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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133334
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| Posted: 05 February 2013 at 10:06am | IP Logged | 1
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Considering that, unfortunately, religion is at the core of much of the world's history, saying I shouldn't be interested in it because I'm not part of it is like suggesting that I shouldn't be interested in World War II because I'm not a soldier. •• Which, unfortunately, is a mindset you will find almost anywhere you care to look. "I am not __________, so I don't care about ________." A variant, I suppose, on NIMBY.
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 April 2006
Location: United States
Posts: 12717
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| Posted: 05 February 2013 at 11:13am | IP Logged | 2
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People are often surprised that I, a non-religious person, know a lot about religion and have read all the major religious books.
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Pretty goofy perspective considering (pace Marcion) the billions of non-Jews who have been captivated by Jewish scripture for 2000 years!
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Robert White
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Joined: 16 April 2004
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| Posted: 05 February 2013 at 11:58am | IP Logged | 3
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Plus the angel with the swords coming out of its mouth is like the coolest thing ever! (Been a LONG time since I read the Bible in detail, but I remember that this character makes an entrance in Revelations)
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DW Zomberg
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 12 June 2012
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| Posted: 05 February 2013 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | 4
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consensus is that it probably still represents a non Christian reference to Jesus The only consensus I know of regarding that passage is that it is a later Xian insertion (which also interrupts the flow of the original text). Josephus was a Jew; he would not have described Jesus in such terms.
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Doug Campbell
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 05 February 2013 at 1:31pm | IP Logged | 5
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The only consensus I know of regarding that passage is that it is a later Xian insertion (which also interrupts the flow of the original text). Josephus was a Jew; he would not have described Jesus in such terms.
As I said, it seems fairly obvious that the passage has been edited to give it an unambiguously Christian spin. Given the existence of the Agapius Arabic translation of Josephus that contains the same reference without the more extravagantly Christian wording, however, the majority of scholars think the reference to Jesus was in the original text, even if it was jazzed up by Eusebius or some other later Christian copyist.
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Michael Penn
Byrne Robotics Member
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| Posted: 05 February 2013 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | 6
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The passage is controversial but, at least from what I have read, the majority of late has looked at it at least as partially authentic. More sensitive reading of the Greek is needed, even accepting the most seemingly pro-Christian line as original to Jospheus. ο Χριστος ουτος ην -- "the 'Christ', this man was." It's like talking about George Herman Ruth and then adding, "the 'Bambino,' this man was." This is the nickname of the man. This is not an expression of Josephus' belief that this man was the Jewish Messiah ("Mashiach").
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Conner Dinkins
Byrne Robotics Member
Joined: 01 March 2010
Location: Georgia
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| Posted: 05 February 2013 at 5:46pm | IP Logged | 7
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The other night I caught a few minutes of the documentary series MANKIND. Where I landed in the episode, they happened to be talking about Jesus, and referred to how much influence and impact was created in the World by this man who died 2000 years ago. I found this troubling, as other segments of the series I have seen seem to be based as much as possible on fact, while there was nothing in this reference to Jesus that indicated his existence is anything BUT "fact". He was presented as a historical certainty, alongside other well-documented figures. That's how Christianity "wins". Most people, even non-believers, accept Jesus as a historical personage, even tho there is ABSOLUTELY NO RELIABLE EVIDENCE to support this position.
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JB what do you think about Bart Erhman's new book Did Jesus Exist? He basically say's he did.
Bart Erhman---
So, I thought it would be worthwhile for somebody who is trained as a historian to take on the question, to try to show why Jesus almost certainly did exist.
