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Menu There is no diplomatic solutionIsrael should declare three nos;
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
Lately I’ve felt animosity toward the Roman Catholic Church in light of the pedophile scandals. It was so widespread I believe Churchmen in power just looked the other way. Last week another pedophile trial started in the U.S. which promises to be salacious. The Church has paid out many millions to resolve the lawsuits. But are these sins really forgivable? Victims will suffer untold damages from this all the days of their lives. Perhaps to take the heat off, the Church in the U.S. has involved itself in stupid politics which in my view degrades them further. Obama’s health care plan wants every woman of a certain age covered for contraception. The Church wants Catholic women not to be covered, although recent polls show many young Catholic women use contraception. Can a recovered alcoholic walk into a liquor store and buy soda pop rather than liquor? As far as I can figure, the Church takes the position that Catholic women who are covered for contraceptives will not be able to resist the temptation to use them. Thus the Church must protect them. This is another insult to women.
I don’t much need to mention the harm the Church has done in the past, but the civil wars in England and parts of the Continent that lasted 2-3 centuries were fought between Popes and Kings, each trying to rule the land and the masses. Millions of Christians died. As I understand it, Henry the Eighth of England wanted to divorce a wife so he could marry another, and the Church said no.
The Anglican church was one result of these wars. Many of the first immigrants to America came to escape the wars, and I think this is one of the reasons Christianity is not very popular today in Europe.
On the other hand, the art, literature and music that was produced in the name of Christianity over the centuries are priceless. I attended a Catholic Church for a few years and liked the rituals and the people. I don’t want anything to occur that would destroy the Christmas, Easter and other holidays the Church holds. Theology, though, I don’t follow.
@ yamit82:
I haven’t banned any of your comments.
@ yamit82:
Yamit,
My wife is getting a bit concerned, that we might not make it to some very important happening today, so I won’t devote much time concerning your comments. I will confine myself to clearly identifying something upon which you and I don’t agree and may never agree. You said,
You insist, for some vain, nationalistic purpose, on using completely different yardsticks to measuring the Christian nation vs. the Jewish nation. As for the Samaritans, as a side-note, you use a cutoff in numbers that is entirely arbitrary. Here is approximately how the numbers break down:
1. Samaritans: 750
2. Jews: 12,000,000
3. Christians: 2,200,000,000
Jews outnumber Samaritans by 16,000:1; Christians outnumber Jews by over 1,800:1. Check my math. It seems you could label the Jews also as “almost extinct”.
Now, lets compare criteria for the Christians vs the Jews.
I. Do these people have a common origin? Yes, both do:
A. The Christians originated in the Roman Empire, around 325 C. E., when Constantine, the national leader of over 90% of Christians, convened a council of the church leaders to settle doctrinal disputes.
B. The Jews originated with the completion of the Talmuds, in Babylonia and Palestine, respectively. They were split pramarily between two nations, Rome and Persia, which is why they have two canons rather than one.
I am including as “canonical” all the scriptures which are considered Inspired, Authoritative and foundational. For Christians, this includes TaNaKh and the New Testament — and for the Catholics, who constitute the vast majority of Christians, also the Apocrypha. All were accepted by the Fourth Century. Some other works, duch as the Didache, were accepted by some in some places. The Jews accept TaNaKh to some degree or another, and the Talmud absolutely. Here is the Jewish canon, approximately:
Aggadic Midrash (numbers are dates C. E.):
—— Tannaitic ——
Seder Olam Rabbah
Alphabet of Akiba ben Joseph
Baraita of the Forty-nine Rules
Baraita on the Thirty-two Rules
Baraita on Tabernacle Construction
—— 400–600 ——
Genesis Rabbah • Eichah Rabbah
Pesikta de-Rav Kahana
Esther Rabbah • Midrash Iyyov
Leviticus Rabbah • Seder Olam Zutta
Midrash Tanhuma • Megillat Antiochus
—— 650–900 ——
Avot of Rabbi Natan
Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer
Tanna Devei Eliyahu
Alphabet of Ben-Sira
Kohelet Rabbah • Canticles Rabbah
Devarim Rabbah • Devarim Zutta
Pesikta Rabbati • Midrash Shmuel
Midrash Proverbs • Ruth Rabbah
Baraita of Samuel • Targum sheni
—— 900–1000 ——
Ruth Zuta • Eichah Zuta
Midrash Tehillim • Midrash Hashkem
Exodus Rabbah • Canticles Zutta
—— 1000–1200 ——
Midrash Tadshe • Sefer haYashar
—— Later ——
Yalkut Shimoni • Yalkut Makiri
Midrash Jonah • Ein Yaakov
Midrash HaGadol • Numbers Rabbah
Smaller midrashim
Source: Wikipedia
Make your cutoff anywhere you want.
II. Do these peoples originate in singular countries? Yes:
A. The Christians originated in the Roman Empire, which lasted from the time of Julius Caesar to 1453, a space of some 1500 years. They were scattered throughout that empire, with largest concentrations in what are now roughly Turkey, Greece, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Cyprus and Egypt. There were also significant groups in Armenia and Iraq.
B. The Jews originated in precisely the same countries, as a diaspora community in precisely the same areas.
III. Do both groups have someone who might be called an “Ethnarch”? Yes:
A. The Pope in Rome is recognized as the head of some 3/4 of the Christians. Others recognize other: The Coptic Pope, the Metropolitan of Constantinople, the King of England, etc.; and there are other Christians who consider themselves autonomous.
B. The Jews have two rabbis in Israel who are considered “Chief Rabbis”; others follow other rabbis, and othes consider themselves autonomous. Their condition is virtually identical to that of the Christians.
Note further, that the Emperor was for a long time regarded as the ultimate head of the Eastern churches, in both secular and spiritual matters, whereas the Pope was considered the ultimate head in both in the West. The Pope crowned Holy Roman emperors, who then ruled according to his instructions. Those emperors who dared to balk at this arrangement were excommunicated.
IV. Do both groups have “founding fathers”? In a spiritual sense, yes. In a secular sense, no.
A. Christians count the Jew, Jesus, along with his close Jewish followers, as the founders of their sect.
B. Jews count the Pharisee leaders and patriarchs who gathered at Yavneh, as the founders of their sect.
Up until 70 CE, both sects had a common root. Both groups augmented their numbers through conversions: the Christians, greatly so; the Jews, less so.
