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n3ptne
Joined: 14 Sep 2005
Location: Poh*A*ng City
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 Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 9:00 am Post subject: |
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To compare the writings of/on Christ to Harry Potter or Gandalf, honestly? Shows you to be a fucking idiot.
I'm not even Christian... the fact is, to even hint at the fact that a man, or men, did not exist to whom the notion of Christ was formulated in light of the overwhelming historical evidence is, simply, ignorant.
Piss off. |
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some waygug-in
Joined: 25 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 4:36 pm Post subject: |
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The way I see it, it's kind of like some things I've read on this forum about
teaching Koreans.
We all are born with an A grade chance at salvation, what we do with it is up to us.
If we are humble, and truely are trying to overcome sin in our lives, he will lead us and show us what is truth.
Joining churches and spouting all kinds of doctrines have nothing to do with it.
For it is grace by which we are saved, through faith, not works...lest any man should boast. |
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Troll_Bait
Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Location: [T]eaching experience doesn't matter much. -Lee Young-chan (pictured)
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| Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 7:41 pm Post subject: |
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| n3ptne wrote: |
To compare the writings of/on Christ to Harry Potter or Gandalf, honestly? Shows you to be a *beep* idiot.
I'm not even Christian... the fact is, to even hint at the fact that a man, or men, did not exist to whom the notion of Christ was formulated in light of the overwhelming historical evidence is, simply, ignorant.
Piss off. |
"Overwhelming historical evidence"?
You obviously only read the first sentence of my post, and nothing more.
Here it is again.
| Quote: |
n3ptne wrote:
However, look at the facts... Jesus Christ, excluding his possible divinity, is the most written about figure in all of human history. There are literally thousands of various accounts, some of which are completely contradictory...
A lot has been written about Santa Claus, Harry Potter, and Gandalf the Grey and their feats of magic as well. That doesn't make them real, historical figures.
If you want to prove that a historical figure actually existed, you have to present historical records, not his many guest appearances in The Amazing Spider-man magazine.
n3ptne wrote:
And as an intelligent man I find it impossible to speculate that these accounts all stem from an apparition. We may never know the true nature of Christ, or whether he truly was the son of God... but I think that we can all accept the fact that at the very least such a mortal man (or, perhaps men, if you were so inclined to intellectually demand to the lowest possible possiblity) did exist.
At first, I also found it impossible to believe. I thought, "Of course there was a historical Christ. He may not have walked on water or come back from the dead, but he existed. There are Roman historical documents that mention him." However, if you read the reseach that's been done with an open mind, you'll find that the evidence is lacking.
n3ptne wrote:
To suggest otherwise is ignorant.
Why so? I think it's a valid question. In fact, people have been seriously pondering this question for a long time (for at least a century).
n3ptne wrote:
The only reason for doing so with Christ is to deface Christian, Jewish, and Islamic tradition (as all three, in one capacity or another, do acknowledge his existence).
As I said, I think it's a valid question. Why is it "blasphemy" to simply ask a question? Is this the Dark Ages or the Age of Enlightenment? Is this the Middle Ages or the year 2006?
n3ptne wrote:
The only reason for doing so with Christ is to deface Christian, Jewish, and Islamic tradition (as all three, in one capacity or another, do acknowledge his existence).
Does Jewish scripture really support the notion that Jesus really existed?
The Talmud states that Jesus lived in the 2nd century BCE. However, this passage itself dates from the early 2nd century CE. The authors were probably basing their writings on a reaction to some of the dozens of Christian gospels circulating by that time.
Does Muslim scripture really support the notion that Jesus really existed?
As we all know, names change form when they are translated from one language to another. Joan of Arc is the same person as Jeanne D'Arc. The name simply changed form as it was translated from French to English.
The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. The New Testament was written in Greek. When we go back to the original language, "Joshua" and "Jesus" are actually the same name.
The Q'ran mentions a "Jesus" who was a prophet. However, the Q'ran puts him around the time of Moses. The "Jesus" that the Q'ran mentions is actually "Joshua," the right-hand man and successor to Moses. Let's not forget that, according to the Q'ran, "Jesus" was never crucified. Even the most secular atheist who believes in a historical Jesus believes that Jesus was crucified. So the "Jesus" that the Q'ran mentions is actually "Joshua," Moses' successor.
Furthermore, if both the Bible and the Q'ran both contain myths, then the fact that both of these books share a mythical figure does not amount to evidence that that figure was an actual, historical person.
If Spider-man makes many guest appearances in the X-Men magazine, that does not serve as historical evidence for Spider-man.
Your post suggests to me that you never read my original post.
Here it is again, in its entirety:
Troll_Bait wrote:
"It has served us well, this myth of Christ."
- Pope Leo X, 16th, century
Like many Christians, I took it as a given that there was a historical Jesus Christ.
He may not have walked on water or come back from the dead, but underneath the fastactic tales accreted onto him, there was a wandering, first-century rabbi whose wisdom has touched us all.
Like many, I thought that there was ample historical documentation of his existance, left to us by the Romans.
Right?
First of all, we should understand that there are very few periods in the history of the ancient world that are as well-documented as when the emperors Caesar Augustus and Tiberius reigned.
