Hmmm. What happens when the myth gives way to logical thinking, and "some" still come up with Jesus as a viable entity?
Origins of Jesus Christ
- Thread starter Tommy Shue
- Start date
Tommy Shue
Member
- Messages
- 8
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 0
Light reflected off of a cloud at sunset can give the cloud a fiery appearence but this doesnt explain the times that they appeared during the day, at night, had people ascending/decending from them or had the voice of God/god booming from them!
Are you sure you want to go there?
I repel out of helicopters for a living (come right out ot the clouds). Megaphones can be in a blimp (right out of the clouds). The sun reflecting off of bronzeor a mirrored sky scraper can light up a cloud. I don't think Christ was banking on man being in awe of his ascention by today's standards and knowledge (hell, man can literally fly by himself, with just a suit designed for that purpose). I think he was/is banking on the message and hope he left us with, which is good even to this day. he said "accept my gift and I will save you".
China Cat Sunflower
Nimrod
- Messages
- 2,924
- Reaction score
- 13
- Points
- 0
What is logical is assembled from nicely arranged facts, but those facts only represent a token of all the facts available. The nature of rationality is that it's "realities" are constructed of just enough facts to justify the general theories attached to them. Juan and I were talking about how a person eventually hits a semantical wall where the legality of definitions becomes meaningless. There isn't any ultimately diminutive or maximal definition. Everything floats. So then you have all these maxims telling us to just forget about it. "The Tao isn't the Tao which can be named"...etc. The idea of a "name beyond all names" kinda thing.
I don't have a clue how Jesus fits in. I was totally off topic on this.
I disagree Chris. I think there are absolutes and black and white.
Just like life (no oxygen/death), there are issues pertaining to God that we can not exclude or ignore, or debase as fallicy.
It would not be logical, at best.
China Cat Sunflower
Nimrod
- Messages
- 2,924
- Reaction score
- 13
- Points
- 0
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
I don't think this is limited to religion, either. Goodness knows politics is rife with it. Orwell's "newspeak" was all about the idea of semantic conflation combined with psychobabble intended to curtail thinking about it and figuring it out. If you're in the clique, you just know what it means without question. If you're outside the clique, who cares?, you're not inside the clique.
So the semantical wall I would think to be endemic across time and culture. In the last three-quarters of a century certain institutions (and counter-cultures) have made a game of playing with this...I see a list in American slang alone ("whatever!").
Words "evolve" anyway. A quick look in a Webster's will show a lot of words that are based on other words that came from the french which came from the latin which came from a derivative of...
Take the English word "chip." How many meanings does it have, once you add the slang and the shop vernacular to the list? It's even a nick-name.
It does seem religion takes advantage of and (ab)uses the semantical wall, but in my opinion political institutions are by far the greater culprits in that regard, with far more nefarious intent.
Tommy Shue
Member
- Messages
- 8
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 0
Jesus is a very viable entity not only in this day and age but also to the ancients way of thinking. I feel that he was sent here to get the people back to his fathers plan for this planet that they had strayed from. Jesus' teaching of peaceful coexistance and tolerance was the basis on which our lives should be patterned on.
taijasi
Gnōthi seauton
I'm with you, Tommy.
I think it time to talk turkey once and for all on the inherent flaws in the position taken by some that Jesus never existed, even as a simple non-miraculous human being. Positing that he was a simple non-miraculous human being is not at all ludicrous.
So it's time for a reality check here on the "mythicist" stance that there's no reality behind any notion concerning one Jesus of Nazareth at all. I found two sets of remarks on the Net written by an atheist concerning the James passage in Josephus's Antiquities, XX. The writer's name is Tim O'Neill. O'Neill writes:
1. Zealots with an axe to grind can find a way to "deconstruct" the data for even the most reasonable ideas if they try hard enough. Their deconstructions are contrived and forced and usually only convincing to fellow zealots, but they can do it with ease. See Holocaust Deniers and Creationists for examples of this.
