Though that's the literal Exodus 20 formulation, the basic principle of "no adultery" has been upheld by virtually every culture ever as foundational to societal maintenance, as shown by Westermarck's history of all forms and types of marital arrangements around the world. Cultures that have permitted adultery have found themselves overwhelmed by breakdown resulting from abusive relationships, illegitimacy (externality) of the representatives of the culture, and irresponsibility for childrearing. Most people recognize objective morality via reference to conscience, logic, facts, history, and culture.

If you don't believe in objective morality, you run into the core illogic problem of nihilism sooner or later: there is no objective standard by which objective standards can all be dismissed. Bob Dylan said you gotta serve somebody. Simplest answer is just admit you wish to pursue truth at all costs; there is never something "better than" truth because truth is isomorphic with good. But if you don't like truth and good, nothing has any meaning because meaning is recognized by its truth and without truth there is no distinction between meaning and nonmeaning. You seem to think that favoring 1800s canards is not "bias" as if their rejection of good still had some good in it; that's illogical and shows the bias. Ultimately you pick either truth or nothing. I've never seen any escape from that most basic of freewill choices.

For one reason, he was only Yehoshua in the synagogue where Hebrew was spoken. In the commons he spoke Aramaic and was called Yeshua, which is still used by millions of covenant Christians (of both Jewish and Gentile races). The rest don't bother to learn the names he called himself in his local languages, just as they don't know who Kong Qiu was ("Confucius"). Both Jesus and Joshua descended from the Hebrew roots, and are recognized as the same name without either being more "wrong" than the other; the KJV also refers to Joshua ben Nun as "Jesus", for instance.

Since I'll need to comment on OP sooner or later, Yeshu was a common Galilean-dialect nickname for any Yehoshua; it does not remove the savior meaning any more than "Jack" removes the gracious meaning of John (it's still there, just not in focus). The Talmud includes three people who got nicknamed Yeshu: Yeshu the Student (2nd century BC), Yeshua of Netzeret (1st century AD), and Yeshu ben Pappos (2nd century AD). There are also passages about "Yeshu" as a stock backwater character without reference to which if any historical Yeshu is intended. Therefore the actual status of the Talmud is that most Yeshu passages either are anachronistic with Yeshua or leave it to the reader to decide which Yeshu is intended (allowing many readers to apply them to Yeshua); and there's really only one passage that is clearly about Yeshua of Netzeret, and it's pretty mild by comparison, giving an important confirmation of his trial, his Passover execution, and his martyred disciples. The blasphemy is not in the text but only in the cultural context, such as when it says Rabbi Ulla blasphemed Yeshua. OP combines a number of justified statements with a number of unsubstantiated leaps, and I don't always watch his videos (sometimes relying heavily on AI) to try to sift which is which.

The autofilter still weeds out a bit, and the admins still suspend accounts globally, which Paleo has efficiently managed. A suspended account says so, a banned account still has a profile page and can have content.

Nothing to do with boardrooms, Vlad, it was my own discovery, which is why I don't reference anyone else.

I appealed to your basis where truth and social mores don't matter because of the alleged greater morality of an imperial impaler, and if you've answered that question then great.

But from the standpoint of truth, in 96 AD Jesus reappeared and dictated seven letters that seven churches preserved because they were about the current events in their churches. When Ignatius reviewed those same problems in 108 AD it's natural that his letters should align. The fact that people made up a meaning of the phrase "synagogue of satan" later that has some connection to Jesus's plaintext meaning to the churches is as irrelevant as people making up a new meaning for "chosen people" and misusing that.

The entirety of Rev. 2-3 is about seven Asian churches and many obscure individuals being used as both local advice and archetypes for larger patterns. But from the standpoint of truth, a valid archetype has to fit the original. The synagogue of satan were not Jews because they weren't circumcised and didn't assimilate. Khazarian theory is about people who got circumcised and assimilated, so it's not a match. I recognize that some people find it to be a metaphorical match, but this isn't a useful rhetoric, and still isn't meaningful because people use Khazarian theory to justify attack against all Jews, attacking the innocent with the guilty. And nobody answers that, they just continue the immoral attack.

You honor me by denying my credibility and dissuading people from me.

But you dishonor white people by upholding for them a persona of attack and immorality in the name of heroism.

Only the ones that ate Cap'n Crunch cereal.

I'm obsessed with Jesus. When I'm blessed with time, I like to demonstrate that a "gallop" approach is a faulty debate tactic in a true unregulated colloquy. It also supports my personal quest for truth at all costs because if there's an open question I believe in finding out about it for myself. I hadn't heard of Dr. Carrier and his work on Josephus seems to stem from a one-man brigade against the historical Jesus, and since I'm obsessed with Jesus I'll make time to look into Carrier's view too because I want to know the truth at all costs. Of course many on this forum self-diagnose as autists, so I do too.

Do you have anything preventing you from noticing your clear bias in favor of the higher-critic and atheistic school?

Heh heh, that's another trope from the same book. The transcendent position is "no adultery", that a marriage relationship should not be adulterated. There are cultures, including in the Bible, where it has been held that the polygynous form does not adulterate any woman and is permitted. Jesus said on the related issue of divorce that questions like this come up because of hardness of human hearts, though, so the cultural permission always arises from prior faults in the culture that encourage an alternative to the monogamous standard that Jesus pointed to. Since divorce always arises from human sin but the church has recognized that it's possible to be an innocent party to a divorce, it seems to me that the point of the Bible's description of polygamy is to say it always arises from human sin but it's possible to be an innocent party to it also. As with the other issues, there are several ways to slice it, and some Christians say there are cultural cases where participation in polygamy might be innocent based on cultural understanding while others say it's always wrong, but this difference doesn't disprove objective morality. It rather reinforces my point that the simple principles ("no adultery") do permit more complicated principles to be drawn that are also transcendent (such as churches declaring a divorcee innocent if all conditions are met), and that both the simple laws and the case laws are part of the same objective system that can be apprehended sufficiently by anyone.

