Clivedurdle

This was said on Radio 4 Thought for the Day this morning, so I reacted and emailed them a link to jesus never existed.

Looking at jne, the style of that site does not work and therefore the arguments may not be listened to because of presentational issues.

To plant the seed of it ain't necessarily so requires a far more gentle nuanced approach.

In fact aa, is that your site or are you using it a huge amount?

How may we go about creating a readable summary of all the arguments? Is that needed to get the mj agenda on the mainstream agenda?

aa5874

I am not in any affiliated with the JNE site. I hardly visit the JNE site. My position with regards to Jesus, the disciples and Paul is being derived primarily from information found in the NT, the church writings, Jewish writings as provided by several sites including www.newadvent.org, www.earlychristianwritings.com and www.earlyjewishwritings.com.

Another useful source of information for me are those persons who post here and claim to be or appear to be HJers.

HJers complete failure to produce any good evidence for Jesus have destroyed their case for the HJ forever.

Now, it can be said without fear of contradiction that Jesus is the BEST documented MYTH.

For hundreds upon hundreds of years the Church has produced fictitious information to try to convince people that Matthew 1.18 is true when it is blatantly false.

Clivedurdle

Trading insults does not lead to resolution, only to louder assertions, and is clearly happening with the mythicist position, reactions of they are nutters and the going up of the walls of the city.

There is a real problem of one side asserting stuff, but having a huge weight of history and real temporal power - like the Pope, and getting unchallenged time on the BBC and the other being very weak.

This needs far better strategy than just chucking back more assertions like fiction and blatantly false.

Is it not the equivalent of shouting at a deaf person?

aa5874

Why do you think the truth is insulting?

Nothing is resolved when you hide from the facts.

I do not trade insults, I constantly present facts.

Some people can't hear the truth.

I am tired of people insulting my intelligence with blatant fiction as truth, while pretending that they are deaf and blind to reality.

jkhuss1

The Lord started out all the way back in Genesis stating what was to come to solve the problem of SIN. . .

Genesis 3:14-15
And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed. . .
And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

"The SEED of the WOMAN" - Men carry the seed, But this woman carries a seed that has powe to break the CURSE. . . A seed from God and not Man.

Is. 7:14 "A Virgin shall Conceive - His name shall be called Immanuel - GOD WITH US."

Matt. 1:18 Virgin Mary - immaculate conception. . . Jesus Christ - God in the Flesh. . . THe day that God came down. . .

Psalms 22 describes the whole event of what Jesus came to do. . .
Isaiah 53 describes the whole event of what Jesus came to do. . .
The Levitical sacrifices for sin is a shadow of what Jesus came to do. . .
God proving a replacement Lamb for Abrahams sacrifice of Isaac. . .
God slew an Innocent animal for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. . .

Revelation 12:17
And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.

"THE DEVIL HATES THE CHURCH"


The bible begins with the seed of the woman and ends with the seed of the woman. . .

God's word does not contradict itself about what Gods plan for man is. . .
Man contradicts the Bible and finds no justification in doing so. . .

Fictitious? This scriptures span thousands of years - and this is a very small portion of scripture pointing to Jesus. . .

THere are over 300 references to Jesus Christ coming in the Old Testiment. . . It all points to Him. . .

But there are 3 times more references of HIS Second Coming. . . And there are no contradictions to that - all bible prophecy is coming to a close. . .

spin

I'm sorry, jkhuss1, but I don't get the idea that you have grasped any notion of what history is about. History is about relating events in texts to events in the real world. It is the attempt at saying what really happened. It requires evidence from the time involved, such as a coin for example celebrating the battle of Philippi or an inscription commemorating such an event. This hard evidence provides foundations on which to build our knowledge from texts. It's very hard for someone with a knowledge of ancient Roman history to question the reality of the battle of Philippi or who won it. When we deal with a text that gives information about the struggle after the death of Caesar, we know that at least this event (at Philippi) actually happened, so the text dealing with such matters has at least that datum guaranteed. Then we can through in statues of Julius Caesar and young Octavian, of Mark Antony and Cicero, and there is basically no doubt as to the reality of the list of players.

