its almost like the whole thing is an amalgam of thousands of texts edited and repurposed across thousands of years by human beings with various motivations.
The religion of the Israelites wasn’t even monotheistic at first. Yahweh was one of many gods.
And Christianity isn’t technically monotheistic either, as it has the trinity of God, Christ, and the Spooky Spirit… errrm… I mean Holy Ghost.
And trinitarianism specifically is basically just a reason to wage wars. I was raised in a trinitarian denomination and I still mostly consider myself Christian but I can’t reconcile my morals with waging literal wars over fucking metaphysics.
It really is tho. The 3 are the same thing. Different parts/names of one entity. Probably wasn’t originally, but def is now
“That’s Modalism, Patrick!”
Loved that video until I looked at some of the creators other videos.
Depending on the exact denomination of Christian. There is no big difference between how many christians view satan and how polytheistic religions view some of the less nice gods.
Does not make sense to me, but that bit was not doctrine until 350 ad.
Also, he was a war god.
source?
source?
wikipedia isn’t a source
Sorry professor
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
You should have just looked this up yourself. It’s going to be the first result in most search engines.
wikipedia isn’t a source
Then check the sources listed under that wiki article.
If you couldn’t be bothered to look up something as simple and undisputed as this, then it’s really silly to make a stand with “Wikipedia isn’t a source”, it just makes you look like a bad troll.
The book of Job is literally written in different parts in entirely different dialects that were spoken hundreds of years apart. The opening and ending is from the older dialect, and written much like a folktale. The middle is newer and written much more like an epic poem.
Even the a single book of the Bible comes from numerous sources.
Not just single books. Single chapters.
♥️
And yet they persist, so it’s almost like it’s not quite that simple either, eh? Funny how the devil stays in the details, no matter which side you lean
absolutely correct. humans have been scamming humans since inception, and the best methods last the longest.
Because it’s all fake. Everyone who actually reads it finds way too many inconsistencies.
That’s because it underwent some serious transformations across the millennia. Yahweh started as a storm god (basically Thor of Canaanite religion). Back then each nation in the religion had their own patron god and guess which god did the Israelites happen to have? Good old storm god Yahweh.
Over centuries the religion evolved and among Israelites Yahweh slowly took on attributes of other gods, mostly El (the all-father and creator of the universe) and Baal. First the other gods were degraded and monotheism was required, even though other gods were known to exist (you might remember the whole “jealous of other gods shtick” even though the rest of the Bible says there’s only one god).
Then the other gods were slowly edited out of the Bible, though some remains persevere (the aforementioned jealousy of other gods, some gods are even mentioned by name). If the gods couldn’t be removed because the story wouldn’t make sense, they were mostly changed into angels or other mythical beings.
It’s pretty funny rereading the Bible with this knowledge, you can clearly recognise which parts were the original Yahweh-the-storm-god and which used to be El-the-actual-creator by how he behaves in the story. When he’s all jealous, rageful and angry, it’s mostly based on the original Yahweh.
Anyway, that’s basically what Old Testament is - a bunch of edits of much older religions. IIRC Yahweh precedes even the Canaanite religion, so it’s a really old and grumpy storm god.
Now, New Testament is something else entirely, that was basically just slapped onto Judaism to have some legitimate and widely recognised vessel. Unlike the other edits, it didn’t evolve naturally over time, it was just violently slapped onto the Old Testament.
Fun fact: try finding Satan anywhere in the old testament. You won’t. Satan has been retrofit on multiple characters, but neither is mentioned directly as Satan, devil or really anything. The most famous one, the snake in the garden? Just a snake (which checks out with older religions where animals had a lot of influence). Then some morons come and say “actually, that snake was the grand adversary.” The concept of a grand adversary wasn’t really common in older religions, there usually wasn’t a Satan-like figure. Compare for example with Greek, Roman or Norse gods.
