The Orthodoxy Of Christianity

I have created this discussion to debate religious and spiritual matters of the Bible.

What is the orthodoxy of Christianity?

Many Christian scholars believe that every single word jot and tittle of the Bible is God inspired and inherently without a single error.

Most people are brought into the study of the Bible with and idealistic approach and so when told that the Bible is inerrant they believe it wholeheartedly. When they encounter their first contradiction in the scriptures they then shift the blame to the error being one of translation or forgeries, for how could God make an error?

They cannot believe in their heart of hearts that God did not write the book and the authors may have had different views concerning spirituality and Christian doctrine. So they twist, contort and wrench the Bible to fit their own point of view.

The Canon of the New testament was assembled out of the myriad of first century writings because they seemed to fit together and had the least amount of blaring contradictions. You cannot have one book saying Jesus was born in a stable and manger at an innkeepers barn then in the next chapter say he as born in a cave in a totally different city under different circumstances. How can Jesus have two, three and four different birthdays?

Thus the New testament Canon had to be shaped to only include books that seemed to agree. Heated debates surrounded the forming of the NT's (New Testament) inception and some brutally lost their lives simply because they disagreed with the doctrines being formed and cemented by the time of Constantine.

Thus God had little to do with this process it was decided by people who considered themselves educated in such matters and had an agenda of their own to propagate.

Even book names and chapter numbers were added and at this time. It is uncertain how many other things were added and subtracted from the original writings. Perhaps there were no original writings but a simple tale of a carpenter's son that was crucified for not fitting in.

Yet the end product of the NT is that this person being called Jesus, or some form of the name, had to be conformed to fulfill all requirements the OT (Old Testament) stipulated in order to be believed as being the true promised messiah of the ancient Hebrew text.

Thus the Biblical writers began to fabricate this "story"...

For instance, the OT stated that this coming Messiah's first miracle would be restoring the sight to the blind... So they wrote a story about Jesus restoring the sight to a blind man and inserted it in.

This Messiah was compared to a lamb in the OT so they created story of Jesus dying as the passover lamb.

In order to pull this off both highly educated Jews and Greeks would have to be in on the process.

This is why Jesus says:

Matthew 5:18
For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.

Comment: The NT Jesus had to fulfill every requirement of the OT in order for the law to face irrelevancy.

So we see story upon story being invented to make this seem like it was indeed the case. Perhaps this was a writing contest to see who could write the best story of a messiah's actions and how he would fulfill this law if he were to come in their present day.

As story upon story was written, compared and compiled suddenly a very enigmatic picture emerged.

Even the reason for having four gospels rather than one continuous story was part of the old testament logic. The old testament talks of "four branches". The messiah would have to be linked with these four branches also. So the stories of Jesus and his fulfilling of the OT prophecies incorporated even the most obscure areas of Hebrew wisdom and doctrine.

In the process of the scribes and librarians writing all of these Jesus stories there were many that were rejected because they did not fit with the overall picture that slowly emerged as the, "word became flesh".

Also in writing these stories new mystical knowledge (revelation) was revealed that had never been speculated upon or perceived before. Human spirituality became crystallized into a very precise almost mathematically exact religious discipline. Thus "the truth" was thought to be present in this body of literature.

The stories and the revelations surrounding them about spirituality seemed to have the earmark of the divine. Though there was probably little or even no truth to them they had far reaching social implications.

Anyone who has written a fictional book knows how they sometimes write themselves once the main pillars are set within the storyline.

Even the parts of Jesus sending disciples out two by two are invented as social mechanics, tools to bring about change and emancipation from the yoke of the law and tyrannical rulers of the day. Jesus distaste for the rich and his feeding the multitudes are all social instruments created to magically empower the people. His temptations, his celibacy (somewhat resembling homosexuality) and tolerance for sin were all parts of a social movement created by the writers of these documents.

Perhaps even a grander picture and watermark of spirituality emerged and was available to these first century writers than what can be gleaned from the scriptures and their translations today.

In the first century true spirituality became defined and Jesus was the vehicle used to paint this picture.

