Gawdzilla Sama
TImeToSweepTheLeg
I don't see a conflict. The priests routinely support whatever government was in power, so they interpreted the whoppers they were handed in a fashion that legitimized the current rulers.
I don't see a conflict. The priests routinely support whatever government was in power, so they interpreted the whoppers they were handed in a fashion that legitimized the current rulers.
HansMustermann
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I didn't say there was a conflict. Just that while granting all you just said as obvious, we can still look at whether the text is just made up fiction or not. Which, really, we are.
Gawdzilla Sama
TImeToSweepTheLeg
Given that the vast majority of the Bible is utter nonsense I would go with fiction by default in that case.
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Ya gots to re-define the story to "We, in the East, have seen His star..."
Exactly.... ever since I started thinking about Matthew's nativity myth I have always wondered what exactly was the point of Jesus sending a star to incorrectly guide the Magi to his birthplace.
- What was the point of them coming to him?
- Why does he need gold and incense and myrrh as a child god?
- Could he not have obtained those by divine legerdemain? Or from the local market or the Temple?
- Could he not have just told them or inspired them or sent them a prophet with the correct Latitude and Longitude?
- Could he not have just zapped them to his location where he was oozing out of Mary's v?
- As a god why did he not know that a single star is not quite an effective method for locating a house thousands of miles away?
- When they got lost why did they have to go to Herod's palace? Was there no Tourist Information Office in Israel at the time? Or at least ask some local normal person?
- When they inadvertently notified Herod, could he not have come in a dream to Herod to pacify him as he did to all those "despots" before him (e.g. Pharaoh) or just like he finished doing to poor cuckolded Joseph to stop him from divorcing poor Mary for adultery?
- Why not make Herod forget about the information he acquired from the lost Magi and thus evade the massacre of all those poor children because of his ineptitude in guiding those Magi for an absolutely meaningless and pointless journey to give him an absolutely useless and pointless rubbish?
- Why did he run away like a poltroon to hide in Egypt and leave Herod to slaughter all those poor children IN HIS STEAD and all of it is because he wanted gold and myrrh?
- What moral are we supposed to learn from this squalid episode of fictive stupidity?
- What kind of value of any kind are we to draw from the tragic debacle?
- With what added value does the sordid tale imbue Jesus?
- Escaping the designs of a despot King to kill him.
- Coming out of Egypt.
- Spending 40 days in the desert where days are an allegory to years.
But the final "mystery" is the linking of the myth of Jesus to the real origins of Judaism.
By having Magis (no mention of three anywhere) come and adore Jesus, Matthew was codifying the blessings of the MOTHER RELIGION for Jesus and setting him up not just as a parallel to Moses but also as Magi himself.
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Rincewind
Philosopher
They never know what they might catch....
Propaganda is a sub category of fiction.... it is fiction peddled as history or fact and yes, even science.
In other words it is a pernicious fiction as opposed to entertaining fiction.
That is why we can blame the
Obviously we cannot blame a pile of dead trees.... but we can decry the malicious intents as well as the insidious effects and disastrous results of utilizing the book as a WEAPON OF MASS DECEPTION.
Regardless of who the book was intended to bamboozle in the first place it is still being used for the purpose it was designed by a cadre of forgers who push it on the people with new meanings and emphases. Albeit not as imaginative as the original ones but just as equally heinous in their machinations facilitated by the book’s effectiveness as a WEAPON OF MASS DECEPTION.
Slight derail, but prompted by some of Leumas's posts.
I found Stephen Oppenheimer's Book Eden in the East to be interesting (and unconventional).
He argues that the land area lost in South East Asia at the end of the last Ice age was about the same size as present-day India, and that the after effects of the ice retreat would have given both sudden flooding, and long term continuous loss of land for centuries in a way almost certain to get it included in myths.
The above is an aside.
He also lists various myths and how their elements are geographically spread (for example myths where the creator makes a man out of clay and blows breath into him stretch in a band from the Western Mediterranean through to Polynesia).
Many stories about immortality involve people descending into the underworld (or dying) and returning in three days. He links this to the Moon "dying" for three days at the new moon. There is an obvious link with the resurrection.
