Archeologly proves the Bible?

[GreNME]

Simon39759, I'm not disagreeing with a good portion of what you're saying, but perhaps that post would serve better in the other thread eccles created.

 

[eccles]

Then you're asking about connections between the Greek rulers and India. Once you get into the Ptolemaic period you've passed out of the realm of Egypt as a self-determining culture, and instead into the slow decline and over-run of Egyptian civilization until finally bred out by the Bedouin nomads, the Coptic people, and the Roman citizens.

A bit of caution: be wary of theosophist stories and those who use theosophist materials in their conclusions. The tendency to conclude viability of religious syncretism within those circles is based more on the human quirk of finding patterns and applying relationships to them where there really are none-- which isn't exclusive to Theosophists, since most religions, ideologues, and conspiracy theorists also display this quirk in spades.

I know about the Theosophical Society. They have a building in the CBD of Melbourne. Australia where I was born and lived for 35 years. I was always intrigued by their seal, especially the Swatiska until I learned about it's origin. I am always cautious about organizations like that as I am with all religious organizations.

There are so many groups that make claims about Jesus Christ - if he lived, his crucifixion, resurrection, etc. it is hard to know if any of it is true. Frankly I dont believe any of it.

 

[Simon39759]

Simon39759, I'm not disagreeing with a good portion of what you're saying, but perhaps that post would serve better in the other thread eccles created.

Oh... I only saw Eccles question in this thread and did not realize the existence of the other thread.

Well, then, most of the information I brought are pretty useless, Eccles already knows all about it.

 

[eccles]

A change in direction here, but I think it fits in with this Topic. I just got this from Guardians Ancient Egypt. Note the warning. However it is very interesting reading, so go to the link.

Tempest & Exodus
The Biblical Exodus Inscribed on an Ancient Egyptian Stele by Ralph Ellis
(Warning from the Tour Egypt Editors: The following article is considered alternative thought, and may differ significantly from opinions of mainline Egyptologists.)
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/tempest.htm

Could it be that the writers based the Book of Exodus on these Stele?

 

[DOC]

And yet you still have to produce any {evidence).

If you read my 980 posts in my Evidence thread in the History and Literature thread you should find some.

 

[paximperium]

If you read my 980 posts in my Evidence thread in the History and Literature thread you should find some.

Did. Can't find anything significant.

 

[DOC]

You are of course making the assumption that the words you referred to were accurately reported in the first place. If they were true, how do you account for the many discrepancies between the gospels?

If you have 4 people watch a Super Bowl game and then ask them to describe the game you will probably get 4 different stories and even some inconsistencies. Inconsistencies are normal with eyewitnesses.

 

[paximperium]

If you have 4 people watch a Super Bowl game and then ask them to describe the game you will probably get 4 different stories and even some inconsistencies. Inconsistencies are normal with eyewitnesses.

So the events and details described in the Bible are as important as a football game? Great analogy.

 

[DOC]

The irony that he keeps quoting Jefferson, who did not believe in the supernatural aspects of the bible, and produced his own version concentrating on the words attributed to the man Jesus, completely escapes DOC. It has been pointed out to him many times.

He believed in Jesus. He believed Jesus' teachings were the most moral and sublime in history. And he believed in a God. He wasn't a mainline Christian by any means but his opinion on who has given us the most moral and sublime teachings of all time is worth noting.

 

[zooterkin]

If you have 4 people watch a Super Bowl game and then ask them to describe the game you will probably get 4 different stories and even some inconsistencies. Inconsistencies are normal with eyewitnesses.

So are you now retracting your earlier claim for divinely-inspired inerrancy?

Well my bible says Mark was written 60 - 65 AD. Which would make it 27 to 32 years after the crucifixion. And Mark was an associate of Peter from which he undoubtedly heard preaching of Jesus' words.

Also with regard to remembering things, Christ said in John 14:26:

"But the Comforter, [which is] the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.

