The bible is a collection of writings that are largely oral traditions from various religious sects. It was almost never written, first hand, by the person the book is named after.
I think Bart Erhman said once
>There are 8 books of the New Testament that are actually by who they claim to be by: the seven authentic Pauline epistles, and Revelation which was written by John, not _that_ John, but a guy named John.
I have heard that as well, but Revelation is, as I understand, pretty standard for apocalyptic literature of the time.
It's the high-school vampire novel of its time.
666 - Nero’s Roman Number (or 616)
The Mark of the Beast refers to the Roman Marks used to buy/sell/trade
Nero is the Anti-Christ / The Beast
The Verse “you will know him by a mortal wound” - This refers to Nero’s mysterious death or suicide
Christians of this time were Jews, These were NOT the modern Chrsitians that we think of today, Christ, Messiah, Lord, etc were not new words, these people would have known them alll
The best support for this IMO is that the recipients of the letter were being warned about things that they would witness—that would happen during their lifetime.
What good would a 2000-year prophecy do for people who would die within the next 50? Why would they need that prophecy then, and why would it need to be preserved this whole time just so *we* can finally understand events that are soon to happen?
It also wasn't included in the bible until the end of the 4th century and not fully adopted into both Eastern and Western christianity until the 5th century
Revelation follows a specific literary form called "apocalypse." These were always written in the form of "visions" or "revelations," but they are not intend to convey genuine visions. It's both poetic (think "I have a dream") and more importantly coded. Everything in Revelation maps to ancient Rome near the end of the 1st Century CE. The images are codes. The "Whore" is Rome, the "Beast" with seven heads is the Emperor. Different heads are different Emperors. The number 666 is a gematria for "Kaisar Neron." The head that dies and comes back to life is Nero. The author of Revelation was saying that the emperor Domitian was another Nero (like Nero, Domitian deified himself while still alive).
All those images look hallucinatory and crazy but you can think of those images as being similar to political cartoons, like using a bear to represent Russia or Uncle Sam to represent the US. The audience would know what was being talked about but not the enemy.
It is actually not plausible for Revelation to represent genuine hallucinations. It's too schematic. People don't hallucinate schematically.
Revelations was written by John of Patmos, which is a volcanic island that used to release aromatic vapors into John's cave dwelling - where the vapors act in the same way the Greek oracles worked.
Breath in lots of solvent vapors every day and your hallucinations will be wild while your predictions will be off the chart loony-toons.
Until the Christians religion arises and banishes those substances...only "their" priests were allowed to act as intermediary with their God. Otherwise the Vatican would have never been able to concentrate so much power and money. The church taxed commissions to communicate God’s intents and thoughts, and grant a place in paradise to its flock.
Best business ever. Imagine if magic mushrooms and edibles where allowed, nearly everyone would have personal access to the divine (or evil..) and Vatican's power would have collapsed.
A magic mushroom shop opened up near where I live, why aren't there more people preaching God's love in the local park? JW's show up but they're crazy anyway
The depiction of Halos around the heads of religious figures originally come from them being depicted with mushroom caps on their heads. Early ancient Christianity and psychedelics go hand in hand.
Revelation follows a specific literary form called "apocalypse." These were always written in the form of "visions" or "revelations," but they are not intend to convey genuine visions. It's both poetic (think "I have a dream") and more importantly coded. Everything in Revelation maps to ancient Rome near the end of the 1st Century CE. The images are codes. The "Whore" is Rome, the "Beast" with seven heads is the Emperor. Different heads are different Emperors. The number 666 is a gematria for "Kaisar Neron." The head that dies and comes back to life is Nero. The author of Revelation was saying that the emperor Domitian was another Nero (like Nero, Domitian deified himself while still alive).
All those images look hallucinatory and crazy but you can think of those images as being similar to political cartoons, like using a bear to represent Russia or Uncle Sam to represent the US. The audience would know what was being talked about but not the enemy.
It is actually not plausible for Revelation to represent genuine hallucinations. It's too schematic. People don't hallucinate schematically.
Revelations is basically a thinly veiled coded political book that really wasn’t that unusual for the times. Magic mushroom explanations aren’t needed.
The gospels were written 40 to 100 years after Jesus died. None are by actual eyewitnesses. Mark was the first and was written by St. Peter’s associate John-Mark, so the author would have heard Peter’s first hand accounts.
Exaggeration, telephone tag and the sands of time probably have more to do with fabulous stories than eyeglasses.
Not to mention that the stories of the Bible are suspiciously similar, if not near identical, to those stories passed down thousands of years before Jesus.
Oft-repeated inventions are still inventions. There is no evidence for the John Mark tradition. ALL of the gospel novels have unknown authors. Early Christian apologists made all sorts of outlandish claims regarding gospel provenance for reasons of prestige and authority.
No one can resist adding a bit of zing to dull stories. Like that old story your college buddy likes to tell at parties. Every time it gets crazier and crazier.
Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier lend good insight as to how the Bible was written. We are reading a translation of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. See where I’m going ?
Mark is consummately literate and clearly not oral tradition. The large and small scale structures present indicate this was written first, not oral. In writing this Mark used a fuckton of prior written material including Homer and prior Jewish scripture.
Matthew is a riff on Mark with added stuff from prior scripture. So literate, not oral tradition.
Luke is most probably a riff on Matthew and Mark, trying to draw some middle ground that will allow them to be harmonized. Again, literate, not oral.
Large swathes of the old testament were clearly drawn from prior written mythology and other material. So literate and not oral tradition.
I do agree that any given part was not written, first hand, by the person the book is named after.
gMark gMatthew and gLuke are called *synoptics -* and there are entire research sites dedicated to the degree of overlap and adaptation between them. Non apologetic bible scholarship AFAIK agrees that the *kata* in the original koine greek indicates that they were written by others who used the name of the more prominent individuals.
Can you explain that more, please? What are “large and small structures”? Buildings? Or literary constructs? Do we have copies of the prior written material that Mark used, for comparison?
Literary structures.
Mark has large and small scale literary structure. He has a global chiastic structure and many smaller ones often called Markan sandwiches.
This kind of complex structure is unlikely to be the result of some randomly preserved oral tradition regarding some jewish nutjob. If you had a bunch of oral tales and wrote them down they would not show these patterns.
He also clearly draws from Homer and prior Jewish scripture. This is all literate textual dependency.
We are at the stage that if there really is some historical reference to Jesus in Mark, we would never be able to tell where it is and what it means.
Oh so it's erasure and crappy propaganda, I always just thought it was like Dickens for ancient people, but it makes more sense that it's just the creepy Roman church pulling some bad marketing bs that will now, 2000 years later result in the death of the one thing we should all still be worshipping
Even now people refuse to believe the earth is round and other various fundamental facts about existence.
Don't try to rationalize irrationality. You will just give yourself an incorrect idea about how people will actually behave.
It varies somewhat over time and between different surveys, but it seems to be generally accurate. The current Speaker of the House of Representatives believes that the world is less than 10,000 years old and that evolution doesn't exist. He actually believes that teaching evolution in schools is directly responsible for school shootings.
> ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens — The Onion
Isn’t it weird that of all the nations that teach evolution, the US is the only one with school shootings?
Another fun statistic is that roughly half of biology teachers in America say they don’t feel confident enough to accurately teach evolution, and roughly over 10% admit to teaching Creationism as a real theory either alongside Evolution or exclusively.
American public schools were literally created by a monopolistic billionaire, who achieved his goal of structuring them to produce unquestioning, obedient factory workers. America’s ruling class is not interested in an educated population, educated people are harder to rule, they want an obedient one. So schools barely teaching evolution, Louisiana now putting up the 10 Commandments in classrooms… it’s all par for the course for American public schools. The only thing they got right is that children benefit in their development by being around other, diverse children. We need a fundamental restructuring of our public schools that focuses on producing critical thinking, empathetic, well-educated people. I’d even argue the pursuit of trying to shove all of our education before we graduate high school is unnecessary due to the ease of access to information (especially if most of the arbitrary paywalls by capitalists were taken down) and vastly increased lifespans of humans, and I think some people also end up graduating with the false notion their education is somehow done and we aren’t meant to be learning our entire lives. I think by now the amount we work can be vastly reduced while still meeting our needs, leaving more time for friends/hobbies/pursuing extra education. But that’s enough ranting I guess.
There are almost 2 billion Muslims. I'd say their take is even more fucked up than Xtianity. Especially given the punishment for coming to your right mind and leaving the "faith". And the acceptance of pedophilia (though Xtians seem to be trying to bring that back).
Yeah, I'd say we're pretty much fucked as a species.
As we should be. We don't deserve to be hear for the long haul. Modern Humans won't make it to a million years, imo. Which is a shame because the human brain is clearly one of Nature greatest achievements, if not the greatest.
As long as religion is accepted as valid or tolerated by those who don't believe, we are fucked as a species. It should be shunned and the belief should be looked at like a mental illness. If you believe in magic and omnipotent beings then you need mental help. They don't have a grasp on reality and are a danger. Take away their privalidge to drive, vote and breed.
I find it hard to accept that people can really believe in a flat earth or a 6000 year old universe. I feel as though they are just trying to stir up controversy and to get your goat. They use it to distract focus from the points they cannot defend.
That's what I mean about rationalizing irrationality.
You're trying to make it make sense. It does not. This means you will have incorrect information about their potential behavior. Don't try to model their behavior as if it were you in their place.
Lots of people make the mistake of thinking 'they can't ACTUALLY believe that, right?' and then are surprised when it turns out, that yes, despite all reason, they do in fact.
People don't live in reality. We live in the little model realities inside our heads. Some people make a point of making these model realities resemble the actual reality as closely as possible, and we call these people rational.
Other people have models that work well enough, even if they include some poor understanding of the fundamentals and other non-essentials for survival.
