Roger Pearse wrote:
On 1 May, 16:35, none ""doug\"@(none)" wrote:
Roger Pearse wrote:
On 29 Apr, 08:19, none ""doug\"@(none)" wrote:
George Hammond wrote:
("4-demigods") Matt, Mark, Luke and John.
These last four are the books chosen by the council ofNicea
to be in the New Testament.
The Council of Nicaea did not determine the content of scripture. The
4 gospels are considered canonical by all the ante-Nicene fathers,
right back as far as it goes.
Luke and John were written in Turkey 100-200 years after Matthew and
Mark so that is not quite correct.
Um, if Matthew was written ca. 80 AD, then you are saying Luke and
John were written between 180 AD and 280 AD? This is absurd. There
are shed-loads of quotations from them both before those dates. There
are commentaries on them from 200 AD! There's even a bit of a
physical manuscript dated to ca. 125 AD.
But I don't quite see what this wild stuff has to do with my comment.
I heard this story about the bible and the council some years ago and
got suspicious. It sounded wrong, based on what I knew ofTertullian
and the ante-Nicene fathers. So I went out and hunted down all the
primary sources on the council. You can consult them he
http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/nicaea.html
I also looked in Metzger on the Canon of the NT, just to check I
hadn't missed any.
The council also voted as to whether women were humans.
What a curious idea; impossible for any Christian council to do such a
thing. Someone is pulling your leg, my friend.
This is an interesting assumption. Why would you insult them to suggest
this? ...
Come, this won't do. You know very well why this claim about the
Council is made -- it's an appeal to contemporary societal values and
is intended as a smear. Either produce evidence for your claim or
retract it, hey?
You made a bald assertions that such a vote was impossible. You made
that without support. The treatment of women in the primitive societies
was generally not very good. There have been a number of stages in
the improvement of their state. You took it as a smear. I did not offer
it that way. I am not responsible for your interpretations.
The point of the council was to try to unify the various christian sects
No, I'm afraid it was not. Christianity was not split into sects at
that date. Rather it was to decide whether the Second person of the
Trinity was of the same substance (homoousios) as the First person, or
of like substance; and to reach an agreed date on which to celebrate
Easter.
No, there were some severe differences.
Evidence?
And the sects still do not agree on the date for easter for example.
Which 'sects' did not agree on this? Name them.
At the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Easter is celebrated at different
times by the different groups. Look in last weeks news and you will
see the discussion of this.
The reality is that Christians in the East and West, who were all in
communion with each other, did not celebrate it at the same time, for
historical reasons. That is one reason why they wanted to get together
and work out an agreement. There was no quarrel between the bishops
of Rome and Alexandria on this; they just didn't have an agreed way to
do it.
They also decided to not include other groups texts such as the
gosphel of thomas. Someone
had to go through and select among the texts from various groups
and then edit them to make them somewhat more consistent.
Well, I'm going to have to be blunt. Please now produce an ancient
text which supports this claim or retract it. :-)
The fact is that the gosphel of Thomas was not included. There are
also others in the Nag Hamadi scrolls that were ignored. These all
date from the time of the council of Nicea.
Seriously, all this is bunk. I have given you a link to all the
ancient texts that refer in any way to the council of Nicaea. None of
them contain the above story.
You have your own definition of bunk.
... and so it accepted the texts from various ones even though there
are terrible discrepancies between them.
This sounds like a confused memory of the fact that the last few books
(2 and 3 John, 2 Peter, Hebrews, Revelation) were not geographically
spread over the same areas, and harmonisation gradually happened after
the church became legal when it was easier to hold councils.
Matthew for instance, is the jewish book ... (snip)
I notice the very dishonest snipping of support for the comments I made
about differences in the books. This is the operation of a coward who
does not want to lose a discussion. You cannot argue with what was
posted so you snip it.
You asked for discrepancies, I provided them. Your beliefs are blinding
you to the truth. The church worked hard to keep people under its
control and thus there was the death penalty in England for translating
the bible into English. In fact, the King James version is heavily
based on the translation of a person who was killed for translating it.
None of the assertions snipped appear relevant to my comment, tho.
All this probably has no direct relevance on your thread, but don't we
all want to have the right raw *data*? I know that I do. I hope that
helps.
You are correct that it has no relevance and that George has no clue
about the connection he is trying to draw with his word salad between
science and religion.
I have no opinion on George's theory (I can't take any interest in
such things), but it sounds a bit odd.
George's theory is total nonsense. He has strung together a series of
unconnected sentences that show up with what he wanted to prove. He
is a classic crank and the hits on his website are from people who
cannot believe that someone could produce so much nonsense in one
place. No one has ever believed him and never will. There is no
science in it. He started out with a religious point of view he
desperately wanted to push and failed badly.
All the best,
Roger Pearse