All christians see Jesus as God

People pay her for this???????????? Now THAT's inanity!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

INSANITY!!

 

Of course-- remember who chose this nut as his 'spiritual advisor'. What would you expect-- a good choice?

 

Christianity has evolved throughout time from the teachings of Jesus to what we have today, mainly influenced by Paul and Constantine the great. The Roman Empire had great influence on the change of direction with Political Power enhanced with the support of god to create supreme authority exercised by one person. The trinity of god, son and the Holy Ghost was probably created at the Conference of Nice (the Nicean Creed) and created other changes like the necessity for Mariam (Mary) to have been a virgin when Yesua (Jesus) was born. I followed the Anglican teachings until I went to college and studied Biology. The only way that Mary could have been a virgin and given birth to a child, is if Jesus was a girl. With time I learned that there were a lot of unsupportable concepts in the Bible. They Include bit are limited to :

1. The stories if Adam and Eve and Noah Arch were derived from Babylonian Poems and predated Judeo-Christian History. Adam had another Wife named Lilith. If Adam and Eve were the first humans, what was Lilith. How about Caen and Abel from whom all humanity is derived. What kind of animal did they marry.

2. Yesua (Jesus) practiced the ancient Jewish faith and he was not a Christian. At his trial for some unknown capital crime was overseen by the Roman Ponticus Pilot. As I learned it Pilot offered a pardon for the attendees to consider. The crowd called out give us Ba Rabbus to be pardoned. the Bible describes Ba Rabbus as a Thief. Stealing was not a Capital Crime in Rome or Judea. Ba' Rabbus is not a given name, it is an Arabic name for Devine Teacher (Rabbi). Jesus was the only Rabbi who was on trial.

3. Mary and Joseph were forced to give birth to Jesus in a manger because there was no room at the inn. There is no word for inn in the Aramaic language. The tradition was to allow travelers to be accommodated into the homes of village elders. At the time of Jesus's birth Joseph and Mariam were traveling with a donkey, Joseph Jr, James the Just and the two daughters.

The confusion goes on and on. Was Jesus Married and did he have children. According to Jewish Teacher (Rabbis) Were required to be worldly, which require them to be married and have children. Are there dependents of Jesus walking on the earth today?

 

There is indeed confusion about the New Testament, some of it perhaps added by your post. Please consider some alternative opinions from a somewhat unorthodox Christian:

• You're right that Paul and Constantine played leading roles, in their own way, in influencing the development of Christianity. Paul is credited with getting rid of the requirement of the Law of Moses for Gentiles, especially circumcision, although Acts seems to give that credit to Peter. Paul also introduced the metaphor of Jesus as Paschal lamb who died for our sins. Paul was more concerned with the death and resurrection of Jesus than in the life and teachings of Jesus as keys to our own eternal fate. (This is probably because he knew Jesus personally only through his visions of the Resurrected Christ. Interestingly Luke conspicuously omits this idea from his gospel and Acts, even though Paul was obviously this hero--leading some scholars to include he didn't accept vicarious atonement. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lukes-interpretation-of-jesus-death_b_9517668 Jesus' Death As Sacrifice?
  
• As for Constantine, his main contributions were in transforming Jesus from the Prince of Peace to General Jesus who wins battles, ending persecution of Christians, and pushing his new religion as a unifying force in the Empire. But he had little patience with doctrinal squabbles. He persecuted the Donatist Christian heretics as troublemakers challenging the legitmacy of bishops who had sacrificed to the emperor during Diocletian's persecution. And he called the Council of Nicea to settle the Arian controversy once and for all (famous last words). He didn't seem to care how it was settled so long as it was. But Constantine didn't outlaw pagan practices & he himself continued to have the image of Sol Invictus (the Unconquerable Sun God stamped on his coinage. (Possibly because he.like many Romans, couldn't tell the difference between Sol and the Christian God.). We'll never know how sincere his conversion was, but he seemed to see Christianity as an asset in his desire to unify the Roman Empire. He wasn't baptized until his death bed, ironically by an Arian. After his death he became a Christian saint and a pagan god, the consummate politician!

