Bernard Muller

I knew I was going to attract a reply like that, sooner or later!

You did not finish your pricy books: they do not seem to be so interesting (but you shun my free of charge website: go figure!). And what do you know after all that?
Your views are constantly shifting and ultra fluid and confused. You embrace a new theory at any time and juggle with different hypotheses in one go.
And in your answer to Bede, you totally ignore what I wrote to you on that same thread, some of which I fully documented in my pages.
Next time, I will not bother to answer your theory of the month (but I may criticize them).

Best regards, Bernard

Peter Kirby

This is all very unbecoming of you, just for the fact that I haven't completed reading (note: not shunned) your web site.

best,
Peter Kirby

Berenger Sauniere

Be fooled not by a mythographer's cartography, lest you end up where you need not be.

Bernard Muller

For your information, I am not a Christian, but a humanist. I do not like the term Atheist, because I do not want to be put on the spot about disproving a Creator of the Big Bang, or an Intervener in the process of evolution (to explain the still unexplained or still unproven or still debated by Scientists).
If in the very slim chance God exists (in my view), he is certainly not the one described (or implicated) in the OT & NT. Here, he is totally fictituous.
I am against any myths, from any side but certainly not against providing a well documented & precise road map to explain the beginning of Christianity.

Best regards, Bernard

leftfist

What connection do you believe the modern Mandaeans or Mandeans have to the Nazarenes or Nazareans? The Mandeans count John the Baptist as their last great prophet. They seem to refer to themselves as Nazarenes. They think Jesus lied and twisted the Baptist's teachings. etc

Peter Kirby

On the one hand, Mandaeanism is evidently a strain of gnosticism (Manda=knowledge and cosmology/language of the Mandaean writings is similar to earlier gnostic literature) that evolved in the early medieval period, with the camouflage of descent from a known revered prophet called John to protect against Muslim (and Christian) predators, thus surviving where others went extinct. On the other hand, it is quite likely that many of the original Nazaraeans held John the Baptist in high regard, though whether the founder was John or some unknown Jewish prophet cannot be speculated. I have very few opinions on who the Nazaraeans were except that they were Jewish and existed before Jesus.

best,
Peter Kirby

Bernard Muller

Ya, you are right on the last part, but antagonism like that could be expected between two competing cults. See John's gospel for the reverse, greatly demeaning JB, but having him glorifying Jesus/Son (Jn1:19-28, 3:26-36)

Connection? There is not enough evidence to say much about that.
I got the Nazorean part from this site:
Encyclopeadia of the Orient

Here is an extract:
>> The Mandean religion could be pre-Christian, or it could date to 1st or 2nd century CE. It could actually be John the Baptist who founded the sect, or they could be a continuation of the Jewish sect that John the Baptist belonged to (guessed to be the Esseneans).
However, elements of their language indicate that the community is of Jewish origin.
One of the texts of the Mandeans tell about a flight of a group called **'Nasoreans'**, from areas that probably were in today's Jordan, to the Mesopotamian region, in the times of the Jewish wars following the destruction of Jerusalem in year 70 CE. <<

Best regards, Bernard

offa

The idea that Jesus was born in Bethlehem is based on one chapter in
Matthew and one chapter in Luke. The only place where the word
"Bethlehem" appears in the New Testament, outside of the infancy
narratives of Matthew and Luke, is in John 7:42.

John 7:42. Others said, "He is the Christ." Still others asked, "How
can the Christ come from Galilee? Does not the Scripture say that the
Christ will come from David's family and from Bethlehem, the town
where David lived?"


We could read a little Josephus and get e few answers.

ANT 13.313 As he was saying this, and that in a melancholy mood,
the news came that Antigonas was slain in a place under
ground, which itself was called also Strato's Tower or of
the same name with that Cesarea which is seated at the
sea. This event put the prophet into a great disorder.


Josephus is teaching us the use of copying names for locations. He
tells us that there is more than one Strato's tower. He does not
reveal the location of the Strato's Tower where Antigonas was slain.
What the gullible reader does not perceive is that Josephus has
already practised this art of copying names of locations hundreds
of times.
Take Tyre for instance,

Ant 12-232 But still he made the entrances at the mouth of the
caves so narrow, that no more than one person could enter
them at once. And the reason why he built them after that
manner was a good one; it was for his own preservation,
lest he should be besieged by his brethren, and run the
hazard of being caught by them.

Ant 12-233 Moreover, he built courts of greater magnitude than
ordinary, which he adorned with vastly huge gardens. And
when he brought the place to this state, he named it
Tyre. This place is between Arabia and Judea, beyond the
Jordan, not far from the country of Heshbon.


