ynquirer

On the one hand, one would expect Jewish historians to mention Jesus. After all, Jesus set in motion a new ‘tribe’ – according to Josephus – and this couldn’t pass unnoticed. Josephus, the only one that had opportunity to mention Jesus and is still available, did mention him.

On the other, one would not expect many Roman historians to mention Jesus very early. Jesus was important for them as far as he started off a religion that became paramount in Rome. Therefore, what was important for them was Christians rather than Jesus – Pliny the Younger being the first to try to understand the Christian faith, with no mention of Jesus. Later on, Suetonius also mentioned the Christians but wrongly believed the faith to be of a Grecian origin. Tacitus quite correctly depicts – in all likelihood by using Josephus as a source – Christianity as a faith originated in Judaea in the life and death of Christus, who was crucified by Pilate.

All in all, dissemination of the earliest news on Jesus followed a reasonable pattern.

No Robots

This was an insight common to all the great iron age civilizations, as Mansueto makes clear:

In all of the principal civilizational centers the basic process leading up to these breakthroughs was, furthermore, the same. First there was a gradual process of rationalization. This process is most apparent in Greece, where we can trace a step by step movement from Homer, for whom the gods are essentially characters in a story, superhuman perhaps, but no less individuals with distinct personalities, through Hesiod, for whom they have become personified natural forces, the natural philosophers (Thales, Anaximenes, Heraclitus) for whom anthropomorphic gods have given way to abstract natural forces (water, air, fire) fire), and finally Pythagoras and the post-Pythagorean philosophers (Xenophanes, Anaximander) who describe the first principle in mathematical terms (the Infinite, the One, etc.).

In Israel, similarly, we see a movement from the still largely anthropomorphic 'el yahwi sabaoth yisrael, to the God revealed in Exodus 3:13ff, who tells Moses that His name is eyeh asher. Eyeh is the imperfect indicative form of the verb "to be" indicating that this God is Being itself, acting still.

In the same passage we also find the revelation of the name (YHWH), which is the causative form of the verb "to be," and points even more clearly to recognition of God as the power of Being as such.

This same process of rationalization can be traced in India and China as well.

--Spirituality and Dialectics By Anthony E. Mansueto, p. 75

Tao, Being, the One, the Absolute, the Ideal, Jahve, Brahma: these all designate the same apperception of the ultimate.

aa5874

Your post is filled with mis-leading information.

You really cannot determine that Suetonius was mistaken about Christians, when you have no idea who the word "Christians" apply to.

It may be that the Christians in Suetonius were NEVER believers in Jesus, were NEVER affiliated with any doctrine, teachings, or sects and were NEVER even heard the name.

Suetonius mentioned ChrEstus, not ChrIstus, and why would Suetonius be mistaken? Is it that whatever you say Must be true?


Tacitus NEVER mentioned that Christus was crucified, he never mentioned the age of Christus, or when Christus suffered the ultimate penalty, you cannot just ASSUME that anywhere you see Christus that it must mean whatever you think it should mean.

If Christus was killed in the 14th year , or earlier, of the reign of Tiberius, then based on the gospel of Luke, Christus would not be Jesus of the NT.

And, you do not know what source Tacitus used, if there was a real human Christus and was known by Romans, including Pilate, and they were seeking to kill him or have him executed, unlike Jesus of the NT, where Pilate did not appear to be aware of the status of Jesus, there may have been other sources that could have provided information that Chritus was killed when Pilate was governor of Judaea.

Now, if Christianity originate in Judaea, can you name the source external of the NT and Church writers, that can corroborate such a claim?


Your posts is not very factual at all.

mountainman

Not according to the carbon dating citations. The earliest news citing some Jesus - any Jesus - are clustered very very very late with respect to the traditional chronology for the existence either of Jesus, or his followers (of any shape or form). If you were to examine the basis for the reasonableness of this "pattern" you will find it to be conjectural and/or reliant upon the victorious christian ecclesiatical historians of the fourth and fifth centuries of our common era.



Best wishes,



Pete

dog-on

Then you have to show that the Gospels are not, simply, fiction.

Good luck... :rolling:

bacht

Okay, I think I understand where you're going. There were some interesting ideas floating around in the 6th C BC: the pre-Socratic Greeks, the Zoroastrians, the teaching of Siddhartha, Confucius, the exilic Jewish prophets...

Should we consider the mystery of the Name to be occult knowledge, known and understood by only a few at the time? The level of literacy was fairly low before Hellenistic times wasn't it?

No Robots

The leadership of the folk do occultize the spiritual principle, perverting it into a scholastic/priestly hierarchy, ultimately making it an offense even to say it, except for the high priest once a year on the Day of Atonement. But the priests really have only a very limited understanding of what it is that they are devoting themselves to.

The prophets, on the other hand, do understand the essence of the spiritual principle. They continually try to de-occultize it, and this leads to constant warfare between themselves and the priestly hierarchy. Even the prophets, though, are uneven in their ability to fully apprehend and communicate the spiritual ideal.

The profound truth of the name, then, is only very rarely completely apprehended, and anyone who attempts to communicate such an apprehension is immediately alienated from the folk and its leaders.