The Bible II

Does anyone think a god needs to SYMBOLICALLY test anyone to REPRESENT something that would happen 2000 years later.

I've just thought. Could it be that the event where Darius crucified thousands of his opponents in the 6th century BCE was to symbolically represent the thousands of slaves crucified by the Romans after Spartacus. Mmmm.

There's no evidence that Abraham, Moses etc ever existed. But the scribes of the 7th century BCE are to be congratulated on an excellent story. Pity they made mistakes in their history.. .

 

All of it. Nothing to be left. The only exception would be if the Eve of the Passover actually fell on a normal Sabbat. Then cooking was not allowed and the lamb remained in the Temple. This was after the 1st century BCE when the Sabbat took preference to the Passover (Hillel)

 

A preponderance of the evidence indicates that Jesus was indeed a divine individual in human form.

 

Anyway.. we are the "Faithful" and there was no other revelation that benefits humanity as the teaching out of Jerusalem.

 

Evidence? Such as?

There's as much evidence that Mohammed spoke with Gabriel; Islam.

 

Wrong Trevor.. you are the Biblical scholar.. find them yourself.. I shaking the dust from my shoes.. I don't know what happened to you if you are what you say.. but I don't want anything to do with you,, you are a bully for one, and you are just wrong for another, I can only pray that you reconsider your anti-Christian, refutation of the Bible or what ever it is you call it. Bye

 

You were simply ASKED to back your claim, this is not bullying it is calling out inaccuracy.....we call it debate. That you become offended and run from it fully indicates the validity of your position....it is indeed probably best that you exit at this point.

 

He's the scholar.. I don't really want to waste my time with him.. I can predict anything I post, he will refute. And he is a bully, this is the only thread on which he post so he can attack believers.. but I have a question.. what is the Shroud of Turin? It is a strange artifact, if you have thoroughly researched it. Why would a bunch of 1st century peasants and fishermen risk their lives for a myth and a lie? After the crucifixion, they were returning to their previous lives, what in the world turned them around to suffer certain torture and death?
My mistake was thinking I could come to a thread such as this to share with believers, I just didn't realize there would be a cadre of trolls bent on attacking what they don't believe in.

 

There is no evidence. We have a story which is believed by some. Words in a book. Millions follow Buddha, Billions follow Islam. You say Christianity has contributed to the world today. Have you seen the contribution of Islam during their Golden age. Have you seen the contribution the early Egyptians and Greeks contributed to the world. Why would Islam 'fighters/terrorists/soldiers' be prepared to lose their lives for something they didn't believe in? So they must be right?

It takes a few followers of a charismatic character to create a crowd. Look at your US TV evangelists.

What makes you think Jesus was divine? There is no reference to him in the OT. Matthew uses prophecies from the OT but they are all to do with Israel as anyone who has studied the OT will know. The Jews knew their own scriptures inside out. Jesus the Jewish preacher, knew them too. That's why the reports in the Gospels are suspect. You have Gospels written by heaven knows who many decades after the death of Jesus.
The church at Jerusalem remained a sect of Judaism until it dissipated. Paul is the main proponent of Christianity and boy, did he use Greek philosophy mixed with his own beliefs, Judaism, in his ministry. You may not like it because it shakes your faith. Compare what Paul said with Greek and Roman philosophers. In some cases he almost plagiarises their comments.

All religions are the product of the human mind - either due to lack of understanding or the need to believe something.

Studying just the Bible alone is just like studying the human heart and not knowing the rest of the human anatomy.

You do realise that the death of most of the disciples and apostles isn't known. It's mostly 'by tradition'.

 

So you are a member of the cannibal cult.

 

I'm afraid that indoctrination has taken hold. If the truth were in front of him and he had been told differently he would not believe.

For years I've been asking how, according to the Bible, Jesus was in Egypt and Nazareth at the same time. Of course he wasn't, but to admit that would be to admit the error in the Bible.

Ah well. As they say 'Where ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise' to take a phrase out of context.

 

Persnally I find issues with the shroud....the first being that it shows a caucasian man with beard and lox....that would make Jesus the only white man in the ME and Judas would have simply said so instead of kissing him so the Romans would know who he was.

 

Mohammed was a white man.

 

I see...so you have the only picture or painting of a man who people kill when portrayed? Interesting, and why distract from my commentary rather than address it?

 

I have no issues with the Shroud. It's a 'fake'. As are many of the millions of 'relics' in Monasteries and churches today. You could probably complete a hundred skeletons of St. Peter from his 'bones' The Vatican have just uncovered in the Vatican the 'steps up which Jesus walked to his crucifixion'. Pilgrims are flocking there to walk them/crawl up them. Well, I guess they're as authentic as Jacobs ladder.
Churches and monasteries that needed money in the Middle Ages suddenly 'discovered' saintly relics and displayed them for the credulous to see - and of course donate money.

