Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldliness'?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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Jax
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Jax »

perseusomega9 wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 11:28 am "Reading the bible is like paying for sex" is the start to a good joke, but I can't finish.
"Just don't get into the habit." :lol:
Secret Alias
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

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Right but there is a serious principle here to consider. For Ben and Ken the nature of the universe is fundamentally different from the books they study. Paul, the Church Fathers think the world is a cesspool, a whorehouse, whatever analogy you want to use. They could think this because they didn't believe the world was going to last very much longer. The Church was pure and purity can't last long in a sordid place. But there was no antitheses because the very presence of this purity in the world would cause the forces of evil to be destroyed or destroy themselves. But Ben and Ken know that the Church and its writings have in theory lasted two thousand years. Whenever they think the texts were written, whether or not they think them 'holy' they still buy into this notion that (a) the texts were preserved 'faithfully' by basically descent people and that as such (b) not everything in the world is prostitution. The good guys sometimes win without being martyred, brutalized etc. This view was not shared by the early Church but as noted there never was a question of whether or not the writings would survive for two thousand years because the world was 'imminently' coming to an end. The world would end before 'textual corruption' would become a serious issue or more correctly before the mere longevity of the Christian community would set up a strange belief - shared by Ben and Ken - that holy texts could be preserved in a sinful world 'faithfully.'
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

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The point is again that modern scholarship is strangely at odds with the material it studies and in fact has inherited much of the growing 'sensibility' which developed in the Church as it saw its influence extend way beyond the original assumptions about the temporality of the world.
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Secret Alias »

I have this debate all the time with atheists. Atheists often pretend if we just get religion out of the way we'd all live in this happy garden of Eden. The problem isn't religion, I often point out, but the fact that that the world is a whorehouse, the world is a cesspool. Religion didn't create this problem. Religion instead was developed to address the corruption inherent in the world. If the world is a cesspool, the corruption of Christian documents and traditions is to be expected. I sometimes think that this is the meaning behind "I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. And indeed, there must be differences among you to show which of you are approved." The sense of many passages in Corinthians is (a) the world is corrupt (b) there is nothing that can be done about it and (c) the purpose of our lives is to die escaping the whorehouse carousel. As such I really wonder whether the early Christians would have been surprised that their writings became corrupt. I think it was get saved or die trying. No thought about 'building a legacy' in a shithole world.
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by mlinssen »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 9:03 pm I have this debate all the time with atheists. Atheists often pretend if we just get religion out of the way we'd all live in this happy garden of Eden. The problem isn't religion, I often point out, but the fact that that the world is a whorehouse, the world is a cesspool. Religion didn't create this problem. Religion instead was developed to address the corruption inherent in the world. If the world is a cesspool, the corruption of Christian documents and traditions is to be expected. I sometimes think that this is the meaning behind "I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. And indeed, there must be differences among you to show which of you are approved." The sense of many passages in Corinthians is (a) the world is corrupt (b) there is nothing that can be done about it and (c) the purpose of our lives is to die escaping the whorehouse carousel. As such I really wonder whether the early Christians would have been surprised that their writings became corrupt. I think it was get saved or die trying. No thought about 'building a legacy' in a shithole world.
You're not completely wrong, but you're certainly not completely right

Religion is a disease and Churchianity a tumor, yes. And the problem lies with people, yes - people who view the world from a very one-sided pint of view, for example that it is a whorehouse. It isn't, the world is what it is - and there is yin and yang to all of it

People are innately insecure, and as such cling on to something - it doesn't matter what you cling to, it only matters that you hold on to it. The Bens and Kens of this world cling to Christianity, and perhaps they have loosened their grip but their Jesus, a Jesus, any Jesus, must still exist or they would have to admit that they have been fooled for their entire life.
The atheists of this world cling to the idea that there are no gods. I'm an atheist myself but in essence it is a preposterous claim, of course: the arrogance, the hubris to dare lay such a claim! I would be seriously devastated if there ever were to turn up a bearded fellow, thoroughly bored from having done nowt at all for ages, eras and aeons, telling me that I'll burn in hell for example, or read all posts by Secret Alias and memorise them

We can't be wrong - Lawd almighty Heaven forbid, we can't be wrong because we chose this one thingy to cling to, ages ago (and to be frank we can't really remember why we did so, most of the time) and WE MUST BE RIGHT.
We must be right and thence why debate was invented, as debate is a form of verbal fighting where the loss of someone else means the victory of the other - because we will never win the argument that Jesus existed and was anything like Da Geewsus, nor can we ever prove that Gawds don't exist.
But, by Jove, WE MUST BE RIGHT - or rather, WE CAN'T BE (proven to be) WRONG

