Quote:The early Christian Church was also apocalyptically oriented and, under Paul's leadership,organized hierarchically, with everyone told to be subservient to the state

(Rom.l3:l-5; 1 Pet.2:13-15 ), women told to be subordinate to men4 and slaves told to

be obedient to their masters (Eph. 6:5; all of Philemon; Tit 2:9,10).

Quote:Bestselling new analysis of Jewish history by a leading Israeli historian. A historical tour de force that demolishes the myths and taboos that have surrounded Jewish and Israeli history, The Invention of the Jewish People offers a new account of both that demands to be read and reckoned with. Was there really a forced exile in the first century, at the hands of the Romans? Should we regard the Jewish people, throughout two millennia, as both a distinct ethnic group and a putative nation—returned at last to its Biblical homeland?



Shlomo Sand argues that most Jews actually descend from converts, whose native lands were scattered far across the Middle East and Eastern Europe. The formation of a Jewish people and then a Jewish nation out of these disparate groups could only take place under the sway of a new historiography, developing in response to the rise of nationalism throughout Europe. Beneath the biblical back fill of the nineteenth-century historians, and the twentieth-century intellectuals who replaced rabbis as the architects of Jewish identity, The Invention of the Jewish People uncovers a new narrative of Israel’s formation, and proposes a bold analysis of nationalism that accounts for the old myths.



After a long stay on Israel’s bestseller list, and winning the coveted Aujourd’hui Award in France, The Invention of the Jewish People is finally available in English. The central importance of the conflict in the Middle East ensures that Sand’s arguments will reverberate well beyond the historians and politicians that he takes to task. Without an adequate understanding of Israel’s past, capable of superseding today’s opposing views, diplomatic solutions are likely to remain elusive. In this iconoclastic work of history, Shlomo Sand provides the intellectual foundations for a new vision of Israel’s future.

Quote:"Particularly absorbing and highly topical: namely, the idea that nothing substantially separates Jesus of Nazareth from Harry Potter except that most human beings believe in the historical reality of the former. Instead, both figures entertain astonishingly parallel personality traits that derive from universal myths. As part of the continuing debate over the nature of Christ, not only among Christians but between them and today's wave of atheist thinkers, Jesus Potter, Harry Christ is timely. Linking this analysis, moreover, to J. K. Rowling's globally popular character further heightens its relevancy." Jeff Crouse, Ph.D - Parmenides



"Absolutely loved it! With so much misinformation being disseminated about Jesus Christ, this book was refreshing. Derek pulls from notable and reliable sources to frame his arguments in a way that is both intriguing and satisfying. His insights into the phenomena that captivate the fans of literary characters like Harry Potter and Jesus Christ are extraordinary. To anyone who enjoys a mystery being unraveled, Harry Potter Jesus Christ is a must read." Andrea Giffith, The Social I.Q. Lady



"If you're a fan of Harry or a fan of Jesus, Derek Murphy's book will open your eyes to the startling similarities between these two characters and why those similarities exist. Murphy takes us on an in depth journey through the land of epic hero tales, their ancient origins and how (and why) they developed. By the end of the journey, Murphy pulls it all together and dares to ask who is perhaps the greater role model; Harry or Jesus? I found this book eye opening and impossible to put down." Henry Scalfo



"I'm impressed. A lot. I figured that Jesus Potter Harry Christ would focus on the commonalities between Jesus Christ and Harry Potter, but Murphy's aims are a lot more ambitious. And interesting. In a highly readable yet semi-scholarly style, he sets out to examine the origins and evolution of Christianity, seeking evidence for a historical Jesus who is akin to the mythical figure revered by believers today. Jesus Potter Harry Christ demolishes part of the foundation of Christianity, Jesus' purported uniqueness and godly heritage, but leaves the most important part: our capacity as humans to become more and better than we are now." Brian Hines, author of "Return to the One"

Quote:Most people wouldn't put it that way, since the Bible is, after all, sacred Scripture for millions on our planet. But good Christian scholars of the Bible, including the top Protestant and Catholic scholars of America, will tell you that the Bible is full of lies, even if they refuse to use the term. And here is the truth: Many of the books of the New Testament were written by people who lied about their identity, claiming to be a famous apostle -- Peter, Paul or James -- knowing full well they were someone else. In modern parlance, that is a lie, and a book written by someone who lies about his identity is a forgery.



Most modern scholars of the Bible shy away from these terms, and for understandable reasons, some having to do with their clientele. Teaching in Christian seminaries, or to largely Christian undergraduate populations, who wants to denigrate the cherished texts of Scripture by calling them forgeries built on lies? And so scholars use a different term for this phenomenon and call such books "pseudepigrapha."

