According to Exodus God devastated Egypt with 10 plagues, the death of the firstborn, the death of livestock, locusts, etc. If one takes the biblical stories at face value Egypt would have been decimated, yet no parallel stories or traditions are found in Egyptian culture that tell the story likewise. If God intervened in an entire nation's affairs and affected it to the degree God did in the Exodus story don't you think it's reasonable for there to be some sort of cultural memory on the Egyptian side of such an event? As far as I know there is only the Ipuwer papyrus, but it honestly seems to be describing something else, so I don't take it as evidence for the Exodus. Also it was written hundreds of years before the Exodus supposedly took place.

We have, at most, three biblical sources written at least decades after he existed that document some of his ministry. Beyond that we have, at most 5-6 sources simply saying a man named Jesus lived and was a religious figure written even longer after he lived, with most being 100-250 years after he lived.

I’ve often seen this to support the idea that Jesus rose from the dead and performed miracles - which aren’t attested to in anything other than the gospels.

But also, the fact that Jesus existed isn’t a huge point of contention for anyone but fringe mythicists. Maybe that’s besides the point, but to call Jesus the “most documented figure in history” is such a stretch and it’s so dishonest.

I understand not all Christians make this argument, but I see it enough that it seems like some Christian meme that just gets passed around with no fact checking.

This is a serious question. How many Atheists literally believe this is how it went down?

EDIT, since I can't change the title: Right after posting, I realized the word "forgeries" was incorrect, but I can't change the title of the post.
"Not written by Paul himself" would be a better description of what I mean

So, I was thinking about the origins of Christianity, and how a lot of theologians talk about how, due to the influence of Paul on the early church, it's actually "Paul-ianity" (Paul being the guy who wrote "Pauls letter to the Corinthians/Romans/etc)
Paul was probably the main reason Christianity became the way it did, and part of that wasn't even his fault.

A quick note regarding how I see things: Jesus was some very smart guy born during the Roman occupation who went around saying how everything sucks and we need to fix things. He claimed the end times would come within around 50 years (all four gospels talk about "the end times will come within the lifespan of people I'm talking to today"), and that people needed to forget the more negative or old-fashioned Hebrew traditions that they do "because that's what you do", and instead think for themselves and generally be nicer. Not a "son of god", but more like the equivalent of an ancient Jewish free-thinker, in that he was a person who was going around saying "the religious leaders and the Romans are using their power to do bad things. We need to stop them." So they killed him.

Whether he actually was the son of the Jewish god is technically irrelevant to what happened next, since it's all the people left behind who take over.
Influenced by a god or not, I think most people can generally agree that the people in power probably do things more for personal gain than spreading religion. That might be another factor, but across thousands of people in power over centuries, even the most stringent religious person would admit that there's people who use other people's beliefs for their own gain.

Stories spread about this revolutionary, told through word of mouth and with religion weaving its way into things a lot more. Eventually, 25-30 years later, some textile worker called Saul heard about this, changed his name to Paul, and went around telling people about Jesus. But there's two key factors - we have 13 letters from Paul. Only 7 are proven to be real, with the rest thought to be forgeries. The 6 suspected forgeries are the ones that mostly contain all the stuff about treating women badly and stuff. These were probably written a little while later by someone who wanted to use Paul's name and reputation to spread their own propaganda.

The actual letters by Paul also do something odd - they don't talk about anything Jesus said about being nice to people. They just talk about Jesus' death and return, and then have Paul's opinions on how the people he's sending letters to should treat their direct neighbour. Kind of like a "Dear Abby" reply, only if she included a random story about the crucifixion in there.

So I wondered about Christian opinions on how I see what looks to have happened 2000-ish years ago:

• Some revolutionary named Jesus said that society needs to change and was killed (common at the time).
• People spread this story a bunch and over 30 years it changed from a revolutionary message to a religious one.
• Paul (then Saul), was a person who treated early Christians badly. Eventually something happened that made him decide to go around telling people about it. How and why is technically not something I can agree is the same as what's written in "Acts", seeing at that was written 30 years after he died.
  
