InnocentSmith

Then I suppose you wouldn't mind citing it.

Crowley

Thank you spin, Pete, and Toto for the useful information and links.

This is the argument that I have the most difficulty with when discussing the truth of Christianity with Christians.

They ask the question, "Well, if there was no Jesus, then why are there written accounts, testimony and letters about him? Even if they occurred a hundred years later there had to be some event that caused them to be written. Occam's Razor would indicate that the simplest explanation is Jesus was a real person and delivered a message of salvation."

I just wanted information to formulate at least a plausible alternate explanation to refute them as I do not think that the man named Jesus (Yesuah?) spoken of in the bible ever existed. I guess I am a supporter of the MJ theory.

Thanks.

PS. Does schilling.klaus often make unsubstantiated statements of fact?

Amaleq13

Yes though we've seen some addition of substance lately. I suspect he has plenty to offer, however. :huh:

Ben C Smith

:rolling:

The question is: Does he ever make anything but unsubstantiated statements of fact?

Ben.

schilling.klaus

no, the only ones who do so are those who try to fool you into buying into the authenticity of fraudulent forgeries such as Paul's epistles.


Klaus Schilling

Vivisector

Great post - my compliments.

V.

Clivedurdle

Pretty please, can we throw in a slave religion? Not sure what category that would fit in - weapon of war category?

And is not Atwill arguing it might be some form of Emperor's private entertainment that got religified, a bit like us making a religion out of a Sherlock Holmes story?

Minimalist

I've always been fascinated by this fact, Spin. One thing is that Aretas III conquered Damascus in 85 BC and ruled it for 20+ years. AS you say, I have checked Suetonius, Tacitus and Josephus for references to Aretas getting hold of Damascus from the Romans and it is simply not there. Josephus mentions the people of Damascus rioting and murdering Jews after the attack on Cestius Gallus' legion in 66 which would seem to be an odd reaction for a non-Roman town. In either case, Josephus says nothing to indicate that Damascus was anything but Roman at the time.

But, to go back to Aretas III for a moment. He was not operating in a vacuum he was a player in the first century BC. In 87/86 the Hasmonean king, Alexander Jannaeus, massacred Pharisees...oddly enough by crucifixion, according to Josephus. While this civil war was raging in Judaea, Aretas made his move on Damascus. He later supported Hyrcanus II against Aristobulus.

Is it so difficult to imagine a scenario in which Jewish pharisees, having escaped Jannaeus and fled to Damascus, suddenly found themselves having to flee again when Damascus was taken by the Nabateans? How can we be so certain that what shows up in "Paul" is not a garbled reference to these events of the first century BC instead of the first century AD. The only thing to support a Nabataean presence in Damascus in 40 AD is the bible and as a historical source that is damn near worthless. Actual history provides not a lick of evidence for that scenario.

spamandham

At present, there are no satifactory theories IMHO, because we are still just trying to make sense out of all the pieces.

People talk about dating the texts as being a problem, and argue whether Mark was written first, or whether Paul was first, etc. But this is too simplistic. The texts we have were not written at one sitting. All of them show signs of being added to over the years.

Paul's letters show the greatest evidence of tampering, with entire books being fraudulently accredited to him. Even in the genuine Pauline epistles, we see what look to be large degrees of tampering. For example, 1 Cor. 15:3-11 appears to be a much later insertion.

So we can't just date the texts, we have to play archeaologist and identify and date the various strata in the texts.

That said, this vast tampering with Paul's texts vs. the other texts we have available (the other books in the NT as well as the writings of the early church fathers) suggest that Paul really did write first.

If we look at Paul, and remove the known forgeries, as well as the suspected ones, and are careful not to project the Gospel story into what's left, you end up with a Christ character who is very mysterious. It's no longer clear whether this Jesus is mystical, legendary, recently historical (to Paul), or a character from the Jewish scriptures (to include noncanonical scriptures Paul would probably have considered 'scripture', like the books of Enoch).

WARNING! What follows is speculation! I can not prove it, so don't ask me to! If you want a debate about it, stop reading now.

For entertainment purposes only.

My own speculation (not yet a developed theory), is that the ultimate trigger that spawned Christianity is the dawn of the new age of Pisces. The way I speculate it happened, is that Daniel predicted the Messiah to coincide with the dawning of the new age. Jews who might otherwise have simply submitted to Rome were emboldened by the expectation of the returning Messiah, which actually led to the Jewish wars. The time for the Messiah came and passed and he didn't show up, so they began pouring through the scriptures trying to figure out why he had not shown up.

They associated their own suffering with Psalm 22 and Isaiah 54, and somebody (probably Paul) came to see the predicted Messiah as an allegory for the Jewish people themselves (you see this type of back and forth equivocation between rulers and those rulers all throughout the OT, so this would not be an unusual thing to do). This was the trigger. This group [I]knew[I] the importance of the new astrological age in their theology, which is why Pisces symbolism was so prevalent in early Christianity.

Then, in 70 CE, Rome sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. It was the equivalent of a humiliating public execution for the Jewish nation. This is the point at which someone concocted an allegorical fiction, drawing on the Jewish scriptures to compose it in a way Jews would appreciate. This author chose crucifixion to symbolize what happened to Israel in 70 CE.

As the 2nd century unfolded, new Greek Christians read these stories and didn't realize they were allegorical fictions. They believed Jesus to be a historical character. Yet they saw problems with that, such as a missing lineage, etc., so they rewrote the original allegorical fiction Gospel to add these historicizing details. By now, Jesus had been equated with a god, as would be typical for Greeks to do, but specifically, the Jewish god since Judaism was the heritage of Christianity. While this was going on, the original Pauline sect, now influenced by this idea that Jesus was historical, began to view Jesus as both spiritual (related to the allegory of his origin) and historical. This spawned Marcion's docetic view.

As the ranks of Christianity grew, structure arose in the organization. Those at the top felt threatened by the competing Marcion sect, so they first tried to discredit it. When that failed, they syncretized the Pauline sect into the Catholic sect. By this time, Marcion had already died, and his sect was dwindling anyway, so it was easy to convince them that Paul was part of the historical Jesus story all along.

That particular sect came to dominate, because it was easy to join, simple to understand, and not so different from other Greek religions anyway. The Jewish sects of Christianity appealed only to Jews (due to the circumcision requirement), and the gnostic versions of Christianity required a long series of rituals to slowly earn the right to gnosis.

When Constantine came to power, Christianity and the cult of Sol Invictus were the two dominant religions, so he combined them into what we know as Christianity.

Clivedurdle

And Aretas does link to Pompey, in Palestine fresh from crucifying slaves.

Might the gospels and Paul actually be originally from the time of Pompey?

A good look at the Pharisees - who were not hypocrites but proto human rights activists is definitely worth doing.

Has anyone tracked what documents have been in whose hands? Are there any that have not been transcribed by a xian scribe?


This does look as if it has been through several metamorphoses - possible BCE, around 70, around 140 and several points in the 300's and onwards.