Christians can you be certain your bible is trust worthy?

[ChristineM]

No. You may take a literal translation, say the NKJB
and a paraphrase, like the Living Bible, read a paragraph, and the words are different, the sentence structure may be different but the meaning of a paragraph is the same, You are trying to say that different translations having minor differences destroys the integrity of the meaning of the Bible, Absolutely not. In America traffic signs say yield, in the UK they say, give way, the meaning is exactly the same, indisputable.

My Catholic brothers and sisters have been led astray by their tradition. Does it affect their ultimate relationship to God ? None of my business, decisions like that are way, way above my pay grade, and a sin.

i am not discussing interpretation but words and yes the general message is "essentially" the same but the differences have lead to around 50,000 branches of the bible each believing the bible they follow is correct and others are wrong.

It is my understanding that catholicism is far, far older than protestantism. Their traditions longer serving, so who has been "led astray"?

 

[ChristineM]

The only people who believe that are fundamentalist Christians.

Here are a panel of scholars including a Christian pastor going over all evidence and all extra-biblical mentions of Jesus or Christianity:

the bottom line is scholarship believes the gospels are highly mythicized and that Jesus was just a man.

Richard Carrier's latest work is arguing for the mythicist theory, but forgetting about that for now the field currently considers the supernatural aspects of the bible to be myth.
You may hear differently from the church but every church claims it's myth to be literal truth.
archeology and biblical history do not say that at all.

I did say "many"

Most people are not scholars of religion. And i dont know for sure but im guessing not all religious scholars agree with the video. Which at almost 2 hours long i didnt watch.

And consider the number of posters on RF confusing "truth" with belief.

 

[shmogie]

i am not discussing interpretation but words and yes the general message is "essentially" the same but the differences have lead to around 50,000 branches of the bible each believing the bible they follow is correct and others are wrong.

It is my understanding that catholicism is far, far older than protestantism. Their traditions longer serving, so who has been "led astray"?

Once again, you are trying to tie different translations to different emphases on the Biblical record.,

Once again, that isn;t the case.

The Baptists read the same Bible as others, saw that Baptism in the Bible was by immersion, not sprinkling, and separated themselves as a group to practice immersion.

John Calvin used the same Bible as Martin Luther.

Calvin interpreted the Bible as supporting the concept of predestination, Luther did not.Calvinist denominations emphasize predestination.

The Bible is much older than Protestantism or Catholicism. It defines the fundamental beliefs that all Christians have, Christs is the Son of God, He was manifested in human form and lived a sinless life both as an example and in place of sinful humanity. He performed miracles as his credentials for who He was. He was crucified, fulfilling the penalty for sin for all, He was resurrected from death. Commitment to Him, adopting his ways are the Ways of A christian.

The Bible clearly shows how the Apostolic church operated and worshiped.

By following tradition, the Catholic church has introduced a plethora of doctrines no where found in the Bible, and makes the Apostolic church totally unrecognizable in Catholicism.

 

[shmogie]

No. If you read The Lost Gospels by Elaine Pagels you can see that those found scripture reveal a very different Christianity in those days.
There were what we today call Gnostic Christians with all sorts of different ideas.

Bishop Ireaneous wanted a church power structure where only the bloodline could teach and interpret the gospels.

Paul's original letters do not mention anything about any ministry or earthly life of Jesus, just revelation and knowledge of some scripture.

The later letters are considered forgery by scholarship (Acts as Historical Fiction by W. Purvue)

All of the gospels are re-writes of Mark and are highly mythic in structure and obvious re-writes of Moses and Elijah.

some of this is covered at 22:44

The so called lost Gospels can be identified as bogus in a number of ways, the most important being the dates they were written/circulated. We know from contemporary writings c. AD 150 that the basic Gospels as we know them in the canon were in written circulation. Obvioulky they were in verbal circulation before then, taking them within the lifetimes of the Apostles. As far as I know, none of the alleged lost Gospels were written before c.190 AD, and most were written later than that.,

They could have no connection with actual witnesses of Biblical events.

As to the opinion regarding rewrites of the Gospels and myth, I can produce a hundred scholars of equal or better qualifications who totally refute the conclusion.

