>>>>>>Again, please read http://www.skiens.com/truth/truth.htm. and it becomes clear what likely happened.
>>>>>
>>>>>This is what they call "The Truth"? I read this excerpt (for instance) and just fall besides my chair for laughing:
>>>>>
>>>>>"... 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!! "
>>>>>
>>>>>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.
>>>>>
>>>>>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,
>>>
>>>I don't laugh about just any alternative story, I just find it ridiculous to call a paper the "Truth" and then to make such a blunt error that shows that this person has no clue about the Roman Catholic doctrines. The Immaculate Conception is probably "THE" most sacred dogma of the Catholic Church, defended most heartedly by Pope John Paul II and many others. There is no way anybody could miss that who has spent at least some time in research.
>>>
>>>This is the only paragraph in the mentioned article where the writer found it such a big thing so he added two exclamation marks (!!) at the end. That indicates he must have found this "truth" so outrageous, he took special attention to it. On the other hand, he completely forgot to mention that the Bible was on the censorship index of the Roman Catholic church for centuries, and it was forbidden for any lay man to read that book. Does this perhaps have anything to do with the strange doctrines that this church teaches?
>>>
>>>I can imagine errors can happen, but not on such a large scale, and especially not when you would try to correct someone else's "mistakes". One error does not solve another error, it's like buggy software, it just won't work.
>>
>>
>>>>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.
>>
>>Sorry, guys but whoever is feeding you information hasn't had the Baltimore Catechism banged into his head by Sister Mary Doloratta (what a magnificent name!!) as I have.
>>
>>Yes, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception has nothing to do with the birth of Jesus, but it also has nothing to do the virginity of Mary's mother.
>>
>>Simply put, the doctrine holds that Mary, unlike the rest of us, was born without inheriting the sins of Adam and Eve.. aka original sin... and therefore needed no baptism to wash them away.
>
>What a nice way to show the problems of trying to make such a text axiomatic and then argue logically from that.
>
>@Walter: on first glance that truth page author looks like a candidate I'd group more with tin foil hats - perhaps reading the longer text gives better impresson - reserve judgement as you usually know what you are talkng about, but the text read alone reads even more improbable than some religous passages.

Thomas, my point is simply that we don't know. Everyone claims their own truth. There are a lot of questions that will never be answered a 100%. The scientist in me wants to explain miracles and out of the ordinary events. since the bible is full of such things, the link to the 'truth' does give a shot into explaining some of the things in a rational way, giving us insight how the text can be interpretated other than literally. Do I beleive it is the absolute truth? To be honest I don't know, however it does do a decent attempt to give an alternative and explain who jesus really was, his motives, and how he lived.

The problem I've got with the bible is that it could have well been written about Ghandi or Nelson Mandela if they were born 2000 years ago. And the stories would have been written in the same cryptic and ambigious language, selectively selected for inclusion or exclusion and bended for political purposes to control the masses.

Bottom line is that I'm convinced that the Jesus was a lot more human, rational person who was trying to get into power in a non traditional way by uniting people (he needed everyone he could get) than the bible wants u to believe. The dead sea scrolls give a lot more clues pointing into this direction.