Zeus is the God of gods. Everyone knows that. No god can be above Zeus.

lol

well abra that is totally your choice.

Abra- and an excellent example of a god who fathered many "immaculate" children by mortal women....

there is just one thing zeus is gone forever and ever and Christ is not.

Hi fellow Debaters,
Sorry, I'm alternating my accounting homework with my JSH fun.

Miles, thanks for remembering. And may all the blessing you bestow be returned in kind.

Feralcaltlady - Hi nice to see ya. It's best not to get too excited over these debates. The fun is in evaluating others ideas, opinions and then making a rebuttel with something to back it up - evidence or logical conclusions. I love these discussions, so much to learn.

Spider, I visited your link and what I have to say, I don't think Skidoo will like too much.

Skidoo - I also checked out your sites, thanks. I apologize because my last post was done quickly and I didn't fully explain my idea of discussion.

If I understand correctly, you base your original post on the studies of one person. She makes some pretty big leaps and without reading her full book, I can't be sure how she has done this. So let me just ask, if you have a copy of her book, has she properly made cititaions, bibliogrophy, or reference to the works she explored?

As I said before, my own research has led me to some conclusions very similiar to those of the website that Spider offered. Though I didn't read it all, I skimmed a few parts, and found agreement with a some.

First ANYTIME I see a scholar connecting December 25 with the birth of Jesus, I'm immediately suspect.

There is no known birth date of Jesus. Constantine chose that date, he figured it gave Christians a reason (and a date) to celebrate the birth of their savior, and it coinsided with the pagan ritual of the high solictice celebration. All part of his plan to unite the people with regards to similiar religious formats.

The other issue is with Freemason's. I've studied them pretty extensively, as my family history includes Freemasons until my parents generation. However, what I'm curious about is how the author (your author)de-volved Freemasons back to the time of Christ. At the moment I don't have a link to provide for my research as it was done pre-www. However, archeology produced some newer evidence regarding the Old Testament era in Egypt.

It included information about the 'masons' of the time. Prior to this information, it was generally believed that all the workers were slaves. It was discovered that the masons were 'freemen' and signs indicate they had a 'quild' (translation equivalent). Now the author may have trans-scribed some documents on her own to make the link, in which case she will have stated the documents from which she makes her conclusions. Even the transcsription of ancient texts require notation. If she comes by her information through some other logical course, she will have demonstrated that also.

Now here's what I meant to proposed in my first responce to you.
Since you have chosen the story of Horus to review, let's follow the path of feralcat and do our own research.

The web contains translations of original documents from that period as well as historian takes on those translations.

From these we can make our comparisons between the comparisons given.

YOU ALL GAME?

I have to finish my accounting, so no reaearch till really late, or maybe tomorrow for me. But if your up for it I'll be back.

YEA!

Feral, you mush play fair - the Bible is only the basis for comparisons in this discussion. Using it in any other mannor might be considered 'preaching'.

SPIDER? - got that! You wanna play reasearch with us?

Even the Hebraic name of G-d, "Yahweh," was taken from the Egyptian "IAO."
Now this statement is hard to believe when they found the paleo Hebrew letters YHWh (Yahweh) in New Mexico...

The Los Lunas Decalogue Stone bears a very regular inscription carved into the flat face of a large boulder on the side of Hidden Mountain, near Los Lunas, New Mexico, about 35 miles south of Albuquerque. The inscription is interpreted by some to be an abridged version of the Decalogue or Ten Commandments in a form of Paleo-Hebrew. A letter group resembling the tetragrammaton YHWH, or "Yahweh," makes four appearances. The stone is controversial in that some claim the inscription is Pre-Columbian, and therefore proof of early Semitic contact with the Americas.






