# Who Killed Jesus? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 29, 2009, 7:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168 "2009-03-29T07:47:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 14
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/262 "2009-03-30T23:28:44Z")
**Kanicbird** Jewish folklore (again going back a few milennia) features beings who are half human/half demon. For example, Lilith has sex with sleeping men to steal their seed and produce Lilim- chicks with fangs and hairy legs. OTTOMH I don’t know of any creatures in Jewish folklore that are demonic but pass for humans. Dybbuks (holy crap! Firefox spellchecker knows that word!) can posses humans but they are ex-humans themselves and generally want vengeance and attention rather obviously. BTW I can’t recall the title but the X Files did an episode on Nephilim. A Nephilim is also featured in the films The Prophecy 2 and 3. ---
**Author:** ![Lacunae\_Quell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lacunae\_Quell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Quell)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/263 "2009-03-30T23:31:29Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > In other words, faith is a pretty word for insanity or foolishness. Faith isn’t admirable; it’s a defect, a serious one. Faith is the crippling of the mind. “Faith is the substance of things hoped for…”–Hebrews 11:1 Why is it insane that I hope for eternal life? How is that a crippling defect? Isn’t some sort of faith required for Science? If faith is the substance of things hoped for, and some scientists hope to make a discovery, wouldn’t that mean that some scientists have faith? I think it’s pretty safe to say that faith was involved in some of the most important scientific discoveries. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/264 "2009-03-30T23:40:59Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > “Faith is the substance of things hoped for…”–Hebrews 11:1 > > Why is it insane that I hope for eternal life? How is that a crippling defect? > > Isn’t some sort of faith required for Science? If faith is the substance of things hoped for, and some scientists hope to make a discovery, wouldn’t that mean that some scientists have faith? I think it’s pretty safe to say that faith was involved in some of the most important scientific discoveries. Faith is entirely unneeded for science, in fact faith gets in the WAY of science because it creates stubborn adherence to old rules. If we had “faith” in Newtonian Mechanics we wouldn’t have General Relativity right now. Now that’s not to say scientists don’t have some faith, but they’re just librarians, their faith may affect their own independent observations, but we rely on those that have faith in something else or the mythical “totally objective person” to call them on it and refine what we catalogue (is that spelled wrong? I swore it had a “ue” at the end but FF is freaking out). Science, as a collective, requires no faith because anyone with a good idea and some doubt can go in and challenge it, now that doesn’t mean their assertions are true by any stretch of the imagination, but science is pretty much just a library with ever more accurate books because we constantly redefine and expand on ideas when the observations don’t match the numbers. ---
**Author:** ![mutantmoose](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a87d85/32.png) [@mutantmoose](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mutantmoose)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/265 "2009-03-30T23:41:28Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > You do know that the Qur’an is proven to be an original document, right? Since the Qur’an has been written, no one, I repeat, NO ONE has altered or changed or added to or taken from the words of the Qur’an. Word for word it has remained the same over centuries. Just to point out - that’s not true. For one thing, it was redacted and earlier versions were destroyed so we don’t know what they said. And, in any case, the oldest quran we have was found in Yemen and it shows differences to the current quran. From this page: > **[Sanaa manuscript](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sana'a_manuscripts)** > > The Sanaa palimpsest (also Ṣanʽā’ 1 or DAM 01-27.1) or Sanaa Quran is one of the oldest Quranic manuscripts in existence and is important for textual criticism in Quranic studies. Part of a sizable cache of Quranic and non-Quranic fragments discovered in Yemen during a 1972 restoration of the Great Mosque of Sanaa, the manuscript was identified as a palimpsest Quran in 1981 as it is written on parchment and comprises two layers of text. > A partial reconstruction of the lower text was published in... > [@](#): > > Carbon-14 tests date some of the parchments to 645-690 AD. Their real age may be somewhat younger, since C-14 estimates the year of the death of an organism, and the process from that to the final writing on the parchment involves an unknown amount of time. Calligraphic datings have pointed to 710-715 AD. > > Restoration of the manuscript has been organized and overseen by Arabic calligraphy and Koranic paleography specialist Gerd R. Puin of Saarland University, in Saarbrücken, Germany. Puin has extensively examined the parchment fragments found in this collection. **It reveals unconventional verse orderings, minor textual variations,** and rare styles of orthography and artistic embellishment. Some of the manuscripts are rare examples of those written in early Hijazi Arabic script. **Although these pieces are from the earliest Qur’an known to exist, they are also palimpsests – versions written over even earlier, scraped-off versions.