Meeting The Author Of The Bible As A Child ...

[joko]

that age old question - what would you do if you went back in time and met Hitler as a child ...


i wonder what people would do if they met the person/people who invented Christianity and wrote the bible etc - or any god for that matter - or who wrote the koran etc too, before they did it ...

would you kill them? try to talk them out of it? try to change what they write?


i wonder if they could have had any ideas of the horrors it would cause?

i wonder if they totally believed it was good thing and would make the world a better place?

[Buenchico]

It might be hard to pin down anyone who actually 'invented' Christianity, or many other faiths. The three Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) are founded upon the same early texts but they, in turn, were based upon folk legends common to many other religions as well. No one person (or group of people) really started the major religions.

Even if you look at the New Testament alone, it's still hard to identify individuals who can be 'credited with' (or 'accused of', depending upon your view) founding Christianity. All of the texts were written at least 200 years after the death of Jesus and, again, founded largely upon legends (many of which are common to many other religions).

You wrote
>>>i wonder if they totally believed it was good thing and would make the world a better place?

The problem with answering that is that the words 'good' and 'better' are subjective. There are plenty of modern day believers (across different faiths), for example, who believe that suppressing homosexuality is a good thing and that, by doing so, they make the world a better place. It's likely that anyone who believes in a particular religion genuinely believes that the world would be a better place if everyone followed their faith, but it doesn't make them right!

Chris

[Clanad]

Seems to me that you're equating what a person does with information to what that information actually provides.

Kinda like banking... the basic idea of placing your money in trust with someone else who works at returning you a profit on your trust (as well as making themaselves money) is a good idea. However, we all know that it's fraught with whirlpools, no? The "idea" isn't at fault, only the practitioners. Same applies to religious matters.

Firstly, it wasn't one person who "wrote" the Bible. The accepted or canonical version we are all familiar with had about 40 authors (some Books are anonymous) over a period of nearly 3,500 years... so you'd be hard pressed to visit each to affect them. Additionally, the written form, in many cases, are based on oral traditions... but you'd be negligent to discount the value of those oral foundations without having an understanding of how it works and has worked for millennium, in many different cultures.

Secondly, much of the Bible, especially the Old Covenant, consists of historical and poetical content that several branches of science have confirmed as valid, especially in the area of archaeology.

The above description of a good "idea" and it's true author vs. those that came afterwards as practioners is especailly valid (in my humble opinion) when Jesus the Christ (Yeshua) is considered. With what could one truly have a fault? His Sermon on the Mount is the epitome of how one should lead their lives in relation to ones neighbors... but rarely practised. But that lack of devotion to practising the "idea" doesn't negate the "idea" itself.

So, it seems to me that you most likely have a set of principles by which you conduct your life, no? But, no matter their source, do you live them as you would like to do or do you find yourself saying "Ooops... really screwed that up"?

Finally, I see a lot of camparisons offered between Judaisim/Christianity of one hand and Islam on the other with the basis for such comparisons being only that they are both "Abrahamic" in origin. But that's over simplified and such comparisons, when investigated, hold about as much water as my grandfathers wooden pump bucket... But that's all another thread, I'm sure.

Thanks for the question though!

[Clanad]

Apologies, Chris, your tome wasn't there when I clicked "Submit"... I've "doubled down" on some of your ideas, and my post was referencing the OP only, not yours...

[boxtops]

Mohammed was a simple guy going about his business before he was "called" to write down the Koran - it's hardly his fault if a handful of followers of his faith turned terrorist. If you killed Mohammed, someone else would have received the message and started it all off in 600 AD. Surely.

[jim360]

Also why this strange idea that religion is the root of all evil? Communism, etc., also has had a role in some horrible atrocities. It seems to be part of the Human condition to hate despise and do evil to anyone who is different. Tribal instinct is the problem I think, rather than religion that is merely a facet of it.

For all that I think they were wrong, it looks to me like the writers of the New Testament were genuinely nice guys who wanted to make the world a better place. If that was corrupted later it's hardly their fault.

[joko]

thanks for the answers however i was being simplistic when i implied if was one person, as since we have no idea what really happened i didn't want to get into that - since its irrelevant to the actual question

the question is about, basically, what you would do if you found yourself right there at the 'birth' of organised religion - and you knew that you had the power to majorly alter and affect the planet as we know it today - what would you do?

[joko]

jim - i did not say religion was the root of all evil ...

[modeller]

But who and what would/could you alter ?
What/which/ Bible /Christianity/ Faith are we talking about ?
All have evolved, been changed, interpreted, translated thousands of times.
It is still happening today so where would you start ?

[jim360]

Well I suppose I was exaggerating a bit but even so it seems odd to go back to the origins of a religion. Instead perhaps we ought to focus on people who sign up to it and then twist it for their own ends. At the core most world religions tend to advocate decent and moral behaviour (although not always agreeing on what that is) and most religious people are similarly decent. I don't see that the world would be made a better place just be removing the major world religions, even if they are wrong. Better by far to find a way to combat the tribal instinct in general.

