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 Manchu wrote:

 AustonT wrote:
That's categorically false we have independent accouts that confirm the existence of all three, what we don't have is any indication that Peter accepted Paul as a "special apostle" or in any way endorsed his letters.

Categorically? I think not. A widely accepted argument is not the same thing as categorical truth. What we truly rely on in all serious consideration is the tradition. The gospels themselves are after all artifacts of tradition.

Your attempting to argue against the historiocity of Jesus and Peter, you number among your supporters David Icke. Categorically false is the nice way of putting it.

All I gotta say...

Was she hot?

Peregrine wrote:

 whembly wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 azazel the cat wrote:
This topic is not as interesting as it would be if some scrolls had revealed Jesus to have had a husband.


...Just sayin', that'd be interesting is all.

That's why there's Jesus/Judas fanfiction.

(Seriously. If you want hot Jesus porn, it's out there.)

And how would you know?

Is it my fault I find a man nailing another man as a third man is nailing him to a cross hot?

Ironically, if one were to believe that everything is a result of God's creation, then technically it would be the fault of the father of the man being, uh, double-nailed. Or possibly that man's fault, depending on how the trinity concept plays out for you.

St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine

Since when were these doctors jesus himself? They had their biases which were expressed in their writings but none of it is doctrine.

General gog = exalted!

In other words, a particular branch of the Bible fandom decided to, in the absence of an official canon policy from the author(s), create a fanon of their own. Like I said, I understand the appeal of doing so, but I don't see why those particular fans have any authority, or why we should use their canon policy over the default assumption that all works by the original author/publisher in a universe are canon.

Apostilic succession. Which is why a roman catholic bible has more books than a protestant one. (And Luther even wanted to remove the letter of st James - the 'epistle of straw')

And I really don't see why this should be considered newsworthy. We don't publish news articles when a bunch of comic book fans decide that Superman #9290430234 (published in 1964) got his costume color wrong and should be considered non-canon, so why should we act like it's a newsworthy event when some Bible fans have a dispute over canon policy in their fictional universe?

Because christianity, more than any other religion is a threat to people. It challenges them and makes them uncomfortable. Whereas the other abrahamic religions are law based, chrsitianity at its core is a love based religion - love god, love your neighbour.

You're right. And I have no proof that Jesus ever even lived, much less Paul or Peter. I suppose your question is not really worth asking if we can't even establish that they existed.

There's more evidence for Jesus' existance than for Julius Caesar.

Your ignorance is showing. The Demiurge/Monad/Archons have little in common with God the Father. Christians have no concept of Sophia, Spiritual plains or beings, or of human ascension.

Actually Catholicsm has likened the Spirit to spohia, wisdom, which is something god loves. In addition it has ascention of Jesus and Mary and a couple of Old testament dudes into heaven.

 Phototoxin wrote:
Apostilic succession. Which is why a roman catholic bible has more books than a protestant one. (And Luther even wanted to remove the letter of st James - the 'epistle of straw')

Sorry, but a fanboy delusion that you're connected to the characters in your favorite fantasy novel doesn't mean it's true or that you get to decide the canon policy for that universe. I don't get to claim I'm descended from Superman and therefore Issue #5464 is non-canon, so why should it be any different for the Bible fandom?

Because christianity, more than any other religion is a threat to people. It challenges them and makes them uncomfortable. Whereas the other abrahamic religions are law based, chrsitianity at its core is a love based religion - love god, love your neighbour.

Sure, it's based around love, the way an abusive husband loves his wife as he beats her. You'd better not forget to express your love for God or he will show his love for you by torturing you for eternity in hell. But I forgot, this is an improvement because he tortured himself to death so he could show you this one bit of mercy, otherwise he would have to be torture you for eternity because a magical talking snake convinced your distant ancestor to eat a magic apple. But remember, even though God is going to torture you for eternity he still loves you the whole time!

