Since Rome and the church did such a good job of destroying the evidence of the truth we will never know for certain.
Is it now incumbent of film and tv producers to hypothecate for the masses some alternative stories that might explain the birth of christianity?
They could start with the obvious...
Jesus was a real person - a naturally charismatic leader of people. A tribal king displaced by Roman Occupation and sent away for 20 years. A bitter person who wanted his birth right back, his power and influence. He was a scholar and a cleric of the old testiment. He knew of the propheses that predicted the coming of the son of god amongst the people. He devised a plan to appear back in his tribal lands as the son of god, fulfilling as many of the propheses by the magic of illusion and of trickery. e.g. many clerics performed "resurrections" in those times to establish holy credentials. He built up a following because he was a natural leader and because he persuaded people that he was the son of god. He challenged Roman rule and the Romans duly had him executed but the religion continued underground. Christianity grew bigger over many centuries. The Romans controlled the people because they controlled their religion. The Romans could only control the people if they were all united under one religion, it mattered not what religion that was. When Christianity challenged paganism, the Romans claimed it for themselves. The Romans killed off paganism by ordering christian festivals to be held on the same dates as existing Pagan festivals. The Romans did not want to be known as the executers of Jesus so they blamed the Jews and destroyed all documentation of the facts. Without any competition and with state backing Christianity flourished. Christianity is a political tool, a guarantee of power over the people, all dissent was quashed for centuries.
Isn't this a more plausible story of the birth and success of christianity?
Shouldn't there be more challenge to those who expect us to believe in miracles and super beings as fact? There are many more plausible and more human explanations.
The thoughts of Chairman Al.
If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.
I find it interesting how many people are able to write about the authority and truth of the Bible when they speak with what I feel is limited information. This is not to criticise anyone because people may not have heard or read very much that would encourage them to believe anything else. There are many reasons for this of course. People may be too busy, not wish to hear alternative views, happy to stay within a comfortable peace, have no desire to read round the subject etc. so may I provide a few sentences from the research of Tony Bushby who spent 12 years chasing through the Bible to find evidence to support or not support Biblical statements. During this time one document came to light that included information which made a whole load of difference to the commonly accepted views of the life of Jesus. This was in a manuscript called the Acts of Thomas (Acts Thomae), the Gospel of Thomas, regarding this document the Catholic Encyclopaedia commented: “His name, Judas the Twin, is the starting point of a considerable literature, and there are also certain historical data which suggest that some of this apocryphal material may contain germs of truth.” When the Catholic Encyclopaedia, an important voice of the established church, suggests the document may contain germs of truth it is significant, especially as the later Christian church went to great lengths to avoid the information in this manuscript being widely available or discussed. How about looking at a short extract of what a suppressed Gospel said? The Acts of Thomas recorded that the population 'saw as two beings, one single Royal token consisting of two halves' and 'united their adoration of the two persons of Christ' . (Two beings, twins, one called Jesus and one called Jude Thomas.) Not surprisingly, this Gospel along with others was suppressed after the first Christian council at Nicaea in 325. Again in the Acts of Thomas, the issue of 'Judas the Twin' was further clarified by a remarkable statement that referred to the '. . . twin brother of Christ, apostle to the most high and fellow initiate into the hidden word of Christ who does receive his secret sayings. . .' The Acts of Thomas recounts the wanderings and adventures of Jude Thomas. . .` and his twin brother Jesus' and made several references to the twin boys being raised in a Palace. The church attributed these words directly to Judas Thomas:- `When I was an infant too young to talk, in my father's Palace reposing in the wealth and luxury of those who nourished me...` This is a very different story to the one that is told at Christmas time. There was no single birth in a stable - there was a twin birth in a palace! And so the story goes on with ever more revealing and fascinating episodes in the parallel lives of Jesus and Jude. Try looking at the book, the Bible Fraud by Tony Bushby and the Fifth Gospel by Fida Hassnain and Dahan Levi. Alternative `truths` can be quite interesting don`t you think?
I become dismayed when populist "liberal" theologians, such as Robert Beckford, present supposedly authoritative television programs which apparently seek to rubbish the story of God incarnate on this Earth, Jesus the Christ.