What's your position on when the Golden Rule can be "rightly" thwarted, and what superior "right" can be asserted that transcends it? If the only transcendence you permit is "dependent upon variables like context and situation (relativity)", then no standard can be maintained. However much you proclaim something to be true for you due to inner light, I could just say it's not true for me due to what I believe to be my inner light, and there is no meeting of minds. When that happens, the only proof is by force, which is a shoddy way to decide things. It seems we must either have agreement on something transcendent, such as the existence of Good and Truth, or we have no means to interact as humans but only as irreconcilable savages.

Vlad, I like trying to get into your brain because it helps widen my experience. I characterize you as working from the perspective of (1) ordinary social conventions against collectivism and informal warfare should be suspended because of your moral cause, (2) factuality is less relevant because false narratives that impel action are more pragmatic.

My immediate thought is that it's not so much Orthodoxy as a separatist demand for a radical Church with simplified court-martial judgments. My appeals to you that such an org should reach out to the larger social morality of recognizing the divine image in man and pursuit of truth at all costs haven't registered.

So instead of going sequentially (since most salient points have already been made), let me dialogue with you about how you wish to change society beyond merely roleplaying a violent character in a data-only forum. Is there any real future to the idea that every Jewish man, woman, and child should be exterminated? If it's impossible for an overt organization to survive with such a charter (except in Arab countries), what good would it do to propose it either as an individual or as a secret org? And you do believe in exterminating innocent children and babies, right, since you offer no plan for exempting them (Scripture gives a very narrow window to countenance such an activity in the past, really in only 2 passages)? How could any such thing have any meaning IRL other than manifesting as a criminally antisocial individual, a masonic secret society, or a Muslim death cult? And it appears to me you want some other org, i.e. the Orthodox Church, to survive and cause all to submit to itself: how is that different from the endgame you say the Jews want for themselves? When I realized that all three Abrahamics were triumphalist and equally demand ultimate allegiance from all humanity, I saw that I couldn't pit my own triumphalism against another's on level ground because there is no value in such a fight: my triumphalism can only win if it takes the high moral ground of demonstrating better virtues so much that all humanity will want to become its slaves.

So I'd appreciate if we could use this opportunity to review whether you have any real plans for the future, or whether you just like to call for the deaths of other humans even if it runs you up against concrete authority enforcing pretty good moral codes against collectivism and attack.

Never heard of anything like that, but I hate that having happened to you with enough passion that I'll pray that you get healed of it.

While on the subject, perhaps hatred for people (I understand your animus toward bigamy in general) might be something to channel into something more productive ... such as the procurement of positive rather than reactionary standards for morality, and moving forward rather than just pulling back others from moving forward ....

No, I disagree with the character Mormon on significant points, but I've also accepted from God that as an anon I should suffer with all sorts of misidentifications, so I'm not saying that to prove it to you.

OP is part of a proof presented to atheists that if you apply history to the Bible and related documents then Jesus has been shown to make incomparably wild claims; the next step to consider is whether he was right (as I believe he was). None of that is related to Mormonism, so you sound like you're just trolling at this point.

I gave a source

And I agreed with your source entirely, and pointed out that "Church of Satan" is not all of satanism, so your statement "satanism has jewish origins" was misleading.

you're the mod of c/satanism

And why shouldn't a Protestant blood-bought sold-out follower of Jesus host a discussion about satanism? The DDF certainly does! (Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!)

and a jew

No proof was offered. What have I failed in demonstrating 5 years of online content for Christ and the Church alone that would qualify me as denying him (which is what you seem to mean by that accusation)? What of the magisterium have I ever denied?

Check with your priest about your online habits to prevent mortal sin and its stain. For your own sake I'd hate for you to rant wildly world without end.

Who anathematized me when in what words, fren?

I perceive you meant the "Church of Satan" has Jewish origins. That's not what I think of as "satanism" because (besides being partly parodic) Jesus teaches me in Rev. 2-3 that there are seven different works of satan to be alert to and so not to focus on any one little twig of it.

I understand if you want to anathematize me and "title" me simply for my "teaching the wring things", but you don't have the authority of the Church to do that, which is why I asked my question. On a forum of anons it's better not to namecall or to link whatever profanity or slander you linked, when you could instead just prove your catholic nature by gently guiding me to the magisterium where I'm so "wring". I suppose that if you say it's "wring" for me to say satanism has satanic origins, you might be interpreted as so illogical that you're not actually Catholic at all but shilling against it.

By an objective standard the harshest treatment I've gotten from anyone on this forum has been by a Roman Catholic, which is odd because I've agreed with everything I've heard the Roman Catholic magisterium say. (It's my magisterium, after all, along with the Orthodox and Protestant ones; I've only occasionally needed to give a signing statement when I affirm some position so that it's understood what definition I infer from the magisterium.) Something about Romanism pushes people back from Aquinian logic, I don't know what, maybe you do. Jesus tells me to be more righteous than any (including Catholics) who live by their righteousness, so of course I'd try to be more Catholic than you.

Thanks Paleo. We would like a bit more admin-coded nudge about what we need to show so as to get a mod so as to enforce the sidebar rules. Admin are the only active mods here but they are not active in removing backlog of reports or enforcing the existing rules always desired by the community. Which is odd because in other similar cases they've always cleared the mod log or given some other nudge, even when there's not community consensus.

I did indeed mean 1993-09-11791, that's today's date. EST it's now past midnight so it's September 11792, 1993. The search term you want is "endless September", I wanted to see who got the reference.

(Continued for u/ExpressionOfTheSoul and u/guywholikesDjtof2024.)

Since you give me new Josephus data, I'll research it and get back to you, but, even if your assumption were correct that it would prove the Josephus account a forgery, it wouldn't alter one detail of the holistic report of Jesus.