[joko]

modeller at the very very start.... and i mean any of them - it doesnt really matter

this is hypothetical question - obviously, so no need to pick it to bits - because its not actually going to happen.

i just wondered what people would do - in the same way people ask whether they could kill hitler as a baby... or whether they'd try to change him.

there is no need to get stuck in the minutiae of it...

[chakka35]

Clanad - all of the bible is anonymous with one exception: Paul (Saul of Tarsus) certainly wrote some of the epistles attributed to him.
Otherwise no author of anything from Genesis to Revelation can be identified.

Buenchico - 200 years is stretching it a bit. Paul's epistles (in which Jesus is first mentioned by anyone and where Christianity starts) were written between AD 55 and 60. The anonymous gospels were written in the last third of the 1st Century with maybe some overlap into the 2nd.

Because of all this anonymity and lack of evidence or eye-witnesses the Jesus story cannot be regarded as history.

[Clanad]

Chakka, we've been down this road before, haven't we?

I mentioned in a post months ago in replying to you about your position (to which you are certainly entitled) that all known copies of all the Gospels (synoptic or otherwise) have always had the author's name attached to the Scroll (as has been the cultural norm since the earliest example), yet none have ever been found with other than the recognized authors. Additionally, the late date placement you suggest doesn't hold water for a number of reasons; the main, in my opinion, there are no references to the destruction of Jerusalem, known to have occurred in AD 70. You never replied and I let it go at that.

I'm also reminded that you hold no brook with any of the "Church Father's" (those that sat under the tutelage of the Apostle's in the mid to late first century) but scads of Phd.'s do and have written libraries defending their positions of early (some 'very early') dates for the production and defense of the currently recognized authors.

Lastly, the copies that are seen today (numbering well over 20,000 (in part or whole) came from areas far flung from Jerusalem. Considering that they are all nearly exact copies and their vast geographical locations of discovery, I'd suggest that they originated from only a few copies of the original letters and books.

One more thing... you state, in reply to Chris, that "...Paul's epistles (in which Jesus is first mentioned by anyone and where Christianity starts)..." doesn't reflect the fact that Paul knew Peter and James very well and had a face to face "Come to Jesus" moment in Jerusalem... kind of a mini-conclave, where a very important disagreement relating to how new converts (especially Jewish ones) were to be treated. Peter and James afterword agreed with Paul (all set forth in The Acts of Apostles). Luke would have been well known to Peter and James and had there been spurious, unfounded writings produced by Luke, Peter and James would have certainly called him out on it in their writings. Peter was also close friends with Mark and would have disputed his authorship had it not been a fact

I've never quite understood (forgive my denseness) why you berate all of the earliest witnesses to the authenticity of the writings (Eusebius, Papias, et al )... One example is from Papias "...‘This also the presbyter said: Mark, having become the interpreter of Peter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, whatsoever he remembered of the things said or done by Christ. For he neither heard the Lord nor followed him, but afterward, as I said, he followed Peter, who adapted his teaching to the needs of his hearers, but with no intention of giving a connected account of the Lord’s discourses, so that Mark committed no error while he thus wrote some things as he remembered them. For he was careful of one thing, not to omit any of the things which he had heard, and not to state any of them falsely..." (Source: Black, C. Clifton, Mark Images of an Apostolic Interpreter, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2001, p.92-94).

"Historian Edwin Yamauchi calls "probably the most important reference to Jesus outside the New Testament. "Reporting on Emperor Nero's decision to blame the Christians for the fire that had destroyed Rome in A.D. 64, the Roman historian Tacitus wrote:

"Nero fastened the guilt . . . on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of . . . Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome..." (Source: Edwin Yamauchi, quoted in Lee Strobel, The Case for Christ (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1998).

Your turn...

[WaldoMcFroog]

Yet oddly, the period to which this "most important" reference to the persecution of Christians by Nero is during the same time that Paul is supposed to be freely preaching in Rome, and indeed the persecution of Christians by Nero is otherwise undocumented. It also seems unlikely that Tacitus would refer to Jesus as Christos, since he wouldn't have accepted that claim and unlikely that he wouldn't know Pilate was a prefect not a procurator.

One would have expected that Eusebius in his discussion of Christian persecution to have made reference to the earlier records of Tacitus were it a genuine claim, yet he does not do so. In fact, there are no references to this passage from Tacitus prior to the 15th century.

You're as credible on this stuff as you are on evolution, old chum.

[Peter Pedant]

erm I dont think the Bible was written by one person.

The Quran was tho'
(Mohd. just in case you reply well who ?)


and when Jesus said: Little Children, love one another ?
ddid he think to himself - oho that'll get them at each other's necks ?
no we know he didnt

and neither did he think aha I have now set up the Summer of Luurve for two thousand years hence.....

but then you really knew that, didnt you ?

[Peter Pedant]

.

I thought the earliest reference was Pliny. in a letter asking what to do with the Christians - who went to their deaths singing hymns

These references could be interpolations - that is put in at a later time - and one can only prove that by finding an earlier version without the addition. I thought this had been done with the reference in Josephus.


