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

Well,one requires the suspension of the laws of nature which have been around for about 4500000000 years and the other one has evidence like a grave dating from about 100AD, for someone whose name sounds like a variant of Jesus (Issa), whose basic philosophy sounds (to me anyway) very like Buddhism. Issa (according to about 10 websites anyway. And a BBC programme which made me look in the first place. Possibly a very weak point, I know) has quite a few similarities to Jesus; name, time, depicted as having holes in his feet. There was also a document, which I've forgotten the link to (honest!), which is about Issa meeting a local king in present day northern India/Pakistan, in which Issa is against formulaic religion and the power of the local priests. Sounds just like you know who...

Also, I like the theory, because it indicates the continuity of the middle east with the rest of Asia. The Parthian Empire was closer to Palestine than Rome was, and traders from the east would have passed through there on the spice road. I think it's Western chauvinism to discount the oriental influences on Christianity (and by extension, ourselves). And, lastly, the three wise men from the east sound exactly like lamas looking for a bhudda.

Thanks for the info, Andrew, about the timing of the New testament. I knew it was more recent after the events than was sometimes said, so i am glad of the clarification...

I have read an English translation of the Arabic version of Jesus is 'Isa'. , but...

pedro7:

I'm not saying they're equaly improbable--just that I think that both fall below the threshhold of probability at which a theory needs to be taken very seriously. For now, I'd list your theory somewhere along with Cheng Ho and Prince Maddog having sailed to America--not impossible but in need of more evidence before I'd mention them in the history books as possibilities.

Also--which is more probable--the compound suggestions that JofN existed and had a life that in some parts matches Biblical accounts very well (three wise men) and in other parts completely differently and that he happens to have lived quite an unusual life as well, surviving crucifixion to be an old man, etc OR the suggestion that the JofN story, whether he lived or not, traveled both to Rome via Paul the Apostle/Heretic and to the East where such a person was included in the stories and myths of the people?

Post 21243: (Andrew S)

You keep referring to evidence and have yet to provide some. Let the evidence be brought into view, if it exists!

Matthew 24:36 - "No one knows, however, when that day and hour will come—neither the angels in heaven nor the Son; the Father alone knows." (Good News Translation)
Surely if Jesus was God, he would have known everything? (Even if he just didn't know while he were human, the question would remain for the Trinity doctrine, why did the Holy Spirit not know?)

John 5:19 - "Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing" (New Revised Standard)
If Jesus is God, surely he can do what he wants, without asking someone elses permission?

John 5:26 - "The Father has life in himself, and he has granted his Son to have life in himself." (New Living Translation)
Wouldn't Jesus have already had life in himself, without needing anyone to give it to him, if he were God?

John 8:28 - "So Jesus said, "So Jesus said, "When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak thus as the Father taught me." (Revised Standard Version)
Jesus here confirms that he didn't know everything of his own accord, but his father taught him.

John 10:36 - "Do you say of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world: Thou blasphemest; because I said: I am the Son of God?" (Douay-Rheims Bible)
Now Jesus confirms to people, not that he claims to be God, but that he claims to be the Son of God. This is what he wanted people to believe - this is what his followers still believe. And he pointed out that there were no grounds for accusing him of blasphemy - though he was aware that under the Mosaic Law, it /would/ have been blasphemy to actually claim to be God.

So what did the early disciples, who knew Jesus, believe?
Acts 13:33 - "in that God raised Jesus. This is what the second psalm is talking about when it says concerning Jesus, 'You are my Son. Today I have become your Father.'"
They believed that the relationship between God and Jesus was Father-Son, not an equality relationship.

I have used different translations in order that you may not accuse me of merely using one that suits my beliefs, though I can simplify it next time if you prefer. Anyway, there's some evidence to start with, to discuss with some basis the matter of whether the Bible actually supports a trinity doctrine, or the idea of Jesus being God.

Post 21206:

Notably, in view of the evidence just presented, one of the altered texts referred to was in 1 John chapter 5, changing verse 7 to read, in the New King James Version, "For there are three that bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one." The footnote admits 'Only four or five very late manuscripts contain these words in Greek', and the editation is not included in most translations.
http://bible1.crosswalk.com/OnlineStudyBible/bible.cgi?word=1+John+5%3A6+-+8&section=0&version=nkj&new=1&oq=&NavBook=1jo&NavGo=5&NavCurrentChapter=5
The point is, why was the editation felt necessary, if those in charge at the time felt, as you suggest, that there was overwhelming evidence for the trinity doctrine already? Or is it more likely that someone realised that the doctrine didn't have any scriptural evidence to stand on, and decided to fabricate some?