There's a difference between believing that a man named Jesus was crucified by the Romans versus believing that he was a God-man.

Here you're starting to focus on real history; that statement is accurate. I just pointed out above that the facts follow a natural hierarchy of evidence. First, the evidence he was crucified for claims of being king of the Jews. Second, with that history established, what we can build of that man's character, using conservative assumptions, based on multiple testimonies, Christian and not, about what Jesus got in trouble for saying. Since much of what Jesus said interpreted Jewish written tradition in ways that we can trace definitively that he was part of the flow of those thoughts at that time, this is much easier. I listed seven categories of Jesus's teaching about himself identified by Bill Craig that are drawn from plural testimony and congruency with context; and those are important enough they deserve their own post, which I can do next. (Third: what we do with it!)

The symbolic nature of the Gospels can easily be seen in Matthew 1. Three sets of 14 generations, that wouldn't be historically accurate. That's symbolism.

I think I told you separately without recalling that you've answered: that is not how histories or biographies of that era presented data. They selected from historical fact, without misrepresenting any fact via the selection, to combine details that were supportive of general narrative of local and global text. When a particular fact (a number) will likely have extra significance, that fact is highlit for selection, sometimes alongside an explanation (which may or may not be contemporary with the history described but which is the author's contemporary understanding of it).

This is exactly what Matthew 1 does. It was never intended as saying "let's invent some names to make up a person who should have existed", that would belie his whole point with the rest of the reference to historical persons. Instead it was to say that even Jesus's genealogy, which was eminently appropriate matter for the beginning of his bio, could be more easily remembered by reference to the mnemonic number 14. (Memes simplify history into easily transmitted detail: Lincoln and Kennedy were inaugurated 100 years apart even though killed only 98 years apart.)

What was known was that David's genealogy from Abraham had 14 generations and that the numerical value of the name D-V-D (4+6+4) was 14, and so that mnemonic clearly goes very far back. About 18 kings descended from David, but Matthew skips 4 of these (likely ones he didn't like) so that he can use the end of the (first) Davidic kingdom as his next memory point. Then he gives Jesus's right to the Davidic throne, which by Jewish law is his by the declaration of his adoptive father, by listing a select 14 generations of that genealogy (again, if any generations were missing it was selective, completely understandable, and not regarded by anyone as deceptive because it was not a statement of direct father-to-son but of the father-to-son chain, son routinely being taken to include grandson). Therefore Matthew is saying that just as David came in the fullness of time from Abraham, and the diaspora came in the fullness of time from David, so the time had then come for Messiah to be revealed.

In short, he's teaching both the symbol that Jesus is Davidic and rightly expected and the history that he came of the Davidic line of Joseph in Nazareth. To read any less is to ignore how people wrote anything in those days.

The Gospel of John placing the cleansing of the temple at the beginning of the ministry...blatant changing of the narrative.

It has never been proven that just because two people mention a similar event that we must assume they are referring to the same event (i.e. prejudging them as contradictory). If we are giving them ordinary witness credit their testimony would be taken as two events. It is only by inserting some assumption that it couldn't have possibly happened twice that we would be able to sustain a proof of contradiction. I've just reviewed all four accounts, and it's clear that there are enough differences (even though some actions and one verse quote were repeated) that they need not be taken as identical when the authors clearly frame them as distinct. In John there is a whip and sheep and oxen absent from the others; the money is specifically poured out; there is the reference to 46 years of temple-building (which doesn't date to the later event); and the reference to miracles is in context about the wedding of Cana. In the synoptics it is not the Passover itself (the 14th) but about the 10th of the month; it is the seats that are turned over, not the money; the blind and the lame are healed; and the children are still calling "Hosanna" from the processional earlier (which doesn't date to the earlier event). So for a skeptic to constantly criticize passages about the same event with slight differences as contradictory, and then to criticize passages stated to be about different epochs with slight similarities as also proving contradiction via the assumption that the differences of timing prove falsehood, is the height of bias against the text rather than historical inquiry. The only point that might be favorable is the (wholly manufactured) assumption that the event was notable enough that it couldn't possibly have happened twice or someone would've mentioned it happening twice. That idea has no basis and, though it could be postulated as possible, is only a secondary hypothesis to be judged by the primary texts, as I have just done. It's not like the case that historians constantly face of a person being reported as dying in two different times and places where one is clearly wrong; it's perfectly understandable that many would have reset their tables and continued their former practice in later years, and this probability is supported by the fact that the second account has less work to undo (no sheep and oxen) and less opposition but much more public approbation and praise. One might just as well theorize that the synoptics omitted the first cleansing because they regarded the second as a vindication against the rejection of the first, while John supplies the first as a corrective because he as an early apostle was well aware of the importance of establishing the 3-day claim from the beginning of the ministry (just as he establishes what the first miracle was), and the opposition of the leadership and the first great uprising event attributed to Jesus. That theory is just as tenable as the idea that they all only knew of one event and deliberately lied about it somewhere. The fact is that Matthew (whom the others follow) wasn't an apostle yet when John was and so John didn't think it necessary to focus on so many of the prior events that had been already circulating (so many that Luke already noted they were diverse); so there being two cleansings is a probability that fits the facts quite well. At a minimum the person who uses the two cleanings as if it's a reason for disbelief is again indicating bias and methodological dishonesty.

Include that with a Jesus with a different portrayed persona than the other Gospels, and it's symbolic. A virgin birth, symbolic.

This fails to account for the Jewish emphasis on accurate transmission of events and the fact that it was only Greek influence (heavily resisted by the many myriads of first Christians) that could even conceive of writing a text that was flatly false but contained symbolic meaning. When John focuses on further aspects of Jesus's persona, it's clearly supplemental like any good history that takes a new tack on a previously covered subject. The virgin birth, which also has very early supplemental testimony (though not in John as you jump rapidly from him), is given as an accurate but uncomprehended (miraculous) historical event. Luke as a doctor did exactly the same as other doctors of the day reported unexplained (wondrous) events: preserving the testimony as accurately as possible alongside the fact that people didn't understand how it could come about that way. Many Greco-Roman histories contain fabulous reports alongside more mundane ones because they had no developed science for disproving certain classes of testimony so they reported them all and judged them on veracity of chain of transmission rather than on appeal to proven physical law.