V. Ethnic origins:
A. The Christians of today are from all over the world. Their greatest numbers are from the following places, in approximately descending order:
Latin America, North America, Africa, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, China
B. The Jews of today are primarily from the following places: Israel, North America, Eastern Europe, Western Europe
Not much difference, eh? The situation around 1700 was different:
A. Christians were mainly from Europe
B. Jews were mainly from Poland and the Ottoman Empire
Before that time, Both groups ultimately came from the Roman Empire. They both picked up numbers along the way:
A. Christians actively sought converts wherever they went, so that they are an ethnically mixed group. Nevertheless, they consider themselves to be one people.
B. Jews have at times encouraged and at other times discouraged conversions, so their makeup is mixed more “lumpily”. The main “lumps” are the following:
1. Middle Easterners, generally: Those from Iraq and Turkey are largely of yDNA haplogroup J2, and those from Israel and Jordan are more of haplogroup J1. Both DNA groups are also found among Christians, in significant concentrations in Italy, Greece, Armenia, etc.
2. North Africans: These are represented by yDNA haplogroup E and mtDNA type U6. “E” is the second most common yDNA of Jews, and is widespread in smaller concentrations among European Christians. As a side note, Adolph Hitler had this yDNA type.
3. West Europeans: These are identified with yDNA R1b. It is possibly the most common yDNA among Sephardic Jews, and present in about 20% of Ashkenazi Jews.
4. East Europeans: These are identified with yDNA R1a. The vast majority of Levites are of this haplogroup, along with Christians from Russia to Scotland.
5. East Africans: Ethiopian Jews and Ethiopian Christians have nearly identical DNA to each other.
There is no Jewish “race”, any more than there is a Christian “race”. Both the early Christians and the early Jews originated in what are now Israel and Jordan, and their lines did not significantly diverge from each other until around 70 CE. Up until that time, both worshipped TOGETHER in the SAME TEMPLE.
Both groups spread initially primarily into modern-day Turkey and Iraq, where they both mixed with the locals. In fact, the first Christian converts in those areas attended Jewish synagogues.
The Zealot uprising that ended shortly after 70 CE was the dividing point between the non-Christians, who were largely Hebrew- and Greek-speaking Pharisees, and the Christians, who were largely of the same group of people. The leaders of the people who now count themselves as “Jews” convened at Yavneh, and proceeded to re-formulate Torah observance to meet their changed circumstances, while the surviving Christian leaders fled to Patna. Yaakov Tzadik, the acknowledged leader of the Christians, was murdered by the Sadducees. The Apostle Paul was killed in Rome, along with Peter and thousands of Christians who were cruelly tortured and killed in the Roman circus.
At this time, each group developed its own survival strategy: The Yavneh group strove to maintain a sense of ethnic identity through common prayers and practices, and began codifying their traditions. The Christians, who were more scattered, actively prosyletized, gradually centralized their local authority structures, and developed a “cult of martyrs” which ultimately won over the bulk of the Roman population.
Animosity of Sadducees and non-Christian Pharisees toward Christians was early and obvious. After 70 CE, the Christians returned the compliment. It was widely believed that the Jews were punished because of their mis-treatment of the Christians, particularly their murder of Yaakov. By the time of Justin Martyr, around the time of the Jewish Messianic Uprising of bar Kochba, the vast majority of Christians no longer felt it was possible for Jews to become Christians, and did not even accept as Christians those Jews who had physically removed their marks of circumcision. This was not the mutual loathing of two peoples who had sprung up apart from one another; it was the intense hatred of brothers, who came from the same root.
As you know, Yamit, my ancestry is in both lines; they have been on both sides of the coin for 2000 years.
Breakfast is on the table. God bless and keep you and yours, and may he watch over Israel.
Stanley: You are coming through loud and clear. GOTCHA!!!
This is a story told to me by a North American Indian Chief.
That is still happening in other lands and involving other people. Are you getting my drift?
Ted it’s your right to remove my comment to CA and dweller but if you re going to remove my reply in all fairness you should remove their comments to which I replied.
You allow Christian polemics and theology and reject a Jewish response?
If anyone wishes to understand what’s wrong with Jews here is a good example.
@ yamit82:
I Mentioned The following postulate in one of my comments:
“THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES CAN BE TRUE AND THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES FALSE BUT THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES CANNOT BE FALSE AND THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES TRUE.”
This running argument seems to miss the point:
On his father’s side: Jesus was divine
On his mother’s side: Jesus was human
JESUS was both fully God and fully man.
He had two natures, and literally two wills. But he subordinated his human will to the divine within himself.
His human nature could be tempted. His divine nature could not.
As for required perfection, when one accepts Jesus’s atonement by faith, Jesus’ perfection is credited to him.
The arguments back and forth are silly UNLESS one properly defines Jesus dual natures.
Appealing to his divine nature, he could claim equality with the Father. His divine nature was equal.
Appealing to his human nature, he could say the Father was greater.
Sort of like this;
When appealing to a military rank, a private is subordinate to a general.
When appealing to citizenship, they are equal in the voting booth.
This is not a blog/board on Christian doctrine, but since the matter was brought up by others.
@ Catarin:
Quite the contrary, it matters — matters enormously.
If he were ‘divine,’ he couldn’t have accomplished his mission (to tempt Satan as Satan tempts man). That couldn’t have been done by a ‘god’ — had to be a man; a special man, TBS, but a man.
Moreover, if he were ‘divine,’ then repentance would be pointless.
A sinner could simply say,
“Jesus loves me just as I am; so why should I repent? — don’t have to, I’m saved.
“Don’t have to ‘be perfect[ed], even as your Father in heaven is perfect.’
“Can’t be like Jesus, since he’s ‘God,’ so how could I become perfect anyway?”
etc, etc, etc.
@ yamit82:
My apologies.
Upon re-reading my original remark, I see that when I first edited the thing and re-worked its phraseology, I failed to replace “unaware” with “aware.” I’ve corrected it above.
It now says what I intended to say.
Why? — how does the former necessitate the latter?
Divergent as to perspective of the writer & target audience, certainly.
