Hey now don’t oversimplify it!
We all know about Joseph Smith and the stones in a hat.
“This happend to me the other day” and then someone wrote it down.
The new testament was written like a hundred years after Jesus died. Its entirely bullshit.
It’s an oral history whose earliest written accounts are dates between 60-150 years after the events in questions.
No more “bullshit” than any number of other 2000 year old transcribed histories.
But it was collected and disseminated by a bunch of dudes in the 300s
Nicae canonized the subset of Gospels they considered legitimate and excised the Gospels they considered heretical.
But the earliest surviving written gospel is dated to AD 125, with speculation (based on adjacent writings) dating new testament documents back to AD 60.
Religion is such a mindfuck. And life-fuck.
666 likes, 9 dislikes and 63 comments 🤣🤣🤣🤣
9 lmao
Well thats what happens when ur books gets updates faster than ur phone… ;-)
My favorite part of the Bible is Matthew 21:33-45; basically killing landlords is cool and the people who do the work deserve the reward
33 “Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and moved to another place. 34 When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
35 “The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. 36 Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. 37 Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.
38 “But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ 39 So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.
40 “Therefore, when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”
41 “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end,” they replied, “and he will rent the vineyard to other tenants, who will give him his share of the crop at harvest time.”
42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the Scriptures:
"‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes’[h]?
43 “Therefore I tell you that the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who will produce its fruit. 44 Anyone who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; anyone on whom it falls will be crushed.”
45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard Jesus’ parables, they knew he was talking about them. 46 They looked for a way to arrest him, but they were afraid of the crowd because the people held that he was a prophet.
Jesus doing far-left radical anti-government extremist propaganda. If Donald Trump had been Caeser, he’d have done something about it
Dude, my favorite is 2Kings 2:23:24
“Then he went up from there to Bethel; and as he was going up by the way, young lads came out from the city and mocked him and said to him, ‘Go up, you baldhead; go up, you baldhead!’ When he looked behind him and saw them, he cursed them in the name of the LORD. Then two female bears came out of the woods and tore up forty-two lads of their number.”
God kills 42 kids for calling someone bald LOL
That verse is funny as fuck, definitely up there with some of the best. Along with killing all of the pigs being raised for food in a village, because they were all apparently possessed by an army of demons
“Killing?” Even when mocking an opponent, at least be accurate; the demons possessed the pigs who then rushed into water and drowned themselves: https://biblehub.com/mark/5-13.htm
Then the villagers pleaded with Jesus to leave due to having wrecked their economy. Whether Jesus did it because He’s Jewish/anti-pork or that just happened to be what the demons weirdly chose to do (or if it, uh, happened at all, of course), we may never know… But that is how the account goes, regardless.
I analyzed this verse as part of my Bible 101 course in college. The NIV analysis (preferred by biblical scholars) is that Jesus drove the pigs to their death as a continuation of the Mesopotamian tradition of religious warriors
Yeah, but also Jesus, also in Matthew, just 4 chapters later:
“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master’s money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’”
Jesus was kind of a dick.
Jesus: socialism
Pharisees: time to kill him
History just repeats itself forever.
I feel like you’re taking a very different lesson from that. He’s saying God is the landlord, and the pharisees are the tenants, and when God sent them person after person to get them to behave right, they mistreated them, and then prophesizes his own death by them. Then he says the Kingdom of God will be taken from them (the bad tenants) and given to the rejected (which is a regular theme for Jesus, chilling with the social rejects and talking shit to the religious leaders).
Basically, he’s not applauding the tenants. He’s saying the Landlord (God) is going to kick them out of his vineyard (his kingdom) for being assholes.
Eh, if christofascists can claim Sodom and Gamorrah is about homosexuality and not disrespect for God, then we can take this verse
I saw a movie several years ago (name below to avoid spoilers) that was “based on a true story” and involved two people stranded in a dangerous situation with no way to communicate with anyone. I watched this whole movie, invested in the characters and the story, and then at the end they died, bodies never recovered. I was so annoyed. I get that biopics take a lot of liberties, but how tf could they say anything but the first ten minutes were in any way “based on a true story”?
