Chili

Not sure what you are trying to prove but if Jesus is 'the way' how can he be anything else but fiction, as you call it, and if we are to follow him how can he be anything more than just 'the way'. Ie, if he is the truth and the life we also must have that truth and life before we can follow him.

mountainman

Apollonius of Tyana unlike Jesus is known to have been credited with at least one monumental inscription in the Greek language, possibly as late as the era of Diocletian. Quite reasonably, Apollonius of Tyana existed, and if the new testament was fabricated after the year c.216 CE then it is quite reasonable to suspect that the stories of Apollonius were doctored by the church scriptorium editors to represent the figure not just of jesus, but also split into the figure of Paul. Many scholars have outlined the comparison between Paul and Apollonius, anc commented on the teacher "Apollos" in Acts.

'This man, named after Apollo,
and shining forth Tyana,
extinguished the faults of men.
The tomb in Tyana (received) his body,
but in truth heaven received him
so that he might drive out the pains of men
(or:drive pains from among men) .'

--- Ancient inscription, translated C. P. Jones
See Source Article

Chili

. . . but there were many, many others like Jesus and Appollonius and all one has to do to be like them is go through metamorphosis which is native to mankind and the most basic and foremost of all human rights that should never be tampered with.

Jesus here is the short pupa stage that is required for uploading the truth and life that first created the larva (the alpha we call it) into 'the new' that so will be the Alpha and Omega now complete and fully mature. This then is how Jesus is 'the way' which ends when religion 'pulls it's hide off' at the cross with "it is finished" and only religion can do this with "we have our own laws" out of which Mary was conceived to be (sic), and who so was from Nazareth (and not Egypt where Matthew's Jesus sought refuse before he returned to religion/Nazareth).

Parables are like paintings with words instead of colors and nobody ever will make a statue pick up its stand and walk away with it, but it is true that an artist can add life to a statue much in the same way as a critic can give life to a poem.

A good example here is the so called 'stake' as an image where self proclaimed Christians crashed and there oxidized (accelerated or otherwise) while singing patient endurance songs until they died nonetheless, or better yet maybe where so called Christians were kept elevated into the heavens so that new life would sooner be theirs, which then is where the stork got it's reputation from.

. . . and please leave me out of my argument as I am just trying to do you a favor.

Littlejohn

"....one monumental inscription in the Greek language, possibly as late as the era of Diocletian.."

Exactly ... 'as late as the had of Diocletian' .. At that time there were also archaeological evidence for Jesus, seeing that Alexander Severus had a private chapel where, in addition to a statue (or a 'herm') of Apollonius of Tyana, there was also one of Jesus.

But, apart from this, the problem is another. Apollonius of Tyana, as Jesus of Nazareth, lived in the first century and none among his contemporaries never mentioned him! .. It will need be to wait until Philostratus (third century) who someone spoke about him ... How is this possible? ...

How can a character, which no contemporary speaks, is to be considered historical, while Jesus of Nazareth, which we certainly have mention within works of Josephus, of Suetonius, Tacitus and by rabbis, should instead be considered 'never existed'??... All this, seems to me, it makes nonsense...


Greetings


Littlejohn

.

mountainman

The source of this evidence is a literary assertion made within the "Historia Augusta" which everyone sees as a 4th century literary forgery of the most mockumentary kind. Here is some notes.. One cannot simply use this source at face value, and everyone knows it is a common forgery.


Apollonius is assessed as being an authentic historical figure.
Have a look at this article - extract follows - by Maria Dzielska

Extracted from Apollonius of Tyana and His Historicity - Maria Dzielska

(VIII, 31) Although Philostratus make Apollonius appear a crucial figure in the empire in the second half of the first century AD, extant sources from the first and early second centuries are completely silent about his achievements and elevated station in the Roman world as related by Philostratus. The period's historians and philosophers do not even know his name.
The silence in the time's sources and the fragmentary information about Apollonius in second-century writing make it extremely difficult to study the authentic Tyanean. We must use a whole complex of pre-Philostratean and later post-Philostratean, Byzantine, and even Arabic records, pseudoepigraphs signed in the name of Apollonius, and information from Christian authors who referred to him.

The memoirs of Damis that Philostratus treats as his fundamental source are considered by scholars studying Vita Appollonii as an invention, a falsification by Philostratus serving to lend credibility to his story. No source independent of VA makes a reference to Damis as the author of memoirs about Apollonius.

We can place some trust in two other authors of records concerning Apollonius whom Philostratus quotes.

