really weird stuff

sculleywr · Sep 9, 2011

Disclaimer: I do not agree with the below post. This is the post from another person on a debate forum dominated by non-Christian members.

I do not believe these sources give an unbiased nor a deep understanding of the 'origins of scriptures.

As far as the OT, the earliest known pre-exile origin of these scriptures is Ugarit cuniform tablets, I have a thread on this here . . .

(removed)

The early history of the gospels is very controversial and scholars are widely divided over how they were written and authored. The most extreme evangelical conservative view is the gospels were written by the assigned authors during or shortly after the life of Christ. Most other scholars hold to what is called Marcan Priority, which considers an early version of Mark to be written some time between ~65 AD and 120 AD, and Matthew and Luke to written after Mark. the authors of the gospels are considered anonymous and not written by the traditional authors, with authors assigned later.

The only parts of the OT that are considered original by the authors assigned to near the life of Christ are 'some' of Paul's letters.

A controversial but interesting claim is that some of the content of the gospels is from Buddhist Suras. The following source describes this possible relationship. . .

Jesus is Buddha

I was wondering if there were other sources than this (The Council of Nicaea (Nicea) and the Bible) I could use. Apparently links are not allowed until later (something frustrating for me) either way, it's on a debate site called Volconvo under the religion category. It's called "the formation of the canon".

Got any links I can use?

buzuxi02 · Sep 9, 2011

Well, good thing your not looking into the council of nicea since that council had absolutely nothing to do with scriptures at all. Nicea dealt with the arian controversy and devised the formula for a common date for Pascha (easter).

Obviously there is nothing buddhist about the gospels. Lets face it, dying and having an afterlife (hopefully in heaven and not Hades) and eventually reuniting with your body in the Ressurection is the antithesis of the buddhist concepts of reincarnation and nirvana.
Also as to the poster, Im not sure what is so controversial about what he says is so controversial! The gospels were wriiten between 65ad and 95ad. The NT as a whole was written between 50a.d. and 120 a.d.(scholars only give this late date to one of the epistles of Peter). Regardless the whole thing was written in less than 90 years from Christ's crucifixion by different authors who agree on virtually all the essentials.

Look at the religion of Zoroastrianism, adherents and scholars cant even agree in which millenium Zoroaster was born in! Historically it seems he was born around 670 b.c. many adherents claim it was 1500 bc! Other ancient religious texts including the OT was handed down word of mouth for centuries before being written, other religions such as the old greek pagan religion had no scriptures whatsoever. That Moses wrote the first 5 books of the OT is not controversial? That Moses wrote Genesis and describes Abraham's life 800 years later is not controversial? Yet jews nor christians dont fret over this. Do hindus have a crisis that alot of there beliefs of their deity's incarnationbs are fanciful and being very ancient, their claims are basically unsubstantiated? No.

How does it matter who authored the gospels? If we find that Mark didnt write the gospel attributed to him, but instead an egyptian Alexandrian christian named Minas wrote it, what difference would it make? If the synoptics did borrow their material from the hypothetical Q sayings, what does it change?
Not many in the early church ever seriously believed Paul wrote Hebrews but it still made it into the canon, with the theory that perhaps it was a pupil of Paul.
By the way what does your poster mean when he says the only authentic Old Testament writings are some letters of Paul? All OT books predate Jesus and none were authored by a Paul.

sculleywr · Sep 9, 2011

buzuxi02 said:
Well, good thing your not looking into the council of nicea since that council had absolutely nothing to do with scriptures at all. Nicea dealt with the arian controversy and devised the formula for a common date for Pascha (easter).

Obviously there is nothing buddhist about the gospels. Lets face it, dying and having an afterlife (hopefully in heaven and not Hades) and eventually reuniting with your body in the Ressurection is the antithesis of the buddhist concepts of reincarnation and nirvana.
Also as to the poster, Im not sure what is so controversial about what he says is so controversial! The gospels were wriiten between 65ad and 95ad. The NT as a whole was written between 50a.d. and 120 a.d.(scholars only give this late date to one of the epistles of Peter). Regardless the whole thing was written in less than 90 years from Christ's crucifixion by different authors who agree on virtually all the essentials.

Look at the religion of Zoroastrianism, adherents and scholars cant even agree in which millenium Zoroaster was born in! Historically it seems he was born around 670 b.c. many adherents claim it was 1500 bc! Other ancient religious texts including the OT was handed down word of mouth for centuries before being written, other religions such as the old greek pagan religion had no scriptures whatsoever. That Moses wrote the first 5 books of the OT is not controversial? That Moses wrote Genesis and describes Abraham's life 800 years later is not controversial? Yet jews nor christians dont fret over this. Do hindus have a crisis that alot of there beliefs of their deity's incarnationbs are fanciful and being very ancient, their claims are basically unsubstantiated? No.

How does it matter who authored the gospels? If we find that Mark didnt write the gospel attributed to him, but instead an egyptian Alexandrian christian named Minas wrote it, what difference would it make? If the synoptics did borrow their material from the hypothetical Q sayings, what does it change?
Not many in the early church ever seriously believed Paul wrote Hebrews but it still made it into the canon, with the theory that perhaps it was a pupil of Paul.
By the way what does your poster mean when he says the only authentic Old Testament writings are some letters of Paul? All OT books predate Jesus and none were authored by a Paul.

I am researching the Council of Nicaea. That prompted me to make the OP on the forum, which drew this guy in to make his rather...odd claim. I found a very good website that, in a heavily referenced and cited essay (I think it might be a paper written for a master's degree program), confronted several misguided and even heretical opinions about the gospels and the canonization of them.

As for Q, by the claim of the website he sourced, the Q is actually a Buddhist gospel that they claim the apostles plagiarized for the gospels of Matthew and Luke. If this were true, then it would mean we are following a false religion. The problem is, the only apostle I know of that would have known Sanskrit would be St. Thomas, since (by the word of the priests at Protection Chapel) he traveled as far as India. It's not like Sanskrit was heavily used in Israel at the time.

I will have to ask if he really meant the OT on his one statement. It's kind of out of place if you ask me.

buzuxi02 · Sep 9, 2011

Tradition does indeed assert that St Thomas was the apostle to India. Again though im not sure how buddhist beliefs is compatible with christianity. I''ll go out on a limb and say the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus in LK 16.9 is extremely hard inb finding common ground with the concept of multiple reincarnations andreaching nirvana. Believe me you can find more parallels in the gospels with ancient greek thought than with buddhism. Theres no such thing in buddhism of the concept of Hades since there is no need of it. In Matthew 16 the greek word ekklesia is utilized, which originally is the greek word given to the gathering place of the elected Athenian statesmen when they would come together in session, what buddhist sanskrit equivalent was this plaigerized from? Are we to actually believe that buddhism which grew out of a polytheistic religion of hinduism and is essentially godless promoted monotheism? What exactly was plaigerized? The Lords Prayer?

ArmyMatt · Sep 9, 2011

gotta love modernism.

sculleywr · Sep 9, 2011

buzuxi02 said:
Tradition does indeed assert that St Thomas was the apostle to India. Again though im not sure how buddhist beliefs is compatible with christianity. I''ll go out on a limb and say the parable of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus in LK 16.9 is extremely hard inb finding common ground with the concept of multiple reincarnations andreaching nirvana. Believe me you can find more parallels in the gospels with ancient greek thought than with buddhism. Theres no such thing in buddhism of the concept of Hades since there is no need of it. In Matthew 16 the greek word ekklesia is utilized, which originally is the greek word given to the gathering place of the elected Athenian statesmen when they would come together in session, what buddhist sanskrit equivalent was this plaigerized from? Are we to actually believe that buddhism which grew out of a polytheistic religion of hinduism and is essentially godless promoted monotheism? What exactly was plaigerized? The Lords Prayer?

I spent a little while reading through the technobabble filled website he sourced, which is Jesus is Buddha on the internet. Here is an excerpt of some of the claims:

[FONT=&quot]1. Mark 1 begins his gospel about ´Iêsou Khristou, Sanskrit ksatriyasya, with an OT quotation. OT is also a part of the real Q, of course. - Then follows a unit of 108 words in 4-9. This is followed by 6 other units of 108 words, viz. 18-24, 21-27, 23-29, 31-38, 32-39 and 33-40. Moreover, the first four verses along with the two final verses, 44-45, add up to 108 words.
The beginning-end pattern, the alpha-omega pattern, is repeated in Mark 13, where the first 3 verses and the last 4 verses add up to 108 words.

2. Mark 5 displays another pattern with 108 in the focus. Verses 1-20 consist of 324, or 3x108 words. Verses 24-37 consist of 216, or 2x108 words. The “missing” verses, namely 21-23 and 38-43 add up to 158, or 108+50, or 1/2 of 100.
Verses 25-31, a unit about the woman who had had a flow of blood for twelve years, also consists of 108 words. All the stories, including the figures, can be traced back to the MSV.

3. Mark 14 has four cases of 108, viz. 28-34, 36-41, 40-45 and 53-59. All words can be traced back to MSV.

4. Paul´s Romans 16:20b-27 consists of two units, 20b-24, and 25-27, each of which consists of 54 words, giving a total of 108 words. To this is added a final amên, the numerical value of which is 99, or 11/12 of 108. Stylistically, the final amên obviously reflects the use of a final Sanskrit iti.
The first half shows a nice concentric pattern on the syllabic level also: 46+23+46 syllables for verses 20b-24, or 5x23 syllables.
The second half, 25-27, consists (without the amên) of exactly 116 syllables, i.e. 115+1, or 4x29 syllables.
The total number of syllables thus adds up to 115+116+2, or 233.
Now, 233 is exactly 1/4 of 932, which is the numerical value of Sâkya-munis, and to haima mou, “the blood of mine”, Matthew 26:28. Paulos, whose name, incidentally, has the same numerical value as sophia, namely 80+1+400+30+70+200 = 781, cannot possibly been unaware of the psêphos of to haima mou, or Sâkya-munis.

5. John 2:1-25 provides us with 4x108 words. Verses 1-7 consist of 108 words, and 8-12 also consist of 108 words. Verses 13-20 consist of 135 words, and 18-25 also consist of 135 words. It both cases John must have 108+27 in mind. Verse 9 consists of 27 words, 1/4 of 108, and 23-24 consist of 36 words, or 1/3 of 108.

6. John 15 shows another 108 pattern. Verses 1-4 (= 72 words) and 12-14 (= 36 words) add up to 108 words, just as 4-5 ( = 54 words) and 9-11 (= 54 words) also add up to 108. In other words: When he counts 36, 54, 72 etc., he does so with the figure 108 in the back of his mind.

7. John 19 ends in a unit, about the odd Joseph of Arimathea, verses 38-42, a unit of 108 words.
In the printed editions of the NT, John 19:16 is broken into two: 7 words belong to the previous section. Then we have 4 words belonging to a new section. This section, 19:16b-22, forms a new unit consisting of 108 words. This example shows how the 108 principle follows the sense, not the verse divisions. This, again, shows that the figure 108 is “authentic”. Q is here MSV.

8. Matthew 1:1-14 consists of 216, or 2x108 words. The figure 216 is arrived at by adding the 99 (= 27+2x36) words of 16 to the 117 (= 3x27+36) words of 7-14. Moreover, verses 1-9 consist of 144 words. Verses 8-12 consist of 72 words, and 10-14 also consist of 72 words. Verses 3-4 and 4-5 consist of 36 words, and 2-4 of 54 words. The pattern of building up on the basis of 27 and 36 words goes on almost ad infinitum in Matthew and the other gospels.

9. The number of letters in Matthew 2: 8-13 amounts to 720. The number of letters in the verses that follow, 14-16, is 360. This gives us a sum of 3x360 = 1080, which is 30x36, or 10x108. The first verse consists of 111 letters. The chapter as a whole displays several interesting patterns already at the level of letters.

