Born in Two Places

I was having trouble with Luke's book, because this Jesus dude was born in two different places. Nazareth, which didn't exist at the time, and Bethlehem.

Matt2:5 “Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea”
Matt 2:23 born in Nazareth
Luke 2:4-7 born in Bethlehem
John 7:41-42 not from Bethlehem
Mark 6—wherever his hometown was, he didn't get no love there, and anyhow he's J of Nazareth, not J the Bethleheme.

There's another town called bethlehem in Galilee, about five miles from Nazareth, but bottom line, nobody knows. It's controversial, but he sure as hell wasn't born in both of them, biblical literalists.

This news item, via Daylight Atheism, cleared it up. William Dembski's in hot water, even though he's “a first order star in the intelligent design firmament.” He wrote The End of Christianity, where he noticed the universe is billions of years old, and fantasized that

“God brought death, decay and natural disasters to earth long before Adam and Eve sinned. That natural evil, he said, was a retroactive punishment for their disobedience … ”

Wait … what? His fantasies are about death, decay and natural disasters: mine run more towards Antonio Banderas and Angelina Jolie, but whatever, Original Sin lubed up a Delorean, entered it, rode it to the Big Bang … oh shit, i've lost my train of thought here ….


[ cold shower ]



The beef wasn't that he waterboards logic and leaves it for dead in a dumpster, it was that he “let scientific commitments trump the most natural reading of the Bible”. One of his co-workers at Hillbilly U. (officially, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) mentioned it in a book review, so the Pres

“convened a meeting with Dembski and several high-ranking administrators at the seminary. At that meeting, Dembski was quick to admit that he was wrong about the flood”

The dean released a paper that included this groveling analingus from Dumbski:

“In a brief section on Genesis 4–11, I weigh in on the Flood, raising questions about its universality, without adequate study or reflection on my part,” “Before I write on this topic again, I have much exegetical, historical, and theological work to do. In any case, not only Genesis 6–9 but also Jesus in Matthew 24 and Peter in Second Peter seem clearly to teach that the Flood was universal.”

[ I totally lost it here when my brain conjured up pictures of Peter in Second Peter. Wouldn't that entail a Third Peter, and would second Peter have his Peter in First Peter? Theology is so hard! Also, “The Flood was universal”---ROFLMFAO] Wait, wait, there's more!

“As a biblical inerrantist, I believe that what the Bible teaches is true and bow to the text, including its teaching about the Flood and its universality.” [snicker]

Ok, why would he change his opinion just like that? President Paige Patterson, [nickname PeePee] said

“Had I had any inkling that Dr. Dembski was actually denying the absolute trustworthiness of the Bible, then that would have, of course, ended his relationship with the school”

Ah, sooo, Grasshopper, it only requires a proper reading of John 1:1-4

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was PeePee, and his Word was God.
2 The same was in the bottom corner of your paycheck.
3 All faculty were paid by him; and without him was not any body that was paid.
4 In him was a living; and making a living was the light of men.

This clears up my little problem with Luke, too, and how the bible can contradict itself and still be inerrant. Doesn't matter what the Bible actually says, what matters is the most natural reading of it. To a god addict, it's a lot more natural to kiss ass than draw unemployment, and if the guy who's paying me says so, that mutherfucker was born in Pasadena.

Luke vs Matt & Mark

Whoever wrote this 'Luke' section of the bible sure is better than those other hacks. This guy even has an introduction, says it's the straight dope on what was handed down by the eyewitnesses. That sure beats starting out with two pages of 'begats'.

He writes better too, with adjectives, and character development, so you can actually read this—as opposed to trudging through it with a bottle of scotch after tying yourself to a chair.

He kind of overdoes it, his characters keep bursting into song like West Side Story. Most of page 125 is Mary erupting with a speech about how her Lord is the greatest, bestest, awesomest, most ass-kickingest, do-goodingest dude EVER; then two pages later Zech goes off for twelve verses how god is gonna kick ass and take names, and his new baby's gonna be Da Man. It doesn't make much sense, but

you know it's important because it has wider margins.

Outside of that, it raises ghosts. Some lines, like “there were shepherds ... keeping watch over their flocks ...” gave me cold chills and memories of my Catholic upbringing, that I've tried hard to forget (Thanks, Luke) but it makes sense they'd quote this guy instead of the hacks. All in all, Luke looks promising.

Messianic Boogers (mark)

OK, I read the Gospel of Mark. Not sure why, though.

Remember writing essays in school and including every source you can scrape up? You only found two articles and one's just a summary of the other one, but you want it to look well-researched so you include them both? Yeah. Did I mention there's nothing in Mark that's not in Matthew?

(Well, there's one thing: Jesus was gay. The censors redacted part of it, but they missed the naked man running away from Jesus when they arrested him. It always seemed fishy Judas kissing him like that, know what I mean? My guess was they busted Judas for being an evil sodomite and he made a deal with the DA to let him go if he pointed out his partner in the Homosexual Agenda. Hey, it could be.)

The more references the better, I guess, and they could hardly include that gospel from OMG a woman, or the one with the women apostles, so we're stuck with this repetitious crap. You'd die of boredom unless you play 'spot the lulz' where the details don't match,

like,

to get a sick guy to Jesus, Matt just used the door, but Mark lowers him down through a hole in the roof. It's an early day helidrop.

There's no zombie invasion this time, dead people just stay dead. The apostles only get to preach and harass demons; no bringing stiffs back to life like they got to with Matt.

The woman Jesus discriminated against was a Canaanite, for Matt, but in Mark she's a Greek Syrian Phoenician. Srsly. Matt only hated one ethnic group, but Mark was more egalitarian,see.

Mark says his family thought Jesus was out of his mind. Matt left that out, but I'd say they could be onto something.

-----

One thing Mark keeps saying is that Jesus told everybody to keep things on the down low. He even told the evil spirits to keep mum about him. Irony hadn't been invented yet so his followers wrote it all down in a book, lol, and now it's on the internet, so I looked it up in Wikipedia and found out this is a Big Deal^(TM), it even has a name, it's the Messianic Secret.

Wiki gives explanations—from theology, and philology, but they left out the best one, the 

Explanation from Stupidity.

People are stupid, and cult followers raise that to the highest power (so to speak). When their leader does anything, anything at all, he could have a booger on his lip, they'll interpret it some way that makes him super awesome.

Our two year old has a cold, and yesterday he sneezed, and two rivers sprang forth on the banana he was biting into. If he was a cult leader you can bet those would become the Messianic Boogers, and revered as a sacred mystery.

 Anyway, that's Mark's gospel.