Also, what do you make of John 1:18, which boldly states, "No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him." (New King James Version) All this time after Jesus has walked around on the Earth for decades, and thousands of people have seen him - John declares that although they've all seen Jesus, no-one has seen God. (Indeed, this is in harmony with Exodus 33:20, where God says, "You are not able to see my face, because no man may see me and yet live.")

Hi RDO

Samhain is quite an ancinet festival that was indeed hijacked by the early Christian Church in Ireland and Rome.

A full and scholarly exposition on this can be found in the seminal text on the cycle of holidays in the west - The Stations of the Sun, byt Professor Ron Hutton.

The claim that it is the celtic new year has some evidence in Ireland, but not in Scotland or Wales. Its connection with the dead is not as sinister as the Christian festival of All Saints. It may have been believed that it was a time when the veil between this world and the otherworld thinned and it was possible to communicate with the ancestors.

However, that was then and this is now. Amongst many neo-pagans it is seen as the first of the four fire festivals, the cross-quarter days. It is now closely associated with the dead and the ancestors.

As Jez has said it is not commonly revered amongst the Northern Traditions, though it is held amongst many of my fellow druids.

As for the connection with the dead and the ancestors well that is a connection you can make at any time with the proper training and preparation. But that is another story...

Blessings,
Matholwch /|\.

Thanks for the information, Math.

marking

I'm wondering if it might be worth going to that optional Halloween lecture on witchcraft after all.

My professor's famous, cool .

Oh my god this thread is still going!

Pun intended!

Bouncy Historian...

>>I'm wondering if it might be worth going to that optional Halloween lecture on witchcraft after all.

>>My professor's famous, cool .

Your professor is Ron Hutton? You lucky b*stard.

Get along to that lecture and TAKE NOTES and then do us an article LOL

Jez - who has only met Prof. Ron once, and knows he wouldn't remember

Hello Insight

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Firstly, I appreciate your use of several bibles, and I was not thinking of criticising your choice; but I might do so if you wheel out the NWT. I will stick with the RSV, commonly used by Anglicans and English speaking Catholics.

Firstly, to find a point that unites us, I think we both agree that Jesus is more than man, and that he pre-exists, from such texts as John 1:1 ('In the beginning was the Word... all things were made through him' - note that 'in the beginning' also kicks off the book of Genesis), John 17:4 ('glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory I had with thee before the world was made'), Philippians 2:5-11 ('[he] emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men'), Colossians 1:15-17 ('in him all things were created... he is before all things, and in him all things hold together' - he conserves everything in being), and several other places. I expect that you agree with all this, if I read you aright.

It helps here if you believe, as the Jews did (having learned their lesson from their Old Testament history) that God is the omnipotent being who has made the world out of nothing, and conserves it in being: conservation requires omnipotence too. But also in John 1:1 the text actually says it explicitly, 'the Word was with God, and the Word was God'. I am sure the Greek Fathers, who knew their own language better than anyone since, made no mistake in interpreting this - in fact it is hardly avoidable - and this has always been the faith of Christians whether expressed in the King James Bible (1611) or the fifth century Latin Vulgate edition of St Jerome.

The same would apply with St Paul's letter to Titus, where St Paul is awaiting "the appearing of the glory of our great God and saviour Jesus Christ". Apart from tradition, this is clearly the correct reading because in the Greek there is only one article common to 'great God' and 'saviour Jesus Christ' - i.e. they are the same person. Moreover the 'awaiting' referred to in the passage is for the second coming of Christ at the end of time.

On Greek too, the Fathers would have seen on top of everything else that in John 8:58, Jesus attributes *eternal* pre-existence to himself: 'Before Abraham was, I am' (I am = 'ego eimi' in the Greek of the Gospel). This 'I am' indicates the present: God has neither past nor future, he simply is, which is why he does not say 'I was' ('ego emen'), for instance. Besides, the words 'I am' had a very powerful meaning for the Jews, because it was the name God revealed to Moses (Exodus 3:14), the name the Jews avoided saying out of reverence. Just by using it Jesus indicates that he is true God. The Jews understood: they picked up stones to throw at him (John 8:59).

