Adinnieken said:
Mr Khan said:
happydolphin said:
I know this thread is about bad journalism, but after having watched the daily show interview posted by seth, it goes to show how off you can be when you reject the bible's account...
Jesus didn't defy the roman empire, he defied the Jewish stranglehold on the Judaic tradition. He was crucified as an outlaw though he never defied the state, that's because he was crucified for reason of Jewish persecution, not roman hostility...
When a scholar of two decades can't appreciate that subtle difference, you know the world is going to shit. |
Having not read Dr. Aslan's account, I would suggest that it is in the interests of the Bible Writers to present an account that painted the Jewish establishment in something of a bad light as Christianity was the new claimant to the Abrahamic tradition, and at the same time to at least paint a neutral picture of the Romans (lest the Empire drop the hammer on the religion in its infancy, and so that Roman citizens would be less inclined to reject the Christian message for patriotic reasons).
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This.
People read the bible believing it is a factual account. It isn't. The Great Flood, for example, didn't happen. It's a story that is common in the middle-eastern region and has its origins in Mesopotamia long before even biblical scholars can attribute it to happening in the biblical time-line.
There are historical facts in the bible, but the bible isn't a true historical document.
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New Testament is a bit different, though. There are 20,000 manuscripts that have been found and utilized to make up what we read today. Between the 20,000 source manuscripts, there is almost no variance between them, aside from translation differences between the languages they are written in. They all say the same thing about Jesus, and the writings thereafter by Paul, Peter, and the writers of the Gospels.
I think you'd be hard pressed to find any document from antiquity that is even close to that kind of relaibility - even the works of the historical scholars that make up our understanding of the ancient world. Even then, the 3rd party, non-religious accounts of Christianity agree with what the NT says, where the statements are available.
Having said that, a book writen by a Muslim on Christ is going to be heavily biased against Christ's claims. Much in the same way if a Christian wrote about Mohammed.
