgement free. I would presume that since the question is judgement free, the responses should be too. But this comment section is seething with judgements that add very little to the conversation regarding the basic query from OP. So, thanks for the suggestion on Justin. I assume they have a lot to say and I’m sure others will find it invaluable. This is not something I have a significant interest in myself so I’ll take your word for it. Thanks.
No worries, learned to have to speak as if no one knows anything when I started running DnD games. It’s really easy to do when you know a subject as well as you seem to
Lol, DnD types are the test case of outliers. If nothing else, it taught me to never assume someone isn’t a player.
Like, one campaign from an OCD person where even the scents and smells were planned. And then a different campaign where the smells were not. Just a pure dichotomy of human prototypes.
Scents and smells? That is so far beyond my ability to prepare but that’s awesome for you(I assume!)
Ive found its a good baseline to start with until you can gauge who you are speaking to.
In connection with the comic XKCD - 10000,it has helped a socially awkward geek like me when speaking to people in meetings or on projects. Kind of follow the I said it outright the first time and emphasize it slightly the first time I use a phrase if I’m going to refer to it a few times and try to shorten it for convenience
Harbinger01173430@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 15:17
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God became terrified of us after the tower of babel, so he told his minions to write the new testament in a more positive way, so we wouldn’t seek to invade his realm and take control over creation in revenge for the atrocities he did to us.
Old Testament -> young people behavior.
New Testament -> old people behaviour.
( yeah I know there are exceptions )
Read again keeping that in mind. Read news to look for allegory. People don’t change at all.
homura1650@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 16:32
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Going well beyond my competencies to answer, but I think a lot of it comes down to monotheism changing the nature of god.
Judaism thinks of itself as starting monotheism; and that is largely true. However, the old testament is still littered with vestiges of it’s polytheistic origins.
If there are multiple God’s, then those God’s will come into conflict. That is simply the nature of human storytelling.
Looking at the old Testament, probably the most violent God has been was during exodus. In addition to freeing the Jews, he smite the Egyptians with 10 plagues, among which was the death of all firstborn sons.
For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the LORD. (Exodus 12:12)
Note the polytheistic origins of this story. God is not merely intervening in the Earthly affairs of us lowly humans. The Jewish God is fighting with the Egyptian gods. He does not have the luxury of being nice and good. Even if he wins this fight without resorting to such drastic measures; he still needs to do so to act as a deterrent against other gods acting against him. That is not so much a specific tactical calculation in this case, but the way humans tend to imagine polytheistic gods working (reflective, of course, of the way human conflict tends to work).
It probably doesn’t help that Yahweh was the god of War before becoming the only God.
By the time we get to the new testament, the situation is different. Beyond merely declaring that their god is the only God, the early Christians believed it, and had believed it for generations of storytelling. Their view of God had shed the vestiges of polytheism and morphed into what is truly possible under monotheism. God can be good because he lacks a peer rival. There is no narrative reason for God to be mean, because he can simply win any direct confrontation he faces.
We see similar dynamics play out in modern story telling. When we have vastly overpowered characters, the nature of the conflicts they get in us not fights. Perhaps they are trying to mediate between lesser parties. Perhaps they want to get something while respecting the rights and interests in weaker parties. A story where a vastly superior force wants something and just takes it is boring; so we don’t tell it.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 16:57
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I feel like y’all are forgetting about all the heinous shit God does in the new testament. Just because he’s not all up front fire and brimstone about it doesn’t mean he isn’t still an evil bastard in the new book
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
on 29 Sep 17:14
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Could you link something cause when I Google any combination of “new testament god angry/vengeful” I’m not getting allot besides religious sites sane washing it.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 18:30
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I’m not gonna link a source, but here’s some chapters from the good book itself:
Acts 5, God kills Ananias and Sapphira for withholding too much of their taxes. Seems like an overreaction for the new forgiving, loving, kind God.
Acts 12, God strikes down King Herod for accepting praise or some shit, which is similar to the egotistical, vengeful, immature punishments the God of the old testament frequently handed out.
Jesus (who is also God) throws some incredibly immature and irresponsible super-powered toddler tantrums, like in Mark 11 where he curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit when he was hungry, even though it was out of season, and in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus forces demons to possess a bunch (like, thousands) of pigs that just happen to be nearby, causing them all to cast themselves off a cliff and die. Jesus suggests/condones rape as a punishment in multiple instances, which is pretty fucked up, but is consistent with the whole “the sexual punishment fits the sexual “crime”” motif you see all throughout the New Testament. Jesus himself isn’t just the peace-loving, love-thy-neighbor hippie they try to portray him as - in Matthew 10 he says “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”, basically acknowledging and condoning religious violence. Very like, un-kumbayah of him, man.
Pick a page from Revelation, that whole book is basically just God bringing about the apocalyptic end times in increasingly violent and cruel ways, including killing people a second time by tossing them into a lake of fire for not being Christian enough to make it onto his nice list.
The continued existence of hell is a big one for me as well. You’d think a truly loving, kind, and forgiving God would get rid of the eternal damnation spirit torture prison. He also doesn’t end other universally-accepted-as-immoral practices like slavery, but instead doubles down on it in Ephesians, Colossians, and probably a bunch of other places. All in all, the God of the new testament is just as much of a bastard as in the old, he’s just hiding behind the introduction of his new son (who is also a bit of a bastard, but maybe a tad less so, so people accept it) and the weird blood magic ritual sacrifice storyline.
Edit: my claim that the God of the new testament is unchanged from the one in the old is also supported by scripture - James 1 and Hebrews 13 say as much, and even Jesus says he’s not coming to shake things up, that all the old laws (including the fire and brimstone ones) still apply in Matthew 5.
YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today
on 29 Sep 21:29
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I’ve been out of the church for a while but always imagined Jesus as a current day socialist with feeding the poor & “how you treat the least of me…” stuff. Shame that book is so contradictory.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
on 29 Sep 21:46
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The entire thing is contradictory, on purpose, to give people excuses to commit atrocities in the name of their “kind and loving” God
Jesus’ instructions on divorce are pretty unJesus like.
Slightly off topic but DAE find it convenient that Jesus’ first lecture to his new disciples was about divorce? Like hey, guys. Forget fishing and making money and handling business, and dont worry about your wives anymore.
Let’s not forget that prior to Jesus any punishments were over when you died. Permanent Hell was a new testament thing.
Redditmodstouchgrass@lemmy.zip
on 29 Sep 17:05
nextcollapse
My take is that it’s a reflection of the Israelite people. It’s easy to be all fire and brimstone when you can back it up with military force. Suspiciously that all went away after they got conquered…
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world
on 29 Sep 17:39
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That’s simply not true. God talks more about Hell in the New Testament than He does in the old testament. He also is forgiving in the old (Exodus 34:7, Psalm 103:12, Psalm 86:5)
GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 15:27
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There are no justifications of slavery in the New Testament
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
on 30 Sep 18:29
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Just blanket acceptance with zero condemnation of the practice. It even includes moral guidelines like how to beat your human property without going to hell…
GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 19:32
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Just blanket acceptance with zero condemnation of the practice.
Right, so no justifications as you erroneously said
It even includes moral guidelines like how to beat your human property without going to hell…
Can you tell me the verse where this is in the NT? I’m only familiar with this in the Old Testament
Justifications, no, just emphasizes that slaves just need to deal with it even if their owner beats them. Could have said to not own slaves, but nope, passively endorses/normalizes slavery.
GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
on 01 Oct 07:11
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1 Corinthians 7:21-23 AMP
[21] Were you a slave when you were called? Do not worry about that [since your status as a believer is equal to that of a freeborn believer]; but if you are able to gain your freedom, do that. [22] For he who was a slave when he was called in the Lord is a freedman of the Lord, likewise he who was free when he was called is a slave of Christ. [23] You were bought with a price [a precious price paid by Christ]; do not become slaves to men [but to Christ].
The Bible identifies slavery as a reality and teaches people how to deal with their situation. That’s what Chrisianity IS. Teaching Christians how to deal with their situation emphasizing faith in God as pivotal because this world ultimately doesn’t matter. The Bible is not a revolutionary book, that gives them a guide on how to rise up against the slave owning class. Jesus wasn’t Marx.
If you are interested in critiquing the Bible you should consider reading up on it. Fwiw I’m not even Christian, but i also don’t like it when atheists make poor arguments trying to “debunk” the Bible. There are much easier points to stand behind than “The NT endorses slavery” which isn’t as clear cut as the old testament.
