by uncle_onion 30 Replies latest jw friends
Shauna,
If you want to discuss issues don't be so extremely sensitive. You seem to take any difference of opinion as full-scale declaration of war. Calm down.
And yes, you seem to actually not know what "average" means. Otherwise your statement about some people being older than the average lifespan does not make any sense.
- Jan
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"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen"
-- Albert Einstein
Jesus Christ is the main feature of Christianity. What proof is there of him existing? We touched on this subject on the the last thread that I started, but I would appreciate in depth veiw points and "evidence" please.
In history, we don't use the word "proof". We talk about evidence. Various forms of evidence has different weight. Some claims, like there being a man called Jesus in 1st century Palestine, and some people thought him to be a saviour, are not all that remarkable. Stories about actual miracles are extraordinary claims that will require extraordinary evidence.
The earliest testimony to Jesus is what we find in Paul's letters, around 50-60AD. However, we find no references there to Paul ever having seen or met Jesus in real life. He relates no eyewitness accounts, no biographical data, nothing except claims of supernatural revelation. Nothing really suggests a real person living only around 20 years earlier. But it does suggest some belief in a "Christ" sometime earlier, in the Jerusalem area.
The gospel accounts are extremely weak evidence. Thet seem to believe all sorts of supernatural stories. They relate hearsay; none of the authors claim to be eye-witnesses, or even know any real eye witnesses. The stories are wild, fantastic, self-contradictory and everything you'd expect from deeply superstitious people who were out to sell you a religious saviour-tale. As a source to any historical Jesus, these stories are very near worthless. You can mix up all sorts of verses from these, and make a plausible story about a miracle-worker, a revolutionary, or indeed whatever you want to have your Jesus to look like. This has been done countless times. These "historical-jesus" reconstructions are interesting, but probably pretty worthless if you have rigurous demands on yoru work.
The secular evidence to Jesus is actually just one: Jospehus. But the two references to Jesus in the Josephus we have today have both been tampered with, to say it mildly, by Christian scribes. It can be doubted weather any real reference to a historical Jesus was behind any of those. Most scholars seem to still assume there was some vague reference there, but the arguments didn't really impress me the last time I reviewed them.
There are some references, like Tacitus, that talks about Christians and the claims made by Christians. This is nothing like any independent testimony to the historical Jesus.
So, to conclude, there may be slightly more reason to believe a real, historical man called Jesus really existed, than to assume he was just made up from scratch. Who or what he was, what he did, we know nothing about.
That's the foundation of the Christian faith. Not much.
- Jan
--
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen"
-- Albert Einstein
I believe that a charismatic teacher named Jesus probably did exist in the first century. At the same time, I do not believe that the stories about him in the Bible are literally true. The synoptic gospels conflict with each other on many points, so somewhere along the way the details were garbled.
Below are parts of an entry under “Jesus Christ” in The Woman’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara J. Walker. If you have been comparing the Genesis stories with Sumerian myths, you may find this material interesting, too.
Ginny
The Jesus who was called Christos, “Anointed,” took his title from Middle-Eastern savior-gods like Adonis and Tammuz, born of the Virgin sea-goddess Aphrodite-Maria (Myrrha), or Ishtar-Mari (Hebrew Mariamne). Earlier biblical versions of the same hero were Joshua son of Nun (Exodus 33:11), Jehu son of Nimshi, whom Elijah anointed as a sacred king (1 Kings 19:16), and Yeshua son of Marah. The Book of Enoch said in the 2nd century BCE that Yeshua or Jesus was the secret name given by God to the Son of Man (a Persian title), and that it meant “Yahweh saves.”
In northern Israel the name was written Ieu. It was the same as Ieud or Jeud, the “only-begotten son” dressed in royal robes and sacrificed by the god-king Isra-El. Greek versions of the name were Iasion, Jason, or Iasus—the name of one of Demeter’s sacrificed consorts, killed by Father Zeus after the fertility rite that coupled him with his Mother. Iasus signified a healer or Therapeuta, as the Greeks called the Essenes, whose cult groups always included a man with the title of Christos. The literal meaning of the name was “healing moon-man,” fitting the Hebrew version of Jesus as a son of Mary, the almah, or “moon-maiden.”
It seems Jesus was not one person but a composite of many. He played the role of sacred king of the Jews who periodically died in an atonement ceremony as surrogate for the real king. “The Semitic religions practiced human immolations longer than any other religion, sacrificing children and grown men in order to please sanguinary gods. In spite of Hadrian’s prohibition of those murderous offerings, they were maintained in certain clandestine rites.” The priesthood of the Jewish God insisted that “one man should die for the people . . . that the whole nation perish not” (John 11:50). Yahweh forgave no sins without bloodshed: “without shedding blood is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). . . .
This Jesus seems to have made little or no impression on his contemporaries. No literate person of his own time mentioned him in any known writing. The Gospels were not written in his own time, nor were they written by anyone who ever saw him in the flesh. The names of the apostles attached to these books were fraudulent. The books were composed after the establishment of the church, some as late as the 2nd century A.D. or later, according to the church’s requirements for a manufactured tradition. Most scholars believe the earliest book of the New Testament was 1 Thessalonians, written perhaps 51 A.D. by Paul, who never saw Jesus in person and knew no details of his life story.
