[QUOTE=dangermom]
Yes, but my point was that people turned them into kings for a reason.
[/QUOTE]
Hey, I’m not arguing with you 
From what I understand, Christians were celebrating on Christmas Day (although it wasn’t really Christmas Day at that time), whereupon the Roman traditionalists tried to coopt it by making a big to-do out of some minor festival previously of little import. Christmas kept getting bigger and more popular, and the other fell by the wayside.
I mean, c’mon, this is Rome we’re talking about. They had more gods than you can shake a stick at and feasts and festivals and high holy days and something every bloody day of the year somewhere.
Eh, why worry? It’s Christmas Eve - time to throw another faggot on the fire and enjoy the blaze.
[QUOTE=Phase42]
Hey, I’m not arguing with you
[/QUOTE]
True. Sorry. 
And Merry Christmas too.
[QUOTE=Phase42]
he point being that the birth of Christ was announced, not only to Jewish peasants (the shepherds), but also to high-ranking, foreign practitioners of arts (astrology and/or sorcery) expressly forbidden by Jewish law. In other words, He was here for everybody.
[/QUOTE]
Unless, of course, he was never born, and it’s simply a myth.
[QUOTE=Phase42]
I’ve never liked the word “kings” in reference to the wise men. The Bible says “magi” or “wise men”, depending on the translation. The interpretation that sounds most sensible to me is that they were Zoroastrian astrologers. My pastor went so far as to call them sorcerers.
The point being that the birth of Christ was announced, not only to Jewish peasants (the shepherds), but also to high-ranking, foreign practitioners of arts (astrology and/or sorcery) expressly forbidden by Jewish law. In other words, He was here for everybody.
However, it is generally agreed that the magi didn’t appear at the stable. They showed up some time later, hence the description of their arrival at the “house” where he was staying.
[/QUOTE]
So basically, you’d have Dumbledore, Yoda and Gandalf?
[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
So basically, you’d have Dumbledore, Yoda and Gandalf?
[/QUOTE]
“I have brought you the gift of Gold, Har… uh, Jesus. Have I mentioned you have your mother’s eyes?”
“Frankincense have I brought you, hmm? When 33 years old you reach, look this good you will not!*”
"Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to d-
Oh, wait, you can? Ah. Well, uhm… have some myrrh, then".
*Cough. Sorry, everyone.
[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
So basically, you’d have Dumbledore, Yoda and Gandalf?
[/QUOTE]
Dumbledore would never have been a Magi because the Baby Jesus would have killed him. Really! You see, Dumbledore is gay, according to his creator.
There was a book called “Le Petit manuel du parfait confessseur” used by Roman Catholic priests in Quebec and elsewhere in the world for several hundred years that states in its chapter on “Sodomites” that God holds homosexuality in such horror that on the night his Son was born, he caused all sodomites in Bethlehem to drop dead!
I don’t know if this book is still in print. It was reprinted in Quebec in the 1960s to give people a laugh, but I have not found it since.
Just think of what it must have looked like at the local gay bar in Bethlehem! Dead queers all over the place.
Or imagine this:
God: What would you like for your birthday, my son?
Jesus: Gee, Dad, a necklace of dead faggots would be nice!
[QUOTE=bump]
Well, very strictly speaking, that’s true. On the other hand, the word manger means “a trough or open box in a stable designed to hold feed or fodder for livestock”, so even if he hadn’t been born in the stable, it makes sense that the manger was in all likelihood in the stable. That’s likely where the idea comes from.
I don’t know what the original Greek or Latin word is or what it translates to (weren’t all 3 of the synoptic gospels written in one or the other?). Anybody care to enlighten us?
[/QUOTE]
I heard (or read, probably) that the word translated into “manger” could be translated as “crib” or “manger”, depending on the context.
At the risk of turning this thread into a debate, I’d like to ask for clarification on this.
[QUOTE=Guinastasia]
So basically, you’d have Dumbledore, Yoda and Gandalf?
[/QUOTE]
BWUH!
[QUOTE=Valteron]
I Bullshit. They hijacked the pagan solstice festival and arbitrarily decided it was the birthdate of Jesus.
[/QUOTE]
“Pagan solstice festival”? If you’re sitting around your house claiming to be a “pagan” your beliefs are no less ridiculous than anything Christianity can throw at you. At least Christians have the weight of 2,000 years of history; today’s so-called “paganism” is a silly, New Age fad that dates back about forty years and is based on a grab bag of cherry-picked, poorly understood, mostly ahistorical rituals either plunked at random from a wide variety of superstitions or just made up from whole cloth by shysters, slapnads and nutbars.