I look at the Apostle Paul. His writings were 20 years after Jesus’ life, but Paul himself converted to be a follower of Jesus within a year or two at the latest of Jesus’ death—which means that people were telling enough stories about Jesus for Paul to convert a year or two later. All of that shows that the mythicists who claim that Jesus was made up 30 years later in Egypt, or some other claim—that simply can’t be right. We have evidence of people telling stories about Jesus in Palestine within a year or two of the traditional date of his death. http://www.religiondispatches.org/books/atheologies/5890/inv enting_jesus%3A_an_interview_with_bart_ehrman/
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
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| Posted: 05 February 2013 at 6:06pm | IP Logged | 8
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The single biggest question about Jesus is Where Is He? Why is there not so much as a single reliable extra-Biblical reference that dates from his aleged lifetime? How did he move thru that time and place, even, as noted, intersecting with the single most important Roman in the land, and leave absolutely no "paper trail"?I have not read Ehrman's new book, but I have read several of his others. Many of my strongest arguments come from his work, in fact. But in all his writings on religion there is an unmistakable undercurrent: Ehrman was a believer, and his studies turned him away. But at center, he still wants to believe. Intellectually, he can't. But...
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Conner Dinkins
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Location: Georgia
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| Posted: 05 February 2013 at 6:19pm | IP Logged | 9
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The single biggest question about Jesus is Where Is He? Why is there not so much as a single reliable extra-Biblical reference that dates from his aleged lifetime? How did he move thru that time and place, even, as noted, intersecting with the single most important Roman in the land, and leave absolutely no "paper trail"?I have not read Ehrman's new book, but I have read several of his others. Many of my strongest arguments come from his work, in fact. But in all his writings on religion there is an unmistakable undercurrent: Ehrman was a believer, and his studies turned him away. But at center, he still wants to believe. Intellectually, he can't. But...
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I'm about to go to work but I just googled extra-Biblical reference to Jesus and came up with Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Julius Africanus, Origen and Pliny the Younger
I've read a few of these accounts before, so I know there is some validity to them. But even if we had none the Gospels are Historical documents themselves, there are over 5000 manuscripts in existence today and many more that have yet to be vetted.
I think Erhman say's that all his findings come from his Historical findings.
Bart Erhman---
But, what I show is that if you have a properly historical approach to, for example, the gospels of the New Testament, you realize fairly quickly that these are based on earlier written accounts, and that those earlier written accounts were based on oral tradition that go back even earlier. Some of these oral traditions make better sense when they’re translated back into Aramaic, Jesus’ own language—which means that even if the gospels are 30 to 40 years later, they’re based on sources that go back to very near the time of Jesus in Palestine
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John Leach
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| Posted: 05 February 2013 at 7:22pm | IP Logged | 10
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I'd have an easier time believing Jesus was real if the stories about him weren't cribbed from Chrishna.
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Paul Gibney
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| Posted: 05 February 2013 at 8:22pm | IP Logged | 11
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Doug Campbell wrote:
| Also, as an aside, the writings of the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus provide a bit of non-Christian evidence for the historical Jesus as well. Josephus' reference to Jesus does appear to have been messed with a bit by later Christian writers copying the documents to make it more robust, but the scholarly consensus is that it still probably represents a non-Christian reference to Jesus. There are also non-interpolated references to John the Baptist and Jesus' brother James in Josephus. |
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Josephus also references Heracles/Hercules in similar terms, and many times more often that the single "Christos" reference. Does that mean Heracles/Hercules is real?
QUOTE:
As for other Roman historians, I don't think it's terribly surprising that they don't mention Jesus. Judea was literally the ass-end of the empire, and Jesus was one among numerous Jewish rabble rousers and messianic claimants active during his era. How likely is that to show up in our documentary record?
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Jesus was supposed to be drawing thousands of followers wherever he went. Crowd control was often a problem (the loaves and fishes story, for instance) How likely is it that no mention of him appears anywhere? |
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John Byrne
Grumpy Old Guy
Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 133334
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| Posted: 06 February 2013 at 6:32am | IP Logged | 12
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The single biggest question about Jesus is Where Is He? Why is there not so much as a single reliable extra-Biblical reference that dates from his aleged lifetime? How did he move thru that time and place, even, as noted, intersecting with the single most important Roman in the land, and leave absolutely no "paper trail"?+++ I'm about to go to work but I just googled extra-Biblical reference to Jesus and came up with Josephus, Tacitus, Suetonius, Julius Africanus, Origen and Pliny the Younger •• What part of "from his lifetime" are you having trouble grasping?
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