Bible vs. Science

Then either defend, or publicly abandon your insinuation that Josephus cannot be trusted when discussing things Jewish simply because he is Jewish.

No, you've been given a pass for far too long. If you're gonna spin circles, you're gonna have to learn to dance.

btw Can no American write American history in a trustworthy manner?

http://home.att.net/~jackthompson/page118.htm

Still looking to locate the book.

Your ID-iocy is showing again, rl - in fairness, though, perhaps you really don't understand that you again present a straw man argument ... apparently, that IS all you've got.

Yeah, but timber; you have a bandwagon that plays only the right songs.

With you completely unable to pretend a defense of your ill-conceived premise, your proposition falls of it's own weight.

In truth, there is no 'evidence' that Isaiah was written by three separate individuals.

The argument rests solely on stylistic differences found in different sections of the book.

Can an individual author not write in more than one style? Are there no men which have written both poetry and prose, or history and fiction, or satire and drama?

Of course we've already dealt with what your notion of 'objective scholarship' is, while discussing Josephus. You wouldn't know it if it bit you.

Ah, to be as pithy as Neo.

What I say in a hundred words, he adds humor and says it in ten.

Well done.

I don't like to type. What can I say?

http://www.alibris.com/search/search.cfm?chunk=25&mtype=&qwork=6660498&page=1&matches=93&qsort=p&browse=0&full=1


Here is the book, (took me forever to find it) But I am not sure if this is the one which claimed that atheists/rationalists denied the existence of Babylon for a time. This is a great book though and worth the read.

Alibris rocks.

1Timothy 6:20
O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called:

rl, there's simply no point attempting to egage you or your persistent absurdities in rational, respectful manner. You go right ahead and figure whatever and however you've determined works best for you. The world will get along just fine - sufficient of its residents are capable of seeing thriugh ID-iocy to ensure the proposition never will achieve that for which its gullible, deluded, luddite proponents strive.

I submit every proposition, argument, and objection you have posed has been more than adequately, and more than once, countered, refuted, and disposed of.

Note that while your right to believe, hold, and express your viewpoint is sacrosanct, the belief set you endorse and the manner in which you present and defend that pertinent to that belief set are ludicrous. I have all the respect in the world for you as a person (absent any reason to hold otherwise), however your medeival religionist philosophy is a pathetic joke, bordering on a clear and present danger to the progress of civilization.

I find comforting the fact your manner of discourse in regard to your proposition serves absolutely stereotypically to expose it for the hypocritical, ignorant, superstitious bunk it is. With proponents such as you, your proposition has little need of external enemies.

Often a newly born believer in God will make rash statements to the effect.

"If God really knew what was happening". That somehow God is detached from the evil of this world because he cannot face it.

Because there is a thick layer of clouds between the sun and the earth maybe. God seems so removed from life sometimes.

So we can do things here on the earth and often go unnoticed by God. God certainly looks for virtue not sin.

Yet, God knows... God is ALL knowing.

So as Christians we can be born of spirit yet the mind can lay in a state of misperception.

This is the way I see God and humans.

I see a tribal people about six thousand years ago who had just put on clothes and walked out of the jungles.

They put down their spears and picked up farming implements.

They changed evolution. Though we are still evolving on a microscopic level we have altered the evolution within our species. So we no longer are controlled by the nature that we once had in the jungles. But a new spiritual nature. A consciousness a new peace between our once untamed species.

So this was the beginning. This was when humanity was touched by the spirit of God and our eyes were opened and we saw good and evil.

Before then we were part of nature and God overlooked evil as a part of survival. The NEW spirit was to guide us to holiness. Yet the spirit was only first granted conditionally not eternally.

Consequently this spiritual guide was removed when humans gave the spirit (dominion, kingdom) to a parasitic part of nature (devil). This left humans in darkness. The zodiac fell into darkness.

Yet one cannot live completely in darkness. It is impossible to be wrong all of the time and is it impossible to be right all of the time. One must be unconscious that there own error is also divinely inspired.

When this spirit had been upon humans they had known God but when they lost the spirit they still retained an idea of who the true God was in memory. They attempted to teach this to their offspring but this heavenly knowledge was slowly corrupted and reversed in it's meaning. It was lost slowly over time.

When this spirit was lost in humans they relied on their memory to guide them. Since this knowledge was heavenly knowledge of God it was woven into they pictorial plotting of the zodiac. This was the television of their day. They didn't stare into tiny little dots on a television screen but they stared into tiny little dots of light in the sky. The dots were arranged into a circle of shapes and images. Many of them animals and even beasts. But it is really not clearly known what the original creatures were. Because the zodiac has so widely been changed.

