Libertarian,
You’re shooting at the wrong targets
1)I never said that Simon the Magus is Saul. I was talking about the beliefs of a Syrian christian sect
2)I don’t know who this Maccoby guy is. Perhaps what he says is totally bunk (though I’ve no particular reason to take your word, or the [unbiased?] catholic church word that he’s a conspiracy theorist), but I don’t intend to read the debunking, since I never read Maccoby at the first place (I even told you I didn’t read the page I cited).
So :
1)The actual source is Schlomo Pines. Perhaps I made a poor pick when selecting a site where he was refered to, but if you want to state that it’s a conspiracy theory, you must show that Schlomo Pines is a conspiracy theorist. I don’t know who he is, but googling his name, I got around 400 hits, and noticed that the University of Jerusalem awards a “Schlomo Pines prize”. So, I would guess he isn’t a discredited author.
2)As I wrote before, if you don’t like this example of alternate christianism, try the Ebionites. If you want to state that there was no such thing as christian sects who had alternate view (in the Ebionite case, believed that the christ was a mere human), you’ll have to dismiss cartloads of sources, including your beloved ancient christians (Iraneus, no less, for instance)
By the way, the fact you state that the mainstream view is reflected by the Catholic Encyclopedia tells something about where this mainstream view originated. Remember what I wrote in an earlier post about the lack of unbiased authors.
Finally, you say once again (though on a topic I didn’t even mentionned, Simon the Magus) that i should necessarily reject anything in the new testament, or nothing. What I refuse to accept as reliable in the church writings when no other evidence can be found is what supports the church beliefs. I assume you can guess why quite easily. When they mention irrelevant events or figures (like Judah of Gamala above) or opponents (like the Ebionites), I’ve no particular reason to believe these irrelevant events of figures never existed. When the Mormons explain how the Book of Mormon was written, I’ve some reason to distrust them. When they say who was the US president when this book was written, I’ve no particular reason to do so.
(And as for the reason I give as much credit to one surviving opposing view than to 40 official christian view, it’s for the exact same reason I would give as much credit to a dissident in the former Soviet Union than to 40 USSR officials…especially when the said officials had 2000 years to make sure there’s no more dissident opinions)
Definately not. Fair minded scholarship consists, in part, of inspecting the documents to discern when that has and has not been done. Even the most skeptical scholars (excluding lunatics like Maccoby) ,who have didacted reams of text to suit their own opinions of the facts, are left with text that compels them to admit to at least the historical existence of Jesus as essentially an important religious and moral teacher. Heck, there’s even an organization called Atheists for Jesus.
If by definitive proof you mean finding the body of Jesus, then I agree that that is a very slim chance indeed. And if the Bible is right in that respect, as it appears to be in practically all other respects of history and geography, then it is impossible. All that can be proved archeologically is that the places and the other people mentioned did exist. And in the case of Caiaphas (the High Priest who confronted Jesus and took Him to Pilate) even the bones themselves have been found (barely ten years ago).
I can’t imagine exactly what it is that we’re waiting for, other than contradictions of biblical times and places. None have been found. When we’ve done all we can do, and if everything checks out as it has so far, then what we’re left with is conclusive proof that this place existed, that place existed, this person was real, and that person was real. But one hole will always remain. No bones of Jesus will be found.
And frankly, that is as it should be. Faith, after all, is the last step we take when we have all other assurances that where we put our foot will hold us up. I find our inability to either prove or disprove God’s existence to the satisfaction of everyone to be an interesting corollary with our inability to prove or disprove that there was a Jesus. Free will is not possible without the allowance of faith. But that’s a debate for another thread.
I suppose that, at this point, we’ll have to agree to disagree. For what it’s worth, however, I do find you to be an honorable debator. I admit that the sources that make the most sense to me are usually (but not always: e.g., Ramsay) biased in the sense that they believed Jesus existed before they began their digs and inspections. And I’m confident that you’ll admit to the biases of your sources as well.
