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Apocalypse Not Now: The Rapture Fails to Materialize
"I guess on Sunday when the #Rapture people feel really upset, we can't console them by saying 'Cheer up, it's not the end of the world.'"
Christian doomsday prophet Harold Camping looks likely to be less than rapturous after his prediction that the world would end on Saturday failed to materialize.
The 89-year-old Californian preacher had prophesied that the Rapture would begin at 6pm in each of the world's time zones, with those "saved" by Jesus ascending to heaven and the non-believers being wiped out by an earthquake rolling from city to city across the planet.
But as the deadline for the Apocalypse passed in the Pacific islands, New Zealand and Australia, it became apparent that Camping's prediction of the end of the world was to end not with a bang but with a whimper.
Only on Twitter did the supposed Armageddon sweep the world, with users expressing their mock disappointment at the lack of dead people rising from their graves.
New Zealander Daniel Boerman tweeted: "I'm from New Zealand, it is 6:06PM, the world has NOT ended. No earthquakes here, all waiting for the rapture can relax for now. #Rapture"
In Australia, Jon Gall of Melbourne was unimpressed by the lack of fire and brimstone. He tweeted: "#Rapture time here in Melbourne. A rather quiet sort of rapture if you ask me.
"Well we have had the #Rapture going for 50 minutes now. So far it hasn't interrupted my fish & chips and glass of stout."
In Brisbane, KillaJeules, was similarly disappointed by the lack of a Hollywood blockbuster ending: "So it's 6:37pm here in Brisbane, Australia. No earthquakes. No beaming up of Christians. No zombie apocalypse. No surprises haha."
Camping, a retired civil engineer, has built a multimillion-dollar, non-profit ministry based on his apocalyptic predictions. He previously predicted that the world would end in 1994. It is difficult to know how many of his followers took his latest prophecy seriously, though his Family Radio Worldwide reaches millions of listeners in the US and around the world.
Some have reportedly sold all their possessions and taken to the streets to warn people to prepare for the second coming of Jesus. In recent weeks, callers to Christian radio stations in the US have debated what to do about non-believing friends and neighbors who will be left behind to endure the wrath of God.
But it looks like it will be atheists and other skeptics celebrating this weekend, with tongue-in-cheek doomsday parties planned across the US.
TV scientist Professor Brian Cox summed up the mood of the non-believers. He tweeted: "I think we should all pretend the #rapture is happening so that when Harold Camping gets left behind later today he'll be livid."
But Kieran Healy had a slightly more comforting message for those disappointed at not joining Jesus: "I guess on Sunday when the #Rapture people feel really upset, we can't console them by saying 'Cheer up, it's not the end of the world.'"
171 Comments so far
Show AllOn the news: Some guy offered a post-rapture animal care service, (no money back in case of rapture failure), and he got 35,000 dollars in contracts. When the next end of the world comes around, that's what I'm doing!
Ah, but they will have learnt from their mistake by then. Er, no - on second thoughts, you're on to a winner, Steve!
That's amazing. People who care about their pets so much they pay to have them cared for once they rapture, don't question what a heaven without animals would be like? They don't question that although they signed a contract, once the righteous have raptured what guarrantee do they have that their animals won't end up as tacos?
You have to admire him for his entreprenuerial spirit.
Too bad these sick people paying for their pets to rapture into a taco are likely the ones so clinically insane they don't care about humanity enough to help put a stop to what really WILL cause an Armageddon.....our perpetual wars.
I don't admire *him* any more than any other callous predator.
I *do* admire those who made provision for their non-human friends and family whom they believed they wouldn't be able to take with. Those folks did the best they could do. He exploited their caring. In my book that's repulsive, not admirable.
You wanna talk about repulsive?? I read somewhere some of the "rapture" followers had their pets put down because they figured they wouldn't be around to care for them. I at least admire the "predator" for saving the pets lives from their naive shallow owners.
Yes, the ones who had their pets killed are repulsive if there were other options open to them, no question.
But that doesn't make the predator better.
If his act had any humane component, as you imply it did, he'd have offered to refund, say, 75% of the fee in the event his service wasn't needed.
But since he didn't for a moment believe his service would be needed (and do we even know whether he would have been a fit person to provide it?) he was nothing more than a scammer, preying on the decency of the confused.
