Iesou Chresto -

[Minimalist]

Your toys are calling you, shithead. That sand won't get out of your dump truck by itself.

Maybe you can ask fucking jesus for help?

[LastPoet]

Ahwww man. I could just see the dudes 2000 years ago, writing the bible and saying: "This will be the best prank evar!!!!111"

[Zen Badger]

Jesus the oleaginous?

No wonder he's such a slippery son-of-a-god. That explains his folllowers as well.

Kudos for the use of the word "oleaginous"

[The Reality Salesman01]

While I don't agree with Drich very often, this time, I think he had a point. The Bible, the way that Christians like it, shows how stupid Christianity is on its own without bringing historical research into the mix. There's no need to search outside the common understanding of the text to find crazy bullshit that doesn't make sense.

[Minimalist]

Doesn't help us with where it came from, though.

No one knows how the pyramids were built but they were built by someone. They exist.

The church was cobbled together at some point, too. If their story is absurd...and it is the most absurd story ever...there is still a reason why we spent 1,500 years groveling to a shitty god and a bunch of con men in fancy robes. I want to understand that story.


For example:

This inscription shows up in 318 AD on a Marcionite church in Syria. This is well within the so-called xtian period...or is it chrestian period, and is six years after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

The earliest known church inscription (found near Damascus) is Marcionite, and dates to 318 CE and reads:

Συναγωγη Μαρκιωνιστων κωμ(ης)
Λεβαβων του κ(υριο)υ και σω(τη)ρ(ος) Ιη(σου) Χρηστου
προνοια(ι) Παυλου πρεσβ(υτερου) -- του λχ' ετους.

["The meeting-house of the Marcionists, in the village of
Lebaba, of the Lord and Savior Jesus The Good.
Erected by the forethought of Paul the elder -- In the year 630."

http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2010/0...r-ali.html

[The Reality Salesman01]

Doesn't help us with where it came from, though.

No one knows how the pyramids were built but they were built by someone. They exist.

The church was cobbled together at some point, too. If their story is absurd...and it is the most absurd story ever...there is still a reason why we spent 1,500 years groveling to a shitty god and a bunch of con men in fancy robes. I want to understand that story.


For example:

This inscription shows up in 318 AD on a Marcionite church in Syria. This is well within the so-called xtian period...or is it chrestian period, and is six years after the Battle of the Milvian Bridge.

The earliest known church inscription (found near Damascus) is Marcionite, and dates to 318 CE and reads:

Συναγωγη Μαρκιωνιστων κωμ(ης)
Λεβαβων του κ(υριο)υ και σω(τη)ρ(ος) Ιη(σου) Χρηστου
προνοια(ι) Παυλου πρεσβ(υτερου) -- του λχ' ετους.

["The meeting-house of the Marcionists, in the village of
Lebaba, of the Lord and Savior Jesus The Good.
Erected by the forethought of Paul the elder -- In the year 630."

http://stephanhuller.blogspot.com/2010/0...r-ali.html

Oh I agree. But Drich is an idiot. If you're not disputing the tenets of Christianity directly, he thinks he's won. He doesn't recognize that this is an Atheist Forum and that people find all aspects of the absurdity of his religion to be entertaining. He stumbles across a thread like this and thinks-"Ah ha! They can't disprove my religion so they've resorted to disputing translation!" I was just wanting to make it clear to him that nothing could be further from the truth, and that this post, while interesting, is not the crux of refuting his stupid ideas. Nor is it required to do so.

[Tonus]

So we'll need to keep this thread in mind the next time a theist tells us that the understanding of a particular verse is dependent on how we define a particular Greek or Hebrew word?

[The Reality Salesman01]

In some cases...it seems so. "Need" is up for debate though.

[Minimalist]

Archaeologist, William Dever, has written a dandy little book called "Did God Have a Wife" which explores the evolution of yahweh from junior member of the Canaanite pantheon through his various promotions to Creator of the Fucking Universe among other things. One constant theme of the book is the existence of "folk religion" along with the state cult for want of a better word. Again, if anyone wants it, I have an electronic version. Just PM an email address.

Folk religion - the religion of the common people as distinguished from the court and the priests of the state cult - lacks any sort of hierarchy or scripture. Dever detects it through artifacts like thousands of fertility figurines and a couple of inscriptions. He also detects it through the various denouncements of it in the OT itself. Christianity - or more likely Chrestianity - may have been one of those "fly beneath the radar" cults which existed among the commons.

We have a tantalizing find along these lines in the Gabriel Revelation Stone which indicates a belief in a resurrection after 3 days but at the time of the revolts which Quinctilius Varus suppressed in the wake of the death of Herod the Great, or roughly 35 years before later xtians set their jesus bullshit story. When Josephus recounts the existing philosophies in Judaea before the outbreak of the Great Revolt he has nothing to say about this one although he does go on at length about those revolts. As a member of the nobility he could be expected to treat with disdain the superstitions of the commoners. There may well have been an infrastructure of belief in a Chrestos which was later co-opted by what Bart Ehrman calls, the proto-orthodox.

Remember that when Pliny describes the so-called xtians he ran into in Asia Minor in 110 BC all he says of them is:

They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.

If some well-meaning scribe changed "Chrestos" to Christos" because he thought it a spelling error it still does not change the fact that the story as told by Pliny has nothing to do with the story which xtians were putting out.

[Cyberman]

Again, if anyone wants it, I have an electronic version. Just PM an email address.

Me please, Santa!