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Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

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zinfamous said:
Horseshit.

Jesus' crime in those stories was to proclaim himself God. Caesar was, in fact, God. Declaring oneself to be above Caesar was a serious crime, punishable by death.

The gospels were supposedly written by men imprisoned by various tribes throughout the region, that were controlled by pharisees (whom did not exist as a power structure at the supposed time that Christ actually lived--meaning, they would not have been around to actually persecute and prosecute Christ).

The gospels were a polemic, written by political prisoners, against the established order of their time.
Click to expand...

You often make absolute claims about the gospels, Paul, etc, but this display of wanton ignorance require solid proof.

Where is it?
 
WelshBloke said:
Prove that caesar wasn't a god.
Click to expand...

I don't have to...I am not making any claims toward his ruler ship.

I actually respect Zinfamous' opinion and him as a poster, but he makes really unsubstantiated claims about Paul and his motives, who wrote the Gospels, and just a ton of nonsense I haven't seen him call out on yet -- he's been getting away with that for quite some time and multiple threads.

That's a whole bunch of ignorance in one pitiful post, and since he posits these as undeniable facts, linking to Wikipedia simply isn't sufficient, especially if there is disagreement among those who have actually studies those accounts.
 
zinfamous said:
Horseshit.

Jesus' crime in those stories was to proclaim himself God. Caesar was, in fact, God. Declaring oneself to be above Caesar was a serious crime, punishable by death.

The gospels were supposedly written by men imprisoned by various tribes throughout the region, that were controlled by pharisees (whom did not exist as a power structure at the supposed time that Christ actually lived--meaning, they would not have been around to actually persecute and prosecute Christ).

The gospels were a polemic, written by political prisoners, against the established order of their time.
Click to expand...

The charge as recorded was, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews."

If he claimed to be the Messiah he would have been claiming kingship ("savior" only being a secondary concept associated with the anticipated role of the Messiah). "Messiah" had become a generalized term for the anticipated descendant of David who would revive the kingdom to one degree or another depending on the sect. Messiah (Heb. mashiach; Grk. christos) means to annoint (by pouring or smearing of oil). It was common in ancient Judaism to annoint kings and priests and Psalm 2 already conflates kingship with annointing.

The Gospels/Acts/Paul all ascribe to Jesus the proclaimed status of Messiah/Christ aka King. This lends support to the accused crime of claiming to be king.

Romans had no issue with other gods; but they did initiate the Imperial Cult and expected homage (Jews typically exempt).

RE: Pharisees. Josephus, the Mishnah and Tosefta, and Acts/Gospels fail to support your position. Understanding that all sects lacked absolute power, the picture is more complex. The Herodians were the established civil authority (but under the Romans) and the High Priest (typically a Saducee) were in charge of cult affairs. But it is complex because there were many priests who were not Saducees. The Pharisees have enough public support that their practice regarding counting the Omer (for the festival of weeks) was the one carried out in the Temple; ponder that, the Saducees administered the Temple procession and yet had to conceed to the Pharisees due to their wide ranging support. Another dynamic was the Sanhedrin which would have been respected as an authority structure within Jewish culture; I have seen no dispute regarding the presence of Pharisees within this group.

On the other hand Hellenistic Jews exerted significant influence outside Israel (heck, even northern areas of Israel in the Galil were primarily gentile). While it is true the spiritual successors of the Pharisees (the Rabbis), post Yavneh exerted sizable influence throughout most Jewish sects this power was not near as sizable as claimed in the Diaspora pre-destruction.

So I would take issue on both sides of the Pharisee coin: they were extremely influentual in Jerusalem; not so much (politically) outside.

For what is is worth, while the recorded charge was sedition (king of the Jews; see the procession the week before upon his entry into the city) the interpreted motives by the Gospel authors vary: false prophet, conflict in existing teachings, threat to religious authorities, understood as threatening the Temple, claiming kingship, applying religious texts, like Daniel 7, that could be considered blasphemous, etc). This is why the recorded court case is all over the place--various parties took issues with different claims or supposed claims. Often missed by modern authors is the witnesses that he threatened the Temple--not a small accusation.

