{"id":10010,"date":"2019-11-16T19:42:40","date_gmt":"2019-11-17T00:42:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kyroot.com\/?page_id=10010"},"modified":"2020-01-18T08:36:26","modified_gmt":"2020-01-18T13:36:26","slug":"2501-2550","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.kyroot.com\/?page_id=10010","title":{"rendered":"2251-2300"},"content":{"rendered":"

(2551) Killing the wrong Jesus<\/strong><\/p>\n

Assuming Jesus was a real person, there is an alternate scenario that could have launched the Christian faith. This theory supposes that Jesus was mistaken for another Jesus (Jesus Barabbas), who was wanted for murder and sedition according to gospel tradition. Thus, the Romans crucified that wrong man. The followers of Jesus Barabbas stole Jesus\u2019 body from the tomb to cover up the confusion, and the empty tomb was misinterpreted as a resurrection. Then, the author of the Gospel of Mark re-arranged the facts to place the blame on the Jews for choosing the criminal Barabbas over Jesus. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/new.exchristian.net\/2019\/11\/troubled-by-christianity-blame-paul.html#more<\/a><\/p>\n

The earliest version of the earliest Gospel (Mark) ends with three women being upset by finding Jesus\u2019 tomb empty three days after his death. (Later versions add material about his resurrection also contained in the later Gospels.) We have two choices here. We can believe that a corpse came back to life after three days and either transported itself back to Galilee (Mark and Matthew) or stayed around the Jerusalem area and ate a meal with Way Followers and walked through the city and out to Bethany with them without causing a major incident for the Romans who had just crucified him (Luke).<\/p>\n

Or we can believe something less supernatural and mythological, something that doesn\u2019t sound like the product of storytelling and legend-making around countless campfires during the decades before these accounts were written. Something like this: Mathew tells us of a man named Jesus Barabbas (some translations conveniently omit \u201cJesus\u201d in the man\u2019s name) who according to Mark was a murderous insurrectionist against Roman rule. The Romans wanted badly to capture him. On the night of Jesus of Nazareth\u2019s arrest, they were informed by a \u201cJudas\u201d or someone else that Jesus was with his followers in the Garden of Gethsamane. They found a \u201cJesus\u201d (the wrong one) there and arrested him. They proceeded to torture him ceaselessly trying to learn more about Jesus Barabbas\u2019 followers and weapons caches of which Jesus of Nazareth could tell them nothing. Then they crucified him and he dies very quickly (for a crucifixion victim) as a result of the relentless torture. Someone sympathetic to the Way Followers donates a tomb and the corpse is placed within. The real Jesus Barabbas knows that if the mistaken identity gaffe is investigated he will once again be a wanted man. So his followers break into the tomb, steal the corpse (so the Romans can\u2019t determine they got the wrong man) and their leader can escape later pursuit and punishment.<\/p>\n

But the missing corpse is the foundation for the Hellenized Jews\u2019 legend-making and deification of Jesus that Paul later developed into a full-blown theology. Like Churchill said, \u201cHistory is written by the victors.\u201d History, or in this case, the mythology. If we were ever to find writings from the Jerusalem Way Followers we might have a very different picture of the origins of Christianity.<\/p>\n

The validity of this theory is not what is important. What is important is that it is infinitely more plausible than a dead man coming back to life and then rocketing himself into outer <\/a>space.<\/p>\n

(2252) The Bible\u2019s chronology criterion<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Bible has been taken as God\u2019s word by Christians based on a presumption that is not\u00a0tied\u00a0to any fact or event that would be readily acknowledged by a disinterested party.\u00a0 For instance, why was what Paul wrote more authoritative than what other Christian writers have written over the past twenty centuries? What if Paul\u2019s epiphany had happened a few centuries later? The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/dy84jp\/there_is_no_clear_criteria_for_what_texts_qualify\/<\/a><\/p>\n

The Bible has always fascinated me as a cultural artifact, because the idea is that the texts within it are somehow\u00a0special. These aren’t just regular texts. These texts are a cut above. They are “sacred”, or “inspired”, or “authoritative”, or even “infallible”. For many believers, these texts have not been compiled by accident. These are precisely the texts that God wants to be included in that special compilation called “The Bible”.<\/p>\n

Believers subsequently take a magnifying glass to each and every sentence and word within this compilation, searching for the true meaning and trying to squeeze out as much doctrine as possible. Many also believe in\u00a0sola scriptura, or the idea that this compilation of texts is the sole authority for theological matters.<\/p>\n

I think if you really inspect this idea, it starts to fall apart. What is the criteria for what makes the cut of the Bible? It’s about as clear as mud. The letters of Paul are a perfect example. Paul’s teachings constitute a huge amount of what makes up Christianity, even to the point where some people jokingly refer to Christianity as “Paulianity”. But who was Paul? Was he God? Certainly not. Was he a close student of Jesus? No, in fact there’s no reason to think he even met and conversed with Jesus for any significant length of time.<\/p>\n

So why are Paul’s teachings considered authoritative? Well, the usual logic is that they’re in the Bible, so they must be authoritative. But why do they make the cut of the Bible in the first place? What clear criteria do they meet? There is none, or at least none that wouldn’t also apply to all sorts of later theologians. Paul’s letters (and therefore teachings) seem to have made the Bible purely because of\u00a0chronological proximity.<\/p>\n

Consider this as a thought experiment: Suppose that instead of living in the first century, Paul lived in the\u00a0eleventh\u00a0century. And suppose everything else about him was the same – he was a persecutor of Christians until he had a conversion experience, he became a spreader of the gospel, he advised local churches through letters, he said women shouldn’t speak in church, and so on. Would his writings and teachings have made the Bible then? No. He would just be another Church father or something like that. You would have Augustine, Origen, Justin Martyr, and so on, and Paul. Just another theologian, but not a guy whose writings made that authoritative book called “The Bible”.<\/p>\n

Paul’s writings are by no means the only example of the ambiguous way that sacred texts are codified. There is of course the apocrypha, and another example is the book of Ecclesiastes, which has had controversy over whether it should be included in the Bible because of its bleak tone.<\/p>\n

Christians might claim that Paul\u2019s writings are canonical because he (claimed he) had a direct visitation from the risen Jesus. But at the same time they will dismiss any other person who has made the exact same claim.\u00a0 Thus, it appears that the only reason Paul\u2019s letters are in the Bible is because he was the first one. Numbers 2, 3, and so forth need not apply. Chronology seems to be the only criterion. All of the thoughtful writings produced ever since are strictly the opinions of the authors themselves.<\/p>\n

This idea is supported by the following thought experiment. Suppose that today another man claims that he had a vision of Jesus and produced letters to that effect. Would these letters be considered as being equivalent to Paul\u2019s. \u00a0No, and why not? Because they weren\u2019t written in an arbitrarily-determined critical time period. Which is to concede (in a backhanded way) that God is incapable or unwilling to add to his inspired message to <\/a>mankind.<\/p>\n

(2253) Bible authors flummoxed by science<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is an historical mystery why Christianity has survived into the 21st<\/sup> Century given that scientific discoveries have continued to erode the credibility of the biblical authors. Christians must increasingly overlook the embarrassment of scriptural errors that have been illuminated by our ever\u00a0sharpening view of reality. The following was taken from:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.reddit.com\/r\/DebateReligion\/comments\/dzmz1j\/the_findings_of_modern_science_render_many\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Let us count the ways.<\/p>\n