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  • Posted by DavidKelley 9 years, 2 months ago
    Here's another one in the same vein:

    Why God Never Received a Ph.D.
    1. He had only one major publication.
    2. It was in Hebrew.
    3. It had no references.
    4. It wasn’t published in a refereed journal.
    5. Some even doubt that He wrote it by Himself.
    6. His cooperative efforts have been quite limited.
    7. The scientific community has had a hard time replicating His results.
    8. He never applied to the ethics board for permission to use His human subjects.
    9. When one experiment went awry, He tried to cover it by drowning His subjects.
    10. When subjects didn’t behave as expected, He deleted them from the sample.
    11. He rarely came to class, just told students to read the book.
    12. Some say He has his son teach the class.
    13. He expelled the first two students for learning.
    14. Although there were only ten requirements, most of his students failed his tests.
    15. His office hours were infrequent.
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    • Posted by j_IR1776wg 9 years, 2 months ago
      No. 2 I believe the new testament was written in ancient Greek.
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      • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 2 months ago
        Correct but not in Classical Greek.

        Old Hebrew and some Aramaic
        New Greek

        Latin came next and served to enslave more than elucidate until the translations into other languages. With the split in the one true church the Eastern Orthodox developed another new eastern European form. Today we call it Russian but like English it has many variations but it's roots are Greek. You will notice many of the letters are similar or exactly the same.

        http://biblica.com

        "During the thousand years of its composition, almost the entire Old Testament was written in Hebrew. But a few chapters in the prophecies of Ezra and Daniel and one verse in Jeremiah were written in a language called Aramaic. This language became very popular in the ancient world and actually displaced many other languages. Aramaic even became the common language spoken in Israel in Jesus' time, and it was likely the language He spoke day by day. Some Aramaic words were even used by the Gospel writers in the New Testament.

        The New Testament, however, was written in Greek. This seems strange, since you might think it would be either Hebrew or Aramaic. However, Greek was the language of scholarship during the years of the composition of the New Testament from 50 to 100 AD. The fact is that many Jews could not even read Hebrew anymore, and this disturbed the Jewish leaders a lot! So, around 300 BC a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek was undertaken, and it was completed around 200 BC. Gradually this Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint, was widely accepted and was even used in many synagogues. It also became a wonderful missionary tool for the early Christians, for now the Greeks could read God's Word in their own tongue.

        So the New Testament authors wrote in Greek. They did not, however, use really high-class or classical Greek, but a very common and everyday type of Greek. For many years some scholars ridiculed the Greek of the New Testament because many of its words were strange to those who read the writings of the great Greek classical authors such as Plato and Aristotle. But later many records were uncovered of ordinary people, and amazingly there were the same common terms used in everyday speech! The ridicule dried up accordingly."

        The two kinds of Greek are Attic and Koine - Classical and Common. In modern English we call it Proper and Vulgate which became Traditional which has now become just vulgar. But it is the language of common people. Editors, Newscasters, Car Sales Staff, Politicians, Reporters.... I speak with tongue in one cheek, half in jest and a twinkle in my eye.

        My thanks to my Uncle who unlike his heathen nephew continued the effort started long ago and helped develop a written language for the Central African Republic natives. Most of whom succumbed to intertribal warfare and AIDs.

        Not all stories have happy endings.
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  • Posted by WilliamRThomas 9 years, 2 months ago
    Good one!

    But the Onion missed out, by claiming that God has stopped writing since around the year 1 AD..

    Lots of people think God has been writing more recently than that:

    Muslims all think God dictated fresh material to Mohammed.

    Mormons were mentioned here: God is thought to have revealed more of His Word to Joseph Smith

    The Bahai'i: Bahá'u'lláh got the Word in the 19th Century, too.

    Those are just a few. Are they knock-offs, or has God been working up new material, with varying degrees of success in getting it read?

    (Tongue now removed from cheek.)
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  • Posted by wiggys 9 years, 2 months ago
    I beg to differ as to "no other author not being an influence"; i gues he never read Ayn Rand. The difference between the two is that the bible is mysticism and Any Rand's writings are reality.
    So maybe it's a good thing nothing more has come forth for 2000 years. We already have to many mystics.
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  • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 2 months ago
    The reclusive deity story is humorous, but if that reclusive deity had recommended additions to the book, then imagine the contradiction of having to pour out all the curses in the last chapter of Revelation on himself.
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    • Posted by ChuckyBob 9 years, 2 months ago
      Understand that when the individual books of the bible were written each was an individual book, or letter. There was no original intent to compile them into a tome. So, the verse you refer to only applies to the book of revelations. Also, the placing of Revelations at the end is more of a happenstance than divine design. While compiling the New Testament the books were placed by category, not in chronological order. Revelations was not the last book written. All that being said, I disagree that God has been silent. I believe in modern scripture and continuing revelation. As stated in Amos 3:7 "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets."
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      • Posted by $ jbrenner 9 years, 2 months ago
        The positioning of Revelations at the end of the Bible is far from happenstance. It made sense to discuss the "end times" at ... the end. Also, Revelations was the last of the canonical books/letters written.
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        • Posted by ChuckyBob 9 years, 2 months ago
          Happenstance may not have been the best word. In the categorizing of the books, Revelations did not fit anywhere else. So it ended up at the end. Also, there is a school of thought that says that the Gospel of John and his epistles were written after Revelations, which would have John condeming himself if Revelations 22:18-19 were to be applied to the entire Bible.
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  • Posted by Herb7734 9 years, 2 months ago
    You must remember that when Moses the former prince and current sheepherder encountered Yaweh the Volcano god, he was bored after 20 years of herding smelly animals. So when Yaweh dictated the book to him he was rarin' to go and see what trouble he could get into in Egypt. He used only one person to write the first five books (more was written later by "inspired writers"). Later, when recording the exploits of his son, the deity had a fairly large number of people write it all up, but it was censored and edited down to just a few books, which I think pissed him off, which is why he has refrained from any more books. He's probably still pouting since time means a whole lot less to him than to us.
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  • Posted by minorwork 9 years, 2 months ago
    Not so fast. A Course In Miracles was dictated to Helen Schucman by Jesus.
    "There is no doubt that the Course material claims to be dictated by Jesus. In the Urtext, the author of the Course refers to Helen's scribing as "taking dictation" from him. In a Manual section about Jesus we are told plainly, "This course has come from him" (M-23.7:1). Elsewhere in the Course, Jesus refers to its words as "my words" (T-31.VIII.8:1) and "the words I speak" (W-pI.RV.In.9:2); in fact, he stresses that he has "made every effort to use words that are almost impossible to distort" (T-3.I.3:11). There is no hint anywhere that the Course's words came from anyone but Jesus." http://www.circleofa.org/question/did...
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  • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 2 months ago
    In referring to People of The Book includes the following. I think "Mormons are considered a sect of Christianity."

