Jesus Christ

Actually, I just want to list a few examples of the apochrphals anyways....

- Most of the apochryphal gospels were gnostic and written after 100 CE(actually the majority of them were written in 300-400 CE, but as we know 99% of everything is junk anyways. What we could call the quality gnostic gospels were written mostly around 100 CE). However, gonsticism was attacked by Paul and John in their epistles, because it was a growing problem for the early church. It was NOT something which was merely decided against at Nicea; it was first attacked 250 years before Nicea.

- The canonical gospels are in perfect harmony with the Old Testament, whereas many of the apochryphal gospels, and especially the gnostic ones, have manor conflicts with the Old Testament.

- Most of the apochryphal works contain historical errors which reither require that they are completely fake, written much later than 100 CE, or are generally inaccurate.

Originally posted by debbiejo
You can look at anyones denomination and find theology sources to back it up..I tend to look at what today science and the medical establishment has confirmed to be truth. Some scientific evidence you have also mentioned I believe to be true. When supported with the writing with the gnostic gospels it is in alignment more with what they have taught. I believe Jesus was probably an Essene do to the knowledge that has been confirmed today by these fields. They knew a truth about the relationship between our science as proven through some Sting Theories..etc...and also in regards to health...Jesus taught these things, and much of it us edited out of the cannon of scripture.

As far as Constantine, he is regarded as the father of our church doctrine. There are many biographies that show his intentions, and they were not as noble as we have been taught.

There are many biographies of FDR that portray him as noble and kind, but if you actually research it you will find that he was hardly either. The point is that you can find something that has been written to say anything about anything; if one is to know the truth then one must do research and weigh the value of what is being read. It's especially hard when it comes to this stuff because there are always people looking to come up with anything they can to prove their point.

The Da Vinci code is a very good example. There are so many mistakes in that book that most anti-Catholic scholars have a hard time accepting it as valid (not that it was meant to be an exposition as it is merely fiction, but Dan Brown did believe his facts to be correct).

Constantine had as much authority over what was decided about doctrines as I do in deciding whether or not to send troops to Iraq.

Also:

Scholars of Mithraism would strongly disagree with Brown on all of these points. Nowhere is Mithras given the title Son of God and the Light of the World. Brown apparently made this up because it sounded good. Mithras was born on December 25th, however this proves nothing. The New Testament never associated December 25th with the birth of Christ. The early Christians chose to celebrate the birth of Christ on this day intentionally to oppose the pagan mid-winter festival of Saturnalia. They never claimed Jesus was actually born on that date. The claim that Mithras died and was buried in a rock tomb is just not true. Scholars will tell you that in Mithraism there is no death of Mithras at all. So, there was no rock tomb and no resurrection.

I'm not a Da Vinci Code fan and I am familiar to the writings of the Council of Nicea, because I own a copy of it. There is also much historical data to confirm who Constantine really was. And yes he did change the day of rest to Sunday, which is in alignment to a pagan day. The Bible never calls Sunday the Lords Day, if anything Jesus said that He was Lord of the Sabbath, that would tell me that Saturday was the Lords day. Easter and Christmas were also additions. The day of Jesus death was on Passover. Constantine instituted many pagan beliefs into the Christian faith which stand today. There are many writing about Mithra, some is only hypothetical, but also there are many similarities between Osiris Dionysus and others that seem to mimic the stories of Jesus...

Constantine could not have changed the day to Sunday. The council was in 325 CE. There were references to worship on Sunday as far back as 100 CE. Writings from Ignatius, Barnabus, Irenaeus, Cyprian and many others speak of worship on Sunday and were written long before Constantine was even born.

You are right about Christmas. December 25th was the celebration of Mithra's birthday, and the council settled on this date for Jesus' birthday to help compete with the pagan religions. The idea is similar for Easter. There are a lot of pagan traditions that were instituted into the Christian faith; no matter of doctrine, however, derived from any pagan religions.

Jesus said He was the Lord of the Sabbath because he eliminated it (ONLY upon His death, NOT before, when He still practiced it and required others to do the same). He was saying He hadpower over the Sabbath.

Osiris

Unfortunatlly there are writing on both sides.

http://www.messiahtruth.com/response.html#mythos

http://www.sullivan-county.com/news/paul/j_myth.htm You can click on the Josephus paragraph

http://www.nobeliefs.com/DarkBible/darkbible2.htm...Has some interesting info a the original scriptures.

Information that is 2000 plus years old makes it hard to find the truth and has many rabbit trails...But like I said the medical and scientific community supports the gnositc view with it's research findings.

And yes, Constatine did change the day to Sunday officially...

The argument "Jesus Christ: Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?" commits the logic fallacy of False Dilemma; Only a limited number of options are presented, when a number of options exist.

And yes, Constatine did change the day to Sunday officially...

The Council of Nicea officially declared what real Christianity is. That was it's purpose, to seperate fact from fiction.

All the council did was give it the stamp of approval; it was not something made up at the council, and it was certainly not instituted as a pagan connection for the worship of Sun gods.

The early church had been worshipping on Sunday for 200 years before the council.

Originally posted by Adam_PoE
The argument "Jesus Christ: Lord, Liar, or Lunatic?" commits the logic fallacy of False Dilemma; Only a limited number of options are presented, when a number of options exist.

