Iasion

Greetings sky kunde,

Thank you :-)

Perhaps you'd like to evaluate Roger's critique of my list ?
http://groups.google.com/group/soc.h...abaabef92abe1e

Sources can be found at Peter Kirby's
http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/


Iasion

Iasion

Greetings,

Well, let's look at the first item :


Hmmm.
I quoted a standard translation of Photius.
Here is Roger's version :

he does not even mention the coming of Christ, the events of his life, or the miracles performed by Him.

Well,
these 2 sentences seem to be almost the same.

My version :
"He makes not one mention of Jesus,
of what happened to him,
or of the wonderful works that he did."

Roger's version :
"he does not even mention the coming of Christ,
the events of his life,
or the miracles performed by Him."

Some slight differences of wording, that's all.


But Roger says Photius says "nothing of the kind" ?!

Pardon?
My version is almost the same as Roger's version.
But he pretends otherwise.


Likewise to what?
Anyone can find Photius if they look.


Frankly Roger, this is beneath you.


Iasion

FatherMithras

The portion about Jesus is regarded by scholars as either being a totally crrrupted passage of mistranslation or a deliberate insertion after the fact. Have you read any of it? NO. I bet you haven't. Plase stop making arguments you know nothing about.

Your beliefs are completely irrelevant. The Bible is clearly not an accurate text, as has been demonstrated by archeology and numerous historical writings. The Gospels were written at least 40 years after Jesus's death, and probably more. According to the way you determine validity, the Koran is a valid source too! EXCEPT that we know more about Muhammad, and can prove beyong a shadow of a doubt he lived!

dark empathy

we should make a poll but, who here thinks that jesus actually existed?

Zeichman

No, the best evidence against pink unicorns is that they do not fit within accepted biological theories (namely, darwinism). YOUR way would have us believing that the "missing links" were ahistorical.

I think the absence of evidence would be more damning if:
a) an illiteracy rate upwards of 90% was untrue during that time
b) the marginalized audience which the pre-gospel "Galilean" traditions were aimed at
c) we didn't already know that early christian documents, namely pre-gospel sayings and deeds collections were lost.

Mountain Man

It's been, more or less, proven that the parts of Josephus that talked about a jesus, are interpolations. Forgeries. Pretty good reason not to believe him.

Mountain Man

Then we do not agree. There were many people at that time with the name of Jesus. The specific jesus of the bible is probably more of a compilation of several people, or entirely made up.Again, we do not agree. The bible is not proof of anything except the staying power of bad literature. Since none of the authors of the bible ever met this jesus, there is no reason to believe what they claim. They don't even agree with each other.

Mountain Man

I have no idea what you mean my "darwinism." Then your argument from ignorance that we have no evidence for a god would be equally as invalid.None of that matters. There is no evidence that a god exists, and no evidence the jesus of the bible existed. Both go against accepted biological and scientific theories. Since they are posing exceptional beings they need to provide exceptional proofs. Evidence isn't going to cut it, they need to provide proofs.

hjalti

Thanks for the links.

Andrewcriddle's link says that "Iesu iou" means "Jesus, help" but Toto's says "Jesus Yahewh", which one is right?

If it says Jesus Yahweh and uses crosses, isn't that a little bit strange?
One could argue that these ossuaries show that Christians did use the cross as a symbol in the first century (I know, it's a terrible argument, but I'm sure some Christians would use it). But what groups used crosses? And is it common to find ossuaries with the name of god (iou) on them?

Roger Pearse

There is only one English translation of Photius, by J.H.Freese. You should quote from that, as I do.

By 'standard' I think you mean only that you see it repeated a lot in atheist literature. Does it ever appear elsewhere?

It's deliberately misleading, and I think we both know it. I don't have a lot of time for the author of that 'quote' -- omitting half a sentence in order to make the rest seem more striking is ethically dubious.

He also chose to omit the other comments of Photius, that the whole text is both brief and largely spurious, in order that the reader may suppose the absence of mention is significant. In my view this involves deliberate deception of the unwary reader. And you yourself have been so deceived. Had you read the full codex when the issue arose, you could never have supposed it to support your case.

Omission and selection is the essence of misrepresentation, in my humble opinion.

I need merely comment that Iasion has chosen to omit half the sentence, and the entire context in which Photius said it. Since the entire codex is only a few lines, it takes little imagination to realise that mischief must be intended by such abbreviation.

Indeed.

There are various terms for someone who is editing someone's sentences to make them give an impression that the full text does not give. I have studiously refrained from using them.

Surely an honest man must quote all of Photius' remarks on Justus or none of them.

All the best,

Roger Pearse