But to cut through the confusion, what was the purpose of the zodiac? It was to guide the world in morality. It was filled with many sagas that explained the NEW nature. The nature of God in humans. The nature they left behind when they stepped out of the jungles and became civilized. Yet as stated, the meanings of these stories over time became altered and changed until they no longer represented the original stories and so their divine authority became in question. The stories were too vague and they became wildly debated and vehemently distrusted.

Thus when the Zodiac lost it's ability to naturally unite the people in all things moral and good then this was where the people were presented with a dilemma. This Zodiac thing was becoming a problem with the people. They became preferential to certain constellations, planets etc... and it only seemed to promote division. This strife among the patriarchs led to Moses writing the law.

No no one can agree on which symbol of the zodiac should ultimately guide them but one man, Moses (along with the help of his God) is going to write the moral "laws" that these symbols are supposed to represent? God voiced apprehension concerning the giving of ANY laws to Moses. So the people instead of twelve constellations to argue over were now reluctantly given a whole barrage of laws to interpret in various ways. At first the laws seemed to work because they had the stories of the zodiac to accompany them. Yet these stories became even more lost in cabalistic mysticism. And as the law suddenly was required to stand on it's own it suddenly led to more division within the people. It led to so much division that they no longer felt the law was truly God inspired. This led to utter lawlessness and death for many.

Yet it seems at the heart of this zodiac and even the law, was a messiah. One to bring back the holy spirit as seed though the tree of life. The story of the zodiac of a "new age". This new age was supposed to be a return to paradise.

Here is where the story becomes very complex. Things are not always like what is seen. We rely on our five senses to see the stars and what we saw guided what we did and believed. Now these twelve constellations have been written within our spirits.

These constellations were only a vague glimpse of the reality of the inner spirit. These laws were a crude frame to enforce survival at all costs. Man had lost the innate sense to survive in the jungles. Yet often this innate animalistic sense usurped the ability to spiritually discern the truth. So it was half truth.

Over time the law lead to even greater wars than the zodiac did. The Hebrews discarded the zodiac as some foreign perversion of the faith. Their pictorial intent long lost. As the laws became so extensive that the emphasis of the law was bound to shift.

The first major shift was the Hebrew temple being destroyed. When there is no temple, there can be no sacrifices and when there are no sacrifices then there can be no observance of the law. The days of prophets spouting out new laws for the Hebrew people to obey had passed. Suddenly the Hebrew people realized they had too many laws to obey. If they were going to ignore whole sections of the law than how could they enforce other sections?

So the emphasis went from doing the law to "talking" about doing the law and the various interpretations of the law. Suddenly everyone was a lawyer. This was the type of religious culture that Jesus Christ was born into. People who copied (scribes) the law but did not act upon it or necessarily obey it. Thus the law was of no effect. Much of the Hebrew faith had also been paganized by Rome.

This was why Jesus called them hypocrites.

Matthew 15:1-9
1 Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, 2 Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread. 3 But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?

Comment: This tradition that Jesus refers to is the talking about the law and various interpretations of law rather than the doing and obeying it. This was why Jesus said:

Mt 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:
Jesus Christ fulfilled the law. There was only one thing left to fulfill. The bride had to accept the bridegroom. The people of Israel were considered the Bride. Yet the traditions of the people had drifted so far from the truth that they could no longer recognize or become motivated by a "messiah".

In fact, the law represented a sore spot of contention for them, considering they felt cursed due to not really following the law for so long. I once read that the very reason why they were called "Jews" and not "Judeans" is because Judeans followed the letter of the law and the Jews were a "shortened" or abbreviated term used to rail on the Hebrews because they had supposedly angered their God by not obeying his "laws".

This was why the people did not stone "the woman taken in adultery" because the law was not carried out in "most" cases. Roman law had also outlawed Jewish public stoning. Yet Jesus still had to obey and fulfill every single law to set us free. Jesus demonstrated the law of liberty.

Thus still the bride rejected the bridegroom and Jesus was crucified. The Hebrew people were only a tool used by the devil to murder God's only begotten son. It was ultimately the devil who saw to it that the people were blinded to his message and that they would reject him when he came. Yet Christ gave his life willingly.

It is the gift of Christ within that is the return to innocence.
The bride (Israel) and bridegroom were supposed to usher in paradise together. Yet since the bride rejected the bridegroom and the bridegroom was slain this changed the plan. Yet God knew this anomaly would occur.

