The Jesus Myth

If they are that easily offended, they need to grow a set and move into the real world. If a discussion can't be had because someone may be offended then the PC world is in severe need of dismantling (which I believe anyway). Y'all will find, I am not PC at all.

 

Absolutely Mike. I love a spirited discussion. I sometimes forget the majority of others aren't as tough skinned as some people such as you and I are. I mean no slight by that to anyone. However the idea of a forum is free speech and the discussion of thoughts and opinions. In this thread, which is by it's very nature, volatile, I have had not had a single issue.. The problem was my personal opinion of officers, which set off and offended at least three people, at least two of whom were former NCO's. I personally think that they were being overly sensitive, especially for having served. But I apologized, edited the post and put them on ignore. I'm here to learn, share my tiny bit of knowledge and maybe network, not to walk on egg shells. JMHO.

 

I completely understand. I do love a good discussion. But I dislike arguments. They accomplish nothing. If walking on eggshells becomes a norm, I will have to walk elsewhere. Just how I am.

 

Most of those saying "who is this or who does he think he is" came from the Pharisees as a derogatory remark. Even after His death they continued to slander him in order to defuse His witness and what the disciples were doing. They were hiding for a reason but when Jesus appeared to them (through locked door) they came face to face with the reality that He was/is the Son of God in the flesh. From then on they witnessed with fervor being assured of his deity. Most were eventually killed(brutally/horribly) by the Jewish "religious" leadership for their missionary work. Their works, letters, and experiences are what compromises the New Testament today.

 

I would make one suggestion, gentlemen, ignore no one. There is no one here, that could not teach you something. The Monkey Tree is a vast storehouse of knowledge, and this is not a "Normal" forum. There are experts in many, many fields here, and they are quite willing to teach.

 

I'm sure there are others with the same skill sets and who aren't that sensitive. And the ignore button is there for a reason. JMHO

 

And I love being NOT NORMAL

 

Normal is boring. Maybe that's why people tend to stare at me.

 

Lol. My opinion 'zactly

 

I did not say BE NORMAL, I said this forum was unusual. It is very rare to NEED to ignore someone here, and rarer still, where it would be to your advantage.

 

I have not found a need to ignore anyone, YET, but if you keep yelling in my ears... I might consider it,

 

Wow! Who would have thought a thread like this would be found here.

I hope it continues as I find questioning authority and tradition are interesting endeavors. For me, I find organized religion to be a tool used by authoritative bodies to control the masses mostly for the purpose of the few, not the many.

From an early age, I had an uncomfortable feeling about organized religion. On an Easter Sunday, I asked the youth minister if Jesus was a zombie because he died and came back to life. I was permanently excused from Sunday school.

I learned early that disturbing such shaky foundations draws disdain from those that struggle to support their position. Most do not want to question it, just accept and move on; blindly follow the flock...

When I question anything in the Bible, the typical response I hear is "Because it says so in the Bible". Asking about the Gospels of Philip usually sends these folks into a tailspin...

 

There have been times when I would swear there was no God.
There have been times when I have prayed, pleaded and begged for God to help.
One does not get to live for almost sixty years on this earth to have seen and heard things which would not be possible without divine intervention.

I'm no student of comparative theology but seems to me most religions appear to agree "God has many names" yet claim "But mine is the one true God". Then they proceed to hack each other to bits.

On prayer Matthew 6:7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: For they think they shall be heard for their much speaking.

Oddly enough then Matthew contradicts himself by leading into The Lord's Prayer, one of the most repeated prayers; Read "vain repetitions".

It wasn't until I rejected Catholicism with all of the prayers I had beaten into me during eight years of parochial school that I began to feel as if God finally started to listen to me and guide me on my path.

"Gospels of Philip" I've got Philemon and Philippians but no Philip.
That's a new one, I'll need to read up on it.

Mostly I'd just say believe what you want and I'll believe what I want.

 

In 1945, at Nag Hammadi in southern Egypt, two men came across a sealed ceramic jar. Inside, they discovered a hoard of ancient papyrus books. Although they never received as much public attention as the Dead Sea Scrolls, these actually turn out to be much more important for writing the history of early Christianity. They are a cache of Christian texts. The Nag Hammadi texts tell us about early Christians. They were written in Coptic, the language of early Christian Egypt. As most ancient Christian texts have been lost, this discovery was exceptional. The discovery includes the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip and the Acts of Peter. None of these texts were included in the Bible, because the content didn't conform to Christian doctrine, and they're referred to as apocryphal.

One of the documents discovered at Nag Hammadi is the Gospel of Philip, in which Mary Magdalene is a key figure. It has been the cause of one of the most controversial claims ever made about her. For the first time in hundreds of years there was a new source of information about Mary Magdalene. She appears very frequently as one of the prominent disciples of Jesus. The text is perhaps most famous as an early source for the popular theory that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. The Ancient Greek manuscript describes Jesus as Mary's "koinonos," or "companion," which may imply an intimate sexual relationship or a friend or companion in faith.

 

History, it is often said, is written by the winners (in a conflict). Many (but possibly not all) of the Nag Hammadi texts are attributed to the Gnostic factions of Christianity. The Gnostics (Islamic Sufism/Bhuddism are approximate analogues) were the losers in the early Christian Church's leadership and doctrinal battles. The Gnostics, having lost, the winners treated Gnosticism as heresy and burnt the Gnostic texts, authors and followers....literally or metaphorically.

It is surprising that the Nag Hammadi texts survive at all. But as the Christian Biblical Canons are closed, the contents of the Hammadi texts are not likely to change the closed Canons much, if at all, at least as far as presently accepted Biblical dogma is concerned.

It is interesting to speculate how Christianity might have evolved had the Gnostic factions gained ascendancy over their competitors during the early Church's history.

Interview with Bart Ehrman about Lost Christianities--the belief systems that didn't cut it. - Beliefnet.com

Biblical canon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

And for a while, that wasn't beyond the realm of the possible. According to Tertullian, the priest and theologian Valentinus, a gnostic, was considered for the post of the Bishop of Rome in the second century.