But Jesus said -
Different gospel, but Jesus seems to be doing exactly the opposite of giving power to a priestly (or rabbinic) hierarchy.
Regards,
Shodan
Even as a Christian myself, I’m all fine for seeing these sorts of discussions, but as others have said, I’m not really sure what the goal here is. Still, there’s two points I particularly want to stress.
One, analyzing a particular book in the Bible without context, it’s necessarily going to be superficial, particularly when you’re looking at the Gospels. You start off commenting that baptism seems really weird to you, but you realize that baptism was already a long standing tradition with numerous other references throughout the Bible. I’m not the least bit surprised that it seems remarkably odd to you. By the same token, the Gospels are filled with references to prophecy from throughout the Old Testament, sometimes it’s mentioned explicitly, sometimes it’s more subtle, but those references will be lost or seem out of place without the context of the rest of the Bible.
Analagously, imagine turning on a Star Wars movie to a random portion and never having seen it before. You see a guy in a black plastic suit fighting some other dude in a brown robe with laser swords and other guys in white plastic suits shooting lasers at some big fury guy, some gold guy, and a few others. Without context, it sounds REALLY silly, yet with the context, it’s one of the most highly regarded films with one of the largest fanbases in cinematic history.
Frankly, this is how this sort of “analysis” of the Bible comes across, grabbing a more or less random part without context, and saying how silly it seems out of context. There’s countless arguments out there regarding inconsistencies/contradictions, historical accuracy, an interpretation of the Bible, but they are only really hold any weight if those arguments consider the context of the rest of the Bible, the culture and history of the people at the time, the history and traditions of the Church, etc.
The other point I want to mention is the comment on the Jesus myth. What, exactly, are you proposing? You recognize that it’s generally accepted that he existed, his divinity obviously being a question of religion not history. But still, throwing out that he was made up for nefarious reasons isn’t just a minority, it’s a vanishingly small minority. Most of those who would suggest he never existed would, instead, suggest that the stories are an amalgamation of other prophets and messiah figures that existed at the time. If you don’t want to discuss that, that’s fine but if so, why mention it and the assertion that the purpose behind the Bible and the invention of Jesus is nefarious?
Frankly, between your suggestion about the nefarious purpose behind inventing Jesus, your user name, and the general tone of the OP, you’ve poisoned the well. This is pretty clear from the substantial number of responses not taking you seriously. Discussions about the Bible, particularly from an atheist point of view, are quite plentiful here, and this thread comes across as a young person, probably in high school, who likely recently became or declared himself atheist, and just wants to talk about how silly Christianity is.
If you really want a serious discussion and analysis, you’ll probably benefit better from less of a shotgun approach with your OP, and perhaps consider requesting a name change if that’s your main purpose here, and raising more pointed questions. You’ll likely get analysis from Christians and non-Christians alike that can give you Biblical and historical context.
The whole point is moot as, not just in your own quote, but throughout the New Testament, Jesus as a whole rejects authority outside His/His Father’s. I was just saying that the rejection based on the application of “priests” probably was a perception issue and not a “Priests post dated Jesus by 150 years” issue.
OP, when Czarcasm is mocking your atheism, trust me, the writing is on the wall like it was Belshazzar’s Feast all over again. :smack:
Actually I was thinking more of Numbers 22:21-35. Perhaps it’s just me. 
Hee Haw,
Shodan
Signs?
Blaster Master thank you for writing out that excellent post. I’m glad there’s someone with enough patience to write out an intelligent, thoughtful, and polite reply.
Damn, if this really is the Antichrist I am putting some *major bucks *down on Jesus.
Put him on your Fantasy Proselyting team for sure.
Dammit! The scam is busted! 
Out of curiosity, are you Romanian?
Meh. Balaam was an ass.
Well, the appearance of English-speaking monkeys as a sign of the End Times would be just plain silly, wouldn’t it? :dubious:
“Balaam! Get your ass out there!”