He also makes a good case that "The Tortoise and the Hare" was a corrupted version of another story of how man came to be mortal, and he gives versions from modern tribes which do still contain these elements.
I found Stephen Oppenheimer's Book Eden in the East to be interesting (and unconventional).
He argues that the land area lost in South East Asia at the end of the last Ice age was about the same size as present-day India, and that the after effects of the ice retreat would have given both sudden flooding, and long term continuous loss of land for centuries in a way almost certain to get it included in myths.
The above is an aside.
He also lists various myths and how their elements are geographically spread (for example myths where the creator makes a man out of clay and blows breath into him stretch in a band from the Western Mediterranean through to Polynesia).
Many stories about immortality involve people descending into the underworld (or dying) and returning in three days. He links this to the Moon "dying" for three days at the new moon. There is an obvious link with the resurrection.
He also makes a good case that "The Tortoise and the Hare" was a corrupted version of another story of how man came to be mortal, and he gives versions from modern tribes which do still contain these elements.
I Ratant
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Thinking pedantically as an engineer, a "star" would have to be in the atmosphere and really close to the location it was pointing at.
Look at any star on the western horizon, and go towards it.
What it is "over" moves at the rate you're approaching the star. And could be anything. The Walmart, or a local quarry.. for a short time, before it sets.
That "star" would be setting in the Eastern Mediterranean, viewed from "the East".
Look at any star on the western horizon, and go towards it.
What it is "over" moves at the rate you're approaching the star. And could be anything. The Walmart, or a local quarry.. for a short time, before it sets.
That "star" would be setting in the Eastern Mediterranean, viewed from "the East".
I Ratant
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Is it legitimate to discard parts of the book to make it "true" and believable?
When the basic stories which are there to inspire faith are acknowledged to be fiction, what is the faith to be based on?
I Ratant
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I Ratant
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Women enter through the wallet.
Let’s say I fabricated a VIRUS to kill a village and I did use it to kill an entire village.
Would you condemn me as a murderer?
Later, someone found my virus modified the RNA slightly and then utilized it to murder an entire city…. would you condemn him as a murderer?
Yes, the virus is not an object of condemnation, but if the virus (and its mutations) has been repeatedly utilized for its original purpose…. the purpose for which it was fabricated and used numerous times… would you condone at the very least quarantining the VIRUS?
And John Stewart would not be that far from the truth. The OT is about setting up for the NT. And I dont see how how the nature of the audience negates the value of the document. Remember the Illiad was written for a bunch of drunk thugs. Does knowing that devalue the work that was done?Because it's just campfire tales for goat-herders. Jon Stewart likes to point out that the OT is for Jews, goyim should not.
A virus that is designed to kill, regardless of who the intended victims are/were or what their nature is/was, is still a DEADLY VIRUS.
Regardless of who uses the virus they are murderers and the manufacturer of the virus is a murderer and moreover, the virus is to be destroyed or taken out of the hands of pernicious dastards who want to use the Weapon Of Mass INFECTION and people ought to be informed of the nature of the virus as well as the history of the havoc it wreaked as well as given options of how to protect themselves from the virus.
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tsig
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If one can determine what is and isn't true in a book then why would one need the book?
tsig
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Get the heart and the wallet will follow.
Have a look at this SMALL list of “all manner of tribulation”.
But just open a news paper or look at a news program or have a look here at what kind of tribulation the belief in the myths of the Bible and its plagiarization are wreaking today and not just in history.
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Rincewind, your OP was great. It is very evident that the Exodus did not happen as described.
But I have theory about the Exodus, that it was a rather grotesque mangling of some dimly-remembered real history.
Around 1600 BCE, northern Egypt was ruled by the Hyksos, the "rulers of foreign lands". They were apparently Canaanites, at least judging from some of their names.
Some time around then, the volcano Thera did its big Minoan eruption. Refugees from Crete told their stories of the horrors that they had suffered through, and among their listeners was likely some Hyksos people. Their memory of those accounts likely ended up becoming the Ten Plagues of Egypt.