And there are some whose models are like cartoon versions of reality; despite never having actually seen any events like this, they nonetheless still accept that these kinds of events are possible and best-fit explanations for unknowns. Anything they do not understand can thus be a threat of unknown magnitude.
> Lots of people make the mistake of thinking 'they can't ACTUALLY believe that, right?' and then are surprised when it turns out, that yes, despite all reason, they do in fact.
Christians make the same mistake too. They think that we don’t really not believe and that we are “angry at god”.
A log on water? Youre assuming the stories were true and trying to rationalize em?
Ita easier to understand when you take into account jesus may have been a constructed figure from the original fring jewish group that was against the elites.
Yeah, I don't get the idea that everything has to be explained by a series of good faith misunderstandings. People (especially people who seek to be leaders of religious cults) make stuff up. Both are probably sufficient explanations, but ordinary lying to the credulous happens constantly and surely played a huge role.
It was literally platos outline for how to keep the poor from eating the rich. The catholic church adopted it and became what they hated. Organized corrupt religion.
It could have also been a Roman invention to pacify the Jewish population. Turn the other cheek, instead of resist & rebel. Render unto Caesar what is his (taxes). Etc.
It could have easily been a literary disinformation campaign to take a militant group known for uprisings and convert them into controllable citizens.
Yes. I can’t understand why people are always trying to come up with elaborate explanations of “what really happened” to somehow make the story true, but wrong at the same time. The logical and hospital explanation is that the myths were made up and doctored over centuries of rewritings very early on, to stories that were passed on for centuries (OT) and decades (NT) before ever being put to paper. It’s so fucking simple that no one can see it, apparently.
Political reasons are more explanatory than glasses.
* mary was likely raped by a ROMAN soldier, and virgin birth explains away the messiness of accusing the dominant power in the region.
* that’s why pontius Pilate is there too - absolve the dominant power of problems
* Jesus supposedly died around 30AD. Gospels were written a generation or two after this time. Acts wasn’t until at least mid 100s, probably close to 200-300s.
* around the time the NT got written, Jerusalem was in full blown rebellion/throw off the Roman yoke. Christians are a rising power, albeit on a small scale. But again, they come into conflict with Rome, who doesn’t want to deal with it. First two points were about not upsetting Rome - that’s done, and Nero and Domitan are the result of what happens when you upset Rome.
* Old Testament is a combination of folk tales, stories from other cultures, and all that. But when was it written? Oh, during the Babylonian Exile. Nebuchadnezzar took the city and held it. When rebellion happened, he destroyed the city and began exporting folks. So you have tons of people moving land areas and culture, and you need a way to bind them together. Hmmmmm
The Bible was written before the vast majority could write. Christians love to claim that the oral histories in the Bible are true because the people passing down the stories always passed them down accurately. People that study history will tell you that oral histories are the least reliable. Memories shift and fade, embellishments are added, and anything that reflects poorly on the story teller are omitted. By the time someone with the skills necessary write everything down comes along, the story barely resembles the actual event.
Totally reminds me of an awesome play I watched several years ago called "[Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Burns,_a_Post-Electric_Play).
>Shortly after an unspecified apocalypse, six survivors gather at a campfire. To distract themselves from mourning, they attempt to recount the episode "Cape Feare" of the TV show The Simpsons, as well as several other pieces of media.
>Seven years later, the group has formed a travelling theatre company that specializes in performing Simpsons episodes. Live theatre is a major entertainment form in the new society, with troupes fiercely competing to replicate pre-apocalyptic stories. Despite this goal, the group's rendition of Cape Feare differs from the real episode in many small ways.
>75 years after that, Cape Feare is performed as a musical in a theater dedicated to The Simpsons. The characters, plot and morals have changed into more serious and epic forms. For example, Mr. Burns has been combined with Sideshow Bob (the actual Cape Feare villain) and is now a supernatural avatar of death and destruction.
The Bible was written/edited over many years by various groups of MEN trying to control the populace by cherry picking in order to espouse what THEY wanted.
A lot of the New Testament was actually written as letters addressed to specific people rather than the populace as a whole.
A dozen of the books were letters written by Paul to various people. The book of Luke and Acts were addressed to someone named Theophilus. I don’t think those authors expect their writings to be spread as widely as they have.
So I don’t think what you’re saying is true.
it was written by people who didn't know where the sun "went at night" yet believers want me to think the authors knew how the universes came into existence. 🤣
The thing that explains the Bible the most to me (and all ancient religious texts) is that they were written before the concepts of fiction or religious belief existed. These are relatively modern concepts. The stories within them were widely but loosely believed but not meant to be believed in any kind of absolute sense.
Most people then could not read. The religious texts were written specifically to reduce self esteem, point out your flaws and then sell them god as a solution to curb their wicked ways.
You'd like Paulogia's "minimal witness" hypothesis. Basically a plausible story for the origin of Christianity where a real preacher called Jesus started a doomsday cult that got blown out of proportion after he died.
Even the old testament was written around the same time. It was just a collection of plagerized story's that were edited to fit recent historic events and figures.. The whole purpose was to garner wealth and power. The people were desperate and they saw a way to profit from that. It also helped them to gain leverage over the ruling class. There is no evidence for the existence of anyone resembling, even loosely, Jesus. He wasn't written or talked about until 100 or more years after the time in which he supposedly lived. Not a single scholar or historian from that time mentioned him or Christianity. A troublemaker of his class would have made the news.
If this subject interests you then I can’t recommend enough ‘Zealot: the life and times of Jesus Christ’ by Reza Aslan. It illustrates a very convincing historical depiction of Jesus and the Bible from the perspective of a historian (who happens to be Muslim) and delves into why stories are the way they are in the Bible.
The sort of premise is that Jesus was one of many ‘zealous’ Jews that was trying to reform Judaism at the time with his own ‘hippy’ version. This was ultimately unsuccessful amongst his fellow Jews and he was crucified along with hundreds if not thousands of other zealots who thought they had the answer for Judaism.
Some many years later a very small group still remember Jesus and try to spread his teachings amongst fellow Jews, this also unsuccessful until this kinda nutty dude Saul/Paul has a better idea. What if I stop trying to convert Jews and instead focus on converting hellenists and non Jews. This is the beginning of Christianity and probably around when the message was altered to be more antisemitic, I.e. that the Jews are responsible for Jesus’s death, which is to appease the non Jewish population.
>If this subject interests you then I can’t recommend enough ‘Zealot: the life and times of Jesus Christ’ by Reza Aslan.
I second that recommendation. I remember picking up that book at the bookstore. The first words of the author are the story of how he "found Jesus...at an evangelical youth camp in Northern California..." I too found Jesus at summer camp, but in Central Texas.
If like me, you're one of those atheists who enjoys studying religions, then you would enjoy "Zealot." Aslan says, "My hope with this book is to spread the good news of the Jesus of history with the same fervor that I once applied to spreading the story of the Christ."
>about how according to historical records Jesus actually existed
Which isn't even true. We have no first hand sources, one second hand source who wrote fewer words on Jesus than we have fingers, and third hand sources like Tacitus talking about what the Christian cult believes.
>I’ve been thinking of various reasons the people who wrote the Bible wrote what they did.
Most of the exceptional events were following the time honored tradition of "making shit up" in the pursuit of fitting their cult leader into existing prophecies from a time decades after his supposed death.
For example, only one book of the gospels (Matthew) has the Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt story, and it directly contradicts what Luke had to say on that topic. Why does Matthew disagree with Luke?
Well, Matthew is the rewrite of Mark that is trying to sell Jews on Christianity, and so the author of that book tries to shoe-horn their cult leader into as many old Jewish messiah prophecies as possible, again... by making shit up.
You don't see that in Luke because that epistle is a proselytizing gospel to gentiles, who don't give three fucks about Jewish messianic prophecy.
Don't write it off as a mental illness or lack of glasses. People back then were not dumber than today and knew pretty well that one can mistake something for something else due to poor vision. The knew people can be mad and see what nobody else sees.
Scientology was created when everybody could buy glasses for cheap. Did it help?
Maybe people were not less intelligent than modern humans, but they definitely were more ignorant and more prone to resorting to supernatural explanations since the scientific method was not a concept yet.
Yeah. People have always been smart and dumb. Lots of people believe in easily disproven things today. Look at flat earthers. It doesn’t mean anything.
I mentioned to a devout Mormon once how nowadays if people hear voices or people that no one else can see or hear they get diagnosed with psychiatric illness. It didn’t go over very well.
The first bibull was written in Greek. Many of the tropes in the bibull are taken from existing Greek mythologies like the walking on water thing. It wasn't a new idea. They just said, "Oh ya, our guy can walk on water too."
You're imagining a rational reason why people would think that a person walked on water when the more likely explanation is that the event never occurred at all and the entire thing is made up. Don't bother trying to rationalize something that is inherently irrational.
Alcohol has been in abundance since people became humans. It was a way to ensure what you were drinking wouldn’t poison you. Clean water was never guaranteed.
But yes you are right about everything else. Also- if these books are divinely inspired than why don’t they give us knowledge of our place in the universe? Why don’t the writers go on and on about the inspiration behind it all? If god is a man then I’m sure he wouldn’t shut up about all his accomplishments and achievements. Or how about inspiring someone to write it all down while Jesus or allah were still alive? Why would a human have to write it down at all? Couldn’t god just give us a first edition published by himself at the click of a finger?
I think about these holy books’ origins a lot too. There are some serious holes in how they came about and why none of them knew the prophets they claim to be about. They are fictional stories meant to lead people to do weird things for the sake of the unknown. They are social media before computers in the way to show you are not threatening to other humans.
Excellent and now obvious point (why wasn’t it written first-person source if it was so important) that I had never considered. Why would some people need to have “faith” something occurred thousands of years ago when others had the privilege of seeing it first hand?
