Actually, Paul was proselytizing throughout the region within 20 years of Jesus' death. Greece, Asia Minor, the near Middle East. . .he got around. There were LOTS of non-Jew converts very early on.

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"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket."

Thomas Jefferson

Boy talk about conflicts with in the church. This was an issue that was obviously argued among the first Christians (Paul even describes an argument he had with Peter in one of his letters about this). Many of Paul's letters are devoted to this subject (Romans comes to mind).

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"A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent."
-John Calvin

Wow, that is interesting! Peter decides to deny Christ three times and then after he sees what the Romans do to him, decides to further his teachings to anybody that will listen. He is initially afraid to be even associated with him and then decides to pull off the greatest hoax in history? He then decides to make up the story about his resurrection (and convices quite a few people to say they saw Jesus resurrected) because that would surely keep things quiet and keep attention away from him. Seems like a simple, safe way to not get noticed by the Romans, doesn't it?

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pro Deus sic diligo orbis terrarum

Since it's been brought up, let's talk about the Epistles a bit.

Surely, there are frauds amongst "Paul's" letters.

How so, you ask? Allow me to bring knowledge to the masses.

We know Paul's thoughts in a rather extensively fashion (and that there's a certain tone & cadence to his message) in that a great deal of the New Testament is devoted to his writings.. It is a conservative message & like Jesus, called for a great deal of sacrifice. But how to reconcile this with passages from some of Paul's other supposed writings that appear in the New Testament, passages that seem to either downplay, or, in some cases, outright contradict that which was said in other letters.

Similarly, Jesus' very conservative message was edited. Let's take Luke 14:26 as a starting point. "If anyone does not hate his own father & mother & wife & children & brothers & sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple." These are the words of Jesus.

Taken at face value, one would be led to believe that this message would attract few followers. Jesus also spoke of divorce in Matthew, saying "what therefore God has joined together, let no man put asunder."

But Matthew was written well after Jesus' death. By conservative estimates, this Gospel was written AT LEAST two generations after Jesus' death, and quite likely a much longer period of time passed between the crucifixion & the writing of the Book of Matthew (probably well over 100 years).

So, later converts took liberties with Jesus' (and Paul's) message. Whoever wrote Matthew evidently found Jesus' command regarding divorce too severe, and edited it, saying, "Whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another, is guilty of adultery." (Matthew 19:9). The part in italics was added.

Likewise, the above passage in Luke was rephrased in Matthew 10:37: "Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me."

Later (especially in Matthew 19), the author of this Gospel constantly juxtaposes Jesus' harsh commands with more moderate elaborations. Likewise, followers of Paul were evidently concerned that his message was also too extreme (see I Corinthians, for example). A generation or two after Paul's death, forgeries of his letters began to appear. Many of these forgeries have found their way into the New Testament. Most people assume these are Paul's only authentic letters: Romans, I & II Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, & I Thessalonians. Most scholars also agree that I & II Timothy are forgeries, as the style & viewpoints are radically different from these other letters. There is much debate regarding Ephesians, Colossions, & II Thessalonians; I tend to think they are also by different authors.

Let's start with Timothy. In all of Paul's other letters, he implores Jesus' followers to chasteness. In I Timothy (4:1-3), "Paul" instead writes that people are demon-inspired "liars. . .who forbid marriage and enjoin abstinence from foods which God created." II Timothy (3:6-7) implore virgins & widows to marry, while I Corinthians urges the same to remain unmarried. (5:14)

More examples for your juxtaposition:

Hebrews 13:4
Ephesians 5:23-24, 29 & 32

These seem to have no relationship to the very austere words from Jesus & Paul.

Which leads me to this: how can anyone say the Bible is the infallible word of God? Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the Bible will realize it greatly contradicts itself again & again. How would an infallible God make such mistakes? And doesn't God also admit failure in his "greatest" creation, man, when he supposedly has to send a great flood to destroy his creation? Hardly sounds like a "perfect" God to me.

Well, enough about my opinions, let's return to Paul again. What it boils down to is ascetic & nonascetic early Christians fought for the legacy of Jesus & Paul. So we get the conservative messages & we get what are likely false liberal messages in the Gospels & Epistles. What we most certainly DO NOT GET is anything approaching the WORD OF GOD or even anything divinely inspired. Why would the divine seek to contradict itself? Why would the divine want obvious forgeries in its "great book."

