figuer

I don't know if if your claims are factual, and I have much reason to doubt that they are, but regardless, they are irrelevant to the concept of a person being both a Jew (ethnicity) and a Christian (religion).

When the Spanish Jews converted to Christianity, many made a point of being both. They mantained their self identification as Hebrews, they continued to practice their traditions and dietary customs, but added the worship of Jesus as their Messiah. A common prayer by the conversos was:

"Ave Maria madre de Dios...y mi parienta"

"Hail Mary mother of God...and my relative"

SlowTrainComing

Six years = two generations?

The original has been provided. Regardless of the spin Josephus may/may not have put on Jesus' divinity, he recorded Christ's existence historically. So I'm not sure what your beef is.

SlowTrainComing

Bingo. the terms "Christian" and "Jewish" are not culturally exclusive, and never have been.

funinspace

STC, I am one of the people sitting on the side lines, occasionally seeing where this thread is going. I knew you would be getting many responses, some respectful, some not so, and from many differing views. I saw no reason to add to the volume. However, now I am curious as to why you appear to resist answering a simple and respectful question(or had originally been until you have stalled/avoided about 3 times), simply on the meaning of one term? Why not just be forthright and state what you think defines the word "contemporary" (aka when would a source no longer be considered contemporary to an event/person)?

SlowTrainComing

Stalled? Avoided? Is that really the issue? My definition of "contemporary"?

I was asked for "contemporaneous" sources - go double-check, if you'd like.

con·tem·po·ra·ne·ous (kn-tmp-rn-s)
adj.
Originating, existing, or happening during the same period of time: the contemporaneous reigns of two monarchs.

Therefore, I provided sources within a few decades of Christ's life (including one from an adversary written SIX YEARS after His death). That short span of time means it's pretty improbable that ENEMIES of the Christian Faith would simply make up the concept of Jesus and write about Him.

Apparently, now, six years is too long removed from Christ's death to be considered "contemporaneous" by this forum.

Then again, I could post histories from pretty much any date and I'd bet by bottom dollar I'd get howls of dissention.

Keith&Co.

Lose this fixation on six years. I asked what you mean by 'contemporary.' You want to make this an attack on a specific reference, that's your issue. I can't help what you read into my post.


In response to the suggestion that Josephus' comments are forged, you claimed that some people believe that he originally made coments, but the only forging was to change it from negative to positive comments.
There's no way to tell this without the pre-doctored manuscript for a comparison.
Are you now claiming that there were no forged comments, that Josephus' reference to Jesus is as he himself wrote it?

Keith&Co.

It's an issue. You think 'within a few decades' is contemporary? How many is a few? When do you make the cutoff? Two decades is about a generation these days. How many decades do you think was a good thumbrule for a generation at the time of Christ's alleged birth/life/death?
Do you think one generation after an event is contemporaneous to it? Two generations? Three?

How do you define 'contemporaneous?'
For that matter, how many fingers in 'myriads?'


Who is saying that? Seriously? Who is posting that a six-year-after reference is not contemporaneous? What post?

Who is howling? You spend a lot of time slandering the people on this forum, claiming that they slander you. Is persecution an important part of your faith?

SlowTrainComing

Well, it's being argued that the jump from 33 A.D. - 39 A.D. was enough time to formulate a massive anti-Christian "creation" of a man who "never existed." Sorry, but I have to call that silly.

No, "some people" don't "believe" it, it was recorded in black and white and remains accessible to this day. The original manuscript is on display with perhaps 2-3 seconds of Googling.

I'll do the work for you:

Toto

Where do you get this 39 ? I know of no documents that can be dated to 39 CE that establish that anyone knew anything about Jesus.

The gospels were written sometime after 70, which is usually counted as two generations, and the gospel of Mark is generally considered to be the source of most of what people think they know about Jesus.

You might be trying to tie this to Paul's alleged conversion - but that is based on speculation, not documentary evidence, and there is still some controversy over whether Paul believed in a Jesus who existed in the recent past, or even a human Jesus. If you could prove that to a reasonable certainty, we could avoid half of the threads in this forum.

When we talk about contemporary evidence, we generally mean a historical account from the time, whether an eyewitness or someone who received reports from eyewitnesses. We might expect someone to write about that guy in Palestine who had a following and was said to work miracles, but Pilate thought he was a threat and offed him. . . but we don't have anything approaching that from before 70 CE.

And if you think you can show that there is any eyewitness testimony in the gospels, you will have to contend with almost all of modern scholarship.

Toto

Stop right there. There is no "original manuscript" of Josephus. There is a copy of a copy of a copy. . . the earliest of which is dated to the 10th century.

You are losing all credibility. Please stop and think about what you are doing here.