Here's a thought guys......prove that Jesus existed at all..using anything besides the Bible....or the writings of Josephus (which have been proven tampered with by the early Christian church). You are all arguing a moot point...Not only has the 'Organization' been deceiving you.....but The Bible itself is a made up, bit of pap, used to enslave man to his own dismay....prove me wrong. Use Historical accuracy.....I'm waiting...... p.s.....happy monday!
Prove to me Jesus existed...............
by passive suicide 51 Replies latest jw friends
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erynw
ARGUMENT FROM BIBLICAL HISTORY
(1) Many modern historians think that there probably was somebody named Jesus, maybe.
(2) Therefore, God exists. -
The-Borg
Pilate existed and so did Caiaphas, if Jesus didn't exist, the man or men who invented Christianty were extremely clever and willing to risk their lives to do it. Imagine inventing a new religion today so powerful it could turn the world upside down based on a fictional character. If Jesus didn't exist it's an even a bigger miracle than if he didn't.
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bigdreaux
Pilate existed and so did Caiaphas, if Jesus didn't exist, the man or men who invented Christianty were extremely clever and willing to risk their lives to do it. Imagine inventing a new religion today so powerful it could turn the world upside down based on a fictional character. If Jesus didn't exist it's an even a bigger miracle than if he didn't.
sooooooooooooooo...........inventing christianity would've been really hard, and dangerous, therefore it must be true!
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bigdreaux
borg, couldn't your arguement also be used by evolutionists?
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AnnOMaly
Why hasn't Josephus been mentioned yet? He seems to think both Jesus and his brother James existed. I can't see any reason to think they were fabrications.
Edit: Oops, excuse me. I read the first post too quickly. If you don't want to use Josephus then, there are no other sources to my knowledge to 'prove he existed.'
Now whether Jesus was the Son of God and did all those miracles .... well, that's an entirely different question.
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CyrusThePersian
Hi
Even though I'm an atheist, I subscribe to the possibility that there may have been a real person, possibly an itinerate Jewish preacher who lived in the time of Tiberius Ceasar, at the core of the Jesus mythos.
The evidence (not PROOF mind you) is in the scriptures themselves. There are events in Jesus' life that are difficult to explain, but the gospel writers have a go at it anyway. I'll give you two:
JESUS' BAPTISM
Why was the almighty son of God baptised by John the Baptist?? This baptism was for the confession and washing away of sins. (Matt. 3:5)Why would Jesus, the perfect son of God, need such a service? Explanation: the real Jesus may have been at one time a disciple of John the Baptist. After John's imprisonment, Jesus struck out on his own and aquired his own disciples. Some of these probably knew of his status as a disciple of John and so a convoluted explanation had to be thought up to explain his baptism.
JESUS' EXECUTION
Why was the son of God humiliated and executed as a common criminal? This one was a toughie. They finally came up with the idea that it was necessary for Jesus to die, mostly using Isaiah's"Suffering Servant" analogy (which by the way had nothing to do with Jesus, but was about the nation of Isreal).
Anyway, here's two, there are others. When I get back from work, I'll post some others.
CyrusThePersian
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The-Borg
Bigdreaux - Evolution was invented in the age of rationalism not in the age religous fundamentalism.
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bigdreaux
borg, i agree, but, religious zealots will still to this day, kill or intimadate people to keep them silent. can someone say Jehovah's witnesses? anyway, no matter when you live, proposing an idea that is against the status quo is dangerous no matter what age you live in. also, just because something is hard to do, doesn't make it right or wrong.
the idea here is PROOF!!!! evolution has alot more evidence than does religion. if this debate were in a court of law, with all emotion removed, evolution would win hands down. it's all about evidence and credibility. how many wars have been started because an evolutionists was pressing their ideas on others?
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Narkissos
Cyrus,
Those are strong arguments, and you may well be right.
For the sake of discussion, I'd just suggest how they might be reversed:
1. John the Baptist was a highly respected character in most of the early "Christian" nebula (some segments of which had obviously "splitted" from JtB's discipleship). Whence the need to somehow relate its developing "Saviour" figure to John (along with the common practice of water baptism). At the first stage (Mark), having JtB baptising Jesus as an introduction to a higher status (Son of God) made a lot of sense. It was both an acknowledgement of John and a limitation of his role to that of a forerunner. At the second stage (Matthew, John), where Jesus was the Son of God right from the start (instead of becoming such at a certain point of the narrative), it became problematic -- hence the painful "explanation" in Matthew, and the dropping of baptism in John.
2. What if the notion of "substitutive suffering and death," nurtured among other things by the contemporary readings of the Songs of the Servant (as attested in much Jewish literature, especially Qumran about the "Master of righteousness"), had become an integral part of the "Saviour" plot line? Then crucifixion under a well-known Roman repressive prefect, with the complicity of the hated high-priestly aristocracy, was a rather natural way to "historicise" the myth of a "Christ crucified by the (spiritual) rulers of this age" (1 Corinthians 2:8).
Again, I am not sure at all that such "explanations" are better than yours. My provisional opinion is that the issue is hardly decidable from where we stand.