Why Didn't Jesus Write The Bible?

Originally posted by liveandletlive
reply to post by oliveoil

 

If you are saying that it can be interpreted in different ways and therefore it is corruptible by the interpreter I would agree. But that does lend support to my argument. As an example, take anyone from any period of time that is unable to read. If they are misled through inappropriate interpretation of “any” ancient religious documents throughout various cultures they are still held accountable. Based on that idea, if you are uneducated and unable to read or you are born into the wrong culture you could spend eternity in hell as a consequence. Isnt that right?

No, The people who teach the people who are uneducated are the ones who would be held accountable. And those who would have you believe that the Bibles message was different 2000 years ago as it is today are deceiving you.

2 Timothy 4:4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.

wasnt it the calvanists that said Gods grace is irresistable if that is so than the point they were making was about predestination and all that jazz but point is that i am trying to make is even if there was no bible would the good will of man over come evil intentions? also I was kinda curious about the virtues of Good love and compassion hardwork and all that are condusive to a good environment were people can grow starting as an individual but the virtues of for some strange reason will always destroy themselves evil will ultimatley destroy itself greed, when you get to polar extremes which if allowed over time will happen what happens when greed gets the better of good men then the greedy turn on each other, violence only the the violent pick on the non violent and the violent when the non violent cease to exist then they kill and beat each other into death or submission, etc

Because Jesus was a myth,
not even one single CHRISTIAN ever claimed to have met him :

Paul
Paul never met a historical Jesus, and never claimed to.
He did claim to have had revelations "thru Christ" etc.
He did claim to have had a vision of Christ.
And others (Acts) claim Paul had a vision of Christ.

It is worth noting that Paul does not place Iesous Christos in history :
* No places - Paul never mentions Bethlehem, Nazareth, Galilee, Calvary, etc.
* No dates - Paul never places Iesous Christos in time.
* No names - Paul never mentions Mary, Joseph, Pilate, Judas, Nicodemus, Lazarus etc.
* No miracles - Paul never mentions the miracles/healings of Jesus
* No trial/tomb - Paul never mentions the trial or the empty tomb etc.
Paul's Christos is a heavenly being, not a historical person.

the 500
Paul claims 500 others had a vision of Christ. The Gospels do not mention that, no other writer mentions that, and we have no names or evidence for any of the 500. Even IF it happened - they had a VISION like Paul - nothing historical.

G.Mark
The author of this book never identifies himself, and never claims to have met Jesus. According to traditon, Mark was a secretary of Peter and never met Jesus. This Gospel, like all of them, started out as an un-named book.

G.Matthew
The author of this book never identifies himself, and never claims to have met Jesus. According to tradition it was written by an apostle - but it never says so, and it mentions Matthew without the slightest hint that HE was writing it.

G.Luke
The author of this book never identifies himself, and never claims to have met Jesus. According to tradition it was written by a follower of Paul.

G.John
According to tradition this Gospel was written by the apostle John, and the last chapter says :
" This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true."
This is part of a chapter that was added to the Gospels, and it is clearly someone else making a claim for the book. It most certainly does not even come close to specific claim that anyone personally met Jesus.

Jude
This letter contains no claim to have met Jesus.

Johanines
1 John contains this passage :
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4We write this to make our[a] joy complete.
Some believers assert this is a claim to have met Jesus.
What did he see and hear? He certainly never says it was Jesus. He just had a spiritual experience and wants to tell everyone about it - "God is light". Nothing here about any historical Jesus at all.

James
There is no claim to have met Jesus in this letter - supposedly from Jesus' BROTHER ! Yet it contains NOTHING anywhere about a historical Jesus, even where we would expect it. It is clear this writer had never even HEARD of a historical Jesus.

Revelation
No claim to have met Jesus.

the Petrines
2 Peter has this passage :
1.16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.
Here we see Peter directly claim to have witnessed Jesus' transfiguration. The ONE and ONLY such direct personal claim in the entire NT.
But -
2 Peter is the very latest and most suspect book in the whole NT - scholars agree it is a forgery, so do many Christians, ancient and modern. A late and deliberate forgery that claims NOT to be based on "cunningly devised fables" - probably in direct response to critics claims. THAT is the one single book that contains a claim to have met Jesus.

