Minimalist

Alas, Toto, you what they say about people who "assume?"

Toto

I am less and less convinced that we have any need to recover the Jesus of history. He's dead and not coming back if he ever lived. The lunatics who think that he defines life itself are not going to be impressed in any case. It might be time to move on.

aa5874

Ok. We have a proposition, Jesus was a lunatic.

You think that is good news to the Jews at around 33 CE?

figuer

Evidently it wasn't, or Jews would have become Christians massively... but what to some is lunacy to others is divinity.

Littlejohn

"..Jesus of WHERE?.."..Of Nazareth!

Have been found some remains of the settlement of Nazareth. It was a modest village and NOT a small town, as counterfeiters have make to believe to tens and tens of generations of faithful. Also at the site were also found ancient "tanks" or pools. What, the latter, which did "shout" the counterfeiter apologists for evidence that Nazareth was a city inhabited predominantly by the Romans, as the discovery of tanks did mistakenly think (it was known, in fact, that one of the first buildings that the Romans did, in their urban settlements, were the public baths)

The discovery of these tanks was extremely important for me, because this has confirmed the intuition that I had while I was reading the works of Hippolytus.

"..Did you write Nazareth?.."

Yes, I am writing Nazareth, although, almost certainly, not this was the original name, which, however, was a little different. Please, note that the Nazarenes were not deriving their name from Nazareth, but it was exactly the opposite. I want to say that Nazareth was to be called so, as inhabited by Nazarenes and NOT vice versa.

"..Now, which book or source are you using to support your claim that there was a person called Jesus who was in a city called Nazareth during the time of Tiberius?.."

Regarding Jesus, testimonies of its existence are even redundants: whether those known now from various sources (New Testament, patristics, gnostics, apocrypha, manicheans, pagans, rabbinicals and mandaeans) and those that one would could know if the true historic profile of Jesus was revealed. (this is an extremely complex aspect, which has allowed to the Catholic clergy to take up the deception until to our days)

The name "Jesus" (from the greek "Ihsous" and NOT by the hebraic "Yehoshuah") was not quite a name, but rather an attribute, and he had become known by such indicative only in the area where this attribute was associated with his figure.

Until when Jesus resided in Palestine, he was not at all called "Jesus", but, up to a certain point, with his real registered name, then with "artistic" names(*). He became "Jesus" in the Roman province of Asia Minor. In Rome this pseudo name was completely unknown, until he remained alive. As regards Nazareth, it is valid what has been said above.

This is your conviction and I respect it. I have said many times that I am not writing to convince someone about "my" truth, but only to provide "ideas" for research, accompanied, whenever it is possible, even from useful data.

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Note:

(*) - The tendency of Jesus to change his identity is also outlined in the canonical Gospels, where it is narrated that Jesus went to Jerusalem, during a festival, under false identities, to avoid being recognized by Jews in the service of priests, who would could kill him. So it's clear the thing: it was known that Jesus had a habit of changing identity and mystified this aspect in inventing that Jesus did this once and to protect his life by "bad" Jews!

Littlejohn

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figuer

It is surprising that some insist in denying that there is evidence regarding a historical Jesus. The Bible is evidence, the fact of Christianity is evidence. Certainly this evidence doesn't constitute proof of any kind, since the Bible is quite unreliable as a historical document, but nonetheless it can not be discounted as a source.

Doug Shaver

It might say something about the emotionalism that attaches to both sides of this debate.

I doubt Jesus' historicity myself, but I have never denied that there is evidence for it. On the other hand, some historicists seem to think that the best evidence of the lot is Paul's reference to James as "brother of the lord." If that's their smoking gun, then their case is in deep trouble.

mountainman

The tendency of Jesus to change his identity is also provided in a number of non canonical gospels and acts, such as:


Acts of John

The author also relates that Jesus was constantly changing shape, appearing sometimes as a small boy, sometimes as a beautiful man; sometimes bald-headed with a long beard, sometimes as a youth with a pubescent beard (§ 87-89)


Acts of Thomas

The author presents Jesus as a slave master who sells his apostle Thomas to a travelling indian merchant in the market place as a slave. Jesus also appears quite separately as a master physician.


"Acts of Andrew and Matthias"

Jesus appears TWICE in the form of a beautiful young child.


"Acts of Peter and Andrew"


The tendency of Jesus to change his identity appears to be well recorded by the non canonical corpus of new testament literature.

Best wishes,


Pete

Minimalist

Is the fact that millions of people worshipped the Olympian gods "evidence" that they were "real?"

Thousands of religions have been concocted by the fertile imagination of humans. Was Zeus real? Was Apollo....Jupiter.... Osiris..... Ishtar..... etc, etc?

thedistillers

Try to do history without "assuming" anything. You will not go very far. You'll be stuck at where aa5874 is.

Some people keep babbling we cannot recover anything about Jesus, because they want certainties. They want everything to be labelled as either true or false. But history is not a rigid discipline like math.