Joan of Bark

I would go one step further and say that even if the HJ existed, he had little impact on Christianity -- at least compared to Paul, Constantine, and Theodosius I. Just as Columbus had little impact on the history of America.

aa5874

The history of Jesus can be found in the NT.

Jesus was the Son of a Ghost.

That is an historical fact, according to the authors of NT and the early christian writers and they had a witness that could corroborate the truth that Jesus had no eartly father, and this witness is the mother of the son of the Ghost, MARY.

And if Mary lied about the history of Jesus, who really knows the true history of the Ghost-Man?

lpetrich

Because they often seem like they believe in doing anything to win; I've never seen any Xian apologists discussing at length what arguments not to use.

Thanx, spin, for mentioning my thread on him.

I'd posted a blow-by-blow analysis of his historicity case here

Someone complained that he believed almost all of what Roman chroniclers had related about JC but almost nothing in the Gospels about him.

Clivedurdle

He is on the way out - now somewhere between myth and local warlord who's remit ran 10 miles around his village.

http://www.worldagesarchive.com/Refe..._(Harpers).htm

No Robots

William Arnal is a historian and an atheist. He writes:

No one in mainstream New Testament scholarship denies that Jesus was a Jew.--The Symbolic Jesus: Historical Scholarship, Judaism, and the Construction of Contemporary Identity, p. 5.

brianrein

As part of what appears to be a minority here (HJ people), I can agree wholeheartedly with this. For about a year I've been annoying my real-life Christian friends by saying that Paul was more important to Christianity than Jesus was, and that Jesus really didn't matter.

Honestly, as my study of early Christian history continues, it becomes quite clear that Jesus' historical personage was not what mattered to the various Church fathers - rather, it was what nonsense they projected onto Jesus that was important. This process even began with Matthew, Luke and John, which I think partially represent responses to the question "Why did Jesus die?" Upon the guy's sudden and senseless execution - senseless, that is, if you're expecting him to save the world! - Jesus' followers faced a choice:

- They could admit they screwed up and followed the wrong itinerant preacher guy.
- They could find a reason that his death was necessary.

I think much of the obviously bogus elements of the New Testament, and a great deal of the divine arguments and doctrinal claims, appear to be responses to this crisis of faith. Paul and others invented their cult so that they could persist in their belief and expand upon it.

Which is why I think that there was a completely irrelevant historical Jesus. Unimportant enough not to get mentioned by anybody outside his follower-group, but charismatic enough to draw a crowd who wouldn't let go after he croaked.

Solo

.....what makes you think that students of music would want to have a teacher who is not just tone-deaf, but thinks his handicap is necessary to approach the subject without preconceived notions ?


Jiri

Solitary Man

http://www.textexcavation.com/anatestimonium.html

Copied off of Luke? We have tons of evidence that Luke used Josephus except in this one instance where someone else took Luke and placed him into Josephus? William of Occam is rolling in his grave.

Toto

Please drop all inflammatory comparisons involving race and crime before a moderator has to perform major surgery on this thread.

Toto

What does Occam's Razor have to do with this? There is lots of evidence that the author of the gospel of Luke had read Josephus. There is also a respectable case that the interpolator of the TF was Eusebius, who certainly had a copy of the gospel of Luke to work with.