Historicity of Jesus - 2

[dhu]

Julian Assange:

The State is a condition, a certain relationship between human beings, a mode of behavior; we destroy it by contracting other relationships, by behaving differently toward one another….We are the state, and we shall continue to be the state until we have created the institutions that form a real community and society of men. – Gustav Landauer, Schwache Stattsmanner, Schwacheres Volk!, June, 1910



Wed 29 Aug 2007: Irrationality in argument



The truth is not found on the page, but is a wayward sprite that bursts forth from the readers mind for reasons of its own. I once thought that the Truth was a set comprised of all the things that were true, and the big truth could be obtained by taking all its component propositions and evaluating them until nothing remained. I would approach my rhetorical battles as a logical reductionist, tearing down, atomizing, proving, disproving, discarding falsehoods and reassembling truths until the Truth was pure, golden and unarguable. But then, when truth matters most, when truth is the agent of freedom, I stood before Justice and with truth, lost freedom. Here was something fantastical, unbelievable and impossible, you could prove that (A => <img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cool.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='B)' /> and (B => C) and (C => D) and (D => F) Justice would nod its head and agree, but then, when you turned to claim your coup de grace, A => F irrevocably, Justice would demur and revoke the axiom of transitivity, for Justice will not be told when F stands for freedom. Transitivity is evoked when Justice imagines F and finding the dream a pleasurable one sets about gathering cushions to prop up their slumber. Here then is the truth about the Truth; the Truth is not bridge, sturdy to every step, a marvel of bound planks and supports from the known into the unknown, but a surging sea of smashed wood, flotsam and drowning sailors. So first, always pick your poetic metaphor, to make the reader want to believe, then the facts, and — miracle! — transitivity will descend from heaven, invoked as justification for prejudice.



Often we suffer to read, “But if we believe X then we’ll have to…”, or “If we believe X it will lead to…”. This has no reflection on the veracity of X and so we see that outcomes are treated with more reverence than the Truth. It stings us, but natural selection has spun its ancestral yarns from physically realized outcomes, robustly eschewing the vapor thread of platonism as an abomination against the natural order, fit only for the gossip of monks and the page.



Yet just as we feel all hope is lost and we sink back into the miasma, back to the shadow world of ghosts and gods, a miracle arises; everywhere before the direction of self interest is known, people yearn to see where its compass points and then they hunger for truth with passion and beauty and insight. He loves me. He loves me not. Here then is the truth to set them free. Free from the manipulations and constraints of the mendacious. Free to choose their path, free to remove the ring from their noses, free to look up into the infinite voids and choose wonder over whatever gets them though. And before this feeling to cast blessings on the profits and prophets of truth, on the liberators and martyrs of truth, on the Voltaires, Galileos, and Principias of truth, on the Gutenburgs, Marconis and Internets of truth, on those serial killers of delusion, those brutal, driven and obsessed miners of reality, smashing, smashing, smashing every rotten edifice until all is ruins and the seeds of the new.

[Husky]

[quote name='dhu' date='11 November 2010 - 06:25 PM' timestamp='1289479641' post='109184']

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

Cioran, E. M.[/quote]A comment on the title alone.

While it is interesting for its phrasing, the statement is untrue. (The Gods can never be destroyed.) The statement should be:

"A civilization is destroyed only when its heathens are successfully alienated from their Gods." That is, when the heathen is destroyed - i.e. when the heathenism of the heathen is taken from it* (after which it ceases to be heathen).



* This includes a heathen's (or an originally-heathen society's) own deHeathenisation, even though the process is always kickstarted by the christoclass mindvirus (since deHeathenisation, being subversion, is not a natural process). DeHeathenisation=christoclass mindvirus. And but for it, the unaffected would have remained ... unaffected, that is, heathen. It takes the external impetus of christoconditioning. Lots of momentum (invasive christo-efforts, like evangelism to large-scale social-engineering, jesuitry/high-level strings) to get the thing rolling. Then the thing rolls all by itself.

[HareKrishna]

[quote name='dhu' date='11 November 2010 - 06:25 PM' timestamp='1289479641' post='109184']

A civilization is destroyed only when its gods are destroyed.

Cioran, E. M.

[/quote]

Sorry dhu ,

Emil Cioran is considered the biggest romanian philosopher.Yes he claim that human soul is pagan in its esence and that religions like christianity are temporary anomalies and that paganism will be restored.But Cioran was an atheist ,not pagan.