This Tyre is located somewhere's in the Holy Land. Likewise,
Arabia and Hesbon are pseudo names. This location has caves and
these caves are common on the cliffs in the Qumran area and on the
precipices created by the wady's that empty into the Dead Sea.


Ant 08-050 Moreover, Hiram, king of Tyre, when he had heard
that Solomon succeeded to his father's kingdom, was very
glad of it, for he was a friend of David's. So he sent
ambassadors to him, and saluted him, and congratulated
him on the happy state of his affairs. Upon which Solomon
sent him an epistle, the contents of which here follow: -


The Tyre mentioned above will be the same location as the Tyre that
Hyrcanus built. What happens is that Solomon and king Hiram become
pseudo names for two other kings in an era several hundred years
later. Josephus planted this story about Hiram and Solomon in an
incorrect time frame and the gullible readers bought it. Josephus
is simply writing in the style that he was taught.


Ant 08-055 The copies of these epistles remain at this day, and
are preserved not only in our books, but among the
Tyrians also; insomuch that if anyone would know the
certainty about them, he may desire of the keepers of
public records of Tyre to show him, and he will find what
is there set down to agree with what we have said.


The above is a tip off. Why would Jewish records be kept on the
island of Tyre?

Obviously there are more than one Bethlehem!


Here is another one.

"The problem with this line of interpretation is that the Fourth
Evangelist insists from Chapter 1 onward that Jesus does come form
Nazareth (1:45-56), with all the scandal that causes even future
believers (e.g., Nathanael in 1:46). John's insistence on Nazareth as
the place of Jesus' earthly origins, a code word for the 'flesh' that
the Word becomes, returns with theological force in his Passion
Narrative (18:5,7; 19:19).


A proof that John was written first is a code word for the
'flesh' that the Word becomes, which tells us that Jesus IS
"the Word". He is mentioned by the authors of the other books in the
"New Testament" as "the Word".


thanks, Offa

offa

Edwin D. Freed writes: "There is no evidence whatsoever anywhere else
for Herod's murder of the children reported by Matthew. ... if he had
committed a deed so dastardly that it caused loud lamentation and
weeping among Jews (Mt. 2.18), it would not have gone unreported by
the Jew Josephus." (The Stories of Jesus' Birth, p. 102) More
important, however, are the facts that the story is a pre-existing
mythical topos for the birth of a king, that the story is intertwined
with the thoroughly implausible guiding star and court intrigue with
three wise men from afar, and that the whole narrative is composed
with an eye to fulfillment of scripture, quoted explicitly in vv. 6,
15, and 18.


Josephus DOES report the "slaughter of the innocent Children"
First, a little background,

"EndNote ANT 1.26">
Josephus here calls Ismael a young child or infant, though he was
about 13 years of age; as Judas calls himself and his brethren young
men, when he was 47, and had two children, Antiq. B. II. ch. 6. sect.
8, and they were of much the same age; as is a damsel of 12 years old
called a little child, Mark 5:39-42, five several times. Herod is also
said by Josephus to be a very young man at 25. See the note on Antiq.
B. XIV. ch. 9. sect 2, and of the War, B. I. ch. 10. And Aristobulus
is styled a very little child at 16 years of age, Antiq. B. XV. ch. 2.
sect. 6, 7. Domitian also is called by him a very young child, when he
went on his German expedition at about 18 years of age, of the War, B.
VII. ch. 4. sect. 2. Samson's wife, and Ruth, when they were widows,
are called children, Antiq. B. V. ch. 8. sect. 6, and ch. 9. sect. 23.

These innocent Children that Herod ordered to be slain were adults.
They were the "Children of GOD" or the "Children of the Father", but,
they were adults and one of the Children that escaped was Joseph. The
mentioned of "two years old or under" was Luke's sly way of telling
us that Jesus was that age.


Antiquities - Book 17
(157) so he caught no fewer than forty of the young men, who had
courage to stay behind when the rest ran away, together with the
authors of this bold action, Judas and Matthias, who thought it an
ignominious thing to retire upon this approach, and led them to the
king.
(158) And when they were come to the king, and he asked them if
they had been so bold as to pull down what he had dedicated to God,
"Yes", said they, "what was contrived we contrived, and what hath been
performed, we performed it; and that with such a virtuous courage as
to become men; for we have given our assistance to those things which
are dedicated to the majesty of God,
(159) and we have provided for what we have learned by hearing
the law; and it ought not to be wondered at, if we esteem those laws
which Moses suggested to him, and were taught him by God, and which
he wrote and left behind him, more worthy of observation than thy
commands. Accordingly we will undergo death and all sorts of
punishments which thou canst inflict upon us, with pleasure, since we
are conscious to ourselves that we shall die, not for any unrighteous
actions, but for our love to religion."
(160) And thus they all said, and their courage was still equal
to their profession, and equal to that with which they readily set
about this undertaking. And when the king had ordered them to be
bound, he sent them to Jericho, and called together the principle men
among the Jews;

The above story is about the innocent children that Herod had
ordered slain.