Clement
Never claimed to have met Jesus or anyone who did.

Papias
Does not claim to have met Jesus or anyone who had.
He did claim to have met Presbyters who told him what some disciples had said.
Discusses two books of Matthew and Mark , not called Gospels, not quite like modern Gospels.

Polycarp
Never claimed to have met Jesus or anyone who did.
Irenaeus claimed Polycarp met discples who met Jesus

Ignatius
Never claimed to have met Jesus or anyone who did.

Justin
Never claimed to have met anyone who met Jesus.
Discusses UN-NAMED Gospels not quite like ours.

So,
the entire NT contains only ONE specific claim to have met a historical Jesus - from the most suspect forgery in the whole book.

There is NOT ONE reliable claim by anyone to have ever met Jesus.


Just later 3rd hand claims, and books, and claims about books.


Kapyong

reply to post by Kapyong


Wow it’s been 4 or 5 hours and no one responded to your post. I’m surprised. I would have expected you to have been pounced on by now. Ill check back later.

Hi Kapyong--

You've laid out some broad strokes, now time for the fine-print.

And since no one else has the bandwidth to add, I'll add just a very few minor points for consideration.

For example the 17 year old Polycarp - claimed in writing to have met the 97 year old Yohannon the Presbuteros ('elder', 'old man') in Ephesus (this was possibly the same John the Elder, who was buried next to another John, the John of Ephesus but who knows who these people were) - but Polycarp was under the impression that this John that he met (as a very very old man being carried in on a stretcher whose only sermon was 'little children, love one another' before he had to be taken out) apparently DID meet R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the galilean in the flesh at least for a time, possibly only in Jerusalem - this same Yohananon old man Elder guy might have been the one who saw the so-called Blood and Urine scene ('out flowed blood & water') at the cross and testified that he saw a Centurion prick the master while being impaled...which suggests that the soma (body) was still alive at the time (not a ptoma - corpse); interestingly in the Markan pericope, when the Praefectus of Judea, Pontius Pilatus 'did not beleuve that he was dead already' states that the SOMA was broght down from crose (literally a LIVE body, not a PTOMA, dead corpse).....

Also it was Polycarp who later met (as an old man himsefl) with the young Iraenaeus the later Bishop of Lyon who stated emphatically that he had gotten it from John the Elder that R. Yehoshua was 48 years old when he died (being born c. BCE 12) in 36 CE. (cf: John, 'You are not yet 50 years old and yet you claim to have SEEN Avraham?) or ('but he spake of the Temple of his Body' i.e. the 2nd Temple of Herod was re-dedicated with a new foundation in 12 BCE - so that the 'body' of R. Yeshoshua in the 4th gospel (some of the material in the book is linked to John the Elder, especially in the Jerusalemite-Kidron Valley passages) is seen corresponding to the age of the temple - ('forty and six years has this temple been in the building of it, and yet you say you can destroy it and build it up again in three days? --'but HE SPOKE OF THE TEMPLE OF HIS BODY...') using what we would call coded Pesher Language.

Not that this John the Elder was the actual source of this information - all we have is Polycarp's claims of the same (whoever this John reaally was) certainly NOT one of the 12 - he might have been one of the 70 apostoloi ('sent ones') who were sent out to the Diaspora towns to speak to Jews in Asia Minor to 'preach the good news of the kingdom of Heaven' to them i.e. one of the 'jobs' of the Messiah was to gather-back the Elect of the Lost Sheep of the House of Israel (e.g. Matt chapter 15, where the good Rebbe was apparently looking at the northern stretch of his 'daviddic kingdom' and told that gentile syrophonecian dog-woman to just go away and let the children eat in peace, as it were).

Aparently the term APOSTOLOI refers more than to the 12 - Saul of Tarsus whom you rightly claim never met R. Yehoshua bar Yosef in the flesh (only in dreams and visions, like my cook !) also called himself an APOSTOLOS of HO CHRISTOS - and we have people like Aristion (often listed alongside this Yohanon/John the Elder/Presbuteros) called APOSTOLOI of which we know nothing further.

