h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The quotes you attribute to Matthew, Hoovaloo, are not from Christ but from a book of the Bible. That's quite a different kettle of fish

Call me incredibly dense if you must... but TheMelvin wrote:
"I don't believe you will find anything in the word of christ that justifies the use of violence"

So, Zagreb - I'm on the edge of my seat. I'm desperate to know... if one wants to know what the word of Christ is, and the Bible is not a reliable source:

(a) why are they called Gospels?
(b) why does every Christian minister in the world keep banging on about them as if they bear some relation to some stuff that Christ actually might have said once and
(c) if you can't get the word of Christ from the GOSPELS in the BIBLE, where on earth CAN you get it from?

Those passages were, in every case, alledgedly verbatim reports of things Jesus actually SAID. Some of them appear in more than one of the Gospels - so there's possibly even (incredibly rare for the Bible this) - *objective* corroborating evidence that the guy did actually say these things. I did not attribute those quotes to Matthew. Matthew attributed those quotes to Jesus in the Gospel. People might disagree on the status of Jesus as messiah, or prophet, or nutter. But if you're going to say that I can't refer to the Bible to quote what Jesus taught, we're going to have a hard time debating anything at all on this subject.

H.

Probably my brain washing as a child as I came from quite a religious background, being part of an evangelical church the scars it leafs can be quite daunting. So believing in a none Christian God helps me live with the scars, and gives me someone to talk to when I'm alone. Maybe once the psychiatrist is finished with me I'll believe in myself more and not need anything to talk to when I'm alone. Plus when you talk to God nothing comes back on you. Alright I'm probably talking to myself, But what the hell.

Message 63 is my answer to Hoovoolo. From Semaj.Maud'dib Shadow of the mouse of the second moon.

Gotcha Semaj, no prob. Threads have a way of running away like that. Thanks for the response.

H.

Hoovooloo

If we are reading from the same King James version:

Matthew, Ch 18, v8: "Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire.!

This is not suggesting you bring harm to any one but yourself.

Matthew again, 10:21 "And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents, and cause them to be put to death."

This is not Christ saying to put brother child parent to death but that people will be put to death for believing in his word.

Matthew again, 10:34 "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."

Where is this saying anything about violence?

Matthew 15:4 "For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death."

This is a good example of the teachings of christ. This he is speaking to the Pharisees and is the Pharisees tradition not the word of Christ. Christ is not suggesting anyone one should be put to death.

Christ challenges the Pharisees and there interpretation of the word of God the father. Christ challenges the Pharisees and the use of justified violence in the name of the father.

" Except the excuse given for a lot of the violence - is god. Is that perhaps the real reason people worship a god? To justify their violence or indifference to others?"

This is just what Christ refutes in his teachings. Christ is not god. Christ is the conduit to salvation.

I don't mean to sound like some bible thumper here. I am not particularly very pious.

"If we are reading from the same King James version:"

I think we are

""...if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off"

This is not suggesting you bring harm to any one but yourself."

That's a lovely idea... (well, actually, it's not, it's suggesting self-harm is a good idea, but we'll skip lightly over that...) BUT what is a pious Christian to do if he sees his neighbour NOT cutting off his hand, or foot? It doesn't take much of a leap of logic to go from cutting off your own hand for your own good, to cutting off your neighbour's hand for *his* own good. Easily justified...

""And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death"

This is not Christ saying to put brother child parent to death but that people will be put to death for believing in his word."

OK, I accept that one. One all?

"Matthew again, 10:34 "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword."

Where is this saying anything about violence?"

Erm... what are swords for? Legalistically, I would characterise this as language suggestive of incitement.

"Matthew 15:4 "For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death."

...Christ is not suggesting anyone one should be put to death."

I agree... in context, this is Christ defending himself against accusations of not following tradition. The Pharisees criticise his disciples for not washing before eating. Jesus retorts that the Pharisees don't kill unruly children, and calls them hypocrites for it. Now, that's a good way of making a point - but you COULD use it to justify violence. I'm not suggesting that that justification would be valid, but that wasn't the question.

" Except the excuse given for a lot of the violence - is god. Is that perhaps the real reason people worship a god? To justify their violence or indifference to others?"

"This is just what Christ refutes in his teachings. Christ is not god. "

Hmm. Then what of:

John, Ch1, v1? "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Jn.1:14 "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."

Jn.10:30-31 "I and my Father are one. Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him."

Jn.10:38-39 "The Father is in me, and I in him. Therefore they sought again to take him."

Col.2:8-9 "Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily."

All of which seems to imply that Christ *is* God. But wait!

Jn.8:40 "But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God."