The first is Moeragenes, whose historicity has been confirmed. His work on Apollonius titled Memorabilia of Apollonius of Tyana, Magician and Philosopher is mentioned by the Church Father Origen in his treatise Contra Celsum written ca. 240. Most likely, the other of the two writers was also a historical figure. Maximus of Aegae supplied Philostratus with an account of Apollonius staying at the temple of Asclepios is Aegae, Cilicia.

Philostratus writes in his VA that he was emperor's secretary ab epistulis graecis (I, 12). His mention of a function in the imperial civil service makes it extremely likely that there was indeed such a historical person as Maximus and it renders a date in the period between Trajan and Caracalla possible.

Both Moeragenes and Maximus of Aegae - in contrast to Philostratus's claims - showed Apollonius primarily as a magus, only later a philosophus.

The magus Apollonius was remembered and referred to - with scorn and contempt- by the well known writer in the second half of the second century, Lucian of Samosata in his satire on Alexander of Abonoutichus in Paphlagonia, the prophet of New Asclepios, who appeared in the form of a serpent named Glycon. He wrote that the false prophet Alexander had learned the magic tricks and gimmicks from a certain Tyanean who was a follower of Apollonius.

In the early third century, under the Severi, Apollonius was remembered by Philostratus's contemporary, the well known historian Cassius Dio. In his Roman History, he once contemptuously called Apollonius a genuine goeta and magus (77. 18, 4), and elsewhere spoke admiringly of the Tyanean as capable of foretelling, clairvoyance, and bilocation.

This latter appreciation was occasioned by an extraordinary event that took place in Ephesus in 96 AD (67. 18, 1). In that location, the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana was watching the murder of emperor Domitian perpetrated in Rome.

Highly antagonistic to Domitian as we know he was, Apollonius accompanied the conspirators in their act as if he had been with them in Rome.

He jumped on some pedestal in the town and shouted encouragement for one of them by the name of Stephanus to deal a final blow to the emperor. Philostratus describes the event in a similar way: Apollonius stopped an address in Ephesus in mid-sentence and shouted Smite the tyrant, smite him. (VIII, 26)

We have no doubt that the event really took place. The historical Apollonius, to whom we are led by the accounts of both a significant writer and an outstanding historian of Rome, was certainly clairvoyant like many mystics and esoterics in history.

He also certainly had his own attitude toward emperor Domitian. He regarded him as a tyrant and considered his death to be a positive and joyous event.

Thanks to a coincidence with an account of a serious historian like Cassius Dio, the fabled biography by Philostratus received another suggestion of legitimacy. It also supplies us with a clue that Ephesus is a city where Apollonius is certain to have been. Both Cassius Dio and Philostratus probably knew of the event from a local, perhaps Ephesian, tradition. Philostratus declares in VA that he drew intensely from Apollonian traditions cherished in cities that loved him (I, 2) and we must concede that he is right on this matter.

Traditional stories of the magus and sage from Tyana were treasured until late-Byzantine and Arab times by Greek cities in Asia Minor and further into the Greek east. Those cities possessed objects of cult associated with Apollonius, and had preserved tales of his prophecies, thaumaturgies, healing powers, and talismans.

etc

Everyone knows that there was no reference to "Jesus the Christ" and the "Nation of Christians" in Josephus before the 4th century, and that Josephus was interpolated --- probably by Eusebius.

The same applies to references in others -- the christian historians had access to the imperial archives as early as c.312 CE. They were not ashamed to invent utter common bullshit and lie through their teeth to authenticate the new state religion in the 4th century.

Eusebius even quotes from the books of Apollonius:

The Mystic Rites or Concerning Sacrifices.

[The full title is given by Eudocia, Ionia; ed. Villoison (Venet 1781) p 57]

This treatise is mentioned by Philostratus (iii 41; iv 19),
who tells us that it set down the proper method of sacrifice
to every God, the proper hours of prayer and offering.
It was in wide circulation, and Philostratus had come across
copies of it in many temples and cities,
and in the libraries of philosophers.

Several fragments of it have been preserved, [See Zeller, Phil d Griech, v 127]
the most important of which is to be found in Eusebius,
[Præparat. Evangel., iv 12-13; ed Dindorf (Leipzig 1867), i 176, 177]
and is to this effect:

“ ‘Tis best to make no sacrifice to God at all,
no lighting of a fire,
no calling Him by any name
that men employ for things to sense.

For God is over all, the first;
and only after Him do come the other Gods.
For He doth stand in need of naught
e’en from the Gods,
much less from us small men -
naught that the earth brings forth,
nor any life she nurseth,
or even any thing the stainless air contains.

The only fitting sacrifice to God
is man’s best reason,
and not the word
that comes from out his mouth.

“We men should ask the best of beings
through the best thing in us,
for what is good -
mean by means of mind,
for mind needs no material things
to make its prayer.
So then, to God, the mighty One,
who’s over all,
no sacrifice should ever be lit up.”