Paul was a fucking liar and he knew it, he was just trying to spin something into his barbs so he could profit from it. That, on a side note
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by davidmartin »

I'm up for having a go at this, the gospel of SA

Assuming all you wrote were the absolute truth, or near enough to get a cigar Monica Lewinksy would recognise
Why can't it be that some of the real 'truth' that rings true to folk can't be found even in a work that could be called forged or corrupted
Like a piece of moss clinging to life on the side of a concrete building. And that's an extreme analogy, what if other texts had a lot more 'truth' mixed in with them?
If you isolated the truth it would be pure
In that scenario folk who hold up these texts as the complete truth have good reason to feel their convictions, except they often tolerate things that are not as they should be, ie the corruption and try to justify it for no good reason. One doesn't have to reject a text just figure out a way to separate the truth out and then enjoy it for what it is

When I was at school there was a kid with really bad acne. His face wasn't too appealing to look at, then one day I saw a girl french kissing him
She wasn't being a whore, she just looked past the bad appearance I try and do the same thing but I have my limits but i assume God's limits go way beyond my own

I drive an old car. Instead of scrapping it I fix it and over the years i've fucked every part of it. It's just a car but i've had sex with it. No-one understands why I keep it but we go way back. It suits me and it's cheap and low stress. Why should I change? I'm happy. The gospels are the cheap runarounds we can fix ourselves compared to Paul the high maintenance performance sports car that will leave you on the roadside without your wallet, sure enough the chicks are all over Paul but can he satisfy them? No, in the end the old reliable gospel Jesus pulls up in his fiat half eaten away by rust and they jump in
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Jax
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Jax »

mlinssen wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 9:29 pm
Secret Alias wrote: Wed May 05, 2021 9:03 pm I have this debate all the time with atheists. Atheists often pretend if we just get religion out of the way we'd all live in this happy garden of Eden. The problem isn't religion, I often point out, but the fact that that the world is a whorehouse, the world is a cesspool. Religion didn't create this problem. Religion instead was developed to address the corruption inherent in the world. If the world is a cesspool, the corruption of Christian documents and traditions is to be expected. I sometimes think that this is the meaning behind "I hear that when you come together as a church, there are divisions among you, and in part I believe it. And indeed, there must be differences among you to show which of you are approved." The sense of many passages in Corinthians is (a) the world is corrupt (b) there is nothing that can be done about it and (c) the purpose of our lives is to die escaping the whorehouse carousel. As such I really wonder whether the early Christians would have been surprised that their writings became corrupt. I think it was get saved or die trying. No thought about 'building a legacy' in a shithole world.
You're not completely wrong, but you're certainly not completely right

Religion is a disease and Churchianity a tumor, yes. And the problem lies with people, yes - people who view the world from a very one-sided pint of view, for example that it is a whorehouse. It isn't, the world is what it is - and there is yin and yang to all of it

People are innately insecure, and as such cling on to something - it doesn't matter what you cling to, it only matters that you hold on to it. The Bens and Kens of this world cling to Christianity, and perhaps they have loosened their grip but their Jesus, a Jesus, any Jesus, must still exist or they would have to admit that they have been fooled for their entire life.
The atheists of this world cling to the idea that there are no gods. I'm an atheist myself but in essence it is a preposterous claim, of course: the arrogance, the hubris to dare lay such a claim! I would be seriously devastated if there ever were to turn up a bearded fellow, thoroughly bored from having done nowt at all for ages, eras and aeons, telling me that I'll burn in hell for example, or read all posts by Secret Alias and memorise them

We can't be wrong - Lawd almighty Heaven forbid, we can't be wrong because we chose this one thingy to cling to, ages ago (and to be frank we can't really remember why we did so, most of the time) and WE MUST BE RIGHT.
We must be right and thence why debate was invented, as debate is a form of verbal fighting where the loss of someone else means the victory of the other - because we will never win the argument that Jesus existed and was anything like Da Geewsus, nor can we ever prove that Gawds don't exist.
But, by Jove, WE MUST BE RIGHT - or rather, WE CAN'T BE (proven to be) WRONG

Paul was a fucking liar and he knew it, he was just trying to spin something into his barbs so he could profit from it. That, on a side note
I subscribe to your pint of view. :thumbup:
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Secret Alias »