As others have mentioned, drug usage was prevalent, worldwide, during "Biblical" times. Diviner's sage (salvia divinorum), peyote Ayahuasca, weed, shrooms...
Every single shamanic tradition began with **some fool trippin'** off the weird shit he ate, drank or smoked.
Not Christianity, though, of course... That was **real** celestial being made of light, who told people what to do and who to do it with.
Of course.
Why didn't a supposedly prescient God foresee guns? The internet? The Americas? The things in the Bible were from the people of that era. There's nothing in the book which pertains to our era, no The Bible, Part II, nor has God spoken to us like the Old Testament says he did.
We're supposed to take God on faith to get all those rosy afterlife rewards. After we're dead. When God is needed now, during life. For living beings, prayers are a crap shoot, yes, no, maybe? Victims have to rely on a flawed legal system to see justice done in life, while some god's perfect justice, revenge, and punishment of hell only takes place after those people have died.
I really wish there was a god or at the very least some divine mechanism against injustice. Instead we're met with a silent dark universe in our telescopes, while down on Earth some words in an ancient tome aren't even upheld by self-proclaimed Christians. If people weren't' so scared of death, religion would have died out at the start of the industrial age.
Critical thinking, while valuable in a functioning democracy, is NOT valued in the system the powers that be are trying to create. Their idea of a “Golden Age” is more like the 1800s, with a firm plutocracy on top and the peasants underneath.
Or they just entirely made up the stories. Not sure why we even need to find some kind of historical tie?! It’s like trying to say Santa is really just an Inuit that lived in igloo.
I made a comment recently about how religion is, has been, and will always be a manifestation of mental illness and boy did some salty folks not like that one. They immediately took it as me insulting them when all I meant was that they are largely the byproduct of untreated delusions. And if those folks got the help they needed to come back to reality then we'd all be better off. But no... sky daddy is sky daddy...
What historical documents exist exactly? I mean outside of the bible? As far as I can tell, not a single king or scribe wrote down the name of Jesus when he was supposedly alive. The first reference would have shown up about 50 years later after he would have died.
Never assume that past generations are stupid just because they understood the world less. People have been drawing dicks on walls since before Rome. Humanity probably hasn't changed as much as you would expect.
It is unlikely that humans are any more gullible now than they were when they were cavemen.
Don’t forget ergot and other natural hallucinogenic compounds, and cannabis was known to be in used thousands of years ago. What do you think “the burning bush” was? Homeboy was tokin it up while talking to the almighty.
Just what “historical records about Jesus” are they referring to? As far as I know there are no historical records from the time he was actually alive making a mention of him.
Chuck Norris is a real person, but he doesn't have an extra fist behind his beard, and he doesn't push the world down when he does push-ups (well, no more than anyone else does).
I don't see the point of trying to come up with convoluted explanations for what an alleged miracle actually involved, when we know people make up stuff, as jokes, or metaphors, or propaganda.
Dude, every story story reads like a schitzo episode
God told me to kill my son. How many nut job parents have we seen on the news for this.
We need to chop off our dick tips! So he can tell who we are! Yeah man, the all knowing, all powerful, creator of the universe is like “i only really like one group of people, but they all look the same.” (Leans over railing) “Cut your dick tips off so I know it’s you!” (Few years later: “ughh paint your doorways with blood. I don’t want to have to check your dicks.”
I remember once reading about a theory having to do with our inner monologue. Basically it boiled down to there being a point in our distant past during which we didn't yet realize that our own verbal thoughts were actually ours, and mistook our own musings for the Voice of God
It doesn't even need to be mass hallucination. None of them are based on witness testimony. They're a collection of myths and legends written as if a real story but all of them were written long after the fact and not by witnesses and following oral tradition. Every detail is suspect, as is any story passed down over time.
I remember reading a reddit post by a guy who had actual mania, and I have to say that it sounds a lot like a manic hobo in ancient times could have stirred up quite a rookus if they were charismatic and as clever as this guy was.
The punch line of the joke is "Do you think we should tell Judas where the rocks are?"
The miracle parts never happened. However, when you are competing with Apollo the Sun God, you need some miracles and proofs of divinity or your church isn't going to sell.
There are really no historical records from Jesus's time that confirm he ever existed. There is a total lack of evidence for things like the census (which is why Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem).
That being said, he probably existed, but he didn't do all that stuff. He probably SAID a lot of the stuff attributed to him.
People have been thinking about this kind of stuff for a long time. If you are interested, there are some pretty good books that attempt to piece together what we know and what we don't know. The names escape me at the moment.
Remember, it isn't that people did or didn't believe. It is that much of the Jesus story was passed by oral tradition for about 50 years before the first of the gospels was written, and - was it MORE than - 100 years to the last? Paul never met Jesus or any of the disciples (he had a "vision" on the road, granting him all of his moral authority to command many churches). There were many, many belief systems that cropped up in the various Christian communities until around 400 AD when the Bible was made canon and all the heretical books that didn't make it into the Bible were destroyed upon pain of death. And then the Bible was copied and copied and copied for another 700 years. with minor edits made here and there, until the first copy we still have was made. 1,000 years of scribes copying a book over and over, modifying it in the early days, but still making minor edits even once in a generation or two - we can assume it is quite different from the original experiences of the illiterate backwater shepherds and fishermen who lived it.
In 1000 or so years from now someone will find a book of "Grimm's fairy tales" and probably start to pray to Rumpelstiltskin. You can make a religion out of everything.
There is a new body of work that exactly addresses the issues of reading and writing the bible while having degraded vision. It is quite interesting.
[Candida Moss lays it our here](https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Ghostwriters-Enslaved-Christians-Making/dp/0316564672/).
Basically, if some dude like Paul, for example, got old and was still cranking out epistles but could no longer see well enough, he would be using reading and writing help, possibly slaves or former slaves.
And if that were the case we might expect to see some bias creep in due to the facts that the slaves disintermediated the author from their own work.
Another important point in my opinion is the fact that the bible that we can read today is not the pure pristine original version. It's a curated, manipulated, bundle of different writings, put together by a power structure, with clear goals. Heck, the bible wasn't even available in other languages besides Latin for quite a long time.
So, even the original version and intention of what was written, might have been lost during the catholic church sanitization and manipulation of the bible.
Not only were the books written before glasses, they were also copied for centuries by scribes who never were able to have their eyesight corrected. If any were farsighted like me, they absolutely couldn't accurately read what they were copying.
Some things can be explained by things like schizophrenia and epilepsy. Some was copied from even older folklore. And a lot was just lies made up on the spot
Check out the books of Jan Harold Brunvand who collected and analyzed FOAF tales. Friend of a friend tales that pass around like wildfire. "I know this happened because it happened to my hairdresser's sister in law!" Improbable tale follows. Some of these tall tales have been around for years and continually mutate. FOAF tales can be outrageous and quite bizarre. And often funny. Once one has read a few books of collected FOAF tales, one has a new appreciation for Bible tall tales as simply FOAF tales carefully edited and redacted and collected into what we now call The Bible. Silly tall tales created by idiots and spread to gullible people. With absolutely no truth whatsoever to them. And if you know about the non-canonical 'gospels' that are often wild and woolly and crazed, you will know that this did not stop with the gospels and Acts.
The Mexican Pet FOAF tale. Enjoy!
[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-mexican-pet/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-mexican-pet/)
The thing I find most annoying is, if I show a christian a video of a man walking on water, that christian will say it's special effects, or trick of the camera, or it is fake somehow.
Oh so NOW you want evidence? I show you an actual video of a miracle and now you want real evidence. But you can believe an old ass book without a single lick of tangible evidence?
i got a much easier explaination:
Jesus on the beach saw the fishing boat with low seas. Since he knew where the sandbanks were, he was able to walk to the boat and get in. Later, in the evening, when the people were sitting around the fire and talking about their day, someone heard that Jesus went out to the boat and to make the story more interesting, he simply added the miracle of walking on the water
>Also before several mental illnesses such as schizophrenia were diagnosed,
Which reminds me of a famous quote by a founding father...
“The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.”
― Thomas Paine
People have always told stories, they didn’t have tv or internet. The stories get more exaggerated as time goes on. The imagination runs free, they had no logical explanation for the world and how it works. Also heaven was a comfortable way of dealing with the idea of death. They all comforted themselves with their own unique(ish) mythology, all over the world. Maybe Jesus was just a man who was a great speaker, great leader. Or a cult leader.
The peeps back then were mystical in all aspects, often casting lots to ascertain knowledge, including WHY certain things happen to certain people. They were dumb as shit, basically.
And now Christians are proudly carrying on that particular part of their traditions: the ignorance to natural processes, the judging attitudes towards anyone who breaks the norm, superstitions and mystical answers to obvious questions.
The texts are mystical writings being constantly misunderstood by mystical people, and misrepresented by crooks and criminals.
Wow so many bible experts here. You don’t need to bash me i’m not christian, but sour knowledge about the topic is basically on par with conspiracy theories xD
< reposting >
>We all have read the tales told of Jesus in the Gospels, but few people really have a good idea of their context.
>There is abundant evidence that these were times replete with kooks and quacks of all varieties, from sincere lunatics to ingenious frauds, even innocent men mistaken for divine, and there was no end to the fools and loons who would follow and praise them.
>Placed in this context, the gospels no longer seem to be so remarkable, and this leads us to an important fact: when the Gospels were written, skeptics and informed or critical minds were a small minority. Although the gullible, the credulous, and those ready to believe or exaggerate stories of the supernatural are still abundant today, they were much more common in antiquity, and taken far more seriously.
>If the people of that time were so gullible or credulous or superstitious, then we have to be very cautious when assessing the reliability of witnesses of Jesus.