Certainly APOSTLE and DISCPLE were not the same - and the 3 (James, John, Peter) were further separated from the other 9 (of the 12) who witnesses certain 'visions' e.g. the socalled Transfiguraion or the socalled Raising of the Daugher of Jairus &tc.

Still fairly third hand info when all is said and done (Iranaeus claims that he got his information from Polycarp that Iesous/Yeshua was 48 at the time of his execution for armed seditioin - and Polycarp did claim to have briefly met one of the 'in the flesh' followers of Iesous) and not something that is able to 'be taken to the bank', as it were - but it does dit the millieu of the 4th gospel (which stands in stark contrast to the first 3 Council approved Canonical Greek Gospels ('the synoptics Greek canonical Gospels' of Matt/Mark/Luke, whoever they were).

Papias certainly was slapshod in his fact gathering - he says that 'Mattathia collected the LOGIA of the Kurios in the Hebrew tongue and everyone translated them as they were able'

Well---LOGOI means 'words' and LOGIA typically means SAYINGS. But LOGIA could ALSO mean 'ORACLES'.

So 'SAYINGS of the LORD' (i.e. words of Iesous) means something VERY different than 'ORACLES of the LORD' (i.e. all the old testament 'prophecies' that the Messiah would fulfill in the Last Days).

If the latter meaning is meant it could fit what we read in parts of the 1st gospel that 'this was done to fulfil what was spoken by the prophet x' so that Matathaih would have some teaching material handy (whoever he was : maybe the 13th disciple who in Acts chapter 1 was the 'replacement disciple' for Yehudah bar Shimeon Ish-Keyria (the bursar) i.e. Judas

If the 1st meaning is meant, it could mean that this replacement disciple ('chosen by lots' to fill up the 12) since he never met the Rabbi himself would need to collect the SAYINGS (logoi) of R. Yehoshua into a WRITTEN book (like the gospel of Thomas : 'And Iesous said...' also for preaching purposes and to get 'caught up' on the teaching/didache of the other 11 followers (sort of like a crib used in School).

Such Collections of LOGOI (words) were around before the gospels were apparently.



Also he states that Mark was the secretary translater for Kephah but that his gospel 'faithfully wrote down Peter's preaching' but 'not in order'.

Did he mean literal chronological order? or maybe Literary order? Papias seems like he left alot of T's uncrossed.

About Mark: even if Papias is correct that 'Mark' did accompany Kephah [Peter] we have no way of knowing that the paltry Greek in the gospel that bears his name today (but circulated originally anonymously as they all did for more than 150 years) is in the form that he left it (if he wrote a gospel at all) especially since we have fragments of Secret Gospel of Mark floating around, which suggests that the gospel was originally much much longer and was pared down by the Iraneus-type proto-Orthodox censors in the 2nd and 3rd centuries as containing terms and pericopes that were later deemed heretical (such as the 'raising of the young man in the tomb' story in Secret Mark) etc.

reply to post by Kapyong


The people of the new testament are all met someone related to knowing Jesus,

New International Version
Galatians 1:19
I saw none of the other apostles--only James, the Lord's brother.

Paul, whose earlier Hebrew name was Saul,[9] was "of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews; as touching the law, a Pharisee.”[Phil. 3:5] Acts identifies Paul as from Mediterranean city of Tarsus (in present-day south-central Turkey), well-known for its intellectual environment. Acts also claims Paul said he was "a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee".[Acts 23:6]

According to his own testimony, Paul “violently persecuted” the “church of God” (followers of Jesus) prior to his conversion to Christianity.[10] and was advancing in stature within Judaism's Jerusalem temple leadership before he came to believe that the crucified Jesus, of the line of David, was actually Lord. [Rom. 1:3] Paul's writings give some insight into his thinking regarding his former place in Judaism. He is strongly critical both theologically and empirically of claims of moral or lineal superiority [2:16-26] of Jews while conversely strongly sustaining the notion of a special place for the Children of Israel.[9-11] His aggressive and authoritative writing style, even when addressing the supposed "super-apostles", [1 Cor. 11] some of whom certainly had stronger claims, having known Jesus during his lifetime, suggests that Paul's stature in Judaism and the temple leadership must have been quite high.