Wouldn't it be nice if next time someone tells these meat puppets the end has come they had themselves "put to sleep"?
Just sayin.
His name is Bart Centre. He is an atheist who blogs at the website The Atheist Camel at http://atheistcamel.blogspot.com/ under the name Dromedary Hump. He was interviewed in the Washington Post about his Eternal Earth-Bound Pets rapture pet rescue business. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/service-will-take-in-fido-after-the-rapture-for-a-fee/2011/05/05/AFcZJn7F_story.html
Man, people believe anything in the media today! If I told folks I was born with purple polk a dots on my skin, there would be newspaper articles about the purple spotted chick in California! I am afraid the only "Armageddon" we are likely to have is one caused by humankind if we continue our useless wars or attitude of perpetual retaliation.
Blessed are the holy purple dots!
Where do we line up to touch them and be cured/blessed/assured our rightful passage into heaven?
;-)
Steve, I've been thinking. That's way too long to wait for a profit. Why don't you begin selling true-believer pets instead so they can make the journey with their human companions?
I believe Edward Current. ;-)
My Cat Is A Christian
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z__RYt_VkiI
Checkmate!
LOL! ;-)
(and yes, he's parodying religion and religious views in his many videos on Youtube though many actually believe the stuff he's had fun with as being serious!)
"wrath of God"??? God is wrathful? Well that does it!! If I can't have a nice, unwrathful god I'm taking my marbles and going home. Who needs a mean God, I sure don't. Glad I'm an atheist. If I believed in God before this would cure me.
I believe in God, but not a wrathful God. the only wrathful God is the one made up by sinful humans that re-wrote the Bible throughout the course of 1500 years. God would never order war onto any people. I can see why people become atheist. Although I still believe in God, I respect all atheist for their beliefs. In fact, one must respect the peaceful atheist more than anyone claiming they believe in God, go to church every Sunday yet believe in killing people at war to "save our nation" How could war protect a nation? I'll sell swamp land in Florida to those holding onto that one....Probably make more money that that guy selling rapture service to people's pets. Armageddon is not likely to ever happen with the prediction of a quack pot preacher as much as the continuation of violent wars. The fire and brimstone will be via the robotics warfare technology and nuclear weapons and nuclear atomic energy no country has the right to design, including the USA. No its not a perfect world, but war certainly makes it less perfect.
Peacechick what evidence do you have to support your assertion that there ever existed a benevolent God who's history was somehow adulterated by scribes over the course of the last 1500 years? The Dead Sea Scrolls that date from 150 BCE and 70 CE confirm that well preceding Jesus' time to quote Richard Dawkins: "The God of the Old Testament was arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully."
The Abrahamic god of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam has been unchanged since his inception. In the second century of the common era Marcion came to a belief that the God of the Hebrew Bible (Christian Old Testament) was not the true God. He called this god the Demiurge. Marcion was subsequently declared a heretic by his opponents who ultimately won the battle for belief and became the Roman Catholic Church.
It happened and all those damned Christians are still here.
A wonderful metaphor for many of "the shy is falling" stories here at common dreams.
Heresy!
We're onto you.
You are obviously a paid corporate shill.
Silence!
I would chastise and ostracise you more, but
I'm about to be raptu
Feeling better today? on to the next chicken little story, charge!
Well, I think it's good when people become less shy.
If you believed in God, you would know HE didn't make the prediction (so no need to be 'cured' of it).
If you read the Bible you would know that the Bible says no man, nor the angels in Heaven, nor the Son know the hour, except for the Father. So, unless Harold Camping is God, he won't know when.
As for the obvious atheist presence here, let me say this - You prefer to think in terms of evolution and the Big Bang theory. Supposedly that makes sense. Let's see...
Atheism: the belief that there was nothing... and nothing happened to nothing... and then nothing magically exploded... for no reason.... creating everything.... and then a bunch of everything magically rearranged itself... for no reason whatsoever... into self-replicating bits... which then turned into dinosaurs.
Makes perfect sense if you lived in a world of chaos and disorder! No worries though... I will pray for all of you... GOD knows who you are. May you be blessed!
SerenityHappens, your impressive understanding of atheism, the Big Bang theory, and evolution are obviously derived from close inspection and long study of the exhibits on these topics at the Creation Museum.