God had a "great mystery" hidden within his mind that he had never told a soul. This great mystery that, from a celibate, obedient and fully human messiah we could all through faith be "born" of holy spirit. That the flesh could be atoned for such (by one man's obedience) that the spirit will again fully indwell and never stand corruption again.

Physical birth is between a man and a woman BUT spiritual birth is the product of a love between God and human. Creator and creation,

God so loved the world that he gave...

Liberty is the true way of the spirit. We now have the circle of the heavens within us as light, the holy of holies, Zion.

The great mystery is revealed! Christ in you, the hope of glory! We are the one third stars this is our inheritance and the real estate of the heavens. God "knows" our every need and has created his perfect word (which is his will) within us through Christ Jesus our living lord and savior.

Col 1:27
To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:

The earliest evidence of agriculture, along with its concomitant permanent settlements and related cultural developments, is to be found in the Mideast. Without argument, the development of agriculture is the primary enabler of what we have become today; without agriculture, there could be no civilization.

The emergence of agriculture in the Nile Vally dates to some 12,000 years ago, roughly coincident with the end of the last period of major glaciation, and also roughly contemporaneous with agriculture's emergence in the North Syrian Plain, the Jordan River Valley, the Zagros Mountain region of what now is Iran, the Anatolian Plain of what now is Turkey, and in the Tigris-Euphrates valley in what now is Iraq. By 10,000 years ago, civilization was well evidenced in the region, as were the predecessors of what has come to be modern Western culture, including the progenitors of Western religion.

What became the Abrahamic tradition, comprising today's Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, can be sourced both archaeologically and linguistically to roots in Sumeria, Anatolia, Syria and the Jordan Valley, and, of course, the Nile valley, with its strongest, deepest influuences originating in Sumeria ad the Nile valley. The migrations, translocations, and mingling of peoples and their languages, cultures, and traditions throughout the region over the past dozem millenia is among the most thoroughly documentented and understood matters of archaeologic, linguistic, and historic understanding.

The Abrahamic Tradition grew out of an amalgamation of, a conjoining synthesis of, extant traditions. The assembled, academically accepted record is greatly at odds with your conjectures re history, Rex.

Where did you deal with my objection to your disqualification of Josephus?

You've consistently avoided defending your statement, and the reason why is obvious. It was an absurdity.

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Neither have you provided ANY evidence for your proposition that there were 'three Isaiahs'.

Just your assertion that it must be so because someone you read thought it was so.

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And we haven't even yet touched on your statement about Daniel.

Again you think it's so because you read it somewhere.

Beyond their supposition -- which you picked up like Silly Putty copies the comic page -- you've presented no evidence, nothing.

Really, timber you've got to do more than holler 'Me, too!' to put forth an argument.

With my dismissal of your objection as a straw man argument ... though in fairness, I'll allow I can understand why you might fail to perceive it to be so, given your frequent resort to the tactic. Mebbe that is all you've got.


My statement reflects objective, accepted academic position. Your objection, found only in the apologetics of fundamentalist biblical literalists, is an absurdity.


Again, the consensus of objective, legitimate scholars is tha Isaiah was written over a period of centries, by at least three distinct authors, writing generations apart from one another - no matter what they tell you in Sunday School.


I didn't "read it somewhere", rl, I've read it many places, written by knowledgeable, objective, legitimate scholars - again, it is the consensus position of those not in thrall to the fairytale you gullibly endorse and ineptly espouse. The Bible, whatever canon, is a collection of myths, legends, fables, moral teachings, and societal rules readily traceable to its origins, consistent with the philosophy of its times, and special only for its pernicious influence on those committed to wallow in fear, superstition, and belief in magic. Silly Putty? That's rich, coming from one whose posts reflect forensic abilities and grasp of reality as weak as do yours.

I know you are, but what am I?

Consistent.

Of course, in your mind , these 'scholars' you favor are 'objective' and 'legitimate' --- because they agree with your premise.

However, simple-minded appeal to authority 'perfesser so-and-so said so' is not evidence.

As I said, 'Me, too!' is not much of an argument.

Neither are brush offs like 'that's a straw man, I don't need to deal with it'.

Simply stating something to be a straw man does not make it so.

It's not a 'failure of perception'; it's your failure to present any type of evidence, or reasoned argument, or make any kind of case at all.

Your avoidance of defending your statements really says about there needs to be said about them.

Now if you want to believe that Josephus is untrustworthy when writing of things Jewish simply because he was a Jew -- go ahead.

Just don't expect anyone else to swallow that.

Do you also disqualify all Americans when they write US history?

Since when is love a bomb?

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