hello frenz, i have not posted to this board in a while. Beunos Aires has kept me busy. I have posted to this board under various usernames over the years.
I write this post today as a discussion regarding the insurgency of muslims into the west. I apologize i might not be able to respond for a few months as the internet is a privilege where I'm at.
This the end game of freemasonry. Think about it. High level masons choose to become a Shriner. Shriners wear a fez with a star and crescent. Many high level masons turn to Islam.
This islamic takeover is to subdue Christianity, all guided by Freemasons. Freemasons worship Satan. Freemasons fear Christians.
Well at least you’re more interested in the fact finding than most Christians. You should read Carrier’s book, he basically took on the project of “if we held Bible history to the same standard as every other element of history we evaluate” and he goes through every single piece of firsthand evidence we have going out to 130AD, because he gives 100 years after Jesus’s supposed death in case a kid met Jesus and then lived to be over 100, and he basically outlines that there are like 13 supposed firsthand sources, they basically all have issues, he goes through each Gospel and Paul’s letters, shows how many issues there are with those. He shows how Jews already had an industry for creating stories based on the Torah (this also explains things like the Book of Enoch, it was just Jews writing biblical fan fiction, that’s also why there are so many apocryphal texts, it was basically all just Bible fan fiction). The Jesus story is the same thing - they had already mapped out all the lines in the Old Testament that could be taken as prophetic, and then they just made up a character that fulfilled all the prophecies they already mapped out.
Lastly, Bart Ehrman, eh, there’s a reason he won’t debate Carrier.
I'm familiar with Richard Carrier and the fact he doubts the historical existence of Jesus as a person, using Bayesian reasoning to analyze the evidence. I haven't read his book, "On the Historicity of Jesus,", perhaps I will. I may agree with Carrier on many things, but I'll disagree with him regarding the existence of the historical Jesus. There is a lot of evidence and independent accounts of a human teacher which matches what today we would call Jesus in the 1st century AD. The 4 canonical gospels which made it in the NT are probably as Carrier puts it "forged", or fake, modified or made up. So, I agree with Carrier here as well, why only these 4 gospels, when we know there are so many more discovered at Nag Hammadi. 52 manuscripts found there in 1945. To me the New Testament canon seems in many ways like a reaction against Marcion's version. Irenaeus writing around 180 AD insisted there must be exactly four gospels. No more, no less. Interesting, because Marcion had only one gospel.
To me real Jesus is presented to us in the Gospel of Thomas. But, here Jesus's message is very different than what church teaches. He says "That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves.". Perhaps that's why this gospel was not included in the canonical Bible. Not because it contains teachings that contradict those in the canonical Gospels, as most scholars would argue. Heck there are plenty of contradictions among the 4 included gospels.
How about historical Paul? did Paul even exist? if he did exist, who was Paul and where did he come from (other than Tarsus, a city in Cilicia, modern-day Turkey)? We actually know very little about the early life of Paul, which itself is suspicious for someone so important.
So were many other stories in the Bible... made up. But, that doesn't explain why this writing was removed from the Bible, and others weren't, does it? especially when it elaborates on Genesis 6:1 by providing a narrative about the "Watchers".
What's the reason in your opinion? I'm aware in March this year Ehrman debated Jonathan Sheffield, whom he claims is backed up by Richard Carrier, Mark Goodacre and others.
To be fair to Carrier he does not claim that Jesus didn’t exist, he gives a probability and iirc he gave around a 2/3 likelihood he existed and a 1/3 that he’s fiction, but he also says that neither possibility impacts his argument. I just take it further and agree with Adam Green that when you put all the evidence together it makes more sense that he’s made up - like if they made up this character that just so happens to fulfill all these prophecoes that they had mapped out in their rabbi schools studying Torah all day, what does it matter if a person existed or not? Like whether it’s made up embellishment around a real guy or not it’s still mythology.
Carrier believes that Paul existed but iirc it’s correct that we don’t have much info on him, with Paul it’s more that 1) he never met Jesus, his claims are based on visions, the way Paul writes gives that away, and that it also shows that writing from the authoritative stance of “I saw visions while reading scripture” was considered a valid stance back then, which validates other pseudo-historical evidence that people use to make other Biblical claims, and 2) that only 7 of his letters can be authentically attributed to him (again iirc I read it like 3-4 years ago now). He goes through evidence on all those.
With Ehrman, I personally have only seen him on critique videos where the people commenting on it disagree with him, so I’m not super familiar with his work other than I’ve seen clips and I generally know what camp he’s in, I did see something of his where I was like “oh I see now why his argument is compelling, it’s more nuanced than I thought”, but I still disagree with his take.
But my impression is that the reason they don’t debate is that Ehrman believes Christianity was made up by the Romans and Carrier believes it was made up by the Jews. And I think even with Ehrman’s nuanced take, Carrier’s case and the foundation for it is stronger - the book is just too Jewish, the context is too Jewish, the background information you’d have to know is too Jewish. The layer on top of that that I think Adam Green gets right is that when you marry the Jewish-source argument with Kabbalah, esoteric Judaism, that’s where the question of “why would someone make this up” gets answered.
I think to that end, Ehrman probably knows that like the biggest foundational column to destroy in his argument is that origin claim and letting someone as knowledge as Carrier embarrass him would hurt his credibility too much because that’s like, his whole thing. Also Carrier rejects where Adam Green takes the argument, which I think he sees AG’s take as like a political issue where he’s just trying to be a detached historian, so Carrier doesn’t go nearly as far in his claims.