1 Tim.2:5 "For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus."

Which would seem to back up your assertion that Christ is NOT God. Tricky thing, believing the Bible to be the divinely inspired Word of an infallible omniscient creator, isn't it?

"I don't mean to sound like some bible thumper here. I am not particularly very pious."

Cool! Neither am I.

H.

Hoovooloo

Remember also that much is also lost in translation from the Aramaic. For example which of coarse in my unpiousness I can not locate the exact verse but it has to do loosely quoted: "To believe in him(Christ) you must hate your mother and your father" this is a poor translation from the Aramaic. The truer translation should read to believe you must set aside your mother and your father. This no doubt leads to most of the confusion in the world. Poor understanding thru translation.

Peace

Hoovooloo

I think what Zagreb meant is what I responded. That the text you quoted is not what Christ says but what the old testament says. And as I suggested it is Christ that refutes alot of what and how the old testament is interpreted by the Pharisee.

Excellent, hopefully I will become a prominent figure in the debating circle; I love debates purely because it emphasizes the fact that I am always right! Anyway for my inarticulate ramblings on this topic I will state the case that God is fact, to believers, and fiction to sceptics, understandably there are valid arguments for both, and by the way, hell does not exist, it is pure fiction, I have read the bible and there is no statement saying that you will be condemned to hell if you have been naughty, and yes, you will still get your Christmas peasants if you have murdered (everyone has murdered, even if it was an ant in childhood) anyway, I digress, God, is not a fact, if you take fact to mean an idea, or object which can be currently scientifically proven, but the existence of Jesus is a fact, as the Romans inscribed his name, and death date on his tomb stone, this artefact has been discovered, and thus, I will not begin a long, draw out struggle of weather or not God is a matter of fact or fiction, unless, or course, people take an interest in this entry, and as I am always right, wish for my honourable intervention in this matter.

so was jesus gods son then ?

Um... TheMelvin:

You said:"the text you quoted is not what Christ says but what the old testament says"

I said, in fact I quoted: "Matthew 15:4 "For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death."

Last time I checked, the Gospel according to Matthew was in the New Testament, and verse 4 of chapter 15 purports to be a verbatim report of something Jesus said to the Pharisees. We can debate what he meant if you like, but this was a quote from the NEW Testament.

As for things being lost in the translation, are you serious? Are you actually saying that bits of the Bible shouldn't be taken seriously or read literally because the divinely inspired infallible Word of God has been imperfectly recorded?

Because once you start to pick and choose which bits of the Bible that you, an imperfect human, deem to be meaningful and acceptable, and which bits you are happy to write off as not meaning what they say because of translation errors, aren't you just saying that the Holy Bible is just like every other extremely old and unreliable patchwork of semi-historical, semi-fictional documents of debatable authenticity? Either it's the word of God himself, and therefore it's ALL true, even the bits that contradict the other bits, OR it's ALL up for grabs and you can take anything you like the sound of and just ignore the inconvenient bits and say they were badly translated. Me, I'm for ignoring "that shalt not covet thy neighbour's ox", because my neighbour's got a really *cool* ox, you know?

H.

I am surprised and confused by Christians pointing to the King James Bible of proof of anything. Apart from, as mentioned above, translation issues (doesn't the Aramaic for virgin also mean young woman?), many parts of the book have been written, rewritten, deleted and altered in order to justify vested interests, religious or otherwise. For instance, there are many contradictions between the old and new testaments, not least the idea that Jesus is God. Didn't the Jews of old (and present, I guess) believe that the Messiah is just a man? Isn't this what's stated in the Old Testament? Forgive me for not being able to provide a reference. I saw a programme on the Dead Sea Scrolls once, and a Bible scholar, talking generally, said the easiest way to tell what bits of the New Testament are made up is to see what prophesies of the Old Testament are 'met' in the New Testament. These are all bogus.

My QPR programmes say that Rangers are the best team in the second division and bound to go up. And all my QPR-supporting friends agree. So does that make it fact?

And regardless of what it says in the Bible, surely an important aspect of religion is the impact it has on the actions of the followers of that religion (isn't that the point?)? Well, looking at the state of humanity today, and the last 2000 years, religious types haven't exactly made a good job of it, have they? Of course, I expect Christians to point to the Devil or the original sin or whatever to explain away the obvious, but considering most of the brutual, barbaric acts in the last two millenia have been done specifically in God's name, by explicitly religious people. So what's wrong? Why all the prejudice?

Hoovooloo

"Matthew 15:4 "For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death."

Yes this is a statement from the New Testament.

And Yes that is what I am saying. They did a shoddy job translating from the original Aramaic. Go figure. ;&gt

TheMelvin:

"And Yes that is what I am saying. They did a shoddy job translating from the original Aramaic. Go figure."

