Comparing religions

[marct]

Hi Sarajevo,

BTW, if you find the real one, original, the one that Vatican rejected since it was against Church centralize power and financial empire they created, tell me. That one I will read.

Great posts - thanks. There actually is no "original bible, certainly not in the sense of the Qu'ran being "original". The earliest of he surviving gospels is the Gospel of Thomas, written probably about 10-15 years after Jesus death. There is a reconstructed "text", called the Q text, that is an attempt to reconstruct the original sayings upon which the Gospels were based.

You're actually wrong about how the current versions (there are two main versions and several minor variants) of the Bible came into existence. It wasn't with the church centralizing power, it was with the Emperor Constantine forcing a new state religion into existence by combining various strands of Christianity and Mithraism in the early 4th century. The Roman Church only started to really grab centralized power after the dissolution of the Western Empire in the 5th century and the creation of the fake Will of Constantine.

If you want to read some of the excluded books, most have been published in one form or another. The earliest is the Gospel of Thomas, while most of the rest are in the Nag Hamadi Library (a few may also be in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that is highly questionable).

[skiguy]

Don't know all that much about "original" OT translations, but Paul's letters are considered by many of the original church to be the "first" NT. (he wrote them long before the Catholic empire started and before churches became, to their detriment, large organizations)

[marct]

HiSkiguy,

Don't know all that much about "original" OT translations, but Paul's letters are considered by many of the original church to be the "first" NT. (he wrote them long before the Catholic empire started and before churches became, to their detriment, large organizations)

It depends on which of Paul's letters you are considering. Galatians was probably written around 52 or so, and most scholars would agree that at least 3, and maybe 5, of Paul's letters weren't written by him. It's also important to note that Jesus didn't write anything, so everything in the NT was written after his death. The general division is into Gospels, Letters and Other, crossed by which "Church" or lineage wrote them (e.g. Paul's stuff, which also includes the Gospel of John and the three Johanine Letters, the Lukan series, etc.).

As far as the "original" church is concerned, and by that I mean the Church in Jerusalem pre-Jewish Revolt, Paul was an interloper and upstart who had no "right" to preach what he did. Nowadays, many people do consider Paul to be a founder of the Church, but that certainly wasn't the attitude of most Christians in the first couple of centuries.

[skiguy]

I have to disagree, Marc. Most of the early (pre AD 60) churches, such as those in Ephesus, Thessalonica etc, did accept Paul as one of the messengers of the gospel. If there was any argument about Paul's authority, it was over whether or not the gospel was meant for the Gentiles as well as the Jews.
Yes, the Gospels (and the rest of the NT) were written after Jesus's death, but the gospel writers were all eye witnesses of His ministry. Speculation here, it wouldn't surpirse me if Luke (the Dr.) kept a journal, seeing how specific he was in his writing.

[marct]

I have to disagree, Marc. Most of the early (pre AD 60) churches, such as those in Ephesus, Thessalonica etc, did accept Paul as one of the messengers of the gospel. If there was any argument about Paul's authority, it was over whether or not the gospel was meant for the Gentiles as well as the Jews.

It's certainly open to debate. Most of Paul's churches weren't accepted by the Church in Jerusalem for exactly the reason you listed. I wouldn't call them "original" partly for that reason, and partly because Paul wasn't a first hand witness. I tend to think of them as a set of "first round expansion teams" to use a hockey analogy .

Yes, the Gospels (and the rest of the NT) were written after Jesus's death, but the gospel writers were all eye witnesses of His ministry. Speculation here, it wouldn't surpirse me if Luke (the Dr.) kept a journal, seeing how specific he was in his writing.

There is some really serious question about the Gospel of John beingn written by an eye witness. Most of the non-conservative theologians I know or have read tend to place it fairly late, say ~85-95, and generally conclude that it wasn't written by the disciple of that name. At least when I studied it, the general agreement was that the Johanine community derived from Paul's churches rather than from John. I'll agree with you on the synoptics, however.

[skiguy]

Yes, definitely debatable...as is most everything in the Bible. (the authorship and dating of the NT probably being one of the bigger debates)
I'll just leave it at this: there's a big difference between studying the bible (or any religious text) for scholarly purposes, and studying it because you believe it.

The original question was because I think there are a lot of moral similarities between the 2 religions, and those similarities can be used for peacekeeping. Just wondering if Sarajevo would agree.

[wm]

More to the point raised by Sarajevo is the divine nature of all the texts. The Gospel of John may have been written by Mary Magdalene's great grandson or some out-of-work wino sitting in the ruins of Jerusalem after the Bar Kochba revolt. I submit that the wielder of the writing instrument does not really matter. The important issue is whether the works are the revealed word of a supreme deity. This claim is differentially made for the Koran and for the elements of the Bible, including the Apocrypha and the so-called Gnostic gospels, among others. It is likewise made for the Book of Mormon and the Eleusian Mysteries, to list a very small sampling of a very long list of foundational religious texts. Can any of us refute these claims? The claims of faith are not usually subject to refutation using rational argumentation.

[Sarajevo071]

The original question was because I think there are a lot of moral similarities between the 2 religions, and those similarities can be used for peacekeeping. Just wondering if Sarajevo would agree.

And Sarajevo wonders why didn't you ask him that directly!?

To save you that hassle of talking to me (obviously you are not big fan of it) let me answer... Do I agree? Yes, I do. But how, when and under which circumstances?! That's something else.

[Sarajevo071]

Hi Sarajevo,
If you want to read some of the excluded books, most have been published in one form or another. The earliest is the Gospel of Thomas, while most of the rest are in the Nag Hamadi Library (a few may also be in the Dead Sea Scrolls, but that is highly questionable).

I did have in mind Dead Sea Scrolls but I forget they actual name (I thought they call them differently!?). They are highly controversial, right? Like Mary Magdalene's, Gnostic gospels (like someone mention them before) or even Juda's?

[marct]

I did have in mind Dead Sea Scrolls but I forget they actual name (I thought they call them differently!?). They are highly controversial, right?

There also sometimes called the Qumran Library and, yes, quite controversial. I've read most of them and, to me at least, they don't appear to be Christian (I'm not an expert, and I've only read them in translation). If you are more interested in the Christian (influenced) books, I would go for the Nag Hamadi Library.

If you are interested in the general topic of early Christian writing, and some of it is very good, you might want to track down Origen, Clement of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo Regis (way too prolific for my taste and I have his philosophy - still, very interesting in understanding the later development of Christianity).

[Sarajevo071]

THANK you marct on you responses and reading recommendations. You will keep be busy for some time.

[wm]

There If you are interested in the general topic of early Christian writing, and some of it is very good, you might want to track down Origen, Clement of Alexandria and Augustine of Hippo Regis (way too prolific for my taste and I have his philosophy - still, very interesting in understanding the later development of Christianity).

In the same vein regarding early Christian writing, I heartily suggest a long look through the contents of this website. Some big names to consider besides those provided by MarcT are Irenaeaus, Justin Martyr, Polycarp of Smyrna, Tertullian, and Jerome. IMO, the later (post 3rd C AD) writers are much less interesting in their broad content and much more interesting because of the minuteness of what they dispute. You might also try a read of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea's history of the early church.

[goesh]

we are starting to shake the Sephirothic tree here methinks

[marct]

we are starting to shake the Sephirothic tree here methinks

In which world ? Well, I spent a couple of years working with the QBL in a variety of its forms and, having done that, I can say that it is a pretty powerful collection of ritual sequences. What is fascinating to me at least is that the power of the technology is not dependent on the particularity of the symbol system used. Which leads to all sorts of things...