Assuming that that passage in Antiquities isn’t a later, Christian edition, which a lot of people think it is.
Err…addition
schnitte:
But is there any evidence for the Romans requiring people to travel to their ancestral village during this or any other census?
C K:
I think the word you’re looking for is jibe, suckuh. 
Wow leander…
You got there just 4 minutes ahead of me. Is it my modem?
Walor -
Must be. Great minds…well, at least our minds, think alike. 
I definetely think they were more persecuted than the American Indians. I am pretty sure they were more persecuted than the Armenians and the Kurds. Because they have been perscuted for centuries. Also I don’t think there was ever mass murder done on the Armenians and the Kurds was there?
Please explain what you mean here? Arn’t most Israeli’s Jewish?
I still don’t see how this is detachable?
Yes. I think it was in God’s master plan. I mean most of the founders of this nation were Christian and think God gave them wisdom on writing the right document to make this country one of the best places on earth. He also blessed then land with many natural resources as well.
Oh probably half the people in the entertainment business. They just about stomp everyone in diamond and jewerly trade. They are awesome business negotiators.
I think you answered your own question here. You don’t find any of that just a little amazing?
what is wildest bill talking about?
so, God blessed the united states? and in this master plan he saw it necessary for the american indians to be mercilessly slaughtered for the expansion of a largely Christian nation?
This is nonsense. Quit while you’re ahead… err, only so far behind.
Lolo
I see what you are getting at, but are you not the least bit suspicious that a non-Christian, unbiased, Jewish observer uses phrases like ‘doer of wonderful works’ and ‘for he appeared to them alive again the third day’, and ‘He was [the] Christ’? It almost sounds like Josephus isn’t quite Jewish anymore.
You have quoted the Testimonium Flavium, and while I think it likely that Josephus did indeed document a man named Jesus, the colorful language you quote is the result of a Christian translation.
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~humm/Topics/JewishJesus/josephus.html
http://www.concentric.net/~Mullerb/appe.shtml
The Books of the New Testament were written 40-100 AD (not too hotly contested). The earliest surviving manuscript copies date from 130-350 AD. For the record there are 5000+ Greek manuscripts, 10,000+ Latin manuscripts and 9,300+ others from that period.
They tend to corroborate each other to a high degree. Most scholars accept their authenticity rather than view them as some sort of a Christian conspiracy.
Caesar’s Gallic Wars were written 58-50 BC. The earliest surviving manuscript copies date from 900 AD.
10 copies exist. There is little debate or questionning over their authenticity!
IMHO, the nature of the historic events of the New Testament are such that they are always likely to be contested and challenged rigourously, in spite of the large volumes of evidence. Afterall, if true, they have to be the most significant events in history.
Well, it’s been 2000 years since the Bar Kochba rebellion was crushed and the Jewish dispora began, whereas the American Indians have only ben oppressed for 400 years, so you could make a case that, yes, the Jews are more persecuted than the Indians.
Yes, bill, Armenians and Kurds have been the victims of genocide.
I wouldn’t bust Bill too hard for his beliefs. IIRC, the LDS Church believes also that the USA is specially blessed by God. LDS Dopers, is that true?
[Edited by bibliophage on 10-02-2001 at 01:29 PM]
Well, it’s been 2000 years since the Bar Kochba rebellion was crushed and the Jewish dispora began, whereas the American Indians have only been oppressed for 400 years, so you could make a case that, yes, the Jews are more persecuted than the Indians.
Yes, Bill, Armenians and Kurds have been the victims of genocide.
I wouldn’t bust Bill too hard for his beliefs. IIRC, the LDS Church believes also that the USA is specially blessed by God. LDS Dopers, is that true?
I was referring to the passage in Antiquities being a later, Christian addition.
banging head I thought we were going to be discussing [despite the possibility the OP is a troll] secular support that the Bible, both old and new testaments, does capture some historical events. And I say this as one who is not generally a proponent of religion. I merely think that during the writing, a great deal of useful information was captured along with the more fanciful.
Now I fear the Wild one is running away with the debate neatly stuffed into his shorts.
If and when this gets back on track, I believe I have some references where credible archaeology has been performed using portions of the bible as a reference.
“Israeli” is a nationality. “Jew” is a religion.
There’s quite a lot of Christians or Muslims who possess Israeli citizenship, btw.
Waverly -
I think you may be correct in your doubts - there certainly is strong evidence that the text was embellished.
However, I think we can consider that, regardless of which text source we choose to believe, Josephus recorded the feelings of others at the time: that they believed that Jesus was the Messiah.
And, yes, let’s get back to the point. I know reading Wildest is like driving past a car wreck - but I too think we should just speed along past and get on with a serious debate/discussion.
Several of the books of the Old Testament were never intended to be literal accounts of history. Books such as Jonah, Job, etc. were works of literature that found there way into the bible because of the object lessons contained in them.
If you want a cite, “Rescuing the Bible from the Fundlementalist” by Sponge.
My point is that the Jews are not by any stretch of the imagination the only oppressed people in the world.
Huge numbers (as many as a million by some accounts) of Roma (Gypsies) were murdered in camps during the Nazi holocaust. American Indians were slaughtered and deported by the hundreds of thousands. And Gobear’s links above should give some indication of what the Kurds and Armenians suffered. Then, of course, we have slavery of Africans in the US and indians in South America.
To play my cards on the table, I’m not particularly impartial here. I’m of Jewish descent and can name several (albeit distant) members of my famaily who died in camps. I grew up in the southwest and spent time in several pueblos. And I’ve had very good friends of both Rom and Armenian extraction.