If the Gospels are to be trusted Jesus irritated all the major factions for different reasons. What isn't disputed is that a Jew could be drug before the Sanhedrin for claims of blasphemy, sedition, or threats to the Temple. All serious matters that any Jewish witnesses, not just the Pharisees, could bring before the Jewish court. There is no doubt the Pharisees existed (Hillel and Shammai say hi!) and a structure existed for them to bring forth accusations.
 
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Rob M. said:
I don't have to...I am not making any claims toward his ruler ship.

I actually respect Zinfamous' opinion and him as a poster, but he makes really unsubstantiated claims about Paul and his motives, who wrote the Gospels, and just a ton of nonsense I haven't seen him call out on yet -- he's been getting away with that for quite some time and multiple threads.

That's a whole bunch of ignorance in one pitiful post, and since he posits these as undeniable facts, linking to Wikipedia simply isn't sufficient, especially if there is disagreement among those who have actually studies those accounts.
Click to expand...

This was all in a rather substantial documentary I saw in the last year or so, possibly Frontline and/or National Geographic with all sorts of biblical scholars.

I'm trying to find those sources.

....Also, there is nothing wrong with wikipedia links. It is a great collection of all the sources that you would inevitably be using anyway, and as such really is our standard reference point. It wouldn't make sense to tell someone to prove the definition of a word, and refuse their use of one of the standard dictionaries, would it?
 
Atwill asserts that Christianity did not really begin as a religion, but a sophisticated government project, a kind of propaganda exercise used to pacify the subjects of the Roman Empire. "Jewish sects in Palestine at the time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior Messiah, were a constant source of violent insurrection during the first century," he explains. "When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system.
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I... uh.... huh?

That's pretty far out there.

Chemtrails are out there. As sophisticated government project, a kind of chemical exercise used to pacify the American people.

Or maybe just Atwill.
 
zinfamous said:
This was all in a rather substantial documentary I saw in the last year or so, possibly Frontline and/or National Geographic with all sorts of biblical scholars.

I'm trying to find those sources.

....Also, there is nothing wrong with wikipedia links. It is a great collection of all the sources that you would inevitably be using anyway, and as such really is our standard reference point. It wouldn't make sense to tell someone to prove the definition of a word, and refuse their use of one of the standard dictionaries, would it?
Click to expand...

I didn't say you can't use Wikipedia, but that simply wouldn't be sufficient by itself. The way it sounds to me, you're saying the ENTIRE Greek Scriptures are a lie...in its entirety, and that inevitably means the entire bible is a lie.

For that sort of claim, your proof or evidence would have to be so solid that denying it would be tantamount to denying gravity exists. Like I said in the other thread, there was "agreement" in the scientific community in general for theories such as spontaneous generation...as recently as the 19th century.

So scientific and even scholarly agreement really has proven to mean nothing, in and of itself.

I mean, if I can't use "scholarly agreement" to attest to the veracity of the bible, then it cannot be used as evidence against the validity of it.
 
Texashiker said:
We pick and choose what we believe in.

If I asked you to prove to me George Washington ever lived, you would provide the same evidence that is used to prove Jesus lived. Which is letters, writings, and first hand experiences from people who lived at that time.

You choose to believe one set of evidence, but ignore another set.

Prove to me julius caesar ever lived. You can't prove it. You can present me with evidence to backup your statements, but there is no way to "prove" julius caesar was ever a real person. All we have is evidence from writings and first hand accounts.
Click to expand...

LMAO
 
Rob M. said:
I didn't say you can't use Wikipedia, but that simply wouldn't be sufficient by itself. The way it sounds to me, you're saying the ENTIRE Greek Scriptures are a lie...in its entirety, and that inevitably means the entire bible is a lie.

For that sort of claim, your proof or evidence would have to be so solid that denying it would be tantamount to denying gravity exists. Like I said in the other thread, there was "agreement" in the scientific community in general for theories such as spontaneous generation...as recently as the 19th century.

