If you want...
Sad news for Christians; difficulties in faith for those who do not know. What am I talking about? You all know I had a struggle with god for a while. I knew he was there, but I didn’t. I knew he was real but I didn’t. The only thing that trips us teens up about god is the bible. That’s right. First a history lesson;
I think that's what trips a lot of people up about the Christian God; the Bible.
Rome took over Judea, which was the home of the Jews. Some Jews believed they would be okay because according to biblical tradition, god had promised a messiah to save the kingdom of the Jews.
Two decades after Romans took over, that’s twenty years; many believed that god had sent a savior.
Three decades. Jesus was closing on 30 when he started to proselytize. Judea was just
a Jewish state anyway, as there were plenty of others around. And it was the Herodian Dynasty that ruled them. Pretty much all of the empires and other states that ruled Judea let Judaism fluorish under it anyway, from the Babylonians to the Persians to the Macedonians and Ptolemaics. And they'd been believing God had sent a saviour all along. Daily. There were dozens, if not hundreds, of messiahs around as Jesus was growing up.
Jesus of Nazareth, born in the spring, which is around April (PROOF: Shepard’s do not guard their sheep at night unless the sheep are lambing. The blood from the births draws out predators so they Shepard’s stay to look after the sheep. In the bible there would not have been Shepard’s on the scene if it weren’t spring. Spring over there is April…also the Romans were collecting taxes…another thing about April, and the North Star is brightest in April.).
Not really relevant when he was born, it's obvious it wasn't in the dead of winter as the association of his birth with Christmas is easily traceable as the absorption of pagan holidays from all over Europe. Being born in the middle of spring, or possibly summer, is a pretty good guess, but yeah.
And you're confusing the Roman tax schedule with modern America's tax schedule. The Romans collected taxes on a monthly schedule. Their financial system couldn't support taxes being taken up only once a year like modern countries such as America can.
Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, but raised in Nazareth. Tradition states that you’re named after the town you’re raised in not born in.
A prophet known as John the Baptist baptized Jesus.
Jesus took up the trade of carpentry. (I only just learnt this)
Right.
At 30 Jesus began his public ministry, did good deeds, taught, preached and reportedly performed miracles. He taught about the Ten Commandments, although they weren’t yet invented.
Weren't invented? What? Moses lived anywhere from a few hundred to a thousand years before Jesus was even a twinkle in Joseph's eye. About 1200 years if you assume Ramesses II was the pharaoh that he butted heads with.[/quote]
Preached monotheism (belief in one god) in a world of polytheism (belief in many gods).
That makes no sense, considering Jesus was a member
of a monotheistic religion, and claimed to be the Messiah for it. Judaism had been around for thousands of years at that point as a monotheistic religion. Zoroastrianism had also been around for a thousand years or so.
Romans believed in many gods, had no afterlife (heaven) and nothing to really work for.
The Romans had an afterlife, called Tartarus. They also had gods of the afterlife/underworld, both Dis Pater and Orcus.
Jesus preached;
God is personal (polytheistic gods do not have a relationship with believers, as they are considered superior)
The Abrahamic God is considered superior, as He is the Creator, and all-knowing, all-loving, and all-powerful. That's pretty much the definition of a god that's superior. You have this pretty much backwards. The Roman gods were not perfect. They had flaws, and human attributes to them, even outside their personification
as humans.
The Romans considered their gods to be very personal, to the point that if something horrible happened in your life, it was thought that a god was personally after you for some transgression. The Roman gods were considered extremely personal, and were a part of every bit of their lives, as the domains of those gods were defined quite well. Every part of Roman life was dominated by rituals and rites that invoked the gods. You couldn't even hold a public office without what was considered to be the blessing of the relevant gods.
God loves you (polytheistic religions are sadistic; gods don’t love subjects, the subjects are there to serve)
You also seem to have this sort of backwards. Polytheistic religions aren't sadistic. They have sadistic gods, but the religions as a whole aren't sadistic. It's a funny comparison when you turn to the Bible and look at all the incredibly sadistic things God did in it, from destroying cities because their inhabitants wouldn't pay their dues to him, to turning a man's wife to salt just for disobeying a frivolous order to demanding a man kill his own son in tribute. Meanwhile the Roman gods were very in touch with their subjects, and walked amongst them on a daily basis. The Jews and Christians serve their God just as much, if not more, than the Romans did their gods.
