Christianity (Including JWs) Debunked

by HowTheBibleWasCreated 9 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • HowTheBibleWasCreated
    HowTheBibleWasCreated

    1 Cor. 15: 21,22 RNWT: For since death came through a man,+ resurrection of the dead also comes through a man.+ 22 For just as in Adam all are dying,+ so also in the Christ all will be made alive.


    So according to the NT Jesus makes alive those that die in Adam.

    Given the overwhelming evidence that Adam as a man did not exist JWs lose the battle on this verse.

    However foolish Christians like Pentecostals and Catholics like to call Adam figurative.

    Okay... read it again^^^^^^...

    Now add verse 45: The first man Adam became a living person.”*+ The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

    Fail....


    And even if you could claim Adam is symbolic that would make Genesis 5, 10,11 of genealogies useless.... Thus Matthew 1 and Luke 3 become useless.

    There is no way out of this.


    I do not even need to debunk Jesus to destroy Christianity even liberal Christianity.


    JW doctrine as I was taught fell through for me when I discovered evolution was true and archaeology debunked most of the OT. But the worst thing I see is a person that knows JW religion is wrong and jumps in bed with another religion that is christian. Just read the NT and see that even Jesus is said to quote Genesis 1: 27 and 2:24 in the same sentence.

    I hope this helps

  • David_Jay
    David_Jay

    I am sure you heart is in the right place. But you arguments need a little sharpening up to work.

    Being Jewish I neither believe that Jesus was the Messiah or in the concept of "original sin," and I totally accept evolution. However it sounds like you are confusing JW claims for what other religions actually teach as well as stuck reading the Pauline texts from the limited Watchtower perspective.

    First off, both Catholicism and Pentecostals believe in the historicity of Adam. The only difference between the two faiths is that Catholicism sees the Genesis account as allegory while Pentecostals generally embrace a Fundamentalist interpretation, reading the Genesis account as literal. So that needs to be adjusted.

    Next, the references in 1 Corinthians 15 to Adam introducing "death" into the world does not mean to other Christians what Jehovah's Witnesses claim it does.

    The Jewish Annotated New Testament (which employs the NRSV text) has a very hearty footnote to these verses. Being that Paul was Jewish, the reference points out that unlike how the Watchtower interprets these verses, i.e., that Adam passed death to the rest of humanity via our DNA or something of that sort, Paul was likely employing the art of midrash to make a slightly different point.

    Midrash is a Jewish form of hermeneutics that plays off the fact that the Hebrew tongue and its idioms are highly terse. Most other languages are not, but Hebrew very much is (meaning that one word can have a variety of subtle meanings). Here Paul seems to be quoting not Scripture but early rabbinical thought from the Second Temple era. Some Jewish sages and rabbis from this era taught that human "mortality" was introduced via Adam's envy, and that the Genesis account was an allegory claiming that humanity has wanted God out of the picture since the beginning (i.e., 'envying' God). The first personification or embodiment of this envy as the "Devil" in a religious text came shortly afterwards as found in Wisdom 2:24, an apocryphal Jewish writing (written around 100 BCE.)

    While it is not clear if the text is calling Adam's envy "the Devil" (as Jews generally don't believe there is such a thing as a spirit enemy of God and humans) or if Wisdom is (for the first time in writing) introducing the Devil as a spirit being similar to Christian belief, Paul nevertheless does expand on this ambiguity via midrash in 1 Corinthians.

    While Judaism does not teach that we die because we inherited death from Adam as a punishment, Paul via midrash took these elements to play off this illustriously. However, even Paul was not advancing the idea of Original Sin. That is a doctrine the Catholic Church would not introduce until much later. Paul's statement is related only to the Second Temple era theology (and it was not universal among Jews of the time either). The idea that all in Adam are dying as opposed to all in Christ being made alive is not literal, not in the first part anyway. He is merely using the illustration about Adam in arguing his point that resurrection is corporeal, not something that happens when someone dies and goes to heaven (the idea advanced by some that Paul is arguing against). By contrast Jehovah's Witnesses refer to a "heavenly resurrection" which is etymologically incorrect as the term "resurrection" refers only to the reanimation of physical, dead bodies.

