Proof that Jesus was real , page 3

reply to post by Kapyong

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So, this passage is not evidence for Jesus, it's nothing to do with Jesus, it's evidence for Christians grasping at straws.

I think Jesus was or is a montage. Probably created shortly after the failed Jewish Revolt of 66 AD. Or CE to be polite to our Jewish neighbors. Not at any one place or at any one time. The notion of Jesus gradually evolved until by the end of the second century CE (100-199 CE) he was REAL in the minds and more importantly, in the hearts of 1000s of people who shared the NEW religion largely concocted by St. Paul.

Of course there never was unanimity of thought in any Jewish group. Just sit for a half hour in the visitors gallery in the Knesset if you doubt me. As today, there were many opinions about Jesus and the appropriate place for their new religion in day to day life. Note: the highly touted Church Fathers exist only in retrospect and not prospectively. “Discovered” as needed.

The Jewish people had proved to be a difficult people to rule when their basic religious values were sharply contested and they had a charismatic leader. The Revolt of the Maccabees in 165 BCE was successful for a 100 years. Five generations. The Jewish people still celebrate that event in their festival of lights, at Hanukkah.

The cause of the Maccabees Revolt is generally given as when the Greek Seleucid King Antiochus IV attempted to bring all his subjects into conformity religion-wise. One king, one religion. (See the much later Peace of Westphalia 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War in a similar way).

Until 63 BC (BCE), the Hasmonean dynasty of the Maccabees ruled Judea. Then Roman general Pompey conquered what is today’s Lavant - the eastern Mediterranean area including Judea - and set in motion the sequence of events that led to the puppet King Herod the Great. Herod reigned from 37 BCE to 4 BCE. He was best known for Herod’s Temple and the redoubt at Masada. After Herod a Roman Procurator (like a conservator or trustee) was assigned to the territory that included Judea.

Note: Most secular scholars agree the first three kings of Israel were mythological. Saul, David and Solomon. Today’s Wailing or West Wall which ultra devout Jews claim is the LAST remnant of Solomon’s Temple are wrong. There was NO temple. Herod’s temple was the First (and last) temple. Oh, and the same goes for the Ark of the Covenant Indiana Jones (and 1000s of others) have looked so hard to find. It is noteworthy that NO Jewish writer after the Babylonian Captivity of 573 BCE ever mentions the Ark. Hmm?

In 66 CE, the Jewish people around Jerusalem again revolted. This time the revolt lasted 4 years as Rome took its time to assemble and march 3 legions to Judea. Jerusalem was captured in 70 CE. The last remnants of the rebels held out until 73 CE at the desert fortress and richly outfitted retreat best known to us as Masada.

The story of a mass suicide there is related only by Josephus and is now generally regarded as a great exaggeration if not made up out of whole cloth. Only 6 skeletons have been found there, not the 900 promised by Josephus. It is now sadly agreed that Prof. Yigael Yadin “salted” the area with the 10 tokens supposedly drawn by the surviving men in a suicide pact. Such is the stuff of legends! Both ancient and modern.

Of course, I must mention the LAST Jewish Revolt. The Simon Bar Kokhba revolt of 132 to 135 CE. It was at the end of this failed revolt that the Jewish Diaspora is said to have occurred. Jerusalem was utterly destroyed and the name of the area changed to Syria Palestina. That is not true either that ALL the Jewish inhabitants of Judea were expelled. It is true that all the Jewish inhabitants of Jerusalem were expelled. About 15,000. For centuries, Jewish people had lived all around the Mediterranean Sea first in Greek colonies - Carthage being the most notable - and then in Roman colonies - Alexandria being the largest.

I consider it notable and of great weight that the Jewish people who lived in Jerusalem when Bar Kokhba assumed power, were convinced that he was in fact the PROMISED MESSIAH. This tells me that the people in Jerusalem KNEW NOT of Jesus or his story as being told by the itinerant St. Paul and much modified over the following centuries.

The modern story of Jesus is a collection of myths mixed with outfight fabrications accumulated over the first 200-300 years of the current era, and which we have selected out the parts most appealing to the times. We have then shamelessly added to, taken from and altered that story.

The Jesus Study Group of the 1970s searched the Holy Scriptures and concluded only 4-5 words in the Sermon on the Mount were likely to have been spoken by Jesus, the Red Letter Edition to the contrary notwithstanding. (They unlike me, assumed Jesus was a real person).

Unfortunately for all of us interested in religion, Gutenberg invented the printing press in the mid-1400s. Before Gutenberg hardly anyone could read and even fewer could afford a book. The Jesus story could be altered as changing times dictated. But Gutenberg forever LOCKED us into this medieval time warp. Otherwise intelligent people are arguing over the most preposterous stories claiming they are true! If anyone really believed that, they would be treatable!