If you’re claiming a divergence ALSO as to asserted facts — i.e., clear-cut contradictions — then cite the ones that trouble you, and we’ll explore them, if you like. Your choice.
May I say, I’m impressed.
A fair question — for once, and at long last.
Don’t take that as “damning-with-faint-praise”; it’s just that it may well be the first time I’ve ever heard a reasonable question from you, fella, over this matter.
Regrettably, however, you may not find my answer, such as it is, to be very satisfying — and I can’t help that. Still, it is what it is:
The reality is that anybody whose faith is based exclusively in what somebody else said, or wrote — even if it represents what truly WAS revealed directly to the speaker or writer — has built his house on sand (to coin a phrase).
Can’t rely on it — not least because what one can say, or write, can be unsaid or unwritten by somebody else (or for that matter by the same person!).
There has to be an individual interior witness to the truth of what you read or hear — and it has to be an objective Witness — or it’s useless where these sorts of things are concerned. Scripture is not like a chemistry or math or grammar text.
I follow the books of John Dominic Crossan. He has written many books on the historical Jesus and been on many television documentaries. He was part of the group (The Jesus Seminar) a dozen years ago who voted on what Jesus really said in the New Testament and what was added by the church as theology. There were a dozen Jesus scholars who worked on this, and they took out theology that Jesus supposedly proclaimed about his being divine, anything that set him apart from other preachers at the time. Google Crossan. There’s a dozen books he wrote on first century Christianity, and some that are not included on the list. I read _The Historical Jesus_ and two or three others, but I had no idea he had published so many new books.
Regarding the books of the New Testament, Iranaeus, a bishop in Lyon, around 200 CE had thousands of articles written about Jesus but he chose only those who supported his philosophy on Jesus and destroyed as many articles as he could that countered his view. No one knows who wrote the four gospels, as their names were arbitrarily assigned. It’s probably correct that the Gospel of John was written by the John who also wrote Revelations, as scholars have been able to find out about him. _The Gnostic Gospels_, books written by Christians at the time who did not believe Jesus was divine, were discovered buried in Egypt about 1945. The Christians had buried them to save them. These Gospels include books by Thomas, Mary Magdelene, and many other writers you might recognize and are fascinating reading.
Mary Magdalene was not a whore. The church started rumors about women to keep them out of the Church, The Church has admitted they were wrong about her. It’s being proposed that Leonardo Di Vinci knew about Jesus’ relationship with Mary, because in The Last Supper painting, the person sitting to the left of Jesus, from our view, looks very much like a woman. She is separated from Jesus by an open space shaped like a V that has symbolic meaning, but I forgot what it was. I’ve read during the time of Jesus everyone ate in the Roman style, which was to lie down, prop yourself up on an elbow and lean into your food. I don’t think everyone ate this way…
It doesn’t matter if Jesus was not divine, at least to me. Buddha and Confucius were not divine and started huge religious movements. There are documentaries on the H2 History channel and the Green Channel that follow this line of thinking and even the broadcast channels and CNN have periodic programs on Jesus that do not adhere to church teachings.
There is so much to know about this. If you read Crossan he tells you where his information comes from.
@ BlandOatmeal:
You can use the Samaritans but not Christians. Christianity is a faith based religion and not a nationality. The Samaritans for all intents and purposes may be considered extinct and are an ethnic/religious cousin to the Jews.
Georgians: There is no such thing as Georgians. Residents of Tbilisi are different from highlanders, who are different from
Mingrels, and so on. While the highlanders are at least respected in Russia, Mingrels are commonly disliked.
Armenia comes closest of all your examples but they had the advantage or disadvantage of being landlocked but they were never as a people expelled. They just lost their independence and at times their national autonomy but except for those who chose to emigrate most stayed put on their territory and endured their many conquerors.
@ BlandOatmeal:
If my post in moderation and at least one of the three that just disappeared show up we can continue.
@ yamit82:
Gotcha, Yam. The last we talked, we were discussing whether or not the recent (past 2000 year) history of the Jews was unique. You said it was, and I said it wasn’t. I cited the examples of the Christians and Samaritans as limiting cases, in which the Jews come out as rather average: The Christians have come to very large numbers through actively encouraging conversions, whereas the Samaritans have been exceedingly clannish and exclusive, and have nearly disappeared. The Jews have pursued a middle course, and have come out somewhere in the middle. I don’t regard that performance as anything unusual or miraculous.
Having said that, I DO regard what has happened among the Jews, as a fulfillment of prophecy. I have no quarrel with Gimpel and other Zionists on that account. What I want to correct, is Gimpel’s exaggerations. The Jews are a VERY ordinary people. In fact, that’s what makes the Bible so appealing that over half the world’s people receive it: It talks about very ORDINARY people having a relationship with God, in contrast with pagan beliefs that only the chosen few can attain to such an honor.
I know you don’t accept Christianity, nor anything coming near that territory; but bear with me. A friend of mine told me a story, about a missionary in China. One of his students presented him with a painting of a very Chinese-looking man, and the missionary asked him who the person was who was portrayed. The student replied that the picture was of Jesus. When the missionary protested that Jesus was actually a white man, the student said,
“Your told me Jesus was my brother. This is a picture of my brother!”
Do you get it? Christianity is popular, because Jesus and the disciples were ordinary people, like them. The same can be said of ALL the Bible characters. Moses parted the Red Sea, but he was also nagged by his wife; and he had to keep performing one miracle after another, because in spite of the miracles, virtually nobody wanted to listen t o him. Aaron was popular when he made the golden calf; but then the people complained that only he was chosen as high priest. The Jewish people were not supermen, and they were not led by supermen. They were “everymen”; and when people continually criticize and attack Jews, it isn’t because the Jews are somehow inferior OR superior — it’s actually because the Jews are ordinary, and the pagans who attack them think that, as God’s chosen, they should somehow be different. Someone once told me what her mother said about the Jews:
“The Jews are just people, only more so”.
That’s my point.
