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Although I am inclined to believe in a historical Jesus, I've come across an increasing amount of evidence and arguments that raise doubts about it. This evidence seems to be countered mainly by Christian apologists, whose numbers are huge obviously. So, it's confusing what the true balance of arguments is on each side.
Another thing I've learned is that in some formerly Christian countries where belief is now less strong than it used to be and secularism is more widespread, the prevailing view is that Jesus was a myth.
What are your views on this?
First of all, the story of jesus comes out at a time when the Roman empire is starting to crumble. Perhaps this jesus fella existed and some reverence made to his wisdom. What was taken for centuries as historical and eye witness accounts pluc the discovery of forgeries and add ones and edits whatever, raised some questions.
How to still maintain influence in regions where you are being booted out? Invent a religion and make it law by the decree of the king. The papal relationships with Europe's aristocracy is known and as such the religion spread. Rome kep their fingers in the proverbial pie of the nations as people gave to the church and to Rome.
Pretty much all of the NT is not even a good myth but it served the political purpose of control with promises and threats of the non existent afterlife. When folk did not understand how stuff works, godunnit was a perfectly normal explanation. I DON'T KNOW is now a perfectly normal answer these days as pretty much all assertions in the bible now have scientific explanations and the don;t knows are stll being addressed whereas a godunnit closes the door to finding out new things. The evidence is a boon in technology over the last century and a half even if that was coupled with smarter ways to kill each other.
Even if Jesus existed, history shows us that much injustice was done in his name by ignorant people. The excuses and/or apologetics really say nothing as this was merely no more than gang mindsets playing out demonstrating rather primitive man and primitive thinking. If this jesus was an enlightened fella, one could draw from reading objectively, he had little regard for tradition and religiosity of the day. One could even glean off a very secular jesus (at times) but the tales are so interwoven with myth and embellishments, one can only take it at face value and dismiss most of it as fiction or at best folklore.
One need only peek over the cone of silence next door and see the majority of texts cited and argued about are Pauline texts and observe the doctrinal traditions come from the same source, just observe how much Paul is cited compared to the gospels. Christians are far more familiar with Paul's (alleged) stuff than the gospels.
AREQUIPA, it is possible you are talking about the dating of something else.
Daniel 1:1
"In the third year of the reign of Jehoiakim king of Judah came Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon unto
Jerusalem - This event occurred, according to Jahn (“History of the Hebrew Commonwealth”), in the
year 607 b.c., and in the 368th year after the revolt of the ten tribes. According to Usher, it was in the
369th year of the revolt, and 606 b.c." (Albert Barne's Notes on the Bible.)
The prophecy below can only be about Jesus. The computation of the date from when the word went forth for the re-building of Jerusalem
to the Messiah was indeed fulfilled by only one Person: Jesus. After He was "cut off" Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed.
Dan 9:24-26 Seventy sevens are segregated for your people and for your
holy city:To detain transgression, to cause sin to end, to make a
propitiatory shelter for depravity; to bring the righteousness of the eons,
to seal the vision and the prophet, to anoint the holy of holies." (25) And
you shall know and be intelligent: From the faring forth of the word to
cause a return and to rebuild Jerusalem--from then till Messiah the
Governor is seven sevens, and sixty-two sevens. It will return and will
be rebuilt, square and salient, even in eras of constraint." (26) After the
sixty-two sevens, Messiah will be cut off, and there is no adjudication
for Him. The city and the holy place shall be laid in ruins with the other
governor's coming; then its end is by an overflow, and till the end of the
war desolations will be decided."
Nope. That's the Daniel I am talking of. From a lengthy post ...
"Verses 7 and 8 describe the victorious war of Ptolemy III (ruler of Egypt), as power continued to see-saw between the two warring empires.
9And he shall come into the realm of the king of the south, but he shall return into his own land.(Seleucus II defeated 242 BC).."
