Skeptic Mangles ZEITGEIST (and Religious History)

Helioform

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For example, in the past 2000 years in the location where Christianity has played a major role in the development of society, slavery has been abolished, technology has increased, freedom of religion has been established, etc., etc., etc. In all of these endeavors, there is at least one historical figure that participated in these activities that have professed to be a Christian and where we can credit some of the motivation to succeed in this way to the Gospel. There is no way to wash away 2000 years of evidence that what the Gospel teaches produces good things.

In just about every other example where the claim is made that the same story was told, the same is not true and the account leads to an inevitable end. More importantly, this information produced no change within former societies in the same way that Christianity has produced change. So if we are going to consider these things based on evidence, there is evidence that truth is expressed in the fruit that it produces.
I agree with the bold text there. Philosophically, I think, the Bible is right on, on many things. But the point of exposing the continuity of these same religions with the same type of saviours is not to discredit the message in the Bible...it is to show that it did not arise out of a vacuum and that all religions share the same aspects.

But to get where we are now, we had to endure centuries of Crusades and ignorance, largely imposed by the Christian Church. And there is still a lot of intolerance from those who profess to be Christians today.

Either way, while the church may be clearly oppressed in more than a few ways, there is no denying that there is more evidence that was produced by the message of Christ than with any other account that appears similar. This is not something that is easily washed away.
Oppressed? I don't think so, one billion Catholics in the world and Christianity is flourishing. Even if some of the people on this board do not consider Catholics to be "Christian", they still are.

However, I also don't see how this creates such fear for the church to accept that the information we have has been censored in some respects. Sometimes, it is like people expect that we will still be using the Bible in Heaven, but the Bible is also something that will inevitably pass away with the end of things and the beginning of the something new.

That is not New World Order speak either. I have had this concept quoted in my signature for the past year. Jesus says he is making all things new. This means that at some point, we should be able to shed the Bible the way a snake sheds his skin when he has outgrown it. I would imagine this will come when the prophecy in Revelation is fulfilled, and if we are almost there; then, in theory, we are almost to the end of the time necessitating the Bible. Something to think about.
I still wonder about Revelation though. Is it a plan or, a "prophecy". I really think it's a plan, a blueprint for something "new" and not something that is set in stone. And some of those "elites" are trying to make it happen.

People freak out about the AntiChrist and the False Prophet, but don't even try to change their own lives instead. They wait for the end to come and someone to point the finger at. It's the hallmark of conspiracy thinking to put the blame on various boogeymen, so it is not too surprising...
 

rainerann

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I agree with the bold text there. Philosophically, I think, the Bible is right on, on many things. But the point of exposing the continuity of these same religions with the same type of saviours is not to discredit the message in the Bible...it is to show that it did not arise out of a vacuum and that all religions share the same aspects.

But to get where we are now, we had to endure centuries of Crusades and ignorance, largely imposed by the Christian Church. And there is still a lot of intolerance from those who profess to be Christians today.



Oppressed? I don't think so, one billion Catholics in the world and Christianity is flourishing. Even if some of the people on this board do not consider Catholics to be "Christian", they still are.



I still wonder about Revelation though. Is it a plan or, a "prophecy". I really think it's a plan, a blueprint for something "new" and not something that is set in stone. And some of those "elites" are trying to make it happen.

People freak out about the AntiChrist and the False Prophet, but don't even try to change their own lives instead. They wait for the end to come and someone to point the finger at. It's the hallmark of conspiracy thinking to put the blame on various boogeymen, so it is not too surprising...
I agree with most of what you are saying. However, I would just like to clarify what I mean by oppressed. When I say oppressed, I mean that the opportunity to grow spiritually has been noticeably oppressed throughout the years. An example would be reading the Bible to a congregation in Latin knowing that most of the congregation did not speak the language. How are you going to expect someone to demonstrate the fruit of the spirit in order to alleviate the ignorance that is present in history if they don't know what the Bible is actually saying? This is what I mean by oppression. The opportunity to succeed in complete freedom afforded by walking in the truth is oppressed by some degree of concealment of the complete truth.