In the first and second centuries, there were approximately forty historians writing in the Roman Empire.
Only three seem to mention this Yeshua of Nazareth: Flavius Josephus, Cornelius Tacitus, and Suetonius.
In Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews," he wrote one paragraph describing Jesus as a wise man who was crucified by Pilate. Most historians believe that this paragraph to be partly or completely a forgery that was inserted into the text by an unknown Christian. The passage "appears out of context, thereby breaking the flow of the narrative." Even many Christian historians have acknowledged it as a forgery since the early 1800s.
One reason for this is because the passage is not mentioned by any Christian church fathers, not even those who quoted Josephus, until the middle of the fourth century, when Eusebius suddenly "found" it.
Even the Catholic Encyclopedia, unwilling to acknowledge the passage as a forgery, grudgingly concedes: "The passage seems to suffer from repeated interpolations."
Another reason for this is because Josephus not only lived around the same time and place as Jesus, but was a well-educated Jewish priest whose passion was to study his people and their history. He wrote forty chapters about a single king, but only one paragraph about a man whom many believed was the Messiah?
Furthermore, his group, the Pharisees, had been accused not only of executing an innocent man, but of deicide. Josephus was known to be a fierce debater, and it's almost inconceivable that he would have penned this without any kind of rebuttal.
In his book "Annals," Tacitus wrote that arson in the city was started by followers of "Christus" who "was put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate." There are two problems with this:
1. He was an imperial writer, and no imperial document would ever refer to Jesus (or anyone else, for that matter) as "Christ."
2. Pilate was not a "procurator," but a prefect, and Tacitus would have known that.
Also, this passage is not mentioned by any early Christian church fathers, including Tertullian (who read and quoted Tacitus extensively) and Clement of Alexandria (whose job was to scour Pagan sources for evidence of Jesus). In fact, no mention of this passage was ever made before the fifteenth century. Nor are Christ, Christianity, or Christians ever mentioned in any of Tacitus' other writings.
This seems to be another example of an interpolation.
In "The Lives of the Caesars," Suetonius wrote: "Since the Jews constantly made disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, [Emperor Claudius in 49 CE] expelled them from Rome."
Many people have concluded that "Christ" was misspelled into "Chrestus."
However, Chrestus was in fact a common Greek name.
Also, Claudius reigned from 41 to 54, around ten to fifteen years after the crucifiction of Christ, so it is likely that the reference is to a Jewish agitator in Rome by the name of Chrestus.
To conclude that this ambiguous passage is historical evidence of Yeshua of Nazareth requires connecting some distant dots.
As Tom Harpur (a former Anglican priest) wrote in "The Pagan Christ," the further back in time we go, the more and more ethereal Yeshua of Nazareth becomes.
Review:
Out of about forty historians, only three make mention of Jesus.
Out of those three, two seem to be interpolations, and the third, ambiguous.
References:
Earl Doherty, "The Jesus Puzzle. Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ?: Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus," Canadian Humanist Publications, (1999).
The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus, by Lee Strobel
Challenging the Verdict: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ", by Earl Doherty
Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, by Acharya S, W.Sumner Davis (Foreword)
The Pagan Christ : Recovering the Lost Light (Hardcover), by Tom Harpur
The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God? by Timothy Freke, Peter Gandy
And here are some websites to give you some food for thought.
http://jdstone.org/cr/files/mithraschristianity.html
http://www.truthbeknown.com/mithra.htm
And the coup de grace ...
Here is a review for Tom Harpur's The Pagan Christ.
It's very interesting because it's written by a pastor, so I hope you read it.
Not Bad, December 27, 2005
Reviewer: Rev. Mike Shaw (London, Ontario Canada)
Mr. Harpur does a good job here. Most clergy already know that the Jesus story is a copy of the Pagan Mystery Cults. Thus, there is nothing really new here. In fact, in my opinion, there is much more and better proof of this already available. Anyone who denies that Christianity came from Paganism, is simply ignoring the facts.
That Christianity is a copy of Paganism, is not a bad thing. In fact, it shows a consistant truth flowing through history.
I highly recommend this book but can only give it a 4 star rating because it does not use the best information available.
Pastor Mike Shaw
Ontario, Canada
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0802714498/ref=ase_ontarioconsultanA/102-9251678-9342531?s=books&v=glance&n=283155&tagActionCode=ontarioconsultanA
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Please read what someone wrote before posting a so-called "rebuttal."
Also, don't make things personal with insults like "ignorant" and "idiot."
If you're unable to have a civilized debate, then I'm leaving.
Not because you "defeated" me, but because I don't need the acrimony. |
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Grotto
Joined: 21 Mar 2004
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| Posted: Tue Jan 10, 2006 9:01 pm Post subject: |
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| who cares? |
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The Man known as The Man
Joined: 29 Mar 2003
Location: 3 cheers for Ted Haggard oh yeah!
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| Posted: Wed Jan 11, 2006 11:15 am Post subject: |
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| Grotto wrote: |
who cares?
I'm not smart.
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Evidently, a lot pf people care, given the number of posts, Mensa. |
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