Queen of Swords

Not according to my bible he wasn't. Unless you define racism as perfection?

Jesus did come, and you can read all about it in yet another wondrous work of fiction penned by christians - the Left Behind series. Hallelujah!

OldYgg

Hey, thanks - I'm glad you responded with a resource.

I'll work against the resource while I read it.

The first segment says "People who really exist and are extensively documented show up in the bible. Therefore Jesus, who is in this book that mentions these people, exist."

This is a logical fallacy. It is easy to write a fictional book with lots of people that really existed in it. The fact that people who really exist are in these books doesn't attest to the main characters existence. It only gives us setting and context and continuity. Continuity, while good, doesn't assure us that the events written and the people it talks about (outside of external source verification) actually happened or existed.

The next item mentioned is Josephus. But Josephus, is not in the same historical context as Jesus. He live a minimum of 70 years later. He cannot be considered a first person historical source. Josephus has been brought up many times on this forum.

The author mentions many other sources; however, they all suffer specific problems. Most of them do not live in or even around the time of Jesus. How, you must ask yourself, do they get their information? Having not actually seen Jesus, they must be dealing with hearsay. Hearsay isn't the most horrible thing in the world; however, its usefulness in determining is something happened or not or if a person existed, is highly questionable.

Tacitus, in particular wrote about many things that clearly he had no experience with, as they were mythical in origin. This doesn't mean he can't have any historical data, father of history that he is; however, it does mean that everything he wrote needs to be examine thoroughly and determined if it has enough supporting evidence. So, mostly, if you did rely on Tacitus, you'd find that you are backing up weak resources with even weaker resources. It doesn't help your historical case much.

The existence of records of a 'Jesus' at Nazareth, don't particularly mean much. I'd like to see some more information on this; however, the author provides no links or notes indicating primary sources. It isn't a scholarly paper where we can look at this information objectively. For example, he says there was a Jesus at Nazareth, but he doesn't indicate what year this record existed or anything like that.

Knowing the year of this record would help us infer a lot of information. Such as this particular Jesus, if he were born in the year 10 or the year 25 BC. This would tell us if he was around for Herod, as a contemporary or things like that.

So, this needs more supporting information. And don't forget, just because there was a Jesus, doesn't mean it was 'the' Jesus.

The author of the article, indicates that say "The remains of Peter’s house at Capernaum, later converted into an octagonal Christian sanctuary, have been uncovered." However, he doesn't give any information about how we 'know' this is Peter's house. There are several times he does this throughout the article and without giving his sources it becomes difficult to establish if we can give any credibility to the things he is saying. He may be right? Who knows? We can't know unless we know what his source was, and then we can read his source.

This is similar to the tomb found recently that people are claiming was Jesus' tomb (with a body in it). Some people claim it isn't Jesus' tomb, but James, his brother. Some people think it is simply someone with a similar name from around that time frame.

So, we need to know more before we can examine a lot of the informatio in this article.

I'll leave it at that, this article doesn't actually prove anything.

And a lot of what he is saying in his archeology section, is really saying 'see these things mentioned in the New Testament, that have been documented elsewhere, exist; therefore Jesus and his exploits exist.'

As mentioned previously, this is illogical. It is simplicity itself to write a book with elements of the present in it with real people and real places mentioned. And especially if you are telling a story from the future where these things existed and you are putting your character in to place.

A better documented site would be better, where we can look at the first or original sources.

In this article, you have to take the author's word for a lot of what he is saying. That's bad. He's no authority figure to me. His statements need to rest on primary sources, that we can look at ourselves.

Old Ygg

Valdemar

Huh?

LogDog

gul·li·ble [guhl-uh-buhl]
easily deceived or cheated.
Also, gul·la·ble.

—Related forms
gul·li·bil·i·ty, noun
gul·li·bly, adverb

—Synonyms credulous, trusting, naive, innocent, simple, green.

American Heritage Dictionary - Cite This Source
gul·li·ble adj. Easily deceived or duped.

gul'li·bil'i·ty n., gul'li·bly adv.

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
WordNet - Cite This Source

gullible

adjective
1. naive and easily deceived or tricked; "at that early age she had been gullible and in love" [syn: fleeceable]
2. easily tricked because of being too trusting; "gullible tourists taken in by the shell game"

WordNet® 3.0, © 2006 by Princeton University.
Kernerman English Multilingual Dictionary (Beta Version) - Cite This Source
gullible [ˈgaləbl] adjective
easily tricked or fooled

gracebkr

I thought this board was for discussion and forbids converting methods? I am not here to convert anyone. You have already rejected. What does it hurt to chat about your disbeliefs?

Avatar

Just where do you think you are posting?

OldYgg

There is some good information at this link on Josephus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephu...nium_Flavianum

Thanks,
Old Ygg

gracebkr

If a Christian is so gullible, why don't we go along with you in your arguments?

steamer

You mean if a god makes it into a calendar then he must exist? Ever hear of Thursday?

gracebkr

Well, the disputed parts have no citations. Then after that the whole thing is un neutral so, all we can really go by is His words as we know them.