There’s been a lot of responses saying some similar stuff, so I’ll just make a general reply rather than to specific posters. It seems the way a lot of you respond is as if you’ve spent much time analysing the Bible as if it were a deep, sophisticated work. Why on earth did you do that? When read without priests or teachers looking over one’s shoulder it reveals itself quickly: it is a bunch of authoritarian junk. It weaves together all sorts of stories about the power of its characters (God, Jesus) and why you’re better off submitting to them, without showing them to be morally good, or giving a consistent description of their characteristics, such that we can believe in them (and know what we’re believing in). If you like ancient stuff there’s no shortage of quality works out there.
As regards the Jesus myth and the Jesus Never Existed site, I can now see what ITR Champion meant by scholarly work, I am not American and would use “peer-reviewed” or “academic” for that. Probably he/she was playing word games anyway. I find the dearth of academics seeing Jesus as a myth to be a severe indictment on the western academic community. Maybe we can discuss that, or have a separate thread later, but if you’ve read the Josephus and Tacitus references and think they’re genuine… I don’t know if I want to bother.
As for my supposed naivety, I am naive when it comes to the Bible, but not in general; I think I am quite knowledgable. Given so much has been written and said about the bible over the years to excuse it and distort its meaning, I think my uninformed reading is probably a very good way to get to the truth of the matter.
I’ll just correct a little error of mine: it seems parable is applied most often to religious works like the bible, so I’ll let Google off the hook for that.
More gospel. A bit briefer this time:
Chapter 7:
This chapter begins with some talk about Jewish traditions for eating, which Jesus chooses to reject:
He then claims that it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come. I doubt the Jews thought evilness came from eating dirty things but anyway. The logic of 24-30 must have gone missing somewhere, I tried. 31-37 more magic, no deep meaning.
Chapter 8:
Opening verses see him doing the feeding the masses trick again. 14-21 feels a bit obnoxious. 22-25 some technical details of magical sight restoration? Useful, I guess. Verses 27 to the end of the chapter see the martyrdom plot building, but… I just think it’s a bit fantastical… wouldn’t a real martyr hope to succeed and not prefigure his death like that? Even if he only suspected it would happen, doesn’t talking of it like it’s certain encourage it a bit? Of course the apparent explanation is that he is meant to suffer and die, and that he is on earth for that. That is the grimmest thing I ever heard of. Especially so if it were about a good character, which thankfully, it doesn’t seem to be.
Chapter 9:
Useful for the early church, not so useful nowadays! Verses 2 to 8 seem to be a tale to connect him up with the Jewish pantheon, disjointedly. 9-13 the Jews ask him about Elijah. It looks like he doesn’t know, but pretends he does? Then we see some very distressing treatment of what seems to be an epileptic. Look if anyone here thinks epilepsy can be cured with exorcism: it can’t. 33-35 and 36-37 join awkwardly, it’s difficult to grasp. In fact I’m just going to give up on 38-50. It appears impossible to tell who he’s talking to, who he’s talking about, what the parables/analogies are meant to mean, etc… Nostradamus, anyone?
Chapter 10:
More discussions with Jews. Jesus speaks against divorce. I’ll dodge that debate, but I don’t know if I like “two shall become one flesh” stuff. 13-16 feels a bit creepy to me. Verses 17-31 consist of Jesus telling people to give up on wealth, possessions, etc. I don’t have a problem with that message, necessarily, though it’s a bit convoluted and confused. The road to Jerusalem now, he prefigures his death again. 35-40 probably has meaning so deep no one will find it. 41-44 harmless.
Hmmm, now that I think of it, perhaps the original idea of the presaged crucifixion is like this: the purpose of his coming was that he would do heaps of good things, but people would reject him and kill him, and that this would teach them how bad they were and mend their ways, thus bringing “the kingdom of God” (goodness, fairness, I’ll presume) soon; with a second coming that would succeed. This explanation actually kind of makes some sense. It would have been useful for the early church, but of course, it never came, so I guess they gave up on it, and went with the more nonsensical explanations. Finish with instant sight restoration.
