Lydia Nickerson wrote: > The books don't exist by themselves, they were written by human > beings, often for somewhat venal reasons. Was it Jeremiah that was > written to justify the new line of kings and the changes in the > religious structure? Joshua and Judges were written to prove that > the Israelites were entitled to the land they'd stolen from the > Canaanites. The Gospels were written as propaganda to prove that > Christ was the Messiah, and tell several flat out whoppers to > accomplish that. Frank Wrote: >Yes, and most often this stuff was written _after_ the fact, particularly >the NT. Most of which was written, when, ca 100 AD? Check out Mithraism. Here's a nice little summery I found on the web. http://members.aol.com/MercStG/ChriMithPage1.html