Also, I wish to make it clear that I in no way intend to minimize the suffering and persecution that Jews have suffered throughout the past two millennia.
Yes. But most Jews are not Israeli. Jews live throughout the world. Just as one can be a good Israeli citizen without being a Jew, one can be a devout Jew without ever having seen Israel (or even wanting to).
In other words, it’s important to remember that there is a huge difference between the state of Israel and the Jewish people as a whole.
Just because the US supports the nation of Israel, it’s not necessarily becasue we as a nation support Jews or Judaism. Our support of Israel is political and diplomatic, and not religious.
Israel didn’t exist when the Constitution was written, and anti-semitism was not uncommon, nor particularly remarkable at that time. A case can be made that Gos blessed the United States (and I’ll disagree with that as well), but it says nothing about His blessing the US becasue of it’s recent history of support of a recently-formed nation.
Oh probably half the people in the entertainment business. They just about stomp everyone in diamond and jewerly trade. They are awesome business negotiators.
[/quote]
With no offense intended, Bill, I think you’ve thoroughly embraced a number of stereotypes.
I’ll grant that there are a number of extremely successful Jews in the entertainment industry, and I’ll also grant that the percentage might be higher than the percentage of Jews in the US population as a whole. But I don’t think you have any reason to think that Jews “stomp” everyone in the jewelry trade, nor that they are any better at business than anyone else.
See, I don’t think you can draw conclusions. Asians are disproportionately represented in the sciences, especially in engineering and mathematics. Are they blessed of God? Or perhaps they simply have a different cultural ethic towards work and education?
Interesting, certainly. But not amazing. One little fort in Italy ended up the center of a world-spanning empire. The tiny Belgium controlled most of the interior of Africa for decades, and the Netherlands controlled a global naval empire. Heck, little ol’ England went on to rule a global empire of its own.
Sorry, Bill, but this is wrong.
It’s well-documented and accepted by American historians that most of the founding fathers – especially Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Madison, and Washington – were deists. While they believed in the existence of a god, they did not believe it was the Christian god as preached and practiced in church. Saying “the founders of this nation were Christian” is both incorrect and insulting (to them).
There are numerous references available on the internet; for a starting point, try this link, which provides numerous quotes from Jefferson et al showing their views on Christianity. And in case you don’t want to bother to do the research, here’s a quickie for you to mull over…
walor wrote:
I thought there was a surviving copy of the Book of Mark dated to around 70 A.D…
Kudos to gobear for the Armenian/Kurd links; I had it in mind, before seeing his post, to refute Bill with the evidence for their being persecuted, and am glad he did the research and posted it before I got to it.
Tracer, by “Roma” were you intending the “Romany” (“gypsy”) peoples? I’m aware of an anti-Romany attitude through much of “modern history” but not of an organized persecution. Care to give some details?
Re: Our Deist Founding Fathers: Several of the “second level” Founding Fathers (John Dickinson, George Mason, etc. – well known to students of the era but not household names) were active “orthodox” Christians (though I confess to not knowing specifically which ones). George Washington was active in the Church of England/Protestant Episcopal Church for most of his adult life, including his Presidency, serving on his parish vestry (“parish council”/“official board”/whatever you happen to call the local lay board of directors for the local church organization). There are some accounts of his piety as recorded in letters, etc., that make him out to be a thoughtful but sincere Christian (as opposed to deist).
Dating of Scripture is an art, not a science, based on the experts’ presuppositions as to what happened when. For example, most of the “late Gospels” school bases their dating at least in part on the “predictions of the Fall of Jerusalem” in 70 A.D. – the theory being that they must have been written after the event, since they predict it, and we all know that predictive prophecy is not valid. (I’m not necessarily saying it is, but pointing out a case of what I consider more or less circular reasoning.)
How much stock you put in the contents of the four Gospel documents, properly interpreted, is certainly subject to personal taste, separately from any belief you may bear as regards them. (For example, Matthew subtly indicates that his five “extended discourses” were not actual accounts but topical collections of Jesus’s teachings. (Best example is in the Sermon on the Mount, where he describes, using the aorist tense, what, if he is to be believed, was a specific time when Jesus did a mass teaching, but then shifts gears as he begins the narrative to the imperfect. The passage in question would read something like this, properly translated: “Then Jesus went up on the side of the mountain, and the multitude followed him. He would sit down and would teach them like this: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit…’”) So any apparent contradiction with Luke’s placing the same teachings at other times in his career is actually not a contradiction, but is explained by Matthew having collected the teachings topically and setting them at five specific instances when Jesus was known to have taught – quite proper by the standards of First Century “historical” writing, though beyond the pale by our own.
Luke himself is a figure that I think gets short shrift in these arguments. Tradition indicates him as a physician with a formal Greek academic education as well, a keen observer, and a close friend of Mary, Jesus’s mother, after the fact. (Which, incidentally, would imply a connection with John, with whom she is said to have lived after Jesus’s death.) And a careful read of the first four verses of his Gospel indicates that he practiced the best of First Century historiography in compiling it, weighing his sources and reporting the ones he found most accurate. IMHO he can be relied on for factuality, if not, beyond the eyes of faith, for the proper interpretation of what he records.
frankhoma makes a valid point with an erroneous cite. The book is Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism, by the Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong, published by Harper-Collins and I think © 1998. (I am fond of reading Spong, and he is doing a teaching mission at my church next month, so I’m quite “up” on his works lately. [aside]Mars Horizon, any chance you can drive up to hear him? Contact me via Pizza Parlor private mail if you can[/aside])