10. Matthew 11:1 looks odd in the modern editions. It seems to belong to Matthew 10. But actually verses 1-14 consist of exactly 216, or 2x108 words, as in Matthew 1:1-14. Here, again, the division into verses can be misleading. The break occurs after the 3 initial words of verse 8, an independent question. Thus, 1-8a and 8b-14 gives us 108+108 = 216 words.

11. Matthew 12:22-32 is the episode about Beelzeboul. It, again, consists of 216, or 2x108 words. The source, Q, is the SDP.
The number of words in verses 1-9 is 144, or 4x36, or 108+36.
The total number of words is 888, the numerical value of the name of ´Iêsous.
Verses 35 and 40 contain several puns on Q, which is here SDP. I can come back to the puns, only recalling here that the numerical value of pundarîka is, in fact = 80+400+50+4+1+100+10+20+1 = 666 - the total number of words in Matthew 18, and also the number assigned to man in Revelations 13.18, where the full phrase a-rith-mos gar an-thrô-pou es-tin beautifully renders sad-dhar-ma-pun-da-rî-ka-sû-tram. All the 9 syllables have been retained. The Greek has 10 vowels, 13 consonants. The Sanskrit has 9 vowels, 14 consonants. Each text has 23 letters. As an r may be taken as a semivowel, both texts have the same number of vowels and consonants. The consonants are the same in both languages.

12. Matthew 17:1-27 displays another 108 pattern. 108 words occur in 2-7, 10-16 and 19-24, respectively. There is a gap of 2 verses. The “missing” verses, 1+8-9+17-18+28-29 add up to 181, or 100+3x27.

13. Matthew 21. Verses 12-16 is a unit consisting of 108 words. Verse 17 consists of 12 words.
Then follows a unit, verses 18-22, consisting of 54+44 = 98 words.
The corresponding number of syllables is 200. The number of syllables spoken by Jesus himself is 50.
The source is MSV, and there are some wonderful puns on Sâkya-munim : sukên mian, monon.
There is thus an intersection of 108 and 100 on the level of syllables and words.

14. Matthew 24:32-33 is also about the sukê from the same source, MSV. Here is also an intersection of words and syllables. There are 36 words, 75 syllables, giving us a total of 111 units, or 1/6 of 666.
It has never been realized that the subject in verse 33 is the apparently adverbial epi thurais, Sanskrit udumbaras - the fig. There are, to be sure, other cases of such “substantivized prepositional phrases”, e.g. ek pneumatos (estin) hagiou, Matthew 1:18&20. They are, of course, bound to escape those ignorant of the Sanskrit original. The pun is on SDP.

15. Matthew 25: 1-13 consists of 168 words, or 370 syllables. Verses 14-30 consists of 292 words, or 612 syllables. The figure 612 is the numerical value of Zeus and also of Buthas. It is exactly 1/2 of the extremely significant figure 1224. The final verses, 38-46, consist of 153 words, or 1/4 of 612.

16. Luke 3: 2-9 consists of 153 words, arrived at by adding 2-6 = 81+ 7-9= 72. It contains 3-4 = 36 words, and 8-9 = 54 words. Round numbers are provided by 2-8 = 130, 4-8 = 100, and 6-9 = 80.
Then follows a unit, verses 10-16 = 126 words. It contains verses 10-11 = 27 words, and 13-15 = 54 words.
Verses 1-21 add up to 370 words, 18-38 to 250 words.
Units of 100 words are provided by 4-8, 14-17, 16-20, 18-22, 29-38.

17. Luke 17 starts by giving 108 words in 1-6 as well as 6-11. The final verses, 30-37, also add up to 108 words. Verses 30-38 contain 90 words etc.

18. Luke 20 consists of exactly 700 words - the numerical value of Munis.
All the evangelists were familiar with Munis, short for Sâkya-munis, having the numerical value of 932, the to haima mou.
Chapter 6 consists of 931 words, at least in the practical edition of Gebhardt-Tischendorf, Lipsiae 1912. Other editors give different numbers.
The original may have had exactly 932 words. It goes without saying that the apparatus criticus always has to be consulted before reaching any final numerical conclusion.[/FONT]

If anyone thinks they can figure out what he is saying, let me know, please!!!

