surface book 15" doesn't have a number pad too!
23 karma · joined November 17, 2017
But you're original claim about the accounts about Jesus copying from Greek mythology, etc.. is just not viable historically.
I encourage you to delve into the literature actually it's quite fascinating! A good book to start with that I've enjoyed is Did Jesus Exist by Bart Ehrman.
Bart Ehrman, Robert Funk, Dale Martin, John Dominic Crossan, Mark Goodacre, Gerd Lüdemann, James Dunn, and the list goes on and on.
If books are not your thing, you can find a great Yale course about the subject here: New Testament History and Literature with Dale B. Martin: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL279CFA55C51E75E0
A number of parallels have been drawn between the Christian views of Jesus and other religious or mythical domains.[1][3] However, Eddy and Boyd state that there is no evidence of a historical influence by the pagan myths such as dying and rising gods on the authors of the New Testament.[3][4] Paula Fredriksen states that no serious scholarly work places Jesus outside the backdrop of 1st century Palestinian Judaism.[5]
Scholars have debated a number of broad issues related to the parallels drawn between Jesus and other myths, e.g. the very existence of the category dying-and-rising god was debated throughout the 20th century, some modern scholars questioning the soundness of the category.[3][6] At the end of the 20th century the overall scholarly consensus had emerged against the soundness of the reasoning used to suggest the category.[6] Tryggve Mettinger (who supports the category) states that there is a scholarly consensus that the category is inappropriate from a historical perspective.[7] Scholars such as Kurt Rudolph have stated the reasoning used for the construction of the category has been defective.[6]
Scholars such as Samuel Sandmel, professor of Bible and Hellenistic Literature at Hebrew Union College, view conclusions drawn from the simple observations of similarity as less than valid.[1]Sandmel called the extravagance in hunting for similarities "parallelomania" – a phenomenon in which a scholar first presupposes the existence of a similarity and then "proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying a literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction", thus exaggerating the importance of trifling resemblances.[1][4]
It is undeniable that biblical mythology was affected by other cultures (especially Genesis for example). But other than that you have no idea what you're talking about. What books have you read about this? And by which scholars?
>Early Christian versions of Jesus were basically copies of Eros, and Late Christian versions of Jesus were basically copies of Zeus, and then in the middle ages everyone got depressed so they turned him into a holocaust survivor on a wooden plank.
This claim is just simply false. I challenge you to present a single work that you have read by a professor of Classics, New Testament, Theology, or Ancient history that argues that.
New man in Christ indeed, but that's not a magical transformation that happened some time in the past, a time where I can say "I was saved". The transformation is a life-long journey. The new man vs old is a daily struggle, a life-long struggle...
This is not something that can be observed and tested, it is something that can be lived and tested.
I'm sorry to hear you were personally negatively affected by the Church. Btw Orthodox is a big umbrella, I'm not sure what you're referring to with Putin, I'm not Russian Orthodox.
I recognise that my comment may have been flippant. But you can't judge Christianity based on its misuse or the inadequacies of Christians. I am just sick and tired of hearing that my beliefs are irrational, or "out of date", and that I need to "get on with the times" and abandon myths and legends about God and Christ. This has been a consistent impression I get from others especially in the tech field. And upon talking to people who believe this I find that they really have done no research on their part and so end up with superficial understanding of everything. I only ask that people do their due diligence and read Christian texts to judge for themselves. I encourage you to completely abandon the current messy Christian debates (including my comment) and look into Christian texts of the first few centuries.
Indeed a lot of writers are men due to the cultural reasons of old times. But you can find sayings by women: https://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Desert-Mothers-Sayings-Chri...
"God is sacrificing"
This makes it sound like Christ was a passive agent in the events of the passion and resurrection, which he is not -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have the same will.
"God is sacrificing his own son, which is also him"
Note how this statement must be false because it's contradictory. How can X "sacrifice" Y, when X == Y? This comes from a misunderstanding of the phrase "Jesus is God" -- that phrase means that Jesus is 'homoousious' in Greek or 'has the same nature/essence' with God the Father. However some people understand it incorrectly as "Jesus is the same person as the Father".
