Freethought & Rationalism Archive

TedM · 02-18-2013, 10:05 PM

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Originally Posted by Toto

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Originally Posted by TedM

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1. Tertulian said that the Romans did record it. We don't know if he was right. Josephus may well have recorded it, but the TF has been tampered with. So, #1 simply can't be measured and must be thrown out of the equation.

It is most probable (which is as good as you can do here) that there was no record. If there had been, Christians would have preserved it, and would not have had to have produced the obvious forgery of the TF. Tertullian is not a reliable source. It's still in the equation.

For Josephus, they may well have preserved it in part of the TF. Or, it may have been quite uncomplimentary so it was entirely replaced. Or it never was there. We can't know. The TF is out of the equation. How do you know that Christians would have preserved the Roman archive reference if it existed? How would they have been able to do that? Do we have ANY records of other crucifixions in the Roman archives? I think we can't say enough to keep it in the equation.

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There is no evidence for this process. You have constructed it as a possible explanation of the connection between the crucifixion and the birth of Christianity. But it seems highly implausible. Look at modern cult leaders or religions. When the cult leader dies, the religion dies with him. Most of the followers are either killed by the authorities or lose faith.

It doesn't seem implausible at all. In fact I would say it was highly plausible that a crucified Messiah claimant during crucifixion would have an ongoing following after his death because of the Jewish culture context regarding the Savior/Messiah expectations (god-like, perfect), the timing of the event(Passover), and the nature of the event (sacrifice) all coming together. Your examples of cult leaders lack these important distinctions which would not be lost on the Jewish populace.

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The only accounts we have indicate that Romans were vaguely aware of Christianity in the second century. There's a big gap between 33 AD and the second century. How did this movement survive? Why weren't Jesus' followers killed along with him? Nothing makes sense here.

The blaming of the fire in Rome on Christians indicate high awareness by AD 64. Why would his followers have been killed with Jesus? What did they do? Did they claim to be King? Who says they called him King? Anyway, there is plenty of evidence for persecutions of Christians. What doesn't make sense?

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Scenario 2:
An underground group of marginal Roman citizens who knew something about Judaism started a new mystery religion using some Jewish themes, and invented a symbolic story about a savior figure being crucified at a numerically significant time and rising from the dead.

You see this as more likely. Who was their target market and why would they be attracted to a Jewish Savior? What do you mean by 'numerically significant time'? Why would Romans create a religion that was anti-Emporer?

The target market, as Rodney Stark detailed, were the urban dwellers who had become separated from their families or other social support, who needed a network. The story that they told had some intricate connections to Jewish history and scripture, but that was not the basis for the appeal, any more than it is today. People become Christians because there is a building with people, and music and food. The stories that the preacher tells from the pulpit are an insignificant factor - at least this is what the sociologists of religion tell us.

I don't doubt that the social aspect is important. I do doubt that the stories are not significant--especially when there is a long-standing traditional religion to begin with. There was no need to replace it with a controversial, dangerous, repulsive concept. As described this account makes no sense to me.

aa5874 · 02-18-2013, 10:11 PM

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Originally Posted by TedM

aa, it is a simple question. Why can't you answer it directly? Why was Jesus ALWAYS Jewish. He's Jewish in all the gospels, He's Jewish in Hebrews and Paul's writings. I don't know of any writings that say he isn't Jewish. Why is a crucified founder of Christianity made to be Jewish if the idea of crucifixion was so repellent to Jews?

Again, your claim is unsubstantiated. There is no actual confirmation that there was an actual Jew named Jesus and the stories that mentioned his birth claimed he was born of a Ghost and a Virgin.

Matthew 1.18

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Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother....... was found with child of the Holy Ghost.

Why don't you actually read the Christian Bible and stop making blatant errors??

In gJohn, Jesus was God the Creator from the beginning.

John 1

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1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.2 The same was in the beginning with God.3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made .

John 8:58 KJV

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Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Before Abraham was , I am .

TedM · 02-18-2013, 10:16 PM

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Originally Posted by rlogan

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Originally Posted by TedM

Without historical Jewish theology, Christianity loses all meaning.