How about eternal torture for something as petty as non belief? Sounds pretty manipulative, insecure, and evil to me.
bathing_in_bismuth@sh.itjust.works
on 30 Sep 16:00
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“Eternal Torture”, as a concept, was invented by Catholics in the dark ages.
The lake of fire and brimstone is eternal torture. If you are not satan, its the lake of fire what is meant. It is eternal separation from God. The God that made you and Creation. To be separated from Him is to live life without living, eternally without any life. Eternal darkness. To say, without all the good the universe has to offer. You’re left with nothing but the worst humanity, the spiritual world and the universe has to offer. And it is called the second death, its eternal and not long sleepy rest death like when your earthly body ceases.
The question was about the new testament. Its literally described in the books of Matthew/Mark and literally says not believing in god is a worth sin of hell in John/Thessalonians.
I also agree eternal torture was made up. I think it was all made up.
blockheadjt@sh.itjust.works
on 30 Sep 06:33
nextcollapse
Because the people who wrote the old testament wanted to scare people into subservience
And those who wrote the new testament thought positive reinforcement was better
Because they’re completely different gods. The old testament is only a part of christianity because in order to gain some legitimacy for their early church, they decided that their new god must be the same dude as the the god of the people that they were living among.
But in reality, they are very different books, written in very different times, by two very different religious cultures.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 13:30
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Yeah, they are “very different books” each individually comprised of “very different books,” and all of the other books that eventually got left out are a lot of the best parts. I haven’t read them, but it feels like how my friend used to describe the Star Wars extended universe books.
It started as a god among other equally powerful and important gods and was later turned (by the writers) into the most important god.
Then it turned into god and satan as being similar in power.
Nowadays, the majority of church people flip the switch whenever they want a bi-theism (god vs satan) or a monotheism (god is all powerful and even satan can’t act with god’s explicit orders).
Similar thing with free will.
You have free will until you don’t have and you have no free will until it is convenient to say you actually have.
maxxadrenaline@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 13:48
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Actually if you read the book of revelations jesus sends the whole planet to hell except 7 cities that he told people to go to. he really lays into the sinners.
GrammarPolice@lemmy.world
on 30 Sep 14:58
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Because the God of the old testament is the demiurge…
And Christ died in the cross to teach us (only those who have a fragment of the divine) how to ascend to perfection and get out of the Demiurge’s hand.
Btw, those who don’t have a fragment of the divine are just NPC (just like myself who am also an NPC)
The reason is because those texts are much older, and that was the style of religion practiced back then. Most God stories and stories about Gods in that period were like it. Most city states and tribal states had their own Gods that reflected them, and conflicts were gravely exaggerated. Also literally everything that happened in that state were an attribute or reflection of that particular God. With stories of how that attribute came to be, which reflected back in the people and in that way religion was a complex social interaction.
The people who wrote the stories we now know as the old Testament didnt write them as a part of a bible. These were stories of people who were taken out of their states and captured. Forced to live outside their land, but they took their God with them. Who became this omnipresent God that would lead people back to a promised land. Including all the complex social interaction people had with their mostly oral religious stories and traditions.
And it’s the continued tradition that lead to the formation of religious scholarship and the idea that Gods could be of the earth and not just of a state. Which brought about new thoughts, new traditions, new religious complexity written down in the New Testament. Which lead to the desire to make religious books encapsulating all of religious thought.
And only much later came literalism, the mistake to take everything in the Bible literal. which sparked the formation of atheism as we know it today.
Bronzebeard@lemmy.zip
on 30 Sep 18:26
nextcollapse
Because Yahweh was originally a lesser Canaanite deity of war and destructive storms, while his counterpart, Baal, was all about gentle restorative rains. Part of that population moved around, and took him to be their primary deity when they broke off. He eventually merged with El.
Then that shit for further rehashed a few millennia later to soften his image.
God is not about forgiveness and such in the New Testament. That’s a retcon by later Christians to make it more palatable.
He preached violence:
Matthew 10:34: Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
He was just as happy to send people to hell:
Matthew 13:41-42: The Son of man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity; And shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Every single horrible decree in the Old Testament still applies in the new (despite modern Christians trying to redefine what ‘fulfil’ means):
Matthew 5:17-18: Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
That’s last one includes all the slavery, rape, genocide, etc. Jesus could have spoken out against those things, but instead he said all those judgements were just and should be continued.
Matthew 10:21: And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death.
Pretty violent, and not very loving.
And let’s not forget the revelations, in which Jesus will doom billions of people to a horrific existence followed by eternal hellfire, not for doing wrong things, but merely for not being devoted to him. Even the devout and righteous of other religions, and even babies who haven’t had the chance to sin.
Remember, Jesus is the same god as in the Old Testament – if god is eternal and unchanging (which the Bible says he is), he is literally the same entity who committed atrocities before he decided to wear human skin and sacrifice himself to himself.
threaded - newest
Not a particularly informed comment, but I always figured because people started getting scared of the Christian god, so they started turning towards other religions. As a consequence, the Christian church needed to figure out how to make Christianity a bit more approachable, so the new testament and forgiveness were created.
There were no Christian before Christ. They were Jews, as was Jesus.
its almost like the whole thing is an amalgam of thousands of texts edited and repurposed across thousands of years by human beings with various motivations.
The religion of the Israelites wasn’t even monotheistic at first. Yahweh was one of many gods.
And Christianity isn’t technically monotheistic either, as it has the trinity of God, Christ, and the Spooky Spirit… errrm… I mean Holy Ghost.
And trinitarianism specifically is basically just a reason to wage wars. I was raised in a trinitarian denomination and I still mostly consider myself Christian but I can't reconcile my morals with waging literal wars over fucking metaphysics.
It really is tho. The 3 are the same thing. Different parts/names of one entity. Probably wasn’t originally, but def is now
“That’s Modalism, Patrick!”
Loved that video until I looked at some of the creators other videos.
Depending on the exact denomination of Christian. There is no big difference between how many christians view satan and how polytheistic religions view some of the less nice gods.
Does not make sense to me, but that bit was not doctrine until 350 ad.
That’s tritheism, Patrick!
Also, he was a war god.
source?
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
Wikipedia isn’t a source
Sloth is a sin
repositorio.uca.edu.ar/handle/123456789/15051
So some guy has an alternative theory
That’s because the israelites were the worshippers of Yahweh
Yeah see this is how I know you’re not serious. The author of that article isn’t “some guy”, he’s an incredibly respected and accomplished historian and archaeologist, specializing in ancient near-east civilizations. And you couldn’t be bothered to read past the first paragraph. You don’t want to have an actual discussion about this.
I read all there was contained on the list. He admits it is literally just a theory
You’re either being obtuse or you don’t understand how science works if you think “he says it’s just a theory” is a gotcha
This is history. History works different than other sciences. You cannot just claim that it’s common knowledge/scholarly accepted that yahweh originated in a pantheon because one scholar puts forward a theory on it, which most scholars reject (but they get dismissed because they are “biased”)
History isn’t replicable and observable like chemistry, physics or biology
Absolutely, definitely, totally, 100% incorrect. Just because I only provided one source does not mean that that’s the only source available claiming that Yaweh originated in a pantheon. To suggest that is laughably disingenuous, and more proof that you’re not approaching this discussion seriously or with honesty.
Your close-minded definition of “history” isn’t, because it doesn’t allow you to update and believe new things based on new scientific discoveries and evidence. It’s stagnant, stuck in the past, rigid, and unwilling to change.
Wikipedia is a source of sources. You can scroll down to the bottom of the damn page and view the original sources if you really need the originals. No, you’re just using this as an excuse. Fuck off. Everyone can see right through this.
Wikipedia is policed by radical jobless atheists like tgeorgescu who deliberately delete Christian sources
Lol. Meanwhile here you are, policing what people provide as evidence because you only accept something that supports your worldview. You should be a wiki moderator apparently… oh wait, they actually have standards.
Wikipedia isn’t a source. A whole Wikipedia article doesn’t back up your claim.
Wikipedia is a source, even in academics. It isn’t a primary source. If you’re going to be pedantic, you could at least have the decency to be correct.
Repeating this doesn’t actually address anything I said though. Presumably you can’t actually engage with what was said because you have no standing.
source?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahwism
wikipedia isn’t a source
Sorry professor
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
You should have just looked this up yourself. It’s going to be the first result in most search engines.
wikipedia isn’t a source
Then check the sources listed under that wiki article.