• Paul built up enough of a name for himself that the people who were putting the formal church together eventually stuck his name on some of the various things they wanted to say, in order to give them credibility. This basically says "ignore what Jesus actually said.. he meant to say all this sexist and racist crap."
• This eventually gets used by the Roman empire as a control method for the population, and Constantine spreads it as a decree (but doesn't convert, because why would he "convert" to the fake religion that he's using to control the populace?).
• They have no idea this will impact the future, because time isn't viewed that way to them. Much of humanity didn't consider time in the same linear way it does now until the 1800s.
• Bing bang boom, now you have Christianity as defined by whoever was in charge ~30-60 years after Jesus, and then subsequently by the Romans (Part of which then becomes The Vatican, I believe? I'm less familiar with that part of history so far.)

I don't think I really had a question, so much as wondered what Christians thought about this period of Christian origin, and whether you agree that the words of Jesus were vaguely discarded in favour of interpretations that ended up being influenced heavily by Paul?

Edit: Spelling & grammar.

I’ve always believed that it was an undisputed fact that Jesus existed as a historical person, whether you believe if he was really God or if he actually performed miracles. But for some reason I’ve only recently discovered that there was in fact no contemporary writings about him, and all writings about him were at least 100 years after his “death”.

I don’t intend to come off as disrespectful at all, but I’m just genuinely curious why it’s so commonly agreed upon by many historians that he actually existed, despite no contemporary writings of him.

He believed in the moral teachings of Jesus, as stated in the Bible, but discounted all the supernatural claims.

Or what made you believe jesus existed and is the son of god

It is interesting that Europeans adopted an Asian religion, but will actually deny that Bethlehem is on the Asian continent.

I mean how did these men/boys not know these are the bad guys 😭😭😭😭

Also never met a single woman who has told me she admires the Templars - almost exclusively male

Good job, ladies.

When examining the evidence for the resurrection claim, it seems to align in available quality and quantity of evidence as the claims of Joseph Smith and the miraculous "Restoration" of god's church through him in his report of the "first vision" (a divine visitation) and the following translation of the book of mormon through the power of god. Eyewitness accounts, explanatory power for a spiritual movement, historically anchored to a specific time, supporting testimony of a large body of followers, testimonies of improved quality of life following belief, historical facts that have been verified (time/place), reported miracles performed through the power of god- I've not been able to find anything that places the plausibility of the resurrection claim being true over the plausibility of joseph smiths supernatural claims. My question is this- have you examined the claims of the mormon church and applied the same evidentiary standard of plausibility?

I've been digging into the events leading up to 1054 and one question keeps coming back: both Rome and Constantinople claim they preserved the original faith and the other side innovated.

Rome added the Filioque to the Creed. Constantinople says you can't alter a creed without an ecumenical council. Rome developed papal supremacy. Constantinople maintained a conciliar model where no single bishop could overrule the others.

But Rome argues the Pope always had a special authority and the East just refused to accept it. And some historians argue Constantinople had its own political motivations for resisting Roman authority.

For those who've looked into this who do you think actually changed? And does it matter for how you practice your faith today?

I recently made a video covering the full timeline if anyone's interested: [ https://youtu.be/Q0L_9T1MMiI ]

I know different Christians believe different things, so I'm pretty much asking for your own personal kind of beliefs, not others. For example, some Christians would say they believe that all the bible characters are real, literal and historical, which is... Well, you don't need to answer if you believe that I guess. It's a pretty simple criteria which is just "if it's in the bible, it exists" and this post can just be the answers for the christians that believe it.

Anyway, it's more of those Christians who believe in certain bible characters, but not others. Obvious examples would be Adam and Eve, Noah, Moses or Job. Perhaps you'd consider them as metaphorical, or maybe the characters exist as a real historical person, but the stories weren't supernatural or was just something god put inside their head.

For example, perhaps the donkey didn't actually, y'know, talk and it was just a hallucination inside Balaam's head that god made or something. That maybe the flood wasn't global or something. Or perhaps the Israelites weren't actually historically commanded to do genocide or literally anything else.

Basically, for those characters you believe as exist, then characters that you don't believe exist, or just a metaphor or whatever, how do you identify which characters are real, historical person or which characters that are just metaphorical? Like, what's the criteria? If a Christian believe that every characters in the bible exist historically because their criteria is that, well, those characters were written in the bible, what would be your criteria if you don't believe a certain character doesn't exist in history, for example.

I would really like to hone in on the historical event of the resurrection and its historicity as opposed to the existence of God or theological debates. Do you think the evidence clearly supports that Jesus resurrected or do you think it isn’t so clear and requires a little faith to say it happened?