Only a fool would think to challenge such unassailable erudition and wisdom.
Only a non-scientist or a pseudo-scientist would be so foolish as to NOT challenge theories, regardless how erudite and intellectually pleasing they might seem. And to raise hypotheses and theories to the level of "wisdom" demonstrates a lack of wisdom.
Science is a contemporary attempt to explain the phenomenon of the universe and is always temporary and always subject to rejection or revision. Big Bang has some hidden glitches in its logic and so does evolution. Even in the past quarter century Darwin's gradualism was replaced with "punctuated equilibrium." The history of science has clearly shown that what the common man takes to be "established" the true scientist regards as a provisional, unhampered search for an understanding of how the universe works.
Science is a work in search for an understanding of how the world works, too. Science has been edited and re-edited and is always in need of re-editing...that's what scientists do. Your atheism is also a belief and requires another kind of faith and another kind of gods and fairies....muons, mesons, pi-mesons, bosons, anti-gravity particles, anti-matter, and black holes. Science REQUIRES faith, usually expressed as assumptions and parameters. Atheism also requires faith expressed as assumptions, parameters, and even arrogance.
Some folks are also making science into a religion with Al Gore, Michael Mann, Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, and Maurice Strong as their high priests. They are misusing the name of science and abusing their positions to control, brainwash and scare people into submission. WHEN science is used for the good of humanity, it is a responsible contribution to civilization. But immoral, greedy, unjust people can and have hijacked science for their own purposes that are antithetical to the good of humanity. Declaring CO2 to be a pollutant to the atmosphere means that EVERY exhalation you make can be taxed, your cooking and heating can be taxed, your pets must be eliminated, useless eaters must be eliminated, excess population must be depopulated. Check out the Georgia Guidestones outside Atlanta...500 million people is the projected goal because of the Club of Rome declarations. Who will be depopulated? Who will choose? Is Fukushima part of the plan? Katrina? Iraq? Afghanistan? Libya? BP? Osama's last death?
In Deuteronomy it is written, "I set before you life and death; therefore choose life that your children might live." Would you rather buy into the pseudo-scientific apocalypse and the extrapolation that can unfold from it...or will you choose life?
You see...humanity needs to remember the Original Instructions to walk in balance, to respect all beings in the web of life. Science and religion are part of the same enterprise and both can be abused when there is no balance.
You are posting with the same emotional fervor of an evangelist calling angels to dance on the head of a pin. CO2 is the food for plants and without CO2 food production virtually stops. That CO2 comes from your breath or from your car engine or from rotting garbage...no diff....but you have responded with illogic, dismissing basic science and claim that you hold a high promontory from which you can look down and judge others. Your Global Warming religion doesn't count because.... well, just because. How is that any different from Camping's rapture?
I'm directing attention to the malice that fairly exudes from some people who have the same ignorance and arrogance as the apocalyptic Christians. Global warming is NOT real and your faith in the new religion of Al Gore, Maurice Strong, Michael Mann, Keith Briffa, and Phil Jones is barely recognizable by contemporary standards but it IS a religion and you are just as caught up in it as the Camping rapturists...pal. You've been flim-flammed by the hucksters and can't recognize it because your FAITH is so strong ... just like the people you deride.
So much of what you believe has been revised by real scientists who pursue an understanding of the universe no matter if grants are not forthcoming or if they cannot publish their research because the peer review process has been corrupted.
Climate models predicted a hotspot in the middle altitudes of the troposphere...after more than a decade of searching for the hotspot, none has been found. But the modelers have not given up on their hypothesis in spite of the observable facts. Long ago astronomers were faced with the same dilemma trying to explain how the sun goes around the earth. Their response was to build orbits within orbits within still other orbits to explain the observed reality. Finally, the edifice of epicycles grew so cumbersome that they had to acknowledge that perhaps another hypothesis - that the earth orbits around the sun instead - was a better explanation.
Global Warming is a concept that has been foisted on unsuspecting folks who haven't a clue that the science they quote is badly flawed and growing increasing cumbersome. Michael Mann, Al Gore, Phil Jones, Keith Briffa, et al have been caught in their intrigues to subvert the scientific process...but the believers cannot see the observable facts in evidence, cannot follow the scientific principles and process, and cannot argue themselves out of a paper bag without looking like apocalyptic dodos. And the dodo is extinct.
