Jews, Christianity & The Bible

Ok.....I've been thinking again. I know, but no matter what else I am doing, I am also thinking. Jesus was Jewish, his followers were Jewish, the NT therefore, was written by Jews. Yet, the Jewish do not think Jesus was the Messiah, but a prophet....and the Christian faith (another whole thread....I mean "starting" a religion to me seems phony to begin with, but that's been hashed out here before) follows the NT. Maybe it's just my odd way of thinking...but this seems really all backwards to me somehow......

Confusing huh Lady.

The whole Jesus story is just a re-hash of other stories of religous figures. His birth way and date, his death are just repeats of stories told before. If you want I can supply you with a few snippets of info on other stories, which have their version of Jesus born on the same day, by a virgin, were crucified, were resurected, feed hundreds of people with just a few cakes etc.

Familiarty breeds contempt.
Just as many great men are still seen as unruly teenagers in ther wn home town while the rest of the world seese them for what they are. Sometmes you can be too close to something or someone to see the truth.

And are you really one to be talkng about creating religon? Aren't you wiccan, wasnt that created by one of crowley's cronies?

Originally posted by Kriz_4
Confusing huh Lady.

The whole Jesus story is just a re-hash of other stories of religous figures. His birth way and date, his death are just repeats of stories told before.

Yes, I know this.....and yes. It is confusing....I am Wiccan...."the old" religion.......and likely one of the first.......it's hard to think of "starting" a religion......the whole Christianity thing id hard to swallow....though I do believe in much of the bible as a history book, but you have to dig really hard to understand it as it has been changed so much, plus I think it is taken wrong in many ways

I don't think Jesus "started" a new religion. Christianity is supposed to be a continuation of Abraham's/Moses religion. If one believes in Christianity, then one would also believe that it is the 1st religion, as God told Adam how to behave, what to do, and how to worship Him.

exavtly babyloi, Jesus didn't end judaism, nor did he come down to do so, he came down to correct the mirepresentations of Gods will, and to help us understand better how to live in accordance with it.

Originally posted by babloyi
I don't think Jesus "started" a new religion.

Of course not, I never said he did! Christianity did not start till "after his death....thus the name! All Jesus was trying to do was get the Jews back to the rules and way of the faith...."not" start a new religion.....

And to mwm1331....when will I learn!? I took you off ignore.....and you are still as ignorant as ever on the subject! NO....Crowley had nothing to do with starting Wicca....there was a man named "Gardner" who started a "form" of Wiccan.....I do not follow the Gardnarian from of Wicca, but an earth old form....read and learn before you make such uninformed remarks.
Off to work-------

Ahhh yes an "earth old" form.
Which basically means you make it up as you go along?
Its like the guys in the UK who claim to be druids despite the fact that noone actually knows exactly what the druids worshipped or what rituals, practices etc. they actually did.
You may gfee its an "earth old" form and as long as you are happy with it thats fine, but do you honestly believe that you worship the same things, way, etc. that our pre hstoric ancestors did?
Now I have no doubts wicca is based on earlier forms of relgon, but you and I both know there is no unbroken chain of worship that connects wicca to earlier pagan religons, there is no direct lineage, wicca is based on what we think we know about those earlier religons, we aren't nor can we be sure because they didn't leave written records, detailed explanations of thier rituals etc. All we have is the folk knowledge passed down which may or may not be accurate. Hell most of what we know about early pagans is based on the writing of ther enemies, so how can you lend it any creedence?
Everything we know about the keltoi for example comes from the wrtings of romans.

Good points. I always wished that Christians would put down the bible for a little bit and do some research regarding the histories of the many religions. No doubt, they will find that many religions if not most, are just a hijacking of a previous religions. Most can be traced back to Summeria I believe.

If they find comfort in believing in Christianity and such- thats fine, each to their own. Whatever brings peace their lives. It's just a shame that most of these people swell in a tunnel vision, unable to accept other ideas. I was raised Catholic, but it never felt right. It seemed as if I was "told" or provided the answers to everything without asking the questions.

My personal religion is a religion built on asking questions and coming to my own educated & yes, intuitive conclusions. And one most go back in history and find the "psycology" of the masses back then and the need to "belong". Belonging defines an individual. Unfortuanatle most dont come to their own conclusions- they are fed them.

I will leave you with is analogy that I often remind my children of:
If you were born and never left the house and didnt not have contact with the outside world and your parents taught you that the color "red" is actually "blue". That becomes your reality. Then one day, when your, say 16, you go out into the world and people tell you are wrong red is not blue.

How do you think that person will respond? Point being... religion is the same. They provide "answers" without letting ask questions.

I dont know if I went off topic- I just had to get this off my chest...

the bible is not the beall endall of religion. there were many beliefs that are
pre - biblical. just as the bible and its edited parts refer to multiple " Gods
and Goddesses".
the bible at best started as a single family diary.

IMO one of the major differences between the " old religions" and those of "the book", is that the old ways in many cases were and are Oral. until recently passed from family member to family member. The book beliefs IMO are passed anally ( in some instances literally).

LadyV, here is my take on how the religion came about.

Most people are not aware of the political and social upheaval from 300BCE to 90ACE particularly within Israel and the large Jewish populations spread out in the Middle Eastern countries of Egypt, Syria, India, iraq and Iran.