@ BlandOatmeal:
WHY the christianity deception?
by Prof. Mordochai ben-Tziyyon, Universitah Ha’ivrit, Y’rushalayim
ON THE ORIGINS OF CHRISTIANITY
“The christianity cult first appeared in the early part of the 4th century CE. That remark may well raise some eyebrows, because it differs markedly from what you have almost certainly always believed to be the case. All the history books say the earliest christians were 1st century Hebrews, don’t they? Well they would say that, though: this is what the churches want everyone to think. And never forget, the churches controlled all publishing and printing for centuries: even into the early 20th century in some countries. But, like so much else about christianity, it just ain’t true.”
Having created his new religion, Constantine was now ready to foist the deception upon his unsuspecting subjects. But he still had one problem to overcome. There were Hebrews everywhere all over his empire, and they were not likely to take kindly to his new religion, which relied so heavily on the distortion and wholesale falsification of everything they held Holy. Constantine was a pragmatic man and knew he couldn’t possibly exterminate them all (it had been tried several times before, but miraculously they always seemed to survive) and, in truth, he didn’t want to anyway. The Hebrews were useful people: they tended to be artisans, craftsmen and professionals, the kind of people who made significant contributions to his taxation revenue and they were – in the main – honest, law-abiding, peaceful and inoffensive people. But he foresaw that they were going to be a big problem when he tried to launch his new religion; they could not be silenced, but they could be discredited. To achieve this, the stories in the “gospels” were written in such a way as to depict the Hebrews of the 1st century as thoroughly disreputable people: crude, uncultured, cruel, turning on their own “king” and baying for his blood, and with wicked and corrupt leaders. That did the trick: after all, who was going to listen to the very people whose hands were covered with God’s own blood?
It’s a sad fact that the roots of all modern antisemitism (i.e. hatred of Hebrews) can be traced directly back to christianity’s “gospels”.
Seems to me that Catarin’s historical views are every-bit as credible as yours both based on lies, fabrications, myths and historical revisionism.b If it were not for the suffering of the Jewish people by Christians historically I wouldn’t give a damn what they believed but since we have paid the price for their un-Jewish beliefs and theology, I don’t mind setting the record straight. Read full essay Here
@ BlandOatmeal:
I did not duck out, my reply is still in moderation. It wasn’t long and quite for me benign. I did include 3 links also not those that should be moderated, especially on this site. maybe it will show up.
@ Catarin:
Hi, Catarin. Yamit has ducked out of communicating with me; perhaps it is just as well. I enjoyed my dinner, by the way. My wife put kale in the soup — it’s delicious! Meanwhile, you’ve meen saying some pretty fantastic things, to which at least some effort should be directed in refuting them. You said,
I would like to know where this “history” of yours is coming from. Please cite your sources. They certainly could not have been Jewish sources, because what we now call “the Jews”, namely, the sect of the Pharisees, were busy trying to collect and put together various of their traditions in the Mishnah, the centerpiece of Jewish doctrine. That work was not finished until around 200 CE. By this time, all the books of the New Testament had been recorded and circulated, along with a host of pseudopigraphical literature and many commentaries. The only Jew I know of who directly addressed the matters discussed in the NT was Josephus, an eyewitness of the Zealot uprising. These other stories, such as sailing adventures to Majorca and affairs with harlots, are of recent origin by unverified sources. That sort of thing is not properly called “history”. What is historical, is the fact that by the fourth century CE, the entire Roman Empire abandoned the state religion of thousands of years, in favor of a Jewish sect that was being practiced by much if not most of the populace. This sort of thing does not just arise out of the blue. You’re wasting a lot of time and energy, trying to gainsay something that is as plain as day.
We are taliking here, about a whole empire of goiim adopting the teachings of a Jew, in preference over centuries of Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek and Roman legends. How can one come up with anything more preposterous than that? The camel jockeys of Arabia came up with a local myth based on Christianity and Judaism, but they had nothing to compare it to. They only had one shrine of note, in Mecca, which they converted to their new one-man heresy. The Romans, Egyptians, Phrygians, Greeks and all, on the other hand, had invested millenia of effort into constructing a religious system that to this day has its temples and statues adored by tourists, and its literature seriously studied in universities. These were proud people, and you are saying that they threw away all this, literally overnight, to heed the ramblings of a JEW who had lived about 300 years before then? Someone who worshipped an alien God at a temple of a defeated people who were, at that time, universally despised and ridiculed?
There is no “history” of Jesus, nor of any of his disciples, by any credible group of authors who agree with one another, other than the New Testament and some supporting literature such as the works of Barnabus, Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, etc. As an example, let’s just take your “Majorca” story. Please cite your ancient sourCES. Note the plural — if something is to be accepted as history, there ought to be at least two witnesses. After all, isn’t Moses attested to by others who agree with one another, as well as by archealogical evidence? It is one thing to disagree with a doctrine, which I grant every Jew and everyone else the liberty to do. It is another thing altogether, to try to recast as fiction something that was already accepted as fact by millions, less than 300 years after the events occurred, by a people who had been blatantly and violently opposed to such doctrines and to those who preached them. That deviates well beyond the realm of religion, into serious historical revisionism.
You mentioned the storms on Lake Kinneret. I am not familiar with the current situation of that lake, which is a major reservoir in a controlled water supply today. If you want to know how deadly storms can get in such places, though, I pray you ask Arnold Harris about Lake Winnebago in Wisconsin, which is practically a twin of Kinneret. Just about every year, boaters are killed in storms there; because the storms arise suddenly, and the shallow lake becomes treacherous. You can see the
BOATS that ply that lake HERE,
boats with ample cabins for sleeping in. And if you think nobody can sleep in such a place, you have obviously not been in the Army. The account of the gospel writers on this matter is very believable, right down to the awe at the sailors at the sudden calming of the storm. I’m from Wisconsin, and have seen such storms develop on the lakes. They are taken seriously, and people scurry for cover when they see them developing.
So much for your “historical” source about the “Majorca Jesus”. Stories of the “Pantera Jesus”, the “Kashmiri Jesus” et al are equally believable (not). As I said, if you have a disagreement about a DOCTRINE, stick to a doctrinal discussion, and leave pseudo-history out of it.
Some books say the Romans were crucifying tens of thousands of Jews each day so I said thousands, because the other seems high.
The virgin story started with the Greeks. They mistranslated the word amah, which means young maiden, as virgin.
@ dweller:
What Person do you ascribe to be that one “G” whose name is left unpronounced?