** > > A substantial amount of material has been retrieved from the site, as the work continues. From 1983 to 1996, around 15,000 of 40,000 pages were restored, including 12,000 parchment fragments some dating to the 8th century.[5] > > In 1999, Toby Lester, the executive editor of the website of The Atlantic Monthly reported on Puin’s discoveries: "Some of the parchment pages in the Yemeni hoard seemed to date back to the seventh and eighth centuries A.D., or Islam’s first two centuries – they were fragments, in other words, of perhaps the oldest Korans in existence. **What’s more, some of these fragments revealed small but intriguing aberrations from the standard Koranic text. Such aberrations, though not surprising to textual historians, are troublingly at odds with the orthodox Muslim belief that the Koran as it has reached us today is quite simply the perfect, timeless, and unchanging Word of God** (my bolds) In that Atlantic Monthly article, he suggests that some of the differences are important enough to actually change the meaning of some suras. Why did they scrape off the earlier versions if they said the same thing? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/266 "2009-03-30T23:41:36Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > Isn’t some sort of faith required for Science? No. Faith is belief without evidence. It’s actually pretty much the antithesis of science. ---
**Author:** ![Lacunae\_Quell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lacunae\_Quell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Quell)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/267 "2009-03-30T23:46:34Z")
> [@Pochacco](#): > > If I have the power to prevent someone from being killed, but instead I stand idly by and do nothing, am I not responsible for his death? Yes… unless you try to help and your help is refused. ---
**Author:** ![Lacunae\_Quell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lacunae\_Quell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Quell)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/268 "2009-03-30T23:53:04Z")
> [@Fear\_Itself](#): > > Well then, who created god? Or is it turtles all the way down? _sigh_ why do people ask this question? God IS. He told Moses at the burning bush “I AM”. He has always been, He always is, and He always will be. God is never changing. If God was created He would have had to been created from something. If God was created from something than something else would have to had been changed. If God is never changing, but has been the same for all eternity, He just IS and wasn’t created. If matter can neither be created or destroyed, where did matter come from? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/269 "2009-03-30T23:53:13Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > Yes… unless you try to help and your help is refused. So in the case of the tsunami, God asked each person who died if they wanted His help and they all refused? So He went ahead and let them die? That seems kind of petty on his part. If I saw someone in danger, I would help them if they wanted me to or not. I’d figure if they were refusing my help, it’s probably because they probably didn’t really understand the danger they were in. The God you worship doesn’t seem very nice or very merciful. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/270 "2009-03-30T23:54:12Z")
> [@DocCathode](#): > > **Kanicbird** Jewish folklore (again going back a few milennia) features beings who are half human/half demon. For example, Lilith has sex with sleeping men to steal their seed and produce Lilim- chicks with fangs and hairy legs. Christian demonology has incubi and succubi but these are usually referred to as spiritual beings/ > [@](#): > > OTTOMH I don’t know of any creatures in Jewish folklore that are demonic but pass for humans. Dybbuks (holy crap! Firefox spellchecker knows that word!) can posses humans but they are ex-humans themselves and generally want vengeance and attention rather obviously. Demonic possession is different then a demon in the flesh. Using the light of the NT to look at the OT it appears that Queen Jezebel is one such demon in the flesh, and who has come back at least 2 times. I am familiar with the concept of Dybbuks if I understand you, but didn’t know that term, a spiritual human which switched places with a embodied human, usually as the human with the body has a NDE, gets out of the body and the other one jumps in. The motivation is sometimes to finish some work, usually motivated by revenge. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/271 "2009-03-30T23:55:31Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > Why is it insane that I hope for eternal life? How is that a crippling defect? It’s not. However, hope and faith are distinct concepts (as is charity). One can hope for a desired outcome, while faith means one assumes the desired outcome will happen despite a lack of evidence and perhaps even in the face of counter-evidence. > [@](#): > > Isn’t some sort of faith required for Science? No, and again you’re confusing hope and faith. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Hamster\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/8edcca/32.png) [@The\_Hamster\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Hamster_King)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/272 "2009-03-30T23:56:08Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > If God is never changing, but has been the same for all eternity, He just IS and wasn’t created. If he’s always the same, how does he DO anything? Doing requires action and action requires change. If God is really unchanging then he also is incapable of interacting with the world. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/273 "2009-03-30T23:59:32Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > Why is it insane that I hope for eternal life? How is that a crippling defect? Because you’re willing to trade rationality for the impossible hope that the particular child’s story you’ve chosen to believe is true. It’s controlling your actions even now, making you deny evolution and act out in igorance. Science isn’t about faith. Science is about things that are rational and reproducible and have evidence. Faith in the religious sense is about hoping really really really hard that the tooth fairy is real. There is no evidence that your religion is real. None. You want there to be, but stamping your feel and sobbing does not make lies true. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [March 30, 2009, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/274 "2009-03-30T23:59:36Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > If matter can neither be created or destroyed, where did matter come from? We don’t know. Oh, sure we have structures that show potentials for how energy became matter and how matter got mass after the Big Bang. The usual question then is “well, where did the explodey thing come from?” The answer to which is “we have no idea.” Science doesn’t really even have a (credible) model for that, or pre-Big Bang (or anything before the Planck Time, for that matter). I suppose you’ll use this as ammo for “see? See!? Science doesn’t know everything but the Bible does!” But it really just highlights the lack of faith science needs and the fact that’s its main function truly is observational, rather than explanatory which is what we’ve been saying all along. Hey, we’re honest about it. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/275 "2009-03-31T00:02:45Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > _sigh_ why do people ask this question? Because it’s a perfectly valid question which just begs to be asked? ---
**Author:** ![Lacunae\_Quell](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ecc23a/32.png) [@Lacunae\_Quell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Quell)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/276 "2009-03-31T00:06:41Z")
> [@Strinka](#): > > Yeah, but if you put Jesus ahead of Zeus, Zeus will get angry and send you to hell. But if you put Zeus first, Odin will get angry. And if you put Odin first, Quetzalcoatl gets pissed off. How do you know which one to worship? God is God of all things making Him God of gods and His son Jesus has the keys of Hell. What authority do Zeus, Odin or Quetzalcoatl have over my eternal soul? > [@Strinka](#): > > And why should I consider your Bible any more of an authority than the Iliad, Gilgamesh, the Bhagavad Gita, or even The Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter for that matter? “Choose you this day whom ye will serve… but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord”–Joshua 24:15 ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/277 "2009-03-31T00:09:17Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > God IS. He told Moses at the burning bush “I AM”. No. You read about it in a modern copy of an ancient book. Why do you think it’s true? You opinions are based on a poorly written, internally inconsistent book written by stinking primitives. Why do you, a man of the 21st century believe their stories to describe the world are real? Do you only wear hand made sandals and clothing? Do you travel only on the back of a donkey? Do you use an oil lamp to light your home? Christianity was an attempt to answer social and scientific questions in an age before science. It is wrong. Like leeches, bleeding and sending women to menstrual huts, it is the twisted thinking of those too primitive to come up with better solutions. Your devotion to it is laughable and not something to be proud of. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/278 "2009-03-31T00:10:24Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > God is God of all things making Him God of gods and His son Jesus has the keys of Hell. Objection. The Ditullio’s have the key to hell. I made it in a dark ritual based on a design in the Sandman. I forgot to ventilate the area properly and received minor chemical burns on my windpipe and lungs. ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/279 "2009-03-31T00:11:10Z")
> [@Lacunas Quell](#): > > What authority do Zeus, Odin or Quetzalcoatl have over my eternal soul? None. They are exactly as real as the psychotic retread Babylonian storm god you’re pretending is real. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/280 "2009-03-31T00:15:58Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Using the light of the NT to look at the OT it appears that Queen Jezebel is one such demon in the flesh, and who has come back at least 2 times. Jezebel was the daughter of Ithobaal, king of Tyre. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2009, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168/281 "2009-03-31T00:20:04Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Jezebel was the daughter of Ithobaal, king of Tyre. Biological parents don’t preclude Jezebel being a demon. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168.md?page=13) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-killed-jesus/491168.md?page=15)