My primary example of this that was specific to the thread was the noticeable effort to suppress the content regarding the coming of the Messiah in scripture. This is why many people prefer the Septuagint and I do think they make a good case even if I am opposed to all scripture concerning the 2nd temple period.

I also think it is possible that some would see Revelation as an opportunity to create a strategy that would act as a sort of pied piper scenario. Although, I would not consider Revelation to be a sort of plan independently.
 

Red Sky at Morning

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I agree with most of what you are saying. However, I would just like to clarify what I mean by oppressed. When I say oppressed, I mean that the opportunity to grow spiritually has been noticeably oppressed throughout the years. An example would be reading the Bible to a congregation in Latin knowing that most of the congregation did not speak the language. How are you going to expect someone to demonstrate the fruit of the spirit in order to alleviate the ignorance that is present in history if they don't know what the Bible is actually saying? This is what I mean by oppression. The opportunity to succeed in complete freedom afforded by walking in the truth is oppressed by some degree of concealment of the complete truth.

My primary example of this that was specific to the thread was the noticeable effort to suppress the content regarding the coming of the Messiah in scripture. This is why many people prefer the Septuagint and I do think they make a good case even if I am opposed to all scripture concerning the 2nd temple period.

I also think it is possible that some would see Revelation as an opportunity to create a strategy that would act as a sort of pied piper scenario. Although, I would not consider Revelation to be a sort of plan independently.
A "Pied Piper scenario" ?

As far as I read things, the period of time pictured in Revelation may commence with Ezekiel 38. Here nations attack Israel, quite possibly Russia, Iran and Turkey. This is certainly not something Israel wishes to bring about and the agressive in this situation have no vested interest in the fulfillment of Bible prophecy.

Additionally, Ezekiel 38 indicates that it will be God who defends Israel, not the nation itself.

Therefore I can see that, rather like with the attempt at fulfilling Islamic prophecy at Dabiq, pied-piper manipulation might conceivably give you an Isaiah 17 scenario, but certainly not an Ezekiel 38 one.
 

rainerann

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A "Pied Piper scenario" ?

As far as I read things, the period of time pictured in Revelation may commence with Ezekiel 38. Here nations attack Israel, quite possibly Russia, Iran and Turkey. This is certainly not something Israel wishes to bring about and the agressive in this situation have no vested interest in the fulfillment of Bible prophecy.

Additionally, Ezekiel 38 indicates that it will be God who defends Israel, not the nation itself.

Therefore I can see that, rather like with the attempt at fulfilling Islamic prophecy at Dabiq, pied-piper manipulation might conceivably give you an Isaiah 17 scenario, but certainly not an Ezekiel 38 one.
I think you are manipulating what I am saying so that you can interject something irrelevant. I said you could create a pied piper scenario but that the text doesn’t represent this independently. So even though I completely disagree with what you are saying about Ezekiel 38, you are basically saying that independently, it can’t be considered a plan, which is exactly what I already said.

So I struggle to see your point in highlighting what I said regarding this comment. Clearly, the countless videos about the “mark” and comparisons between trump and Cyrus demonstrate that the text can be used as a strategy to lead people in the direction you want them to go, like a pied piper.

So, like I said, I don’t know what point you are trying to make.
 

Red Sky at Morning

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I think you are manipulating what I am saying so that you can interject something irrelevant. I said you could create a pied piper scenario but that the text doesn’t represent this independently. So even though I completely disagree with what you are saying about Ezekiel 38, you are basically saying that independently, it can’t be considered a plan, which is exactly what I already said.

So I struggle to see your point in highlighting what I said regarding this comment. Clearly, the countless videos about the “mark” and comparisons between trump and Cyrus demonstrate that the text can be used as a strategy to lead people in the direction you want them to go, like a pied piper.

So, like I said, I don’t know what point you are trying to make.
Ok... Let me try it a different way and take your input on the question. I agree that there may be prophecies which could in a sense be engineered by careful geopolitical manipulation. For example, assuming a fake and deceptive group of "Jews", they may latch onto a prophetic narrative to legitimise their statehood. This is a popular line in the forum, I think.

Subsequent events where God or supernatural events on a grand scale are prophecied to occur, e.g. Ezekiel 38, or even the seal, trumpet and bowl judgements of the later chapters of Revelation fall outside that potential for engineered outcomes.

Do you agree?
 

rainerann

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Ok... Let me try it a different way and take your input on the question. I agree that there may be prophecies which could in a sense be engineered by careful geopolitical manipulation. For example, assuming a fake and deceptive group of "Jews", they may latch onto a prophetic narrative to legitimise their statehood. This is a popular line in the forum, I think.

Subsequent events where God or supernatural events on a grand scale are prophecied to occur, e.g. Ezekiel 38, or even the seal, trumpet and bowl judgements of the later chapters of Revelation fall outside that potential for engineered outcomes.

Do you agree?
I agree to a certain extent. There are aspects of what you are introducing that are easier to replicate even though they would represent something false. For example, the sealed of Israel would be something that could be replicated in theory. You could have a group claim that they have been sealed as the 144,000 and then the question would be answered individually according to the absence or presence of the Holy Spirit.

However, originally when I was saying that revelation could not be considered a plan independently it was because the whole of the book is much more complex than a mere description of defeating the antichrist.

This is one of the first things I noticed years ago when I read it for the first time. I was surprised to see so much less action than I was expecting. There were letters and the description of Jerusalem and all of these other features.

I finished with the conclusion that the message of revelation was to abide in him, which is a very challenging thing to create a strategy with unless you want start helping the poor and showing mercy to the guilty. It seems counterproductive, but that is what revelation is teaching as a whole even though people can get much more excited about other things.
 
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I was reading a little bit of this book called The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors. There is a very clearly stated theory in the book that explains the motivation for sharing this knowledge, which is to cause people to move past religion. The problem with this expectation is that evidence should be the motivation to progress as a society.

The author considers the presence of similar stories to the gospel as a form of evidence. However, it is not a strong enough form of evidence to discredit the impact of the Gospel over the last 2000 years. This is what I was considering while I was reading about these other stories. Sure, there may have been an account of a crucified savior before, but when did this account ever lead to the same result as Christianity has.

For example, in the past 2000 years in the location where Christianity has played a major role in the development of society, slavery has been abolished, technology has increased, freedom of religion has been established, etc., etc., etc. In all of these endeavors, there is at least one historical figure that participated in these activities that have professed to be a Christian and where we can credit some of the motivation to succeed in this way to the Gospel. There is no way to wash away 2000 years of evidence that what the Gospel teaches produces good things.
I agree to the extent that Christianity was the first religion to place the emphasis on the poor and oppressed, and the first to view all people as valid, Church history is largely not good. From Inquisitions and Crusades to witch and homosexual burnings to decades long religious wars after the reformation. ( Martin Luther lived his life relatively unaffected, but for the European Peasant it wasn't so) While many abolitionists were indeed Christian ( Adin Ballou comes to mind )its primary justification was also the Bible, in fact a literal reading of both testaments is entirely Pro-Slavery, not to mention it was the justification of Colonialism in the first place ( and Native American Genocide later on). I'm not sure how you conclude Christianity had anything to do with religious freedom either as it spent centuries violently oppressing all other forms of religion. The end of slavery and the beginning of religious freedom has much more to do with the enlightenment imo. Even to this day the most oppressive groups in the west are the Christian Right and movements like Christian Identity.
 

Red Sky at Morning

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I agree to the extent that Christianity was the first religion to place the emphasis on the poor and oppressed, and the first to view all people as valid, Church history is largely not good. From Inquisitions and Crusades to witch and homosexual burnings to decades long religious wars after the reformation. ( Martin Luther lived his life relatively unaffected, but for the European Peasant it wasn't so) While many abolitionists were indeed Christian ( Adin Ballou comes to mind )its primary justification was also the Bible, in fact a literal reading of both testaments is entirely Pro-Slavery, not to mention it was the justification of Colonialism in the first place ( and Native American Genocide later on). I'm not sure how you conclude Christianity had anything to do with religious freedom either as it spent centuries violently oppressing all other forms of religion. The end of slavery and the beginning of religious freedom has much more to do with the enlightenment imo. Even to this day the most oppressive groups in the west are the Christian Right and groups movements like Christian Identity.
I think it is very interesting to consider the message of a particular religion as set against the use men put its message to. Jesus was certainly unimpressed by the way the Scribes and Pharisees put the Law to.

Judging by the critique he prophetically offers to the seven churches of Revelation (patterning then future church history), He is no more impressed by the way "Christians" interpreted and lived out their faith at times!
 
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I think it is very interesting to consider the message of a particular religion as set against the use men put its message to. Jesus was certainly unimpressed by the way the Scribes and Pharisees put the Law to.

Judging by the critique he prophetically offers to the seven churches of Revelation (patterning then future church history), He is no more impressed by the way "Christians" interpreted and lived out their faith at times!
There have always been groups of Christians that have worked for the betterment of our species but Christianity as an organized hierarchal religion is soaked in blood. I will say this the good accomplished by the minority is at least nearly equal to the evil caused by the majority.
 

Red Sky at Morning

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There have always been groups of Christians that have worked for the betterment of our species but Christianity as an organized hierarchal religion is soaked in blood. I will say this the good accomplished by the minority is at least nearly equal to the evil caused by the majority.
When the judgement of believers works ultimately comes, it will be the Lord Himself who will distinguish the works of wood, hay and stubble from those of gold, silver and precious stones.

I suspect in the "Who's Who" of eternity, there will be many names nobody had heard of or cared about, while other notable names here now will not be on the list!
 

rainerann

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I agree to the extent that Christianity was the first religion to place the emphasis on the poor and oppressed, and the first to view all people as valid, Church history is largely not good. From Inquisitions and Crusades to witch and homosexual burnings to decades long religious wars after the reformation. ( Martin Luther lived his life relatively unaffected, but for the European Peasant it wasn't so) While many abolitionists were indeed Christian ( Adin Ballou comes to mind )its primary justification was also the Bible, in fact a literal reading of both testaments is entirely Pro-Slavery, not to mention it was the justification of Colonialism in the first place ( and Native American Genocide later on). I'm not sure how you conclude Christianity had anything to do with religious freedom either as it spent centuries violently oppressing all other forms of religion. The end of slavery and the beginning of religious freedom has much more to do with the enlightenment imo. Even to this day the most oppressive groups in the west are the Christian Right and movements like Christian Identity.
Christians were the driving force behind the abolitionist movement that was a primary reason that slavery became illegal at all in the north so as to give the impression of a higher moral standard in comparison with the south by the time of the civil war.

For example, sourjouner truth was still a slave in New York a few decades before the civil war. In particular, the quakers in Pennsylvania were very opposed to slavery and Pennsylvania was one of the first states to abolish the practice. So I think many people are minimizing the contribution of the gospel has made in improving social conditions.

In addition to this, while it is obviously true that the gospel teaches about helping the poor and other things similar to this, the major evidence that this isn’t just any ordinary message is the lasting power it has had to do the same thing.

You can find ten examples of people who may have said or done something valuable, but these things only have the power to improve your disposition temporarily. Whereas more people have overcome addictions and bad habits by the gospel message than any other teaching that has ever existed. Two thousand years later, there are still more people in prisons and in other circumstances where they faced with a damaged reputation and people who don’t expect them to change that have been able to overcome this by the power of the gospel.

There is no historical connection between any other example of a similar account like the ones mentioned in this thread, that produces the same evidence. There is also more evidence today of the power of the gospel than at any other time in history.
 
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Christians were the driving force behind the abolitionist movement that was a primary reason that slavery became illegal at all in the north so as to give the impression of a higher moral standard in comparison with the south by the time of the civil war.

For example, sourjouner truth was still a slave in New York a few decades before the civil war. In particular, the quakers in Pennsylvania were very opposed to slavery and Pennsylvania was one of the first states to abolish the practice. So I think many people are minimizing the contribution of the gospel has made in improving social conditions.



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Yes but it was also the biggest justification for slavery, so its a bit of a wash.

time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/.

I love the Quakers btw.

You misunderstand me. I don't think the evidence provided in this thread detracts from the Gospel or from Jesus. There was a time a when I would have thought this evidence proves that Jesus is just a "solar myth" , but I now believe that the similarities are part of the myth that has been attributed to Jesus throughout the centuries. Obviously there is something to the Christian teaching that gives it power. I'm more interested in the similarities between Christ and the Buddha anyway.

 

rainerann

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Yes but it was also the biggest justification for slavery, so its a bit of a wash.

time.com/5171819/christianity-slavery-book-excerpt/.

I love the Quakers btw.

You misunderstand me. I don't think the evidence provided in this thread detracts from the Gospel or from Jesus. There was a time a when I would have thought this evidence proves that Jesus is just a "solar myth" , but I now believe that the similarities are part of the myth that has been attributed to Jesus throughout the centuries. Obviously there is something to the Christian teaching that gives it power. I'm more interested in the similarities between Christ and the Buddha anyway.

Interesting. I think there is a connection between the two as well. Personally, I think the message of the messiah is censored in some way to control people, which could be why so many pieces seem like they could fit but are disjointed. With the messiah, there is freedom. Without him, there is slavery. That is basically my thoughts on discussions like this these days.
 
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Interesting. I think there is a connection between the two as well. Personally, I think the message of the messiah is censored in some way to control people, which could be why so many pieces seem like they could fit but are disjointed. With the messiah, there is freedom. Without him, there is slavery. That is basically my thoughts on discussions like this these days.
To paraphrase Tolstoy all religions have at their core love but it was best articulated and formulated as a way of life by Jesus Christ. I agree with you but from the opposite side. It's the supernatural 'Son of God', mythic components to Christianity ( and Buddhism ) that obfuscates the truth. The Gospels were written with the old Jewish myths open, written to convince an audience of potential converts that Jesus is God and to fit into prophecy. As I have said here recently I don't need miracles or prophecy to know that Jesus is divine, the proof is in the teaching.

Edit : And its why we see similarities between Christ and say Dionysus, Christianity grew up in a Greek influenced world, and to associate him with Dionysus made 'Gentile' conversion easier.
 
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I still wonder about Revelation though. Is it a plan or, a "prophecy". I really think it's a plan, a blueprint for something "new" and not something that is set in stone. And some of those "elites" are trying to make it happen.

People freak out about the AntiChrist and the False Prophet, but don't even try to change their own lives instead. They wait for the end to come and someone to point the finger at. It's the hallmark of conspiracy thinking to put the blame on various boogeymen, so it is not too surprising...
Here is one similarity that many religions have in common. Waiting for some new prophet ( or the return of one) . Whether this is the Messiah in Judaism, The Second Coming in Christianity, the return of Christ to break the cross in Islam,
Maitreya in Buddhism, the Moonchild in Thelema or the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard in Scientology (lol).

I think the practical reasons for this in "religion" are fairly obvious. To keep people perpetually invested in them, or bringing this about.

This is the best thread this forum has had in ages tho @Helioform , right on.
 

