The Great Conspiracy-what if Jesus was never born?

Originally posted by Liberty1
The question posed at the start of this thread has NOT been properly addressed here.

A few skeptics such as myself are still trying to find a historic account of Jesus. Can we please address that? Can we please not gloss over that with another 4000 words praising Jesus? Pretty please.

OT - I sincerely appreciate your knowledge on the subject. It is nice to see a religious person who actually has some knowledge. But I have to say the length of your posts are not conducive to this debate. You could be more effective by being more efficient. Otherwise it's just a lecture....or a book.

No offense intended, please don't take it that way. I just want to get to the root of the question.

We keep hearing over and over how it either doesn't matter if he existed or not, or how barbarous the world would be without him. No one is even touching the possibility that he didn't exist and we are currently living the scenario of a world where Jesus wasn't born.

Come on now guys: Can someone please show me some historic records of Jesus?

Nice post...

My posts are records...for the current readers and the stumplers later...

More information is better than less information...

Here's a source for your review... www.apostolic.net...

This idea that the Jesus story was fabricated whole-cloth is all the more unbelievable when you consider that the Christian message began in Jerusalem/Israel in AD 30 or 33, the very location and time Jesus was purported to have lived and died. Does it make sense to think that the disciples could get away with preaching about a man named Jesus to Jesus' neighbors and contemporaries if He never existed? It is preposterous to think that the people of Palestine would not have objected to the disciples' claims if they had not known of Jesus and the events surrounding His life. A fabricated story about a Jewish faith-healer who rose from dead in Israel might have worked had the message began in Rome some 1400 miles removed from the actual events, but not in Jerusalem. A fabricated story about a Jewish faith-healer who rose from the dead might have even worked in Jerusalem had the apostles' claimed the events transpired hundreds of years before their time. But it is unreasonable to think that a story about a Jewish faith-healer who rose from the dead in your back yard a few weeks ago could have taken root and flourished in Jerusalem/Israel had Jesus not existed, and the events surrounding Jesus' life had not been known by the disciples' contemporaries

I have SO much more, but I'll respect your request for efficiency for now, ok?

reply to post by Liberty1


pithy...2 the point...research 4u

Books:

The Evidence for Jesus - RT France: Very few scholars have bothered reply to the Jesus Mythologists but France was one who did. This book refutes elements of GA Wells with rigour and honesty. Sadly only available in the UK.

One Hundred Years Before Christ - Alvar Ellegard - Literary critic invents a variation on the Dead Sea Scrolls conspiracy and then redates all the ancient documents to support it.

The Jesus Mysteries - Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy: Unadulterated rubbish from the masters of the genre.

The Jesus Puzzle - Earl Doherty: A serious minded and worthwhile effort to put the best case for an impossible theory.

The Christ Conspiracy - Acharya S: Makes Freke and Gandy look like serious scholars. Really, really, silly and unintentionally quite funny.

The Jesus Myth - GA Wells: Another serious effort to show Jesus never existed. Sadly for devotees the author has changed his mind now and admits he was wrong.


Web sites:

Tekton Apologetics - JP Holding: Among many other things, contains a demolition job on the Jesus Mythologists so total and complete you even end up feeling sorry for them. www.tektonics.org...


Truth be Known - Acharya S: For those who cannot believe how dreadful her book is, there is more here. www.stellarhousepublishing.com...

“But OT isn’t the story of Jesus SO similar to the pagan traditions?”

“Yeah, I ‘ve heard that and here’s some advice for any inspiring authors who may want to write a book to show that from… www.bede.org.uk... ... see below ...

1. The first thing to do is ensure you cast your net as widely as possible. So within Christianity you should include every cult, heresy and sect you can get your hands on. Gnosticism will be particularly helpful as they did indeed borrow large chunks of pagan thought which is partly why they were considered heretics in the first place. As for paganism, this can include just about everything. Freke and Gandy comb not only Greek cults (Oedipus) but also Egyptian (Horus and Osiris), Roman (Bacchus) and Persian (Mithras). Elsewhere you will find Celtic deities, Norse beserkers and Indian mystics pulled into the fray. Now, with this vast body of writing, finding parallels will not be too challenging provided you are willing to wade through it all.
2. But don't restrict yourselves to pagan religions from before the time of Christ. Remember your methodology should be that Christians copied pagans and not the other way around. This is useful because you can now point to similarities between paganism and Christianity after the latter was already widespread. So if, like Freke and Gandy, you can find a picture showing Bacchus on a cross dating from two hundred years after Jesus was crucified you can still claim that the Christians copied the pagans and not the other way around.
3. Language is important. Christian terms such as 'salvation', 'Eucharist', 'word made flesh' and 'lamb of god' are common currency today. Therefore when translating or paraphrasing pagan sources always use modern Christian language. Never mind that the ancient pagans would not have known what you were on about - you are not talking to them. In this way you can call a woman being raped by various kinds of wildlife a 'virgin birth', you can call having ones body parts stuck back together a 'resurrection' and you can call just about every Greek hero a 'son of god'. Also it is helpful to use King James Bible phrases and style when quoting pagan texts. It gives them some more gravitas.
4. Do try to confuse liturgy and practice with history. For instance the mystery religions and Christianity were both underground movements so they had to operate in similar sorts of ways. Sacred meals and ritual washing are as old as religion itself so the Christianity using them as well as pagans is not surprising at all. Make it sound like a complete revelation.
5. Say totally different things are in fact closely related. For instance, Mithras was sometimes represented by a bull. Say this is the same as Jesus being called the lamb of God (ignoring that one is a symbol of sexuality and strength and the other of innocence and humility). Compare the Mithric ritual of taking a shower in the warm blood of the aforementioned bull with Christian baptism with water. Claim that the thieves crucified with Jesus are the same as a pair of torch bearers that appear on some illustrations of Bacchus.
6. For goodness sake do not mention the things that really made the pagan mysteries interesting. After all your work of showing that Jesus and Bacchus are one and the same, you will lose everything if you let on that Bacchus was the god of drunkenness and his worship involved getting plastered and having sex with anything in sight (goats being a particular favourite). In fact, keep sex out of it altogether. Yes, sex was the central feature of an awful lot of these pagan rituals but that is not the point your are trying to make.
7. Avoid up to date scholarship which will probably pour cold water over your vaunted theories. You will find plenty of nineteenth and early twentieth century writers with a bone to pick that can support your wildest speculations. And do not worry if not everyone agrees with you - you can always dismiss the dissenters as apologists or as those unable to cope with your earth shattering ideas.

Take this advice and you may be a best seller!!!!

Originally posted by OldThinker

Here's a source for your review... www.apostolic.net...

sorry ot this uses as much backward thinking and falsety as is the how to write a best seller info is

Consider Alexander the Great. The two earliest biographies of his life were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after his death and yet no historian believes that he did not exist or that the biographies are legend
Why treat Jesus differently? Why do new standards of historical inquiry need to be adopted when it comes to Jesus?

well yes ... except the coins, statues, first hand account written while he was alive several second hand accounts writen not to long after, a bunch of third foruth and fith hand accounts too ... so yes historians do believe in him seemingly with a whole lot more evidence then you know of

why treat him differently becasue we havce all this evidence, new standard? there is no new standard just your ignorance that all this evidence exists ... never heard of google?

This idea that the Jesus story was fabricated whole-cloth is all the more unbelievable when you consider that the Christian message began in Jerusalem/Israel in AD 30 or 33,

can you prove that or is it personal opinion?.. no proof you opinion ok next

the very location and time Jesus was purported to have lived and died. Does it make sense to think that the disciples could get away with preaching about a man named Jesus to Jesus' neighbors and contemporaries if He never existed?

can you prove the disciples existed? could it be they could have preached about a hundred other gods before after and during this, if they had never existed(and by which i mean had no proof of) ..yes yes happens all the time sorry

It is preposterous to think that the people of Palestine would not have objected to the disciples' claims if they had not known of Jesus and the events surrounding His life.

why? have you ever beleived somthing someone told you and didnt see/experience for your self? yes yes you did your points faulty

A fabricated story about a Jewish faith-healer who rose from dead in Israel might have worked had the message began in Rome some 1400 miles removed from the actual events, but not in Jerusalem.

geography has nothign to do with belief wrong conclusion drawn from your opinion again. infact the romans would be more likley to beleive it would just be another god to them .. wait didnt romans accept jesus as just one of the many gods long before constanitine made an official ruling .. why yes they did, they worshipped jesus and thier other gods as well


its all based on the same sillyness as the 7 day creation young earth loonies trying to dsicredit science

its my opinion that
i dont think that
i dont know how it
its improbable to think that

thier ignorance coupled with pretty words are just thier ignorance not the thruth or facts or even somthing resembaling anything except thier ignorance.

Web sites:

Tekton Apologetics - JP Holding: Among many other things, contains a demolition job on the Jesus Mythologists so total and complete you even end up feeling sorry for them. www.tektonics.org...

who the tekton guys? yepp i had a quick look around and yes i started feeling sorry for them

1. Authorship and date are important; but equally important, if not more so, is whether what is in the Gospels is true. Regardless of who wrote the Gospels and when, if they reflect reality correctly, then it points to their being written by eyewitnesses, or having eyewitnesses as their source. Thus, even if the traditional authorship and earliest dates are disproved - and it is my contention that the arguments against them are inadequate - it matters very little, we may surmise, who wrote them and when.

excellent point .. can you show they are accurate descriptions of how events happened? ..what do you mean you beleive them so you didnt think youd need to prove your point ...... so if you cant prove they were accurate or when they were actually made youve just wasted your time writting it and mine for reading it .. now say sorry

Critical arguments about authorship and date of the Gospels revolve around the same data, and have revolved around it, for the past 2 million years. Well, not exactly 2 million; that's hyperbole to make the point which IS true: That is, with very, VERY few exceptions, critics and skeptics have used the same arguments against the traditional data over and over and over to the point of nausea