So scientific and even scholarly agreement really has proven to mean nothing, in and of itself.

I mean, if I can't use "scholarly agreement" to attest to the veracity of the bible, then it cannot be used as evidence against the validity of it.
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I never said any of that was a lie.

Scripture is an interpretive text. Has it been improperly interpreted through the lens of the faithful all this time?

I think that is very likely. I see the Bible as a historical reference point and a general guide written as allegory, and few would disagree that it is prone to excessive exaggeration.

Herodotus is largely regarded as a lynchpin of ancient Greek history, but no Historian reads his accounts without a hyper-critical eye, as he is known to exaggerate and color his text with a healthy dose of personal bias.
 
Vdubchaos said:
It's peanuts compare the # of deaths from Religion.

Heck add ALL the dictators in the ENTIRE history of the world and it would still not even be close.

🙂

Also one has to keep in mind that a lot of these wars/dictators were driven by religion as well.
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Over 133,000,000 killed by Communist and Fascist regimes in the 20th century:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

Muslim terrorists kill 2000+ people a month, for comparison's sake.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

You should fear government more than religion (at least in the modern era).
 
IEC said:
Over 133,000,000 killed by Communist and Fascist regimes in the 20th century:
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM

Muslim terrorists kill 2000+ people a month, for comparison's sake.
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

You should fear government more than religion (at least in the modern era).
Click to expand...

gee, you are quoting hawaii.edu and religionofpeace.com in the same post.

D:

Still, you ignore the past 2000 years of deaths caused directly by jesus, while displaying your 2 minutes worth of googling for random numbers proudly. Good for you.
 
zinfamous said:
Horseshit.

Jesus' crime in those stories was to proclaim himself God. Caesar was, in fact, God. Declaring oneself to be above Caesar was a serious crime, punishable by death.

The gospels were supposedly written by men imprisoned by various tribes throughout the region, that were controlled by pharisees (whom did not exist as a power structure at the supposed time that Christ actually lived--meaning, they would not have been around to actually persecute and prosecute Christ).

The gospels were a polemic, written by political prisoners, against the established order of their time.
Click to expand...

Jesus never claimed to be God. However; son of God was equally punishable.
 
texashiker said:
what do we have to prove anyone in history ever lived?

We have writings and first hand testimony from people who witnessed the person being alive.




Prove me wrong.

Without relying on historical text, prove to me julius caesar, george washington, or anyone else lived hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

Historical text is all we have. We can not discard the text to fit our idea of how things should be.
Click to expand...

hOLY FUCK YOU REALLY ARE FROM TEXAS
 
Texashiker said:
It is amazing how many people hate a man whos sole teachings were that we should love one another.
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Nobody I've ever known professed hate for Jesus, but plenty of us are fed up with all the self-professed American "Fox News" Christians who fear and detest Arabs, Jews, Iranians, Mexicans, blacks, liberals, atheists, agnostics, Democrats, gays, pro-choice women, environmentalists, Puerto Ricans, and, of course, the poor.

Mahatma Gandhi put it best, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." They hated him, too.
 
Perknose said:
Nobody I've ever known professed hate for Jesus, but plenty of us are fed up with all the self-professed American "Fox News" Christians who fear and detest Arabs, Jews, Iranians, Mexicans, blacks, liberals, atheists, agnostics, Democrats, gays, pro-choice women, environmentalists, Puerto Ricans, and, of course, the poor.

Mahatma Gandhi put it best, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." They hated him, too.
Click to expand...

same can be said of self-professed atheists
 
Texashiker said:
The same standard of evidence to prove anyone in history lived is used to prove Jesus lived.

But for some reason people ignore the evidence, or discredit the evidence.
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Well we wouldn't want to do that! I've had miserable luck finding something tangible however, but you sound like you know exactly what you are talking about regarding all The Evidence.

I take by your familiar tone regarding The Evidence that citing some of it shouldn't be a big deal, which is great because we can't have evidence go ignored.
 
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