HuggyBear

Apollonious' biography was written by a Philostratus nearly a century and a half after the life of Apollonious. Additionally, Philostratus was under commision of an empress who was a follower of Appolonius.

Additionally, Nero's persecution of the Christians was occuring during A.D. 64, he blamed the Great Fire of Rome on the Christians that year. The documentation of Apollonious didn't surface until the beginning of the second century.

Doctor X

HuggyBear:

Welcome to the forums . . . mind the hounds. . . .

With all due respect you are trying to construct an argument on a falsehood. It would be the equivalent of me wandering over to the Science forum and opening with, "since Einstein was wrong about the speed of light," everything I think folllows from the premise falls right there.

In order to argue against Einstein, I need to address Einstein.

You are attempting to argue biblical criticism. You raise Josephus without appreciation of the study of Josephus. It is similar to me stating that "Einstein disagreed with quantum mechanics because he was a devote Christian!" A little biographical information on Einstein correct that!

You may not wish to be "stopped" at you premise--hoping to travel to a more interesting area--but you are stuck with a weak foundation.

Thus, I recommend that you do visit the BC&H forums. I recommend that you consult the Recommended Reading there.

THEN you can argue about the "historicity" of miracles having the evidence for and against at your fingertips.

For example, if a miracle is mentioned in Mt and/or Lk but not in Mk . . . do we discount it? Why did not Mk mention it? Oh yes . . . Lk and Mt date the birth to two different dates about ten years appart . . . so much for accuracy!!

When someone rebuts you with "these miracles are the same as those reported for many 'godmen'" you will understand what that means.

--J.D.

Family Man

There's a couple of issues here that need to be addressed.

First, no historical analysis can make the claim that Jesus is God. History is the study of normal human events, not supernatural ones. An event like the resurrection is routinely labelled non-historical, meaning not that it didn't necessarily happened, but that it is not something that is in the realm of history. In short, claims of divinity for Jesus are a matter of faith, not of the historical record.

Second, there was no quick rise of Christianity. It did spread to many different parts of the Roman Empire, but this is a testiment to the relative ease of travel within the Empire and the efforts of Paul and other Christian missionaries. The numbers were small, and it took nearly 300 years for Christians to number 10% of the population. Christianity doesn't consistently appear in the historical record until the year 180, 150 years after Jesus was crucified. The miraculous rise of Christianity is a myth.

Doctor X

. . . like the rise of its founding figure. . . .

The argument that "it must be true because it caught on" is rather hilarious when one then considers the popularity of various Buddhist sects, Islam, Scientology, and country-western music.

There is also something similar to the "anthropic principle" arguments for design--life can only exist if such-and-such laws of physics exist . . . this makes it like really, really, really improbable that any of us are here . . . which mean there must have been a PURPOSE--forgetting that we would not be here to notice this if said "laws of physics" were different--selection bias.

What is funny about the argument is that Christianity developed and changed over time. IF it was so phenomenal and impressive and spread like wildfire 'n all that . . . why did it change rapidly?

--J.D.

Biff the unclean

Apollonious' biography was written by a Philostratus nearly a century and a half after the life of Apollonious. Additionally, Philostratus was under commision of an empress who was a follower of Appolonius.
So what? Unlike Jesus the bio by Philostratus is not the first time anyone hears of him. He is an historical figure who wrote, and was written about during his life. He left behind records and possessions. He never claimed to be supernatural but stressed that his "miracles" were the result of superior knowledge. People saw him and wrote about him during his life. If you ever get to the antiquities museum in Milan you can even see some of his belongings.

Additionally, Nero's persecution of the Christians was occuring during A.D. 64, he blamed the Great Fire of Rome on the Christians that year. The documentation of Apollonious didn't surface until the beginning of the second century
The Christians, followers of the demigod Christna, lead by Apollonius had been active for more than twenty years at this point. Nero persecuted all the philosophers and not the followers of Jesus. There is a Roman record that Apollonius was brought before Nero at this time, and that he escaped. There are no records for Peter or Paul.
It is interesting to note that all of the same healing miracles attributed to Jesus were also attributed to Apollonius (who said that they weren't miracles). It is also interesting to note that the emblem of the followers of Christina (spelling changed in late 1800's to Krishna) was the sign of Pisces which in the first century CE was a single fish and not the pair used today. Pisces was the symbol of rebirth, not some outrageous anagram.

There is no record…outside of Christian myth…that Nero ever heard of Jesus based Christianity. There is good reason to believe that he was actually correct about the followers of Apollonius starting the fire. It should also be noted that a "Christ" is a specific sort of hero demigod. Christna (whose name forms the base of the word) Apis, Jesus, Serapis and Dionysus were all Christs.
Most, if not all, of the stories of Romans persecuting Christians first appear after the Christian barbarians conquer Emperial Rome in "lives of the Saints". They are the Roman Catholic Church, an arm of the Imperial Roman government, telling the new conquerors that they never really got along with those nasty Romans anyway...please pay no attention to the "Roman" in our name...we're on your side...honest.

Koyaanisqatsi

Not to mention three salient facts (but I will ) :

1. The victors (re)write the history
2. Certain followers of Jesus (let's differentiate "christians" here, for clarity's sake) were persecuted by other Followers of Jesus, e.g., Paul, and
3. There is no evidence that states that any early followers of Jesus were persecuted because they believed in a risen Christ, or, indeed, because of the belief that Jesus was a god

The Romans were persecuting a lot of people back then, primarily for not being Roman; the Jews more so than anyone else in the region, hence the Jewish Revolts. Even if they had persecuted early Followers of Jesus, what difference would that have made in addition to all of the other people they were persecuting?

If religious persecution is any barometer of veracity, then we should all be Jewish. They are, after all, god's "chosen."

Javaman

Even without addressing the earlier answers re: Christna, I attribute the spread of Chritianity and its offshoots to the following:

1) It offers an enormous reward
2) You don't have to do anything special to get the reward
3) You don't have to be good
4) You don't have to be nice
5) You don't have to follow a bunch of inconvenient rules
6) You don't have to die in battle

All you gotta do is believe

All that and you tie it into an established religion to show that it's not really new. Heck, I might start believing if I'm not carefull. Perhaps (and I'm not knowledgeable here) the rise of Islam can be attributed to something similar... more rules but more tempting afterlife?

Howard

If Mohammed was not the true prophet of God, and the Koran was not the final and most important revelation of God, how did Islam spread so quickly? And why is Islam rapidly overtaking Christianity as the world’s most populous religion?

Finally, why is it that Christians do not hold their religious beliefs to the same standards to which they hold all others?

Jobar

HuggyBear, though I will say that your approach is rather novel, any question which first involves proving the historicity of Jesus is plainly a topic for our BC&H forum. If you can first succeed in proving that point (something which many others have tried, and none successfully) then you may come back to this forum and try to use that to prove EoG (which is putting the cart before the horse, IMO). Jobar.

Gooch's dad

Excuse me, HuggyBear, but that is bullshit. That link says this about the slaughter of the innocents:

That isn't evidence at all for the slaughter by Herod, that is special pleading! Do you realize that the ONLY place the slaughter of the innocents by Herod is mentioned, is the book of Matthew? Not only do the other 3 gospels not mention this atrocity, NO ancient historian mentions it. It is certainly something that Josephus would have mentioned.

Sorry, try actually backing up your claims with references to historians. So far, you haven't.