|
What happens when you die ? (pg. 11)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| Izzy |
| ok maybe i made a bad point by taken a commandment as a metaphore, but i just meant that if we start to take stuff that are literaly written in the bible (ie earth was created in seven days) and start changing around the meanings, where do you draw the line? stuff like opinions on homosexuality, most of which come from different quotes out of certian stories, if they are left up to personaly interpratiation how can they be taken as absolute and universal? |
|
|
| drewfactor |
| quote: | Originally posted by Izzy
ok maybe i made a bad point by taken a commandment as a metaphore, but i just meant that if we start to take stuff that are literaly written in the bible (ie earth was created in seven days) and start changing around the meanings, where do you draw the line? stuff like opinions on homosexuality, most of which come from different quotes out of certian stories, if they are left up to personaly interpratiation how can they be taken as absolute and universal? |
I agree with what you are saying here. By starting to take some of the bible as metaphore then you create a slippery slope and where do you stop? Next thing you have is a vague meaningless text ie the bible, koran, torah etc...that no longer provides true authority. If you are a religious person then you need to take the text as religious authority. Hence I am not particularily religious!:)
It's like you can either be truly religious or part of some vague wishy washy religion and if so why bother? Just come up have your own beliefs.
I have no idea what happens when I die. I like to believe in a God/Higher being/Higher force. It should get sorted out, we all die, so I don't worry. |
|
|
| davinox |
| "You" weren't anywhere before you lived, so why do we "go" somewhere after we live? |
|
|
| Mental Exodus |
| How do u know that DAVI? Have u ever heard of subconcious reincarnation ? |
|
|
| Stassi |
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/21/s...21CND-JESU.html
this link belongs here for all the arguing about jesus existing or not.
not that i really care. My views on religion are mixes and therefore i take the scientific approach to life after death.
There is none.
The end. |
|
|
| Neo nEro |
| could you paste the article in a post because i don't feel like signing up to see it. thanks |
|
|
| DJ Freestyle |
| quote: | Originally posted by Neo nEro
could you paste the article in a post because i don't feel like signing up to see it. thanks |
Word... Anyways I don't know if I belive in religion & such... But death is my #1 fear... :eek: |
|
|
| Stassi |
| quote: | Originally posted by Stassi
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/21/s...21CND-JESU.html
this link belongs here for all the arguing about jesus existing or not.
not that i really care. My views on religion are mixes and therefore i take the scientific approach to life after death.
There is none.
The end. |
An inscription in stone, found in or near Jerusalem and written in a language and script of 2,000 years ago, bears the words "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus."
This could well be the earliest artifact ever found relating to the existence of Jesus, a French scholar has concluded in an analysis of the inscription being published this week in the magazine Biblical Archaeology Review.
If the inscription is authentic and indeed refers to Jesus of Nazareth, it would be the earliest known documentation of Jesus outside the Bible. The magazine, which announced the find yesterday, is promoting it as "the first-ever archaeological discovery to corroborate biblical references to Jesus."
Other scholars are reacting with caution, calling the find important and tantalizing but saying it will probably be impossible to confirm a definite link between the inscription and any of the central figures in the founding of Christianity.
Fraud cannot be ruled out, they said, though the cursive style of the script and a microscopic examination of the etched surface seemed to diminish suspicions. An investigation by the Geological Survey of Israel found no evidence of modern pigments, scratches by modern cutting tools or other signs of tampering.
Radiocarbon dating was impossible because no organic material was found with the inscription. But the words were carved on a 20-inch-long limestone burial box, similar to ones the Jews used only in the first centuries B.C. and A.D. More specifically, the scholar said, the style of the script and the forms of certain words placed the date of the inscription to the last decades before the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.
Biblical scholars said in interviews that the circumstantial evidence supporting a link to Jesus was possibly strong, but circumstantial nonetheless.
Although James (Jacob or Ya'akov), Joseph (Yosef) and Jesus (Yeshua) were common names of that time and place, several scholars noted, it would have been highly unusual to have them appear in the combination and kinship order found in the inscription. The words, in Aramaic, "Ya'akov bar Yosef akhui diYeshua," were carved on a burial box, known as an ossuary, which presumably once held the bones of a man named James who died in the first century A.D.