Tap for spoiler
I think it was Open Water
My favourite thing about the Bible is that every time it’s been translated the people doing the translations include they’re own nonsense.
My favorite thing about the Bible is that the gospels were written by followers of the disciples, who themselves didn’t know how to read or write, in Aramaic, then translated to Greek, then to Latin, then censored by the council of Nicea, then finally translated into English with the Geneva, then quickly edited by the commission of King James, because the J-Sauce was very socialist and anti-government.
And the atheists who want to quote terrible things mentioned in the bible are pulling from the Old Testament, specifically a book of law written by the King Joshua, 800 years before Jesus, and proclaim that people proclaim it to be the word of God.
So, ok: we have so many translations, literally a mass obliteration of Cathars, as well as other Inquisitions… now, you wanna tell me you know jack shit about the bible and tell me things didn’t happen?
Ok. Cool, bro.
Edit: btw, the two loaves of bread and five fish story was about a 12 year old boy. Jesus didn’t magic shit other than inspiration in that story. Lost in translation/Nicea/government. You may be kept hidden from the teachings, because Jesus was punk fucking rock.
And a King didn’t want you to even know it! That’s my point, good ol’ JKV that every goddamn “scholar” quotes from.
Apologies, I’m going to do something that I think is kind of a jerk move and paste my standard argument for a very specific point. It’s a jerk move because I see that you wrote a genuine reply and I appreciate that. I don’t know enough about the specific points that you raised to discuss them directly, so I’m falling back on my broader thinking. To that end, I’m truly trying to contribute to the discussion (even though I’m pasting a repeated(-by-me) blurb; see my sibling post; I’m pretty into this topic). I respect your views even if we disagree, so long as you don’t try to impose them on others, which I’m not saying you do / did.
Jesus is an ahistorical figure who was originally crucified in the firmament above the earth. Notice no mention of an earthly ministry in the Pauline epistles; Paul is arguing for salvation from a heavenly figure. In his letters, Jesus is still to be revealed, rather than returning. Only decades later did the stories about a human man get written.
The Didache was most likely part of the letter written by the “pillars in Jerusalem” (James the Just, Peter, and John) after their meeting with Paul. This was the meeting to discuss the matter of preaching to gentiles and whether circumcision ought to be required for christian converts. It contains many of the tenets later ascribed to Jesus, but doesn’t associate him with teaching them.
The reason the earthly story was embraced by the church was to stop people like Paul from having visions of Christ that the church couldn’t control. By pointing to a real guy on earth, they could control the message. Otherwise, any yokel on the street could teach that Jesus revealed new teachings and the church risked being undermined.
Marcion was probably the first to create a collection of writings associated with christianity: he collected some of Paul’s letters and had his own gospel. It was thought that he had a shortened version of Luke (as testified by Eusebius and Tertullian). Marcion, however, claimed that his gospel had been “judaized”; this suggests that his shorter version was the original gospel before others modified it.
Acts was written as a direct response to Marcion’s scripture. It was written to harmonize Paul’s high-jacking of the religion by making he and Peter appear to be in alignment when actually he was at odds with the leaders in Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem pillars (James, Peter, John), were strict adherents of Judaism, whereas Paul taught that Jesus made the Law / Torah unnecessary. They were almost certainly Essenes, one of the three flavors of Judaism at the time (the other two were the Pharisees and Sadducees mentioned in the new testament). John the Baptist was clearly also an Essene. He’s said to wear camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and honey. His practice of baptism also aligns with daily ritual water immersion believed to be a core practice of the Essenes.
This is a very long way of saying that Jesus first appeared in visions and spoke to the early leaders without walking on earth. It’s a fringe belief about which I was quite skeptical, but damn if the evidence doesn’t line up. See Robert Price, Earl Doherty, and Elbe Spurling for more info. Elbe’s online book is free and contains a huge amount of historical information about the region at the.
You are claiming Jesus is ahistorical, using the term to basically mean fictional. Those aren’t the same.