So If the Holy Spirit brings things to your memory it doesn't matter how long after the fact the words were written down.

 

[paximperium]

He believed in Jesus. He believed Jesus' teachings were the most moral and sublime in history.

Yes. So?

And he believed in a God. He wasn't a mainline Christian by any means but his opinion on who has given us the most moral and sublime teachings of all time is worth noting.

Using your logic in this situation his opinion that the supernatural fantastical nonsense in the Bible is as important as his option of how moral and sublime it is. So do you accept that the Bible is superstitious nonsense?

 

[DOC]

Well, here we go again... As I posted before (and I'm not sure on which page, so I'm not going back and finding it), I don't know about "most historians". But John Shelby Spong and Robert Funk of the Jesus Seminar, both of whom do believe that Jesus was a historical person, also believe that he didn't actually say a good 80% of the quotes attributed to him in the Bible. So we have two types of theologians who really do accept the historicity of Jesus: the ones who aren't going to accept the silly idea that everything ascribed to him was actually said by him, and the ones who do. We just don't have any good arguments, or sensible arguments, or arguments backed up by biblical scholarship to support the second idea.

The people of the Jesus Seminar seem like Modern day Jeffersonians. They don't believe in miracles, and anything Jesus said in the course of miracles is automatically rejected as not coming from Jesus. This accounts for a lot of the words they reject.

On the other hand I believe it was Augustine who said the growth of Christianity without miracles would have been the greatest miracle of all.

 

[DOC]

Now I'm going to put myself in danger from the Acharya knockers. I am almost through "Christ in Egypt". I am finding it an excellent book. She has really done her homework. I am glad I have a good knowledge of the Egyptian Religion. It makes it easier to follow what she is writing. I don't necessarily agree with everything she wrote. I think she placed to much creedence over the connection between the crucifix and it's Christian depictions, and those of crosses in Egyptology. However, as a person with a good knowledge of the bible and of Christian doctrine, I can see where the similarities between Christianity and the Egyptian Religion lie. I have know about those well before reading "Christ in Egypt" and I also thought how much Christian fables are similar to Egyptian fables.

The fact that they might be similar (if in fact they are similar) doesn't mean Christianity is false. One of the first movies ever made had a rocket ship land on the moon in it. This was way before something like landing on the moon in a rocket was even considered a possibility. So when 50 years later we actually do land on the moon in a rocket does that mean it should be viewed with suspicion because it is very similar to the story made 50 years earlier.

 

[pakeha]

Is DOC setting up a strawman argument?

The fact that they might be similar (if in fact they are similar) doesn't mean Christianity is false. One of the first movies ever made had a rocket ship land on the moon in it. This was way before something like landing on the moon in a rocket was even considered a possibility. So when 50 years later we actually do land on the moon in a rocket does that mean it should be viewed with suspicion because it is very similar to the story made 50 years earlier.

 

[pakeha]

Well my bible says Mark was written 60 - 65 AD. Which would make it 27 to 32 years after the crucifixion.

Any chance of a chapter and verse on that claim, please?

 

[paximperium]

The people of the Jesus Seminar seem like Modern day Jeffersonians. They don't believe in miracles, and anything Jesus said in the course of miracles is automatically rejected as not coming from Jesus. This accounts for a lot of the words they reject.

Which is a great reason to do so, just like Thomas Jefferson did when he referred to everything supernatural he cut out of the Bible as a "dunghill'.

On the other hand I believe it was Augustine who said the growth of Christianity without miracles would have been the greatest miracle of all.

And he would be completely and utterly wrong. All the world's greatest religions prove his wrong.

 

[paximperium]

The fact that they might be similar (if in fact they are similar) doesn't mean Christianity is false. One of the first movies ever made had a rocket ship land on the moon in it. This was way before something like landing on the moon in a rocket was even considered a possibility. So when 50 years later we actually do land on the moon in a rocket does that mean it should be viewed with suspicion because it is very similar to the story made 50 years earlier.

