bloody christians - TTLG Forums

Agent Monkeysee on 28/1/2004 at 16:50

Quote:

Originally posted by buglunch
Thank you, Monkeysee, for existing!

MY PLEASURE, CITIZEN

*Zaccheus* on 28/1/2004 at 17:12

Quote:

Originally posted by the_grip
i've always stuck to the main point being that the flood killed everyone (again, minus Noah and his family) and the rest is just the surrounding details.

Oh, ok.
:)

Jenesis on 28/1/2004 at 17:32

Quote:

Originally posted by Cebrus
Yeah, Old Testament is not for wusses. Thats what the New Testament is for.

Jesus' own disciples were shocked at how hard Jesus' message was ((http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&passage=Matthew+5&version=NIV) Matthew 5, for instance). See in particular v.20, where Jesus tells his disciples that they must be more righteous than the Pharisees, who were considered the most devout and righteous Jews of the time. People turned away, unable to follow Jesus' teaching. Christianity is by no means easy to put into practice. There is a lot of good news in there, of course, such as the forgiveness of sins through Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, but there are a lot of difficult things that go along with it.

This leads to the question, if you maintain that the Gospels are not historically accurate, of 'why did whoever make it up make it so hard?'. If you were out to set yourself up as the head of a religion by inventing it, you'd surely make it pretty easy to follow.

There's also an enormous stack of evidence for the Bible's accuracy - in fact, the more archaeologists look, the more they find. (http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-t007.html) Google turned this up. The footnotes to that are also worth reading.

scumble - (http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?SearchType=AND&language=english&searchpage=0&search=bees&version=NIV) bees, yes, but not giant ones.
The best I could come up with for rivers of milk was (http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=JOEL+3:18&language=english&version=KJV&showfn=on&showxref=on) this. But I think lots of dairy stock is being referred to.
Although you probably weren't being serious.

Edit: Spelling

*Zaccheus* on 28/1/2004 at 17:46

Quote:

Originally posted by scumble
... rivers of milk do seem a little unlikely...

I would assume that's just a phrase meaning "a lot of milk".
:)

But I can understand why people find certain accounts in the bible a bit hard to believe.

Jenesis, I always took "must be more righteous than the Pharisees" to mean that we will never be good enough to get to heaven on our own merrit, hence the cross.

SD on 28/1/2004 at 18:22

Originally posted by Jenesis
This leads to the question, if you maintain that the Gospels are not historically accurate, of 'why did whoever make it up make it so hard?'. If you were out to set yourself up as the head of a religion by inventing it, you'd surely make it pretty easy to follow.

Jesus wasn't trying to set himself up as the head of a religion. That's the point. Jesus's brothers and children were furious with Paul, who spread the word that Jesus was "God made man". No doubt Jesus himself would be horrified too were he alive today. Paul's brand of Jesus-worship was a million miles away from Jesus's militant Judaic freedom fighting.

Obviously, when the Roman Emperor Constantine fused Paul's Jesus cult with his own sun-worshipping cult of sol invicta (ever wonder why the sabbath was switched from Saturday to "Sun"day?) it wouldn't look good if the Romans were seen to be anti-Jesus.

So they re-wrote the gospels to lay the blame squarely at the feet of the Jews who refused to save him in favour of Barabbas, rather than the Romans who executed hm (after all Pilate gave the people a chance to save Jesus, which is more than reasonable). And they permanently excluded a number of other gospels which differed so greatly from the true version of events that a rewrite would be impossible.

The Bible you hold in your hands today is the greatest work of propaganda in history. How ironic that the Romans (Catholics) hold more power these days, without an empire, than they did back in the day when they had subjugated half the known-world.

StD

Rug Burn Junky on 28/1/2004 at 18:32

When I went to visit one of my friends a few years ago, I saw the Noah's Ark Playset he had for his young son.

It had a big boat, and a bunch of different figurines:
2 cows,
2 chickens,
2 horses,
2 pigs,
Noah...
and 1 sheep.

Never knew quite what to make of that Noah character after that. :)

screech on 28/1/2004 at 18:40

Quote:

Originally posted by DarkTiamat
All of them! ^_^

Kleptocracy more like.

remind self to use spell checker more often.

--edit-- I seriously doubt that Ruggy.

GayleSaver on 28/1/2004 at 18:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Strontium Dog
Originally posted by Jenesis
The Bible you hold in your hands today is the greatest work of propaganda in history. How ironic that the Romans (Catholics) hold more power these days, without an empire, than they did back in the day when they had subjugated half the known-world.

Propaganda without substance is ineffective.

driver on 28/1/2004 at 18:55
Quote:
Originally posted by the_grip
but i've always stuck to the main point being that the flood killed everyone

But what about the evil fish...? :(

Goggleboy on 28/1/2004 at 18:58
Quote:
Originally posted by the_grip
Definitely could have been... i'm not arguing against it (and i'm no Hebrew scholar). My impression of the main point of the passage is that every human being was killed by the flood, minus Noah and his family. i know there is tons of historical debate about the flood (and other literature that surrounds it, i.e. Gilgamesh), but i've always stuck to the main point being that the flood killed everyone (again, minus Noah and his family) and the rest is just the surrounding details.

Every culture around the world has their own story belonging to the Cataracts of the Gods archetype. In many cases the story describes a great flood that covers the entire world. It's likely that "whole world" is synonomous with the known world, or the region of the world in which the writers lived. I could imagine that for someone living through such a natural disaster, it might very well look like the entire world is covered with water. Another possible interpretation is that the biblical story described the whole world as being flooded as a metaphor (read hyperbole), which the Bible is full of. The various flood stories of course take place at different times in history, which makes sense.:)