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links
burial
Bart Ehrman and Jodi Magness on the Burial of Jesus and the Empty Tomb
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pauls conversion
risen jesus?
they were MARTYRED for their belief?
500 witnesses
https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/14255
empty tomb
miracles
Review of Craig Keener, “Miracles,” Part 1: What Evidence of Miracles Are Skeptics Searching for?
paul and his gospels and early disagreements
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then you disagree with facts. it is plainly obvious that the first major schism in the christian church is recorded in the new testament. paul writes that he had a dispute with peter/cephas, and we have no reason to disbelieve him. the resolution was splitting the church between jewish adherents (under peter) and gentile ones (under paul). we have texts from both camps, paul’s epistles (obviously), but epistles like james flatly contradict paul’s doctrines and come from the jewish-christian church:
What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,” and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that? So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.
But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I by my works will show you my faith. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder. Do you want to be shown, you senseless person, that faith apart from works is barren? Was not our ancestor Abraham justified by works when he offered his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was brought to completion by the works. Thus the scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” and he was called the friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Likewise, was not Rahab the prostitute also justified by works when she welcomed the messengers and sent them out by another road? For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is also dead.
(James 2)
compare to paul:
For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law. Or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also, since God is one; and he will justify the circumcised on the ground of faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith. Do we then overthrow the law by this faith? By no means! On the contrary, we uphold the law.
What then are we to say was gained by Abraham, our ancestor according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.
(Romans 3-4)
negative, paul’s church was “universal” in that it (initially) applied to gentiles and jews alike. peter’s church was jewish. the two had a major disagreement, which i described above, and paul talks about it in galatians 2. here is the compromise:
On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised (for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles), and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do.
notice, two churches. this is a major split in the church, and a doctrinal difference. paul holds sola fide, peter does not and believes christians are jews held to the law.
maybe you should read it again:
But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?” We ourselves are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners; yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.
peter is compelling gentiles to live like jews. this isn’t an issue about “manners” but about whether christians are jews or not. it’s a doctrinal issue. paul and peter disagree.
Peter was avoiding sitting with Gentiles.
peter was following jewish law, some of the time, because james etc had compelled him to do so.
this is a doctrinal dispute.
Regarding faith vs works, Paul is speaking in context of works.
read it again:
But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness.
paul thinks faith is the relevant factor, even in the absence of works. that’s sola fide. james thinks that idea is nonsense. this is a doctrinal dispute.
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Not isolation, competition. Early Christianity was a bunch of different sects competing with each other. Matthew ad Luke were both overwriting Mark. John was responding to and trying to replace the Synoptics altogether. Talking about “Christians” at all is imprecise sne there were multiple Christianities. Paul himself acknowledges this with his references to “other Gospels.” It is acknowledged in the Gospels and the Epistles of John with mentions of “other Christs” and “antichrists.” Even before Marcionites and Gnostics, there were early Jewish Christian sects like the Ebionites which were vehemently opposed to Pauline Christianity and called Paul a liar and a hater of Judaism. Paul himself admits to conflict between himself and the Jerusalem Apostles, who still kept the law and required circumcision.
https://ehrmanblog.org/does-the-book-of-acts-accurately-portray-the-life-and-teachings-of-paul/
Plus, your claim that Paul got everything from revelation is utter nonsense — he claims only to have gotten the bare gospel through Revelation. Paul makes it absolutely clear that he got tons of information from men. Heck, 1 Corinthians 15:3-7 and Philippians 2:6-11 are both entirely creeds from other men! Nice try.
This is absolutely false. Paul never once admits to learning anything from another person, including in the Corinthians creed and the Philippians hymn. Paul says he never even met an Apostle until three years after his conversion and that he never bothered to tell them what he was preaching until another 14 years after that. He says the Jerusalem Apostles are “nothing to me” and that they “contributed nothing” to what he taught.
I would challenge you to find a single verse where Paul ever says he learned anything about Jesus from another person.
You also don’t give the full story with the Judaizers of Galatians 2. I think I don’t need to mention that the Judaizers lost the intra-church debate.
“Judaizers” is kind of a propagandistic, chauvinistic term for Jewish Christians, but we’re talking about the original church anyway. Not “Judaizers,” but the actually followers of Jesus led by his actual brother. They were not “Judaizing” anything they were already Jewish and never saw themselves as anything else. Neither did Jesus. Paul was a Hellenizer, they were not Judaizers.
