Why So Much Trinity Bashing?

[Dimi95]

As far as the hymn to Inanna goes, it is noted that it was written about 2300 bce. Not 100,000 years ago if you get my drift. Given the dating by socalled experts, 2300 bce in the course of time wasn't that long ago.

You need to understand the existence of human species way before that.

The earliest drawings of early human species shows us that language developed in the corse of 50000 years and has it's best potential only in the last 5000 years where it should be noted that today's way of communicating is evidence of how human language developed through time.

That procces does not happen just like that but thr best answer is that we still don't know what is the cause of all that.
Everything has a Cause in this Universe.
No one can deny that.
The Big Bang is evidence enough that suggest the Uncaused.
The difference is that we belive that this Universe is created by force which is infinite in nature and in that sense it is not created.
Others say that fact can suggest infinite multiverse , but again that leads to infinite regression and circle of many bubbles.And also they don't like it because we identify it as God.
Because that force shows potential to speak to human species and interfere in human affairs.

Many will use that 'They did not know better' as Absence of Evidence.

The essence of Truth is not marely the 'absence of falsness'.
Rather Truth is the PRESENCE of verifiable , documented , proven and witnessed facts and agreements

 

[Dimi95]

@joelr
I have read and watched all your answeres,quotations and videos.

There is no connection between Christ and Hellenistic culture and belief.
Christianity as a belief is a consequence of the events in the Gospels and the crucifixition of Jesus Christ.Nothing there suggest connection to what you suggested.That's not a matter of opinion , that's a matter of fact.

Jesus himself does not identify like suggested , he was consistent on events in the Tanakh.

This is classical straw-man on mainstream Christianity.
To say that Christianity is a consequence of something else then Christ.

No Historian will say that.

 

[viole]

've noticed on RF there are a lot of heretical (that's the technical term) Christians who disbelieve in the Trinity.

No surprise. Heretical is anyway relative. Everyone is heretical to anyone not agreeing on theological matters.

Why?

I would say that a good candidate as an answer for such a difficult question is that the trinity makes no logical sense whatsoever.

We've had the creeds since Late Antiquity (Apostolic, Nicaean, Athanasian) and they all include the Trinity, especially the latter, which is all about it. These creeds are regularly read in churches and have been for hundreds of years. If the Trinity were so easily disproven, why would it have held out and been accepted by the orthodox Christians? Why spend so much time fighting the Arians? And why, I'm sorry to ask, is it almost always Protestants? Do you think you know something that everybody in the early orthodox Church failed to grasp?

We have the belief that black cats bring bad luck since a long time, too.
The age of a belief does not increase its reliability, nor it protects it from being exposed as ridiculous.

Why is there so much of this around lately? How do you explain how Jesus is God without the Trinity?

Simple. He is no God. Or His Dad is not God.

But we already know that. Since He admitted He did not know when He will return, claiming only Dad did know that, then it is obvious that Jesus is not equal Dad, and therefore at least one of the two cannot be God, if we assume God to be omniscient. Not to speak of His complain, on the cross, "Why have You forsaken me?", which clearly shows He had not clue of what was going on.

in fact, If He had been God, He should have asked: Why did I forsake Me? Which sounds a tad silly.

Therefore, doubting the trinity is nothing but the application of very basic logic. What we should ask is why there are still people not doubting It.

How do you explain the worship of Christ?

Well, that worship cannot possibly be the worship of the Boss. The Father.

Christians like to make little images of Jesus Corpse on a cross. Or pictures of Jesus in some situations. If they really insisted Jesus were God, they would be guilty of violating one of the commandments requiring to not making graven images of God. In fact, any Christian church would be in violation of that commandment by depicting Jesus, if Jesus was God.

Again, simple logic.

Ciao

- viole

 

[joelr]

Double standard fallacy

These are the most common Atheist answers on this fallacy:

"When we deal with any fictional character that contradicts the laws of nature/what we've observed to be true/etc. we can simply suspend disbelief. Thor from the Marvel Cinematic Universe can have a hammer that defies the laws of physics and we're all fine with that because there's no one out there saying "Thor from the MCU isn't a work of fiction; he's real."

Uh, no. Thor is a fictional character. If a group claimed he actually was real I would say he isn't. Same for Jesus?
You can change "Thor" to The Quran, Mormon Bible, Lord Krishna, all things billions of people claim are real and are not. Same for Jesus.

History is not natural Science.

Right and you do not believe in Krishna, Muhammad's revelations, Joseph Smith's revelations, Brahman, fro the same reasons. No evidence to warrant belief.
The Bible is even worse for evidence.

The evidence of the NT are so close to the events , it makes it the strongest historical case.You underestimate the NT.

The Quran is closer. The Mormon Bible is about the same. Jesus supposedly died 30 AD. Mark is written first around 70 AD. Incredibly fictive and re-writes many myths. Uses ring structure, chiasmus, triadic inversions, and is one big parable with a character who teaches in parables, it couldn't be more fiction.

It's also a Hellenistic savior demigod which was trending. The entire NT is a Hellenistic document. Before I start with historical scholars, let's go with a huge apologetic work of scholarship.


Encyclopaedia Biblica : a critical dictionary of the literary, political, and religious history, the archaeology, geography, and natural history of the Bible
by Cheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly), 1841-1915; Black, J. Sutherland (John Sutherland), 1846-1923

Encyclopaedia Biblica : a critical dictionary of the literary, political, and religious history, the archaeology, geography, and natural history of the Bible : Cheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly), 1841-1915 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet

Vol. 2

archive.org

"

We must conclude with the following guarded thesis. There is in the circle of ideas in the NT, in addition to what is new, and what is taken over from Judaism, much that is Greek ; but whether this is adopted directly from the Greek or borrowed from the Alexandrians, who indeed aimed at a complete fusion of Hellenism and Judaism, is, in the most important cases, not to be determined ; and primitive Christianity as a whole stands considerably nearer to the Hebrew world than to the Greek."

If you reject them , you reject the fact that 500 people and more are being delusional at the same time according to events in Scripture.
These are events from first generation of eye-witnesses.

No, that is part of the Gospels which looks to be myth. No history supports that
However, Mormonism has witnesses to the golden plates, Sai Baba has MILLIONS of witnesses in the 1900's to miracles. Do you find either compelling? Probably not.
In case you don't know the Gospels are anonymous and non-eyewitness, the internal and external evidence is compiled here:

Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels

Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels » Internet Infidels

The traditional authors of the canonical Gospels—Matthew the tax collector, Mark the attendant of Peter, Luke the attendant of Paul, and John the son of Zebedee—are not held to be the Gospels' actual authors by the majority of mainstream New Testament scholars. Christian apologists nevertheless...

infidels.org

The NIV has a cover page to Matthew that also mentions this. You cannot hide from the fact that the Greek original says "Kata Evangelion" or "as told to be by...." in the titles.

We have the Epistle of Clement who lived 35AD - 99 AD.

First Letter of Clement, a letter to the Christian church in Corinth from the church of Rome, traditionally ascribed to and almost certainly written by St. Clement I of Rome circa 96 CE. An important piece of patristic literature by an Apostolic Father, it is extant in a 2nd-century Latin translation, which is possibly the oldest surviving Latin Christian work. Regarded as Scripture by many 3rd- and 4th-century Christians, it was transmitted in manuscripts with a sermon known as the Second Letter of Clement, written circa 125–140 by an unknown author. See also Clementine literature.

As usual, it's people who heard about Mark's story.

Also by definition , miracle is defiling the laws of nature.

