Posts by Half banana

6

Serve Jehovah get everlasting life don't serve get everlasting death

by Brokeback Watchtower in

jehovah's personality is explosive with no guarantees he won't blow a head gasket and destroy your ass for some petty offense.. i know the jws claim jehovah always keeps his word and once you get to heaven or pass the final test you got guaranteed everlasting life.

but when we look in the bible jehovah seems to kill even his worshipers over trifles, so who is to say that someday he won't get pissed off and destroy the whole human race and start all over again?.

while i don't believe the bible or what the wt corporation teaches about jehovah personality, if what they say is true then i would much rather die than live an eternity under the whims of such a capricious jehovah.. the reward system the bible has promoted is really terrible and not to be grasped at..

Half banana

Touch my ark?..I'll kill you!

I'm glad now not to worship anything...everyone: stop worshipping, it does your head in!

4

Emblems

by Harold Mourning in

food for thought: .

why didn't jesus (as the sacrificial lamb) choose bread and wine to signify his life instead of the (if it was actually on the passover) lamb that would have been there per jewish practice?

also using a lamb would have been consistent with the law...the symbolic ideas would have been linear instead we have lamb represents "passover lamb"/messiah represented by bread and wine?

Half banana

I get the picture that Roman religion had been dominated by Mithraism peaking towards the end of the second century and as it declined, Jesus- Christianity amongst many others, was replacing it. If we had been able to take a sociological survey at that time, namely finding out what people were actually doing as opposed to being bamboozled by the entirely biased Bible writings, we would probably find that Mithraic practice was the norm and was the source ritual for the ‘Christian’ last supper (remember the Saviour Mithra or Mithras was a christ too). The specific parallels can be explained by the later Roman Church under Constantine taking this prevailing pre-Jesus, Mithraic ‘eucharist’ symbolism of bread and wine into the syncretised Catholic worship. Mithra was called both the ‘Lamb of God’ and the ‘Good Shepherd’ and is depicted standing above a cross.

Since the Vatican was built on top of the Roman Mithreum (underground church) its continuity with that cult is palpable. There exists in the caverns there the Mithraic inscription “Whoever does not drink of my blood and eat of my body, the same will not be with me in paradise”.

So indeed eating the lamb would seem superfluous and innovative, best stick with tradition. The Jewish converts by now in the fourth century (when the Bible books were selected and edited) having been thoroughly Romanised.

25

Bible Christianity is Holy baloney

by Half banana in

underpinning all the claims of the jw org is a belief in the sanctity of the bible as gods word.

this holy assumption is certainly never challenged by the watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

the watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin.

Half banana

Yes Opusdei it does look like the Ebionites did have some influence and possibly the major one for Jewish converts. The difficulty is lack of documentation but even that fact in this instance, may indicate the suppression of texts from the Christ cultists or the Roman Church denying the promiscuous origins of their religion and possibly by destruction of antecedent sect literature in the fourth century under Constantine.

It seems the Ebionites were related doctrinally to the Essenes if not the very same sect. What I find interesting is that Judaism was generally not disposed to asceticism neither before nor after this time yet it seems that their thread of self-denial was introduced to Greek and Roman Christianity which later became expressed in monasticism (culminating in the unhinged St Francis of Assisi and ten thousand other self flagellating monks!).

@Mr P, thanks for the reference of Gandy and Freke's Jesus book, I'll have to look that up.

@Cofty, now I'm also looking forward to Richard Carrier's book.

16

How the Watchtower organization does, in fact, claim to be an inspired prophet.

by Island Man in

draw any jw's attention to watchtower's history of false predictions and invariably, somewhere down the line of the conversation, the jw will tell you that watchtower never claimed to be an inspired prophet and therefore cannot be accused of being a false prophet.

but is it really true that watchtower has never claimed to be an inspired prophet?.

technically speaking, the answer is yes - i think (if i'm wrong i'd love to see the quote).

Half banana

I think it’s worth considering why the ghastly Watchtower magazine was published in the first place back in 1879. It was because the wealthy entrepreneur Chucky Russell had defended the most recent Adventist prophecy failure of the heavenly coming of JC in 1874.

“No! Don't be disappointed, you are wrong, it did happen after all!” he said addressing his invisible friend Noddy, because Jesus did arrive but came invisibly! Ta dah! That means, thought Chucky, stroking his beard and polishing his Rosicrucian badge, that given forty Biblical years, God’s enemies will be destroyed, the saints will be raptured and the paradise will be restored, brilliant! Noddy wasn’t impressed... "So!" thought Chucky "I’ll tell the world of my invisible discovery by printing Zion’s Watchtower and Herald of Christ’s Presence, that’ll show em!"

So surely the whole enterprise was explicitly ‘prophetic’ by Russell's self professed mandate foretelling a divine event? And Russell permitted his followers to give him the accolade of "God's channel". He personally relished that flattering image of being God's spirit driven appointee. This founder effect has never been cancelled by the subsequent presidents and governors of the WTBTS.