You have said in the past that you did not believe in youshka’s divinity. If you accept the fable of virgin birth then you must ascribe supernatural divinity to your boy. Which is it?
The accounts of the birth and Nativity of Jesus appear in only two of the four Canonical Gospels, the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew. Even here their narratives are quite divergent,
Mark and Paul are silent. 4th century the Nicene Creed rejected the teaching that Jesus was a mere human. Celsus, a pagan anti-Christian Greek philosopher wrote that Jesus’s father was a Roman soldier named Pantera.
Why believe either Luke or Mathew and not Celsus?
@ BlandOatmeal:
Since when do you or anybody else attribute nationhood and nationality to Christianity?
Answered and refuted #20
The Hebrew Language is The DNA of Creation
Do any of those tribes you mentioned have a common distinct national language, culture, history? Have they been dispersed to every country in the world with few exceptions? Have they avoided assimilation it’s the majority cultures? Were they expelled from every nation where they resided again with few exceptions? have during their exilic periods been persecuted as the Jews? What languages do the Kalash anf Burushaskis speak? Are they a distinct people?
Jewish DNA – The Kohanim Gene and the Lost Tribes of Israel
Jewish DNA – Genetic Research and The Origins of the Jewish People
@ Catarin:
Not each day. But often, yes. So?
Not if they truly ARE ‘Christians.’
Sorry, Jesus had NO line. Couldn’t.
If the Virgin Birth is a fact, Catarin, then Christ would have been created of genetic material from only one physical parent. If you accept the Virgin Birth, then you have to acknowledge that he was biologically incapable of fathering children.
You’re not thinking this thru; if he could walk on the surface of the water, he didn’t need a boat to sleep on in a storm.
Of course he had female followers. Yes, they preached; yes, they healed; yes, they helped with expenses.
No, they didn’t ‘service’ him
— nor he, they.
@ yamit82:
How do they ‘disagree’ with each other in the matter?
“Can be interpreted”? — that’s the way it’s always interpreted; makes perfect sense too.
What of it?
Of course they aren’t
— who could circumcize them?
Even the pigs would rather die than endure another moment with them.
Ah, I knew THAT would bring you out of your lair (though I’m sure you meant “load”).
I’m unaware of only one god who ever “existed as a real person”
— and that’s the one whose title begins with a capital “G,” and whose name is left unpronounced
so why would I even SEEK ‘evidence’ of any other one existing as a ‘real person’?
Based on your characterization of him as a ‘god,’ he might as well have been ANY or ALL of the above.
Catarin’s problem is essentially the same as yours, boychik’l : She hasn’t a clue as to what Christ’s mission consisted of. So she readily buys into the stories of his being ‘married.’
Had she understood that mission, it would be impossible for her to speculate thusly; absolutely off-the-table, out-of-the-question.
But I’ll get to her (added) remarks presently.
There is no way to reconcile the study of Jesus of the New Testament and the study of the historical Jesus. I’m interested in the historical Jesus, and scholar John Dominic Crossan, a retired priest and professor from Chicago, has written many books about the historical Jesus and is a leading scholar in that area. I agree with what he writes on the whole. For example, did you know when Jesus was crucified, the Romans were crucifying thousands of Jews each day?
Many scholars are researching Jesus’ life before he came into public view, and many Christians are hoping that Jesus did have children. There is a man in Scotland, a SinClaire, with a famous chapel on his property, who claims he is descended from Jesus’ line. Some Europeans passed this information down for almost 2000 years.
There was a list of geological features of the site Jesus sailed to which does not fit the Sea of Galilee. The gospel says that Jesus slept during a storm on the journey, which helped Simcha lead to his theory of Majorca. The Sea is not large enough for a ship, and Jesus couldn’t have slept through a storm on a smaller boat. To find people in Majorca who claimed descendancy from the Gads and have for 2000 years is no small matter. Perhaps DNA tests could verify their Jewishness.
Simcha claims that Emperor Constantine decided many issues of Christian theology. He called for the Nicean Council in 325 CE, and half thehe Bishops attending did not believe Jesus was divine and half did. After days of wrangling with no agreement, Constantine decided that Jesus was divine. After all, Constantine was a son of a god, so why not Jesus? This is quite a decision! Of course the details of the Council were forgotten but details were written down only to be exposed by scholar Elaine Pagel in a recent book.
Having studied the historical Jesus,I know he had women followers, some that helped with travel expenses (a woman named Joanne) but they also preached and healed. So the Church’s banning of women from leadership is a crock. All the other Catholic rituals were decided by men,
which didn’t come from Jesus. The Church built a hierarchy with men only which resulted in millions of people being killed in the name of Christianity.
@ dweller:
Another case of your unholy scriptures not agreeing with each other. Demons? not Jewish… Devil? not Jewish…Yushka? not Jewish
I ask the question posed by Rabbi Locks. “Is G-d in the heart of the devil?”
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Gospel of Mark, 5:9, describes the following in the country of the Gadarenes:
And He (Jesus) asked him (the man), “What is thy name?” And he answered, saying, “My name is Legion: for we are many.”
The Gospel of Luke, Luke 8:30, describes the following in the country of the Gadarenes:
And Jesus asked him, saying, “What is thy name?” And he said, “Legion”: because many devils were entered into him.
The Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 8:28-34, has a unique version of the story:
And when He was come to the other side into the country of the Gergesenes, there met Him two possessed with devils, coming out of the tombs, exceeding fierce, so that no man might pass by that way.
The demons comprising the Legion are given the appearance of fearing Jesus in the King James Version, Mark 5:10:
And he besought Him much that He would not send them away out of the country.
dweller what a loud of Bull. You can’t even show a single piece of credible evidence that your god even existed as a real person.
If Catarin says he was married to the whore of Babylon her evidence is at least as credible as yours.
Based on your description of your little god, he must have been a Queer, Eunuch or maybe a Catholic Priest?…Mystic?
@ Catarin:
What makes a treaty “honorable” is more than its contents.
What makes it honorable is the commitment of the parties to uphold it.