And despite the efforts of his friend to make him repent and become a christian,he remain an atheist all his life.



Cioran explains that early Christian apologetics are simply a set of libels camouflaged as treatises. But there was one thing that made Christianity different: hatred. Without that hatred, this new religion would merely have traded in "the old gods for a nailed corpse."



Cioran is not the first to criticize Christianity. But he then goes on to defend Paganism. He explains that under Paganism, fervor is shared among Goddesses and Gods. Only under monotheism does this fervor degrade into faith and aggression. People, being capricious, would shift from one God to another if given the chance. And Pagan Goddesses and Gods do not demand to be worshipped, just respected: in general, one does not kneel before them but merely hails them.



As Cioran states, the human soul is naturally Pagan. And thus he has a conclusion:"We humans will return to Paganism. The only thing Christianity had going for it was hatred, and that is no longer going to be there to sustain it. We'll ask the Goddesses and Gods to return to us."

Cioran claim that Saint Gregory's oration against Julian the Philosopher "makes you feel like then and there converting to paganism".

[dhu]

Husky, of course you are correct. I should have known that anyone aligning themselves as a philosopher is definitely something of a joker. Surprising, 'alienation' was a major theme of his "work", yet he failed to place it in heathen believer context.

[dhu]

'Angels and demons' was about the science/christianity conflict and yet it did not capture the popular imagination like 'Da vinci code', which was written later. This means that there is still some resonance with the heathen narrative in the converted populations. This would have been quite terrifying to the Church at that time

[HareKrishna]

[quote name='dhu' date='12 December 2010 - 08:30 AM' timestamp='1292122361' post='109801']

Husky, of course you are correct. I should have known that anyone aligning themselves as a philosopher is definitely something of a joker. Surprising, 'alienation' was a major theme of his "work", yet he failed to place it in heathen believer context.

[/quote]

Did i mentioned that Cioran father was a christian priest from a generational casta chain of priests.

He was in shock when he found about the alienation of Cioran and his praise of paganism.

[ramana]

brihaspati posted in BRF:

Thomas is a problem:



(1) First - is that Thomas is known within inner Church lore as the "doubting Thomas", he was not an easy and gullible disciple. The Gospel of Thomas fell into the so-called discarded "Gospels" after the Romanization of Chritianity under Constantine and his favourite Bishops. Thomas could have represented the early "Gnostic" sects within Chritianity (and perhaps as speculated by some, closer to historical Jesus if any)



(2) Significantly he is the only one named to be in association with India in the New Testament. Jews of teh first century are not unlikely to have travelled to south India. But his "doubting Thomas" background and "Gnostic" shades - makes India a more poignant connection. He could have had earlier exposure to Indic thought and hence took refuge back there. Or he joined the early Christian movement from that original attraction for "Gnostic" or "Indic" tenets. He might have found it impossible to continue with the intensely political/fanatical and increasingly Judaic form of the Gnostic movement as Roman repression intensified in the lead up to the final Roman action on the Jews.



The Roman Catholics or EJ's in general may have severe theological and teleological problems with Thomas in India - for strategic reasons obviously.

ramana replied

Anyway its diversion from my intent in briging up Thomas: namely to put the others in their place.



Also can you expand on his uniqueness in your blog or India Forum? If later the Historicity of Jesus thread

Brihaspati replied:

ramana ji,

very very seriously we should explore the possibility of early Christianity being an Indian export. Buddhism->Mani->Gnostic->Roman X-tian. At least two trade routes - one along the fertile crescent -Gulf/Iran-AFG sector, the other Arabian Sea->Red Sea-Egypt->Alexandria would have carried the "gospel" from India. I will not divert - I understand your reason.

[acharya]

The missionaries saw that they have many problems once they discovered Sanskrit in India.

Only after 1700 did they figure out that they have a problem in their narrative of jesus



http://www.scribd.com/doc/40025185/SANSK...n_download

Hollwel was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1711 and joined as a surgeon in East India Company inB engal. For a very short period he was a Governor ofB engal and then soon he left India.He died in 1798 in England. He didnt know Sanskrit.

