Subject: Is it a Fact that the Biblical Background is Original?

Below is how I now understand salvation and Christianity and why I'm not worried about a future life in a Heaven or Hell. You will not find this taught in church supported schools (Bible colleges or conservative seminaries) nor mentioned in Sunday School classes as these facts would totally be counter productive in any development of faith.

As a non-Christian (one who was never saved (John Calvin) or one who lost his salvation (Jacobus Arminius)…I’ll leave that up to the theologians to debate) I feel very fulfilled with my life and find the concepts of eternal reward or punishment meaningless now in light of the environment. But just to clarify my view, below is the central reason why I left Christianity.

Some Major Biblical Facts

A. Every major Greek theological term and concept the New Testament and Early Church used to create his or her religious doctrine was taken directly from the Classical “pagan” world. Here are a few: God (Greek: Theos) Church, Faith, Prayer, Salvation, Gospel, Heaven, Hell, Sin, Soul, Spirit, Demon, Forgiveness, Sacrifice, Blood Atonement, the concept of “god” as father, divine punishments and rewards and so on. These terms and concepts were loaded words pregnant with meaning from the so-called “pagan” religious traditions and applied by the early followers of Jesus to their up start religion(s) (Christianity is a “catch all” term for all early Jesus movements whether latter accepted as orthodox or not). As proof, look up any of the above words in Oxford’s Classical Greek Lexicon (A Greek-English Lexicon, Liddell, Scott, Jones) and watch how the word is reapplied latter by the authors of the New Testament in A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and other Early Christian Literature, Bauer, Arndt, Gingrich, Funk and finally the exclusive use in the Christian tradition in Oxford’s A Patristic Greek Lexicon, Lamp. These “pagan” religions used these same terms and concepts for hundreds to thousands of years before Jesus which enabled people like St. Paul proselytize based on the foundations of Classical religious traditions (Paul needs this foundation to preach at Athenians: Acts 17). It is little wonder Christianity was given its name and had great success in Classical pagan Asia Minor while the teachings of Jesus (as found in the Synoptic Gospels and taught by such Jewish-Christian sects as the Ebionites whose terms and concepts where base the Semitic Aramaic language) had mostly died out in Roman Palestine by 400 CE.

Even the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, minted coins with a cross on one side and Apollo, the Sun god, on the other. The New Testament’s concept of judgment where God is seated on a throne with Jesus either standing or seated at His right hand is drawn directly from the court of the Roman Emperor with his son or favorite general seated or standing to his right and set the stage for the imperial cult worship of the Emperor.

Symbolic numbers such as 3, 6, 7, 12, 40, 72 are also given divine meanings and are used repeatedly by Jesus and the writers of the New Testament (especially in the book of Revelation) to reveal divine mysteries. These same six numbers can be found as symbolic and magical numbers in much older stories and religious texts from ancient Semitic language families such as Akkadian, Phoenician, and Ugaritic. In light of this fact (as argued by Christian apologist) to claim that “God” uses known symbols and terms of the ancient pagan world only begs the question as to the exclusive truthfulness of both Judaism and Christianity.

The West Semitic language of Hebrew (of the Israelites) is a direct dialect of the hated Canaanites reed stylus script: Ugaritic (Note: The late Hebrew alphabet script compared to the ancient reed logographic script proves which came first). The symbol used in the Book of Revelation of the seven- headed beast (Rev. 13) was a concept already about 1000 years old when the writer of this Christian book chose to plagiarize it (see: Ancient Near Eastern Text in Pictures Relating to the Old Testament, Princeton University Press). Thus the New Testament writers often depended on, and needed popular pagan symbols to create accepted and factual bases for their new faith so the Christian tradition would fit right in to a competing “pagan” religious context.

In a world in which most people were poor and illiterate, with few living past the age of thirty (where a simple abscessed tooth could cause death), the austere teaching of the Synoptic Jesus on wealth (Matt. 13:22, Mark 10:25, Luke 6:24, 16:19-31) is replaced with promises of “health, wealth and prosperity” in latter works such as the Gospel of John where the faithful will be given many rooms (Greek: mona) in Heaven (John 14:2) or, in the books of Revelation, where the righteous walk on streets of gold in an emerald city (Rev. 21: 9-21).

Even recent major archaeological discovery now shows, more than ever, that the Hebrews are themselves part of their hated neighbors: the Canaanites. The lack of any archaeological sites that are linked to the Israelites in the Sinai over their forty year journey under a man called Moses are proving there was never an exodus form Egypt as stated in the Bible (for a review of the facts see: America’s leading archeologist William Dever in his book: Who Were the Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Eerdmans, 2003). In fact, the old lunar calendar of the Canaanites and their religious festivals to their gods is the same basic calendar of dates for many of Israel’s major festivals: Rosh ha-shanah, Sukkot, Pesach and Shavu’ot. Shav’uot.

It’s very interesting that while so called Bible Believers (as such, Bob Jones University) claim to accept the Bible at face value and follow Jewish tradition (and that of Jesus himself) that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, they never explain why an earlier text such as Deuteronomy 18:10 is not followed or accepted by Yahweh Himself in a much latter time/text such as the burning of Jephthah’s daughter in Judges 11:29-40 (and notice that the English word used here: Lord is the direct rendering of Hebrew Yahweh in the Masoretic Hebrew text ). Even if the text of Deuteronomy 18 is dated into the Josianic reforms, Yahweh Himself has both prohibited and accepted human sacrifice as a burnt offering! It’s now just a small step from accepting a human burnt offering (that of Jephthah’s daughter) to the human crucified offering: Jesus. One thing being equal, Israel’s god Yahweh and the Canaanite gods (Baal / El) both accepted human flesh and blood as a sacrifice!