• The Council was held at Nicea, not Nice, and probably did not create the doctrine of the Trinity. That seems to have originated with Tertulian in the late 2nd-early 3rd centuries, although the Council did adopt it as official Christian doctrine. The main issue they were called to settle was whether Jesus was coterminous with and of the same substance as the Father, as Athanasius or a created being, as Arius insisted. (Jehovah's Witnesses today still cling to the Arian version, and maintain that Jesus was God's first creation, the Archangel Michael. Likewise, the doctrine of the virgin birth was not created by the Council That was first propounded in the Gospel of Mathew circa 80s c.e., based on what appears to be a misreading of Isaiah 7:14, which was part of the initial canon advanced by Irennaeus. How did you arrive at the conclusion that the only way for Jesus to be born of a virgin would be for him to have been a girl? Seems to me that if we accept virgin birth at all, anything goes where God is concerned.
• The Noah's Ark story does seem to be derived from Babylonian sources, especially the tale of Utnapishtim in the Gilgamesh epic, derived from Atrahasis in the Akkadian version, based on the legend of Ziusudra in the Babylonian account. So what? There are interesting nuances we might explore. The reason for the flood in the Babylonian version was that Enlil, the storm god, was having trouble with insomnia & the humans had multiplied to the extent that their noise was keeping him awake at night. In the Babylonian version, the god who helped a human build the Ark was Enki, the water god, who had created humans from clay and god's blood as slaves to help the overworked gods, who tipped off Atrahasis .Humans were his proud creation, and the other gods wanted them around to give them sacrifices and do the work on the planet. Some might consider it significant that it was human immorality rather than population and noise that brought on the deluge, and that humans had been created in the image of God in the first place to be free and happy, not slaves.
  
• Re the story of Adam and Eve being "derived" from Babylonian sources, the case is more complicated. The leading candidate would be the tales of Ninhursag's garden . The Mother goddess, queen of the harvest, Ninhursag, discovered that her husband the god Enki was molesting their granddaughter, and she decided to teach him a lesson. She obtained specimens of his semen, planted them in eight portions, and warned him not to eat the fruit from her garden, knowing he couldn't resist. He became pregnant in eight places from his own seed, and lacking a birth canal, was in major pain. Ninhursag relented and helped him deliver eight goddesses, the last from his rib. Despite superficial similarities, we might note important differences. It was not gods but humans who were told by God not to eat the fruit; and if they did, they'd gain forbidden knowledge, not pregnancy. The "rib" part might have been the source of the notion that Adam was created from Eve's rib, but that's a stretch. The Hebrew word translated as "rib"in the Bible is sala, which more accurately should be rendered side. But a major difference is that the major concern of Mesopotamian myths, from Adapa and the South Wind to the Gilgamesh epic was the futile human quest for immortality. It is interesting that one of the two trees in the Garden of Eden was the Tree of Life, but the one Adam and Eve went for was the fruit of knowledge of Good and evil--i.e., evaluative knowledge of the human condition. Reality bites!
  
• Lilith is not a figure in the canonical Bible. She comes from folklore and appears in Jewish Talmudic sources in 400 A.D., as a demon who steals infants. In Jewish works from 700 A.D., she is mentioned as the first wife of Adam. A Lilith is mentioned briefly in Isaiah as a screech owl but not As Adam's wife.
  
• Who did Cain and Abel marry/ Presumably their sisters or other close relatives. Jewish tradition holds that Adam and Eve had 50 children. Of course, for Cain and Abel to marry them would be considered incest today, but if they were all that were available, that taboo was presumably waived.
  