What's amazing is *not* that the translation job is shoddy - that's obvious. What's amazing is that, knowing that, and knowing the myriad contradictions, failed prophecies, barbaric laws, absurdities, historical inaccuracies, intolerance, injustice and just general ghastliness of it all, that anyone chooses to base a large part of their inner life and behaviour on its contents. Go figure THAT.

H.

Hoovaloo,

The Bible is not the "word of Christ" it is a collection of Christian writings that was compiled at the council of Nicea in the 4th century under the orders of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Many of the writings were left out, as the Roman bishops thought them "unsuitable". It was only turned into the "word of God" by the established Church. It is infamously contradictory, that's why the Roman Catholic clergy got nervous when the Protestants insisted on translating it into non-Latin languages. They thought the ignorant rabble would pick it to pieces. They needent have bothered.

Hoovooloo

The crux to it is that the faithful are very much unaware. It is only relatively recent that 1. Services are not done in latin 2. That people on a whole even know how to read.

What Christ had to say is not what the problem is but the people that get in the way of interpreting his word.

Zoroaster kept it simple. Be kind to your neighbor.

Runner

This statement: "And regardless of what it says in the Bible, surely an important aspect of religion is the impact it has on the actions of the followers of that religion (isn't that the point?)? Well, looking at the state of humanity today, and the last 2000 years, religious types haven't exactly made a good job of it, have they? Of course, I expect Christians to point to the Devil or the original sin or whatever to explain away the obvious, but considering most of the brutual, barbaric acts in the last two millenia have been done specifically in God's name, by explicitly religious people. So what's wrong? Why all the prejudice?"

Goes back to what I originally said concerning the state of affairs in the world today when I said "The violence in the world is not from god but from man. There are religious leaders around the world teaching hatred and violence in the name of god. The justification for teaching this to childern is purely baseless. The terrorism in the world is born from these teachings" Until the community that this hatred is being taught faces up to the problem within their clergy and the evil that they are teaching things will not get any better but will spiral even worse.

I had this reply in another forum elsewhere about religion. Seems to fit here.

The guy was trying to tell me that the books that didn't make the final cut for the bible at the Council of Nicea were merely paint scratches and meant nothing.


"And I would offer this one last thing. If all you've read about Jesus begins and ends at the bible, you have a biased view. You read what revision after revision has filtered. You read a watered down version of Jesus. I say this without fear because the Diaspora-later to become Christians were not the only ones to have ideas about what Jesus said(did not say) and what is written about him. The earliest dissenters from the established Christian faith as we know it, were the Gnostics. In fact, one of their bishops, Valentinius(I believe that is his name, I'll check should anyone be curious) was martyred/murdered because of his beliefs about Jesus.

"Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you"
--the Gospel of Thomas.

It was the belief that the Kingdom of God was within each and every one of us, that lead to his death. And this is only one of many things that Jesus has in the Apocrypha and Nag Hammadi codices that the established church of Christianity killed to surpress.

"The disciples said to Jesus, "We know that you are going to leave us. Who will be our leader?"

Jesus said to them, "No matter where you are you are to go to James the Just, for whose sake heaven and earth came into being."
--Gospel of Thomas"

The other guy is telling me that Jesus was not a revolutionary for his time.

"You've said that Jesus came to tell the Jews they were doing everything wrong. The Jews followed their laws, they way the always had. Prophecy spoke of Jesus(or someone else, depending on your inclination) coming to be the King of the Jews. Prophecy never said he would come and force them to change traditions they had maintained over centuries.

An example?
Ok. How about sacrifice?

Abolished because of Jesus.

Don't dismiss this out of hand. Sacrifice was man's tithe to god in atonement for his sins. Abraham was ready at one point to offer his own son in tithe to God. Sacrifice is serious business. And now, on the word of Jesus, the only way to get atonement from god is through Jesus. This is a 180 turn ladies and gentlemen and I'm telling you, the people couldn't have viewed as anything other than revolutionary.

Jesus's ideas were revolutionary. Believe it. It wasn't just an elite few that clamored for his death."

And now to the violence part that some of you were talking about. Taken from the Apocrypha of the bible.....


"Jesus said, "I have cast fire upon the world, and look, I'm guarding it until it blazes"

"Jesus said, "Perhaps people think that I have come to cast peace upon the world. They do not know that I have come to cast conflicts upon the earth: fire, sword, war.

For there will be five in a house: there'll be three against two and two against three, father against son and son against father, and they will stand alone."

--Gospel of Thomas"

There is more in this vein, but it serves to point out that ther is moe to this Jesus guy than people think. Particularly if they get all their info from just one book.

Also should anyone be curious I had an interesting conversation with della about this stuff, check out the conversation here...... http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/classic/F71014?thread=150374&skip=0&show=20