Belief in white Jesus linked to racism

[Belacqua]

I will read the link he provided and extract the statistics later on.

This is the main thing.

Please note the bibliography, and all the sources cited in the text. It is solid history.

[Bucky Ball]

[Belacqua]

[Bucky Ball]

[Belacqua]

There's a lovely passage in the Phaedrus which addresses how people used myth in the old days.

Socrates and Phaedrus are walking along outside the walls of Athens. Phaedrus thinks they're at the spot where, according to legend, the wind god abducted a girl. He asked Socrates of he believes in the literal truth of such myths.

Phaedrus: Tell me, Socrates, isn’t this or hereabouts the place from where Boreas is said to have abducted Oreithuia from the Ilissus?

Socrates: Yes, that’s how the story goes, anyway.

Phaedrus: Well, wasn’t it from here? At any rate, the water has a pleasant, clean, clear appearance –– just right for girls to play beside.

Socrates: No, this isn’t the place. It’s about two or three stades* downstream, where one crosses to go towards Agra.* There’s an altar of Boreas somewhere there.

Phaedrus: I’ve not really noticed it. But tell me, Socrates, by Zeus:* do you think this story is true?

Socrates: It wouldn’t be odd for me to doubt it as the experts do. I might give a clever explanation of it, and say that a gust of wind from the north pushed her from the nearby rocks while she was playing with Pharmaceia, and although this caused her death she was said to have been abducted by Boreas––either from here or from the Areopad gus,* since there’s another version of the story, that she was abducted from there, not here. Basically, Phaedrus, although I find these kinds of interpretations fascinating, they are the work of someone who is too clever for his own good. He has to work hard and is rather unfortunate, if only because he next has to correct the way Centaurs look, and then the Chimaera, and then there pours down on him a horde of similar creatures, like the Gorgon and Pegasus and countless other extraordinary beasts with all kinds of monstrous natures.*† If anyone has doubts about these creatures and wants to use a rough-and-ready kind of ingenuity to force each of them to conform with probability, he’ll need a lot of spare time. As for me, I never have time to spend on these things, and there’s a good reason for this, my friend: I am still incapable of obeying the Delphic inscription and know- ing myself.* It strikes me as absurd to look into matters that have nothing to do with me as long as I’m still ignorant in this respect, so I ignore all these matters and go along with the traditional views about them. As I said just now, I investigate myself rather than these things, to see whether I am in fact a creature of more complexity and savagery than Typhon, or something tamer and more simple, with a naturally divine and non-Typhonic nature. But anyway, my friend, if I may interrupt our conversation, isn’t this the tree you were taking us to?

Socrates considers a euhemerist interpretation, but in the end says it doesn't matter. The importance of these stories is what we can learn from them about ourselves.

This is a basic hermeneutic among traditional Christians, as well. The importance is a spiritual, rather than a historical, meaning.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

This is a basic hermeneutic among traditional Christians, as well. The importance is a spiritual, rather than a historical, meaning.

Not as much as you'd like us to think. 'Traditional Christians' by and large accept Jesus' walking on water, healing by touch, cursing the fig tree, casting out demons, etc, as matters of historical fact. They seem to spend a great deal of time trying to find factual explanations for the star announcing Jesus birth, his virgin mother, the feeding of the multitude and so on.

While I don't doubt their attempt to glean moral or spiritual teaching from these stories, the fact is that a majority of Christians accept these fantasies and fairy tales as fact. They have to - Christianity without miracles would vanish in a puff of nonsense.

Boru

[The Grand Nudger]

I'll remind the christians in my life that it's not important whether or not christ existed. The Message™ is spiritual.

OFC people have believed in their own religious content as facts. It's amazing to me that anyone is attempting to debate this. Even in the narrative above, which is..itself.... a myth or legend, our hero only has occasion to mention his own take because someone else has asked a question that simply assumes the truth of some other myth or legend.

[Bucky Ball]

[jasonelijah]

You do realize the Holy Bible is the oldest living document we have of early civilizations and how things were back then, there's lots of historicity in the bible, also lots of silliness, but you can't just write off the whole book just b/c u dont believe. It's the only book we have of the old ages.

[Belacqua]

You do realize the Holy Bible is the oldest living document we have of early civilizations and how things were back then, there's lots of historicity in the bible, also lots of silliness, but you can't just write off the whole book just b/c u dont believe. It's the only book we have of the old ages.

I think you're right if you're taking about specific regions or ethnic groups. The Bible is the oldest set of texts we have from them.

Other groups have records that are pretty damn old, though. Egypt, for example, and Mesopotamia. 

And it depends on what parts of the Bible you're talking about, and which scholars' dates you accept. Is the Moses story older than Homer? Was it written much later to portray events that were already long past? 

I think "oldest" is kind of stretching it.

I agree with you, though, that it's an important document and should definitely not be written off.