Toast, Sorry to see you go I think that you were making a valiant effort. I wish you hadn't removed your posts as they were of value and remember that there are lurkers here who may have gotten your point even if the intended target did not appear to.
MDLarson I am curious are you going to school here at the U or are you at one of the seminaries I live just down the street from Luther Seminary who knows we may have bumped into each other at the store.
Just a couple of things I would like to mention that have come up in this thread. This may be a bit long but please bear with me.
ScottW Is the professor a Christian? Nothing like being taught how to cook chineese from someone who grew up in France.
This is just plain offensive. Have you ever watched the Iron Chef The "Chinese" chef was Japanese and he was a bad ass
Not to mention that the new "Japanese" one is from New York.
Honestly, I have taken several theology classes and I think the christian that taught me about Buddhism and Hinduism was quite good. Ironically I never took any Christian theology classes in school because they had a bad reputation. Not because of the professors and the content of the courses but rather because many of the stereotypical "Bible Thumper" students who would take the course. Those students saw the christian theology courses as a place to convert their fellow students. That made the actual study of theology quite difficult.
Finally, people are allowed to hold differing opinions and world views and it can be very enlightening to be taught about "your" religion by someone who does not believe in it themselves. It highlights many of the unspoken assumptions that go unsaid while preaching to the choir. So listen to the atheists, animists, darwinists and whatever other heathens in the world since they may well ask the questions which will make you a better christian. (Of course that statement applies to any ism or ist replace them at will
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Gia...the removed parts of the bible were about reincarnations. A Roman emperor and his mother wanted to remove them, as removing anything about soul 'recyclin' or of multiple lives, would have made the Romans to be more respectful to the life in this life
The history of the bible is actually really interesting and you are correct about them leaving out several books. The funny thing is that when I went through catechism (well confirmation classes but the same thing) that was one of the things they spent some time on. That bit of history always made me wonder how people could take the bible as 100% correct and literally true. I wonder do people really think that the Gideons were handing out copies in year one.
If you look at the new testament originally there were many more books than are included in the present bible. Different sects saw different books as being true and divinely inspired and furthermore in cases there were different version of the same book. This is understandable when you consider that in several cases the accounts in the bible were passed on orally since few were literate and many were only written down decades after the crucifixion.
As an added layer of obfuscation Jesus almost certainly spoke Aramaic and not Greek which is what the new testament was written in so even if the author remembered exactly what was said we still have to trust their initial translation to the greek.
When Christianity was gaining acceptance in the Roman empire and becoming an institutional religion there was a need to pull the different traditions together into something to stamp with the seal of official christianity. So basically a committee looked at all of the different accounts of Jesus' life and decided which ones were divinely inspired and which were not. That committee decided which books would be in the bible and which versions of those books would be included. I believe that Gia is right that this happened in about 300 AD, I did not look it up though.
That did not even settle matters, there is still conflict about what books belong in the Bible. If you look at a Catholic bible it includes several extra books which are not in the Protestant version (the Apocrypha).
Going back to my confirmation classes this tainted history of the literal veracity of the Bible does not sink christianity. The argument it that there was the initial revelation given by God which then has been transmitted to us via several unreliable paths. Then the task of reading the bible is to find the deeper truth using your knowledge of the bible, its history and context.
As an aside it is very interesting to look at what was left out the bible as well as what was selected. Many of the competing books are lost to time but there are some interesting commentaries on them as well as some amazing archaeological finds. Off the top of my head some of the things that could be different had "other" gospels been selected that I have heard about.
- Included stories of miracles Jesus preformed as a small child.
- Documented that Jesus had had a wife and was not himself a virgin (that would sure change the Catholic priesthood )
- No immaculate conception, Joseph was his dad.
Now it may well be that these things we rightfully left out of the Bible by that committee in 300 A.D. but you have to wonder. Another interesting thought game is to wonder how some of the present puritanically uptight sects would have handled the inclusion of
The Song of Solomon . It is not as racy as the Karma Sutra but it does open up more possibilities beyond the missionary position
Geeze this is already too long so I'll stop there but if you really want to talk theology there are some of us still around here to ask the hard questions and maybe we can coax toast to come back.
