Well, Yea Forums, is the New Testament a good book?

Yes, it is. We have like 5 Bible threads a day. It's a good theological text with literary merit and influence on western culture that cannot be overstated. Stop spamming or baiting (yous)

They’re like the rest of the NT. Just Greeks writing down some of the stories coming out of Palestine and applying their Platonism to it. Original Christianity was going to be a mysteries cult till some Abrahmaic “purists” started calling them heretics, and much later Gnostics it a all.
Yeah, the copies found at Nag Hammadi aren’t as old as the so-called founding, but the texts go back to the start

*if at all

Let me ask you one question: do you know what you’re a part of? :3

Just got done writing some thoughts, and strove to be as pious as possible when writing them too, and yet I found out I have written exactly 666 words. What must this mean?

youtube.com/watch?v=xAZnN1u3bBo

cormac mccarthy seems to think so

The Synoptic Gospels predate the Nag Hammadi texts, but somehow the Greek gnostics represent the original foundatiom of Christianity? Jesus, according to a previous post by you, is a composite but there remains an "Original Christianity"? Exactly who chartered this original Christianity which does not have, according to you, an original foundational figure called Christ? What does the tradition of Paul and the Jerusalem Church mark an aberration from? How did something initially Greek get coopted by "Abrahamic Purists"?

I have never heard such an argument advanced anywhere. Typically people argue that something Abrahamic was coopted by Greek ideas, either by Paul himself or by later Gnostic cults and in forms ranging from Marcionism to Manicheeism.

You make no sense.

>talking sense to a mentally ill person
You're a better man than me

Social unrest in Roman era Palestine.
Largely illiterate masses hear street preacher(s)
Stories orally migrate to Anatolia, enchant Platonists, they write the stories down
They are called Christians because they follow the teachings of Christ
Some teachings are withheld from non-initiates
Non-initiates rebel with a more OT flavored dogma. They expel the founders and call them heretical, later they become know as Gnostics
Slaves of Rome are susceptible to new cult
Romans too stupid to understand what the problem is, are taken over by masses of life denying cultists, so they integrate it and put the continent into a trance...

But you’re a good boy, you won’t believe anything but the established Christian dogma. Have a Scooby snack

121:6.3.Though the Hellenized Jewish beliefs were very little influenced by the teachings of the Epicureans, they were very materially affected by the philosophy of Plato and the self-abnegation doctrines of the Stoics. The great inroad of Stoicism is exemplified by the Fourth Book of the Maccabees; the penetration of both Platonic philosophy and Stoic doctrines is exhibited in the Wisdom of Solomon. The Hellenized Jews brought to the Hebrew scriptures such an allegorical interpretation that they found no difficulty in conforming Hebrew theology with their revered Aristotelian philosophy. But this all led to disastrous confusion until these problems were taken in hand by Philo of Alexandria, who proceeded to harmonize and systemize Greek philosophy and Hebrew theology into a compact and fairly consistent system of religious belief and practice. And it was this later teaching of combined Greek philosophy and Hebrew theology that prevailed in Palestine when Jesus lived and taught, and which Paul utilized as the foundation on which to build his more advanced and enlightening cult of Christianity.

Attached: cde20e42bc50a4a8a960824e863a1b7601ff69795979930102b771da0aa8c746.jpg (506x455, 38K)

More like a collection of good books, and yes, I enjoyed most of them.

Butterfly, the first century of Christianity is very foggy. There are many ways it may have occured. Certainly the cannonical Gospels began as oral stories and contain revisions and amendations. Greek ideas influenced them almost immediately.

That is quite another thing from saying Christianity began as a Greek mystery cult and became Judaisized.

Please think about what you say before you post it!

>But you're a good boy

I am quite open minded about history, and do not have much of an orthodox or dogmatic stance on any of it. I am well aware of such ideas as the Documentary Hypothesis, current scholarship suggesting the early Israelites were polytheists, the lack of archaeological evidence for the Exodus, Augustine's belief that the Letter to the Hebrews was not written by Paul, that John was nearly declared non-canonical, that John the Baptist may have been an Essene, that the New Testament took 4 centuries to canonize etc.

Please do not assume anyone who takes the idea of God seriously is some kind of mindless slave to doctrine incapable of evaluating evidence to the contrary. That is a very lazy way to conceive of those who do not share certain of your opinions.

You haven't written enough

no mainstream historian, whether christian like gary habermas or agnostic like bart ehrman, agrees with you. nag hammadi scripture is dated after the NT documents and is almost entirely unquoted in early Christian writings

>That is quite another thing
It isn’t really.
>I am quite open minded
Ah, beg pardon.

>No Christian Era historians connect these dots
I know when the Nag Hammadi where copied. Probably from older books from Alexandria