 

[ChristineM]

Once again, you are trying to tie different translations to different emphases on the Biblical record.,

Once again, that isn;t the case.

The Baptists read the same Bible as others, saw that Baptism in the Bible was by immersion, not sprinkling, and separated themselves as a group to practice immersion.

John Calvin used the same Bible as Martin Luther.

Calvin interpreted the Bible as supporting the concept of predestination, Luther did not.Calvinist denominations emphasize predestination.

The Bible is much older than Protestantism or Catholicism. It defines the fundamental beliefs that all Christians have, Christs is the Son of God, He was manifested in human form and lived a sinless life both as an example and in place of sinful humanity. He performed miracles as his credentials for who He was. He was crucified, fulfilling the penalty for sin for all, He was resurrected from death. Commitment to Him, adopting his ways are the Ways of A christian.

The Bible clearly shows how the Apostolic church operated and worshiped.

By following tradition, the Catholic church has introduced a plethora of doctrines no where found in the Bible, and makes the Apostolic church totally unrecognizable in Catholicism.

I have never said the basic message cannot be interpreted as the same across all versions. I said each version is worded differently from others

My example of comparing the KJV and NIV is extreme but valid.

The christian bible is not much older than catholicism. Protestantism came over 1000 years later

And each sect of christianity has developed its own rituals.

 

[shmogie]

I have never said the basic message cannot be interpreted as the same across all versions. I said each version is worded differently from others

My example of comparing the KJV and NIV is extreme but valid.

The christian bible is not much older than catholicism. Protestantism came over 1000 years later

And each sect of christianity has developed its own rituals.

Catholicism was in time, a century from when the Koine Greek manuscripts were circulating.,

Again, my point. All translations and paraphrases, except for the NWT, used by a small sect, are the same as to meaning paragraph by paragraph.

Catholic tradition for the most part has little to do with the Bible,.A Christian from the Apostolic or immediate post Apostolic church, would not recognize Catholicism as a Christian church.

 

[sojourner]

Not Correct. The Gospels and most letters were in circulation by 100 AD. Letters from the Church Fathers of the immediate post Apostolic church, c. AD 150 prove this so. Though churches chose which documents to use, most used the Foundational Gospels, Letters of Paul, and Epistles. Some used additional Gospels later to be found non Canonical, most, if not all not written before AD 200. The Council of Nicea correctly identified the long used books, added the book of Revelation, written before Johns death c.100 AD, and eliminated those books identified as having been written by those not having any living connection with Christ. It cannot be overemphasized that early non canonical letters and other writings establish that what today is the canonical NT was in use very early.

Any theory that the gospels and epistles (minus Paul) were written by apostle’s or anyone who knew Jesus is highly suspect, because that’s not where the evidence points.

 

[shmogie]

Any theory that the gospels and epistles (minus Paul) were written by apostle’s or anyone who knew Jesus is highly suspect, because that’s not where the evidence points.

It depends upon who is evaluating the evidence.

 

[ChristineM]

Catholicism was in time, a century from when the Koine Greek manuscripts were circulating.,

Again, my point. All translations and paraphrases, except for the NWT, used by a small sect, are the same as to meaning paragraph by paragraph.

Catholic tradition for the most part has little to do with the Bible,.A Christian from the Apostolic or immediate post Apostolic church, would not recognize Catholicism as a Christian church.

I make it about 80 years but ok.

Nope. Not so, what is written in Matthew 18:11 niv? Or John 5:4 or acts 8:37

The Apostolic Church is a Christian denomination that came from the Pentecostal movement
Apostolic Church (denomination) - Wikipedia

Edit : just found his new thread
No Wonder the Bible is Anybody's Guess

 

[joelr]

I did say "many"

Most people are not scholars of religion. And i dont know for sure but im guessing not all religious scholars agree with the video. Which at almost 2 hours long i didnt watch.

And consider the number of posters on RF confusing "truth" with belief.

With the exception of a few fundamentalist Ph.D biblical historians the vast majority believe in historicity but not divinity.
Meaning Jesus was considered to have been a man and the supernatural tales added to the story.
Some scholars are backing the mythicist theory but the research is fairly new and needs more peer review.
There is no secular historian arguing that Jesus or any other god man was a divine supernatural being.

 

[joelr]

The so called lost Gospels can be identified as bogus in a number of ways, the most important being the dates they were written/circulated. We know from contemporary writings c. AD 150 that the basic Gospels as we know them in the canon were in written circulation. Obvioulky they were in verbal circulation before then, taking them within the lifetimes of the Apostles. As far as I know, none of the alleged lost Gospels were written before c.190 AD, and most were written later than that.,

They could have no connection with actual witnesses of Biblical events.

As to the opinion regarding rewrites of the Gospels and myth, I can produce a hundred scholars of equal or better qualifications who totally refute the conclusion.

Right now scholarship considers Jesus to have been a man and the supernatural aspects myth.
No scholar except fundamentalists believe any supernatural stories as true.

The worlds leading NT historicity Ph.D is Richard Carrier
here he points out some pagan connections:
Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier

who is now advancing the mythicist theory. I've seen all his debates, no one has come close to showing his conclusions are wrong.


But to the pagan connections, we can start with the ancients.
Why would Christian apologist Justin Martyr say"

When we say…Jesus Christ…was produced without sexual union, and was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing new or different from what you believe regarding those whom you call Sons of God. [In fact]…if anybody objects that [Jesus] was crucified, this is in common with the sons of Zeus (as you call them) who suffered, as previously listed [he listed Dionysus, Hercules, and Asclepius]. Since their fatal sufferings are all narrated as not similar but different, so his unique passion should not seem to be any worse"

if the similarities were not obvious?

The early church bishops came up with a Latin phrase that translates into "the devil in history" which was how they explained the fact that the Jesus story was so much like many other pagan gods at the time. They explained that the devil went back in time and made history look like this.

I can find the source for this as I've seen it, but I can't come across it right now.


Elaine Pagels studied the lost gospels for years and published a book The Gnostic Gospels where she describes early Christianity much different than what the church teaches.

Through a careful reading of the fifty-two sacred texts that survived—they are Coptic translations of Greek originals, some as old as the four Gospels—Pagels made it clear that early Christianity was far more complicated than anyone had ever imagined. A wildly diverse compendium of poems, chants, myths, gospels, pagan documents, and spiritual instructions, the texts are distinct evidence of fierce theological debate and of an alternative tradition within early Christianity—a kind of mystical variant, much like the Zen tradition in Buddhism, Kabbalah in Judaism, Sufism in Islam. What was more, Pagels argued, the early Church Fathers, in their attempt to eliminate this more experiential Christianity in favor of building an orthodox institution—a universal, or catholic, church—declared the texts to be heretical. The Gnostics may well have buried the texts to avoid brutal purges being led by the notorious Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, in the year 367. Although many of the stories in what became the New Testament—the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection of Christ—are at least as strange as anything in the Gnostic texts, the Church leaders canonized the Gospels attributed to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as a reliable basis for a social organization with mass appeal. Gnosticism, with its emphasis on individual divinity and unmediated personal communion, was a threat to the authority of bishops and priests. Its suggestion, for instance, that the Resurrection of Jesus was a mythological vision, rather than, as the Synoptic Gospels assert, a historical event, was intolerable, and so was the Gnostic notion that God was both father and mother of Jesus. Thus, in the second century an orthodoxy began to take shape—and, with it, a temperament. Irenaeus, the orthodox Bishop of Lyons and one of the leading crusaders against the Gnostics, declared that, while certain heretics “boast that they possess more gospels than there really are,” no Church leader may, “however highly gifted he may be in matters of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these.”

The Thomas gospel dates 130-250AD

 

[joelr]

They could have no connection with actual witnesses of Biblical events.

The gospels all start with the Greek "Kata Matteion" which is the way Greek writers would say "as told to me by". They had a different way to notate they were themselves the author.
So the gospel writers were not eyewitnesses either.

