Alf

It is time for you to get educated.

"Christ" comes from greek and means "annointed one" and is as such the same title as Messiah in jewish. There were a multitude of greeks worshipping an "annointed one" around the roman empire at the time. Many of those would be rightfully called "christians" as they worshipped "christ". However, whether their "christ" is the same "christ" as the one you worship is not obvious. It might have been but it might also not have been.

So yeah, there were christians in existence even around 100 BC! So this "How could there be so many christians so shortly after Jesus existence" is largely just a dumb question that you have to be uneducated to ask. How could there be so many christians before christ? That is an even better question!

Now, if you limit your "christian" to mean those who follow the gospels etc it is a trickier question. Largely because the gospels didn't exist yet per se. Paul did write a lot of letters around to communities within the empire and in so far as their christ could be aligned with Paul's christ they would eventually listen to the gospel stories as they were told and thus would end up as "christians" by today's meaning of that word. However, if they were christians from the start with that same meaning is not possible to know.

Also, Paul's very active letter writing and travelling also helped spreading the religion pretty fast. However, the fact that there were people already at those places with similar ideas and mind-set didn't slow it down either.

Alf

Alf

Then show us any. No, tacitus doesn't count. He only testify that there were christians in rome. He did not and could not provide proof that Jesus actually existed.

No, Josephus doesn't count either. It would be wonderful if he could. Unfortunately some very eager fanatical christian interpolated his text and destroyed the original paragraph as written by Josephus. We might never know what Josephus actually wrote. We know for sure that he did not write that paragraph as christians show as "proof" - at least not in the form as it appears to us now. We do not even know that he did write about Jesus. It could for example have been a paragraph about Appolonious of Tyrana instead and then changed to be a paragraph about Jesus by some fanatic christian copyist.

Alf

Alf

So you admit that the bible which was written by men is fallible?

Alf

Alf

The lack of evidence for exodus is far more than simply "no egyptian writing to testify the story".

It is also the nasty little fact that if any of the events in exodus happened, some testified and verified events really appear inexplicable and amazing.

Like, after all that humiliation and his country left in ruins with no soldiers and no first-borns and with rivers filled with blood, how could Egypt enter its era of grandeur and wealth?

How could the exodus story tell about how they tore apart the walls of jericho when the city had no walls at the time the exodus story allegedly took place?

Worse, from archeological digs it appears that the jews can show a continuous presence in palestine and judea region during their whole "egypt exile". How could they be in exile in egypt when they were in Judea at the same time?

Get over it. The exodus simply never happened.

No, but you would expect that they perhaps wrote about his crucifixtion. A punishment that in their eyes appeared just and fair for his false teaching. On the other hand, they might consider it to be NOT just and fair as they would prescribe stoning for that particular type of crimes instead.

Perhaps a letter indicating that they would prefer him stoned rather than crucified or perhaps some reasoning as to why he should be crucified and not stoned as the traidition prescribes. Such a letter would be worth gold if it could be proven authentic and it could be shown to indicate the same person as the gospels write about.

Alf

Alf

You don't know much about Socrates, do you?

People wrote about Socrates during his life time. We even have theatre plays that makes fun of Socrates that was written at a time so that Socrates most likely was among the audience of the same theatre plays and probably laughed with the rest of the audience when they made jokes about him. Assuming he had a sense of humor of course, which he probably had :-)

So yes, we can take it as fairly solid that Socrates was a real person and a celebrity within his community.

Unfortunately, we don't have any writings from pharisees or others concerning Jesus and his teaching. We have no letter from Jesus to his family. We have no letter from someone who told their friend about this Jesus guy healing them or that they even heard him speak any sermon on the mount or any other sermon or speach.

We have nada, zip, nothing, zero.

As usual the christians embarass themselves in public.

Alf

darstec

Wow, your statistics are blindingly convincing. The bible is greater than 99.5% accurate. But is it accurate enough?

How many letters are there in the King James Version of the Bible? Answer = 2,629,150. If you don't believe me, count them yourself, but make sure you double check yourself. Now if only 3 (Three) letters are changed in all those 2,629,150 letters, the whole underlying premise of the entire bible can be changed. That would mean that the bible could still stay 99.9999989% accurate and be so changed it would astound the entire world. So arguments from numbers won't work on your behalf because if only 0.0000011% changes, the meaning of the entire bible can change.

For my example just add the three letters TON (English letters of course since we are speaking of the KJV) to one sentence in the bible.

jgibson000

Um, who might these people be and in what pre 399 BCE works do their references to Socrates appear?

We have one allegedly pre 399 BCE play in which this occurs -- Clouds attributed to Aristophanes.

But the earliest MS we have of this play dates from 1000 CE (Codex Ravennas 429). So it is hardly contemporary evidence for Socrates, and given its late date, the MS cannot be trusted to accurately represent what its purported author really said, if indeed he actually ever said anything at all about Socrates. Given that we have testimony that the MS is a revison of an ealier version of the play, all references to Socrates should be supected as interpolations.

Prove me wrong.

Jeffrey Gibson

RED DAVE

From Geetarmoore:
1) Apology heartily accepted.

2) Let me explain the issue. What Patriarch Verlch is implying is that what is generally considered by humanity to be a historical advance, the ceasing to sacrifice animals, on the part of Jews, is to be attributed to the alleged rending of the veil in the Temple when Jesus died.

The implication is, first of all, that this event actually occurred. There is no record outside of, I think, Matthew, that this ever happened. It is highly unlikely that if it did, it would go unmentioned elsewhere, as with the other bullshit about the darkness, dead people walking, etc.

Secondly, the implication is that xtianity is morally superior to Judaism: Jews only stopped sacrificing because of something that happened as a result of xtianity.

We Jews, religious or secular, have our own moral codes. We do quite well without George Bush's.

RED DAVE

Ben C Smith

Actually, it is attested in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. However, since those are the synoptic gospels, two of them probably got it originally from the other, so we are left with only one independent attestation, which may be what you were trying to say.

True, I think.

Ben.

RED DAVE

From RED DAVE:
From Ben C. Smith:
Thanx. I stand corrected.

RED DAVE