[edit on 12/7/2008 by donwhite]

reply to post by Kapyong

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Yup, it has been posted before - but not nearly as many times as faithful believers have preached their faithful beliefs. As long as faithful believers keep preaching these beliefs, I'll post the facts that shows them wrong.

To me, “true believers” closely resemble a flock of turkeys. A loud noise will cause all of them to turn and run and often many turkeys will die in the ensuing melee! Yet, you can make the same loud noise again and the same surviving turkeys will do a re-run of the first episode. I guess that’s why we call them “turkeys?”

Intro: Sam Harris, Best-selling author of Letter to a Christian Nation

An “On Faith” panelist Sam Harris is the author of the best-selling books Letter to a Christian Nation (2006) and The End of Faith (2005), which won the 2005 PEN Award for Nonfiction and has been translated into many foreign languages

The Problem with Atheism; a lecture by Sam Harris (This is an edited transcript of a talk given at the Atheist Alliance conference in Washington D.C. on September 28th, 2007)

To begin, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge just how strange it is that a meeting like this is even necessary. The year is 2007, and we have all taken time out of our busy lives, and many of us have traveled considerable distance, so that we can strategize about how best to live in a world in which most people believe in an imaginary God. America is now a nation of 300 million people, wielding more influence than any people in human history, and yet this influence is being steadily corrupted, and is surely waning, because 240 million of these people apparently believe that Jesus will return someday and orchestrate the end of the world with his magic powers.

Of course, we may well wonder whether as many people believe these things as say they do. I know that Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins are rather optimistic that our opinion polls are out of register with what people actually believe in the privacy of their own minds. But there is no question that most of our neighbors reliably profess that they believe these things, and such professions themselves have had a disastrous affect on our political discourse, on our public policy, on the teaching of science, and on our reputation in the world. And even if only a third or a quarter of our neighbors believe what most profess, it seems to me that we still have a problem worth worrying about.

Finally, I think it’s useful to envision what victory will look like. Again, the analogy with racism seems instructive to me. What will victory against racism look like, should that happy day ever dawn? It certainly won’t be a world in which a majority of people profess that they are “non-racist.” Most likely, it will be a world in which the very concept of separate races has lost its meaning.

We will have won this war of ideas against religion when atheism is scarcely intelligible as a concept. We will simply find ourselves in a world in which people cease to praise one another for pretending to know things they do not know. This is certainly a future worth fighting for. It may be the only future compatible with our long-term survival as a species. But the only path between now and then, that I can see, is for us to be rigorously honest in the present. It seems to me that intellectual honesty is now, and will always be, deeper and more durable, and more easily spread, than “atheism.”
newsweek.washingtonpost.com...

[edit on 12/8/2008 by donwhite]

reply to post by Mozzy

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The most obvious proof of Jesus' existence is the Jewish Talmud , which also bears witness of Jesus being condemned to die at the same time in history for blasphemy.

reply to post by Anonymous ATS

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The most obvious proof of Jesus' existence is the Jewish Talmud , which also bears witness of Jesus being condemned to die at the same time in history for blasphemy.

Nonsense. First, blasphemy was not a crime in Rome. Second, it seems the Talmud was written between 200 AD (CE) and 500 AD (CE). There is no reason to credit anything in the Talmud as historically accurate. Third, you ought to know people PRIOR to the Age of Enlightenment did not regard the distinctions between story and truth as we do today. Those good folks were totally credulous. I say the claim the TALMUD proves Jesus is both empty and fanciful. The only thing the Talmud proves is the durability of the Jewish people. AND their not particularly admirable mythology.

The Talmud is a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, customs, and history. It is a central text of mainstream Judaism.

The Talmud has two components: the Mishnah (c. 200 CE), the first written compendium of Judaism's Oral Law; and the Gemara (c. 500 CE), a discussion of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Tanakh.

The terms Talmud and Gemara are often used interchangeably. The Gemara is the basis for all codes of rabbinic law and is much quoted in other rabbinic literature. The whole Talmud is also traditionally referred to as Shas, a Hebrew abbreviation of shisha sedarim, the "six orders" of the Mishnah. en.wikipedia.org...

Never let a fact stand in the way of a fancy! Dream on.


[edit on 2/25/2009 by donwhite]

reply to post by letthereaderunderstand

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Jesus literally means "Jehovah is salvation". Jehovah literally means "Self existent". Yehushua is then....SELF EXISTENT SALVATION.

I thought JESUS was the Greek version of the Aramaic for JOSHUA. Nothing more.

There you go again, scooping up the psychedelic mushroom dip! Or have you found a source for a sugar cube laced with Dr. Leary's lysergic diethylamide acid?

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