Jesus and Talmud part 2

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Part 2 of the post is on Doxa

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Do you say this of your own accord? (John 18:34, ESV)

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One of the most well-known events in Scriptures is Jesus' exchange with Pontius Pilate at his trial as described in John 18. In verse 38 of that chapter, Pilate asks the question that may be the most ironic in the history of the world, "What is truth?" A less known but equally intriguing saying of Jesus from an apologetics viewpoint can be found in Jesus' response to an earlier question in the same trial. It is a question that is not often quoted, but on those rare occasions when it is quoted, Jesus' response is often overlooked as not particularly important or relevant to today's world. However, it is my experience (as well as the experience of many people who have truly spent time studying the Scriptures) that little, if any, of what Jesus said in the Bible lacks significance across time. To best understand the response, it's important to see the response in context. The situation is this: Jesus has been arrested following His betrayal by Judas I...
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The Banana: Proof of Atheism!

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Jesus in the Talmud part 1

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  As with many pieces on my sight it's written to be more like debate briefs than an essay. But don't let that get in the way,  It's a series of quotations with explains about why I'm using them. Jews self censored the Talmud to remove mentions of Jesus, thus modern Jews deny that it is talking about him, while ancient rabbis used examples supposedly speaking of him for centuries. But what cannot be denied is that the Talmud gives evidence of Christians believing in Jesus as a flesh and blood rabbi from the late first century, which contradicts the Jesus myth theory. There is a history of the Talmud The Babylonian Talmud translated by MICHAEL L. RODKINSON Book 10 (Vols. I and II) [1918] The History of the Talmud from Vol I chapter II Thus the study of the Talmud flourished after the destruction of the Temple, although beset with great difficulties and desperate struggles. All his days, R. Johanan b. Zakkai was obliged to dispute with Sadducee and Bathu...
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Ignatius' Reliance on Paul's Letter to the Ephesians And More

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Resurrection harmony

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The purpose of this argument is merely to establish that the events described in the four canonical Gospel resurrection accounts can be construed as a coherent event. Atheists are always harping on the many differences in the accounts. They seem to feel that these amount to insurmountable contradictions, marking a totally contradictory story. But I will argue that we can pull together the events described in all four Gospels to create a unified harmony which shows that there was a single coherent event taking place.This may not mean that call differences vanish away, but most of them can be explained by the process of eye witness testimony and story telling based upon the accounts of eye witnesses. There may be a couple of loose ends, but I will argue that these are not important when one considers the over all agreement and ensuing harmony, (for harmony table click here) * my model: (1) women go to tomb find stone moved, immediately  they suspect the Romans or Sa...
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The Bogus Gandhi Quote

By J. P Holding -
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I first made this post in 2012, and since then I've made a sort of mini-career out of tracking down bogus quotes like this one (including a video version below). It's a sort of fun microcosm of the way information is mishandled in the Information Age. ** I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. – Mahatma Gandhi A Christian can probably expect to get this quote thrown at them at least once in their lifetime, and waved in their face many more. I had it put to me recently, but my experience with this sort of thing immediately led me to wonder -- is it real? The evidence at this point seems to be no. The first signal of a problem was that anywhere I found it, no source was given. That's often a sign that something is being passed around uncritically. Whether online sources or books, no one seemed to have a source for this quote. A second warning was that the quote has been given more than one context. As ...
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The Last Superstition: Atheism

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The early Christians Did not believe in adoptionism

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Pixie said: "The early Christians believed Jesus was adopted as God's son, not born that way (though Paul believed that happened at the resurrection). His childhood was relatively normal, born to two Jewish parents, the oldest of four brothers and some sisters too." [1] There is no historical basis for that belief.There is no document that says  this.  Adiptionism arises in the second century there is no recognized bastion of that view in the first century. [2] The only basis anyone has is gained by interpreting passages in Mark and written by Paul to seem to take an adoptionist view. [3] Of course they have to ignore the testimony of the church in all it's many facets. It is not hard to imagine that before the creeds and the controversies that shaped Trinitarian doctrine the average Christian probably did understand something like an adotionist view. That does not mean that the Gospel of Mark  or Paul taught this view. There is no passage in Mar...
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Disagreement Does Not Equal Hatred

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Today, two children were killed and multiple other children and adults were injured during morning mass at a Roman Catholic church/school in Minnesota . The perpetrator was a trans woman who had transitioned from male to female in approximately 2019. The news also reported that the perpetrator had apparently attended that school. I don’t know why the perpetrator chose to shoot children. According to the news report I saw, he had posted a video manifesto either last night or earlier in the day saying how much he enjoyed shooting children. Having been a father to four children, and now being a grandparent to even more, I am heartbroken for the families of the victims – both the two young children who were killed as well as the other adults and children who were hit in the hail of bullets. We don’t yet know why the perpetrator acted in this way. I do know that if it is true that he just liked shooting children, he was a very evil individual. People who want to harm children are evil, p...
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