Let's pretend Jesus is real

[Donovan]

I was going to tell you two to go measure your imaginary dicks someplace else, but then I realized what thread we're in and it seems fitting. Feel free to keep talking about imaginary dicks. I plan to.

[Maggot]

After re-reading Hawkings book I'd rather read about black holes and what happens when a soul gets sucked in. Or a baby daddy.

[Donovan]

Back on topic. Having established that the real Jeshua was more a political activist than anything else, we come to the point of the narrative where he dies for his crimes against the Roman empire and Jewish Heirarchy, specifically the trumped-up charge that he was going around blaspheming about being the son of God. Now from here on we end up with conflicting accounts and conjecture, mainly because most of the earliest traditions of Christianity were not only fractured and splintered, but also strictly oral legend passed down through families. The absolute oldest known copies or fragments of the New testament date back to around 400 AD:

https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/scri...ripts.html

so anything from the years immediately following the death of the man is based on conjecture and study of various documents, language styles and writing patterns.

What's generally agreed is that pretty much all of what became the Catholic church, and later a great many other versions of the Christian church, was created by Peter and Paul. Peter is called the first Pope, Paul was widely known as the most self-promoting and controversial of the early figures and instituted many practices Jeshua was not known for, such as preaching to non-jews. Other competing records indicated a rivalry and jealousy between Peter and Mary, who was either a lowly whore or Jeshua's most favored and trusted second in command and probable wife.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mary

Although Peter's version became official canon for the church, the versions supporting Mary the favored apostle and even Judas as Jesus' most trusted friend, were written in the same time period and therefore were equally important to the earliest Christian sects.

Of further interest: none of the acknowledged earliest versions of the testaments of Jeshua's life include anything about resurrection. Mark, the canonical oldest gospel, ends at his death in the earliest known complete codex ever found.

http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/codex/...cance.aspx

Paul's writings never mention the resurrection either, nor any of the fairy tale portions of the myth we have come to know so well, like the passion, the crucifixion, the empty tombs, the meetings on the road etc. None of it.

http://www.answering-christianity.com/ab...n_hoax.htm

So essentially, what they had was a fringe movement of a couple hundred disenfranchised jews and assorted peasant gentiles, following a dead rabbi and the folk tales of his followers, folk tales which slowly incorporated existing pagan rituals and religious practices and parables into itself by way of natural osmosis. There was by no means a cohesive version of events, nor was there any one unified vision of what the religion ought to be. Those caught practicing the religion were often persecuted as heretics and killed, like many other subgroups of the period.

So how do we get from this lowly state of imminent destruction and historical obscurity to the wealthy world power that was used to control the masses and prevent peasant uprisings? One word.

Constantine.

[Donovan]

After re-reading Hawkings book I'd rather read about black holes and what happens when a soul gets sucked in. Or a baby daddy.

So start a thread about us pretending theoretical physics is real. Probably two sides of the same coin anyway. Mental masturbation for idle minds.

[Love Child]

I've had a couple of long commutes lately and sometimes this thread comes to mind. I want to ask Donovan if Jesus is not real, then the bible is not real and neither is God.
I mean those are obvious statemens I am sure, but I just wanted to get clarification. Also one of those links in the OP didn't work, but I found many similar arguements about this online.

Shoot, just seeing your most recent post. (I assumed no new posts were made in this thread since it didn't come up in my "new" feed today)

Reading now.

[Donovan]

I've had a couple of long commutes lately and sometimes this thread comes to mind. I want to ask Donovan if Jesus is not real, then the bible is not real and neither is God.
I mean those are obvious statemens I am sure, but I just wanted to get clarification. Also one of those links in the OP didn't work, but I found many similar arguements about this online.

Shoot, just seeing your most recent post. (I assumed no new posts were made in this thread since it didn't come up in my "new" feed today)

Reading now.

Jesus may have been real. He was the son of God as much as any of us is, and never claimed anything more. So if you believe yourself to be a child of God, then so was he.

The bible is real as well. It contains many thoughtful rules for living life that are seldom adhered to in any consistent fashion, as well as archaic edicts which would be better forgotten. It is not the word of god. It is the work of men. And therefore subject to the same criticism any other purported "self help" book might receive.

God is the following story. When my child was around 9 he asked me if god was real. We were in the front yard of our home at the time. As an answer I pointed to an ant hill in the sidewalk we had probably stepped over a thousand times. I said, have you ever noticed that before?
He said no, he hadn't. I said, do you think those ants know we are here? He said, no, we are too big. I said, we and the ants are living side by side and neither knows the other exists. Then I took my foot and swiped away the anthill poking through the cracks and the ants went into frenzied motion, running around frantically rebuilding their home and assessing damage and doing other frenzied ant things. I said, do you notice them now? My son said yes, they're running around like crazy. I asked, do you think they can see us now? He said no, we are still too big.

I told him as I tell you. That is what god is to us and us to him. It is not our place as ants to define the unknowable force that occasionally takes notice of us and destroys what we have built.

[Duchess]

Can you tell me why my God seems to be so radically different than the God many others worship?

[Donovan]

Because like everyone else, you created him in your own image.

[Duchess]

Because like everyone else, you created him in your own image.

Works for me!

That's actually sorta profound to me. I've never viewed it like that until now.

[Maggot]

Finally, someone gets it. God is us.

