i notice your signature is a quote from benjamin franklin.

i thought i would include a lesser known quote, also from franklin, below.

Recorded by Charles Coteworth Pinckney
Delegate to the Constitutional Convention of 1787

I fully agree with General Washington, that we must protect this young nation from an insidious influence and impenetration. The menace, gentlemen, is the Jews.

"In whatever country Jews have settled in any great number, they have lowered its moral tone; depreciated its commercial integrity; have segregated themselves and have not been assimilated; have sneered at and tried to undermine the Christian religion upon which that nation is founded, by objecting to its restrictions; have built up a state within the state; and when opposed have tried to strangle that country to death financially, as in the case of Spain and Portugal.

"For over 1,700 years, the Jews have been bewailing their sad fate in that they have been exiled from their homeland, as they call Palestine. But gentlemen, did the world give it to them in fee simple, they would at once find some reason for not returning. Why? Because they are vampires, and vampires do not live on vampires. They cannot live only among themselves. They must subsist on Christians and other people not of their race.

"If you do not exclude them from these United States, in their Constitution, in less than 200 years they will have swarmed here in such great numbers that they will dominate and devour the land and change our form of government, for which we Americans have shed our blood, given our lives our substance and jeopardized our liberty.

"If you do not exclude them, in less than 200 years our descendants will be working in the fields to furnish them substance, while they will be in the counting houses rubbing their hands. I warn you, gentlemen, if you do not exclude Jews for all time, your children will curse you in your graves.

"Jews, gentlemen, are Asiatics, let them be born where they will nor how many generations they are away from Asia, they will never be otherwise. Their ideas do not conform to an American's, and will not even thou they live among us ten generations. A leopard cannot change its spots. Jews are Asiatics, are a menace to this country if permitted entrance, and should be excluded by this Constitutional Convention."

-Benjamin Franklin, 1787, at The Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Originally posted by marg6043
Weller,

Thanks for that post, you know I was expecting a full blown bashing for my post but its been nice so far or I just been ignored.

No problemo, mine was a bit inflammatory as well but as long as someone states their own views it shouldn't upset anyone. I used to work in a mall a long time ago and got people coming up to me all the time trying to "witness" their faith to me...and they rarely knew anything about the history of their own faith. Here I was a complete agnostic giving them a history lesson about their church...silly.

Why anyone would belong to a religion without checking it out thoroughly is beyond me...it only puts them in a position of ignorance later in life and forces them to live life on the defensive. Luckily, the real wackos are few and far between, most people who go to church are passive and can retain the fact that not everything told to them is the total truth, they just want to worship with others who believe the same basic things as they do and I can respect that. The 'creationists' or others who suspend all logic for the answers they find in religion are the really scary ones.

Take care.

Groupies:

This is a very complex subject: but I will only add a few of my own comments, since one can write whole books on this subject.

ERETZ v. KOSMOS

I think some of the trouble here in understanding the role of Judaesim's view of itself in the larger "world" (besides its constant invasion and destruction by invading goyim from the outside) is the evident confusion of the Hebrew word "Eretz" which can mean "earth" or "world" or "land" or "lando of Israel" (e.g. Ha-Aretz, "the world" or "the land of Israel" -- like the Newspaper in Tel-Aviv)

The Hebrew cognate ERETZ is etymologically related to earlier Indo-European roots for earth/land and even the old German ERDE from which we get our English word "earth".

Again: Eretz in Hebrew can mean variously "earth" or "land" or "ground" or "Land of Israel" i.e. the Promised Land--and this double or triple usage in connotation has to be examined by those who would claim that certain OT texts show that Israel had "a world domination complex"...

Here are some different usages in the OT: (i.e. his blood spilt on the face of the Eretz = his blood spilt on the ground) or ("YHWH formed the seas and the Eretz" = YHWH formed the seas and the dry-land) or ("The Meek Ones shall inherit Eth-Ha-Aretz i.e. the land (of Israel)..") etc.

Similar confusion exists among many of Greek words placed into the mouth of R. Yehoshua bar Yosef the Galilean (i.e. "Jeezuzz") in the gospel narratives --since he seems to have spoken a kind of Galilean Aramaic mixture of 1st century Mishnaic Hebrew---and when he used the word translated by the King James Version as "earth" from the Greek HO KOSMOS (which in Hebrew/Aramaic would have been "Eretz" or "Ha-Aretz" from the way the Greek OT LXX translated its Hebrew Vorlage of the OT) sometimes he clearly meant something narrower than the whole earth (after all he was a Daviddic King over "Israel" albeit a king in exile)-- in other words, he often meant "land of Israel" when the word "earth" was used in the Greek, and we have to check this possibility by closely examining the supposed contexts of these words in the Gospels wherever they can be ascertained (which is rare enough, since most of the original contexts have been lost when the NT Gospels were written down in Greek and re-ordered into liturgical formats and order)....

