Using ChatGPT

Discussion about the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, pseudepigrapha, Philo, Josephus, Talmud, Dead Sea Scrolls, archaeology, etc.
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billd89
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Re: WAT

Post by billd89 »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed May 03, 2023 10:19 am We can do anything. I once hired a contortionist from Las Vegas and later stumbled upon his sideline business of making videos of him sucking himself off. Never hired the guy again.
WHY NOT.

Also, Very, Very Old News.

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Staying on topic, I see MountainMan trying to get ChatGPT to advance his pet theories. I feel certain -- without knowing, in fact -- that he has already investigated this.
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Leucius Charinus
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Re: Using ChatGPT

Post by Leucius Charinus »

ABuddhist wrote: Wed May 03, 2023 10:25 am
Has anyone set up a religion entirely fixed to chronology and various chronologies (i.e. 6000 AM, 490 years from Daniel, and "under Pilate") under a scenario where none of the things described in the narrative were historical?
Yes! The Book of Mormon does exactly that. It keeps dating its events relative to Christ's birth.
Mormon was aware of the Arian controversy and preached during the brief rule of Emperor Julian. Has anyone set up a religion based on historical and theological fiction? Nobody could possibly ever think of doing anything like that.

Alexander Campbell
Delusions (1831)

p. 532

The Book of Nephi the son of Nephi, gives, in 4 pages, the history of 320 years after Christ. In the 36th year, all the inhabitants of the land were converted; there was a perfect community, and no disputations in the land for 170 years. Three of the American Apostles were never to die, and were seen 400 years after Christ; but what has become of them no one can tell, except Cowdery, Whitmer and Harris, the three witnesses of the truth of the plates of Nephi, be these three immortal men. Towards the close of the history of Nephi or the record Ammaron, sects and divisions and battles became frequent, and all goodness had almost left the continent in the year 320.

Mormon appears next in the drama, the recording angel of the whole matter, who, by the way, was a mighty general and great Christian; he commanded in one engagement 42,000 men against the Lamanites!!! He was no Quaker! This dreadful battle was fought A. D. 330. The Lamanites took [89] South America for themselves, and gave North America to the Nephites.

Mormon was very orthodox, for he preached in these words, A. D. 362:--"That Jesus was the very Christ, and the very God." He must have heard of the Arian controversy by some angel!!

Moroni finishes what Mormon, his father, left undone, and continues the history till A. D. 400. He pleads that no one shall disbelieve his record because of its imperfections!! and declares that none who receive it will condemn it on account of its imperfections, and for not doing so, the same shall know greater things.

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DCHindley
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Re: Using ChatGPT

Post by DCHindley »

Secret Alias wrote: Wed May 03, 2023 12:24 pm But Mormonism is a Christian sect. We should Manichaeanism as a separate religion from Christianity?
There is debate about that. Living close to Kirtland, OH, where Smith's LDS church briefly settled, we see a lot of LDS and RLDS literature here, and I have read through (several times) the Book of Mormon and some of their other classics like Pearl of Great Price. Yes, part of a manuscript of a book containing a passage remarkably like a part of the BoM story line (about the Lamanites & Nephites IIRC), but clearly not a draft of the BoM and is believed to predate it, is in the Cleveland Public Library rare books collection (I've seen it there). The parallels are often overstated. Some of their revelatory literature resemble some intertestamental Jewish, and Christian, apocrypha known, but not widely available, in his day.

While their beliefs do incorporate elements about Jesus Christ, IMHO it is not classical Christianity by any means. The salvation scheme is entirely different. The God of the OT is a powerful flesh and blood human being, as was his son Jesus, but the only thing divine about them is that they are part of a network of countless gods over various planets or solar systems. Joeseph Smith was the original L Ron Hubbard.

I think the same can be said of Manichaeanism, it borrowed elements from Christianity, but it was a dualistic system at its heart closer to Zoroastrianism than the Christian system and understanding of the universe.

Arianism was concentrated on the nature of the godhead of the Christians, and thus properly Christian, just as JWs are "Christian." They all feature a twist on the classic Christian scheme of salvation.

Why these rants with throw-away equations, Stephen?
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