But I think it only makes sense that the sources with bias in favor of Jesus will likely, in the end, present the most information. After all, it is their very bias that motivates them to look for something in the first place. The Fransiscans and they’re momunmental body of work is one example.
I feel confident in reviewing whatever work I see and weighing one evidence against another to derive a conclusion that is satisfactory for me. In fact, my approach to the whole thing was not unlike Sir Ramsay’s. I doubted the authenticity and accuracy of biblical translators and, owing to my keen interest in linguistics, set out to translate the ancient scriptures for myself. It is a famous story around these parts that it was during that endeavor that I found Him. Alive and well.
I respect your opinions and wish you well. When all is said and done, we are simply too investigators at odds over our interpretations of the facts and follies that we see. That doesn’t mean we can’t be friends.
An interesting (to me at least) tidbit : I discovered today that some muslim (for people who don’t know it, muslims believe that the gospels were falsified and that Jesus was only a prophet) theologians hold the theory that the “real” christians, who knew the real teaching of Jesus were the Ebionites and Nazarenes.
Libertarian,
Indeed, I believe it’s time for an honorable cease-fire.
Other examples include the New Testament writers themselves.
Many skeptics reject the gospels and the epistles, saying “You can’t trust those accounts! They were written by people who believed in Christianity!” Such an objection misses the point. If Jesus Christ did indeed exist and had a substantial following, then it would be unreasonable for his followers not to write about him. Additionally, if he did indeed rise from the dead, then it would be inconceivable for people who knew of this to remain unbelievers. This objection, therefore, amounts to rejecting the evidence that one should reasonably expect if these accounts are indeed factual – hardly an objective approach to history.
Excellent points, JT. And I thought I might add my closing remarks since Clairobscur offered his: I do understand the point made previously about the USSR and the dissident, and I concur with it. However, if ever there was a Soviet Union, it was Rome. And if ever there were dissidents writing on pain of death, it was the early Christians.
If I understand you correctly, **JThunder[/B , your argument runs like this:
If it weren’t true what these people are writing, these things didn’t happen, then they would have had no reason to write them down. Therefore, as they have written something down, that means it must be true.
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m not saying that they must be true, merely by virtue of having been written down.
What I am saying is that it’s wrong to dismiss these accounts because they were written by early followers of Christianity. That is, after all, equivalent to rejecting the evidence that one would naturally expect, if such a charismatic religious leader had actually existed.
Obviously, I’m not claiming that we should accept the New Testament books simply because someone took the effort to write them down. Rather, I say that if we are to reject their reliability, we need to have more solid reasons than merely saying “But they were written by Christians!”
(Well, I see that he’s answered, but I’m going to post this anyway since I bothered to write it… hmmm…)
I think he’s just saying that what would be odd to him is if these things did happen and nobody bothered to report them. I don’t think he’s saying that the reports are self-validating, but that their absence would be enigmatic. Thus, insisting that they’re fantasy merely because they make extraordinary claims in some instances is an ipso facto abjuration, along the lines of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
That is indeed part of what I’m saying. If the Resurrection had occured, for instance, I would find it extremely odd if nobody had reported it. In addition, I would not expect any hostile sources to directly admit to this event, as this would be compelling evidence for his Messiahship.
In addition, even if no extraordinary events had occured, it would be foolish to say that the gospels and epistles are unreliable by virtue of having been written by Christ’s followers. After all, if you want to determine if Jesus existed, should you automatically reject the testimonies of people who give indications of being his immediate followers, or close associates thereof? If anything, I’d say that such testimonies would be MORE reliable than those from people who did not know him personally.
Actually, I do believe that Jezus existed, based on the fact that it would be strange for the apostles to have made up a totally fictional character. So in a way I am saying, I guess, that their testimony is a strong indication that Jezus existed.
As to the reliability of the accounts, I do have strong reservations. Not solely because they are simply ‘Christian’.
