lying for Jesus

[Minimalist]

Chronicles is simply silly. It's purpose seems to be to gloss over some of the less glorious chapters in the earlier books.

The most glaring example of this is when it creates a battle for Josiah to be killed in rather than being ignominiously whacked by Necho. With uncharacteristic modesty the Egyptians did not seem to know they won a battle that day!

[Wyrd of Gawd]

Not a new idea...which fundies hate to hear.

Joseph Wheless' "Forgery in Christianity" dates to 1930 and is available from Infidels.org online.

http://infidels.org/library/historical/j...istianity/


You may have to read their disclaimer to gain access to the "library."

Thank you so much for that link. I read a couple of the essays and they are certainly though-provoking. I look forward to reading all of them as time permits.

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I'm sorry but you're wrong.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasmonean_dynasty

The Hasmonean dynasty[2] (Hebrew: חשמונאים‎, r Ḥashmona'im; Audio) was the ruling dynasty of Judea and surrounding regions during classical antiquity. Between c. 140 BC and c. 116 BC, the dynasty ruled semi-autonomously from the Seleucids in the region of Judea. From 110 BC, with the Seleucid empire disintegrating, the dynasty became fully independent, expanded into the neighbouring regions of Galilee, Iturea, Perea, Idumea and Samaria, and took the title "basileus". Some modern scholars refer to this period as an independent kingdom of Israel.[3] In 63 BC, the kingdom was conquered by the Roman Republic, broken up and set up as a Roman client state. The Kingdom had survived for 103 years before yielding to the Herodian Dynasty in 37 BC. Even then, Herod the Great tried to bolster the legitimacy of his reign by marrying a Hasmonean princess, Mariamne, and planning to drown the last male Hasmonean heir at his Jericho palace.

Prior to this there were two short-lived attempts at independence when Hezekiah revolted against Assyria and later when a king who the OT calls "Josiah" (but who is not archaeologically attested) tried to expand into areas vacated by the withdrawing Assyrians.

Both attempts were quickly crushed.

That leaves the Hasmoneans as the only time in the entire first millennium when an actual kingdom existed and became something of a regional power.

Oddly..or perhaps not...

the so-called Davidic Empire (which no one at the time seemed to know about)



covered pretty much the same area as the actual Hasmonean "empire."



Coincidence? I doubt it.

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Well it was only for 5 minutes and well outside of the time frame for both the Old & New Testament events. And as you pointed out, they were still under the Seleucids' thumbs for some of that time. So it's safe to conclude that their independent history as depicted in the Bible is 100% BS.

[Minimalist]

Took a while but I did find the report of Ahmose I's campaign against the Hyksos.

http://ib205.tripod.com/ahmose_1_1.html

Ahmose I slowly drove the Hyksos back to their capital Avaris (location on one of the eastern branches of the Nile in Lower Egypt), once here Ahmose laid siege to the city. Ahmose had troubles of his own with his kingdom, he left the siege of Avaris in the control of his military commanders so that he was free to placate a rebellion in the Theban region. When Ahmose returned to Avaris he found that negotiations had been taking place between the Hyksos and his military commanders ­ the Hyksos were allowed to leave Egypt gracefully in return for surrendering the city (1532 BC).

...However, Ahmose was not going to let his enemy escape so easily ­ the Egyptian army pursued the Hyksos people into southern Palestine to Sharuhen. The city was put under siege by the Egyptians, after three years the Hyksos once more fled this time into Syria. Again the Egyptians followed, but Ahmose finally returned home to Egypt.

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Well it was only for 5 minutes and well outside of the time frame for both the Old & New Testament events. And as you pointed out, they were still under the Seleucids' thumbs for some of that time. So it's safe to conclude that their independent history as depicted in the Bible is 100% BS.

60 years is more than 5 minutes but the issue of what time-frame constitutes the Old Testament is certainly one which could bear a little examination. As far as the Seleucid's "thumbs" go, they were a spent force. If part of the peace treaty was that the Hasmoneans would acknowledge their king as some kind of feudal overlord it hardly matters. The Seleucids could not defend themselves much less attack anyone else. When Pompey gave them the coup de grace it was a gesture of kindness. They were the living dead.

