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No, just returned from a day trip to Lake Tahoe (gotta love God's handy work!)
Your attacks on traditional Christianity, are for the most part, irrelevant (for me anyway) because not all Christian faiths are the same nor experiencing the turmoil you mention. Therefore your issues with traditional Christianity are best left for others to defend. Some faiths are experiencing an increase in activity but more importantly some Christians individually and as a group are earnestly seeking to put into practice what Jesus taught and they do it day in and day out.
However, to stay on track the subject of my reply was your attempt to cast doubt on Jesus's existence. This is something that as far as I'm aware of every Christian sect/church whatever has in common...that he was real. Moreover Muslims also believe Jesus was real as taught in the Qu'ran. Lastly traditionally many Jews believed Jesus was a real person. Thus even non Christians consider him a real person.
Note what well known Bible Scholar Bart Ehrman, whom you appear to respect, says about those who deny the existence of Jesus:
"That is the claim made by a small but growing cadre of (published ) writers, bloggers and Internet junkies who call themselves mythicists. This unusually vociferous group of nay-sayers maintains that Jesus is a myth invented for nefarious (or altruistic) purposes by the early Christians who modeled their savior along the lines of pagan divine men who, it is alleged, were also born of a virgin on Dec. 25, who also did miracles, who also died as an atonement for sin and were then raised from the dead. Few of these mythicists are actually scholars trained in ancient history, religion, biblical studies or any cognate field, let alone in the ancient languages generally thought to matter for those who want to say something with any degree of authority about a Jewish teacher who (allegedly) lived in first-century Palestine. There are a couple of exceptions: of the hundreds -- thousands? -- of mythicists, two (to my knowledge) actually have Ph.D. credentials in relevant fields of study. But even taking these into account, there is not a single mythicist who teaches New Testament or Early Christianity or even Classics at any accredited institution of higher learning in the Western world. And it is no wonder why. These views are so extreme and so unconvincing to 99.99 percent of the real experts that anyone holding them is as likely to get a teaching job in an established department of religion as a six-day creationist is likely to land on in a bona fide department of biology."
It is my sincere hope that you will reexamine your belief system and provide yourself the opportunity to learn from what Jesus taught.
I never once denied Jesus' existence. I believe implicitly that He lived, and nobody evern notices that I ALWAYS capitalize the H in He or His to show He was God's chosen savior for mankind. I have to repeat that frequently because people pass judgment on me without knowing the first thing about my personal beliefs. Pointing out the flaws, errors, inconsistencies in doctrine in The Bible is NOT tantamount to not being Christian.
But I go crazy over hardcore fundamentalists who play this "see no evil, hear no evil" and just shut themselves off from anything that might challenge their faith a little. It's like they're terrified of the slightest bit of info that might prove their beliefs have a shaky foundation historically. So they walk through life with blinders.
I'm not out to turn Christians into atheists. I'm just out to show Christians that their beliefs are not the only game in town and that history proves that the rise of the Christian faith is a story born not of pristine beauty and honesty like some kind of Disney cartoon like Bambi, but of duplicity, politics, shenanigans, backstabbing, dishonesty and lots of other skullduggery that Christians would rather not admit to themselves, lest it sully this fantasy they carry around with them.
To me, "Christianity" was born and it "died" with Jesus. Sadly, only about 2% of His original teachings survive. Most everything that followed is pure man-made dogma.
@thrillobyte, I was also struck by the same question when I read Josephus' Wars for the first time. I apologize for coming so late to this thread, but it wasn't until I re-read Josephus a few weeks ago that I decided to research any details that were available on Jesus ben Ananias. To those who are claiming that Mark was written by Peter's companion Mark the Evangelist, that theory was started by Bishop Papias in the 2nd century and has not been taken seriously by most bible scholars for at least the last few centuries.
I am very grateful to @revrandy for the reference to the Bart Ehrman book. I am surprised that I had not heard of his work before, but I just began reading his book. Much appreciated.
To @Cephas40 with infinite respect since you are not calling down hell-fire upon @thrillobyte for questioning the perfect accuracy of the gospels, but I don't think that the chronology you mentioned causes any issues. To be sure, even a late date for the composition of Mark predates Josephus' writing of the Wars, but the person of Jesus ben Ananias was at least relatively well-known in Jerusalem from 66 AD on. The fact that Josephus has details of his actions during the siege when Josephus was not even in the city (he was with Vespacian) suggests a reasonable degree of notoriety.