If you're serious rather than just trolling, you should really do some basic reading, because you're quite confused.
Start with the basic premise of James Lovelock's and Lynn Margulis's Gaia theory, that Earth is a *single system* that holds itself in homeostasis by balancing producers and consumers.
Humans and other higher-order lifeforms are, as you say, producers of CO2 and consumers of oxygen. Trees and other plant life, but trees particularly, are consumers of CO2 and producers of oxygen.
But humans have wrecked the homeostasis in which we evolved. We have simultaneously boosted the amount of CO2 we generate and killed most of the long-lived CO2 consumers through deforestation.
This has produced an excess of CO2, which causes infra-red mirroring and is overheating Earth. The knock-on effects, as Earth struggles to find a new homeostasis, are climate disruption and, if we don't pull our collective fingers out, the catastrophic release of the methane stored in the oceans and permafrost areas.
Earth literally *cannot* allow imbalance to continue, and a new homeostasis *will* be found - but unless we take action to make sure it's our natal homeostasis again, the new one quite likely won't include any oxygen-dependent life forms at all. The best guess is that the new homeostasis will be like that on Venus: 250C temperatures and sulphuric-acid storms.
According to James Hansen, the biggest unknown preventing us from better predicting how close we are to that final tipping point is how much the current atmospheric aerosol (pollution) is holding the temperature down. If it's a large factor, then we dare not stop polluting til we have reforestation and other ameliorations in place. If it's small, then the quicker we stop, the better. But we have to know which, and we don't.
Which means the only *safe* things we can do, absent that information, is to end Capitalism, turf out the ruling classes (who, being mad and/or psychopathic, don't give a tinker's dam about anyone but themselves), start drastically reducing our population, re-forest like mad things, and hope like hell that we're doing it all fast enough.
Thanks, Gerda. I hope it didn't feel like an intrusion, but his level of ignorance is/was so high that I thought a second person coming in might help.
okay, maybe we can sort of reign this monster in a bit. There is a vital difference between atheist and religionist belief systems that needs to be taken into account. Religions appeal to divine authority, which places questioning of that authority out of definitional bounds. Atheism absolutely rejects that sort of divine privileging.
I appreciate your sentiment, but honestly, I absoluteyl can't stand lame attempts to conflate the two as just "warring religious factions". That would be complete horsepoop.
I don't believe any human being has all the answers. Humanity has been given a free will to believe what they wish. . Why is it that society or people in society disallows or discourages people to believe in what they wish? What difference does it make to you what others think?
Let me clarify my position. By your response it sounds as if you think I am defending people who believe in God or in fairies. I don't have any problem with people who choose to believe in what they want no matter what it is. I believe everyone is entitled to their own thoughts. Beliefs are essentially repeated thoughts. I am not defending any specific belief. My point? The problem lies when one try's to force their belief upon others that they disagree with. Forcing ones will upon another is the cause of war, genocide, prejudice and whatever.There is no difference in telling a Christian or any other religion that their beliefs are false than it is for a Christian or any other religion to state your religion is false. Both are causing one another harm. Live and let live!
Now that I hope I have clarified myself, does it truly matter to you what my spiritual beliefs are? As long as I am not causing you are anyone no harm......who cares?
correction:
Now that I hope I have clarified myself, does it truly matter to you what my spiritual beliefs are? As long as I am not causing you or anyone harm......who cares?
Instead of trying to destroy each other I believe the most influential thing anyone can do is to act out of love and live their lives to their fullest. .
There is nothing anyone can do to change what has resulted in the past. The only thing we can do is change ourselves and our future. It is important for us to learn from the past rather than to repeat it. If people plan on pushing against the thoughts or beliefs of others then we are doomed to repeat history. I would rather people focus on their own happiness and act out of love rather to act out of indifference.
Nothing remains the same, the world is evolving. Ultimately, you are responsible for your OWN thoughts that result in your own personal experiences. You get to choose!
Thanks for noting the arrogance of Camping and his supposedly "Christian" followers who deny that their own Bible is speaking to them when it says no man, angels, or even the Son knows the time. They claimed in this instance that God was ONLY speaking to his churches in another time and therefore it did not apply to them!