Many scientist are observing this miracles in Modern time and they can't understand it.Nobody can

Cool, link to a paper. But this is an actual fallacy. Personal incredulity does not prove any supernatural folk tale. When you don't understand something, it means you don't understand it. A natural cause can be found out at a later date.
Or it could be Krishna, Allah, Thor, Scientology aliens or fairies. Or is it just the one thing (special pleading)

And every time we point to that Atheist show their ignorance in these kind of answers : 'That does not mean that God did it'.

Because it's God of the gaps and if it's probably isn't Krishna than you have no business claiming it's Jesus because both are equally as fictive.

That is how we know that Logic is inconsistent in these claims:

"It's the same way with any god especially the Christian one. Theists invoke the double standard fallacy for god to speak of him as though he's a fictional character (where his attributes are substituted in as justifications for his abilities and actions) yet insist He's real without. They do this without doing the necessary work of first using logic and evidence to prove that god is instantiated outside of the world of fiction.

Please drop the false fallacy you are mis-using. You actually said "they can't understand it.Nobody can" that means we don't know.
You cannot get your specific magic being from that.

For example, we've observed that energy doesn't just appear out of nowhere."



Here is what scientist are saying
"The universe began, scientists believe, with every speck of its energy jammed into a very tiny point. This extremely dense point exploded with unimaginable force, creating matter and propelling it outward to make the billions of galaxies of our vast universe. Astrophysicists dubbed this titanic explosion the Big Bang."

You see the irony?

No because there isn't any. You have been misled by crappy apologetics.
The big bang is a change of state of the universe, not an explosion. We do not know if there are infinite big bangs, a multi verse, we do not know. It does not make The Quran any more true and same for your book.

He says that Archeologist are marely historians any yet all this responces.
1:10-1:15

Is there a point here? Dever has demonstrated the Biblical narrative is false.

William Dever: From the beginnings of what we call biblical archeology, perhaps 150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to use archeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was thought to work. [William Foxwell] Albright, the great father of our discipline, often spoke of the "archeological revolution." Well, the revolution has come but not in the way that Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archeology raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even the New Testament than it provides answers, and that's very disturbing to some people.

Genesis is Mesopotamian, Exodus didn't happen as written, Moses is a literary construct. The kingdom was much smaller and more:

NOVA | The Bible's Buried Secrets | Archeology of the Hebrew Bible | PBS

In this article, archaeologist and biblical scholar William Dever discusses how archeology can offer vivid insights into the biblical world.

www.pbs.org

the name 'Abraham' existed in the general period when the Bible says that Abraham lived.

Dever: One of the first efforts of biblical archeology in the last century was to prove the historicity of the patriarchs, to locate them in a particular period in the archeological history. Today I think most archeologists would argue that there is no direct archeological proof that Abraham, for instance, ever lived. We do know a lot about pastoral nomads, we know about the Amorites' migrations from Mesopotamia to Canaan, and it's possible to see in that an Abraham-like figure somewhere around 1800 B.C.E. But there's no direct connection.

Also in myth writing a character is what the name means. Abraham means "father of many". It's a myth.

Archeology does follow up with the narrative.

That one is a stretch. A man named Abraham would not mean magic is real. Muhammad is actually a real person as well.

Semitic tribes of the time used to prefix their names with the term banū ("sons of"), so it is hypothesized that the Raham called themselves Banu Raham ......Furthermore, many interpreted blood ties between tribe members as common descent from an eponymous ancestor (i.e., one who gave the tribe its name), rather than as the result of intra-tribal ties. The name of this eponymous mythical ancestor was constructed with the patronymic (prefix) Abū ("father"), followed by the name of the tribe; in the case of the Raham, it would have been Abu Raham, later to become Ab-raham, Abraham. Abraham's Journey from Ur to Harran could be explained as a retrospective reflection of the story of the return of the Jews from the Babylonian exile. Indeed, Israel Finkelstein suggested that the oldest Abraham traditions originated in the Iron Age (monarchic period) and that they contained an autochthonous hero story as the oldest mentions of Abraham outside the book of Genesis (Ezekiel 33 and Isaiah 51) do not depend on Genesis 12–26, do not have there indication of a Mesopotamian origin of Abraham, and present only two main themes of the Abraham narrative in Genesis: land and offspring.

So Finkelstein suggests it's a myth they picked up. He is the author of Bible Unearthed, one of the best OT books for historical scholarship.

 

[YoursTrue]

Uh, no. Thor is a fictional character. If a group claimed he actually was real I would say he isn't. Same for Jesus?
You can change "Thor" to The Quran, Mormon Bible, Lord Krishna, all things billions of people claim are real and are not. Same for Jesus.



Right and you do not believe in Krishna, Muhammad's revelations, Joseph Smith's revelations, Brahman, fro the same reasons. No evidence to warrant belief.
The Bible is even worse for evidence.







The Quran is closer. The Mormon Bible is about the same. Jesus supposedly died 30 AD. Mark is written first around 70 AD. Incredibly fictive and re-writes many myths. Uses ring structure, chiasmus, triadic inversions, and is one big parable with a character who teaches in parables, it couldn't be more fiction.

It's also a Hellenistic savior demigod which was trending. The entire NT is a Hellenistic document. Before I start with historical scholars, let's go with a huge apologetic work of scholarship.


Encyclopaedia Biblica : a critical dictionary of the literary, political, and religious history, the archaeology, geography, and natural history of the Bible
by Cheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly), 1841-1915; Black, J. Sutherland (John Sutherland), 1846-1923

Encyclopaedia Biblica : a critical dictionary of the literary, political, and religious history, the archaeology, geography, and natural history of the Bible : Cheyne, T. K. (Thomas Kelly), 1841-1915 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet

Vol. 2

archive.org

"

We must conclude with the following guarded thesis. There is in the circle of ideas in the NT, in addition to what is new, and what is taken over from Judaism, much that is Greek ; but whether this is adopted directly from the Greek or borrowed from the Alexandrians, who indeed aimed at a complete fusion of Hellenism and Judaism, is, in the most important cases, not to be determined ; and primitive Christianity as a whole stands considerably nearer to the Hebrew world than to the Greek."










No, that is part of the Gospels which looks to be myth. No history supports that
However, Mormonism has witnesses to the golden plates, Sai Baba has MILLIONS of witnesses in the 1900's to miracles. Do you find either compelling? Probably not.
In case you don't know the Gospels are anonymous and non-eyewitness, the internal and external evidence is compiled here:

Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels

Why Scholars Doubt the Traditional Authors of the Gospels » Internet Infidels

The traditional authors of the canonical Gospels—Matthew the tax collector, Mark the attendant of Peter, Luke the attendant of Paul, and John the son of Zebedee—are not held to be the Gospels' actual authors by the majority of mainstream New Testament scholars. Christian apologists nevertheless...

infidels.org

The NIV has a cover page to Matthew that also mentions this. You cannot hide from the fact that the Greek original says "Kata Evangelion" or "as told to be by...." in the titles.






First Letter of Clement, a letter to the Christian church in Corinth from the church of Rome, traditionally ascribed to and almost certainly written by St. Clement I of Rome circa 96 CE. An important piece of patristic literature by an Apostolic Father, it is extant in a 2nd-century Latin translation, which is possibly the oldest surviving Latin Christian work. Regarded as Scripture by many 3rd- and 4th-century Christians, it was transmitted in manuscripts with a sermon known as the Second Letter of Clement, written circa 125–140 by an unknown author. See also Clementine literature.

As usual, it's people who heard about Mark's story.

