MAMEWorld Forums - The Loony Bin

It's a clever site, but they can't just keep repeating the same rational for every argument (that no evidence exists, therefore it's not true)... or can they? As the site develops and improves, I hope they do better research to support their findings with actual historic references for the origins of the belief they question.

I used to study the Bible as a text of history... and it was VERY eye opening.

For example:

The Virgin Birth... that website lists this entry as incomplete but it does state "According to the Christian Gospels, Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, thus having no natural father." I hope they fix that in the end, since no ORIGINAL written gospel says this. When describing Mary, The original ancient writings use a word that has two meanings... one meaning a sexual virgin, and the other meaning ANY young woman (the closest modern equivalent would have been the word 'nubile'... which both means a marriageable young woman or an attractive young woman, depending on its context). In translation, the duality of this meaning is lost... and the choice of which translation to keep was a very conscious debate.

The Catholic Church's Council of Constantinople II in 553 AD debated this issue, and VOTED that the meaning to keep is a sexual virgin, but it was a very close vote, passing by only a margin of two votes. But it passed none the less, and so the Church, by majority vote, declared Canon Law that Mary was a sexual virgin, and not just a young woman, and added the text that, being a virgin, the father must therefore have been divine intervention, and therefore God, and anyone denying this is a heretic, leaving no room for further debate on the matter. The entire debate of the counsel was recorded, and can be reviewed. The push for her to be of divine conception was a political one, since the church up until that canon was divided between chastity and premarital promiscuity, the supporters of chastity feeling that it avoids the illegitimate origin of Jesus and the analysis of lineage for the blood-father, and the supporters of the other feeling that divine conception was too big of a leap of faith to expect followers to accept at the time, and would erode their following in ridicule. This decision actually divided the church into two followings, those who went along with the vote, and those who refused to accept it. Of course, those who refused to accept it were, by declaration, heretics, and thus persecuted into extinction. Religious teachers like to ignore this history, and just say the Gospels declare it so... but they didn't. Not originally. Not before 553 AD, when they were re-translated to be in accord with the new Canon Law... decided upon by the vote of men.