But mainly because there has been a lot of editing before all the christian movements were unified into a state church by Constantine.
There was some stiff competition before the final christalization of those writings.
There were good reasons for editing. Not only have we the competition between all the seperate cells, the Paulian question (who did not know Jezus personally, it would seem) but also the orthodox jewish religion and it’s sects, Roman state religion, the Roman state itself and last but certainly not least the Isis and Mithras cults.
These struggles have all had their influence and it makes me wonder how much is left of the original testimonies.
There is no reason to assume that “hostility” would take only the form of silent boycott. When a controversial event happens, people discuss it (or deny it) with great vigour, they certainly don’t keep silent about it in hope of sabotaging the chances of anyone else possibly hearing about it and assigning it credibility. Had anything significant to do with a historical Jesus ever happened–from resurrection to more modest claims–the logical thing to expect of such a controversial figure is a contemporary set of debates as to the nature of the claims surrounding him. The fact that sources of his alleged lifetime are consistently silent on this matter does seem to suggest that THE Jesus of Christianity made an advent somewhat after the one normally attributed to him–and this advent was possibly fictitious, at least partly.
Of course, that is not the way one approaches evidence of any kind. The first things one has to consider when studying history, however, are the accuracy, degree, and bias of any given source. You may wish to assume that the material written about Jesus decades (at the earliest) after the fact by followers may be considered accurate, but you can hardly be surprised when people disagree with that view. In terms of accuracy, the New Testament is sketchy: there are some historically accurate references, but these hardly prove anything since it would be easy enough to elaborate or backfill such details with each retelling of the story or upon writing it down.
So, in terms of accuracy the New Testament is not conclusive, also because of the inconsistencies and extravagant claims present within the gospels that indicate this could be something other than an accurate historical record. In terms of degree or proximity to the alleged events, once again, we can’t say that the NT is an authority, since we are not even sure who wrote the bulk of the materials and there is no indication that any of the NT books are accurate accounts. In terms of bias, of course we don’t automatically reject the NT just because it was written by Christians, but there is little to suggest that these followers behaved differently from other followers, and therefore exaggerrated and embellished their accounts with mythological elements, allegory, etc. These must be accounted for and weighed against other claims and evidence. The other claims and items of evidence, with the exception of what looks at least superficially to be fishing expeditions, simply do not correlate with the alleged historicity of Jesus in any but the most rudimentary sense.
Would you trust one of Ayn Rand’s followers to write accurately about the life of Rand for posterity? Would a Scientology-sponsored historical account of L. Ron Hubbard be in any way an accurate and unbiased portrayal of the man’s real life?
So what, based on the concrete points of this discussion, can we actually tabulate for the New Testament as a set of sources?
Accuracy: low. While some events and persons are mentioned in the NT books, that is nothing that couldn’t have been retro-fitted by early Church redaction. Degree: unknown, but we are almost certainly not talking about primary sources and eyewitnesses. Hearsay, as mentioned, is the lowest type of evidence and is never considered conclusive (hearsay tends to produce myths rather than historically factual records). Bias: high.
That is why many people reject the argument that these texts are conclusive (or even supportive in some cases) in establishing the historicity of Christ. One could discuss such sources in the light of other supporting evidence, yet evidence outside of a few suspect Christian texts is still lacking.
This comes back to my earlier point about hearsay. There is a very important difference between hearsay and eyewitness, although to hear the replies to my previous messages this is a disinction some ignored. We don’t have a single qualified eyewitness for Jesus, and therefore we lack a qualified eyewitness testimony of anything to do with him. We do have a lot of hearsay, but such evidence is not high in credibility and is not corroborated, as already discussed.
So you have the two-fold problem of propaganda from a biased source and reliance on hearsay. This does not make for a very accurate source.
Several other supporting sources were quoted, and they all turned out to be sufficiently removed as to be recycling existing material or hearsay. Once again, the above is the case for any number of classical mythological characters, including Hercules. Why should the case of Jesus be granted special exemption? Why, given the absence of evidence, is it OK to claim emphatically that Jesus really existed when it apears we don’t know?
