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To be fair, it's off our smilies list; but if I saw that pelting towards me, I'd more than likely piss myself laughing that anything else.
Really, the only difference between what's being touted here and the usual cult line is the "send money" punchline. However, since Rev is blatantly fishing for punters - new souls for the faith - one convert is going to be worth a shit-ton of brownie points to him. They all add up until he gets the badge.
What is the exchange rate for atheist souls these days, I wonder?
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
(June 27, 2014 at 2:29 am)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: Since you refuse to consider alternatives you must believe the orthodox version. If that's the case then you must believe that the First Century Middle East Jews Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote some of it because they were eye witnesses to the events they wrote about. After all, they get credit for writing the books that bear their names. Those names don't seem like traditional Middle East Jewish names to me but maybe they do to you.
Quote:The Hebrew name "מַתִּתְיָהוּ" (Matityahu) was transliterated into Greek to "Ματταθίας" (Mattathias),[8] which was shortened to "Ματθαῖος" – (Matthaios). Deceptively, it is therefore unrelated to θεῖος (theios) meaning divine (adjective, e.g. theology) or sulfur (Koine noun, e.g. thiol group).[9] The Greek Ματθαῖος was Latinised as Matthaeus, which became Matthew in English.
Quote:Mark is a common male given name and is derived from old Latin "Mart-kos", which means "consecrated to the god Mars", and also may mean "God of war" or "to be warlike".[citation needed] Marcus was one of the three most common given names in Ancient Rome. See Roman given names.
Quote:The name Luke is derived from the Latin name Lucas or from the Greek Loukas, meaning "man from Lucania" (a region of Italy). Although the name is attested in ancient inscriptions, the best known historical use of the name is in the New Testament
Quote:John is a masculine given name in the English language. The name is derived from the Latin Ioannes, Iohannes, which is a form of the Greek Ἰωάννης. This Greek name Ἰωάννης is in turn a form of the Hebrew name יוֹחָנָן, Yôḥanan which means "Graced by YHWH". There are numerous forms of the name in different languages.[1]
This means that, in the 1st century, the names would have been Matityahu, Marcus, Lucas and Yôḥanan. This doesn't prove that the gospels attributed to them really are eye witness accounts. There were other gospels which were rejected as canon, including the Gnostic Gospels.
Quote:At the start of the Middle Ages, England was a part of Britannia, a former province of the Roman Empire. The English economy had once been dominated by imperial Roman spending on a large military establishment, which in turn helped to support a complex network of towns, roads, and villas.[1] At the end of the 4th century, however, Roman forces had been largely withdrawn, and the English economy collapsed.[2] Germanic immigrants began to arrive in increasing numbers during the 5th century, initially peacefully, establishing small farms and settlements.[3]
The word, English, in this context is referring to an area of Britain which eventually became known as England because the article is about the history of this area. There weren't any English people living in it, though, when the 'Old Latin Bible' was written. Enlgish people didn't even exist then unless you count the pagan Angles and Saxons who didn't start moving to Britain until the 5th century.
It seems that you have a couple of Jews, a Roman, and a Greek as the Gospel writers with German sodbusters as the Bible writers.
(June 27, 2014 at 4:38 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: It seems that you have a couple of Jews, a Roman, and a Greek as the Gospel writers with German sodbusters as the Bible writers.
What are you on about?
The Jews wrote the books of the Old Testament in Hebrew.
Some people in the Roman Empire wrote the books which were included in the New Testament. These books were attributed to men named Matityahu, Marcus, Lucas and Yôḥanan but that doesn't mean they were genuine eye witness accounts or even that these men really existed. The names later became Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Some other people in the Roman Empire wrote all the other books which weren't included in the New Testament.
The Germanic tribes were pagans at the time and they worshipped the Germanic gods - Odin and Thor etc.
Quote:Partial translations of the Bible into languages of the English people can be traced back to the end of the 7th century, including translations into Old English and Middle English. More than 450 versions have been created over time.
Although John Wycliffe is often credited with the first translation of the Bible into English, there were, in fact, many translations of large parts of the Bible centuries before Wycliffe's work. The English Bible was first translated from the Latin Vulgate into Old English by a few select monks and scholars. Such translations were generally in the form of prose or as interlinear glosses (literal translations above the Latin words). Very few complete translations existed during that time. Rather, most of the books of the Bible existed separately and were read as individual texts. Thus, the sense of the Bible as history that often exists today did not exist at that time. Instead, an allegorical rendering of the Bible was more common and translations of the Bible often included the writer’s own commentary on passages in addition to the literal translation.
Toward the end of the 7th century, the Venerable Bede began a translation of scripture into Old English (also called Anglo-Saxon). Aldhelm (c. 639–709) translated the complete Book of Psalms and large portions of other scriptures into Old English.
Quote:Old English (Ænglisc, Anglisc, Englisc) or Anglo-Saxon[2] is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southern and eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon.
Quote:Old English was not static, and its usage covered a period of 700 years, from the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Britain in the 5th century to the late 11th century, some time after the Norman invasion.