In 1767, and 1771 he added second and third part to this book. In1779 he re-issued second and third part with altered title-A Review of the Original Principles, Religious and Moral, of the Ancient Bram ins.L astly in 1786 he brought out a tract titled- Dissertation on the Origin ,N ature, and Pursuits ofI ntelligent beings and on Devine Providence, Religion and religious worship. He followed orthodox Deism and was an enthusiastic advocate of vegetarianism.



He was hostile to the Christian doctrine ofT rinity and to the existing structure of Church of England. Hollwel didnt agree with contemporary missionaries who wanted to make Hinduism a derivative of Christianity. He also believed that Hindus believed in one god and Deities of the pantheon were to be taken only in the figurative sense. Hollwel was translated in German in 1767 and in French in 1768





Alexander Dow born in Scotland in 1735. He was a Colonel in East India CompaniesB engal army and died in India in 1779. In 1768 he translated 17th century historian Firishtas History on India into English titled-History of Hindostan. In 1772 he added third volume to this book. Dow didnt know Sanskrit. Dows dissertation on Hindus appeared in French in 1769.



Both Hollwel and Dow were widely reviewed and discussed inB ritain. Their description of Hinduism had very little new dimensions. What had been described in the early two centuries writings of Missionaries and travelers on Hinduism had reflected in their writings. [size="6"]However, to a greater extent they accepted originality of Hindu philosophy, independent of Christianity.[/size]





Voltaires criticism of Christian doctrine is well known. He was attracted to Hinduism in 1760 when he was presented a copy of Ezour Vedam, a forgery perpetrated by the Society of Jesus. Voltair had read both Hollwel and Dow and also was influenced by their description of Hinduism.



Voltairs Philosophie de lhistoire was first published in 1765, which had most abrasive anti-christian statements.T here is no doubt that writings of Hollwel and Dow had influenced Voltair in formulating his views on antiquities of Religions. He challenged the antiquity of Jews and was convinced the Hindus were most ancient people on the earth.

[size="6"]

This recognition to the Hinduism as an oldest religion on earth obviously put Judaism and Christianity as relatively recent religions in the history of mankind. Halheds writings also tacitly supported Hindu antiquity and originality.T his position of Hinduism was obviously not acceptable not only to the mainstream Christianity but even the scientists of the period couldnt digest this view (Pristley).[/size] All future Indology starting with William Jones till the beginning of 20th century should be assessed on this 18th century image of Hinduism portrayed by early European Indologists

[acharya]

NathanielB rassey Halhed was a son of a Director ofB ank of England and had received training at Harrow and Christchurch. He arrived in India in 1771 as a writer in East India CompanysB engal Service. He left India with Warren Hestings in 1785.Halhed was a linguist with interest in development of languages. He had learned enough Persian. He was the first European to see a connection betweenB engali and Sanskrit. His knowledge of Sanskrit was probably limited. He wrote a Gentoo codein 1776.



Gentoo code was commissioned by Warren Hestings by appointing eleven Pandits for the job.T hey were instructed to draw on the best authorities in Sanskrit.T his group of Pandits produced a code in Sanskrit language , which was translated into Persian and from Persian it was rendered into English by Halhed.T he work of translation was complete by Halhed in 1775. The Code was published in England in 1776. The Code was a failureand could never gain the confidence of the people and thus was never accepted as final authority.



Halheds preface to the Codein English is source ofinformation about Hindus and their religion.T he code was translated in French and German languages in 1778. Halhed also wrote a Gramm ar of Bengal Languagein 1778. In the preface of this book Halhed for the time pointed astonishing similarities of Sanskrit words with those of Persian, Arabic and evenL atin and Greek. He developed these ideas further and in a manusript written in 1779 he says



every part of speech, and every distinction , which is to be found in either Greek orL atin, and that in some particulars it is more copious than either.. I do not attempt to ascertain as a fact, either Greek orL atin are derived from this language; but I give a few reasons wherein such a conjecture might be founded: and I am sure that it is a better claim to the honour of a parent than, Phoenician or Hebrew

[acharya]

http://www.white-history.com/hwr17.htm

CHRISTIANITY THE YOUNGEST RELIGION



It is a sobering thought for many Christians today who presume their religion has been in existence since the start of the world, to realize that Christianity only in fact became widely known in southern Europe some 1,700 years ago, and was only accepted in northern Europe many hundreds of years after that, with the last northern European country to formally adopt Christianity being Iceland, around the year 1,000 AD.



