The church fathers tampered with the New Testament books

submitted by Vulptex from self.Christianity

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[–]HugodeCrevellier 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

Christianity is an amalgam , to begin with.

It consists of Platonic and Neoplatonic philosophical ideas, about a pure universal consciousness, 'The One', onto which was tacked (somehow!) a mythology surrounding some primitive tribal deity, 'Yahweh'.

The two conceptions are not just radically different, they're essentially incompatible.

And yet, in Christianity, they're conflated, with Christians unwittingly(?) associating the Platonic 'The One', a universal consciousness, with the mythology of some shockingly evil tribal deity from the Middle East.

[–]Vulptex[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

That is not a doctrine I have found anywhere, other than Unitarian Universalists. Although certain aspects of Platonism greatly influenced later Christians (the obsession with "no non-procreative sexual acts" is Platonic, for example).

The Old Testament is not actually incompatible, but its allegorical intentions are constantly demonized so people don't see that. If you look back in history you can see how people's understandings of it turned more and more literal over time.

[–]HugodeCrevellier 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

The primitive tribal deity in the 'Old Testament' is grotesque from its very inception.

Hellenism grew much more allegorical, with an interesting and useful mythology.

And Hellenists, importantly, were syncretic, accepting other cultures' own symbolic representations of the universal concepts they themselves celebrated.

One of the aspects of Judaism that made it necessarily evil is a foundational/dogmatic demand for hostility towards other cultures/religions.

This also infected Christianity, unfortunately, and Islam, condemning them all to be unethical, not to say murderous, basically by dogma.

[–]Vulptex[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The Old Testament was never meant to be literal.