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Not true. We'd still have the Old Testament even if Jesus hadn't come along because it is part of the Jewish antiquity. The truth is the entire life of Jesus can be found in the Old Testament. That has nothing to do with prophecy. It has to do with the gospel writers modeling Jesus' life on characters from the Old Testament. Want to know about baby Jesus' flight to Israel from King Herod, just read Moses being hidden in the basket on the Nile because Pharaoh ordered all the baby Hebrew boys to be drowned at birth. Want to know about Jesus raising Jarius' daughter from the dead, just read Elijah raising the widows son from the dead. Want to know about Jesus being condemned to die and Barabbas being released, just look at the Passover custom of releasing a goat with bearing the Hebrews' sin into the wilderness and slaughtering the Lord's goat. It's all right there in the Old Testament. The gospel writers simply stole the stories and fashioned Jesus' life around them.
How does that work exactly? How did the religion spread so fast WITHOUT any of the gospels yet written?
How does that work exactly? How did the religion spread so fast WITHOUT any of the gospels yet written?
It did not. Pliny the Younger wrote that after interviewing the Christians, they admitted many of them had left the faith. It was such a small cult at the start of the 2nd century AD that Pliny did not know who the Christians were, or what they believed. It was not until the fictional gospels were written that it started to spread, because the stories sold better than the idea of someone claiming to have a vision of an angel.
And yet we haven't got a dime's worth of objective evidence the resurrection is and was anything more than a myth. Paul never saw Jesus while he was alive. He claims to have had some kind of mystical experience on the road to Damascus. Problem with all this is we haven't a dime's worth of evidence Paul even lived. Historians of the day don't mention a word of Paul or his trial or his travels so he's as big a mystery as the resurrection of Jesus. All we have are 7 epistles that Bible scholars have determined were written by the same hand. Whose hand that was we have no idea, and so they attribute them to Paul as a matter of tradition. We haven't dime's worth of proof the apostles were real. NONE of them are mentioned in any secular historic record of the day. Far as the gospels go they were written up to a century after Jesus' crucifixion by anonymous Greek authors with an agenda to spread the gospel of Jesus so we cannot trust that a single word in them that they attribute to Jesus was ever actually spoken by Jesus, because by the time the Greek writers got around to writing them all the witnesses to Jesus were either dead or just faded into history. The early days of the church are as flimsy and transparent as glossimer.
I can't rep you again.
I am very impressed with your precision thrill. You have utterly separated a statement of belief about god from a discussion about the flaws in any given belief set.
It did not. Pliny the Younger wrote that after interviewing the Christians, they admitted many of them had left the faith. It was such a small cult at the start of the 2nd century AD that Pliny did not know who the Christians were, or what they believed. It was not until the fictional gospels were written that it started to spread, because the stories sold better than the idea of someone claiming to have a vision of an angel.
What does that even mean?
Christianity is the gospel spread by word of mouth. The book doesn't even factor in.
Paul said he received everything from Jesus, not from a man. He also says Jesus was an angel in Galatians 4:14.
Hebrews also has a celestial Jesus, who is the priest of the temple that is the copy in heaven that mirrors the one on earth, where is one and only sacrifice took place.
The gospel Jesus an allegory for this cosmic divine being, and should not be read literally. You know, the argument you use to attack atheism, but attack Christianity instead.
Quote:
Originally Posted by OzzyRules
Christianity is the gospel spread by word of mouth. The book doesn't even factor in.
And what are the priests quoting? The Bible. Because if they are talking about something else, then they are not talking about Christianity.
Even Paul used letters to tell people what to believe and how to worship. And James. And Jude. And Peter. And the false Peter. And John. And where are those letters?
How does that work exactly? How did the religion spread so fast WITHOUT any of the gospels yet written?
Christianity didn't actually spread that fast. Mormonism spread much faster than Christianity, reaching an estimated 14.8 million converts today, just shy of 200 years since Joseph Smith. Does this make Mormonism the one true religion? When confronted with this fact Christians often argue, "Well, Mormonism had the benefit of mass communication. But why limit God's power? He could make any religion He wanted travel at the speed of light around the globe if He wanted to make sure one religion spread faster than the rest, right?