Put another way - compared to the time frame of the existence of records of the White race - a little over 35,000 years - Christianity represents less than the last six percent this time.



THE EVOLUTION OF THE POPE



Each major town throughout the Roman world was assigned a Christian leader, called a bishop. Gradually the Bishop at Rome came to be recognized as the most important and assumed the title of "Pope" (from the Greek word meaning father).



By the seventh century AD, the Bishop of Rome, the Pope, had become the spiritual leader of all Christendom and was in possession of great political power - aided by the forged Donation of Constantine. The Pope even adopted the Roman Emperors' color - purple - which to this day remains the most used color in the Catholic church.



DISPUTES ALMOST IMMEDIATE



Although there was initially only one Christian church - the Catholic church - disputes over the interpretations attached to the new cult broke out almost immediately amongst its supporters. As Christianity spread after its legalization in 313 AD, it became more and more disorganized, with serious disputes erupting amongst the various missionaries as to the true version of the creation and purpose of the new God.



One of the biggest clashes was over the concept of what was called "Arianism," (named after Arius, a Christian leader in Alexandria) or the relative position of the three components of the Christian Trinity: God, Christ and the Holy Ghost. The belief that all three of these beings were one and the same thing was challenged by Arius who argued that the Christ figure could not be God as well.



So serious was this dispute taken that the Emperor Constantine called a special meeting of all the major leaders of the religion in 325 AD, to the now famous Council of Nicaea, to discuss the problem.



At the council of Nicaea it was decided that the Arian doctrine was ungodly, and declared a heresy, with its proponents being persecuted in the name of the new God - the first of many such repressive tactics to be used by the Christian church.



THE BIBLE CREATED



However, several other disputes over doctrine made the religious leaders at Nicaea realize that if some weighty final word on the outline of their belief was not forthcoming, the religion could splinter into factions. The problem was that there was no such manual or holy book in existence - the leaders then took it upon themselves to create such a book. For this purpose they turned to whatever texts they could find.



The books now contained in the Old Testament were largely oral before 300 BC, although some had been written down by Jewish rabbis. Through contact with Jews in Ptolemaic Egypt, King Ptolemy II of Philadelphus (285-246 BC) is credited with ordering the translation of the Jewish religious books into Greek.



The Christian version of the Old Testament was only established as a comprehensive work by the scribe Origen around 250 AD, and up until that time only loose translations of the Ptolemaic Greek work formed the basis of Christian teachings.



The origins of the New Testament are very vague. By the end of the first century AD, the writings of Saul/Paul (called the Pauline Epistles) consisting of letters to the various Christian communities in Asia Minor and Rome had been established as a collection of inspired works. The gospels which make up the first part of the New Testament only emerged after the writings of Saul/Paul had become well known, and long after his death.



This is evidenced by the fact that in Paul's writings there is no mention of any other new testament book or gospel, as well as the account of what Jesus did on the night he was "betrayed" (1: Cor. 11:23) which differs substantially from the Gospel version as recounted in the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John versions.



It is clear that if the four gospels were in existence at the time when Saul/Paul wrote his epistles (around the year 55 AD), he would have at least mentioned them, or very likely have even quoted from them. The earliest existent gospel consists of fragments of the Gospel of John, dating from about 100 AD, and which is in Greek.



By 200 AD, the Church had developed the New Testament in its present form, although still written in various languages, including Greek and Hebrew, apart from the Book of Revelations. Where this last chapter came from no-one knows for sure, but by the 4th Century it had been included in the New Testament anyway.



The compilation of the New Testament omitted several early Christian manuscripts which did not fit in with the other books. The most famous of these "left out" books is the Gospel of St. Thomas, probably because the events described therein are at quite some variance with the events described in the four more well known gospels.



The Council of Nicaea went a long way to formalizing the Bible as Christians know it today - all in an attempt to prevent the church from splitting again as it nearly did over the Arian controversy. In this attempt they were to fail, and some of the most grievous conflicts to come in Europe would be precisely over different interpretations of the Bible.



THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY - RESISTED BY BALTS, SLAVS AND GERMANS



When the Roman Empire in the West collapsed (see chapter 18) Christianity had been spread throughout its former dominions, with the exception of the Germans, the Balts, and a significant section of the Slavs.



The Germanic tribes, who participated in the sacking of Rome at the formal end of that empire, did not destroy the Roman Catholic Church alongside with the Roman state, partly as a result of them viewing the religion of Rome as being part of the great original cultural tradition of that Empire - which it was not.