So, in conclusion, the Bible is a horrible mess of edits that were made so the religion would serve the needs of the time they were introduced in. IIRC the Israelites were having some trouble with their neighbours back when Yahweh got the promotion, so having a strong sense of nationality would really help in keeping the nation together. New Testament is even more obvious because it didn’t even really try to fit with the rest. They just tried to retrofit a few things and called it a day.
Well, this got longer than I planned, but I really like the topic and I don’t think you can do it justice in two paragraphs. If anyone’s interested, do some research, it’s honestly fascinating! For example, what’s the connection between Dionysus and Yahweh? That would be a homework for ya!
Fun fact: try finding Satan anywhere in the old testament. You won’t.
What about the Book of Job? That was all about a bet between God and Satan to make Job suffer. Like, I’m sure he was still an edited deity from another religion. But he’s straight up referred to as Satan, right there in the Old Testament, which seems to be the exact thing you’re claiming can’t be found.
I meant the character, not the name, I perhaps worded it poorly. Satan in this context is meant in the “accuser” sense. As in it’s a role in a divine court, not an entity. Anyone could be the “satan” for the specific case, it’s not a person, but a role.
I could be wrong but isn’t Ha-Satan just the title for “the accuser” and not the biblical satan who is the fallen angel
You just taught me as much bible as I have ever learned, last lesson being south park raining frogs.
So… it’s like the Jorge Joestar novel ?
Me when I listen to tiktok instead of doing actual research
Could you be more constructive with your feedback?
It’s the same stuff I see copypasted everywhere. A lot of it is speculation from like one academic which gets quoted as fact
I guess you’re referring to Dan McClellan. I’ve consumed a lot of his content via YouTube and his podcast.
It generally seems like a pretty impartial, critical analysis of the data, rather than speculation. But given that he has dominated my understanding of the data I recognize I’ve got a pretty big blindspot. Where would you point me to refute the view that the bible seems to be a source that has been heavily edited to remove its polytheistic origins?
I have studied this topic academically, a little bit. My answer:
- The people who wrote the old testament lived in a world that was almost unfathomably dangerous and difficult compared to today’s first world. Death, disease, starvation, natural disasters, the collapse of whole towns and settlements, unexplained daily suffering for which there is not even an explanation let alone a cure, were constantly present. If you’re in that place, and you believe there’s a God who’s in charge of it all, there is absolutely no conclusion to come to other than he’s a real son of a bitch.
- I definitely believe that Jesus had some kind of genuine religious inspiration, that a lot of what he was teaching was for-real insight about life. The stuff about forgiving your enemies, living for good works through action and how it really doesn’t matter what you say or what team you’re on, trying to build a better life by caring about people around you, taking care of the sick and injured, even if they are beggars or prostitutes or foreigners or otherwise “bad” people in your mind simply because of their circumstances, seems pretty spot on to me. It was 100% at odds with the religion of the day, pretty much as much as it is with modern religion. What Jesus actually said does obviously have “spiritual” and supernatural elements also, but it is also focused to a huge extent on what you as an individual can do, and a sort of alignment towards the greater good and a calling for humanity, as opposed to this wild half-Pagan mythology about a capricious and bad-tempered God who might kill you at any instant.
I like this reasoning a lot, however:
#2. In terms of there being a real-life Y’shua, AFAIK it’s hard to know if such a person ever really existed in the first place, or if they were in fact more of an amalgamated ‘King Arthur’ / ‘Robin Hood’ type, very much inspired by earlier legends & mythology, and greatly elaborated upon in later years, via oral traditions, before finally being documented hither & tither by various writers scattered around the region.
AFAIK there is no archeological evidence whatsoever for that exact person’s existence, and no contemporaneous writing from the time, describing his life.