Regrettably, Catarin, the Arab concept of ‘honor’ has little to do with the principle of keeping one’s word (that’s why trying to do serious business, on a contractual basis, in the Arab world is often, at best, a crap shoot
— moreover, the Arab world’s confluence with the Religion of Peace makes the dishonoring of one’s word something to celebrate and sanctify
since after all, the World’s Most Perfect Man had no trouble with the practice [google: Hudaibiyeh].
And Arafat never saw a scrap of paper he wouldn’t sign.
— So?
In the Arabo-Islamic world, what is called “honor” consists of your father’s (or eldest brother’s) duty to kill you for having had the temerity to shame the family by deciding for yourself, as a woman, what man to snuggle up to in the sack on cold nights
— and “honor” is your mother’s duty as a woman to cooperate with the killing.
An “honorable peace treaty” with the Palys? — get real, darlin.’
Not perhaps while it was ruled as a Jewish theocracy.
But Israel hasn’t always been ruled as a theocracy.
Hasn’t always been ruled by Jews — let alone, Jews ruling as a theocracy
— in case you hadn’t noticed.
And it certainly wasn’t ruled as a Jewish theocracy when Jesus walked its blessed soil.
Of course there were pigs there — on the “Gadarene coast.”
Michelle Obama went traipsing off to Majorca (that tax check you wrote, last Tuesday, paid for it).
And Dylan Thomas & his wife Kaitlyn went sailing off to Majorca (when he was sober enough to walk unassisted up the gangplank).
Jesus, however, never went to Majorca.
Never left the Land of Israel (except for a brief sojourn in Egypt when King Herod’s hit squads were combing the Holy Land with orders to kill any male baby under the age of two years).
Jesus never married anybody.
Never got laid either.
Didn’t need to.
In fact, I seriously doubt that he was ever even. . . . horny.
And the image of the Virgin Mary is reputed to be forever preserved in the top slice of a peanut butter & jelly sandwich.
Yam, my comment #23 is being moderated. Apparently, I’m considered dangerous.
@ yamit82:
On with our academic argument. I’m glad we’ve both been able to remain civil about it. You said:
That’s false, and I’ve already listed example after example to refute this belief. CuriousAmerican has also refuted you, citing the Parsees.
The Jews have become a matrilineal society, which means that unless they repeatedly augmented their numbers through conversions, it’s a craps shoot as to how many would have survived. Taking patrilineal societies as an example, where we can keep track of things by surnames, the odds are stacked against any line surviving; yet some do — the “Smith”s are an example.
Your logic is faulty. The Chinese are not a uniparental society: They count as “Chinese”, both male and female children equally. The Jews have stacked the odds against themselves, through their own doctrine. They make up for this deficit by allowing, according to the needs of the time, varying numbers of conversions.
Incidentally, the Chinese are an excellent example of an “ancient people” which has not disappeared, refuting Gimpel’s assertion about the uniqueness of the Jews in this respect.
I don’t know what you’re trying to imply here. Both the Samaritans and the Christians arose out of the Jewish people. The Samaritans today number only a few hundred, and the Christians number in the billions. The Jewish numbers are in between these extremes. Are you trying to say that the Jews are the most “in between” people in the world?
Supper’s on the table. Nice chatting with you 🙂
Unless Arab Palestinians sign an honorable peace treaty with the Jews, how can negotiations go further?
The History Chanel on Easter afternoon broadcast several hours of Biblical theories by Simcha Jacobovici (Is this partly an Italian name?) Some people consider him a joke but he does come up with interesting theories. He says the lost tribe of Gad ended up in Majorica, then throughout Spain and Portugal. The Gospels mention Jesus taking a boat trip where there were pigs and certain geological features that were thought to be at the Sea of Galilee. Pigs in Israel? Simcha looked at earlier translations of the Gospel and found Majorica fit the description. Jesus and many from the tribe of Gad sailed on a ship to a place on Majorca that still has Gad- in its name. He interviewed the people there where it came down in their oral history that their ancestors were with Jesus on that trip almost two thousand years ago. They said Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and they had a son named John. These people view Jesus as a great man and hold no Catholic beliefs but are close to the Jews. The Gads were asked to return to Israel by Jews, but decided to stay where they were at. There is a footprint on the island in cement that they say is Jesus’.
Simcha also made a good case that the Emperor Constantine was a phoney Christian who really believed in a Roman war God, but used his so-called beliefs to shape Christianity and his empire to his own terms. He said he dreamed of meeting Jesus and decided to convert, but the Arch in Rome which has the Jewish Menorah and was built after his claim that he converted to Christianity has not one Christian symbol on it. In fact there was once a statue of Constantine as the sun god which was built behind the Arch which acted as a “frame” for it.
The Catholic Church may eventually have to come to terms with all this, for, in my opinion, as much good as it has done, it has done as much evil.
@ BlandOatmeal:
Is this the best you can up with????
Interesting because it shows how desperate you are to try show our contentions not just false but where true just banal. I think you should stick with your marvel comic clone called book of revelations. It suits you more intellectually.
@ BlandOatmeal:
The Jews survived as a distinct people through 2 exiles and returned.
“God will then scatter you among the nations, and only a small number will remain among the nations where God shall lead you” (Deuteronomy 4:27).
To every other people, a small population spells extinction. We know from the records that the Romans kept about 2,000 years ago, there were between 8-10 million Jews living in the world. How many Jews do demographers say should be in the world today?
If in the same period of time, the Chinese went from a population of 30 million to over 1 billion people, there should be approximately 500 million Jews alive in the world today. After the Chinese and the Indians, the third largest ethnic group on the planet earth should be the Jews! But there are only 14 million Jews alive today.
There are virtually no more Jews in the world today than there were 2,000 years ago and yet throughout all this time, the Jews remained a distinct people.
Hebrew didn’t develop through evolution. Someone consciously created Hebrew words by adding a third letter to the two-letter root cells (such as making n-sh-k from the n-sh root cell). What’s more, this means that our “caveman grammarian” had the alphabet at his disposal when creating words, whereas the normal process is the opposite: alphabets crystallize from spoken languages. The presence of the alphabet means that Hebrew was a written language from the beginning; it did not pass through the standard stage of being a spoken-only language.
Hebrew did not appear from nowhere. Its concepts are traceable to the Ancient Egyptian and proto-Semitic. But at some point someone built a new language on the basis of those. The language was not for Jews only: Moabites used it, too. The language wasn’t static, but continuously evolved along the preset grammatical rules. But it couldn’t have appeared naturally. No other language group comes close to Hebrew’s mathematically structured rigidity.