If you couldn’t be bothered to look up something as simple and undisputed as this, then it’s really silly to make a stand with “Wikipedia isn’t a source”, it just makes you look like a bad troll.
What do you mean “undisputed”. The whole pantheon thing is a historical reconstructed theory, not a fact. You’d find millions of people who’d dispute a claim as absurd as pre-messianic Judaism not originally being monotheistic.
Now yes, the israelites have practiced polytheism several times. The Bible records this. But the Christian religion has always been monotheistic.
Yep, undisputed. Except by religious zealots who resort to bad faith arguments when some of their cultist beliefs are not accepted as fact by non believers, but on those subjects, those people aren’t taken seriously by anyone except others from their cult, so yes, pretty much undisputed.
You’re acting as if there’s actually solid evidence for this theory. There really isn’t. We know polytheism existed, that doesn’t mean it was necessarily the origin. Heck, there are even hindus today that claim to worship Jesus. Does that mean that Jesus originated in Hinduism? No.
That isn’t even remotely analogous to this situation.
One easy way to know it’s the origin is to recognize that every religion is an evolution of other religions on the area. The others are polytheistic. It would only be reasonable to assume Judaism originated from the same practice, and we can observe similarities between Judaism and local religions of the time and find they share some aspects, implying they have the same origin. That origin being polytheistic.
And yet they persist, so it’s almost like it’s not quite that simple either, eh? Funny how the devil stays in the details, no matter which side you lean
absolutely correct. humans have been scamming humans since inception, and the best methods last the longest.
♥️
The book of Job is literally written in different parts in entirely different dialects that were spoken hundreds of years apart. The opening and ending is from the older dialect, and written much like a folktale. The middle is newer and written much more like an epic poem.
Even the a single book of the Bible comes from numerous sources.
Not just single books. Single chapters.
Maybe because JC was a great guy and a lot of people believed in what he had to say. So, in order to benefit from his fame and gain the trust of his past and potential future followers, there was a gathering a hundred or so years after his death where they chose suitable accounts of his life to include in the book called the new testament. Accounts like the ones later found in the Nag Hammadhi texts and “gnostic gospels” were excluded because they undermined the authoritiy of the church and the power of priests to be the only ones to interpret the will of God.
The simple answer is that the gospel wasn’t working as well as it had been, so they had to change it up to continue attracting people. Cults are basically popularity contests, and you can’t win if you’re scaring everyone away.
I guess they did some market research between the two testaments
“nobody shares my kinks”
I have studied this topic academically, a little bit. My answer:
I like this reasoning a lot, however:
#2. In terms of there being a real-life Y’shua, AFAIK it’s hard to know if such a person ever really existed in the first place, or if they were in fact more of an amalgamated ‘King Arthur’ / ‘Robin Hood’ type, very much inspired by earlier legends & mythology, and greatly elaborated upon in later years, via oral traditions, before finally being documented hither & tither by various writers scattered around the region.
AFAIK there is no archeological evidence whatsoever for that exact person’s existence, and no contemporaneous writing from the time, describing his life.
Which is fine as far as it goes, yet does very little if anything to address the body of the above concerns.
While “Jesus” likely had something to do with an actual person who once lived, nailing down the details of his life and history seems highly problematic from a scholarly & historical POV, and as for embellishment, amalgamation and distortion… all such things are highly possible, and even highly likely, AFAIK.
You are thinking about this the wrong way. From the scraps of information that we do have, which includes volumes of work by Jesus’s followers, there are two extremes one could take: we know absolutely nothing about Jesus or whether he even existed, or we know absolutely everything about Jesus. I agree that the later extreme is wrongheaded, but surely treating it as a binary choice so that the only other possibility is that we can say nothing at all about Jesus is also wrongheaded.
You might argue reasonably, of course, that his followers cannot be trusted, so we can learn nothing from their writings. This is not true, however, because if nothing else we can learn from the editorial choices that they made; for example, when a Gospel goes out of is way to explain a detail that would have been embarrassing to contemporaries, this actually provides potential evidence that this detail was true and widely known at the time so that it needed to be explained, because otherwise it would just have been left out.
At the end of the day, scholarship is essentially about weighing probabilities rather than certainties, and good scholars do not pretend otherwise.
I consider that a terrible way of framing things, and then to make matters worse, you propose only a binary set of conclusions.
Please do better then that if you want to debate fairly.
Thank you.
It must be very convenient to be able to declare victory in a discussion without hanging to present an actual argument. 😉
Except for the fact that… I did indeed present multiple arguments, and the fact that at no point did I ‘signal victory?’
EDIT: Ruh-roh, downvotes! :D
But then you’re making up new standards of evidence for historical characters, and only applying them to Jesus.
All evidence points to a jew who, under roman occupation, organized a political and religious movement around his person with a message so powerful that it immediately started replicating. Otherwise, how can we explain the sudden outflow of missionaries from Galilee ? Whose message were they spreading, which travelled as far as Asia and Ethiopia with relative unity and consistence ? What reason do we have to doubt that a revolutionary mystical prophet such as Jesus existed (they were legion at the time in that region), and why should we subscribe to some more exotic, laborious explaination ?
The question is not whether Jesus’ story was embellished and distorted, because it was, with 100% certainty. But then that’s true of everything we know from that time period. We have 0 archeological evidence of most historical characters existence, only hearsay and unreliable testimony. But we don’t doubt their existence because the alternative would have to be far fetched and contrived to fit the evidence.
Absolutely false, right from the get-go, Bob.
(hmm, “gecko..?,” but anyway)
The whole point of what I said above is to understand things from an historians and archeologists’ POV. You know– the ones who generally try their best to strictly adhere to known facts & reality?
Such criteria is commonly applied to virtually EVERY significant figure in history, Bob. So then, are you actually (haha) asking for a special exception for someone possibly known as Y’shua ben Josef during his lifetime, who later got turned in to an almost impossibly, legendary figure by political, financial and religious institutions…?
You know, that “Jesus Christ” figure, later whitewashed in to being a tall, pale Euro-type dude, and not the actual short, Semitic dude which he almost certainly was. (if he ever existed in the first place)
I sure hope not, anyway, because that would not be the “Bob” we all know and love.
That is simply not true. There’s a lot of historical figures from Antiquity for whom we have zero archeological evidence, it’s kind of the norm in fact. Literary evidence is fine if it can be corroborated from multiple independent sources. If we go by your standards then Socrates and Pythagoras are not historical figures, neither is Tacitus, or Hannibal, or most people who were not kings and did not have steles or coin to their name.
A couple centuries before his embellishment by the roman state, the so-called Jesus movement was flourishing and started to expand in pretty much every direction. The existence of this movement is abundantly attested in independent sources from very distant places.
Are you saying this movement did not exist and the sources that attest to it are not reliable ? Are you saying there was a movement but it wasn’t founded by a guy named Y’shua ben Josef from Galilee ? Why would that be ? Do you think they lied, or forgot the name and origin of their founder ? I understand the idea but what would be the point, and how would those various sub-groups, some of which were very distant geographically, have coordinated their lie so perfectly ?
At one point Okham’s razor says the most probable thing is that a guy named Y’shua from Galilee did indeed start a religious movement. It’s happened before, it’s happened again, why would this specific occurrence need an esoteric explanation ?
Looks like you tried to reply to my actual response, and then sort of went all Gonzo-weird ness for motivational purposes?
Well, HELLO THERE, fellow freakazoid!
(I mean, that’s what the point is here, right..?)
I honestly don’t understand the point here and your sarcastic mode makes the whole experience tedious and confusing.
You seem to be arguing that Jesus shouldn’t be considered a historical figure, for reasons that somehow do not apply to other historical figures, but you don’t wish to engage with actual discussion on the matter. I’m at a loss here and suspect you may be experiencing a critical shortage of slack.
Again– a very whitewashed theory.
So what you’re telling me there is that you didn’t actually read it there, Bob?
Wow, it is as if you need something to be true, in the deepest sense, in order to validate your life?
Dude– and THAT’S the part I always try to confirm. Live your life!
Enjoy our silly, mutual existence, if you can!
WE ARE HERE F0R A LITTLE WHILE, and also we like our animal friends et al.
The ride will be over soon, my friend. So let’s enjoy…
Yeah well fuck those platitudes you must have me mistaken for a 13 year old on TikTok.