In a 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship, Bart D. Ehrman wrote, “He certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees.”[13] Richard A. Burridge states: “There are those who argue that Jesus is a figment of the Church’s imagination, that there never was a Jesus at all. I have to say that I do not know any respectable critical scholar who says that any more.”[14] Robert M. Price does not believe that Jesus existed but agrees that this perspective runs against the views of the majority of scholars.[15] James D. G. Dunn calls the theories of Jesus’s non-existence “a thoroughly dead thesis”.[16] Michael Grant (a classicist), “In recent years, ‘no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus’ or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary.”[17] Robert E. Van Voorst states that biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted.[18] Writing on The Daily Beast, Candida Moss and Joel Baden state that, “there is nigh universal consensus among biblical scholars – the authentic ones, at least – that Jesus was, in fact, a real guy.”[19]
Which is fine as far as it goes, yet does very little if anything to address the body of the above concerns.
While “Jesus” likely had something to do with an actual person who once lived, nailing down the details of his life and history seems highly problematic from a scholarly & historical POV, and as for embellishment, amalgamation and distortion… all such things are highly possible, and even highly likely, AFAIK.
But then you’re making up new standards of evidence for historical characters, and only applying them to Jesus.
All evidence points to a jew who, under roman occupation, organized a political and religious movement around his person with a message so powerful that it immediately started replicating. Otherwise, how can we explain the sudden outflow of missionaries from Galilee ? Whose message were they spreading, which travelled as far as Asia and Ethiopia with relative unity and consistence ? What reason do we have to doubt that a revolutionary mystical prophet such as Jesus existed (they were legion at the time in that region), and why should we subscribe to some more exotic, laborious explaination ?
The question is not whether Jesus’ story was embellished and distorted, because it was, with 100% certainty. But then that’s true of everything we know from that time period. We have 0 archeological evidence of most historical characters existence, only hearsay and unreliable testimony. But we don’t doubt their existence because the alternative would have to be far fetched and contrived to fit the evidence.
All evidence points to a jew who, under roman occupation, organized a political and religious movement around his person with a message so powerful that it immediately started replicating. Otherwise, how can we explain the sudden outflow of missionaries from Galilee ? Whose message were they spreading, which travelled as far as Asia and Ethiopia with relative unity and consistence ? What reason do we have to doubt that a revolutionary mystical prophet such as Jesus existed (they were legion at the time in that region), and why should we subscribe to some more exotic, laborious explaination ?
I think that it is worth noting that the person who did most of the successful evangelizing in the beginning that led to the explosion of the movement was actually Paul, who had his own message that wasn’t quite the same as Jesus’s apostles–in fact, he started spreading the message without talking to them first because he figured that he already knew everything that he needed to know, which led to conflict that required Acts to work really hard to make it seem like they were all on the same side all along.
But regardless, it is peculiar that people seem to think that starting a widely successful cult is a particularly hard thing to do if the founder has enough charisma (and luck), given that all you have to do is look around at the numerous modern examples. For example, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness was founded in 1966 by a guy banging drums in New York, and has since grown into a huge movement with hundreds of dedicated temples. So it is far more plausible that this is what happened in the case of Christianity than that some other more complicated process synthesizing the existence of a fake founder.
Yeah i don’t understand what’s so controversial here. This time and place was home to a million apocalyptic militant movements, and Jesus’s just was the most successful of his generation.
But then you’re making up new standards of evidence for historical characters, and only applying them to Jesus.
Absolutely false, right from the get-go, Bob.
(hmm, “gecko…?,” but anyway)The whole point of what I said above is to understand things from an historians and archeologists’ POV. You know-- the ones who generally try their best to strictly adhere to known facts & reality?
Such criteria is commonly applied to virtually EVERY significant figure in history, Bob. So then, are you actually (haha) asking for a special exception for someone possibly known as Y’shua ben Josef during his lifetime, who later got turned in to an almost impossibly, legendary figure by political, financial and religious institutions…?
You know, that “Jesus Christ” figure, later whitewashed in to being a tall, pale Euro-type dude, and not the actual short, Semitic dude which he almost certainly was. (if he ever existed in the first place)
I sure hope not, anyway, because that would not be the “Bob” we all know and love.