“Pagan” 2,000 years ago was not a religion; it’s a word that originally had essentially the same meaning and connotation as “Rube” or “bumpkin,” and came to mean “Not a Christian, Muslim or Jew.” “Pagan solstice festival” is exactly as meaningless a description as “Heathen winter holiday” or “Non-believer celebration held the third Tuesday in April.” It describes, in literal use, a thousand or more distinct faiths, and in the case of modern neo-paganism, something that isn’t really much more of a faith than Scientology or the folks who write down “Jedi” on census forms.
How’s that for as take on someone else’s religion?
[QUOTE=Valteron]
Today is quiet, and I am sitting by a nice roaring fire, next to a beautifully lit and decorated evergreen. Candles are glowing, beating back the gloom of the shortest days in the Northern Hemisphere. I am waiting for my in-laws to get here for a holiday visit, so while we wait, little children, let me tell you a story about how the Christians stole Yuletide.
You see, Yuletide is celebrated at the end of December because that is when the days are short and gloomy, and we need a festival to lift our spirits. So our pagan ancestors started a yearly celebration to replace the missing sunshine and warmth of summer. They would cut down a tree that was still green in spite of winter, bring it into the house, and decorate it with lights and round ornaments so that it looked like a tree full of fruit basking in sunshine.
They lit Yule logs and lots of candles. They sang songs and ate good food. And every year, just after the festival, the days start to get longer again!
The Romans celebrated a feast with holly and ivy and gift-giving at Solstice.
And do you honestly believe it is just a coincidence that the Jewish feast of lights occurs right around the Solstice?
Now, this is the time of year that Christians like to complain that society is taking the “Christ” out of “Christmas”. Churches put up signs saying “Jesus is the reason for the season” as if this celebration was about the birth of their fraudulent man-god, Jesus, and had somehow been stolen from them.
Bullshit, kiddies, bullshit.
For starters, even their own gospels, written decades after Jesus was allegedly born (if he ever existed at all) give us no indication of his date of birth. It was the Emperor Constantine, a ruthless, murdering tyrant who imposed Christianity on helpless people for his political ends centuries after Jesus who decided to hijack the Solstice feast of our ancestors and call it the birthday of Jesus.
The whole tradition of Christmas is full of holes and outright lies.
So, kiddies, those of you who have kids still ignorant and superstitious enough to subscribe to Christianity, here are a few facts you can give them as Yuletide presents.
-
Nothing tells us that Jesus was born in a stable. Our only account, Luke 2:7 says that his mother Mary “laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them at the inn”. Nothing about any ox and ass. The manger could have been in an alleyway or under a tent, or anywhere.
-
Why was a pregnant woman travelling anyhow? Because the Gospel writer had to find some way to have Jesus born in Bethlehem, because the Old Testament says that the Messiah was to be born there. But Jesus was clearly from Nazareth. So Luke (or somebody in the early Christian community) invented the absurd story of a Roman decree that “all the world should be taxed”. And get this. You had to travel back to the city of your birth to pay your taxes. Weird and very unlikely. People travelling with all that money would have been sitting ducks for robbers.
By the way, there is not a word about a Census in the Gospel of Luke, just about taxing.
There is also not a word in any Roman or other records about a special world-wide tax imposed by Caesar Augustus on or around 1 AD (or 4 B.C.) which was the real birth-year of Jesus if he existed.
Nothing tells us that there were three kings. The Gospel of Matthhew, Chapter 2, tells us that there came “wise men” from the east. Nothing says they were kings or that there were three. And nothing tells us they were white, black and brown.
And they came into the “house” where Jesus was, NOT a stable or a manger. So any manger scene that shows the Wise Men presnt does not even make sense according to the Gospels (which do not make sense either, kiddies).
What about the Star of Bethlehem? Well, it could have been anything. Eastern magi made a big deal of fallen meteorites. Or, as Anatole France pointed out, “the star of the Magi has lost its miraculous character for us, who know that the heavens are incessantly perturbed by the birth and death of worlds, and who in 1866 saw a star suddenly blaze forth in the Corona Borealis, shine for a month, and then go out.”
And what about the Little Drummer Boy, who had no gift to give but a solo drum performance? Well, he exists only in a song written in 1958. But don’t worry, kiddies. Someday, if Christianity still exists, if the human race has not yet put religion on the junk-pile of superstitions, Christians will tell you with a staight face that there was a little drummer boy in the stable alongside the Magi, Shepherds, ox and ass, doves, and maybe Chilly Willy the Penguin!
