I read this blog. It’s about priests doubting, losing faith, or disagreeing with the theology of their church. Go read it.
Seriously, go read it, then come back.
Assuming you did, now consider this. What if you were a jewish rabbi in the iron age, and you didn’t agree with the scriptures about stoning your son to death for disobedience or working on the sabbath being automatically punishable by death or eating the wrong food making you evil, or burnt animal sacrifice when your village was starving already. Lets say you lost faith in your religion, if not your god.
So you start teaching some different ideas, trying to square them with scripture however you can, but at some point you can’t, so you break off and form your own theology/philosophy, primarily rooted in disagreeing with the doctrines of your former faith. You, believing in a creator that inspires his followers to follow his wishes, would assume as many believers do today that the ideas in your head came from yahweh.
You get a following, turns out there are tons of people fed up with all of that stuff too.
Then politics are politics, you get put to death. But the movement doesn’t end there, your followers use the momentum surrounding your rise and fall to build a whole new faith based on what they see as the good from their former religion and the good from your teachings. And eh, so a few miracle stories gain some popularity, it can only help the popularity of this new faith, right?
It’s something to ponder.
agnophilo 
I am ponderingI think that this is very obvious in Christianity. Their are more types of Christians then I will ever know about or care about.I think faith is a personal thing, and you shouldn’t have to blindly agree with EVERYTHING EVERYONE in your church or group says. I think expecting as much is ridiculous.*continues ponderingPS: jews don’t call their god yaryay(or whatever you called it), they say (for the most part) god, or “adonai”, which is like a title for god as far as I can tell (my hebrew leaves alot to be desired)god has no known name to the jews
@splinter1591 – that’s not true. yahweh is a very common synonym for god in the Hebrew bible. it’s also used in Stephen Colbert’s segment “yahweh or no way” about whether a particular happening is an act of god or not lol
That reminds me of an old time travel story about a man who goes back in time to see Christ and ends up being totally disillusioned when he finds out Christ is not the Son of God but rather a hunchbacked retard. Furthermore, in the story, Mary is a prostitute (if I recall correctly) and Joseph is just a bitter old perv. I can’t remember the details of the sequence of events that leads to the guy’s death but in the end, he’s on the Cross, in place of Christ, yelling “It’s all a lie!” or something like that (which is an allusion to “Eloi, eloi,” etc.) Good stuff.
@jenessa1889 – no its notthat’s just people who can’t read Hebrew making up vowels for their own amusementHebrew bible= Torah BTW
@QuantumStorm – that sounds like an intresting bookwhat’s it called?
@splinter1591 – Alas, it’s been so long that I can’t quite remember. I did find it on wikipedia, and I may have gotten the details wrong – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behold_the_Man
@splinter1591 -“Then God spoke all these words. He said, ‘I am Yahweh your God who brought you out of Egypt, where you lived as slaves. You shall have no other gods to rival me.’”Exodus 20: 1-3″I am Yahweh, that is My name; I will not give My glory to another, or my praise to idols.”Isaiah 42:8″Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God; Yahweh is one: and you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.”Deuteronomy 6: 4-5If it’s an incorrect translation/pronunciation it’s certainly a popular one.
@jenessa1889 – yeah seejews leave it in hebrew אני יהוה הוא שמי וכבודי לאחר לא אתן ותהלתי לפסילים(this is Isaiah 42:8)יהוה is the word that we are having problems with here, literally the “י” makes the Y sound “ה” makes the “H” sound and “ו” makes the V sound. But their are NO vowels. So instead of chancing saying gods name wrong by making up the wrong vowels, Jews will say “adonai”also this is a stupid argument
@splinter1591 – agreed, it’s pretty much pointless lol
@splinter1591 – The real pronunciation of the name of the christian/jewish god is lost (because it was forbidden to be spoken by all but a few people in some circumstances)but it’s translated as YHVH/JHVH and modern christians/jews add vowels to make it pronounceable, saying yahweh or jehovah.@QuantumStorm – Where was this again? Reminds me of this.
Yeah, but there were a lot of people who were alive during Jesus’s time on earth who were willing to die very painful deaths because they said they had seen Jesus raised from the dead and couldn’t deny the truth of it. Not just because they believed they were following him, but because they said they remembered it actually happening. Why would all of the disciples have been willing to deny such excruciating deaths (or told people, as is seen a few times in Scripture, to ask around if they didn’t believe what was written, because of the number of witnesses who saw what was recorded) if there wasn’t more than a grain of truth to it?Maybe they all had stronger wills (and/or a weaker sense of self-preservation) than I, but I wouldn’t be willing to die like that for something I knew to be a lie.