....stop telling me the world is round im sick of hearing it and i renounce your maths and pictures from space

the fact the same argument has been used over and over could be becasue its accurate ... they still dont really disprove this and the fact your bored of hearing it doesnt make your point any more valid

they just go on a long and rambling route using more we dont beleive /its inconcivable to think and draw conclusions from evidence that silly or missleading(the conclusions not the evidence)

sorry OT if your researching these all your going to learn is what other people are ignorant of and what they beleive dispite or without evidence

as for the how to write a best seller ... thats funny wow bachus 200 years later ...couldnt possibly .. o wait we know they hadnt standardised christianity until 2-300 years after so possible but unlikley sowwy

and the one way to undo all the no no we didnt copy anything they are just a bit similar on the outside and the devil did it.... why does jesus quote buddist scripture in the bible as his own words?

we may never know exactly what sources christianity drew on in many cases it had several choices for the same component, but us not knowing 100% doesnt make us wrong. we just have to be more right then the other guys

[edit on 4/11/08 by noobfun]

Hey OT, why didn't you list the negative aspects of christianity in your OP as well? That would be the fair thing to do.


If the legend of Jesus didn't exist, then WW2 would have never happened.
MArtin Luther would have never wrote "On the Jews and Their Lies" which in turn would have never motivated Adolf to persecute Jews. Maybe he would have used his incredible charisma for a good purpose.

reply to post by Good Wolf


your thinking to small scale

if jesus never lived paul would have never written his anti-jewish bits in the bible

he wouldnt have written the jews peresecuted and killed jesus and other prophets over and over - its his words that have been used to justify the persecution forced conversion and massacer of jews for almost 2000 years, its his words that inspired Martin Luther

with out christianity there would be no islam, or it would be a very very different thing then it was/is today. this may be a good or bad thing we could never know until we were there but it certainly would have stopped a whole lot of christian/islamic war and killings too

reply to post by noobfun


Yea I know. Hitler may have even been a Jew/Muslim. Now that's an alternate reality that I want to visit.

Originally posted by Good Wolf
Hey OT, why didn't you list the negative aspects of christianity in your OP as well?

I am biased...

OT

ps will try and answer you 2 tonight between political channel - surfing later...

sorry, in an area with in and out internet...

[edit on 4-11-2008 by OldThinker]

fat finger double post...sorry

[edit on 4-11-2008 by OldThinker]





triple? eeekkk!!!

[edit on 4-11-2008 by OldThinker]

reply to post by OldThinker
triple post?

OT must really mean it lol

its a big day over there for you guys take your time we will wait

reply to post by Good Wolf


how about hitler the buddist, shaved head and saffron robes ... deffinaltey WW2 would have gone very differently

Originally posted by OldThinker
I am biased...

Well at least you can admit that much, good on you.

However that is no way to be analytical like you were trying to be in the OP. If you are reviewing the fruits of your religion, you need to be fair and add all the thing's done in the name of Jesus and [the Christian] God.

Originally posted by noobfun
reply to post by Good Wolf

 

how about hitler the buddist, shaved head and saffron robes ... deffinaltey WW2 would have gone very differently

Well I understand Hitler was learned in Hinduism and Buddhism and all also all things occult hence his use of the Swastika in reverse which was based on the original Hindu symbol for goodwill.
And add to this his bizarre fascination and belief that ancient relics of antiquities held special powers etc.
Shame in the end he used his intellect and knowledge for fear and separation instead of love and oneness.

www.religionfacts.com...

www.bibliotecapleyades.net...

Sorry if off topic

No, no problem, the boys will be along sometime later...to debate!

Thanks

OT

Originally posted by calihan123
God is simple. God is existence in itself. We are god. Life is god.

calihan, Thank you for your thoughts here...

Why do you believe this?

"Simple?"

OT curious...

reply to post by OldThinker




Thank you OT. I don't know that those sources will answer my question but I think we're making progress here. I have work to do to properly keep up with you.

Originally posted by OldThinker

Originally posted by calihan123
God is simple. God is existence in itself. We are god. Life is god.

calihan, Thank you for your thoughts here...

Why do you believe this?

"Simple?"

OT curious...

Yes I also believe that what is of God is simple and profound as Man makes complicated and ambiguous with his ego thinking.
Think about it... how simple is the idea.
"Love your neighbour as you love yourself"
Mark 12:31
It is only the ego mind that try's to complicate things and say.
I will only love those who only love me first etc

Originally posted by Epsillion70
Think about it... how simple is the idea.
"Love your neighbour as you love yourself"
Mark 12:31
It is only the ego mind that try's to complicate things and say.
I will only love those who only love me first etc

I might just point out that this is not a christian concept. Confucius said this too, 200 years before Jesus.

Confucian version of the Golden Rule: one must always treat others just as one would want others to treat oneself.

en.wikipedia.org...

Factoid over.

[edit on 11/4/2008 by Good Wolf]

reply to post by Good Wolf


That is true. It is indeed a universal Golden rule throughout all of Humanity.
I only put a bible quote in their as that is what most people are familiar with in regards to that quote.

Point still stands what is simple and universally understood is felt in love, peace and oneness with All That Is