RE: Was Christianity started to control the masses and dictate poltical agendas
March 27, 2018 at 12:34 pm
(This post was last modified: March 27, 2018 at 12:36 pm by Fake Messiah.)
Aegon is on a right track. The real birthplace of Jesus was on the pages of a story written in the last quarter of the first century, by an unknown writer in an unknown place far removed from pre-war Judea by both time and space.
The anonymous Gentile author of The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God we call "Mark" has drawn upon on a variety of sources: classic Homeric themes, snappy one-liners from Cynic and Stoic philosophy, bits of astrology and gematria ("sacred geometry"), pharisaic parables and proverbs, teachings from Paul, names from Paul's epistles, and above all, also like Paul, motifs from Hebrew scripture.
He even creates a reason/plot device why no one has heard any of this before: the silly women were so scared, they ran away and didn't tell anyone.
"Mark" wasn't writing to the entire Christian world, just his own scattered community. They are in pockets somewhere far away from Jerusalem. We can only guess where and who they were, but their knowledge of Judaean and Galilean geography is spotty at best and they have little if any knowledge of what everyday Jewish life in Judea had been like. And they are poor since Jesus in Mark always praises the virtuous poor while lambasting the rich.
He certainly doesn't think there will be any future Christians around to read his work. In his mind, he is writing to the very last generation on earth, the people who would live to see the end of the world (Mark 13:30), and the only ones who will survive it.
Remember, regular offerings in the temple ceased in July of the year 70; the temple burned in August and later that month, the Roman army took over the temple and offered sacrifices to it for their victory. For Mark, both of those signs occurring meant that only three and a half years ("one thousand two hundred ninety days") were left on Daniel's timeline until the end of the world because, like so many of the aspiring apocalypts, he also thinks Daniel's prophecies were written especially for his time. He is not just citing Daniel's "Abomination of Desolation" he is starting the timer on Judgment Day. Daniel 12:11 said:
"From the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that desolates is set up, there shall be one thousand two hundred ninety days."
All of this means that Mark's Gospel was written during that interval, sometime in 71-73, and he expected the Lord would come sometime early in the year 74. The only problem is, the Lord never shows that year, and the world keeps rolling along as usual.
The anonymous Gentile author of The Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God we call "Mark" has drawn upon on a variety of sources: classic Homeric themes, snappy one-liners from Cynic and Stoic philosophy, bits of astrology and gematria ("sacred geometry"), pharisaic parables and proverbs, teachings from Paul, names from Paul's epistles, and above all, also like Paul, motifs from Hebrew scripture.
He even creates a reason/plot device why no one has heard any of this before: the silly women were so scared, they ran away and didn't tell anyone.
"Mark" wasn't writing to the entire Christian world, just his own scattered community. They are in pockets somewhere far away from Jerusalem. We can only guess where and who they were, but their knowledge of Judaean and Galilean geography is spotty at best and they have little if any knowledge of what everyday Jewish life in Judea had been like. And they are poor since Jesus in Mark always praises the virtuous poor while lambasting the rich.
He certainly doesn't think there will be any future Christians around to read his work. In his mind, he is writing to the very last generation on earth, the people who would live to see the end of the world (Mark 13:30), and the only ones who will survive it.
Remember, regular offerings in the temple ceased in July of the year 70; the temple burned in August and later that month, the Roman army took over the temple and offered sacrifices to it for their victory. For Mark, both of those signs occurring meant that only three and a half years ("one thousand two hundred ninety days") were left on Daniel's timeline until the end of the world because, like so many of the aspiring apocalypts, he also thinks Daniel's prophecies were written especially for his time. He is not just citing Daniel's "Abomination of Desolation" he is starting the timer on Judgment Day. Daniel 12:11 said:
"From the time that the regular burnt offering is taken away and the abomination that desolates is set up, there shall be one thousand two hundred ninety days."
All of this means that Mark's Gospel was written during that interval, sometime in 71-73, and he expected the Lord would come sometime early in the year 74. The only problem is, the Lord never shows that year, and the world keeps rolling along as usual.
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