The first recorded mention of the stone is in 1933, when professor Frank Hibben, an archaeologist from the University of New Mexico, saw it. Hibben was led to the stone by an unnamed guide who claimed to have found it as a boy in the 1880s. The 1880s date of discovery is important to those who believe that the stone was inscribed by a lost tribe of Israel. The Paleo-Hebrew script was unknown to scholars in the 1880s, making a forgery at that time unlikely, and thus allegedly proving the stone's antiquity. [citation needed] However, the Paleo-Hebrew script is practically identical to the Phoenician script, which was known at the time, thus not precluding the possibility of fraud. One argument against the stone's antiquity is its apparent use of modern Hebrew punctuation, though fringe epigraphist Barry Fell argues that the punctuation is consistent with antiquity.[1]

Most modern scholars question much of Hibben's research today because of his work with alleged pre-Clovis sites. In at least two separate incidents, Hibbens fabricated some or all of his archaeological data to support his pre-Clovis migration theory. [2][3] These missteps call the rest of his work into question, and, for many, undermine the validity of his claims about the Los Lunas Decalogue Stone.[4]

Controversial archaeolinguist Cyrus Gordon once proposed that the Los Lunas Decalogue is in fact a Samaritan mezuzah, though this is hotly contested.[5]

Though the stone is sometimes cited as evidence for the existence of the Nephites in Mormon archaeology, FARMS appears to have no scholarship dealing with the site.

Because of the stone's weight of over 80 tons, it was never moved to a museum or laboratory for study and safekeeping. Many visitors have cleaned the stone inscriptions over the years, likely destroying any possibility for scientific analysis of the inscriptions's patina. Nevertheless, comparing it to a modern inscription nearby, geologist G. E. Morehouse, a colleague of Barry Fell, estimates that the inscription could be between 500 and 2000 years old. [6]

The name Yahweh is not even used much today.


Also as for Yahshua having a brother James(Yahcob) this article seems to say he does... Shalom... Miles



Update—Finds or Fakes?

Forgery Bombshell

May 16, 2006

The ossuary inscribed "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus" has recently been studied by Professor Wolfgang E. Krumbein, a world-renowned authority. He has reached startling conclusions that will change the debate over this highly controversial artifact. Printed below is a summary of Professor Krumbein's report; click the following links for the full text of the report and the accompanying photographs.


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As this is being written, Israeli antiquities collector Oded Golan is being tried in criminal court for forging the now-famous James ossuary inscription ("James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus"). A new report by a leading German scientist, however, may blow the case out of the water.

According to Professor Wolfgang E. Krumbein, of Oldenburg University, Germany, a well-known expert in geology, geochemistry and microbiology, "We can state with certainty that a period of 50-100 years, at least, was necessary for the formation of the specific composition of patina whose traces were identified inside the ossuary inscription."

Krumbein also examined the patina on the ossuary far from the inscription. His conclusion:

"Patina sampled from the surface of the ossuary, far away from the inscription, was found to be identical to the microscopic traces of patina, which I found inside the ossuary inscription and sites sloping from the surface into the inscription grooves (and no indication of any kind was found of any adhesive on this patina). Therefore, we must conclude that the patina formed over the entire ossuary and the remains of patina in the inscription area were formed over the same period of time."

What about the examination and reports by Tel Aviv University Professor Yuval Goren and his colleague Avner Ayalon of the Geological Survey of Israel on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA), concluding without doubt that the inscription is a modern forgery?

Professor Krumbein directly addresses their reports:

"The conclusions noted in the reports by Goren, Ayalon and their colleagues, originate from a series of errors, biases, mistaken premises, use of inappropriate methodology, mistaken geochemistry, defective error control, reliance on unconfirmed data, disregard of information (such as the cleaning and preservation actions performed [on the ossuary], and the use of a comparative isotope methodology despite the fact that the [James ossuary] inscription fail[s] to meet the cumulative prerequisite conditions for such tests and comparisons." Each charge is documented in detail in Krumbein's report.

Professor Krumbein is considered one of the world's leading experts on stone chemistry and biology. He has been a visiting professor at numerous universities, including Harvard, and has conducted post-doctorate research at Hebrew University. He is the recipient of two honorary doctorates. He has edited 15 scientific books and has published over 400 articles in scholarly journals. He was recommended to undertake this study by Professor Steven Weiner, the director of the Kimmel Center for Archaeological Science at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, who was asked for a recommendation by Golan's attorney, Lior Bringer.

Under the heading "Disregard of Relevant Information," Krumbein noted that Yuval Goren and Avner Ayalon ignored the fact that some members of the IAA team also observed original patina in the inscription, patina that Krumbein himself observed. As stated in his report, "I found traces of natural patina inside the ossuary inscription in at least three different sites of the inscription (in the first and last sections of the inscription)." He pointedly added (an apparent reference to observations of other members of the IAA team), "Traces of ancient patina were found inside the area of the inscription... not only by us."

