The rapture is finally here again!

[Minimalist]

Alright, let me now ask you something...where did you find this information concerning these ancient writers? You most certainly were not around to witness them for yourself. Have you personally examined their original writings? Probably not. So you cannot say that you know for certain they were tampered with can you?

I'm 62 years old and have been fascinated by Greco-Roman history since I was 19 and a college sophmore. Back then there was no internet ( heresy to the youngsters around here, I know) so yes. I have read this stuff in (gasp) books!

There are scholars ( I direct you to the Bart Ehrman thread) who have spent their lives studying this stuff. They write books which drive xtians nuts and good for them I say.

The bottom line remains that the only place your 'jesus' exists is in the pages of your bible...a committee based compilation of ancient documents meant to fulfill a political need for both the empire and the church. In much the same way Scarlett O'Hara only exists in Gone With The Wind and Luke Skywalker only exists in Star Wars. All fictional characters have that common link. Oddly, the editors of the NT weren't overly concerned with the obvious contradictions because they could simply kill anyone who dared point them out. The church started going downhill when they lost that ability. You should consider that aspect of the problem more closely.

At any event I still have a fairly extensive collection of ancient Greek and Roman writers in my library. What I do not bother with is pious xtian bullshit. If you wish to delude yourself that's not my problem. All I ask is that you keep your bullshit out of our courts and classrooms.

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Nope. Most of the N.T. is thought to have been written before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD. This is well within the time frame...try again.

Patently absurd. Who thinks that? Other fundies desperate to believe in rapture stories? Well your rapture is from 1830 and a psychotic teenager talking to John Nelson Darby!

BTW, there are enough holes in the "Saul/Paul" story to drive a truck through. Very little in the way of historical markers and the one which does come to mind places the writing in the early first century BC when King Aretas of Nabatea actually DID control the city of Damascus. ( He lost it to the Romans.)

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Remember also that silence is not evidence.

Absolutely wrong. Absence of evidence is indeed EVIDENCE of absence. It is not "proof" of absence but it sure as shit is "evidence."

Were I to assert that there was a Roman city located on the site of Louisville and a team of archaeologists dug down to 2d-3d century levels and found NOTHING they would categorically state that there was no evidence whatsoever of my claim. And they would be right. As one cannot disprove a negative they could not say that they had "proven" the claim false but they could state that there was no evidence to support it.

That's how I feel about your jesus....and mohammad and moses and all the other made up nonsense that humanity has been scaring itself shitless with since the dawn of time.