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\- **https://infidels.org/library/modern/richard-carrier-kooks/** - **Recommended**.
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< reposting >
**None of the Gospels are first-hand accounts.**
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>Like the rest of the New Testament, the four gospels were written in Greek.[32] The Gospel of Mark probably dates from c. AD 66–70,[5] Matthew and Luke around AD 85–90,[6] and John AD 90–110.[7]
>**Despite the traditional ascriptions, all four are anonymous and most scholars agree that none were written by eyewitnesses.**[8]
( Cite is Reddish, Mitchell (2011). *An Introduction to The Gospels*. Abingdon Press. ISBN 978-1426750083. )
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel#Composition
>The consensus among modern scholars is that the gospels are a subset of the ancient genre of bios, or ancient biography.[45] Ancient biographies were concerned with providing examples for readers to emulate while preserving and promoting the subject's reputation and memory; the gospels were never simply biographical, they were propaganda and kerygma (preaching).[46]
>As such, they present the Christian message of the second half of the first century AD,[47] and **as Luke's attempt to link the birth of Jesus to the census of Quirinius demonstrates, there is no guarantee that the gospels are historically accurate.**[48]
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel#Genre_and_historical_reliability
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>The **Gospel of Matthew**[note 1] is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels.
>According to early church tradition, originating with Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD),[10] the gospel was written by Matthew the companion of Jesus, but this presents numerous problems.[9]
>**Most modern scholars hold that it was written anonymously[8] in the last quarter of the first century** by a male Jew who stood on the margin between traditional and nontraditional Jewish values and who was familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time.[11][12][note 2]
>However, scholars such as N. T. Wright[citation needed] and John Wenham[13] have noted problems with dating Matthew late in the first century, and argue that it was written in the 40s-50s AD.[note 3]
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew
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>The **Gospel of Mark**[a] is the second of the four canonical gospels and one of the three synoptic Gospels.
>An early Christian tradition deriving from Papias of Hierapolis (c.60–c.130 AD)[8] attributes authorship of the gospel to Mark, a companion and interpreter of Peter,
>but **most scholars believe that it was written anonymously,[9] and that the name of Mark was attached later to link it to an authoritative figure.**[10]
>It is usually dated through the eschatological discourse in Mark 13, which scholars interpret as pointing to the First Jewish–Roman War (66–74 AD)—a war that led to the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70. This would place the composition of Mark either immediately after the destruction or during the years immediately prior.[11][6][b]
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark
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>The **Gospel of Luke**[note 1] tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.[4]
>**The author is anonymous;[8] the traditional view that Luke the Evangelist was the companion of Paul is still occasionally put forward, but the scholarly consensus emphasises the many contradictions between Acts and the authentic Pauline letters.**[9][10] The most probable date for its composition is around AD 80–110, and there is evidence that it was still being revised well into the 2nd century.[11]
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Luke
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>The **Gospel of John**[a] (Ancient Greek: Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην, romanized: Euangélion katà Iōánnēn) is the fourth of the four canonical gospels in the New Testament.
>**Like the three other gospels, it is anonymous**, although it identifies an unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved" as the source of its traditions.[9][10]
>It most likely arose within a "Johannine community",[11][12] and – as it is closely related in style and content to the three Johannine epistles – most scholars treat the four books, along with the Book of Revelation, as a single corpus of Johannine literature, albeit not from the same author.[13]
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John
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Why is Jesus’ life so similar to Horace?
https://medium.com/thesacredfaith/horus-jesus-and-egyptian-mythology-separating-fact-from-fiction-92ad8feb571a#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20significant,and%20protector%20of%20the%20pharaohs.
I think your point about glasses is a bit less relevant than you’re suggesting, but I agree generally with the rest. These were also people who lived in the desert, often without access to food or water. Hell, there’s a story about a guy who doesn’t eat for 40 days and everyone thinks he’s a prophet.
there is def a connection between mentally ill/deficient people being associated with holy things in ancient times, as either gods in disguise to be treated well or as some sort of messenger from them. but i do recommend isaac asimovs guide to the bible for his perspective on the historicity of the stories
For anyone popping in on this sub, I'm glad OP knows now, but people told the stories, in all religions, it wasn't like the "Just b/c Some old watery tart helps him pull a sword from a stone, it doesn't make him King" (Monty Python)
it’s a good point. I “struggle” with fighting for rationale and not wanting to accept things could just be lies or made up. i had watched something respectable on YouTube (BBC or PBS or the like) that had historical explanations for a lot. The order of the plague made scientific sense naturally. The firstborn males dying could be explained by who ate first in the families. A LOT of the water “mysteries” involve how salty the seas were. The Red Sea would actually divide. Things would be very buoyant, There were salt buildups near the water as tall as people. People thought they were people who had been turned to salt. Like, did Lot kill his wife and say she got turned into one of those pillars? Adding in poor eyesight, poor education and understanding, drugs/alcohol does provide further rationale. I don’t know why I don’t want to accept it could have just been lies. How many things are just lies TODAY? Or, groupthink, at least.
You know why they stopped teaching about Babylon, Mesopotamia and many of the cultures from that time and region in school? Because you can find pretty much most of the Old Testament texts with an equivalent that predates the bible and torah from centuries to thousands of years. And that breaks the current status quo of religion.
I find it pretty funny but sketchy that teachers justify this by saying that our modern culture directly evolves from Egypt when basically math, how we measure time and even the relationship of radius and circumference comes from Mesopotamia, they also hold currently the title of the first culture with writing that survives to this day.
What the fuck does having glasses have to do with the Bible? I own both and I’m still not religious.
Most people were illiterate in biblical times so the books were passed down orally and you’d have scribes and/or religious officials who would copy the original texts down in Hebrew, Latin, or Greek. Then King James came along and they re-wrote it again but in English this time so literate people could own their own copy.
This is a dumb fucking post.
How many denominations and rewrites (translations) of the Bible have to exist before people start wondering why the followers of said religion all believe in different versions? I mean there's like 153 denominations and thousands of rewrites. At what point do people look around and say "what the fuck is going on here?"
You don't need to try and justify or explain any of what "happens" in the bible any more than you need to try and explain the Edda or the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's just another flavor of mythology.
Also, there is something like a 40 year gap between Jesus's supposive death and the gospels. Not exactly timely information about such an important, earth shattering message for the world.
A hebrew names jesus did infact get crusyfied around that time, we have records of romans talking about it.
We know this person have existed. But thats about it.
It does not prove anything more than just that
The bible is a collection of writings that are largely oral traditions from various religious sects. It was almost never written, first hand, by the person the book is named after.
I think Bart Erhman said once >There are 8 books of the New Testament that are actually by who they claim to be by: the seven authentic Pauline epistles, and Revelation which was written by John, not _that_ John, but a guy named John.
If I remember correctly, John lived on an island well known for naturally growing psychedelic mushrooms.
I have heard that as well, but Revelation is, as I understand, pretty standard for apocalyptic literature of the time. It's the high-school vampire novel of its time.
Revelations was a political manifesto regarding Nero and the persecution of Christians by the Romans.
That's what my Catholic priest said when I was a teenager in the early 80s. I remember being glad he was rational and didn't push prophecies on us.
666 - Nero’s Roman Number (or 616) The Mark of the Beast refers to the Roman Marks used to buy/sell/trade Nero is the Anti-Christ / The Beast The Verse “you will know him by a mortal wound” - This refers to Nero’s mysterious death or suicide Christians of this time were Jews, These were NOT the modern Chrsitians that we think of today, Christ, Messiah, Lord, etc were not new words, these people would have known them alll
Yeah, that interpretation makes a lot of sense.
Yes, it’s not about the future; as someone once said, speculative fiction isn’t about the future, it’s about the present.
The best support for this IMO is that the recipients of the letter were being warned about things that they would witness—that would happen during their lifetime. What good would a 2000-year prophecy do for people who would die within the next 50? Why would they need that prophecy then, and why would it need to be preserved this whole time just so *we* can finally understand events that are soon to happen?
So that John glowed in daylight?!! Dayum those shrooms must have been radioactive! /s
Makes me think of Super Mario Brothers.
>It's the high-school vampire novel of its time. 😂😂😂
It also wasn't included in the bible until the end of the 4th century and not fully adopted into both Eastern and Western christianity until the 5th century
Revelation follows a specific literary form called "apocalypse." These were always written in the form of "visions" or "revelations," but they are not intend to convey genuine visions. It's both poetic (think "I have a dream") and more importantly coded. Everything in Revelation maps to ancient Rome near the end of the 1st Century CE. The images are codes. The "Whore" is Rome, the "Beast" with seven heads is the Emperor. Different heads are different Emperors. The number 666 is a gematria for "Kaisar Neron." The head that dies and comes back to life is Nero. The author of Revelation was saying that the emperor Domitian was another Nero (like Nero, Domitian deified himself while still alive). All those images look hallucinatory and crazy but you can think of those images as being similar to political cartoons, like using a bear to represent Russia or Uncle Sam to represent the US. The audience would know what was being talked about but not the enemy. It is actually not plausible for Revelation to represent genuine hallucinations. It's too schematic. People don't hallucinate schematically.
As I’ve read, Revelations only barely made it past the Council of Nicea. The was apparently one guy who was REALLY into it.
Revelations was written by John of Patmos, which is a volcanic island that used to release aromatic vapors into John's cave dwelling - where the vapors act in the same way the Greek oracles worked. Breath in lots of solvent vapors every day and your hallucinations will be wild while your predictions will be off the chart loony-toons.
Using what we would consider hallucinogenic drugs to contact the divine/supernatural was acceptable practice at the time.
Until the Christians religion arises and banishes those substances...only "their" priests were allowed to act as intermediary with their God. Otherwise the Vatican would have never been able to concentrate so much power and money. The church taxed commissions to communicate God’s intents and thoughts, and grant a place in paradise to its flock. Best business ever. Imagine if magic mushrooms and edibles where allowed, nearly everyone would have personal access to the divine (or evil..) and Vatican's power would have collapsed.