People are innately insecure, and as such cling on to something - it doesn't matter what you cling to, it only matters that you hold on to it.
I think that's not a constructive way of looking at the problem. Life is so fucking short. Let's divide up life into the various stages:

1 - 13 - young and useless
14 - 21 growing into being useful
21 - 35 height of power and usefulness
35 - 50 decline begins
50 - 65 waiting to have health problems
65 - 80 arrival of health problems/death
80 + you're either already dead, on the way to dying or having to listen to friends talking about death, illness, misery (so you want to be dead)

That's the reality. So you have maybe 15 years of being sexy (if you are attractive). Otherwise you're not beautiful and you go through life having to come to terms with a wasted life. All the while - whether you are blessed or not - you have to find some sort of use for yourself. If you are too serious in this period, too devoted to being 'useful' you will regret it in the next stage in your life. If you are too frivolous, the very same thing. Either way 35 - 50 is the slow dance to bad times.

If it was just your life. If you didn't have the capacity to compare yourself to others you might be able to have a good time. But as it is the internet makes life even more miserable than it was for former generations.
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Secret Alias »

The point here was that it is a rare individual who acknowledges the 'rule book' for life. The fact is that only the very fortunate are blessed with the possibility of having what could universally described as a 'good life.' If you are born into money, good looks and favorable circumstances maybe you'll have a good life. The rest of us, well, we have to find diversions from realizing we weren't so lucky. Religion clearly developed out of something else - the impulse for revenge against the world for being in the category of the unfortunate which, because of the convoluted nature of human civilization became ever more layered and convoluted throughout the centuries.

But my point was that Ben and Ken follow what I would call the modern religious approach:

1. the world isn't shitty/the world can be good
2. the truth is capable of surviving in the world because of (1)

This point of view is merely a product of Americans never having to face any sort of hardship or tragedy. It is a consequence of continuity in American society since the Great Depression (i.e. before their lifetime). The reality is that once America falls into hard times the shittiness of the world will resurface as will the understanding that indeed it would be impossible for the gospel to have survived 'intact' without corruption.

In the same way the late antiquity - medieval notion that sin and corruption are 'everywhere' was a product of their social circumstances. But since the flowering of prosperity is rare and shittiness far more common the latter is necessarily 'truer' and more in keeping with the nature of the universe. In plain terms, the flower is rare, the mud out of which it grows the universal principle.
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Re: Were the Gospels Established by 'Other-Worldly' Means? Do Scholars Need to Defend Their Belief in 'Other-Worldlines

Post by Secret Alias »

The point then is, when we return to the subject of early Christianity and our discovery of whoremongering and corruption as a principle of world history:

1. The Marcionites who say that our canon was corrupted by Judaizers or the orthodox who say that they preserved the original writings of the apostles. Who is likely the more truthful? Ben and Ken of course would argue that it more likely that the orthodox preserved 'true enough' versions of early documents than the Marcionite counterclaim of total corruption - viz. the world is a whorehouse. But since the world is a whorehouse clearly the inverse is true - viz. the Marcionites because they lost, were wiped out were probably effectively 'roadkill' or 'gang raped' by the orthodox.
2. The Samaritans say 'look at the Torah, Jerusalem isn't mentioned and all the principal locales are in Israel (i.e. 'northern' Israel), the Jews say as a rebuttal ... ignore the Torah, just believe in Jerusalem because of all this ancillary literature that came much later. You'd think that the complete lack of argument from the Jewish apologists would be the ultimate proof of Samaritan antiquity. However, this demonstrate just how corrupt the whole system is. The ancient religious authorities in the Church were instructed by their New Testament canon to prefer Jewish claims to Samaritan ones. But that shouldn't have effected 'serious' scholarship on the issue. Yet it has. The laziness of religious scholars to simply ignore questions and prefer familiar answers settles the issue without even a debate. Why? The answer clearly is not a conscious conspiracy of any kind but rather an unconscious condition to all things in the world viz. the world is a whorehouse and humanity its whores.

The point here again is that we don't even have arguments for how Mark, Matthew and Luke could be proof of the corruption of gospel material. It isn't even a topic of discussion. Why? What could be more obvious? It is simply because there is never an acknowledgement of an understanding that the early Christians themselves would have agreed with - viz. the world is a whorehouse so evil triumphs again and again over the course of world history.

Apparently it is just coincidence that the Jews outlasted the Samaritans and the orthodox the heresies that we assume 'what the heck, good enough place to start is with the winners of history ..."
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