The details were accumulated through later adoption of the myths attached to every savior-god throughout the Roman empire. Like Adonis, Jesus was born of a consecrated temple maiden in the sacred cave of Bethlehem, “The House of Bread.” He was eaten in the form of bread, as were Adonis, Osiris, Dionysus, and others; he called himself the bread of God (John 6:33). Like worshippers of Osiris, those of Jesus made him part of themselves by eating him, so as to participate in his resurrection: “He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him (John 6:56).
Like Attis, Jesus was sacrificed at the spring equinox and rose again from the dead on the third day, when he became God and ascended to heaven. Like Orpheus and Heracles, he “harrowed hell” and brought a secret of eternal life, promising to draw all men with him up to glory (John 12:32). Like Mithra and all the other solar gods, he celebrated a birthday nine months later at the winter solstice, because the day of his death was also the day of his cyclic re-conception.
From the elder gods, Jesus acquired not only his title of Christos but all his other titles as well. Osiris and Tammuz were called Good Shepherd. Sarapis was Lord of Death and King of Glory. Mithra and Heracles were Light of the World, Sun of Righteousness, Helios the Rising Sun. Dionysus was King of Kings, God of Gods. Hermes was the Enlightened One and the Logos. Vishnu and Mithra were Son of Man and Messiah. Adonis was the Lord and the Bridegroom. Mot-Aleyin was the Lamb of God. “Savior” (Soter) was applied to all of them. . . .
The skeptical Celsus noted that beggars and vagabonds throughout the Empire were pretending to work miracles and become gods, throwing fits, prophesying the end of the world, and aspiring to the status of saviors:
Each has the convenient and customary spiel, “I am the god,” or “a son of God” or “a divine spirit,” and “I have come. For the world is about to be destroyed, and you, men, because of your injustice, will go (with it). But I wish to save, and you shall see me again coming back with heavenly power. Blessed is he who worships me now! On all others, both cities and countrysides, I shall cast eternal fire. And men who (now) ignore their punishments shall repent in vain and groan, but those who believed in me I shall preserve immortal. . . .
The rest of the Gospel material was largely devoted to the miracles supposed to demonstrate his divine power . . . Even these miracles were derivative. Turning water into wine at Cana was copied from a Dionysian ritual practiced at Sidon and other places . . . Many centuries earlier, priestesses at Nineveh cured the blind with spittle, and the story was repeated of many different gods and their incarnations. Demeter of Eleusis multiplied loaves and fishes in her role of Mistress of Earth and Sea. . . .
The ability to walk on water was claimed by Far-Eastern holy men ever since Buddhist monks praised it as the mark of the true ascetic. . . .
But the Jesus who emulated Buddha in advocating poverty and humility eventually became the mythic figurehead for one of the world’s pre-eminent money-making organizations. The cynical Pope Leo X exclaimed, “What profit has not that fable of Christ brought us!”
Modern theologians tend to sidestep the question of whether Jesus was in fact a fable or a real person. In view of the complete dearth of hard evidence, and the dubious nature of the soft evidence, it seems Christianity is based on the ubiquitous social phenomena of credulity:
An idea is able to gain and retain the aura of essential truth through telling and retelling. This process endows a cherished notion with more veracity than a library of facts. . . . Documentation plays only a small role in contrast to the act of re-confirmation by each generation of scholars. In addition, the further removed one gets from the period in question, the greater is the strength of the conviction. Initial incredulousness is soon converted into belief in a probability and eventually smug assurance.
JanH, Just wanted to apologize if I took you wrong earlier. I forget you are from another part of the world and probably didn't mean to come across as you did, or I mean as I took it.
Please no bad feelings. I've been told you are quite an expert on history. I'd appreciate anything you could teach me. Just here to learn.
Thanks,
Shauna
No prob, Shauna.
Yes, I'm from the "say it as it is" part of the world .
- Jan
--
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen"
-- Albert Einstein
People,
You've been doing some research especially those on the godman myths,Adonis,Mithras,Dionysius.It's amazing how many of the events relating to Jesus's 'life' had been already visited in the other godman myths.Oh fiddle dee dee......Shauna have you been burning the midnight oil in your research...
Regards Welshman
This is just nonsense.
JanH,
To an American, this phrase IS a "put-down". It DOES imply that whoever made the original statement must be stupid in your eyes. It IS a way to "be-little" a person - i.e "you be little, so I be big". No one likes to be treated in this manner.
NewLight2
To an American, this phrase IS a "put-down".
It may be, to anyone who considers style more important than content.
It DOES imply that whoever made the original statement must be stupid in your eyes.
No it does not, NL2. That is where you are totally confused. There is a clear difference between a person him/herself and a statement made by this person.
Don't you understand such a simple fact?
It IS a way to "be-little" a person - i.e "you be little, so I be big".
Of course, if you paid any attention to the actual statements made (what a crime!), you would see that the statement I proclaimed nonsense was one uttered by someone in a TV documentary. It was one where Shauna was merely quoting somebody else, not referring to this as her own opinion. That Shauna should feel "belittled" by me considering these claims nonsense is well beyond me.
No one likes to be treated in this manner.
NL2: I think someone may be saying something that offends you in thousands of discussion boards on the Net today. Hurry up and run, so maybe you can make it, and can satisfy your desire to practice this popular American pastime of being constantly offended by everyone and everything.
- Jan
--
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen"
-- Albert Einstein
Hi Jan and others
I agree let's keep this discussion on a civilized level
Jan, Thanks for your reply. I'll have get back to you - i'll have to do some research prior to answering
Idaho
Hi all
So can anyone recomend a good book that deals with all this please?
UO