• .The "unknown capital crime" Pilate was interested in probably had to do with Jesus' grand entry into Jerusalem during the sensitive time of Passover being proclaimed "King of he Jews". Pilate would probably have seen that as sedition, or at least a threat to order during a holiday celebrating Israel's liberation from Egypt.. The historical Pilate was not into legal niceties and saw his primary duty as keeping order, which is why he traveled with his troops every year from Caesaria to Jerusalem for the holiday. Barrabas was not simply a thief but an armed robber or bandit. Matthew says he was "notorious" and Luke tells us he was as murderer who had been involved in a riot. Violent members of the Zealot sect, the Sicarii ,often called bandits, which seems to have been the euphemism for terrorists, were known to engage in attacks on Romans and their sympathizers. Your rendering of the name as Ba'Rubbus is interesting. The koine Greek, in which the New Testament was written, is Bαραββᾶς, Bar Rabban, which does mean teacher or rabbi. It is possible, that Barabbas was a Zealot rabbi, or was regarded as one, as well as being a Sicarii, and would be logical for Pilate to crucify him as another troublemaker.
• The word translated as "in' in the KJV is is kataluma (Greek, not Aramaic; the New Testamment was written in Greek) and is best understood as a “guest room,”not a commercial inn for travelers. After all, this was supposedly Joseph's hometown, and he would probably have had relatives there. Instead of the guest room, where other lodgers would be subjected to the "uncleanness' of birthing process, the birth took place in an animal shelter in the back. Even peasants had them, and rules of hospitality might be satisfied that way.
• A greater difficulty with Luke's birth account is that it differs radically from Matthew's: no star, no wise men, no travel to Bethlehem to be taxed. & an annunciation to shepherds. Luke and Matthew had the common task of getting Jesus born in Bethlehem, the city of David, but they got there by different routes. Matthew seems to think that's where his parents were living there, & move to Nazareth after returning from Egypt. Instead of magii, Luke has shepherds, in keeping with his theme of Jesus' lowly birth & ties to the common man. Luke's idea of going back to one's ancestral home to be taxed though seems farfetched. Surely that wouldn't make sense to the Romans. It would have created havoc!
  
• As for Jesus being married, that's largely speculation circulated by such works as novelist Dan Brown's DaVinci Code and the questionable work of such dubious sensationlaist writers as Michael Bagent (Holy Blood, Holy Grail) and Wilson & Jacobovici in The Lost Gospel. But Luther assumed He was married, since most Jewish men of the day were. But where are you getting this requirement for married rabbis? Jesus was operating an itinerant ministry in Galilee, far removed from the Temple in Jerusalem, & rabbinical Judaism didn't develop until after Jesus' death. "Rabbi" before then was just an honorary title of respect His followers gave Him. There is no evidence of rabbiical (ie, pharisaical) training, although His style of argument resembled theirs in some respects, and he shared views with both the liberal Hillel and the conservative Shammai schools of Pharisees. But in the Gnostic literature suppressed by the later church, Mary Magdallene is portrayed as a player in the ranks of Jesus' inner circle. She might have been suppressed by the male church hierarchy that later took over and made her into a prostitute. Who knows?

But where are you getting this requirement for married rabbis? Jesus was operating an itinerant ministry in Galilee, far removed from the Temple in Jerusalem, & rabbinical Judaism didn't develop until after Jesus' death. "Rabbi" before then was just an honorary title of respect His followers gave Him. There is no evidence of rabbiical (ie, pharisaical) training, although His style of argument resembled theirs in some respects, and he shared some views with both the liberal Hillel and the conservative Shammai schools of Pharisees.

I look forward to your replies.

 

Thank you for your kind Reply. I need to digest your text before I discuss specifics. I apologize for some Type-O's. I am a terrible typist. I meant to recognize Nicea rather than Nice. I am not much of a religious historian and need to read your post carefully before get back to you. My interests are primarily with The Arthurian legends and the quest for the Holy Grail. The two books that I was referring to are "The Bloodline of the Holy Grail" by Laurence Gardner and "Conspiracy in Jerusalem by Kamal Salibi. Gardiner a distant relative, traces the Celtic Church that predated the Trinity and its movement from Jerusalem to Egypt and on to Ireland and Scotland. His thesis is that there are two blood Lines from Jesus leading to Bonny Prince Charley and his decendents. A second line may originate from Mary Magdalen to the mother of Charlemagne. A possible third line may follow the bloodlines through the Ethiopian Royal Family, which may now redundant. The Templars, when they were in Jerusalem, may have discovered information about the story of Jesus and may have communicated with the Abyssinian Church. The Templars ran afoul with the Catholic Church in Rome, and we all know what happened to them. Kamal Salibi has taken a variety of Arabic words used in the Bible and discussed their meaning relative to current Christian beliefs. He sites a lot of information about James the Just, brother of Jesus to support his ideas. He is a Christian Historian from Lebanon.