    Abrahamic religions (also Semitic religions) are monotheistic religions of West Asian[1] origin, emphasizing and tracing their common origin to Abraham[2] or recognizing a spiritual tradition identified with him.[3][4][5] They comprise one of the major divisions in comparative religion, along with Indian[6] and East Asian religions.[6]

    As of the early 21st century, it was estimated that 54% of the world's population (3.8 billion people) considered themselves adherents of the Abrahamic religions, about 30% of other religions, and 16% of no organized religion.[7][8]

    The largest Abrahamic religions in chronological order of founding are Judaism (1st millennium BC), Christianity (1st century AD), Islam (7th century AD) and the Bahá'í Faith (19th century AD).[9]

    Abrahamic religions with fewer adherents include:

    The Rastafari movement[10]
    Samaritanism[11]
    Druzism[12]
    Mandaeism[13]
    the Bábí Faith[14]

    Predating many of these is Zorasterism a monotheistic fore runner about 3500 BC

    source was wikpedia.

    The Druze of the the Christian faith and Bahai o are two of the groups along with others of Islamic faith under attack by ISIS. There are 73 separate sects of the Islamic religion. Shiite and Sunni are the largest
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 9 years, 2 months ago
    The Bible was cherry picked by a collection of people aka "holy men."
    They had a lot of material to chose from.

    https://carm.org/lost-books

    Long time ago I read some of those so-called lost books.
    I vaguely recall one about Adam and Eve being so silly I could see why it was rejected.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 9 years, 2 months ago
    Let me try to put all this in a new perspective. Seeing that I will be publishing a conscious commentary on the history of preconscious man: The Old Testament, civilization for dummies: The Torah and an ancient blog about it all: The New Testament, also containing and a rant about the status quo that uses this information to keep us subservient and in that preconscious mindset. The latter hasn't changed much.

    1. Something created creation...or the cosmos if you prefer.
    2. That something was obviously conscious...see Einstein and quantum physicist in their observations that Consciousness governs creation.
    3. This creator was obviously aware of it's creation...see science that has observed how specific things have been designed...one decimal off and the whole thing collapses.
    4. Of all the creatures on earth, only mankind, (some of us anyway) became conscious, developed a conscience, a subconscience and a mind outside our brain; against all odds and disempowerments. see; Julian Jaynes's work on the subject.
    5. Human brains transceives vibratory energy and through the mind achieves a direct connection to the ether; that space between units of energy that when assembled form atoms, cells and things we determine to be solid.
    Einstein and Edison measured thought energy in the either and how it effects matter.
    However, one could and obviously did send thoughts through the ether even without a mind or a connection to it, but, it was a shot in the dark so to speak.
    6. The discussion in number 5 refers to what is called a 'Quantum Event', I call it "ask and receive". This is how creation has been designed.
    7. Humans have a tendency to humanize everything. This discussion also demonstrate's our penchant for mystifying and deifying anything we don't understand...this is a pagan preconscious bicameral Remanent...the results of first hearing a voice in our heads that was actually ours, although we were not aware that it was our voice.
    8. The 3 books mentioned here, are probably the most important books in human times. Problem is, we don't understand bicameral man and his attempts at describing our history and, not to mention how our language has been confounded naturally and on purpose, it's all written in bicameral speak and written for bicameral man.
    9. Once one studies, science, psychology, biology, archaeology and quantum physics combined with the work of Jaynes; only then do you begin to understand our biblical ancestors.
    You also might see that Jesus the man was expressing conscious thought, behavior and a world view to it's fullest extent. It would seem that he had an extraordinary connection to the either, a consequence of creation.
    10. So, one of the big questions remaining is one inwhich we must all answer for ourselves...hopefully in a conscious way.
    A. Is the either a direct connection to it's creator in real time? or B. Was creation designed to seem that way by proxy of a direct connection?

    Observing how much emotion and profoundly honest intent it takes to get answers, a bit of good luck, or a degree of protection in an effort to create value. I have a tendency to chose the latter; (created in proxy).

    One thing is self evidently clear though...one must appreciate the consequences of this creation otherwise it doesn't work at all.
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    • Posted by $ MichaelAarethun 9 years, 2 months ago
      No way I'm debating that one. Those Prez candidates should be on their knees thanking --- you were not on the panel.
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      • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 9 years, 2 months ago
        Hahahahahahahahah...you might be right, I'd be facing a fight from the left and the right. Thank goodness I am not stuck in their meme or level of awareness and many if not all of us here are not stuck their either.

        And that's a Good thing.
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