not sure what the angst is with the xians; god protects his own people, ancient tribal jews, from harm.

 

well it's god that protects them when nothing happens to them and when harm does happen to them it's some other excuse, you know, gays, atheists, all olther religions, evolution, health care plans.....all that stuff.

 

 

Travels, I've got news for you.  Evil exists.

* NEWS FLASH*

God walked the earth, healed the sick, cast out demons, forgave the adulterous woman, while all the "religious' folk were going to stone her.
Then was crucified by the religious leaders.

So Please!  spare me the religious crap!

 

^ nice story, where did you read that??

In the Bible vk, so instead of cutting and pasting posts by the haters you so admire, maybe sit down and read the word of God for yourself, huh?

Matthew would be a good place to start.

²³ Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. ²⁴ News about him spread all over Syria, and people brought to him all who were ill with various diseases, those suffering severe pain, the demon-possessed, those having seizures, and the paralyzed; and he healed them. ²⁵ Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis,^[g] Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him.

He said:

³ “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
⁴ Blessed are those who mourn,
    for they will be comforted.
⁵ Blessed are the meek,
    for they will inherit the earth.
⁶ Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
    for they will be filled.
⁷ Blessed are the merciful,
    for they will be shown mercy.
⁸ Blessed are the pure in heart,
    for they will see God.
⁹ Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.
¹⁰ Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
    for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

 

Sound like a hateful God to you?  I thnk not.

Well then, why are his followers so hateful?

Lol, spare us the religious crap. I love the double standard. The bible is very violent, especially the death of everyone in the great god driven flood. Why doesn't every person on earth have DNA going back to Noah or Adam and Eve?

I wonder if he healed any gay people?  Probably not, I hear that's against his religion.

RS nice story, and about as real as harry potter.

yep, there is nothing in the bible that is evil, not at all, never find a single passage.

 

To be fair, accounts of supernatural events look decidedly dodgy when we consider when they have happened.


1. various in OT and NT up to, say 70CE

<quiet patch, nothing.>

2. 600s and Big Mo starts getting dictation of the Qur'an. He gets a ride on a winged horse (Pegasus from the legends maybe) and gets take to Jerusalem and then on up into heaven.

<quiet patch, nothing.>

3. 1700s, Joseph Smith - angels, gold plates the lot.

<quiet patch, nothing.>

In other words, either the one god? or many god, start religions and disappear

OR

People start religions and claim the magical events really happened.
 

 

you decide

 

 

 

 

 

 

yep, there is nothing in the bible that is evil, not at all, never find a single passage.

 

Vk, are you for real?  Of course there is evil in the Bible!   The Devil is evil, and he is alive and well, PROOF is everywhere! and he is one of the main characters in the Bible. 

The Qur'an was written 600 years after Jesus walked the earth.  So, think about that.  That is six hundred GENERATIONS, at least, after.  Look how much our world has changed in the last  sixty years!

Muhammad ( 570-632 A.D.) introduced Islam in 610 A.D. after experiencing what he claimed to be an angelic visitation. One man.

  God warns us that Satan can appear as an angel. 

The Bible was written by many men, not one, and those such as Matthew were THERE when Jesus walked the earth. It is an accurate account, and what proves that is all the prophecies coming true.  This was all fortold, and we have been through all that here numerous times, but you are blinded to the truth, so trying to convince you of ANYTHING concerning the truth of the Bible is pointless.

So, back to news, which I'm afraid is going to be jam packed with incidences such as these.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/10/23/hatchet-wielding-man-shot-and-killed-after-vicious-attack-on-officer-in-nyc/

Apparent Muslim Suspect Viciously Attacks NYC Officers With a Hatchet; Possible Ties to Radical Islam Revealed

 

the "devil" who happened to be yaweh's fav angel never drowned the worls, told people to rape, beat slaves, kill babies, incest, put she bears rip 42 children to shreds for laughing at a bald man, wipe po0p on priests faces lol, turned a good women into a pillar of salt, the devil did not invent hell or judge people (and babies) and send them there, could go on for hours, no el diablo did none of that your god did. all el diablo did was want to get as far from this maniac yahew as he could.

 

as for your yahew creating himself from himself to sacrifice himself to himself and all the miracles that went unnoticed by the jews scholars of the time you might want to check your sources, only two mentions of jeesayus has ever been found outside the bible and they are dodgy and almost surely forged, changed, fabricated.

 

you should look into this stuff, i will leave this info for those that actually be looking for truth;

 

Josephus (c37-100 AD)

Flavius Josephus is a highly respected and much-quoted Romano-Jewish historian. The early Christians were zealous readers of his work.

A native of Judea, living in the 1st century AD, Josephus was actually governor of Galilee for a time (prior to the war of 70 AD) – the very province in which Jesus allegedly did his wonders. Though not born until 37 AD and therefore not a contemporary witness to any Jesus-character, Josephus at one point even lived in Cana, the very city in which Christ is said to have wrought his first miracle.

Josephus's two major tomes are History of The Jewish War and The Antiquities of the Jews. In these complementary works, the former written in the 70s, the latter in the 90s AD, Josephus mentions every noted personage of Palestine and describes every important event which occurred there during the first seventy years of the Christian era.

At face value, Josephus appears to be the answer to the Christian apologist's dreams.

In a single paragraph (the so-called Testimonium Flavianum) Josephus confirms every salient aspect of the Christ-myth:

1. Jesus's existence 2. his 'more than human' status 3. his miracle working 4. his teaching 5. his ministry among the Jews and the Gentiles 6. his Messiahship 7. his condemnation by the Jewish priests 8. his sentence by Pilate 9. his death on the cross 10. the devotion of his followers 11. his resurrection on the 3rd day 12. his post-death appearance 13. his fulfillment of divine prophecy 14. the successful continuance of the Christians.

In just 127 words Josephus confirms everything – now that is a miracle!

 

BUT WAIT A MINUTE ...

Not a single writer before the 4th century – not Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, etc. – in all their defences against pagan hostility, makes a single reference to Josephus’ wondrous words.

The third century Church 'Father' Origen, for example, spent half his life and a quarter of a million words contending against the pagan writer Celsus. Origen drew on all sorts of proofs and witnesses to his arguments in his fierce defence of Christianity. He quotes from Josephus extensively. Yet even he makes no reference to this 'golden paragraph' from Josephus, which would have been the ultimate rebuttal. In fact, Origen actually said that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ."

Origen did not quote the 'golden paragraph' because this paragraph had not yet been written.

It was absent from early copies of the works of Josephus and did not appear in Origen's third century version of Josephus, referenced in his Contra Celsum.

Josephus knows nothing of Christians It was the around the year 53 AD that Josephus decided to investigate the sects among the Jews. According to the gospel fable this was the period of explosive growth for the Christian faith: " the churches ... throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria ... were edified... and ... were multiplied." – Acts 9:31. This is also the time of the so-called "Council of Jerusalem" when supposedly Paul regaled the brothers with tales of "miracles and wonders" among the gentiles (Acts 15.12). And yet Josephus knows nothing of all this: "When I was sixteen years old, I decided to get experience with the various sects that are among us. These are three: as we have said many times, the first, that of the Pharisees, the second that of the Saduccees, the third, that of the Essenes. For I thought that in this way I would choose best, if I carefully examined them all. Therefore, submitting myself to strict training, I passed through the three groups." – Life, 2. Josephus elsewhere does record a "fourth sect of Jewish philosophy" and reports that it was a "mad distemper" agitating the entire country. But it has nothing to do with Christianity and its superstar: "But of the fourth sect of Jewish philosophy, Judas the Galilean was the author. These men agree in all other things with the Pharisaic notions; but they have an inviolable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord. They also do not value dying any kinds of death, nor indeed do they heed the deaths of their relations and friends, nor can any such fear make them call any man Lord ... And it was in Gessius Florus's time that the nation began to grow mad with this distemper, who was our procurator, and who occasioned the Jews to go wild with it by the abuse of his authority, and to make them revolt from the Romans. And these are the sects of Jewish philosophy." – Antiquities 18.23. Nothing could better illustrate the bogus nature of the Testimonium than the remaining corpus of Josephus's work.

Consider, also, the anomalies:

1. How could Josephus claim that Jesus had been the answer to his messianic hopes yet remain an orthodox Jew?
The absurdity forces some apologists to make the ridiculous claim that Josephus was a closet Christian!

2. If Josephus really thought Jesus had been 'the Christ' surely he would have added more about him than one paragraph, a casual aside in someone else's (Pilate's) story?

