Harmon, your knowledge of the history of the Roman Empire & early Christianity is flakier than Choate's physics. Go home and read some history books instead of New Age loonies with a persecution complex.
No point in refuting the heap of ignorance appended below because there isn't enough meaningful in it to require an answer - but if it makes you feel superior to fantasise that using a modern-style transliteration of an Aramaic name as "Yeshua" instead of the Latin-style "Jesus" makes you some sort of elite soul, go right ahead. The Greek spelling of the name is Iesous anyway. And the origin is the same Hebrew name that also comes to us as Joshua and Hosea. That sort of thing happens when you move between alphabets. Harmon Seaver wrote: > > On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 08:43:34PM +0100, Ken Brown wrote: > > Steve Schear wrote: > > > > > At 06:34 PM 3/30/2003 -0500, stuart wrote: > > > >On Sunday, March 30, 2003, Harmon Seaver came up with this... > > > > > > > >You give too much credit to the Romans. Catholicism worked so well > > > >because it is a virus, and conversion was often forced upon heathens by > > > >their fellow countrymen. > > > > > > Interestingly though, Christianity started in the Holy Land but never got > > > much traction there. > > > > Not true. Palestine became majority Christian quite early, as did parts > > of Syria, Armenia and Arabia. All those places, and also Egypt, were > > largely converted long before the Christians had any political power. > > No, they weren't "christian" -- they were followers of Rabbi Yeshua ben > Yoseph ha Natzri, later called Mesheach ha Israel. No Jewish moma ever named her > little boy Jesus, which is a Greek name, and the Jews had just spent 200 years > of ethnic cleansing anything that looked, smelled, or spoke Greek. Jesus and > Christ and christianity were something invented by the europeans -- a take-off > of the Jewish messiah and with some of the early writings, heavily edited, of > Rabbi Yeshua's apostles, but rather a different thing. When the Romans started > trying to alter things, the groups in Palestine, Syria, etc. essentially told > them to fuck off. > The "epistles of Paul", for example, were written in Greek, while the earlier > stuff was originally written in Hebrew, then very badly translated into Greek, > essentially by the word for word substitution method, which really resulted in > some strange passages in the new testament. Some scholars have been reverse > translating them by the same method with good results, but of course there's a > lot of official opposition to this (just as there is to translating the Dead Sea > scrolls) and zero funding. > Interestingly enough, Paul's letters would have been totally lost except for > one man, Marcion, who collected them all. Unfortunately, he was a Gnostic, not a > christian, and a rabid anti-semite, so he took a scissors and cut out anything > that was at all favorable to the jews and burned it, leaving some very strange > and heavily altered texts. > The new testament wasn't canonized until around 400-500ad, can't remember > exactly, but anyway long after the council at nicea where they excommunicated > all the Palistinian, etc. followers of the Rabbi, and also after christianity > had been made the official state religion of the empire, so any hope of the > real authentic older teachings being included was long gone. And, of course, we > know that pretty much as soon as they were made the official church, they went > about destroying the old religion's temples, sacred texts, etc and persecuting > the followers. > Talk about "broken chains of tradition". 8-) > > -- > Harmon Seaver > CyberShamanix > http://www.cybershamanix.com