The texts in the Bible are in line with the mythological accounts of what people did back then. The dying and resurrecting savior motif was nothing new.

That is an old and false canard. The gospels are biographies with extraordinary events, they are not mythologies divorced from time, place, and reality. They are in line with the supernatural events attributed to Caesar, such as his miraculous birth by C-section and his power to work miracles (though this usually meant fortuitous timing). Those use the same historiographic approach, namely to pass reports as they were heard and to suspend judgment without clear reason for controversion. When the Greeks and Romans spoke of mythology, they still regarded it as connected to history but the archetypal and pedagogical elements of the narratives of the gods were much clearer, and narratives were put far into the past rather than spoken of about contemporaries. Even the allegedly supernatural construction of the Artemis temple of Ephesus was put far back in the past rather than having any immediate interaction with the priests who served there in Paul's day. So it's pretty easy to tell the genres of history and mythos apart.

When we come to specific mythoi of dying and rising, I grant much has been made of trying to make the Christian version of it supplemental and dependent on other earlier established religions. Every time I've tested these claims of antiquity they've shown themselves false and invented: the covenant people always had the thing first. At the beginning of paganism you have the idea of Dumuzid's death and comeback, and when you look at it it's clear that it has strong parallels with Adam, Eve, Cain and Abel, with Dumuzid overlapping Adam and Abel, and Inanna overlapping Eve. So when you trace both these back, there's a strong probability that the Hebrew version is the older because its narrative consistency is tight while the accounts of Dumuzid evince development, incorporation, and dependency. The theory that Dumuzid's curse of death and restoration to life would be automatically prior to Adam's curse of death and restoration to life needs to meet a burden of proof.

Dumuzid goes through Ninus (note that his wife was not Semiramis, who was a historical figure several centuries later who got templated over Ninus's wife as it developed). Now there we might have a historical core in saying that there might have been some king of Nineveh who died in his youth but whose pregnant wife yielded an heir who was taken as a restoration of the father. Of course the principle that the son carries on the work and eventually the identity of the father is not new at all and is clear in pre-Mosaic and Sumerian and Egyptian tradition, so by the time of Ninus there is nothing really added. Note also that Ninus's story has nothing to do with the same person rising from the dead.

By the time you get close to Christ with Mithras and the establishment that there is some (distant) deity who not only every year at a set time dies with fall/winter and rises with spring, but also is a figure who intervenes in immediate history at a near point in time to contemporary witnesses, you get some very different narrative about bull-wrestling as the demonstration of the deity's power (I think it has zodiacal roots). You get nothing about Jesus's claims of suffering for others' sins which are uniquely Semitic. Much of the Mithras literature is post-Christian and reactionary, and what can be proven to be pre-Christian doesn't anticipate a thing of Christianity.

But you do find that the Hebrew prophets are constantly getting vignettes about what God will do next and tying it to a coming suffering Anointed king, and that they are holding onto these as inspired without knowing their fulfillment until it's discovered that they fit precisely with Jesus's narrative. The skeptic might quibble that some fits are imprecise, but even if that were true the historical fact is that many people found them very useful and effective proofs that Hebrew tradition had the exactly right anticipation. Isaiah 53 presents a godly servant who dies for the sins of others but still sees the light and joy of life after his death (and whether this refers to a people metaphorically as later interpreted, or a single person, it still betokens a perfect fit to the personal resurrection testified by the gospels). Hosea uses the metaphor of the third day (that we call "day after tomorrow" with the same force) as being a day when all things get fixed, and that is the metaphor Jesus draws on in his entire period of testimony, as I will prove further in my next post.

So in all of this the idea that Jesus's resurrection was anticipated in and copied from some prior pagan source has never ever withstood the light of even ordinary scrutiny given all the historical facts. Because I pursue the truth at all costs, I looked into what the skeptics said about Mithras and the rest, and found that it was just another spiderweb tissue that yielded immediately. (And I will look into your link on Josephus because it appears scholarly.) To actually sustain an argument that any aspect of Jesus's life was a lie taken from paganism is an extraordinary claim that you haven't evidenced.

Which leads me to ask directly about method. I thought I pointed a couple such points out to you, Soul, but instead of seeing some cogent interaction I see you sniping at Guy instead, and by "sniping" I mean a gallop of several tired atheist tropes that all stem from the higher-critic school and never existed before 150-200 years ago. And every one comes from an assumption of bias against the text that comes from a known school of thought that wanted to reject Christianity and embrace immorality (as shown by its proponents' lives). But these sources are upheld as if they represent science when they are merely reflexive objections that a group sustains to continue to resist claims of morality. The fact is that when good methodological historians look at the data, the biased view fails. So question assumptions.

I appreciate the opportunity to comment on these because they have been well-handled in the 200 years during which such quibbles have been unduly raised, and their explanations are very salient and straightforward.

When it comes to 500 witnesses, there is only a claim and nothing to back it. Anonymous sources with unverified claims.

Not really, the 500 are clearly an extension of the 120 counted in Acts 1, and scores of these are known from the contemporaneous accounts, and church tradition preserves names for all 120 of them even if some layers may have been added. Therefore the demonstration that there was a core of families around the named 12 and their many known associates was a significant proof via the fact that nobody controverted the account with any success. We have much less proof that Caesar was killed with 23 wounds than that Jesus was killed with 5 wounds, and yet every historian accepts that Caesar was killed by those stab wounds at the hands of known people.