TBH the prequels were better. At least that version of God was open about being a with anger management issues and did awesome stuff like burning his own followers to death for petty offenses or sending bears to slaughter rude children. Khorne just wishes he was that cool

You just made me laugh out loud in the middle of the office! Exalted!

 Phototoxin wrote:


There's more evidence for Jesus' existance than for Julius Caesar.

Rubbish.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html

 LordofHats wrote:
I hear the French Embassy has Croissants. And that they hate Wiener dogs.

Well it is wrong to be French. Someone get the ptchforks. I'll bring the torches. The blasphemy shall not stand!

Do you ever sleep Frazzled?

or.... Tbone? Is that you?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 reds8n wrote:

 Phototoxin wrote:


There's more evidence for Jesus' existance than for Julius Caesar.

Rubbish.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html

When the first line of the website says "Unlike the mythical Jesus Christ..." I don't think it's a credible source. An exhaustively researched website that does not cite any of the books claimed as its sources and cites a prominent atheist in Michael Grant as it's main source for Jesus related materials is hardly credible.

See? I can do this too... I'm sure plenty of people in the below link will tell you that jesus did exist.

http://www.catholic.org/

Exactly. Mythical. We can even approximate his height from recordings of a Jewish historian.

Sorry, but a fanboy delusion that you're connected to the characters in your favorite fantasy novel doesn't mean it's true or that you get to decide the canon policy for that universe. I don't get to claim I'm descended from Superman and therefore Issue #5464 is non-canon, so why should it be any different for the Bible fandom?

If Superman said to someone : I charge you with maintaining my legacy here on earth while I go off into space, what makes that person unable to decide the canon policy?
You don't get to claim descent from Superman because he did not appoint anyone to be the guardian of his church. Unlike Jesus who appointed Peter who then had the authority to appoint others.

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:

 reds8n wrote:

 Phototoxin wrote:


There's more evidence for Jesus' existance than for Julius Caesar.

Rubbish.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html

When the first line of the website says "Unlike the mythical Jesus Christ..." I don't think it's a credible source. An exhaustively researched website that does not cite any of the books claimed as its sources and cites a prominent atheist in Michael Grant as it's main source for Jesus related materials is hardly credible.

See? I can do this too... I'm sure plenty of people in the below link will tell you that jesus did exist.

http://www.catholic.org/

.. does that site offer any attempt to back up the preposterous claim that there's more evidence for Jesus than there is Julius Caeser ?

A claim made first, to the best of my knowledge, by various "interested parties" around the time of Mel Gibson's religious paen.

From Julius Caesar's reign, we have plenty of historical artifacts, both archaeological and literary, attesting to his existence--coins, sculptures, writings by him (The Gallic Wars) and about him by contemporaries (e.g., Cicero).

Compared to Caesar, we have virtually no documented evidence about Christ from his lifetime. In fact, all the earliest historical documents that refer to Christ--the Gospels, Paul's letters, and Josephus and Tacitus's accounts--were all written after his death.

I don't doubt the historical existence of a person or eprsons that could or could not Christ, , but certainly Caesar's existence is much better documented.

 Phototoxin wrote:
If Superman said to someone : I charge you with maintaining my legacy here on earth while I go off into space, what makes that person unable to decide the canon policy?
You don't get to claim descent from Superman because he did not appoint anyone to be the guardian of his church. Unlike Jesus who appointed Peter who then had the authority to appoint others.

Except we don't have evidence of Jesus actually doing that (which would be hard for a fictional character), we have members of the Bible fandom claiming that Jesus said that. If I claimed that Superman appointed me guardian of his legacy you'd laugh at me and ignore my demands, all I'm saying is that we should do the same for the unfortunately deluded fans of the Jesus novels.

Sgt_Scruffy wrote:
Do you ever sleep Frazzled?

or.... Tbone? Is that you?

The Eye of the Great Wiener is always watching.

Actually Catholicsm has likened the Spirit to spohia, wisdom, which is something god loves. In addition it has ascention of Jesus and Mary and a couple of Old testament dudes into heaven.