Rubbish. Are you listening to yourself? Christianity is called the "New Testament", abolishing the old Testament.

This shows that you don't understand Christian theology at all. It requires Jewish theology and heavily relies on the OT.

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And, if you say --no it was a Gentile religion-- then why even bother with making it an extension of Judiasm?

Let's see if you can listen and grasp this basic observation: Do you see how Wallace Fard got away with racial hatred as a central premise to Nation of Islam when Islam is not based upon it? You can't market a completely new religion so well. You smuggle it in under the claim it is an ancient one. And market it to people who do not understand the ancient one.

The early Christian apologists were emphatic about this - how it was not a new religion. It was viewed without pedigree by critics. The "midrash" Christian writers used is superficially lame.

Obviously you embrace the Christian propaganda. But can you grasp the example right before us with Wallace Fard and Nation of Islam?

You didn't answer the question. What was there to gain by hijacking the Jewish religion when the Romans didn't even like the Jews? And instead of telling me that Christians don't understand the true Jewish religion, why don't you give examples in that vein instead of the Nation of Islam?

TedM · 02-18-2013, 10:19 PM

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Originally Posted by aa5874

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Originally Posted by TedM

aa, it is a simple question. Why can't you answer it directly? Why was Jesus ALWAYS Jewish. He's Jewish in all the gospels, He's Jewish in Hebrews and Paul's writings. I don't know of any writings that say he isn't Jewish. Why is a crucified founder of Christianity made to be Jewish if the idea of crucifixion was so repellent to Jews?

Again, your claim is unsubstantiated. There is no actual confirmation that there was an actual Jew named Jesus and the stories that mentioned his birth claimed he was born of a Ghost and a Virgin.

The authors all made him Jewish, even though you are incapable of reconciling that fact with the mythological claims.

spin · 02-18-2013, 11:24 PM

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Originally Posted by TedM

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by TedM

Is it the word 'Messiah' that you are objecting to? Would a different word have been better to use -- like 'the Chosen One' or something like that?

It is the misappropriation of the term "messiah" that I'm trying to communicate to you. That is what interests me. Your blindness to it.

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I have no problem with the fact that Jesus is represented as a savior, nor the story that he was crucified, nor that he was supposed to be Jewish. It is that you can unashamedly call him the messiah, an act of religious disinheritance of the Jews, while showing no understanding of the actual term.

You must be mighty bored today. Hope you enjoyed playing your little word game with me.

The Alfred E. Newman approach to the problem. As is typical of christianity in general, TedM doesn't seem to know what the notion of "messiah" is. It is not a substitute for the ancient mystical notion of "savior", a word that has widened its meaning into the modern generalized meaning of "rescuer".

Christianity has covered its tracks by confusing the terms in such a way as to make believers see that they are interchangeable, allowing the origin of the term "messiah", its Jewish significance, to be lost without any need to examine its inappropriateness for the christian savior.

It doesn't matter to TedM that "messiah" is a totally empty concept in christianity, so much so that its Greek derived form "christ" has become little more than a modern surname. It was early seen as a name rather than a role, "in the name of christ".

The issue here is reduced by TedM to "a little word game", showing just how detached from the problem and how insignificant the term is to him. The christian Jesus is not the fulfillment of Jewish messianic expectation at all. "Christ" just means "our guy" and we've cribbed an image together of him from christian interpretations of Jewish literature.

rlogan · 02-18-2013, 11:35 PM

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Originally Posted by TedM

This shows that you don't understand Christian theology at all.

Sure I do. It is you who fail to understand Jewish theology, and logic.

The Christians do not logically make the determination of what is Jewish religious belief. The Jews do.

The Jews do not follow the New Testament. So you cannot say Christianity is Jewish. This is so elementary as to be an astonishment a person of logic cannot follow it.