Cool, link to a paper. But this is an actual fallacy. Personal incredulity does not prove any supernatural folk tale. When you don't understand something, it means you don't understand it. A natural cause can be found out at a later date.
Or it could be Krishna, Allah, Thor, Scientology aliens or fairies. Or is it just the one thing (special pleading)



Because it's God of the gaps and if it's probably isn't Krishna than you have no business claiming it's Jesus because both are equally as fictive.




Please drop the false fallacy you are mis-using. You actually said "they can't understand it.Nobody can" that means we don't know.
You cannot get your specific magic being from that.






No because there isn't any. You have been misled by crappy apologetics.
The big bang is a change of state of the universe, not an explosion. We do not know if there are infinite big bangs, a multi verse, we do not know. It does not make The Quran any more true and same for your book.




Is there a point here? Dever has demonstrated the Biblical narrative is false.

William Dever: From the beginnings of what we call biblical archeology, perhaps 150 years ago, scholars, mostly western scholars, have attempted to use archeological data to prove the Bible. And for a long time it was thought to work. [William Foxwell] Albright, the great father of our discipline, often spoke of the "archeological revolution." Well, the revolution has come but not in the way that Albright thought. The truth of the matter today is that archeology raises more questions about the historicity of the Hebrew Bible and even the New Testament than it provides answers, and that's very disturbing to some people.

Genesis is Mesopotamian, Exodus didn't happen as written, Moses is a literary construct. The kingdom was much smaller and more:

NOVA | The Bible's Buried Secrets | Archeology of the Hebrew Bible | PBS

In this article, archaeologist and biblical scholar William Dever discusses how archeology can offer vivid insights into the biblical world.

www.pbs.org

Dever: One of the first efforts of biblical archeology in the last century was to prove the historicity of the patriarchs, to locate them in a particular period in the archeological history. Today I think most archeologists would argue that there is no direct archeological proof that Abraham, for instance, ever lived. We do know a lot about pastoral nomads, we know about the Amorites' migrations from Mesopotamia to Canaan, and it's possible to see in that an Abraham-like figure somewhere around 1800 B.C.E. But there's no direct connection.

Also in myth writing a character is what the name means. Abraham means "father of many". It's a myth.

That one is a stretch. A man named Abraham would not mean magic is real. Muhammad is actually a real person as well.

Semitic tribes of the time used to prefix their names with the term banū ("sons of"), so it is hypothesized that the Raham called themselves Banu Raham ......Furthermore, many interpreted blood ties between tribe members as common descent from an eponymous ancestor (i.e., one who gave the tribe its name), rather than as the result of intra-tribal ties. The name of this eponymous mythical ancestor was constructed with the patronymic (prefix) Abū ("father"), followed by the name of the tribe; in the case of the Raham, it would have been Abu Raham, later to become Ab-raham, Abraham. Abraham's Journey from Ur to Harran could be explained as a retrospective reflection of the story of the return of the Jews from the Babylonian exile. Indeed, Israel Finkelstein suggested that the oldest Abraham traditions originated in the Iron Age (monarchic period) and that they contained an autochthonous hero story as the oldest mentions of Abraham outside the book of Genesis (Ezekiel 33 and Isaiah 51) do not depend on Genesis 12–26, do not have there indication of a Mesopotamian origin of Abraham, and present only two main themes of the Abraham narrative in Genesis: land and offspring.

So Finkelstein suggests it's a myth they picked up. He is the author of Bible Unearthed, one of the best OT books for historical scholarship.

Sorry, maybe I don't have a good attention span but your post is very long. And the comparison you make at the beginning between Thor and Jesus is out of the ballfield because of the Bible, its history which I don't think you believe, whether you think it's true or not is not the question. There is no comparison even if you say there is.

 

[YoursTrue]

You need to understand the existence of human species way before that.

The earliest drawings of early human species shows us that language developed in the corse of 50000 years and has it's best potential only in the last 5000 years where it should be noted that today's way of communicating is evidence of how human language developed through time.

That procces does not happen just like that but thr best answer is that we still don't know what is the cause of all that.
Everything has a Cause in this Universe.
No one can deny that.
The Big Bang is evidence enough that suggest the Uncaused.
The difference is that we belive that this Universe is created by force which is infinite in nature and in that sense it is not created.
Others say that fact can suggest infinite multiverse , but again that leads to infinite regression and circle of many bubbles.And also they don't like it because we identify it as God.
Because that force shows potential to speak to human species and interfere in human affairs.

Many will use that 'They did not know better' as Absence of Evidence.

The essence of Truth is not marely the 'absence of falsness'.
Rather Truth is the PRESENCE of verifiable , documented , proven and witnessed facts and agreements

I don't believe there is verification of human history beyond 6000 years thereabouts. Just as there is simply no genetic verification from cell formation to multiplication by natural selection or random mutation to plants and animals by dividing off from the root, the UCA. Or common ancestor. Even if scientists say there is and can show diagrams or imaginings of how fish, for instance, evolved to humans. Or the UCA of apes. THERE IS nothing to show that by steps in reality, i.e., real time. Zilch.

 

[joelr]

The Akkadian poet Enheduanna (l. 2285-2250 BCE) is the world's first author known by name and was the daughter of Sargon of Akkad (Sargon the Great, r. 2334-2279 BCE). Whether Enheduanna was, in fact, a blood relative of Sargon's or the title was figurative is not known.It is clear, however, that Sargon placed enormous trust in Enheduanna in elevating her to the position of high priestess of the most important temple in Sumer (in the city of Ur) and leaving to her the responsibility for melding the Sumerian gods with the Akkadian ones to create the stability his empire needed to thrive.

This is evidence that P O L Y T H E I S M existed , nothing more.

So? I'm saying there are earlier authors. And polytheism continued into Israel which is in scripture and proven in archaeology. The Persian period introduced them to monotheism and a supreme God. Among many other things.


Mary Boyce -

Doctrines taken from Persia into Judiasm.

fundamental doctrines became disseminated throughout the region, from Egypt to the Black Sea: namely that there is a supreme God who is the Creator; that an evil power exists which is opposed to him, and not under his control; that he has emanated many lesser divinities to help combat this power; that he has created this world for a purpose, and that in its present state it will have an end; that this end will be heralded by the coming of a cosmic Saviour, who will help to bring it about; that meantime heaven and hell exist, with an individual judgment to decide the fate of each soul at death; that at the end of time there will be a resurrection of the dead and a Last Judgment, with annihilation of the wicked; and that thereafter the kingdom of God will come upon earth, and the righteous will enter into it as into a garden (a Persian word for which is 'paradise'), and be happy there in the presence of God for ever, immortal themselves in body as well as soul. These doctrines all came to be adopted by various Jewish schools in the post-Exilic period, for the Jews were one of the peoples, it seems, most open to Zoroastrian influences - a tiny minority, holding staunchly to their own beliefs, but evidently admiring their Persian benefactors, and finding congenial elements in their faith. Worship of the one supreme God, and belief in the coming of a Messiah or Saviour, together with adherence to a way of life which combined moral and spiritual aspirations with a strict code of behaviour (including purity laws) were all matters in which Judaism and Zoroastrianism were in harmony; and it was this harmony, it seems, reinforced by the respect of a subject people for a great protective power, which allowed Zoroastrian doctrines to exert their influence. The extent of this influence is best attested, however, by Jewish writings of the Parthian period, when Christianity and the Gnostic faiths, as well as northern Buddhism, all likewise bore witness to the profound effect: which Zoroaster's teachings had had throughout the lands of the Achaernenian empire.

You understand transitivity , i suppose?
Elyon - God Most High(title)
YHWH - name of God Most High

Exodus 3:14
God said to Moses, 'I am who I am'.This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I am has sent me to you.'

Jesus claims 'I am' from Exodus in Mark and John.