The whole of the chapter can be matched to the history of the time. to cut to the the conclusion
Ch 11. .... 40And at the time of the end shall the king of the south contend with him; and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass through. 41He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many [countries] shall be overthrown; but these shall be delivered out of his hand: Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon. 42He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries; and the land of Egypt shall not escape. 43But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps. 44But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him; and he shall go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly to sweep away many. 45 And he shall plant the tents of his palace between the sea and the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him.
These verses envisage, the defeat of Antiochus. He was defeated, but I am not certain whether this is a very poetic report of the revolt or a hope for it.
In any case, it dates Daniel to c. 167 B.C. not 530 B.C .
The rest of the 'prophecy' cannot be matched with history, so is not prophetic history but prophetic guesswork.
Nope. That's the Daniel I am talking of. From a lengthy post ...
"Verses 7 and 8 describe the victorious war of Ptolemy III (ruler of Egypt), as power continued to see-saw between the two warring empires.
9And he shall come into the realm of the king of the south, but he shall return into his own land.(Seleucus II defeated 242 BC).."
The whole of the chapter can be matched to the history of the time. to cut to the the conclusion
Ch 11. .... 40And at the time of the end shall the king of the south contend with him; and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots, and with horsemen, and with many ships; and he shall enter into the countries, and shall overflow and pass through. 41He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many [countries] shall be overthrown; but these shall be delivered out of his hand: Edom, and Moab, and the chief of the children of Ammon. 42He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries; and the land of Egypt shall not escape. 43But he shall have power over the treasures of gold and of silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; and the Libyans and the Ethiopians shall be at his steps. 44But tidings out of the east and out of the north shall trouble him; and he shall go forth with great fury to destroy and utterly to sweep away many. 45 And he shall plant the tents of his palace between the sea and the glorious holy mountain; yet he shall come to his end, and none shall help him.
These verses envisage, the defeat of Antiochus. He was defeated, but I am not certain whether this is a very poetic report of the revolt or a hope for it.
In any case, it dates Daniel to c. 167 B.C. not 530 B.C .
The rest of the 'prophecy' cannot be matched with history, so is not prophetic history but prophetic guesswork.
Daniel was not held captive in Babylon in 167 B.C. nor Israel. Your timeline is waaaaaaay off friend.
The 70 7's or 490 years has to do with Messiah coming AFTER the word went forth to rebuild Jerusalem. The passage I quoted has nothing to do with Ptolemy III. He was not the Messiah and Jerusalem was not destroyed after he was cut off per the prophecy. Right now there is one 7 remaining.
Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed after Christ the Messiah was cut off.
If there was an historical Jesus and the Romans crucified him it stands to reason that he was a zealot or some sort of Jewish rebel.
He was a zealot and from what we can glean off the texts, is that he was really opposed to the pious and religious leaders of the day. This is difficult to disseminate as we have conflicting stories in miracles performed where sometimes the recipient is told to tell the high priest and other times to keep quiet about it.
If we take the gospels as having some accuracy, there is a theme of not only the Pharisees wanting to see into his enlightenment and "new thinking" of the kingdom descended and within you and then we see them trying to trick jesus into applying the law which he was supposed to have established in the first place. If we read between the lines, this jesus has audiences that far exceed any temple practices and with the assumption that these folk like what they are hearing, it stands to reason, the religious leaders are threatened.
What follows is a conspiracy to falsely accuse him and be tried in a Sanhedrin trial. This is where the stories go awry. The Sanhedrin would not assemble just like that and at night.
I suspect with all the differences in the crucifiction story, that there is much embellishment here. What probably happened was that he was arrested, he was tried and he knew or should have known, according to the laws, he was due a stoning. As the Roman had stopped this practice, the onus was on the Romans to carry out the punishment.
What we know historically that religious and secular leaders collude, it stands to reason that this collusion was possible and all the Scribes and Pharisees had to do is demonstrate a plausible threat of an uprising that the priests would not be able to stem or control.
