the (mainly) non-Christians thread.

[hamin_aus]

And now for something completely probable:

Half of New Testament forged, Bible scholar says

A frail man sits in chains inside a dank, cold prison cell. He has escaped death before but now realizes that his execution is drawing near.

“I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come,” the man –the Apostle Paul - says in the Bible's 2 Timothy. “I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”

The passage is one of the most dramatic scenes in the New Testament. Paul, the most prolific New Testament author, is saying goodbye from a Roman prison cell before being beheaded. His goodbye veers from loneliness to defiance and, finally, to joy.

There’s one just one problem - Paul didn’t write those words. In fact, virtually half the New Testament was written by impostors taking on the names of apostles like Paul. At least according to Bart D. Ehrman, a renowned biblical scholar, who makes the charges in his new book “Forged.”

“There were a lot of people in the ancient world who thought that lying could serve a greater good,” says Ehrman, an expert on ancient biblical manuscripts.In “Forged,” Ehrman claims that:

* At least 11 of the 27 New Testament books are forgeries.

* The New Testament books attributed to Jesus’ disciples could not have been written by them because they were illiterate.

* Many of the New Testament’s forgeries were manufactured by early Christian leaders trying to settle theological feuds.

Were Jesus’ disciples ‘illiterate peasants?'

Ehrman’s book, like many of his previous ones, is already generating backlash. Ben Witherington, a New Testament scholar, has written a lengthy online critique of “Forged.”

Witherington calls Ehrman’s book “Gullible Travels, for it reveals over and over again the willingness of people to believe even outrageous things.”

All of the New Testament books, with the exception of 2 Peter, can be traced back to a very small group of literate Christians, some of whom were eyewitnesses to the lives of Jesus and Paul, Witherington says.

“Forged” also underestimates the considerable role scribes played in transcribing documents during the earliest days of Christianity, Witherington says.

Even if Paul didn’t write the second book of Timothy, he would have dictated it to a scribe for posterity, he says.

“When you have a trusted colleague or co-worker who knows the mind of Paul, there was no problem in antiquity with that trusted co-worker hearing Paul’s last testimony in prison,” he says. “This is not forgery. This is the last will and testament of someone who is dying.”

Ehrman doesn’t confine his critique to Paul’s letters. He challenges the authenticity of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John. He says that none were written by Jesus' disciplies, citing two reasons.

He says none of the earliest gospels revealed the names of its authors, and that their current names were later added by scribes.

Ehrman also says that two of Jesus’ original disciples, John and Peter, could not have written the books attributed to them in the New Testament because they were illiterate.

“According to Acts 4:13, both Peter and his companion John, also a fisherman, were agrammatoi, a Greek word that literally means ‘unlettered,’ that is, ‘illiterate,’ ’’ he writes.

Will the real Paul stand up?

Ehrman reserves most of his scrutiny for the writings of Paul, which make up the bulk of the New Testament. He says that only about half of the New Testament letters attributed to Paul – 7 of 13 - were actually written by him.

Paul's remaining books are forgeries, Ehrman says. His proof: inconsistencies in the language, choice of words and blatant contradiction in doctrine.

For example, Ehrman says the book of Ephesians doesn’t conform to Paul’s distinctive Greek writing style. He says Paul wrote in short, pointed sentences while Ephesians is full of long Greek sentences (the opening sentence of thanksgiving in Ephesians unfurls a sentence that winds through 12 verses, he says).

“There’s nothing wrong with extremely long sentences in Greek; it just isn’t the way Paul wrote. It’s like Mark Twain and William Faulkner; they both wrote correctly, but you would never mistake the one for the other,” Ehrman writes.

The scholar also points to a famous passage in 1 Corinthians in which Paul is recorded as saying that women should be “silent” in churches and that “if they wish to learn anything, let them ask their own husbands at home.”

Only three chapters earlier, in the same book, Paul is urging women who pray and prophesy in church to cover their heads with veils, Ehrman says: “If they were allowed to speak in chapter 11, how could they be told not to speak in chapter 14?”

