- They were all anonymous until around 180. Still, The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the unknown author of Mark wrote it at least a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote this gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark’s 666 verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove.

nutcase “The Bible was written by several different men under the direct inspiration of God.”

- Then, god should’ve chosen to use a language that wasn’t soon to be obsolete.

n.c. “The proof is out there, the question is will people dare to see it, or take the lazy road and continue to live is dishonest denial of the proof.”

- Every single shred of your so-called ‘proof’ has been debunked long before you were ever born.

“What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!” ~ Pope Leo X

* From the CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA:

“Sunday was kept holy in honour of Mithra, and the sixteenth of each
month was sacred to him as mediator. The 25 December was observed ashis birthday, the natalis invicti, the rebirth of the winter-sun, unconquered by the rigours of the season.”

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10402a.htm

** Notice the word “REBIRTH,” which means that the sun was perceived to have died. Sound familiar?

YOU WORSHIP THE SUN & DON’T EVEN KNOW IT. You provided the link that proves at the top – Thanks for that.

LOL

NO! They are rebellious towards a holy and righteous God, and choose to reject his truth, therefore they hate God , Christ, and the Bible and anything else having to do with the Christian faith.

Free Bird wrote “- LOL, all of the gospels were anonymous. Nobody knew who wrote them until the public announcement by the Pope in 180. Turns out that even “Revelation” was plagiarized from some 4,000 year old texts as it relates to the Mithraic legend of Zarathustra/Zoroaster.”

The Gospels were written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Anyone who suggest that the Gospel authors were originally unknown and were later given authors is suggesting that the Gospels were read for about 70 years, circulated, accepted by the church as authoritative throughout the entire Roman Empire, and changed the course of human history before someone finally said, “You know, we really ought to name these books.” That just isn’t plausible.
The Bible’s writers–even over such a long period of time–all convey the same basic message: the God who created the heavens and the earth has provided a way for people to know Him in a personal way.
The Bible was written by several different men under the direct inspiration of God, they often bear the name of the author, and many are letters written to other groups of believers to instructing them in the faith. Free Birds statement is what is Laughable, it is just another attempt to discredit the book and the message that has outlasted far more brutal attacks than the one free bird in launching here.

One fellow named Voltaire was an atheist who attacked the scripture and the Christian faith, he stated “It took centuries to build up Christianity, but, I’ll show how one Frenchman can destroy it within 50 years.” Then as one author wrote, “He took his pen, dipped it into the ink of unbelief and wrote against God.“. As Voltaire laid upon his deathbed, drawing his last few breaths of air he cried out “O Christ, O Jesus, I must die abandoned by God and men.”, and then he died. His estate was purchased by a group of Christians and used to print Bibles, how ironic is that? On his deathbed Voltaire realized just how wrong he was, and cried out to the God he had persecuted for so long, Voltaire died without Christ however, a very sad story indeed.

Free Bird continues his anti-God rant “There are no primary sources for the existance of the historical Jesus of the bible. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof”; yet, no proof of any kind for the historicity of Jesus has ever existed or is forthcoming. First, Free Bird spelled existence wrong! Secondly, that is a very unintelligent, uninformed statement to make. We have literary proof outside of the Bible written in the first and second centuries. We have three major world religions that all reference and bear witness to the proof of the Historical figure, Jesus of Nazareth, anyone who fails to at least acknowledge this truth is willfully blind to the historical facts that exist. Satan worshippers also know full well that Jesus is real, and they fear him and his words. The very fact that so many people down through history have brutally attacked Jesus and Christianity, stands as proof alone that this is not a myth, or something made up, but very real person with a message of hope the devil does not want them to hear.

There are extra biblical sources that exist, they are testimonies located outside of Scripture, and these testimonies support the Biblical historical evidence.

Amazing evidence from non-canonical documents.
The proof is out there, the question is will people dare to see it, or take the lazy road and continue to live is dishonest denial of the proof. The fact is that we do not have time to waste arguing with dishonest atheistic fools who in their so-called intellectual mind cannot fathom the existence of God or Christ. The truth is these people are not intellectuals at all, but lazy foolish men/women who when presented with the truth, are too blind and deaf to acknowledge the facts.

http://www.geocities.com/metacrock2000/Jesus_pages/HistJesus1.htm” target=”_blank”>Now Skeptics will often charge “you cannot prove that Jesus really existed…” But wait! This is not the believer’s burden to prove!
JESUS-MYTHERS: WHY THEY ARE NOT TAKEN SERIOUSLY

There is just too much proof out there to post it all, and it is not my job to prove anything to infidels who viciously attack my faith and values so that they can institute their own atheistic theocracy here in America. The fact is that Jesus was a real historical person who lived on this earth, the real question for the infidel is, was Jesus really the Son of God? I believe he was indeed, and will not be moved from the rock I am fixed upon because that rock is the rock of salvation, Jesus Christ!

