Evidence of a historical Jesus Christ

Great Debates
61

Simply impossible. Mars goes into retrograde motion once a year, so it can appear to not move against the background stars for a few days at a time. But no way it would do it for 15 months, or anything like that. You should get your money back from whoever sold you that program.

I recommend Stellarium as a free alternative.

There are at least two problems with your theory.

  1. There is something interesting happening in the sky every night. The visible planets all travel in the same path around the sky (the ecliptic), all at different speeds, so there are several conjunctions every year as one overtakes another, with especially interesting ones every few years at least. There are comets every several years, and novae at unpredictable intervals. Not to mention several meteor showers each year, some of which must have been quite spectacular in the past, when there were no city lights, and there was a lot more debris in the solar system.

  2. Astrology doesn’t work. And even if it did, I guarantee that there is nothing in the astrology manuals, especially old Babylonian astrology manuals, that says “This conjunction indicates that a new King of the Jews is being born.”

Besides, the whole thing makes no sense. Why would Babylonians, or whatever, care about a new King of the Jews? And if they did, why would they just send three guys to see him when he was a baby, and never again?

In fact, if Mary and Joseph were told by angels that their little bundle of joy was the Messiah, and saw angelic choirs and the magi giving him gold and Herod trying to kill him, why were they so surprised a few years later when he turned out to be precocious? Were they complete dunces?

62

In #15 you said “That is incredibly lame. The Slaughter of the Innocents, if it had occurred, would be the most spectacular event of Herod’s reign.” In #21 I asked you to explain how you knew that to be true. You never answered, so I assumed you were dropping that argument. Since you apparently aren’t, the question is still open.

This conversation is obviously not going to go forward as long as you’re hanging your hat entirely on the claim that I’m a Christian as a result of “childhood indoctrination”. The claim is flatly false. I was an atheist until age 23, at which time I converted to Christianity. Moreover, I can give the reason for this, which is that while young I accepted the things that my family, the media, and the schools taught me, and thus naturally was an atheist. Starting around age 20 I began to question whether the things I’d been taught as a youth were true. I began reading, studying, and discussing widely outside the bounds of my formal education. As a result of this process, I learned many things which I had not learned before, and the end result was that I converted to Christianity.

Your implication that I was “indoctrinated” by means such as the words on money, years numbered from the birthdate of Jesus, and vampire movies is not convincing. (First of all, I have never watched a vampire movie, and the only vampire book I’ve ever read is Terry Pratchett’s Carpe Jugulum, in which the vampires are invincible to religious symbols.) Perhaps you know people who are willing to alter their worldview based on such things; I am not, nor is anyone I know. According to Webster’s, “indoctrinate” means is “to teach or inculcate (a doctrine, principle, ideology, etc…)”. Putting words on money does not meet this definition, nor does playing songs on the radio, nor do vampire movies.

63

Okay, well consider this. You have a very strong belief in a great many things that are flatly untrue. For example, in this post you wrote:

Now there’s no congressman who said what you claimed he said, and no American Christians have gone to Uganda and inspired them to take Leviticus literally and enact laws calling for the death penalty for homosexuals. (Some folks might say that it’s morally wrong to falsely accuse people of murder.) So by your own standards, should I “discard the entire thing”? Obviuosly it’s an important question, because you’ren ot much into providing evidence to back up anything you say. When you make declarations like “Absolute divine inspiration is the only reasonable position to take for any book that claims to know what God thinks, let alone one whose authors are largely anonymous” I can’t look at your reasoning because you don’t give any. My only choices are to trust whatever you say on faith or to dismiss it.

64

Well, if that’s true, you are a rare bird, and I can no more understand your way of thinking than I could one of Charles Manson’s disciples. I can only speculate that it filled some need for security and/or certainty in your life. Good luck to you.

65

Yes, but remember this is brocks we’re dealing with. If we judge by this post he probably won’t get the point. He says that it’s “provably, testably wrong” when Jesus said “you could tell a mountain to cast itself into the see [sic], or tell a fig tree to wither up.”* Once he gets done showing his superiority over Christians, here are some other provably, testably wrong statements that he could debunk:

[ul]
[li]William Blake said that tigers in nighttime forests are on fire. This is provably, testably wrong.[/li][li]Shakespeare said “all the world’s a stage”, but it’s actually a flattened sphere of diameter roughly 8,000 miles. Shakespeare is proably testably wrong.[/li][li]Edward Abbey said that he wanted to roll his strength and sweetness into a ball. This can’t be done. It’s provably, testably wrong.[/li][/ul]
*And yes, *I *know that Jesus made a fig tree wither up himself, rather than saying that his followers would do so.

66

and no American Christians have gone to Uganda and inspired them to take Leviticus literally and enact laws calling for the death penalty for homosexuals.
[/quote]

67

sic??? really? Good heavens, are you reduced to criticizing obvious typos now?

Matthew 21:18-22
Early in the morning, as he was on his way back to the city, he was hungry. Seeing a fig tree by the road, he went up to it but found nothing on it except leaves. Then he said to it, “May you never bear fruit again!” Immediately the tree withered.
When the disciples saw this, they were amazed. “How did the fig tree wither so quickly?” they asked.
Jesus replied, “I tell you the truth, if you have faith and do not doubt, not only can you do what was done to the fig tree, but also you can say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and it will be done. If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer.”

Emphasis mine.

68

Hee hee.

69

I said RELATIONSHIP TO THE HORIZON not relationship to the stars, which I noted continued to change.

I recommend you quit responding to my posts if you’re not gonna have a look or read carefully what I write.

All that is necessary for this story is for the Magi to think astrology works. Cite your guarantees please, on Babylonian astrology manuals, as well as proof the Magi were babylonian, since it is “guaranteed.”