Conveniently denying their own source of religious guidance to suit their personal viewpoint is akin to the people of the Covenant who had abandoned His teachings to create their own gods and idols. Their God declared through the prophets, Jeremiah, Amos, and others, that these rebellious, unfaithful "Chosen" would be forsaken, cut off from their inheritance. Millions of these de-chosen, rejected decided that they would do what their God had not yet done for them: they returned to Jerusalem, and they are repeating the genocide and apartheid of the Old Testament on their own.
Camping and his followers are similarly headstrong and haughty. It seems to be a human condition that some choose to develop into murder and mayhem, self-righteousness and pride.
If you read your Bible and understood it, you would know that the end of the world that superstitious Christians believe is to come was supposed to have already occurred. It was supposed to have happened within the lifetime of Jesus and his first generation of followers. In Matthew 24:1-33 Jesus talks about all of the things that were supposed to happen ushering in the end times. In verse 34 he says" Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened." That generation has been dead nearly 2000 years and none of the things Jesus prophesied has happened.
As early as 53 C.E, two decades after the reported crucifixion of Jesus, Paul in 1st Thessalonians (the earliest writing in the New Testament) is writing to console members of the Christian community there who had expressed concern for the welfare of fellow members of the community who had died (fallen asleep) and Jesus and the kingdom of God had not yet come. We find later in 2nd Peter (a work written in the 2nd century and forged in the name of Peter, remember the Book of Acts says that Peter was illiterate) the author is writing to counter gnostics and "scoffers" who at that time were ridiculing Christians for their belief in the return of the crucified Christ. "Above all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” 2 Peter 3:3-4. These scoffers were able to use reason and their intellect to see that what the Christians were preaching was utter nonsense. Christians today are just as deluded as they were 2000 years ago. When will Christians realize that Jesus if he existed died, rotted, was never resuscitated, and will not return a 2nd time
By the way, save your ineffective prayers for someone else. You're just wasting your breath.
The historicity of Jesus' crucifixion has never been established by corroborating sources. There is no historical record of Jesus' crucifixion. The collection of sayings and teachings of Jesus were collected by the street preacher, Eusebius, at the behest of Emperor Constantine, and revamped into the narrative now familiar in the literature of Western Civilization. All the other versions were destroyed and the original unification church was born...in 325 AD. The vote of the council was close, the winning version receiving a bare majority of the street preachers present.
I prefer the Big Bong theory.
and God said "Give Me a light."
SerenityHappens.....from one believer of God to another....there is one thing to remember. The Holy Bible is not entirely the world of the Lord. Be careful not to preach every word of the Bible, which was re-written by sinful man through the years. Hence, you may also believe that God said "Spare the rod spoil the child". Not only are these words nowhere to be found in the Bible, any reference to such abuse of children written into the Bible is written by man, not the Lord. There are some things many people claiming to be such good Christians believe in which are a huge sin in the eyes of God. War which involves mass killing, extoling a "virtue" of killing the proverbial "bad guy" (Osama), hurting innocent children with a hand or object. All huge sins and most horrible of crimes. Let's be careful abut being too staunch in our beliefs of the written word.....whether in the Bible (much fiction) newspapers (60% fiction at least) American History Books (nearly all fiction and put at an angle to keep our nations horrible global crusade going "war hero" oxymoron overused. Look into your soul for the answer. As a Christian myself, I believe there are as many if not more atheist that will have thier soul go to heaven than "Christians" sinning such as priest molesting little boys. No labels and pointing fingers here!
peacechick - I totally agree with your comment about the atheists who's souls will go to heaven, and christians who won't. But I don't believe in Heaven or Hell. I'm also not an atheist. I believe in a creator, and in the soul that survives this human body.
I remember remembering the many lives I've lived before and knowing I have many more to live after this one. That memory goes back even further than very early childhood memories I have that have background to them. I believe I was born remembering, and somehow managed to retain the memory while details of past lives and any other memories I might have had then faded away.
There are parts of the Bible I know, because I did attend church for a few years in my early twenties, but stopped for obvious reasons. I know the Bible says something about being born again, and the church I went to used that as the need for accepting Jesus Christ and being baptised. I believe that verse is one that was revised to cover the original meaning.