Even if you aren’t a believer of any sort, why do you consider one of the defining bases of western civilization not worth study? This is, pretty much, the book that oversaw the rise, fall, fracture, and rise again of Europe for 1900 years.
If Machiavelli’s The Prince had been a venerated document for 1900 years, wouldn’t you wish to know more about it than just reading it like it was a fantasy novel?
Do you look at Shakespeare and go “meh, it’s just a bunch of plays.” despite him contributing a plethora of words, phrases, and memes to the English language? Why did his contributions take hold? Was it part of a greater awakening of the general populace to the pleasures of social consumption? Or was it just his hidden dirtiness in the plays that made it so popular?
As long as we’re reading the Bible, check out Proverbs 18:2
If all you ever give it is a superficial, dismissive reading, you’ll never know whether it’s worth more than that.
I actually laughed out loud at this.
Comedy gold!
Well it depends what you mean by sophisticated.
Is it a double blind, placebo controlled trial that ferrets out the usefulness of a drug? No.
Is it one of the more intricate plays of Shakespeare with highly formatted meter and intricate themes? Not really, but you’re getting closer.
Is it a collection of ancient stories, myths, songs and prophecy written over a huge swath of time that has had a lasting and profound impact on history subsequent to it’s writing? Are many of the real writers and original documents still unknown, or in question? Is it a document still held up as relevant today by many (misinformed) politicians and persons? Yes, obviously.
And it’s that last bit of stuff that does require some sophistication to understand and deal with. Everything from proper literary and form criticism to an understanding of human psychology and biases is required to unwind the knot.
You are well within your rights as a rational human being to approach the bible at only the surface level, and dismiss it out of hand… but there’s no denying that it is a sophisticated historical document, and that actually understanding the men who wrote it, and their original intent, is something both interesting and useful (and which will always be up for debate).
Also, if you want to be taken seriously talking to more sophisticated Christians about the bible, and have them consider your opinions instead of dismiss them, then it helps to have more than a passing familiarity with the text they are always referencing 
If your intent is persuasion, and force of argument, then you’d be serving yourself well to spend a bit of time on the scholarship.
In other words, a great many errors and instances of ignorance on your part have been pointed. As I recall, you specifically invited us to do so. Now you’re not going to acknowledge those or admit that you made so many mistakes.
Because the Bible is worthy of being analyzed that way.
I’ve read the Bible, many times, without anyone looking over my shoulder and my results do not match what you claim. In your first post, you said that you had not read the Bible. How do you know what happens when one reads the Bible if you haven’t read it, pray tell?
Yup, when I say ‘scholarly material’, I mean material that’s scholarly. You apparently mean something entirely different. Perhaps you should tell us what that is.
About time for some good ole’ anti-intellectualism.
Discuss away. I’ll give you a word of advice: you probably want to find sources better than anonymous websites if you want to debate here. Discussion on this board generally assumes that personal websites are not reliable and asks for sources with some actual credibility. Those who have nothing to back up their claims tend to be roundly mocked, as you’ve already learned.
You are referring, I presume, to the work of Josephus: Antiquities. It’s a history of the Jews written in the late first century. Josephus referred to Jesus twice, first a paragraph in book 18, ch. 3, paragraph 3, and then a mention of James the brother of Jesus in book 20, ch. 9, section 1. There is dispute about the first passage, but no scholar has ever made a serious case against the authenticity of the second.
Concerning the first, while almost everyone acknowledges that present-day manuscripts must contain some words added by Christian scribes that weren’t in the original, a large majority of scholars believe that Josephus did write an original paragraph concerning the life and death of Jesus and the Christian community. (Cite)
The Roman historian Tacitus also briefly mentioned Jesus in his Annals. There again, there’s no serious argument against the authenticity of the passage.