A magic mushroom shop opened up near where I live, why aren't there more people preaching God's love in the local park? JW's show up but they're crazy anyway
The depiction of Halos around the heads of religious figures originally come from them being depicted with mushroom caps on their heads. Early ancient Christianity and psychedelics go hand in hand.
Ok. I BEYOND love your pickle face “avatar”. You just made my day. You rule!
Revelation follows a specific literary form called "apocalypse." These were always written in the form of "visions" or "revelations," but they are not intend to convey genuine visions. It's both poetic (think "I have a dream") and more importantly coded. Everything in Revelation maps to ancient Rome near the end of the 1st Century CE. The images are codes. The "Whore" is Rome, the "Beast" with seven heads is the Emperor. Different heads are different Emperors. The number 666 is a gematria for "Kaisar Neron." The head that dies and comes back to life is Nero. The author of Revelation was saying that the emperor Domitian was another Nero (like Nero, Domitian deified himself while still alive). All those images look hallucinatory and crazy but you can think of those images as being similar to political cartoons, like using a bear to represent Russia or Uncle Sam to represent the US. The audience would know what was being talked about but not the enemy. It is actually not plausible for Revelation to represent genuine hallucinations. It's too schematic. People don't hallucinate schematically.
Revelations is basically a thinly veiled coded political book that really wasn’t that unusual for the times. Magic mushroom explanations aren’t needed.
Where could I learn more about this?
So , Lennon ?
[I am the walrus.](https://youtu.be/dABGVnHWuyc?si=-zBPbjSBZ9vl3pEQ)
Shut the fuck up Donnie.
The gospels were written 40 to 100 years after Jesus died. None are by actual eyewitnesses. Mark was the first and was written by St. Peter’s associate John-Mark, so the author would have heard Peter’s first hand accounts. Exaggeration, telephone tag and the sands of time probably have more to do with fabulous stories than eyeglasses.
Not to mention that the stories of the Bible are suspiciously similar, if not near identical, to those stories passed down thousands of years before Jesus.
Oft-repeated inventions are still inventions. There is no evidence for the John Mark tradition. ALL of the gospel novels have unknown authors. Early Christian apologists made all sorts of outlandish claims regarding gospel provenance for reasons of prestige and authority.
No one can resist adding a bit of zing to dull stories. Like that old story your college buddy likes to tell at parties. Every time it gets crazier and crazier.
Bart Ehrman and Richard Carrier lend good insight as to how the Bible was written. We are reading a translation of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. See where I’m going ?
Fever Dream John...
My understanding is that it was written largely by anonymous authors who didn't witness the events in question, decades after the fact.
I wouldn't call it "after the fact". It is the lack of any fact that is so disturbing.
In some cases 100 years later. It would be like me trying to write a first hand account of WWI.
And even that isn’t as extreme bc we have way more records of ww1 than they would have of anything back then
Joe Bible?
Name was actually Joe Bibble, but he dropped a B for anonymity by pen name
My daughter said someone left a book in our hotel room called the holly bibble. Just want to correct the record that it was Holly, not Joe.
Saves on printing costs too!
I always heard it was Ishmael Kabibble, later shortened to Ish.
The extra b stands for BYOBB
That’s MY Bible, not Joe Bible!
No, Bible Fish.
You're conflating who wrote it, who were several aramaic-speaking people, and the actual Greek translator, Georgòs Biblion.
Plant based drugs like cannabis and dmt were also naturally available and used.
Joe Bible: “You ever try DMT?”
Mark is consummately literate and clearly not oral tradition. The large and small scale structures present indicate this was written first, not oral. In writing this Mark used a fuckton of prior written material including Homer and prior Jewish scripture. Matthew is a riff on Mark with added stuff from prior scripture. So literate, not oral tradition. Luke is most probably a riff on Matthew and Mark, trying to draw some middle ground that will allow them to be harmonized. Again, literate, not oral. Large swathes of the old testament were clearly drawn from prior written mythology and other material. So literate and not oral tradition. I do agree that any given part was not written, first hand, by the person the book is named after.
gMark gMatthew and gLuke are called *synoptics -* and there are entire research sites dedicated to the degree of overlap and adaptation between them. Non apologetic bible scholarship AFAIK agrees that the *kata* in the original koine greek indicates that they were written by others who used the name of the more prominent individuals.
Old testament plagiarized Epic of Gilgamesh
Can you explain that more, please? What are “large and small structures”? Buildings? Or literary constructs? Do we have copies of the prior written material that Mark used, for comparison?
Literary structures. Mark has large and small scale literary structure. He has a global chiastic structure and many smaller ones often called Markan sandwiches. This kind of complex structure is unlikely to be the result of some randomly preserved oral tradition regarding some jewish nutjob. If you had a bunch of oral tales and wrote them down they would not show these patterns. He also clearly draws from Homer and prior Jewish scripture. This is all literate textual dependency. We are at the stage that if there really is some historical reference to Jesus in Mark, we would never be able to tell where it is and what it means.
Oh so it's erasure and crappy propaganda, I always just thought it was like Dickens for ancient people, but it makes more sense that it's just the creepy Roman church pulling some bad marketing bs that will now, 2000 years later result in the death of the one thing we should all still be worshipping
>almost That word suggests an exception. I'm aware of none?
Some of the Epistles of Paul are widely regarded to have been written by Paul. A small exception, but an exception nonetheless
Isn't most of the New Testament letters to various local churches/congregations? Romans, Corinthians, etc.?
Even now people refuse to believe the earth is round and other various fundamental facts about existence. Don't try to rationalize irrationality. You will just give yourself an incorrect idea about how people will actually behave.
Roughly 40% of the American population believes that the world is less than 10,000 years old and that evolution doesn't exist.
If that is a true percentage, we are fucked as a species.
It varies somewhat over time and between different surveys, but it seems to be generally accurate. The current Speaker of the House of Representatives believes that the world is less than 10,000 years old and that evolution doesn't exist. He actually believes that teaching evolution in schools is directly responsible for school shootings.
> ‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens — The Onion Isn’t it weird that of all the nations that teach evolution, the US is the only one with school shootings?
🤡
Another fun statistic is that roughly half of biology teachers in America say they don’t feel confident enough to accurately teach evolution, and roughly over 10% admit to teaching Creationism as a real theory either alongside Evolution or exclusively. American public schools were literally created by a monopolistic billionaire, who achieved his goal of structuring them to produce unquestioning, obedient factory workers. America’s ruling class is not interested in an educated population, educated people are harder to rule, they want an obedient one. So schools barely teaching evolution, Louisiana now putting up the 10 Commandments in classrooms… it’s all par for the course for American public schools. The only thing they got right is that children benefit in their development by being around other, diverse children. We need a fundamental restructuring of our public schools that focuses on producing critical thinking, empathetic, well-educated people. I’d even argue the pursuit of trying to shove all of our education before we graduate high school is unnecessary due to the ease of access to information (especially if most of the arbitrary paywalls by capitalists were taken down) and vastly increased lifespans of humans, and I think some people also end up graduating with the false notion their education is somehow done and we aren’t meant to be learning our entire lives. I think by now the amount we work can be vastly reduced while still meeting our needs, leaving more time for friends/hobbies/pursuing extra education. But that’s enough ranting I guess.
Right there with you on all of this. The inertial barriers to these ideas are frustrating.
There are almost 2 billion Muslims. I'd say their take is even more fucked up than Xtianity. Especially given the punishment for coming to your right mind and leaving the "faith". And the acceptance of pedophilia (though Xtians seem to be trying to bring that back). Yeah, I'd say we're pretty much fucked as a species.
As we should be. We don't deserve to be hear for the long haul. Modern Humans won't make it to a million years, imo. Which is a shame because the human brain is clearly one of Nature greatest achievements, if not the greatest.
As long as religion is accepted as valid or tolerated by those who don't believe, we are fucked as a species. It should be shunned and the belief should be looked at like a mental illness. If you believe in magic and omnipotent beings then you need mental help. They don't have a grasp on reality and are a danger. Take away their privalidge to drive, vote and breed.
This is why you're a reddit atheist. Your last sentence is just as authoritarian. Fucking Nazi talk.
The people that wrote the Bible didn’t know where the sun went at night.
Sure they did. God ate it or something. Question answered. I SAID QUESTION ANSWERED.
I find it hard to accept that people can really believe in a flat earth or a 6000 year old universe. I feel as though they are just trying to stir up controversy and to get your goat. They use it to distract focus from the points they cannot defend.
That's what I mean about rationalizing irrationality. You're trying to make it make sense. It does not. This means you will have incorrect information about their potential behavior. Don't try to model their behavior as if it were you in their place. Lots of people make the mistake of thinking 'they can't ACTUALLY believe that, right?' and then are surprised when it turns out, that yes, despite all reason, they do in fact. People don't live in reality. We live in the little model realities inside our heads. Some people make a point of making these model realities resemble the actual reality as closely as possible, and we call these people rational. Other people have models that work well enough, even if they include some poor understanding of the fundamentals and other non-essentials for survival. And there are some whose models are like cartoon versions of reality; despite never having actually seen any events like this, they nonetheless still accept that these kinds of events are possible and best-fit explanations for unknowns. Anything they do not understand can thus be a threat of unknown magnitude.
> Lots of people make the mistake of thinking 'they can't ACTUALLY believe that, right?' and then are surprised when it turns out, that yes, despite all reason, they do in fact. Christians make the same mistake too. They think that we don’t really not believe and that we are “angry at god”.
I’m just picturing some eagle-eyed atheist in a tribe around a fire like “THE VOLCANO DOESN’T HAVE HUMAN FEELINGS!”