None of us were there, of course, and so all of our subjective theories are open to question and that is, of course, as it should be, for God's greatest gift to His/Her children was the unconditional love that allows for free will.
If we choose to use that free will to indulge in conspiracy theories or to imagine other scenarios that are somehow more palatable to our post-modern minds, so be it. It's not unamusing and can be satisfying, intellectually. Believe me, as a former atheist who would argue such points to the ends of the Earth, I can testify to the intellectual satisfaction to be found in such pursuits. Not spiritual, but intellectual, yes.
But equally, if through prayer and study we allow God to do the one and only thing that He/She most wants, namely for us to choose to allow Him/Her to find and nurture us, then we can experience a love, a sense of belonging ... a spiritual home where no amount of mass consumerism (the religion of our age) can hope to compare to the joy.
Allow yourself the chance to be Surprised by Joy. God is always seeking us, but we must choose to be found.
Originally posted by Lloyd Mongo:If we choose to use that free will to indulge in conspiracy theories or to imagine other scenarios that are somehow more palatable to our post-modern minds, so be it.
I think it is more that other scenarios are more palatable to realistic minds. The concepts of virgin births and resurrection were not unique to jesus and are more likely the results of "imagination" than anything else (IMHO).
Allow yourself the chance to be Surprised by Joy. God is always seeking us, but we must choose to be found.
Just what we needed: another religious freak in the forum. Hallelujah! Praise the Looord.
Just what we needed; more intolerance
Sorry, when was it that Catholicism had the monopoly on tolerance? Because IIRC it brought the continent of Europe centuries of gratuitously cruel intolerance from which it has barely recovered.
(Oh right, when it tolerated the Nazis in WWII... )
-------------------- If you feel like you're always in the dark - switch the lights on!
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Winston Churchill
Sorry, when was it that Catholicism had the monopoly on tolerance?
Who said it did?
quote:
Because IIRC it brought the continent of Europe centuries of gratuitously cruel intolerance from which it has barely recovered.
Somewhat overstated but not entirely wrong. A shameful episode which the present church has abjectly apologised for. Power corrupts the hearts of men and women; even those who purport to work for God.
quote:
(Oh right, when it tolerated the Nazis in WWII... )
Albert Einstein: "Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty." (Pinchas E. Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews, pg 251).
Jewish Rabbi Pinchas Lapide wrote that: "The final number of Jewish lives in whose rescue the Catholic Church had been the instrument is thus at least 700,000 souls, but in all probability it is much closer to ... 860,000." (Pinchas E. Lapide, 'Three Popes and the Jews', pp 227-228).
After the Pope's 1942 Christmas broadcast to the world, the German SS analysis of his message said:
"The Pope has repudiated the National Socialist New European Order. His speech is one long attack on everything we stand for. God, he says, regards all peoples and races as worthy of the same consideration. Here he is clearly speaking in behalf of the Jews and makes himself the mouthpiece of the Jewish war criminals."
The Nazis were in no doubt how the Church felt. In 1935 Hermann Goering said: "Catholic believers carry away but one impression from attendance at divine services and that is that the Catholic Church rejects the institutions of the Nationalist State."
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much. Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
Somewhat overstated but not entirely wrong. A shameful episode which the present church has abjectly apologised for.
Whilst I admit a penchant for hyperbolic effect, in this case it's not overstated. How can you overstate three centuries of unspeakable awfulness? The reality will always transcend the hyperbole. And you need to face up to the cold, hard truth, that however much you try to distance yourself from the Dark Ages, your religion might not even exist without them stamping their boot upon the indigenous culture of the continent. Not so much something to apologise for ("oh, sorry we subjected you to centuries of slaughter, torture, and mind-fecking") as something to soberly assess what your belief system is really about. Whilst you can conveniently blame the "greedy and power-hungry" of the time, you can't really escape that your supposedly immutable god-given religion has changed, and that the forces of change during the Reformation were broadly external to the religion.
quote:
Power corrupts the hearts of men and women; even those who purport to work for God.
No True Scotsman...