 

No need to apologize. I caught myself at one point typing Pilot instead of Pilate. Looking forward to your next post.

 

I hate to ruin your digestion, but I have some further thoughts on a couple of subjects I previously discussed:

• Lilith , Adam's first wife. As I mentioned earlier, there is nothing in the canonical Bible that says Adam had a first wife named Lilith. The only mention of a Lilith is in Isaiah 42;13 where she is listed as a screech owl among the nocturnal creatures that will torment the destroyed Kingdom of Edom.Lilith was a Babylonian category of female demons that attacked infants and pregnant women, and the legend traveled from Babylon to Anatolia, Syria Egypt, Greece and Israel. But no first wife of Adam until the 8th century Jewish sources outside the Bible. But I continue to come across atheist assertions that cite Genesis.as a source of her existence. Reading farther, I came to understand what they're basing their theory on: inference. In Genesis 1:26-29, we're told that on the the sixth day God created man and woman, apparently simultaneously.Then in Genesis 2:18-25, apparently after the sixth day,.God sees that Adam is lonely, so after trying out various animals, He decides to make a woman out of Adams's rib and flesh, and to call her Eve. Aha! There must have been two Women: Woman #1, who is not named, seems to be Adam's equal. Woman #2, named EVE (life) is made from Adam's body part, and presumably is dependent on him. Mental wheels turning: mate #1 was too independent for Adam, & left him or was sent away. Who was she? Creative brains working overtime: "Genesis doesn't say who she was. But she must have been a real bitch. And there are legends about a she-demon called Lilith who preys on pregnant women and little children. Must be Adam's jealous first wife! Must be Lilith." Elementary, my dear Watson.

Hmm. I think there's another, more plausible, explanation based on Wellhausen's documentary hypothesis: There weren't two wives, but instead two different, conflicting creation stories. Gen. 1 is stately and majestic, almost poetic, with the recurring refrain refrain: "And God saw that it was good. " It's as though it was meant to be sung at a religious service. Although it's the first thing in the Bible, many scholars think it was added centuries after the rest of the Pentateuch, probably during the Babylonian exile. Wellhausen calls the author(s) P, standing for "Priestly"--probably one or more Aaronite priests and their scribes, determined to preserve the faith during the exile. Gen ! can be interpreted as a refutation of the Babylonian creation myth, in which the world was created after a cosmic battle between the forces of the chaos monster Tiamat and her son, Marduk, who slays her and uses her carcass to construct the earth. Unlike Marduk, Yahweh simply uses words to create, and the objects he creates are things that the Babylonians worshiped as gods. Gen. 2.is strikingly different,,God being portrayed in anthropomorphic terms and more hands-on, walking in His garden and fashioning Adam out of dirt, much like the Sumerian god Enki fashioned humans from clay, and breathing life into him; then later creating Eve from a body part of Adam with his nostrils. The sequence of creation is differen.t Wellhausen thought Gen.2 came from an earlier pre-exilic time, blending the creation myths of the southern kingdom, which he calls the J (Yahwest) source and the northern kingdom, called E (Elohist) source. The entire Pentateuch reflects contribution from these three and another source, D (Deuteronomist). No Lilith needed.

• Constantine and after. We've established that Constantine was a major influence on the development of Christianity, but sometimes his influence has been exaggerated. Contrary to the novelist Dan Brown in the popular DaVinci Code, he did not select the current four gospels of the Christian canon and exclude eighty-some competing ones, establish Jesus as a divine figure, compel his subjects to convert to Christianity, require his troops to be baptized, nor make Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. The choice of the four gospels was done by Irenaeus before Constantine was born & was pretty firm by the time of Constantine and was finalized by church councils after his death. Dan Brown to the contrary, Constantine did not transform Christianity from a matriarchal to a patriarchal religion. Patriarchal dominance was well-entrenched in the second century. Nor did Constantine make Christianity the established state religion or institute widespread persecution of pagans. He did destroy a few temples, plundered more, and neglected others in favor of Christian churches. Notably, he destroyed a temple to Aphrodite in Jerusalem , on grounds that it had been built over the site of Jesus crucifixion, and built a Christian church in its place. But he also erected a temple to the goddess Tsyche and a column topped by statue of Apollo with himself looking up adoringly. And he was careful not to upset the pagan aristocracy unduly.