Your stuff about the Sanhedrin not being able to find a body and Roman guards abandoning their posts presupposes that a man named Jesus was crucified and buried in the manner stated across those texts.

If you sincerely believe the Shroud of Turin is real, that tells me all I need to know about you. They've found an actual burial shroud from that time frame and the manner of how they'd wrap people up was completely different.

That didn't contradict the actual shroud, nor did it prevent the shroud from being the outer cover of a body that was more tightly wrapped by inner covers now lost. I was skeptical about the shroud until I read the reporting of the unique burning effects noted on both sides (even though they are nigh-invisible on one side) that have never been fully reproduced by any attempt to duplicate all physical aspects of the shroud at one time. If someone added a little medieval paint later out of misplaced piety, it doesn't contradict the actual core problem that the phenomena jointly contained in one artifact are highly anomalous and not satisfactorily explained to many researchers. I did indeed once dismiss the shroud as you do, as easily debunked, but I learned that it's not safe to debunk things out of hand that (literally) have many more layers than meet the eye.

In Acts the story changes each time.

Not true, this is like the other higher-critic 19th-century skeptical objections, a feint from uncontextual uncultural assumptions that started from rejection and then fortified that foregone conclusion with manufactured interpretation of evidence and rejection of alternatives. That is, the blind-faith unscientific method.

Luke 24 presents the ascension of Jesus as happening on the same day of the resurrection. In Acts 1, the ascension is portrayed as 40 days later.

Not true, another assumption thrown onto the text that doesn't do justice to the next text intended to be read together with it. The word "And" in Luke 24:50 does not require immediate subsequence but has the force of "Also" (at a later date). It would have been very silly of Jesus to have led those dozens all out to Bethany that same night several hours after sundown after both dinner and "fourthmeal".

That's symbolic play on the number 40, and 12 guys all speaking in tongues is symbolic.

No, it properly fits in the fact that the distance between Firstfruits (the Resurrection) and Pentecost (Feast of Weeks) was always 50 days by command, so it would be eminently fitting to the historical narrative for the Ascension to have happened short of but close to 50 days. The fact that numbers may also be taken as symbolic doesn't prove they're necessarily false. In fact, Luke is regarded by some as the greatest historian of the era, the most exact with numbers, and who has dozens of times been vindicated by later archaeological discovery that proved him right and the less-informed skeptics wrong.

Talking snakes, talking donkeys, and many other stuff are obviously not to be taken literally.

It's not obvious at all unless you were sold a bill of goods by materialists, who are incidentally chewed out by Peter in his epistles for believing there can be no supernatural. In the entire era of the Bible they didn't have "scientific" and "unscientific" categories as we pretend them today, they had "known" (understood) and "mysterious" (unexplained), and all accounts of the mysterious were in the same category, whether they were later proven as lies or later proven as natural but subtle phenomena described by later study of physics. Because physics has become so overarching lately, we forget that all modern theories of physics leave room for the unexplained somewhere, and we act like physics really has explained everything; and that is what Peter ridicules when he tells people they forgot that the Creation and the Flood (known to all) were never fully explained by the modern uniformitarians.

The Gospels crucifixion and resurrection accounts differ in such a way that makes them non-compatible with each other.

False, they agree on all significant historical points, and when they give divergent testimony it's compatible (e.g. one leper vs. two lepers means two were present and one was active). All historical inquiry from plural sources has this same problem and the solution is to find why both accounts were written and only then to judge whether an account is truly mistaken or lying, only in the even that they are truly irreconcilable. But all alleged incompatibilities in the gospels are easily reconciled by those without an axe to grind.

The differences don't add more credibility.

That contradicts all historians' methodology. If two sources were flatly contradictory then we'd need to test credibility; but if all favorable sources agree in essentials and only diverge in minors, and if all unfavorable sources agree with essentials as hostile witnesses, credibility is at its highest level. I wrote about this very process with links to even deeper discussion.

Your stuff about the Sanhedrin not being able to find a body and Roman guards abandoning their posts presupposes that a man named Jesus was crucified and buried in the manner stated across those texts.

The fact that Jesus was crucified and would have been buried in accord with Jewish law need not depend on the gospels as primary witnesses at all because there are so many secondary and hostile witnesses to that fact that it gives credence to the gospels. When you get to the details of Judea and Rome it still isn't necessary to assume the gospel description of it as the primary to establish the significant historical points.

1. Historians agree that within 2-5 years of the resurrection there were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people circulating (memetic) statements such as "Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again", and (1 Cor. 15:3-4) "that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures". They agree that this indicates some irregularity about the death of Christ that caused the empty tomb to be upheld as an unsolved fact of history. There is no scenario of Christ's death that follows complete materialist assumptions that explains all the facts: the closest you can come is to imagine that there either wasn't such a person or there wasn't such an empty tomb and yet a group of people created an empty-tomb narrative that was so compelling and truthy that it spread like wildfire among the Jewish and Gentile people despite institutional rejection. Because the historical narrative of some kind of empty-tomb anomaly is reported already in the 30s with Pilate being deposed in 36, and we know the Sanhedrin's power and interest and limits at that time, when we take these foundational facts attested by many favorable and hostile witnesses and test one other fact against them, namely that the Sanhedrin who had great interest in pointing to an occupied tomb of Christ but never did, we find that that theory as presented in gospels that were written a couple decades later (i.e. when eyewitnesses could still have contravened them) is more likely true than any other hypothesis holding. There would be no sense for the writer of Matthew to have been lying in 60 or 70 about an embarrassing empty tomb if the actual state of affairs had been that the Sanhedrin knew full well there was an occupied tomb. That's an example of how the less essential facts are verifiable with reference to the more essential and more widely founded.