The Holy Spirit is more comparable to Pleroma than Sophia and even that is a crappy comparison because Pleroma has a completely different roll and purpose (the only similarity is being spirity willness stuff, but Pleroma more likely spawned from Hellenized Zorastrianism, since the Holy Spirit wasn't a defined concept till after Gnosticism had started dying out).

Sophia in Gnosticism is more than just wisdom. It's a deity like force itself that spawned the Demiurge... which is somehow the creator of everything, and somehow different from Monad (and other Archons)... and somehow Sophia is also one of the lowest Aeons alongside the Aeon that would be Christ...

Gnosticism is a gak storm of confusion for anyone who hasn't caught on btw. Honestly, I can't even tell if Gnosticism is polytheistic or monotheistic. I don't think they ever made up their minds XD They seem to have a little bit of the Brahman syndrome going on maybe. EDIT: Actually, Gnosticism and its baffling series of beliefs are either a) the product of being a mystery religion and trying to be mysterious or b/ the product of having no centralized religious authority XD Probably a mix of both.

Phototoxin wrote:

St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Augustine

Since when were these doctors jesus himself? They had their biases which were expressed in their writings but none of it is doctrine.

I never said it was Jesus, you asked where I got it from. As to it not being doctrine: is there an emorkicon for laughing in someone face?
Do you even know what a doctor of the church is?

I think he meant dogma.

Doesn't really matter what he meant, what he said was foolish, what he meant was to discredit my source as relevant to Christianity. In that he fails utterly regardless of what he meant.

Why a majority of times I do not get involve in religous arguements. No one is right

 Hordini wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Nothing in the ministry of Jesus looses any value or meaning if he was in fact married.

This guy knows what's up.

I don't see what the big deal is really. I mean, yes, it's very interesting to talk about about, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really change anything from a theological standpoint.

Do you guys really believe that?

It makes all the difference in the world, actually. If Jesus was truly married, his ministry would mean nothing, and I would believe him to be no more than a liar and a hypocrite.

I'll attack this from a few angles.

My first argument:
According to Scripture, all men are sinful. Jesus was perfect, and had a sinless life, thus making the perfect sacrifice for our sins. If he had sinned but once, his death would be meaningless. Now, when a man marries a woman, there flesh becomes one, according to the scriptures, so Jesus would become one with an imperfect human, making himself an imperfect sacrifice... making his substitutionary death meaningless.

Another argument:
As I briefly said earlier in this thread, the Church was seen as the metaphorical bride of Christ. That is, the Church was his life. He lead it, he loved it, he served it. If he had a human wife, she would demand the same kind of attention, and it would draw away from his ministry, his purpose here on earth. Jesus being perfect would not give all his time to one women when he could be ministering to the many who did not know God.

Another:
It was considered a utterly crime, an abomination, when angels and men had sex or whatever they did to make the nephilim... I would imagine it to be even moreso of an abomination if Jesus, God and man, was tied to a human woman.

Just my thoughts.I know that these arguments aren't all completely solid.

 The Bringer wrote:

 Hordini wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Nothing in the ministry of Jesus looses any value or meaning if he was in fact married.

This guy knows what's up.

I don't see what the big deal is really. I mean, yes, it's very interesting to talk about about, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really change anything from a theological standpoint.

Do you guys really believe that?

It makes all the difference in the world, actually. If Jesus was truly married, his ministry would mean nothing, and I would believe him to be no more than a liar and a hypocrite.

horsegak, or for our British cousins- bullocks!

And I really don't see why this should be considered newsworthy. We don't publish news articles when a bunch of comic book fans decide that Superman #9290430234 (published in 1964) got his costume color wrong and should be considered non-canon, so why should we act like it's a newsworthy event when some Bible fans have a dispute over canon policy in their fictional universe?

Well, there is an entire period during the Silver Age of DC where the writer(s) of Superman comics claim that all the "what if"-style stories actually are canon, despite what DC's overall stance has been. This creates a few problems, particularly that it means Lois Lane has died more times than Resurrection Man. And also, that Superman married a mermaid.