Love everyone (polytheistic Romans believed in the class system- higher is good, lower or poor is bad and hated)
The Romans had a caste system, but it wasn't like the Indian caste system. There were no Untouchables. The castes didn't look at each other as superiors and inferiors, and wealth could be had by a member of any of the castes, and vice versa. The Romans had the odd esteem of considering the poor and the ugly to be paragons of morality, while the rich and beautiful were considered to be the liars and decadent fools with blackened souls.
God has a kingdom for those who repent their sins; he wants you to be there
“Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth” –appealed to the poor (pretty much everyone)
He wants you to run his rat race for his entertainment to get there.
The Romans already believed that to a degree anyway.
Jesus’ popularity grew and grew, and he brought too much attention towards himself.
Pontius Pilate arrested Jesus many times each time Jesus told the roman (never defy a roman) “you have no control over me” when he was warned he would have to be put to death if he kept up the preaching and miracles. Anyways, the people kept screaming for his death. Pontius whipped Jesus, pit a crown of thorns on his head and said to the people “whom should I have crucified then? These serial killers or Jesus?” to that effect anyway. The people chose to kill Jesus.
Early example of whitewashing, which the Romans did to the scriptures after they decided to be a Christian empire (fun fact: the Jews hated the Romans because the Romans had a very all-inclusive theology, picking up gods from everywhere [such as the entire Greek pantheon], and being very open to new ideas on religion). They were trying to pin things on the Jews, to make themselves seem less at fault. As mentioned earlier, Jesus was one of a myriad of Messiahs. He just got lucky.
Considering Pontius Pilate's track record involved him being governor of Judea, and being recalled to Rome because he was about as welcoming towards the Jews as Adolf Hitler.... Actually, that's not a fair comparison. Pilate was just a monster in general, it wasn't just the Jews. That's the most likely reason Jesus was tortured before his execution; Pilate found it hilarious. So yeah, it wasn't even an edict sent down by the Roman government that Jesus needed to be tortured and killed. It was just a psychopath drunk with power that decided to kill some random Jew.
Jesus was on the crucifix with two other men (all three on different ones). One laughed and scorned Jesus, and the other was sorry about it. Jesus said the man who was sorry would go to heaven and live with god, the other man would not. The sorry man slipped away painlessly. The other died in prolonged agony. You know the rest.
Pretty sure all of them died in prolonged agony. Being nailed to a length of wood and such.
Well. After all that, the bible was written. It was in books, or gospels. I think it took 400 years for the first copy.
The first copy of the modern Bible, sort of. As everything in it had to be copied constantly all the way from when it was first written, it's been in Development Hell for some 2200 years, ever since the first Christian Bible, the Septuagint, was written. Everything since then has been slowly added. The romans whitewashed it, others have done the same no doubt.
WHAT WE WERE TOLD: monks copied it down letter by letter, so it’s practically the original
Well, they copied down the scriptures they had. For the most part it's accurate to what they put together. The problem is that the Romans had had a few hundred years of copying it themselves before those monks got a hold on it, as I said. Same with the Gospels. A lot of people have had a chance to put their own spins on the Bible, even if it wasn't intentional, like it was a big game of Telephone. Still, a lot of the lessons remain the same.
CONTRADICTION: international bible vs almost any other bible. Try it, the difference in words allows a difference in translation.
WHAT REALLY HAPPENED: King James wrote his own version of the bible (I asked my teacher about this and I swear she wanted to spit at me, she said “King James is a [insert high vocabulary insults here that I can't spell but understand, the lower vocab would be “slime ball, sleazebag, ect”] and his version of the bible is disgusting!” then went on about how much she doesn’t want to talk about him!), and the bible we have today is influenced slightly by it.
That's only relevant because the King James Bible was the first
English translation of it. And the Bible you have today in your home probably
is is a New King James Bible. It was also the first Protestant Bible, which is important, as that's why it changes so much; it has to put a new spin on things to separate them from Catholicism.