The idiom for Jesus is not God (which is never mentioned in the NT or the nicene creed -- never it is said that "Jesus is God") but the idiom is 'Son of God'. This idiom is the one language that is used by the council of Nicaea to formulate the creed. And to explain what 'Son of God' means the creed goes on to say that Jesus is homoousious with the Father.
"to himself"
The popular and incorrect understanding of this is that God just wanted someone to be punished instead of humanity (note how that doesn't even make sense how humanity is reconciled to God if someone else took the punishment! And how is Jesus supposed to die instead of humanity when he later rose from the dead? the whole thing is absurd!) but this understanding of the atonement (called 'penal substitution') is part of 16th century reformation theology. In the firsth 10 centuries of Christianity we have ZERO authors who thought about the atonement that way (have a quick look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atonement_in_Christianity for a general view of this). The reason all Christian apologists believe this and try to defend it is because they are protestant.
"in order to satisfy rules that he himself also put in place"
This just portrays God as one who needs to find a 'loophole' in the system which he himself has put in place. How can this be even intelligble? God can do whatever he wants and he could have forgiven humanity easily. It's just that what humanity needed was more than forgiveness: human beings needed to be made alive again after being subject to death because of sin. Again just to be clear: the death because of sin is not a punishment -- it's the natural course of events when a human being turns their back to the source of life -- God.
"so that he doesn't have to send people he created and loves infinitely to be tortured forever in a place he created"
The popular image of God throwing people in a pit of fire and torturing them for eternity is not a Christian image. It first made its way to Christianity long long ago (which is probably why it's still prevalent) with the apocalypse of Peter -- a document that was influenced by pagan ideas (I'll put a reference here because this is important: this is from Bruce Metzger's The canon of the NT)
Here is a passage from a truly fascinating Christian author from the 2nd century. He starts by saying "we shall be told that these are fictions, no better than fables, like the rest of the strange stories about Jesus." (funny how arguments against Christianity haven't changed for 2000 years)
Origen's reply is this:
Our answer is that to reconstruct almost any historical scene, even if true, so as to give a vivid impression of what actually occurred, is exceedingly difficult, and sometimes impossible. Suppose some one to assert that there never was a Trojan war, mainly on the ground that the impossible story of a certain Achilles being the son of a sea goddess Thetis and a man Peleus is mixed up with it; or that Sarpedon was the son of Zeus, or Ascalaphus and Ialmenus sons of Ares; or that Aeneas was Aphrodite's son: how could we dispose of such an objection? Should we not be very hard pressed to explain the strange blending of a fiction with the universal |74 belief that there was war between Greeks and Trojans at Troy? Or let us suppose some one to doubt the story of Oedipus and Jocaste, and of their sons Eteocles and Polynices, because that a sort of half-woman, the Sphinx, is mixed up with the story; how should we clear up the difficulty? Well, the prudent reader of the narratives, who wishes to guard against deception, will use his own judgment as to what he will allow to be historical, and what he will regard as figurative; he will try to discover what the writers meant by inventing such stories; and to some things he will refuse his assent on the ground that they were recorded to gratify certain persons. And this we have premised, having in view the history of Jesus as a whole contained in the Gospels; for we do not invite intelligent readers to a bare unreasoning faith, but we wish to show that future readers will have to exercise prudence, and make careful inquiry, and, so to speak, penetrate the very heart of the writers, if the exact purport of every passage is to be discovered. -- Philokalia of Origen CHAP. XV. 15
Literally ALL basic tenets of Christianity are misunderstood and distorted. And while I acknowledge that part of the problem is the ignorance of some Christian leaders and ministers, it's definitely not the whole problem. Intellectual honesty demands of us that we properly understand a viewpoint before rejecting it.
>God is sacrificing his own son, which is also him, to himself, in order to satisfy rules that he himself also put in place so that he doesn't have to send people he created and loves infinitely to be tortured forever in a place he created because they broke rules they couldn't understand with consequences they couldn't comprehend.
You claim this is the Christian view of the atonement. Where do you get this? Is it scriptural? Patristic?
Don't speak on behalf of Christianity if you do not understand it. And let me tell you in case this isn't clear: You do not understand it.
How can someone reject Christianity when they haven't done the due diligence of looking at __primary sources__ for the Christian position?