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Wake up sleepyhead!
quote:
The Grauniad:
Pope Pius XII never publicly condemned the Nazis' persecution of Jews, even when they were being rounded up and deported from Rome. His silence is partly blamed for the failure of Germany's Catholics to resist Hitler. Anti-Jewish Catholic doctrines such as the claim that the Jews murdered Christ were said to have ideologically underpinned nazism. Vatican officials allegedly helped Nazis escape Europe after the war.
Elsewhere:
quote:
In 1933, the Catholic Church had viewed the Nazis as a barrier to the spread of communism from Russia. In this year, Hitler and the Catholic Church signed an agreement that he would not interfere with the Catholic Church while the Church would not comment on politics.
This isn't a cut-and-dried argument, there are many shades of grey here. I pulled the Nazi example out of my a55 as a counterpoint to "tolerance". Perhaps I could have chosen women, or gays, but the point is that your precious religion, despite making grudging cheap apologies decades if nor centuries after-the-fact, is still not exactly the force for pure moral agency.
-------------------- If you feel like you're always in the dark - switch the lights on!
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Winston Churchill
That doen't answer the question. When did anyone say that Catholocism had the monopoly on tolerance? Christ calling upon his followers to be tolerant is not the same thing.
quote:
Somewhat overstated but not entirely wrong. A shameful episode which the present church has abjectly apologised for.
quote:
Whilst I admit a penchant for hyperbolic effect, in this case it's not overstated. How can you overstate three centuries of unspeakable awfulness?
By being ignorant of the actual history I would suggest.
quote:
Power corrupts the hearts of men and women; even those who purport to work for God.
quote:
No True Scotsman...
The abuse of power is in direct contradiction to the teachings of Christ so the above is not a No True Scotsman Fallacy
quote:
Wake up sleepyhead!
quote:
The Grauniad:
Pope Pius XII never publicly condemned the Nazis' persecution of Jews, even when they were being rounded up and deported from Rome. His silence is partly blamed for the failure of Germany's Catholics to resist Hitler. Anti-Jewish Catholic doctrines such as the claim that the Jews murdered Christ were said to have ideologically underpinned nazism. Vatican officials allegedly helped Nazis escape Europe after the war.
Elsewhere:
quote:
In 1933, the Catholic Church had viewed the Nazis as a barrier to the spread of communism from Russia. In this year, Hitler and the Catholic Church signed an agreement that he would not interfere with the Catholic Church while the Church would not comment on politics.
This isn't a cut-and-dried argument, there are many shades of grey here. I pulled the Nazi example out of my a55 as a counterpoint to "tolerance". Perhaps I could have chosen women, or gays, but the point is that your precious religion, despite making grudging cheap apologies decades if nor centuries after-the-fact, is still not exactly the force for pure moral agency.[/QUOTE]
So you think a Guardian article successfully counters actual historical evidence. Says a lot.
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much. Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
The abuse of power is in direct contradiction to the teachings of Christ so the above is not a No True Scotsman Fallacy
The cognitive dissonance here beggars belief! How one can consider that the modern-day Catholic church, a vast, grotesquely rich and self-aggrandizing institution even remotely resembles what you'd like to call "the teachings of Christ" is beyond me.
Oh, and here's news for you: they have and always did claim to represent the teachings of Christ. So do the KKK. As do the protestants in general. As do those individuals who shout anti-gay slogans at US soldiers' funerals. As do those who shoot family planning practitioners. As do the Calvinists. As did the People's Front of Judea. It's "No True Scotsman" because there is no authoritative version of "Christ's Teachings" - other than the one which the Romans imposed in Nicea, of course.
-------------------- If you feel like you're always in the dark - switch the lights on!
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Winston Churchill
It seems to me, as a former Catholic, that what is really bothering ballyboneman and, in particular, smoke and mirrors is the vast and yawning gulf between what we believe to be the teachings of Jesus and what actually exists in the established Roman and Anglican churches of today.
I am perfectly willing to believe that Jesus Christ existed as an historical personage,(not necessarily the son of God) and that his philosophy was possibly the most humane and advanced of any philosophy which has appeared, from ancient times to the present day.
How then to reconcile the centuries of evil and violence done in 'his name' by all species of 'Christian churches' . I can't, I don't have the wit to do it.