Since we’re discussing the evidence here, it may be more helpful raqther than quoting and especially praising names, to actually present their arguments, which we can then address (the lavish description of Ramsey as the ultimate historian archaeologist was simply an exercise in persuasive writing). The claim of corroboration is quite important and probably deserves elaboration, which I am eager to look at. But just as there was no archaeological evidence to conclude that Peter was buried under St Peter’s Basilica, there seems to be a lack of archaeological evidence to conclude that Jesus existed in a manner similar to that described in the NT.
The two biggest fallacies in social disciplines are that of authority and that of the majority. Both have been used extensively for a few pages now, and they still do not establish anything except the opinion of the relevant authority and/or the majority.
If Jesus existed, the truth is that we don’t know very much about him. He may very well have existed, if not as the son of god perhaps as yet another amateur prophet, or an epileptic carpenter, or Kazantzakis’s haunted hero, or even as the tortured and unlikely character in Moorcock’s Behold The Man. The possibilities exist, and I don’t think anyone here is denying them outright. But making a conclusive claim of historicity is rather more than acknowledging the possibility of historicity. I fail to see how the evidence seen here supports historicity rather than, more simply and modestly, the possibility of historicity.
I won’t go into the various conflicts of interest that prompted some of the redaction of early Christian materials. Latro mentioned those in his most recent post though.
You could quote the opinion of someone with 25 PhDs in the history and archaeology of Palestine who claims that Jesus existed and that the NT books are largely true, and that Apostle X or Y is a historian of the highest grade (!!); it would still mean nothing unless the good professor’s arguments supported his claims. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, as they say. Haven’t seen any extraordinary or even remarkable evidence yet in this thread.
During my year-and-a-half of research with the translation exercise that I mentioned earlier, I was never as concerned as you are about that particular matter. But if I had been, I would have translated the Gospel of Mark first, rather than the Gospel of John. You might want to have a look. It is the oldest manuscript that we possess. Its style is rather primitive and in-your-face, so it is not as elegant and eloquent as the writings of John. But the story is compacted nicely in the short book. And you’d be surprised at how many people have rejected what they haven’t even read for themselves.
Was Jesus real? Yes, he was a real person but don’t rely on the Gospels to give you an accurate picture of Jesus.
Jesus was a Hebrew from the day of his birth to the day of his death. His God was the Hebrew tribal God. His quest was a conservative one; to make the Hebrew people obey the ancient Judean laws so God will expel the Romans. Remember, at the time Jesus lived, Rome ruled Palestine. The Jews hated the Romans as much as the Palestinians hate the Jews today.
At the time of Christ, the Jews believed the Messiah was one appointed by God to free the Hebrews from Rome. Hence the authorities viewed anyone who claimed to be the Messiah as one that will lead a revolt or cause unrest within the Hebrew nation. According to Josephus there were many who came forth and claimed to be the Messiah. Messiahs were executed to prevent them from causing trouble.
Was Jesus the son of a God?
Consider this.
God impregnates a woman.
The woman gives birth to a son.
An attempt is made to kill the son.
It fails and he grows to manhood.
He performs miracles to show he is the son of God.
He is betrayed.
He dies a violent death.
His rises and lives with his father for eternity.
Who is this man?
He is Hercules, one of the more popular Gods in the Roman Empire at the time of Jesus.
If you want to sell Jesus to a pagan you must first paganize him. That is what the authors of the Gospels did to Jesus.
A man feels led to save his people.
He is an avid amateur artist.
His eyes are a steely pale blue.
He is shy and stutters, but is a great orator.
He is a short man, about 5’6".
He writes a book about his life experiences.
Assassins take aim at him and fail.
He dies from damage to his brain.
He leaves an enduring and controversial legacy.
Who is this man? Why, Winston Churchill, silly!