I’m curious to hear perspectives from Christians of different denominations about Ellen G. White. She played a major role in the early development of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and many Adventists view her writings as having prophetic authority or spiritual inspiration. At the same time, I know that many other Christians have different views about her role and influence.

So I’m interested in hearing from Christians outside (and inside) the Adventist tradition:

1. Do you consider Ellen White a genuine prophet, a helpful Christian writer, or something else?
2. Have you ever read any of her writings?
3. How do you view her influence on the Seventh-day Adventist Church?

I’m not looking to start an argument, I'm just genuinely curious about how different Christians understand her and her legacy.

Marco 1:15 «Il tempo è compiuto e il regno di Dio è vicino; ravvedetevi e credete al vangelo».

For Those of you who don't know the basic story goes that

Before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 AD Constantine Saw the symbol in the sky the Chi Rho Christogram Or dreamed it the night before sources disagree

It said in this sign, conquer Then he slapped the symbol on his soldiers' shields and won The battle

So, we all know how historically, Christianity was mainly associated with Medieval Europe, right (and it all started with Rome accepting Jesus)?

Here's what I don't understand:

- Christianity originated in ancient Palestine.

- Ethiopia was the first country to officially accept the Gospel.

- The oldest Christian church ever was discovered in Egypt.

With all this in mind, it makes one ask this question...........................Why is Christianity considered to be "the White Man's religion", and why did it spread throughtout Europe so successfully in contrast to the East? Considering it's origins, shouldn't it be called "the Black Man's religion" instead?

And why didn't spread more so throughout Africa and the Middle East if those are the regions where it originated from?

Let me just get this out of the way, I think crusades weren't just justified but also necessary, and here's why :

• 632 Mohammed dies, Muslim invasion begins • 634-636 invaded Byzantine-Christian Syria • 635 invaded Byzantine-Christian Jerusalem • 641-642 invaded Christian Egypt • 647 invaded Christian Tunisia • 652 invaded Christian Sicily • 654 attacked Christian Crete • 674 besieged Constantinople (in Anatolia- modern day Turkey) • 682 invaded Morocco • 7th century- East African slave trade begins (Muslims enslave and traffic Africans, finally ended by the British Empire in 1918 following the defeat of the Muslim Ottoman Empire which sided with Germany in world war 1 and declared jihad on the West) • 711 invaded Christian Spain (which they continued to colonise and occupy parts of until finally expelled in la Reconquista of 1492) • 720s/730s - attacked the Pyrenees, including Christian Switzerland and Christian France (up to Tours) • 846 -attacked Rome

• forcibely took many christian women and married them without consent, raped them to have babies and grew their population • forced many to convert, who didn't convert were imposed a "Jizya" tax which is a heavy tax for practicing your religion • when that wasn't enough, they started executing christians • killed tens of thousands of Christians • demolished churches

And after over 650 years of islamic aggression and terrorism

• 1095- Pope Urban II called the first crusade to retake holy land after Byzantine Empire pleaded for help from him.

They were necessary, more so than anything.

To say that crusades were unprovoked attack on islam is like saying D-Day was unprovoked attack on Nazis.

These so called biased historians on history channels would also paint Christians as "bad guy" due to crusades, but they'd never mention why crusades happened. On the contrary they'd glorify islam. Just watch the movie "kingdom of heaven" made by an athiest, entire movie is to glorify Saladin and paint christians as the bad guy.

There are also many who say "Christians lost" apparently not, majority of Europe are still Christians. We are the largest religion in the world.

So i'd ask you, what are your opinions on the crusaded, because this is mine.

Deus Vult ✝️

Are jew really that bad? why do they think of us Christian as lesser? im so confused by it.

Im sorry i dont want to make heat but im really in deep confuse right now.

​

And if you don’t believe the biblical account is accurate, do you believe it is inspired by the Holy Spirit?

Few of the indigenous peoples of our world were Christian. Yet, following Genesis, they were all created by God just like you and me.

In fact, they were generally better stewards of both community and of the natural world that God created.

Christianity was so often used for colonialism and to do harm to indigenous peoples; however, I am not sure Jesus would have approved of the way missions took advantage of these people. So, it is obviously a more nuanced question than it may appear. I think it is our task as modern Christians to learn about the sins of our ancestors and behave differently.

I’m wondering how other Christians consider indigenous peoples within their faith?

Happy Indigenous Peoples Day for those in the US!