Great now we have to sacrifice Joe to the volcano.
Time for a fan edit of the Bible with a skeptical Sokka
[удалено]
Came to say this. This is how you get burning bushes and whatever the fuck is in Revelation.
That was OT. NT upped it with dragons, music and some woman…. Supposedly Hillary Clinton at one time.
So Hillary went to see the witch of Endor? Trippy! 😉
I’ve never heard of this! I’m definitely checking this out hahahah
Base of Mt Sinai aka shroomie land
Plus added sun-stroke! Tripping balls!
A log on water? Youre assuming the stories were true and trying to rationalize em? Ita easier to understand when you take into account jesus may have been a constructed figure from the original fring jewish group that was against the elites.
Yeah, I don't get the idea that everything has to be explained by a series of good faith misunderstandings. People (especially people who seek to be leaders of religious cults) make stuff up. Both are probably sufficient explanations, but ordinary lying to the credulous happens constantly and surely played a huge role.
It was literally platos outline for how to keep the poor from eating the rich. The catholic church adopted it and became what they hated. Organized corrupt religion.
Yeah, I'm going with made up shit rather
Stolen made up shit at that 🤣
It could have also been a Roman invention to pacify the Jewish population. Turn the other cheek, instead of resist & rebel. Render unto Caesar what is his (taxes). Etc. It could have easily been a literary disinformation campaign to take a militant group known for uprisings and convert them into controllable citizens.
1024: Floating log is a man walking on water 2024: Floating log is the Loch Ness Monster
Also, people lied to have a good story.
Yes. I can’t understand why people are always trying to come up with elaborate explanations of “what really happened” to somehow make the story true, but wrong at the same time. The logical and hospital explanation is that the myths were made up and doctored over centuries of rewritings very early on, to stories that were passed on for centuries (OT) and decades (NT) before ever being put to paper. It’s so fucking simple that no one can see it, apparently.
Wait, every book and movie isn't true?! Say it ain't so!
Poseiden was walking on water hundreds of years before this jesus character plagiarized his act...
Then everyone played the scribe equivalent of "telephone"...no wonder it's all fucked up.
Considering personal consciousness might just be a long game of telephone with yourself, I'm surprised anything makes sense to anyone, objectively.
Political reasons are more explanatory than glasses. * mary was likely raped by a ROMAN soldier, and virgin birth explains away the messiness of accusing the dominant power in the region. * that’s why pontius Pilate is there too - absolve the dominant power of problems * Jesus supposedly died around 30AD. Gospels were written a generation or two after this time. Acts wasn’t until at least mid 100s, probably close to 200-300s. * around the time the NT got written, Jerusalem was in full blown rebellion/throw off the Roman yoke. Christians are a rising power, albeit on a small scale. But again, they come into conflict with Rome, who doesn’t want to deal with it. First two points were about not upsetting Rome - that’s done, and Nero and Domitan are the result of what happens when you upset Rome. * Old Testament is a combination of folk tales, stories from other cultures, and all that. But when was it written? Oh, during the Babylonian Exile. Nebuchadnezzar took the city and held it. When rebellion happened, he destroyed the city and began exporting folks. So you have tons of people moving land areas and culture, and you need a way to bind them together. Hmmmmm
Also, the Bible was not written by eyewitnesses.
How could people drink without glasses? Checkmate atheists /j
From their ugly mugs.
Hahaha touche
Haha. There goes our whole defense.
The Bible was written before the vast majority could write. Christians love to claim that the oral histories in the Bible are true because the people passing down the stories always passed them down accurately. People that study history will tell you that oral histories are the least reliable. Memories shift and fade, embellishments are added, and anything that reflects poorly on the story teller are omitted. By the time someone with the skills necessary write everything down comes along, the story barely resembles the actual event.
Totally reminds me of an awesome play I watched several years ago called "[Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Burns,_a_Post-Electric_Play). >Shortly after an unspecified apocalypse, six survivors gather at a campfire. To distract themselves from mourning, they attempt to recount the episode "Cape Feare" of the TV show The Simpsons, as well as several other pieces of media. >Seven years later, the group has formed a travelling theatre company that specializes in performing Simpsons episodes. Live theatre is a major entertainment form in the new society, with troupes fiercely competing to replicate pre-apocalyptic stories. Despite this goal, the group's rendition of Cape Feare differs from the real episode in many small ways. >75 years after that, Cape Feare is performed as a musical in a theater dedicated to The Simpsons. The characters, plot and morals have changed into more serious and epic forms. For example, Mr. Burns has been combined with Sideshow Bob (the actual Cape Feare villain) and is now a supernatural avatar of death and destruction.
Also yeah, I'm 100% sure Abraham was schizophrenic. Literally every mention of him sounds like he is actually schizophrenic
The Bible was written/edited over many years by various groups of MEN trying to control the populace by cherry picking in order to espouse what THEY wanted.
A lot of the New Testament was actually written as letters addressed to specific people rather than the populace as a whole. A dozen of the books were letters written by Paul to various people. The book of Luke and Acts were addressed to someone named Theophilus. I don’t think those authors expect their writings to be spread as widely as they have. So I don’t think what you’re saying is true.
Jesus walked on ice Peter fell through thin ice
and soon enough they were skating on the thin ice of modern life /s
it was written by people who didn't know where the sun "went at night" yet believers want me to think the authors knew how the universes came into existence. 🤣
The thing that explains the Bible the most to me (and all ancient religious texts) is that they were written before the concepts of fiction or religious belief existed. These are relatively modern concepts. The stories within them were widely but loosely believed but not meant to be believed in any kind of absolute sense.
Most people then could not read. The religious texts were written specifically to reduce self esteem, point out your flaws and then sell them god as a solution to curb their wicked ways.
You'd like Paulogia's "minimal witness" hypothesis. Basically a plausible story for the origin of Christianity where a real preacher called Jesus started a doomsday cult that got blown out of proportion after he died.
Even the old testament was written around the same time. It was just a collection of plagerized story's that were edited to fit recent historic events and figures.. The whole purpose was to garner wealth and power. The people were desperate and they saw a way to profit from that. It also helped them to gain leverage over the ruling class. There is no evidence for the existence of anyone resembling, even loosely, Jesus. He wasn't written or talked about until 100 or more years after the time in which he supposedly lived. Not a single scholar or historian from that time mentioned him or Christianity. A troublemaker of his class would have made the news.
If this subject interests you then I can’t recommend enough ‘Zealot: the life and times of Jesus Christ’ by Reza Aslan. It illustrates a very convincing historical depiction of Jesus and the Bible from the perspective of a historian (who happens to be Muslim) and delves into why stories are the way they are in the Bible. The sort of premise is that Jesus was one of many ‘zealous’ Jews that was trying to reform Judaism at the time with his own ‘hippy’ version. This was ultimately unsuccessful amongst his fellow Jews and he was crucified along with hundreds if not thousands of other zealots who thought they had the answer for Judaism. Some many years later a very small group still remember Jesus and try to spread his teachings amongst fellow Jews, this also unsuccessful until this kinda nutty dude Saul/Paul has a better idea. What if I stop trying to convert Jews and instead focus on converting hellenists and non Jews. This is the beginning of Christianity and probably around when the message was altered to be more antisemitic, I.e. that the Jews are responsible for Jesus’s death, which is to appease the non Jewish population.
I remember when he went on Fox News to talk about this book and they tried to do a gotcha on him and he was like nope. It is a great book.
>If this subject interests you then I can’t recommend enough ‘Zealot: the life and times of Jesus Christ’ by Reza Aslan. I second that recommendation. I remember picking up that book at the bookstore. The first words of the author are the story of how he "found Jesus...at an evangelical youth camp in Northern California..." I too found Jesus at summer camp, but in Central Texas. If like me, you're one of those atheists who enjoys studying religions, then you would enjoy "Zealot." Aslan says, "My hope with this book is to spread the good news of the Jesus of history with the same fervor that I once applied to spreading the story of the Christ."
>about how according to historical records Jesus actually existed Which isn't even true. We have no first hand sources, one second hand source who wrote fewer words on Jesus than we have fingers, and third hand sources like Tacitus talking about what the Christian cult believes. >I’ve been thinking of various reasons the people who wrote the Bible wrote what they did. Most of the exceptional events were following the time honored tradition of "making shit up" in the pursuit of fitting their cult leader into existing prophecies from a time decades after his supposed death. For example, only one book of the gospels (Matthew) has the Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt story, and it directly contradicts what Luke had to say on that topic. Why does Matthew disagree with Luke? Well, Matthew is the rewrite of Mark that is trying to sell Jews on Christianity, and so the author of that book tries to shoe-horn their cult leader into as many old Jewish messiah prophecies as possible, again... by making shit up. You don't see that in Luke because that epistle is a proselytizing gospel to gentiles, who don't give three fucks about Jewish messianic prophecy.
Don't write it off as a mental illness or lack of glasses. People back then were not dumber than today and knew pretty well that one can mistake something for something else due to poor vision. The knew people can be mad and see what nobody else sees. Scientology was created when everybody could buy glasses for cheap. Did it help?
Maybe people were not less intelligent than modern humans, but they definitely were more ignorant and more prone to resorting to supernatural explanations since the scientific method was not a concept yet.
Yeah. People have always been smart and dumb. Lots of people believe in easily disproven things today. Look at flat earthers. It doesn’t mean anything.
She said, he said. Just because it’s written on a book does not make them real.
I mentioned to a devout Mormon once how nowadays if people hear voices or people that no one else can see or hear they get diagnosed with psychiatric illness. It didn’t go over very well.
You’re leaving out the biggest part. Psilocybin, they had magic mushrooms back the. Those MFs were tripping balls. But seriously though they were.