    All that aside, and as I do not subscribe to Christianity, I don't accept Paul's teaching even here. But what he is actually saying is far different than what you are describing (which seems to be the fault of the JWs never allowing you to learn outside their influence, not yours). Your conclusion has merit, but others outside the Watchtower will simply slice through the details in your argument for the reasons I pointed out. They need to be sound enough to stand up to mainstream theological academia. JW teaching does not.

    A footnote: none of the Biblical genealogies are meant to be complete. All of them are based on outside sources, some oral and some written which no longer exist, from which only select names were taken in order to build a narrative in the context in which they occur. Jehovah's Witnesses claim that the Bible is the main source for these records, but the Bible was never the ultimate source for Jewish records, especially genealogical ones, since marriage and business contracts relied upon them. Copies of the Scriptures were never widely available even among the Jews until after the 17th century CE, so it would have been impractical to keep our records in the Bible. One therefore cannot base arguments for or against evolution on them (and remember, I accept the evolutionary model).

  • WTWizard
    WTWizard

    I recommend the song Plastic Jesus by Billy Idol (off the Devil's Playground album) for a perspective of Christi-SCAM-ity. The song details that, as long as he has his plastic Jesus, it will bring him through trials and tribulations. Which is about what the thoughtform jesus is worth--at least the plastic representation can be seen.

  • Cold Steel
    Cold Steel

    The reality of Adam wasn't even questioned by the early brethren. The term "quickening spirit," of course, means, "the living spirit," which scholars have said is an esoteric term referring to the perfected physical body of Jesus after the resurrection.

    Most often people think of spirit as being non-corporeal, but it refers to the physical body animated by spirit. (Cited by Nibley as: It has been shown that the term "the Living Jesus" (and even kyrios) refers specifically to the risen Lord, Schmidt, Gespräche Jesu, 264; cf. James Rendel Harris, The Odes and Psalms of Solomon: Now First Published from the Syriac Version (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1909), 73. Thus the same value must be given to the opening line of the Gospel of Thomas 80:10 (=NHLE 32:10, p. 118), as to the Oxyrhynchus Logia, no. 8 (1): "sayings which Jesus who liveth and was dead spake to Judas Thomas"; cf. Gospel of Thomas 99:7-8 (=NHLE 51:7-8, p. 129). The conversational and questioning form of discourse is another clue, Schmidt, Gespräche Jesu, 206; Puech and Quispel, "Les écrits gnostiques du Codex Jung," 9, n. 3; Gospel of Thomas 81:14-17 (=NHLE 33:14-17, p.118); Oxyrhynchus Logia, 4-5, 13 (6), 8 (1); a large number of the pseudo Acts in E.A. Wallis Budge, Contendings of the Apostles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1935), begin with the Apostles questioning Christ after the Resurrection. Where an account of the Resurrection or Descensus is included in the report the setting is naturally post-resurrectional: this refers to all the apocrypha mentioned below, notes 63-66. The 40-day situation is implied where the resurrection of others is described, as in the second Akhmim fragment of the Gospel of Peter, in ANT, 508; Gospel of the Twelve Apostles 2, in PO 2:135; and Acts of Thomas 54-55, in ANT, 390-91. The Prologue to the Discourse on Abbatôn purports to offer documentary evidence from the hands of the Apostles for the typical 40-day situation it describes, in E.A. Wallis Budge, Coptic Martyrdoms (London: British Museum, 1914; reprinted New York: AMS, 1977), 225—26, 474-75.)

  • Crazyguy
    Crazyguy

    You said the OT has been debunked well so has the NT. Most of NT Christianity was stolen from the ancient religion of Egypt. Christ was a retelling of Osiris and Horus with some Greek god stories and even some Babylonian thrown in. So this made up character is saying some thing about another made up character, hey it works.

  • shepherdless
    shepherdless

    Good thinking. However, I don't think your point would bother too many other Christians, such as Catholics.