It is reported in other places that the Jews realised that he did indeed claim he was God (John 4:18) and complained about it (John 10:33) and allowed himself to be convicted because of it. In Mark 14:62 and the parallel passages in Matthew and Luke, the Sanhedrin condemn him to death for blasphemy because they realise that he is claiming to be equal with God in his response to the High Priest. Here the key thing is not so much that he says 'yes' to the question about his being the Messiah, but that he does so identifying himself as the 'son of man' of the book of Daniel, seated, besides, at the right hand of the Power of God, called the 'Ancient of Days' in the book of Daniel 7:9-14, and thus makes himself equal with God.

Some passages, which at first sight might go against the divinity of Jesus, such as the ones you quoted, do not present any difficulties in all this context, e.g. Jesus also said the Father was greater than he (John 14:28). Christians believe that Jesus was man too, having 'emptied himself' (Philippians 2:7), and here he is referring to God being superior to Christ's human nature. In fact Jesus as man was 'for a while' also lower than the angels (Hebrews 2:9), but nobody would thereby affirm from that that the angels really are greater than him from all eternity.

St Paul's Letter to the Philippians says that Jesus Christ, 'though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.' (Philippians 2:5-7). The whole doctrine is expressed here with great economy.

So the early Christians - and let's not forget that people such as Polycarp and Ignatius actually had contact with at least one of the apostles - would have noted all these statements about Jesus being God. They would also have spotted the more subtle hints in other places, e.g. at the opening of St Mark's Gospel, which takes a prophecy that in the original (Malachi 3:1) refers to God and his messenger Elijah, and seems to apply it to Jesus and John the Baptist. (There are quite a few of these hidden clues.) So one can see where the doctrine of Jesus being God comes from: it is there in the New Testament.

This posting is getting long. Let's stop here.

Hi Insight again:



This is not just 'one of the altered texts' in the New Testament: it is the most important addition of all, traced to a fourth century text attributed to Priscillian, the bishop of Avila, Spain (d.385). It is post-Nicean, and Athanasius and all the bishops at Nicea (325) did not have it to hand when they stated the belief that Jesus was truly God. Nor for that matter do we, as modern biblical criticism has detected and corrected it. It is not necessary to the case.

Priscillian, incidentally, was condemned as a heretic posthumously for other reasons, at a council in 563. It clearly does not do to edit the New Testament, although the people who condemned him presumably did not realise he had also inserted a corruption in the bible text.



This text is consistent with God taking the form of a man whom people could see, i.e, Jesus. It would also have to be balanced with other texts in which Jesus says, for instance, in answer to Philip (John 14:8) "He who has seen me has seen the Father; how can you say 'Show us the Father'? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?'"

Also there is the text "All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him." (Matt 11:27) This text has a symmetry that very nicely expresses the equality between the Father and the Son in the Godhead. But note also that no one knows the Son, although presumably thousands of people knew Jesus.

It seems clear that the word "God" in John 1:18 refers to the Father. Equally in John 1:1 it refers the first time to the Father and the second time to the Son. As I said earlier the Greek Fathers in the first three centuries up to and including the Council of Nicea not only knew their Greek, it was the language they used in daily life.

All this is quite apart from the broader picture, which is that Jesus revealed himself also by his mighty works and revealed himself as the ruler and king of all creation. His acts such as speaking authoritatively to evil spirits and driving them out, cleansing lepers, making the lame walk and the deaf hear, these are acts of God (in the true sense). The healing of the man born blind, who could have restored this faculty denied him at birth but the controller of his whole being, the 'Lord of birth' (as St Athanasius puts it).

Again, consider the transformation of water into wine at Cana. He who did that was the lord and maker of the water that he changed. He also walked on water as on dry land, proving that he had the mastery over everything. He fed the 5,000 with five loaves and two fishes, showing that he is God whose mind rules over everything.

C'mon Insight, you know Christians in general have always believed that Jesus was God incarnate, even if some of them have believed otherwise. Athanasius in the fourth century was able to challenge the Arians to produce one piece of evidence from the early Fathers in support of the teaching of Arius, saying 'you will never be able to quote for me a single one who is learned and reasonable.'

Food for thought:

There are many claims in books that god does this, or he's that or the other...but these books are written by men....(religious men with agendas no less)...and how would they know what god is. Ofcourse this is all attributed to faith. Now faith is a nice idea. It gives hope, and with all the things that happen in the world hope is not a bad thing to have. So religion gives hope and role models, for what the model person should be. So having hope in the people is god.