The leader of the church in Rome, the Pope, therefore survived the Germanic invasions, and went on to become an important political player in his own right.



The Church itself lost no time in sending Christian missionaries to the pagan tribes, the most famous of them being Wufilas (311 - 383 AD) who worked amongst the Visigoths.



Another famous missionary was Patrick, who although born in Britain, went to Ireland and became the Christianizer of that island, later being made a saint by the church for his efforts.

COERCIVE CHRISTIANITY TAKES ROOT



With the use of violent and bloody coercion, Saxon and German paganism was quite literally killed off, and most of the survivors became Christians more out of fear than out of genuine conviction. Christianity finally spread to the Goths themselves, through a Christian slave named Wulfila, who translated the Bible into Gothic.



Before the end of the fourth century, Christianity had spread to the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Lombards and other German tribes within the direct sphere of influence of the Western Roman Empire.



By the year 550 AD, the only non-Christian tribes were to be found in Bavaria and those parts of Germany north from there - including virtually all of the Danes, Scandinavians, Balts and Slavs to the east.



WHITE PAGAN ORIGINS OF CHRISTMAS AND EASTER



Through sheer terror rather than logical persuasion, Christianity then became the dominant religion of the previously pagan Europe - yet because they never quite succeeded in rooting out some pagan customs, they quietly adopted them.



Easter, for example, comes from the old pagan goddess of fertility, Eoster (or Ostara), who used as her symbols the egg and the rabbit - potent signs of fertility. Most Christians today have no idea where their Easter rabbit comes from, or why they have Easter Eggs.



The ancient north European feast of Eoster marked the start of Spring in Europe - and as this celebration was too deeply ingrained in these Gothic tribes to remove, the Christianizing church elders simply took this feast and in arbitrary fashion made it into the date of Jesus Christ's crucifixion.



The same happened with the Winter solstice - originally a pagan celebration to mark the turning point of winter - the longest night of winter - with a fire and a pine tree. Solstice was then combined with the date of Jesus Christ's birth, again in an arbitrary fashion.



However, the church was for a long time uneasy with the pagan undertones of the celebration - such as the pine tree, which is native to Scandinavia, which is nowhere to be found in the Bible - and this led to the church officially banning the celebration of Christmas no less than three times - all of course unsuccessfully.

[ramana]

Martin Carver, "The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300"

Boydell Press | January 26, 2006 | English | ISBN: 1843831252 | 602 pages

In Europe, the cross went north and east as the centuries unrolled: from the Dingle Peninsula to Estonia, and from the Alps to Lapland, ranging in time from Roman Britain and Gaul in the third and fourth centuries to the conversion of peoples in the Baltic area a thousand years later. These episodes of conversion form the basic narrative here. History encourages the belief that the adoption of Christianity was somehow irresistible, but specialists show the underside of the process by turning the spotlight from the missionaries, who recorded their triumphs, to the converted, exploring their local situations and motives.

[Husky]

^



[quote name='acharya' date='22 January 2011 - 12:09 AM' timestamp='1295634678' post='110347']

ww.white-history.com/hwr17.htm



CHRISTIANITY THE YOUNGEST RELIGION



Put another way - compared to the time frame of the existence of records of the White race - a little over 35,000 years - Christianity represents less than the last six percent this time.

[/quote]

Tsss. The ignorance some people labour under is always astounding. You think you've heard it all - and actually, I think you have by the time you reach even your teens - but it's *always* stupefying when you hear it again from people who are (presumably) serious:



Despite their clamour about christianity being the youngest "religion",

christianity is still older than the invented notion of "white race" that has possessed the totally subverted unfortunate Europeans. And in fact, the "white race" self-identification (=latest Replacement theology for their actual identity) is *entirely* an invention of christianism.

If there had been no christianism there would be no identification with/as "white race". I.e. "white race" notions owe their existence to christianism.



So these race-centrists of "white-hystery" ought to be grateful to christianism for giving them all this christo-conditioning (i.e. the "white race" stuff) that they so desperately hold on to as their identifying mark.



Everyone knows this much. So, surely, their delirium *must* be a joke - play-acting. No?



