I stumbled upon the following site. It certainly is a thorough piece of work regarding whether Jesus existed or not. Interesting read anyway, and thought perhaps might bring some good discussions. <a href="http://www.truthbeknown.com/origins.htm"target="_blank"> Origins of Christianity</a>
Medicine Woman gleefully pronounces: So are websites devoted to Holocaust deniers. Your point being? Acharya S Refuted: http://www.tektonics.org/JPH_SFS.html
I don't know what YOU mean! I've read the book by Acharya S, but I don't recall quoting anything from it.
Bridge, First of all Jp Holding aka: Robert Turkel, is nothing but a fraud. He has been refuted by so many it is unreal LOL see: http://members.aol.com/bbu85/hold.htm And to be fair, here is Acharya S retort to Turkel's poor attempt to refute her http://www.truthbeknown.com/holding.htm
This document has little in the way of hard facts unless if your the type who listens to what "learned men" think without fully investigating the sources. Some of .it I can tell is not well researched. For example the article quotes Pope Leo with "What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!" but the source is not from a church document, it is from "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, by Barbara Walker, p. 471. Rev. Taylor, in The Diegesis, reports a slightly different version of Leo X's admission: "It was well known how profitable this fable of Christ has been to us." (footnote, p. 35.)" Of course this is probably a mistranslation of a quote taken out of context. So what can we say from this. Well three things 1.) The author knew that the quotation may be inaccurate 2.) The author was too lazy to find the real quotation 3.) The author is willing to guess conclusions from unsubstantiated evidence Overall the author is unwilling to read the bible or church father's for himself and then come to a conclusion. There is a buch of rubbish such as "Turning to the gospels themselves, which were composed between 170-180 C.E.22a, their pretended authors, the apostles," They were not pretended. It's not like the gospels said who exactly wrote them, it is the church's tradition that gives us the names of the books. So then when a book mentions the name Luke as the author and this same Luke is mentioned by Paul, do we have to really go with "Luke" as the author? Is this some type of brainwashing effect whereby you use "Luke" over and over so that the reader's aren't even sure of their own names? This document has so many mistakes that it dwarfs any scribal errors in the bible. In my public school we were not taught that Jesus existed. The extant of our teachings was that Christians believed that Jesus existed.
Okin, the most important word here is FABLE Give me a break Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! You totally missed the point that she was making and have gone off into left field Oh, and if you have any question as to the author's credentials you can check them out here: http://www.truthbeknown.com/author.htm
To be honest with you I don't know that much about Holding/Turkel but I generally don't take people's word on it and like to explore the matter myself. I went to the url you pasted. Most of the links about Turkel being a liar and a fraud end up here: http://exposed.faithweb.com/apologetics.html A broken link. Another here: http://theskepticalreview.com/index2.html A broken link Many of these are dead ends. Then the one that claims he's a liar ends up here: http://theskepticalreview.com/cgi-bin/ceilidh.exe/abi/?C33e8f1816KIi-4723-730-90.htm Which is finally a working url. But all it does is go on ad nauseam about Turkel being a lying bastard. The author bemoans some broken links? Go figure. Where's the beef? What exactly did Turkel lie about?
I have read the book (all 400 pages in 3 sittings) and I think it is great. She has a comprehensive bibliography included, so you can check her sources yourself. I am off to read the refutation of her work. I have been looking for that for some time now to no avail. Thanks for the link, Bridge. (and I will read her rebuttal, thanks, heart)
Heart, when an uneducated person can find something wrong with the arguments there's something flawed.. Of course this doesn't mean you should take my word for it, it's just that there are more credible ways of being skeptical. The writing is just quote after quote of sources that I do not have the time to check up on. But when the to misquote of the Pope knowing that she was misquoting it shows a desired state of ignorance. Here's another "Even the Hebraic name of God, "Yahweh," was taken from the Egyptian "IAO." Well IAO as it turns out is not even an Egyptian God but a Greek gnostic derivation of YHWH. She is purposely trying to construe the Exodus events to make it as if they were taken from the Egyptians. http://www.cs.utk.edu/~mclennan/BA/OLBRPnotes.html "On Gnostic gems is found the sacred name IAO [)Iaw] of the Sun, which the Greeks took to be the name of the Jewish God, since the Tetragrammaton YHUH (using U for the semivowel wau) was often pronounced IAO. The Tetragrammaton has several other interesting connections with Greek religion. For example, it has been claimed that YHUH, pronounced YAUO or YAOU, is just IAO with a definite article. This in turn is Jove, which is pronounced YOUE (Jupiter is a contraction for Jove Piter = Jove the Father). The connection with Zeus (pronounced DZEUS) is harder to see, due to the retention of the initial consonant, but it is apparent from the hard pronunciation of J (as in Jehova), which is phonetically equivalent to DZH. Thus DZEU (Zeu, voc.) = DZHEU (Jeu) = DZHEUO (Jeuo) = DZHOUE (Jove), etc. Finally, consider the ecstatic cry of the Bacchantes, Io Euhoi [i)o\ eu)oi(/], which is phonetically YO EUHOI. Dropping the vowels yields YUH, which is three fourths of the Tetragrammaton. The Tetragrammaton YHWH could be vocalized Yohewhoi (YO HEU HOI), which is nearly identical to the Bacchantic yell. These similarities may reveal a Sacred Sound (a "Secret God-Name") common to many cultures. (See also Godwin, Vowels, Ch. 8.) " Here's another "In one of the most notorious of Christian deceptions, in order to convert followers of "Lord Buddha," the Church canonized him as "St. Josaphat," which represented a Christian corruption of the buddhistic title, "Bodhisat."102" The offical church canonization had not started until like 900AD. The result was that many of the early saints were only known by legend and one of those legends had Buddha as a saints. Is this is the real St. Josaphat? http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08503b.htm "For example, early Church Father Tertullian (@ 160-220 C.E.), an "ex-Pagan" and Bishop of Carthage, ironically admits the true origins of the Christ story and of all other such godmen by stating in refutation of his critics, "You say we worship the sun; so do you."65 Interestingly, a previously strident believer and defender of the faith, Tertullian later renounced Christianity66" Tertullian did not really renounce Christianity, he bacame a heretic which would make him a Chrisitan but not Catholic. http://www.tertullian.org/tertullianistae/de_haeresibus.htm
I do like Acharya's site, but I think my favorite part of her site has to be the section where she prints the Christian letters she gets - what a riot! Her book, "The Christ Conspiracy," is a great one - for anyone who hasn't read it yet, I highly recommend it. I would also recommend "The Jesus Mysteries" by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. There are also a couple of really good websites I'd like to recommend that expose the kind of individual Jesus was, that is, if we can assume he ever really existed in any form: Things We Didn't Find Out in Sunday School Jesus: The Truth The Christian myth has caused a great deal of harm in this world, and personally I think it's high time everyone took off their gospel-colored glasses and took an honest look at Christianity, and see it for what it is and always has been - a means of controlling the masses.
