For your copious free time
Offline Several times I have noted Jesus is little more than a hood ornament for the religion of Christianity. I mean this from several aspects the form of the religion, the organization and the teachings themselves. So I read this one a couple days ago.
Jesus Interrupted by Bart D. Ehrman
A current atheist he was a believer and not only went to some bible college but in fact taught at one -- maybe still does, I don't remember he was clear on that.
Surprised I was to find my simple comparison of reading the New Testament with the practice leading me to observe the absense of any correspondance between the gospel words and the teachings is nothing new. OK, I don't really think I make all that many new observations. What I did learn was this exact thing has been taught to all wannabe priests and ministers of all Christians sects for at least a half century and if you leave out the Catholics almost a full century.
I don't think I make all that many new observations but gee, do I have to be this far behind the curve?
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
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Well, I just found Doctor Ehrman a couple of months ago myself. For the record, he identifies as agnostic and yes, he is currently employed as the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
From here, you may want to check both “Lost Scriptures” and “Lost Christianities”. Both are excelent reading and continue the main ideas from Jesus Intterupted. Btw: Did you know that Jesus might have been gay? OK, the actual evidence on that is slight and controversial but even so, it seems that there was an early version of Mark that had him spending the night alone with a young man who was naked except for a linen cloth, whom he instructed about god. Sounds pretty gay to me.
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This reconfirms the fact that the preachers know they are lying. No matter what a preacher says, you can look him in the eye and confidently say he knows he is lying.
http://www.giwersworld.org/mgiwer/youngman.html
A Certain Young Man
by
Matt Giwer (c) 1995 [3/14]
But seriously I have no idea what that detail is supposed to mean. I don't think for a moment whomever wrote it had any thing but fifth hand stories circulating decades later to work from. Nor do I think much of anything in the gospel stories has any connection with anything that might have happened and there is good reason to question all of it. This particular story has all the witnesses asleep when it happens. Sort of like the recouting of the dialog between Jesus and Pilate while they were alone. There is so much identifiable nonsense in the gospels that there is no reason to suspect what little is left after the nonsense has any credibility.
The idea of a homosexual incident being a common story does not make much sense either. Adopting the Septuagint as part of the canon was at most an afterthought for completeness. It does not indicate the earlier versions of Christianity were inately jewish in some respect. The few that were overtly jewish were not large enough to avoid being eliminated as heresies. (Today's Jews for Jesus is just a revival of the Ebionites, no?) I know of nothing suggesting the real attitude of the Jerusalem Yahweh priests towards homosexuality surviving from those times. Not lying with a man as with a woman can be seen as a prohibition against face to face permiting doggy style for all we know.
Which all leads up to the ancient world had a much different attitude towards it and in fact it varied over the centuries as was different from ours as little as a century ago.
What stands out is that it is recounted in the wrong context. Have it happen as part of the Cana wedding water into wine trick story make it guests instead of soldiers. Add it to one of the rich men stories. It does not fit as a sexual encounter on the highest of holy days, straight or gay.
1) I don't give any credibility to anything in the gospels as real events so whatever this is about I would not take it seriously.
2) Why the anecdote is in there at all is as much as mystery as to where it is in the story.
Which means I have no idea.
Jews stole the land. The owners want it back. That is all anyone needs to know about Israel. That is all there is to know about Israel.
www.ussliberty.org
www.giwersworld.org/made-in-alexandria/index.html
www.giwersworld.org/00_files/zion-hit-points.phtml