But that "devil in history" thing I found at least a reference to in a paper by Martin Luther King
"The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity" | The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute




"
The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity"

certain Christian apologists felt the need to present an explanation for the similarities in their respective characteristics. The only one they could offer was quite naive, but it was in keeping with the trends of thought in that age. They maintained that it was the work of the devil who helped to confuse men by creating a pagan imitation of the true religion"


Although King doesn't seem to realize Mithrism was older than he thinks.
It was the main religion of the entire Roman army before the council of Nicea.

King tries to say it rose in popularity later but when Constantine was uniting Rome the army worshipped Mithras.

King obviously had to choose his words carefully, the 1940's was not the time for a minority to write a paper about Christianity stealing mythology.
It was a dangerous time with a lot of angry white racist old school religious folk.

 

[nPeace]

Oh I see, no, not at all. So scholarship shows we cannot prove that the gospels are historical.
So you're saying "see, maybe they are". But it doesn't work that way with supernatural things.
We can't prove Inanna didn't or did exist. We really can't prove Godzilla did or didn't exist. I mean, I saw him in a movie?
But with the supernatural it doesn't exist unless proven. That was the point of this thread - is it proveable, no? Then only faith exists. You claimed something other than faith, which is not true.

Then deny every scientific theory, and declare them myths, because you can't prove any of them.
We have a written record, for which much of it has been shown to be authentic, and reliable.
You believe what you want. We have that freedom.

I got to my position exactly by examining the evidence. That isn't clear? We know where archeology stands, here is the JERUSALEM POST admitting no evidence for Exodus.
The Exodus: Does archaeology have a say?
and as William Denver says, the OT isn't historical.
We have already covered the gospels being unable to provide proof and the pagan connections.
We also have the fact that all supernatural tales have never turned out to be true so what evidence is there?

You claimed it was historical and that isn't true. The failed prophecies are too numerous to even consider those few savior messiah quotes as prophetic?

How about I write down a 15 digit number and someone has an angel (or whomever) tell them what it is and post it. That would be a start. I would examine that evidence.

What are you talking about?
It seem like you feel that holding on to a few arguments somehow means that you have proven something.
You have not. All you have proven is that you have no evidence for or against. While we have evidence for.
Speaking of prophecy... here is an example of opinions.
The Book of Daniel
Dating
The prophecies of Daniel are accurate down to the career of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, king of Syria and oppressor of the Jews, but not in its prediction of his death: the author seems to know about Antiochus' two campaigns in Egypt (169 and 167 BC), the desecration of the Temple (the "abomination of desolation"), and the fortification of the Akra (a fortress built inside Jerusalem), but he seems to know nothing about the reconstruction of the Temple or about the actual circumstances of Antiochus' death in late 164 BC. Chapters 10–12 must therefore have been written between 167 and 164 BC. There is no evidence of a significant time lapse between those chapters and chapters 8 and 9, and chapter 7 may have been written just a few months earlier again.

Further evidence of the book's date is in the fact that Daniel is excluded from the Hebrew Bible's canon of the prophets, which was closed around 200 BC, and the Wisdom of Sirach, a work dating from around 180 BC, draws on almost every book of the Old Testament except Daniel, leading scholars to suppose that its author was unaware of it. Daniel is, however, quoted in a section of the Sibylline Oracles commonly dated to the middle of the 2nd century BC, and was popular at Qumran at much the same time, suggesting that it was known from the middle of that century.

Can we ask for experts opinions better than that? What a laugh.
The author knows about the siege of Jerusalem by king Nebuchadnezzar - 597 BC.
The author knows about the Persian conquest of Babylon - 539 BC.
The author knows about the conquest of Persia by Greece - 334 BC.
The author knows about the fall of the Greek king, and the crumbling of his empire, and the rise of the Roman Empire - 323–146 BC.

You are certainly entitled to your preferred opinions. We have that freedom.

1) No it isn’t. We know the earth to be older than 6000 years. There’s no evidence for a global flood, or for Hebrews in Egypt. David’s army could not have been as large as we’re told. None of that history is accurate.
2) No it isn’t. The Synoptics all tell vastly different stories of the birth and resurrection. There are two vastly differing accounts of creation — just to name a few.

The Bible is reliable at being what it is; not at what you wish it to be.

Thanks for sharing your opinions. They have been duly noted.