    I was brought up a Catholic (never a JW). Most Catholics know there are numerous inconsistencies in the bible, but it does not cause a major issue. Not only do they not believe in a literal Adam, they have the view that if you try to read the bible literally as a book of history (or a book of science) you are reading it the wrong way.


    If I wanted to "stumble" a Catholic, I would focus on the resurrection. If Jesus was resurrected, he could have walked the streets of Jerusalem, yelling "Ha Ha, you can't kill me!". Instead, all we have is a few partially conflicting accounts of people claiming to see Jesus resurrected, a couple of whom didn't even recognise him until after he left. (This is the issue that bothered me most, as a teenager.) Even if the biblical resurrection accounts are broadly true, they are second hand accounts with about as much credibility as Elvis sightings. And without the resurrection, there is no Christianity.

  • Cold Steel
    Cold Steel
    Shepardless » all we have is a few partially conflicting accounts of people claiming to see Jesus resurrected, a couple of whom didn't even recognise him until after he left.

    You can believe as you wish, of course, but there are multiple accounts of people seeing Jesus after the resurrection. And there are multiple prophets who testified of him, his betrayal, his sacrifice and his resurrection (see Isaiah 53). There are countless people who have reported seeing him, including those who have had near death experiences. Many of these are non-Christian. One wonders why Muslims don't die and see Muhammad, or are Hindus and don't see Hindu gods; or Jews dying and seeing Abraham. But they see Jesus -- even atheists. And there are others witnesses as well, but none that can't be dismissed if you put your mind to it.

    Jesus was seen of the apostles for 40 days after the resurrection (Acts 1). That's well over a month. Others were resurrected too. The idea wasn't to prove to his enemies that he was alive and couldn't be harmed by them again. Rather, the idea was to gain believers through faith. All the apostles were killed but one (John), giving their lives as testimonies.


    40-Day Ministry by Hugh Nibley

    Part 1 - 40-Day Ministry

    Part 2 - 40-Day Ministry

  • Crazyguy
    Crazyguy

    Sorry cold steel but the jesus story was a myth. Another part of the story that shows this is when he died it was said that a bunch of patriarchs and others were resurrected and then ran around Jerusalem. So a bunch of people rose out of the graveyards of Jerusalem (which is a huge event) yet it not mentioned by anyone beyond the Bible. Just like the resurrection of Jesus only mentioned in religious texts .

    Jesus was a retelling of the Osiris myth and they used the god Serapis as thier templet for this new god they called Jesus.

  • Cold Steel
    Cold Steel

    No one said it was a bunch of dead patriarchs. It said the graves of many were opened and appeared to many, and frankly, no one knew what any of the patriarchs looked like, anyway. And we don't know anything beyond what I just said. And that no one recorded anything about it also isn't unusual.

    First, the Roman and Herodic authorities were trying to suppress such accounts (that's why guards were placed at the tomb of Jesus). Second, people didn't write things the way they do now. There were numerous miracles that happened in the early church I belong to; some were written down and some weren't, but they were dismissed because the unbelievers didn't want to believe, and the witnesses were thus not deemed credible. People don't change, and they don't gain or lose credibility just because they're ancient.

    Religion is all about faith. You can say the Jesus story was simply a myth all you wish, but it doesn't change the fact that Christianity was simply too big to have been a concoction. As I said, every apostle except one was killed. Churches were established, epistles written, doctrines created and defended and many documents written. The Coptic Christian church collection alone proves Christianity was more than a mere concoction. It's an absurd proposition, sir, and is a super-minority position as most critics of Christ believe he existed.

    If you have a decent Bible, try reading it. Read Isaiah 53 and listen to the lecture I posted for Shepardless. The sheer consistency of the story is a strong argument in its favor. You may not agree with what Jesus said and did, but the man and his followers both lived and died for what he believed in and taught.

  • Crazyguy
    Crazyguy

    If you have a supposed prophecy in your hands Isaiah and you want your god to be that guy then all you have todo is write that he did these things and bam he's the guy. You can see this plainly with the writings of Mathew. He tried to connect this jesus with all sorts of prophecies from the Old Testament he was so desperate to do so he even wrote things about Jesus that weren't even prophecies from the Old Testament. Took stuff out of context.

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