The real persecutions began under his son Constantius II, who reverted from Nicene Trinitarianism to Arian Christianity. After murdering all family rivals, he imposed death penalties for pagan sacrifice and the worship of idols and closed all temples. But Christianity wasn't officially established as the religion of the empire until the reign of Theodosius I in 380. The form that he adopted was the Nicene kind.

 

I will need to check my notes for a reference. I read that Constantine was consumed with having political and divine supremacy in order to rule without conflict. A Roman Emperor with the divine power from the Christian God was on his mind.

I read from another document is that Adam divorced Lilith because she wanted to engage in sexual intimacy in the on-top position rather than the on-bottom (missionary) position. This was a real problem for Adam. Boy-did he really miss out on enjoying a woman affection.

 

As I said, I think Lilith is bogus. And where would anyone get the idea about the preferred sex positions of a fictional being? The Lilith myth has a certain appeal to feminists, but that doesn't make it more credible.

 

I have a chance to carefully look at your posting, and I generally agree with you. The only areas I question concern some mystical events that are now, expected to believe as part of our faith. The first one concerns the rib story under which Eve came to be Adams second wife. and how they are described to be the first man and woman. I am writing all of this with the declaration that I am a biologist by education and cannot accept some of this Myth. If the earth was created and populated 6,000 years ago as the bible states, the fossil record must be a conspiracy. I believe that their is fossil evidence of Homo sapiens being on the earth at least 75,000 years ago. To produce Eve from Adams rib is technically impossible today. For Adam and Eve to produce about 50 children is an Eye opener. I know that their story predates television, but Eve's doing laundry and cooking would really impact on the time to conceive children.

The story of Joseph and the Virgin Mary now comes under scrutiny. As understand the history of these key players, Joseph was a direct descendent of David and Soloman, making him an elder in the House of David. Mary was a descendent of Benjamin, making her a a candidate of the House of Benjamin. A marriage between these two "Royal Families" would easily be construed that their offspring ,could refer to themselves as Kings and Queens of the Jews. The Idea that Mary was a virgin at the time of the Birth of Jesus is inconceivable for a Biologist. Even if you accept the explanation that Joseph had a previous wife that bore the other 4 siblings of Jesus, Mary could only produce female children without a male (Y Chromosome) being introduced. If you propose that Joseph inseminated Mary an produced a human Body, but the Soul of Jesus came directly from God, the result is kind of iffy but I would go along with it.

As far as the trial of Jesus, the charges consideration and the Ba'Rabbus dialogue, there is more to discuss. I would suggest that you check out the story of Saint Issa from Hindi text. The Hindus followed the life of Saint Issa in India at the time in the lost years of Jesus. Some monasteries in India have documents written at the time of Jesus. They describe the reasons for the trial and execution in more detail. Saint Issa is also referenced in some Arabic documents as well. We can talk about that later.

I cannot accept everything that has sourced in in Catholic Church and the European Protestants. The Vatican knows the truth and don't want everyone to know. I say this with the declaration that I am a descendent of John Rogers (the martyr), burned at the stake (Cir 1455) on the orders of the Pope, because he chose to love a woman. The genocide of the Order of the Templars because the pope wanted their accumulated wealth for his treasure chest. In addition include the French and Spanish inquesitions and he destruction of the South and Central American cultures.

 

have a chance to carefully look at your posting, and I generally agree with you. The only areas I question concern some mystical events that are now, expected to believe as part of our faith.[/Quote] Good for you. Only biblical literalists or "fundamentalists" expect us to believe literally everything that's in the Bible. I personally think it would be mentally damaging to do so, and would in many cases miss the point.