In southern Egypt in 1550 BCE, Pharaoh Ahmose organized an army and drove the Hyksos out of Egypt. The expelled Hyksos remembered his name, but in Hebrew, his name sounds like "Akh Moshe": "Brother of Moses". Later generations of storytellers likely asked who Moses was, and ended up inventing him.
On the way out, the Hyksos likely went through some big marsh, a marsh that seemed like a sea of reeds. A marsh possibly near Eilat. The Egyptians decided to quit chasing them and return home. But "we got through this big sea of reeds and the Egyptians stopped chasing us and went back to Egypt" was not nearly as dramatic as "Moses parted the Reed Sea, letting us pass, but when the Egyptians were crossing, Moses let the water return, drowning them".
So the Hyksos made it back to Canaan and told their stories.
Half a century later, the Egyptians sent their armies into Canaan and beyond, creating their New Kingdom Levantine Empire. This may have been remembered as being enslaved in Egypt, though with the timeline scrambled.
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Advancing to 1200 BCE, the Sea Peoples and similar people were on the march in the eastern Mediterranean area. They destroyed the Hittite kingdom of central Anatolia, and it was never heard from again until 20th cy. archeologists rediscovered it. They also destroyed the Mycenaean palace society of Greece, but it had cultural successors who had a dim and mangled memory of it in their mythology.
They also ravaged the Levant, and various Egyptian Pharaohs described fighting them off. In 1208 BCE, Merneptah commissioned a stele that celebrated his triumphs over various enemies in the Levant. It included "Israel is destroyed. Its seed is no more." A generation later, Ramesses III celebrated a triumph over the Sea Peoples in the eastern Nile Delta.
Around 1100 BCE, the Onomasticon of Amenope hinted that some of the Sea Peoples had settled in Canaan. Around that time, Ramesses XI ruled rather weakly, losing Nubia, with Egypt almost splitting in two.
It is evident that Egypt's New-Kingdom Levantine empire was now gone.
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Around 1000 BCE, in the highlands west of the Jordan River, pig bones became rare. A century and a half later, the Moabites and Assyrians refer to the land of King Omri, and someone referred to the "house of David" at Tel Dan.
Around 622 BCE, high priest Hilkiah "discovers" a "book of the Law" in the Jerusalem Temple. It is apparently an early version of Deuteronomy, a book that features Moses very prominently as a lawgiver.
During the Babylonian Exile, about 597 - 539 BCE, the Exodus story may have reached its present form as an assurance that it is possible to escape subjection in a distant land and return home.
But I have theory about the Exodus, that it was a rather grotesque mangling of some dimly-remembered real history.
Around 1600 BCE, northern Egypt was ruled by the Hyksos, the "rulers of foreign lands". They were apparently Canaanites, at least judging from some of their names.
Some time around then, the volcano Thera did its big Minoan eruption. Refugees from Crete told their stories of the horrors that they had suffered through, and among their listeners was likely some Hyksos people. Their memory of those accounts likely ended up becoming the Ten Plagues of Egypt.
In southern Egypt in 1550 BCE, Pharaoh Ahmose organized an army and drove the Hyksos out of Egypt. The expelled Hyksos remembered his name, but in Hebrew, his name sounds like "Akh Moshe": "Brother of Moses". Later generations of storytellers likely asked who Moses was, and ended up inventing him.
On the way out, the Hyksos likely went through some big marsh, a marsh that seemed like a sea of reeds. A marsh possibly near Eilat. The Egyptians decided to quit chasing them and return home. But "we got through this big sea of reeds and the Egyptians stopped chasing us and went back to Egypt" was not nearly as dramatic as "Moses parted the Reed Sea, letting us pass, but when the Egyptians were crossing, Moses let the water return, drowning them".
So the Hyksos made it back to Canaan and told their stories.
Half a century later, the Egyptians sent their armies into Canaan and beyond, creating their New Kingdom Levantine Empire. This may have been remembered as being enslaved in Egypt, though with the timeline scrambled.