2. Though Guy slightly overstates the case because it wasn't stated that the Romans explicitly abandoned their posts, the issue is still handled the same way. We know how troops were assigned and ordered and that they were at Pilate's disposal for suppression of traitorous claimants to kingship (messiahs) that were also historically at a peak in those decades; everyone remembered the rebellion of 6 AD as one of the most serious, but uprisings were regularly repeated in Judea and Pilate naturally thought the Christian problem was just another such one. It is not necessary to assume that soldiers guarded the tomb, but it is certainly reasonable that for any executed rebel the remaining followers and their likely bases would be watched by such soldiers in the immediate aftermath. Further, hostile witnesses are given as testifying in court that Jesus was associated during all his ministry with a claim of a 3-day resurrection narrative: with his other claims to uniqueness it's one of the most salient things that all accounts agree about him. He began with it in reference to the shock-value thought of destroying the Temple, and he continued it with application to Jonah's 3 days and to a taunt to be reported to Herod (i.e. widely) about what we could call "the day after tomorrow"; and as I just showed still in the late 30s the oral claim, transcribed in the 40s by Paul to Corinth, that he was still associated with a 3-day wonder is one of the most certain things about him. So when we take that foundation and then test the additional claim, namely that the soldiers encountered some unexpected disturbance at the (occupied) tomb, we find that within that claim there is also stated an appeal to then-circulating hostile testimony that a narrative had circulated that the guards slept and the disciples stole. Obviously the claimant has no fear of controversion because he himself is putting forward the other story and explaining why it is false compared to his own (i.e. because it was motivated by censorship of truth). But when we investigate history we find an even more corroborative detail, namely that such a report circulating would already be suspect because sleeping soldiers could be summarily executed and would certainly have lost face by such a story being circulated, even if it had to be so as to suppress a competing narrative. Therefore once again the nonessential claim fits squarely in the essential claims and all the historical witnesses taken together.

Texts that were not written down at the time, but decades later.

Most histories even today are written 10-30 years after they happen. But historians that go back that far are happy to have histories 100-300 years after the fact, and they base their inquiry very solidly on those sources. The objection that Matthew and John didn't keep diaries and immediately circulate them in the 30s (when they were under severe persecution and organizational stress) is facile and fights systematic history; and, to me, Matthew and John read like they relied in part on contemporarily drafted handwritten notes anyway. It is completely plausible that the disciples did once or more create "sermon notes" as Jesus was speaking and then later developed these with other sources into the gospels. So your bold statement as if you know the texts were not written down at the time is not even provably true.

Those like James, were not Christians like you think they were. They were Ebionites, and the Christians rejected the Ebionites as heretics because they believed very different than they did.

Whoa! Suddenly you accept historians who say of course James existed because he was Ebionite and heretic! You doubled down on your selective bias. Actually James tells you who he was when he says "be a Doer". The Hebrew for Doer is Oseh (James uses Hebrew thought) and the transliterated Greek is Essene. So he was Essene, and wasn't an Ebionite. However, those two, and the other Qumranites and Naassenes and Quartodecimans and some others, were closely allied groups in the Messianic movement that were more favorable to Hebrew roots than others. When James was written these were all formative and not regarded as separatist titles, nor were there any heresies extant about the case (there were two recorded cases then that would be regarded as declarations of heresy, the Judaizers that were heard at the Jerusalem Council, and the Simonians as judged by Peter personally; but the pre-Ebionites were never heretical in the time of James). So I see that you're throwing together strands of rejection both new and old, which indicates methodology problems in the first place.

The Josephus account is a forgery (https://www.richardcarrier.info/archives/7437), and the Tacitus account was written almost a hundred years after the alleged events.

No, but I appreciate that the link is not just a random drive-by shooting. Historians have had two views, the whole paragraph being Josephus, or the core facts being Josephus with the pro-Christian parts being interpolated. On a quick skim I'll be happy to review the evidence but (1) its polemic indicates that it is likely to have been written from bias wholly to suppress the whole testimony (as if that debunks every other testimony) and (2) the case isn't based on any single testimony but as stated upon a massive number of sources much more contemporary than usual. Tacitus is 83 years later, which I wouldn't call almost 100, but it's clear that Tacitus was speaking of both contemporary Christianity and the account he believed of its originator based on his fully Roman beliefs. We can't say Josephus and Tacitus were wrong because we 2,000 years later know so much better that they were deceived, that their reliance on documents we don't have totally misled them and there was no such person as Christ who died in a time and manner as they testify (which is about the only key point of their testimony). When I looked into the reports of Simon Magus, as a control figure, to see what they were like, historians make many assumptions about him based on testimony much later than 83 years and yet they clearly agree on the figure and his time and locality without needing total consensus on all details. That's what we do with Jesus.

As a Catholic, you should say satanism has satanic origins, there would be no satanism without satan initiating it. Was satan dormant until Jews came along? Obviously Abraham's family provoked him because they were cutting into his older Canaanite gains.

It starts moving further away from us in one week, on the 19th. Sadly, there is nobody to stop it from being mythologized into whatever narrative people are willing to buy, except the people.

If you had said 4200 years ago (aka 4.2kya event, I calculate 4361 myself), you'd have the same narrative power but you wouldn't be relying on the sketchy Urantia Book (with several noted scientific noob errors) but instead on mainstream science about cataclysm. Otherwise it's a passable narrative, with some minor quibbles such as that the quote isn't from Revelation.

Thank you for publishing this today, September 11791, 1993.

You can tell this is a lie from the first paragraph. It's not "roughly 1000 BCE", the Mosaic kosher laws are from 1539 BC, and when Christianity was founded Peter had a vision about pigs being clean that led to all Christianity except a couple Jewish-influenced sects not using the same kosher laws. There was no Islam until the first revelation of 610 AD, and the degree to which Arabs were somewhat kosher before then was only because of Jewish influence in a couple prior centuries. So it's not "multiple religions suddenly" by any stretch, it's only Abrahamic religion and only as influenced by Abraham's grandson Israel and no other grandson.

