Paul Weyrich: The Jews crucified Jesus, and the Muslims are at war w/ us

[ck4829]

Gee Paul, it seems as though everybody is guilty except for the people who believe in Dominionism.

"Christ was crucified by the Jews who had wanted a temporal ruler to rescue them from the oppressive Roman authorities. Instead God sent them a spiritual leader to rescue them from their sins and despite the fact that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, performed incredible miracles, even raised people from the dead, He was not what the Jews had expected so they considered Him a threat. Thus He was put to death."

And

"We do believe Islam is at war with the Christian West.”
With that comment, Paul Weyrich and William S. Lind have broken through a taboo in the entire discussion of the war on terrorism.

Those who say the threat comes only from "Islamic fundamentalism” or "Islamic extremism” miss the whole point of the terrorist attacks, Weyrich and Lind argue. In fact, those who believe the terrorist enemy is confined only to a few fanatics "misportray the nature of Islam itself.”

"War against the unbeliever is as central a doctrine and practice of Islam as the Virgin birth, the Trinity and Christ’s resurrection are central to Christianity,” declares the Free Congress booklet.

http://www.middleeastinfo.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=XForum&file=post&action=reply&fid=1&tid=1390&repquote=r%7C20977

This Muslim believes war against people who are not Muslims is wrong and I believe that God loves you no matter what your religion is or even if you do not have a religion.

What Paul also forgets to mention is that he helped Islamic terrorists when he was involved with the Committee for a Free Afghanistan, and that he also helped Central American Death Squads and Pinochet.

[noonwitch]

1. The Virgin Birth isn't all that important of a doctrine to christianity

Especially in light of invitro fertilazation. The resurrection is the most important of the three he mentioned, but it is still possible to reject all three and still be a christian, if one believes and practices the essential teachings of Jesus, such as those laid out in the Sermon on the Mountain.

[MadHound]

2. Weyrich is an asshat who doesn't even know his own religion

Sorry, but the Jews DIDN'T kill Christ, the Romans did. The Jews were perfectly within their legal rights to execute Christ if they had wanted to, by stoning, the age old Jewish method of execution. Instead, they turned Christ over to the Romans for Roman justice. And that very political justice was visited upon Christ with a very political execution, by crucifixtion. The Jews had nothing to do with it.

I hate Christians who have to have their own religion explained to them.

[madrchsod]

6. the "elders" or leaders of Israel

decided that since Christ was pointing out their financial dealings with the Romans, so there had to be something done about him. the elders decided to paint Christ as the "king" of Israel/Jews thus putting Christ on the Roman hit list. so a deal was worked out between the elders and the Romans thus Christ was hung on the cross.

[Behind the Aegis]

11. Still the Romans

While that may be true, the fact is, that the Romans still made the decision and acted upon said decision to execute Jesus.

[RBHam]

15. That's not true...

Yeheshua ben Youseff was the hereditary king of Judea...

Read Dr. Robert Eisenman's work on the Dead Sea scrolls. The most suppressed scholarly work ever...

[starroute]

3. Who is William S. Lind?

He may be one of Weyrich's guys, but he seems to be among those conservatives who are talking reasonable sense on Iraq:

http://antiwar.com/lind

Between now and January, the Bush administration will have to decide whether or not to take the last dignified exit from Iraq. That is, to announce before the Iraqi elections that we will be leaving soon after them. If Bush and his neocon handlers miss this opportunity, our only choice will be to remain in Iraq until we are driven out in a humiliating defeat. Like the kid who knows he has to eat his spinach, we will be better off pretending to choose the inevitable.

<snip>

With other fools throughout history, the neocons' answer to defeat will probably be escalation. What I had predicted as a likely "October Surprise" may instead be a Christmas present: a joint Israeli-American air and missile attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

<snip>

Under the cover of bad weather, which winter often provides, Iran could strike suddenly into Iraq with several armored divisions. Our forces are scattered throughout Iraq, and they cannot mass rapidly because Iraqi guerillas control the roads. With skill that is not beyond what Iran might manage (the Iranian army is better than Saddam's was) and a bit of luck, they could roll us up before American airpower could get the clear weather it needs to be effective. America would not only lose a war in Iraq; it would lose an army.

At that point the analogy I have suggested from the outset would have come to full fruition: Athens' Syracuse expedition. Like the Syracuse expedition, a victory in Iraq would have given America little in the war against its real enemies, Islamic non-state forces. But a defeat that resulted in the loss of an entire army would be a catastrophe.

[ck4829]

4. He is one of Weyrich's Goons. He is against the war, but that is

the only good trait you will find about him. Lind is a Racist Anti-Semitic Neo-Nazi lover.

[starroute]

9. Another one like Pat Buchanan, then

I'd thought Weyrich was closer to the Neocons than to the Paleocons. It's interesting to know that there's that split.