Todd. I'm sorry you think me a bully. Most of us are simply trying to get you to think for yourself. The Bible is not a divinely inspired 'Word of God'. It is the work of men. Study Judaism and understand the OT as it was written. Look at proven ancient history of the Middle East and compare it to what the Bible says. . We know most of the OT was written around the 7th century BCE. It can't be otherwise. You can't write history before it has happened. And the history of the Jews begins around 1000 BCE and continues until it was written in Babylon. It's found in the Books of Kings and Chronicles. At the same time the Pentateuch was written to give the Israelites an origin farther back in history. Their captors, the Babylonians, had a long complicated history. They didn't - so they wrote one. And made mistakes in their history knowledge.

Many of us have been through what you are believing but we've gone further in trying to understand the Bible. It is a book with much wisdom - but it has errors. It is a book that should be considered as 2 sections. Jewish and Christian (OT and NT testaments).

Of course you probably won't read this which really is a shame.

 

One of my biggest questions regarding God is what is he composed of? Everything we can we observe in the universe is composed of matter. If God exists, I must presume that he is composed of matter (or anti-matter). The problem of course is how can God be composed of matter? It makes his existence dependent on something outside of him, something that exists with or without him. If he is not composed of matter, how can he exist at all?

The Bible says that man was created in the image of God. If this is true, why does God have a penis and a belly button? A belly button is evidence that an entity was created by another entity. Why would God have such an anatomical feature? The penis is used for waste disposal and procreation, two functions that would be useless to God. Why does God have one? If the answer is that God doesn't have one, then why does the Bible say that man is created in the image of God if that is not true?

Regarding free will, it is hard for me to see that God has any. Since he knows everything that will happen forever, there is no possible way he can change anything... it is preordained. Existence is simply a movie running that was written an infinity ago. It is an exercise in pointlessness.

I LOVE the idea of an eternal existence of happiness and bliss that is achievable through no real effort on my part.... a kind of welfare salvation. Unfortunately I don't I have the power to choose what to believe. I BELIEVE that BELIEF is simply another biological function I have no power over... like breathing. When somebody asks me if I can name a great movie, the answer will vary based on what movie pops up into my head. I didn't consciously think of every movie ever made and sort them.... a movie name simply popped up outside of my conscious control.

The thought that we are just another organism destined for extinction in a universe destined for extinction is intolerable to most people (myself included) and we look to something outside of ourselves for that meaning. Religion of some sort will exist forever in humans until we lose this need for meaning. BTW: the radical edges of SJW culture is nearing the point of religion IMHO (I know you disagree on this).

Although I am agnostic, my family is Christian and in general I have a positive vibe towards the religion. To me Christianity is completely compatible with Western secular democracy and if it is destroyed my fear is that Western secular democracies (and perhaps civilization itself) will follow into oblivion.

 

He was Caucasian, just like the rest of the ME, and of the Semite variety. here's a photo of the Man in th eShroud

 

Science is still baffled about how the image was made, I've keep abreast of ti over the years. and now, in my opinion , we must be careful we don't turn it into a "graven image". We worship the Trinity.. not a photo nor a cross.. they are merely symbols.

 

We can't explain what God is, only guess, but he existed before all matter/anti-matter, God just is, and always has been.. yeah, I didn't like that explanation much either.. but that's as good as it is going to get. Now on the other hand, I believe all of existence as we know it , it just a product of God's imagination.

" IN HIS image" refers not to the physical body , but the spiritual, we were made to have free will, to be divine creatures; we blew it in the Garden when we decided we could be gods too.

Preordained AND free will... Correct, He knows how everything will turn out for ever... over an infinite number of possible timelines... HE knows what would have happened has Ceasar foiled assassination, He knows what would have happened had the Vikings successfully colonized the USA and it's interior, how the Civil War could have changed, what changes in history if you had backed out of your driveway and gone left instead of right.. We have freewill and God can see the outcome of any number of alternate timelines.. Y' got figure.. He's Omniscient.

 

Then we have the science.

 

The Cro Magnon era was 20 thousand years ago. Jesus lived 2 thousand years ago. You may want to update your "science".

 

WTF does that have to do with anything....did you even watch the three minute video?

 

As I understand it Jews were laid to rest with a cloth covering their face, their hands and feet also wrapped and then wrapped in a shroud in which spices had been placed. .

 

There was a second relic, the face clothe, the stains on that one matched the stains on the shroud .
@tecoya.. the image produced from the shroud was also science.. heavy duty science.

 

Enough to know that it has no credibility. I've seen portrayals of Cro Magnon man that look more human and advanced looking than that. So stop pretending that you or the fraudsters in the video know anything at all about what Jesus looked like.

https://pumpkinperson.com/2016/10/26/estimating-cro-magnon-mans-iq-from-brain-size-and-drawings/