True Authorship of New Testament

by QED 22 Replies latest watchtower bible

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  QED

  Hi everyone.

  I'm new here and this is the first time im posting. about myself: I come from China and have been living in the UK. 5 years ago, I began to attend meetings and study the bible with JW in a Chinese congregation, but never baptised. I went conventions and had a few close friends. I stopped studying in 2008 and never had contact with any JW since. I have done some researches in the areas of global conspiracy and secret societies, this is where came across this book and i want to hear people's opinions on this:

  www.ivantic.net/Ostale_knjiige/TrueAuthorship.pdf Basically, the author presents evidences that the New Testament of the Bible was written not by Matthew, John, Paul, etc., as we were taught. In fact those people had never existed and Jesus was a fictious character. The real author is a man named Arius Calpurnius Piso, who was a roman aristocrat. Also the 1st century historian Josephus was him as well. He created false histories of the Jewish people, and used his writings of New testament to create christianity to counter the influences of Judaism after the Romans conquered them. If this is true, then it implies that the very foundation the Christianity stands on, i.e. "Jesus came to save humanity and got killed and raised from the dead belief" is all false, thus no true Christian can exist and this implies that whatever JW doctrines are false, furthermore, all Christian faiths are false. i know that there are many christians on this site who are not JWs, who believe in Jesus and God. So can you provide valid evidences that god and Jesus exist without using the bible? I personally can't. And BTW, how many people knows that CT Russell was a high degree freemason. Knowing this explains a lot of things. Some JW doctrines are very close to the Mason doctrines, you know where they come from. The book "The Watchtower and Masons" by springmeier has details.

  QED
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  darth frosty

  I kinda agree. I feel that the new testament was needed so some jews could distance themselves from the vengeful Jehovah of the odl testament.

  Good reading:

  here

  and here
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  Mad Sweeney

  This view is out of the mainstream. Get ready to be bashed and ridiculed.
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  bohm

  Welcome!

  I would recommend you read up on higher critisism. I am an atheist and i believe the existence of jesus is pretty indisputable.

  CT Russel was not a Mason. There is no evidence that point to that conclusion, and plenty of evidence against.
• 

  QED

  Lol, I had to laugh at myself when I look back I used to be so sure that JWs has the truth that i would do everything the truth requires of me. I remember in the meetings the speaker would ask who out of all religions in the world has the truth, then he would go on to give the answer is "us." Looking back it seems all so stupid and ridiculous.
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  moshe

  Dan Brown could have written this who-dunit.
• 

  Doug Mason

  QED,

  There are several themes you should pursue.

  The primitive Christian movement was broadly split into two: with the Peter/James group at Jerusalem, and the Paul group at several other places. (Notice that Paul had to defend himself from the Jewish Christian sect, saying that he was indeed a Hebrew of the Hebrews.) The original movements were initially seen as a Jewish sect.

  Read: "St Peter versus St Paul: A Tale of Two Missions", Michael Goulder (Professor of Biblical Studies, Birmingham, England).

  Then recognise how the NT was assembled: it took until the 4th century that the dominant Christian sect through the Trinitarian Athanasius came to a decision, aided by the Roman Emperors.

  Read:
  "Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 Years:, Philip Jenkins.
  "AD 381: Heretics, Pagans and the Christian State", Charles Freeman
  "A New History of Early Christianity", Charles Freeman

  It should be apparent that this long process, which included violent disagreements between the various Christian sects, would bias the writings selected for inclusion as the NT scriptures. That is the reason the NT basically comprises Paul's writings. It is possible that the only Petrine source could be the book of James.

  The process also resulted in serious mistakes, where writings were included that fraudulently claimed to have been written by Paul.

  Read:
  "Who wrote the New Testament? The Making of the Christian Myth", Burton Mack
  "The Authentic Letter of Paul: A New Reading of Paul's Rhetoric and Meaning", Dewey (and others).

  When you have come to grips with the origins of the NT, then turn your view to the Hebrew Scriptures. Look at the origins of the OG (=LXX) and the MT, and the probable reasons for the large differences between them (and also with the DSS).

  Come back to me when you have gone through this so I can then point you to the recent books by Spong (such as "Liberating the Gospels") and by Ehrman (such as "Forged").

  Then ask that if the Bible was the Word of God, why did he take a back seat and take no interest in preserving and protecting it. The Bible is a very human book, which means every writing has to be understood through the culture (idioms, understandings, politics, etc) of the community that created and who edited it.

  Examine a Bible writing as you would any other piece of literature. Each writer (and editor) was interested in their own immediate community, and was addressing that community with the purpose of having it change its behaviour and attitude.

  Enjoy the journey.

  Doug
• 

  QED

  Thanks Doug.

  I will have a look at those books you mentioned.

  I feel we should focus on living in reality instead of myths and the Bible is just one of them out of all the myths told in the world.
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  ProdigalSon

  Agreed that the New Testament is a total concoction, based on nothing but myths and from what I have gathered, gnostic writings. But the idea that Josephus was the culprit is beyond reason. Josephus lived in the first century and the NT wasn't compiled until hundreds of years later at the Roman Councils. If Josephus wanted to promote this myth as historical fact, you would think he would have mentioned Jesus, but the fact is that he never did. Neither did any other historian of the first century. There was one paragraph attributed to Josephus that Bible defenders always point to, but it is a ridculously blatant forgery that has been acknowledged by scholars for the last 200 years.
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  james_woods

  And BTW, how many people knows that CT Russell was a high degree freemason. Knowing this explains a lot of things. Some JW doctrines are very close to the Mason doctrines, you know where they come from. The book "The Watchtower and Masons" by springmeier has details.

  Am I the only one who finds it ironic that you would so easily believe this Masonic conspiracy theory while also so easily rejecting the Authorship of the New Testament?