Why people forged

Forgers often did their work because they were trying to settle early church disputes, Ehrman says. The early church was embroiled in conflict - people argued over the treatment of women, leadership and relations between masters and slaves, he says.

“There was competition among different groups of Christians about what to believe and each of these groups wanted to have authority to back up their views,” he says. “If you were a nobody, you wouldn’t sign your own name to your treatise. You would sign Peter or John.”

So people claiming to be Peter and John - and all sorts of people who claimed to know Jesus - went into publishing overdrive. Ehrman estimates that there were about 100 forgeries created in the name of Jesus’ inner-circle during the first four centuries of the church.

Witherington concedes that fabrications and forgeries floated around the earliest Christian communities.

But he doesn’t accept the notion that Peter, for example, could not have been literate because he was a fisherman.

“Fisherman had to do business. Guess what? That involves writing, contracts and signed documents,” he said in an interview.

Witherington says people will gravitate toward Ehrman’s work because the media loves sensationalism.

“We live in a Jesus-haunted culture that’s biblically illiterate,” he says. “Almost anything can pass for historical information… A book liked ‘Forged’ can unsettle people who have no third or fourth opinions to draw upon.”

Ehrman, of course, has another point of view.

“Forged” will help people accept something that it took him a long time to accept, says the author, a former fundamentalist who is now an agnostic.

The New Testament wasn’t written by the finger of God, he says – it has human fingerprints all over its pages.

“I’m not saying people should throw it out or it’s not theologically fruitful,” Ehrman says. “I’m saying that by realizing it contains so many forgeries, it shows that it’s a very human book, down to the fact that some authors lied about who they were.”

TL;DR - some random Christian discovers what a bit of common sense and a reality would make glaringly obvious.

[StarPhoenix]

TL;DR - some random Christian discovers what a bit of common sense and a reality would make glaringly obvious.

You wouldn't be implying that most of the human race is devoid of common sense and delusional, would you?

[hamin_aus]

Yes, I would.

[StarPhoenix]

Care to back up your statement?

[hamin_aus]

The past 5000 years of recorded history is evidence enough.
Multitudes of imbeciles stagnating in their own effluent punctuated by short sharp leaps forward courtesy of people with the sense to cast off the blinkers of religion and see the world with analytical eyes.

[KALSTER]

So, apparently the day is finally upon us. The end of the world and the Apocalypse is this Saturday, sometime around sundown.

Riaan on OFM spoke to one of the guys promoting it and got him to promise Riaan his car if he is still around on Sunday.

I saw a guy during the day distributing warning pamphlets.

DETAILS

REPENT!

[Anakha56]

Finally! Its taken its sweet time getting here...







*edit*

Just want to comment that is close to the fugliest page I have ever seen, nearly tops Zana page...

[StarPhoenix]

So, apparently the day is finally upon us. The end of the world and the Apocalypse is this Saturday, sometime around sundown.

Riaan on OFM spoke to one of the guys promoting it and got him to promise Riaan his car if he is still around on Sunday.

I saw a guy during the day distributing warning pamphlets.

DETAILS

REPENT!

....and about time too!
I was getting tired of waiting.
It's going to be a blast!

[Anakha56]

Busy trying to read the PDF they link but keep on getting distracted by better reading materials. So far (only on page 11) no proof is given to support the theory.

[KALSTER]

Riaan from OFM is going to phone that guy again next Monday. Can't wait for that!

[Anakha56]

If you get a audio clip that would be awesome!

[StarPhoenix]

Busy trying to read the PDF they link but keep on getting distracted by better reading materials. So far (only on page 11) no proof is given to support the theory.

You were expecting proof? You got to BELIEVE. Have faith.

[Anakha56]

Yeah after page 22 I said stuff it. Closed the PDF and deleted it...

[JollyJamma]

Oh noes the DA will never see the light of power!

In the real world you can't but help laugh at the 1000th time this has been bought up and this time it's 'for realz...srsly'.

Last night my Christian co-boxer said that I would 'return to christianity' when he found out I was no longer Christian. Fat chance.
It's the last religion I would consider. I can't understand the level of arrogance with Christians as if they know everything and everyone.