So then after all there is a god, just not the one most people think. It's alright to believe in an almighty being that offers resurrection. Or to want to be freed into a clear state of mind or whatever else. Let us remember that naturally most people are afraid of death. And the first rule for conversion is for religion to offer a benefit. Otherwise they just simply would not believe. So this abstraction that is god, helps so that most people sometimes think before they do harm. Because people are stuborn and they will not listen to advice. They will be afraid of sin and this is a good thing. So the books say if you sin too much you will not go to heaven. And people want their resurrection so they might not sin as much. Ofcourse many people sin anyway.

Take one more example. Most religions will say that if you don't belong to them then you are damned, or will not go to heaven or special place or state. Now a god that created all-under the notion of religion-would give each being a fair chance at making it to that heavenly place or state. People however don't. So you end up with claims about being damned or not being allowed to reach a place or state, because of each group's particular reason(s). Often not belonging to a particular group automatically disqualifies you. How one sided.

One more thing: Most religious prophecies have failed. Specially the ones about the end of the world. There have been so many religions that have claimed that the world would end many years ago, and are still wondering why it has not ended. That ones that are no longer wondering-as much-have changed their claims and usually split into new religions. And let us not even get into corruption. That alone has split religions into countless new groups.

Now you can post scriptures about the existence of god, but that is not going to change anything. What does change some things is that scriptures from most religions usually have good messages. So atleast some people will listen to some of that good advice and will not be as bad to their society as they could be without a religion to regulate their impulses.

Hello Andrew,


Quite true.


To whom to you refer as 'the Greek Fathers'? And why would they be interpreting anything?
In any case, what is concerned here is not whether educated people are capable of understanding the Bible, but whether they are more interested in what the Bible says or in their own traditions and philosophies.


That's what a certain English translation says explicitly, but what the Greek text said was, "ho logos en pros ho theos kai theos en ho logos" - word for word, "the word was with the god and god was the word"
Notice that there is a difference between what the Word was (theos) and what the Word was with (ho theos). The word 'ho' is the equivalent of 'the', pointing out that a particular instance of an object is being referred to, not just any object. Hence the word 'logos' is always preceded by 'ho', since it is a particular person that is being referred to, not just 'a word'. Likewise when saying that the Word is with God, the word 'ho' is used to point out that the one being referred to isn't just any god, but THE God, the omnipotent, almighty God. But when it says that the Word was 'theos', there is no definite article, no determiner, leaving the noun 'theos' to be understood as referring to any god, or to the quality of god, being a person like god - as the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament puts it, "whatever can in any respect be likened unto God, or resemble him in any way". (By this meaning men are said to be theos in the plural at John 10:34.)


It would seem you're referring to Titus 2:13, but what I see in the KJV Strong's Interlinear is him waiting for the appearance of "the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ", which is what I would expect. And in the greek, the word 'of us', translated 'our', certainly follows, and is attached to, 'saviour', whereas God still has the definite article (though a different word than 'ho' now, since it is now a word meaning 'of the' rather than just 'the'). So what we're waiting for is 'the great God', and 'our saviour Jesus Christ.'


I could also say that before my younger brother was, I am. Though we would not generally put it that way in English, in greek it was common to use the present tense for a verb that had begun in the past and was still happening. The same grammar is used in Luke 2:48, when Mary and Joseph say they have been looking (lit. 'we are seeking') for Jesus, in Luke 13:7, where a man says he has been coming (lit. 'I am coming') to find fruit on his fig tree, in John 5:6, where Jesus knew that a man had been sick a long time (lit. 'much already time he is having') in John 15:27, where Jesus tells his disciples that they have been with him from the beginning (lit. 'from beginning with me you are', and so on.

Surely you realise that the words 'I' and 'am' are quite common words, and if they suit the meaning he wishes to convey, why shouldn't he use them? If I say the words 'Charles Dickens', will you take that as a claim that is who I am? If not, then why take the fact the Jesus says 'I am' (in greek, don't forget, not in hebrew) as claiming that he is a person called 'I Am'?


I think you need to check this reference. John 4:18 just has Jesus talking about a Samaritan womans husbands.

I'm afraid that's as much as I can cover today.

Not very nourishing after all that recycling, Ford!

Yea it's old material

If old material was excluded from this thread half the protagonists would have nothing to debate with and we wouldn't have reached posting 2000 yet, let alone 21280.

Come on Toxxin, let's see you post something original before you criticise anyone else.

F