Your claim that “he claims only to have gotten the bare gospel through Revelation.” is 100% false. He doesn’t claim “only” anything. What do you think “the bare Gospel” even is? Paul never says. The only formulaic Gospel he gives is the Corinthians Creed.
Discussion of shrowd of turin, did others diefy their leaders after their leaders deaths ???
Does the quran think that the sun goes into a muddy spring???
https://m.facebook.com/groups/130763117665481?view=permalink&id=342054403203017
atheists
Where are the words of Jesus?
By Ibn Anwar
In their preaching and sermons, Christian pastors, priests and missionaries quote words attributed to Jesus from their English Bibles as if Jesus truly uttered those words. Nothing could be further from the truth. The next time you encounter a Christian preacher that attempts to tell you what “Jesus said,” ask him to kindly tell you if Jesus spoke English. I cannot imagine even the most fundamentalist Christian of fundamentalist Christianity to actually say “yes” to that. English did not exist as a language 2000 years ago. Neither did Jesus spoke Hebrew. Instead, according to most scholars, the language that Jesus spoke was Aramaic. This is easily understood by tracing Jesus back to Galilee, the town in which he was born and raised. The language spoken by the locals of that area was Aramaic. Ben van Noort writes:
“It is a common view that Jesus spoke Aramaic when he taught the crowds… In 1954, H. Birkeland wrote, “As a matter of fact, no competent scholar any longer holds the view that Jesus spoke Hebrew, the language of the Old Testament. They all agree that this language was Aramaic.” He was right; many eminent theologians took this position. F. F. Bruce declared in 1962, “It [Aramaic] was thus the language commonly spoken in Palestine in New Testament times, the customary language of our Lord and His apostles and the early Palestinian church.” .[1]
Stephen Andrew Missick writes:
“Scholarly consensus is that Aramaic was the language Jesus spoke. This has been determined by careful study of the text of the New Testament, archeological discoveries and other ancient sources, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls.” [2]
The oldest manuscripts upon which English Bibles are based are in Greek. With the exception of a few Semitic expressions in the Aramaic, the words said to have been spoken by Jesus, as recorded in the gospels, are completely in Greek. What that means is that the words and speech of Jesus as found in the English New Testament are fourthhand sources at best.The words of Jesus in the English Bible were translated from the Greek which were, in turn, supposed to have been translated from Aramaic, the original language of Jesus. Therefore, the words of Jesus in the English Bible are, at the very least, a translation of a translation of the actual words of Jesus. The expression ‘lost in translation’ comes to mind when one considers the multilayered translations that went into the production of Jesus’ alleged recorded speech. The biblical scholar Bernard J. Lee notes this point:
“…the Jewish voice of Jesus that spoke in Aramaic has been transmitted as heard by Greek ears and in the Greek language… From the late eighteenth century into the early twentieth century, the desire to recover the historical voice of Jesus was carried on as the “quest of the historical Jesus.” …We look not so much for the authentic words of Jesus as the authentic voice of Jesus. Because our earliest texts are Greek, we are not certain about the original words in any single thing that Jesus said, with the possible exception of the occasional phrase actually transmitted in Aramaic, such as Abba…)” [3]
Because Christians have admittedly lost access to the original words of Jesus, there is simply no substantive way to confirm the veracity of the words attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. In short, Christians, in reality, do not know what Jesus really said at any time during his shortlived ministry. Christians do not have the words of Jesus.
MARK 7. did the pagan human sacrifice of jesus put an end to old testament sacrifices ? FOODS DO not defile? foods sacrifices to idols do not defile?
All garbage, something I expect from you at this point. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross made all subsequent sacrifice (animal/plant/whatever) disappear from the pre-existing Judaism of the day. Just take a look at this;
This was nothing that Jesus taught. Jesus, like John the Baptist, preached repentance (sacralized through baptism) as a means for forgiveness of sins instead of animal sacrifice, but that was not a statement against the law for either of them. The Essenes did the same and the Essenes were extremely strict observers of the law. Jesus never said there was a new covenant. Matthew has him say to obey the Pharisees and that the law is in effect for all time. Even leaving the Gospels out (which we should because they are not the least bit reliable as history) Paul himself says that the Jerusalem Apostles still observed Jewish law and required circumcision for converts, which means Jesus could not have told them otherwise.
krist REDUCES yhwhs “holy” laws to DRAIN and digestion
if God said do NOT eat X and X is an “OUTSIDE” ITEM, then BREAKING the COMMAND of God , one has ALREADY become UNHOLY.
