- Joined
- Mar 27, 2017
I got my daily 4-5 hours of sleep. So i can reply now.
So basically when i was a teenager my parents got me a NIV study bible called quest study bible. I used its marginal questions and answers notes as a springboard basis for looking up things about the bible online. I would look up answers on various websites and read their opinions and see if their explanations made sense to me or felt right to me. Over time i developed my sense of proper truth of the bible based on my conscience and sense of what is right based on all i had known up til then. One of the questions in the NIV study bible said why does Jude quote from the apocryphal book of Enoch. instead of denying that it quoted it the NIV bible admitted that yes it does quote the Book of Enoch however that doesn't mean the book of Enoch is scripture. but when i saw that they were admitting that the evidence is pretty undeniable that he quoted from a book outside the bible as divine authority, i immediately knew that the church was wrong about this. If Jude quoted Book of Enoch as a prophetic text, he clearly considered it a divinely inspired text. there's no way around it. and i was not afraid to go against what the church believed provided there was compelling evidence. So i figured if i want to take the bible seriously i should accept the book of enoch as Scripture. That started me on a quest to study well if they were wrong about Enoch being included in the bible what else were they wrong about? what else is there that perhaps should be included in the Bible? so i was inspired to find as many apocryphal books as possible. I studied this all the time constantly. Hours and hours every day. i was in high school at the time, and I would look up this info even at school in computer labs. whenever i had the chance to be on the computer i was looking up religious stuff instead of doing what i was supposed to be doing. Study hall i would go to computer lab and look up these religious stuff and see if i could learn as much as possible about these subjects. The canon is a subject i have probably studied more than anything else and it led me to the conclusion that there is no real basis for excluding a large majority of the extra books for they have the same basic objections that any of the normal books have. Even books like the Quran have the same basic issues like the OT theology is quite "barabaric" in the same way the Quran is. Not really fair to reject the Quran when the same standard applied fairly would result in the OT being rejected. Anyways over time i have accumulated info of over 200 books excluded from the Bible which have a basis for consideration into the Bible. Over the years I have spent thousands of dollars and also downloaded illegally pdf files of various books. these books are from varied different authors since the field is so massive. But it spans many generations of scholars. I decided long ago its important to read what the experts say and their academic editions since generally they are the ones with the best data and resources. their interpretations/opinions i might disagree with since admittedly the field is full of speculative science, but their expert knowledge of the field cannot be denied. and thus i have learned so many amazing things from reading these academic books about the history of Israel and Christianity as well as the history and related info of the various apocryphal books.
Regarding perfectionism, i was convinced by two people who have a very controversial ministry. Their names are Kerrigan Skelly and Jesse Morrell. They are part of a perfectionist christian music. I watched their videos and they showed compelling evidence that the bible actually taught we had to be sinless to be saved. I have since refined their views to match my own and i go much farther than they do (they only say you have to be sinless to be saved; i put a limit on grace and say you can only receive repentance one time; thats part of what drew me to melinda initially becaues she claimed to believe in the need to be perfect to be saved and she believed in very little grace. but i eventually came to see melinda believed in way too little grace, and that melinda was definitely not even close to perfect and she defines things in such a way to make herself perfect without being honest. I have never done that. Ever since i realized we have to be perfect to be saved, i have declared to the world i am a sinner and thus not saved. And so for the last 10 years, since 2010, i have publicly claimed that I am not born again, that i am not saved, and that I am currently on my way to hell since i am not perfect. Imagine what its like living your life for 10 years thinking if you die you are hellbound. That's been the reality of my life for the last 10 years. Cause im too much of a coward to try to be fully sinless becaues in my belief once you become sinless if you ever sin intentionally again after that, you can never be forgiven again. thats it your doomed forever. So i want to make sure i repent only when i am truly ready and serious and will definitely never intentionally sin again. im not at the stage of spiritual maturity yet. My main issue is sexual sin, as it relates to masturbation. that has a major stronghold over my life. and while one may argue that sex addiction doesn't truly exist, i think there are a few people out there like me who provide compelling evidence that it does exist due to how disruptive it is to their lives. I believe i have the power to overcome my sins its just something im scared to do because i know how painful it is to feel withdrawal and you feel miserable and lonely and like you want to die. Who wants to go through that. So i hope to eventually work up the courage to fully repent. anyways, Kerrigan and Jesse really changed my life probably the most radically of all. They also take their faith seriously and are on the streets preaching to the world to stop sinning. they go to beaches, colleges, busy corners in cities where they think sin is going to be rampant. I think its noble their desire, however, I question the properness of their methods, mainly in regards to going to beaches and outside of bars and strip clubs. In my view, it is entirely absurd to go into a strip club to preach against sin to those people. Those people are there to sin and when someone is actively engaging in sin, they are not open to what you have to say if it goes against what they are doing. so i don't fully agree with their views, on many other issues too. But i will always have the utmost respect and admiration of them as the basis of my change of beliefs on the very important subject of repentance.
I came to believe in messianic judaism because of various websites due to a life crisis i was having. i was convicted about what i was eating. what foods should i eat since i was going to college and they let me have pizza and tacos and burgers and soda all the time. i felt convicted and realized its a sin to eat unhealthy. i almost stopped eating and was practically starving myself. This type of behavior eventually led to eating disorders that still persist in some way to this day. If you look up orthorexia nervosa that describes to a T what i have experienced in my life. And now i don't eat for lengthy period of time and then i gorge myself and eat a ton of food. i sometimes eat 6 dozen eggs in a single meal and on rare occasion a dozen eggs in a single meal. Ill make sandwiches out of the eggs and put lots of mayo on it. And sometimes cheese and a lot of butter too. i bought 6 dozen eggs the other week. I will eat them in less than 4 weeks. but anyways, in the past i wasn't eating much of anything rather than gorging myself. So there have been different manifestations of my eating disorder. But anyways, I came to the conclusion based on a snappy comment from my family's church deacon that God wants us to eat kosher. I was askin all the spiritual leaders i looked up to at the time what does God want us to eat and how can we say its ok to eat unhealthy. No one really gave helpful answers. One man in particular, at the time a deacon of my family's church said something like "i assume you are not talking about kosher" and then proceeded to explain why going to mcdonalds isn't going to send you to hell. he didn't realize i didnt' care at the time whether it would send me to hell or not i was convicted about sin and i didn't want to sin anymore! so what is righteous to eat! but that comment about kosher set a lightbulb off in my head. I said thats it! thats what im looking for! so i looked up about kosher and saw thats what the bible says we should be eating. and i said to myself wow i was wondering what god wants us to eat and it was in the bible under my nose the whole time! so i began looking up on google for verses to support kosher as well as trying to look up scientific basis for those laws (since the foods being healthy was the only reason i decided the kosher laws are valid). that led me to various messianic websites written by random people. These people showed what i considered compelling evidence that the Bible teaches that the Law of Moses has not been abolished but is still required to be obeyed by God's people. I was blown away by their arguments because I couldn't refute them and it had all the strong compelling evidence to back it up. i suddenly began seeing how flawed illogical and inconsistent the church's theology was on matters of law, atonement, repentance, and forgiveness etc. The acceptance of the Law of Moses came a few months prior to the acceptance of perfectionism since I only saw Kerrigan and Jesse's videos after i accepted the Law of Moses as still binding.
Just like i did with the Quest study bible, i used what i knew from these people as a springboard for further research to develop my own unique sense of what seems right. in 2011 and 2012 i gravitated towards the Essenes and dead sea scrolls as a natural progression of my research and spiritual journey as the Essenes were the group that most accurately and fully reflected what i believed. Then i decided i need to know what the essenes believed they must be the true group. So i bought tons of resources on the dead sea scrolls and essenes. And i had the amazing luck of being given a free pdf version of the entire DJD series which is a scholarly edition of the dead sea scrolls which is very valuable. Buying the books new costs more than $13,000 last time i checked. PDF e version therefore would be many thousands of dollars in cost. Yet someone gave it to me for free the entire series. I used these books to further my research as well. these are considered chiefs texts in the field of dead sea scrolls scholarship. (as proof i have the series, anyone interested private message me and ill show you the proof). For proof of the price of these books, you can find them from their official website here: https://global.oup.com/academic/con...ield=1&sortField=6&resultsPerPage=100&start=0 (like i said i have all these books in pdf file)). My total physical library encompasses over $10,000. I also have many more free pdf files i have illegally downloaded over the years. A list of the books in my physical library can be found here. Those books included many academic editions of apocrypha books as well as the regular bible books. As well as ancient literature of related cultures, as well as books on language. Language fascinates me and ive studied from linguistic scholars for many years trying to teach myself language. I studied language across the board without specific to any language for years. From 2011 to 2017 i did not go to college and i had no work, so i had free time every day to do whatever i wanted and i spent the vast majority of my waking hours doing intense autistic type research in extreme detail on many diverse subjects including language as well as history and theology.
I believe its important to read what others have to say from different perspectives, and that has led me to value the contributions to the field from places such as atheists. I find much of the logic of atheists to be valid and compelling and so I have learned many important things from atheists as a springboard of my research. also most of the scholars and academics of the field of apocryphal texts are nonbelievers, and don't actually adhere to judaism or christianity. but i recognize their expertise in their fields and authority and knowledge and thus i have learned from those scholars some essential things about data and the world we live in.
I try to be very practical and adjust my beliefs when i see my beliefs don't make sense any more or that another beliefs makes more sense or that there is a contradiction or inconsistency which is better explained by another view. Thus i am constantly over time seeking to refine my beliefs to account for the divergent evidence. Becaues of this constant pursuit and openness towards truth my beliefs have changed very much over time. I have continued to remain in the essene mindset, but because the Essene mindset is a big grey area due to the fact the entire group died out and some of their ideas are speculated by scholars or not clear what they believed on certain subjects one must fill in the blanks. But being an essene myself gave me a unique window into the mindset of the essenes that the scholars did not have. thus i could fill in the blanks of essene concepts that the scholars could not since when you think live and breathe their faith to the best of what is available, it gives you a very unique insight that is otherwise hard to grasp by someone outside of that mindset. so that enabled me to make progress in places scholars could not. Studying the dead sea scrolls intensely inevitably leads to textual criticism. And my resources on textual criticism are very diverse. I have spent over $2,000 on the critical edition of the Septuagint series, which is a very academic and scholarly set of texts providing a highly academic and scholarly critical edition based on textual criticism principles. It is called the Gottingen Septuagint series. I also have that in PDF files as well, but i prefer having the books themselves when I can.
My goal is to make my own version of the bible which incorporates all these extra texts and which does not have the biases and inaccuracies of scholars who don't believe these books to be authentic. My unique perspective of considering all these books (with few exceptions) to be authentic gives me a unique perspective from scholarship that the others don't have. Over time i have gotten more and more radical with my textual criticism theories, and more and more evidence has come to light of corruptions and such so now, i am at a point where i think the entire bible is radically corrupted and i plan to try to reconstruct and restore the texts as best as possible knowing i will certainly not get it perfect, but my goal is to produce a significantly more accurate and reliable version than what we currently have. Based on a more literal translation of the texts, based on a fuller and more peculiar decision making process of which variants i will base my text on, and finally using parallel sources as well as internal logic to reconstruct and correct errors and falsehoods in the bible. For example, it is unlikely that the original text of Isaiah mentioned the name of Cyrus, considering Cyrus reigned well after Isaiah and it'd be unlikely for prophecy to be so explicit like that. It would make more sense for a prophecy to be vague and generalized, and then later scribes seeing that prophecy, believed it was referring to Cyrus and added a note into the text saying this is referring to cyrus. eventually it became part of the text. things like that I am doing. And much of the bible has parallel text. Like for example the books of samuel, chronicles, and kings have many quotes and parallels from other books of the bible, which enable one to look at the same passage in two different books and see how they both diverge from what must have been an original source behind the two books. the same goes for the synoptic gospels, which have many many parallels which necessitate a common source. It is the goal of comparing the three gospels and their variants to try to determine what the original reading that is the source of all three gospels must have been. That is a very challenging job but it is very rewarding and eye opening. Who better to learn about what the bible means than from the bible itself. However, this type of stuff is so indepth and requires so much knowledge and study, that I am not ready yet to release a scholarly edition for people. I recognize my lack of sufficient expertise due to my not yet knowing the languages. So over the next several years i want to master the Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, and Latin languages for the sake of adequately rendering what the bible says. I also would like to have a working knowledge in Coptic, Ethiopic/Ge'ez, Armenian, and perhaps Slavonic though Slavonic isn't as important.) Would be nice to also know Arabic. And many other languages for my study of history. I have a thirst for knowledge with my pursuit of academic knowledge.
