To find out who the historical Jesus was. One of books the "Five Gospels" did a realy good job of weeding out what stuff Jesus was most likely to have said, with stuff that was likely added in by the various schools of Christianity that cropped up in the first couple of hundred years after the religion started. It is probably the most interesting of all of the works Crossan worked on. He and the others on the comittee,the Jesus Seminar, have been relentlessly attacked by the religious right, and their works and ideas comdemend by them quite vociferously.
They even published and entire book atacking Crossan and his scholarship.
Another book that the religious right has attacked by Crossan is Jesus: A revolutionary biography. Falwell and Robertson were deepely incensed at the suggestion that Jesus was a revolutionary of any kind.
Crossan reminds me of all of the Irish Catholic Priests I had as teachers when I was a kid.
The "Concerned Women for America" have attacked Crossan and the Jesus Seminar as Heretical, and attacked The Interfaith Alliance for honoring Peter Jennings with the Faoth amd Freedom Award, for his report "The Search for Jesus" because Jennings relied heavily on Crossan and three other members of the Jesus Seminar.
An ominous note, in an Article Attacking the Interfaith Alliace, Crossan, Jenning and the Jesus Seminar, the "Concerend women for America" presented methods for detecting the left wing attemt to spread these "lies about Christ and Christianity. "REAL: Christians must listen for key phrases, one of ewhich is "Stanfing up for religious freedom" which the "Concerned Women" have warned their supporters, is doublespeak for a leftist agenda. The INterfaith Alliance is an organization that these nonble women are dead set on exposing as an exclusive club for Religious Radicals.
Interested in finding out more about their witch hunt, and their plans for burning anyone who suggests that religious freedom is an American value
http://www.cwfa.org/articles/503/CFI/cfreport/These people are ripe nuts, and they are dangerous, adn they elected George W. Bush.
A little quote from the link above:
Thus, the commitment to religious pluralism by organizations like The Interfaith Alliance is in reality a surreptitious attempt to marginalize the value system of the historic Christian faith. Biblical, Christian opposition to homosexual affirmation, unrestricted abortion, and radical feminist theology serves as an obstacle to the moral relativism of the modern pansexualist movement.
They are , I think in fact more dangerous than they are nuts. There agenda is to put an end to the constitutional guarantee for religious freedom, by interpreting it as only meaning freedom for the relgious right's interpretation of Christianity.
Another great source for dealing with fundies is here:
http://edwardtbabinski.us/fundamentalists/helpful_links.htmlIt is a site that is sort of a "Fundamentalists Anony,ous" a 12 step progrtam for those who are trying to escape religion addiction.
What offends the attackers of the attemts to apply historical analysis and archaelogy as tools to examine Christianity is the assertion that St Paul was not Christ, and that his interpretation of Christianity can not be taken a the "Word of God" as his writings were selected by one sect of christianity that happend to win a political battle for control during the early years of the religion.
Pauls writing are only a part of the Western Church, and many Christian scriptures do not include Pauls writings at all. while some exclude the Gospel of John. THey Syriac Churches, for example exclude a great deal of what is considered scripture, by the Western Church.
THe Coptic Churches in Egypt and Ethiopia as well, do not contain much of what is considered "the Gospel Truth" to the nuts of the Western Christian Church. I think Close to half of the Christian world in some way or another, excludes a lot of the scriptures that the west considers as authentic. In thew case of the Syriac Church and their New Testement (The Peshitta) their scriptures are still written in the orignal Aramaic, not Greek, and their traditions run in a continual line that can be traced back to 35 A.D. Their scriptures can be traced back further than any scripture in the Western Church. Fragments of the Gospel of Mark, as accepted by the Syriac Church, have been dated to 35 AD. There are some differences in these scripures that are significantly different thatn the interpreations of the Western Church. However, the nuts in the West, who attached a great deal of Western ideas to the teachings of an iternerant Jewish/Mediterranean preacher of the first century islost on these maniacs. Try to get a hold of the Peshitta some time if you can. A good deal of Christs sayings are loaded with innuendo, and a lot of the parables are loaded with puns in the origianl Aramaic. Far from being the serious type, Jesus was one of the original stand up comics. A rather funny guy.
The recent analysis of Pauls writings, plus some other historical evidence which suggests that Paul may have been a self-hating homosexual (new discoveries of linguistic and idiomatiic meanings of phrases in Pauls writings that are suggestive that Pauls. thorn in the flesh, was referring to Pauls homosexuality) This has sent the Fundies, and organizations like "Concerend Women of America" into and absolute fit, and their witch hunt has taken on even more acidic tones. One of the statements that Paul made about this "thorn in his flesh" was that it was a condition that brought about loathing, which none of the other possible conditions that have been suggested as the thorn elecited under Jewish Law.
Yet Paul, repeats his gratitude that those he was accepted by those who he preacxhed to and that they did not loath him
Epilepsy, one suggested condition to fit this, was not a consdition that was loathed under Jewish Law, nor were any of the other body ailments that have been used to explain what Paul meant by this "bodily thorn" Most of these physical conditions were conditions that evoked pity, but not scorn or loathing. Plus this thorn was also described as a messenger of Satan. One of the few human conditions that would have evoked loathing and scorn among religious Jews. particularly a Pharisee, as Paul was, would have been the discovery that Paul hemself had Homosexual usrges. This is not playing well with the religious right.
A key proponent of this idea, Bishop Shelby Spong, is the latest target of this group
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