Paul asserted that he received the Gospel not from any person, but by a personal revelation of Jesus Christ.[Gal. 1:11–16] Paul claimed independence from the "mother church" in Jerusalem[11] (possibly in the Cenacle), but was just as quick to claim agreement with it on the nature and content of the gospel.[Gal. 1:22-24]

Paul's conversion can be dated to AD 33 - AD 36[12][13][14] by his reference to it in one of his letters.[6] According to the Acts of the Apostles, his conversion (or metanoia) took place on the road to Damascus, where he experienced a vision of the resurrected Jesus after which he was temporarily blinded.[Acts 9:1-31] [22:1-22] [26:9-24] This event is the source of the phrase Pauline conversion

Text

Gday,

Originally posted by The time lord
reply to post by Kapyong

 

The people of the new testament are all met someone related to knowing Jesus,

So you say.
But none of the NT writings say that clearly at all.

Originally posted by The time lord
New International Version
Galatians 1:19
I saw none of the other apostles--only James, the Lord's brother.

A title.
Nothing to do with a physical brother.

Paul says he is just as much an apostle as the others.
Paul makes no mention that James was the actual brother of Jesus - if so, James' word would be superior.
Paul says he learnt the Gospel from "no man".
The epistle of James says nothing about being a brother.
Acts says nothing about James being a brother.

So,
alll you have is ONE little phrase "brother of the Lord".
Nothing solid at all.

Just claims in books and claims about books.


K.

Far be it from me to speak for Jesus , but perhaps he didn't " write it " because it was all ready written ?

Also possibly worth mentioning , he did more to teach the " spirit " of the word as a posed to the " letter of the law .

Hi Max-TO

I think you bring out an important point about oral tradition v. written word; some of the Nazorean Ebionim who were followers of Yakkov bar Yosef (James the Just, the alleged blood brother of R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean Nazir, and who took over the 'ministry' after his brother's execution for armed sedition against Rome in 36 CE, even though he was NOT one of the 12 - shows how blood is thicker than Pauline Ink in Ebionite circles..) were very loathe to write anything down, 'for we believe that the Breathing Word of a Living Disciple is always far more preferable than anything WRITTEN' which can be (as the poor prophet Jeremiah found out back in 550 BCE) prone to the whims of 'the LYING PENS OF THE COPYISTS'

Of course as the original disciples and apostoloi of R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean (Gk. Iesous) began to die off over time (and during the 1st failed Jewish War against Rome in 66-72 CE), and NO SECOND COMING in sight (the socalled PAROUSIA) , gradually, 'orality' began to die off and literary collections started appearing in the form of material to 'be read in the churches' (probably first the oracles of YHWH in the Old Testment Hebrew that the earliest Christians believed were 'fulfilled' by their teacher (we see similar lists about the Teacher of Righteousness at Qumran among the dead sea Scrolls, dated to about 150 BCE) and also a series of pronouncements or prophecies attributed to their teacher ('remember how he used to tell us...') to which was added axioms for 'right living' and later midrashic haggadic legends (sort of acted out parables) and miracle stories that we see in the gospels (and especially over time in the later gospels where the miracles keep getting bigger and better).

Also as a Daviddic Pretender who believed he was 'living in the Last Days' ('there be some of you standing here right now who will not taste of death until they see the Bar-Enasha coming on the Clouds of Heaven, seated at the Right Hand of the Power of EL, with all of his holy ones with him...') there would have been a. danger in committing seditionist ideas (like overthrowing the filfthy rotten goyim dog occupying Romans) to paper and b. no point of thinking about a posterity if the end was coming soon anyway.