But hope they don't ludicrously imagine that Greece and Rome identified with any "white race". Or identified - other than in a general "humanity" sense - with the Celtic or Germanic communities. Romans massacred the Germanic population significantly in wars of conquest - even before Constantine. (There's a difference, but the difference is irrelevant to this point.) And Romans wiped out much of the continental Celtic civilisation. Cruelly, with calculated intent. Rome certainly dealt ruthlessly with those who resisted earlier.



The later Romans allowed the southern Germanic tribes that were settled to be a part of the empire, including its armies - but then, Rome had a lot of sub-Saharan Africans too in its army (and apparently also officers in high positions, going by one instance I seem to remember). Every "barbarian" was equally a barbarian. Until Hellenised. Once Hellenised, they became an extension of the empire. Never quite the "local" (pagani), but a familiar face to them.

Rome moreover came to see the Levant/Middle East as an extension of itself, its empire - having Hellenised the population. (The empire even had a Syrian emperor at one point - though the particular individual was not the best of examples). And this was different from how Rome regarded Germania or Gaul or the British Isles.



Anyway.

It must really bother all these "white-race"-ists (white-racists?) that the traditional Hellenistic GrecoRomans of today remain insubvertible (they're traditional, genuine Hellenes, after all - i.e. actual heathens) and so don't give a jot about the 'white race shmace' pre-occupations, but instead stick firmly to their actual (known, historic, documented, true) self-identity and self-identification: as Hellenes. (And as subsets thereof as Greeks, Romans/Italics.)



But that's what happens when a population gets christianised. It gets so permanently christo-conditioned that even when it thinks it has "escaped" christianism it is actually more permanently in christianism's stranglehold. Because now they don't even see that their current state is still possessed by the christoclass virus anymore, and so they won't know to try to escape it anymore. ("Didn't we abjure jesus/christianism? Didn't that do the magic trick of returning us to who we were/were supposed to be/come?" No. Never. There are *layers* of subversion. Dumping jeebus - the visible trappings of the christoclass mindvirus - is but the first step in a very very long process that will actually never be complete again until these people are restored to their Gods=religion unsubverted. In fact, the restoration requires that people are unsubverted first, and hence truly open to becoming who they actually are/were meant to be. E.g. the genuine Hellenes of today again.)



It took centuries to christianise the various European populations and break them collectively into being true christians - a true christian society -, until all their thought was controlled and patterned and very very christian.

(Deus ex machinas excepted as usual) they imagine that they can just snap out of it all in a moment - and that too by swearing on yet another christian credo (but peculiar to christian Europe): the "white race".

It's insane.



They must think there is no effort that comes with breaking free. But then, such entities/groups don't really want freedom. Not really. Because they're still enamoured by that next layer of the mindvirus (that was residual from their earlier credo). First it was jeebus/gawd/the One Troo Religion they clung to, now it's the One Troo/White Race.

It's all the same really: it's all still everything *except* who they are.



Isn't it time the christo-conditioned west *tried* to grow out of its christo-conditioning. Fully. Properly. Actually.

It's not sufficient to take the first step and stop. Because the situation is effectively like them stepping out of long-term incarceration and falling straight into a well. They're still stuck - granted the view from their new prison quarters seems different to them. And some will even swear it is freedom.

But the onlookers - who are actually free - know better.



Full-blown christianism as well as white-race/black-race/whatever delusional self-identifications are all part of the same christoclass mindviruses. Identifying as christian or by race ("colour" etc) is always a Replacement identity for one's true, innate heathen identity. That (the latter) "white-race"-ists have not regained. And it can only be regained by first dumping all false self-identifications.



On false self-identifications. Both aggressors and victims end up doing it - both christian Europeans who developed the notion to see themselves as white (and other such convoluted christian concoctions), and - for example - the Africans on whom the dichotomy was imposed. Who therefore in time (after so much exposure, due to living in the societal reality of the dichotomy wherein it was all-pervasive together with christianism) started believing in "white" and "black" and started playing their assigned role. And so, eventually, their identity *became* that: "black". Of course, the real African identity is not so trivial, cheap, irrelevant and meaningless as "black". (Their real identity is their original identity which is that of their unsubverted ancestors. I.e. heathen.) It's sad that even the memory of that original/true identity of theirs has left, having been replaced by black and/or christian. Same for those of Europe: it's white and/or christian. In place of their actual heathen identity. The conditioned among such Europeans are still groping in darkness. Still far away from where they should be. Still pre-occupied by every other pitfall.