Several times the New Testament mentions that Jesus had a brother named James, who became leader of the nascent Christian community in Jerusalem after the crucifixion. And the first-century Jewish historian Josephus recorded that James was executed by stoning around A.D. 63.
The James whose name is on the stone could have been one of many Jameses. But the rest of the inscription significantly narrows the possibilities. First, in the common practice, his father is identified, in this case as a Joseph.
Rarely, though, would a brother of the deceased have been added to the inscription, unless the brother was prominent. James the apostle might have wanted to proclaim one last time his kinship with Jesus.
Dr. André Lemaire, a researcher at the Sorbonne in Paris and a respected specialist on inscriptions of the biblical period, calculated the statistical probability of the three names' occurring in such a combination as extremely slim. Probably over two generations in first-century Jerusalem, no more than 20 people could have been called "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus," and few of them might have been buried in inscribed ossuaries. Other calculations yield an even lower probability.
"It seems very probable that this is the ossuary of the James in the New Testament," Dr. Lemaire wrote in the magazine article. "If so, this would also mean that we have here the first epigraphic mention — from about A.D. 63 — of Jesus of Nazareth."
But elsewhere in his article, he acknowledged that "nothing in this ossuary inscription clearly confirms the identification" of this James as the one known in Christian tradition.
Christians have three different interpretations regarding the kinship of James to Jesus, Dr. Lemaire noted.
Protestants generally read the New Testament to mean that James was the son of Joseph and Mary; in this case, Mary presumably gave birth to Jesus as a virgin and then had James and other children. A second interpretation, dominant in the Eastern Orthodox Church, regards James as a son of Joseph by a previous marriage. Roman Catholics tend to regard the word "brother" to mean any close relative; perhaps James was a cousin, the son of Joseph's brother, which would accord with teachings of Mary's "perpetual virginity."
Before this, Biblical Archaeology Review reported, the earliest mention of Jesus was in a piece of papyrus containing a fragment of the Gospel by John, written in Greek in about A.D. 125. Most of the existing early texts for the New Testament date from 300 or more years after the time of Jesus. The earliest Gospel to be written, by Mark, is thought to have been composed around the year 70.
Only a few other ancient artifacts mention New Testament figures. In 1990, the ossuary of Caiaphas, the high priest who turned Jesus over to the Romans, was uncovered. Even earlier, archaeologists discovered an inscription on a monument that bears the name of Pontius Pilate.
Like other biblical scholars, Dr. James C. VanderKam of the University of Notre Dame praised Dr. Lemaire as an authoritative epigrapher, or specialist in ancient inscriptions, whose research is thorough and evaluations judicious.
"Since the research comes from André Lemaire, I take it very seriously," Dr. VanderKam said. "If it is authentic, and it looks like it is, this is helpful nonbiblical confirmation of the existence of this man James."
Dr. Eric M. Meyers, an archaeologist and director of the graduate program in religion at Duke University, said the rarity of this configuration of names occurring, especially the inclusion of a brother's name, "lends a sense of credibility to the claim."
But Dr. Meyers questioned whether the discovery, if it does refer to Jesus Christ, will "tell us anything we didn't already know." He and other scholars agreed that Jesus as a historical figure has long been well established.
Dr. Joseph Fitzmyer , professor emeritus of New Testament studies at Catholic University in Washington, hailed it as a significant discovery if it does indeed refer to Jesus of Nazareth. "That would be a new extrabiblical attestation of his existence, and there are so few extrabiblical things that do," he said.
Still, Dr. Fitzmyer said he had serious doubts that the third name on the inscription actually referred to Jesus of Nazareth.
"My reaction is, it's possible, but I hesitate to say probable," he said. "I don't see how anybody can say any more."
How the ossuary was discovered is part of the problem, scholars said. It somehow fell into the hands of looters, who then turned a profit selling it on the antiquities market. Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review, said the ossuary was now owned by an unidentified collector in Jerusalem.
