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Old 11-29-2011, 06:02 PM
 
Location: America
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRational View Post
As you're (sort of) also back on the OP's topic...
Did anyone else native to the area and of similar social circumstances, qualify as a Roman citizen?
As has already been pretty well settled... I also think not.
I looked it up and it seems you had to have been "ethnically" Roman to be a citizen. Not even women were citizens. I have some things to do but I will provide a link when I get a chance.
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Old 11-29-2011, 06:07 PM
 
Location: Parts Unknown, Northern California
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony45 View Post
I thought Jesus was a Jew?
That isn't in question. Saul/Paul was also a Jew, but he was a citizen of Rome, a status which saved his life later. He was a citizen by birth, but how his parents had gained that status is unknown, the information is not provided in any of Paul's texts. There is a singular reference to his mother in Romans 16 where Paul indicates that she lived in Rome.

The most common path to Roman citizenship for a provincial was to be an influential or wealthy person in the province, who cooperated fully with the Roman authorities. In that Paul's earlier career was as a Christian persecutor on behalf of Rome, that certainly hints that he came from an important family closely allied with the Roman government.
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Old 11-29-2011, 06:18 PM
 
Location: Minneapolis
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
Not true. No mention of Jesus appears in a Roman source until long after the supposed death.

If you believe otherwise, please provide your source. You might wish to get up to speed here by reading the section called "Greco-Roman Pagan sources"
in this link.
Historicity of Jesus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It certainly wouldn't have been unusual for Jesus to have gone virtually unnoticed during his lifetime. Other than to a small number of devoted followers, he would have been of little consequence to any of his contemporaries. He was, however, casually referenced by both Josephus and Tacitus--not proof of his existence, but strong circumstantial evidence.

We also know that a new religion founded on the belief in Jesus' divinity spread rapidly into southern Europe in the first century, CE. Given that rise of Christianity, the "cause and effect" principle further strengthens the likelihood of his having existed.

As for citizenship, I don't think ethnicity in itself had much meaning. My understanding is that only non-citizens were executed via crucifixion, with the less torturous act of beheading reserved for Roman citizens.
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Old 11-29-2011, 06:27 PM
 
25,727 posts, read 16,340,902 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
That isn't in question. Saul/Paul was also a Jew, but he was a citizen of Rome, a status which saved his life later. He was a citizen by birth, but how his parents had gained that status is unknown, the information is not provided in any of Paul's texts. There is a singular reference to his mother in Romans 16 where Paul indicates that she lived in Rome.

The most common path to Roman citizenship for a provincial was to be an influential or wealthy person in the province, who cooperated fully with the Roman authorities. In that Paul's earlier career was as a Christian persecutor on behalf of Rome, that certainly hints that he came from an important family closely allied with the Roman government.
Ok, I always thought that those ancient governments were so anti-semetic that a Jew would never have been allowed to have citizen status.
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Old 11-29-2011, 06:49 PM
 
Location: Parts Unknown, Northern California
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rogead View Post
It certainly wouldn't have been unusual for Jesus to have gone virtually unnoticed during his lifetime. Other than to a small number of devoted followers, he would have been of little consequence to any of his contemporaries.
.
It is apparent that Jesus did not make a big splash in the Roman world while he was alive. It seems that in their eyes, he would have been just one more in a series of Messianic trouble makers who had to be eliminated.

However, that certainly is not the case with John the Baptist who gets a multi page treatment in Jospehus which is mostly congruent with the account found in the gospel of John. Where they depart is over the motivation for John's execution. According to John's gospel, it was the Baptist's denunciation of Herod's marriage to his former sister in law which triggered the death sentence. Josephus explains that Herod had grown fearful of the crowds which the Baptist attracted wherever he went and suspected John of trying to organize a religious revolution against Herod's Roman supported authority.

And there you have the classic problem in trusting any of the sources from antiquity. The religious oriented source has John being murdered for taking a moral stance, the secular Roman historian has it as an execution to maintain Roman peace, both obviously self serving explanations.

Even if we had Roman accounts of the life of Jesus, written around the time of his death, we would still have to comb them carefully for evidence of Roman bias. But at least we would have a contrasting account by which the gospels may be more deeply examined.

As it stands, we have the worst of all historical worlds...unvetted accounts written and controlled by the fanatical followers of a cult figure.
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Old 11-30-2011, 02:45 AM
 
Location: Peterborough, England
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Grandstander View Post
As it stands, we have the worst of all historical worlds...unvetted accounts written and controlled by the fanatical followers of a cult figure.
They can't be swallowed whole. Frex, the portrayal of Pilate is an obvious whitewash, and it's most unlikely that a Jewish crowd would have shouted "Crucify him" since Jews viewed that death as an abomination. But they are still useful.

Thus the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist is almost certainly historical. No retrospective fiction would have included it, since it landed the Church with serious explaining to do. Why did the Sinless Son of God need to be baptised at all, and how could He accept it from someone less than He? That whole passage makes it sound as if Jesus started His mission as a follower of John, which was not at all what the Church taught.

The story of the woman caught in adultery presents a similar problem. Adultery was condemned by Christians as much as by Jews, and the story doesn't help anyone's theological notions, so why invent it?

But the Big Daddy, of course, is the Crucifixion itself. One of the Early Church's biggest handicaps was that its founder had been a criminal, executed by the Roman state, a fact which put His followers in very bad odour. Why on earth invent that? If Jesus had to die violently as part of a myth, why not say that He was stoned by the Jews, like Stephen? In general, the Church tried to play down its bad start in relation to the Roman authorities, and make the Jews the main scapegoats for Jesus'death. If the whole episode was fiction, why bring Pilate into it at all. Why not let the Jews carry the whole can?

By far the most straightforward explanation is that it's written that way because that's more or less how it happened, and contemporaries knew this - even if there's been some embellishment along the way.
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Old 11-30-2011, 02:47 AM
 
Location: Texas
14,076 posts, read 20,445,188 times
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Isn't it interesting that those who deny the historical Jesus, often have no problem accepting the historical Peter or Paul?

Those men claimed to be followers of that mythological Jesus and believed in His authenticity even to the point of death. So did all the disciples but one, John, who died exiled for his belief in the historical, actual person called Jesus.

Either they were victims of some sort of mass derangement, or Jesus really did exist. What else could explain such devotion and dedication?
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Old 11-30-2011, 04:23 AM
 
366 posts, read 772,280 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PostSecularist View Post
I doubt the Roman Empire had citizenship laws like the United States does, but I'll ask anyway
Since Jesus was born in Bethelem, a territory of the Roman Empire at the time, does that make him a citizen of the Roman Empire? Or does Jesus' ethnicity preclude him from that status?
In effect, yes.
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Old 11-30-2011, 05:33 AM
 
Location: Venice Italy
1,037 posts, read 1,385,520 times
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The citizenship was given according to specific procedures
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Old 11-30-2011, 08:25 AM
 
Location: Parts Unknown, Northern California
48,564 posts, read 23,965,444 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikestone8 View Post
By far the most straightforward explanation is that it's written that way because that's more or less how it happened, and contemporaries knew this - even if there's been some embellishment along the way.
Yes, but there need not be congruity between the "most straight forward" explanation and the most accurate explanation. If some episodes were embellished, some invented and some were accurate representations of what happened, we are still left with the probelms of identifying which ones are which.
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