 

[ChristineM]

With the exception of a few fundamentalist Ph.D biblical historians the vast majority believe in historicity but not divinity.
Meaning Jesus was considered to have been a man and the supernatural tales added to the story.
Some scholars are backing the mythicist theory but the research is fairly new and needs more peer review.
There is no secular historian arguing that Jesus or any other god man was a divine supernatural being.

Thats not the impression i get from these pages.

Regarding secular historians, of course. But religious historians (sic) do

 

[shmogie]

The gospels all start with the Greek "Kata Matteion" which is the way Greek writers would say "as told to me by". They had a different way to notate they were themselves the author.
So the gospel writers were not eyewitnesses either.

But that "devil in history" thing I found at least a reference to in a paper by Martin Luther King
"The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity" | The Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute




"
The Influence of the Mystery Religions on Christianity"

certain Christian apologists felt the need to present an explanation for the similarities in their respective characteristics. The only one they could offer was quite naive, but it was in keeping with the trends of thought in that age. They maintained that it was the work of the devil who helped to confuse men by creating a pagan imitation of the true religion"


Although King doesn't seem to realize Mithrism was older than he thinks.
It was the main religion of the entire Roman army before the council of Nicea.

King tries to say it rose in popularity later but when Constantine was uniting Rome the army worshipped Mithras.

King obviously had to choose his words carefully, the 1940's was not the time for a minority to write a paper about Christianity stealing mythology.
It was a dangerous time with a lot of angry white racist old school religious folk.

Your conclusion re the Koine Greek term, "as told to me" is in error. Koine Greek was the primary written language of the middle eastern part of the Roman Empire. Further, it was read throughout the Empire by scholars, and many who read Latin as well.

None of the authors of the Gospel wrote Koine Greek, their language was Aramaic. None were scholars. It was common practice to use scribes to transcribe a narrative into Koine Greek. It was also common practice for the scribe to preface the document with "as told to me".

Even Paul, who knew and spoke Koine Greek, used a scribe for some of his letters.

Further, if the Gospels were originally written in Aramaic, and were later read to a Koine Greek scribe, the preface could be the same.

To say Christianity "stole" from mythology is ridiculous. It is representative of ignorance between the vast differences between Christianity and these mythologies.

Co incidences occur all the time. A very superficial similarity does not prove cause and effect.

Your last smartass sentence proves you to be solidly in the new atheist camp.Anyone with the temerity to challenge your position is slyly disparaged with a snide innuendo.

To use phraseology you are familiar with, F you.

 

[metis]

Probably most of the apostles were semi-literate at best, and undoubtedly the same was likely true of so many of the other disciples. So, what we do know was done much of the time was to have a "co-author" who could take the message and write it into Greek, Latin, Hebrew, or whatever. Since the apostles wanted the word to be spread, Koine Greek would have been the best because Latin would certainly be a no-no and converting Jews to the Church seemed to largely hit a wall.

 

[shmogie]

Right now scholarship considers Jesus to have been a man and the supernatural aspects myth.
No scholar except fundamentalists believe any supernatural stories as true.

The worlds leading NT historicity Ph.D is Richard Carrier
here he points out some pagan connections:
Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier

who is now advancing the mythicist theory. I've seen all his debates, no one has come close to showing his conclusions are wrong.


But to the pagan connections, we can start with the ancients.
Why would Christian apologist Justin Martyr say"

When we say…Jesus Christ…was produced without sexual union, and was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended to heaven, we propound nothing new or different from what you believe regarding those whom you call Sons of God. [In fact]…if anybody objects that [Jesus] was crucified, this is in common with the sons of Zeus (as you call them) who suffered, as previously listed [he listed Dionysus, Hercules, and Asclepius]. Since their fatal sufferings are all narrated as not similar but different, so his unique passion should not seem to be any worse"

if the similarities were not obvious?

The early church bishops came up with a Latin phrase that translates into "the devil in history" which was how they explained the fact that the Jesus story was so much like many other pagan gods at the time. They explained that the devil went back in time and made history look like this.

I can find the source for this as I've seen it, but I can't come across it right now.