Such criteria is commonly applied to virtually EVERY significant figure in history
That is simply not true. There’s a lot of historical figures from Antiquity for whom we have zero archeological evidence, it’s kind of the norm in fact. Literary evidence is fine if it can be corroborated from multiple independent sources. If we go by your standards then Socrates and Pythagoras are not historical figures, neither is Tacitus, or Hannibal, or most people who were not kings and did not have steles or coin to their name.
Y’shua ben Josef during his lifetime, who later got turned in to an almost impossibly, legendary figure by political, financial and religious institutions
A couple centuries before his embellishment by the roman state, the so-called Jesus movement was flourishing and started to expand in pretty much every direction. The existence of this movement is abundantly attested in independent sources from very distant places.
Are you saying this movement did not exist and the sources that attest to it are not reliable ? Are you saying there was a movement but it wasn’t founded by a guy named Y’shua ben Josef from Galilee ? Why would that be ? Do you think they lied, or forgot the name and origin of their founder ? I understand the idea but what would be the point, and how would those various sub-groups, some of which were very distant geographically, have coordinated their lie so perfectly ?
At one point Okham’s razor says the most probable thing is that a guy named Y’shua from Galilee did indeed start a religious movement. It’s happened before, it’s happened again, why would this specific occurrence need an esoteric explanation ?
Wow, it is as if you need something to be true, in the deepest sense, in order to validate your life?
Dude-- and THAT’S the part I always try to confirm. Live your life!
Enjoy our silly, mutual existence, if you can!
WE ARE HERE F0R A LITTLE WHILE, and also we like our animal friends et al.The ride will be over soon, my friend. So let’s enjoy…
At one point Okham’s razor says the most probable thing is that a guy named Y’shua from Galilee did indeed start a religious movement.
Haha, and later on, some group of assholes tried to make hay with the original guy… to the extent that whatever he might have actually said (remember the Gnostics?) to the message of bullshit “Christianity?”
Looks like you tried to reply to my actual response, and then sort of went all Gonzo-weird ness for motivational purposes?
Well, HELLO THERE, fellow freakazoid!
(I mean, that’s what the point is here, right…?)
You are thinking about this the wrong way. From the scraps of information that we do have, which includes volumes of work by Jesus’s followers, there are two extremes one could take: we know absolutely nothing about Jesus or whether he even existed, or we know absolutely everything about Jesus. I agree that the later extreme is wrongheaded, but surely treating it as a binary choice so that the only other possibility is that we can say nothing at all about Jesus is also wrongheaded.
You might argue reasonably, of course, that his followers cannot be trusted, so we can learn nothing from their writings. This is not true, however, because if nothing else we can learn from the editorial choices that they made; for example, when a Gospel goes out of is way to explain a detail that would have been embarrassing to contemporaries, this actually provides potential evidence that this detail was true and widely known at the time so that it needed to be explained, because otherwise it would just have been left out.
At the end of the day, scholarship is essentially about weighing probabilities rather than certainties, and good scholars do not pretend otherwise.
You are thinking about this the wrong way.
I consider that a terrible way of framing things, and then to make matters worse, you propose only a binary set of conclusions.
Please do better then that if you want to debate fairly.
Thank you.
It must be very convenient to be able to declare victory in a discussion without hanging to present an actual argument. 😉
Except for the fact that… I did indeed present multiple arguments, and the fact that at no point did I ‘signal victory?’
EDIT: Ruh-roh, downvotes! :D
Whoops; apologies.
I borked up my last reply-comment, and so deleted that, and re-created from scratch.Maybe he existed… but only as a common human and all the supernatural things were added later.
Oooohhhh
I mean, yes, obviously. It all of a sudden makes the other commenter’s steadfast insistence against me make sense, if they thought that I meant this person actually existed who could do real life magic tricks and came back from the dead and he still watches to see if you’re masturbating.
Yes, I was talking about the historical figure, not the superhero. I thought that went without saying but maybe not.
(Edit: What the heck, their original argument is clearly saying that they think there’s no evidence that the historical figure existed. But whatever, we got there in the end, I guess.)
(Edit: Also I think it is dishonest of them to edit their comment…
Dude, I did nothing of the kind.