Antiquities - Book 17
(174) He commanded that all the principal men of the entire
Jewish nation wheresoever they lived, should be called to him.
Accordingly, there where a great number that came, because the whole
nation was called, and all men heard of this call, and death was the
penalty of such as should despise the epistles that were sent to call
them . And now the king was in a wild rage against them all, the
innocent as well as those that had afforded him ground for
accusations;
(175) and when they were come, he ordered them all to be shut up
in the hippodrome, and sent for his sister Salome, and her husband
Alexas, and spoke thus to them: - "I shall die in a little time, so
great are my pains; which death ought to be cheerfully borne, and to
be welcomed by all men; but what principally troubles me is this,
that I shall die without being lamented, and without such mourning as
men usually expect at a king's death."
(176) For that he was not unacquainted with the temper of the
Jews, that his death would be a thing very desirable, and exceedingly
acceptable to them; because during his lifetime they were ready to
revolt from him, and to abuse the donations he had dedicated to God:
(177) that it was therefore their business to resolve to afford
him so alleviation of his great sorrows on this occasion; for that,
if they do not refuse him their consent in what he desires, he shall
have great mourning at his funeral, and such as never any king had
before him; for then the whole nation would mourn from their very
soul, which otherwise would be done in sport and mockery only.
(178) He desired therefore that as soon as they see he hath
given up the ghost, they shall place soldiers around the hippodrome,
while they do not know that he is dead; and that they shall not
declare his death to the multitude till this is done, but they shall
give orders to have those that are in custody shot with their darts;
and that this slaughter of them all will cause that he shall not miss
to rejoice on a double account; that as he is dying, they will make
him secure that his will shall be executed in what he charges them to
do; and that he shall have the honor of memorable mourning at his
funeral.


The above is about the innocent children Herod ordered slain. These
are principle men and the same persons in both paragraphs.


(193) But then Salome and Alexas, before the king's death was
made known, dismissed those that were shut up in the hippodrome, and
told them that the king ordered them to go away to their own lands,
and take care of their own affairs, which was esteemed by the nation
a great benefit;


So, innocent children were ordered slain but they were released after
Herod's death.

The problem with biblical scholars is their verbatim translation
of Scripture. They drink the milk instead of eating the meat.

thanks, Offa

JoeWallack

JW:
Outside of Polemics the objective Bible scholar does not need to be restrained by the Christian assumption that the Supernatural is possible. If you start with the logical assumption that the Supernatural is not possible then "Mark" contains an Apology which supports "Nazareth" as Jesus' "home":

Mark 6: (NIV)

1 "Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. 2 When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were amazed.
3 "Where did this man get these things?" they asked. "What's this wisdom that has been given him, that he even does miracles! Isn't this the carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son and the brother of James, Joseph,[1] Judas and Simon? Aren't his sisters here with us?" And they took offense at him.
4 Jesus said to them, "Only in his hometown, among his relatives and in his own house is a prophet without honor." 5 He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. 6 And he was amazed at their lack of faith."

If you assume that the Supernatural is not possible then the historical Jesus did not perform miracles anywhere. If original Christianity knew that Nazareth was Jesus' home then when Christians went to Nazareth and asked the natives about Jesus the natives would say that the Jesus of Nazareth didn't do any miracles there. Subsequently "Mark" spun this as a fulfillment of prophecy, the reason Jesus couldn't do many miracles in his hometown was because there was a prophecy which said he wouldn't. Of course it's also possible that the original Christians only thought Nazareth was Jesus' home and received the same answer from the locals, "We don't know what the hell you're talking about."

This Natural explanation that Nazareth never knew a miracle performing Jesus because miracles are impossible also fits in nicely with the big picture of the authorship of the Christian Bible. The Christian Bible had to be written anonymously because it only could have been written by people who didn't know the historical Jesus or anyone who knew him and when subsequent Christianity "interviewed" the actual authors it dismissed them as the actual authors because they didn't know the historical Jesus and once Christianity had eliminated the actual authors as the actual authors only non-authors were left to choose from.


Joseph

PRAY, v.
To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

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