This is another of those urban legends that gets picked up by Christians when defending their faith. According to new calculations by Rodney Stark, a sociologist of religions:
For a starting number, Acts 1:14-15 suggests that several months after the Crucifixion there were 120 Christians. Later, in Acts 4:4, a total of 5,000 believers is claimed. And, according to Acts 21:20, by the sixth decade of the first century there were “many thousands of Jews” in Jerusalem who now believed.These are not statistics. Had there been that many converts in Jerusalem, it would have been the first Christian city, since there probably were no more than twenty thousand inhabitants at this time… As Hans Conzelmann noted, these numbers are only “meant to render impressive the marvel that here the Lord himself is at work” [1973:63]. Indeed, as Robert M. Grant pointed out, “one must always remember that figures in antiquity… were part of rhetorical exercises” [1977:7-8] and were not really meant to be taken literally. Nor is this limited to antiquity. In 1984 a Toronto magazine claimed that there were 10,000 Hare Krishna members in that city. But when [researchers] checked on the matter, they found that the correct total was 80.3
So let’s say there were only 1,000 Christians by the year 40, a full decade after Jesus’ death.
As for the ending number, at 300 C.E., historians have made many estimates, usually around 5-8 million.4
So, Christianity may have grown from about 1,000 believers in 40 C.E. to about 5-8 million in 300 C.E. – just 260 years. That would require a growth rate of 40% per decade, as shown by this table: Year Number of Christians, given 40% growth per decade
40 1,000
50 1,400
60 1,960
70 2,744
80 3,842
90 5,378
100 7,530
150 40,496
200 217,795
250 1,171,356
300 6,299,832
350 33,882,008
Now we can ask, does this kind of growth require mass conversions?
As it turns out, this matches almost exactly the growth rate of the Mormon church over the past century. Mormonism has grown at 43% per decade, and without mass conversions.5
Is there any proof that the Bible is not 100% man made?
No. There is a lot of proof that the Bible once existed in many different forms, as a means of telling parables about life's lessons learned, and providing social guidelines to religious leaders of the books, to impart to their tribes. After a time, it was codified by groups of religious readers. (I am putting this simply, because it would take pages and pages to provide the actual technical history -- and advise those truly interested to do their own research.)
I've read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations many times, and find more wisdom in many of it's passages each time I read it, but it is simply a guide for people to find their spiritual path to a greater consciousness and was never intended to be taken literally. All the stories are for self-examination, and NOT for deciding what's wrong with others. See my tag line.
No. There is a lot of proof that the Bible once existed in many different forms, as a means of telling parables about life's lessons learned, and providing social guidelines to religious leaders of the books, to impart to their tribes. After a time, it was codified by groups of religious readers. (I am putting this simply, because it would take pages and pages to provide the actual technical history -- and advise those truly interested to do their own research.)
I've read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations many times, and find more wisdom in many of it's passages each time I read it, but it is simply a guide for people to find their spiritual path to a greater consciousness and was never intended to be taken literally. All the stories are for self-examination, and NOT for deciding what's wrong with others. See my tag line.
No. There is a lot of proof that the Bible once existed in many different forms, as a means of telling parables about life's lessons learned, and providing social guidelines to religious leaders of the books, to impart to their tribes. After a time, it was codified by groups of religious readers. (I am putting this simply, because it would take pages and pages to provide the actual technical history -- and advise those truly interested to do their own research.)
I've read the Bible from Genesis to Revelations many times, and find more wisdom in many of it's passages each time I read it, but it is simply a guide for people to find their spiritual path to a greater consciousness and was never intended to be taken literally. All the stories are for self-examination, and NOT for deciding what's wrong with others. See my tag line.
yeah, the anti-religous sect of my atheism frowns on such notions.
they are all wrong
and
thats the end of it.
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Want to know about Jesus raising Jarius' daughter from the dead, just read Elijah raising the widows son from the dead. 
Because if they are talking about something else, then they are not talking about Christianity.