I don’t see how baiting a conversation then refusing to partake in it is “living your life” but hey good job Kerouac you’ve got this
Hahaha… now there you go!
Now THAT’S the way we do things, mate! XD
Haha, and later on, some group of assholes tried to make hay with the original guy… to the extent that whatever he might have actually said (remember the Gnostics?) to the message of bullshit “Christianity?”
I think you may have personal feelings against christianity mixed up with the historical stuff and it doesn’t make for interesting discourse.
Sorry for giving that impression, mssr.
What I know for sure is that absolutely everyone in life forms a belief system in order to sort out reality.
Me, it’s not so much that I dislike ‘Christians’ in any particular way, as much as the fact that I don’t like seeing others push people around via their ‘wrong’ beliefs, and so forth…
Hey, at least you tried! 😉
(And don’t think too harshly of the other poster; we were all 14 once, after all!)
I think that it is worth noting that the person who did most of the successful evangelizing in the beginning that led to the explosion of the movement was actually Paul, who had his own message that wasn’t quite the same as Jesus’s apostles–in fact, he started spreading the message without talking to them first because he figured that he already knew everything that he needed to know, which led to conflict that required Acts to work really hard to make it seem like they were all on the same side all along.
But regardless, it is peculiar that people seem to think that starting a widely successful cult is a particularly hard thing to do if the founder has enough charisma (and luck), given that all you have to do is look around at the numerous modern examples. For example, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness was founded in 1966 by a guy banging drums in New York, and has since grown into a huge movement with hundreds of dedicated temples. So it is far more plausible that this is what happened in the case of Christianity than that some other more complicated process synthesizing the existence of a fake founder.
Yeah i don’t understand what’s so controversial here. This time and place was home to a million apocalyptic militant movements, and Jesus’s just was the most successful of his generation.
Whoops; apologies.
I borked up my last reply-comment, and so deleted that, and re-created from scratch.
Maybe he existed… but only as a common human and all the supernatural things were added later.
As I see it, there’s pretty much a landslide of evidence, from almost every studied angle, that points to what you just postulated.
Oooohhhh
I mean, yes, obviously. It all of a sudden makes the other commenter’s steadfast insistence against me make sense, if they thought that I meant this person actually existed who could do real life magic tricks and came back from the dead and he still watches to see if you’re masturbating.
Yes, I was talking about the historical figure, not the superhero. I thought that went without saying but maybe not.
(Edit: What the heck, their original argument is clearly saying that they think there’s no evidence that the historical figure existed. But whatever, we got there in the end, I guess.)
Dude, I did nothing of the kind.
Wow, it’s almost like you managed to copy-paste the known fact that the body of Christian scholars agrees that someone existed, later known as “Jesus,” and then seemingly couldn’t deal with a rebuttal upon your notion of ‘that clearing up everything.’
So now you’re getting weird about the fact that I had to re-do my comment, simply because I responded to the wrong commenter at the time? So, did not see my rebuttal at all? Did you not see my attempt to explain that?
Go ahead, tho– consider this your opportunity to fairly reply to what I said above. Sound good?
EDIT: Hahaha, instant downvote!
Yeah, I realized after that you were talking about archaeology up in your original reply to me, not in the pre-editing version of some other comment. Sorry about that, I had already edited my comment to take out the accusation (within 5 minutes of originally posting it.)
I pretty much agree with this comment of yours. I have absolutely no reason why that would mean we have to continue to bicker. I do think that comment is pretty firmly in contradiction to your earlier statements ("King Arthur / Robin Hood"), but whatever, I see no profit at all in us having a dispute about that part of it.
Yes, but why are we ‘bickering’ in the first place, and why the need to accuse me of re-editing a comment? (which never happened)
What you are seemingly trying to tell me here, “PhilipTheBucket,” is that you’re not really able to countenance the actual arguments I’m making above.
Now would you say that’s a fair or unfair statement? If unfair, could you give me some facts & reality-based reasons as to why not?
You edited this comment after I posted my reply to it which talked about archaeology. I thought you’d edited the comment to remove mention of archaeology, but I was wrong, that mention came from this comment of yours.
But then, I realized I’d been wrong, and retracted the wrong thing I’d said, and apologized about it. Not sure how you even managed to see my wrong accusation within the ~2 minutes or whatever that it was on Lemmy, but in any case, my bad.
I don’t know how to upload an image within a comment in Piefed. Presumably it’s not that hard and I’m just thick. Anyway, please in the meantime enjoy this ASCII art of a sea lion:
Congratulations!
Not only do you manufacture stuff that never happened, but you’re about as disingenuous a religious creep as I’ve ever encountered, so far upon the FV.
Hehe, the ‘donkey-ears’ fit well, amirite?
For the record, the downvote was from me, and it was because you are being an ass.
Do you mean, being just like you… my fellow freakazoid? :D
Hahaha, nice!
Lets consider that jesus did exist and did someone have a cure for leprosy. Why didn’t he give that cure to everyone??? We still have leprosy today, kinda proves he didnt have the cure. But again lets say he did and he only gave it to a couple people, not a very godly thing to do, to withhold that cure from the entirety of humanity.
Maybe he cured a strong headache (maybe some herbal remedy) but they grew the anecdote and he ended up “curing leprosy”.
One Theory I like is that the Jesus we know is an amalgamation of multiple Messiah figures that were walking around around that time, one of them was the basis for the religion and then other stories about those other Messiahs were folded in over the years
Almost like every lauded, ‘perfect’ figure across history?
In fact, “The Messiah” is a concept that certainly goes back long before some dude allegedly named “Y’shua” was branded that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah
Now, modern humans being ~300Kyrs old, I would guess that it’s not just an ancient fixation, but even endemic to our very species… our very way of hoping and wanting and longing for a return to ‘the good times,’ directly embodied via mythological figure.
Mais non, mon ami..?
yaaa cept for the fact that most if not all the things ‘jeebus’ supposedly said were said in older books already. So there is nothing new in the new testament, they stole all of it from older books like code of hammurabi and then invented a character to say the things.
The Old Testament is a bunch of books, letters, poems, historical and legal documents. That when read tell the story of the Jews and their relationship with God and the world over a couple of thousand years. They reflect the culture in which they were written. Many of the documents were written during wars where the writer is convinced God is on their side. There are many prophesies especially in Isaiah which point to Jesus. So when Jesus arrives and fulfills the prophesies some of the Jews follow Jesus but many powerful leaders are awaiting a different, more normal king figure and they are comfortable as they are so choose not to follow. The New Testament is written in a time of relative stability during the longtime invasion by the romans. The writers of those letters and books, some of whom are eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. (Almost unique in historical documents) take a different stance to who God is. But they don’t all agree. Basically Bible means library.
A nitpick, none of the gospel writers were eyewitnesses, the documents were written long after Jesus was gone. They are interpretations of stories passed down, and all four gospels have different takes on events. So the phrase "gospel truth" is very ironic in its definition.
Not only that, Jesus doesn't fit the requirements for the prophesied Jewish Messiah, to the best of my understanding. He may well be the Christian Messiah, but no one else is under any obligation to accept or reject anyone else's religious beliefs.
Matthew and John were written by eyewitnesses.
Most modern scholars think that none of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses.
It’s a little bit academic (har har) anyway, since they all went through so many layers of translation often by people with specific agendas that the modern English versions can’t really claim to be “authentic” to the originals anyway, but regardless of that they almost certainly weren’t written by those specific disciples of Jesus (even if you accept the events described in them as semi-authentic.)
Relative stability? Buddy I don’t know where the hell you got that notion from. When was it stable exactly? During the Jewish revolt? That extremely bloody time?
You know what relative means?
Do you know what complete devastation of an entire province means?
Relatively.
Buddy you don’t have to keep stanning for somebody who’s just wrong about history.
Stanning?
Why don’t you look it up? At the same time you can go go ahead and look up why the time period we’re talking about was extremely unstable. That same instability largely why Christianity comes about in the first place.
Jesus did not fulfill prophecy in any confirmable way, it seems like some of the contradictions between the scriptures exist because different authors made up new stories to attempt to have jesus fulfill prophecy.
Figuring out which, if any, of the gospel stories are true is an impossible task.
As a wise man once said. “Well that’s just like, your opinion man”
El Duderino
Sure.
Everyone’s got an opinion, just some of them match the facts.