Mark 7:18-19: “Are you still so dull?” He asked. “Do you not understand? Nothing that enters a man from the outside can defile him , 19because it does not enter his heart, but it goes into his stomach and then is eliminated.” (Thus all foods are clean.)
First, the washing of hands was a Pharisaic practice not an actual part of Mosaic law, so this is saying where Jesus is allegedly explaining why he doesn’t do something the Pharisees do, not something required by law. In this story, Mark (Mark is the original source. Matthew got it from Mark) Jesus is actually scolding the Pharisees for going beyond the law (“You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” [Mk. 7:8]).
Secondly, the claim that with this saying, Jesus “declared all foods clean” is Mark’s own opinion, not something Jesus is actually quoted as saying. Mark himself is extrapolating from the saying. We can be sure that Jesus never told his disciples or his brothers that “all food was clean” because Paul tells us that they believed no such thing (e.g. Galatians 2:11-14). Paul claimed he got his “new covenant” ideas only from personal revelation, “not from any man” (Gal. 1:11-12).
I think this is a different issue from whether the Bible allows free speech or free religion, though. It obviously doesn’t because it says to kill people who say bad stuff about God, or who preach religions other than Judaism or who puck up sticks on the Sabbath or even your own kids if they follow a different religion than you own. Now you can say that’s all “Old Covenant” but even the New Testament forbids free speech for women or any freedom at all for slaves. Christians had no power to enforce actual laws, so there was no point in trying. Mosaic law was written under Judean royal authority. the whole Pentateuch is essentially Judean government propaganda (this is literally true, not a subjective characterization). Christianity did not start out with any government authority and it was originally an apocalyptic cult anyway. They were not trying to establish any permanent program of policies or laws because they thought Jesus was going to come back in the first generation. They were endtimers. All governments were about to get wiped out. They did not advocate for free speech or free religion, they said if you were the wrong religion, you were going to get slaughtered by God.
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. Jesus doesn’t use the word “new covenant” but, of course, it’s a standard of Christian theology that sacrifice is unnecessary anymore because Jesus provided the final sacrifice. You know this, right?
This is Christian belief, yes, but it’s not what Jesus actually taught. You understand the difference, right? You are espousing Paul’s theology, not Jesus.
The Mark verse clearly has a saying of Jesus that is taken in the Gospel as a proclamation of all foods being clean.
“taken as” by anti-Jewish, Gentile converts 40 years after the death of Jesus. As I explained, this cannot be what Jesus actually taught.
You reference Matthew 5:17-18, once again ignoring the academic literature in favor of your own ideology.
What the f__k ideology is that? I have no ideology and I am ignoring nothing. The academic view is that Matthew is a Jewish Gospel that was trying to push back against antimomianism. That’s basically true. Matthew has Jesus say that the law is in effect until the end of time, that the Pharisees “sit in Moses’ seat” are are to be obeyed, and that Jesus himself was being perfectly obedient the law, not breaking it, despite the frequent and incoherent claim that to “fulfill” the law somehow meant to supercede or do away with it. It doesn’t.)
You go on again with the free speech stuff. Yes, I CAN say it is Old Covenant, because the Old Covenant, even in Matthew 5:17-18 is something that Jesus doesn’t abolish but “fulfill
See. There it is. The reliable and always asinine misunderstanding of πληρόω. That’s not what it means, dude, as ten seconds of thought should make clear. Are people allowed to murder or commit adultery now? To “fulfill” the law means to follow it perfectly (. That is what Matthew is arguing, This must be the most frequently perverted verse in the whole New Testament. Pleroo (literally “make full”) means to perfect something or to do something completely. It does not mean to replace something or do away with with. That is such an incoherent interpretation that I don’t understand why it’s so pervasive. How did Jesus “fulfill” the law against murder? How did Jesus know he was going to be deified and turned into a “savior” after his death?
Actually, Jesus did teach this.
Nope. Absolutely not. This is sheer Christian fantasy, One more tome, his brothers and closest disciples never heard of such a ting, jesus never said the words “all foods are clean” Tat was Mark alone. Jesus just explained why his disciples didn’t preform a Pharisaic handwashing practice.
hyde park discussions
Adam and eve were WITHOUT sins
BAD DESIGN ARGUMENT
If he wanted to make perfect designs then he could have kept us in heaven. The whole purpose of earth is that it is a test. So why would he make us perfect?!
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