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So sorry for diging up an old thread but i had to respond to this post.
| quote: | Originally posted by montie
oh and one more thing tho.
if Jesus never did exist, who started Christianity?
It certainly wasn't the Romans who adopted it about 200 years after its conception.
Was it the apostles and they just made up this Jesus guy to get things going?
Christianity got here somehow, someone had to start it.
Whether Jesus was actually the son of god or some crazy bloke who thought he was or some kind man who believed he had a mission to spread the word of peace and forgiveness or some crazy cult type leader, Jesus is the most logical person to have started the religon.
If Jesus didn't I'd like to hear some very strong arguements for who did. |
Shocking as it may be to most Christians, Jesus wasn't the founder of Christianity, and the Apostle Paul was. Jesus was a Jew, taught a sect of Judaism. Paul preached salvation by faith while Jesus preached salvation by works.
In the Torah, God says that one who is "hanged upon a tree" – crucified – is "accursed" (Deut. 21:23). Paul side-stepped this by saying that Jesus became accursed in order to take on the sins of man (Gal. 3:13); in so doing, however, Paul set aside the very Law of God.
Jesus preached ethics and personal conduct, not "faith alone." Paul came along about 3-5 years later, came up with this savior-god original sin business. Paul's writings make up most of the New Testament because Constantine/others would adapt his ideas as compatible with their attempt to bind together a crumbling Roman Empire.The Book of Revelation, written by John of Patmos is a failed first century prophesy.There were arguments by the church fathers to exclude it; they decided include it in the end. Constantine used Christianity for his own reasons, convened Nicaea around 325 to get a more uniform version he and the Church could control. Pagans were forced to convert or were murdered while Jews who made up 10% of the Empire were stripped of their rights, murdered, etc.They altered Scripture, burned, and selected what they wanted to produce what became the Bible. Paul's originality lies in his conception of the death of Jesus as saving mankind from sin. Instead of seeing Jesus as a messiah of the Jewish type human saviour from political bondage he saw him as a salvation-deity whose atoning death by violence was necessary to release his devotees for immortal life
What the Roman empire needed was a way for Gentiles to worship one god without the accompanying baggage of repugnant teaching. Paul was the one who made the message palatable – through a liberating theology of God's son, Jesus Christ.
The UnHoly Origins of the Bible
Christians believe the Bible is a direct communication from God to man. But the Bible is strictly a man-made collection of mythology. The Bible was not handed to mankind by God, nor was it dictated to human stenographers by God. It has nothing to do with God. In actuality, the Bible was VOTED to be the word of God by a group of men during the 4th century. The Roman Emperor Constantine the Great (274-337 CE), who was the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity, needed a single canon to be agreed upon by the Christian leaders to help him unify the remains of the Roman Empire. Until this time the various Christian leaders could not decide which books would be considered "holy" and thus "the word of God" and which ones would be excluded and not considered the word of God. Constantine used what motivates many to action - MONEY! He offered the various Church leaders money to agree upon a single canon that would be used by all Christians as the word of God. The Church leaders gathered together at the Council of Nicaea and voted the "word of God" into existence. The final version of the Christian Bible was not voted on at the Council of Nicaea, per se. The Church leaders didn't finish editing the "holy" scriptures until the Council of Trent when the Catholic church pronounced the Canon closed. The Nicene Creed was adopted forming the basis of the orthodox concept of the Holy Trinity. The New Testament was then put down with full reaffirmation of the Nicene Creed. However, it seems the real approving editor of the Bible was not God but Constantine! Therefore, one can easily argue that the first Christian Bible was commissioned, paid for, inspected and approved by a pagan emperor for church use. Voted the books that now compose what is called the New Testament to be the Word of God. This was done by yeas and nays.
There is a VERY commen trait of most people who "claim" to be Christian and that is they have never read the Bible.
Christians contention is every event is the direct work of God and there is no element of chance. Anything that disagrees with their version of Scripture is wrong, regardless of the proof. If an airplane crashes, it was the will of God to punish sin. A hurricane hits Florida, it's the work of God punishing sin etc. Though their distorted view of the Biblical Book of Revelation, they see God's punishment for sin in every job loss, school shooting, or natural disaster. All we have to do is follow whatever gospel they preach and the world will be great.
P.S. According to doctrine, ALLLLLLLLL Christians are born sinners and die sinners...makes you wonder what the point of Jesus was in the first place. If he was sacrificied for the so-called original sin of Adam for all mankind then it seems his mission was a failure.
Rom. 5:12, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned"
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. The only things I changed around were the dates and locations.
...you should not be debating this subject if you are not aware of the facts i posted...try reading the Bible...like i said the majority of proponents of the Bible have never actually read it..