Helioform

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Here is one similarity that many religions have in common. Waiting for some new prophet ( or the return of one) . Whether this is the Messiah in Judaism, The Second Coming in Christianity, the return of Christ to break the cross in Islam,
Maitreya in Buddhism, the Moonchild in Thelema or the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard in Scientology (lol).


I think the practical reasons for this in "religion" are fairly obvious. To keep people perpetually invested in them, or bringing this about.

This is the best thread this forum has had in ages tho @Helioform , right on.
Hubbard heh. You're right of course and understanding that shared similarity might remove the dependance on the coming of Messiahs/Prophets (and false ones) that certain people have. You can't fall for a false one if you don't believe in any in the first place.

Free minds in a way...which is why I think Zeitgeist is a push in a good direction, and the video went viral so it is encouraging. Maybe people will stop believing in centuries of Catholic/Jesuit controlled "scholarship."
 
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Hubbard heh. You're right of course and understanding that shared similarity might remove the dependance on the coming of Messiahs/Prophets (and false ones) that certain people have. You can't fall for a false one if you don't believe in any in the first place.

Free minds in a way...which is why I think Zeitgeist is a push in a good direction, and the video went viral so it is encouraging. Maybe people will stop believing in centuries of Catholic/Jesuit controlled "scholarship."
qualunque sarà sarà is how I view eschatology. Who the hell knows what will happen? All we can control is how we live our lives and treat others.

by focusing on the what is to come or the supernatural elements of belief systems we lose sight of what it teaches us
 

Red Sky at Morning

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Screenshot_20181208-074548~2.png

Fig. 3: Fragment 7Q5 of Mark 6:52-53

There arose a mighty hoo-ha when O’Callaghan identified 7Q5 as being a portion of Mark 6:52-53. The critics were not kind. ‘There is not enough of it to allow such an identification,’ it was objected. ‘It has only 20 letters or parts of letters on only 5 lines of text. It is therefore not possible to make any identification. It could be anything. It is not enough!’... and so on.

It is wondrous strange then that these same scholars were ready enough to accept 7Q2 as a portion of Baruch 6 – the Letter of Jeremiah, found in the same cave as 7Q5. For that fragment has 22 letters on also only five lines of text, just two letters more than 7Q5 has.

Moreover, five of its 22 letters are indistinct, and the two words only that can be made out, ουν and αυτος, are too common to be distinctive. Furthermore, when Benoit and Boismard made the identification, they could do so only “by presupposing textual variants much more difficult than those found in 7Q5.”1 Yet few have ever challenged that identification.

So, what is the difference between the two fragments, 7Q2 and 7Q5? The answer is simple. Baruch 6 (the Letter of Jeremiah) is part of the Old Testament Apocrypha – not a Biblical book, but an add-on by those who would add to God’s Word. The presence of such a writing as early as AD 68 would not be a surprise, and would therefore not rock the Bible critic’s boat. But a book from the New Testament at such a date? Such a suggestion is rank heresy to the critics, and hence the thunder which is still rumbling today.

However, when it comes to identifying fragments such as these, the papyrologist is constrained to looking at probabilities, and it cannot be insignificant that the mathematician, Albert Dou (1915-2009), has calculated that the chances of the fragment 7Q5 not being that of Mark 6:52-53 is less than 1 in 900,000,000,000.2
 

Red Sky at Morning

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Screenshot_20181208-074328~2.png

7Q4.1 & 7Q4.2 - 1 Timothy 3:16-4:3

Fig.1: 7Q4.1………Fig.2: 7Q4.2

7Q4 is a papyrologist’s delight. Usually, fragments of texts on papyrus come from the middle of a page, a paragraph, or a line, and then the one deciphering its contents has a lot of work to do. How many letters were there to a line, what letters were they, and how many lines were there to a page?

