All I was saying was that the idea of a devil as a scapegoat isn't so strongly found in the bible, most of it developed later in christian imagination.

I don't think it really matters, the Satan trying to overthrow God story is definitely a part of the Christian Mythology, whether it is in their Bible or created afterwards.

But I think this is the quote that suggests he did:

12 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!

13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:

14 I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.

No, really?



I'm not even going to touch that.

Yes, because the ancient Egyptians went south to conquer Nubia/Sudan.

Some of the later Pharoahs are indeed depicted as what we consider black people. Most Egyptian art depicts folks who look very much like the modern Egyptians. Which isn't to say there weren't large migrations of peoples from the Arabian peninsula later on, just that the indigenous people there may have been very similar to begin with.

By the time Jesus was born, of course, the place had been overrun with Romans and Greeks for a while, so that's yet another change in the phenotype.

In any case, relating back to what I said initially, Jesus was Jewish. In order for him to also be black, he would have had to come from Ethiopia, where there is a very old tribe of African Jews who trace their roots back to the Queen of Sheba, and who have recently been shown to have some typically Jewish genetic markers. But Jesus was born in Israel, so it's a moot point.

I find this to be a very strange statement. As far as I can see, the essential idea in Christian thought is the unconditional submission to an idealised principle of absolute authority, which is that of the rather pompous entity "God" (and the "will of God" such as this is manifesting itself through the words and teachings of "the prophets").

There can be little doubt that these memes which Christianity is based upon have successfully established themselves in our secular world of affairs as well, most notably in the coming of the political entity of the national state, which is an offspring of Augustine of Hippo's "Civitas Dei" (the Kingdom of God), and the implicit demand that the individual must bow to the "will of the state", as this is manifested in the so called democratic institutions.

The essential ideas of Plato however, are better represented in modern physics than in contemporary philosophy, such as the work of David Bohm and his theories on The Holographic Universe.

With respects to the OP of this thread, I believe most scholars agree that the collection of texts which we call "the bible" was given its final form at the first ecumenic council of Nicaea in 325.

I like the books Exodus and Revelations. If you can view them objectivly they both make for as fine works of science fiction as many a story written in this day and age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotheism

This has some interesting information as far as the beginnings of the worship of a single deity. The book of Genesis tells the story of Moses being raised by a pharaoh's daughter. If I'm not mistaken, Moses gets the writing credit for the book of Genesis and the story of the creation of the universe by a single, all powerful deity. It was around that time frame that the Pharaoh Akhenaten began the worship of a single deity. That would be a good explaination for one god. I saw this on a history channel show, I believe, and this wikipedia article is a good start. It also goes into a little detail about Christianity. Hope this helps.

JESUS IS LORD!!!!

Who!?

Who let this moron in?

Wow, you sure changed in a year and a half.

I think he just does not know how to manage the "auto-login" function on his computer, left his account without a password and VOILA! Easy access for some delusional moron to post 5 or 10 random replies without any content whatsoever.

Or this could be what the early stages of what a born again christian looks like. He might go on and make things up, give "testament" of all the evil topics he found here... after a little more brainwashing of course... I wonder what kind of stuff they put in that holy water.

I'm curious about what makes you believe that. Could you explain a little more about how you reached such conclusion?

Sanhedrin fan are we?

FYI, the "early church" was actually Jewish. It wasn't until Rome dispersed the Jews out of Israel did christianity really begin getting a significant non-Jewish membership.

Also worth mentioning...the Jewish world in that day was filled with all kinds of Messiahs.

Context is everything. These "verses" are not referring to the Devil.