[deleted duplicate post]
What evidence is there for a biblical jesus?
by Touchofgrey 189 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Jeffro
Vidqun:
Very few contradictions
😂🤣🤣😂🤣🤣😂🤣🤣😂
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Vidqun
Jeffro, this one was made especially for you:
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FreeTheMasons
@JoeyJoJo said: Are you asking me to have a beer with you and some dude from Mexico?
Sounds good - I like Mexican beer.
😆
Yes, someday you me and a guy name Jesus from Mexico - and the other Jesus who is also known as Michael - we'll get together and have a beer.
Lol, incidentally, I also do like some Mexican beers - Corona is pretty good with lime on a hot day...this song always makes me think of Mexican beer😜
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peacefulpete
For if a person called Jesus Christ didn't exist at one stage, then Christians made themselves up from some literary fandom they created, which doesn't give much credibility to the fact that they had enemies who actively opposed them in the first century, including the Romans, who alluded to the fact they were followers of Jesus. So if the Jews were lying and the Romans were lying, my God maybe we should question if the Romans and the Jews back then ever existed!
You have formed multiple lines of 'evidence' from the same story for which there is no evidence occurred. Dr Julius No can't be used to prove the existence of James bond. Nor can the CIA or MI6. They are elements of the same story.
It seems many, including skeptics, have a hard time believing that the Jesus of the Gospels could have been an euhemerization (or possibly more accurately a dramatization) of a spirit being believed to have existed. This is strange to me. Numerous stories in the OT depict Yahweh as a guy walking around his garden, eating and talking with people. Most believers understand those stories as dramatizations. The Jews had enemies resulting from belief in Yahweh. That is not proof Yahweh walked around on earth. It's not difficult. Is not the same possible, even reasonable, for believers in a spirit Christ? The story is manifestly drawn from source OT source material, everything from the human name/s given him, his place of birth, to the stage setting on Mt of Olives, it's a dramatization.
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peacefulpete
I know it sounds insulting, but religion based upon physical people are idolizations. Religions drawn from spiritual conceptions, metaphor and symbolism are spiritual faiths.
The instructors of the ancient faiths of Egypt, the near east and the far east understood their stories of battling gods and miraculous births were dramatizations, colorful teaching tools to instill belief and fear of the unseen. Ironically literalizing Christians mistake their own as history while claiming a higher faith.
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Touchofgrey
What swayed me most about the authenticity of the Gospel accounts are their contents. I have read lots of books before, but they were special. Very few contradictions and some excellent advice and moral guidance in there. And as for the theory that a disciple or groups of disciples came together and sucked all of it out their thumbs is somewhat hard to swallow. And as already discussed, to be willing to die for a big lie is highly unlikely from a human standpoint.
Vidqun
Bart Ehrman gets his new students who were manly fundamentalist Christian who believed the gospels as being inspired to get a bible and a pen and writing pad and starting with Matthew take notes of major events about jesus life and ministry and parables and his death etc ,then do the same with the other gospels and then compare them to see if any contradictions.
Or as James tabor a biblical scholar encourages that people read the new testament in date order ,all the letters of paul first then the gospels that were written decades later and see then if it makes sense.
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ukpimo
Exactly TonusOh
"We are confident that Joseph Smith existed and that he established a new branch of Christianity, but we do not believe that his addendum to the Bible is legitimate"
I wasn't saying that a Christian's view of their religion proves the legitimacy of the Bible. You have helped prove a point, I too believe Jesus existed, but that doesn't mean certain extravagant details are legitimate. This doesn't however take away the need for faith in a man who proves to be more of a pacifist than Joseph Smith and Muhammad, Mr Smith being a sex mad polygamous chap and Muhammad being a fanatic who would justify bloodshed in the name of his religion.
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peacefulpete
ukpimo...Are Joseph Smith and Muhamed analogous to Jesus? Some have argued so, but others see a distinction. Jesus is described in divine terms throughout the story. He has supernatural abilities of passing through crowds and walls, he has ability to see the future and thoughts, he manipulates matter, he claims all god's attributes such as authority over life and forgiveness. While followers of Smith and Muhamed revere them for their proximity to the divine, they were not depicted as divine, supernatural beings. Jesus is more analogous to an Apollo or Shiva. Neither of whom are assumed historical despite their stories locating them on earth.
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TonusOH
You don't have to convince me that Smith and Mohammad were crappy people. However, that's not my point. Both of those men are far better attested to than Jesus, but the fact that they existed does not convince Christians that their more extravagant claims are true. "This person existed" is simply not sufficient.
On the other hand, there are millions --billions, even-- of people who do believe that Smith and Mohammad were divinely inspired. Why? Presuppositions. Very powerful, yet very clearly unreliable. If we apply the same approach to all of these claims, they all fall short. To the extent that they are believed, it is entirely dependent on what we believed before we had a chance to put them to the test.