I have great respect for Genesis, since Gen.1:26 set in motion the train of thought that made me a Christian. However, I think it's all a MYTH, comparable to Aesop's fables, the Norse myths, the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the Greek myth of Pandora and her box of troubles, etc. . Joseph Campbell has taught us that myths aren't falsehoods or mistaken ideas. They're stories intended to convey basic truths more effectively than could be done by prose. In the case of Adam and Eve, I think it captures a basic human character flaw. Two people in Paradise can't get their minds off what they don't have. As for the rib, that is probably a metaphor for the intimacy of husband and wife, being of "one flesh". Unfortunately, it's also been interpreted (by Saint Paul) as making the woman subordinate to the man ("For man did not come from woman, but woman from man). 1 Cor. 11:8. That's the problem with taking metaphors too seriously. As for all those children, it does seem like a lot, but Adam supposedly lived 930 years. (We don't know how long Eve lived, but if the biblical account is true, the poor woman probably died of exhaustion!

Actually, I suspect the whole thing was made up to establish Jesus messiahship. The virgin birth originated with Matthew who found a passage (Isaiah 7:14) that he thought (for some strange reason) was applicable to Jesus. It had to do with King Ahaz who was under attack by enemy nations back in the eighth century BCE. Isaiah told the king not to worry. See that young maiden (virgin?) over there. She isn't even pregnant yer, & by the time she is, has the kid and he reaches the age of reason, you'll still be here & your enemies won't. Apart from the fact that almah, the Hebrew word which he translates as "virgin", can simply mean young maiden, the passage has no obvious bearing on messianic prophecy. I tend to follow the maxim that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", so I'm skeptical that any human virgin gave birth, although there is record of a Komodo dragon doing so around Christmas. Virgin birth by Komodo dragons

The Prophet Isa in Isalm is Jesus, the penultimate prophet of Allah who will come again in the last days to judge humanity. The "Saint Issa" you're talking about, however--Issa Yuz Asaf (Jesus Son of Joseph)--seems to be an invention by the Punjabi founder of the Ahmadiyya movement, Muslim Ghulam Ahmad. Ahmad came to the conclusion, on the basis of intuition and misinterpretation of Buddhist sources, that Jesus visited East Asia and died in Kashmir. Gunther Grönbold (Jesus in India, 1985), Norbert Klatt,1988, and Mark Bothe, 2009, 2013) have pretty well debunked this claim, and shown that Ahmad was actually confusing Issa with legends of the Buddha. The variant that Jesus visited India during the "lost years" was picked up by the Russian Nicholas Notovitch in the 1890s, & Levi H. Dowling's Aquarian Gospel in 1908. These books satisfy Christian curiosity about what Jesus was doing between his childhood and the beginning of His ministry, but in my opinion are not serious works of scholarship--similar to so many fanciful tales of the Lost Continent of Atlantis, the Loch Ness Monster, Extraterrestrial contributions to ancient civilizations, and the ones you've mentioned about Jesus and Mary Magdalen escaping to France and founding dynasties. There seems to be a stable market for such material among folks of "New Age" inclinations who find the world more wonderful after reading such accounts.

I should hope not!

The Inquisitions were certainly a blight on the history of Christianity, but in fairness to the Pope, I think King Philip IV of France was the primary instigator of the campaign against the Templars. It enabled him to cancel his huge debts to that religious order, and to assert his control over a weakened papacy. Anyhow, I've enjoyed our discussion. Another time?

 

Thanks again. I am excited about the Fusion result at Lawrence Laboratory. I have not visited there since I retired. Hooray for the staff. I used to love watching their monitors depicting air currents around the Bay Area. I will get back to you later with the trial assessment by the Saint Issa story.