To @hljc, it is not at all unlikely that there were many people with the name Jesus in Judaea in the first century, but the excerpt from Josephus' Antiquities that you referenced is fairly controversial and is widely believed to have been inserted by a later pro-Christian redactor. Origen, writing in the 2nd century explicitly states that Josephus did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah. The utter lack of any reference to Jesus (aside from ben Ananias) in the Jewish Wars is significant since the beginning of the book contains a detailed history of the events in and around Judaea for the first half of the 1st century.
Jesus Christ changed the world he lived in.
It is not unusual to see another with the same first name
speak of the coming fall of Jesusalem over 30 years after Christ's death and resurrection.
Yet another Jesus was a temple priest.
The majority of Judeans knew something bad was going to happen
by the time the 60s came.
Nothing to see here, folks. Just another ridiculous topic by a mudslinger.
i think this is a great discussion and from the topic I knew it would generate a lot of emotional posts. From what I've read most of the mudslinging has come from the Christian side of things though. Thillobyte asked a question, and then gave reference in support of asking it. I think hd4me is incorrect in that there are many scholarly works on the historicity of Jesus coming from some pretty bright folks holding solid credentials who come to the conclusion that the Gospels are based on a mythicized Jesus Christ. I am not here to debate that but Christians should educate themselves and read some of the competing viewpoints. Richard Carrier provides a number of scholarly texts on the subject including his latest work, "On the Historicity of Jesus". Although I don't agree with his arguments using Bayes' Theorem he raises many questions that Christian Apologetics needs to consider. Many of the points Richard raises are quite good for the atheistic argument against the Historicity of Jesus Christ. We as Christians cannot afford to just take a dismissive attitude by calling such topics as this... "Just another ridiculous topic by a mudslinger." (Snowball7) This topic is not about mudslinging but getting to truth.
I never once denied Jesus' existence. I believe implicitly that He lived, and nobody evern notices that I ALWAYS capitalize the H in He or His to show He was God's chosen savior for mankind. I have to repeat that frequently because people pass judgment on me without knowing the first thing about my personal beliefs. Pointing out the flaws, errors, inconsistencies in doctrine in The Bible is NOT tantamount to not being Christian.
You never really did answer my last question...of WHY you choose to believe the historians you do instead of the Biblical account. I can only conclude that it's simply becasue you don't want to.
If that's what you want to believe....ok. You've certainly got the right....but I find it interesting when someone holds on to something so tightly regardless of evidence.
YIf that's what you want to believe....ok. You've certainly got the right....but I find it interesting when someone holds on to something so tightly regardless of evidence.
This accurately describes YOU! How on earth can you be this obtuse and blind to your own failings, Vizio.
You never really did answer my last question...of WHY you choose to believe the historians you do instead of the Biblical account. I can only conclude that it's simply becasue you don't want to.
If that's what you want to believe....ok. You've certainly got the right....but I find it interesting when someone holds on to something so tightly regardless of evidence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
This accurately describes YOU! How on earth can you be this obtuse and blind to your own failings, Vizio.
I agree with Mystic. The Right Reverend pastor Vizio's statement is the height of hypocrisy. Here's the REAL evidence: Anyone is free to research it, including the fundamentalists (if they have courage enough). From a quote from my last post in "Sound Doctrine has left the building:
Quote:
What [evidence] have we got for Jesus?
Absolutely nothing. Don't take my word. Check for yourself. Easily done.
1. Nothing written by Jesus
2. Earliest writings are of Paul mentioning Jesus 25 years after his crucifixion, but not an earthly Jesus---a celestial Jesus. Paul claims he gets everything NOT FROM MAN, including the apostles, but from a Jesus who talks to him. I have an uncle in a ward who claims Napoleon talks to him and has visions of him. Paul never mentions one earthly event in Jesus' life.
3. Earliest gospels written 40-100 years after Jesus' death. The writers were Greeks who never met Jesus, but were listening to stories passed around for generations before someone wrote down the gospel called Mark. This Jesus is not divine and doesn't claim to be divine. He calls one person good--God. Later accounts gradually deify Jesus more and more until we have the Jesus/God of John.
4. Not one contemporary historian of Jesus' time mentions him even once. There are hundreds of them but the most famous was Philo of Alexandria (25 BC-50 AD) who had relatives living in Jerusalem during Jesus' time. Don't you think they would have send back reports to Philo of something---ANYTHING of all the turmoil caused by Jesus at his crucifixion and resurrection? That would have been news all over the Roman world. But Philo never mentions Jesus once.
