I read a tremendous account of the history of the Old and New Testament this morning. I suggest that everyone of my readers check this out.
The author factually explains the reasons behind the content of the Bibles and the historical context which led to a need to write these "books of God."
To sum it up, bibles were written at times when followers were all over the map in their beliefs. The writers borrowed ancient mythological stories coupled with believable, but incorrect human history.
As literacy rates went up in the Holy land, writers put down their mythological stories on paper. The Old Testament writers of around 750-650 BC, used the story of the Hyksos who were driven out of Egypt around 1570 BC, as their foundation for the Exodus myth, for example.
In order to get the people to defend Israel from Assyria, the concept of monotheism was reinforced by Isaiah, who gave god some new and improved qualities.
When the Assyrians forced the Jews into exile, for 48 years, God's qualities again were modified, and when the Jews were allowed back as foreigners, even more modifications were made to be consistent with the times, like the NO KING rule.
Then came the Greek skeptics who started influencing many of the Jews of Palestine.
They started to look at the bible as a bunch of allegorical stories, causing Jews to be in different camps.
Quoting Scott Bidstrup's article, "And Greek philosophy, skeptical and secular in many ways, made a great deal of sense. So again our Hebrew culture is presented with a problem.
How can the Jewish god, who by now had acquired a great deal of mythological and philosophical baggage, be reconciled with the unspeakable, unknowable god(s) of the Greek philosophers?"
The literal maniacal jealous vengeful god wasn't a hit with most people.
Then came the height of Roman persecution of the Jews and the Destruction of the Second Temple, causing every Rabbi to be on his own. And of course, that maniac God let his people down again. The time was perfect just leading up to this event and of course after it, to redefine god one more time. Making him out to be a loving, understanding, turn the other cheek sort of dude, who promises an eternal blissful after life for all those who accept him. The early Christians found a perfect scam, people already believed in God, now they finally had the hook to reel the suckers in.
And of course it snowballed.
In fact, the Jesus myth was mostly a combination of Dionysus, a Greek God and Yeishu ha Notzri(Jesus of Nazereth???), a magician from around 100 BC and Pagan stories.
Not a word was written about Jesus until Mark put something on paper, around 70 AD, almost 40 years after Jesus' supposed death. He wrote nothing about the virgin birth or mangers or wisemen, because that idea didn't come along until later. The stories just built on one another from Mark to Matthew to Luke to John.
Taken from an article by John Bice, 'Early Christian cults embraced a highly diverse variety of beliefs and disagreed on numerous fundamental elements of faith. Some Christian groups believed Jesus was divine, but others believed he was merely a man. Some Jesus cults believed in two gods, others in 12, 30, even 365 distinct gods. Religious scholar, Bart Ehrman writes in his new book , "Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.", "All these groups claimed to be Christian, insisting that their views were true and had been taught by Jesus and his followers."'
Eventually a weeding out process occurred, and the New Testament was written. Taking a little bit from here, and a little bit from there.
Of course, then came the numerous rewrites, Protestant revisions, the King James version, etc. All rewritten to appease the current political and religious leaders of the time they were rewritten. And of course the language barrier: "thousands of New Testament manuscripts exist, including over 5,700 in the original Greek language, but "among these thousands of copies, no two of them are exactly alike in their wording."
Bice concludes: "Rational people, however, will recognize that the Bible is a demonstrably imperfect, purposely altered and error-ridden collection of texts created by humans, not a mythical supreme being."
The one thing I liked the best from Bidstrup's article is the concept called the Negative Evidence Principle. I never heard of it before, but here is how he describes it:
"Here's how the N.E.P. works - it states that you have good reason for not believing in a proposition if the following three principles are satisfied: First, all of the evidence supporting the proposition has been shown to be unreliable. Second, there is no evidence supporting the proposition when the evidence should be there if the proposition is true. And third, a thorough and exhaustive search has been made for supporting evidence where it should be found."
The Negative Evidence Principle discredits both The Exodus, and the existence of Jesus Christ.
Again, don't shoot the messenger.