[HareKrishna]

[quote name='ramana' date='07 February 2011 - 06:46 AM' timestamp='1297040930' post='110597']

[b]

Martin Carver, "The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300-1300"



[/quote]

Even the german Edda has christian interpolations.

[ramana]

J

John Philip Jenkins, "Jesus Wars: How Four Patriarchs, Three Queens, and Two Emperors Decided What Christians Would Believe for the Next 1,500 years"

Publisher: H a r p e r O n e | 2010 | ISBN: 0061768944 | 352 pages |

*Starred Review*



The fifth-century Christian church faced a doctrinal issue, now largely forgotten, that precipitated intramural Christian savagery unparalleled until the 11-centuries-later Thirty Years’ War. The bone of contention was the nature of Jesus Christ. That he wasn’t a mere man was indisputable. But was he a human-divine cross-breed, so to speak, or was he purely divine and his human body an illusion? Neither was accepted, but the conclusion of the council of Chalcedon in 451 that he was fully divine and fully human—that is, said dissidents, of two natures—incensed those who held he was of one nature, entirely divine. The fight broke out well before Chalcedon, entailing the death-from-assault of the patriarch of Constantinople during the 449 council of Ephesus, thereafter disowned as the “Gangster Synod.” Chalcedon eventually triumphed, but not until well after 250 years of intermittent violence in which monks behaved like the Waffen SS. Jenkins condenses centuries of church and imperial strife with admirable clarity despite the continuous blizzard of historical names and ecclesiastical terms the narrative entails. He suggests that this era, not the later Dark and Middle Ages, is the most violent (un-Christian?) in Christian history and that it may have lessons for the present and future conflict between Christians and Muslims over the nature of God.

[HareKrishna]

Religious Forgeries



Christian apologists frequently argue that if Daniel were full of historical errors, as the critics say, learned Jews would have spotted those errors and prevented the book from being canonized in the Hebrew Bible. Actually, this argument carries little weight because successful religious forgeries have been common throughout history.



To begin with, many a Mormon today embraces Joseph Smith's Book of Mormon, an alleged history of ancient America miraculously translated from gold plates that had been buried in a hill in upstate New York fourteen centuries before his time. Some of our nation's most brilliant doctors, lawyers, engineers, computer scientists, and corporate executives are devout Mormons. This dubious book demands and receives self-sacrificing morality, honesty, and obedience from its adherents. Alas, mitochondrial DNA studies show that Native Americans are Asian rather than Jewish.[66] In addition, the Book of Mormon contains many other errors demonstrating that it was written by a modern American rather than an ancient Native American.[67]



The Mormons are not the only ones to embrace forgeries. Ignatius of Antioch had written seven genuine epistles in the early second century, but a fourth-century impersonator interpolated false passages into his genuine epistles, and forged six more epistles in his name. The fraud was exposed only in modern times, but for centuries the Catholic Church used the expanded collection of Ignatius' epistles to support the authority of the Catholic hierarchy.[68]



The Donation of Constantine is a forgery produced by eighth-century Catholic leaders to support the Popes' temporal claim to the Papal States of Italy and their spiritual claim to rule all Christendom. Emperor Constantine supposedly issued this decree early in the fourth century to donate the Papal States to Pope Sylvester I in gratitude for his miraculous cure from leprosy upon his baptism.[69]



The Donation of Constantine is one part of a much larger collection, the False Decretals. These documents are a collection of papal letters and decrees of church councils purportedly compiled by Saint Isidore of Seville around 600 AD. Many of the documents happen to be genuine. However, many of the letters, including all those dating from the first three centuries of the Church's existence, were forged to prove that the clergy have always had political rights that secular kings dare not interfere with. The ninth-century pope Nicholas I declared the Decretals authoritative, and had them incorporated into the Canon Law of the Roman Catholic Church. Although the Church has admitted for some time that these works are forgeries, they were official Church documents for many centuries.[70]



Millions of Arabs and other enemies of the Jews continue to cite the Protocols of the Elders of Zion to this day as proof of a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. This infamous forgery supposedly comprises the minutes of twenty-four meetings of a congress in Basle, Switzerland, in 1897. Supposedly, Jewish political and economic leaders from all over the world collaborated with the Freemasons to hatch a diabolical plot to subvert the morals of young people and foster liberalism and socialism. Thus they hoped to destroy the economies of all nations and thereby take over the world.[71]



We read in the Book of Daniel that God's angels ordered the venerable prophet Daniel to "shut up" and "seal" his book (Daniel 8:26; 12:4,9). Perhaps the author meant us to understand that Daniel was to conceal the meaning of the book from the unworthy (Daniel 12:9-10), but these verses can also be understood as saying that the book was to be concealed until the time that all its predictions about the end of the world were due to come to pass in the Maccabean Age.[72] If an ancient Jewish author asserted that in an old trunk somewhere he had just discovered a book of prophecy that was four centuries old, such a claim would be hard to disprove without modern forensic equipment.



