Agreed. What would a secret message be, if it was hidden somewhere? The discrepancies in the later Synoptic birth stories, for example, convey to the reasoning brain only the message that both tales are factually false. Yet Christians believe that Jesus was born in Bethlehem to a virgin mother, and their consciousness of the stories derives from a conflation of the more striking elements of these contradictory tales. The star and the wise men from Matthew; the census and the stable from Luke, and so on. The discrepancies seem in practice to be easily accepted (or rather, hardly noticed) by the flock, so why should the pastors raise unnecessary difficulties by drawing needless attention to them?
pakeha
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What makes you think early Christians had access to the four canonical gospels? Or to the Pauline literature?
I'm not so sure about that. Similar numbers of pligrims are involved in the Hajj in many years (upwards of 4-million) and even more Hindus in the Kumbh Mela.
Of course, it *is* still logistically impossible, but I 'm not sure if it is for that reason.
MG1962
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Because the supernatural elements are always going to be the hardest to prove. Extraordinarily claims need extraordinary evidence.
Correa Neto
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They were quite likely as smart as us.
Note that most of us, despite the huge improvments in communications, data storage, science, democracy, health, well fare and education we experienced since the Bronze Age, still fail to see the most obvious plot holes and contradictions of The Bible. Why?
Star Trek has lots of contradictions. Fans spend a huge ammount of time discussing them and sometimes trying to build reasons to explain them and smooth things out. The obvious one are that script writers could have paid more attention to each other's works for a number of reasons and that in a long series with hundreds of episodes, the odds of such issues happening are not small. Similar reasons can be proposed for The Bible. Contrary to Star Trek, The Bible is seen by most as containing several real things (how many and which ones, these answers depend on the "customer") and there is a number of one-size-fits-all answers readily available: god works in mysterious ways, and its an allegory. Again, which answer is chosen for which contradictory aspect depends on the dogmas tendered by the believer, and this depends on hers/his cultural background and personal experiences.
On top of this, remember that back them -and even nowadays, depending on your particular cultural background- questioning holy texts will not make you a popular person. Once the owners of the status quo decide what is the truth, it becomes the truth for the faithful.
MG1962
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I am referring to a point in time when the bible was being assembled. What to keep what not to include
MG1962
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And that would be fair comment. I am a very strong believer in we should all be welcome to travel whatever path we chose in life. Faith should always be a choice
pakeha
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When do you reckon that was?
tsig
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Were those who decided what was in or out inspired by god?
I Ratant
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.
ftfy
Exactly! But I'm a bit confused. Are you saying that Paul Bunyon or the people that he is based on really were 20 feet tall and blew hurricanes when they exhaled? If not, why do people believe supernatural things really happened when they read theological fables? And why do they believe it for one religion's fable but not another?
I don't wish to compare the reality of the Old and New Testaments here. There is another thread for that if you wish to discuss it.
HansMustermann
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Actually, no they don't. You just found a non-official page that repeats the Wikipedia article. Quote from the bottom of the page: "The article content of this page came from Wikipedia and is governed by CC-BY-SA."
So, whop-de-do, you found a mirror of Wikipedia on their domain. And that... err... what? Makes it an official Princeton University historical position?
Plus if you had actually read more than the first paragraph on that page, you'd notice that it was only credited with being historical by a JOURNALIST not a historian, in 1925. Scroll a bit down the page, and it even tells you, "Later historians hold that Paul Bunyan, and specifically the idea of Bunyan as a giant lumberjack with a giant blue ox sidekick, was created in the 20th century for an advertising campaign." It even discusses where else it appears, (spoiler alert: it's only in stories by the same specific fiction author) and it even tells you who came up with specific elements of the story.
Hint: it's not actually based on huge humans, it's even known who came up with each extraordinary element in that legend. We don't even have to guess when or how it happened. We have names.
So, anyway, I hope I can be excused if I'm totally unimpressed by that effort to rationalized believing any BS legend is based on something real.
pakeha
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And you are welcome and can believe whatever you wish if that belief doesn't affect anyone else (legally can, at least, in many countries). You have a right to any faith, or lack of faith, you wish. But if you wish to argue your beliefs publically with others, expect your arguing points to be questioned. And if your faith is treated specially by the government (the Hobby Lobby case or special displays on public property for example) I have the right to complain.
Sherman Bay
Master Poster
Compare Fakelore.
At the root of many tall tales and urban legends is a kernel of truth. Most UFO reports are based on "real" observations, but that doesn't prove we are being visited by aliens. Many bible stories might have been based upon similarly "real" people, places or events but been blown so far out of proportion that their source is of no importance. They might as well have been made up from nothing, and they prove nothing.
ddt
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At the time that the canon was formed, the flock could hardly have noticed: it's not like they had readily access to the text of the gospels. The minister may have had a copy, and then maybe even only of his favorite gospel. Common ownership of Bibles, or Bible texts, only took off after the invention of printing, and then, in the West, primarily among Protestants, as the RCC put the Bible on the Index of forbidden books. But by then, Luther, Calvin, Knox et.al. could not really mess with the canon, could they?
So, when you're an apologist and confronted with the discrepancies between the Nativity stories, your only resort is to try to fit them together as good as it goes.
ddt
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Yes, Church politics.
Oh sure. From my perspective, you're free to believe whatever you like, how wacky it may be. But on a skeptics' site, prepare your beliefs to be challenged for evidence.
Sherman Bay
Master Poster
To comment on the "discrepancies": It has been argued that the later gospels tried to correct some of these as well as making sometimes tortured connections between people and events, all in an attempt at pious redacting. Most likely the author of John (a later work) didn't expect his gospel to be placed along side the earlier works of Matthew, Mark or Luke. He probably thought his version would supplant the others, giving him freedom to elaborate, combine, "correct" and just make up stuff to improve the story. He was under no obligation to be factual.
The books in the bible are not research projects, doctoral theses, or collections of valid references. They are narratives that totally lack footnotes or bibliographies.
HansMustermann
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But the problem is that sometimes that kernel is itself a joke or some part of another fiction story.
As I was saying, there is stuff on Snopes or The Straight Dope that originated as fiction or on some satire pseudo-news story, but then started being circulated as real. Hell, I almost cited an article when posting on JREF, but then (as sometimes, but sadly not often, I tend to do) I click on the link for their reference and land on The Onion. Someone had actually used a The Onion story as a source.
The easiest to verify is the story about the spammer found dead with a can of SPAM shoved down his troat, because we actually have the author on YouTube saying that yes, it was a fiction story and published as such. But it ended up debunked on Snopes because it started getting circulated in Emails as true. (According to Snopes it's not even the only story that had that particular trajectory, from fiction straight to urban legend.)
And that is not even taking into account cases when the story was deliberately created as a propaganda lie.
Forget even Bunyan, take the story of Alexey Stakhanov, the miner who supposedly dug up no less than 14 times his quota of coal in a day. Actually not even in a day, but in less than 6 hours. Then a couple of months later, he did 30 times his daily quota in one day.
The guys who arranged the whole propaganda event, including using several workers to dig at the same time and tally their output for Stakhanov too, knew it was fake. But they needed that for propaganda reasons, among other things, to justify brutally raising the miners' (and other workers') quotas. There's a reason for why his name was used for the Stakhanovite Movement, a.k.a., Stakhanovism.
Sure, there are some elements which are technically true. Mining was a real profession. And there actually was a miner named Stakhanov. And there was a pretense of a competition there. And coal was mined.
But in reality it was such a complete fake event, that it could have just as well been written as fiction from the start.