@jenessa1889 – @agnophilo – yes XPto both of you(>^^)>
@Teletheus – perhaps some people have problems excepting the bible as an all fact bookidk… i’ve never read it, but I have heard some of the stories are a bit fictisios, so perhaps people began to question which parts of the bible can be trusted as %100 truth
@splinter1591 – Well, we have manuscripts on several books of the New Testament dating back to A.D. 60-70 or so. That’s only 30-40 years removed from the death of Jesus — a little early to be introducing complete fabrications that could be easily discounted by those who were alive during his lifetime.
@Teletheus – the oldest copy was dated to about 125 ADJesus (according to wikpedia ^^) died around 30AD at age 35. The average life expectancy at the time was 40 (though highly influenced by infant mortality rate)Paul (who i believe was one of the mane “authors” of the bible died in 67 A.D.That’s a 95 year difference between our oldest copy and Jesus’s death. Nearly 100 years for stuff to be added and taken out. At the time, women got married at about 15 and men at age 20. Assuming they were having children at age 16/21 respectively, this is enough time for 5 generations. Which is an immense about of time for the story to change.also, alot of the storys ARE unbelievable and it IS understandable how one could loose faith. IE, bringing the bird back to life thing I think Jesus did, the great flood, Adam and Eve… things that contradict modern science. those can be terribly difficult things for Christians who do not either look at the bible as a book of metifors, believe only certain parts, practice “double think”, or disregard science.http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/bibleorg.html#ZTxLuCZXicyuhttp://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/internetlife/2008-07-22-ancient-new-testatment-online_N.htmhttp://scriptorium.lib.duke.edu/papyrus/texts/manuscripts.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament#Date_of_composition
@splinter1591 – From the sources you pointed me to:”For the gospels they tend to date Mark no earlier than 65 and no later than 75. Matthew is dated between 70 and 85. Luke is usually placed within 80 to 95. However a select few scholars disagree with this as Luke indicates in the book of Acts that he has already written the Gospel of Luke prior to writing the introduction to Acts. Acts is written in a journal form indicating that it may have been written during Paul’s journeys which it documents. That would put Acts as early as the 60’s and the Gospel of Luke earlier than that.”That’s somewhere between 35-65 years after the death of Jesus. Yes, the average life expectancy was 40, but people died a lot earlier than that — and that means people died a lot later than that as well. I think it’s unrealistic to say that everyone who was alive during Jesus’s life was dead by the time the gospels were written.”also, alot of the storys ARE unbelievable and it IS understandable how one could loose faith. IE, bringing the bird back to life thing I think Jesus did, the great flood, Adam and Eve… things that contradict modern science. those can be terribly difficult things for Christians who do not either look at the bible as a book of metifors, believe only certain parts, practice “double think”, or disregard science.”There’s a very common tendency to beg the question on the topic of miracles. If you believe God exists, then they’re obviously possible. If you believe God doesn’t exist, then they’re obviously not possible. You can’t say the Bible is false just because it recounts miracles — you’re assuming God doesn’t exist before you begin.
@Teletheus – I just did a blog about this.
@agnophilo – Very interesting and thought-provoking post! I don’t have time right now to respond to that in the kind of detail I’d like, but I’ll take a look at it again when I get home. Would you prefer I respond here or there? š
@Teletheus – oh wikipediayou copyed and pasted from the diputed sectionyes?not sure wikipedia is downbut if so, its desputed for a reason. it can’t be dated, just guessed at
@Teletheus – you can believe in god withoutbelieving in mercilessI am very Jewish, but I do not believe in mercilessit is not a book which MUST be taken literally to believe in god. and that is where the discrepancy ussualy begins
@splinter1591 – “you can believe in god withoutbelieving in merciless”I didn’t say you had to believe in miracles to believe in God; I said that if you believe in God, you can, by extension, believe in miracles. There’s a difference. š
@Teletheus – Well there would be more appropriate, but here you’d have an audience.
@agnophilo – It was this book – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behold_the_Man
@QuantumStorm – Title reminds me of an episode of larry sanders : )
@agnophilo – Bahaha!
Jesus fulfilled the Law, and never destroyed it, for it was only a schoolmaster to teach us no one except Christ can be good enough.
@gmx0 – What a depressing role model.