Because the ossuary did not come from a controlled excavation, where archaeologists plot every detail and possible clue to a discovery's context, scholars said they despaired of ever knowing the inscription's meaning beyond doubt.
"This could be something genuinely important, but we can never know for certain," said Dr. P. Kyle McCarter Jr., a professor of biblical and Near Eastern studies at Johns Hopkins University. "Not knowing the context of where the ossuary was found compromises anything we might say, and so doubts are going to persist."
A few scholars criticized the magazine for publishing an article based on research involving looted goods, arguing that this encouraged unethical practices in the antiquities market. The Discovery Channel announced it planned a television documentary next spring on the scientific testing of the so-called James ossuary.
Ossuaries were used in the two-burial practice that was standard among Jews in the first century. When a person died, the body was first laid out in a burial cave for about a year. After the flesh decayed, the bones were then gathered and placed in a limestone box, an ossuary. The one in question was unadorned, except for the inscription of 20 Aramaic letters etched on one side.
In the article, Dr. Lemaire concedes that no one knows whether Christians at the time continued the Jewish two-burial custom. He said the shapes of three of the letters in the script indicated that the burial occurred shortly before the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70.
In the immediately preceding years, Dr. Meyers of Duke said, it was possible that the nascent Christian community in Jerusalem might still have been following certain traditional Jewish practices because "they were just beginning to articulate the differences between Christianity and Judaism." |
|
|
| davinox |
| quote: | Originally posted by Mental Exodus
How do u know that DAVI? Have u ever heard of subconcious reincarnation ? |
i didnt make a statement, i asked a question. but a statement did spring forth from my question, and thats because my question made you realize the truth. |
|
|
| DrUg_Tit0 |
First, if Jesus actually existed, that doesn't prove anything. We are sure that Muhammed existed, and that doesn't mean the Kuran is right.
Second, from what I've heard (I may be wrong here, I heard it only once on a tv documentary) Mary wasn't a virgin at all. Instead, she was a young woman, and when bible was first translated into greek, the word for young woman got confused with the word virgin, and from then on later she's a virgin. Besides, it's highly improbable that Joseph didn't have sex with Mary at all, and for no obvious reason.
Or maybe Mary was screwing around and got herself pregnant and Joseph was very gullable, so she sold him the story about divine pregnancy and he actually fell for it.:D |
|
|
| Stassi |
| quote: | Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0
First, if Jesus actually existed, that doesn't prove anything. We are sure that Muhammed existed, and that doesn't mean the Kuran is right.
Second, from what I've heard (I may be wrong here, I heard it only once on a tv documentary) Mary wasn't a virgin at all. Instead, she was a young woman, and when bible was first translated into greek, the word for young woman got confused with the word virgin, and from then on later she's a virgin. Besides, it's highly improbable that Joseph didn't have sex with Mary at all, and for no obvious reason.
Or maybe Mary was screwing around and got herself pregnant and Joseph was very gullable, so she sold him the story about divine pregnancy and he actually fell for it.:D |
This is true, but I felt like throwing a curveball in the thread. |
|
|
| sherman |
ok i just read this whole thread and i think im only going to start from the last two pages, or this could take days
| quote: | | you shouldn't take literally everything that's written in the bible, that Adam and Eve story and kinda most bible's passages are just methafors so that the people at the time would understand it |
i don't think that it's so much a metaphor, but just that the bible was written as almost a guidebook for life(i know, that was a bad metaphor) and it was written so openly so that people could apply it to their daily lives, and be like o, i see how that applies to me, if only they read it that way. if you want to reply to that, go open the bible to just about any page, really think about your life, and see if any of what you are reading could help you or apply in any way, then get back to me
| quote: | | Or maybe Mary was screwing around and got herself pregnant and Joseph was very gullable, so she sold him the story about divine pregnancy |
....and then decided to tell her son about it, who managed just managed to "make up" a religion, and get so many people to believe him that it has lasted for almost 2,000 years?
i'm sorry if i sound condescending, or snobby, or holier than thou, but it just bugs the crap out of me when people try to make points about something they really haven't studied enough to understand well enough to actually hold up in a discussion. |
|
|
|
|
