Part 35 of Post Your Tough Questions Regarding Christianity

Whoa right there mate, speculation is fun but don't overdo it..
For example 'The Last Temptation of Christ' starring Willem Dafoe was great entertainment and speculation, but it never pretended to be reality, it simply explored the fascinating theme of what would have happened if Jesus had voluntarily chosen not to go to the cross and become a family man instead.
You should be a hollywood scriptwriter..

 

He did not...someone else made something up and made up a story about him saying it. Much like everything else in the Bible(S) .

 

Aarghh that's a consp-theory inside a consp-theory inside another consp theory!
Ooh I think need a cup of tea and a lie down, then I'll watch my Nanny McPhee video..

 

Is every other religion a conspiracy theory?

 

Its really not.. Its just honest study of real geography, history, geology, archeology, language and culture.

Faith should be enhanced by that. Do we believe in God because of epic myths and legends?

 

Very seldom go to the cinema. 'The Last temptation of Christ'? Means nothing to me. Don't watch Religious films for the very reason you quote.

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Matthew 17:21-23 and Mark 8.

No Hebrew Messiah would make a vicarious sacrifice. The idea was anathema to them. Each man was responsible for his own sins. Thus Yom Kippur. That's one of the reasons I believe the Gospels have been used to put forward Christian doctrine using a Jewish preacher. Jesus Christus - Jesus the anointed one. So were many of the OT Kings anointed. The OT foretells an anointed one who will come and destroy their enemies. Hardly the 'anointed one' they were expecting.
Everything Jesus does is in line with Jewish teaching, with extra thrown in by Christianity. His main teaching was repentance by the Jewish Religious heirarchy, and for this he was crucified by the Romans. The Jews could not do it. The Romans could impose the death Penalty and that was by crucifixion. The Jews would have to stone him as they did not recognise crucifixion as a punishment.

Matthew is full of OT parables and stories

There are so many problems with the Gospel of Matthew it's a job to know what is fact and fiction. Try Matthew 26 v 17 for example. The Nativity story. The Arrest, trial and crucifixion. Barabbas.

 

I don't there's any "conspiracy" involved, they're probably just wackos..

 

But WHY on earth would anybody want to "put forward Christian doctrine"?
For fame or money or what?

 

Why indeed? Remember these gospels were written decades after Jesus died. Perhaps they genuinely believed that this crucified man was something special. Mohammed convinced a few men and Islam came into being from adapting the same Jewish scriptures. . The Jews needed a history and a religion so they took one from Babylonian Zoroatarism and earlier religions. Most of Judaism can be traced back to earlier times - including Egypt, and formed into their own. Christianity has used Judaism and adapted it.

There's nothing to show that Jesus was anything that a Jewish preacher except the writings of 4 people, only one who was an eyewitness. John. And he was self-opinionated. .Matthew was written by an anonymous writer.

 

You gotta be kidding us mate..
1-Jesus had a ginormous fan base- "Large crowds from Galilee, the Ten Cities, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him" (Matt 4:25)
and he pulled crowds of over 5000 and 4000 at two concerts alone (Matt 14:13, Matt 15:32)
and he blew everybody's socks off with his 37 miracles..

2- Both John and Matthew were actual disciples, you can't get better street cred than that..
Matthew, formerly Levi (Mark 2:14; Luke 5:27) was the son of Alpheus, and was formerly a tax collector (Luke 5:29-30) one of the 12 apostles handpicked by Jesus (Matthew 9:9) and he wrote his gospel between c.60 and 80 AD.

 

Probably not.. Palestine never had a population of over 600,000... and they had no way of communicating with distant villages or small farmers and shepherds

 

Preacher Brady asks why anybody would want to promote Christianty. He should ask himself that question. Preaching Christianity is about all he seems to do on this forum, and he's not very good at doing even that.

 

Jesus and the disciples criss-crossed the Holy Land for 3 long years, so even if they walked only 5 miles a day and took Sundays off, that adds up to a total mileage of over 5000 miles if my maths are right..