25

Bible Christianity is Holy baloney

by Half banana in

underpinning all the claims of the jw org is a belief in the sanctity of the bible as gods word.

this holy assumption is certainly never challenged by the watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

the watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin.

Half banana

@Opusdei, you make a good case for the un-likeliness of 90% of the gospels being historical. To my mind in the absence of any contemporary secular corroboration of gospel stories, virtually the whole thing looks like propaganda and not history... and that includes JC. IF there really was a wonder working god-man who could raise the dead, don’t you think he would be brought to the attention of the highly literate Roman authorities? People who can really raise the dead would be somewhat in demand.

I understand the general protest we all make: “but surely it was built around a real person.” As I said, this is generally not the way of the Bible; the Bible puts flesh on a prevailing skeleton of myth which has far greater psychological leverage than raising up and idolising some Jewish conjuror for example. The reason the prevailing myth theory (such as the god-man) is more successful than glorifying an existing individual, is that the belief is already present when the story is told.

The substitution of “Jesus” for the Roman “Mithras” or “Dionysus” was clearly an expediency of the early christ-cult to attract the disaffected and messianic minded Jews who already had, by the way, a story in the back of their minds told from about 100BCE of a wonder- working Rabbi called Jesus.

25

Bible Christianity is Holy baloney

by Half banana in

underpinning all the claims of the jw org is a belief in the sanctity of the bible as gods word.

this holy assumption is certainly never challenged by the watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

the watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin.

Half banana

@Village Idiot, I haven’t investigated enough to know the answer or even to know whether it’s possible to arrive at a conclusion as to a reality of Islam’s founding figure. I think the strongest parallel is in the sacralising of the text which appeared in the Roman Church also took place with the Koran with similar results.

25

Bible Christianity is Holy baloney

by Half banana in

underpinning all the claims of the jw org is a belief in the sanctity of the bible as gods word.

this holy assumption is certainly never challenged by the watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

the watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin.

Half banana

@Village Idiot “cults like Christianity do not invent leaders; their members won’t have the imagination to do so.”

I quite agree with the second half of your sentence, they had no need for imagination when there was a ready-made and universal myth of a holy superman which could be elaborated upon.

Was it necessary to have a charismatic leader to jump start Christianity?

There are two strong arguments against this. Firstly as already stressed the virtually complete story of christ the superman, demi-god born of a virgin in a cave in midwinter with oxen, visited by three Persian astrologers, healed the sick raised Lazarus ,walked on water, turned water into wine and died at Easter on a cross etc . This tale was told from antiquity. Again, Christianity with a capital C began in the fourth century with the Roman Church. It became ‘Catholic’ or universal by the deliberate absorption of all significant religious beliefs syncretising them into the Christianity we recognise today.

The idea of Christ already existed in people’s minds so a man of flesh was not necessary and it was the Roman Church and Emperor Constantine, not any charismatic Jew which jump started the religion. In fact there is no extant written evidence that ”Jesus” was used in the first century. The most widely distributed Christian literature of the first two centuries, The Shepherd of Hermas, called the saviour hero ”Lord”.

As regards myth it is worth appreciating that the obvious does not apply here. The obvious assumption is that a historical person or event, a kernel of truth is elaborated and ‘mythologized’ over time. Whereas this is completely possible; this is not mythology, it is not the pattern of transmitting myth. For what it is worth; the opposite is true.

I would maintain that much of the Bible texts are built around myth and not history. It is critical in understanding that what has occurred is that writers have historicised the myths and not mythologized history. In other words they have clothed the myth to give it a recognisable personality or plausible historical setting. As with the question of who is the real James Bond; the character (the myth) is fiction but comes to life by elaboration of his exploits and by the actors who play him. Once this perception has been fully grasped it makes for real progress in understanding what the Bible is all about. (IMHO)

@ finklestein

"And wasn't the reason why the Romans eventually adopted Christianity was because it was deemed better than their old previous pagan practices ?"

I would say that they adopted Christianity because IT WAS ALREADY their pagan practice!

Consider...
1) Hundreds of years before Jesus, according to the Mithraic religion, three Wise Men of Persia came to visit the baby savior-god Mithra, bring him gifts of gold, myrrh and frankincense.

2) Mithra was born on December 25 as told in the “Great Religions of the World”, page 330; “…it was the winter solstice celebrated by ancients as the birthday of Mithraism’s sun god”.

3) According to Mithraism, before Mithra died on a cross, he celebrated a “Last Supper with his twelve disciples, who represented the twelve signs of the zodiac.

4) After the death of Mithra, his body was laid to rest in a rock tomb.

5) Mithra had a celibate priesthood.

6) Mithra ascended into heaven during the spring (Passover) equinox (the time when the sun crosses the equator making night and day of equal length).

25

Bible Christianity is Holy baloney

by Half banana in

underpinning all the claims of the jw org is a belief in the sanctity of the bible as gods word.

this holy assumption is certainly never challenged by the watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

the watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin.