Elaine Pagels studied the lost gospels for years and published a book The Gnostic Gospels where she describes early Christianity much different than what the church teaches.

Through a careful reading of the fifty-two sacred texts that survived—they are Coptic translations of Greek originals, some as old as the four Gospels—Pagels made it clear that early Christianity was far more complicated than anyone had ever imagined. A wildly diverse compendium of poems, chants, myths, gospels, pagan documents, and spiritual instructions, the texts are distinct evidence of fierce theological debate and of an alternative tradition within early Christianity—a kind of mystical variant, much like the Zen tradition in Buddhism, Kabbalah in Judaism, Sufism in Islam. What was more, Pagels argued, the early Church Fathers, in their attempt to eliminate this more experiential Christianity in favor of building an orthodox institution—a universal, or catholic, church—declared the texts to be heretical. The Gnostics may well have buried the texts to avoid brutal purges being led by the notorious Bishop of Alexandria, Athanasius, in the year 367. Although many of the stories in what became the New Testament—the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection of Christ—are at least as strange as anything in the Gnostic texts, the Church leaders canonized the Gospels attributed to Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as a reliable basis for a social organization with mass appeal. Gnosticism, with its emphasis on individual divinity and unmediated personal communion, was a threat to the authority of bishops and priests. Its suggestion, for instance, that the Resurrection of Jesus was a mythological vision, rather than, as the Synoptic Gospels assert, a historical event, was intolerable, and so was the Gnostic notion that God was both father and mother of Jesus. Thus, in the second century an orthodoxy began to take shape—and, with it, a temperament. Irenaeus, the orthodox Bishop of Lyons and one of the leading crusaders against the Gnostics, declared that, while certain heretics “boast that they possess more gospels than there really are,” no Church leader may, “however highly gifted he may be in matters of eloquence, teach doctrines different from these.”

The Thomas gospel dates 130-250AD

What is a Fundamentalist, someone who operates within a certain set of beliefs. You use the term as a qualifier for faulty scholarship

Yet there are many Fundamentalist Christian historians, archaeologists, and Bible scholars who are highly respected and well known in their field their field. There are many hundreds less known, who do solid work and have the highest credentials.

Don¨t atheists operate within a set of fundamental beliefs ? If Christian fundamentalist research is inherently biased by their fundamental beliefs, why is the same not true of atheist fundamentalists ? It is.

Pagels work is primarily the result of research seeking a preconceived conclusion, rather than researching all the data to find a conclusion.

Various of her erroneous conclusions have been refuted adequately by other scholars.

Some of her conclusions are spot on, especially those around the manipulation the post Apostolic church by those with personal and group agendaś.

Interestingly, the Apostles warned that this would occur. They knew the subversion of Christianity would come very quickly.

Your dating for Thomas, the oldest of the the bogus gospels, is too early by 50 years, based on scholars I have read.

 

[joelr]

Your conclusion re the Koine Greek term, "as told to me" is in error. Koine Greek was the primary written language of the middle eastern part of the Roman Empire. Further, it was read throughout the Empire by scholars, and many who read Latin as well.

None of the authors of the Gospel wrote Koine Greek, their language was Aramaic. None were scholars. It was common practice to use scribes to transcribe a narrative into Koine Greek. It was also common practice for the scribe to preface the document with "as told to me".

Even Paul, who knew and spoke Koine Greek, used a scribe for some of his letters.

Completely wrong. First the gospel authors were highly educated as they used all types of mythic structure which I can provide examples of.
They used Markian sandwiches, ring structure and many other types of advanced literary devices commonly used in myth writing but NOT in historical writings.

some is explained at 15:35

You don't seem to be aware of the historicity of the gospels at all?
Even wiki recognized the greek origins:

The Gospel According to Matthew (Greek: Τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγέλιον, translit. Tò katà Matthaīon euangélion; also called the Gospel of Matthew or simply, Matthew) is the first book of the New Testament and one of the three synoptic gospels. It tells how the Messiah, Jesus, rejected by Israel, finally sends the disciples to preach the gospel to the whole world.[1] Most scholars believe it was composed between AD 80 and 90, with a range of possibility between AD 70 to 110 (a pre-70 date remains a minority view).[2][3] The anonymous author was probably a male Jew, standing on the margin between traditional and non-traditional Jewish values, and familiar with technical legal aspects of scripture being debated in his time.[4] Writing in a polished Semitic "synagogue Greek", he drew on three main sources: the Gospel of Mark, the hypothetical collection of sayings known as the Q source, and material unique to his own community, called the M source or "Special Matthew".[5][6]"



Note "anonymous", because Kata is how Greek writers as "as told to me by".
To which I can find a Ph.D in biblical history saying this

Same for Mark - Wiki - "Mark was written in Greek, for a gentile audience"
"The Gospel of Mark is anonymous.[7] Early tradition commencing with Papias of Hierapolis links it to John Mark, a companion and interpreter of the apostle Peter, and hence its author is often called Mark, but most scholars are content to identify the author of Mark's gospel as an unknown first-century Christian"

Again - "anonymous." because that's what "to kata Markion" MEANS - AS TOLD TO ME BY MARK!

To say Christianity "stole" from mythology is ridiculous. It is representative of ignorance between the vast differences between Christianity and these mythologies.

Co incidences occur all the time. A very superficial similarity does not prove cause and effect.

Ha ha - coincidences!
Dying-and-Rising Gods: It's Pagan, Guys. Get Over It. • Richard Carrier

please point out where he's wrong? Can you do it without swearing?

some similarities:

• They are personal salvation cults (often evolved from prior agricultural cults).
• They guarantee the individual a good place in the afterlife (a concern not present in most prior forms of religion).
• They are cults you join membership with (as opposed to just being open communal religions).
• They enact a fictive kin group (members are now all brothers and sisters).
• They are joined through baptism (the use of water-contact rituals to effect an initiation).
• They are maintained through communion (regular sacred meals enacting the presence of the god).
• They involved secret teachings reserved only to members (and some only to members of certain rank).
• They used a common vocabulary to identify all these concepts and their role.
• They are syncretistic (they modify this common package of ideas with concepts distinctive of the adopting culture).
• They are mono- or henotheistic (they preach a supreme god by whom and to whom all other divinities are created and subordinate).
• They are individualistic (they relate primarily to salvation of the individual, not the community).
• And they are cosmopolitan (they intentionally cross social borders of race, culture, nation, wealth, or even gender).
  

You might start to notice we’ve almost completely described Christianity already. It gets better. These cults all had a common central savior deity, who shared most or all these features (when, once again, we eliminate all their differences and what remains is only what they share in common):

• They are all “savior gods” (literally so-named and so-called).
• They are usually the “son” of a supreme God (or occasionally “daughter”).
• They all undergo a “passion” (a “suffering” or “struggle,” literally the same word in Greek, patheôn).
• That passion is often, but not always, a death (followed by a resurrection and triumph).
• By which “passion” (of whatever kind) they obtain victory over death.
• Which victory they then share with their followers (typically through baptism and communion).
• They also all have stories about them set in human history on earth.
• Yet so far as we can tell, none of them ever actually existed.

"ignorance" you say?

Your last smartass sentence proves you to be solidly in the new atheist camp.Anyone with the temerity to challenge your position is slyly disparaged with a snide innuendo.

To use phraseology you are familiar with, F you.

That's cute, drop an F bomb but make it like it's something I would say rather than you. But you just said it. Ha, funny. And manipulative.

So you don't believe there was strong racism against black people in 1949? You don't believe that there were some violently racist white people who would have used an anti-Jesus article as a reason to lash out against a black person in 1949?
It's not really a "smartass" statement, I'm saying writing an article like that could be dangerous for certain people in 1949.
You're wrong to think I'm an atheist just because I don't believe a savior-messiah myth to be true.
What a dumb assumption. As if the world revolves around you and your beliefs?

 

[joelr]

Then deny every scientific theory, and declare them myths, because you can't prove any of them.
We have a written record, for which much of it has been shown to be authentic, and reliable.
You believe what you want. We have that freedom.

Scientific theories make predictions that can be tested.
Sometimes they are replaced with new theories and the new theories first have to make predictions and the predictions have to pan out.
We have a soft science - archeology and history which is how we judge historical probabilities.