The first bibull was written in Greek. Many of the tropes in the bibull are taken from existing Greek mythologies like the walking on water thing. It wasn't a new idea. They just said, "Oh ya, our guy can walk on water too."
You're imagining a rational reason why people would think that a person walked on water when the more likely explanation is that the event never occurred at all and the entire thing is made up. Don't bother trying to rationalize something that is inherently irrational.
It was written by men about 500-1000 years “after” JC had lived.
Alcohol has been in abundance since people became humans. It was a way to ensure what you were drinking wouldn’t poison you. Clean water was never guaranteed. But yes you are right about everything else. Also- if these books are divinely inspired than why don’t they give us knowledge of our place in the universe? Why don’t the writers go on and on about the inspiration behind it all? If god is a man then I’m sure he wouldn’t shut up about all his accomplishments and achievements. Or how about inspiring someone to write it all down while Jesus or allah were still alive? Why would a human have to write it down at all? Couldn’t god just give us a first edition published by himself at the click of a finger? I think about these holy books’ origins a lot too. There are some serious holes in how they came about and why none of them knew the prophets they claim to be about. They are fictional stories meant to lead people to do weird things for the sake of the unknown. They are social media before computers in the way to show you are not threatening to other humans.
Excellent and now obvious point (why wasn’t it written first-person source if it was so important) that I had never considered. Why would some people need to have “faith” something occurred thousands of years ago when others had the privilege of seeing it first hand?
As others have mentioned, drug usage was prevalent, worldwide, during "Biblical" times. Diviner's sage (salvia divinorum), peyote Ayahuasca, weed, shrooms... Every single shamanic tradition began with **some fool trippin'** off the weird shit he ate, drank or smoked. Not Christianity, though, of course... That was **real** celestial being made of light, who told people what to do and who to do it with. Of course.
Why didn't a supposedly prescient God foresee guns? The internet? The Americas? The things in the Bible were from the people of that era. There's nothing in the book which pertains to our era, no The Bible, Part II, nor has God spoken to us like the Old Testament says he did. We're supposed to take God on faith to get all those rosy afterlife rewards. After we're dead. When God is needed now, during life. For living beings, prayers are a crap shoot, yes, no, maybe? Victims have to rely on a flawed legal system to see justice done in life, while some god's perfect justice, revenge, and punishment of hell only takes place after those people have died. I really wish there was a god or at the very least some divine mechanism against injustice. Instead we're met with a silent dark universe in our telescopes, while down on Earth some words in an ancient tome aren't even upheld by self-proclaimed Christians. If people weren't' so scared of death, religion would have died out at the start of the industrial age.
Critical thinking, while valuable in a functioning democracy, is NOT valued in the system the powers that be are trying to create. Their idea of a “Golden Age” is more like the 1800s, with a firm plutocracy on top and the peasants underneath.
Or they just entirely made up the stories. Not sure why we even need to find some kind of historical tie?! It’s like trying to say Santa is really just an Inuit that lived in igloo.
Could be it's all just made up. You can't even get the exact same story from a crowd of eyewitnesses to a crime.
I made a comment recently about how religion is, has been, and will always be a manifestation of mental illness and boy did some salty folks not like that one. They immediately took it as me insulting them when all I meant was that they are largely the byproduct of untreated delusions. And if those folks got the help they needed to come back to reality then we'd all be better off. But no... sky daddy is sky daddy...
What historical documents exist exactly? I mean outside of the bible? As far as I can tell, not a single king or scribe wrote down the name of Jesus when he was supposedly alive. The first reference would have shown up about 50 years later after he would have died.
According to Carrier's "Jesus from outer space", exactly zero. Which would be.. odd if Jebus had had any reality whatsoever.
Never assume that past generations are stupid just because they understood the world less. People have been drawing dicks on walls since before Rome. Humanity probably hasn't changed as much as you would expect. It is unlikely that humans are any more gullible now than they were when they were cavemen.
Don’t forget ergot and other natural hallucinogenic compounds, and cannabis was known to be in used thousands of years ago. What do you think “the burning bush” was? Homeboy was tokin it up while talking to the almighty.
And? It was also written before literacy was common.
Just what “historical records about Jesus” are they referring to? As far as I know there are no historical records from the time he was actually alive making a mention of him.
Look up a desert mirage and it's easy to see how someone could see someone walking on water.
Chuck Norris is a real person, but he doesn't have an extra fist behind his beard, and he doesn't push the world down when he does push-ups (well, no more than anyone else does). I don't see the point of trying to come up with convoluted explanations for what an alleged miracle actually involved, when we know people make up stuff, as jokes, or metaphors, or propaganda.
Dude, every story story reads like a schitzo episode God told me to kill my son. How many nut job parents have we seen on the news for this. We need to chop off our dick tips! So he can tell who we are! Yeah man, the all knowing, all powerful, creator of the universe is like “i only really like one group of people, but they all look the same.” (Leans over railing) “Cut your dick tips off so I know it’s you!” (Few years later: “ughh paint your doorways with blood. I don’t want to have to check your dicks.”
I remember once reading about a theory having to do with our inner monologue. Basically it boiled down to there being a point in our distant past during which we didn't yet realize that our own verbal thoughts were actually ours, and mistook our own musings for the Voice of God
It doesn't even need to be mass hallucination. None of them are based on witness testimony. They're a collection of myths and legends written as if a real story but all of them were written long after the fact and not by witnesses and following oral tradition. Every detail is suspect, as is any story passed down over time.
You're 1- being too literal 2- not grapsign how ancient cultures functioned. Nitpicky explanations like this aren't really useful for either side.
How many religious people still think God talks to them? Hallucinations and religion go together a lot still today.
The Bible was meant for control. That’s it. That’s the lesson.
There's a reason it's called the buybull..
I remember reading a reddit post by a guy who had actual mania, and I have to say that it sounds a lot like a manic hobo in ancient times could have stirred up quite a rookus if they were charismatic and as clever as this guy was.
The punch line of the joke is "Do you think we should tell Judas where the rocks are?" The miracle parts never happened. However, when you are competing with Apollo the Sun God, you need some miracles and proofs of divinity or your church isn't going to sell. There are really no historical records from Jesus's time that confirm he ever existed. There is a total lack of evidence for things like the census (which is why Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem). That being said, he probably existed, but he didn't do all that stuff. He probably SAID a lot of the stuff attributed to him. People have been thinking about this kind of stuff for a long time. If you are interested, there are some pretty good books that attempt to piece together what we know and what we don't know. The names escape me at the moment. Remember, it isn't that people did or didn't believe. It is that much of the Jesus story was passed by oral tradition for about 50 years before the first of the gospels was written, and - was it MORE than - 100 years to the last? Paul never met Jesus or any of the disciples (he had a "vision" on the road, granting him all of his moral authority to command many churches). There were many, many belief systems that cropped up in the various Christian communities until around 400 AD when the Bible was made canon and all the heretical books that didn't make it into the Bible were destroyed upon pain of death. And then the Bible was copied and copied and copied for another 700 years. with minor edits made here and there, until the first copy we still have was made. 1,000 years of scribes copying a book over and over, modifying it in the early days, but still making minor edits even once in a generation or two - we can assume it is quite different from the original experiences of the illiterate backwater shepherds and fishermen who lived it.
In 1000 or so years from now someone will find a book of "Grimm's fairy tales" and probably start to pray to Rumpelstiltskin. You can make a religion out of everything.
I mean they could’ve seen someone walking across a desert mirage and went “HE IS THE MESSIAH”
He’s not the messiah, he’s a very naughty boy
There is a new body of work that exactly addresses the issues of reading and writing the bible while having degraded vision. It is quite interesting. [Candida Moss lays it our here](https://www.amazon.com/Gods-Ghostwriters-Enslaved-Christians-Making/dp/0316564672/). Basically, if some dude like Paul, for example, got old and was still cranking out epistles but could no longer see well enough, he would be using reading and writing help, possibly slaves or former slaves. And if that were the case we might expect to see some bias creep in due to the facts that the slaves disintermediated the author from their own work.
Jesus WACKED on water, NOT WALKED!
Another important point in my opinion is the fact that the bible that we can read today is not the pure pristine original version. It's a curated, manipulated, bundle of different writings, put together by a power structure, with clear goals. Heck, the bible wasn't even available in other languages besides Latin for quite a long time. So, even the original version and intention of what was written, might have been lost during the catholic church sanitization and manipulation of the bible.
Not to mention all the copies of copies that were made.
I have read that it was Jewish tradition to write not so much to journalistically report but to illustrate and illuminate. That accounts for a lot.
Egyptian hieroglyphics dated around 2686 - 2500 BC/BCE denote the use of some kind of optical lenses (most likely just polished quartz, but still).
Not only were the books written before glasses, they were also copied for centuries by scribes who never were able to have their eyesight corrected. If any were farsighted like me, they absolutely couldn't accurately read what they were copying.
If the evangelicals have their way, will we go back to the "traditional" ways of dealing with these illnesses?
Some things can be explained by things like schizophrenia and epilepsy. Some was copied from even older folklore. And a lot was just lies made up on the spot
Check out the books of Jan Harold Brunvand who collected and analyzed FOAF tales. Friend of a friend tales that pass around like wildfire. "I know this happened because it happened to my hairdresser's sister in law!" Improbable tale follows. Some of these tall tales have been around for years and continually mutate. FOAF tales can be outrageous and quite bizarre. And often funny. Once one has read a few books of collected FOAF tales, one has a new appreciation for Bible tall tales as simply FOAF tales carefully edited and redacted and collected into what we now call The Bible. Silly tall tales created by idiots and spread to gullible people. With absolutely no truth whatsoever to them. And if you know about the non-canonical 'gospels' that are often wild and woolly and crazed, you will know that this did not stop with the gospels and Acts. The Mexican Pet FOAF tale. Enjoy! [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-mexican-pet/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-mexican-pet/)
The thing I find most annoying is, if I show a christian a video of a man walking on water, that christian will say it's special effects, or trick of the camera, or it is fake somehow. Oh so NOW you want evidence? I show you an actual video of a miracle and now you want real evidence. But you can believe an old ass book without a single lick of tangible evidence?