Of course, Hercules was a Greek god, not Roman. And, as writers for the Perseus Project report, “There are as many different versions of Hercules’ life story as there are storytellers.”
But you’ve got his death wrong. Deianira had been given a magic balm by the Centaur, who told her that whoever she smeared it on would fall in love with her, when it fact it was poison. She smeared it on a cloak she wove herself, and gave the cloak to Hercules. When he put it on, he immediately began to feel the pain of the caustic balm burning his skin. It kept getting worse and worse.
He decided that death would be better than his pain, so he asked his friends to build a pyre. They did, and he got on it and asked them to light it up. They did. But before Hercules died, Zeus told Hera that he had suffered enough. She agreed, and Zeus sent Athena to rescue Hercules, whereupon she lifted him alive from the pyre and took him to Olympus.
I guess I can’t see how it might be hard to separate that story from the death and resurrection of Jesus. Frankly, to find similarities in them, I’d have to squint and grunt so hard that my brain would explode.
You miss the point. There is nothing in the Hebrew religion that has God impregnating women and having offspring. I have asked many Jewish people I know and they all say the Messiah was never meant to be an offspring of a God. He was meant to be an APPOINTED one that would give Hebrews freedom during times of oppression. It was after Christ’s death that Paul and others changed the meaning of what the Messiah was supposed to be. Today it seems that some Christians think they know more about the Hebrew religion than the Hebrews.
God’s having offspring is a pagan religious belief not Hebrew. Hence, if Hebrew’s have nothing in their religion about Gods having children through mortal women then where did this idea come from? It came from the very religion of the people whom Paul and his followers were trying to convert.
Looking at pagan religions and the life of Hercules it’s obvious that Paul and the gospel writers incorporated pagan beliefs and ideas into the life of Christ in order to make Christ acceptable to them. Look at Christmas and Easter. Pagan holidays.
You are wrong in saying Hercules was strictly a Greek God and not Roman. The Greeks created Hercules but the Romans absorbed Hercules into their religion and built numerous temples to him. He was one of Rome’s most popular Gods. It was not uncommon for Romans to incorporate other religions Gods into their own. They were much more tolerant and respectful of other religions and beliefs than the Christians proved to be.
As for differences, of course there are differences. If there were none than Christ could not be called Christ but Hercules.
Hercules death was not a betrayal as the type identical to Jesus. But it was a deception. It was misplaced trust. That is where the similarity between the death of Jesus and Hercules lies.
The resurrection of Jesus? If we are to believe those who have had Near Death Experiences (NDE) and Out of Body Experiences (OBE) that pretty much blows the body disappearances of Jesus out of the water. Human bodies do not and cannot exist in the dimension of the Supreme Being. The disappearance of the body made sense to those ignorant of science and different dimensions. It makes no sense today unless you accept God as being something that exists in our four dimensional Universe. If so then who resides in the other dimensions? Your God would not be multi-dimensional and therefore would not be the God of all if he were a prisoner in a four-dimensional world.
If God is to be God of all he must reside outside of our dimension. If he does then Christ’s body would not have any reason to disappear. Christ would be with the Light the same way all others would be, through their soul or spirit.
There is a better fit than Hercules. Mithra, whose religion predates Christianity by a fair number of years. The details surrounding the life and theology of Mithra very closely parallel that of Jesus. I’m sure I could find a list if needed. Of course, it was one of those pesky mystery religions so how much the story of Jesus is borrowed from the story of Mithra and vice versa is another question.
Well, that seems reasonable. First, God didn’t “impregnate women” with His Divine Penis. Rather, the Virgin Birth (which is, granted, orthodox doctrine, but not believed in as a literal event by many people who consider themselves Christian) suggests, rather, that the conception of a new human by the combined work of man and woman (having intercourse) and God (making their intercourse fruitful, in that they conceive a child, was in this case, as perhaps in other alleged parthenogenetic cases, shortcircuited by the absence of a human father – the ovum becoming a viable zygote, embryo, fetus, and baby without fertilization by male semen.