Originally posted by Lazerlike42
The Council of Nicea officially declared what real Christianity is. That was it's purpose, to seperate fact from fiction.

All the council did was give it the stamp of approval; it was not something made up at the council, and it was certainly not instituted as a pagan connection for the worship of Sun gods.

The early church had been worshipping on Sunday for 200 years before the council.

Not everybody was worshipping on Sunday...The church forced that.

The council not only gave it's stamp of approval, but manipulated the out come of votes...Funny there were even a few deaths just before votes were to be cast. One vote only won by one person...There was some muscle being thrown around in that council...don't fool yourself.

The church forced the correct teachings, yes. In any case, the worship on Sundays was being performed long, long before 325.

And Saturday..In fact the Celtics in Britain were worshiping on Saturday until around 500AD when Rome decided to force them into subjection along with Easter and Christmas...That whole British Island was was forgotten by the Roman Christian church and when they sent missionaries they found that they, the Celtic Christians, were already sending out missionaries of their own, and following the teachings of Christ. But the Roman church didn't see it that way, and conquered them too.

I'm not arguing with you that people were doing it on Saturday too. My town made a rule that says you can't throw away tv monitors or computers in the garbage, you have to bring them to this place. They made the rule like 3 years ago. That's the correct way to do it, but even though some people do it right and go to the place, a lot of people still throw them away in the garbage. It doesn't make them right 😉

The point that I'm making is that depending on your denomination, you can find scriptures to support your view.

I would agree with you to a point, because some scriptures are vague or more so are difficult to understand without knowing the context. Paul's letters would be much easier to understand if we knew what questions he was answering in them. Because we don't, different denominations can take different statements in different ways.

HOWEVER, if we go beyond the text of the Bible itself we can settle on more definite conclusions. Taking into account the culture of NT times, and sometimes the original language, enables us to know matter of factly what is actually being said.

Most people don't do that, though. Most people just try to figure out what it means from what it says. Many don't even read things in context and just take single verses!

"If you want to understand the Bible, read the lines in between the ones you've underlined."

EDIT - we can determine what is actually being said in MOST of the Bible this way; some things we don't have enough data on to settle beyond a certain point.

Originally posted by Lazerlike42

Most people don't do that, though. Most people just try to figure out what it means from what it says. Many don't even read things in context and just take single verses!

EDIT - we can determine what is actually being said in MOST of the Bible this way; some things we don't have enough data on to settle beyond a certain point.

I do agree that you need to look at the whole context of what is being said and not many people do that.

[EDIT - we can determine what is actually being said in MOST of the Bible this way; some things we don't have enough data on to settle beyond a certain point.[/B][/QUOTE]

I agree with this too.

Did you look at the links I posted earlier up?

Yes.... the first is a Jewish anti-missionary site and as such is full of old news.

The second one I haven't read completely yet

The third one seems to try to argue that since the oldest discovered manuscript is from the second century that the NT had to have been written later, which is not correct. There are plenty of ways to date documents beyond their physical age. There are hardly any scholars left that date the gospels any later than 90 CE.

There is quite a bit out there by Jewish sites that suggest that the reason the Jews didn't believe Jesus to be the Messiah was that they knew that Roman church had merged paganism with the scriptures to bring them in. The Church tried to deceive them to bring under the new tent of Christianity along with the pagans. Though the Gnostic's they just burned books and wiped them out. The Jews new who he was and who he wasn't and wouldn't be deceived. Soon after that they were persecuted. Funny though how Josephus mentions the main sects as the Gnostic's, who he spoke vary highly of, the Pharisees and the Sadducee's...Not Jesus though.

The Roman Church did not exist at the time when Jews were making the decision as to whether or not to convert. Furthermore, all this talk about the Church doing this or doing that makes no sense, because the Church did not have any power until hundreds of years later.

Josephus' references are to sects of Judaism.

Originally posted by Lazerlike42
The Roman Church did not exist at the time when Jews were making the decision as to whether or not to convert. Furthermore, all this talk about the Church doing this or doing that makes no sense, because the Church did not have any power until hundreds of years later.

Josephus' references are to sects of Judaism.

The time period I'm talking about is a few hundred years after...When all the different texts were floating around. Until they were mostly collected by Constantine's bishop what ever his name was( gee I'm tied, not enough sleep last night.) the different texts were spread out over the whole area..One area might have John, another area might have Mark...another area might have Thomas...etc...All the pressuring to make all conform and to gather all the texts and decide what Texts should be considered all started around 300AD. That's when all the pressure started to take place.

Originally posted by debbiejo
There is quite a bit out there by Jewish sites that suggest that the reason the Jews didn't believe Jesus to be the Messiah was that they knew that Roman church had merged paganism with the scriptures to bring them in. The Church tried to deceive them to bring under the new tent of Christianity along with the pagans. Though the Gnostic's they just burned books and wiped them out. The Jews new who he was and who he wasn't and wouldn't be deceived. Soon after that they were persecuted. Funny though how Josephus mentions the main sects as the Gnostic's, who he spoke vary highly of, the Pharisees and the Sadducee's...Not Jesus though.

The sad thing is,If Adof Hitler had been born several hundred years or even a thousand years ago,he would now be considred a saint by the Christian church. 🙁