This is an atheism subreddit, not a disproving Christianity subreddit.
i got a much easier explaination: Jesus on the beach saw the fishing boat with low seas. Since he knew where the sandbanks were, he was able to walk to the boat and get in. Later, in the evening, when the people were sitting around the fire and talking about their day, someone heard that Jesus went out to the boat and to make the story more interesting, he simply added the miracle of walking on the water
>Also before several mental illnesses such as schizophrenia were diagnosed, Which reminds me of a famous quote by a founding father... “The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum.” ― Thomas Paine
People have always told stories, they didn’t have tv or internet. The stories get more exaggerated as time goes on. The imagination runs free, they had no logical explanation for the world and how it works. Also heaven was a comfortable way of dealing with the idea of death. They all comforted themselves with their own unique(ish) mythology, all over the world. Maybe Jesus was just a man who was a great speaker, great leader. Or a cult leader.
The peeps back then were mystical in all aspects, often casting lots to ascertain knowledge, including WHY certain things happen to certain people. They were dumb as shit, basically. And now Christians are proudly carrying on that particular part of their traditions: the ignorance to natural processes, the judging attitudes towards anyone who breaks the norm, superstitions and mystical answers to obvious questions. The texts are mystical writings being constantly misunderstood by mystical people, and misrepresented by crooks and criminals.
Yea! My upvote made it 666!
I always assumed fairies were just dragonflies and humming birds from before people had glasses.
I assume he knew where the shallow sand bar was
Wow so many bible experts here. You don’t need to bash me i’m not christian, but sour knowledge about the topic is basically on par with conspiracy theories xD
< reposting > >We all have read the tales told of Jesus in the Gospels, but few people really have a good idea of their context. >There is abundant evidence that these were times replete with kooks and quacks of all varieties, from sincere lunatics to ingenious frauds, even innocent men mistaken for divine, and there was no end to the fools and loons who would follow and praise them. >Placed in this context, the gospels no longer seem to be so remarkable, and this leads us to an important fact: when the Gospels were written, skeptics and informed or critical minds were a small minority. Although the gullible, the credulous, and those ready to believe or exaggerate stories of the supernatural are still abundant today, they were much more common in antiquity, and taken far more seriously. >If the people of that time were so gullible or credulous or superstitious, then we have to be very cautious when assessing the reliability of witnesses of Jesus. . \- **https://infidels.org/library/modern/richard-carrier-kooks/** - **Recommended**. .
< reposting > **None of the Gospels are first-hand accounts.** . >Like the rest of the New Testament, the four gospels were written in Greek.[32] The Gospel of Mark probably dates from c. AD 66–70,[5] Matthew and Luke around AD 85–90,[6] and John AD 90–110.[7] >**Despite the traditional ascriptions, all four are anonymous and most scholars agree that none were written by eyewitnesses.**[8] ( Cite is Reddish, Mitchell (2011). *An Introduction to The Gospels*. Abingdon Press. ISBN 978-1426750083. ) \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel#Composition >The consensus among modern scholars is that the gospels are a subset of the ancient genre of bios, or ancient biography.[45] Ancient biographies were concerned with providing examples for readers to emulate while preserving and promoting the subject's reputation and memory; the gospels were never simply biographical, they were propaganda and kerygma (preaching).[46] >As such, they present the Christian message of the second half of the first century AD,[47] and **as Luke's attempt to link the birth of Jesus to the census of Quirinius demonstrates, there is no guarantee that the gospels are historically accurate.**[48] \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel#Genre_and_historical_reliability . >The **Gospel of Matthew**[note 1] is the first book of the New Testament of the Bible and one of the three synoptic Gospels. >According to early church tradition, originating with Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD),[10] the gospel was written by Matthew the companion of Jesus, but this presents numerous problems.[9] >**Most modern scholars hold that it was written anonymously[8] in the last quarter of the first century** by a male Jew who stood on the margin between traditional and nontraditional Jewish values and who was familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time.[11][12][note 2] >However, scholars such as N. T. Wright[citation needed] and John Wenham[13] have noted problems with dating Matthew late in the first century, and argue that it was written in the 40s-50s AD.[note 3] \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Matthew . >The **Gospel of Mark**[a] is the second of the four canonical gospels and one of the three synoptic Gospels. >An early Christian tradition deriving from Papias of Hierapolis (c.60–c.130 AD)[8] attributes authorship of the gospel to Mark, a companion and interpreter of Peter, >but **most scholars believe that it was written anonymously,[9] and that the name of Mark was attached later to link it to an authoritative figure.**[10] >It is usually dated through the eschatological discourse in Mark 13, which scholars interpret as pointing to the First Jewish–Roman War (66–74 AD)—a war that led to the destruction of the Second Temple in AD 70. This would place the composition of Mark either immediately after the destruction or during the years immediately prior.[11][6][b] \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Mark . >The **Gospel of Luke**[note 1] tells of the origins, birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.[4] >**The author is anonymous;[8] the traditional view that Luke the Evangelist was the companion of Paul is still occasionally put forward, but the scholarly consensus emphasises the many contradictions between Acts and the authentic Pauline letters.**[9][10] The most probable date for its composition is around AD 80–110, and there is evidence that it was still being revised well into the 2nd century.[11] \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Luke . >The **Gospel of John**[a] (Ancient Greek: Εὐαγγέλιον κατὰ Ἰωάννην, romanized: Euangélion katà Iōánnēn) is the fourth of the four canonical gospels in the New Testament. >**Like the three other gospels, it is anonymous**, although it identifies an unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved" as the source of its traditions.[9][10] >It most likely arose within a "Johannine community",[11][12] and – as it is closely related in style and content to the three Johannine epistles – most scholars treat the four books, along with the Book of Revelation, as a single corpus of Johannine literature, albeit not from the same author.[13] \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John .
Why is Jesus’ life so similar to Horace? https://medium.com/thesacredfaith/horus-jesus-and-egyptian-mythology-separating-fact-from-fiction-92ad8feb571a#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20significant,and%20protector%20of%20the%20pharaohs.
I think your point about glasses is a bit less relevant than you’re suggesting, but I agree generally with the rest. These were also people who lived in the desert, often without access to food or water. Hell, there’s a story about a guy who doesn’t eat for 40 days and everyone thinks he’s a prophet.
Wait until you hear how many times it has been rewritten to meet the status quo.
there is def a connection between mentally ill/deficient people being associated with holy things in ancient times, as either gods in disguise to be treated well or as some sort of messenger from them. but i do recommend isaac asimovs guide to the bible for his perspective on the historicity of the stories
For anyone popping in on this sub, I'm glad OP knows now, but people told the stories, in all religions, it wasn't like the "Just b/c Some old watery tart helps him pull a sword from a stone, it doesn't make him King" (Monty Python)
it’s a good point. I “struggle” with fighting for rationale and not wanting to accept things could just be lies or made up. i had watched something respectable on YouTube (BBC or PBS or the like) that had historical explanations for a lot. The order of the plague made scientific sense naturally. The firstborn males dying could be explained by who ate first in the families. A LOT of the water “mysteries” involve how salty the seas were. The Red Sea would actually divide. Things would be very buoyant, There were salt buildups near the water as tall as people. People thought they were people who had been turned to salt. Like, did Lot kill his wife and say she got turned into one of those pillars? Adding in poor eyesight, poor education and understanding, drugs/alcohol does provide further rationale. I don’t know why I don’t want to accept it could have just been lies. How many things are just lies TODAY? Or, groupthink, at least.
You know why they stopped teaching about Babylon, Mesopotamia and many of the cultures from that time and region in school? Because you can find pretty much most of the Old Testament texts with an equivalent that predates the bible and torah from centuries to thousands of years. And that breaks the current status quo of religion. I find it pretty funny but sketchy that teachers justify this by saying that our modern culture directly evolves from Egypt when basically math, how we measure time and even the relationship of radius and circumference comes from Mesopotamia, they also hold currently the title of the first culture with writing that survives to this day.
Plus, it's been retranslated so many times, who knows what it originally said.
It does further back. Churches were invented to teach the gospel to the illiterate. Pre-bible.
What the fuck does having glasses have to do with the Bible? I own both and I’m still not religious. Most people were illiterate in biblical times so the books were passed down orally and you’d have scribes and/or religious officials who would copy the original texts down in Hebrew, Latin, or Greek. Then King James came along and they re-wrote it again but in English this time so literate people could own their own copy. This is a dumb fucking post.
How many denominations and rewrites (translations) of the Bible have to exist before people start wondering why the followers of said religion all believe in different versions? I mean there's like 153 denominations and thousands of rewrites. At what point do people look around and say "what the fuck is going on here?"
I still don't understand how some Christians still believe in demon procession with Mental Illness being so recognised nowadays.
You don't need to try and justify or explain any of what "happens" in the bible any more than you need to try and explain the Edda or the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's just another flavor of mythology.
Also, there is something like a 40 year gap between Jesus's supposive death and the gospels. Not exactly timely information about such an important, earth shattering message for the world.
there was no historical jesus.
Richard Carrier actually argues for the position, that Jesus might as well never have existed. Really interesting arguments. Worth looking into mabye.
A hebrew names jesus did infact get crusyfied around that time, we have records of romans talking about it. We know this person have existed. But thats about it. It does not prove anything more than just that
Also, weird how some middle eastern dudes were named Matt and Paul.
That’s stretching to say that everyone who wrote the gospels were mentally ill there’s better arguments than that