Jesus was crucified here on Earth, and his crime was pissing off Pontius Pilate. He would help people without going through the proper channels.
The religious leaders were getting kick backs from the Roman Empire, as they were taxing the people for religious reassurance. Jesus was doing it for free.
His disciples didn’t understand what he was doing, because Simon wanted a cult. The other Simon and Judas were picking up what he was throwing down.
He then told Judas to identify him to lead by example and show the harsh brutality of their governance.
And Jesus didn’t “live without sin”. He stole a donkey just to ride it into town, just for a performance act which he was tried for, because he was claiming himself King of the Jews.
I don’t see him as being fictional. Ahistorical I can concede, as he wasn’t literally born during Yule. And that is another fun topic I can delve into.
However, he reminds me of Abbie Hoffman.
Anyhow, while his records are muffed, he was a living human who said a lot of things you can catch in the Vulgate, which includes proof that the Jews didn’t free a murderer and condemn Jesus. Barabbas means son of God, while Christos is King of the Jews.
In the Vulgate, it makes it clear. Jesus went before two judges. “Are you the son of God?” and “Are you the king of the Jews?”
“If you say so.” The vulgate also reveals that Barrabas had a first name: Jesus.
So to appeal to the Jewish populace, as they could see that their tyranny was causing insurrection, certainly amplified by Jesus, they gave a tricky deal:
We will free a prisoner. This man who claims he is your messiah! Or this man who claims he is the son of God.
“Free the Son of God.”
Well, you said it. Don’t blame us. It is your fault.
And that’s why Jesus was put on display with the sign that says, “Here lies the King of the Jews.”
Now, I realize you are saying his existence is fictional. I don’t care. I love the story. Some people really get into Warhammer lore. And the same with Star Wars: just because it got retconned all to shit doesn’t mean Episode 4 didn’t kick ass.
So Christians don’t know jack shit either since every historical fact is lost in translation or just corrupted and misconstrued for a personal agenda.
The “Christians” who didn’t study the Bible don’t follow the teachings of Jesus.
Jesus was punk rock and worthy of study. Buddhism fell in the same hole.
You are buying into and, sure, trying your best to reject the propaganda. But you are buying into the “official story” just the same as the “Christians” you disdain.
Study the Bible, and then when some evangelical asshole wants to tell them that you will burn in eternity in Hell, you can correct them: Hell is simply destruction, literally what atheists consider death to be.
But Jesus was way cool, and not as magical as the GOVERNMENTS that killed him for insurrection want us to believe.
So how can one study the true Bible where to find a faithful translation
Study it and cross reference the translations, and you will find the point being made.
I know, it takes time, and this thread makes me want to just write a book that summarizes the Bible, like it is Harry Potter, but of course citing sources.
It’s all horseshit.
Thank you for attending my lecture.
So you are MAGA?
Maybe your knowledge of the topic is just horseshit.
Succinct. Informative. Accurate. No notes.
God damn, I need to attend your lecture. You know so much that I don’t.
Ask away, my man. Look at the rest of the thread because some of us are having some deep dives into the topic.
In regards to the 12 year old boy, the people were complaining about hunger. Jesus gave a sermon saying we should share food.
The 12 year old offered 2 fish and 5 loaves of bread, which was his paycheck, to a disciple. The disciple asked Jesus, “Wtf am I supposed to do with this?”
“Disperse it.”
5000 men, meaning 5000 families as children and women were being counted, ran to their pantries, inspired by the boy, to grab what they could find. Shit that was just sitting on the shelves that they didn’t have the rest of the ingredients to actually use it.
It is a story of an impromptu potluck. The magic was only the words of Jesus and the generosity of that 12 year old boy.
And everyone was fucking fed. That’s properly administrated socialism. Love your neighbor. Government doesn’t even need to be involved.
you mean poopiecoin isn’t cannon??
And the Lord sayeth, “Vote for Trump, for the Haitians are eating dogs”. Amen.
As David Cross said, “They didn’t have science back then so everyone was even stupider…” or something approximating it.