Second, the logic behind what many Jewish people say is quite valid, but not applicable. There were many understandings of what the Messiah was to be in late O.T. and intratestamental Jewish lore – Davidic conquering king, ideal high priest, God Himself come to earth, suffering servant… Those who found Jesus to fill the role became Christian Jews, and eventually were subsumed in the burgeoning Christian movement and largely lost their Jewish character; Jewish converts who become convinced that Jesus was indeed the Messiah become Christians. So your sample would be taken from those who hold to a view of the Messiah’s role that precludes Jesus from fulfilling that role – and hence were unanimously opposed to His doing so.
Well, Mashiach literally means “aNointed one” – and I think I’ve already given the objection to your statement of “what the Messiah was supposed to be” – and in any case, if one gives any credence to the Gospels, it would appear that it was Jesus, not Paul, who “changed the meaning” – if change it was. BTW, I’d say that a modern Jew has a fairly good understanding of what a Jew of Jesus’ time thought – but remember that present-day Judaism is descended from Pharisaical thought, against some perversions of which at His time Jesus was in strong protest. It’s quite clear from non-controverted Jewish documents including the Dead Sea Scrolls that there were a number of, well, somewhere between “schools of thought” and “denominations” within Judaism prior to the 70 AD revolt; only one of those survived to structure modern Judaism.
Fine. I’m sure I could find some examples to explain a given Christian teaching in relativity theory (in fact, I find the Summary of the Law as being the constant around which the Law is modified to be an almost perfect parallel to the value of “c” being constant while anything else may change in different frames of reference). Paul and Luke were working with source matter and using the parts that fit into the mind-set and piety of the people they were trying to convert. John quite explicitly picks up on the Logos philosophy of Philo to explain his understanding of Jesus. Metaphor and analogy have always been tools used by thoughtful men to explain their insights to others. What’s your problem?
Oh, groan. Yes, Christmas was placing the celebration of the Incarnation and Nativity on the feast of Sol Invictus, more or less. Easter was a Jewish holiday, Passover, as the literature and liturgy would show anyone who bothered looking – you did indicate you were trying to look at this from a Jewish standpoint, right? – that fell in the spring and therefore replaced numerous pagan spring festivals, including that of Eostre, whose sole claim to fame so far as I can tell is having given her name to the English name for the holiday now celebrated as the Christian feast of the Resurrection.
First, Herakles was a Greek god incorporated into Roman myth, where he became a second-rate god. Rome was nottolerant; it was syncretic. Your tribe’s god is just fine, so long as you don’t mind having him equated with Mars or Apollo or whatever and incorporated into our system. Belief that your God is the supreme God is forbidden, unless you’re Jewish, which we’ll accept, grudgingly, because the Jews insist on it and we need Palestine as part of our defense system, a barrier against Parthia and a protective buffer for Egypt where most of our grain comes from.
Sheesh. Whatever the Resurrection may have been in objective look, one thing it was not was the resuscitation of the mortal human body of Jesus, producing the Messianic Zombie. Check out the Resurrection stories for a hint of the similarities and differences between the Risen Christ and normal human bodily abilities, and then see I Corinthians 15 for Paul’s take on what this meant.
First, precisely where do you get that assurance of what is and is not present “in the dimension of the Supreme Being”? Thomas Aquinas could have used your certitude.
Second, this system of argument is almost as sensible as the “proof” over in David God of Frogs’s thread that God must not be able to make people believe in Him, or whatever it is he’s attempting to prove with faulty logic. We consider God illimitable except by His own power, able to be present everywhere and in everything as He sees fit. That could easily include in the life of a Palestinian rabbi 2000 years ago.
Well, then, this makes sense. Divorced of the metaphorical usage of a three-story universe that impedes modern understanding of it, what you’re saying here is the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Ascension.
