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Christians and the falsely so called knowledge Part 1
15:48 Aug 15 2008
Times Read: 1,200

It has served us well, this myth of christ

- Pope Leo X, 16th Century

In doing research for a house project here on VR, which involves World history, i would choose a subject and then research events and dates on it.

One subject was Jesus Christ, which started me thinking (which is very bad!)



And at the end of it all, i find myself completely boggled by the idea that throughout history no one, no christian has stopped to think about the difference between faith and fact, primarily, the difference between the Jesus Christ of faith and the factual Jesus of history, between truth and fiction.



It seems to me that many are happy to believe and teach of everything thats in the bible!

The miracles, that He walked on water, that He cured a blind man...that he came back from the dead. How much do people even know about the origins of what they're reading? About who actually wrote the bible...the most familiar version, the new testament? FOr instance the Gospels, how did they come about or even something more basic, like when were they written? Most believe, that they were written during, or shortly after his death...well, this would be the wrong answer.



Its amazing isn't it, over a billion people out there, worshipping these writings, accepting every word as Gods own wisdom, slaughtering each other over them, and all of it without having the vaguest notion of where these scriptures really come from.

I can hear the zealots rising up already

But its the bible, its been around long enough

Well then i suppose that makes it all true then...follow on blindly.



Through all my research, its become apparent, that no one truly knows what went on in the holy land almost two thousand years ago, unlike most other historic events, theres seems to be no documented fact, nothing can be verified, its like theres a black hole in history. But, there is one thing that is known: and thats none of the four Gospels that make up the new testament was written by people who were comtemporaries of Christ.



For example the earliest of the four, the Gospel of Mark (or rather the one people refer to as the Gospel of Mark, since we don't even know who wrote it, as i have recently found out, it was common practice at the time to attribute written work to famous people), is thought to have been written at least 40 years after Jesus' death. Now thats 40 years without, the BBC, CNN, without videotaped interviews, without a google search engine turning up scores of eyewitness reports from people who actually knew Him. So at best what we're talking about here are stories that were passed on by word of mouth, over 40 years without any written record, how accurate do you think such "evidence" would be, after 40 years of primitive, uneducated, superstitous people telling stories around their campfires?



What should be even more troubling to followersof the faith, is how these particular four Gospels actually came to be included in their new testament.



Over the two hundred years following the writing of the Gospel of Mark, it is well known that many other Gospels were written, with all sorts of tales about the life of Jesus. As early movements grew more popular and sread throughout the different villages, stories of Jesus' life took on local flavours that were influenced by the circumstances of each community. Dozens of Gospels were flying around, more often than not at odds with each other, we know this as fact because of the Nag Hammadi discovery.

In December 1945, in the mountains of Upper Eygpt, at a place called Jabal al-Tarif, which is close to the town of Nag Hammadi, two arab peasants dug up a 6ft jar, they broke it open hoping to find gold, instead they found 13 papyrus books bound in gazelle leather. Sadly, the peasants didn't understand the significance of their find and some of the books went up in flames in the ovens of their homes. Other pages were lost as the valuable documents found their way to the coptic museum in Cairo.

What did survive though, were 52 texts that are still to this day the subject of great controversy among biblical scholars, because these writings, commonly referred to as the gnostic Gospels, refer to sayings and beliefs of Jesus that are at odds with those of the new testament.

For instance, among the texts found at Nag Hammadi was the Gospel of Thomas, which identifies itself as a secret Gospel and opens with the line:

"These are the secret words which the living Jesus spoke, and which the twin, Judas Thomas, wrote down."

And theres more, bound in the same volume was the Gospel of Philip, which openly describes Jesus' relationship with Mary Magdalene as an intimate one. And Mary has her own text - the Gospel of Mary, in which she is regarded as a disciple and a leader of a christian group. Then theres the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Egyptians, the secret book of John. Then theres the Gospel of Truth with its distinctly buddhist undertones...the list goes on.



A common thread in all these Gospels apart from the acts and words of Jesus thats pretty different from those written about in the Gospels of the new testament, is that they considered common christian beliefs like the virgin birth and the resurrection to be silly delusions. Even worse is that these writings were extremely gnostic, because, although they refer to Jesus and His disciples, the message they convey is that to know yourself, at the deepest level, was to also know God - that is, by looking into yourself to find the sources of joy, sorrow, love and hate, you would find God.



TBC



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nag_Hammadi

http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnostic_Gospels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus