Posts by Leolaia

16

What is the difference between Christianity and Paganism?

by CruithneLaLuna in

recently i had the opportunity to read the first three or four chapters of a very interesting book: the jesus mysteries : was the "original jesus" a pagan god?

i regret that circumstances prevented me from completing my reading.

i may choose to purchase a copy of this book for my personal library, and so that i can finish reading it.

Leolaia

This book sounds a lot like Doherty's The Jesus Puzzle. I don't think many scholars doubt that "pagan" mystery religions played a significant role in the development of the mystical Jesus of Gentile Christianity, such as what we find in Paul, John, and later Christian writers. Few scholars tho accept the additional stipulation that no historical Jesus lay at the core of Christianity. I personally find this argument very unconvincing. It pretty much assumes that Jesus was an invention of Gentile Christianity but this fails to account for the very existence of normative Jewish Christianity which had no conception of this "mystical Jesus" and which followed and prized the words of Jesus which the Pauline church paid very little attention to. James the Just's claim to authority as the leader of the Jerusalem Church as the blood brother of Jesus makes no sense at all if no historical Jesus existed -- and his conception of Jesus drew on none of the mysticism of Paul (in fact, the evidence suggests that James viewed Paul as a heretic). The Nazoreans and Ebionites, the descendants of the original Jewish followers of Jesus, were in fact condemned as heretics by the catholic Gentile church because they dared to hold onto their traditional teachings and failed to accept the Pauline and Johannine theories on the redemption and the divinity of Christ. The Islamic view of Jesus as a great prophet, but not God, in fact derives from the traditional Jewish Christianity of Judea and knows nothing of the developments of the Gentile Church. The claims of Doherty and Freke & Gandy, if I understand them correctly, would seem to be biased against the Jewish Christians who had little connection with the mysteries of Gentile Christianity and who viewed Jesus as a very human prophet whose words were passed through oral tradition and written gospels, and who were very unlikely to draw their traditions from Gentile Christians whom they viewed as the real heretics. All the evidence I've seen suggests that the direction of influence originally was from Jewish Christianity to the Gentiles, and not the other way around.

Leolaia

31

Throwing out Old Watchtowers

by Okram in

when you were a jw,.

did u feel guilty about throwing out old copies of the watchtower even if you had the yearly bound volumes?

my mom won't do it.

Leolaia

I might still have that one...we stopped buying bound volumes towards the end, and so my last two years or so we just have random mags....

22

After Baptism Was There Anything That You Didn't Comprehend About The Truth

by minimus in

jw
friends

i've seen a lot of persons that got baptized and go thru 100 questions with the elders say that they did not know that such and such a thing was a disfellowshipping offense.

or that they would be counseled or looked down upon for a certain thing.

did you ever experience that type of thing?

Leolaia

I grew up in the Trooth and was never baptised. But tho I never had the 100 questions (tho I watched my mom sweat it out), I can relate a little. I was 17 years old when I realized to my shock that the annointed were being resurrected since 1918. I thought it was a brand new doctrine. I always somehow thought they were resurrected since the first century. I was really shocked to learn that it was taught all along and somehow I never realized it. And I could not understand where the 1918 date ever came from.

31

Throwing out Old Watchtowers

by Okram in

when you were a jw,.

did u feel guilty about throwing out old copies of the watchtower even if you had the yearly bound volumes?

my mom won't do it.

Leolaia

Considering how I tended to dispose of used chewing gum between its pages, I guess old WTs weren't exactly sacred to me.

43

The Crucifixion in History

by hooberus in

encyclopedia brittanica micropaedia vol.

"there were various methods of performing the execution.

usually, the condemned man, after being whipped, or "scourged," dragged the crossbeam of his cross to the place of punishment, where the upright shaft was already fixed in the ground.

Leolaia

Ah, okay....we are in agreement then...:)))

43

Why do the JW's not Believe in Hell?

by Tirisilex in

i may have asked this question before awhile back but i was not able to find it in the search.

other than what the nwt provides for information.. how do the jw's provide proof for this no hell belief?

Leolaia

Tirisilex.....

Message boards can be a full-time occupation, huh?

60

Your Ideas On The Bible?

by shamus in

so, what do you think about the bible?

is it really ispired of god?.

i am strongly believing that the bible is nothing more than folk-tales, half-truths, and suggestions by man.

Leolaia

Do you really think that there was never death before Adam sinned?
What the heck did the animals do to deserve it, then?
Then what kind of death is that text really talking about, then?

hehehe, that's a really brilliant point. I can actually answer the latter point for you. The Eden story is an adaptation of an older Near East myth, the closest attested parallel of which is the tale of Adapa and the Southwind. I'll spare you the details but both tales involve food of life, eating food which allegedly brings death, the granting of divine knowledge, and deception by another god. The main difference is that in the Babylonian version, man already has divine knowledge but seeks everlasting life whereas in the biblical version, it is the other way around.