I still think it’s wild that no one really talks about how the order of the books after the gospels is shortest to longest with Revalation (some truly crazy ass shit) tacked on at the end.
The best part, in my opinion, is the extra ending in Mark. This was the original ending, which is an absolute banger:
When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body. 2 Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb 3 and they asked each other, “Who will roll the stone away from the entrance of the tomb?”
But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. 5 As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. 7 But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.'”
Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.
This is in later versions, likely because someone copying the text found the ending to be insufficient:
When Jesus rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom he had driven seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him and who were mourning and weeping. When they heard that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe it.
Afterward Jesus appeared in a different form to two of them while they were walking in the country. These returned and reported it to the rest; but they did not believe them either.
Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.
He said to them, “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. And these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will drive out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes with their hands; and when they drink deadly poison, it will not hurt them at all; they will place their hands on sick people, and they will get well.”
After the Lord Jesus had spoken to them, he was taken up into heaven and he sat at the right hand of God. Then the disciples went out and preached everywhere, and the Lord worked with them and confirmed his word by the signs that accompanied it.
But remember, kids: the bible is all true and infallible and the word of god and whatever other crap they tell you.
Criticism aside, I’m a hardcore atheist and reading about the history of early christianity (first ~300 years) was absolutely fascinating and I’d recommend checking out the subject to others who oppose organized religion. Bart Ehrman would be a good starting point, though can you go down quite a rabbit hole beyond his writing. This might be a good jumping off point: How Jesus Became God
is there a story over why Jeusus’s body was entombed with a big rock? Was the big rock put there by people who loved Jesus or Zombie panicked haters of Jesus?
I think there were cases of grave robbery going on, and if I recall correctly, He was buried with some expensive perfume or something.
Better title for that book would be How Jesus became do onto others with full righteousness of being the chosen people. The common matter declaration by Constantine (not even the pope) at Nicea, became Moses’s whoever doesn’t support the emperor’s wars is a heretic to be put to death. P.S. Santa Claus was a dick.
Yes, the book of Revealation is insane
written about 60-90AD, fyi
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This is an interesting fact, but why does it matter?
Instagram has some wonderful clips of Christopher Hitchens absolutely destroying religion.
Official explanation: The Holy Spirit narrated to the author. This can be quite removed, some books were written many years after the event, some were passed down.
A few centuries later, the Council of Nicea went through all of these texts and decided, “This is real, we can tell, we’re putting this in the Bible. That… that other stuff is fake, yuck! Gross. Heresy.”
They also resolved a pressing issue for the new church. “Priests, please stop cutting your balls off, that is a metaphor, not literal instruction. Even though He said that they were literal instructions, that was also a metaphor.”
“Oh, just one more thing… you can’t get married. No, He didn’t say that, but we’re inspired by the Magic Bird, so mote it be.”
You probably think I’m joking… but sadly, no.
p.s. the church pays no taxes womp womp
FYI, the council of Nicea had nothing to do with biblical canon. That’s a common misconception.
My favorite bit of Christian lore is the time that predestination became a widespread belief. People cursed god and the church and sinned 30x harder, recognizing that if they did it, they were always meant to. In the absence of choice, people found hedonism not just agreeable but compulsory. Then the church solved that issue by telling people that they could actually get into heaven by paying. People got so pissed off that a sect splintered off, and I think that how we got Protestants.
Someone please tell me how many different events I erroneously mixed together.
Luther and Calvin started off with Niecea and Trinity are complete BS mistranslations of original greek, and you can be your own priest = “conscience interpreting Jesus words as meaningful”. It ended up with Trinity is best, and only Calvin was allowed to be his own priest, and you should be killed for having believed the first version. I don’t know about paying for sin, but how else can a pastor get a G6?
Someone please tell me how many different events I erroneously mixed together.
I can for money… Otherwise, enjoy the orgy!
people found hedonism not just agreeable but compulsory.
.,.
People got so pissed off that a sect splintered off, and I think that how we got Protestants.
I think something is missing or the Protestants would be Hedonists.