Half banana

Charlie Smith thank you for replying but your return fire is from a blunderbuss. I would have to make a list too long to answer the matters you raise. In defence of modern archaeologists, at least those I know and have worked with and who are scientists: they do not lie, at least not professionally. It has to be said that the Kenyons, sixty years ago, worked within a different investigative frame at odds with today’s approach. Their digs took the Bible at face value and they attempted to find evidence for its veracity, similar to the way that the WTBTS only raises secular evidence if it appears to support its cause.

You quote the Bible in a similar way, you make assumptions that we work from these propagandistic stories. (Ten plagues, exodus etc.) This was the very point I was trying to make. As Vivian’s cat knows: it’s poop ‘cos it smells like poop. Archaeology is a science and so it textual criticism and these two disciplines supporting the historian's narrative, now show that the Bible has little factual foundation in the modern post-enlightenment sense of history. Because of the Catholic Church’s ownership of the Bible they had by total political control infused or rather infected all western learning with its teachings as if sacred, above criticism and duty bound to be held true. We have moved on from here.

You must be aware of the books by Israeli archaeologists Finklestein and Silberman The Bible Unearthed and David and Solomon. The lack of archeological evidence for the Exodus; that the Jews were never in Egypt en masse in the first place, there is no Egyptian record of them being there which there would have existed had it been true.

Alas! You have removed your nuttery!

But I do agree with you crazy guy; the impotent goat herders of the Canaan highlands had to borrow their myths from their awesome Egyptian neighbours...and that is the more important story which illuminates and explains the contents of the Bible. It is the pagan myths which are the important details of the Bible texts not the enslaving religious propaganda derived from it.

25

Bible Christianity is Holy baloney

by Half banana in

underpinning all the claims of the jw org is a belief in the sanctity of the bible as gods word.

this holy assumption is certainly never challenged by the watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

the watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin.

Half banana

Opus dei, you said “I don't believe that Jesus was 100% an invention”. Where is your evidence that he existed?

I said that Jesus was highly unlikely to be an individual because his character, as in a play, as in literature, was already there for millenia before he is supposed to have existed.

Let me ask you, who is the real James Bond?

25

Bible Christianity is Holy baloney

by Half banana in

underpinning all the claims of the jw org is a belief in the sanctity of the bible as gods word.

this holy assumption is certainly never challenged by the watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

the watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin.

Half banana

Underpinning all the claims of the JW org is a belief in the sanctity of the Bible as God’s word. This “holy” assumption is certainly never challenged by the Watchtower and neither does the believer dare to use critical thinking to evaluate the source of his or her beliefs.

The Watchtower org, for obvious reasons would not do this as they would need to sell up and hand back the money were they to admit that the Bible is just a piece of literature and not divine in origin. For the true believer, to discover fault would be most unsettling. To investigate further, could reshape their whole world-view, it could actually change the identity of the person. What an incentive not to go down this avenue?

For countless generations of Homo sapiens possessing a faith in an invisible spirit world has been their emotional anchor. This idea is promoted in the Bible texts and in turn the Bible is revered as holy to the point that it is the word of God. So to come to realise that the Bible is mainly pagan and that Jesus is just a literary fiction would be to invite insecurity and probably depression as well.

Yet all things considered, the Bible is simply a collection of texts selected by the imperial Roman religious authorities as the corpus of writings made divinely sacred by the state Church for the purpose of political control. This is the story of Bible Christianity, it is fourth century Roman and not the imaginings of the Bible writers who are credited with the Christ story.

When Paul wrote “All scripture is inspired of God...” he referred to any writing of an uplifting nature as opposed to legal works, dramas, histories and inventories. He was not referring to the Bible since it did not exist. The received view is of some miraculous descent from heaven of Jesus and Christianity in the first century. This is a myth imagined by Christians and JWs.

The only reference to Jesus of Nazareth outside of the Bible is the mention in Josephus (called in scholarly circles the Testimonium Flavianum) which has been satisfactorily dismissed as a forgery. It was probably performed by an early church father inserting his wishful thinking into the historian’s hand-written text. Do not confuse the word christ with Jesus-Christianity for christs have existed from the early Bronze Age. In fact “Krst” was a name of the Egyptian saviour figure Osiris and his mother for that matter was “Meri”. These facts alone hint at the enormous field of textual scholarship regarding the entirely pagan and uninspired Biblical source documents from antiquity.

To imagine that Jesus said all the things he said in the Bible is preposterous in terms of literal historical truth. Hand written documents are most susceptible to alteration when being copied and political and cultic imperatives are easily slipped into the text. But more than that, since the character and deeds and life story of Jesus were already those same character, deeds and life stories of earlier ’God-men’ known from antiquity, it is highly improbable that Jesus ever existed as an individual since his character is a composite, a mosaic built from these older stories. The Bible writers were simply re-telling the same ”holy” tales in their local cultural dialect to promote their own religious power-base.

In short (since this is a long subject) I have little doubt now that Jesus is a fabrication and that the Bible is not in the slightest bit sacred apart from what human sentiment attributes to it.

The failing of the religious mind is to become enslaved to what other people have already called "holy".