The reason cows, goats, and sheep are clean is exactly that they require pasture to graze; pigs are unclean because they'll eat anything, they are (like shrimp and crabs) the bottom-feeders that perform a valuable service to nature of removing refuse at risk of infection. If that makes pigs "democratic" and cows "landlorded", it also makes cow owners more likely to have good ideas for societal organization than pig owners. Yes, parasites are a valid additional reason; and yes, forbidding people from pork is a valid sanitation and societal improvement to legislate in spite of any bogus argument that it somehow "improves" a people to eat unhealthy food. (Even if the case were valid that pork was truly more healthy, which is both dubious and misleadingly presented, there's nothing inherently wrong with wealthier people making decisions for poorer in society; though the powerful have abused it in favor of the wealthy, nowadays we've also seen it thoroughly abused allegedly in favor of the poor, so it's always about those with greater power having greater responsibility, and abuse of that responsibility getting punished by natural consequences sooner or later.)

I don't follow at all the logic that "This pattern repeats through history. Medieval European nobility consumed pork freely while peasants were restricted. Victorian England saw pork associated with lower classes while beef signified wealth and status." If the "pattern" is wealthy deprecate pork to preserve status, the second example fails; if it's that wealthy direct the diet of the poor regardless, the objection that pork suppression was about power fails. The only logical thing left that is proven is that more powerful people have more power, a tautology.

The conclusion, "When everyone can access protein, hierarchies flatten", is a false dilemma. The nature of the world is that things of more benefit are harder to achieve, and yet that the basics are available to all; and the least privileged, to whom subsistence is hardly available, generally find the more privileged willing to share reasonably, one way or another (except when morality fails and greed or pride intervenes). 99% of the world can access enough protein to live off of, and those that can't are in some temporary crisis status, not endemic curse. People who have been "starving" for years, though greatly overhyped by manipulators, are almost always the victims of mismanagement by their own leadership and by outside exploiters. The blame lies squarely on human irresponsibility, stemming from Adam's own failure of dominion; it is not based on ordinary determination of what foods are healthy, at a determination level fit to how far human knowledge has progressed, by those who have enough luxury to research and report on the subject. There is ordinary warning by the knowledgeable about sanitation, and then there is extraordinary theft of resources (not by promoting moral code but by physical force) by the better-armed and better-connected.

Mudpies are free, the rich don't eat them, and they tell the poor not to eat them, and yet they are not significantly unhealthy. It would be silly to say that encouragement not to eat mudpies on a basis of societal improvement is a control tool of the powerful, and to say that it's not a factor at all if there were massive forcible theft of corn by others who aren't interested to any degree in whether peasants eat mudpies or not at all.

Why am I even debunking such a stupid writeup, I wonder, what is even its point. Seems to me the person is influenced by Big Pork to promote propaganda that is directing people to eat food they want eaten for exactly the same control reasons projectively complained about.

Rabbi Laitman is talking about one interpretation of preexistence in Judaism (a subtheory) that is not dogmatically held as a tenet of Judaism but is in tension with other views. Nor is his concept of Judaism related to any different concept than arising from Judah's family.

Now, I do admit to gatekeeping for language generically, as I will challenge any false etymology of any word and I've seen many (granted, I formerly challenged Will on a lot of his and now I decline to press it because he doesn't intend them as etymologies but as puns; but if someone is misinformed and appears willing to be told so, I say it). Here is proof that the word "Jew" in its earliest English spellings that predated standardization (e.g. "Ieu", "Iewe", and many others) is from the 1200s ("First Known Use"). Here is the French version "jue" ca. 1000; last time I searched I got "Ju" for the same. And it's a simple elision from Latin as so often observed. Dictionaries flatly disagree with you putting Sheridan as the first use of the word, and even if you were quibbling about spellings (when experts don't) even the spelling "Jew(s)" is much older. I already told you that it was irrelevant that the standardization of I vs. J had not yet been engaged because people knew the word regardless of whether the first letter had a tail or not. So you're echoing talking points that have been debunked before they were ever raised. Plus, they don't help carry the major premise anyway because even if all that were true there is no evidence for a meaning other than Judahite.

I wasn't going to make the distinction between Judahite and Judean, because all Judeans (such as Levites) are counted as Judahite by adoption. In the first century there simply wasn't a difference where people used different words for "descended from Judah" and "naturalized into the national entity led by descendants of Judah". One was counted as good as the other. Your idea that the rabbi is saying to adopt the culture of a host country doesn't seem to relate to this at all.

Yes, many (not all) Idumeans became Judeans alongside all the other Judeans in the 2nd century BC. Their children were regarded as Ioudaios like any others because they had been naturalized, circumcised, and converted to the culture and religion and did not retain an Idumean identity. Herod has some Idumean and some Judean in his heritage, but all regarded him as Ioudaios, the argument was just over whether he had pure enough blood to be trusted with representing the government. He didn't say "This country is Idumea now" because Idumea was a separate region that he also ruled, populated by Idumeans with Idumean culture. So the fact of the intermarriages does nothing to change the historic flow of the peoples of Judea or of Idumea. If it did, then people would be right to say this is no longer America but literally Arabia because of a little immigration and intermarriage; of course we're still America. Nobody truly judges people that way, nor wants their own people judged that way. (Same applies to Khazaria.)

I've said, I've stopped denying what people want to accuse me of being, because they don't listen and it's better for me to suffer with all those people you name (Jews, crypto-Jews, and Zionists). I believe in what the Bible calls "Zion", but "Zionism" as proposed is so rarely defined that there's no meaning there for me to affirm or deny. I like Israel when it does well and dislike and criticize it when it does ill; I don't think that's Zionism. Plus, since you hardly understand the word "Jew" itself and you decline to put forward a credible theory that it means something other than "Judahite" here, my denial wouldn't help. Instead I just affirm Jesus is Lord.