El is the name of a well known deity going back before Israel. It is not Yahweh. Scholars suspect El was the original deity of Israel as the word appears in all sorts of places including Israel. Yahweh was a warrior deity and gradually came to usurp El. We don't know how.

"Instead a different strategy was employed; in a spectacularly transparent attempt at spin-doctoring, some writers sought to downplay Yahweh's apparent supplanting of his mythic father El by insisting that Yahweh was El all along: "I am Yahweh" the deity says to Moses, in Exodus. "I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shadday, but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them".

Fransesca Stavrakopouloy, Professor of Hebrew Bible,

She goes on to say all gods in this time were part of a pantheon.

and it says:

When Elyon most high apported the nations
when he divided humankind
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number of the divine sone
for Yahwehs portion was his people
Jacob/Israel his alloted share.


You cannot mistake this for one god. EL was supreme.

her book, God; An Anatomy.

Which shows us evidence for the existence of polytheism

How funny , he says that Archeologist are marely historians and yet he has the guts to talk about History.

he talks about his finds. Early Yahweh worshippers gave him a goddess Ashera.

This is evidence from people who practiced polytheism and what he is doing is taking that belief against monotheism.

Again , Archeologist tries to be Historian.

No, he's explaining the early beliefs were not what the Bible claims. That was a late invention, 6 BCE, based on later ideas and not what the common person was doing. After the Persian influence they became monotheism.

You don't know that , Jews were subjects to tyrany and most of the evidence has been destroyed or lost.

Absence of evidence is not Evidence of Absence

John Collins is only using BIBLE SCRIPTURE to show the first clear of Persian beliefs in Jewish theology. He demonstrates there is no doubt.

Another,

Old Testament Interpretation


Professor John J. Collins

12:10 a possible inspiration for Ezekiel treatment of dead (valley of bones) was Persian myth





14:20 resurrection of dead in Ezekiel, incidentally resurrection of the dead is also attested in Zoroastrianism, the Persians had it before the Israelites. There was no precent for bodily resurrection in Israel before this time. No tradition of bodies getting up from the grave. The idea of borrowing can be suggested.


In Ezekiel this is metaphorical.


The only book that clearly refers to bodily resurrection is Daniel.





17:30 resurrection of individual and judgment in Daniel, 164 BC. Prior to this the afterlife was Sheol, now heaven/hell is introduced. Persian period. Resurrection and hell existed in the Persian religion.
Resurrection of spirit. Some people are raised up to heaven, some to hell. New to the O

Also The Bible does not claim the age of the Earth.

And this is argument against Young-Earth Creationist.

The Bible doesn't know the age of the earth because it was written by people.

Which makes Absence of Evidence to be Evidence of Absence

I will answer the rest as soon as i have the time

Funny, you didn't say that about miracles, you said "we cannot explain" and then insert your gods.

In terms of Genesis we have evidence. The stories are compared using intertextuality to confirm they are dependent and the Mesopotamian stories are older.

Explained here:
Flood Myths Older Than The Bible - Dr. Joshua Bowen

Assyriologist who specialized in Sumerian literary and liturgical compositions



1:25

OT scholars will say Genesis is using a Mesopotamian background and apologist will say

“Well no, there is no literary evidence that shows it borrowed, we cannot show literal evidence”…”it was in the air”….”how do you know it wasn’t true”…….somehow downplaying the Mesopotamian background…

2:57 Dr Josh Bowen - there is no question as far as Biblical scholars and Assyriologists are concerned that the Biblical text is much later than Mesopotamian text and it’s borrowing directly or subtly from Mesopotamia.

References monograph - Subtle Citation, Allusion and Translation in the Hebrew Bible by Z. Zevit. Explains intertexuality and what Hebrew Bible is doing. Not seen as plagiarism in the ancient world.

21:00

Enuma Elish, Babylonian creation myth Genesis 1 borrows from, is recited every year at the New Years festival. Exiled Israelite kings were in captivity in Babylonia. Genesis was written after the Exile.

Genesis demythicizes the Babylonian stories.

23:22

“(Well we don’t know which came first), is nonsense, we do know. The textual tradition for the flood story is much much earlier than the Biblical text. Israel is NOT EVEN A Nation”

 

[YoursTrue]

So? I'm saying there are earlier authors. And polytheism continued into Israel which is in scripture and proven in archaeology. The Persian period introduced them to monotheism and a supreme God. Among many other things.


Mary Boyce -

Doctrines taken from Persia into Judiasm.

fundamental doctrines became disseminated throughout the region, from Egypt to the Black Sea: namely that there is a supreme God who is the Creator; that an evil power exists which is opposed to him, and not under his control; that he has emanated many lesser divinities to help combat this power; that he has created this world for a purpose, and that in its present state it will have an end; that this end will be heralded by the coming of a cosmic Saviour, who will help to bring it about; that meantime heaven and hell exist, with an individual judgment to decide the fate of each soul at death; that at the end of time there will be a resurrection of the dead and a Last Judgment, with annihilation of the wicked; and that thereafter the kingdom of God will come upon earth, and the righteous will enter into it as into a garden (a Persian word for which is 'paradise'), and be happy there in the presence of God for ever, immortal themselves in body as well as soul. These doctrines all came to be adopted by various Jewish schools in the post-Exilic period, for the Jews were one of the peoples, it seems, most open to Zoroastrian influences - a tiny minority, holding staunchly to their own beliefs, but evidently admiring their Persian benefactors, and finding congenial elements in their faith. Worship of the one supreme God, and belief in the coming of a Messiah or Saviour, together with adherence to a way of life which combined moral and spiritual aspirations with a strict code of behaviour (including purity laws) were all matters in which Judaism and Zoroastrianism were in harmony; and it was this harmony, it seems, reinforced by the respect of a subject people for a great protective power, which allowed Zoroastrian doctrines to exert their influence. The extent of this influence is best attested, however, by Jewish writings of the Parthian period, when Christianity and the Gnostic faiths, as well as northern Buddhism, all likewise bore witness to the profound effect: which Zoroaster's teachings had had throughout the lands of the Achaernenian empire.


El is the name of a well known deity going back before Israel. It is not Yahweh. Scholars suspect El was the original deity of Israel as the word appears in all sorts of places including Israel. Yahweh was a warrior deity and gradually came to usurp El. We don't know how.

"Instead a different strategy was employed; in a spectacularly transparent attempt at spin-doctoring, some writers sought to downplay Yahweh's apparent supplanting of his mythic father El by insisting that Yahweh was El all along: "I am Yahweh" the deity says to Moses, in Exodus. "I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shadday, but by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them".

Fransesca Stavrakopouloy, Professor of Hebrew Bible,

She goes on to say all gods in this time were part of a pantheon.

and it says:

When Elyon most high apported the nations
when he divided humankind
he fixed the boundaries of the peoples
according to the number of the divine sone
for Yahwehs portion was his people
Jacob/Israel his alloted share.


You cannot mistake this for one god. EL was supreme.

her book, God; An Anatomy.



he talks about his finds. Early Yahweh worshippers gave him a goddess Ashera.







No, he's explaining the early beliefs were not what the Bible claims. That was a late invention, 6 BCE, based on later ideas and not what the common person was doing. After the Persian influence they became monotheism.



John Collins is only using BIBLE SCRIPTURE to show the first clear of Persian beliefs in Jewish theology. He demonstrates there is no doubt.

Another,

Old Testament Interpretation


Professor John J. Collins

12:10 a possible inspiration for Ezekiel treatment of dead (valley of bones) was Persian myth





14:20 resurrection of dead in Ezekiel, incidentally resurrection of the dead is also attested in Zoroastrianism, the Persians had it before the Israelites. There was no precent for bodily resurrection in Israel before this time. No tradition of bodies getting up from the grave. The idea of borrowing can be suggested.