-
Advancing to 1200 BCE, the Sea Peoples and similar people were on the march in the eastern Mediterranean area. They destroyed the Hittite kingdom of central Anatolia, and it was never heard from again until 20th cy. archeologists rediscovered it. They also destroyed the Mycenaean palace society of Greece, but it had cultural successors who had a dim and mangled memory of it in their mythology.
They also ravaged the Levant, and various Egyptian Pharaohs described fighting them off. In 1208 BCE, Merneptah commissioned a stele that celebrated his triumphs over various enemies in the Levant. It included "Israel is destroyed. Its seed is no more." A generation later, Ramesses III celebrated a triumph over the Sea Peoples in the eastern Nile Delta.
Around 1100 BCE, the Onomasticon of Amenope hinted that some of the Sea Peoples had settled in Canaan. Around that time, Ramesses XI ruled rather weakly, losing Nubia, with Egypt almost splitting in two.
It is evident that Egypt's New-Kingdom Levantine empire was now gone.
-
Around 1000 BCE, in the highlands west of the Jordan River, pig bones became rare. A century and a half later, the Moabites and Assyrians refer to the land of King Omri, and someone referred to the "house of David" at Tel Dan.
Around 622 BCE, high priest Hilkiah "discovers" a "book of the Law" in the Jerusalem Temple. It is apparently an early version of Deuteronomy, a book that features Moses very prominently as a lawgiver.
During the Babylonian Exile, about 597 - 539 BCE, the Exodus story may have reached its present form as an assurance that it is possible to escape subjection in a distant land and return home.
Agreed. Exodus is trying to say that the Israelites were helped to leave Egypt by God. Does it have in addition a non-factual moral message that God is trying, without complete success, to enunciate, like a tongue tied teenager? If that is God's purpose for the work, why is it full of false history, preposterous accounts of the construction of the Ark of the Covenant and other artefacts, and bloodthirsty commands to destroy or enslave neighbouring peoples?
They might be self-evident to you but to numerous many it is not. Just in America alone 48% of the people believe that the Exodus is a REAL HISTORY. And even many atheists who believe that there is no YHWH still believe that the Exodus REALLY occurred but without all the miracle stuff. Even scientists who should know better try to rationalize the parting of the sea (e.g. it was reeds) or to explain away the plagues etc. etc.
Also a long time ago or not is immaterial since there are new suckers being born every minute and this kind of post might lift the pall off of the eyes of some suckers who might not have had the chance to be exposed previously to the “self-evident” aspect of the hoodwinker they are being subjected to.
Really???? Do you really think that??? See below.
No, as I said above, even atheists and scientists STILL hold on to the notion that Exodus is a REAL HISTORY if we only strip away the miracles and other b.s.
In other words they have not moved away at all.
Wrong, man…. Speak to a Rabbi sometime (or watch here or this one ) and you would realize how REAL the story is considered to be. It is the CORNER STONE of Judaism, Islam and Christianity….
A Jew, Christian or Muslim who believes would be HORRIFIED at even beginning to think of discarding Exodus as just fabricated fairy tales or allegories.
The Torah is THE reason for Judaism. If there was no Moses then there was no Torah and if the Torah is just a bundle of myths then the Metzvot are just orders out of thin air and thus the Sabbath is meaningless and Kosher is meaningless and all Judaism is meaningless.
Rabbinical Judaism is based upon the COLLECTIVE REVELATION from YHWH to ALL the tribes of Israel. It happened, it is the foundation of Judaism and even if you no longer believe in YHWH the Exodus is the origins of Judaism and the creation of the Israelites as a people.
If the Exodus is a myth or allegory then Jews are a myth…. Try to tell that to the Israeli guy in this video (see minutes 01:23:00 to 01:25:00)
Israel was created by a United Nations of people who believed that the Jews had an ancestral TITLE DEED to Palestine because of the Bible.
Netanyahu quoted the myths in his speech in the UN just a few years ago (also last year). This is a
So no… no one has moved away and people’s brains are still being vitiated by the VIRUS and there are NEW VICTIMS of strife and mayhem and atrocities being committed by people whose brains have been infected by this 2500 years old VIRUS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.
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