There are more than a few disrespectful answers here, but if any of these ppl talked to someone who honestly believed, they’d be more inclined to tell you to investigate the new covenant
Am a Christian atheist ftr–just feels bad to see so many accept convenient lies over the honest truths of a worthwhile series of stories (wether they factually happened is of little to no value in the pursuit of truth, no?)
Just to clarify - so you don't believe in any of the supernatural stuff and are just about the better teachings of Jesus? Aka a Jefferson bible take?
Correct. It feels beyond a little silly to pretend there is any kind of entity in control or overlooking the unfolding of events that is reality or what we mean by reality. I will admit, the ‘god in process’ theories are fun and maybe insightful to some degree but nothing worth putting faith in just yet.
I’ve heard of this, but I just now researched it. Seems interesting, but it is certainly not what I’m speaking to at all afaict
The old testament is essentially Judaism which is an ethnic religion. There is no marketing needed because it is a religion for a specific group of people from a theoretical single lineage. There is no need for God to be accepting or patient since the goal appears to be unify and keep people under control during times of great strife.
Christianity is a universal religion ie. it tries to create new followers. If you’re a religion that is trying to grow your following, you need to have a message of openness and acceptance.
It’s because the Old Testament is actually just the Torah, rearranged and edited to fit the beliefs of what was once a sect of Judaism. That sect branched off when they decided that Jesus Christ was their Messiah, then progressively became more open and split away from the rest of Judaism and became their own religion.
That might be a bit oversimplified, but that’s really the gist of it. Jesus made a new covenant with god, which was meant to replace the old one, chronicled in the New Testament; but the old covenant was kept in as background, becoming the Old Testament.
I was reading a scholar’s book and one of her central themes was that there are clearly two gods in the Bible. It was really dry reading, couldn’t finish.
Some argue that there are even more! I’m definitely not an expert on this one, but I remember something about Yahweh being the god of some town or village that then somehow got absorbed into the old testament god when tribes and traditions consolidated, and then new testament god is just a completely different animal. I’m probably getting something wrong, so don’t quote me.
Seems clear early Jews believed in multiple gods. There’s more than a couple passages in the Old Testament talking about gods, plural. I would think singular vs. plural would make the translations, and even if you changed the passage to singular god, it wouldn’t make sense or need to be stated.
“You shall have no other gods before me.”, comes to mind.
You might find my top level comment on this post interesting.
Aw fuck yeah, that’s what I like to see. Thanks for writing that up friend. 👊
the only "um akshually" I would even bother adding to this is that the Torah / Pentateuch is just the first five books of the Tanakh, which is the best / closest approximation of books that later became the Christian old testament. The Tanakh also includes the Prophets (Nevi'im), and the Writings (Ketuvim). There's also a few books in there that the council of Nicaea (the council of og old Catholic dudes who decided which books were true or not) chose not to include. Also relevant is the Septuagint which was the first translation from Hebrew into a mainstream language (which at the time was Koine Greek) which is relevant because that specific translation has had a profound effect on translations since, which really hammers in that concept of "a translation of a translation of a translation of-"
Yeahhhh… I took a class on the history of the Bible, but that was about a decade ago, so I’m spotty on some of the details. Thanks for fleshing it out, though - I knew my take was probably missing something!
I've been getting back into Christianity lately for a variety of reasons but I've also been doing a lot of research into the history and philosophy and whatnot and reconciling:
vs
and honestly it's actually been really interesting from an academic perspective as well. It's a fascinating combination of history, language, culture, and even what influences it's had on the sciences over time like I recently wound up learning some stuff about early geometry and the ways metaphysical interpretation of mathmetical concepts have affected the architecture of churches.
and that actually led me to creating this gif of how Metatron's Cube is constructed using basic geometric concepts with a compass and straightedge. The animated circles were specifically programmed in FMS logo it was a really fun way to spend my weekend.
marcionite-scripture.info/Marcionite_Bible.htm
This is one of the reasons Gnosticism exists. In the gnostic interpretation the God of the old testament was the demiurge, while the snake is identified with God or Jesus.
It depends where you read. There is fire and brimstone in the new testament. Revelation is a book that doesn’t hold back and we see a wrothful God of judgment. But then there stories of Josiph and his brothers, or the book of Daniel, shows that there is forgivness in the old testament as well.
It made sense to scare people into being reasonable. That was the Old Testament.
Once they acted less stupidly, it became safer to let people be as they are. That was the New Testament.
If you think the old testament rules are reasonable ones, I hope you are never in charge of any person, place, organisation or animal.
Fiction usually has highs and lows. Unfortunately all the authors wrote under pseudonyms, and multiple editors went through the plagiarized stories, some books were left out, and the consistency is just a mess. Not to mention the terrible translations.
Your local Library most certainly has better Fiction books that are very well written and highly entertaining.
He’s very much not.
I mean, using Jesus to recontextualize the Old Testament God definitely misses the mark. Jesus was here on a mission of mercy to cross the boundary between the sinful ape and the rising angel, and to bring as many people along with him as he could.
But once you’re grafted into the tree of Judaism through Christianity, you still have to abide by the rules of Judaism (with the exception that foods are no longer verboten or whatever).
Jesus was an incredibly stern man who was very rigid and inflexible on his views because he had the eternal viewpoint.
He refused to perform an exorcism for a Samaritan woman’s daughter who was half Jewish because she wasn’t full Jewish even though she was perfectly faithful until she made such a hue and cry that she publically shamed him into it.
He would snap at his own friends if they said the wrong thing or failed to understand something because he didn’t effectively communicate it to them so that they would understand at the same level he did.
And I don’t hold any of these actions against him, he was on what should be the most important mission in all of human history, right?
But the modern Christianity teachings of Christ where he’s like buddy Jesus and he’s just a happy-go-lucky, I love everyone peace, love, and harmony dude is absolutely not the way he’s actually represented in the Bible by his closest followers.
It was not out of the realm of normalcy for him to do things like beating the fuck out of a temple full of salespeople.
But once again, the sheer stress of his every moment, the fact that if he told a lie, if he felt lust, envy, greed, selfishness, anything that even approximated a sin, it would destroy all of humanity, and himself in the process, must have been so stressful, that in a way, I believe it was a mercy that he died so young.
If Jesus had had to stick it out into his 80s, I don’t know.
Maybe he would have fallen along the way.
Keep in mind that most likely the historical Jesus was just one of many apocalyptic preachers going around telling people that, within the lifetime of some present, God was going to come down and vanquish evil once and for all, so one had better be prepared and be on God’s good side when this happened. (Incidentally, the Romans probably could not have cared less about this; it was when they got word that he was claiming to be an earthly king–which may have been how Judas actually betrayed him–that they got seriously pissed and executed him because they had a zero tolerance policy for that kind of thing.)
You can see imminent apocalypse theme in the epistles where
JohnPaul writes that there is no real point making big life changes like getting married since the world is going to end any day; amusingly, when this did not happen, they needed to start coming up with alternative policies, and so other letters start to set down rules which thematically contradict the earlier letters, but it turns out that there are other things about these letters that make them different too so I’m many cases they are considered to be forgeries. (Obviously this is an oversimplification of the academic research!)(Also, it’s also worth noting that
JohnPaul and the apostles had really different notions of what Jesus was all about, and part of the whole point of Acts is to paper over these differences and make it seem like they had all been past of one team all along.)Finally, it is worth pointing out that there were a lot of texts floating around in the same genre as Revelation, so it was not all that unique and it almost did not make it’s way into the Bible, but the Church Fathers thought incorrectly that the John who wrote it was the same as the author of the Gospel of John; if they had known that these were two different Johns, then the Left Behind series would never have been written (amount other consequences).
So in conclusion, be very wary of trying to read a lot of significance into the New Testament as a whole because it was not a unified document written with single purpose.
Edit: Gah! I wrote John above when I meant Paul. How embarrassing!
The old guys message wasn’t working anymore, the age of Pharos and godkings was done. You couldn’t just mass execute people anymore, everyone was really woke and PC.
The ruling class needed to revamp the religious arm of the machine that enslaves us all to get with the times or there were going to keep being problems.
You know how corporate media are, it’s easier to sell a sequel.
You know what, we’re going for a kind of apple vibe, we’re literally just going to call this thing “THE BOOK”.