Another failed analogy. It just means the idea for landing on the moon is NOT ORIGINAL. What does that imply about your Jesus huh?

 

[joobz]

If you have 4 people watch a Super Bowl game and then ask them to describe the game you will probably get 4 different stories and even some inconsistencies. Inconsistencies are normal with eyewitnesses.

Using your analogy, if the final play of the game was reported like the bible reports the ressurection, we would have:
1: It was great, the QB ran it in for a touchdown.
2: It was great, the QB made a 20 yard pass to win the game.
3: It was great, the QB made a 5 yard pass to win the game.
4: It was great, the QB made a fake pass at the 5 yard line, did a hand off who ran it in.

At which point, you woul assume that all four people were drunk and didn't even watch the game.

 

[joobz]

He believed in Jesus. He believed Jesus' teachings were the most moral and sublime in history. And he believed in a God. He wasn't a mainline Christian by any means but his opinion on who has given us the most moral and sublime teachings of all time is worth noting.

He wasn't a christian at all. He was a diest.
he called the bible a pile of crap needing editing. I'm sure even he, a slave owner, Saw the problems with Jesus' condoning of beating slaves.

 

[dafydd]

Here are some quotes.


The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, April 11, 1823, quoted from James A Haught, "Breaking the Last Taboo" (1996)

We find in the writings of his biographers ... a groundwork of vulgar ignorance, of things impossible, of superstitions, fanaticisms and fabrications.
-- Thomas Jefferson, to William Short, August 4, 1822, referring to Jesus's biographers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.


The whole history of these books [the Gospels] is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, January 24, 1814


What is it men cannot be made to believe!

-Thomas Jefferson to Richard Henry Lee, April 22, 1786. (on the British regarding America, but quoted here for its universal appeal.)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because if there be one he must approve of the homage of reason more than that of blindfolded fear.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787

I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Richard Price, Jan. 8, 1789 (Richard Price had written to TJ on Oct. 26. about the harm done by religion and wrote "Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism?")


If we did a good act merely from love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? ...Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than the love of God.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thomas Law, June 13, 1814


Priests...dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subversions of the duperies on which they live.

-Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Correa de Serra, April 11, 1820


To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, Aug. 15, 1820



Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.

-Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.


It is between fifty and sixty years since I read it [the Apocalypse], and I then considered it merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to General Alexander Smyth, Jan. 17, 1825


May it be to the world, what I believe it will be, (to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all,) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition had persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government. All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826 (in the last letter he penned)


"Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must approve the homage of reason rather than of blind-folded fear. Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences.... If it end in a belief that there is no god, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others it will procure for you."
--Thomas Jefferson, to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787


The natural course of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Caspar Wistar (June 21, 1807), quoted from Encarta Book of Quotations (1999)


They have made the happy discovery, that the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them.
-- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1781-82 (see Positive Atheism's Historical section)


I am not afraid of the priests. They have tried upon me all their various batteries, of pious whining, hypocritical canting, lying and slandering, without being able to give me one moment of pain.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Horatio Gates Spafford, 1816


If by religion we are to understand sectarian dogmas, in which no two of them agree, then your exclamation on that hypothesis is just, "that this would be the best of worlds if there were no religion in it."
-- Thomas Jefferson, in a reply to John Adams' letter, quoted by Joseph Lewis in his address "Jefferson the Freethinker," delivered at a banquet of the Freethinkers' Society of New York on the evening of April 13th, 1925, at Hotel Belleclaire, 77th Street and Broadway, New York City, in honor of the 182nd anniversary of the birth of Thomas Jefferson.


Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp July 30, 1816, denouncing the doctrine of the Trinity and suggesting it to be so riddled in falsehood that only an authoritarian figure could decipher its meaning and, with a firm grip on people's spiritual and mental freedoms, thus convince the people of its truthfulness

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise ... without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence.
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820