Jamin I have a paper written on the problems with beliefs if you want? It's free and I can email it to you.

[Stuart]

So, apparently the day is finally upon us. The end of the world and the Apocalypse is this Saturday, sometime around sundown.

Riaan on OFM spoke to one of the guys promoting it and got him to promise Riaan his car if he is still around on Sunday.

I saw a guy during the day distributing warning pamphlets.

DETAILS

REPENT!

I'm keen to see how the founder of this theory (Harold Camping) talks his way out of this one on Sunday. He predicted the end of the world in 1994. When it didn't happen he said it was because God's people prayed and God graciously heard their prayers and granted more time. More recently, he's admitted that he was "mistaken" in reading the signs then. But this time . . .

“God has given sooo much information in the Bible about this, and so many proofs, and so many signs, that we know it is absolutely going to happen without any question at all. There’s nothing in the Bible that God has ever prophesied — there’s many things that he prophesied would happen and they always have happened — but there’s nothing in the Bible that holds a candle to the amount of information to this tremendous truth of the end of the world. I would be absolutely in rebellion against God if I thought anything other than it is absolutely going to happen without any question.”

(That's from an interview with New York magazine.)

He also told The Washington Post that he came up with "the very precise date of May 21 through a mathematical calculation that would probably crash Google’s computers."

The guy's a bit of a loon.

[Bladerunner]

The guy's a bit of a loon.

What do you expect from someone who looks like a raisin from all his wrinkles? He looks to be about the same age as Moses... I.e. probably 600 years?

[KALSTER]

The guy's a bit of a loon.

Without a doubt. Still, I have encountered at least one person who is more than a bit perturbed by this.

Independent of this, I have also encountered a bunch of people who think the end must be coming soon and are reading all sorts of "signs" that supposedly points toward the Apocalypse happening sooner rather than later. These people aren't loons either (by the conventional use of the word) and include family members. Do you have any views on this?

[Stuart]

I think every generation of Christians since the time of Christ have had representatives who believed that they were living in the end times. To be honest, my personal interpretation of Scripture is that we aren't given a whole lot of signs of the end. I think that passages like Matthew 24-25 and the book of Revelation were prophecies of the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. They employed symbolic language (like the Old Testament prophets), but the events that they prophesied have already been fulfilled. I don't think that there is any justification whatsoever to believe that the second coming will be preceded by a rise in natural disasters or whatever.

I wouldn't call all end time misinformants loons. Camping certainly is one. He is what the apostles would consider a false teacher. I think that a lot of Christians have been subjected to bad teaching and just haven't really examined what they have been taught in the light of what the Bible actually says.

[ryanrich]

According to the countdown timer on that website it will happen at 11am SA time. I wanna log on shortly after that and see what they have to say.

[KALSTER]

I wonder if people will be "raptured" like in the movie The Forgotten? 3....2.....1.....BANZAAAAAAAAAAAAI!

[Stuart]

That's the idea, yes. Camping's small band of followers will be raptured on Saturday. The rest of the world will then suffer "Judgement Day" from Saturday until 21 October, when the world will officially end.

I'm a little unclear as to why "Judgement Day" lasts for six months, but there you have it.

[rustypup]

"raptured" like in the movie The Forgotten?

left behind which reminds of a funny stor....

• 2011-05-17 11:52:38 Socket timeout.
  2011-05-17 11:52:41 Connection reset by peer!
  2011-05-17 11:52:53 Subject **RUSTYPUP** disconnected from matrix
  2011-05-17 11:52:58 sudo shutdown -r 0

[Stuart]

LaHaye and Jenkins (authors of the Left Behind series) are hardly in the same loony camp as Camping. Still, their exegesis of New Testament prophecy is a little on the sketchy side.

[ryanrich]

• 2011-05-17 11:52:38 Socket timeout.
  2011-05-17 11:52:41 Connection reset by peer!
  2011-05-17 11:52:53 Subject **RUSTYPUP** disconnected from matrix
  2011-05-17 11:52:58 sudo shutdown -r 0

aaahahahaha!

[KALSTER]

I saw one of the movies. The Antichrist had superpowers!