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From: yiri@ucf-cs.UUCP (Yirmiyahu BenDavid)
Newsgroups: net.religion
Subject: Re: Evidence for Christianity
Message-ID: <1599@ucf-cs.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 21-Oct-84 08:49:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucf-cs.1599
Posted: Sun Oct 21 08:49:24 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 23-Oct-84 05:13:04 EDT
References: <1577@ucf-cs.UUCP>, <403@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Organization: UCF, Orlando, FL
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I think you make an excellent point regarding the futility of trying 
to use the greek copies redacted by Christians to prove Christian
doctrines and teachings. It is a classic example of circular reason-
ing. Certainly I've tried to make the point several times but there
are none so ignorant as those who WILL NOT learn.

On the other hand, there are many Jewish writings (not all of which
are N'tzarim as Jeff ASSUMED I meant) which, when taken together,
provides a fairly rich and broad perspective of Jewish life and
Judaism of that general era. This would  be the 'Jewish fabric'
to which I made reference. When the 'New Testament' is filtered
through the process I outlined of accepting those things which
more likely were taken from Jewish fabric and rejecting those
things which have greater resemblance to the 'Roman fabric' of
the time as being Roman redactions of the period from their
original writing in the first century (roughly) through the time
of our earliest extant manuscripts in the 4th century; when that
is done, a much more historical picture emerges, and one which is
diametrically different from the Christian 'Jesus' version.

I think we would probably agree (?) that the reason Christians
have to fall back on quoting their own redactions to support 
their position is because that is the reason the Christians PUT
them there in the first place - Christian teachings were the
conjurations of the Romans and they HAD to PUT support for them
in those manuscripts if they were going to fashion a religion
which the Roman populous and government would 'buy' AND STILL
HAVE APPARENT (counterfeitted) BASIS IN THE JEWISH MESSIAH 
CONCEPT. When that is all the argument they have, then that is
all the argument they can use - which is so vividly demonstrated
for us by Jeff Gillette.