Friday, April 07, 2006

Organized Religion

Did anyone else see this

Apparently Judas didn't betray Jesus but followed his orders.

I wonder what the Pope thinks of that?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

You know, I actually had this debate with my religion 20 teacher. I have half a mind to call her up and tell her to look this up. Sheesh.

Anyways.. I find these particular things extremely fascinating... mainly because I grew up being preached too, but also because these types of manuscripts can be taken so many diffrent ways. Say this is the writting of Judas.. what's to say that it is true? It is all perseption of those in the event.

Simply amazing.

Michael Lehet said...

XM - I think that's the problem with Organized Religion. You can read the Bible (or the Koran or the Torrah) and interpret however you like. What I find most interesting is how a chapter is broken into verses and the verses aren't necessarily at the end of a sentence which means that when people quote scripture they're quoting totally out of context.

It really pisses me off when someone will quote a scripture saying one thing and then when you read what how it was written in context it's not the same.

The things we don't remember is that a long time ago, people weren't educated and people couldn't read so therefore the Priests were the ones that "told people" the word of God, as they felt it should be. The priests and the church didn't want people to learn to read, because if they could read then they could interpret as they wanted instead of the church telling them how it should be.

Well the problem is, people are more intelligent now, but in actuality they're not!

I can already see people "interpreting" this story completely different because the problem is, this sort of upsets all that the church is based on, doesn't it?

Xmichra said...

Totally agree with you. Even when the church is confronted with truth, it ignores it. Even when people are given variations... they don't stop to think about what was just read.

It is all relative.

But this piece of parchment could really "harm" the catholisist regime.. and change history. That is most likely what backed the funding ( two mil on a document is heafty).

Michael Lehet said...

XM - you're absolutely right.

I read that National Geographic has been main benefactor.

Rob7534 said...

I think the biggest problem with old manuscripts being newly found are issues of authorship.

I've heard about this over the past few days, and from what I have read, they have done extensive testing on the paper, and ink. To prove that it is indeed as old as they say, but I haven't read the actual text.

To my eye, the biggest conflict about this will be the authorship. To try to confirm it was written by Judas. Can they prove or disprove? I dunno, but if the text reads a bit too odd, the scholars and the church (which has most of the scholars) will pick it apart, and refute it as an ancient forgery. Like many other writings from the period the church refuses to recognize as authentic.

I don't understand the timeline then. When was Judas supposed to have written it? I thought he died soon after. Was this a suicide letter? Or did he sit down to pen his story first, then go off himself? Or are the gospels wrong, and Judas didn't commit suicide afterall?