It's at this point that objective criticism of the available literature can begin. The historian cannot but be a hard critic of the raw material of history, because every text has an attitude. Every text was written from a point or points of view, at a particular time or times and reflect those times, with certain presuppositions and background knowledge that mold the text being written. The historian's job is to hack at a text until they can yield information that must be considered for its historical relevance.

You make claims about text that tend to reflect not the text, but your desires of what the text should say. For example, you say

"THere are over 300 references to Jesus Christ coming in the Old Testiment. . . It all points to Him. . ."

In fact, there is not one mention of Jesus Christ in the Hebrew bible and not one of those 300 references you talk about must be considered for the historical relevance you impute. In short, what you are doing is called eisegesis, which is diametrically opposed to the process that a historian must perform.

Prophecy by its nature is cryptic and little analysed or understood by its believers. In fact a lot of what is peddled as prophecy turns out to have been misunderstood by those seeking to define something as prophecy. Virgin birth and nailing to the cross for example are simply lack of understanding of text. You might believe differently, but belief is not at issue when doing history. History requires you to be able to present evidence which a rational person who doesn't believe what you do so that that person must consider it for its historical relevance.

You will find that not that many people either christian or not will accept your data as evidence that must be considered. That means you are not doing history at all, because you are not providing information that passes muster as evidence.

To my eye you seem to be purveying a series of reveries that will be acceptible only to those who believe like you, leaving you with no objective controls for what you are saying. People can simply ignore your comments as though they were from a raving nutter, which is not your desire at all. If you want to make sense, you have to find a language that will communicate with your listener and here it is at least the semblance of rational objectivity. (I must admit that aa5874 has difficulty getting up to the "semblance" stage, but then not that many people listen to him either.)

What I'm telling you in part is that you won't communicate when you choose not to talk in a language that will be meaningful to your listeners. That language as I said requires a grammar of argument and a vocabulary of evidence.


spin

Huon

Let us go back to the OP :
Jesus better documented than any other ancient figure.

It is not the existence of JC or his non-existence which is questioned.

An irrefutable answer would be : JC is mentioned ONLY in the NT and other christian sources. During the times when he supposedly existed (as a man, of course) nobody remarked him, either Jews or Romans. And, what is more surprising, is that the reports of his trial and his supplice are not "standardized" in the gospels. I do not mention the resurrection, not historical.

So, Julius Caesar, Tiberius, the leaders of the jewish nationalist revolts, are much better documented than JC. Here is a list (probably incomplete) of candidates to the title of Messiah :
1. Judas, son of Hezekiah (4 BCE)
2. Simon of Peraea (4 BCE)
3. Athronges, the shepherd (4 BCE)
4. Judas, the Galilean (6 CE)
5. John the Baptist (c.28 CE)
6. Jesus of Nazareth (c.30 CE)
7. The Samaritan prophet (36 CE)
8. Theudas (45 CE)
9. The Egyptian prophet (52-58 CE)
10. An anonymous prophet (59 CE)
11. Menahem, the son of Judas the Galilean (66 CE)
12. John of Gischala (67-70 CE)
13. Simon bar Giora (69-70 CE)
14. Jonathan, the weaver (73 CE)
15. Simon ben Kosiba (132-135)

PhilosopherJay

Hi Clivedurdle,

The word "documented" is a rather odd word. Here is the Webster's online dictionary definition of the word "document" used as a verb

It is hard to say exactly what is meant by "documented" in this sentence.
Apparently, it does not refer to the concepts of "historical" or "actually existing"

If the statement is simply saying that there are a lot of documents relating to Jesus, I would have to say that he is the second best documented ancient figure, with Zeus and Hercules being the first and third best.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Clivedurdle

Thought for the day is a daily religious piece and the speaker asserted Jesus was both god and man!


In the middle of BBC news it was slightly surreal!

I am after a calm summary of the issues - AA, as Mary Poppins put it, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/thought//

Toto

What date was this and who was the speaker? Your link goes to Abdal Hakim Murad