Professor Krumbein had available to him the photographs taken of the ossuary at the time the inscription was initially published in BAR, the photographs taken at the Royal Ontario Museum after the ossuary had broken into five pieces during transit from Israel, photographs taken by the IAA after the ossuary was confiscated, and photographs he himself took when he examined the ossuary in 2005. From a comparison of these photographs, Professor Krumbein found that "the ossuary inscription recently was altered and contaminated by the IAA and/or police." Professor Krumbein notes that "Traces of such [original] patina are evident in photographs of several letters taken in 2002."

Krumbein compared pictures taken in 2002 (published in BAR) with photographs subsequently used in presentations by Goren. In the 2002 photographs there is hardly any filling inside the letters, filling that Goren called the "inscription coating" and more sarcastically (implying a forgery) as the James Bond. This, according to Goren was the paste or adhesive (the bond) used by the forgers to cover the evidence of a modern forged engraving. Krumbein reported that later photographs, taken in 2003 by the IAA, do "show the presence of a 'granular' coating [the inscription coating or James Bond]." On Krumbein's examination in 2005, however, he "saw no traces of such granular coating inside these letters, because these had been recently removed by the IAA/police." Krumbein then observes, "This could be taken as a documentation of deliberate manipulation of the inscription patina by the IAA and/or police during the custody period."

The Krumbein report goes on: While the ossuary was in the custody of he IAA "The inscription and surrounding areas was contaminated using silicon-like red material, preventing more comprehensive tests to confirm or disprove previous test results." The red material was apparently used to make a cast of the inscription. The remains of this material are visible in many of the photographs Krumbein took in 2005.

The Krumbein report also accuses the IAA of ignoring exculpatory evidence. In his report for the IAA, Professor Goren states: "The inscription has been engraved or cleaned over its entire length in the modern age." In their scientific publication Goren and his colleagues acknowledge that the inscription was "freshly cleaned." The Krumbein report charges that "The IAA completely ignored these statements and specifically ignored the ramifications of the cleaning," which would account for the presence of the inscription coating.

Goren and Ayalon conducted oxygen isotope tests on the inscription coating (or James Bond), which in their report is the basis for concluding that the inscription is a forgery. The Krumbein report states that "the isotopic tests conducted on the ossuary inscription patina are irrelevant and can provide no indication of the dating of the inscription production, because the item fails to meet the prerequisite conditions, which are necessary if such tests should bear any scientific meaning." The Krumbein report explains at great length why this is so.

Professor Goren also condemned the ossuary inscription because he found microfossils of nanoplankton (coccoliths) in the inscription coating that, in Professor Goren's words, "are abundant in marine-derived sedimentary rocks (such as chalk), but are nonexistent in terrain-derived sediments. This phenomenon is unique to the inscription coating and was never observed in the other patina samples."

Krumbein directly contradicts Professor Goren:

"Contrary to Professor Goren's opinion, marine microfossils, unobservable to the naked eye, are commonly found in the patina on stone artifacts from the Jerusalem region and were found by us on the ossuary also at places far away from the inscription. Not only do they not indicate a forgery, their presence in the patina reinforces the arguments supporting the authenticity of such items...Over 150 years of literature it was established that all kinds of microfossil remains are permanently blown by wind and storm into the atmosphere and deposited on exposed surfaces and even penetrate into caves."

Professor Krumbein concludes:

"The patina covering several of the inscription letters is no less authentic than the patina covering the other parts of the ossuary, which, according to the IAA team, is authentic."

Professor Krumbein also analyzes the Yehoash (or Jehoash) inscription and the ornamentation on a stone oil lamp, both of which have been charged to be forgeries. In these cases, too, Professor Krumbein finds evidence supporting the authenticity of the inscription and the ornamentation.

Click the following links for the full text of the report and the accompanying photographs.

Cat lady-

I don't understand- How is Zeus any more "gone" than Jesus?

Both continue to have their adherents although I will certainly grant you that Jesus is more popular (has more current worshippers) at this time in history...

Is that what you mean?

There are paralles between the Prophet Eiljah and Jesus both raised the dead and made food mulitplied. Eijljah with flour and oil and Jesus with bread and fish.

