For your enjoyment - the Gospel of Homer.
Posted on 04/26/2006 11:53:48 AM PDT by Caleb1411
And all of the Christian Churches, including the Roman Catholic Church through most of its history, accept your credit gladly. Thanks so much!
They're welcome - including the ones that murdered people or hired others to do it for them.
Yep - your comment generated massive cofusion in me! ;-P
There are no "hard questions" these books will cause to be asked of Christians. Well, except for "how the hell could these Kooks have attracted anyone to believe in this gibberish?"
No they did not.
It is apparent that you have little knowledge of Gnosticism. They believed the world was created by an EVIL God not the God of Mercy and Love. They HATED the world even going so far as to condemn marriage and procreation.
They also PREDATED Christianity and were NOT suppressed by the Church nor were there writings hidden.
Actually there was NO Gnostic canon so just about anyone can claim to be Gnostic and could write a new Gnostic Gospel, the Gospel of Homer.
For your enjoyment - the Gospel of Homer.
Of course, even if you look at either the Crusades or the Inquisition at its worst, the number of people murdered by atheists in the 20th Century makes them look like pikers in comparision.
Hell the Turkish Moslems killed over a million Armenian Christians early this century. That was the first of the genocides. Moslems killed hundreds of thousands a year still.
Another question that could be asked is: "Father, is it true that in the Middle Ages the Catholic Church actually taught that there were evil dragons? And do you believe in dragons Father? Have you seen them? And If the Catholic Church believed in dragons then, but doesn't now, what other things did they preach that are no longer "operative?"
Since it took a couple of centuries for a formal church to come into being, how could gnostics be heretical to a church and a doctrine that didn't exist?
Well, let's go back through history. The Israelites were enslaved by those mean old Egyptians. Working with Moses, God freed them. Then they wandered around for 40 years, building up their numbers and raising an army. Then, they used that army to conquer and massacre. Yes, they would kill entire cities, men, women, children, and animals. But hey, it was ok because God told them to do it, and the Israelites were his chosen people. And maybe the people in those cities were like the gnostics believe - no permanent souls. So it wasn't as they invaded an established civilization and murdered their citizens. All they did was put down some animals. No harm there! If anything, the God of the Old Testament is more akin to the Allah of today's militant Moslems. Kill 'em all - it's ok with God.
There were isolated incidents wherein the inhabitants were killed but that does not compare to the history of Islam which gained power by murdering its way throughout the Middle East most of which was Christian and Jewish when Mo arrived on the scene. What was an exception was SOP for the Murderous Minions of Mad Mo.
If you want to review history keep at it and let me know what a religion based upon the idea that "Heaven is entered under and arch of Swords" is going to be like. Or that argues that you can Kill your way there as the Koran repeatedly tells us. Or which perverts the concept of martyr (one who is killed for his religion) into murderer (one who kills for his religion).
I encourage all to read the Koran if you have not it clearly illumines the inherent violence of Islam which is more a totalitarian political ideology than a religion in any case.
Now THAT's funny! The Israelites never gained power through war. Oh Noooooo. BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Just a bunch of happy happy joy joy types weren't they? I mean, Saul has killed his thousands, David his ten thousands. Yep, sounds like a right friendly group to me! And the cutting off of the penis's of thousands of troops killed in battle as proof of their deaths. Bushels of peckers for God. LOL! Sure sounds a lot like Allah and his goofballs to me.
But hey - these guys had a head start, and the world wasn't as populated before Christ as it was after Christ. And those good old Islamics sure caught on fast didn't they. Kill your enemies for God. He likes it, he really likes it! (If you don't believe it, just read the Old Testament!)
"If you want to review history keep at it and let me know what a religion based upon the idea that "Heaven is entered under and arch of Swords" is going to be like."
Hell if I know. I would have to ask the ancient Israelite Kings about that. Evidently THEY believed it! And so should you! You're the one defending them! Personally, I don't know what such a heaven would be like, and I don't want to know.
"I encourage all to read the Koran if you have not it clearly illumines the inherent violence of Islam which is more a totalitarian political ideology than a religion in any case."
President Bush calls it a Religion of Peace. He didn't call it a political ideology of peace. At least he knows it's a religion, unlike some posters here.
The Church was formal from the very beginning. Christ appointed twelve apostles, gave them a specific office and delegated specific authority to them for the discharge of that office. Within weeks of the Resurrection the apostles had rules for succession to the apostolic office in place and local churches had episkopoi (bishops or overseers), presbyteroi (elders or priests) and diakonoi (deacons or helpers) in place while Paul was still alive. The Church obviously had organized missions across the Mediterranean world at that time and it also was able to coordinate almsgiving and other charitable works over a broad geographical area.
However, the Gnostics were already heretics before Jesus was born - they specifically rejected the status of the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob as the one true God.
Gnostic cults at that time already held that the world was created by a evil subsidiary deity and that material creation itself was evil.
The Gnostics had already rejected the orthodox teaching of the book of Genesis before they were even able to begin distorting and falsifying Jesus' teaching.
The answer to that question is no, it is not. Firebreathing, flying dragons were a popular folk superstition in the Middle Ages, but the Church never taught that such beasts exist.
The LXX text of the Book of Daniel makes mention of a dragon, but this is a generic term for an enormous snake, not a flying, firebreathing beast. The Book of Daniel does not describe any of the magical qualities ascribed to dragons in European folklore, it is just a very big, vicious snake living in a Babylonian temple. In Latin and Greek the words "draco" and "drakon" usually Englished as "dragon" were actually used by the Romans and the Greeks to refer to pythons. There were no pythons in Europe so for the uneducated European peasant of the VIIIth century a "draco" was clearly an enormous and frightening beast, but he had no mental picture of what it actually was. So folktales came up with a more and more elaborate picture of what a "draco" might be.
And If the Catholic Church believed in dragons then, but doesn't now, what other things did they preach that are no longer "operative?"
The Catholic Church never "believed in firebreathing dragons" any more than the Catholic Church "believed cats have nine lives" or the Catholic Church "believed that if a ring suspended over a woman's belly rotates in a circle she will have a girl."
Old wives' tales have nothing to do with Church teaching. It's like saying that "In the 1920s the Catholic Church taught that cigarettes are not harmful" simply because the vast majority of Catholics in the 1920s sisn't think that cigarettes were bad for you. The Church never said such a thing, let alone taught or asserted such a thing, but by your logic, it did, somehow.
Repressed? Or discarded? Why in the world would the Christian Church continue to reproduce the writings of their adversaries? The bulk of important Christian writings have disappeared, the work of men with impeccable orthodox views, but they have vanished . The famous Christian monks who copied stuff did not attempt to copy the Alexandrine library but only such documents that fell into their hands. Many of those likewise vanished over the course of time. Such historical documents we have are the result of chance. We actually know more about Rome during the first century before Christ than we do about the Third Century after Christ,
The History Channel reported that for 300 years, from about 1300 to 1600 the Catholic Church taught that dragons were real. So when you get the chance, write them a letter and tell them to correct their error.
Remember in future that "I saw it on late night cable TV" is not a valid scholarly reference. Note: not everything you see on TV is accurate.
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