In Ezekiel this is metaphorical.


The only book that clearly refers to bodily resurrection is Daniel.





17:30 resurrection of individual and judgment in Daniel, 164 BC. Prior to this the afterlife was Sheol, now heaven/hell is introduced. Persian period. Resurrection and hell existed in the Persian religion.
Resurrection of spirit. Some people are raised up to heaven, some to hell. New to the O




The Bible doesn't know the age of the earth because it was written by people.




Funny, you didn't say that about miracles, you said "we cannot explain" and then insert your gods.

In terms of Genesis we have evidence. The stories are compared using intertextuality to confirm they are dependent and the Mesopotamian stories are older.

Explained here:
Flood Myths Older Than The Bible - Dr. Joshua Bowen

Assyriologist who specialized in Sumerian literary and liturgical compositions



1:25

OT scholars will say Genesis is using a Mesopotamian background and apologist will say

“Well no, there is no literary evidence that shows it borrowed, we cannot show literal evidence”…”it was in the air”….”how do you know it wasn’t true”…….somehow downplaying the Mesopotamian background…

2:57 Dr Josh Bowen - there is no question as far as Biblical scholars and Assyriologists are concerned that the Biblical text is much later than Mesopotamian text and it’s borrowing directly or subtly from Mesopotamia.

References monograph - Subtle Citation, Allusion and Translation in the Hebrew Bible by Z. Zevit. Explains intertexuality and what Hebrew Bible is doing. Not seen as plagiarism in the ancient world.

21:00

Enuma Elish, Babylonian creation myth Genesis 1 borrows from, is recited every year at the New Years festival. Exiled Israelite kings were in captivity in Babylonia. Genesis was written after the Exile.

Genesis demythicizes the Babylonian stories.

23:22

“(Well we don’t know which came first), is nonsense, we do know. The textual tradition for the flood story is much much earlier than the Biblical text. Israel is NOT EVEN A Nation”

Wow. What a long reply.

 

[joelr]

@joelr
I have read and watched all your answeres,quotations and videos.

There is no connection between Christ and Hellenistic culture and belief.

Scholar J.Z. Smith, specialist in Hellenistic religion:

Hellenistic religion - Beliefs, practices, and institutions

-the seasonal drama was homologized to a soteriology (salvation concept) concerning the destiny, fortune, and salvation of the individual after death.

-his led to a change from concern for a religion of national prosperity to one for individual salvation, from focus on a particular ethnic group to concern for every human. The prophet or saviour replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure.


-his process was carried further through the identification of the experiences of the soul that was to be saved with the vicissitudes of a divine but fallen soul, which had to be redeemed by cultic activity and divine intervention. This view is illustrated in the concept of the paradoxical figure of the saved saviour, salvator salvandus.

-Other deities, who had previously been associated with national destiny (e.g., Zeus, Yahweh, and Isis), were raised to the status of transcendent, supreme


-The temples and cult institutions of the various Hellenistic religions were repositories of the knowledge and techniques necessary for salvation and were the agents of the public worship of a particular deity. In addition, they served an important sociological role. In the new, cosmopolitan ideology that followed Alexander’s conquests, the old nationalistic and ethnic boundaries had broken down and the problem of religious and social identity had become acute.

-Most of these groups had regular meetings for a communal meal that served the dual role of sacramental participation (referring to the use of material elements believed to convey spiritual benefits among the members and with their deity)


-Hellenistic philosophy (Stoicism, Cynicism, Neo-Aristotelianism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and Neoplatonism) provided key formulations for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophy, theology, and mysticism through the 18th century


- The basic forms of worship of both the Jewish and Christian communities were heavily influenced in their formative period by Hellenistic practices, and this remains fundamentally unchanged to the present time. Finally, the central religious literature of both traditions—the Jewish Talmud (an authoritative compendium of law, lore, and interpretation), the New Testament, and the later patristic literature of the early Church Fathers—are characteristic Hellenistic documents both in form and content.

-Other traditions even more radically reinterpreted the ancient figures. The cosmic or seasonal drama was interiorized to refer to the divine soul within man that must be liberated.

-Each persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for its becoming linked to nationalistic or messianic movements (centring on a deliverer figure)

-and apocalyptic traditions (referring to a belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events)

- Particularly noticeable was the success of a variety of prophets, magicians, and healers—e.g., John the Baptist, Jesus, Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander the Paphlagonian, and the cult of the healer Asclepius—whose preaching corresponded to the activities of various Greek and Roman philosophic missionaries



-During the period of the Second Temple (c.515 BC – 70 AD), the Hebrew people lived under the rule of first the Persian Achaemenid Empire, then the Greek kingdoms of the Diadochi, and finally the Roman Empire.[47] Their culture was profoundly influenced by those of the peoples who ruled them.[47] Consequently, their views on existence after death were profoundly shaped by the ideas of the Persians, Greeks, and Romans.[48][49] The idea of the immortality of the soul is derived from Greek philosophy[49] and the idea of the resurrection of the dead is derived from Persian cosmology.[49] By the early first century AD, these two seemingly incompatible ideas were often conflated by Hebrew thinkers.[49] The Hebrews also inherited from the Persians, Greeks, and Romans the idea that the human soul originates in the divine realm and seeks to return there.[47]
The idea that a human soul belongs in Heaven and that Earth is merely a temporary abode in which the soul is tested to prove its worthiness became increasingly popular during the Hellenistic period (323 – 31 BC).[40] Gradually, some Hebrews began to adopt the idea of Heaven as the eternal home of the righteous dead.[40]


(Sanders, Lambert, Wright)



Sang Meyng Lee, Born 1963; 2005-2008 Adjunct Professor at San Francisco Theological Seminary, Pasadena; since 2008, Professor of New Testament and Dean of Academic Affairs at Presbyterian Theological Seminary in America, Santa Fe Springs,
"

only in Hellenistic times (after c. 330 BCE) did Jews begin to adopt the Greek idea that it (Hell) would be a place of punishment for misdeeds, and that the righteous would enjoy an afterlife in heaven"




Death & Afterlife: Do Christians Follow Plato rather than Jesus or Paul?


Dr James Tabor

5:40 1st Hebrew view of cosmology and afterlife. The dead are sleeping in Sheol, earth is above, the firmament is above that and divides the upper ocean from falling to earth,





7:50 A linear version emerged with time and an end times and final Judgment.


Genesis says you will return to dust.





9:00 Translation of Genesis 2:6 God breathes the breath of life into Adam (giving him a soul). The actual Hebrew translation is “living-breathing”, meaning all life is this.





10:40 Hellenistic period - the Hebrew religion adopts the Greek ideas.


Sources the Britannica article and explains it’s an excellent resource from an excellent scholar.





13:35 In the Hellenistic period the common perception is not the Hebrew view, it’s the idea that the soul belongs in Heaven.





14:15 The basic Hellenistic idea is taken into the Hebrew tradition. Salvation in the Hellenistic world is how do you save your soul and get to Heaven. How to transcend the physical body.





Greek tomb “I am a child of earth and starry heaven but heaven alone is my home”





15:46 Does this sound familiar, Christian hymns - “this world is not my home, I’m a pilgrim passing through, Jesus will come and take you home”.