Wow, it’s almost like you managed to copy-paste the known fact that the body of Christian scholars agrees that someone existed, later known as “Jesus,” and then seemingly couldn’t deal with a rebuttal upon your notion of ‘that clearing up everything.’
So now you’re getting weird about the fact that I had to re-do my comment, simply because I responded to the wrong commenter at the time? So, did not see my rebuttal at all? Did you not see my attempt to explain that?
Go ahead, tho-- consider this your opportunity to fairly reply to what I said above. Sound good?
EDIT: Hahaha, instant downvote!
Yeah, I realized after that you were talking about archaeology up in your original reply to me, not in the pre-editing version of some other comment. Sorry about that, I had already edited my comment to take out the accusation (within 5 minutes of originally posting it.)
I pretty much agree with this comment of yours. I have absolutely no reason why that would mean we have to continue to bicker. I do think that comment is pretty firmly in contradiction to your earlier statements (“King Arthur / Robin Hood”), but whatever, I see no profit at all in us having a dispute about that part of it.
Yes, but why are we ‘bickering’ in the first place, and why the need to accuse me of re-editing a comment? (which never happened)
What you are seemingly trying to tell me here, “PhilipTheBucket,” is that you’re not really able to countenance the actual arguments I’m making above.
Now would you say that’s a fair or unfair statement? If unfair, could you give me some facts & reality-based reasons as to why not?
EDIT: Hahaha, instant downvote!
For the record, the downvote was from me, and it was because you are being an ass.
Do you mean, being just like you… my fellow freakazoid? :D
Hahaha, nice!
Maybe he existed… but only as a common human and all the supernatural things were added later
Lets consider that jesus did exist and did someone have a cure for leprosy. Why didn’t he give that cure to everyone??? We still have leprosy today, kinda proves he didnt have the cure. But again lets say he did and he only gave it to a couple people, not a very godly thing to do, to withhold that cure from the entirety of humanity.
Maybe he cured a strong headache (maybe some herbal remedy) but they grew the anecdote and he ended up “curing leprosy”.
As I see it, there’s pretty much a landslide of evidence, from almost every studied angle, that points to what you just postulated.
deleted by creator
Which is fine as far as it goes, yet does very little if anything to address the body of the above concerns.
What? Of course it does. A near-unanimous consensus by experts in the field is worth more than whatever you are bringing up in your Lemmy comment.
I mean, it would be possible to lay out logic so compelling that even if experts in the field felt one particular way about it you could make a case otherwise, but weird strawmen like wanting archaeological evidence of Jesus’s specific skeleton or something is not that.
One Theory I like is that the Jesus we know is an amalgamation of multiple Messiah figures that were walking around around that time, one of them was the basis for the religion and then other stories about those other Messiahs were folded in over the years
Almost like every lauded, ‘perfect’ figure across history?
In fact, “The Messiah” is a concept that certainly goes back long before some dude allegedly named “Y’shua” was branded that way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messiah
Now, modern humans being ~300Kyrs old, I would guess that it’s not just an ancient fixation, but even endemic to our very species… our very way of hoping and wanting and longing for a return to ‘the good times,’ directly embodied via mythological figure.
Mais non, mon ami…?
a lot of what he was teaching was for-real insight about life
yaaa cept for the fact that most if not all the things ‘jeebus’ supposedly said were said in older books already. So there is nothing new in the new testament, they stole all of it from older books like code of hammurabi and then invented a character to say the things.
They switched writers.
I guess they did some market research between the two testaments
“nobody shares my kinks”
Fiction usually has highs and lows. Unfortunately all the authors wrote under pseudonyms, and multiple editors went through the plagiarized stories, some books were left out, and the consistency is just a mess. Not to mention the terrible translations. Your local Library most certainly has better Fiction books that are very well written and highly entertaining.
Why Hulk can defeat Wolverine in one comic but in the next one gets obliterated by someone weaker?
I don’t see how hulk can defeat wolverine.
