Yeshua before 30 AD

[WhiteWings]

Kudos go to DeeDee for finding this one!

http://30ce.com/
Use bar on the left to navigate.

Please don't believe the hell myth. It is a terrible fiction created by the church that has been attributed to Yeshua. In the myth, Yeshua is portrayed as a tyrant who requires that people swear allegiance to him or he will lock them into a place of unrelenting, agonizing torment for eternity. That is not the Yeshua who speaks of love, compassion, judging not, and forgiving in the New Testament. Yeshua doesn't mention such a place and certainly never threatened anyone if they chose not to grow spiritually by following his teaching. There is no word for such a place in Aramaic, Greek, or Hebrew. It just didn't exist.

The Jewish Yeshua and those in the Jerusalem church, especially James, Yeshua's brother, held a traditional conception of the Messiah. The Messiah would be a man, perhaps descended from David, who would be anointed by God to rout the occupying army, the Romans, and establish an earthly kingdom of God (or Kingdom of Israel). It would be presided over by God's elect, but God would be the supreme ruler. It would be a theocracy. Some envisioned a new Kingdom of Heaven separate from the earth.

"Salvation," then, meant being saved from Roman occupation and being part of the kingdom of God; there was no conversion involved with the Jewish messiah. It was salvation for Jews only. Yeshua was thoroughly Jewish, was bringing a message to the Jews exclusively (Matthew 10:5-6 and 15:24), had Jewish disciples

After Yeshua's death, his followers were sure he would return within a few days or weeks to rout the Romans and establish the Jewish theocracy.

Salvation for Yeshua meant growing to be compassionate, loving, non-judgmental, peaceful, and forgiving. The person who grew to spiritual maturity would display those qualities, and would thus live in the kingdom of God that was within.

Paul still had no conception of a hell of everlasting torment or a heaven elsewhere than on earth. People who were not "saved" would simply die. They wouldn't have everlasting life. They would perish and never be heard of or seen again. They would not go to a hell; they would just be dead.

By the second century, however, the church leaders, in their zeal to convert people to become followers of Yeshua, read references to fire and judgment in the Bible to mean that people who did not convert to their version of Yeshua's theology would not simply die--they would be thrown into a fire that would burn eternally. They based this belief on the pagan descriptions of a hell at the time.

The first adoption of the pagan beliefs by a Christian writer was in the Apocalypse of Peter, probably written between 125 and 150 CE that remained in various church lists as a canonical text for centuries..............

Much more good stuff on that site!

[DeeDee]

        

[WhiteWings]

http://30ce.com/mithras.htm

Can someone explain what's written there?
It seems to say Paul/church borrowed a lot from Mithraism???
But to me it seems Matthew, Mark, Luke and John write about teh same things as attributed to Mithraism...

Also read: http://30ce.com/paulstatements.htm

[jabcat]

I've looked at this site several times before, and although there is some good stuff on it (seemingly scripturally accurate) I found there to also be some things on there that were, oh, kind of "out there", sort of opinions I guess that didn't seem really based on scripture.   They apparently don't believe in hell, but in my humble opinion, read much of it with discernment.  God's blessing, James.