But let's be clear here...especially about the purposes of writing in antiquity. It served the powerful. They commissioned the scribes who did the writing and the scribes told the stories that their masters wanted told. So, we have Judah becoming an actual state in the late 8th century but as a vassal of the Assyrian Empire. They stayed that way except for Hezekiah's brief rebellion until Assyria was defeated by Babylon. They were quickly destroyed by Babylon who burned Jerusalem ( or whatever it was really called ) to the ground and moved their administrative center to Mizpah. This remained until Babylon was overrun by the Persians and the Persians suddenly found themselves with a Western Empire. Persia retained control until Alexander came rolling through and when he died first the region was under his general Ptolemy and later under Sleuchos. This situation brings us down c 160 BC or, in other words, a fairly unbroken run of some 650 years in which Judah - later Yehud - was under someone's control.

I submit that no Babylonian, Assyrian, Persian or any of the various Greek overlords would have tolerated a story in which their captives were encouraged to think of themselves as anything other than conquered peoples. Again, there was no underground book-sellers club. Books served a purpose and they were expensive to produce and only the elites could afford them or read them.

So the question of "Old Testament Times" comes down to that same period, right around the end of the 2d century BC when there was an independent, Judaean-based state which might have benefited from tales of a great empire that had god on its side. Go back and study those two maps, above.

Are you following me so far?

[rightcoaster]

For the sake of completeness I will mention two relevant books, both by Bart D. Ehrman, which deal extensively with this subject, although I did not in fact use them in any of the previous posts.

Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are

Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics


It's hard to escape the conclusion that the people who gave us the New Testament and the church were mostly inveterate liars.

XP, I'm surprised that you will read Bart Ehrman (I have read many of his also, even own a few) and not Maccoby on the same sort of lying by Paul. Indeed, as you point out Acts was something of a whitewash of Paul written some decades after the letters (those that are considered authentic).

As to lying for Jesus: Do you think the "cleansing" of the Temple by Jesus actually occurred?

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As you know, Min, The Bible Unearthed disposes of the notion of the great United Monarchy of David and Solomon.

Instead of having an army of 1.3 million fighting men, as claimed in Chronicles, his total number of subjects was somewhere around 45,000, and his capital Jerusalem was a one-donkey town of 1000.

But this is lying for Yahweh rather than lying for Jesus.

Ah, I posted the same title before getting to this by you; will see if I can edit it away {looks like I could, and did!}. Fascinating read.

[xpastor]

I have finally ploughed my way through Ehrman's longer book, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics, admittedly skipping many of the Greek quotations and all of the German footnotes.

It's hard not to conclude that lying and forgery were endemic among the early Christians. Three interesting examples:

The stories about martyrs. For instance, whoever wrote the Martyrdom of Polycarp professes to be an eye witness, but it's clear enough from internal evidence that he was not.

In the 4th century someone created a fictional correspondence between the apostle Paul and Seneca, the foremost Roman philosopher of his era. The 14 letters (8 "from" Seneca and 6 "from" Paul) have nothing of substance to say. They appear to have been created solely to pretend that the great pagan philosopher was impressed with Paul's writings.

The Sibylline Oracles (sometimes called the "pseudo-Sibylline Oracles") are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. (Wikipedia) Several chunks of the oracles are forgeries by Christians and also Jews, pretending that these pagan prophetesses either endorsed the monotheism of the Jews or foresaw the coming of Christ. More than one passage has a neat little acrostic in which the first letters of successive lines spell out Jesus Christ Son of God Savior ICTHYS (or fish) in Greek. Both Jerome and Augustine were taken in by the forgery.

It may be true that many early Christians were ready to die for their faith, but it is also true that many Christians were ready to lie for their faith.

[rightcoaster]

I have finally ploughed my way through Ehrman's longer book, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics, admittedly skipping many of the Greek quotations and all of the German footnotes.
....
It may be true that many early Christians were ready to die for their faith, but it is also true that many Christians were ready to lie for their faith.

Do you think the "cleansing of the Temple" story was a fabrication? If so, what purpose might it have served, since it reflects so badly on Jesus?

[xpastor]

Do you think the "cleansing of the Temple" story was a fabrication? If so, what purpose might it have served, since it reflects so badly on Jesus?