Quote:In the famous painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo there is the memorable scene of the creator God extending his finger to the outstretched hand of the newly formed Adam. The imagery makes clear that Adam is a creation of God, not an extension of him. Creator and creation are distinct.



That is the clear understanding of the Judeo-Christian worldview. In contrast to Eastern religions, where God is seen as everything (pantheism), or in everything (panentheism), the biblical teaching is that there is an eternal, personal and infinite God who is not to be confused with his creation.



For millennia the West was based on the monotheistic religions which viewed creation as the finite result of an infinite God, while the East has been shaped by monism (the belief that all is one) and pantheism. But recently these two opposing worldviews have experienced a massive crossover.



There are various reasons why East and West have lost their distinctive differences, and become so entwined. I here wish to focus on just one area. Western popular culture and the entertainment industry have done much to promote the pantheistic worldview and New Age spirituality.



Whether it be popular films such as the Star Wars series, or bestselling New Age tomes such as The Secret by Rhonda Byrne or A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, on all sides the West is being inundated with Eastern thinking and New Age concepts.



The most recent – and most spectacular – example of this is the runaway hit film, Avatar. It is a classic example of the pantheistic worldview, dressed up to suit modern Western tastes. It is thus quite a part of the New Age revolution which has conquered so much of the West over the past few decades.



Part of the reason why the New Age appeals so much to Westerners is that it offers the Eastern religious system but without much of its more demanding religious and ethical emphases. People are free to choose in the New Age spirituality what they like, and little or no demands are made on them.



Many of the people today who tinker with the East are really just imbibing in the New Age smorgasbord. They pick and choose those aspects which they like, and leave those which they don’t. It is all very Western really, fitting our consumerist lifestyle. Thus Eastern thoughts and concepts have very much become a part of Western life.



And films like Avatar are in many ways just a reflection of this. Instead of a creator God who stands outside of us, and places expectations and demands upon us, in the new Easternised spiritualities of the West, people are free to call the shots and determine what is right and wrong, true and false.



Indeed, they get to be God. That is the real attraction of the New Age worldview. Instead of a transcendent God with whom we must do business, and bow to, we in fact are all a part of the divine already. We just need to realise that we are already God, that we are already divine.



And sadly, many Christians have bought into this explicitly non-Christian worldview as well. Many Christians seem to think they can simultaneously hold to Christianity while dabbling in New Age beliefs and practices. I have spoken to many such persons.



Indeed, how many Christians would have gone to a film like Avatar and left it all agog, without even being aware of how in so many ways it is promoting a decidedly non-biblical point of view. Of course many people have warned about how this new paganism is creeping into the churches.



Peter Jones of Westminster Seminary, for example, has written numerous volumes on these dangers. Readers should consult The Gnostic Empire Strikes Back An Old Heresy for the New Age (P&R, 1992); Spirit Wars: Pagan Revival in Christian America (WinePress, 1997); Pagans in the Pews (Regal, 2001); and Capturing the Pagan Mind (Broadman & Holman, 2003).



Earlier C.S. Lewis had warned about the dangers of pantheistic thinking. In the 1950s he had penned these words: “I freely admit that, believing both, I have stressed the transcendence of God more than His immanence. I thought, and I think, that the present situation demands this. I see around me no danger of Deism but much of an immoral, naive and sentimental pantheism. I have often found that it was in fact the chief obstacle to conversion.”



Indeed, it is biblical Christianity which provides the right mix between divine transcendence and divine immanence. God is wholly other and separate from us (his transcendence) and yet he chose to become one with us in the incarnation, and he dwells with those who seek to follow him (his immanence).



There is no possibility in the biblical worldview of confusing who we are and who God is. Indeed, just today I read a great line in the third and final volume of John Goldingay’s magisterial Old Testament Theology. He says this: “The difference between God and us is that God never thinks he is us”.



Exactly so. But the tendency amongst so many Westerners influenced by pantheism, Eastern thought and the New Age movement is to think we are God. That type of thinking runs counter to the entire biblical belief system. We are doubly alienated from God: first, by creation, and secondly, by sin. The first renders us finite; the second renders us fallen.



Both these obstacles must be overcome, and we cannot do the overcoming ourselves. It is God who has taken the initiative here, becoming incarnate so that we might become (in the right sense of the word) partakers of the divine nature. And of course to get right with God, we must come to him on his terms, not our own.