[Donovan]

If god didn't exist, we'd have to invent him. That "we are god" bit was Jeshua's whole message. It was the reason the hebrews called him a blasphemer because it eliminated their jobs as middle men. And the reason Rome hung him on a tree because only Caesar was "of god".

[Maggot]

Well..........that's all nice and good but Jesus believed and that's what really mattered. In the end the idea changed the world and in that aspect it was a worthwhile endeavor.No matter the outcome the original aspect is still a noble cause. Even in this day and age.

[Donovan]

Jesus didn't believe, and evidence shows he probably would have been appalled at what they turned him into. Jesus wanted to be a good jew and make life easier for other jews. He was not a proponent of spreading his message to gentiles. That's you, in case you wondered. Jesus was actually pretty dismissive of gentiles in general, even telling one non-jew who asked him for guidance that he wasn't going to "throw the children's bread to feed dogs." (matthew)

The preaching to gentiles part was all Paul, who called it his special great commission. Mainly because he'd been excluded from the elite apostle crew and was more or less a bandwagon self-promoter who made his name after Jesus got smoked. PS the early complete codex I mentioned upthread makes zero mention of resurrection, in any sense. Prevailing wisdom is that shit was added much, much later, even after the original followers were long dead.

[Maggot]

I give up, you have said yourself that there is no written established documents. Stop tromping and flailing uselessly on top of an agenda that just as much as the Romans did, they tried to squash and change the original belief and faith that there are things that take a tiny bit of faith to believe there is good in the world.
I'm not trying to change you. That would be the last thing I want but MS started a thread about his beliefs and you decided to start another thread in my eyes as a rebuttal.
Be that as it may I'm beginning to think your both nuttier than a snickers bar buried in a peanut farm silo.

[sally]

No matter what higher power you may think exists, I don't understand praying and worshipping it. What's the point? Is it somehow listening to you, but not the little, innocent girl who was abducted by some freak, gagged until her eyeballs bled and was brutally sodomized and choked to death. Who the fuck are you praying to? Or worshipping to for that matter? Are you so arrogant to think it cares about your petty shit?

[HairOfTheDog]

C'mon Mags............MS gets all twisted when anyone challenges or makes counter points to the Daily Bread crumbs in HIS thread.

So, a thread with other theories was started for actual, you know, discussion and debate.

And............now you're acting as if that's out of line too. Why?

Anyway, unlike in the Daily Bread thread, Donovan hasn't told MS or you or anybody else not to post counter-points in this thread and I'm glad everyone can share their opinions and facts here.

P.s. I see a lot of good in this world all the time, without religious faith (or discrimination).

[Maggot]

No matter what higher power you may think exists, I don't understand praying and worshipping it. What's the point? Is it somehow listening to you, but not the little, innocent girl who was abducted by some freak, gagged until her eyeballs bled and was brutally sodomized and choked to death. Who the fuck are you praying to?

Maybe for world peace? I only say that because I'm thinking of beauty pageants and just adding a James Bond song .



w/Pussy Galore.

[sally]

I give up, you have said yourself that there is no written established documents. Stop tromping and flailing uselessly on top of an agenda that just as much as the Romans did, they tried to squash and change the original belief and faith that there are things that take a tiny bit of faith to believe there is good in the world.
I'm not trying to change you. That would be the last thing I want but MS started a thread about his beliefs and you decided to start another thread in my eyes as a rebuttal.
Be that as it may I'm beginning to think your both nuttier than a snickers bar buried in a peanut farm silo.

I bet no one would have rebutted MS's thread if he hadn't come across as a condescending prick in his first post.

I could start a holy roller thread that is thoughtful and polite and no one would even question it, but that fucker has no couth or business starting such threads.

[Donovan]

Last on topic post we had come to the point some 300 years after the death of the original man Jeshua, at a point when Christians had been roundly persecuted and driven underground by a succession of Roman emperors: Nero, Marcus Aurelius, Diocletian. Incidentally this is where the fish symbol is invented, for christians to identify each other without telling the roman overlords. Jews in general take a beating from Rome, and Christians especially. The earliest documents I mentioned earlier, those gnostic gospels, the ones that later became canon, and possibly hundreds of other gospels, all have equal footing in the hidden sects of christianity. There are stories of Jesus' youth, stories of his sorcery tricks, a gospel of Judas, one of James Jesus' brother, a gospel of Barnabas, one of Mary Magdalene who is presented literally as Jesus second in command. These gospels can be found in the online references

Dead Sea Scrolls
Nag Hammadi scrolls
and other sources of apocrypha

But the roman emperor Constantine changed all of that, when after a lifetime as a pagan he gradually converted to a belief in Christianity and was officially converted on his deathbed, beginning a centuries long tradition of old heathen assholes finding god at the moment when they might actually be meeting him soon.

IN addition to that storied tradition of hypocrisy, Constantine was also responsible for the legitimizing of Christianity as a legal religion and for stabilizing the tenets of the religion through his council at Nicea. While the council did a number of things regarding the rules for church and religious leaders to follow, and attempted to pin down a date for easter unsuccessfully (that's right, there was no set easter date before this) the big development was the deification of Jesus through the Nicene creed. This was the exact moment Jesus was given spiritual equality to God, and turned into a created being.

[sally]

Happy Easter, everyone.

I celebrate it for eggs and ham. Deviled eggs and honey baked ham with scalloped potatoes.