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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (29026)	7/29/2012 9:07:18 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 69300

In the ferocious battle for adherents, the propagandists sought to outdo each other at every turn. One example: by the 5th century, four very different endings existed to Mark's gospel. Codex Bobiensis ends Mark at verse 16:8, without any post-crucifixion appearances; it lacks both the 'short conclusion' (of Jesus sending followers to 'east and west') or the 'long conclusion' – the fabulous post-death apparitions, where Jesus promises his disciples that they will be immune to snake bites and poison. Once the Church had grabbed mastery of much of Europe and the middle-east, its forgery engine went into overdrive. 'The Church forgery mill did not limit itself to mere writings but for centuries cranked out thousands of phony "relics" of its "Lord," "Apostles" and "Saints" … There were at least 26 'authentic' burial shrouds scattered throughout the abbeys of Europe, of which the Shroud of Turin is just one … At one point, a number of churches claimed the one foreskin of Jesus, and there were enough splinters of the "True Cross" that Calvin said the amount of wood would make "a full load for a good ship." ' – Acharya S, The Christ Conspiracy. And the beat goes on! ;-)

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (29026)	7/29/2012 9:32:41 PM
From: average joe	Respond to of 69300

In the OT people were naturally afraid of God. Jonah did his best to outrun him but lost in the end, was thrown off a boat and swallowed by a fish. It is a great story about not shirking your responsibilities. The whole point of Jonah was not about God’s ability to conjure up man-swallowing fish; it was that Yahweh loves even the depraved folk of Nineveh (and their cattle). The 6th century BC scribe who wrote Jonah used the name of a prophet mentioned in 2 Kings to make a point about the worthiness of evangelising to the heathen. He has his reluctant hero sail from Joppa and encounter a storm. Cast overboard somewhere out at sea, the big fish is a literary device to get Jonah back to Joppa, from where, more enthusiastically, he can set out again for the big, bad city of Nineveh. The theological point could be made simply – ‘our god loves all who repent, don’t be reluctant, go and tell it to the heathen’ – but would that entertain the crowd? Simple folk of course would start to take the entertaining story as a literal truth. Then, several generations later, when the story falls into the hands of the author of Matthew – who may well believe that the Jonah story is ‘true’ – he has his own fictional Christ figure quote Jonah to give authority to a different theological point: ‘death can be conquered.’

To: 2MAR$ who wrote (29026)	7/29/2012 11:02:55 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 69300

The 5th and 6th centuries was the 'golden age' of Christian forgery. In a moment of shocking candour, the Manichean bishop (and opponent of Augustine) Faustus said: "Many things have been inserted by our ancestors in the speeches of our Lord which, though put forth under his name, agree not with his faith; especially since – as already it has been often proved – these things were written not by Christ, nor [by] his apostles, but a long while after their assumption, by I know not what sort of half Jews, not even agreeing with themselves, who made up their tale out of reports and opinions merely, and yet, fathering the whole upon the names of the apostles of the Lord or on those who were supposed to follow the apostles, they maliciously pretended that they had written their lies and conceits according to them." In the ferocious battle for adherents, the propagandists sought to outdo each other at every turn. One example: by the 5th century, four very different endings existed to Mark's gospel. Codex Bobiensis ends Mark at verse 16:8, without any post-crucifixion appearances; it lacks both the 'short conclusion' (of Jesus sending followers to 'east and west') or the 'long conclusion' – the fabulous post-death apparitions, where Jesus promises his disciples that they will be immune to snake bites and poison. Once the Church had grabbed mastery of much of Europe and the middle-east, its forgery engine went into overdrive. AND THE BEAT GOES ON!!