Everyone will step into line after we nail a few to boards and stuff
The new testament is just old testament fan fiction. By that reasoning all these newer religions like Mormonism are fan fiction based on other fan fiction… and Im sure I dont have to tell anyone how loony tunes Mormonism is.
It’s all fiction. Different fiction from different people at different points in history. It was even re-written at certain points in history, to conform with (then current) ideas and morality.
Why doesn’t it all make sense put together? It’s fiction written by many, very different types of people with completely different ideas.
In the gnostic belief it is just two different gods.
God a bitch
Because it’s all fake. Everyone who actually reads it finds way too many inconsistencies.
That’s because it underwent some serious transformations across the millennia. Yahweh started as a storm god (basically Thor of Canaanite religion). Back then each nation in the religion had their own patron god and guess which god did the Israelites happen to have? Good old storm god Yahweh.
Over centuries the religion evolved and among Israelites Yahweh slowly took on attributes of other gods, mostly El (the all-father and creator of the universe) and Baal. First the other gods were degraded and monotheism was required, even though other gods were known to exist (you might remember the whole “jealous of other gods shtick” even though the rest of the Bible says there’s only one god).
Then the other gods were slowly edited out of the Bible, though some remains persevere (the aforementioned jealousy of other gods, some gods are even mentioned by name). If the gods couldn’t be removed because the story wouldn’t make sense, they were mostly changed into angels or other mythical beings.
It’s pretty funny rereading the Bible with this knowledge, you can clearly recognise which parts were the original Yahweh-the-storm-god and which used to be El-the-actual-creator by how he behaves in the story. When he’s all jealous, rageful and angry, it’s mostly based on the original Yahweh.
Anyway, that’s basically what Old Testament is - a bunch of edits of much older religions. IIRC Yahweh precedes even the Canaanite religion, so it’s a really old and grumpy storm god.
Now, New Testament is something else entirely, that was basically just slapped onto Judaism to have some legitimate and widely recognised vessel. Unlike the other edits, it didn’t evolve naturally over time, it was just violently slapped onto the Old Testament.
Fun fact: try finding Satan anywhere in the old testament. You won’t. Satan has been retrofit on multiple characters, but neither is mentioned directly as Satan, devil or really anything. The most famous one, the snake in the garden? Just a snake (which checks out with older religions where animals had a lot of influence). Then some morons come and say “actually, that snake was the grand adversary.” The concept of a grand adversary wasn’t really common in older religions, there usually wasn’t a Satan-like figure. Compare for example with Greek, Roman or Norse gods.
So, in conclusion, the Bible is a horrible mess of edits that were made so the religion would serve the needs of the time they were introduced in. IIRC the Israelites were having some trouble with their neighbours back when Yahweh got the promotion, so having a strong sense of nationality would really help in keeping the nation together. New Testament is even more obvious because it didn’t even really try to fit with the rest. They just tried to retrofit a few things and called it a day.
Well, this got longer than I planned, but I really like the topic and I don’t think you can do it justice in two paragraphs. If anyone’s interested, do some research, it’s honestly fascinating! For example, what’s the connection between Dionysus and Yahweh? That would be a homework for ya!
You just taught me as much bible as I have ever learned, last lesson being south park raining frogs.
What about the Book of Job? That was all about a bet between God and Satan to make Job suffer. Like, I’m sure he was still an edited deity from another religion. But he’s straight up referred to as Satan, right there in the Old Testament, which seems to be the exact thing you’re claiming can’t be found.
I could be wrong but isn’t Ha-Satan just the title for “the accuser” and not the biblical satan who is the fallen angel
I meant the character, not the name, I perhaps worded it poorly. Satan in this context is meant in the “accuser” sense. As in it’s a role in a divine court, not an entity. Anyone could be the “satan” for the specific case, it’s not a person, but a role.
So… it’s like the Jorge Joestar novel ?
jojowiki.com/JORGE_JOESTAR_(Novel)
Me when I listen to tiktok instead of doing actual research
Could you be more constructive with your feedback?
It’s the same stuff I see copypasted everywhere. A lot of it is speculation from like one academic which gets quoted as fact
I guess you’re referring to Dan McClellan. I’ve consumed a lot of his content via YouTube and his podcast.
It generally seems like a pretty impartial, critical analysis of the data, rather than speculation. But given that he has dominated my understanding of the data I recognize I’ve got a pretty big blindspot. Where would you point me to refute the view that the bible seems to be a source that has been heavily edited to remove its polytheistic origins?
Dan McClellan is a textbook example of this. He is known to block people whom responds to his videos. which is bad faith.
I could point you to another video about the Yahweh pantheon by the same guy.
The Bible hasn’t been heavily edited. There isn’t much proof for this, notably, no original “unedited” documents. Yahweh was worshipped in a pantheon though, and the Bible records this. But it’s the writings of a monotheistic sect.
Numbers 25:1–3:
While Israel lived in Shittim, the people began to whore with the daughters of Moab. These invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel yoked himself to Baal of Peor. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel.
Judges 2:11-13 ESV [11] And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals. [12] And they abandoned the Lord, the God of their fathers, who had brought them out of the land of Egypt. They went after other gods, from among the gods of the peoples who were around them, and bowed down to them. And they provoked the Lord to anger. [13] They abandoned the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth.
Judges 3:5-7 ESV [5] So the people of Israel lived among the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. [6] And their daughters they took to themselves for wives, and their own daughters they gave to their sons, and they served their gods. [7] And the people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. They forgot the Lord their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth.
Judges 10:6 ESV [6] The people of Israel again did what was evil in the sight of the Lord and served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Syria, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the Ammonites, and the gods of the Philistines. And they forsook the Lord and did not serve him.
The archaeology is basically just backing it up that there were instances of Yahweh being worshipped alongside other gods.
So the Bible hasn’t been edited- it documents this happening.
I know he blocks people if he decides they are not engaging productively. Like in the video you linked InspiringPhilosphy says that: when Jesus knew the doubters wondered “who can forgive sins but God”… InspiringPhilosphy insists that they were talking about God the father, but trinitarian belief didn’t exist at the time of the composition of the gospel of Mark right? I suspect Dan lost patience with the retrojection of Trinitarianism.
These are the first three edits that come to mind: Pericope of the women caught in adultery is absent from all early manuscripts if the gospel of John. Johannine comma being absent from all Greek manuscripts (except for the forgery from like 1000 years later), short ending of Mark. Also the pseudepigraphal letters of Paul, are editing in a sense.
What is monotheism? Is it compatible with belief in the power of rival gods like in 2 Kings 3:27?
That recording in Mark is Jesus teaching Trinitarian belief.
I also said “heavily” edited. A story here in there added in isn’t heavy editing. The Johannine Comma existed for a period of time but isn’t in modern bibles except maybe a footnote. Even the woman caught in adultery comes with a disclaimer, as well as the ending in Mark.
2 Kings 3:27
What rival god?
I don’t think trinitarianism was invented at that point, if Jesus is teaching it there he is doing a terrible job.
The rival god that the son was sacrificed to.
What do you mean “it wasn’t invented”?
…wikipedia.org/…/Trinitarianism_in_the_Church_Fat…
Jesus was literally claiming to be God in the passage about forgiveness of sins.
Pretty sure he claims to be the son of man.
Mark 2:5-12 ESV
By saying “the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” was a divinity claim. Because the scribes were correct - only God can forgive sins.
Sin is a transgression against God. So only God is in a position to forgive that.
Psalm 51:4 ESV [4] Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgment.
This is written by David despite the fact he committed adultery.
2 Samuel 12:9, 13 ESV [9] Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword and have taken his wife to be your wife and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites. [13] David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” And Nathan said to David, “The Lord also has put away your sin; you shall not die.
If someone were to wrong me, would my child be able to forgive them? Nope. I’d have to forgive.
He says the son of man has the authority to forgive sins. If he is trying to explain that he is god, he is doing a terrible job. To me it seems like he is saying “you think only god can forgive sins, I’ll show you you’re wrong”
You’re saying that your omnipotent god can’t authorize someone to forgive sins on its behalf?
Whenever Jesus did directly claim to be God, they tried to kill Him.
John 8:58-59
John 10:30-31
John 8 starts with the pericope of the women caught in adultery, one of the edits I mentioned…
Do you know what John 10 doesn’t say?
Argument from silence fallacy
No, this was in support of my statement that Jesus was a terrible teacher.
Uhhh the dead Sea scrolls showed exactly how much the Bible had been edited over there years. The entire book today is edit upon edit upon edit
The dead sea scrolls are the same as the Bible we have today
There are significant differences as I understand it
Like what?