Christmas was not initially recognized by the U.S. government because it was considered to be too pagan. In his book “The Battle for Christmas,” Stephen Nissembaum notes that at first, before the U.S. had an established national government, Christmas was opposed by many local governments, such as those in New England:

“In New England, for the first two centuries of white settlement most
people did not celebrate Christmas. In fact, the holiday was
systematically suppressed by the Puritans during the colonial period and largely ignored by their descendants. It was actually illegal to celebrate Christmas in Massachusetts between 1659 and 1681 (the fine was five shillings). Only in the middle of the nineteenth century did Christmas gain legal recognition as an official public holiday in New England”.

Nissembaum also notes that “most of the other states” did not “grant
legal recognition to Christmas until the middle of the nineteenth
century”.

Nissembaum then explains why there was such opposition to celebrating
Christmas at the time:

“Why? What accounts for this strange hostility? The Puritans themselves had a plain reason for what they tried to do, and it happened to be a perfectly good one: There is no biblical or historical reason to place the birth of Jesus on December 25″.

Nissembaum writes that the Puritans were quick to point out a related
reason for objecting to Christmas celebrations:

“Christmas was nothing but a pagan festival covered with a Christian
veneer. The Reverend Increase Mather of Boston, for example, accurately observed in 1687 that the early Christians who first observed the Nativity on December 25 did not do so ‘thinking that Christ was born in that Month, but because the Heathens Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those Pagan Holidays metamorphosed
into Christian [ones]‘”.

Part of the reason Christmas was not always celebrated by certain religious groups such as the Puritans until the 19th century was because of what many people deemed its underlying pagan roots. The opposition to Christmas was not universal, however. In his book “The American Christmas: A Study in National Culture,” James H. Barnett notes:

“Few American are aware that large groups of colonists objected to Christmas during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many loathed it as an ‘abomination’ even though others observed the occasion as a religious feast. In general, Puritans, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Quakers strongly opposed the religious observance of Christmas, but members of the Church of England, the Dutch Reformed, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic churches, as well as the German sects, carefully followed their
traditional celebrations. Religious, ethnic, and national ties were intermixed in defining attitudes toward the festival”.

The federal government first declared Christmas a federal holiday. Restad writes that in June 1870:

“For the first time in its history, the United States Congress declared
Christmas a federal holiday. Although the act’s stated purpose was the regulation of fiscal matters on several holidays, the law nonetheless formally endorsed the importance of a holiday that had been developing in the homes and sensibilities of the nation’s citizenry for half a century”.

Also, a 1999 Congressional Research Service Report, “Federal Holidays:
Evolution and Application,” notes on page one that this act was passed on June 28, 1870. You can find this report online in PDF format on the U.S. Senate website at:

http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/Federal_Holidays.pdf

You can view full text of the act online through the Library’s American Memory collection “A Century of Lawmaking” at:

http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=016/llsl016.db&recNum=203

Enjoy the holidays!

Ever heard of “Righteous Indignance” Mr F? that is “righteous anger” agaisnt evil?

God gets angry, it’s all through the Scripture where God got angry with his people and punished them for thier disobiedience.

I have to laugh every time some liberal wiener accuses me of hate, ignorance, and/or intollerance. Mr. F’s comment is typical, and laughable as he has no frickin’ idea what he is talking about as most commmies don’t!

Me, I’m happy where I am in life. No god, no [edited], just the wonder and mystery of existance in the universe. Halleluja!

And thanks to the aclu too!

I don really see how the hundred year old hearsay you cited as evidence proves anything other than that some people (probably early christians) were propagating such myths. Can you explain how it definative proof of anything else?

Despite my unrepentant atheism, I have no problem with the historical record for Jesus suggesting he was a real person.

However, I rejoin the ‘God who wasn’t there’ crowd, in that I deny the ‘divinity’ of Jesus and his miracles.

Did he exist? Probably, yes. Did the Romans kill him? Again, probably yes (the Romans killed lots of people, and Jesus would have been nothing special to them in that regard).

Did he rise from the dead? Was he the son of God? Born of virgin? Turn water into wine?

Uh, no.

Antiphon

I already provided evidence to the contrary and you haven’t responded.

[i]Two surviving non-Christian accounts, one by Roman historian and another by a Jewish historian, confirm that Pilate ordered the execution of Jesus[/i]
http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/jesus/jesusaccount.html

Someone called me a “tool of Satan”? Someone who doesn’t even know me? Wow.

Face it: there is no God, George Bush is a moron and the ACLU is more Christ-like than most Christians.

dayve