 

Prove it. You've already posted the above several times. The possibility of such crowds happening at so short time has been shown you. Even it it were possible to get so large a crowd. Palestine was not exactly overcrowded. Villages were small, cities were no larger than our large towns. The cities of the Decapolis were centres of Greek populations. These people were not interested. They had their own beliefs. Even Paul had to adapt his teaching to the Greek way of thinking. Many were Samaritans with whom the Jews would have not dealings. Doesn't leave that many to bother about Jesus.
Matthew may have been a disciple. That doesn't mean he wrote the Gospel. It is anonymous. It is attributed to Matthew, but unlikely written by him. Rather like some of Pauls Gospels.

 

In this religion, they chose a golden calf. Or the forefather of the religion. Even though it didn't actually happen.

 

You've taken on the new role of WanRen.
Tell us your views of how God didn't kill innocent children, babies, and fetuses in the world wide flood in Noah's time.

 

I don't have to mate..
I've got the debating high ground here because I quote from a wealth of Judeo-Christian literature spanning many centuries of earth history to back me up, whereas you're an atheist without any backup at all and can only give us your hunches and guesses, spot the difference?-

 

Huh? I googled WanRen and got "A Chinese-registered Cargo ship" ??
As for the Flood, only hardcore fundies take it literally. Surely you don't think there was enough room to take every animal species on board?
Rather, it's pure symbology, or alternatively we could even put it in sci-fi terms and speculate that the Ark was a "DNA repository craft" quite capable of storing millions of microscopic DNA samples.
The film "Silent Running" touched on the theme, where samples of earth animals and plant life were put under domes on a spacecraft for safekeeping-

 

Again, that's a supposition. Given that we only have about 3-6 months of the 3 years of Jesus life recorded and we don't know what happened in between, your maths are pretty well out. Jesus, the preacher, almost certainly spent time at home, and we know his disciples did. He turns up one morning to find they had been fishing.
You are just interpreting things in todays terms, not those of 2000 years ago.
The Bible rarely gives us time intervals so people read it as a continuous story. I wonder how many Christians realise that there are 400 years between Genesis and Exodus.

 

Aarghh another consp-theory..
No offence mate but can I ask you what your angle is on all this? I mean, if you're a commie or Jew or Muslim or satanist or fairy-worshipper etc, that's just the sort of anti-christian stuff you would say isn't it?
And if Christianity scares or worries you for some reason, how can you be scared of something that you claim is a myth?..

 

Unfortunately much of that 'knowledge' is proving out-dated. The Catholic Church forced its beliefs on people for centuries. Reformation has allowed people to think for themselves.
Archaeology is disproving much of the Bible and proving parts of it. Modern Biblical Scholars are taking a different view of things like the OT. Viewing and interpreting it in the situation
of the time. 'Lucifer' in Isaiah is recognised as a Babylonian King, Many Psalms are related to Ugarit poetry. There is no evidence for the Pentateuch as being written by ' Moses'. Modern knowledge shows that most of it is a rehash of ancient practises, codes etc.

Sorry. You should forget what you have been told and start at the beginning making your own mind up.

Actually I'm an agnostic but one who has studied your books of knowledge as a practising Christian.

 

Why can't that same logic apply to the writers of the Gospels?

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Except we have exactly zero evidence of this "ginormous fan base" other than the Gospels. Why should we believe them?

 

What's all this consp-theory. Is that a stock answer? It's pretty obvious to anyone who has studied that we have very little of Jesus movements in 3 years. Most we have is events that, taken together, would only take up 3-6 months of those 3 years. In one instance we have Jesus sending his disciples out to preach while he preaches in their cities. Nothing then till his disciples are back and wandering through the cornfields on a Sabbath day. (Matthew). We know nothing of how long he preached or when they came back.

 

The flood didn't happen then.
How about Adam being made from dust?
The Exodus out of Egypt?
The wandering in the desert of 1M people for 40 yrs?

 

Preacher Brady is a classic Bible cherry picker.