Plagiarism? I mean much of the Christian structure is modeled upon Pagan storylines already.
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Wait, now I am even more confused. If I am not mistaken, the Gospels were written towards the end of the first century AD, while the Cathars were a Christian movement that first appeared with that name in the 11th century AD. How could the writers of the Gospels plagiarize from a medieval source? Even if you trace the Cathar movement back to the Gnostics or the Manicheans, the Lord’s Prayer is not found in the Gospel of John and it doesn’t express dualism. 
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Yep you are right it obviously predates the Cathars by a long time. Dunno how I got that one so wrong. Had it in my head from somewhere we got our lord’s prayer from the Cathars. They did adopt it as a central text, but it seems like it was quite popular already. Did read it wasn’t in the original text off Matthew.
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First off, I’m no historian, but I know enough that these texts have been edited, chopped and mixed over centuries. None of it has been completely linear. Perhaps it was folded in at some point between the first century and King James?
There is the existence of the Q-source hypothesis concerning the Gospels:
Very true. Also, to this day, “And also with you” is my immediate response whenever anyone says “May the force be with you.”
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Don’t forget Adam and Eve. You create people, don’t give them the ability to know good from evil, don’t give them a particular drive to obey you, and then when they disobey you once, you condemn them and all their descendants to lives of pain and toil.
Even Pharoah might qualify: “Thou shalt speak all that I command thee: and Aaron thy brother shall speak unto Pharaoh, that he send the children of Israel out of his land. And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders in the land of Egypt. But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt, and bring forth mine armies, and my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments.” And later in the New Testament, “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’ So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.”
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Bit of a tangent, but does anyone else remember the Lord’s Prayer set to music and released by some kind of singing nun? I distinctly remember in the late '70s or early '80s playing it on a cassette tape (!).
If Jesus actually existed he probably spoke Aramaic. The Gospels, however, were written in Greek, decades after Jesus had supposedly been crucified and resurrected, by unknown people who had never actually met the guy. Therefore I would be quite reluctant to accept that anything in the Gospels is an exact translation of a verbatim quote from Jesus. This would be the equivalent of writing down, say, Dr Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech today, for the first time ever, probably having heard about it from people who knew people who had actually been there, but doing it in Russian, and maintaining that this corresponds exactly to what MLK said in English in 1963. People generally have trouble remembering what exactly happened two weeks ago, let alone a couple of decades, and of course everyone who told the stories, beginning with those people who actually had been there all the way to the people down the line who wrote the stories down had an agenda, so no wonder that by the time the stories did eventually get written down, the guy walked on water and raised the dead.
The other thing is that whoever wrote the Gospels wrote them in Greek but we can tell from the texts that they were probably not native Greek speakers, so there are all sorts of mistakes and weird word choices that make it difficult to approach the Gospels from a POV that presupposes that they are the inspired word of God. One would assume that an omniscient and omnipotent entity with something very important to say ought to be able to inspire people to write proper Greek.
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[insert theological discourse on the body of christ]?
You are replying to me, but I think you actually mean to reply to @Seamo, since you are expounding at some length a commentary on what I said in reply to them, and they are the one who failed to understand my post.
Googled it:
Thought for a sec you were talking about the French language nun, whose song comprised a meta-layer of the Asylum season of AHS:
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I don’t know about singing nuns, but I do know about the reggae Lord’s Prayer.
I also know about Cliff Richard’s version which I will spare you from hearing. He got upset because BBC Radio 1 wouldn’t play it. No, Cliff, they didn’t refuse to play it because it was a Christian prayer, they refused to play it because it was a shit version that would have never got into the charts if it wasn’t made by you.
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Here’s a version I wrote, translated from the original Greek:
Our Father in heaven,
Named sacred and precious,
Bring your kingdom here and now.
What you want, it will be done
here on earth, as done in heaven.
Sustain us today with the food you bring
Forgive us all we owe you,
the same as we forgive others their offenses.
If you put us through adversity,
do not allow us to be accused or condemned
But rescue us from the present evil.
It might need some work, but I think I’m getting the gist of it.
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I’m not sure Q works down to the verse level on the Lord’s Prayer. It’s not as sliced-and-diced as JEDP theory. I’d have to check scholarship, it’s been a while.
Hey, Siouxsie isn’t a nun!
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First song they ever performed, IIRC.
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Hey now, the Holy Spirit inspired them to speak other languages, not write them! Acts 2:4-12
/s
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