Is my nose too big, mom?

Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.

Prove it.

That was in Betlehem. This does not look like Pennsylvania.

It’s not a bad thing to ask for clarifying questions… How the flying fuck do you think people learn things from people who are scholars/teachers/experts!? Did you never ask a single question in school or your job(s)?? How the fuck do you learn without questions?

You being upset at this is pathetic.

The cursing of the fig tree has echos in other Jewish literature best example is Moses hitting a rock to get it to send out water.

The temple had to do business. It wasn’t practical for everyone to bring their own animals and the coinage issue wasn’t considered a big deal. If there has been a historical Jesus (again there wasn’t) he most likely started the assault on the temple because he was trying to fulfill the OT prophecy of its destruction. Kinda like when you want sex so you give your partner a back rub.

You got to understand all the accounts of man were written multiple decades later by liars.

He is almost certainly is fictional. I don’t see at all why you think it matters what people did after his supposed existence. Also not sure where you are getting bitterly opposed. Paul was sending money to the Church of Jerusalem. He argued but you don’t give free money to people you bitterly oppose. You also don’t write a letter saying how the leaders were good people. The fighting really started as Christianity moved into power and little spats made a difference. Plus you know we have no evidence that Buddhism had that fighting after Siddharth death and the Mormons didn’t break out into civil war after Smith died. Scientologists are also doing fine.

Every detail of his supposed life was pulled from literature available and was to generate a specific result. We can also see where they were taking “known” facts at the time and misrepresenting them to try to get what they want.

Source? /s

The Tank? That was a canon event.

I don’t get why you buy into Bible Literalism.

I don’t, and I’m not sure where you get the sense that I do.

There’s a very wide gulf between thinking that a historical person named Jesus existed and that the New Testament depiction of that person is accurate.

There’s a ton of things in there that are pretty clearly BS, but the way in which they are BS seems much more like an attempt to spin historical events than to invent them from scratch.

For example, Peter’s denials.

Dude is nicknamed after a “hollow rock” which is actually a terrible thing to try to use as a foundation, but it’s an incredible nickname for someone regularly missing the point and arguing with you.

Then around the time Jesus is being tried approximately three times Cephas is also denying Jesus three times, even seen going back into a guarded area where a trial is taking place to do so.

But it’s all okay because a rooster crowed?

That sounds a lot more like there had been earlier eyewitness testimony or rumors about “hollow rock” having had a more prominent role in testifying against a historical figure which needed to be spun to be a lesser offense which was explained away as acceptable than it sounds like a fabrication originated by a religious organization owing itself to “hollow rock.”

There’s many places where the earliest layers of the NT are sort of engaged with a phantom tradition we can no longer see directly, and only in reflection of its opposition. Things like Mark pointing out that the women saw the empty tomb but didn’t tell anyone or that Thomas doubted the resurrection but then changed his mind. Given Paul was combating the disbelief in physical resurrection in Corinth in 1 Cor 15 among what was a community following some version of Jesus, maybe traditions later on that owed themselves to female teachers, prominently had females receiving sayings from Jesus separate from the other disciples, and had an over-realized eschatology such that it rejected physical resurrection like the proto-Thomasine group were a bigger deal earlier on than the church would like to let on?

My point is that this kind of undermining and spin - “yes Cephas denied him but it was prophesied” or “no, the women actually saw the empty tomb they just didn’t tell anyone, we pinky swear” - is the kind of thing we should expect from a very early split around a cultush origin and not something like Mithraism where a mythologized narrative is adapted and embellished from purely fictional origins.

As for publishing - I’d like to and plan to one day probably at least do a video series on the topic. But this is a hobby and people take religion very seriously to an irrational degree so I’m probably not going to be comfortable linking my real world self to a counter-cannonical Christian public stance until I’m retired. On the upside that gives me many more years to continue to find out more nuances.