I answered your question and you asserted I did not. I further asked you a question you avoided. I am not into being treated rudely so this is it for me.

spin · 02-19-2013, 01:06 AM

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Originally Posted by TedM

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Originally Posted by spin

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Originally Posted by TedM

The accolades given are so grand as to make a 'jump' to a divine being not difficult:

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Isaiah 9:6-7. His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.
7 There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace,
On the throne of David and over his kingdom,
To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness
From then on and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.

Not messiah. Perhaps you should find out about the Jewish messiah.

From the Jewish Encyclopedia:

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The Ideal in Isaiah.

But though the name is of later origin, the idea of a personal Messiah runs through the Old Testament. It is the natural outcome of the prophetic future hope. The first prophet to give a detailed picture of the future ideal king was Isaiah (ix. 1-6, xi. 1-10, xxxii. 1-5). Of late the authenticity of these passages, and also of those passages in Jeremiah and Ezekiel which give expression to the hope in a Messiah, has been disputed by various Biblical scholars (comp. Hackmann, "Die Zukunftserwartung des Jesaiah"; Volz, "Die Vorexilische Jahweprophetie und der Messias"; Marti, "Gesch. der Israelitischen Religion," pp. 190 et seq.; idem, "Das Buch Jesaia"; Cheyne, "Introduction to Isaiah," and edition and transl. of Isaiah in "S. B. O. T.").

The objections of these scholars, however, rest principally on the hypothesis that the idea of the Messiah is inseparably bound up with the desire for universal dominion, whereas, in reality, this feature is not a characteristic of the Messianic hope until a later stage of its development. The ideal king to whom Isaiah looks forward will be a scion of the stock of Jesse, on whom will rest the spirit of God as a spirit of wisdom, valor, and religion, and who will rule in the fear of God, his loins girt with righteousness and faithfulness (xi. 1-3a, 5). He will not engage in war or in the conquest of nations; the paraphernalia of war will be destroyed (ix. 4); his sole concern will be to establish justice among his people (ix. 6b; xi. 3b, 4). The fruit of his righteous government will be peace and order throughout the land. The lamb will not dread the wolf, nor will the leopard harm the kid (xi. 8); that is, as the following verse explains, tyranny and violence will no longer be practised on God's holy mountain, for the land will be full of the knowledge of God as the water covers the sea (comp. xxxii. 1, 2, 16). The people will not aspire to political greatness, but will lead a pastoral life (xxxii. 18, 20). Under such ideal conditions the country can not but prosper, nor need it fear attack from outside nations (ix. 6a, xxxii. 15). The newly risen scion of Jesse will stand forth as a beacon to other nations, and they will come to him for guidance and arbitration (xi. 10). He will rightly be called "Wonderful Counselor," "Godlike Hero," "Constant Father," "Prince of Peace" (ix. 5).

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Jeremiah's picture of the Messiah is not a detailed one; but, like his future hope in general, it agrees in all essentials with that of Isaiah. The Messiah will be "a righteous sprout of David," who will establish just judgment and wise government in the country, and whose name will be (= "God is our salvation";

Not just a man, and an instrument of salvation...close enough along with the Suffering Servant passage to see why his Jewish followers might have considered him to be their Messiah before AND after the crucifixion.

This last comment is endemic of the incoherence of the christian position on the messiah.

We find speculations in texts such as Isaiah on the nature of kingship, the "ideal king". This in itself has nothing to do with messianism. We also find speculations about god's servant Jacob (45:4), nothing at all to do with the messiah or the ideal king, and that gets rolled into the christian stew. Hopes around the coronation of the king from psalms get added in for spice.

Then there's pure fraud such as the virgin who will fall pregnant or the manipulation of Dan 9:25, the combining of the seven weeks and the sixty-two weeks in order to conflate the anointed prince and the anointed one who are 62 weeks apart in the text. However, Daniel uses "messiah" as an indication of the high priest and the merging of the weeks is subterfuge to cover the conflation of two Jewish high priests.

Toto · 02-19-2013, 01:38 AM

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Originally Posted by TedM

..
... How do you know that Christians would have preserved the Roman archive reference if it existed? How would they have been able to do that? Do we have ANY records of other crucifixions in the Roman archives? I think we can't say enough to keep it in the equation.