This is precisely what we find with the Jesus Mythers. Yes, the James mentioned by Josephus could be some other James who, like the one mentioned in the Christian tradition, just happened to also have a brother called Jesus who was also called "Annointed" and he could also have been executed by the Jewish priesthood just like the James who Paul claims he met. This remarkable sequence of coincidences are all possible. But the application of Occam's Razor to this idea shows anyone other than a blinkered Myther zealot that this idea strains credulity. It makes far more sense that what we have here is a confluence of evidence indicating that Jesus did exist and did have a brother called James.
This is why you can count the number of professional scholars who think Jesus didn't exist on the fingers of one hand and the Myther position is dominated by amateur polemicists like Doherty and Carrier and New Age loons like Dorothy "Acharya S" Murdock. (forbiddengospels.blogspot.com/2009/02/my...)
And in the other passage, O'Neill starts off by citing a previous poster and then proceeds to make his additional point:
2. "Historian Richard Carrier talks about the James/Josephus passage and about how it probably was never intended to refer to the Christian James. After all, this James was killed over a violation of some minor Jewish law, which the Sanhedrin was none too pleased with. This would be very odd if this James was a leader of heretical Jewish cult."
Carrier is a guy who needs to make up his mind whether he wants to be a historian or an activist. At the moment he has too many blunt anti-Christian axes to grind for me to take him seriously as an objective researcher. Historians with an agenda are usually poor historians. And I say that as someone who is an atheist myself.
There is nothing unlikely about the story Josephus tells about James. He doesn't say that "the Sanhedrin" objected to his execution, he says that an objection was made by "those who seemed the most equitable of the citizens". We're given no clear indication as to who these concerned citizens were, though it's clear that (i) they were important enough to be able to write to the Roman prefect, (ii) they were important enough for him to pay attention to them and (iii) they were no friends of the High Priest and seemed to want to bring him down.
What they object to is not the death of heretic, but the usurpation of power by Ananus. And their objective seems to have been Ananus' removal. Who or what James was is likely to have been pretty incidental in this political play. (aigbusted.blogspot.com/2009/03/did-jesus...)
These two sets of remarks express to a T my problem with the entire mythicist racket. Because it is a racket, and that's all it is. I was not brought up as a Christian; I was brought up by two agnostic/atheist academics who never attended any religious institution, for whom reading continually was as natural as breathing. Reading became as natural as breathing for myself and my brother as well. So the knee-jerk argument that anyone crediting the plausibility of historic references to Jesus must be brainwashed by religion is baloney. Not only is it baloney as applied to me; it's baloney as applied to 99.9% of the extremely skeptical colleagues and friends of my parents whom I got to know -- and know well -- when growing up.
The reason why so many rigorous NON-DENOMINATIONAL scholars and academics with degrees and professional training in this field -- professional scholars like April DeConick -- continue to be so leery of these fanciful mythicist notions is because they so often do require a flagrant disregard of the principle of Occam's Razor. Not only are we supposed to assume a series of coincidences in order to shrug off Chapter XX of the Josephus Antiquities; that is compounded by a similarly twisted skein of reasoning that we must evidently apply to Galatians -- at the same time! Both texts(!!!!!!!!!) just happen to have been coincidentally distorted vis-a-vis the way they're read today. How convenient is that?
The dishonest methods of many of the mythicists suggest in addition a proselytizing mindset rather than a research one. This really isn't just a matter of whether or not some ancient "eccentric" did or didn't exist. It's a very basic misinformation campaign on how to read history. My atheist father happened to be a pretty d**n rigorous history professor, and I don't mind saying that this whole question becomes pretty personal for me, as a result.
Operacast
Not that I believe Jesus didn't exist.
I thought it had been determined that the notations about Jesus from Josephus were not original and had been added long after his death?
For me, as a Christian, it is one of those things I don't contemplate much. I contemplate what he is purported to have said and done and the value in that.
I thought it had been determined that the notations about Jesus from Josephus were not original and had been added long after his death?