The more I examine Christianity, the more I realize its fraudulence. I know my words are jarring to the run-of-the-mill C&E Christian (Christmas & Easter, that is) & outright blasphemy to the hard-core devoted follower of Christ. But just open your mind & explore the words & compare them for yourself. Explore the history of these texts. Look for their true origins. Arrive at truth for yourself. Don't allow yourself to be huckstered into believing in myths.

All one need do to know God is to truly study the creation. It's right before you to observe, from the ground, the sea, and the heavens. Check out its consitency, its measurability, its greatness. It's so much more awe-inspiring than any of these silly little myths we like to call "organized religion." Organized insanity is more like it. . .

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"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket."

Thomas Jefferson

Surely a change in emphasis or a downplaying of certain themes from letter to letter would be explained by the fact that the letters were written to different people of diffiferent cultures, on different topics, at different times. I'm unaware of any flat contradiction of facts that evidence fraud.

I would be tempted to say those estimates of time represent the maximim, given the archeological record. Pieces of a copy of the Gospel of John (universally acknowledged as the last Gospel written) are dated from 125 AD to (even the latest estimates) the latter half of the second century. That requires times for the gospel to be written, accepted, transmitted into codex form, and propagated to Egypt. The other Gospel were presumably written long enough before that they reached John for his reference. Given that, I would say that the two generations past Jesus' death would be the latest boundary on the writting of the earlier Gospels. And naturally that provides no evidence that they weren't originally written earlier still.


Oh come now, these are hardly contradictions and would be significant only if the two authors promised to be precisely quoting the precise same words spoken at the same moment.

And I certainly question that mindset that first calls the account a partial forgery and then goes on to point out precisely which parts were forged and which were not. Is that not opperating under some bizarre assumption that we, twenty centuries later, somehow know what Jesus really said and know it better than these authors?

"Most people..."? Or most "scholars"? Or most "scholars" from the last half-century?

Nevermind. Rather than throw around percentages of who does and does not believe what about any given text, I can say, having read them, that one notices changes in style and tone. But that becomes far less suprising when one remembers these were never intended to be chapters together in some book, but are letters written to very different people (some official and some, like Timothy, quite personal) over a period of many years in vastly different periods of Paul's life. In some cases he's in the midst of traveling across Asia Minor or Europe and trying to settle a crisis in a distant church. By the end he's writing from imprisonment in Rome, awaiting his quickly approaching execution.


Let's consider these verses:

I have no idea what you're talking about with II Timothy 3:6-7, as that has nothing to do with marriage and I'm not sure what verse you intended.

Here's 1 Timothy:
Likewise, there IS not 1 Corinthians 5:14, the chapter ends with verse 13. Again, I'm not quite sure what you intended. 1 Corinthians chapter 7 is all about marriage and clearly demonstrates that Paul doesn't think its a good idea. However it also just as clearly emphasizes that he doesn't think it should be forbidden. Here's a snippet:

I don't see any contradiction there. Paul clearly isn't encouraging marriage (at least not in Corinth at this time), but he clearly doesn't think it should be forbidden and (in Timothy) expresses anger over those who would turn what considers "good advice" into some sort of absolute command.


???
Are you sure you're looking at the right verses here? There's no conflict. He calls the marriage bed undefiled and, in Eph, makes an anology between husband and wife and God and the Church.

I will say, however, that if there is any one book for which the authorship is uncertain, it is Hebrews, which was just barely accepted into the cannon to begin with. Most Bibles will freely admit that Paul is merely the "supposed" author of Hebrews and there is some uncertainty in the matter.


I hardly thing you've pointed out any "obvious forgeries" here.
And surely a book can be somewhere between "divinely authored" and forged. Perhaps the authors were merely who the church thought they were; neither gods nor forgers?

... and we all know what christianity says about husband and wife, don't we?

That they don't say it doesn't mean they don't think it. I personally think christians today are too busy hating gays and atheists to be concerned of the jews.

And of course, the romans didn't do it. Pontus Pilate refused to kill an innocent man, but he had an order from Rome to keep peace in Judea. It ended with him letting the people decide (democracy you know?) and Jesus getting killed. The people were of course, jews. Not that I think anyone should hold a grudge against jews for that today, unless they still think it was ok to kill an innocent man.

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To fill a world with ... religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used. - Richard Dawkins

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned

MY CAPSLOCK KEY IS BROKEN LOL - Will be stumbled upon several times on the web.