However, whilst sharing the disappointment of all would be Christians, I would side with ballyboneman on this point only; the failure and corruption of the human beings who have formed the chuch over the centuries cannot and do not negate the beauty of the original message of Christ in so far as we can be sure that some, at least, of the writings came from him. It is, of course, because of that aching disappointment that I describe myself as a former Catholic.
How then to reconcile the centuries of evil and violence done in 'his name' by all species of 'Christian churches' . I can't, I don't have the wit to do it.
I find this view rather perplexing. The bible is full of violence, intolerance and cruelty. The god of the bible commands his tribe to kill, massacre, destroy and burn.
The character of Jesus is a follower and a believer of the old testament. This is something frequently forgotten by many present-day christians. Jesus himself adds quite a bit of intolerance of his own. He says that those who dont follow him will suffer eternally, and that those cities who dont receive his minions will be destroyed, etc etc. This is hardly a message of love and peace. It's true that lost in this orgy of barbaric intolerance there are a couple of puzzling messages about loving your brother. But the general idea is that if you dont believe this chap's message you are dirt and must be destroyed.
The fact that christianity was for centuries a religion of violence, brutality and intolerance is anything but surprising. If they could get away with it now they would still be, but of course they've been reined in by a long and laborious process of secularization and they had to bite the bullet and pretend to be civilized and tolerant.
Originally posted by Sheik Yahbouti:... his philosophy was possibly the most humane and advanced of any philosophy which has appeared, from ancient times to the present day....
except that it is not unique to him. Buddha & Krishna preached the same message bafore him & plenty have done so since, e.g. Gandhi.
The fact that christianity was for centuries a religion of violence, brutality and intolerance is anything but surprising. If they could get away with it now they would still be, but of course they've been reined in by a long and laborious process of secularization and they had to bite the bullet and pretend to be civilized and tolerant.
What are you talking about? human beings have always been and will always be violent, no matter what religion or regime or political system they were living under. You think secularization led to less violence? Dunno what planet you live on
What are you talking about? human beings have always been and will always be violent, no matter what religion or regime or political system they were living under. You think secularization led to less violence? Dunno what planet you live on
So we're agreed: religion does no better than secularism
The problem is that religion sets itself up as the self-appointed source of all that is moral and good and claims these with divine backing. If, as you suggest, it is no less blighted than secularism, then it is a spectacular demonstration of the vacuousness and arrogance of religion.
-------------------- If you feel like you're always in the dark - switch the lights on!
"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." - Winston Churchill
The abuse of power is in direct contradiction to the teachings of Christ so the above is not a No True Scotsman Fallacy
The cognitive dissonance here beggars belief! How one can consider that the modern-day Catholic church, a vast, grotesquely rich and self-aggrandizing institution even remotely resembles what you'd like to call "the teachings of Christ" is beyond me.
Oh, and here's news for you: they have and always did claim to represent the teachings of Christ. So do the KKK. As do the protestants in general. As do those individuals who shout anti-gay slogans at US soldiers' funerals. As do those who shoot family planning practitioners. As do the Calvinists. As did the People's Front of Judea. It's "No True Scotsman" because there is no authoritative version of "Christ's Teachings" - other than the one which the Romans imposed in Nicea, of course.
Are you a cereal farmer by any chance? The amount of straw you have at your disposal is something to behold
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much. Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
What are you talking about? human beings have always been and will always be violent, no matter what religion or regime or political system they were living under. You think secularization led to less violence? Dunno what planet you live on
So we're agreed: religion does no better than secularism
The problem is that religion sets itself up as the self-appointed source of all that is moral and good and claims these with divine backing. If, as you suggest, it is no less blighted than secularism, then it is a spectacular demonstration of the vacuousness and arrogance of religion.
Except of course study after study has shown that religious observants are less likely to exhibit violent behaviour both inside and outside of personal relationships; are less prone to substance abuse including tobacco and alchohol; are less likely to suffer mental illness or stress; are less likely to suffer from STDs and are more likely to be generous with their money and their time.
Of course these facts don't prove the existence of God but they do explode the tired old atheist canard of religion being the root of all evil.
Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much. Oscar Wilde (1854 - 1900)
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