Adam Green says Christianity is a deception and came from Judaism. I'm well aware of his views and beliefs. Like I said before imo Judaism is not a religion, it's blood cult masquerading as a religion. So, how could a religion be created by a cult? it's not possible, it has to be created by a system. Maybe the same people (bloodlines) are responsible for coming up with both Christianity/the religion, and Judaism/the cult... yes, absolutely. Otherwise, I agree with a lot of things Adam Green claims. I also disagree with him and also with Christopher Jon Bjerknes (I'm not sure if these two made up or are still enemies) when it comes to Jesus as revealed in the non-canonical gospels. This real Jesus is not Moshiach Ben Joseph as these two, and others believe. He simply does not fit this description according to traditional Jewish beliefs. Simon of Peraea (aka Simon son of Joseph), who led a revolt against Roman rule, would be a much better fit. So, I feel like they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak.
If you read carefully the manuscripts found at Nag Hammadi you will see Jesus gave us a message of spiritual autonomy, which is very dangerous to any system of power. But, it's also dangerous to Jewish beliefs like repairing the world as well as the coming of the messianic age (Jew World Order). A slave with inner light does not fear death, a peasant with a sense of divine stature does not accept being owned by the system or someone else, and a whole nation moved by inner courage & character it’s not possible to control.
That's one of the problems, but there are others. For instance, according to most scholars the Gospels are generally considered to have been written after the Epistles, with the following approximate dates: Mark around 66 AD, Matthew 80–90 AD, Luke 100 AD, John 96 AD. In contrast, the Epistles to the Corinthians and Galatians are believed to have been written earlier, 1 Corinthians around 50 AD, Galatians around 50 AD. So, Paul wrote his letters, or if his letters were published or written down, before the Gospels, 20 to 50 years before Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. Why would the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, which claim to be the first person eyewitness accounts of the actions and sayings of Jesus, why on earth would they have been written down 20 to 50 years after the letters attributed to Paul were written down?
It's possible they're both correct. Paul (and Paul could represent a team of Romans and Jews) replaces Jesus' message and belief and hands interpretive power back to the system (authority, the Church or Rome). Paul shifts the center of experience and creates a new kind of structure. A structure that will grow much faster as a community than any individual autonomy. You could say Paul was the original architect of what today we call social media. Paul was very familiar with an ancient Greek art of using words not to seek truth but to construct reality. Paul takes Jesus’s message of spiritual autonomy and redirects/reconstructs it as a message of spiritual submission. Something that worked for both the Romans and the Jews.
Look at today's Jewish controlled Roman Catholic church, it's such a sad sh*tshow. For example, last year Pope Leo XIV blessed a giant ice cube in the name of fighting "climate change".
I kind of see Judaism as reflective of old world religions where they were basically tribal/racial inherently, and you could say Judaism is the cult of Yahweh and Yahweh is a violent psychopath, so generally I guess I agree with you I just don’t see it as that different from other old world religions - like if every religion was some flavor of “yeah we’re the fucking best and if you gotta wipe out people for Your Guy it’s righteous”, Judaism just survived longer than most so it’s sort of jarring to see nowadays.
As far as I know AG and CJB still hate each other, I think CJB holds the more fervent opinion on Jesus being Ben Joseph, but it’s something you can see modern rabbi’s claim on video too so it’s something being actively taught in some schools of Judaism. But they have a more nuanced tale as to what Ben Joseph is and how it can be represented - all I’m saying is it’s not gentiles who made up the idea that Jesus could represent Moshiach Ben Joseph, it’s gentiles who found the documents and videos of Jews talking about it themselves.
I think just to summarize my position on Judaism and all the various texts, apocryphal and canon, I don’t really put that much weight into the stuff other than analyzing it as you’d analyze any other ancient text. If I’m ever going to get well versed enough on any ancient mythology that I’m like “well if you recall Ecclesiasties 3:2-5”, it’s going to be European mythologies and not Biblical ones. I just…I don’t know when people get all emotional about the Bible being this divine miracle, I kind of just find that to be gay, like grown men acting like reading about mustard seeds is so damn profound and being called a sheep is like, only GOD could have come up with that! as they cry, I just think it’s super gay and sad, because most of the time they’ll then turn and say that their own ancestors worshiped demons while also knowing less than nothing about their own mythologies, it’s really sad to me, total Abrahamic mind virus folk-soul death.
Anyway, enough of my own opinions, Carrier did go over that about Paul, I forgot about that - I mean you could make the case that Christianity IS Paul’s creation. Also, he studied under Gamaliel! Like could you have a better premise for a poison pill religion? “Oh yeah so I studied under the most famous Pharisee of the day, expert in Jewish law, one of the leaders of the Sanhedrin, but we toooootally have this authentic religion for you guys who are routinely slaughtering us, we really truly care about you.”
The church has literally always been Jewish - Peter…first pope…who were the first Christians? What race were the first popes. There’s also some sort of conspiracy that I want to look into about Constantine as well as…there was this family who was Jewish banking family who got one of their guys as Roman emperor and there’s a conspiracy around it all being a Jewish takeover of Rome using religion and finance - but regardless (it’s something I’m meaning to look into) - the church’s goal has always been to destroy paganism and get people to worship Yahweh so it’s literally always been Jewish. But iirc Laurent Guyenot has a book about how the church routinely helped either finance or direct wars in Europe strategically to prevent European unity, that it’s always been used as a divide and conquer mechanism to stifle White people’s development - I mean the renaissance itself was a rebellion against the church and back to Roman and Greek pagan principles. Anyway, some scattered thoughts but I’m about beat on this convo