 

Great. You might be interested in these blogs explaining that the document is a hoax.
https://www.jasoncolavito.com/the-life-of-st-issa-hoax.htm
Nicolas Notovitch and the Jesus-in-India myth – D.M. Murdock
Articles on the Notovitch hoax from "The Nineteenth Century" magazine
Professor Max Mueller writes: "Although I was convinced that the story told by M. Notovitch in this Vie inconnue de Jésus-Christ 3 was pure fiction, I thought it |677 fair, when writing my article in the October number of this Review, 1894, to give him the benefit of a doubt, and to suggest that he might possib]y have been hoaxed by Buddhist priests from whom he professed to have gathered his information about Issa, i.e. Jesus. (Isa is the name for Jesus used by Mohammedans.) Such things have happened before. Inquisitive travellers have been supplied with the exact information which they wanted by Mahàtmas and other religious authorities, whether in Tibet or India, or even among Zulus and Red Indians. It seemed a long cry to Leh in Ladakh, and in throwing out in an English review this hint that M. Notovitch might have been hoaxed, I did not think that the Buddhist priests in the Monastery of Himis, in Little Tibet, might be offended by my remarks. After having read, however, the foregoing article by Professor Douglas, I feel bound most humbly to apologise to the excellent Lamas of that monastery for having thought them capable of such frivolity. After the conrplete refutation, or, I should rather say, annihilation, of M. Notovitch by Professor A. Douglas, there does not seem to be any further necessity----nay, any excuse----for trying to spare the feelings of that venturesome Russian traveller. He was not hoaxed, but he tried to hoax us. Mr. Douglas has sent me the original papers, containing the depositions of the Chief Priest of the Monastery of Him is and of his interpreter, and I gladly testify that they entirely agree with the extracts given in the article, and are-signed and sealed by the Chief Lama and by Mr. Joldan, formerly Postmaster of Ladakh, who acted as interpreter between the priests and Professor A. Douglas. The papers are dated Himis Monastery, Little Tibet, June 3, 1894.

I ought perhaps to add that I cannot claim any particular merit in having proved the Vie inconnue de Jésus-Christ----that is, the Life of Christ taken from MSS. in the monasteries of Tibet----to be a mere fiction. I doubt whether any Sanskrit or Pâli scholar, in fact any serious student of Buddhism, was taken in by M. Notovitch. One might as well look for the waters of Jordan in the Brahmaputra as. for a Life of Christ in Tibet."Articles on the Notovitch hoax from "The Nineteenth Century" magazine

 

Unbelievable!!! I particularly liked the guy walking back & forth nonchalantly while she was having her breakdown. It's shocking and deeply disturbing to me that this is anyone's idea of religion.

 

Hi Tishomingo: I have just two ideas to share left.

1. The story of Saint Issa may not be a hoax but a second or third hand summary of what happened in the life of Jesus, not supported by contemporary theologians.

Since Jesus was in always Jewish, following the Nazarene view, his real thinking may not be totally compatible with he Christian Faith. Imagine the time after the crucifiction, the apostle Thomas journeys to India to teach the story of Jesus. This was recommended to Thomas by Jesus before his imprisonment. That part of the story not documented is that there was unrest in Judea at the time. Rome had bribed Harod the great to go along with the Roman Law. Jesus was preaching distrust of Rome and Harod. When the population referred to Jesus as a descendent of Solomon and David, and thus being the legitimate King of Judea. Rome and Harod decided to act to prevent an insurrection. Jesus was executed in order to maintain control over Judea. Thomas brought the true story to India and established a ministry that survived until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th Century. The Portuguese with direction from the pope in Rome either destroyed all documents from Thomas' Ministry or removed all documents from the Ministry to Rome. They replaced the Ministry with a Roman Catholic Ministry which still exists to this day. Some documents may have been saved by Indians and are now part of the story of Saint Issa.

1. What happened to the Remains of Joseph, Mary, James the Just and Jesus.

Part of the problem with the Knights Templar, was they learned some of the teachings of the story of Jesus the Nazarine, from Moslems (Islam) in Jerusalem . Some Islamic symbols survive in Masonic Rituals to this day. As Islamic militancy increased the Templars may have moved the remains of Joseph, Mary, James the Just and Jesus to Ethiopia under the protection of the Abyssinian-Coptic Churches.