Old English is a West Germanic language, developing out of Ingvaeonic (also known as North Sea Germanic) dialects from the 5th century. Anglo-Saxon literacy developed after Christianisation in the late 7th century. The oldest surviving text of Old English literature is Cædmon's Hymn, composed between 658 and 680. There is a limited corpus of runic inscriptions from the 5th to 7th centuries, but the oldest coherent runic texts (notably Franks Casket) date to the 8th century.
Quote:The mainstream consensus is that the New Testament was written in a form of Koine Greek,[1][2] which was the common language of the Eastern Mediterranean[3][4][5][6] from the Conquests of Alexander the Great (335–323 BC) until the evolution of Byzantine Greek (c. 600).
Now it's up to you. Provide proof from reputable scholars that English people wrote the books of the Bible instead of just translating them.
You guys keep digging your hole deeper and deeper with ever post. By your own statements you admitted that the other works were incomplete and fragmented. Wycliffe and his buddies put it all together in its current format. And because it was Englishmen who wrote the Bible it gained credibility. Hell, people still believe every word in the King Arthur saga.
(June 27, 2014 at 9:40 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: You guys keep digging your hole deeper and deeper with ever post. By your own statements you admitted that the other works were incomplete and fragmented. Wycliffe and his buddies put it all together in its current format. And because it was Englishmen who wrote the Bible it gained credibility. Hell, people still believe every word in the King Arthur saga.
Even if all older works were fragmented, that does not mean they weren't altogether used as the source to translate.
(June 27, 2014 at 9:40 pm)Wyrd of Gawd Wrote: You guys keep digging your hole deeper and deeper with ever post. By your own statements you admitted that the other works were incomplete and fragmented. Wycliffe and his buddies put it all together in its current format. And because it was Englishmen who wrote the Bible it gained credibility. Hell, people still believe every word in the King Arthur saga.
Even if all older works were fragmented, that does not mean they weren't altogether used as the source to translate.
Logic, my friend, learn it well.
So you think some crazy old coot who's living in some Fourth Century hovel had the resources to collect all of those various bits and pieces of religious manuscripts scattered in the lands around the Mediterranean Sea and then translate them?
You know you are insane when you write something so preposterous about the Bible the you end up with a pack of atheists defending the antiquity of the Bible.
Besides being insane, you really don't know your English history. English did not become a major language of commerce, scholarship, or much of anything else until quite late. Just because they became the British empire and the U.S. became a superpower does not mean Europe revered or even spoke English much before the 1800s. French was the language of diplomacy and Latin the language of the church and science. Wycliff's Bible was not an international event. It was an English event.
If there is a god, I want to believe that there is a god. If there is not a god, I want to believe that there is no god.
(June 27, 2014 at 10:59 pm)Irrational Wrote: Even if all older works were fragmented, that does not mean they weren't altogether used as the source to translate.
Logic, my friend, learn it well.
So you think some crazy old coot who's living in some Fourth Century hovel had the resources to collect all of those various bits and pieces of religious manuscripts scattered in the lands around the Mediterranean Sea and then translate them?
I just saw Jesus walking through the clouds.
Why is it everytime someone points out something rational to you, you have to make it sound like we must be arguing for some really weird crazy scenarios?
(June 28, 2014 at 2:12 am)Irrational Wrote: Why is it everytime someone points out something rational to you, you have to make it sound like we must be arguing for some really weird crazy scenarios?
When your whole position is an argument from personal incredulity, I guess making your opposition seem silly is all you've got left.
"YOU take the hard look in the mirror. You are everything that is wrong with this world. The only thing important to you, is you." - ronedee
Want to see more of my writing? Check out my (safe for work!) site, Unprotected Sects!
June 28, 2014 at 3:06 am (This post was last modified: June 28, 2014 at 3:10 am by Wyrd of Gawd.)
Ref. Post #297 ~
You're forgetting your European history. The English (for you, the people who lived in England) were more literate that the other country bumpkins on the mainland. They had a rich history of story-telling and could spin some fantastic tales. They wrote them down and other people read them.
I don't give a rat's ass about the scraps of religious manuscripts crazy old fanatics kept hidden in damp monasteries or in the Vatican. Those were not Bibles. The people living in England wrote the Bible and not some clown in Italy or Asia. And once the English (people living in England) sent it to the Pope everyone else fell in line with the basic tales. When one Pope decided to write his own version he messed it up with a couple of thousand of assorted errors. Now how did anyone know about those errors? They compared the Pope's tale with the English version.
And while the English were writing their fairy tale they gave all of the main characters non-traditional Jewish names. The didn't have any problem giving the minor characters Jewish names but all of the main characters were given European names.
An Englishman, Robert von Ranke Graves, wrote the book "I, Claudius" which you may have seen on tv. It was fiction but seemed plausible history. William Shakespeare wrote "Julius Caesar" and you know how many movies have been made based upon that. Julius gets credit for writing one book but everything else about him was written by people who never saw him. Now why any sane person would think that a single book written by Julius who croaked in 44 BC would survive intact to modern times is beyond me given all that happened in ancient Rome but maybe it did. People swear that the Shroud of Turin is real. Anyway, suppose Julius' book did survive. Does that mean that everything the other writers wrote about him is true?