I incline to the view that the cleansing of the Temple had a factual basis. I take for granted that Jesus was a real itinerant teacher and also that he really was crucified. So the disturbance in the Temple would be the cause of his trial and execution. The story is found in all 4 gospels, which means it is independently attested and thus more likely to be historical.

If it is not historical, the only plausible explanation which I can think of is that it is a manifestation of the anti-Semitism which is found in the gospels. However the trend in the anti-Semitism is to become more virulent as we go from the earliest gospel (Mark) to the latest (John), and I don't see that here.

[Minimalist]

http://plim.org/1Moneychangers%20in%20the%20Temple.htm

What did the moneychangers do?

The moneychangers served an important function within the temple. They exchanged a person's foreign coins for a fee into coins that were acceptable within the temple. In many ways they were similar to a currency translation in foreign countries where foreigners have to translate their currency for a fee into the currency of the country they are visiting.

Only the half-shekel coin of the temple was allowed as atonement money, which the priests in the temple used. Those Jews coming from foreign lands with foreign currency or those that had Roman coins had to have these coins changed by the moneychangers. This was one of the largest revenues for the temple.

What's curious here is that the temple complex was an enormous area and the commercial aspects were conducted in the outer courtyards - not the holy of holies. Why wouldn't a "jew" know that? For that matter, why wouldn't a "jew" know that the temple tax had to be paid in the half-shekel coin?

Even more to the point, why was this act of sacrilege not brought up while the priests were questioning jesus? The gospel accounts...bullshit though they may be....suggest that the priests were searching around for a charge but they ignored this violent disruption of the temple operations just a few days before? Sorry. That doesn't make any sense at all.

What does make some sense is the general Roman aversion to usury and the suggestion that Jews were the primary usurers of the day. Again, I suspect this gospel crap is second century writing back-dated to the first. By the mid second century, the Jews were at the top of the Roman shitlist after 3 revolts.

[rightcoaster]

http://plim.org/1Moneychangers%20in%20the%20Temple.htm

What did the moneychangers do?

The moneychangers served an important function within the temple. They exchanged a person's foreign coins for a fee into coins that were acceptable within the temple. In many ways they were similar to a currency translation in foreign countries where foreigners have to translate their currency for a fee into the currency of the country they are visiting.

Only the half-shekel coin of the temple was allowed as atonement money, which the priests in the temple used. Those Jews coming from foreign lands with foreign currency or those that had Roman coins had to have these coins changed by the moneychangers. This was one of the largest revenues for the temple.

What's curious here is that the temple complex was an enormous area and the commercial aspects were conducted in the outer courtyards - not the holy of holies. Why wouldn't a "jew" know that? For that matter, why wouldn't a "jew" know that the temple tax had to be paid in the half-shekel coin?

Even more to the point, why was this act of sacrilege not brought up while the priests were questioning jesus? The gospel accounts...bullshit though they may be....suggest that the priests were searching around for a charge but they ignored this violent disruption of the temple operations just a few days before? Sorry. That doesn't make any sense at all.

What does make some sense is the general Roman aversion to usury and the suggestion that Jews were the primary usurers of the day. Again, I suspect this gospel crap is second century writing back-dated to the first. By the mid second century, the Jews were at the top of the Roman shitlist after 3 revolts.

Thanks for your and XP's inputs. I'll wait a bit to see if more come in before responding further.

[xpastor]

Again, I suspect this gospel crap is second century writing back-dated to the first

For want of convincing evidence to the contrary I go with the dates assigned by the majority of NT scholars:
Mark 65-70 CE
Matthew 75-80 CE
Luke 85-90 CE
John ca 95 CE
Plenty of time for unhistorical details to creep in.

It must also be remembered that all of the gospels were directed at a predominantly gentile audience who knew diddly-squat about the temple procedures. For that matter the writers knew next to nothing about it.

So if Jesus did create a disturbance in the temple, the gospel writers present it simply as an anti-usury protest. And it may even have been just that at bottom. Jesus was a rube from the hill country, quite possibly could not read and write (Yes, yes, Drich, I know the gospels present him as reading in the synagogue, and the most doubtful passage in the NT presents him as writing in the dust, but that doesn't mean it's gospel truth) So, as I was saying, a sincere hillbilly preacher could be outraged at those moneychangers skimming 5% on each transaction or whatever they took.