sotto voce

If there are many absurdities, how is it that this birth story is being read today?

aa5874

It is TODAY that the Jesus stories are considered absurd.

1800 years ago, the Christians called Marcionites Ridiculed those who believed the Jesus story although Marcion and the Marcionites believed in some other ABSURDITY called a Phantom.

You should also know that in the 4th century, during a time of Constantine, it would have been extremely difficult to state that the birth story was absurd.

It is clear to me that human beings have believed ABSURDITIES for thousands of years even up to TODAY.

Help eliminate the Belief in Absurdities.

Diogenes the Cynic

Israelite" is not synonomous with "Jew." That former is generally used to refer to the period before the Babylonian exile. They weren't even really "Jewish" yet. "Jews" are post- "Israelite."
The Romans had nothing to do with it. There was nothing for the Romans to destroy. If there were any genealogical records destroyed (and it's doubtful any existed except for royalty), the Babylonians and the Assyrians and the Greeks got to them long before the Romans.
There are two conflicting genealogies for Joseph in the NT. both of them allege descendancy from legendary, (and in Luke's case) purely fictional characters. Which one of the genealogies do you believe is the real one, and upon what do you base your assertion that it was "preserved" from anything? Luke's genealogy goes back to Adam. Do you think that Adam was a real person and Luke's genealogy is based on some genuinely preserved record?
Neither one of these statements is accurate.
What are you talking about? They were laborers who worked piecemeal. If they were hired to fix a wall, they fixed a wall. They didn't pack up and leave before it was done. Where are you getting that? What are you referring to?
They weren't skilled workers, that's just it. They were grunts. They humped rocks and cut wood. They weren't craftsmen.
What do you mean by "not promising?" Not promising of what? And yes, most of the world was illiterate. That's why it's so implausible that a sub-peasant day-laborer would be literate.
Who said it did? I didn't say Joesph couldn't have owned property because he was illiterate. I said it was implausible that a tekton would own property because it such an impoverished class.


What is this supposed to be refuting? The peasant classes who worked the land did not own it or reap any wealth for it. They were subsistence sharecroppers. The wealth went to a small, elitist overclass. The brutal exploitation of the vast majority by a rich minority is the subject of a lot of the polemic in the sayings attributed top Jesus. The fact that the soil was rich doesn't mean that the people were.

Even the fishing villages did not reap the wealth of their own lake. Fishermen like the one Jesus is said to have evangelized didn't get to keep, or even eat their own fish. The lake was "sharecropped" like the fields.

Diogenes the Cynic

How is it that The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is still being read today?

sotto voce

There is no implication of that.

I wrote 'Jew' meaning that this was, and remains, an unofficial term. I'm sorry that I did not make myself clear. The tribes that went to make 'Jews' were Israelites. The term 'Jews' was one applied by others for centuries before the southern tribes did so of themselves, and 'Israelite' is applicable now, on the understanding that no-one can now prove himself an Israelite or Jew as Joseph did.

I hope that is perfectly clear.

Evidence?

Diogenes the Cynic

Evidence of what claim, exactly? That all of those other entities sacked Israel and Judea (and repeatedly looted the Temple) before the Romans did?

You are the one claiming these records ever existed at all. What is your basis for that? you claimed the Romans destroyed them. What is your basis for that?

sotto voce

Because people are so convinced that Jesus died for them that they will make themselves apparently insane on that account.

I may be mistaken, of course, in which case the world is about to embark on a new age of peace, concord and equitable dealing.

sotto voce

The one in quotes. You understand your own words, I take it.

Diogenes the Cynic

You seeming to be demanding proof of the negative. What is the evidence fr your own assertion that people kept written family records, or that the Romans destroyed them?

What is your evidence that either of the genealogies in the NT were "preserved" from prior sources rather than fabricated by the authors?

sotto voce

Of what was claimed.

So the Babylonians, Greeks and Assyrians didn't destroy family records.