And what is your hypotheses that any story that does not include the motivattion of the characters is false? I have already demonstrated your over-complication of the story, it would seem to me you don’t WANT to understand the story.

70

BTW Brocks, the apparent motion of the planets against the stars is west to east, not east to west.

Its the relationship with the earth wherein everything in the sky moves east to west over a night.

71

Comparing Christians to Charles’ Manson’s followers is completely uncalled for and entirely insulting.

IRC Champion is not the only person to have an atheistic phase in youth. So did I. Its not so rare.

72

[quote=“David42, post:69, topic:590017”]

I said RELATIONSHIP TO THE HORIZON

[quote]

It’s not clear what you said, but it’s clear you didn’t say that. First, you just said that Mars stayed in the same spot every night, and then you said “Mars still moved around the earth from east to west (as seen from earth) but it somehow seemed to linger around the same spot in the west every night.” That makes no sense, it either moves or it doesn’t, but I tried to give you the benefit of the doubt by assuming that you meant it stayed in the same spot relative to the stars.

Your only mention of the horizon had to do with the very end of its 15-month period of visibility.

No, you didn’t. You didn’t mention the stars at all.

LOL. Here is what you expect people to read carefully: you don’t know how many months Mars stayed stationary, but maybe it was 15 months; you don’t know when it happened, probably 9 to 7 BC, but maybe 6 BC; Mars moved across the sky from east to west every day but stayed in the same spot in the west every night; you don’t know how far back you checked to see that it was a unique event; you don’t know which planet it was in conjunction with before it went below the horizon.

Why should anyone read that mishmash carefully?

And you say you’re aware of free virtual planetaria, so you could easily download one and give us some real facts and figures instead of your vague recollections, but you’re too lazy to do that.

But you want me to do that.

Well, I did, and I don’t see what you’re talking about. In particular, if I set the clock to 9 BCE, which you said is right before it happened, I see that Mars is just moving west of the sun at the beginning of that year, which means it sets before the sun does, so you wouldn’t see it on the western horizon. And it stays west of the sun all year.

I’ve also read several articles about various phenomena that might have been what the Magi saw, and none of them sound anything like your claim, either.

I didn’t say it was guaranteed they were Babylonians; I didn’t even say they were Babylonians. You even quoted me, correctly, saying “Babylonians, or whatever.”

I did guarantee that Babylonian astrology manuals don’t have chapters on predicting Jewish kings. I saw the originals in the museum in Baghdad, about 30 years ago (and yes, I am fluent in ancient Akkadian). Unfortunately, they disappeared when it was looted in 2003.

You didn’t demonstrate anything; you just asserted, with no justification whatever, that the Bible doesn’t mean what it says about the star going before the magi and then stopping above the spot where Jesus was. It would seem to me that you don’t WANT to admit that the story is absurd.

73

Correct for superior planets not in retrograde motion. Perhaps you would be so kind as to quote me saying anything different.

74

No insult was intended, but I think it’s a reasonable analogy. Manson didn’t kill anywhere near as many people as the Crusaders.

He didn’t say he merely had an atheistic phase; he implied that he had little or no exposure to Christianity at all, until his 20’s. I think that is extremely unusual for an American. In fact, I find it very difficult to believe.

75

I had read somewhere that the story of the Magi was actually an early medieval embroidery, and it does not appear before around the 1200s.

Any truth or not in that?

76

I think you must be referring to embellishments that added details to the story. The book of Matthew says that wise men came from the east, as AFAIK that is in the earliest manuscripts. But it doesn’t say there were three of them, or that they were kings, or what their names were – that was all “unofficial,” and added later, but not to the Bible, just to church traditions.

77

I don’t know how much I’ll be online the next few days, but here’s two cents: the notion of a historical Jesus is suspect because the narrative had been in currency long before he came on the scene. See Jesus as a Reincarnation of Mithra.

Now, that link is from a larger website that is making the case that a number of prophetic/religious figures from history must be the same being reincarnated over and over again, and this explains their similarities. Yes, I know. I’m not too well versed in Mithras and don’t know what is a really good cite for this information, if there is one at all. I’ve seen references to the idea here and there, and maybe 'dopers can fill in the details for us.

As for the fig tree, I’ve heard it was a symbol of Mithras and that by destroying it, Jesus was symbolically defeating Mithras and taking his place, much as Mithras previously had bested the sun, slain a bull etc. to establish his primacy. I’m not sure how accurate this is either- it is something I’ve seen floated around.

78

From the link I just posted:

79

What you said was that “conservative American Christians went to Uganda and inspired them to take Leviticus literally and enact laws calling for the death penalty for homosexuals”. Assuming that what you meant to link to was this, it doesn’t in any way back up your claim. It merely says that three men from American attended a conference at which one person later associated with the anti-homosexuality bill also attended. Furthermore, the citation Wikipedia gives as proof that the three men were there is actually a dead link. This “guilt by being in the same building” line of argument is remarkably similar to the way that Glenn Beck and his type argue.

80

The idea that material in the gospels was copied from Mithra-worship had some currency in the 19th century but recent scholarship thoroughly debunked it. Most of the claims on that webpage, such as that Mithra had twelve disciples, sacrificed himself, or promised his followers eternal life, are simply not backed up by any ancient documents. Further, the claim that the Mithra cult existed long before Christianity hides an important detail. There were two separate cults, one in Persia as early as thousand years before Christ and one in the Roman Empire beginning around the year 100 A.D. They share nothing in common except the name. The details that caused some people to believe in a link between Christianity and the Mithra cult all came from the latter Roman cult, which originated after the gospels were written. See here for a thorough discussion with references.