Look, the man was so amazing and unforgettable and influential that our western calendar is based on his birth. People have smeared his name right and left for all these centuries. I'd feel the same way if 2,000 years from now people said Martin Luther King JR. was a mythological legend that never existed.
Jesus never existed!
by Layla33 63 Replies latest jw friends
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Gopher
FHN -- I am no longer 'afraid' of any angry God. I think such gods are items of faith (or figments of people's imagination). I do object to how extreme religious people take the anger of their gods and foist it on unbelievers.
I didn't see the Discovery documentary, but I am familiar with Christian revisionism trying to fit the Bible's Jesus into a historical context. As I tried to say in my earlier post, this cannot be done by looking at concurrent records. If Jesus was truly a miracle worker, this should have made it into concurrent historical records rather than needing to be built up by later believers.
Belief in Jesus is an item of faith and not history.
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Narkissos
A recent discussion on a related topic: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/6/155071/1.ashx
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owenfieldreams
Why did you choose to make a 'devil's advocate' argument against Jesus? Why not Mohammed? Just curious....
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HB
This is a very interesting thread. Presumably the reason it is not being bombarded by true and faithful Christians is simply that they do not have a rational answer. Well done to FlyingHighNow even though I don't agree with you, for braving it out alone and making this more interesting.
I agree with Gopher on the point he made that 'Belief in Jesus is an item of faith and not history'.
Truth is different things to different people............................
- to those who base their beliefs on science and logic, Truth is "ascertainable fact",
- to those who base their beliefs on such things as emotional feelings, superstition, supernatural experiences, unquestioning acceptance of what they are taught and what they read (or see on TV), and all the millions of other 'proofs', Truth is in their hearts, ie Faith, and can't be proved.
There is not really much common middle ground, which is why the philosophy of religion is so interesting.
Within the set of believers in Jesus there are a multitude of sub-sets, such as those who don't want to think about history but mystically believe in Jesus as the son of God, mediator for and saviour of mankind, or those who accept the bible's description of Jesus and his life as a man as true and accurate, but don't necessarily believe completely in his mystical power or relationship with God. There are also many who are happy to believe in the nativity 'just at Christmas' and the crucifiction 'just at Easter', but the rest of the year they vaguely say they are agnostics or just 'not religious'.
None of these groups can comfortably join in a thread where reason and logic are the basis of the discussion. I'm half hoping this is going to bring believers out and onto this topic, but I won't be surprised if it doesn't.
I would like to add one other thing which is at a slight tangent to the main topic, on the subject of the heretical gospels. It was stated that only four gospels were chosen to be included in the Canonical New Testament, the significance of the number four being that it represented "the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John".
If what I have read elsewhere is true, (sorry forgotten where), then that reason was just political spin from those who chose what to include and what to leave out. Apparently the real reason was that the contents of the rejected gospels didn't fit with the brand image desired by the early Church with regard to the status of women, and in particular the notion of Jesus being married and of women performing sacrements.
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startingover
What, no responses from Burn, Perry or Real One? I am dissapointed.
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jaguarbass
Layla, I wish I could say it wasnt so, but your information seems to be correct.
I guess were on our own.
Or there is a mystical God who has nothing to do with the bible.
Maybe were Gods having human, material experiences.
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R.Crusoe
12 months ago I could never even consider this plausible!
But things I learned about since then suggest to me that the divine of Jesus of the Bible is highly likely never to have existed!
Though I consider his Buddha like persona to likely have been around someplace in someone!
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Layla33
Why did you choose to make a 'devil's advocate' argument against Jesus? Why not Mohammed? Just curious....
Oh this was an off-shot of something Real One said in a gay thread. I wanted to challenge the existence of Jesus as he referred to my even questioning those things taught about Jesus as blasphemous.
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Layla33
Look, the man was so amazing and unforgettable and influential that our western calendar is based on his birth. People have smeared his name right and left for all these centuries. I'd feel the same way if 2,000 years from now people said Martin Luther King JR. was a mythological legend that never existed.
The problem is that there is absolutely no written history of a figure Jesus Christ at the time he was alive, at all. This was shown by people that were neutral to the whole debate. Hey, I am open to it, if there is any evidence written at the time of a Jesus Christ that people refer to, I would gladly read it and comment on it. The fact is that everything, even his supposed sermons, etc were written many years after his supposed death, miracles interjected, etc.
There is so much written evidence of MLK Jr. not just by those that believed in him, but by those that didn't, there would be no way to discount his existence completely.
No pictures at his time, no other historical data, and sorry when a Discovery channel does something on Easter to talk about his supposed existence, I am going to be just a little bit skeptical about this.
All I am saying is to just consider that maybe a story that was told to us, took on a life of its own, other myths were interjected, to create a belief that resides today.