There's more evidence for Jesus' existance than for Julius Caesar.

This is one of the dumbest things I've read in my lifetime. There is more evidence for Caesar's existance than there is for my own, and I live in a country that exalts government bureacrats. The historical Jesus (that is, some guy named Jesus circa 1-33 AD) I believe has some sort of records. However, everything claiming he could fly and shoot lazers from his eyes appear to be crap that was just added about 300 years later, and plagiarized from the myth of Horus.

Frazzled wrote:The Eye of the Great Wiener is always watching.

I... I don't think that sounded like what you intended it to.

Scott wrote:
...

He could've baked the most delicious cake in the world.

He could've scored more goals than Wayne Gretzky.

...

It's not much of a stretch to think He could've scored a wife.

/sorry
//obscure?

He turned water into wine
And if he wanted to
He could have turned wheat into marijuana
Or sugar into cocaine
Or vitamin pills into amphetamines



Jesus is way cool

 LordofHats wrote:

You are quite right in that Gnosticism is different from Christianity.
However, what says that everything that was excluded in Nice(sp?) was Gnostic?

To me, it seems more like a lot of the things that was excluded from the Bible, may just have been called "Gnostic" because those who gathered simply disliked the view on how those other gospels and scriptures described Jesus, and/or what Jesus did.
I can, at best, consider that they saw those texts commonly studied by gnostics, and thus thought that they were false by association.

By the way, i do not know about gnostics at that time, but it do seem that gnostics today makes a difference between the Demiurge and Yaweh(the Christian God).
Also, the gnostic's idea is to gather Knowledge ... I assume the christians at that time did not know that.

 The Bringer wrote:

 Hordini wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Nothing in the ministry of Jesus looses any value or meaning if he was in fact married.

This guy knows what's up.

I don't see what the big deal is really. I mean, yes, it's very interesting to talk about about, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really change anything from a theological standpoint.

Do you guys really believe that?

It makes all the difference in the world, actually. If Jesus was truly married, his ministry would mean nothing, and I would believe him to be no more than a liar and a hypocrite.

The equivalent argument to this is that Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha trod on a grasshopper once by mistake or had some lamb and therefore his entire ministry and practice is lies and deceit.

 The Bringer wrote:
Do you guys really believe that?

It makes all the difference in the world, actually. If Jesus was truly married, his ministry would mean nothing, and I would believe him to be no more than a liar and a hypocrite.

I'll attack this from a few angles.

My first argument:
According to Scripture, all men are sinful. Jesus was perfect, and had a sinless life, thus making the perfect sacrifice for our sins. If he had sinned but once, his death would be meaningless. Now, when a man marries a woman, there flesh becomes one, according to the scriptures, so Jesus would become one with an imperfect human, making himself an imperfect sacrifice... making his substitutionary death meaningless.

Another argument:
As I briefly said earlier in this thread, the Church was seen as the metaphorical bride of Christ. That is, the Church was his life. He lead it, he loved it, he served it. If he had a human wife, she would demand the same kind of attention, and it would draw away from his ministry, his purpose here on earth. Jesus being perfect would not give all his time to one women when he could be ministering to the many who did not know God.

Another:
It was considered a utterly crime, an abomination, when angels and men had sex or whatever they did to make the nephilim... I would imagine it to be even moreso of an abomination if Jesus, God and man, was tied to a human woman.

Just my thoughts.I know that these arguments aren't all completely solid.

Your arguments are metaphysical ones, and I'm not a theolgoian. But they do nothing to suggest that his teachings would in any way be incorrect. They certainly don't paint him as a hypocrite.

And his death wasn't meaningful because he was without sin. He's divine, and as sin is acting against the will of the divine, he can't possibly be sinful. His death is meaningful because he actually died (and in some traditions spent three days in hell).