Often it appears that the Greek NT Gospels tend consciously to "universalize" the words of "Iesous" to get goyim gentile converts to the new religion , and thus the early church after 80 AD found it more "persuasive" and "gentile friendly" to cut out any clear references to Eretz Yisrael--kainly because after all, the Jews were humiliatingly defeated in their Great War against Rome in AD70, with the Temple ground to dust---this at a time when when the Gospels were first being formed into their present Grek written state from the Aramaic oral streams of the first followers of "Iesous", and it was not until AFTER Israel was destroyed by Rome that the Gospels had begun to be written down in Greek---which is one step away from the original language of "Iesous"-----thus the original Aramaic ipssissima verba and original contexts of those words) attributed to "Iesous" in the gospels were blurred, misunderstood or completely lost altogether (thus much of his original meanings were lost forever).

This Greek "universalising trend" in the Greek Gospels came about mainly because virtually the whole Roman Empire knew that tiny Israel was totally destroyed by Powerful Rome----so any reference to the future glory or world position of the Land of Israel "in the Last Days" had to be supressed in order to make the Messianic message more palatable to goyim (i.e. gentiles) in the Empire that they were trying to convert to their own weltanschauung...and to guard against what the Romans would have considered political sedition against the Empire and the Emperor himself, which caused the "founder" of Chrsitianity (and most of his original followers) to be executed in the first place.

Here are some Greek sayings placed into the mouth of "Iesous"which bear notice (from the so-called Sermon on the Mount Sayings in the Gospel of "Matthew")

Happy are the Meek (or "the Poor one" = Heb. Ebionim) for they shall Inherit the Land (of Israel) i.e. in the [future] Last Days of the Messiah.

This parallels the usage in the dead sea scrolls and the Tanakh (OT)

Unlike the Greek (ho kosmos) the words attributed to "Iesous" were NOT iintended to mean that the poor shall "inherit the whole earth" but rather it means that there shall be a time of Tribulation where the wicked of Israel shall be cut off "from the land" and the righteous ones shall live to "inherit the land of Israel" and the usage of "Iesous" the Rabbi seems to echo midrashic quotes from the Hebrew scriptures in the "Last Days" found among the Dead Sea Scrolls---the idea of the Righteous Remnant that we find in all the Pesherim (e.g. the pesher on various "Righteous v Wicked" Psalms).

Psalms 25:8 Good and upright is YHWH: therefore will he teach sinners in the way [which verse the Messianic Jews of the 1st century applied to themselves as harbingers of the "Last Days"]

"The Meek Ones will he guide in Judgment: and the Poor Ones will he teach his way.

...What man is he that feareth YHWH? him shall he teach in the way that he shall choose.His soul shall dwell at ease; and his seed shall inherit the land [of Israel.]

Psalms 37:7-12 Rest in YHWH, and wait patiently for him: fret not thyself because of him who prospereth in his way, because of the man who bringeth wicked devices to pass. Cease from anger, and forsake wrath: fret not thyself in any wise to do evil. For in that Day the evildoers shall be cut off: but those that wait patiently for YHWH shall inherit the land (of Israel) For yet a little while, and the wicked shall vanish: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his location, and it shall not be found.

For the Meek shall inherit the Land [of Israel] and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace [in that Day].

Psalms 37:18 YHWH knoweth the days of the upright: and their inheritance shall be for ever...For such as be blessed of him shall inherit the land [of Israel] and they that be cursed of him shall be cut off from it...

If one takes many of the references to "the earth" in the sayings of Iesous or the passages in the Tanakh (Old Testament) and understand them to refer (in the narrower sense) to the future glory within "the land of Israel", the whole concept of the "Jews taking over the world" is changed-----and most of the language we come across in Jewish writings is a reaction to the fact that tiny Eretz Yisra'el had been repeatedly invaded AND OCCUPIED by older, larger, more powerful and more sophisticated gentile-foregn nations for most of their history

In fact, reading the OT (and the sayings attributed to Iesous in the NT) one can see that the whole zionist Weltanschauung (which comprises most of the period in which the present Old Testament was written as well as the Career of "Iesous" is about "taking back the land" from various foreign Occupiers over the centuries (first the Egyptians, then the Assyrians, then the Babylonians, then the Persians, then the Greeks and finally the Romans who destroyed Israel completely by AD 137)...