Noack [Psyche, I ii.5.] tells us that scholarship
is convinced of the genuineness of this fragment.
This book, as we have seen, was widely circulated
and held in the highest respect, and it said that
its rules were engraved on brazen pillars
at Byzantium. [Noack, ibid.]

The above verses on sacrifice quoted by Eusebius were authored by Apollonius of Tyana.
You and everyone else reading this need to understand this simple fact.
There is little doubt Apollonius existed.
The same cannot be said about Jesus.
Jesus was very political in the 4th century not the 1st.

You need to spend some time wading through the polemical and political rhetoric of Eusebius, probably sponsored by Constantine against the "History of Apollonius". You can find all of these sources indexed here: Apollonius of Tyana [Resources].

Jesus appears inside a fairy tale which is wrapped in an embellished pseudo-history (The "Historia Eccesiastica" of Eusebius) which on all accounts appears on the surface to be exactly of the same genre as the "Historia Augusta" ---- a plain and simple imperially contrived common forgery on a lavish scale.

What is Eusebius doing with Heggesipus and Papias and Celsus and Irenaeus and all those other "legions of mouthpieces"?
He is busy painting a religious romance for the war council of Nicaea 325 CE.

Mars Man

Apologies for getting back late, but it's just simple fact that I don't have the time to spend here that much.

Now, it is very clear (or should be) aa5874, that you may have missed my point in a moment of emotional rush. To help out, it might be productive to think of it in this way; I am not talking about Jesus. I'm talking about one Yeshua (or Joshua) who lived at that general time period in the Palestinian area, and started some cult there in the general area.

I cannot recall the professor investigating the historical Yeshua matter, nor the source, but one valid observation made which I do recall is that in the 100 BCE to 100 CE range, Yeshua was a common enough male name. There is no valid reason to deny that as being a fact of history. In fact, as you are familiar with Flavius Josephus, you might recognize that such Yeshua types can be reasonably said to have existed. (Wars 3.9.7 b;
6.5.3b~4; Antq Jews 15.3.1b; 20.9.4; Col. 4:11; not to mention the scroll which carried that name, among other examples)

The historical evidence for a number of movements within the greater Jewish belief system at that general time is secure enough, and splinter groups springing from those are equally valid. For these reasons, it is quite fair to hold the position that a given Yeshua had been the charismatic leader of one eschatological cult (somewhat of a similar nature to that of Qunram) and had set out on some sort of activity--which general story line had been picked up by some later, dressed up and embellished (in order to 'make the sale').

ApostateAbe

Mars Man, nobody would hold it against you if you gave up arguing with aa5874. Most of us simply ignore him, and I always have to tell this to the newbies. You ever see those street preachers who hold large signs with hell-fire graphics and they yell at the top of their lungs all day? I used to see them on campus in Seattle. It didn't do me much good talking to those people, either.

mountainman

Hey aa5874 have you ever been to the Seattle campus? Maybe ApostateAbe has you confused with his local mentors. Maybe if we were to see some of these large signs with hell-fire graphics we would feel more convinced? Dont you like the questions aa5874 is asking AA? Are they too Socratic?

aa5874

You still have no time?

You are not talking about Jesus?

I am talking about Jesus of the NT.

I have investigated or examined the KJV Bible, Church and secular writings and have found that Jesus of the NT to have been presented as a MYTH with no historical support external of apologetic sources.

I conclude Jesus of the NT was fiction/mythology but believe by the DUPED.

So, how in the world would I be able to confirm what the "professor" wrote? I had to look for sources of antiquity to find out the status of Jesus of the NT.

Jesus of the NT was truly God, the Creator, born of a virgin without human father, who was resurrected and ascended to heaven according to the author of 'De Principiis'.

Jesus of the NT was truly a myth/fiction.

I can't find any Jesus cult which promoted the Pauline doctrine that Jesus was the Creator, equal to God, born of a woman, was resurrected, that without his resurrection all mankind would remain in sin and that Jews, Roman citizens and the Roman Emperors should BOW before the name of Jesus.

Have you found any Jewish cult that propagated the Pauline doctrine before the Fall of the Temple?

Examine the following statement:
"There might have been people called Jesus who claimed that they were Christ and there might not have been any who were called Christ."

Is that a fair statement?

It must be obvious that EVIDENCE must be provided to continue.

But, you can't remember YOUR professor.

I am talking about Jesus of the NT and I have my sources.

Lights out.

Mars Man

Thanks for getting back, aa5874. Yes, believe it or not, I am bit too busy to spend too much time on line.


Gottcha! We're talking about different things after all, then. Thanks for the heads up.

MM