Crackpot Bible scholarship

What is the craziest thing you’ve ever heard someone say about the Bible?

My top three would be

  1. Jeffery Dougherty. A time-traveller (!) who travelled back in time to discover that Paul is the Antichrist.

  2. Dave Sim. A Canadian comic book artist who follows a made up Abrahamic religion which combines Judaism, Christianity and Islam. He claims that both testaments alongside the Quran are the word of God, and that contradictions in and between the scriptures are the result of a conflict between God and Yahweh, who is an evil, female deity called Yoowhoo. His only evidence is his own misogyny.

  3. Fernando Conde Torrens (a shout out to @archicastor1). Believes Christianity was invented at the council of Nicea.

Other nonsense:

  • Fiery Flying Serpents are dinosaurs. (A much more simpler explanation is that they are spitting cobras)
  • The Bible mentions unicorns. (As opposed to Auroches)
  • Paul never mentions the crucifixion (a brazen falsehood promoted by "Rational"Wiki)
  • The Trinity originited in Paganism. (In spite of the preponderance of overwhelming evidence indicating Proto-Trinitarian ideas were common amongst 1st century Jews, who identified the Logos as part of God, yet also separate, far to similar to Johannine ideas to be a coincidence)
  • Jesus was a hermaphrodite.
  • Jesus was a Paedophile.
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  1. Fernando Conde Torrens: for his crackpot scholarship, his series of unfalsifiable hypothesis, his mental gymnastics, his violation of Occam’s razor, his insults towards amyone who disagrees with him, his unsourced statements and his “buy my book or don’t say anything, you ignorant fool”.

  2. Acharya S: there is no need to explain why.

  3. Michael Sherlock: for… do I really need to speak about this?

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Just about every attempt to calculate the date of the Rapture. Ever.

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FYI, it’s next week

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Oh man, I have so many “rapture anxiety” stories from my childhood. Left Behind messed me up.

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I was way past that when the Left Behind series came out, but Late Great Planet Earth was released when I was in college, and it had about the same effect on me.

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Some of my grandmother’s Chick tracts really left an impression in my supple young memory.

I hope not as I have a vacation planned week after next. At least I bought the trip insurance.

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This subreddit is full of Bad Religious Scholarship if you’re interested:

If you want to see some BAD scholarship, then go to r/atheism, the place where Richard Carrier is the ultimate authority.

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Hmmm. Already thinking about which bills I don’t need to bother paying.

Wait a minute! If I’m technically late on a water bill, do I get left behind?

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And not DM Murdock?

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No, but they say she was a brilliant woman, even though they mock her favourite movie (Zeitgeist) for how bad it is. Oh, I almost forgot, Robert Price is the other ultimate authority.

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Oh boy, it’s about time someone made this thread lol. Basically the idea that Paul thought Jesus was some sort of celestial being crucified by demons in outer space before the world existed (a central tenet of mythicism), the idea that Jesus is based on Horus or any other pagan deity, the work of Dennis R. MacDonald, almost anything that has to do with the Council of Nicaea or Constantine, and probably endless other theories that are invented on the daily basis.

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And they wonder why real scholars don’t take them seriously.

Other stuff

  • Isaiah 66:1 means the earth is flat because footstools are flat not round. (From YHWH’s Flat Earth Ministry)
  • The Bible predicted Brexit.
  • Israel means Isis Ra El.
  • Muhammad is prophesied in the Song of Songs.
  • Genesis 1:1 contains the secret message ‘Bar Aleph’, which means son of God (It actually means son of an ox), therefore Jesus is prophesied.
  • The Bible correctly predicted that the Heart thinks (seriously), and that this is an amazing example of foreknowledge. (The Egyptians apparently had this divine foreknowledge as well)
  • Planet X would collide with the earth on September 23rd based on Biblical prophecy.
  • Ezekiel saw a spaceship.
  • The Ruwach in Genesis 1:2 is a UFO.
  • The universe is not infinitely expanding because the Heavens and the Highest Heavens cannot contain God.
  • The Serpent of Eden was a Reptilian.
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I must agree, my friend. This is some weird stuff.

Oh please, not that one.

Zakir Naik’s favourite argument.

2015 or 2017?

In ANE cosmology, the sky (Heavens) was the rest of the visible universe.

Oh brother…

Carrier and Doherty in a nutshell, but I prefer that to Fernando Conde Torrens.

The other day, I found a comment on YT that said “It is a proven FACT that Jesus is a copy of other gods”. Also, I’ve found a lot of videos where their main source is… Tom Harpur’s The Pagan Christ.

At least MacDonald is a real scholar, unlike Atwill and others.

Oh my…

Oh, I just remembered something. @Reggie_O_Donoghue the other day, I visited Conde’s website, where he keeps a written record of ALL discussions (including the exact date) he has had with people who disagree with him (Antonio Piñero, Aletheia, a historian who goes by the name of Xabier, etc). Someone asked him about his thoughts on Joseph Atwill. He said that Atwill’s conclusion is the same one anyone would arrive to after doing some proper study.

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