Who strains at a gnat, and swallows a camel.?

[Masterblaster]

Is theology suffocating belief in God.
Is religious doctrine logically effective.
Is religious debate an egoistic indulgence, devoid of purpose?

[Masterblaster]

Hello TRANSPONDER

I am not too sure but apart from a little bit of hair splitting, we would seem to have reached broad agreement, lovely biblical quote. you can do them going forward. I am told that if you consciously do a loving thing for someone that you will feel good about it. Remember the boys being forgiven down the line, in the parable.. People often reciprocate kindness with kindness. Be a good motorist, be nice to staff in shops, Give a bottle of water to a homeless person, start small. Have a good weekend.

[TRANSPONDER]

Hello TRANSPONDER

I am not too sure but apart from a little bit of hair splitting, we would seem to have reached broad agreement, lovely biblical quote. you can do them going forward. I am told that if you consciously do a loving thing for someone that you will feel good about it. Remember the boys being forgiven down the line, in the parable.. People often reciprocate kindness with kindness. Be a good motorist, be nice to staff in shops, Give a bottle of water to a homeless person, start small. Have a good weekend.

Already did. Be generous...but watch out for scams. There are some who will take advantage of the generous, thinking them gullible. And always remember...you can do this just as well as a secularist as a theist. Maybe more as the Church isn't there to scrape off their cut...

[Masterblaster]

Hello Data
You say about religious debate - Generally. It's a smokescreen. It's about something else. It isn't transparent.
I agree, the girl in the video just paints the reality of the situation. Questions are never answered.

[Masterblaster]

Hello
The Temple worship of God is not working at any level for Jesus. The underlying dynamic of it is clumsy and dangerous. It is a guarded protocol of approach that creates exclusion.
Jesus felt its divisive potential

Here is another camel that was swallowed whole.

Muslims, Jews and Christian's worship the same God. If you want to get after each others throats, you need to create a new crime, which is that of the infidel. This is not an accusation of worshiping a different God but rather of worshiping the shared god in an inappropriate manner. Now Islam and Christianity, the two self-declared religions of love, both of whom acknowledge Jesus as a great teacher ,can brutalized and sodomize whoever is not worshiping god correctly.
Look at the arrogance and deception of this position. You, a loving religion ,have it in for people worshiping the same god as you. It's all there at the Temple.People with big hats telling small people what they can and cannot do with god.

[TRANSPONDER]

Hello
The Temple worship of God is not working at any level for Jesus. The underlying dynamic of it is clumsy and dangerous. It is a guarded protocol of approach that creates exclusion.
Jesus felt its divisive potential

Here is another camel that was swallowed whole.

Muslims, Jews and Christian's worship the same God. If you want to get after each others throats, you need to create a new crime, which is that of the infidel. This is not an accusation of worshiping a different God but rather of worshiping the shared god in an inappropriate manner. Now Islam and Christianity, the two self-declared religions of love, both of whom acknowledge Jesus as a great teacher ,can brutalized and sodomize whoever is not worshiping god correctly.
Look at the arrogance and deception of this position. You, a loving religion ,have it in for people worshiping the same god as you. It's all there at the Temple.People with big hats telling small people what they can and cannot do with god.

It's been said before that different religions tend to introduce divisions that didn't exist. Not only do Jews, Christians and Muslims supposedly worship the same god, but so do Catholics and protestants. And if the Holy wars of the past seem forgotten and they are on the same side now, it wasn't so long ago that Jack Chick tracts could have a theme on how Catholicism (and Islam) were wicked perversions of god and even satanic. If that kind of Christianity ever gained power, they'd soon be working to put down the religious rivals as hard as they are presently battling against secularism.

Of course you aren't talking about secularism or even Deism, but irreligious theism will do fine, for now.

[Masterblaster]

Hello
It is time to eat another camel, but just as the boa manipulates its meal, for swallowing, there is manipulation to be done here too. This is perhaps the biggest theological/doctrinal camel ever eaten whole.

Did you know that Paul the Apostle, never met Jesus. Do you know why he is referred to as an apostle. This fellow, falls off a horse and in his concussion completely changes his tune. Where did Paul go to school. We are talking about the most influential doctrine/theology producer within the malleable gatherings of the early Jesus followers.

[Masterblaster]

Paul was an amazing person. He was brave and thoughtful and tenacious. The 1st Century sounds like a nightmare. Did Paul save Christianity from extinction and by default did he also save the Jesus message contained within its literature. I need help from historical research on this point.

[Masterblaster]

Hello
This is a google search to offer background and if it contains significant error I will change it.

The Gospel of Mark probably dates from c. AD 66–70, Matthew and Luke around AD 85–90, and John AD 90–110. Despite the traditional ascriptions, all four are anonymous and most scholars agree that none were written by eyewitnesses.
Acts was apparently written in Rome, perhaps between 70 and 90 ce, though some think a slightly earlier date is also possible.

Nero: 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68

Almost nothing is earlier than Nero and Acts comes before most of the Gospels. Which is contributing to which or more importantly , what is the authentic source material or memory reference that is central to all.Where is Mark's gospel coming from, 2 years before the death of Nero. Is that a real question.

And then there is Paul 5 AD - 64/5 AD

[TRANSPONDER]

Hello
It is time to eat another camel, but just as the boa manipulates its meal, for swallowing, there is manipulation to be done here too. This is perhaps the biggest theological/doctrinal camel ever eaten whole.

Did you know that Paul the Apostle, never met Jesus. Do you know why he is referred to as an apostle. This fellow, falls off a horse and in his concussion completely changes his tune. Where did Paul go to school. We are talking about the most influential doctrine/theology producer within the malleable gatherings of the early Jesus followers.

You are preaching to the converted here. Though we cannot be the iconic 100% sure, I doubt that Paul met Jesus.

Of course he was a Pharisee Jew, and might have visited the Temple, but it would be a coincidence if he was there during Holy Week which is the only time Jesus went public, so to speak. I have a suspicion that Paul was not an observant Jew and thus had more than a doctrinal reason (or even political) to scrap the Mosaic Law, but a personal one. Though in Romans he says that the Law still applied to Jews, later on he says that Jesus frees even Jews from the Law, which I suspect was part of the reason he converted at all, give or take a vision.

Where Paul went to school? Locally? Even in Athens, though the days of the philosophers of the Agora were gone (1) but the Philosophies were still popular especially in teaching persuasive rhetoric, which Paul seems to have learned, as can be seen in his argumentative presentation in Romans with mispresentation of Scripture to underpin his own opinions, a precedent for a method that has lasted to the present day, quoting scripture for his purpose

Paul was an amazing person. He was brave and thoughtful and tenacious. The 1st Century sounds like a nightmare. Did Paul save Christianity from extinction and by default did he also save the Jesus message contained within its literature. I need help from historical research on this point.
[/quote

The thing that I wonder is how much Paul was a reflection of the views and beliefs on the disciples, and how much not. I don't doubt that (despite his protest that he didn't get his ideas from any man) he heard of the resurrection -belief from them, but adapted it to suit his own needs. I am more than half convinced that the opponents and teachers of gospels contrary to his own are the disciples, who remained observing Jews, and it was Paul who invented Christianity, and the disciples remained observing Jews with no mission to the gentiles, and Luke in Acts appears to be aware of this.

That mission was Paul's own and he could make the pots of the Greek churches to the shape he liked, though he soon found that they didn't turn out the perfect shape he intended; but of course, he blamed the pots, not his own workmanship.

(1) Luke's tale in Acts of Paul lecturing the philosophers in Athens is polemical, showing how Christian lecturing had replaced philosophical discourse.

[TRANSPONDER]

Hello
This is a google search to offer background and if it contains significant error I will change it.

The Gospel of Mark probably dates from c. AD 66–70, Matthew and Luke around AD 85–90, and John AD 90–110. Despite the traditional ascriptions, all four are anonymous and most scholars agree that none were written by eyewitnesses.
Acts was apparently written in Rome, perhaps between 70 and 90 ce, though some think a slightly earlier date is also possible.