[/QUOTE]
If there wasn’t a census, why didn’t anybody reading the Gospel accounts in 70 AD say, “What the hell are you talking about??? There was never any census!!! This is all a load of crap” and walk away from Christianity is disgust?
Look, if I were a con artist, I could think of dozens of plausible sounding explanations for Jesus being born in Bethlehem. Why would I make up a census that everyone at the time KNEW had never taken place?
[QUOTE=astorian]
Look, if I were a con artist, I could think of dozens of plausible sounding explanations for Jesus being born in Bethlehem. Why would I make up a census that everyone at the time KNEW had never taken place?
[/QUOTE]
No kidding – I’d find it more plausible if the Bible said Joseph & Mary were merely in town for the X Games.
[QUOTE=astorian]
If there wasn’t a census, why didn’t anybody reading the Gospel accounts in 70 AD say, “What the hell are you talking about??? There was never any census!!! This is all a load of crap” and walk away from Christianity is disgust?
Look, if I were a con artist, I could think of dozens of plausible sounding explanations for Jesus being born in Bethlehem. Why would I make up a census that everyone at the time KNEW had never taken place?
[/QUOTE]
The gospels were written 30 years after the fact. I imagine most of the folks old enough at the time to remember a census were dead.
And besides, apocalyptic charismatic religions find numbskulls to convert all the time. David Koresh had followers, Heaven’s Gate had followers, Scientology *has *followers. In in the first century AD, Christianity was little more than a loony sect of Judaism.
So in the beginning the gullible nibble on the preposterous story and by the time the’re dead, their grandchildren have been brought up such as to never question it.
Is that really so hard to believe?
[QUOTE=RickJay]
“Pagan solstice festival”? If you’re sitting around your house claiming to be a “pagan” your beliefs are no less ridiculous than anything Christianity can throw at you. At least Christians have the weight of 2,000 years of history; today’s so-called “paganism” is a silly, New Age fad that dates back about forty years and is based on a grab bag of cherry-picked, poorly understood, mostly ahistorical rituals either plunked at random from a wide variety of superstitions or just made up from whole cloth by shysters, slapnads and nutbars.
[/QUOTE]
“Slapnads”? What a wonderful word. 
[QUOTE=dangermom]
Anyway, I’m not sure what the point of the OP was. But I always like to discuss the traditions and legends that have grown up around the core of Christianity (such stories, of course, grow around any popular figure or movement, from Robin Hood to Islam).
[/QUOTE]
Excellent point. The figure at the core of Christianity is just as real as Robin Hood. Well played.
[QUOTE=astorian]
If there wasn’t a census, why didn’t anybody reading the Gospel accounts in 70 AD say, “What the hell are you talking about??? There was never any census!!! This is all a load of crap” and walk away from Christianity is disgust?
Look, if I were a con artist, I could think of dozens of plausible sounding explanations for Jesus being born in Bethlehem. Why would I make up a census that everyone at the time KNEW had never taken place?
[/QUOTE]
The world was a different place in 70 A.D. News traveled very slowly. If there had been a census of the whole world it would most likely have been written down in more places than the Bible. Much of the New Testament was written after the fact and it would not be surprising if few people had heard of a census of the entire world. If one takes Matthew and Luke separately one of the versions had to be wrong. At 8 days Jesus was said to be in Jerusalem in the temple.It seems the Holy family did a lot of running around during that first period of Jesus birth.
Monavis
[QUOTE=RickJay]
“Pagan solstice festival”? …
“Pagan” 2,000 years ago was not a religion; it’s a word that originally had essentially the same meaning and connotation as “Rube” or “bumpkin,” and came to mean “Not a Christian, Muslim or Jew.” …
How’s that for as take on someone else’s religion?
[/QUOTE]
So, in brief, you’re saying, “Don’t Payg me, bro!”
[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Excellent point. The figure at the core of Christianity is just as real as Robin Hood. Well played.
[/QUOTE]
I think you know what my point was. IIRC, Mohammed was a real person, but I used the example of Islam as well. Whether a real person, a folk hero, or a movement based on an idea, there are going to be stories and legends that grow up around it. That’s human nature for you. And for myself, I enjoy those legends very much.
I used to think the census described by the author of Luke was silly too, but I changed my mind after reading what Richard Carrier has to say on the subject. Carrier’s an expert in ancient history. He’s also an atheist who strikes me as being very reasonable and fair. Anyway, here’s a link: