A true gnostic are you with that that secret knowledge of yours. A shame that all those historians and theologians disagree with you.
Jesus Was
- Thread starter yung_dood
- Start date
I'm pretty sure this Jebus fellow is not coming back, but in the very unlikely event that he does, it pretty much means that all of us, except for a couple hundred thousand, are fucked.
That's a fundamentalist (Phil Robertson) view, amusingly I find that this is a very popular TERB conception of Christianity and Christians. TERB doesn't much like that among Jesus Disciples were Tax Collectors - in the world of Roman Galilee and Judea there wasn't a more despised unclean person imaginable, or that God is Love.
I'm perfectly confident in a second appearing which doesn't involve any of this Scofield Reference Bible, John Nelson Darby rapture nonsense.
so what those so called historians and theologians use to prove the existence of Jesus?
Bart Ehrman (who is himself a secular agnostic) wrote in his 2011 review of the state of modern scholarship Forged : writing in the name of God: "He [Jesus] certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees." Which I would think would be a book right up your alley.
Robert E. Van Voorst in his 2000 Jesus Outside the New Testament: An Introduction to the Ancient Evidence states: "biblical scholars and classical historians regard theories of non-existence of Jesus as effectively refuted" He also points out that in antiquity, the existence of Jesus was never denied by those who opposed Christianity (and if they could they certainly would have).
John Dominic Crossan (a name that anyone who wants to dabble in this should recognize) writes in his Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. "That he [Jesus] was crucified is as sure as anything historical can ever be, since both Josephus and Tacitus...agree with the Christian accounts on at least that basic fact."
Michael Grant (who is a classicist) wrote in his 2004 book Jesus "In recent years, 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non historicity of Jesus' or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."
Geoffrey Blainey writes that by the standards of the late first century B.C. and early first century A.D. Jesus' life is "astonishingly documented" – more so than any of his contemporaries – with numerous books, stories and memoirs written about him. The problem for historians is not therefore, determining whether Jesus actually existed, but rather in considering the "sheer multitude of detail about his life and its inconsistencies and contradictions."
those authors rely on hearsays and forgeries like the Josephus passage on Jesus which does not appear until the start of the 4th century. the Tacitus claim is also a forgery.
5th century source of Tacitus foregery
'Chronicorum Libri duo' – The 'world history' of the Christian scribe Sulpicius Severus of Aquitaine.
Published early in the 5th century and preserved in a single 11th century manuscript.
The "Tacitus" passage is found in Chronica 2.29..
"Nero could not by any means that he tried escape from the charge that the fire had been caused by his orders. He therefore turned the accusation against the Christians, and the most cruel tortures were accordingly inflicted upon the innocent.
Nay, even new kinds of death were invented, so that, being covered in the skins of wild beasts, they perished by being devoured by dogs, while many were crucified or slain by fire, and not a few were set apart for this purpose, that, when the day came to a close, they should be consumed to serve for light during the night."
Our new Regius Professor of Divinity I presume?
For whatever peculiar reason, I believe I'll stick with the academic consensus thank you very much.
Truth and evidence does not rely on appeal to authority
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_authority
Nope, not christian at all. Just saying that if this Jebus character does somehow "come back", it would mean that I was wrong and those crazy bible thumpers (Phil Robertson) was right. But I don't see it happening, I stopped believing in fairy tales a long time ago.
There are many moderate Christians who reckon the Bible to be written
by human and accept the many horrible things in the Old Testament and
the few not so pleasant things in the New Testaments to be the results
of the fallibility of their authors. Not sure if they belong to type one.
Does this type include those liberal minded who reinterpreted the gospels
to suit their liberal agenda? According to these liberals Jesus was a non-white
who advocated gay love and hated everything the conservatives stand for.
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Tacitus got it wrong.
Nero was damned not because he persecuted Christians or allegedly set Rome ablaze, his devaluation of the coinage brought about his downfall. There was a historical Jesus but his followers no longer accepted his message of non-violence and love. They became zealots and set fire to Rome as a form of purification. Nero responded to this ancient 9/11 but he didn't specify Christians exclusively, Christians and Jews were persecuted and Judea was sacked.
The Christians bought it on themselves and dragged the Jews down with them.
Nero was damned not because he persecuted Christians or allegedly set Rome ablaze, his devaluation of the coinage brought about his downfall. There was a historical Jesus but his followers no longer accepted his message of non-violence and love. They became zealots and set fire to Rome as a form of purification. Nero responded to this ancient 9/11 but he didn't specify Christians exclusively, Christians and Jews were persecuted and Judea was sacked.
The Christians bought it on themselves and dragged the Jews down with them.
Yep, if you study the history of religion you can see how each religion evolved from previous ones in the same geographic area. Christmas is mostly a pagan tradition, and the earliest gospel of jesus was written 40 years after his death. You'd think the greatest person to ever live, and the son of God would at least have some writings of him earlier than 4 decades after his death. He was supposedly very well known, yet there are no writings about him from non-Christian sources, and no writings of him from his supposed followers during his life, the whole story of him is hearsay. Hearsay would not be accepted in court as evidence, yet billions around the world accept hearsay written about a man 40 years after his death which was written thousands of years ago. Jesus the man could have existed at that time, but that's not saying much, there are many other ordinary Jesus' that live right now in Mexico, they're not divine either.It seems that religious people come in two types.
Those who are willing to accept the horribly fucked up shit in the bible and embrace it.
Those who seeing the horribly fucked up shit in the bible go through no end of mental gymnastics to reinterpate or deny what they are unconfortable with.
And when that doesn't work.
People accept Jesus as their Lord, and believe in all sorts of different religions, because they were taught to do so by their parents, teachers, friends etc., if a kid is born and nobody told them these fables, they would never know these fables existed. People propagate religion, which makes sense because people invented religion, there never was any divine intervention in the creation of any of the thousands of manmade religions throughout the ages.
You sure do love to sound like an expert, using words like hearsay over and over when it's been pointed the society at the time was one of most people not having reading an writing skills to relying on written words to record events. It had an oral tradition passing stories along by word of mouth. Oral traditions are found to be a valid form of recording and reporting. It's even accepted in the Canadian courts as valid evidence.
Then we have your claim that no contemporary records exist, when the truth is not have been found or that none survived. The dead sea scroll , arguably the most valuable documents ever to come out of the ancient world, supposedly didn't exist until 50 years ago.
When and by whom was the Book of Acts written?