Common theme that comes from the Hellenistic religions. Immortal souls trapped in a human body etc…





47:15 Hellenistic Greek view of cosmology


Material world/body is a prison of the soul


Humans are immortal souls, fallen into the darkness of the lower world


Death sets the soul free


No human history, just a cycle of birth, death, rebirth


Immortality is inherent for all humans


Salvation is escape to Heaven, the true home of the immortal soul


Humans are fallen and misplaced


Death is a stripping of the body so the soul can be free


Death is a liberating friend to be welcomed


Asceticism is the moral idea for the soul





49:35 Genesis view


Creation/body very good, procreation good


Humans are “living breathers”, akin to animals, mortal, dust of the earth


Death is dark silent “sleeping in the dust”


Human history moves toward a perfected new age/creation


Salvation is eternal life in the perfected world of the new creation


Humans belong on earth


Resurrection brings a new transformed glorious spiritual body


Death is an enemy


Physical life and sensory pleasures are good





I just now noticed you already have some of these scholars, you didn't explain why they don't apply to Jesus, they are in fact older, Christian scholarship says the NT is Hellenistic, Dr Tabor and others demonstrate distinct borrowings, which I demonstrated and you failed to even try to explain. You just went right to denial.
So you are now just trolling and do not care at all about what is true.

 

[joelr]

@joelr
I have read and watched all your answeres,quotations and videos.

There is no connection between Christ and Hellenistic culture and belief.

More, there are stacks of books and papers, David Litwa, Richard Miller, journal articles and so on but here is a summary by Dr Carrier (based on Petra Paken and other specialists)


Richard Carrier | Mystery Cults & Christianity

4:37 Greeks conquer Judea 332 - 110 B.C.Greek idea (Hellenism) flow into Judaism


5:26 Mystery cults, come from Greek religions. Every culture that was conquered by Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Thracians, all took the Mystery cult theology and added it to their local religion and came up with the Mystery religions.


6:06 Basic Mystery cult, common features:


- Individuals “initiated” into the mysteries, ritually and by teaching sworn secrets about the universe. Something about the cosmos one needed to be saved, secrets. Many secrets are now lost.


- purpose was to gain salvation in the afterlife


- all use baptism and communion(communal meals)


- fictive kinship “brotherhood”


9:00 - Trends in Hellenistic religion


- Petra Pakkanen, Interpreting Early Hellenistic Religion (1996)


- Four big trends in religion in the centuries leading up to Christianity


- Christianity conforms to all four


9:16 Four Trends


- Syncretism: combining a foreign cult deity with Hellenistic elements. Christianity is a Jewish mystery religion.


- Henotheism: transforming / reinterpreting polytheism into monotheism. Judaism introduced monolatric concepts.


- Individualism: agricultural salvation cults retooled as personal salvation cults. Salvation of community changed into personal individual salvation in afterlife. All original agricultural salvation cults were retooled by the time Christianity arose.


- Cosmopolitianism: all races, cultures, classes admitted as equals, with fictive kinship (members are all brothers) you now “join” a religion rather than being born into it

12:34 Savior deities, dying/rising, pre-Christian, Osiris, Adonis, Romulus, Zalmoxis, Inanna (oldest 1700 B.C., female deity resurrected in 3 days)


13:32 Worship of Inanna was continued in Tyre during the origin of Christianity (Tyre is mentioned in Bible). Highly unlikely it’s a coincidence that a Jewish sect decided to build their own version of a dying/rising deity using the Jewish concepts of angels instead of Gods.


15:37 bad scholarship on internet, Horus not a dying/rising God. Mithras is also not. Mithras does undergo a passion, no death.


18:30 All Mystery religions have personal savior deities


- All saviors


- all son/daughter, never the supreme God (including Mithriasm)


- all undergo a passion (struggle) patheon


- all obtain victory over death which they share with followers


- all have stories set on earth


- none actually existed


- Is Jesus the exception and based on a real Jewish teacher or is it all made up?


27:00 mysteries


Elusinian Mysteries = Mycenaean + Hellenistic


Bacchic Mysteries = Phoenician + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Attis and Cybele = Phrygian + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Baal = Anatolian + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Mithras = Persian + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Isis and Osiris = Egyptian + Hellenistic


Christian Mysteries = Jewish + Hellenistic


32:00 Baptism, Christian version is different from Jewish/John the Baptist version of baptism. Differences are the same in all mystery religions.


- symbolic sharing of saviors ordeal


- to be born again (Osiris cult)


- united into brotherhood


- to be saved in afterlife


- cleaned of sin (Bacchus, Osiris, Mithras)


- baptism for dead (Paul mentions this 1 Cor, 15: 29)





37:05 Eucharist in Mystery religions


- become one with savior


- to be united in brotherhood


- saved in afterlife


- Lords Supper


- Rememberence, flesh/blood/death, 1 Cor 11:24-26





Christian Lords Supper is distinct in Jewish ways





38:50 Mysteries in scripture


1C. 4:1 We are entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed


R. 11:25 (Do not) be ignorant of this mystery


R. 16:25 (the) message I proclaim about Jesus Christ is in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past but now revealed


1C. 2:6, 7 (We) speak a message of wisdom among the mature….(and) declare God’s wisdom, a. Mystery that has been hidden


1C. 15:51 Listen I will tell you a mystery: we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed


1C. 3:1-2 I could not address you as people who live by the spirit but as people who are still worldly - mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. (Milk and solid food is mystery cult terminology)


H. 5:13-14 Anyone living on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for that mature. (Clearly conceiving the religion in mystery terms)


Mark 4:11-12 (Jesus) told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables, so (they won’t understand)”


Dead giveaway Mark is conceiving the teachings in mystery cult terms





42:00 Jesus becomes the Temple. Kamran sect was also anti-temple. Jews were looking for ways to replace temple cults because of corruption etc….


Jesus gives permanent atonement and so on.


42:52


Christianity is a Jewish Mystery religion, syncretic, henotheistic, individualist, universal brotherhood, savior son of God with passion and myth, baptism, Lords supper as communion for salvation, mysteries reserved for initiated.

 

[walt]

More, there are stacks of books and papers, David Litwa, Richard Miller, journal articles and so on but here is a summary by Dr Carrier (based on Petra Paken and other specialists)


Richard Carrier | Mystery Cults & Christianity

4:37 Greeks conquer Judea 332 - 110 B.C.Greek idea (Hellenism) flow into Judaism



5:26 Mystery cults, come from Greek religions. Every culture that was conquered by Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, Thracians, all took the Mystery cult theology and added it to their local religion and came up with the Mystery religions.





6:06 Basic Mystery cult, common features:


- Individuals “initiated” into the mysteries, ritually and by teaching sworn secrets about the universe. Something about the cosmos one needed to be saved, secrets. Many secrets are now lost.


- purpose was to gain salvation in the afterlife


- all use baptism and communion(communal meals)


- fictive kinship “brotherhood”


9:00 - Trends in Hellenistic religion


- Petra Pakkanen, Interpreting Early Hellenistic Religion (1996)


- Four big trends in religion in the centuries leading up to Christianity


- Christianity conforms to all four


9:16 Four Trends


- Syncretism: combining a foreign cult deity with Hellenistic elements. Christianity is a Jewish mystery religion.


- Henotheism: transforming / reinterpreting polytheism into monotheism. Judaism introduced monolatric concepts.


- Individualism: agricultural salvation cults retooled as personal salvation cults. Salvation of community changed into personal individual salvation in afterlife. All original agricultural salvation cults were retooled by the time Christianity arose.


- Cosmopolitianism: all races, cultures, classes admitted as equals, with fictive kinship (members are all brothers) you now “join” a religion rather than being born into it





12:34 Savior deities, dying/rising, pre-Christian, Osiris, Adonis, Romulus, Zalmoxis, Inanna (oldest 1700 B.C., female deity resurrected in 3 days)





13:32 Worship of Inanna was continued in Tyre during the origin of Christianity (Tyre is mentioned in Bible). Highly unlikely it’s a coincidence that a Jewish sect decided to build their own version of a dying/rising deity using the Jewish concepts of angels instead of Gods.