But for those who want to call the shots, who want to pretend they are already divine,. The Christian answer will never do. Lewis again had all this rightly explained a half century ago. Writing in his classic 1947 volume, Miracles, he wrote that pantheism “is in fact the permanent natural bent of the human mind”.



Why so? It is so congenial to unregenerate man because it simply means “what man says about God, and not what God does about man”. In biblical Christianity God is sovereign and we are not. No wonder people prefer pantheism. As Peter Kreeft rightly noted,



“Men are reluctant to pass over from the notion of an abstract and negative deity to the living God. I do not wonder. Here lies the deepest tap-root of Pantheism and of the objection to traditional imagery. It was hated not, at bottom, because it pictured Him as a man but because it pictured Him as king, or even as warrior. The Pantheist’s God does nothing, demands nothing. He is there if you wish for Him, like a book on a shelf. He will not pursue you. There is no danger that at any time heaven and earth should flee away at His glance. If He were the truth, then we could really say that all the Christian images-of kingship were a historical accident of which our religion ought to be cleansed.”



Ever since our first parents fell, people have been looking for a way to get back to God, but on their own terms. The way of the cross is simply too hard and too demanding for many. But a worldview which tells us we are already God, well, that is something most people can readily sign up for.



But it is a false path to salvation. There is only one path whereby we can get right with God, and that path goes through a hill with a cross on it, and it goes though a person, Jesus Christ. The masses may marvel at the God-is-everything philosophy of a film like Avatar, but only those who have come to an end of themselves will realise that reunion with god is something that God decides and God lays out the specs for.



We either bow the knee to him and his designated means of becoming reunited with him, or we devise our own paths. But Jesus made it clear that there is only one path. “But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it” (Matt 7:14).



Philosophies like the New Age, and films like Avatar readily appeal to us. They allow us the right to set the boundaries and determine the rules. They assume mankind is already alive and part of the divine. Biblical Christianity, by contrast, assumes that we are all spiritually dead and alienated from God. That is why Christ came – not to tell us we are already part of the divine, but to show us how to flee the wrath to come, and how to become who we were truly meant to be.

Quote:And did those feet in ancient time

Walk upon England's mountains green

And was the holy lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen



And did the countenance divine

Shine forth upon our clouded hills

And was Jerusalem builded here

Among those dark Satanic mills



Bring me my bow of burning gold

Bring me my arrows of desire

Bring me my spears o'clouds unfold

Bring me my chariot of fire



I will not cease from mental fight

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand

'Til we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land

'Til we have built Jerusalem

In England's green and pleasant land

Quote:Inkling

06-02-2007, 08:25 PM

A mind bending college moment for me was discussing the Republic with the rest of the Honors students in my great books program and stumbling across what Plato says about the truly just man. According to Plato:



If there was ever a truly just man, he'd be mocked, beaten, and *crucified* (yes, the Greek word literally means crucified). Do we know anyone who might fit that description <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />.

Quote:Inkling

06-02-2007, 08:25 PM

A mind bending college moment for me was discussing the Republic with the rest of the Honors students in my great books program and stumbling across what Plato says about the truly just man. According to Plato:



If there was ever a truly just man, he'd be mocked, beaten, and *crucified* (yes, the Greek word literally means crucified). Do we know anyone who might fit that description <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/wink.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />.

Quote:Emperor Julian writes in Contra Galilaeos ("Against the Christians"):

It is, I think, expedient to set forth to all mankind the reasons by which I was convinced that the fabrication of the Galilaeans [color="#800080"](=those who call themselves christians)[/color] is a fiction of men composed by wickedness.

Quote:brihaspati wrote:

There are parallel studies which find the early Christian movement to be a political one, which either started off as a revolutionary movement or was taken up as such a revolutionary movement by disgruntled sections of the Roman society.

Quote:Jesus Lied. He Was Only Human' is arguably the most comprehensive and exhaustive debunking of the Christian myth on bookshelves today. Like a forensic accountant, Werleman meticulously pulls apart the New Testament thread-by-thread until the greatest lie ever told if exposed for all to see. Werleman not only reveals the suffering - Jesus caused his early followers, he cleverly demonstrates that the New Testament is brimming with contradictory views, conflicting accounts, historical flaws, and irreconcilable discrepancies. Comprehensive. Funny. Entertaining. A must read for anyone who wants to silence their evangelical friends.

Quote:We cannot prove that Moses ever existed but as we cannot explain the development

of Israelite monotheism without a Moses, he must have existed. Otherwise we

would have to invent him … disregarding the possibility that ancient writers

did exactly that!



ON THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTING PRE-HELLENISTIC ISRAELITE (PALESTINIAN) HISTORY

by N.P. Lemche