Would you compare the scripture of Mithras to scientific theories like special relativity?
Or does that sound stupid?

Now archeology has not helped prove any biblical truth but has put doubt onto it.
Historicity has proven the gospels to be myth.
You are lying when you say the gospels are reliabe and authentic because they ways in which we judge historical information has shown the gospels are neither.
This is a fact.

Now when I say "proven to be myth" we obviously can't say that 100%. But the same goes for Romulus or Mithras or Zeus. But since we know the actual text is:
-copied from the OT
-rates 18 out of 22 on the myth scale
-has no outside corroboration
- all copied from Mark
-using myth from other cultures
-tells supernatural tales which in all cases have never been verified, ever, from magicians to religious myth to psychics

we can say the probabiity is similar to Thor or Mithras.

What are you talking about?
It seem like you feel that holding on to a few arguments somehow means that you have proven something.
You have not. All you have proven is that you have no evidence for or against. While we have evidence for.
Speaking of prophecy... here is an example of opinions.
The Book of Daniel
Dating

A few arguments?
-Archeology shows the OT is not history
-Abraham didn't like solar myths and "revelationed" up a Yahweh (acording to the Qu'ran)
-the gospels have no outside evidence, are highly mythical and are obviously copied from pagan sources
-every mention of Jesus was covered by that panel, they all agree the gospels cannot be shown to be historical
- you say you have evidence but I haven't seen any?
- supernatural stories have always turned out to be untrue
-there is nothing else?


Daniel contains nothing of interest, the Jewish community explains why it's a bunch of rubbish:
Many Christians assert that these passages are a prophecy that predicts the exact dates that the Messiah will come and also die. They believe that Jesus fulfilled these predictions. Before examining these verses it is important to point out that: 1) Based on the Hebrew original and context, Jews have very valid reasons for rejecting the Christian interpretation and 2) the New Testament authors never quote these passages and calculations as a proof-text.

To understand this chapter, we must begin with an explanation of the term “weeks.”

Daniel chapter 9 uses the Hebrew word (שבעים ~ Shavuim) to represents a period of time multiplied by seven. For various reasons this word is translated as “weeks” and means a multiple of seven years rather than a multiple of seven days. etc
https://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/daniel-9-a-true-biblical-interpretation/

Can we ask for experts opinions better than that? What a laugh.
The author knows about the siege of Jerusalem by king Nebuchadnezzar - 597 BC.
The author knows about the Persian conquest of Babylon - 539 BC.
The author knows about the conquest of Persia by Greece - 334 BC.
The author knows about the fall of the Greek king, and the crumbling of his empire, and the rise of the Roman Empire - 323–146 BC..

Again, most of those "prophecies" (is that your proof?) are all mis-interpretations by Christians
https://jewsforjudaism.org/knowledge/articles/daniel-9-a-true-biblical-interpretation/

But if one wants to point out anything vaguely prophetic then you have to look at the FAILED prophecies as well.
You can't just pick and choose things that appear to be correct then say "look the bible is prophetic"??
That's insane?
There are over 200 prophicies from the bible that have not happened?
Bible: Prophecy and Misquotes


and the OT thinks pi is "3"?? WTF?
Don't try to say it's not a science book because if it wasn't it would not be giving calculations for pi?

 

[joelr]

Thats not the impression i get from these pages.

Regarding secular historians, of course. But religious historians (sic) do

The"field" of biblical Ph.D historians are in agreement about Moses and the patriarchs being myth and the general consensus is that Jesus was a man and the supernatural stories added later.
Richard Price, Earl Doherity, Elaine Pagels, Richard Carrier, Bart Ehrman,

There are guys like Gary Habermas who are believers and write apologetics and are educated but he's not a Ph.D scholar. That isn't just 3 random letters. From masters to Phd in historicity one spends 4 years learning almost exclusively how to work with source material, proving sources as accurate and so on. For a biblical historian one needs to read Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic.

Richard Carrier is putting forth his work on the mythicist theory but it's not accepted in the field yet as the standard belief. Maybe it never will?