Thekla · Sep 9, 2011

There weren't chapter breaks and verse numbers til long after the Gospels were written.

Thus it would seem the theory - to the extent that it is "accurate" - would apply to those who applied chapter breaks and verse #s to the text, not the Gospel writers

buzuxi02 · Sep 9, 2011

Islam uses the same nonsensical numerology to attempt to prove that the koran is miraculous. If you ever listen to someone claiming to be a numerologists, he can take your date of birth and contrive a myriad of numbers with supposed significant meanings. Remember the bible codes, that was a similar attempt utilizing the OT to demonstrate an otherwordly supernatural character to the structure of the text.

As Thekla points out, chapters were first introduced into the NT by Stephen Langton the archbbishop of Canterbury in 1225a.d. Later a french printer named Robert Stephanus added the verse numbers in 1551a.d. Infact adding both chapters and verses to a koine greek NT was done years later, it was first applied to the latin bible and then to the bibles of other western european languages since the greek speaking eastern world did not have access to printing presses.

Personally i think much of his numbers are complete fabrications due to the existence of textual variants. For example the above poster in #7 says "in the printed editions of the NT".... As opposed to handwritten editions? Which greek version does he mean by this? Probably the textus receptus, but why not the byzantine majority text which is way more common, or how about the most ancient Alexandrian text? If he is using the textus receptus in point 7 which variant is he using for the rest? Also some of the oldest fragments of the koine NT show that there werent even spaces or punctuation marks between words. I wouldnt waste my time with this guy.

sculleywr · Sep 10, 2011

Noting that the quotes were from his source. However, he apparently had no clue that his source heavily leaned on Q as a source, sop I am slightly off my assumed argument because I assumed that he knew what his source was saying... now I am officially completely confused. lol. Why is it that I can't find a person to debate against that ever once will actually read his sources?

buzuxi02 · Sep 10, 2011

Well originally i thought your debate opponent was making this claim based on parallels. Something in the gospel, perhaps a parable with a similar parable in a buddhist text. But even this is wild speculation. Parallels are quite common across the board in many texts spanning various cultures and time periods.

One can argue that many important people in the ancient world claimed to have been born from a virgin. But thats the whole point. There was a common strain among ancient people that perhaps a tranformational figure can indeed be born from a virgin. Some have used this to say christianity plaigerized from other historical figures who claimed the same. Then which of those figures plaigerized from whom first? And if many figures lay claim to being born of a virgin why should it scandalize christians? It would simply mean it was a commonly held belief of people in a particular place and time. That other figures laid claim to being bborn from a virgin didnt scandalize the apostles and first century christians even though they were aware of these claims made by past rulers and kings.

Faithful Skeptic · Sep 10, 2011

That certainly is weird... You can point that person to this thread, though, if you wish: http://www.christianforums.com/t7557814/. I took a Buddhist philosophy course last semester and compared and contrasted it with Orthodoxy for my final paper. There certainly are some similarities, but the differences are far too deep to simply ignore and try to equate Christianity with Orthodoxy.

sculleywr · Sep 10, 2011

ok, debate continues. he has claims that the apostolic fathers, as well as many of the bishops of the early church (Ignatius, Clement, etc.), never mentioned the scriptures anywhere. I know they did. I just don't have access to the specific citations I can use.

Protoevangel · Sep 10, 2011

The Early Church fathers more than mentioned the Scriptures, they lived and breathed the Scriptures; they quoted the Scriptures SO extensively that even if every copy of the Bible were taken from us, we could recreate the Bible simply from their quotations.

This person does not even appear to be having an honest conversation with you. The crud he is throwing has exactly zero credence. this may be a Matthew 7:6 situation. Just something to think about.

sculleywr · Sep 11, 2011

you mean a don't waste time on it? lol.

That's why I don't spend much time on that site now, lol.

I got more interesting questions to ask on here anyways. I'm about to post another interesting question

.

applejack23 · Sep 11, 2011

How is this weird? Odd and with bad scholarship but not weird. I tried to summon demons using black candles before. Now that is weird and was a waste of candles

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