[Dr.Phool]

5. Throw some gas on the fire.

I grew up in a fundamentalist christian family. I started having doubts about it in my late teens. I'm now an outspoken atheist.

In the Near East, around the time of Jesus, there were entire libraries written about people and life in that area. There is NOT ONE SINGLE WORD written about or refering to Jesus, other than the New Testament, who's first books were written 50-70 years after the supposed fact. You can find a wealth of information on the Secular Web, at www.infidels.org. They have old and modern libraries, magazines, etc. There's several years worth of reading there

I agree with the quotes from Thomas Edison, "All religion is bunk". And one of our Founding Fathers, Tom Paine, "Man will not be free until the last monarch is strangled with the entrails of the last priest".

[megatherium]

7. The first books of the New Testament

are certain letters of Paul, written about 25 years after Jesus. His first letter to the Corinthians was written before 60, and includes a direct statement that Jesus appeared to various of his followers after his death (chapter 15). These appearances include the one Paul claimed to have had, on the road to Damascus: Jesus appeared to him but was not visible to his companions.

Interestingly, Paul hardly mentions the miracles of Jesus except the Resurrection. Paul doesn't mention the virgin birth, or the empty tomb. The Gospels mention that Jesus' own family didn't believe in him, until after his death. This is curious, if Jesus did the sorts of miracles the Gospels portray him as performing. Apparently, something happened immediately after his death that convinced his disciples that he survived death, in some sort of paranormal or supernatural sense. So no one made much note of Jesus during his life; only after Christianity began to spread did outside writers make note of him and his followers. (Josephus, towards the end of the first century, mentions Jesus and he mentions James as his brother.)

[starroute]

8. Well, not quite

There are good reasons for believing that the letters of Paul concern a purely mythological Jesus. There is nothing in them which would indicate they were describing a real person who lived in a particular earthly location. The few events of the later Jesus-story which they do mention, like the crucifixion, were apparently regarded by Paul as having occurred on the celestial level and been revealed to him personally in the form of visions.

The supposed mention of Jesus by Josephus is widely regarded as a later interpolation. It speaks of Jesus in language that a Jew like Josephus would not have used. And it was never mentioned by Christians in the early centuries when they were desperate for outside support of their claims that their god alone had actually walked the earth.

The first clearcut indications of the gospel-story Jesus date from about 130-150 AD -- and the Gnostics of the time were quick to denounce those and reassert the primacy of the mystery-cult Jesus. It was not until after 180 AD that the historicizing tendency became dominant, and the gospels were apparently put into canonical form at about the same time.

[megatherium]

10. Paul wrote about the Risen Jesus,

who sounds like a mythological being, but it is clear from Paul that Jesus was a near-contemporary who lived in Palestine before the Resurrection. Again: Paul wrote in the 50s (he doesn't mention fun things like the destruction of the Temple in 70; tradition holds he was martyred in Rome in the late 60s).

I'll grant you about Josephus. (The best explanation I've heard is that Josephus refered to Jesus as a wise man whose followers still revere him, but later this was embellished to say that Jesus was the messiah and that Jesus performed great miracles. But I recall that Josephus elsewhere in passing refers to James as the brother of Jesus.)

Everything I've read, skeptical scholarship as well as Christian, seems to agree that the Gospels were already in their final form by 70 (Mark) to maybe 110 (Luke-Acts). I would be curious where your much later dates (130-180) come from.

I think the most reasonable conclusion from history is that Jesus was a real person, and his followers believed he appeared to them after his death. Of course, we cannot prove the Resurrection was real using the tools of history. But anyone basing their disbelief of Christianity on the notion that Jesus was purely mythological is skating on thin ice. There's a lot of clap-trap written about Christianity on both sides of the equation.

[starroute]

13. Here's a detailed chronology from the skeptical point of view

http://members.iinet.net.au/~quentinj/Christianity/Gospel-Timeline.html

The author is one of those who believes that Christianity began as a Gnostic mystery cult and only gradually was taken over by a more populist brand of historical literalism.

There are additional materials elsewhere on his site, such as a detailed discussion of first century authors who might have been expected to make reference to a historical Jesus but did not.

[megatherium]

14. You're relying on G. A. Wells,

who arrives at much later dates for the Gospels than do most scholars (including skeptical scholars), to support his claim that Jesus was only mythological. His critics claim that he is an amateur in NT studies; he does not have academic credentials in this area (he is a professor of German), he doesn't publish in the usual academic journals for NT studies, and serious scholars do not cite his work.

[LiberalEconomist]

12. Ahem....

Muslims also believe in the virgin birth of Jesus. Matter of fact, the virgin Mary, or Maryum, is highly revered in the Islamic world, especially among Muslim women.