Divinity of Jesus Christ

[rory_20_uk]

Well, no. On the other hand, what's actually in the Bible, excusing Revelations, is the earliest stuff with a reasonable authorial attribution. The only book that might be earlier is Thomas, but that doesn't contain anything massively controversial from what we have seen of the surviving fragments.

Merely that things are not earlier (and we are already talking tens if not hundreds of years for this allowed "early" stuff) doesn't mean that other sources wern't early, merely that earlier versions have been destroyed in one of the church's early book burning activities - hence not allowed as evidence it could be allowed has been destroyed. Rather similar to tearing out parts of a dictionary before using it as a source of information. I believe that a lot of the Dead Sea material is from a similar period of time.

Creationism makes sense if you are allowed to destroy everything that contradicts it.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

Merely that things are not earlier (and we are already talking tens if not hundreds of years for this allowed "early" stuff) doesn't mean that other sources wern't early, merely that earlier versions have been destroyed in one of the church's early book burning activities - hence not allowed as evidence it could be allowed has been destroyed. Rather similar to tearing out parts of a dictionary before using it as a source of information. I believe that a lot of the Dead Sea material is from a similar period of time.

We are only talking about decades, in the field of classical biography and historiography that's pretty good going. There is, for example, no history of Alexander the Great surviving from before the second century AD, and no account is known to have been written until several decades after his death. So Paul's letters and the Canonical Synoptic Gospels are likely to have been the earliest coherent books. That doesn't mean there weren't earlier written accounts, but you tend to only systematise information once the people who lived through the events in question have died. In this case Mark is about 30 years after Jesus died, Matthew and Luke between 40 and 50 and John 60-70. It is entirely possible that the younger actors who lived through those events were still alive when Mark, Matthew and Luke were writing, so the likelyhood of blatent fakery and construction is actually fairly low.

As to "Book Burning", do you have any evidence of Christians systematically destroying books prior to the 4th Century? Given that the tradional canon was already basically in place by this point, with only minor revisions, can you demonstrate any underhand supression at all, aside from anachronising later medieval practice when putting down heretical movements?

Creationism makes sense if you are allowed to destroy everything that contradicts it.

sure, but most of the non-Canonical works have survived, they sit on my bookself in a volume thicker than my Bible, even the 2nd Century ones are hardly Earth shattering, a few of the much later ones are a bit wierd, but so what. It's like reading the Book of Mormon and going "Ah-ha!" Christianity's truth has been horribly supressed, which irrc not even the Book of Mormon claims.

[Ronin]

while we are in this level of discussion..

who do you guys think would win in a fight? Wolverine or Batman???

I'm going with Wolvie all the way.

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

while we are in this level of discussion..

who do you guys think would win in a fight? Wolverine or Batman???

I'm going with Wolvie all the way.

Well, Wolverine can't die, but Batman isn't going to try and kill him anyway. That actually puts Wolverine at a disadvantage, because Batman can just shoot grapling harpoons into him and drag him into an adamantium cage, lock him up and weld the door shut.

[Beskar]

Cue for Topic Nap-time? Please keep the discussion remaining on topic.

[TheLastDays]

Bah, the OP wrote his posts makes it pointles to quote him, because his quotes disappear. Most has already been answered but if you want to argue biblically, as PVC pointed out, you have to use context, which means, whole passages.

For example, please read John 1:1-18 and this should pretty much settle the discussion about whether the Bible states that Christ is God or not. Now, the questions as to whether you believe what the Bible says or choose to doubt it, is a different one, but that's not what the OP was arguing.

Also, if you want to indulge in word studies, please refer to the language in which the document was originally written, not some translation.