It’s because the Old Testament is actually just the Torah, rearranged and edited to fit the beliefs of what was once a sect of Judaism. That sect branched off when they decided that Jesus Christ was their Messiah, then progressively became more open and split away from the rest of Judaism and became their own religion.
That might be a bit oversimplified, but that’s really the gist of it. Jesus made a new covenant with god, which was meant to replace the old one, chronicled in the New Testament; but the old covenant was kept in as background, becoming the Old Testament.
the only “um akshually” I would even bother adding to this is that the Torah / Pentateuch is just the first five books of the Tanakh, which is the best / closest approximation of books that later became the Christian old testament. The Tanakh also includes the Prophets (Nevi’im), and the Writings (Ketuvim). There’s also a few books in there that the council of Nicaea (the council of og old Catholic dudes who decided which books were true or not) chose not to include. Also relevant is the Septuagint which was the first translation from Hebrew into a mainstream language (which at the time was Koine Greek) which is relevant because that specific translation has had a profound effect on translations since, which really hammers in that concept of “a translation of a translation of a translation of-”
Yeahhhh… I took a class on the history of the Bible, but that was about a decade ago, so I’m spotty on some of the details. Thanks for fleshing it out, though - I knew my take was probably missing something!
I’ve been getting back into Christianity lately for a variety of reasons but I’ve also been doing a lot of research into the history and philosophy and whatnot and reconciling:
that outer sphere of what all these different people over the centuries have written and decided to include or exclude from their various compilations and what motivated them morally or especially politically to do so
vs
the inner sphere of my own lived experience with what does and does not make the world a better place and what motivations exist in the modern day to practice or interpret those centuries of texts in one way or another
and honestly it’s actually been really interesting from an academic perspective as well. It’s a fascinating combination of history, language, culture, and even what influences it’s had on the sciences over time like I recently wound up learning some stuff about early geometry and the ways metaphysical interpretation of mathmetical concepts have affected the architecture of churches.
and that actually led me to creating this gif of how Metatron’s Cube is constructed using basic geometric concepts with a compass and straightedge. The animated circles were specifically programmed in FMS logo it was a really fun way to spend my weekend.
I was reading a scholar’s book and one of her central themes was that there are clearly two gods in the Bible. It was really dry reading, couldn’t finish.
Some argue that there are even more! I’m definitely not an expert on this one, but I remember something about Yahweh being the god of some town or village that then somehow got absorbed into the old testament god when tribes and traditions consolidated, and then new testament god is just a completely different animal. I’m probably getting something wrong, so don’t quote me.
Seems clear early Jews believed in multiple gods. There’s more than a couple passages in the Old Testament talking about gods, plural. I would think singular vs. plural would make the translations, and even if you changed the passage to singular god, it wouldn’t make sense or need to be stated.
“You shall have no other gods before me.”, comes to mind.
You might find my top level comment on this post interesting.
Aw fuck yeah, that’s what I like to see. Thanks for writing that up friend. 👊
It’s all fiction. Different fiction from different people at different points in history. It was even re-written at certain points in history, to conform with (then current) ideas and morality.
Why doesn’t it all make sense put together? It’s fiction written by many, very different types of people with completely different ideas.
Because god was pregnant with jesus so she was all crazy lol
Because they exist for different audiences.
What works to keep people in line in prehistory is not the same as what works in ancient Rome, is not the same as works now.
Thats why all religions change over time, even if they like to say they don’t.
The old guys message wasn’t working anymore, the age of Pharos and godkings was done. You couldn’t just mass execute people anymore, everyone was really woke and PC.
The ruling class needed to revamp the religious arm of the machine that enslaves us all to get with the times or there were going to keep being problems.
You know how corporate media are, it’s easier to sell a sequel.
You know what, we’re going for a kind of apple vibe, we’re literally just going to call this thing “THE BOOK”.
Everyone will step into line after we nail a few to boards and stuff
The old guys message wasn’t working anymore
The new testament is just old testament fan fiction. By that reasoning all these newer religions like Mormonism are fan fiction based on other fan fiction… and Im sure I dont have to tell anyone how loony tunes Mormonism is.