Even Saul of Tarsus ('Paul') believed this 'going to happen at any minute' stuff to be true at the beginning of his evangelistic work - so he didn't bother with much forward planning in terms of longer term 'church organisation' - that was left to the early 2nd century Paulinists to deal with, taking over the Nazorean Ebionite idea of Overseers (Gr. Epi (over) + skopoi (lookers) = episcopoi, i.e. bishops) and Deacons &tc. - so they ended up adding and changing some of his shorter notes / letters (read 2 Timothy to see how this expansion of a short note can be done by later forgerers who use 'a vastly different vocabulary, syntax, grammar, diction, sentence length, Greek spelling, theological presuppositions and political world-view than Paul himself, despite placing these Greek words into his mouth...' C.K. Barrett, 1981 Lecture series.)

Of course parishioners are never allowed to know this kind of thing...only scholars and clerics, who keep this stuff all to themeselves...but then came the Internet....

And well, look at us now...

Originally posted by Max_TO
Far be it from me to speak for Jesus , but perhaps he didn't " write it " because it was all ready written ?

Wel, the OT was already written,
but,
the NT wasn't.

K.

reply to post by Kapyong


But the OP means the Old Testament! Or didn't you know that remedial fact?!

Originally posted by Solasis
reply to post by Kapyong

 

But the OP means the Old Testament! Or didn't you know that remedial fact?!

Pardon?

The phrase "OP" means Original Post, not "Old Testament".

And the OP in this thread does NOT say "OT", it just says "the Bible".


K.

Why didn't god itself drop a indestructable book containing all of his rules, in all human languages? It would solve a few problems I think.

[edit on 11-3-2010 by hippomchippo]

reply to post by Kapyong


*sigh* You didn't read any of the topic, did you?

Lil' history lesson for my joke. www.abovetopsecret.com...

Jesus is just a myth and i can prove it. The story of jesus is actually the oldest story ever told and that is the story of the suns journey through the zodiac during each year. I will give you one example of this and it concerns john the baptist. John the baptist is actually a representation of the star sign Aquarius. Aquarius represents water as each year when aquarius was in the sky it signalled the rainy season (the zodiac was a tool used by the ancients for telling the seasons), this is why John the Baptist baptises with water. Now in the Gospels, John the Baptist is beheaded and then is risen from the dead later in the story. This ALSO happens to the star sign aquarius. Aquarius is able to be seen again later on in the year after it dissapears from the sky, however when it appears again it looks as if the top of aquarius has been cut off (its head). There are many more similarities between the jesus story and the suns journey through the zodiac, i really recommend you read them yourself.

Originally posted by Ricklett
Jesus is just a myth and i can prove it. The story of jesus is actually the oldest story ever told and that is the story of the suns journey through the zodiac during each year. I will give you one example of this and it concerns john the baptist. John the baptist is actually a representation of the star sign Aquarius. Aquarius represents water as each year when aquarius was in the sky it signalled the rainy season (the zodiac was a tool used by the ancients for telling the seasons), this is why John the Baptist baptises with water. Now in the Gospels, John the Baptist is beheaded and then is risen from the dead later in the story. This ALSO happens to the star sign aquarius. Aquarius is able to be seen again later on in the year after it dissapears from the sky, however when it appears again it looks as if the top of aquarius has been cut off (its head). There are many more similarities between the jesus story and the suns journey through the zodiac, i really recommend you read them yourself.

Sorry but I'm an atheist and thats a little weak.

I only gave one example out of hundreds, why dont you go research it yourself

Originally posted by Ricklett
I only gave one example out of hundreds, why dont you go research it yourself

Because you're the one saying it's the proof that jesus is simply a myth.
And I'm saying that could have simply been a coincidence, please give me some more examples.

The topic is a long and complicated one and me just giving short examples will not prove anything, you have to study it for yourself.

[edit on 11-3-2010 by Ricklett]

[edit on 11-3-2010 by Ricklett]

Originally posted by Ricklett
The topic is a long and complicated one and me just giving short examples will not prove anything, you have to study it for yourself.

[edit on 11-3-2010 by Ricklett]

[edit on 11-3-2010 by Ricklett]

You said you had proof that jesus was simply a myth, then gave poor proof, i asked for more proof, and you said do it yourself.
Does that make sense to you?