Certainly we can see that the gentile Christian community in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD deliberately twisted and changed the language of the Hebrew "Ha Aretz Yisra'el" into the Greek: "HO KOSMOS" in order to "universalize" their messianic message which would have had no interest to the goyim otherwise, with Israel ground to powder and the Jews sold into slavery and scattered abroad throughout the empire...

Clear as mud?

The only thing thay is promised is death. So as soon as people realize this the happier people we be.

Originally posted by marg6043
Weller,

Thanks for that post, you know I was expecting a full blown bashing for my post but its been nice so far or I just been ignored.

No bashing!! All true! I can never figure out why Christians don't know their own faith. Jesus was Jewish, he would of been very dark skinned, dark hair and eyes and had short hair, per the Jewish tradition. He was also most likely a Rabbi and therefore, most likely........ married.

Originally posted by LadyV

Originally posted by marg6043
Weller,

Thanks for that post, you know I was expecting a full blown bashing for my post but its been nice so far or I just been ignored.

No bashing!! All true! I can never figure out why Christians don't know their own faith. Jesus was Jewish, he would of been very dark skinned, dark hair and eyes and had short hair, per the Jewish tradition. He was also most likely a Rabbi and therefore, most likely........ married.

absolute rubbish. how can jesus be married and such a thing be left out of the biblical account. there is absolutely no proof of this, biblical or otherwise

Originally posted by Ashlar

Originally posted by LadyV

Originally posted by marg6043
Weller,

Thanks for that post, you know I was expecting a full blown bashing for my post but its been nice so far or I just been ignored.

No bashing!! All true! I can never figure out why Christians don't know their own faith. Jesus was Jewish, he would of been very dark skinned, dark hair and eyes and had short hair, per the Jewish tradition. He was also most likely a Rabbi and therefore, most likely........ married.

absolute rubbish. how can jesus be married and such a thing be left out of the biblical account. there is absolutely no proof of this, biblical or otherwise

Oh, your talking about books that were written about him 40 or more years after his death? What, you think these people had court reporters taking down everything as it was said?

There were a lot changes to the Christian faith thrown into the Bible to specifically prop it up and in some cases make it more divine in the eyes of its followers. Take the immaculate conception for instance, there is Biblical and independently researched evidence that Jesus had siblings, does this mean that Mary and Joseph weren't having sex or something and couldn't have conceived him in the normal manner?

Where does the proof of his birth come from? Second hand information from authors of the Bible? Give me a break. The New Testament was brought together by a group of church elders in the 4th century, they decided among many books which ones would be included. Doesn't sound too divine to me, more like usual human manipulation.

Your arguments will always seem weird when you continue to use the Bible as your main source of factual information. Again, try learning the history of your religion and the formation of the New Testament, an agnostic shouldn't be the one to tell you these things.

In the first three centuries of the Christian Church, there was no firmly established New Testament canon that was universally recognized. The first attempt at compiling a canon was made by Marcion, but this was rejected when Marcion was branded a heretic by the church. His canon included only ten of the thirteen Pauline epistles, and an altered version of the Gospel of Luke. Around 200 the Muratorian fragment was written, listing the accepted works. This list was very similar to the modern canon, but also included the Wisdom of Solomon (now part of the Apocrypha) and the Apocalypse of Peter. The New Testament canon as it is now was first listed by St. Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in 367, in a letter written to his churches in Egypt. That canon gained wider and wider recognition until it was accepted by all at the Third Council of Carthage in 397. Even this council did not settle the matter, however. Certain books continued to be questioned, especially James and Revelation. Even as late as the 16th century, theologian and reformer Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James, calling it chaff.

Wow, sounds like a holy process to me...a book brought together by human bickering and probably internal politics. I didn't see where the hand of God came down and annointed the texts as sacred with regards to their inclusion.



