^^ Hi Karl, Good to hear from you. ^^
Quote:
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"Well Bob you talk like Christianity has been here since the beginning, but in fact it is just a branch off of Judaism..
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Mitch, your biggest problem with your understanding of the Bible is that you are going to atheist's for enlightenment. Atheists are not out to investigate IF there is a God; but rather to prove one thing; and that is, there is no God. That's hardly the way to find enlightenment. Instead, you need to have your >legitimate< questions answered by Christian apologetics that is, people to whom the word is revealed, NOT concealed.
You are absolutely
RIGHT about
this portion of your statement: Christianity
HAS been here since the
very beginning.
It started with the promise of a savior way back in Genesis just after the fall of man. As a matter of the fact the entire old testament points to the promise of a savior. Allow me to explain at least the first promise.
In Genesis:2:17 God commanded Adam: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
thou shalt not eat of it: Genesis 3:2 And
the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: 3 But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it,
neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. I've italicized [neither shall ye touch it] because Eve was putting words into Gods' mouth, which was the actual first sin against God.
NOT the eating of the forbidden fruit as popular lore would have it.
(Note: Before the fall, the serpent was the most beautiful of Gods' creatures and did not crawl on the ground like a worm.)
Now as part of the curse that God placed on the serpent Genesis 3:15 states: And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed;
IT shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise
HIS heel.
All but the most liberal of "Christian" theologians that I've run across have agreed that the
IT: is Jesus and he will bruise the serpents head but they never could agree on what it meant that Jesus heel would be bruised. Today thanks to archeology, we know that crucifixion was not done anything like the popular pictures by the italian artists. To be honest, as one born with a mechanical acumen, this has bothered me as long as I can remember as being a ridiculous and impossible depiction on several levels
MECHANICALLY.
(Sorry, if you wanted to talk to a fundamental faith driven Christian, you've picked a poor excuse in me.) With the exception of a fair eye photographically, I'm ALL mechanics or electronics.
In continuing:
I was even taught that God must have been referring to the bruising pressure involved in having the feet of Christ pressing against the cross. Yah, sure! There is NO WAY the feet could be fastened to the cross as depicted by the Italian painters-
PERIOD!!! Wood was very expensive & hand hewn without power tools. They sure as heck couldn't have had neatly hewn platforms affixed by nails for the subjects feet to rest on. Especially when you consider the did this to THOUSANDS of people at a time. Any other way of fastening the feet to the cross would result in failure as the feet separated while the nails tore out.
EXCEPT to drive the nails through the calcaneum (heel bone). This is born out by the 1968 discovery of the "THE CRUCIFIED MAN FROM GIV'AT HA-MIVTAR" were they found the skeletal remains of a man in his twenties, who had been crucified. The evidence for this was based on the right calcaneum (heel bone) of the individual, pierced by an iron nail 11.5 cms. in length. The nail penetrated the lateral surface of the bone emerging on the middle of the surface in which the tip of the nail had become bent. The bending of the tip of the nail upon itself suggests that after the nail penetrated the bone it must have struck a knot in the wood thereby making it difficult to remove from the heel when the victim was taken from the cross.
Remains of olive wood found between the head of the nail and the heel bone (the calcaneum) suggest that prior to penetrating the calcaneum the nail went through a hole in a wooden spacer so as to increase the size of head of the nail head thus preventing the feet from coming free of the upright. [in order to prevent splitting the wood, the hole was probably burned in the spacer with a heated augur, a common method of drilling wood at the time. One can imagine the struggling victim could possibly break the calcaneum during the extreme agonies of standing on a rough square nail driven through the bone, were it not secured by a "washer" to stabilize the foot.] Anyhow the feet were nailed through the heel to the SIDES of the upright portion of the cross.
Sorry Mitch, as you have so little understanding of the bible from a Christian perspective, I've had to run a bit afield in order to explain the first promise of christ was right after the fall. I hope this helps you to see that Christianity is fact
OLDER than Judaism, because it is the promise of a redeemer throughout the old testament even before Abraham.