Seeing that eventually in 70CE, there was a war, this popular thought did take hold and there was a rebellion. The rebellion was crushed and led to the great diaspora.
Obviously, jesus had made folk start standing up to subversion of the Romans and the obvious collusion of the religious hierarchy. Jesus was perhaps the inspiration for this but now he is long dead.
So stories get embellished and he becomes a legendary man-god, add-on miracles and resurrection in line with other man-god myths and from there the story grew and changed over time.
Whoops did we just kill god?
The crucifiction is thus made to seem as preordained and necessary and from there it takes on a whole new meaning. As the gospels are edited and redacted, the stories we now read are the ones that emerged.
This expansion of the belief in this jesus fella probably did not go unnoticed and folk prepared to die for this legend and whatnot.
If such a legend can have influence over people, how can we use that to our advantage?
By 354CE(?) the canon is proclaimed in Nicea and so much time has elapsed and no one is left who was there. It is thus all hear say.
The Pauline texts water down the Jewish traditions and seems chronologically based on the life of this jesus fella and riddled with lies or half truths, forms the bulk of the canon.
Paul is not even philosophical, much of what he attributes to the gifts of the hs are probably found in any small communities that care for each other. Pagan churches are converted to his religion and so more pagan practices are incorporated.
It is reading excluded gnostic texts that one gets a totally different picture to the one the RC sold us and finding these laid waste much of the myths and legend surrounding jesus.
We find that texts attributed to alleged disciples are merely done so to give some semblance of authority to the texts.
That is more or less the conclusion I have come to.
What follows is a conspiracy to falsely accuse him and be tried in a Sanhedrin trial. This is where the stories go awry. The Sanhedrin would not assemble just like that and at night.
Hi Seeker, no, I'm not following you around on the boards
But I was amused by what you wrote above. How do you know the Sanhedrin would not assemple just like that and at night?
The priests had been scouting Jesus for some time trying to catch Him in a slip-up. The Passover was approaching. Unbeknownst to them, Jesus was the Passover. They had to act quickly for all this to happen at just the right time (unbeknownst to them). They got Judas in on the act, got a group together to arrest Jesus and brought Him to trial.
I see no embellishment of the story. The people who wrote the four accounts were very righteous people, not given to lie, not given to embellish.
The Living God through Lord Jesus Christ is alive in His people , and this alive in Not a conjuncture of ideas , the Spirit of Lord Jesus is alive and He is a thinking living Lord , and rules in all the earth and Heaven , ....and if you really did your home work to find out the real truth of Christ instead of looking to the denier logic , then If you did your home work correct they you would be saved and know Lord Jesus Christ in your day to day life .... Because if you have a witness of Christ then you will never have enough of truth of Christ....
Daniel was not held captive in Babylon in 167 B.C. nor Israel. Your timeline is waaaaaaay off friend.
The 70 7's or 490 years has to do with Messiah coming AFTER the word went forth to rebuild Jerusalem. The passage I quoted has nothing to do with Ptolemy III. He was not the Messiah and Jerusalem was not destroyed after he was cut off per the prophecy. Right now there is one 7 remaining.
Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed after Christ the Messiah was cut off.
I agree. Daniel was not held captive in Babylon in 167 BC nor at any other time. What he wrote was based on history, not prophecy, and not even very accurate history, since he makes a number of errors in his account on the fall of Babylon and the persian takeover.
The timeline was worked out to fit the time when the Seleucid greeks were interfering so much in temple affairs that it was prompting revolt. The messiah Daniel had in mind turned out to be the Hasmoneans.
Subsequently the Christians tried to apply it to their beliefs and so the timeline had to be reinterpreted. Of course you won't believe the evidence and you would prefer to raise all manner of irrelevant qubbles about Ptolelmy or back to front reasoning like if Daniel is true then he lived in Babylon, not in the time of the selucids. Not that I claim even that Daniel even wrote the thing any more than I believe that the Tax collector wrote Matthew.
You arguments are based on the shifting sands of faith, not on evidence.
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