The problem with Gospels being 'anonymous' OK suppose Mark wasnt written by Mark about whom we know diddly squat by the way - clearly it was written by someone and not a committee - so suppose we say it is by 'Wayne'. But we know diddly squat about 'Wayne' as well - so really why bother to change his name ?

and clearly whoever wrote John's gospel also wrote John's letters. so why dont we just call him 'John' ?

[Clanad]

Not so fast yourself Wooly... fact is Paul (nee Saul of Tarsaus) was a Roman citizen, which is a major part of why he was in Rome to begin with, and as such would have enjoyed the protection of that cloak... but as an accused one.

While he awaits his trial, he does preach, but during a period prior to Nero's most aggressive hostility. The fire in Rome (to which Nero himself attributes its cause to the Christians) occurred in AD64. Paul probably arrived for his trial as early as the spring of that year... but, it's obvious that there were already a number of Christians in Rome since Nero used them as a scapegoat. Fact is, the Christians had been there quite a while. Paul is thought to have been executed in 68AD... a few months before Nero commited suicide.

Strange that you should give such a late date for Tacitus' Annals. A manuscript (MS) of his Annals resides in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana[i in Florence, Italy dated to around 800AD. Tacitus' work is well attested by scholars. Strange you wouldn't know that.

One source (yes I do attribute [i]my] ) sources states "... Tertullian referred to persecution of Christians as institutum Neronianum, an institution of Nero..." and adds "...Domitian is recorded as having executed members of his own family on charges of atheism and Jewish manners, who are thus generally assumed to have been Christians..." (Source: "Nero." Encyclopædia Britannica Premium Service. 2005). Numerous others reference the persecutions that extended, off and on, for over 150 years.

You continue: "...It also seems unlikely that Tacitus would refer to Jesus as Christos, since he wouldn't have accepted that claim and unlikely that he wouldn't know Pilate was a prefect not a procurator..." yet he (Tacitus) did exactly that according to his well respected Annales[i (One correction... he used the title [i]Christus]... not Christos... additionally, Tacitus was an historian and used the commonly accepted title for Pilate... he's relating factual history, not his own beliefs.
Not much blame there, title wise, since Pilate's actual title of Prefect of Judaea wasn't known until the discovery of the 'Pilate Stone' in 1961.

Where's that long awaited CV?

[chakka35]

Clanad - I am not interested in the opinion of scholars or others who have no basis in history for anything they say. I prefer facts, which are:

1.There is no mention of Jesus at all during those times when he is supposed to have lived. Silence not only from those who are supposed to have known him him but also in Jewish and Roman records of the time. Historians writing at the time (as distinct from Josephus, Suetonius,Tacitus and others whom Christians love to quote but who were not there and were writing many decades later) such as Philo and Justus never mention him even though they were writing profusely about Palestine and the Jewish religion. The latter lived in Capernaum which was supposed to be a favourite haunt of Jesus; that he should never have heard of Jesus when they are supposed to have been there at the same time is preposterous.

2.This blank silence is not broken until AD55 when Paul starts writing his epistles and mentions Jesus for the first time. But he offers no evidence of Jesus' existence (how can he?) nor any ear- or eye-witness accounts that we can study. He had not met Jesus himself.

3. That is enough to establish that there is nothing to support the Jesus concept except stories. No-one can identify the four gospel writers despite the Church's efforts to do so. (I will list those efforts if you like.) They were given their present names late in the 2nd Century and they could have been Tom, Dick, Harry and George for all that it matters.

4. Subsequent writings have no more to go on than that, so there is nothing that their authors can know that we don't. If you believe the Jesus story then you must also believe the stories about Zeus, Venus, Apollo and the rest.

5. Finally, I have not touched upn the fact that the Jesus story was not new; all the main ingredients in it had appeared in other god-man stories years before. Again, I will eleborate if you like.

Clanad, please don't quote others at me unless you can show that they have special knowledge that we don't have. Anecdotes are not good enough to establish miracles. Please stick to facts.

[Clanad]

"... I am not interested in the opinion of scholars or others who have no basis in history for anything they say..." is astounding! To be in your shoes would require that even those opinions to which you do adhere be entirely suspect because in most cases the authors to which you turn for knowledge in your view of life are... well... scholars of one stripe or another. (Unless, of course, you performed the investigations yourself.)

It's probably best to honor your request to "... don't quote others at me unless you can show that they have special knowledge..." since we all know no scholar or researcher has 'special' knowledge...

[joko]

oh dear.
i see people haven't really got into the spirit of my question at all ...

it was just a simplified, hypothetical question, regarding how you'd feel if you had the option to change the world - to potentially rid the world of religion - any/all of them - what you would do or say, how you'd feel about it...
it was not meant to spark some big long winded historical debate.

instead people have chosen to split hairs and analyse the ins an outs of Jesus's life and who wrote what, in minute detail, etc etc

oh well... carry on, don't mind me... lol