Posted on 05/19/2011 11:50:25 AM PDT by Renfield
Nearly half of the New Testament is a forgery, according to a provocative new book which charges that the Apostle Paul authored only a fraction of letters attributed to him, and the Apostle Peter just wrote nothing.
Written by Bart Ehrman, a former evangelical Christian and now agnostic professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the book claims to unveil "one of the most unsettling ironies of the early Christian tradition:" the use of deception to promote the truth.
"The Bible not only contains untruths of accidental mistakes. It also contains what almost anyone today would call lies," Ehrman writes in "Forged: Writing in the Name of God -- Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are."....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.discovery.com ...
The assault on all that
is decent and good by the forces of hell
continues unabated.
This is the era more than any other
when they call evil good and good evil.
. . . when they think they do God a service by killing those who most love and serve Him.
Most likely . . .
other than the lusts of the flesh . . . the pride of life . . .
BAD RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER VERY FLAWED CHRISTIANS and “Christians” . . .
and looking to, expecting Christians to be as perfect as Christ
instead of looking TO GOD ALONE.
No need to criticize that already in satan’s camp.
Thanks for the ping.
The cesspool of
“P.C.”
sinks lower and becomes yet again more odorous.
My wife just had a discussion with a friend that is of another faith. One of the friends arguments that the Bible wasn’t the entire truth and was messed up was “The books aren’t even in chronological order.” I thought to myself “Huh. I didn’t realize they were supposed to be in chronological order?” I think my wife, better versed in that stuff than I am, had a reasonable explanation for their order.
With regards to Old Testement mythologies, I always get a kick when they find something in archaeology that fits in with the Bible. For the longest time a “King David” was considered myth, until they found some coin (or maybe it was just an inscription) referencing King David.
Ya know, I used to feel sorry for people.
Tended towards compassion.
I find me doing that less and less.
Classic liberals. Sarah Palin and Peter are both God-fearing followers of Jesus, both fishermen, so they must both be illiterate. No doubt many fishermen of the time were illiterate, but a man was not automatically illiterate just because he had been a fisherman. He could, as you said have narrated his words to a scribe, or he could have learned to write while following Jesus or even before then. In a year, or three years, of following the son of God, he would have had both the time and the motivation to learn to read and write, particularly if Jesus had inside knowledge that reading and writing would become relevant later.
I think lots of Biblical scholars date these writings to 40 years plus after the events. One thinking is, the followers thought Jesus was coming back soon, and they were busy spreading the word. At some point they though “Hmmm. I'm getting pretty old. I should probably get this stuff written down before I die”. (At least with the Gospels, not Paul's letters obviously).
I see that happening with my 93 year old mother as she writes down events from her life. Events that she remembers with amazing clarity - even things that happened to me that I have forgotten! So even though she might be writing about something that happened 70 years ago, she is writing accurately and it is not distorted by time - she was an eye witness to those events.
And I would imagine that as Peter preached and traveled and spread the word, he would have realized the importance of reading and writing and learned it.
lol,,,i actually know several amish people that are very good auto mechanics,,,so your analogy doesnt work very well.
Timothy 6:12 - “Turn away from godless chatter and the opposing ideas of what is falsely called
knowledge, which some have professed and in so doing have wandered from the faith.”
SAINT TIMOTHY: Apostle, saint AND martyr.
I understand the feeling . . .
long term stubborn, dogged, conscious rebellion, idiocy, arrogance & perversity
have NO redeeming social value.
“Stop stating the obvious” [paraphrased]
LOL!
But you know me, I aimed for the low hanging fruit on this one.
The writers obviously know that Christians aren’t going to be beheading them for writing this tripe.
Muslims, on the other hand...
So very true...assuming Peter really WAS illiterate. He and his father seem to have OWNED the shipS and equipment, rather than being "simple fishermen", as in one who just cast nets.
Hard to run a comparatively expensive and complex business successfully without some acquaintance with "letters and numbers".
Matthew was a "publican", meaning a freelance tax collector & functionary, and so he also was not poor, and also probably not, out of necessity, illiterate.
Also, if one carefully looks at the Bible, Jesus's family, all the way back to Abraham, was NOT "poor and illiterate", as the poor of the times understood poor. Not all of the Apostles, and certainly a large number of (especially of the post-Resurrection) disciples, were decidedly far from poor and illiterate, also.
It is much easier to play to stereotypes and popular fancy, while stoking one's "superior knowlege" by writing such learned drivel as Ehrman and his ilk so love to do.
“I wonder what drove him from Evangelical beliver to agnostic?”
He explains that thoroughly in “Misquoting Jesus”.
William Zinsser, On Writing Well, includes this illustration by George Orwell on how not to do it. Orwell takes a verse from Ecclesiastes and rewrites it into modern bureaucratic sludge.
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
This became:
Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.
I do not claim the ability to compete with the Bible, but I can and do write in a number of styles. My style changes depending on whether I’ve been reading Mark Twain or George MacDonald Fraser, whether I’m angry, whether I’m very tired, et cetera.
When I help my college-age kids with their philosophy, head-shrinkery, or cultural anthropology, what comes out of my mouth as I explain something changes dramatically in style when they write their essays. However, if they got it right, the change in style is absolutely, totally, and in all other ways irrelevant.
In other words, this is just more bone-headed drivel from the God haters.
Papias claimed that Mark had been Peter’s follower and amanuensis. Which leads to the proposition that Mark’s Gospel is based upon Peter’s own account of the events.
Papias is known to us through Irenaeus and Eusebius. Papias is reputed to have known the disciples of the Apostles, and perhaps John himself.
Thanks for the ping!
These guys are so predictable.
Yeah, it's interesting that 99% of all the criticisms by agnostics and atheists are against the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, almost never do they criticize the writings of Islam or Bhuddism or Hinduism.
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