[edit on 2-9-2004 by Weller]

weller

firstly if you do not believe in the bible, why are you posting in a topic that is discussing the bible

secondly you should re-read what i wrote

"there is absolutely no proof of this, biblical or otherwise"

can you see the last word on that sentence?
because you cant dipute it, dont change the topic. this is a biblical topic. accept it or leave

Jesus would have considered himself a proud Jew. I highly doubt he would have wanted a religion formed in his name after he died .He saw the there where members within the higharchy of the Jewish church witch were both corrupt and collaborating with the Roman occupiers. Essentially Jesus was the worlds fist anarchist/hippy ....man. He was disposed of; the myth of his rebirth was probably created by the same people to avoid riots and social chaos. I personally believe Jesus was a real historical figure. I believe he was a good man who tried to make his world a better place. He had his flaws, after all he was only human, he drank, picked his a**, his nose and farted. Of course when the stories of Jesus where finally compiled they surely would have be elaborated and exaggerated upon. But guess what that’s how all religions start. It’s unfortunately that the Roman Catholic Church has been run by so many greedy, power hungry and sadistic people through out the ages. Considering the man’s message was one of love and forgiveness.

oops sorry i posted in the wrong spot , but ill keep it here any way

[edit on C:Friocu09e9 by Opus]

Originally posted by Ashlar


absolute rubbish. how can jesus be married and such a thing be left out of the biblical account. there is absolutely no proof of this, biblical or otherwise

Another Christian that has not bothered to study and learn his own religion...I mean no disrespect, but it Christians like you that form such a negative view of the religion and it's followers to others.....you believe only what is in hte bible, which isn't correct. The Bible is the Abridged Version. There have been close to fifty versions or translations of the bible throughout history and there are actual large volumes of gospels that were omitted from the ultra-popular King James version. Essentially, as soon as someone found a disparity, which was invariably, they would excise a chapter that didn't agree with their version of Christianity. This led to the formation of God's Beatles - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John - whose gospels were chosen as the definitive volumes. The word religion appears only 4 times in the Bible, three of those times in direct reference to the religion of the Jews. The one time it refers to religion in general is in this verse:
[ibJames 1:27 Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.

And It comes to the same thing at the end Religion and Religious beliefs are for personal interpretation, whatever make you happy, as long as you stay in the dark everything make sence, when you start learning the truth and see the facts it does not look nice anymore and faith starts to fade away.

Originally posted by Ashlar
weller

firstly if you do not believe in the bible, why are you posting in a topic that is discussing the bible

secondly you should re-read what i wrote

"there is absolutely no proof of this, biblical or otherwise"

can you see the last word on that sentence?
because you cant dipute it, dont change the topic. this is a biblical topic. accept it or leave

My apologies, I leave you to your discussion void of actual facts.

Thank you dbates for that well researched and well worded post. I think that pretty much sums up anything I would have stated on this topic and it actually uses quotes rather than strange theories (generally promoted by hate groups, gotta admit that ashlar).

Great job dbates.

Hi Dbates:

Your map is pretty but.....

don't be too quick to believe the accounts of the "national borders" of the "kingdom of David" as it is outliined in the late Hebrew of I-II Samuel and I-II Kings and I-II Chronicles in the Hebrew Bible BEFORE you read the book The Bible Unearthed by Neil Silberman (and Israel Finklestein) two Jewish archaeologists who have been examining the artefacts from before and after the Daviddic period in Cannan for more than 20 years now--and have found THAT THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIGS DO NOT MATCH THE ACCOUNTS IN THE BIBLE about the size and scope of David's tiny "kingdom" in Hebron.

Their book refutes on many points the "biblical revisionist" view of the "YHWH only" Deuteronomist writer (the so-called D-Shechemite priest in Anathoth who wrote during the reigh of Josiah (c. 621 BC i.e. in the 7th century BC (not the 9th) and who wrote (in the same LATE Hebrew) the book of Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I-II Samuel and I-II Kings with a view to making Josiah look good, and everyone else (especially those pagan northern Israelite kings) look bad...(i.e. and Manasseh did bad in the sight of YHWH...and Hezekiah did good in the sight of YHWH etc.)

This kind of value judgment of ancient kings is not exactly the way history is meant to be written.

The archaeology unearthed over the past 80 years shows beyond any doubt that the tiny "clan-chiefdoms" of David and Solomon were insignificant Canaanite hamlets centered around Hebron and Jebus (later called Yerushalayim), and that the "extensive" Daviddid kingdom during David and Solomon was a fantasy-fabrication of later 7th century writers (250 years after the event) who wrote their tall moral-political tales only AFTER the Northern kingdom of Israel (the 10 tribes) fell to Assyria in 701 BC and Judah (the surviving southern kingdom) assumed political prominance---i.e. after all, it was the smaller southern Kingdom of Judah who managed (by virtue of its inaccessibility according to the Sennacherib steles) lived through the Assyrian onslaught to write (and promulgate)several of the texts included in that post Exilic fanciful creation we today call the "Hebrew Bible" having taken in 8 times their population in refugees fleeing south from the north in 701 BC.

READ THE BOOK !!