Toni O’Loughlin, The Guardian.co.uk, Thursday 17 December 2009 10.44 GMT -
A New Zealand church has sparked outrage by erecting a billboard depicting Mary and Joseph lying semi-nude beneath the sheets.
In an unorthodox take on the Christmas tale, the billboard depicts a forlorn Joseph and Mary looking to the sky with a caption which reads: “Poor Joseph. God is a hard act to follow.”
The St Matthew-in-the-City church said it wanted to inspire people to talk about the Christmas story.
But within five hours of the billboard going up in downtown Auckland a man was standing on his car roof painting over the raunchy image.
Archdeacon Glynn Cardy said the church meant to challenge a fundamentalist interpretation of Christ’s birth.
“What we’re trying to do is to get people to think more about what Christmas is all about. Is it about a spiritual male God sending down sperm so a child would be born, or is it about the power of love in our midst as seen in Jesus?”
Cardy said one person had threatened to tear down the billboard but that of the 20 odd emails and phone calls he had received “about 50% said they loved it, and about 50% said it was terribly offensive."
The Catholic church joined those on the attack, accusing the Anglican church of disrespect.
“It’s flying in the face of our 2,000-year-old beliefs,” a Catholic church spokesman, Lyndsay Freer, said.
The conservative Family First organization said the Anglican church could debate the Bible story away from the public eye. “To confront children and families with the concept as a street billboard is completely irresponsible and unnecessary,” Family First’s national director, Bob McCoskrie, said.
A complaint has been lodged with New Zealand’s advertising watchdog, the Advertising Authority, but Cardy was unrepentant.
“I don’t see why one person’s protest should deny other people the enjoyment of the billboard.”
Does anyone really believe that a divine being came to Earth to impregnate Mary? Only the Christian religion subscribes to such an outlandish belief.
Both the Greeks and Romans believed that the progeny of a god and a mortal called a demigod would be God like, but always have a fatal weakness. The disciples were shocked when the Romans easily dispatched their Messiah.
They expected Jesus to rise from the dead and return to them immediately. Jesus supposedly rose from the dead, but no one recognised him. Why did no one recognize Jesus? Because someone else was pretending to be Jesus.
The Jesus impersonator then quickly rose into heaven to fulfil the prophesy given of the disciples. Exit, stage right.
To explain this slight of hand, Christians created the Trinity, one of the most absurd religious concepts ever.
First there is God, then there is Jesus. But wait, there's more: The Holy ghost. The Trinity is the the Three Musketeers of religion: three Gods in one. If Joseph did not impregnate Mary, then whom? Is there anything at all to be said of this matter? Has any alternative tradition regarding Jesus’ father come down to us?
The answer is yes, the name Pantera is found in a number of ancient sources. Rather than dismiss these out of hand as a “shop-worn tale” produced by Jewish opponents of the Christians who wanted to cast aspersions on Jesus’ paternity, let's examine what one might responsibly conclude about the subject.
Having examined the “Jesus son of Panthera” textual traditions in their various forms, the tombstone of the 1st century Roman soldier, one “Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera” from Sidon who was buried outside of present day Bingerbrück, Germany is still standing.
Ancient texts appear to use the designation “Yeshu ben Pantera” in a descriptive rather than a slanderous or polemical way they offer us evidence that Jesus was remembered as “son of Panthera” in the region of Galilee, and even on the streets of Sepphoris, in the early 2nd century.
source: http://www.jesusdynasty.com/blog/2006/07/13/the-jesus-son-of-panthera-traditions/ Subscribe to the Rightardia feed: feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/IGiu
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