Peacechick how do you determine which information in the Bible was "written into the Bible by man" versus that which is truly inspired by God? Other than the Ten Commandments, (for which there is not a shred of archeological evidence) which were supposedly directly transcribed by God, all of the texts of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament were written by men. These texts are full of fables, myths, contradictions, and errors. They have all been heavily redacted. We have none of these texts in their original form. In fact, most of the books of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament are forgeries. They were authored in the name of individuals who did not write the texts. Biblical scholars and theologians like to use the quaint term psuedopigraph to describe these texts since it is less offensive than the terms we use in modern times to describe such works. They are pious frauds and forgeries.
"We have none of these texts in their original form.."
Wrong.
There are DOZENS of original manuscripts for the books that were eventually assembled into 'The Bible(tm)'.
True, >some< of the original texts have been lost due to degradation of the writing materials, war, arson and the like, but the texts still survive. One of the best known 'original' texts are the so-called 'Dead Sea Scrolls' and Nag Hamadi scrolls, containing some of the earliest written versions of well known Christian texts. J.R.R. Tolkien (the man who wrote 'The Lord of the Rings') was a professional linguist and scholar who studied and translated them.
Are there frauds and forgeries that were issued under the name and by the authority of the Church? Definitely. But not >ALL< early texts are forgeries.
Do your research before you yip off.
Galenwainwright please provide me with the with the evidence that "There are DOZENS of original manuscripts for the books that were eventually assembled into 'The Bible(tm)'.
Before you attack me you need to read what I wrote more closely. I did not say that all of the texts of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament were forgeries. I said that a substantial number of them are forgeries. I quote the esteemed agnostic and acknowledged biblical scholar Bart D. Ehrrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. In Jesus Interupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them) on page 183.
1. We don't have the originals of any of the books of the New Testament.
2. The copies we have were made much later, in most instances many centuries later.
There are no dozens of original manuscripts of the books that were eventually assembled into the Bible. The earliest intact manuscripts of New Testament texts that we have date no earlier than the 3rd century C.E. There are scraps of papyri that date to the early 2nd century C.E.
We don't know who wrote the canonical gospels. They were originally anonymous documents. This is acknowledge by most critical conservative and liberal biblical scholars. The names were not attached to these documents until the 3rd and 4th centuries. Of the New Testament, all of the following books are forgeries or pious frauds: 2 Thessalonians, Colossians, Ephesians, 1and 2 Timothy, Titus. None of these books were authored by Paul. Paul also did not write Hebrews.
1and 2 Peter were not written by Peter. We don't know who wrote the Epistles of John or the Epistles of James and Jude.
The antiquity of the Dead Sea Scrolls says nothing about who authored the texts of the Hebrew Bible that were found at Qumran. The Dead Sea Scrolls have been dated from 150 BCE until 70 CE. Hebrew Bible scholars believe that the Torah was written 700-600 BCE. The authorship of the texts of the Hebrew Bible is as nebulous as those of most of the texts of the New Testament. Moses did not write the Torah. David didn't write the Psalms. The Song of Solomon and Ecclesiates were not written by Solomon. Daniel didnt' write the book of Daniel. We don't know who composed most of the texts of the Hebrew Bible.
The Nag Hammadi texts were texts that had been suppressed. Prior to their discover at Nag Hammadi many these texts existed only as citations in the work of various Church Fathers. The texts discovered at Nag Hammadi date from the 2nd and 3rd centuries. They are copies. They are not original texts. We don't know how true to the original texts the copies found at Nag Hammadi may be due to the fact that many of the earlier texts that may have been in existence were either lost naturally or they had been suppressed by the orthodox Christians.
Next time before you yip off, do your own research and provide some references.
I think the point was that the texts have remined basically unchanged for 2000 years...and this is verified by the findings of the Dead Sea Srolls and at Nag Hamadi.The 'Christian' religion and writers did not edit and modify the 'original' (meaning ancient or preceding) texts to support their perspective. There is a common theme among skeptics that these works have 'evolved' over time MUCH more than the evidence suggests...