It was explained to me by someone I know who I trust. I would have to ask them or go looking. Unfortunately I haven’t been in contact with them so that’s not much of an option for the foreseeable future. As I said it is my understanding,
I was led to believe this isn’t really something to argue about as there were entire books that no longer exist in modern versions. This was about 15 years ago and you are the first person to challenge that assertion I’ve made since then. (It isn’t something that has come up all that often to be fair)
Sorry if I’m mistaken or was misled
The assertion I’ve generally heard is that it’s quite close. Like some things are worded differently to the masoretic text which we used before it (although other manuscripts were right anyway) but no doctrine changes.
You hear the likes of Bart Ehrman claim all these things about thousands of textual variants- most of them are simply spelling errors.
Why Hulk can defeat Wolverine in one comic but in the next one gets obliterated by someone weaker?
I don’t see how hulk can defeat wolverine.
Hulk’s power level has no upper limit. Wolverine can heal, sure. But if Hulk smashes him down to atoms, and smashes those atoms together, it’s gonna be a long healing process.
Never heard of that. Hulk is very strong for sure but wolverine is also “very strong”.I don’t think smashing something to atoms is only a matter of force It should also be abiut size
They switched writers.
Different guy
Oh wait so now jeebus wasnt “god”? Wow nice post hoc rationalization you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it
It’s like that Shaggy song, “It Wasn’t Me”
Because they exist for different audiences.
What works to keep people in line in prehistory is not the same as what works in ancient Rome, is not the same as works now.
Thats why all religions change over time, even if they like to say they don’t.
The old testament was all about acting a certain way and laws, laws, laws. The new testament says just try your best to love and respect each other. In theory anyways. Humans be humaning though and human nature trumps religion every time.
Because god was pregnant with jesus so she was all crazy lol
Full disclosure Im an atheist. The answer ive been given before is something along the lines of ‘after jesus died and did his whole thing, part of the deal with jesus dying is now mankind and god enter into a “new testament” and now the new one supersedes the old one’, but thats a very rough paraphrasing.
How any of this makes any sense is beyond me. God killed himself for himself to have himself stop hating us…?
In religions nothing makes sense and thats the entire point. All religions are a basically a gullibility test, and they only want the ones who Fail that test to be in their cult. Its been like this for thousands of years.
Jesus was the OG Nigerian Prince!
There’s a Jesus quote about specifically this. Here’s the first search result.
That’s the convenient quote that conservatives can point to when they still want to enforce old testament shit. For instance, claiming to follow Leviticus when they’re being homophobic, rather than going with their homeboy’s forgiveness and loving the sinner.
So Jesus was a Jew, who didn’t want to change for things are done, so halal/Jewish food laws should still apply to Christians?
Yo put the bacon down you heathens!
Also shellfish and that 30% cotton 70% polyester shirt!
Right right!
PR mandated rebranding
Wow, this comment section… Yikes. Without getting deep in the weeds, testament means covenant. It was god’s new agreement with man. In layman’s terms, matthew 1:1 starts out like, “here’s the deal man”.
Um, isnt ‘gawd’ the boss? Cant he just make rules and a system that works and boom it happens?
Frankly instead of all this armchair biblical experts, its probably better to get answers from real experts like Justin from Deconstruction Zone.
Oh dude I just saw Justin on The Line last night with Forrest Valkai, dude seems to know the Bible like the back of his hand
No argument here. Literally. I have no dog in any respective race. Figuratively.
And I would imagine that the community “no stupid questions” is not intended to be a repository of questions exclusively for SME’s. As I understand it is an open forum to ask unspecified questions judgement free. I would presume that since the question is judgement free, the responses should be too. But this comment section is seething with judgements that add very little to the conversation regarding the basic query from OP. So, thanks for the suggestion on Justin. I assume they have a lot to say and I’m sure others will find it invaluable. This is not something I have a significant interest in myself so I’ll take your word for it. Thanks.
You think people here kniw what SME means?
Oof, my apologies, subject matter expert.
No worries, learned to have to speak as if no one knows anything when I started running DnD games. It’s really easy to do when you know a subject as well as you seem to
Lol, DnD types are the test case of outliers. If nothing else, it taught me to never assume someone isn’t a player.
Like, one campaign from an OCD person where even the scents and smells were planned. And then a different campaign where the smells were not. Just a pure dichotomy of human prototypes.
Scents and smells? That is so far beyond my ability to prepare but that’s awesome for you(I assume!)
Ive found its a good baseline to start with until you can gauge who you are speaking to.
In connection with the comic XKCD - 10000,it has helped a socially awkward geek like me when speaking to people in meetings or on projects. Kind of follow the I said it outright the first time and emphasize it slightly the first time I use a phrase if I’m going to refer to it a few times and try to shorten it for convenience
God became terrified of us after the tower of babel, so he told his minions to write the new testament in a more positive way, so we wouldn’t seek to invade his realm and take control over creation in revenge for the atrocities he did to us.
Old Testament -> young people behavior.
New Testament -> old people behaviour.
( yeah I know there are exceptions )
Read again keeping that in mind. Read news to look for allegory. People don’t change at all.
Going well beyond my competencies to answer, but I think a lot of it comes down to monotheism changing the nature of god.
Judaism thinks of itself as starting monotheism; and that is largely true. However, the old testament is still littered with vestiges of it’s polytheistic origins.
If there are multiple God’s, then those God’s will come into conflict. That is simply the nature of human storytelling.
Looking at the old Testament, probably the most violent God has been was during exodus. In addition to freeing the Jews, he smite the Egyptians with 10 plagues, among which was the death of all firstborn sons.
Note the polytheistic origins of this story. God is not merely intervening in the Earthly affairs of us lowly humans. The Jewish God is fighting with the Egyptian gods. He does not have the luxury of being nice and good. Even if he wins this fight without resorting to such drastic measures; he still needs to do so to act as a deterrent against other gods acting against him. That is not so much a specific tactical calculation in this case, but the way humans tend to imagine polytheistic gods working (reflective, of course, of the way human conflict tends to work).
It probably doesn’t help that Yahweh was the god of War before becoming the only God.
By the time we get to the new testament, the situation is different. Beyond merely declaring that their god is the only God, the early Christians believed it, and had believed it for generations of storytelling. Their view of God had shed the vestiges of polytheism and morphed into what is truly possible under monotheism. God can be good because he lacks a peer rival. There is no narrative reason for God to be mean, because he can simply win any direct confrontation he faces.
We see similar dynamics play out in modern story telling. When we have vastly overpowered characters, the nature of the conflicts they get in us not fights. Perhaps they are trying to mediate between lesser parties. Perhaps they want to get something while respecting the rights and interests in weaker parties. A story where a vastly superior force wants something and just takes it is boring; so we don’t tell it.
I feel like y’all are forgetting about all the heinous shit God does in the new testament. Just because he’s not all up front fire and brimstone about it doesn’t mean he isn’t still an evil bastard in the new book
Could you link something cause when I Google any combination of “new testament god angry/vengeful” I’m not getting allot besides religious sites sane washing it.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_of_Revelation
I’m not gonna link a source, but here’s some chapters from the good book itself:
Acts 5, God kills Ananias and Sapphira for withholding too much of their taxes. Seems like an overreaction for the new forgiving, loving, kind God.
Acts 12, God strikes down King Herod for accepting praise or some shit, which is similar to the egotistical, vengeful, immature punishments the God of the old testament frequently handed out.
Jesus (who is also God) throws some incredibly immature and irresponsible super-powered toddler tantrums, like in Mark 11 where he curses a fig tree for not bearing fruit when he was hungry, even though it was out of season, and in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus forces demons to possess a bunch (like, thousands) of pigs that just happen to be nearby, causing them all to cast themselves off a cliff and die. Jesus suggests/condones rape as a punishment in multiple instances, which is pretty fucked up, but is consistent with the whole “the sexual punishment fits the sexual “crime”” motif you see all throughout the New Testament. Jesus himself isn’t just the peace-loving, love-thy-neighbor hippie they try to portray him as - in Matthew 10 he says “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword”, basically acknowledging and condoning religious violence. Very like, un-kumbayah of him, man.
Pick a page from Revelation, that whole book is basically just God bringing about the apocalyptic end times in increasingly violent and cruel ways, including killing people a second time by tossing them into a lake of fire for not being Christian enough to make it onto his nice list.