For me, as a Christian, it is one of those things I don't contemplate much. I contemplate what he is purported to have said and done and the value in that.
juantoo3
....whys guy.... ʎʇıɹoɥʇnɐ uoıʇsǝnb
Yep, but in the spirit of what I think Operacast was trying to say, it *is* interesting to note who the nay sayers are pertaining to that questionable passage.
Particularly when John the Baptist plays such a dominant role in about a chapter or so of ol' Josephus, and Salome gets even more attention as the mother of later kings. Besides, as an historian and former military general, Josephus was writing about *everybody* long after they died...
bob x
Well-Known Member
One of the passages (the long one) has obviously at least been extensively reworked by a Christian hand, and it is controversial whether it was entirely made up, or is an edit of something shorter that was in the original text; the other passage (with a brief mention, in the course of identifying James) is not questioned by anyone as far as I know.
Dream
Well-Known Member
Operacast, I partially agree with you about the witchhunting, but I also realize that Criticism & Bible Criticism is a necessity for the preservation of all Scripture. Without attacking it, you leave it to waste away; and I am not joking about this. It really struck a note with me when another forum member expressed a concept which he called 'Killing the Buddha'. (I think it was CitizenZen who mentioned this.) It is a similar idea, where a Buddhist fervently attacks his own concept of Buddha. Or something like that.
Many good things have come from Bible Criticism, and the Bible is here not just in spite of but because of it. The history of Bible criticism, for example, lends palpability to the Bible. I know the Bible both through its friends and its historical enemies. Many people say the Bible is 'An anvil that has worn out many hammers.'
Judges 6:31 But Joash said to all who were arrayed against him, "Will you contend for Baal? Or will you defend his cause? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been pulled down."
Many good things have come from Bible Criticism, and the Bible is here not just in spite of but because of it. The history of Bible criticism, for example, lends palpability to the Bible. I know the Bible both through its friends and its historical enemies. Many people say the Bible is 'An anvil that has worn out many hammers.'
Judges 6:31 But Joash said to all who were arrayed against him, "Will you contend for Baal? Or will you defend his cause? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been pulled down."
Last edited:
One chief concern I have about this mythicist program is the way their dishonest methods might really take off, if they're not checked right now, and bleed over into successful denialist agendas aimed at other crucial hinges in history like the Armenian genocide, the Trail of Tears, the Nazi holocaust, the McCarthy era, the Flight 93 heroes, Stalin's gulags, the Guantanamo gulag, the Allende assassination, ante-bellum slavery, the Salem witch trials, the Rwanda genocide, Srebenica, the Spanish Inquisition, and on and on. It's no joke. Whether or not you accept the Christian creed, the way the Roman Empire treated not only Jesus but many of his colleagues and his posthumous followers for over a century is simply shameful. And it's creepy to me the way people even now are still trying to "forget" the Armenian genocide. While I'm happy that Obama was forthright enough in his latest trip abroad in decrying anyone who denies the Nazi holocaust, his not holding Turkey's feet to the fire on the Armenians is uncomfortably convenient, IMO.
Reading the downright lying assertions by various mythicists -- "Paul never refers to Jesus as a human being who lived and died"(!), "there are many suspicions voiced on Antiquities 20 by accredited scholars in academe"(!), "all Jesus's sayings uniformly have precedents in prior philosophies and creeds"(!) -- I can easily imagine the same Big-Lie tactics used against the evidence for the Trail of Tears, the McCarthy era, the Guantanamo gulag and so on.........."Oh, historians exaggerate, show me where there are actual contemporary reports or accounts of even one entire Japanese-American family being summarily swept up without due process; why everyone knows the [so-and-so] account was just faked and there's no reference to that text until many years after the war was all over" or "Anne Frank was a fictional character, obviously, and it shouldn't surprise us that she's passed off as having died in a camp so no one can question her" or "the Spanish Inquisition was hardly as cruel as anti-Catholics like to make out; it's just a conspiracy to put everything that's Roman Catholic in a bad light".
Wake up, people! This mythicist agenda is designing deadly tools of prevarication and elaborate lies through sheer repetition that can be sharpened and used in 101 different ways to cover over any number of atrocities throughout history that ought never be forgotten but will be. Somebody better start collecting contemporary eyewitness accounts of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib now and put them all into the most carefully researched and sourced book now before the denialists get their hands on that one.