Wind, breath, air, dust, soul, spirit, body, mind, heart etc these constituents of religion were all given precise meaning. Today these meanings are lost and these terms are used interchangeably by many spiritualists, preachers and minsters without even a thought that their Biblical meaning differs from today's usage. Even within the first century their meaning became obscured by mass confusion. Scribes were unsure which terms to use so they changed copies of the bible to reflect their own understandings. Thus life itself (when it begins and when it ends) became indefinitive.

These terms were once Biblically defined.

Out of the mass of first century writings came a well polished social instrument meant to engineer the world toward a peaceful age.

Yet these writings had loose ends. The allegories and metaphoric symbolism that when carried to their conclusions left many questions unanswered. The first century writers could never have imagined how their works would be scrutinized.

This scrutiny led to the fracture and eventual collapse of the orthodoxy.

The extraneous writing that never made it onto the canon were suppressed as best the church fathers could. The cracks in the orthodoxy had already rendered it waxed feeble by the second century. Besides the entire Christian church had been built upon the old testament and the writers never dreamed that science would evolve to such a degree to prove many of the OT stories as false and as unreliable as they have become. The church tried to suppress even the scriptures themselves in a dark age so as to conceal their contradictions.

The ironic parable about the man who built his house on shifting sands where the rains came and washed his house away came around and bit the orthodoxy on the behind. Perhaps if Jesus had rejected the OT outright but Jesus seemed to endorse the OT and was an extension of its fables. Thus he can easily be thrown under the same bus. For how can he be divine and God in the flesh and not know the earth is round and such other vital matters?

How can Jesus endorse the God of Abraham and Noah? This God does not even know the great flood never ever happened...

Science opened a gaping hole within the orthodoxy that rendered it impotent and without divine authority. This science then exposed the Jesus myth as just exactly that a myth created by spiritualists and social engineers. This does not negate the social truth implemented in the Bible message. It simply stripes it of its divine inception. It removes the word "holy" from its title... For how can something be divine and full of so many blaring scientific errors? How can we have been created 6000 years ago and yet share the DNA of plants and animals? How can an earth millions of years old be only 6000 years old? And why would God create dinosaur fossils? How can the Y chromosome be a mutation of the X chromosome when man was created first?

These astounding scientific revelations have crippled the Orthodoxy to the verge of extinction. It has silenced and exposed a once authoritative Christian source to ridicule and rank foolishness.

If we were to overlook the blaring problems between science and the Orthodoxy how would we arrive at the core message that Christianity is trying to impart? Why would this message even have merit considering that the orthodoxy has tried to pass bad science off as the inspired word and will of the one true God? How much divinity is really left to recapture a simple faith and doctrine? The fact that Islam is built upon the same scientifically inept myths subjects "Allah" to the same sterility and foolish ridicule. Well one approach it to consciously dismiss it all and to only believe those things that seem worthy of belief. As opposed to believing it all and throwing out what is found lacking. Considering the Bible had a several thousand year tradition of being wrong about many things it seems like an unlikely place to find more truth given its abhorrent history.

How many people have lived and died believing in its trickery? Yet still spiritual truth is the quest here not discrimination for discrimination's sake. Can we still learn anything from the Bible and its philosophies? I say yes... but much has to be overlooked in order to find the "wheat among the tares." And one must constantly say to themselves this book is NOT divine as a whole so as not to become ensnared again by its allure and claims of infallibility.

Perhaps its greatest truth in the Jesus story is the travesty of hate crimes and how people unfairly exact judgment on others based upon false witness. One does not need to be a Christian to understand this. One does not have to believe in a flat earth to love their neighbor and one does not have to follow the Judeo-Christian laws to live a good and meaningful life.

If there was a Christian orthodoxy it is certainly shrouded in contradiction and obscurity now and probably was just as errant back then. Is Christianity obsolete? I do not believe this to be true. Perhaps it is the few stories of love and compassion within its pages that will stand the test of time. Yet its stories of brutality and hated will linger and continue to cause it to become more and more marginalized.

This discussion here is for debating what is left of the Orthodoxy and the Gnostic texts surrounding it and for trying to ascertain if there is anything (maybe a god) left salvaging out of the whole mess.