Also one thing that separates me from most people is i give everyone the benefit of the doubt. That means by default i assume a person isn't lying unless compelling evidence indicates otherwise. Thus, my approach requires me accept the integrity and honesty of every writer by default which allows me to see everyone's perspective fairly because i consider everyone's point of view to be a sincere attempt at arriving at truth. Thus, the authors of the apocryphal texts, being sincere, could not have been pseudepigrapha writers like the scholars are saying. Unless compelling evidence indicates they were fake writers, one must default assume in my view that they were not, giving them benefit of the doubt of sincerity of integrity but not accuracy. So by benefit of the doubt, i consider everyone i ever meet to sincerely believe what they say. but that doesn't mean what everyone thinks is true is in fact true. Its their opinion/belief. But in the case of the apocrypha texts, the only way for the author to be sincere is if they didn't author the book or if they used earlier sources to try and reconstruct the book something similar to like i am trying to do. this extreme fidelity to the principle of innocent until proven guilty when applied to authorship necessitates that i accept the authenticity and authority of all documents claiming to be biblical until evidence compelling indicates otherwise. this has also led me to the conclusion that all religions root back to the same truth as the bible, and through my studies i hvae come to the conclusion that every religion in its basic essence is true. every religion has falsehoods and corruptions, some more than others. But when comparative religion is underwent, one can see the common origin of all religions, and i believe every religion has a large majority of truth. Even the pagan religions of the past which have thousands of gods i have now come to see due to my study and research of those religions that those gods are based on real spiritual beings, and not made up. So i believe basically in the existence of all or most gods that are claimed to exist. I would consider gods like the flying spaghetti monster as well to be a real god, since they are essentially the same being, just a distortion of it. And the reality is, who of all people has a perfect grasp and everything they think about god is accurate? We all have false and inaccurate ideas about who god is. So the satirical description of God as a flying spaghetti monster does not lead one to conclude that that being doesn't exist. I would say it does exist and whatever they characterize it as, may or may not be correct, but it is a real being just as any god is a real being. My understanding is that God created many angels and that these angels do in fact exist and that all angels are gods. Thus every god in every religion i believe is actually an angel. once you start doing comparative mythology and trying to rationally understand the origin of mythology, some amazing things can be discovered.
My family thinks im crazy, but they have never actually seriously considered or looked into the things I have discovered. if they did with an open mind, i believe they would realize i am right about many things i have been saying. my christian friends didn't really stay my friends. and over the years i have lost a lot of meaningful friendships due to people simply not believing the same things as me which is childish and immature. Anyways, i have made online friends over the years, people who stick with me, and have developed quite a following (small, but nonetheless significant) in which people look up to me as a respected authority figure and expert in the field. However i always tell people don't believe it just cause i say it but challenge what i say both to yourself as well as to me. so i welcome criticism and rebuke provided it is done in the spirit of truth seeking and not trying to put me down. My youtube channel is this. I'm at nearly 1,500 subscribers which isn't that much but for me its a lot and I am proud of my accomplishments so far in my studies. I have helped many people. Many have donated money to me because they believe in what I am doing. Sometimes those people eventually don't like won't im doing and unfriend me. But i can't base my work on what people want me to say but only on what i believe is the right thing to say and do. I have a friend who takes my teachings on audio recordings and puts them on the radio for random people to hear. And people do hear it and reach out to him asking for more info about me.
Its hard to give specifics on who i read and such because its such a diverse field of scholarship on so many different subjects. But i am a scholar in my own right, and thus i do my own original research that is comparable to other scholars in the field due to my intense knowledge and expertise in the field.
I can say in regards to Melinda, her knowledge and expertise in the fields of study is very limited. That being said, she has some very amazing insights on a rare occasion which is what attracted me to her in the first place. She made some definite impressions and influence on my beliefs and who i am academically. But she and i diverge quite sharply because she isn't actually interested in truth. She sincerely believes what she thinks is true, but she isn't interested in radical correction. She would rather be wrong about something but feel good about herself than to open herself to correction on many issues that she can't accept due to moral conundrums that bias her against the conclusions. And she will never be successful in the field of scholarship because she is poor and doesn't have adequate resources to be an expert. nor does she have adequate time studied to be an expert in the field. She'll live for her children the rest of her life. maybe in her final 20 years of life she will have free time to do lots of scholarly stuff. But because of the life she chose, her room for growth is stunted and very limited. Whereas mine my growth and potential is unlimited because I can be whatever and whoever i want to be and i can study and learn and put as much time into things as i want to. I could live anywhere on earth that i want to, and i could even stop having a job if i wanted and just devote myself to whatever i wanted.
If you have more specific questions about my beliefs i'd be happy to answer them. But you asked a very general and openended question. So i gave a very general but lengthy response due to that reason. Sorry for the length as well since that as an aspect of my "asperger" syndrome if it even exists (i was diagnosed with it as a child but i contest the diagnosis or at least the implications of the diagnosis).