Now, for the sake of argument, even if someone were a Messianic Jew (which you call "crypto"), and affirmed every creed and practice you wanted, would that somehow invalidate his logic or ability to be a Christian brother? Is there something that damns Jewish descendants before they commit any sin? I've worked with Messianic Jews and learned the Hebrew culture informing the Bible, and have called myself a Messianic Gentile so they understand where I am, but it doesn't matter what suffices for you if you don't deal with the logic I present itself. The only way to proceed forward with fighting a satanic enemy is to have sufficient common trust insofar as two anons are able to share. Your preclusive judgment about me suggests that there's nothing I could say that would gain your trust, even though I seek to answer everything sincerely and my conscience is clear about my being forthcoming. So I counsel you to look into whether you've made prejudicial statements about the history that are not backed by fact and to consider that there may be more to it than the simplistic view, and that may be enough for you to accept my testimony that Jesus is my Lord. But if you doubt the testimony because of some deeper view you have about locked-in racial destiny, that seems not Christian at all.

Sometimes I keep pestering people to present their evidence for some alternate history, but it appears to me you have none and are just guessing from memory, so I abstain.

1. I told you there are several solutions accepted by believers in morality, and I told you you don't have to accept mine just because I find it suitable for me. If you quibble at a narrative because you believe there's no way to interpret it except for there being two people who were morally barred from creating an extended family and thus a contradiction, the burden is on you to prove that's the only way to interpret the text, because billions have had no problem with rejecting that reading. Cain's wife doesn't justify throwing out the Ten Commandments. If the theistic evolutionists are right and we're both wrong, presumably we can both be corrected; but even if you think I'm wrong it doesn't make your opinion right by default because it's not a binary argument. Now, since you ask, I do believe that (the law of entropy indicates) human powers were greater in the past and, just as other powers go extinct in e.g. past gigantism in many species, there's nothing wrong with parthenogenesis going dormant in humans (with the notable exception of Mary) but remaining present in a number of animal species. It's devolution that makes it not happen anymore. Not a miracle, it's been observed by scientists, just not recently in humans. But for you to focus on this quibble while letting others go suggests the basic methodology issue I've been describing.

2. I didn't change my morality. "Authority" means legitimate power, not illegitimate. Morality is not to reject community authority, but of course one should reject tyranny, and one is responsible to know the difference. As I said, leaders lose their righteous authority by themselves transgressing moral law such as by abusing their constituency. It's natural that moral law deals with issues like failures of government, and decisions that war is necessary, and it's natural that these are not always the simplest questions even though morality when grasped on a subject is itself simple. The fact that some questions have layers doesn't prohibit authority.

Now, the basic methodology issue here is that you rightly assume an objective transcendent morality just by engaging the topic. First you assume that having the discussion is better than not having it; then you assume that your view of my description is better than what you think I mean by it. Those express moral preference and the use of an external standard that you wish to hold me to. It is common in these discussions to tell the Christian that if he believes in a high standard he must be held to it; Christians should admit that, and also admit that we're not perfect and fall short of it, and that since that's always been part of our gospel it's no shame to admit it. But everyone treats standards the same: they seek to use something external and direct others to the same as what they see, even for things as simple as "you took my seat". The person who holds off from believing in the Christian's detailed (and work-in-progress) morality often doesn't realize that he also has quite a nuanced, and occasionally self-reworked, morality himself.

So it's a categorical error to say that simply because one can find open questions that appear to be zingers for Christians therefore one has no responsibility to declare any morality. Most atheists agree murder is always wrong, and lots use the Golden Rule for simplicity. If you simply said that there exist a small number of human conventions that appear to meet the high bar of being universal morals, you'd immediately position your case better: because then you wouldn't be arguing the illogical "morality is bad", but the much more debatable "my morality is better than yours". You'd be free to call out the Christians for being casuists and also pushovers, by referring them to (what are often called) simple laws of Noah instead. But if you refer people to nothing then the methodology is fatal to the argument.

It's not about what I want anyway as to what you believe. What I ask is whether you want to believe what is true. If you do, you will be guided by the cosmos into all truth, and that includes getting morality questions settled to your satisfaction and not mine. I'm just someone guessing what may help. And I think that backing away from the failed 1800s approach of throwing out the Baby with the bathwater will help you, as you instead focus on what you know to be right and wrong (as expressed by what you do and don't do). Picking on someone else taking up a hard responsibility (even if he's failing) doesn't help, but picking up what responsibility you do see makes you a brother.

However if the circumstances were different if the society wasn't subjected to fake religions and fake nations and all the deceptions that are going around then maybe we could be totally different.

Yes up to a point.

It's a speculation hypothesis which cannot be disproven or proven.

Actually ordinary proof usually settles for much lower bars of evidence, you simply start being the community you wish to build and encouraging others to do so, and seeing what works. I've been doing that on this site five years with good evidence that there is something that works.

I think scientific method, logical reasoning, is the strongest form that we can use to understand the world around us, And if you want to classify hypothesis as belief then that's up to you.

Yes, and it leads to conclusions about the intervention of the unexplained in history.

Like I said before nothing really matters.

That never follows from scientific method or logic. Method presumes that it itself matters; if nothing mattered nothing would be method or nonmethod.

To speculate there are consequences in the afterlife as to how you lived your human life, would be a bit ignorant and gullible.

Manipulable, but we do have quite a lot of firsthand evidence that cannot be discounted by handwaving from materialists, seeing as all materialists smuggle in the unexplained into their own systems somewhere too.

Think about what is right and what is wrong according to an all-knowing all experiencing source of knowledge. Why would this overwhelming love that people feel when they have near-death experiences care about you raping puppies or whatever disgusting thing you did in this life.

That's a start on using the NDE evidence. But you do know that there are thousands of bad trips reported too, for some reason? So the evidence of "overwhelming love", and that which is often reported as overwhelming hatred, need to be combined into a fuller hypothesis ....

He's literally a Dolfolater.