Also the monks edited stories slightly (from the original). The Catholics took stories out, and put some in, changed roles and basically molded it to their form. Well I'm not entirely sure if it was Catholics, but the person was catholic, so I blame them all for letting it happen.
Wait. What? You have a lot of things in this letter bass-ackwards, you know. King James I was a Protestant. That's why he wanted to do an English translation of the Bible--and make it his own translation. The Catholics were big sticklers for keeping the Bible in Latin. King James had
six separate companies working on the translation, and they deemed there several books needed to be cut, as they weren't canon, and others that were canon needed to be added. King James altering the Bible was Catholic propaganda. The Catholics were pissed that he would translate it to English so most of the population of England could read it, instead of just the clergy and the few scholars that were fluent in Latin.
WHY?! The catholic church-ever since it started, has emphasized control, power and obedience.
Yes, that's Christianity. Control, power, and obedience. Read the Bible!
One example of role change is they made the role of women unimportant, and portrayed the Virgin Mary as whore-ish (it’s in our SCHOOL text book which is checked by millions of teacher before and after publishing). This was because they felt threatened by women.
Wait. What? The Catholics portray the Virgin Mary, who they uphold as the paragon of purity, as being a whore. That's...an utterly retarded statement that shows you have no idea what Catholicism even is.
They banned books from the bible and locked most away, to this day no one will ever see them because if they get out the Catholic Church will loose control-heaven forbid! You can read the banned books that are out of that vault, I can't spell the name of what their called, but ask at a bookstore for the banned books of the bible and I'm sure they will find it for you.
This is approaching Dan Brown levels of retardation, with Catholicism perpetuating a 1700 year conspiracy to keep certain books of the original Bible locked away. What you're referring to is the Apocrypha. All of it that is know can readily be found on most decent book stores, compiled and dissected by editors that discuss what it means, why it was left out of the original Catholic Bible by the Council of Nicea, etc.
SO THEREFORE; I would change the bible. Yes that’s right. But I wouldn’t just change it any old how. I'd change it back, or restore it to its original state. As far as I'm concerned the Catholic Church (or anyone for that matter) has NO RIGHT to obstruct the word of god, or hide it from us.
So...you would create the Catholic Bible. As the Protestants were the one trying to obstruct and hide the supposed Word of God from you.
The ONLY bible or holy book unedited untouched is the Qu’ran. Which is the Islamic holy book, and I envy them. They have the words of god in their hand and they know they can trust it. But we can't trust everything in ours, simply because it’s been changed far too much to know what's real and what's not.
That's mostly because the Qu'ran is a few thousand years younger than the Bible. Though you don't mention the Torah--that seems to have made it through the ages pretty unchanged. The Catholic Bible has remained unchanged for a good 1700 years, ever since the Creed of Nicene went into effect. The King James Bible messed with a few things, but it was mostly edits founded on good reason.
Don’t fret, my god is my god, and NO ONE can take that from me, or change my opinion of him, and certainly not enough for me to convert. Although I do love learning about religions. I just learnt "religious studies" is a college major. I wonder if there’s a career that requires it…
Careers in theology would require it. I'd suggest not going into "religious studies" if you're actually religious, though. More than anything, "religious studies" should be a sub-set of history as a major.
DID YOU KNOW? Put away your crosses, and stay out of decorated churches! Yes that’s right, the cross, and the stained glass windows, they're GRAVEN IMAGES!! The Ten Commandments say that you can have no graven images, and almost everyone’s breaking that and sinning. The last supper is a graven image. Jesus on the cross is a graven image. The cross which is symbolistic (I know that’s not a word, but go with me) of Christianity, god, and Jesus is actually a graven image! Christians are sinning without realization! It’s horrible. The worst is they can't repent if they don’t now their sinning. The Pentecostals are the ones who truly realize this.
That's possibly the most intelligent thing in this letter, if it a bit overreactive. As long as you aren't actually worshiping the images, there's nothing wrong with it. This stemmed from the Hebrews thinking the tribes around them were worshiping idols, and not the deities the idols represented.
I forget where, but I laughed a few times.
I laughed, I cried, I raged a lot.
Novelist Bunnies: Do you write in order? 