Tishmingo: Thanks for the discussion - It has been fun

I do need to spend more time on the Fortunes of John Rogers the Martyr

 

Since most of the central doctrines of the Christian Faith developed at least two decades after Jesus' death, that would not be surprising. The dominant thinking of the Jerusalem Church, headed by James, the brother of Jesus, seems to have been Jewish Christianity which the church later condemned as heresy. I suspect that Jesus was following in the footsteps of John the Baptist who baptized Him--preaching the imminent coming of God's kingdom and the need to repent. He also seems to have been thought of as the Son of Man prophesied in the Book of Daniel and popular among apocalyptic Jews at the time. The standard doctrines of Christianity--that Jesus came to die for our sins and rose from the grave, and that faith in that rather then practice of Mosaic law was the important thing, were introduced by Paul who got them from a vision, supposedly from Jesus. I tend to be wary of truths reported by people from their visions. The earliest church and even Paul seem to have thought Jesus was the adopted Son of God. The idea that He was a divine being from day one being introduced later in John's Gospel, and the Trinity later still. Christianity as it evolved with the aid of Paul and Constantine might be far different from anything Jesus had in mind.

The story about Jesus sending Thomas to India is not documented, at least in canonical scripture. Thomas does seem to have been one of the Twelve--in fact, legend has it he was Jesus' identical twin brother. The story that Jesus commissioned him to go to India is extra-biblical, although there are various traditions that he did so. The Saint Thomas congregation of Christians in India makes this claim. It isn't impossible that it happened, but evidence for it seems weak.

I agree with most of what you say here. Herod the Great was long gone by the time Jesus started preaching and was crucified, but Herod Antipas was Tetrarch of Galilee and the Jewish Establishment that ran the Temple , as well as the Romans, felt threatened by Jesus,as did Pilate.

The operative word is "may". It also may be the case that extraterrestrial aliens absconded with them to analyze such remarkable specimens. Of course, if mainstream Christians are correct, there would be no "remains' of Jesus, since He rose from the dead on the third day and ascended into heaven, where he is now, plotting His comeback. Besides, Jesus' family tomb, complete with occupants, was discovered in Israel in 2007, according to movie director James Cameron, who released a documentary on the Discovery Channel. Working with Cameron was Dr. Charles Pellegrino, who co-authored a book on the subject with Simcha Jacobovici, The Jesus Family Tomb: The Discovery, the Investigation, and the Evidence That Could Change History. Several scholars have disputed their claim Duke University Religion Department: The Talpiot Tomb Controversy Revisited. The names marked on the coffins were very common at the time: "I don't accept the news that it was used by Jesus or his family." All of these theories are certainly interesting and entertaining, like the stories in the tabloids about women giving birth to two-headed calves.After all, they may be true. Anything is possible.

In the final analysis, it's a judgment call. Nothing is certain, not even that. we could be figments of each other's imagination, or virtual reality simulations. In fact, Oxford Professor Nick Bostrom thinks that's exactly what we are, and they pay him good money. Reality is a gamble. I like to make educated bets, so I go by the available evidence, reason, experience, intuition and the kind of street wisdom that makes me wary of used car dealers and snake oil salesmen. I do tend to believe that Jesus was a real historical figure. This is mainly because I can't understand why any group of fist century Jews would make up a crucified criminal as their Messiah, when the Messiah was supposed to restore Israel to glory. But also because most reputable historians, both secular and religious, who have devoted their lives to the matter agree with that conclusion. The deniers are still on the fringe, and their arguments seem lame to me. But I'm a skeptic when it comes to the miracle stories. I go by the maxim: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. My Christian faith is centered on the teachings of peace, love and understanding for all, including society's rejects and least advantaged. That's the important thing.to me--the only thing that matters.

 

I think that is time to close this discussion. I have never seen any evidence that the deceased body of Jesus actually went to heaven with his soul. I thought that concept died out with the Egyptian Pharaohs. How could the followers of the Jewish faith and Islam get so far out of step with Pauline Christians? The Jewish faith members are inclined to believe that Jesus died with most of the other Nazarenes at the siege of Masada. In the Islamic faith, the profit Jesus is alleged to have escaped from Masada and lived his life out in Alexandria Egypt. We do not have any Nazarines left in organized religion, so we will probably never know their view. The Celtic Church (Synod) is now alined with the Paulines (Presbyterians?) in order to avoid persecution from the other Christian groups. Bonnie Prince Charley is now only memory. Thanks for all of the nice information.