The old testament is essentially Judaism which is an ethnic religion. There is no marketing needed because it is a religion for a specific group of people from a theoretical single lineage. There is no need for God to be accepting or patient since the goal appears to be unify and keep people under control during times of great strife.
Christianity is a universal religion ie. it tries to create new followers. If you’re a religion that is trying to grow your following, you need to have a message of openness and acceptance.
Keep in mind that most likely the historical Jesus was just one of many apocalyptic preachers going around telling people that, within the lifetime of some present, God was going to come down and vanquish evil once and for all, so one had better be prepared and be on God’s good side when this happened. (Incidentally, the Romans probably could not have cared less about this; it was when they got word that he was claiming to be an earthly king–which may have been how Judas actually betrayed him–that they got seriously pissed and executed him because they had a zero tolerance policy for that kind of thing.)
You can see imminent apocalypse theme in the epistles where John writes that there is no real point making big life changes like getting married since the world is going to end any day; amusingly, when this did not happen, they needed to start coming up with alternative policies, and so other letters start to set down rules which thematically contradict the earlier letters, but it turns out that there are other things about these letters that make them different too so I’m many cases they are considered to be forgeries. (Obviously this is an oversimplification of the academic research!)
(Also, it’s also worth noting that John and the apostles had really different notions of what Jesus was all about, and part of the whole point of Acts is to paper over these differences and make it seem like they had all been past of one team all along.)
Finally, it is worth pointing out that there were a lot of texts floating around in the same genre as Revelation, so it was not all that unique and it almost did not make it’s way into the Bible, but the Church Fathers thought incorrectly that the John who wrote it was the same as the author of the Gospel of John; if they had known that these were two different Johns, then the Left Behind series would never have been written (amount other consequences).
So in conclusion, be very wary of trying to read a lot of significance into the New Testament as a whole because it was not a unified document written with single purpose.
The Old Testament is a bunch of books, letters, poems, historical and legal documents. That when read tell the story of the Jews and their relationship with God and the world over a couple of thousand years. They reflect the culture in which they were written. Many of the documents were written during wars where the writer is convinced God is on their side. There are many prophesies especially in Isaiah which point to Jesus. So when Jesus arrives and fulfills the prophesies some of the Jews follow Jesus but many powerful leaders are awaiting a different, more normal king figure and they are comfortable as they are so choose not to follow. The New Testament is written in a time of relative stability during the longtime invasion by the romans. The writers of those letters and books, some of whom are eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. (Almost unique in historical documents) take a different stance to who God is. But they don’t all agree. Basically Bible means library.
A nitpick, none of the gospel writers were eyewitnesses, the documents were written long after Jesus was gone. They are interpretations of stories passed down, and all four gospels have different takes on events. So the phrase “gospel truth” is very ironic in its definition.
Not only that, Jesus doesn’t fit the requirements for the prophesied Jewish Messiah, to the best of my understanding. He may well be the Christian Messiah, but no one else is under any obligation to accept or reject anyone else’s religious beliefs.
Matthew and John were written by eyewitnesses.
Most modern scholars think that none of the gospels were written by eyewitnesses.
It’s a little bit academic (har har) anyway, since they all went through so many layers of translation often by people with specific agendas that the modern English versions can’t really claim to be “authentic” to the originals anyway, but regardless of that they almost certainly weren’t written by those specific disciples of Jesus (even if you accept the events described in them as semi-authentic.)
Relative stability? Buddy I don’t know where the hell you got that notion from. When was it stable exactly? During the Jewish revolt? That extremely bloody time?
You know what relative means?
Do you know what complete devastation of an entire province means?
Relatively.
Buddy you don’t have to keep stanning for somebody who’s just wrong about history.
Stanning?
Why don’t you look it up? At the same time you can go go ahead and look up why the time period we’re talking about was extremely unstable. That same instability largely why Christianity comes about in the first place.