5. There is not one artifact left behind that is associated with Jesus--nothing to show he was a real person.
6. There are no existing eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus. All there is are later descriptions of Jesus’ life events by non-eyewitnesses, most of whom are obviously biased.
7. The Dead Sea Scrolls, also known as the Qumran texts, contain no mention of Jesus. Paul, credited with spreading “Christianity” shortly after the supposed death of Jesus, never says that Jesus was a real person — even in the Bible itself.
I wouldn't write anything I didn't research first to make sure there were reliable sources. I even quoted an article from the Washington Post which says: "Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up."
I basically maintain, as does Bart Ehrman, one of the most respected Biblical historians today that a Jesus certainly did exist, in fact hundreds of Jesuses existed at the time. One was singled out to create this elaborate mythological legend upon--a common practice of the day. In short, everything you read in the gospels is hearsay, not written by eyewitnesses, but by literate Greek scholars who were recording various stories circulating 50-100 years after Jesus' supposed crucifixion and then elaborating and mystifying them more and more with supernatural events to make the stories more convincing. Outside of the gospels nothing phantasmagorical like what's found in the gospels ever surfaces from secular historians. They know absolutely NOTHING about a Jesus performing all these miracles and causing earthquakes and darkness and zombie saints to rise out of the grave and go into Jerusalem at Jesus crucifixion/resurrection and appear to thousands of citizens.
As far as all the supernatural events surrounding Jesus: NEVER HAPPENED. Fiction. Lack of secular historical evidence proves this beyond a shadow of doubt.
Last edited by thrillobyte; 08-03-2015 at 10:12 AM..
Thank you to @alethelia for posting a well-worded and well thought out response. Although I do not share your personal beliefs, I highly respect your open-minded consideration of the discussion.
Caution and doubt are warranted on both sides of the discussion. Taking a literal view of the Biblical narrative and summarily rejecting any evidence which does not perfectly correspond to that narrative is a guarantee of blind confirmation. This form of circular logic is useless and serves to isolate its believers in a growing and evolving World. However, using the lack of hard evidence as proof against the events of the Bible is equally as unsound. The specific acts of an individual in a small corner of the Roman Empire cannot be expected to be accurately recounted in detail.
Taken in the context of a cultural narrative based (at least in part) on real people and real events, the Bible can tell us a great deal about the Near East of that time-period. The cosmic significance assigned to it comes in large part from the monumental events that led to the writing of the books. It is no coincidence that the Old and New Testament were each written within a generation of separate instances of complete destruction of Jerusalem and scattering of its inhabitants.
And to @thrillobyte, another interesting coincidence to add onto this discussion. Could Jesus ben Ananias have been any relation to Ananias of Damascus who is reputed to have cured Paul of his blindness after his conversion in ~36-37 AD? Having been present at the siege of Jerusalem would make the time-frame feasible.
Thank you to @alethelia for posting a well-worded and well thought out response. Although I do not share your personal beliefs, I highly respect your open-minded consideration of the discussion.
Caution and doubt are warranted on both sides of the discussion. Taking a literal view of the Biblical narrative and summarily rejecting any evidence which does not perfectly correspond to that narrative is a guarantee of blind confirmation. This form of circular logic is useless and serves to isolate its believers in a growing and evolving World. However, using the lack of hard evidence as proof against the events of the Bible is equally as unsound. The specific acts of an individual in a small corner of the Roman Empire cannot be expected to be accurately recounted in detail.
Taken in the context of a cultural narrative based (at least in part) on real people and real events, the Bible can tell us a great deal about the Near East of that time-period. The cosmic significance assigned to it comes in large part from the monumental events that led to the writing of the books. It is no coincidence that the Old and New Testament were each written within a generation of separate instances of complete destruction of Jerusalem and scattering of its inhabitants.
And to @thrillobyte, another interesting coincidence to add onto this discussion. Could Jesus ben Ananias have been any relation to Ananias of Damascus who is reputed to have cured Paul of his blindness after his conversion in ~36-37 AD? Having been present at the siege of Jerusalem would make the time-frame feasible.
You hit on an important part of the crux of this whole problem. The gospels were written to be allegories, not to be historical accounts. They were like a Shakespeare stage play designed to present moral lesson to their audience. Like Othello they teach us the folly of petty jealously and taking vengeance on someone while not leaving it to God.
re Ananias, that'd be an interesting research project but I have never come across any mention. Documents are so sketchy from that period, probably nothing exists to corroborate such a relationship.
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