It's also a potent miracle. Nothing shows divinty quite like rising from the dead, only to later ascend to heaven on your own power.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 The Bringer wrote:

 Hordini wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Nothing in the ministry of Jesus looses any value or meaning if he was in fact married.

This guy knows what's up.

I don't see what the big deal is really. I mean, yes, it's very interesting to talk about about, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really change anything from a theological standpoint.

Do you guys really believe that?

It makes all the difference in the world, actually. If Jesus was truly married, his ministry would mean nothing, and I would believe him to be no more than a liar and a hypocrite.

The equivalent argument to this is that Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha trod on a grasshopper once by mistake or had some lamb and therefore his entire ministry and practice is lies and deceit.

Not much of a Buddhist scholar are you?

Not seeing how being married violates a god damn thing he said.

It does explain that one line in Timothy, pondered over for years: " And Jesus dideth take a long walk to Galilee for was henpecketh, and his ears doth hurt."

 DutchKillsRambo wrote:

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:

 The Bringer wrote:

 Hordini wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
Nothing in the ministry of Jesus looses any value or meaning if he was in fact married.

This guy knows what's up.

I don't see what the big deal is really. I mean, yes, it's very interesting to talk about about, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really change anything from a theological standpoint.

Do you guys really believe that?

It makes all the difference in the world, actually. If Jesus was truly married, his ministry would mean nothing, and I would believe him to be no more than a liar and a hypocrite.

The equivalent argument to this is that Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha trod on a grasshopper once by mistake or had some lamb and therefore his entire ministry and practice is lies and deceit.

Not much of a Buddhist scholar are you?

I know a reasonable amount for a non-believer, the statement is meant to be as ludicrous as the argument above it.

It does explain that one line in Timothy, pondered over for years: " And Jesus dideth take a long walk to Galilee for was henpecketh, and his ears doth hurt."

Wait.....he took along a Kender wife?

To me, it seems more like a lot of the things that was excluded from the Bible, may just have been called "Gnostic" because those who gathered simply disliked the view on how those other gospels and scriptures described Jesus, and/or what Jesus did.

Some books were certainly excluded for such a reason but it isn't like this was a single decision by a small group of people at one point of time. The Bible wasn't finalized until eight or nine centuries after the life the Jesus. There were dozens of councils with thousands of church leaders involved. Because of Gnosticism geographic proximity and usage of Jesus, Christians at the time did believe it to have spawned directly off of their faith and there are several papers that were written against it.

I can, at best, consider that they saw those texts commonly studied by gnostics, and thus thought that they were false by association.

Probably, but Gnosticism being a separate religious doctrine, I fail to see how that's much of a problem for Christians.

By the way, i do not know about gnostics at that time, but it do seem that gnostics today makes a difference between the Demiurge and Yaweh(the Christian God).

The Demiurge is the OT god, but he's just a lower emanation of the ultimate being who is either dead or fractured? I'm not really sure. Reading Gnostic stuff gives me headaches. Its hard to parallel any of Gnosticisms god figures to Christianity's god, but the Demiurge is in their system the god of the Old Testament, while the New Testament excludes this god in favor of Manod and Jesus. But I don't think the Gnostics ever did much with the Old Testament.

I don't know what modern gnostics might think. There's so few of them that their modern beliefs get ignored by scholars since the major focus is on the parallel development alongside Christianity and shared influences with one another during the 2nd century especially.

Also, the gnostic's idea is to gather Knowledge ... I assume the christians at that time did not know that.

Well Christians made numerous false assumptions about the Gnostics in their own time (people today have numerous false assumptions about Gnosticism). The point of Gnosticism is to free the spirit from the slavery it exists in under the Demiurge and enter a higher plain of existence through the paths shown by the Aeons. Jesus Christ was incorporated by Gnostics as a lower Aeon (though they're ideas of his works are much more focused on spiritual mysticism. Anyone familiar with Hinduism is actually gonna see a lot of similarity to Gnosticism. In Gnosticism, a soul is saved by freeing itself through Gnosis which is a specific kind of knowledge concerning the spirit.