Nero: 15 December AD 37 – 9 June AD 68

Almost nothing is earlier than Nero and Acts comes before most of the Gospels. Which is contributing to which or more importantly , what is the authentic source material or memory reference that is central to all.Where is Mark's gospel coming from, 2 years before the death of Nero. Is that a real question.

And then there is Paul 5 AD - 64/5 AD

In researching, one is going to get the Orthodiox and accepted views of the matter, and I think they have been largely put in place by Biblical historians. If they even mention it, they assume that the resurrection -sightings of I Corinthians are the same as those in the Gospels, when plainly, they are not. They also seem to accept as history that Peter went to Rome to be first Pope and he and Paul perished in the executions after the fire. There is no real connection and it is the biographical fantasy of Acts that puts in place the assumption that Paul ever went to Rome, let alone Peter. All we know is that the record of Paul ends about 60 AD which is in Nero's time at the time of the Boudiccan revolt and with the Jewish war about to break out.

Aside from that the received and transmitted dogma of Bible study is that Mark is the Original Gospel and Matthew and Luke based themselves on it. And even more the certainly Christian preaching that Mark predated the Jewish war, prophecies and all, when reason proposes that it was retrospective prophecy after the destruction of the Temple.

What's worse, Mark is not the original, as it contains a lot that Luke has not and this Omission is easily waved away and that Mark has extra stuff ignored by both Matthew and Luke is striking evidence that they cannot be based on Mark, is ignored. The conclusion is that the synoptics were based on an earlier gospel with more in common with Luke and Mark and lacking a lot of material (1). But it's even worse. That does have the prophetic material and (given doubts that prophecy is true) must post date the Jewish war, so even original "Matthew" is after the end of the Jewish war, and the original story has to also match John who has little Galilee material but skips from the feeding of 5,000 men at Bethsaida to the trip to Jerusalem for the Temple fracas, though John spreads that into 2 different arrivals in Jerusalem. So we have a cut down gospel that may indeed be around 50 AD and the oft - cited 'oral tradition' or stories told about Jesus and his mission, and who but the Christian churches would have been telling these stories?

but it gets even worse. The Passover release is Original - common to all four. But the (negative) evidence is - there was no such custom. This early common tradition itself is a fabrication of Christian apologetics, first crack out of the box, and my theory is it was concocted to give the Jews the choice (Christian Jesus or zealot Barabbas) and they choose wrong and Jerusalem falls as a punishment. Bang. Even theis common (and early) tradition must be post Jewish war.

I can see in the present gospels signs of floating miracle claims that were used in different ways. such as the palsied man healed in Galilee in the synoptic gospels but in Jerusalem in John. That being the case, doesn't that explain why the 'healing at a distance' occurs with Jesus in Capernaum in the synoptics but done from Cana in John. That said, might it be that the healing of the blind man in the synoptics does appear in John, but in Jerusalem and which then becomes a Johannine dispute with the Pharisees where the writer forgets this was a blind beggar on the streets and now disputes like Seneca. And - noting the omission of the walking on water from Luke which could be explained as a floating story picked up separately by everyone but Luke and of course, the woman taken in adultery which turns up in Luke as well as John. And also why the resurrection night appearance is unknown to Matthew who has the disciples troop off to Galilee,.

Plus the miraculous net of fish after the resurrection in John happens at the calling of disciples in Luke, and as a poetic parable in Matthew. it might solve the big invisible elephant in the room - no raising of Lazarus in the synoptics. How - if that was true - could they have not used it? If these floating stories or just claims could be picked up it could have surfaced in Luke as the son of Nain raised from death. All these problems seem to be ignored by the Experts, let alone addressed, but I hope that at least my questions will filter out there if not my proposed answers.

I could be wrong, but I think I'm on the right track. It explains problems the Experts and Authorities don't even seem to notice, let alone address. I could be totally mistaken, but by nongod, it explains just about everything.

(1) the nativity and resurrection (lacking in Mark) and the sermon material (not in mark and the 2nd feeding of 4,000 not in Luke.