Thinkingmom please put on your thinking cap. Many of the major Christian texts have evolved over time. New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman, who I previously cited, states that among the thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament that are available for review by scholars, there are more variant readings among these texts than there are words in the entire New Testament. This has been acknowledged by all but the most conservative evangelical New Testament scholars. You can see evolution of the Christian texts by doing a side to side reading of the synoptic gospels. Mark, Matthew, and Luke have been dated to have been written between 70 and 100 C.E. Matthew and Luke clearly copied from Mark. Matthew and Luke also share material from a common source referred to as Q. Matthew and Luke clearly modify material in Mark to support their theological agenda. One of the major criticisms that the early apologists of Christianity such as Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Origen, and Turtullian had to counter was the charge that Christians had altered their holy texts. This was a major component of the pagan philosopher Celsus' attack against Christians in his work 'On the True Doctrine'. Read 'On the True Doctrine yourself or read Origen's refutation of Celsus the 'Contra Celsum". Celsus' work was written in the 2nd century. The apologetics of Origen, Turtullian, Irenaeus, and Justin Martyr were written in the late 2nd century and early 3rd century. We see that clearly within 40 to 60 years after the supposed crucifixion of Jesus, the writers of the anonymous synoptic gospels were altering the texts. Little over 100 years after the crucifixion of Jesus critics of Christianity such are Celsus record their observation that Christians were altering their texts. This clearly shows that when you closely examine the evidence, your assertion that "The 'Christian' religion and writers did not edit and modify the 'original' (meaning ancient or preceding) texts to support their perspective" is without foundation. These texts have not been unchanged for 2000 years. You can't even assert this regarding Christian texts because we do not have any intact manuscripts that date earlier than the 3rd century. Hell scribes are continuing to publish new versions of the Bible this very day that are changing prior interpretations of the text.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are also not Christian texts. They don't say a damn thing about Jesus or Christianity. The Dead Sea Scrolls are Jewish texts. It is ludicrous to refer to them as Christian texts.
I concur (and have heard of Q and J before) that the early Christian texts were in flux for several hundred years after the time of Jesus, and also that there are many writings from that era that are not included in the Biible that can help shed light on the many contemporaneous interpretations and understandings of the meaning of the teachings of Jesus and his life and death. I also quest for the real message of Jesus and suspect it is not what we see reflected in the current (since the First Council of Nicea (AD 325)) Bible, as this can surely be interpreted as a political as much as religous meeting. However to argue that current English translations represent the document in flux is not entrley accurate...as the 'original' writings availble for the translators are still as they were at that time. And the 'original' texts I was referring to in my previous post , the 'Jewish' texts of the "Old Testament' are also unchanged for 2000 years...
Thinkingmom the First Council of Nicaea was called by the Emperor Constantine to resolve important theological issues in the church. This council had nothing to do with codification of the New Testament texts. This is a myth that has been perpetuated for some time. More recently this myth has been popularized in fictional books such as 'The Da Vinci Code". The First Council of Nicaea was primarily concerned with the Arian Controversy and Church organization. Also, contrary to what was suggested earlier in this thread by a participant, Constantine did not suppress rival Christian texts that were not supported by the orthodoxy. The first time a church council ruled on the list of "inspired" writings allowed to be read in church was at the Synod of Hippo in 393 AD. Constantine had been dead for years by the time of the 393 AD Synod of Hippo.
You wrote: "to argue that current English translations represent the document in flux is not entrley accurate...as the 'original' writings availble for the translators are still as they were at that time." You keep referring to original texts. There are no original texts. There are only copies. Current English translations do represent these documents in flux. I cite the recently published 'The New American Bible, Revised Edition'. This is the first new Catholic Bible in 40 years. This new version updates many Old Testament passages based on newly translated manuscripts discovered in the past 50 years.
The Dead Sea Scrolls do not show that the "Old Testament" has been unchanged for 2000 years. One of the discoveries in the Dead Sea Scrolls is that the Qumran community in fact had texts that are now part of the Hebrew bible that actually have variant readings when compared with the Hebrew Bible texts that were available prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Since the Dead Sea Scrolls contain the earliest copies of some of the texts of the Hebrew Bible, someone must have made changes in the texts that were available to scholars prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Otherwise, how would you account for the variations seen in the Old Testament texts that date later than those found among the Dead Sea Scrolls? Thus someone made changes in the Old Testament texts that were available prior to the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Your assertion that the 'Old Testament" was unchanged for 2000 years is again unsupported by the available evidence.
PHOTIUS: Thank you for posting this material. It's fascinating.
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