That argument has been made that Christianity is the invention of St. Paul (a Roman citizen), rather than on what Jesus said in the Gospels. That's bandied about. But there was a historical Jesus, many records indicate a trouble making named rabbi was crucified. Was he the living son of God? Well, lots of people say no, and that's fair enough, but he did walk the earth at the time.
The bible itself is a historical record, as is the writing of Josephus, among others. The noted Roman historian Tacitus mentions him.
However, you're getting things backwards. The 12 apostles were not Romans, they were Jews and Gentiles, but not culturally, Roman. They were only "Roman" in that the empire conquered their homelands. It would be like calling someone from Texas a Canadian if Canada annexed Texas. The only Roman citizen was Paul, who was not an apostle, who was a Jew and Roman citizen who converted. Much of what the Christian religion is today is on account of his writing. For instance, because of Paul, Christians are not obliged to follow Mosiac dietary laws or get circumcised.
By the time the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, the tenets and background of the faith were largely in place, thus you cannot say it was a joke created by Romans.
You're very amusing on this topic. I've debated whip sharp atheists and am willing to concede a lot is a matter of faith, but you're just wrong on the history here.
Peter means Pater, father. Think "at the potter's house". What does a potter do? Shape mud into urns, he gives form to the formless.
What does a child have? A father. The child needs a father to give form to his formless mind.
Church is a physical place meant to resemble the mind. You go into the church (mind) to pray and respect God (consciousness).
With the Temple of Solomon, there are two pillars outside the door you must pass thru to enter the temple, called Boaz and Jachin (but that's not important to the metaphor). These pillars are symbolic for going beyond the known realms of mankind in the old world (beyond physical/material world). You see, the pillars were a copy of the pillars at the Straight of Gibraltar, the pillars of Hercules, which marked the gateway to the vast ocean, an endless unknown territory. This is much like the mind. So you enter Solomon's Temple, passing thru the pillars, and it's symbolic of entering your mind where God is.
Jesus walks on water indeed. Like the analogy of Solomon's Temple and the Straight of Gibraltar, Jesus is exploring that unknown vast ocean of consciousness. He walks upon consciousness (water).
There has long been a debate about how literal to take passages of the bible. For instance, I'm not taking the story of Adam and Eve literally. However, biology tells us humanity did all spring from an Eve, and all one need believe as a Christian is that there were the first humans disobeyed God for it to be true in an allegorical sense. I don't presume to understand it all, nor that there aren't mistakes in the bible, there are.
As for being a former Morman, I get where you're coming from, as I was a lapsed Catholic for a decade or so until I had a spiritual awakening. It's given me the distance to appreciate the myriad problems with the church, let alone Christianity in general.
You see, though, you are taking things from the bible that are similar to things in other religions or cultures, from the time of the writing of parts of the bible, and assuming that the bible copies those things in creating a story, rather than that thing just coming from shared cultural aspects. For instance, Moses is put into a basket and pushed down a river. This thing shows up in other religions, that is, the baby in the basket down the river. But it was also a cultural thing in the region at the time, the same way it was common at one time in America to leave a baby on the rectory doorstep and how firehouses are safe places to drop off babies no questions asked today.
A carpenter knows how to create useful form out of useless things.
A potter (pater/father) turns mud into urn, and this urn can now hold substance/source (consciousness). The Holy Grail.
A shepherd takes care of his flock (family/husbandry).
Jesus is about building good things in your mind and life.
Francis Bacon likely wrote the New Testament (KJV).
Consider the point of reading the Bible is to (re)gain consciousness, nothing more. It's not there to instruct people to do anything or act in any sort of religious way. That's our doing. Consciousness is God. The reason the Bible is everywhere ("a bible in every home") is so that consciousness can never be destroyed. The book preserves it forever. Nobody can destroy all the Bibles in the world, even with a mass book burning. It would be found and recopied and reproduced once again.
God is consciousness and we have used it in bad ways.
The Bible is a story about the different ways we have used it.
By reading the Bible we can gain consciousness, learn of the bad our ancestors did, and instead aim to do good.
You don't know how to do good unless you have something bad to compare. For every Hero, there was a villain.
The knowledge of good vs evil, is just consciousness itself.
To know good, you must know evil.
The Bible contains everything needed to understand all this.
When "God" sends an "Angel" to stop Abraham, it is a voice of in his consciousness debating right vs wrong. Debating the potential consequences of actions. This was merely how they described the conscious experience. We actually do have "voices in our head", many of them, instructing our ego about conditions and feelings of our environment. When these voices are too prominent over the ego, or too loud in general, modern science calls it schizophrenia. But this is essentially how consciousness works. There is a subconscious made of many subtle voices.
We read the old testament and see an angry god, pushing genocide, supporting conquests, stoning people to death for picking up sticks on the sabbath. But hey, at least he sent an angel to stop Abraham from performing a human sacrifice.
What do you think, that the Bible is telling us to act in this way? It's merely telling us how dumb this behavior was, as an example of what not to do with consciousness. Their bad behavior came from God (consciousness) so we have to get smarter and better about using it. That's why the Bible doesn't say these horrible actions are wrong, because God is not wrong, consciousness is not wrong, God is unbiased and almighty, he (we) can do anything, but the way we use God can be wrong or not conductive to our prosperity. That's what the Bible points out.