Think of this carefully. If you need proof of G-d, this is it.
There is no accepted and conclusive evidence to show and or prove that Romanians are in fact a distict people with a common origin and common history. Many conflicting theories and each is as good or bad as another.
Your examples # 4 & 5 as you state in # 5 cannot be comparable to the Jews. They are not a distinct people with a common history or language distict from any other tribes in their regions and dispersal for mist was in the easy walk of a day or so.
#6 we are talking about nations not specific regions within a national border.
The term “anti-Semitism” itself is very curious. Why not refer to the hatred and persecution of Jews by more generic terms like religious bigotry, xenophobia, or racism? The Jews are the only group in the world with a unique term for their persecution. Why? The world seems to realize that anti-Semitism isn’t simply one more unfortunate example of hatred in the world, but is instead a phenomenon specific to the Jews.
There are four different aspects to anti-Semitism which characterize it as being a hatred like no other:
1) Universality
2) Intensity
3) Longevity
4) Irrationality
FULL LIST OF EMPIRES AGAINST THE JEWS:
Egyptian Empire,Chaldean Empire,Babylonian Empire,Greek Empire,Roman Empire,Byzantine Empire,Spanish Empire,Ottoman Turkish Empire,British Empire,Austro-Hungarian Empire,German Empire,French Empire,Russia Empire,Soviet Empire,Nazi Empire
@ yamit82:
Yam,
If you want to attack my arguments, you will make a better case if you give some examples. I agree with Curious about the Parsees, and your argument about their small numbers is surprizing. Didn’t Jeremy Gimpel use the fact that the Jews are so FEW and yet survived, as and argument IN FAVOR of the miraculous nature of it all?
While arguing on these matters, I hope you will keep in mind my main point: That it didn’t require a miracle for the Jewish people to survive. I gave the example of one group, the Christians, who have survived 200 x as well as the Jews, as well as much smaller groups, such as the various pygmy nations, who have survived not for thousands of years but tens of thousands, with the handicap of having a lifestyle that is doomed to extinction.
Face it: The Jews are a very, very ordinary people. Are they smart? So are the Parsees. Are they influential? So is the British peerage. Did they survive a long time? So did the Pygmies. Have they resisted assimilation? So have the Kalash. In fact, the central message of the Bible, if you can ever get it, is that God doesn’t require “super people” to accomplish His work; He only requires Himself: The rest is grace. This was the message of Jesus, which the Jews rejected.
@ BlandOatmeal:
I think you are trying too hard to prove or disprove what the Jews contend about themselves. So far you are stretching the outer limits of incredulity [Latin incredulitas] by the examples you give.
@ CuriousAmerican:
CuriousAmerican says:
There were more people in my old apt building in NYC.
Are all the Parsi’s Queer?
Bland Oatmeal,
if you want to see history of a remarkably insular, but scattered, but intelligent,
and highly creative people, look at the Parsi of India.
These were the Zoroasteran Persians who fled Iran when the Muslims invaded about 1300 years ago.
They moved to India and set up a Parsi community.
Their name Parsi is cognate with Persia.
They are only about 10,000 left.
I think they have the highest collective IQ on the planet.
Zubin Mehta, and Queen’s Freedie Mercury were Zoroasteran Parsi.
My comment #13 (the one BEFORE the Bielski thing) is being moderated.
@ yamit82:
Right. Any enemy collaborators in Israel? Don’t make the net too big — it might include the whole country. At the very least, the IRANIANS need to pay a price. Yeah, the Bielskis, the Stern Gang… a place for everything, and everything in its place. In my own country, I fear that the propaganda machine is more effective than it was in Hitler’s Germany. In the clip, they mentioned that just surviving was a major goal — a military objective, if you will; and lifting one another’s spirits was a major weapon.
Such times are coming, very soon — for Christians, for Jews, for all sorts of people. “Beacons of Freedom”, like the US and Israel, may become some of the most awful tormentors of the righteous. The Bible warns us not even to trust our own families. It’s good that we had the Bielskis to go before us — they’re a good example.
@ yamit82:
It all depends on what it means to be “effective”.
1. Israel does not need to take Iran out of the nuclear business. It can’t: It’s so doggone cheap to become nuclear these days, Western Samoa could become a nuclear power with the right sponsors.
2. Israel needs to hit the Iranians where it hurts the most — in their pride. What puffs up Arab pride the most, is to have powerful enemies. Whatever Israel does, they need to do it cheaply and swiftly, and catch the Iranians with their pants down.
3. Israel needs to set the Iranian nuke program back a few more years, because nobody else will do it.
4. An Israeli strike on Iran, done with the right timing, might hurt Obama’s re-election chances. Israel must be prepared to take that risk 😉
I HOPE Israel has enough brilliant generals in high places to connect the dots. A MAJOR problem in Israel seems to be that
1. Prommotions in the IDF seem to be entirely political, putting idiots in high places
2. Israel’s military leaders have no incentive to serve their country, and every incentive to pursue personal gain; because high rank in the IDF or Security Service appears to be nothing more than a steppingstone into national politics (viz Sharon, Barak, Mofaz)
Israel has been fumbling militarily for decades now. It seemed on the ball in taking out the Syrian reactor, but every other move seems to have been a poorly managed exercise in futility. By contrast, American moves seem to have been well executed, and only CONCEIVED by jackasses. The IDF has a long way to go, for me to have confidence in its operational capabilities; and I wonder at times whether Israel’s political leadership is nothing more than a “good cop/bad cop” dog and pony show (forgive the mixed metaphor) staged by stooges of the Americans.
When the people lead our leaders to the guillotine, I want to be in the front row. I may even learn to knit.
@ yamit82:
Clip left out of Bielski bros. playlist. Probably because too descriptively violent. This time on the part of the Jews. Price tag..
Voices from the Holocaust
@ BlandOatmeal:
That’s why I posted that ref.
A- you are either right or the premise of the article is re: Use of tactical nukes.
B-If Israel does attack she would need to use tactical Nukes to be effective.
Yam, I responded twice to your post #4, and both comments are in moderation.
