Re: mr. antolini & other thoughts

AntiUtopia (AntiUtopia@aol.com)
Mon, 08 Dec 1997 14:15:30 -0500 (EST)

In a message dated 97-12-08 03:14:44 EST, you write:

<< My point is not to attack religion, only a blind faith. I suppose that's
bad enough,
 though.
 
 Brendan
  >>

heh...

blind faith is what you're demonstrating in your sources :)  If there's no
copies of a text, or no quotes of it in ancient documents, or any reference at
all to it or its contents in ancient documents, you can't "prove" the
existence of the text.  Hearsay isn't proof.  

Back then, as now, it was Nigh On Impossible to completely eradicate all
copies of any manuscript--especially documents so Copied and ReCopied as the
New Testament (or the Hebrew Scriptures for that matter--The Dead Sea Scrolls
are proof of that.  The oldest copies of the Hebrew Scriptures we had until
their discovery this century were from about 900 AD.  Imagine that...copies of
the books of Isaiah, Deuteronomy, etc, as well as documents relating to the
Qumran community layed around for over 1900 years in clay pots before being
discovered by a sheperd boy throwing a rock into a cave.  You think something
as radical as Jesus' homosexuality is going to be easily hidden?).  There are
literally Thousands of copies, as well as fragments and quotations scattered
about, of the Christian Scriptures.   

I mean, why don't you apply that type of scepticism to the Vedic materials?
What has been left out of them, or added spuriously?  Brahman as a later
addition and corruption of the ancient documents, added as Christian
missonaries carried the gospel into India as early as the 1st century AD
(according to church tradition since the 4th century AD)?  Abraham as the
basis of the existence of Brahman (which, I think, would be incorrect to
identify with a single person anyhow...)?  

If we're gonna guess, we can guess anything we want.  

There's good scholarship out there and bad.  Anything that makes radical
claims is probably bad....  

Jim