That argument has been made that Christianity is the invention of St. Paul (a Roman citizen), rather than on what Jesus said in the Gospels. That's bandied about. But there was a historical Jesus, many records indicate a trouble making named rabbi was crucified. Was he the living son of God? Well, lots of people say no, and that's fair enough, but he did walk the earth at the time.
The bible itself is a historical record, as is the writing of Josephus, among others. The noted Roman historian Tacitus mentions him.
However, you're getting things backwards. The 12 apostles were not Romans, they were Jews and Gentiles, but not culturally, Roman. They were only "Roman" in that the empire conquered their homelands. It would be like calling someone from Texas a Canadian if Canada annexed Texas. The only Roman citizen was Paul, who was not an apostle, who was a Jew and Roman citizen who converted. Much of what the Christian religion is today is on account of his writing. For instance, because of Paul, Christians are not obliged to follow Mosiac dietary laws or get circumcised.
By the time the Roman Empire converted to Christianity, the tenets and background of the faith were largely in place, thus you cannot say it was a joke created by Romans.
You're very amusing on this topic. I've debated whip sharp atheists and am willing to concede a lot is a matter of faith, but you're just wrong on the history here.
What does a church have? A father.
Peter means Pater, father. Think "at the potter's house". What does a potter do? Shape mud into urns, he gives form to the formless.
What does a child have? A father. The child needs a father to give form to his formless mind.
Church is a physical place meant to resemble the mind. You go into the church (mind) to pray and respect God (consciousness).
With the Temple of Solomon, there are two pillars outside the door you must pass thru to enter the temple, called Boaz and Jachin (but that's not important to the metaphor). These pillars are symbolic for going beyond the known realms of mankind in the old world (beyond physical/material world). You see, the pillars were a copy of the pillars at the Straight of Gibraltar, the pillars of Hercules, which marked the gateway to the vast ocean, an endless unknown territory. This is much like the mind. So you enter Solomon's Temple, passing thru the pillars, and it's symbolic of entering your mind where God is.
Jesus walks on water indeed. Like the analogy of Solomon's Temple and the Straight of Gibraltar, Jesus is exploring that unknown vast ocean of consciousness. He walks upon consciousness (water).
There has long been a debate about how literal to take passages of the bible. For instance, I'm not taking the story of Adam and Eve literally. However, biology tells us humanity did all spring from an Eve, and all one need believe as a Christian is that there were the first humans disobeyed God for it to be true in an allegorical sense. I don't presume to understand it all, nor that there aren't mistakes in the bible, there are.
As for being a former Morman, I get where you're coming from, as I was a lapsed Catholic for a decade or so until I had a spiritual awakening. It's given me the distance to appreciate the myriad problems with the church, let alone Christianity in general.
You see, though, you are taking things from the bible that are similar to things in other religions or cultures, from the time of the writing of parts of the bible, and assuming that the bible copies those things in creating a story, rather than that thing just coming from shared cultural aspects. For instance, Moses is put into a basket and pushed down a river. This thing shows up in other religions, that is, the baby in the basket down the river. But it was also a cultural thing in the region at the time, the same way it was common at one time in America to leave a baby on the rectory doorstep and how firehouses are safe places to drop off babies no questions asked today.
A carpenter knows how to create useful form out of useless things.
A potter (pater/father) turns mud into urn, and this urn can now hold substance/source (consciousness). The Holy Grail.
A shepherd takes care of his flock (family/husbandry).
Jesus is about building good things in your mind and life.
Francis Bacon likely wrote the New Testament (KJV).
Consider the point of reading the Bible is to (re)gain consciousness, nothing more. It's not there to instruct people to do anything or act in any sort of religious way. That's our doing. Consciousness is God. The reason the Bible is everywhere ("a bible in every home") is so that consciousness can never be destroyed. The book preserves it forever. Nobody can destroy all the Bibles in the world, even with a mass book burning. It would be found and recopied and reproduced once again.
God is consciousness and we have used it in bad ways.
The Bible is a story about the different ways we have used it.
By reading the Bible we can gain consciousness, learn of the bad our ancestors did, and instead aim to do good.
You don't know how to do good unless you have something bad to compare. For every Hero, there was a villain.
The knowledge of good vs evil, is just consciousness itself.
To know good, you must know evil.
The Bible contains everything needed to understand all this.
When "God" sends an "Angel" to stop Abraham, it is a voice of in his consciousness debating right vs wrong. Debating the potential consequences of actions. This was merely how they described the conscious experience. We actually do have "voices in our head", many of them, instructing our ego about conditions and feelings of our environment. When these voices are too prominent over the ego, or too loud in general, modern science calls it schizophrenia. But this is essentially how consciousness works. There is a subconscious made of many subtle voices.
What do you think, that the Bible is telling us to act in this way? It's merely telling us how dumb this behavior was, as an example of what not to do with consciousness. Their bad behavior came from God (consciousness) so we have to get smarter and better about using it. That's why the Bible doesn't say these horrible actions are wrong, because God is not wrong, consciousness is not wrong, God is unbiased and almighty, he (we) can do anything, but the way we use God can be wrong or not conductive to our prosperity. That's what the Bible points out.