While he is occupied with that, he has to work out, if he can, what literary work the text is a fragment of. He has to make a note of all the surviving letters that can be discerned, and then try to reconstruct all the letters of which only parts or traces remain. To do this, he has to be something of an expert in the language and even dialect that the text is written in, as well as all the nuances and foibles of its calligraphy, and so on. In short, it can be a mammoth task just trying to offer a reconstruction that makes any sense. He knows that waiting in the wings are a whole tribe of scholars whose only interest in life seems to be to question and preferably undo all the work he has done, and hopefully ruin his reputation as a scholar while they’re at it. The scholars of academe can be vicious when they want to be. They will pounce on any uncertainty as a disproof and will milk that for all it is worth, even long after their objections have been answered. They have to. There is a great deal at stake, and it’s a lot more than just their own reputations and professorial chairs.

That is why 7Q4 is such a satisfying find. It doesn’t come from the middle of a page. It comes from the outside edge, the very end of the scroll, preserving beautifully the last words of each line. That makes the papyrologist’s work so much more straightforward. The stichometry (line and letter-count) that he has to work out is simplified immensely, because he knows exactly where each line terminates. That is an enormous plus. In Figures 1 & 2, we can see the fragment almost exactly as it was found. Figure 2 constitutes the last line of text (Line 9), but there was another tiny scrap, now lost by all accounts, which constituted Line 8 of the fragment and which contained two letters, ]ντ[. When these fragments were first published in 1962 in what came to be known as the editio princeps of the Cave 7 fragments, not one of them was identified as belonging to the New Testament, and this particular tiny scrap was transcribed by the editors with simply two dots ]..[, indicating that its letters were unidentifiable.2 O’Callaghan identified them both though...

...There was only one brave attempt of any note to disprove the Pauline provenance of 7Q4, and that was collectively made by Nebe, Muro and Puech, each of whom tried to show that it was in fact from the apocryphal Book of Enoch.6 They all failed, and they failed dismally, mainly because they had to stretch the stichometry of the fragment to breaking point, and had to invent oddities of grammar and vocabulary entirely unknown in ancient Greek literature.
 
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Interesting. I think there is a connection between the two as well. Personally, I think the message of the messiah is censored in some way to control people, which could be why so many pieces seem like they could fit but are disjointed. With the messiah, there is freedom. Without him, there is slavery. That is basically my thoughts on discussions like this these days.

“Christ's teaching is not generally understood in its true, simple,
and direct sense even in these days, when the light of the Gospel
has penetrated even to the darkest recesses of human
consciousness; when, in the words of Christ, that which was spoken
in the ear is proclaimed from the housetops; and when the Gospel
is influencing every side of human life--domestic, economic,
civic, legislative, and international. This lack of true
understanding of Christ's words at such a time would be
inexplicable, if there were not causes to account for it.

One of these causes is the fact that believers and unbelievers
alike are firmly persuaded that they have understood Christ's
teaching a long time, and that they understand it so fully,
indubitably, and conclusively that it can have no other
significance than the one they attribute to it. And the reason of
this conviction is that the false interpretation and consequent
misapprehension of the Gospel is an error of such long standing.
Even the strongest current of water cannot add a drop to a cup
which is already full.

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-
witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the
simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if
he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of
doubt, what is laid before him.

The Christian doctrine is presented to the men of our world to-day
as a doctrine which everyone has known so long and accepted so
unhesitatingly in all its minutest details that it cannot be
understood in any other way than it is understood now.

Christianity is understood now by all who profess the doctrines of
the Church as a supernatural miraculous revelation of everything
which is repeated in the Creed. By unbelievers it is regarded as
an illustration of man's craving for a belief in the supernatural,
which mankind has now outgrown, as an historical phenomenon which
has received full expression in Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy, and
Protestantism, and has no longer any living significance for us.
The significance of the Gospel is hidden from believers by the
Church, from unbelievers by Science.”

Leo Tolstoy
 
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