Don't let any Big Lie go unchallenged. Ever. It was the Big Lie that FDR's banking laws were really unneeded and ineffective that precipitated the laissez-faire time bomb in the 1980s leading to the big crash of '08-'09. History DOES repeat itself if not safeguarded vigilantly. Don't let these tools of the Big Lie in the mythicist arsenal become the sharpened weapons to justify every whitewash of every other atrocity in human history. In the age of the Internet, where every unscrupulous trickster can communicate with everyone and get away with anything, the time to challenge these Big-Lie methods sharply is right now.
Sincerely,
Operacast
Reading the downright lying assertions by various mythicists -- "Paul never refers to Jesus as a human being who lived and died"(!), "there are many suspicions voiced on Antiquities 20 by accredited scholars in academe"(!), "all Jesus's sayings uniformly have precedents in prior philosophies and creeds"(!) -- I can easily imagine the same Big-Lie tactics used against the evidence for the Trail of Tears, the McCarthy era, the Guantanamo gulag and so on.........."Oh, historians exaggerate, show me where there are actual contemporary reports or accounts of even one entire Japanese-American family being summarily swept up without due process; why everyone knows the [so-and-so] account was just faked and there's no reference to that text until many years after the war was all over" or "Anne Frank was a fictional character, obviously, and it shouldn't surprise us that she's passed off as having died in a camp so no one can question her" or "the Spanish Inquisition was hardly as cruel as anti-Catholics like to make out; it's just a conspiracy to put everything that's Roman Catholic in a bad light".
Wake up, people! This mythicist agenda is designing deadly tools of prevarication and elaborate lies through sheer repetition that can be sharpened and used in 101 different ways to cover over any number of atrocities throughout history that ought never be forgotten but will be. Somebody better start collecting contemporary eyewitness accounts of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib now and put them all into the most carefully researched and sourced book now before the denialists get their hands on that one.
Don't let any Big Lie go unchallenged. Ever. It was the Big Lie that FDR's banking laws were really unneeded and ineffective that precipitated the laissez-faire time bomb in the 1980s leading to the big crash of '08-'09. History DOES repeat itself if not safeguarded vigilantly. Don't let these tools of the Big Lie in the mythicist arsenal become the sharpened weapons to justify every whitewash of every other atrocity in human history. In the age of the Internet, where every unscrupulous trickster can communicate with everyone and get away with anything, the time to challenge these Big-Lie methods sharply is right now.
Sincerely,
Operacast
Dream
Well-Known Member
I agree with you that we shouldn't encourage denial of mass killings, but I disagree with you about how to discourage it. Rather than try to stop mythicists, you might try to ensure that their works are fully recorded. Also record those who disagree. That would turn a liar's momentum into a force for truth to ensure the sacred memory of those who've died. Think of it as mass reverse-psychology or advanced Historical technique. For example, I think you ought to duplicate everything that Iran's president has said or that the Turks or US State Dept. has said about various genocides and store them in low temperature vaults. Store all of their denials and absolutely as much as you can store, store. Every denial will become evidence of the event -- guaranteed.
I do think that the Bible 'Mythicists' as you call them, are coming from personal belief, rather than in inward drive to mystify. Their desire is usually not to mystify but to demystify; so they are not in the same league with genocide deniers. The early 'Higher Critics' activities were actually religious activities. Though their methods were secular, the reasons for their pursuit could not really be called that. For reasons of personal belief, they pursued a non-church-approved criticism. Wellhousen smothered his work with praise for the Bible's poetry while at the same time disagreeing with a literal view. Would you also call him a mystifier? Whom today has not benefitted from his work? It has actually resulted in a stronger Catholic faith! Ancient critics like Porphyry attacked in every way they could, but their attacks rather than destroying were actually cold medicine. These critics, with their very criticism and attempts to demystify, enshrined what they were criticizing.