I would say that in the original form of the Israelite myth, death already existed among the lower animals. For man, immortality was a gift from the gods. As long as man ate from the Tree of Life, he would be immortal. However, the gods kept man in his place by denying him divine knowledge. The head of the pantheon would not have it that way because man would become a god if he were both immortal and had divine knowledge. You can have either one or the other, not both. Therefore the gods declared that if man eats from the Tree of Knowledge, he would forfeit his right to eat from the Tree of Life and thereby lose immortality. Then along came a trickster, perhaps wise but jealous of man's immortality, who took advantage of man's gullibility and told him that he was already a god and had every right to eat from the Tree of Knowledge and that once he did, he would realize that he would not lose immortality. Man eats from the tree (perhaps in secret), but once he gains divine knowledge, he realizes that he has been tricked -- he knows who he really is and he cannot hide his newfound wisdom from the other gods; he cannot feign ignorance. He gives himself away (just as Adam and Eve did in the biblical version), and the gods banish him from their divine presence -- denying him the Tree of Life. Thus the trickster succeeds in stripping away man's immortality.

In the biblical primeval narrative (Gen. 2-11), this is but one of several attempts of man trying to attain godlike status. Having intercouse with the gods (ch. 6) was another, and building a tower to reach heaven (ch. 11) was yet another.

Leolaia

43

The Crucifixion in History

by hooberus in

encyclopedia brittanica micropaedia vol.

"there were various methods of performing the execution.

usually, the condemned man, after being whipped, or "scourged," dragged the crossbeam of his cross to the place of punishment, where the upright shaft was already fixed in the ground.

Leolaia

hooberus.....i'm not sure what your point is - that Justin Martyr was misinformed or that Jesus wasn't crucified / didn't exist? --Leolaia

43

The Crucifixion in History

by hooberus in

encyclopedia brittanica micropaedia vol.

"there were various methods of performing the execution.

usually, the condemned man, after being whipped, or "scourged," dragged the crossbeam of his cross to the place of punishment, where the upright shaft was already fixed in the ground.

Leolaia

I wrote a lengthy paper on this subject.....it's no longer online tho, but I could probably write up a summary for this forum. The evidence cited by the WTS against crucifixion is mostly bogus and the evidence from biblical and patristic sources for crucifixion (as opposed to "impalement on a stake") is also quite weighty. --Leolaia

60

Your Ideas On The Bible?

by shamus in

so, what do you think about the bible?

is it really ispired of god?.

i am strongly believing that the bible is nothing more than folk-tales, half-truths, and suggestions by man.

Leolaia

The Bible is a selection of the national literature of the ancient nations of Israel and Judah, supplemented with a selection of the literature of the early Christian church. It is a library (Gk. biblia), not a single book, and thus presents many different points of view. As a library, it contains history, law, poetry, wisdom, religious tracts, and yes, fiction. But it is only a selection of the literature. The library of Qumran included their own sectarian writings, as well as other apocryphal and pseudepigraphal texts. The Septuagint included the Greek apocrapha. There were many other pseudepigraphal works that never made it into the Bible (like Daniel did) that are valuable for shedding light on NT doctrines. There were many other early Christian works that never made it into the New Testment as well. The question of divine inspiration raised by 2 Timothy 3:16 is an interesting one. What counts as "scripture"? The "Bible" that the Paulinist used, the Septuagint, would have included what the Protestant church today rejects as the Apocrypha. Why reject it if "the Bible" itself regards it as inspired? Another problem is raised by the extensive use of the pseudepigrapha by the Epistle of Jude. If 1 Enoch is to be rejected as a spurious work, why did Jude believe it as recording the authentic words of Enoch? And why did the 2nd-century 2 Peter make it into the NT (a clear instance of a pseudenymous work) but the genuine first-century Epistle of Clement did not (which was regarded as "scripture" in some churches)? The boundaries of what counted as scripture are man-made and, during the period when "the Bible" was being written, not fixed. It is also quite biased. Why does the NT overwhelmingly preserve the work of the Gentile church, while the Jewish-Christian church (who were the real intellectual and religious heirs of Jesus) is represented only by the Epistle of James and whatever remains of the Sayings Gospel Q? I would say that there is inspiration in the Bible (inspiration in a looser sense, not as God-authored), but it is not limited to what we today call the Bible, and there can be much in the Bible that is not inspired as well. And I view it a completely modern conceit to claim that the Bible, as a remnant of the national literature of Israel and Judah, must not contain any fiction and must be completely literally true and must have been perfectly preserved. That viewpoint is not warranted by the facts.

Leolaia