Yamit,
I wrote a small critique of your link about Jewish/Israeli history. It ended up in moderation, part of the game we all have to play here. When it comes on board, you’ll see that, essentially, Jeremy Gimpel was a bit over-enthusiastic about the uniqueness of the Jewish people.
While we’re waiting for my piece to rise, I did some lookups on another group in Europe similar to the Jews. It is a people few in number, who have been scattered among the nations for hundreds of years yet retains its identity. In fact, I would say that, on average, this people keeps far better genealogical records than the Jews, and is equally fastidious about keeping its traditions. I am referring, of course, to the Nobility. There is an excellent little website about the English nobility during the reign of Henry VII at
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/henry_vii_nobles.htm
Here’s what they have in common with the Jews:
1. Uniparental lineage — though male heirs, for the most part, as the Jews reckon their lineage through the female heirs
2. Small numbers. Extremely small numbers, at times, for the nobles (only 43 of them in the time of Henry VII), yet they managed to survive. A miracle? No — both the Jews and the Nobles augmented their numbers as needed, by loosening or tightening restrictions against joining the clan
3. Isolation. In the case of the Jews, it was the shtetl. I the case of the Nobles, it was social status in a society of little upward mobility.
There have been, of course, all sorts of peoples across the world with similar situations. The Pygmies have maintained a genetic separation from their neighbors, with whom they regularly did trade and communicated, for tens of thousands of years. They were separated from their neighbors by their lifestyle (hunter-gatherer vs slash & burn) and, because of the lifestyle difference, by the rain forest. The Eskimoes are another group that has survived without assimilating, because of their austere lifestyle.
Today the rain forest is disappearing, along with its game, and so are the Pygmies. That ought to strike Jewish dreamers like a bucket of cold water. The Pygmies depended on their forest like the Jews depended on their shtetls. They also depended, like the nobility, on the feudal structure of society. When the Jews were no longer confined by law to the shtetls, and when the Polish nobility and Jewish bourgeoisie were replaced by more democratic governments, Jews began losing numbers through assimilation. It was no miracle that kept the Jewish people separate, and no miracle that suddenly put them in danger: It was natural change in their environment.
Today, what separates the Jews from the goiim is no longer the shtetl, nor the aristocracy; it is Israel. If the Jews want to continue to exist as a people in this new environment, they must do so in Israel.
@ yamit82:
Hello again, Yam
The video about Israel’s history was impressive, though a bit exaggerated. The Jewish experience has accorded with prophecy and has been remarkable, but it has not been unique. You might note, for instance, that
1. The Christians were fewer in number than the Jews 2000 years ago. They now outnumber them by about 200:1
2. 2000 years ago, the Aramaic script, used today for Hebrew, was more widespread than the Latin alphabet. It was used by Persians, Iraqis, Jews, Nabatean Arabs, Egyptians and more. The Italians were the only ones using Latin script, and at that, they communicated with most of their subjects in Greek. Today, Greek and Hebrew both are used by only a few million; but the Latin script is used by well over half the world.
3. Other people have disappeared for about as long as the Jews, ruled by one nation after another, until arising out of the ashes in the 19th Century. Notable among them are the Romanians, speaking a derivative of Latin while surrounded by Slavic- and Hungarian-speaking peoples. Until modern Romania got its independence from the Ottoman Turks, the last trace of any “Romanian” people in the area was in the Second Century CE.
4. As for ancient people surviving, Jeremy forgot (a) the Armenians, (b) the Georgians, (c) the Kalash, (d) the Burushaski, and many more. The Nuristanis of Afghanistan resisted conversion to Islam until forced to under pain of death in 1896. Their cousins the Kalash are still not completely converted. They have maintained their ancient language and, unlike the Hebrews, even their ancient DNA.
5. Granted, none of those people I mentioned had been scattered among all the nations. Others have been scattered similarly, only not so far. The various castes in India, for instance, have lived as minorities for thousands of years with virtually no admixture. The Hakka of Southeast China (whose name literally means “Guest Families”) have also lived as strangers among the Min Nan and others, and kept their language and traditions for thousands of years, having migrated to the area wherein they are now scattered from Northern China. To this day, they preserve their culture and language not only in China, but in overseas communities across the globe — and so do the other Chinese communities, such as the Teochew, Hokkien and Cantonese. My 4-year-old granddaughter speaks the Teochew dialect of her father, along with English and Mandarin, in the Cantonese-speaking community they live in.
6. You might be interested to know that here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, in spite of intensive logging, we have more trees than we had a hundred years ago. That’s because the Kalapooyah Indians, who lived here before us, used to burn the land every year to encourage favorite crops such as the camas. We do some burning, but not as much; and buttes that were grass-covered for hundreds or thousands of years are now thickly forested. Again, Israel has been remarkable, but not unique.
What’s truly unique to the Israelis, is that they are so hated by so many people, despite the fact that they have so little real power. The Americans are hated, as were the British before them and clear back to the Romans. That’s because we are and they were very powerful. But the Israelis? A few people, living in a land that most people can’t even find on the map? That they should hate those people? THAT is truly remarkable.
Shalom shalom.
@ yamit82:
Hi, Yam.
The link you gave is to an almost 5-yr-old article. Five years of posturing has only meant five more years for Iran to get its centriguges whirring. If Israel didn’t need nukes to get the job done five years ago (when, by the way, the Iranian facilities were much more vulnerable and undefended), it might by the time it gets around to doing something.
Bielski Brothers(-Defiance)
Grandson of Biekski in the IDF: Lone Soldier: Why I Serve
Israel — One Hundred Years of Science and Technology
EU Ambassador: Israel ‘Occupying’ Hevron
The European Union continues to maintain Israel is occupying Judea and Samaria; denies that Judaism and Israel are inherently connected
The MOST Important Video About Israel You’ll Ever See! </a
@ BlandOatmeal:
Israel denies plan to hit Iran enrichment plant with tactical nukes
Iran: Sunday Times report shows ‘Zionist regime is main menace to global peace,’ any invader will regret its act.
This has been around for a while. I saw it weeks ago.
Nice video. Too bad it’s in English — the Jews in Israel will never get it. I’m pretty sure their leaders don’t get it — they’re still waiting for Obama to tell them what to do.