Then the church solved that issue by telling people that they could actually get into heaven by paying. People got so pissed off that a sect splintered off, and I think that how we got Protestants.
OP here is referring to the fact that the Catholic church was selling indulgences (basically get out of purgatory free cards), and that is what led Martin Luther to publish the Ninety-five Theses, calling them out on it. This is generally considered to be the starting point for the Protestant Reformation.
They were pissed off with the hedonism and made catholicism but with fun being illegal and salvation through wageslavery
pissed off with the hedonism
That part actually explains a bunch of things about the ‘Protestant ethic’.
I read this in the voice of Bill Wurtz, jingles included.
Someone could make a religion out of this.
Official explanation: The Holy Spirit narrated to the author.
You mean the four authors who all wrote the same story but slightly different?
Holy spirit talking to people must have been common back then. Strange how it just stopped.
It didn’t stop, we just understand it as psychosis these days.
This is ‘explained’ by Julian Jayne’s idea of the Bicameral Mind.
So, everyone had, until 3000 years ago, schizophrenia induced by gods and were comanded by gods? That’s some wild mental gymnastic he did…
Some of the other writings that didn’t make the cut for the canonical bible are wild.
Bet a non canonical bible with only cut content is a way better book.
The Bible: Extended Cut
now with multiple endings
Apocalyptic foretelling was apparently a pretty widespread hobby in the time when the ‘Revelation’ was composed. However, the canonical one is a political pamphlet masqueraded as such a story, with both 666 and its Latin variation 616 referring to Nero.
Choose Your Own Adventure Bible
thats called the bible with apocrypha, and youre right its way better
edit: sry misread, dont know if you can get the apocrypha without the main bible. But the cut content is great!
Lower-case apocrypha are extra-canonical religious writings, which cover a wide range of ancient texts in Christianity.
“The Apocrypha” is applied to a specific set of books that are accepted in various configurations by the Catholic, Orthodox and Eastern churches but are rejected from the Biblical canon by many Protestant denominations. Those are the ones you can find between the Old and New Testaments in some Bibles.
It’s not at all confusing.
The book of Enoch often features in nutty ancient aliens content. Extra terrestrial beings and hand held devices and so on.
It’s important context for the canonical bible. Imagine you find a bunch of scrolls in urns in a cave and it’s basically an anthology of short stories from the star wars realm. You cut out the ones that just seem too crazy and the ones that contradict others, and then call the rest your special nutty history.
Flagging for best-of-lemmy
The celibate came in the middle ages and wasnt a law before the begin of the 20th century
“Oh, just one more thing… you can’t get married. No, He didn’t say that, but we’re inspired by the Magic Bird, so mote it be.”
Didn’t that one come later because certain members of the clergy were having kids and functionally turning their positions into hereditary fiefdoms?
IiRC it was more so that the Church got actual fiefdoms and wanted control so that potential priestly families wouldn’t just distance themselves into secular noble houses, taking lands with them.
Fiefdoms and related duties originated from kings, so the church wanted similar parallel rights over their vassal priests.
Well, he didn’t say you can’t rape little boys…
Wait what? Really? I mean I figured. Just…it was basically like that?
My favorite part is how well it can be used to light a fireplace. Just tear out some pages, put some wood over it and light it. Secundair use is rolling paper when you’ve run out.
My father once threw my mother’s bible to the fireplace and because it was closed it didn’t burn, my mother took that as a holy sign, I’ve never had the heart to explain her why it didn’t burn.
Physics explanations usually aren’t welcome anyway.
I’m still annoyed that it has never been printed in two-ply
I smoked a bible joint once, it’s still a lot of paper hahs
It does not work well as toilet paper. But in a a pinch give it a try. Consider your ass warned, though.
No no no, cleaning your ass is what holy water is for. At the entrance of every church they have a bidet for that.
The part where Moses writes down his own death and funeral is also pretty trippy.
I also like how John keeps saying “BTW Jesus totally liked me more than the other disciples. Beloved, even.”
He came back after getting crucified prolly told them about it then
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