thenexttodie
New Member
thenexttodie said:Couldn't some just have simply asked Pilate if Jesus existed?
Sparhafoc said:Not really a logical way to address the contradiction I raised, but ok... yes, they could have, and maybe they did, and maybe it wasn't recorded - we don't think for a moment that we have a perfect historical knowledge of the 1st century anywhere in the world, let alone there.
Instead, if you read what I wrote, you said that no one could have 'made this up', and I said they could in the same way as they made up other complex story lines.
I didn't actually say that it is all made up as I personally believe the primary events happened and see no reason to doubt them. There was a dude called Yeshua with all the relationships with other humans, he did preach a Jewish heresy, and this resulted in him being killed by the Romans with the support of the Pharisees. Given the tensions between the Romans and the Jews, and given the nature of Judaism, and given the large number of recorded self-declared prophets.... I don't personally see anything incredible or extraordinary to any of these claims.
It's the myths laid on top which I think are clearly made up.
I see . By myths you mean the ressurection and ect.
Sparhafoc said:/scratchy head emoticon
. Take Genesis 30:39
Did God not know how genetics works? Looking at a red envelope while copulating is not going to result in a red haired child, is it TNTD? Even a school child today knows more about how traits are passed to offspring than the knowledge of the people of the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age, so we wouldn't expect to see any knowledge of genetics from them. We would, however, expect an all-knowing God to ensure that the content of his supposedly singular text sent to instruct the mortals wouldn't make such obvious mistakes.
In fact, if God had dictated this book, we humans should have been mining it for centuries, making discoveries about the nature of 'his' Creation, leading us to a much greater understanding of the world around us. But no. There are no revelations when it comes to empirical reality, and such declarations as there are contradict what we know today.
So, two options:
1) God exists, had this document written, allowed it to be full of errors because 'he' didn't care about such things, or /apologetics on/ didn't want to freak the humans out with knowledge about reality etc. etc, etc,
2) The OT is a collection of late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age oral tales handed down through generations reflecting the knowledge and musings of these people, and as such would be expected to reflect their limited knowledge.
For me, 2 is a much more compelling factor as it explains the errors in the Bible, whereas excuses have to be made for 1.
Incidentally, this isn't a heathen attack on Christianity. I 'discovered' this while I was still a Christian, and I am sure I annoyed the various priests I queried about it no end. None of them seemed able to answer the questions of a 12 year old.
When you continue reading a bit into I think chapter 31, it says the sheep were born mottled because God saw how Jacob was being cheated by Laban. This part of the bible is obviously not meant to convey that standing sticks up around mating sheep will cause them to produce striped offspring.
I would also ask a couple different priests alot of questions when I was young. My great uncle was a priest actually. Very well educated but none of them would hardly ever give a straight answer on anything about the Bible.
thenexttodie said:So you are trying to show that the etimology(sp?) of the Aramaic word for "Gods" shows that God used the wrong word to describe Himself in the Bible? That is interesting. What word do you think God should have used?
Sparhafoc said:No, that's not what is in the text. Please read it again:
el elohe yisrael
The term for the category of 'gods' there is 'elohe', whereas El is the name of that god. El elohe yisrael = God (name) god (title) of Israel.
It's not etymology - it's the same pantheon as its Canaanite predecessors, with syncretized components from the passage of time.
Yeah, that is interesting.
Which ones?Sparhafoc said:The monomyth exists independently of the Bible, TNTD... what I am saying is that the NT bears the same component quantities as other myths humans have made. The story structure appeals to us psychologically and emotionally. It is what we humans do.