The internal religious problems for the Jews had been that they had several sects of Judaism, each advocating some beliefs quite different to the others. For example, one sect believed in reincarnation the others did not, one believed in the strictest following of the OT, the others did not. One firmly believed the messiah described in the OT was about to materialize to save them from their conquerors, giving rise to a host of false prophets claiming to be this person. As well, their internal governance was based on the Sanhedrin council a mixture of elders and high priests from all of these sects, where the political climate was heightened after Alexander's entrance into the state and later with the installation of the Jewish Herods reporting to pagan Rome. The rivalry of the sects turned into civil war amongst the people, and against the Herods, each jockeying for control.

The 4 gospels are based on the religious beliefs of one of those sects, the one that decided to spread its word outside of the Jews as aided by the Romans. It was initially still Judaism except it had the reincarnation sect written all over it, morphing into it the Jesus story as proof of same while rewriting the messiah prophecy as well, and since the other sects did not share that belief, nor recognize a messiah as having come, Christianity turned with Paul to non-Jews for a congregation as the Jewish followers were dropping like flies, as evidenced by the epistles.

The one sect got its wish albeit not in a Judaic sense, the others to this day still exist and co-exist.

Babloyi, LMMFAO!!!

Christianity is the 1st religion??? I guess you never heard of Ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, etc., who ALL predate the Israelites generally credited for starting the whole OT thing.

What about the people of the Stone Age? I'm sure that as long as modern man has been on the planet (100,000 years according to the Out Of Africa model), people have been wondering what else bigger than them is out there and have been worshipping something.

But I guess your right...Christianity is the 1st religion. Hell, it even predates Judaism...

Not really confusing if you think about it, for instance:

The reason Jews do not believe that Jesus was the Messiah is simple - Jews, at the time, did not believe. Those who continued with that faith still have those beliefs.

Those who chose to follow Christ became "Christ"ians, which was originally, and still is, an offspring of Judaism.

The Jewish and Christian religions are extremely close-knit, so some of the differences between them are very similiar.

-wD

Originally posted by mwm1331
wicca is based on what we think we know about those earlier religons,

Really!? My mother, my grandmother and my "great" grandmother would be interested in that, since they were all Wiccan.......

Old testement Jews before Jesus were looking for the "king" that would bring salvation. CHristians know who that is, and are waiting for his second coming.

In a sense, Jews of this day "Missed the boat" to Christians, present day jews are too entrapped in thier traditions that they do not realize the promised one has allready come. Jesus was without sin, which none of the other prophets were able to do.

And if you follow the Judeo-christian religion, it has been around from the very beginning. SO in a sense saying that some other belief pre-dated Judeo-christian religion will never register with a christian.

The cornerstone of Christianity, which was the basis for the creation of Christianity, was the resurrection of Jesus the Christ.

No empty tomb, no Christianity.





seekerof

There are always exceptions to everything laid out in the bible, a new order is brought forth in the NT, as opposed to the OT, almost all of jesus life is missing, so we really dont know why/who/what/where...

It seems more a jigsaw puzzle, or just a bad attempt to patch together something that could be presented to the mostly illiterate people of the time as belief system. It also made the church very very wealthy, and brought great power to the scribes and religious systems.

someday......

as far as the earliest religions...you can call it wicca, nature worship, alchemy, tree huggers, moon lovers, whatever....but the earliest religious services were Nature Based. These preceeded Judeo-Christian beliefs by tens of thousands of years.

There are snake engravings along with the swaztika that are 20,000 years old. These is a very ancient religion. The swaztika represents many things; the four directions, the four major elements, the four conditions of matter, etc, etc. There are rock paintings older than this depicting sacred tree ( tree of Life) and the symbol for Infinity ( the figure 8 at 90 degrees).

The oldest monoliths are of the Mother goddess, roughly 18,000 years old. For 12,000 years, this was the largest statue on earth.
The aborigines are the oldest Culture on earth, they have an interesting belief systems including a plumed serpent that dispenses wisdom in what is called dreamtime. In dreamtime they can communicate with their descendants as well as their ancestors, its like a Cell phone system that spans Time itself.

I understand when we believe in something, we want it to be the right choice, for the right reasons. But the facts are Nature based Religions have been here tens of thousands of years.

Originally posted by truthseeka
Babloyi, LMMFAO!!!

Christianity is the 1st religion???

I guess you never heard of Ancient Egyptians, Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, etc., who ALL predate the Israelites generally credited for starting the whole OT thing.

Sigh.... I think you missed it when I said "if one believes in Christianity...". See, if one believed in Christianity, they would believe that Christ came to preach a continuation of Moses'/Abraham's message, which was the religion of the One God, which was taught to Adam and Eve who, according to Christianity were the first people. Just because Christianity got a different name doesn't mean it is a different religion.

The Jews were waiting for a messiah who would come and rule physically and put down the occupation of others in the land of Israel and Israel would be the head of the nations. Some think that Judas was trying to force Jesus hand to do this by betraying Him.

Man has a problem with doing the wrong things and acting inappropriately and we are seperated from God(which all three are sin). Jesus came to deliver mankind from the disease of sin. He took the punishment of sin upon Himself. We are now able to come to God. When God covered Adam and Eve with skins, God got those skins from an animal. An animal whose blood was shed. God taught them the OT foreshadowing for salvation. This sacrifice was put in place until Christ came and shed His blood for our sins.

Now Christ is coming again but this time it will be for the physical rule of the earth. But the man of sin(antichrist, who comes first) will be accepted because he will bring this physical rule but will not be the True Christ. That's why many will be deceived and that's why it's very important to study the Bible and get your relationship with God in order through Christ.
God doesn't want any to perish so God has given us a general outline of what to expect in the Bible.

The deception that comes before Jesus Christ really returns, will be very believable, but those in charge will be serving satan and the goal of satan is the worship of himself which leads to death.