I thought he basically said - I’m god - call me when you’re god.
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Well yeah, but with a very precise list that a munchkin-y enough interpretation can see as a target 
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This lawsuit was dismissed in 2015 a few days after it was filed. Why is this dumb case news now?
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The correct answer to most of those is “ask a question that makes sense”. They’re category errors.
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I remember Minneapolis from that time as well. It was a bastion of Scandinavian progressiveness, and ahead of its time (from a US point of view) in so many ways. But, the racism against Natives was as ugly as anywhere.
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If I remember correctly the case was in a small jurisdiction, and happened in the mid-19th century, so I can see a small town court letting something like that through, either out of ignorance, or for entertainment value.
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Hm. In TMNT, Shredder’s Foot Clan Warriors…
That works.
Ignorance, the original entertainment value.
I’m pretty sure Chaucer had something to say about this, but in my mad rush to acquire all possible knowledge I somehow overlooked Chaucer.
Pedantry:
It’s actually derived from ‘vis’, ‘power’, ‘force’, not ‘vir’, ‘man’, so ‘beyond the powers’ - beyond the authority of the court.
‘Beyond men’ would be ‘ultra viros’; ‘beyond [a] man’ would be ‘ultra virum’.
‘A gentleman need not know Latin, but he should at least have forgotten it.’ – James Brander Matthews (1852-1929)
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There’s a joke in there somewhere.
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Or a Raymond Pettibon drawing.
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Oh, but this is scholarship, not pedantry.
Thank you. I shall update my comment accordingly.
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For my own part, I took one look at the parameters for the first Council of Nicea and basically abandoned all belief in any version or translation of the Bible as “The Word Of God”.
Quick summary (and please, chime in with any further relevant details, you folks with better data than mine): In the 3rd Century CE, one wealthy dude invited representatives from every group in the Roman Empire (and beyond) who considered themselves “Christian” to come to his city (“Nicea”) to hash out what was and was not “canon”. Basically, after three hundred years of oral transmission of the teachings, with the occasional copies of copies of copies of what might have been witnessed events or might have been recalled accounts passed down from a witnesses’ son’s roommates hairdresser’s bartender as ‘proof’ of what had been done or said, any given congregation might consider itself very “blessed” to have three or four other “congregations” with whom they had cordial relations… and most of them resigned themselves to the kind of factionalism that made the most hilariously cliched movie about cutthroat inter-clique drama in high-school seem like a sandbox scuffle between three-year-olds.
Anyway, what records survive of the event say that no more than one in five of the groups who got invitations actually accepted. So, right there, that means that 80% of “Christians” in the ancient world made no contributions to what wound up becoming “the” Bible.
Next, we have a series of debates about what each group ‘brought to the party’ and whether everyone could agree that it was “the True Word of God”.
Which is the next strike: You’re going to assemble a holy book for a ‘major religion’ BY COMMITTEE?!?
See, anyone who has ever sat through an academic debate, especially one held between academics who are also theologians, knows that the veracity of your theory (even if you happen to have ‘letters’ and ‘artifacts’ to back it up), takes second place to your ability to out-persuade your rivals with competing theories. In other words, if your scholarship is impeccable but your rhetorical skills couldn’t convince a thirsty man to drink water, then you’re NOT going to win the debate.
And so on…
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My one quibble: my understanding is that the specific stories about Yeshua and his disciples weren’t started until something like 100 years after his supposed death, so the disjointed canon at that point was quite a bit less than 300 years old.
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The gospels date to about CE 70-100, so a few to several decades after Jesus’ death. Ie., the point where the people who had known him and witnessed his teachings and acts were getting old or dying off, so things needed to be written down.
As for the Council of Nikea, it was not about what books were supposed to be part of the Bible. That had become more or less established long before, with the biggest differences of opinion being about some of the epistles, plus whether the various apocalyptic books counted or not. (There are two main reasons why most “gospels” beyond the four we’re familiar with didn’t become canonical: either they were redundant with the ones we know, or they were really weird shit, typically gnostic.)
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Why wouldn’t you want to cosplay as a baboon?
I refer you to my previous comment.
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Biblical scholars are nearly 100% in their agreement that the gospels were not written by anyone who had ever known Jesus. They were writing down stories they’d heard, from people who themselves had not ever met Jesus.
And I can’t tell how you understand your second paragraph to NOT be in agreement with the idea that the Council decided what should and shouldn’t be included in the official book from that point forward.
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Because that was not what the Council decided on! The first Nicaean council did not address the contents of the Biblical canon at all, they were busy ironing out theological stuff that led to the creation of the Nicaean creed, plus things like establishing canon law and agreeing on how to calculate when to celebrate Easter.
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a priori is the way to my heart. 
Just gotta get past my tentacle beard and the set of triplet spleens and you’re right there.
for the most part, but the judge has to take the time to review and throw it out … or their aides. anyone can file a lawsuit for anything. in most courts, there’s literally a checkbox for “other” on the form.