The continued existence of hell is a big one for me as well. You’d think a truly loving, kind, and forgiving God would get rid of the eternal damnation spirit torture prison. He also doesn’t end other universally-accepted-as-immoral practices like slavery, but instead doubles down on it in Ephesians, Colossians, and probably a bunch of other places. All in all, the God of the new testament is just as much of a bastard as in the old, he’s just hiding behind the introduction of his new son (who is also a bit of a bastard, but maybe a tad less so, so people accept it) and the weird blood magic ritual sacrifice storyline.
Edit: my claim that the God of the new testament is unchanged from the one in the old is also supported by scripture - James 1 and Hebrews 13 say as much, and even Jesus says he’s not coming to shake things up, that all the old laws (including the fire and brimstone ones) still apply in Matthew 5.
I’ve been out of the church for a while but always imagined Jesus as a current day socialist with feeding the poor & “how you treat the least of me…” stuff. Shame that book is so contradictory.
The entire thing is contradictory, on purpose, to give people excuses to commit atrocities in the name of their “kind and loving” God
Jesus’ instructions on divorce are pretty unJesus like.
Slightly off topic but DAE find it convenient that Jesus’ first lecture to his new disciples was about divorce? Like hey, guys. Forget fishing and making money and handling business, and dont worry about your wives anymore.
Spoken like someone who mixes their fabrics and eats shellfish.
🤘😈🤘
Let’s not forget that prior to Jesus any punishments were over when you died. Permanent Hell was a new testament thing.
My take is that it’s a reflection of the Israelite people. It’s easy to be all fire and brimstone when you can back it up with military force. Suspiciously that all went away after they got conquered…
Yahweh was originally a Levant god of war.
That’s simply not true. God talks more about Hell in the New Testament than He does in the old testament. He also is forgiving in the old (Exodus 34:7, Psalm 103:12, Psalm 86:5)
There’s basically no change.
The book of Jonah revolves around Jonah not wanting his god to forgive Nineveh.
Another good example, and God forgiving them anyway
The new testament is just as vile and filled with hate as the old one.
How so?
Behold a bunch of unrelated out of context quotes from the New Testament chained together to play into @ChetManly@lemmy.world 's fictional narrative
Who decides which context is correct?
How about reading it and actually seeing context for yourself?
I have. You going to try to justify slavery now?
There are no justifications of slavery in the New Testament
Just blanket acceptance with zero condemnation of the practice. It even includes moral guidelines like how to beat your human property without going to hell…
Right, so no justifications as you erroneously said
Can you tell me the verse where this is in the NT? I’m only familiar with this in the Old Testament
Justifications, no, just emphasizes that slaves just need to deal with it even if their owner beats them. Could have said to not own slaves, but nope, passively endorses/normalizes slavery.
1 Corinthians 7:21-23 AMP
[21] Were you a slave when you were called? Do not worry about that [since your status as a believer is equal to that of a freeborn believer]; but if you are able to gain your freedom, do that. [22] For he who was a slave when he was called in the Lord is a freedman of the Lord, likewise he who was free when he was called is a slave of Christ. [23] You were bought with a price [a precious price paid by Christ]; do not become slaves to men [but to Christ].
The Bible identifies slavery as a reality and teaches people how to deal with their situation. That’s what Chrisianity IS. Teaching Christians how to deal with their situation emphasizing faith in God as pivotal because this world ultimately doesn’t matter. The Bible is not a revolutionary book, that gives them a guide on how to rise up against the slave owning class. Jesus wasn’t Marx.
If you are interested in critiquing the Bible you should consider reading up on it. Fwiw I’m not even Christian, but i also don’t like it when atheists make poor arguments trying to “debunk” the Bible. There are much easier points to stand behind than “The NT endorses slavery” which isn’t as clear cut as the old testament.
How about eternal torture for something as petty as non belief? Sounds pretty manipulative, insecure, and evil to me.
“Eternal Torture”, as a concept, was invented by Catholics in the dark ages.
The lake of fire and brimstone is eternal torture. If you are not satan, its the lake of fire what is meant. It is eternal separation from God. The God that made you and Creation. To be separated from Him is to live life without living, eternally without any life. Eternal darkness. To say, without all the good the universe has to offer. You’re left with nothing but the worst humanity, the spiritual world and the universe has to offer. And it is called the second death, its eternal and not long sleepy rest death like when your earthly body ceases.
The question was about the new testament. Its literally described in the books of Matthew/Mark and literally says not believing in god is a worth sin of hell in John/Thessalonians.
I also agree eternal torture was made up. I think it was all made up.
Because the people who wrote the old testament wanted to scare people into subservience
And those who wrote the new testament thought positive reinforcement was better
IIRC that’s not actually positive reinforcement. Common mistake to make though
Because they’re completely different gods. The old testament is only a part of christianity because in order to gain some legitimacy for their early church, they decided that their new god must be the same dude as the the god of the people that they were living among.
But in reality, they are very different books, written in very different times, by two very different religious cultures.
Yeah, they are “very different books” each individually comprised of “very different books,” and all of the other books that eventually got left out are a lot of the best parts. I haven’t read them, but it feels like how my friend used to describe the Star Wars extended universe books.
Also, the old testament god is not a single god.
It started as a god among other equally powerful and important gods and was later turned (by the writers) into the most important god.
Then it turned into god and satan as being similar in power.
Nowadays, the majority of church people flip the switch whenever they want a bi-theism (god vs satan) or a monotheism (god is all powerful and even satan can’t act with god’s explicit orders).
Similar thing with free will.
You have free will until you don’t have and you have no free will until it is convenient to say you actually have.
Actually if you read the book of revelations jesus sends the whole planet to hell except 7 cities that he told people to go to. he really lays into the sinners.
Because the God of the old testament is the demiurge…
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself
And Christ died in the cross to teach us (only those who have a fragment of the divine) how to ascend to perfection and get out of the Demiurge’s hand. Btw, those who don’t have a fragment of the divine are just NPC (just like myself who am also an NPC)
If I had to guess, it’s because they were written by different people at different times.
The reason is because those texts are much older, and that was the style of religion practiced back then. Most God stories and stories about Gods in that period were like it. Most city states and tribal states had their own Gods that reflected them, and conflicts were gravely exaggerated. Also literally everything that happened in that state were an attribute or reflection of that particular God. With stories of how that attribute came to be, which reflected back in the people and in that way religion was a complex social interaction.
The people who wrote the stories we now know as the old Testament didnt write them as a part of a bible. These were stories of people who were taken out of their states and captured. Forced to live outside their land, but they took their God with them. Who became this omnipresent God that would lead people back to a promised land. Including all the complex social interaction people had with their mostly oral religious stories and traditions.
And it’s the continued tradition that lead to the formation of religious scholarship and the idea that Gods could be of the earth and not just of a state. Which brought about new thoughts, new traditions, new religious complexity written down in the New Testament. Which lead to the desire to make religious books encapsulating all of religious thought.
And only much later came literalism, the mistake to take everything in the Bible literal. which sparked the formation of atheism as we know it today.
Because Yahweh was originally a lesser Canaanite deity of war and destructive storms, while his counterpart, Baal, was all about gentle restorative rains. Part of that population moved around, and took him to be their primary deity when they broke off. He eventually merged with El.
Then that shit for further rehashed a few millennia later to soften his image.
God is not about forgiveness and such in the New Testament. That’s a retcon by later Christians to make it more palatable.
He preached violence:
He was just as happy to send people to hell:
Every single horrible decree in the Old Testament still applies in the new (despite modern Christians trying to redefine what ‘fulfil’ means):
That’s last one includes all the slavery, rape, genocide, etc. Jesus could have spoken out against those things, but instead he said all those judgements were just and should be continued.
Pretty violent, and not very loving.
And let’s not forget the revelations, in which Jesus will doom billions of people to a horrific existence followed by eternal hellfire, not for doing wrong things, but merely for not being devoted to him. Even the devout and righteous of other religions, and even babies who haven’t had the chance to sin.
Remember, Jesus is the same god as in the Old Testament – if god is eternal and unchanging (which the Bible says he is), he is literally the same entity who committed atrocities before he decided to wear human skin and sacrifice himself to himself.
This is not a loving god.
Because it’s all fake and the authors changed.
Not the same gods, not the same authors, written at completely different times, and written in the context of completely different cultures.