What Did Jesus Sacrifice?

Credit can be given at will, Bill. I am not dismissing anything that others may choose to believe. If you want equal weight....you got equal weight.

You have never, in any post I have read, proven anything. You have only mocked what others say in your broken English. Fortunately, most are able to decipher what you are saying.

Who is Intredpide?

Hehehehehehehehehe . . .

Exactly what makes it clear? Are you saying that this should be clear to the world because you deem it to be clear to you?

The supernatural parts of the story are clearly a fairy tale, that's true. The other parts aren't quite so clear.

True no one can rule out that a religion leader by the name of Jesus existed in that time period but neither can anyone so far at least had been able to prove it.

The issue one way or another seem in any case kind of pointless as his existed as a real flesh and blood person even if proven hardly said anything about either his real teachings if any or back up any supernatural claims by the cult created in his name.

I see it as an academic curiosity. Neither reality (whether Jesus really existed or now) would alter the result.

How are the " several savior gods who predated Jesus [...] has taken a severe beating with recent scholarship"? And who's is doing all the "beating"?


"They" are the pagan gods who predated Jesus, who allegedly possessed his god-like attributes.

Jason, in 1875 biblical scholar Kersey Graves published "The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors" (available online here http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/kersey_graves/16/ ) and the book quickly became the favorite of non-theists world-wide in their arguments against Christianity. It is very easy to hear the echoes of this work persisting today in many of the writings posted to forums. At its heart are virgin births, December 25th birthdays, and resurrections from death, among other apparent similarities. It appears to be a compelling case and one that I can understand could be tempting to lay out in an exchange with a insistent Christian. But the scholarship of Graves has not withstood the test of time well. The online site of Graves work, Internet Infidels, has this warning to potential readers:

Note: the scholarship of Kersey Graves has been questioned by numerous theists and nontheists alike; the inclusion of his The World's Sixteen Crucified Saviors in the Secular Web's Historical Library does not constitute endorsement by Internet Infidels, Inc. This document was included for historical purposes; readers should be extremely cautious in trusting anything in this book.

Respected ancient historian Richard Carrier has weighed in on the book, and to get an idea of what problems Graves' work poses to modern scholarship, I would suggest reading it here http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/graves.html .

To be sure, similarities exist in what we see today as Christianity and the older myths. But I think the argument you have forwarded about the stunning similarities is in need of a more nuanced approach, lest you get called on it in your encounters with theists. Certain motifs, which have arisen from the agricultural experience of rebirth with the seasons, have thus become nearly universal in many religious practices.

No, and I'm not saying that this is the only evidence there is to prove whether a person did or didn't exist. This is evidence that shows us the early religion institutions as being capable of deceit.


I am saying that the writings of Josephus and Tacitus that mention Jesus were forged to appear as if they actually said he [Jesus] existed and performed magical miracles...



...that is evidence for that, and for that only.


And if you have to lie to present your "truth", then your "truth" was not true to begin with.


How is this not relevant to the argument...? If Christians are actually telling us that Jesus existed 2000 years ago, and 2000 years ago we find historical inconsistencies with Herod not carrying out a census that lead to the execution of young male children; nor a religious figure named Jesus being trialed and sentenced to death by the Jews while Pontius Pilate was in power; and other probabilities like letting free a well known murderer in Rome and letting Jesus be thrown to the mob; and having to take a vote in order to let Jesus go, it defeats any historical authenticity; and many other examples...but I know what there is evidence for, Set: there is evidence for the existence of an great amalgam of insane people roaming the streets of Palestine at the time, claiming to be savior gods. And there is also evidence that there was a very popular individual known as Apollonius of Tyana, a political figure who happened to have Jesus god-like attributes...if you are telling me that the Christ was this individual, then I ask you "why don't you just call him 'Apollonius' instead of 'Jesus' "?



And there were also Christians of the time who thought that Jesus has been killed a century before under king alexander jannaeus.


This is why I like you, Set...you are so immersed into your own delusion.

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(One more time ) No, I said it.



Dismiss them as sources for what? Are you kidding me? Their documents were forged, Set... further study into their documents only reveal that they mention there existed people who followed "a so-called Christ" and "still people who follow him to this day". You can have modern writers citing what happened 2000 years ago, and that would not constitute as evidence, unless we come across with a writer who lived at that time...we would need the source of such historical document.



When it comes to recording history, it is very important to be contemporary to the history that is being recorded. otherwise it would only be hearsay. You don't rely on hearsay...


Well, if the evidence points out to an impossibility of something happening, why would I think otherwise? Don't you think it is the right thing to do...to think he didn't exist, when the evidence shows him as being a myth? This is why I don't like absolutism, because it prevents people from looking at the evidence and coming with a factual conclusion.


The not being contemporary part is very useful evidence because it tells us that Tacitus or Josephus were not eyewitnesses to Jesus, and therefore, they did not witness the events that took place in Jesus's life that would support the claim of Christians. ...these writers were just copying their works from other sources other than witnessing the actual event.


And this would be one of those reasons.


Of course not.


In your mind, yes, you have.


This is another brilliant quote from you.



Let me just add: If a person is on trial, and all the evidence points at he being a murderer (knowing that the evidence were not tempered with), does it mean that the person is not guilty?
What do you consider evidence?
Knowing that there are mountains of evidence for Jesus as being a mythological figure, there would be no reason at all to say that he ever existed...the same way we can say that Jason and the Argonauts, Thor, The Bachae, Perseus were mythological characters. And thinking contrary would be idionic, silly, and I venture to say... "insane".

That early proselytizers of the cult were liars no more constitutes evidence that Jesus did not exist than does a claim that Flavius Josephus and Tacitus were not contemporaries. You just don't employ logic here.

Both Tacitus and Flavius Josephus were respected historians who each wrote many works for which they were justly respected in their own lifetimes and have been ever since. Their works were not "forged." It appears that in the early 4th century, two very small passages were interpolated into the Antiquities of Flavius Josephus. It is not mentioned anywhere (and at a time when Christians would have been eager to find something of that kind) until Eusebius mentions it, and many scholars since then, up to the present day, believe that Eusebius himself may have made the interpolation. Those interpolations can be dismissed on contextual bases, because Josephus not only is not sympathetic to Christians, but outside those two brief passages shows no evidence that he even knew of them, and because he was a Pharisee, proudly mentions it several time, and would have contradicted his own cherished beliefs to have claimed that a messiah had appeared.

Tacitus is an even more egregious case, because he was a very popular historian with a widely held reputation for careful scholarship, and yet people like Eusebius do not mention any such passage in his works, which had been published almost 200 years before Eusebius flourished. He wrote (among other works) The Histories of Imperial Rome, The Annals of Imperial Rome and the Germania, all of which were "best sellers" in his lifetime. Very likely, Eusebius if he did do the Josephus interpolation was banking on the work being obscure to Greeks and the other educated people of the Hellenistic world and to the Romans, and so unlikely to be challenged. Alternatively, of course, Eusebius may have been innocent of the interpolation, only having gotten a corrupted text, and therefore would have no reason to attempt an interpolation of Tacitus. However, anyone who would have attempted an interpolation of Tactitus anytime before about 500 CE would have gotten nailed for it in a New York minute. The supposed interpolation occurs in The Annals of Imperial Rome, and i've already explained why it is considered to be dubious, so i'm not going to go over all of that again. No mention of the passage in Tacitus appears before the 15th century, despite the appeal it would have had for Christians to cite such a well-known and well-respected historian to bolster their claims.

The works of Flavius Josephus and Tacitus were not forgeries and you just expose yourself to ridicule to say so. But more about that later.

The point about Pilate is relevant because you claimed there is no evidence that he "was in power 2000 years ago," and that is just plain bullshit.

It is not delusional on my part to point out that i've stated these things more than once, and you keep bringing them up, which makes me suspect that either you are not very bright, or that you've been too lazy to read and understand what i post.

It is totally false that one needs to be a contemporary of events or persons to write a reliable history. This shows how little you know about historiography, and once again you expose yourself to ridicule. So not being a contemporary of the putative Jesus is not a good reason to dismiss certain parts of those texts as interpolations--you just don't know what the hell you're talking about.

No, it is not in my mind that i've already given three good reasons to dismiss the passages in Josephus and Tacitus as interpolations--it's in the posts of this thread--it is no fault of mine if you were too lazy to read them, or too dull-witted to understand what you were reading.

That you keep saying that there are "mountains of evidence" that the putative Jesus never existed does not make it so. You haven't provided a molehill of such evidence, never mind mountains.

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You show a profound ignorance of the times of which we speak. You show a profound ignorance of the historians of the times of which we speak. You show a profound ignorance of early church writers, and i suspect you don't know jackshit about Eusebius, a man crucial to the epistemology and exegesis of the early church and its history. You show a profound ignorance of the tenets of historiography. There is really no reason to take you seriously because of the ignorance you display. Your only stock in trade seems to be some dribs and drabs which i suspect you picked up online, followed by sneers and name-calling at anyone who has the temerity not to agree with you.

You're even so dull-witted about these matters that you don't see the simplest objection to the possible interpolations in the Romans--which includes Seutonius and Pliny as well as Tacitus. That is that they only mention a cult, and don't mention anyone named Jesus. They aren't evidence because they don't claim any such individual existed, just that the cult exists.

If you had ever taken the trouble to inform yourself, you might have some credibility, but it's obvious that you hadn't, and therefore you have none.

In the end, all you show yourself to be is a jerk who wants to pick fights with Christians. You should be glad you've never run into a truly competent scholar of church history who happens to be a devout believer--because then you'd find that you would have shown up for a gun fight carrying a knife.

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There is no reliable evidence that the putative Jesus ever existed, nor is there any evidence that he did not exist. The only important consideration is that hundreds of millions of people believe he did.

This thread is not about history or about Jesus, it's about Jason attempting to get his jollies by jerking the chains of Christians.

What Setanta said.

I am glad that you read all that, know all that, and brought it here. Thank you.

I'm meeting Jesus for late night wings and wine after band rehearsal and I'm ratting all you fuckers out.

If that's what you want to call it...


It is futile to prove a point when the other party just rejects, ignores, or/ and censors the explanation...ain't life good, Intrepid...

Sure, life is good. Just waiting for that proving of the point thing to surface. Rejection, ignoring and/or censoring not withstanding.

Yes, Kersey is not a reliable source because he lacked scholarship. Not only does Richard Carrier warns people about using Graves's Work as a valid source, but also Brian Flemming criticizes him heavily. If you want to read respectable books on the subject, read Lord Raglan's "The Hero", Otto Rank's "The Myth of the Birth of the Hero", Alan Dundes's The Hero Pattern and the Life of Jesus", D.M Murduck's "Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection", Acharya S's "Suns of God",Robert M. Price's "Deconstructing Jesus", among others.

Just be patient, my friend, and let me savor my bone.

What you do on your own time is your own business.

That’s right; there is evidence that points to the early church lying about Jesus having god-like attributes. This only proves that the early Christian church was capable of “lying for Jesus.”Since we already know that Josephus nor Tacitus did not live at the same time as Jesus( neither there is proof of any Roman legitimate record used to write these documents), we can dismiss any claims made by them when it comes to him [Jesus] having “holy” attributes or having actually existed...it is not enough evidence to support existence. However, there is plenty of evidence that support Jesus being a mythological character introduced in secular historical time line for religious purpose. Jesus is not the exception: this is the mythological time line of the Greeks (mind you, this is only the Greeks),caked with mythological characters that have been introduced in the secular historical time line by the religious for religious purpose.

There is no argument about how well respected historians Tacitus and Josephus were. It is not the argument. The question here is whether their works were forged or interpolated. I already gave you the definition of “interpolation” and “literal forgery”…and I assume you already knew (although I may be wrong) Some of Tacitus’s and Josephus’s works have been interpolated. However, if a document is known to contain some interpolations and other parts contain words that have been deliberately altered for the purpose to deceit...regardless of the interpolations, as long as the manuscript contains at least a word that was intentionally changed with the intention to guile, the document is considered forged...despite the interpolations... Let me give you a very good example of what I mean:

Cornelius Tacitus, Annals 1644 (AKA Manuscript M2) 110CE

In this document, there is a passage that so many Christians like to use to prove that Jesus really existed.
This passage reads about Nero blaming “Christians” for the great fire that burned in Rome for five and a half days.
In this specific paragraph, words have been changed and letters have been re-inked.
One of the words that has been altered is the word that resembles the name “Christus”...the word doesn’t actually read “Christus...there is no vowel (no “E” nor “i”) between the “R” and the “S”
There is no way to pronounce this word without a vowel... Christians like to argue that Tacitus used legal documents to write this passage...although there is no proof for that...but even if he did write it, I’m pretty sure that a historical figure named“Jesus”, “Joshua”, “Christ” , “the messiah”, was not recorded in official Roman historical records.

There is another word,“Christianus,” that appears to be erased, because there is a space in between the letter; someone changed this word, erased part of this letter to make it seem like it read something else. This word examined under white light appears to be an inclusion of the letter “i”, which replaces the letter “E”. There is a good reason why this word was never quoted prior to the 15 century by Christians. The reason was that Christians knew that these passages didn’t refer to them. It referred to a group of people called “Chrestians” or “Chrestiani”...This is actually evidence that Christians have been playing extensively with this document. It is also clear that Nero didn’t blame the Christians for the fire that consumed most of Rome in 64 CE.


Now, let’s go back to Jesus...besides the time in which Jesus supposedly lived, there were other cultures that are known to have similar saviors who possessed god-like characteristics...just like Jesus. But this is not the evidence that ONLY links Jesus as being a mythological character. None of the evidence that I’ll present will prove, on their own, that Jesus was a mythological figure. That would be silly. But (just like a 21st century murder investigation) collectively, the evidence will present, strongly, that the story of Jesus wasn’t based on a real person. This is the list of reasons that supports the claim:


• The Gospel of Mark was the first story of Jesus that was written, and all others are dependent on it
• The Gospel of Mark shows clear signs of being written as an allegorical fiction
• Virtually every detail of the life of Jesus comes from "Old Testament" scriptures
• Some of the details of the life of Jesus are based on mistranslations of the Hebrew scriptures
• Jesus' crucifixion on Passover defies historical believability, yet makes perfect sense metaphorically
• The Gospels make many claims that are contradicted by the historical record
• The earliest writings about Jesus, from Paul and others, contain no details of his life
• Many statements in the letters of Paul only make sense if Paul does not view Jesus Christ as a historical person
• There is not one single writing from or about Jesus during his supposed lifetime
• Philo, a prolific Jewish writer who lived from 20 BCE to 50 CE, wrote extensively about the political and theological movements throughout the Mediterranean, and his views foreshadowed Christian theology, yet he never once wrote anything about Jesus. Not only this, but he actually wrote about political conflicts between the Jews and Pontius Pilate in Judea
• All of the non-Christian references to Jesus can be shown to have either been introduced later by Christian scribes or were originally based on Christian claims
• There is no evidence of any knowledge of a tomb of Jesus (empty or occupied) prior to the Gospel stories
• There were many conflicting beliefs about who Jesus Christ was in the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd centuries, including beliefs that he had never existed on earth "in the flesh"
• The Catholics made purely theological arguments as to why Jesus Christ had to have existed "in the flesh"

It is well known that first century Palestine was a very well recorded time. There were so many historians who kept accurate and detailed historical records. And for a person who existed in the year 30AD in well historically recorded Palestine, who was known to have gone into the Temple at Jerusalem, on Passover , and caused public disturbance, there isn’t a single mention of Jesus in any historical document of that time. ..This is considered evidence for a mythological Jesus, whether you like it or not.
And if you agree that this is evidence for Jesus being mythological, we can actually say that he never existed. According to the definition of “ myth” : it is a construct of human imagination, which does not exist in reality.


No, Set, I have exposed you of “lying for Jesus”...I’m not claiming that the works of both Josephus and Tacitus are forgeries...I’m only referring as forgeries those passages that imply that Jesus was a real man. Both historical works of these historians have been interpolated...and it has been proven that the works that include Jesus as having existed …have been forged...I can’t be any clearer than this, Set.


My comment on the existence of Pilate not being a Roman procurator was rhetoric....to see if you were able to distinguish whether anybody exists in the historical time line...or whether you recognize existence from non-existence in history.
Would you say that the story of George Washington and the cherry tree was real… that it actually took place? What do you think?



I’m not very bright, Set...but I guess I’m able to emit some light. We can spend a great amount of thread pages discussing your level of delusion. But why bother, right? Let’s carry on…


But it is totally factual that in order to write a reliable account of history, you need to have contemporary document of the history being written or the historian has to be contemporary to that historical time...there is no proof that Josephus nor Tacitus used original Roman historical records to prove that Jesus existed as a man...nor Josephus or Tacitus were contemporaries to Jesus...and after the forgeries have been identified and corrected, the only affirmation about Jesus is that “There are people called Christian, and they believed in a prophet named Jesus, who they believe that he died for our sins”...



Yes, it is in your mind...in the fantasy world in which you...only you dwell in. And you’re right about something...sometimes I’m very lazy when it comes to reading your intellectual bravado derived from Christian apologists. But, sometimes, when you want to prove a point...you have to make the sacrifice...and this time, I actually read the whole thing...


Don’t you think I have already provided the evidence, Setanta? If you don't think so, then I would have to force myself to recommend to you to take clozapine three times a day, after a good meal...but be careful, it is known to reduce the amount of white blood cells. Nevertheless, you have to talk to your doctor about it.



Don’t say that, Set...I know Jackshit...I already had the privilege to know you.


When I read this, I didn’t laugh...I smiled...but when I read it again I almost shitted in my pants...”ignorance”? this word comes from someone who overlooks the evidence that is shown to him and intuitively thinks that when reality doesn’t conforms to his predetermined biases, therefore, reality must be ignored...you’re pussycat, Set...and I’m having so much fun with you.



Oh yeah, Set...I consider name-calling an art. For instance, I suspect that every time you are about to express one of those predetermined remarks, fecal matter streams out your ears , product of the mental activity that only takes plain within the brain of a bullshitter.


Exactly, and when the documents that Josephus and Tacitus seem to imply the existence of Jesus, they appear to sound like Christians...as if those words and passages were placed by later Christians...big forgery, indeed.



I don’t "pick fights"...fighting is only for irrational people. I engage myself only in argumentative applications that only exist in democratic societies.


All alone I thought I was arguing with a Christian.


Bullshit...again I ask you...what do you consider evidence?


And if you had a modicum of scientific background, you would realize that “belief” is not even close to "knowledge".



Yeah, and I think I already rattled your chains.

To be concluded...

Aren't you a Christian?...I thought Christians cared about what people did behind closed doors.