15:37 bad scholarship on internet, Horus not a dying/rising God. Mithras is also not. Mithras does undergo a passion, no death.


18:30 All Mystery religions have personal savior deities


- All saviors


- all son/daughter, never the supreme God (including Mithriasm)


- all undergo a passion (struggle) patheon


- all obtain victory over death which they share with followers


- all have stories set on earth


- none actually existed


- Is Jesus the exception and based on a real Jewish teacher or is it all made up?





21:00


Pagan /Jewish element, Judea-Pagan Syncretism


Pagan - Savior son of God


Jewish - Messianic resurrection cult


Pagan - Undergoes ordeal by which he obtains victory over death


Jewish - based on blood atonement theology (substitutionary sacrifice)


Pagan - which he shares with those initiated into his cult for individual salvation


Jewish - adapting Passover and Yom Kippur


Pagan - in a universal brotherhood


Jewish - first by circumsision, then without


Pagan - through a baptismal invitation and communal meal


Jewish - through a baptismal invitation and communal meal



27:00 mysteries


Elusinian Mysteries = Mycenaean + Hellenistic


Bacchic Mysteries = Phoenician + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Attis and Cybele = Phrygian + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Baal = Anatolian + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Mithras = Persian + Hellenistic


Mysteries of Isis and Osiris = Egyptian + Hellenistic


Christian Mysteries = Jewish + Hellenistic





28:00 Christian Pesher (combining disparate passages in scripture that reveals “hidden messages”)


29:15 examples of Pesher logic taken from Old Testament and used for Jesus


32:00 Baptism, Christian version is different from Jewish/John the Baptist version of baptism. Differences are the same in all mystery religions.


- symbolic sharing of saviors ordeal


- to be born again (Osiris cult)


- united into brotherhood


- to be saved in afterlife


- cleaned of sin (Bacchus, Osiris, Mithras)


- baptism for dead (Paul mentions this 1 Cor, 15: 29)





37:05 Eucharist in Mystery religions


- become one with savior


- to be united in brotherhood


- saved in afterlife


- Lords Supper


- Rememberence, flesh/blood/death, 1 Cor 11:24-26





Christian Lords Supper is distinct in Jewish ways





38:50 Mysteries in scripture


1C. 4:1 We are entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed


R. 11:25 (Do not) be ignorant of this mystery


R. 16:25 (the) message I proclaim about Jesus Christ is in keeping with the revelation of the mystery hidden for long ages past but now revealed


1C. 2:6, 7 (We) speak a message of wisdom among the mature….(and) declare God’s wisdom, a. Mystery that has been hidden


1C. 15:51 Listen I will tell you a mystery: we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed


1C. 3:1-2 I could not address you as people who live by the spirit but as people who are still worldly - mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. (Milk and solid food is mystery cult terminology)


H. 5:13-14 Anyone living on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for that mature. (Clearly conceiving the religion in mystery terms)


Mark 4:11-12 (Jesus) told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables, so (they won’t understand)”


Dead giveaway Mark is conceiving the teachings in mystery cult terms





42:00 Jesus becomes the Temple. Kamran sect was also anti-temple. Jews were looking for ways to replace temple cults because of corruption etc….


Jesus gives permanent atonement and so on.


42:52


Christianity is a Jewish Mystery religion, syncretic, henotheistic, individualist, universal brotherhood, savior son of God with passion and myth, baptism, Lords supper as communion for salvation, mysteries reserved for initiated.

Gee that's a quick read.

 

[joelr]

[
Christianity as a belief is a consequence of the events in the Gospels and the crucifixition of Jesus Christ.Nothing there suggest connection to what you suggested.That's not a matter of opinion , that's a matter of fact.

Within the confines of what was then the Roman Empire, long before and during the dawn of Christianity, there were many dying-and-rising gods. And yes, they were gods—some even half-god, half-human, being of divine or magical parentage, just like Jesus (John 1:1-18; Matthew 1:18-25; Luke 1:26-35; Philippians 2:6-8 & Romans 8:3). And yes, they died. And were dead. And yes, they were then raised back to life; and lived on, even more powerful than before. Some returned in the same body they died in; some lived their second life in even more powerful and magical bodies than they died in, like Jesus did (1 Corinthians 15:35-50 & 2 Corinthians 5:1-10). Some left empty tombs or gravesites; or had corpses that were lost or vanished. Just like Jesus. Some returned to life on “the third day” after dying. Just like Jesus. All went on to live and reign in heaven (not on earth). Just like Jesus. Some even visited earth after being raised, to deliver a message to disciples or followers, before ascending into the heavens. Just like Jesus.
Not in ancient Asia. Or anywhere else. Only the West, from Mesopotamia to North Africa and Europe. There was a very common and popular mytheme that had arisen in the Hellenistic period—from at least the death of Alexander the Great in the 300s B.C. through the Roman period, until at least Constantine in the 300s A.D. Nearly every culture created and popularized one: the Egyptians had one, the Thracians had one, the Syrians had one, the Persians had one, and so on. The Jews were actually late to the party in building one of their own, in the form of Jesus Christ. It just didn’t become popular among the Jews, and thus ended up a Gentile religion. But if any erudite religious scholar in 1 B.C. had been asked “If the Jews invented one of these gods, what would it look like?” they would have described the entire Christian religion to a T. Before it even existed. That can’t be a coincidence.

The general features most often shared by all these cults are (when we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

• They are personal salvation cults (often evolved from prior agricultural cults).
• They guarantee the individual a good place in the afterlife (a concern not present in most prior forms of religion).
• They are cults you join membership with (as opposed to just being open communal religions).
• They enact a fictive kin group (members are now all brothers and sisters).
• They are joined through baptism (the use of water-contact rituals to effect an initiation).
• They are maintained through communion (regular sacred meals enacting the presence of the god).
• They involved secret teachings reserved only to members (and some only to members of certain rank).
• They used a common vocabulary to identify all these concepts and their role.
• They are syncretistic (they modify this common package of ideas with concepts distinctive of the adopting culture).
• They are mono- or henotheistic (they preach a supreme god by whom and to whom all other divinities are created and subordinate).
• They are individualistic (they relate primarily to salvation of the individual, not the community).
• And they are cosmopolitan (they intentionally cross social borders of race, culture, nation, wealth, or even gender).

You might start to notice we’ve almost completely described Christianity already. It gets better. These cults all had a common central savior deity, who shared most or all these features (when, once again, we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

• They are all “savior gods” (literally so-named and so-called).
• They are usually the “son” of a supreme God (or occasionally “daughter”).
• They all undergo a “passion” (a “suffering” or “struggle,” literally the same word in Greek, patheôn).
• That passion is often, but not always, a death (followed by a resurrection and triumph).
• By which “passion” (of whatever kind) they obtain victory over death.
• Which victory they then share with their followers (typically through baptism and communion).
• They also all have stories about them set in human history on earth.
• Yet so far as we can tell, none of them ever actually existed.

This is sounding even more like Christianity, isn’t it? Odd that. Just mix in the culturally distinct features of Judaism that it was syncretized with, such as messianism, apocalypticism, scripturalism, and the particularly Jewish ideas about resurrection—as well as Jewish soteriology, cosmology, and rituals, and other things peculiar to Judaism, such as an abhorrence of sexuality and an obsession with blood atonement and substitutionary sacrifice—and you literally have Christianity fully spelled out. Before it even existed.

