>>Again, please read http://www.skiens.com/truth/truth.htm. and it becomes clear what likely happened.
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>This is what they call "The Truth"? I read this excerpt (for instance) and just fall besides my chair for laughing:
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>"... When being taught about the virgin birth they are directed to Matthew and Luke. When being taught about other aspects they are directed to the Gospel or Gospels concerned - as if they were all intended to be constituent chapters of the same overall work - which of course they were not. The immaculate conception was not included into Catholic dogma until 1958!! "
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>Just look up the Catholic Doctrine of the "Immaculate Conception", this has absolute nothing to do with the "Virgin Birth of Jesus". It is the doctrine of the Catholic Church, indeed introduced at a much later time, which teaches that Mary was born from a virgin. Today this is one of the main Catholic dogmas, and very important to their faith, because they teach that Mary was without sin and therefore, instead of inheriting the sin from her blood line, was born by a virgin.
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>And because of that it is one of the most important doctrines of the Catholic church, because they stress on the status of Mary being a "Holy Mother of God". Only a complete fool would have missed that, so we wonder? How much else of the "Truth" article is just complete foolishness?

I doubt it would contain more foolishness than what is written literally in the bible. The author of the referred book was very thourough and did do a lot of research about other sources that describes the history in palestine, cultural,political and economically. It offers a much more reasonable explanation and insight of events written in the bible that after all were selected and manipulated for obvious reasons over the course of centuries.

If you wish to believe something else, I'll respect that, but laughing at anything that tells an alternative story say more about a fixed mind rather than being open minded for reasonable explanations.

Walter,