|
Korean Job Discussion Forums
"The Internet's Meeting Place for ESL/EFL Teachers from Around the World!"
|
| View previous topic :: View next topic |
| Author |
Message |
EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
|
 Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 5:50 am Post subject: |
 |
|
| kangnamdragon wrote: |
| If He does not exist, why do you call yourself a unitarian and go to church? |
Ignorant of the Unitarian Church, obviously. Think: the Un-Church. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 5:57 am Post subject: |
|
|
| thorin wrote: |
PROOF THAT JESUS WAS...
...Jewish:
1. He went into his father's business.
2. He lived at home until the age of 33.
3. He was sure his mother was a virgin, and his mother was sure he was God.
...Irish:
1. He never got married.
2. He never held a steady job.
3. His last request was a drink.
...Puerto Rican:
1. His first name was Jesus.
2. He was always in trouble with the law.
3. His mother did not know who his father was.
...Italian:
1. He talked with his hands.
2. He had wine with every meal.
3. He used olive oil.
...Black:
1. He called everybody brother.
2. He liked Gospel.
3. He couldn't get a fair trial.
...Californian:
1. He never cut his hair.
2. He walked around barefoot all the time.
3. He started a new religion. |
Funny sh i t t t |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 6:14 am Post subject: |
|
|
| joe_doufu wrote: |
| Most people are not theologians and I don't believe they would have cared about the details of Christ's theological teachings. I have to disagree with you there. People join a religion because of trendiness and sex appeal -- see Scientology -- or because of the excitement of an apocalypse -- see 7th-Day Adventists. Christianity offered one or both of those. |
It's comments such as these that cause me to beleive you are, in fact, a fifteen year-old. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 6:17 am Post subject: |
|
|
| joe_doufu wrote: |
| Kermo, I like you a lot so I don't want you to think I'm insulting your religion. Your faith leaves you no alternative but to belive Jesus started preaching for a reason, that somebody intended for Christianity to become the primary religion of Western civilization. |
For Chrissake... .. this is utterly bass-ackwards. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 6:33 am Post subject: |
|
|
I have had a number of good laughs reading this thread. (Not derisively: there's some witty stuff here.) Who would'a thunk it??
Learned a bit, too. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 7:53 am Post subject: |
|
|
I'm disappointed that no-one has responded to my post back on page seven.
It took me a while to write, and I thought it was a good answer to the question: "Did Jesus Really Exist?"
OK, here's another nugget to chew on:
According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was born while Quirinius was governor of Syria.
Quirinius took office in the year 6 C.E.
However, according to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus was born while Herod the Great was in power in Judea.
Herod the Great died in the year 4 B.C.E.
So, you can see that there is a ten-year gap between the reigns of Herod the Great and Quirinius.
As Freke and Gandy put it, the true miracle of Mary's pregnancy was that it lasted for ten years!
Reference:
Freke, Timothy, and Peter Gandy. The Jesus Mysteries,1999 |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Satori
Joined: 09 Dec 2005
Location: Above it all
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 8:32 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Rteacher wrote: |
Because the material world functions like a prison-house, hovering like a dark cloud in the spiritual sky there are harsh reactions to practically all activities. The four main pillars of sinful activities are meat-eating, intoxication, illicit sex and gambling.
|
The material world does not function like a prison-house to me thankyou very much. Im having a great time, sorry! As for your four pillars of sin, well gambling to me is just a rediculous way to waste money, but certainly aint evil. The other three are totally righteous! They are in fact, the three pillars of my very own personal religion, which I call "Funkadelica"... |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 4:19 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Troll_Bait wrote: |
I'm disappointed that no-one has responded to my post back on page seven.
It took me a while to write, and I thought it was a good answer to the question: "Did Jesus Really Exist?"
OK, here's another nugget to chew on:
According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus was born while Quirinius was governor of Syria.
Quirinius took office in the year 6 C.E.
However, according to the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus was born while Herod the Great was in power in Judea.
Herod the Great died in the year 4 B.C.E.
So, you can see that there is a ten-year gap between the reigns of Herod the Great and Quirinius.
As Freke and Gandy put it, the true miracle of Mary's pregnancy was that it lasted for ten years!
Reference:
Freke, Timothy, and Peter Gandy. The Jesus Mysteries,1999 |
The first link that you provided was kind of a waste of time.
http://www.jesus-institute.org/historical-jesus/jesus-before.shtml
Even though it gives a timeline and mentions Herod the Great, it doesn't mention Quirinius.
This link that you provided contradicts what you said and supports what I said.
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=17jgenucpf6ti?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Detailed+timeline+for+Jesus&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc04b&linktext=detailed%20timeline%20for%20Jesus
According to it:
- Herod the Great died in the year 4 B.C.E. (or B.C.)
- Quirinius took power in the year 6 C.E. (or A.D.)
- Jesus was born in either the year 6 B.C.E., 1 C.E., or 6 C.E.
This link that you provided was also interesting.
http://www.comereason.org/bibl_cntr/con100.asp
Here is a great quote:
"The only point that is really in question, then, is whether Luke was mistaken in ascribing this census to the time when Quirinius was in the role of Syrian Governor. Since Quirinius wasn't governor of the Syrian province until after Archelaus was deposed, critics claim Luke misidentified the census as the smaller one, which happened some 8-10 years after Herod died. Either Luke is wrong on his dating of Jesus' birth or Matthew made up the story of Herod the Great and the killing of the infants."
In trying desperately to uphold the orthodox timeline, the author is forced to describe either Luke or Matthew as wrong.
In fact, the author had to concede that Matthew may have completely fabricated the story of Herod killing the babies.
This I agree with, because as Tom Harpur, a former Anglican priest, wrote in The Pagan Christ (page 126):
"There is no historical record of Herod's alleged edict regarding the 'slaughter of the innocents' either.
Common sense tells us that such an order was an impossibility in any case.
Did Herod intend to kill the children of his friends, his soldiers, his civil servants, tourists passing through, and so on?"
Thanks for the links!
Reference:
Tom Harpur, The Pagan Christ (2004) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
kermo
Joined: 01 Sep 2004
Location: Eating eggs, with a comb, out of a shoe.
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 5:41 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| Troll Bait, you're quite a force to be reckoned with, aren't you? |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
|
| Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2006 6:07 pm Post subject: |
|
|
| kermo wrote: |
| Troll Bait, you're quite a force to be reckoned with, aren't you? |
Thank you.
(swivels hips)
Thank you very much.
(turns and makes a sneer-like facial expression) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 7:13 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Troll_Bait wrote: |
| kermo wrote: |
| Troll Bait, you're quite a force to be reckoned with, aren't you? |
Thank you.
(swivels hips)
Thank you very much.
(turns and makes a sneer-like facial expression) |
wrong...
The Governorship of Quirinius
In studying this problem, there are two main solutions that Christian scholars offer, and each has some good merit. The first point is the terminology Luke uses when writing about Quirinius' governorship over Syria. In stating that Quirinius controlled the Syrian area, Luke doesn't use the official political title of "Governor" ("legatus"), but the broader term "hegemon" which is a ruling officer or procurator. This means that Quirinius may not have been the official governor of Judea, but he was in charge of the census because he was a more capable and trusted servant of Rome than the more inept Saturninus.
Justin Martyr's Apology supports this view, writing that Quirinius was a "procurator", not a governor of the area of Judea.6 As Gleason Archer writes, "In order to secure efficiency and dispatch, it may well have been that Augustus put Quirinius in charge of the census-enrollment in Syria between the close of Saturninus's administration and the beginning of Varus's term of service in 7 B.C. It was doubtless because of his competent handling of the 7 B.C. census that Augustus later put him in charge of the 7 A.D. census."7 Archer also says that Roman history records Quirinius leading the effort to quell rebels in that area at exactly that time, so such a political arrangement is not a stretch.
If Quirinius did hold such a position, then we have no contradiction. The first census was taken during the time of Jesus birth, but Josephus' census would have come later. This option seems to me to be entirely reasonable.
Herod's Slaughter of the Babies
Your second question is quite different in its format. You ask why, if Herod committed such an atrocity as killing all the male babies "two years old and under" as Matthew recounts, how could historians such as Josephus completely ignore it? Well, let's think about this for a moment. Bethlehem at the time of Jesus' birth was a very small city with no more than a few thousand people. The total number of infants who would have been murdered under Herod's edict could be pretty low. As James Patrick Holding writes "How many boys aged two and under could there have been in and around the tiny city of Bethlehem? Five? Ten? Matthew does not give a number. Josephus says that Herod murdered a vast number of people, and was so cruel to those he didn't kill that the living considered the dead to be fortunate. Thus, indirectly, Josephus tells us that there were many atrocities that Herod committed that he does not mention in his histories - and it is probable that authorizing the killing of the presumably few male infants in the vicinity of Bethlehem was a minuscule blot of the blackness that was the reign of Herod. Being that the events of the reign of Herod involved practically one atrocity after another - it is observed by one writer, with a minimum of hyperbole, that hardly a day in his 36-year reign passed when someone wasn't sentenced to death - why should any one event in particular have touched off a rebellion, when others in particular, including those recorded by Josephus, did not?"8
I hope these discussions have helped you further your understanding of the difficulties historians face when trying to piece together events from the limited records of the past. There is certainly no slam-dunk evidence that the Biblical accounts are wrong here. In fact, one must also remember that the Biblical accounts are themselves historic documentation and therefore have historic merit in themselves. The fact that we have outside corroboration of the possibility of multiple censuses strengthens Luke's report of the events as he has written them. To say that this is an error would be premature. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 8:00 am Post subject: |
|
|
| rapier wrote: |
| Troll_Bait wrote: |
| kermo wrote: |
| Troll Bait, you're quite a force to be reckoned with, aren't you? |
Thank you.
(swivels hips)
Thank you very much.
(turns and makes a sneer-like facial expression) |
wrong... |
First of all, do you have something against Elvis?
I know that my impersonation of him wasn't very good, but can't I at least get some points for effort?
Secondly, could you provide some links?
The way I'm reading this ...
| Quote: |
| It was doubtless because of his competent handling of the 7 B.C. census that Augustus later put him in charge of the 7 A.D. census."7 Archer also says that Roman history records Quirinius leading the effort to quell rebels in that area at exactly that time, so such a political arrangement is not a stretch. |
... it seems to me that the author is saying that Quirinius was quelling a rebellion in the year 7 CE (AD).
If so, then the period of his authority still does not overlap with that of Herod the Great, who died in the 4 BCE (BC).
It seems a little ambiguous so I'd like to clarify for myself, if you don't mind.
Oh, and ...
Thank you.
(swivels hips)
Thank you very much.
(turns and makes a sneer-like facial expression) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
rapier
Joined: 16 Feb 2003
|
| Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2006 8:24 am Post subject: |
|
|
| Troll_Bait wrote: |
The way I'm reading this ...
| Quote: |
| It was doubtless because of his competent handling of the 7 B.C. census that Augustus later put him in charge of the 7 A.D. census."7 Archer also says that Roman history records Quirinius leading the effort to quell rebels in that area at exactly that time, so such a political arrangement is not a stretch. |
... it seems to me that the author is saying that Quirinius was quelling a rebellion in the year 7 CE (AD).
If so, then the period of his authority still does not overlap with that of Herod the Great, who died in the 4 BCE (BC).
|
It appears quirinius was busy in official capacity in Syria (and presumably neighboring Judea) in 6BC: (Christs birth is dated 6-4 BC.)
"6 B.C., when Quirinius was a special legatos Aogusti to Syria"
http://www.ccel.org/s/schaff/encyc/encyc09/htm/iv.vi.xii.htm
Quirinius, at the time of King Herod's death was doing military expeditions in the eastern provinces of the Roman empire (Tacitus , Annals 3:48; Florus, Roman History 2:31), with some evidence indicating that he either was a co-ruler with the governor of Syria (the somewhat inept Quintilius Varus) or at least placed in charge of the 14-year census in Palestine.
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/quirinius.html
An eminent archaeologist named Jerry Vardaman has done a great deal of work in this regard. He has found a coin with the name of Quirinius on it in very small writing, or what we call 'micrographic' letters. This places him as proconsul of Syria and Cilicia from 11 B.C. until after the death of Herod.
http://answering-islam.org.uk/Responses/Menj/quirinius.htm
This is a good link(below)...I think in summary we can say..the discrepancy is unresolved. But evidence allows for Quirinius to be undertaking a census in judea around 6BC..not as official governor, but as assisting the governor saturninus. I agree that Quirinius was appointed official Governor in 6CE, but he was also in Judea/syria before then, acting in other capacity. The original word Luke uses does not strictly mean governor.. just that he was "in charge" (of something) in that area at the time..so its unclear. But in no way does it wreck Luke's cred..as other evidence is still coming to light. You are assuming that Josephus is correct and the bible is not: or that Quirinius was not present in the area before 6CE/Ad when he clearly was..
There is also another inscription (found in Italy) which corroborates Quirinius' work of census-taking in the area north of Palestine. The "Lapis Venetus"
http://www.ibri.org/RRs/RR004/04census.htm |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
FAQ
Search
Memberlist
Usergroups
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
