The gullible will always be with us.
This thread leaves much to ponder about the Turin threads.
Not really, although it does leave much to ponder about faith in the face of contrary evidence.
yep, the word is delusional
It is an odd thing that so many Christians claim to have faith yet so desperately look for physical evidence that the object of their faith ever existed.
On the other hand, it’s worth noting that the first recorded person to call “bullshit” on the Shroud was the Bishop of Troyes, back in 1390.
And at least two of the Catholics quoted in the story say that the authenticity of the Shroud is not fundamental to their faiths.
I think it is funny to see devout Christians fight hard for their lives when they have a terminal illness–“no, please, please don’t send me to an eternity of endless bliss!”
I saw what you did there. Five years later.
Personally, I take the rather absurd biblical description of the Census of Quirinius (Luke 2: 1-5) as indicative. No such census ever required people to travel to their ancestral homes because, frankly, the idea is ridiculous. To me, it looks like a transparent attempt to take some known person who lived his whole life in and around Nazareth and contrive a reason for him to have been born in Bethlehem in order to fulfill prophesy. It’s like trying to come up with some tortured circumstances for the birth of Barack Obama to try to place it in Kenya for political reasons rather than any genuine interest in historical accuracy. Some future historian who reads about the ridiculous claims about Obama could plausibly take them as supporting evidence for the existence of Obama (if this was ever in doubt), because why else would anyone bother to try to advance such stories except to libel an existing person?
If Jesus was wholly fictional, the author of Luke would simply say he was born in Bethlehem and not bother trying to cram in an implausible story element.
Does it strike anyone else as odd that a burial shroud was nine feet long and folded once at the head *just so *as to capture the front and back of a corpse? Seems very contrived, and unlikely to comport with Jewish burial custom of the time.
Not just the first recorded person to call bullishit. First recorded person to say anything about it.
I’ve long awaited an explanation for why, in First Century Palestine, Jesus looked so doggone Early Gothic instead of Classical or even realistic. A man of the future, 12 centuries out of his time?
Are you starting some kind of new Internet church?
I’ve been tempted. I know how tempted I’ve been, but my oldest keeps finding reasons why the Romans or Pharisees would put me in jail. I have no desire to be sacrificed to myself for one lousy grift.
It’s from the 13th Century. There’s nothing to debate.
Was Joshua-Ben-Joseph a real person? Of course he was. But he didn’t look like Peter Frampton ( see image in article ), no matter how much stained-glass artists insist he did. He looked like Anwar Sadat. A near middle-eastern man.
Did Jesus, the Christ, exist? That’s for each person to discover within their heart, or not. Nobody gets to tell you if a God exists, or existed. But a guy whose family worked with their hands? Yeah. There’s plenty of documentation around that this guy existed.
When I referred to Jesus with this name during a class at my Episcopal Church on The Nicene Creed, she smiled and nodded. I know what I’m talking about- that was his real name, in the day. In 1st Century Judea, the common folk were not speaking Greek. They were speaking Aramaic and Hebrew.
The Greeks, they got into the naming mix later on.
If you want to be technical, His Aramaic name (Hebrew was pretty much out of day-to-day use) was יֵשׁוּעַ (“Yeshua”). יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (“Jehosu‘a”, traditionally Englished as “Joshua”) was archaic.
And pretty much everybody spoke Greek then, thanks to Alexander the Great.
Yeah but his name- as you point out- wasn’t Jesus.
Knowing Greek and using it to name your kid are two fundamentally different things.
Yeshua Ben Yoseph. Better?
ETA: Thank you for the accuracy and the use of original language. Seriously- I respect the depth of knowledge.
All that Cecil addresses of Jesus’ historicity is just two brief paragraphs, the rest is devoted to the Shroud of Turin, over 20 paragraphs, which he does a great job on. The Shroud, had it been the authentic burial cloth of Christ, would have certainly been an interesting find. I suppose at the time of Cecil’s column (1985), after 20/20 and many other TV shows, magazine and newspaper articles later, it was getting plenty of attention, so maybe that’s why he devoted that much time to it. I’ve been hoping after 34 years since that column was written, he’d go back and readdress it, and just leave the Shroud of Turin out of it altogether.
Another reason is many on the SD use “The Master Speaks” and linking to this on other threads when this gets brought up, as if that is the last word that needs to be said about Jesus’ place in history, when it really doesn’t cover any of the major controversy whatsoever of what scholars have said about those sources he lists.
I understand him giving children a break, by not spilling the beans on Santa Claus to kids, gosh, I loved how he got out of that one, and good for him. But I’m so disappointed in this particular column, and not because I think he finds it more plausible than not that he was a historical person of some sorts, but because he uses Josephus and Tacitus, without mentioning just how spurious many credible scholars still think those quotes are. He doesn’t clue in the reader to any of the controversy, and I’m sure he is aware of it.
Scholars have noted how none of the earlier church fathers use this quote from Josephus, many would have wanted and needed it. Some in fact state that Josephus didn’t speak of Jesus, at least the one they were looking for. We have to wait a few centuries later till Eusebius before it starts getting quoted from. Some feel like he is the one that forged it into Josephus writings. During the last fifty to seventy years or so (not exactly sure on timeline), some scholars, usually Christian apologists are trying to salvage a few bits of Josephus that they think could possible be authentic after all, while others think the argument is weak considering the evidence.
Tacitus’ quote that often gets mentioned, doesn’t start to surface until many centuries later, if Remsberg is correct, 1,360 years.
Using them as a source without any elaboration gives readers the impression that important historians were referencing Jesus outside of Christian circles so there must have been some kind of historic Jesus.
The last non-Christian source he brings up is the Talmud. Some Christians (and some Jews) don’t claim this one, preferring to think it doesn’t refer to their Jesus. Perhaps because it is not very flattering, but that is no reason to reject it. At least it’s a non-Christian source and has some similarities to the Gospels, but also goes completely off script, not sure what to make of it.
Something I think worth exploring is him stating: *Still, barring an actual conspiracy, 40 years is too short a time for an entirely mythical Christ to have been fabricated out of (heh-heh) whole cloth. * I wished he would have elaborated more on this.
Regardless, I hope someday, Cecil will go back and at least devote as much time to it, as he did the Shroud of Turin.