Captain Howdy

You can fool some people all of the time, you can fool all the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.
Psst psst...
Do you know where YOU fit in?

Magus, judging from every SINGLE post you have made (that i have read), I conclude {flame deleted}

{more flames deleted} You DON"T EVEN KNOW YOUR CHURCH HISTORY!!

If you want to try to "save" us, save yourself first. Because the way I see it, you can't teach someone something you don't know yourself.


{yet more flames deleted}

Magus55

Ah, more insults coming from the atheist peanut gallery. And here i thought moderators didn't tolerate that. . .

Captain Howdy

Aww now, you're insulted?

How inconsiderate of me to forget about the feelings of one of God's chosen! Wow! I guess I'll have to burn one more eternity eh magic boy?

you're funny

Radorth

So what? This is another of your arguments from silence, which only skeptics are permitted to use apparently. If you were as cynical about his writings as Thallus, I'm sure you could figure out something. I suspect you are cynical about ANY Roman writings which denegrate the JM'er case, but accepting of all which help it.

It's not like he recorded every unusual event or eclipse of the time. It's not like he was an eyewitness of the time anyway.

I'm sorry, but for Thallus to write what he did was to take the crucifixion of Christ for granted. He could well have been there, or heard of it immediately, unlike Pliny. Any other interpretation is a huge stretch. If you had a historian or even an apostate saying the crucifixion of Jesus never happened, you'd be posting it weekly. We know how the system works.

Rad

Sabine Grant

I do not know much about Thallus but crucifixions occured on a daily basis so it may not have been such an exceptional event to be mentionned compared with the sudden darkening of the sky.

By the way which translations of the Bible explicitly describe the phenomenon as a " solar eclipse"? In the KJV, the Gospel of Matthew mentions a darkening of the land from the 6th hour to the 9th. Same in Mark. Luke mentions that the sun was darkened but as a result of the darkening over the land not as the cause of the darkening. No mention of any phenomenon in John.
I took a more liberal translation from the Living Bible ( Student's Life Application Bible). In Matthew " darkness fell across the whole land". Same in Mark. Luke " darkness fell across the whole land and the light of the sun was gone". John, no mention.

Anyone has a translation which defines the sun as being the origine of the darkness? I wonder if arguing over an actual solar eclipse will prove one thing or the other. Of course we can interpret the only possible cause of darkening as being a solar eclipse. But I find no literal evidence so far which describes the darkening to be caused by the sun being hidden by any other body. And John found it so insignificant that he does not mention it.

Biff the unclean

So all I'm finding about Tallus is Eusebius saying that Julius Africanus discussed Thallus. Eusebius says that Julius says that Tallus said that an eclipse had happened but that an eclipse was impossible during a full moon. Julius Africanus is quite positive about it not being an eclipse but was rather a supernatural darkness.
So this isn't even second hand. We don't have anything written by Tallus about any darkness covering the Earth. We don't have anything by Julius Africanus saying that Tallus was mistaken in his opinion. All we have is Eusebius, the fellow who is the most likely culprit with the Josephus "pious fraud," saying that Africanus said that Tallus said that…

So since during this supernatural darkness " (Matt 27:52) …the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, (53) And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many." If all of these formally deceased saints were wandering around town then what was the big magilla about Jesus coming back from the dead? He would have been just part of the crowd. Did any of the "many" that these saintly zombies appeared unto think it unusual enough to write down?

Radorth

Christian plot number 3,259 exposed by Biff.

Rad

Biff the unclean

Oh then I must be wrong. You have something from Tallus. Cool, let's see it. And why do you keep ignoring the zombies? Surely you must have something that supports many bodies of the saints which slept arose, came out of the graves, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many. Sounds like a Bruce Campbell "B" movie

Radorth

Biff changes subject of thread to promote JM'er agenda. (Again)

Rad

lpetrich

LP:
And that, of course, does not explain why Pliny the Elder had failed to mention that alleged darkness in his Natural History. And why no others had written about it in their books.

Radorth:
So what? This is another of your arguments from silence, which only skeptics are permitted to use apparently.

How so?

If you were as cynical about his writings as Thallus, I'm sure you could figure out something.

Thallus is referred to not directly, not second-hand, but third-hand. And a lot can happen in such an indirect transmission.

However, Pliny's Natural History survives, and he would have recorded it if it had happened. Though I have never read that tome, I notice that nobody else has claimed that Pliny had recorded that mysterious alleged 3-hour midday darkness.

Since he had been born ~23 CE, he would have been 7 to 10 years old when it happened, and he would have known lots of older people who had seen it.

It's like someone living a few blocks from the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 claiming that "I never saw anything happen to it"

And Pliny would have recorded it if he had seen it. His Natural History is full of odd curiosities (from the Smithsonian's article on him)

He wrote of dog-headed people who communicated by barking, and people with no heads at all, their eyes in their shoulders. He wrote of snakes that launch themselves skyward to catch high-flying birds, and of the "basilisk serpent" of Africa, which kills bushes on contact, bursts rocks with its breath and is so venomous that when one was killed by a man on horseback, "the infection rising through the spear killed not only the rider but also the horse."

Imagine someone who writes about such things -- and not about a mysterious midday 3-hour darkness.

I suspect you are cynical about ANY Roman writings which denegrate the JM'er case, but accepting of all which help it.

I'm not cynical -- I think that "pro" writings don't demonstrate what you think they do. Isn't it strange that there is no detailed first-hand account of Jesus Christ from outside the New Testament? Wouldn't it be very interesting if such an account could be shown to exist?

It's not like he recorded every unusual event or eclipse of the time. It's not like he was an eyewitness of the time anyway.

Pliny had been ALIVE when it allegedly happened.

I'm sorry, but for Thallus to write what he did was to take the crucifixion of Christ for granted.

Except that we don't know for sure what he had originally said.