Celsus

Or both.

Joel

Iasion

Greetings again,

Pardon?
G.Matthew and its stories were totally unknown until early-mid 2nd century - not one single Christian makes any mention of the empty tomb story until more than a CENTURY after the alleged events. How do YOU explain this?

Both the empty tomb story and the Jewish response are fiction arising long, long after the alleged events.

How on earth can you claim this is "contemporary" ?


Interestingly, the theme of an empty tomb discovery as a dramatic story climax is found in Roman FICTION of the first century - Chariton's "Chareas and Callirhoe" (sp?) (has anyone got this online yet?)

There is little in the NT that looks like history and much that looks like legends - ESPECIALLY the empty tomb story.


Iasion

Koyaanisqatsi

Well, first of all, Acts does not say whether or not James was "martyrd" in the slightest. It just claims that Herod killed him with a sword because he wished to do evil to the assembly (not "church," btw). "Martydom" is what one side says of their own heroes, but it is a completely worthless and arbitrary designation.

Setting aside the extreme unlikelihood of that scenario (at best, Herod would have ordered James' death, not killed him himself), the assembly would have been (and apparently was) viewed as being non-orthodox Jews, so if any of them were persecuted, it wouldn't be because they believed in a resurrection, but because they were being "bad" Jews, following a (false) prophet who preached a blasphemous revision of their god's dietary, hygiene and marriage laws.

In other words, the persecution would have been from orthodox Jews against reformist Jews and not necessarily because these reformists believed in a resurrection (or that Jesus was God or any of the other later century interpolations).

It wouldn't necessarily be a crime to believe that a prophet had risen from the dead, even a false prophet, but it would have been a crime to break any of their god's dietary, hygiene, marriage, and/or sabbath laws as Mark has them doing for the majority of his gospel.

Which is to say, James and Peter wouldn't have been persecuted necessarily (if they were) for believing in Jesus, they would have been persecuted for not following orthodoxy.

What's the difference, you ask? Christians make it seem as if early "Christians" were persecuted because they believed Jesus to be "the" messiah (a misnomer, since there were several "messiahs" prophesied, but no matter) and/or "the" son of God and/or God, and that "the Jews" (always plural, non-specific) hunted them down specifically because of these beliefs (always implying, of course, that they were doing this because they were evil), but that wouldn't have been the reason for their alleged persecution by other Jews. It would have been (if at all), because they weren't following orthodox rules (i.e., god's rules; i.e., they weren't keeping proper sabbath, they were eating the wrong foods, etc., etc., etc.).

And let's not forget that all Jews were being persecuted in those days (and today). Christians only care about their own precious idols, of course, so this fact always gets ommitted in favor of making it seem as if everyone just hated the Christians for knowing the "real truth," so they must be killed for their knowledge or they're not special and their "truth" isn't "real."



That's just selective, biased, nonsensical mythmaking in the extreme. There's nothing unique or relevant about people being killed for their beliefs (or lack thereof) and the fact that they were (if they were) doesn't lend any credence at all to the veracity of those beliefs, or every single Nazi who was ever killed or the assholes in the airplanes that slammed into the WTC, or the "witches" and Jews and pagans who were killed by the Christians were all dying for "true" beliefs.

It's just one more way for Christians to pretend that they've got special knowledge, but if any of them actually thought for ten seconds about the area and what was going on at that time, they'd see that any deviant thinking from the oppressor's view was fair game for persecution. That's what "oppression" means.

Vorkosigan

That's my view. But it is difficult to prove that the passage is an interpolation. But clearly Acts can't be right on this, perhaps the most important event in early Christianity after the death of Jesus and the conversion of Paul.

Amlodhi

Hello Vorkosigan,

While I agree, overall, with the points both you and Iason have raised, you are in error on this point.

The James killed according to Acts was James the brother of John, the son of Zebedee; not James the brother of the Lord who is later written about by Josephus.

James, the brother of John in Acts, would have been killed in the reign of Herod Agrippa I who died in A.D. 44.

An easy mistake to make, as there are alot of James, Herods and Agrippas to keep track of.


Namaste'

Amlodhi

capnkirk

Presuming momentarily (purely for argument's sake) that there was a historical Jesus (Note: I didn't say Christ), has anyone asked the question WHY either Herod (Agrippa II) or the High Priest (Ananias) would want to kill James in the first place?

IMHO, the answer is that James, head of the Jerusalem 'church' comprised of observant Jews who believed Jesus was a Jewish Messiah (which made Jesus and his movement a political threat to the Romans), would naturally incur the wrath of Herod (appointed King by Rome) and the High Priest (a Sadducee appointed by the Roman governor) as a seditionist against Rome.