In fact, Josephus relates much more about John the Baptist than about Jesus! He also reports in great detail the antics of other self-proclaimed messiahs, including Judas of Galilee, Theudas the Magician, and the unnamed 'Egyptian Jew' messiah.

It is striking that though Josephus confirms everything the Christians could wish for, he adds nothing that is not in the gospel narratives, nothing that would have been unknown by Christians already.

3. The question of context.

Antiquities 18 is primarily concerned with "all sorts of misfortunes" which befell the Jews during a period of thirty-two years (4-36 AD).

Josephus begins with the unpopular taxation introduced by the Roman Governor Cyrenius in 6 AD. He presents a synopsis of the three established Jewish parties (Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes), but his real quarry is the "fourth sect of philosophy ... which laid the foundation of our future miseries." That was the sect of Judas the Galilean, "which before we were unacquainted withal."

At the very point we might expect a mention of "Christians" (if any such sect existed) we have instead castigation of tax rebels!

"It was in Gessius Florus's time [64-66] that the nation began to grow mad with this distemper, who was our procurator, and who occasioned the Jews to go wild with it by the abuse of his authority, and made them revolt from the Romans; and these are the sects of Jewish philosophy."

"Nor can fear of death make them call any man Lord." Sound a tad familiar?

Chapter 2 notes the cities built to honour the Romans; the frequent changes in high priest (up to Caiaphas) and Roman procurators (up to Pontius Pilate); and also the turmoil in Parthia.

Chapter 3, containing the Testimonium as paragraph three, is essentially about Pilate's attempts to bring Jerusalem into the Roman system. With his first policy – placing Caesar's ensigns in Jerusalem – Pilate was forced to back down by unexpected Jewish protests in Caesarea. With his second policy – providing Jerusalem with a new aqueduct built with funds sequestered from the Temple, Pilate made ready for Jewish protests. Concealed weapons on his soldiers caused much bloodshed.

At this point the paragraph about Jesus is introduced!

Immediately after, Josephus continues:

"And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews ..."

There is no way that Josephus, who remained an orthodox Jew all his life and defended Judaism vociferously against Greek critics, would have thought that the execution of a messianic claimant was "another terrible misfortune" for the Jews. This is the hand of a Christian writer who himself considered the death of Jesus to be a Jewish tragedy (fitting in with his own notions of a stiff-necked race, rejected by God because they themselves had rejected the Son of God).

With paragraph 3 removed from the text the chapter, in fact, reads better. The "aqueduct massacre" now justifies "another terrible misfortune."

4. The final assertion, that the Christians were "not extinct at this day," confirms that the so-called Testimonium is a later interpolation. How much later we cannot say but there was no "tribe of Christians" during Josephus' lifetime. Christianity under that moniker did not establish itself until the 2nd century. Outside of this single bogus paragraph, in all the extensive histories of Josephus there is not a single reference to Christianity anywhere.

5. The hyperbolic language is uncharacteristic of the historian:

"... as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him."

This is the stuff of Christian propaganda.

6. The Testimonium is a rather short for a genuine digression in the narrative of Josephus (the material surely was deserving of more attention than it gets). But a copyist, working with scrolls of a fixed length, would have had little space to play with.

 

REALITY CHECK

In fact, the Josephus paragraph about Jesus does not appear until the beginning of the fourth century, at the time of Constantine.

Bishop Eusebius, that great Church propagandist and self-confessed liar-for-god, was the first person known to have quoted this paragraph of Josephus, about the year 340 AD. This was after the Christians had become the custodians of religious correctness.

Whole libraries of antiquity were torched by the Christians. Yet unlike the works of his Jewish contemporaries, the histories of Josephus survived. They survived because the Christian censors had a use for them. They planted evidence on Josephus, turning the leading Jewish historian of his day into a witness for Jesus Christ ! Finding no references to Jesus anywhere in Josephus's genuine work, they interpolated a brief but all-embracing reference based purely on Christian belief.

Do we need to look any further to identify Eusebius himself as the forger?

Sanctioned by the imperial propagandist every Christian commentator for the next thirteen centuries accepted unquestioningly the entire Testimonium Flavianum, along with its declaration that Jesus “was the Messiah.”

And even in the twenty first century scholars who should know better trot out a truncated version of the 'golden paragraph' in a scurrilous attempt to keep Josephus 'on message.'