The denials of holocausts are part of what verifies them in the long term. Denial, through its duplicitous nature, always identifies itself eventually. It always lies too much! Record every lie! Record the skillful as well as the crude liar. They will step on each other's feet.
Proverbs 14:5 A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness breathes out lies.
Proverbs 19:5 A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who utters lies will not escape.
I do think that the Bible 'Mythicists' as you call them, are coming from personal belief, rather than in inward drive to mystify. Their desire is usually not to mystify but to demystify; so they are not in the same league with genocide deniers. The early 'Higher Critics' activities were actually religious activities. Though their methods were secular, the reasons for their pursuit could not really be called that. For reasons of personal belief, they pursued a non-church-approved criticism. Wellhousen smothered his work with praise for the Bible's poetry while at the same time disagreeing with a literal view. Would you also call him a mystifier? Whom today has not benefitted from his work? It has actually resulted in a stronger Catholic faith! Ancient critics like Porphyry attacked in every way they could, but their attacks rather than destroying were actually cold medicine. These critics, with their very criticism and attempts to demystify, enshrined what they were criticizing.
The denials of holocausts are part of what verifies them in the long term. Denial, through its duplicitous nature, always identifies itself eventually. It always lies too much! Record every lie! Record the skillful as well as the crude liar. They will step on each other's feet.
Proverbs 14:5 A faithful witness does not lie, but a false witness breathes out lies.
Proverbs 19:5 A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who utters lies will not escape.
Actually, I'm more concerned with the Jesus mythicists than the Bible mythicists. After all, I myself am hardly a Bible literalist. I guess what has really gotten me going is something far more creepy to me than the Jesus mythicists going after the New Testament. After all, that's part of the Bible mythicist aspect, with which I'm less inclined to be upset. Maybe some do overstate that case too, yes, but the Jesus mythicists are hardly alone there. No, what's really gotten me concerned is the surreal way in which the secular or non-Christian documents from ancient Rome and elsewhere -- Josephus, etc. -- are called myth by the Jesus mythicists. That Big Lie, to me, is what is truly sinister. And that is where I really see denialist tools that could be honed into the most dangerous weapons against the rest of history. Not sure if you're familiar with Orwell's "1984", but directing The Big Lie against secular and non-Christian texts(!) is most strongly reminiscent of the powers-that-be in "1984". It makes my blood run cold, frankly. And the fact that so many mythicists add insult to that injury against secular documents by also making vague references to "many scholars" and what's "generally known", etc., only makes it all that much creepier. It seems so orchestrated sometimes <shudder>.
Sincerely,
Operacast
Dream
Well-Known Member
Stand by the conviction that liars will not overcome. That is the truth, the nitty-gritty. People who say that 'Victors write history' are unknowingly spreading a myth, because history writes itself. Historians can only comment. Denialist tools only work in the present, not in the future.
...which leads us right back to the beginning question. What are the origins of Jesus Christ? For all our opinions, they are all based on a fact, called the Bible (and what it teaches us about Jesus the Christ).
Afterall, without the Bible, we wouldn't know Jesus from a hole in the ground...right?
Afterall, without the Bible, we wouldn't know Jesus from a hole in the ground...right?
Come to think of it, that may not necessarily be right, entirely. We do have Josephus's Antiquities, after all, helter-skelter as its textual history may be. And although it would be in very distorted form, we'd also have some inkling of Jesus in the exegeses of the Church Fathers, each with their individual axe to grind, granted, together with the tiny handful of additional Roman chronicles out there, in addition to Josephus. These may not give anywhere near as vivid a picture of Jesus as the Scriptural texts do, but they do address your conundrum: we would indeed know Jesus from a hole in the ground. He would not have disappeared from the historical record. We would simply know him as a historical human being who inspired some unusual philosophical activity, although we might well be mystified as to how come such a fuss was made over his followers during much of the first millennium b.c.e.<shrug>
As an afterthought, after 1945, we would also have a somewhat sharper picture of him as well, having found the non-Biblical Gospel of Thomas at Nag Hammadi.
Sincerely,
Operacast