Chuckling Atheist

Mark, Matthew, and Luke say the sky darkened three hours before Jesus' death and the veil of the temple being split at the moment he died.

Why would it be the wrong time of the year of a solar eclipse?

Anat

Wrong time of the *month*. Solar eclipses occur when the moon covers the sun, thus can only happen at the end of the lunar month, while Passover is celebrated on the full moon, in the middle of Nisan.

fromdownunder

I tend to accept a historical Jesus on the basis of the legitimate Pauline letters (and yes, I know he never met Jesus), the Gospel that is known as Mark and the two references in Josephus (one of which has certainly been interpolated, but not in full), where he is effectively a throwaway line, because Josephus was primarily concerned with his brother James.

However I can still claim to be an atheist, and will strongly argue that we know so little about Jesus the man, that we cannot be certain about anything else about him, including:

his birth, because there are contradictions in the literature;
his death (see above)
the resurrection (see above)

If that makes me a closet Christian in some peoples eyes, that is their problem, not mine.

Norm

Chuckling Atheist

I did type year, didn't I. :blush:

Thomas II

"Worthy of supporting the religious claims"...?:huh:
Who found that?
Finding a possible actual person has NOTHING to do with finding "a god".
The "GOD" is a Roman creation.
Why bother at all with the non-god dude?
Simply for historical accuracy.
What one can not do is erase any possible real person in order to erase any possible divine person.
I START from the premise that the whole "DIVINE person" thing is a mythical creation.
Then I look to see WHO WAS ACTUALLY the person used by believers as their "DIVINE PERSON".
Could be one person or several individuals as the basis for the "divine character".
For the sake accuracy and truth, one looks to see who, if any,was actually there...
But I have no other interest in the character found than I would have for any other historical person. For example, if I would do a study of Alexander the Great,I would like to know the nuances
of his character,of his personality, beside the fact that he was born here, fought there, and died over there...

Thomas II

A darkening ski has that anthropomorphic connotation of "god angry" or "god in a somber mood" As if...!
I guess god was not that somber when they were beating the crap out of Jesus, or even when he was being nailed to a cross...
Only when he died did God become somber and maybe even moderately angry...:huh:
One would think that when god gets angry there would be some serious fire and brimstone, or some category 5 tornado, or something like that...
After all, they don't call a cat 5 tornado "the finger of God" for nothing...
But apparently nothing "major" was recorded...

Diogenes the Cynic

Yes but you claimed it was recorded by Josephus. It wasn't.
It was the wrong time of the month, not year. Passover happens during the full moon and eclipses cannot happen during a full moon (because the moon is on the opposite side of the earth from the sun).

Gooch's dad

Thanks for starting this thread, Chris. I agree that such ad hominems are just unacceptable at IIDB, most especially in an upper forum like BC&H.

Count me as another HJ'er atheist, btw.

jjramsey

Side note, just to clear up some errors:

Apollonius did not claim to be a Messiah, nor was he a Jew, and IIRC, there is no record in the ancient sources about him being crucified. Some good information on him is here: http://www.livius.org/ap-ark/apollon...tml#Evaluation

Doug Shaver

The only thing that can disqualify a person from being an atheist is to affirm the existence of a god.

No other statement can be inconsistent with atheism. You can believe every word in the gospels except the parts the reference God. You can believe not only that Jesus was real but that he actually rose from the dead, as long as you think no god had anything to do with making it happen.