Clash

Ridiculous statement. Certain Christians yes, but those would find anyone to hate because it's not a Christian thing. Please don't make blanket statements.

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"A dog barks when his master is attacked. I would be a coward if I saw that God's truth is attacked and yet would remain silent."
-John Calvin

Dil, I'll admit that I made a few typos re: chapter & verse. Thank you for pointing those out.

But now, I'd like to announce that you've fallen into a trap. I essentially only provided Cliff's Notes of Elaine Pagels' book Adam, Eve, & the Serpent. She is an endowed professor of religion at Princeton & has studied the Nag Hammadi manuscripts firsthand.

You're not arguing with my own assertions anymore. Rather, you're now attempting to refute 20+ years of research by one of the world's foremost religious scholars. This is not even to mention the great majority of mainstream scholars who agree with conclusions.

I eagerly await your reply.

Your friend,

M. Twain

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"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket."

Thomas Jefferson

I doubt my reply will be very satisfactory to you.

If your defense is that someone much better educated on the topic than you (or me) said such-and-such, then I can only say that I still don't yet find her conclusions very convincing, and have learned long ago that just because someone with a degree and lot of reseach says something, that doesn't mean I should just start believing them.

If you want to deal with other facets of Dr. Pagels' book I think that might be quite interesting (though you'll have to keep giving my cliff notes since I haven't read it), but I have no interest in devolving this discussion to the level of trying to decide the issue by lining up a bunch of names and assuming that, sense they're very bright people, they must be right.
I'm sure, if she's interested in such a thing, Dr. Pagels can find a debate closer to her own league than I.

-Dil

It's easy, in our culture, to dismiss academia because they are "intellectuals," as if that somehow makes anything such people write or say irrelevant.

However, just because you disagree with Dr. Pagels & the majority of her colleagues also doesn't make YOU right. I guess I'm in the minority of Americans who actually respect majority opinions from such academics, especially if the overwhelming number of them have reached independent consensus on the matter.

And in the case of Dr. Pagels & her argument, there is in fact overwhelming consensus regarding her conclusions in the book I cite here. I don't think it'd be much fun debating someone who hasn't read the book, but it's only 154 pages long & easily accessible in most libraries. Perhaps you can pick up a copy & read it in the coming weeks. I would thoroughly enjoy discussing her findings with you or anyone. (That is, of course, assuming you have the time & interest. However, I found it an entirely enjoyable read, so much so that I've read it twice within a 10 year period. And judging from your remarks on religion thus far, I'd say you too would find it an intriguing & enjoyable read.)

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"The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket."

Thomas Jefferson

Certain christians, and the Bible. Alot of christians are really secular, and only find those parts of the Bible they agree with as true. Why not have the guts to believe all of it, while you're in the realm of irrationality?

What about that part in the Bible where it says a man that goes to bed with another man should be stoned to death? Do you interpret that to mean the opposite?

Alot use those lame arguements about seeing it in a "historical perspective". Which means, that people hated gays is normal back then and we should see it in perspective and thus can not blame them for it? But the Bible itself was written with loads of bull droppings in it, like waking people from the death. Why not see all of that in perspective aswell and realize it's all a lie? Why not put in perspective the deeperation jews had of finding a saviour, thus making lots of rumours into a "messiah".

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To fill a world with ... religions of the Abrahamic kind, is like littering the streets with loaded guns. Do not be surprised if they are used. - Richard Dawkins

Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be questioned

MY CAPSLOCK KEY IS BROKEN LOL - Will be stumbled upon several times on the web.

Clash

Surely a book could, hypothetically, be thought of as such but surely a book that is supposed to be valid as authoritive religious scripture cannot be thought of as such.

Even if you're not a literalist, the authority of the Bible must be regarded in the same way that makes the literalist argue that either it's all true or none of it is. Which is, of course, that if you consider part of it to be forged, you're in no position to point out the valid parts and, thus, you might as well dismiss it all.

The so-called apostle Paul was a fraud. He never knew Jesus, and the story about his vision of Christ on the road to Damascus was - as all such stories - a fabrication. Paul invented Christianity to fleece gullible people, which he propagated through the hoax of Christ’s resurrection. Paul’s lies and schemes got him in trouble with the Jewish authorities. He tried to escape prosecution by claiming Roman citizenship, but Nero put an end to him.

I personally see no more reason to an "all or nothing" approach to the books of the Bible than to any other writings.

Your considerable confidence not only in your view of the events but also the motivations of the people involved them is truely astoni