We don't have any Roman archives. We do have historians who were preserved by Christians, and several historians have opined that Christians were more likely to preserve material that mentioned Jesus. That's why it is very suspicious that Christians did not preserve the volume of Tacitus that covered the years when Pilate was governor of Palestine.

This is all probabilistic. You will probably find some reason to discount it, but it is still a factor to be taken into account.

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It doesn't seem implausible at all. In fact I would say it was highly plausible that a crucified Messiah claimant during crucifixion would have an ongoing following after his death because of the Jewish culture context regarding the Savior/Messiah expectations (god-like, perfect), the timing of the event(Passover), and the nature of the event (sacrifice) all coming together. Your examples of cult leaders lack these important distinctions which would not be lost on the Jewish populace.

You have a strange idea of Judaism. And we still have no indication that Jews were the original Christians, outside of Christian claims.

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The only accounts we have indicate that Romans were vaguely aware of Christianity in the second century. There's a big gap between 33 AD and the second century. How did this movement survive? Why weren't Jesus' followers killed along with him? Nothing makes sense here.

The blaming of the fire in Rome on Christians indicate high awareness by AD 64.

If you believe that passage was original, and that, if original, it referred to Christians as we know them.

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Why would his followers have been killed with Jesus? What did they do? Did they claim to be King? Who says they called him King? Anyway, there is plenty of evidence for persecutions of Christians. What doesn't make sense?

If the Romans executed Jesus for sedition, which was the only reason that they bothered to crucify anyone, they tended to wipe out all of the followers along with the leader.

The evidence for persecution of Christians is actually pretty thin.

The whole story of early Christianity does not make sense to me. But it looks like that is going to be a subjective judgement.

TedM · 02-19-2013, 01:49 AM

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Originally Posted by rlogan

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Originally Posted by TedM

This shows that you don't understand Christian theology at all.

Sure I do. It is you who fail to understand Jewish theology, and logic.

The Christians do not logically make the determination of what is Jewish religious belief. The Jews do.

The Jews do not follow the New Testament. So you cannot say Christianity is Jewish. This is so elementary as to be an astonishment a person of logic cannot follow it.

rlogan, I never said Christianity is Jewish.

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I answered your question and you asserted I did not.

Ok..marketing a new religion by smuggling it under an ancient one. Fair enough.

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I further asked you a question you avoided. I am not into being treated rudely so this is it for me.

Neither am I, which you started and smugly do in a lot of your posts (I note your condescending post about 8:4). You started this thread saying:

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It is so superficial that even a junior varsity player like me can see through it.

and

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Let's see if you can listen and grasp this basic observation:

and above

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This is so elementary as to be an astonishment a person of logic cannot follow it.

I don't like your attitude either. :wave:

TedM · 02-19-2013, 01:59 AM

Your claims lose their persuasive power when I find sources that dispute you. Then you make a snide comment or ignore them. Since you believe I'm ignorant on the subject why don't you instead enlighten me with some better commentary? Case in point is the post you just responded to. Obviously I found that the Jewish Encyclopedia has a much broader perspective on the Messiah than you have said Jews have. This included the very verse that I used early on from Isaiah 9, which you said was not Messianic! How have you responded to what I found? You haven't..

I have concluded that your definition of Messiah is grossly more narrow that the average Jewish person of 2000 years ago.

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Originally Posted by spin

We find speculations in texts such as Isaiah on the nature of kingship, the "ideal king". This in itself has nothing to do with messianism. We also find speculations about god's servant Jacob (45:4), nothing at all to do with the messiah or the ideal king, and that gets rolled into the christian stew. Hopes around the coronation of the king from psalms get added in for spice.

Then there's pure fraud such as the virgin who will fall pregnant or the manipulation of Dan 9:25, the combining of the seven weeks and the sixty-two weeks in order to conflate the anointed prince and the anointed one who are 62 weeks apart in the text. However, Daniel uses "messiah" as an indication of the high priest and the merging of the weeks is subterfuge to cover the conflation of two Jewish high priests.

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