The canonization of the Book of Daniel was probably a matter of politics. Pious Jews apparently embraced the book, despite its historical errors, false predictions, and recent origins, because it supported their political movement. Even if the age of everlasting righteousness did not appear as expected, the political independence of the Jews for the first time in over four centuries seemed to be miracle enough to confirm Daniel's prophecies. The details of the unfulfilled predictions were probably reinterpreted in a more figurative and "spiritual" manner, much as Jehovah's Witnesses have repeatedly rationalized the failure of their own predictions for the imminent end of the world. Thus religious fantasies like the Book of Daniel will survive if the political factions that embrace them prevail in the end, and it is the winners who write the history books.



for more here



http://spirituality.forumup.de/post-2940....html#2940

[HareKrishna]

o cite a parallel example, the Book of Mormon prophets, who purportedly flourished between 600 BC and 400 AD, supposedly gave explicit predictions about Jesus Christ's career in first-century Palestine (Helaman 14 et passim), Christopher Columbus' discovery of America (1 Nephi 13:10-12), the Revolutionary War (1 Nephi 13:15-19), and Joseph Smith's prophetic career in nineteenth-century America (2 Nephi 3). However, the book is totally silent about events after 1830, the year the book was first printed. The most likely explanation is that the book was Smith's own composition, and a heavy burden of proof lies on Mormon apologists to prove otherwise. And the exact same reasoning applies to the prophecies of Daniel.



The biblical prophets themselves admitted that their credibility stands or falls with the fulfillment or failure of their predictions.[74] We read, for instance, in the Book of Deuteronomy:



But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die. And if you say in your heart, 'How may we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'--when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously, you need not be afraid of him. (Deuteronomy 18:20-22)



Now of course nobody should ever be executed for their religious beliefs, and the Book of Daniel is probably just a novel rather than a serious prophecy. Even so, the dramatic failure of the prophecies in the Book of Daniel demonstrates that whatever else it is, it is not the inspired word of God.



http://spirituality.forumup.de/forum-15-...ality.html

[Husky]

Hamsa.org doesn't seem to be around anymore.

The new home of the Ishwar Sharan Archive - previously at hamsa.org - is at:

http://ishwarsharan.wordpress.com/.



Rest here.





Sorry Ramana (next post). I got confused between the "Thomas in India fraud" thread and this "jeebus fraud" thread. After all, jeebus and thomas are supposed to be identical twins and, both being equally/identically non-existent, it was hard to tell their threads apart too.

[ramana]

Husky, Don't mind lekin this thread is for examining the historicity of Jesus. What you posted is about modus operandi of the Church in India. We cann post what we like then it becomes a bulletin board and not a structured forum.

[ramana]

Secret Origins of the Bible



Publisher: Millennium Press | ISBN: 0965504786 | edition 2002 | 478 pages |

• Clearly written and easily understandable by the lay reader.

• Thoroughly researched: author's points are backed by references in the writings of acknowledged scholars.

• Special features of the book: lavishly illustrated with multiple images in each illustration that show at a glance the mythic themes paralleling the bible.



This book demonstrates that the stories and themes of the Bible were part of the great mythic systems of the ancient world by u ing comparative mythology, tell tale verses in the Bible and archaeology. The abstract God of modern monotheistic Judaism, Christianity and Islam is a comparatively recent creation. In later times the myth of a messianic deliverer was combined with that of the pagan god-man who suffered a horrible, excruciating death but was physically resurrected to produce the Christ myth.

[ramana]

Dhu, The above book is a recent one and relies on archaelogy and history and uses language analysis. He has quite a few badly drawn pictures. All in all he says tis a whole conglemoration of legends and myths of the Middle East woven together to create a one god narrative.