Name:wmiller4 •
Title: Why is it so hard to believe the theory? •
Date posted: 03/05/07 6:44
Q: I 've been a Southern Baptist for the greater part of my life. I'am excited about the idea of finding Jesus's remains; to be able to show that the biblical Jesus most likely existed in history is fantastic! If it is the physical remains of Jesus it does not effect my belief in Jesus's divinity. I would like to thank you Mr.Simcha Jacobovici for validating my belief in Jesus as a historical figure and not a fabricated one. I do believe that this is the tomb of Jesus and his remains and that he was indeed married to Mary and had a son. I do not believe that we go to heaven with a body containing organs and blood. I find it silly and simple minded that Jesus would retain his physical body and not a spiritual presentation of one. I hope that the tomb is reopened and given the proper respect it deserves as proof of the life and death of Jesus the son of God and confirming that Mary was important emough to be buried along with Jesus. I thank you deeply.
Name:DontBeNaive •
Date: 03/05/07 6:55
A: Well, Jesus' existence has never been refuted. It's considered historic fact. The fact that He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven (body and soul) has been a debate between science and religion for centuries. Therefore, the film is slapping your Baptist beliefs in the face. But then again if you believe that Jesus was married to Mary Magdelene and had a son, you're pretty far off from what Christianity is teaching you anyway... so carry on. Pfff.
Name:Pat •
Date: 03/05/07 15:40
A: DontBeNaive • Date: 03/05/07 1:55
A: Well, Jesus' existence has never been refuted. It's considered historic fact. The fact that He rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven (body and soul) has been a debate between science and religion for centuries. Therefore, the film is slapping your Baptist beliefs in the face. But then again if you believe that Jesus was married to Mary Magdelene and had a son, you're pretty far off from what Christianity is teaching you anyway... so carry on. Pfff.
Don’t be Naïve:
I agree with wmiller4 to a certain point. You Don’t be Naïve are far off
Because of the following
The stories of the Bible evolved slowly over centuries before the existence of orthodox religions. Belies cults spread out stories and myths were handed down and carried by oral tradition from generation to generation before people started writting them down.
Stories originally came from Egyptian and Sumerian cults. All of these early religions practiced polytheism, including the early Hebrews.
Some of the oldest records of the stories that later entered the Old Testament came from thousands of small cylinder seals depicting creation stories, excavated from the Mesopotamia period. These early artifacts and artworks (dated as early as 2500 B.C.E.) established the basis for the Garden of Eden stories a least a thousand years before it impacted Hebrew mythology.
The Old Testament is a series of writtings spread over a period from approximately 1450 B.C.E. to 200 B.C.E.
There exists no original writings of the Old Testament.
However there exists, hundreds of fragments from copies that became the old testament.
These fragments consist of Cuneiform tablets, papyrus paper, leather etchings and the famous Dead Sea Scrolls.
The scribes of the old testament wrote in classical Hebrew except for some portions written in Aramaic. The traditional Hebrew scribes wrote the texts with consonants but the Rabbis later added vowels for verbal pronouncing.
Of course the Rabbis did their best in choosing the vowels that they thought gave the words their proper meaning and pronouncement.
In the second century C.E., or even earlier, the Rabbis compiled a text from manuscripts that had survived the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E. and on this basis they established the traditional or Masoretic text, so called from the Hebrew word Massorah.
However this text incorporated the mistakes of generations of copyists, and in spite of the care bestowed on it, many errors of later copyists also found their way into it. The earliest surviving manuscripts of this text date from the ninth to eleventh centuries C.E.
Religious people used from these texts to form the present Old Testament translations.
The New Testament hasless fewer surviving texts.
Not until years after Jesus' death that its authors wrote the Gospels.
There exists no evidence that the New Testament came from the purported original apostles or anyone else that had seen the alleged Jesus.
Even if the oldest surviving Christian texts came from Paul, he had never seen the earthly Jesus.
There is nothing in Paul's letters that either hints at the existence of the Gospels or even of a need for such memoirs of Jesus Christ.
The oldest copy of the New Testament found to date consists of a tiny fragment from the Gospel of John.
Scholars dated the tiny papyrus from the period because of its style of writting to about around the first half of the 2nd century C.E.
The language of most of the new testament was old Greek.
The bible is made of many books. And there has been much editing
One of the Bible's most influential editors, Irenaeus of Lyon, decided that only four Gospels books should exist
Irenaeus had left out other Gospels.
Irenaeus also wrote what Christianity did not include, and in this way Christianity became an orthodox faith.
The work of Irenaeus, Against the Heresies, became the starting point for later inquisitions.
There existed over a hundred different versions of the Bible, written in most of the languages of the time including Greek, Hebrew and Latin.
Some versions left out certain biblical stories and others contained added stories. The completed versions of the old and new testament probably got finished at around 200-300 C.E.
Many disputed the authenticity of some books which later ended up as Apocrypha (uncanonical or of questionable authorship). For example, the book of Ecclesiasticus appears in the Catholic Bible but not in Protestant versions.
