Raf

I will repay you for the earworm. So help me You Will Pay. Rapture, by Blondie

happy birthday!!

15. And still waiting for Twinky's answer.

I thought you were trying to throw off the countdown. Do you turn 25 on Tax day?

Oriental setting Where the city don't know what the city is getting. The creme de la creme of the chess world and the show with everythibg but Yul Brynner.

Are you sure she wrote it?

no, wait. 16

17

I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine

No No. Not that I know of. Definitely no. It's either great news or not great news. Definitely not bad news, though it started that way.

It's a drag It's a bore It's really such a pity To be looking at the board Not looking at the city

I can only imagine the courage it takes to come forward. Welcome, Leah.

A final note on fiction: Jesus used parables to convey truths. He never claimed those parables (like the rich man and Lazarus) actually happened. So a problem with learning from fiction is a problem with learning from how Jesus taught. Right? Awkward.

Our Lips Are Sealed The Go Gos

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In II Thess 2:2, readers are warned not to believe forged letters. Fun fact: II Thess is a forgery, warning people not to believe forgeries. Now you may not believe II Thess is a forgery. That's up to you. But if you believe it is authentic then you are forced to admit that Paul himself warned the early church to be on the lookout for letters falsely pretending to be from him. Such letters would claim to be from him, proving that just because a letter SAYS it's from Paul doesn't mean Paul wrote it. Whoever LUKE was, he undermines Paul's claim to have received the gospel directly from God and not from the apostles that came before him. One of them is lying. If Luke is lying, then how can he be trusted to give a reliable account of the resurrection? We KNOW he lied or was wrong about the circumstances of Jesus' birth (census in the wrong year, no flight to Egypt, Joseph would not have been required to go to Bethlehem, etc). What leads you to think he's above lying about the end of the story when he lied so casually about the beginning? Because he was a doctor? He never claims to be a doctor. Never even claims to be Luke! Someone pretending to be Paul said Luke was a doctor. Acts doesn't make that claim. If this were the claim of any other religion you would reject it for lack of supporting evidence.

Here's a good review of Ehrman's book for those who don't wish to buy it or subscribe to his blog.

Another article summarizing scholarship on textual criticism.

Here's a good article on how people can learn from fiction.

It's not about my views. It's about the scholarship of textual criticism. Every single case of forgery pretends to he written by someone who is not the author. It's silly to look at the "signature" as proof of authorship. Using a fictional example is a valid form of explaining how it works. But if you'd prefer a factual example: Hitler's diaries claimed to be written by Hitler but were not. The Book of Mormon claims to be written by people who were not its authors. The Gospel of Thomas was not written by Thomas The Gospel of Peter was not written by Peter. Colossians and Ephesians were not written by Paul. This is not "Raf's view." This is the position of the majority of mainstream scholars whose study goes beyond "well it says right here Paul wrote it. Must have been him."

Then that rules out the Bible

I was using a pop culture reference to explain forgery to you.

This is not about what I will and will not like. It's about actual research that people with no vested interest do when they study the Bible. In the tv show Welcome Back Kotter, one of the characters used to hand in notes to excuse himself for being absent or late, or for missing homework. The notes were always signed, "Epstein's mother." The joke was, of course Epstein's mother didn't write those notes. Epstein only wanted people to THINK his mother wrote those notes. Of COURSE if someone in the ancient world wanted to pass off a letter as an epistle from Paul, that letter is going to say it was written by Paul. THAT'S HOW FORGERIES WORK. They don't announce themselves as forgeries. Start here: https://ehrmanblog.org/faint-heart-authorship-colossians-members/ i will post more when i have time

Forgery was rampant in the first century, and many letters were excluded from the Bible because, even though they claimed to be written by certain people, they were not. Some of those letters made it into the N.T. Colossians was one of them.