You can find all the evidence and scholarship establishing these facts in Elements 11 and 31 of my book On the Historicity of Jesus (pp. 96-108; 168-73). This “common package” was indeed simply “syncretized” with Jewish elements, ideas, requirements, and sensitivities (e.g. Element 17, ibid., pp. 141-43). The mytheme was simply Judaized. And thence Christianity was born. The “differences” are the Jewish element. The similarities are what were adopted from the widespread mythemes raging with popularity everywhere around them.

Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier Blogs

Easter this year lands most fittingly on April Fool’s Day. Because indeed, the resurrection of Jesus is akin to the greatest prank in history. Not because anyone actually faked it (though the evidence we have left, remains fully consistent with their having done so: see Robert Price’s chapter...

www.richardcarrier.info

 

[joelr]

Jesus himself does not identify like suggested , he was consistent on events in the Tanakh.

This is classical straw-man on mainstream Christianity.
To say that Christianity is a consequence of something else then Christ.

No Historian will say that.

Carrier says that, David Litwa, Richard Miller, Lataster, Price, Pakken, say that and are historians.
And many journal entries such as:



The Religious Context of Early Christianity


A Guide to Graeco-Roman Religions

HANS-JOSEF KLAUCK


Professor of New Testament Exegesis, University of Munich, Germany

Summary

The Hellenistic mystery cults play a decisive role in the argumentation of the representatives of the school of the history of religions (see the Introduction, above), in two ways. First, they postulate a genetic derivation of the Christian sacraments from the quasi-sacramental rites of the mystery cults (initiation, washings, anointings, sacred meals); they see the Chrisrian sacraments as having no basis in the message of Jesus and in Palestinian biblical Judaism, but rather as the outcome of a process of Hellenisation which is evaluated as a lapse from the original purity of the gospel, whether this is dated (with Heitmuller) already before Paul, or (with Harnack: see p. 148, n. 49) only outside the New Testament itself in the second century. Secondly, it is further argued (see Bruckner) that the myth of the dying and rising again of a divinity, which lies at the centre of each cult, was a significant influence on earliest Christianity's image of Christ, which drifted off into myth.







The Relationship between Hellenistic Mystery Religions and Early Christianity: A Case Study using Baptism and Eucharist
Jennifer Uzzell

Baptism has been widely compared with initiation into the Mystery cults. In many of the Mysteries purification through ritual bathing was required as a prerequisite for initiation.

.....It is interesting to note that the early Christian writer Tertullian (c. 160-225CE) would not have agreed with this appraisal. Not only did he believe that certain of the Mysteries practiced baptism, but also that they did so in hope of attaining forgiveness of sins and a new birth. This was so striking a similarity that it clearly demanded some form of explanation. Not surprisingly, demonic imitation was the culprit.


The Nations, who are strangers to all understandings of spiritual powers, ascribe to their idols the imbuing of waters with the self-same efficacy. But they cheat themselves with waters that are widowed. For washing is the channel through which they are initiated into some sacred rites...of some notorious Isis or Mithras...at the Appolianrian or Eleusinian games they are baptised and they presume that the effect of their doing is their regeneration and the remission of the penalties due to their perjuries.


Another area where some have seen a link between Christian baptism and the Mystery religions concerns the Taurobolium associated with the cult of Cybele and Attis.





Dying/rising demigods


In Pagan Hellenistic and Near Eastern thought, the motif of a “Dying and Rising God” existed for millennia before Christ and there had been stories of divine beings questing into the underworld and returning transformed in some way.


Eucharist.


-Perhaps the clearest point of contact between the Mysteries and Christian Eucharist, and one of which the Church Fathers were painfully conscious, lay in a sacramental meal of bread or cakes and wine mixed with water in which initiates to the cult of Mithras participated.


They seek salvation from the debased material world through a spiritual ascent through the spheres. Mithras was expected to return to earth to lead his followers in a final cataclysmic battle between good and evil.


-The Mithraic sacramental meal almost certainly predates Christianity and cannot, therefore, be contingent upon it.






and this says the same;




Hellenistic Ideas of Salvation, Author(s): Paul Wendland


Source: The American Journal of Theology , Jul., 1913, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jul., 1913), pp. 345-351


Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3154653

"

Christian and Hellenistic ideas of redemption cannot be sharply separated.


The deity's resurrection from the dead gives to the initiates, who see their own destiny prefigured in his adventures, hope of a life after death."

 

[joelr]

Gee that's a quick read.

I did time stamp each point at least?

 

[walt]

I did time stamp each point at least?

I myself try to make my comments short and sweet, because I don't think anybody bothers reading mine.

 

[joelr]

Sorry, maybe I don't have a good attention span but your post is very long.

Lot of information here.

And the comparison you make at the beginning between Thor and Jesus is out of the ballfield because of the Bible, its history which I don't think you believe, whether you think it's true or not is not the question. There is no comparison even if you say there is.

For cripes sake. Really? Ok, sorry, THE QURAN. The MORMON BIBLE. THE HINDU SCRIPTURE. SCIENTOLOGY. BAHAI SCRIPTURE.


Substitute those. Billions of people believe those, they include historical things. Your welcome.

 

[joelr]

Wow. What a long reply.

Uh huh. Good comment. Thank you.

 

[joelr]

I myself try to make my comments short and sweet, because I don't think anybody bothers reading mine.

Right but it's because he claimed no historian and no scholar would say this. It's not for reading it all, it's a demonstration that this is commonly known info in scholarship.
They just don't make B- movies and stand on street corners preaching about it.

 

[metis]

I don't believe there is verification of human history beyond 6000 years thereabouts. Just as there is simply no genetic verification from cell formation to multiplication by natural selection or random mutation to plants and animals by dividing off from the root, the UCA. Or common ancestor. Even if scientists say there is and can show diagrams or imaginings of how fish, for instance, evolved to humans. Or the UCA of apes. THERE IS nothing to show that by steps in reality, i.e., real time. Zilch.

I was brought to believe this, but it simply is not even close to being true.

 

[Sargonski]

I don't believe there is verification of human history beyond 6000 years thereabouts. Just as there is simply no genetic verification from cell formation to multiplication by natural selection or random mutation to plants and animals by dividing off from the root, the UCA. Or common ancestor. Even if scientists say there is and can show diagrams or imaginings of how fish, for instance, evolved to humans. Or the UCA of apes. THERE IS nothing to show that by steps in reality, i.e., real time. Zilch.

That is simply not the case .. we have written history going back further .. if we are talking the existence of primative writing system .. which in earliest form was for keeping track of how many sheep you sold your neighbor last year .. or how many pigs he owes you this year ..

Dating back to 5500 BC The Tărtăria tablets, earliest form of writing in the world​

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/11/17/dating-back-to-2700-bc-the-tartaria-tablets-earliest-form-of-writing-in-the-world/

Thats 1500 years earlier than 4000 BC .. and that is just using writing .. if we go look at cave paintings or building structures left behind --- we go back 20,000 years .. if we are including stone tools .. things like that .. back 100,000 years.

Now perhaps there were sky people that came down round .. not 6 but 12,000 years ago -- and created a hybrid annunaki-human to do the hard labor -- using a primative human -- and some fancy alien in-vetro fertilization techniques .. like the stories of old tell .. and we might argue that there was a rapid advancement the stone age beasts .. primative tools .. starting writing on clay tablets .. as pictured above

Is this what you are getting at ? ... the alien hybrid theory ? ..I am open to hearing more about that -- think an interesting story those sumerians had... and those Israelites .. and Canaanites .. Jebusites .. hittites .. and well everyone around the near east ..


sdsdss