I believe that zeus is a myth. And I don't think there is denying that Jesus was a living man, or at least I don't think that was in dispute....

Miles - about the ossuary - I noticed the date for that article is in 2006.

I remember watching a history channel 'documentary'regarding this issue, but I can't remember the date. At the end of the documentary they had pretty much concluded that the ossuary was found, 'adjusted' and then replaced to be found by the research team.

I think the show began with the discovery,all the who's where's and such and then went into the various historical discussions of why this piece was in question. You know, based on where it was found, the commonality of the names, yadda yadda.

This was then followed by the research that led to discrediting the finders - which ultimately led to finding the actual person who commited the offence.

I'll try to remember to check with thehistorychannel.com tomorrw to see if I can find that segmant. The date is what I'm interested in. Not sure if it preceeds your article or if it was the culmination of the findings of this case.

feralcatlady wrote:
" I believe that zeus is a myth. And I don't think there is denying that Jesus was a living man, or at least I don't think that was in dispute....."

I believe that Jesus was just a man too. The mythical part was the claim that he was a god.

Abracadabra,

"I believe that Jesus was just a man too. The mythical part was the claim that he was a god. "

I agree. Jesus wasn't a god, Jesus is God. We aren't in the same book, but somehow we are still on the same page.

The only god that you can know with absolute certainty is the god of pantheism. The only god that doesn’t require faith or books of any kind is the real living god of pantheism. By pure definition the god of pantheism cannot be denied. To deny the god of pantheism is to deny your own existence.

Everything else is idol worship.

Abracadabra,

You are wrong, Jesus offers proof of his existance.

To the contrary there are many items both writen and archeological finds that predate christ that in fact point to his coming, Like the existence of the Hebrew state. The Law that was given to Moses that still exsist. The remains of the temple that was built by Harod. To simply say that the Bible is not so is like saying that the Romans are a myth, There is the arch of Titus showing the Jews being taken into captivity by the Romans wich was also for told by Jesus, Of course those who thought that Jesus was a myth back then or in the day of Titus would not have listned to his words to flee Jerusalem when the Romans broak into the Temple. However one can beleave what they will just as in that day, and both with see the results of there decissions weather for good and ones favor or not. One thing is certain, Time will tell the end of this story

then again i'll say that is the beauty of North America
if i want to believe that the pigs can fly, and that Santa Claus is real, i'm entitled to it.
nevertheless, it does not mean it's real.
ergo, i will keep myself out of here because i have found that anybody has the right to express their opinion.
so let me be happy believing that the pigs can fly, and the hell with the rest.

Spider wrote:
“You are wrong, Jesus offers proof of his existance.”

Jesus never even claimed to be God, his disciples claimed then when they wrote about him and distorted his teachings.

They claim that Jesus was an incarnation of the God of Abraham. Therefore they are claiming the Jesus was the same entity that drowned all of humanity because they displeased him. He is also the same God that tells everyone, “Believe in me or go to hell”.

Not a very nice god.

People often claim that this god’s love is unconditional, but it’s full of conditions not the least of which is that you must believe in this god or go to hell. He’s not even nice enough to offer you the option of simply ceasing to exist if you don’t want to play his silly games.

Compare that with the truly unconditional love of the true God of this universe. She created you from herself. Her lover for you is completely unconditional. When you die you will return to her just as you came from her. She doesn’t care what you believe. It makes no difference. Her love is unconditional.

She is far superior to a mythical god that places conditions on his love and acceptance.

Her proof is in her nature. No words needed.

But like Miquel says. You’re free to believe whatever you like. Even God doesn’t care what you believe. She loves you just the way you are even if you do unjustly punish little children.

James my friend u r just making a wrong statement. Jesus proclaimed himself as the son of God. that is the basis of my faith,
if that was not truth i would be let's say atheist.
the fact that my Lord is God's son, is what makes kneel before him to pray evry night.
and then again i failed to myself joining this.

What if I proclaimed myself to be the "son of god"? Some would believe it and if they kept perpetuating that myth sooner or later I would have a huge following! With todays technology I'm sure I could come up with a few tricks to make people believe anything!
I'm not picking on anyone or bashing their faith. I just cannot have blind faith in any deity. Just because it's written in a book doesn't "prove" anything to me. They're all myths and fairy tales as far as I'm concerned.