Did Jesus Actually Exist?

@Olivier5,

Quote:

Galileans were considered less strict followers of the Law than Judeans, on average. That may explain why Jesus' disciples don't wash their hand before eating or things like that... It may have predisposed Jesus to focus on the spirit of the Law rather than its letter - a significant theme in the Gospels.

What you have said sounds profound, but, who are the ones having that consideration for Galileans?

What other historical records show that Galileans were people living apart from the law?

The opinion of historians is not enough, you must have some historical records showing directly or indirectly such a behavior from Galileans.

According to the biblical narration, the "law is spiritual". And in the case of washing the hands before eating, it is not a commandment of their god but...

Quote:

[I}The hands are susceptible to spiritual uncleanness and are rendered clean up to the wrist. How so? If one poured the first water up to the wrist, and the second beyond the wrist and it went back to the hand - it is clean. If he poured out the first and the second pouring of water beyond the wriest and it went back to the hand, it is unclean. If he poured out the first water on to one hand, and was reminded and poured out the second water on to both hands, they are unclean. If he poured out the first water on ot both hands and was reminded and poured out the second water onto one hand, his hand which ahs been washed twice is clean. If he poured out water on to one hand and rubbed it on the other, it is unclean
~ Mishah Yadayim 2:3[/I]

...an oral tradition found in the Mishnah. Lol

Well, I don't see any indication that the followers of Jesus were lawbreakers, neither Judas "the traitor".

1 Reply

@FBM,

Quote:

The Bible is historical evidence for the Bible, nothing else. Professional historians and archaeologists have done a lot better at figuring out what happened back then. After all, you've got a global flood, talking snakes, people rising from the dead, burning bushes and all sorts of miraculous nonsense in the Bible. If you start treating it as a history book, you may as well go back and live in the Dark Ages. We can do and already have done a lot better.

Tell me of another ancient culture mentioning the peoples of the different lands according to their names and physical location.

The bible pointed them very well, and even mentions what land produced gold and diamonds, which actually are still producing those by the descendants of the ancestors mentioned in the bible.

No other culture has reached that far.

What is your complaint about it?

Are you going to discredit that because the Hebrews and later Israelites were religious people, that their historical records are invalid?

Lol

Look, lots or archeologists are religious and they celebrate Christmas and go to church. And because they worship a god, are you going to disregard their archeological discoveries?

Lots of scientists today are religious dudes, and you will "ignore" their knowledge in science because they worship a god?

You must have a clogged mind in order to do so.

1 Reply

@Frank Apisa,

Quote:

I'm hoping you are kidding here, Carlos...or maybe just brown-nosing that vicious god of yours.

But to suppose that the "history" portrayed in the Bible is accurate, helpful, or valuable...is beyond absurd.

You will hate the following.

Historians have no other choice but to use ancient records to look for archeological sites, understand historical events, and so forth.

Historians can't avoid or evade using the bible as another source of information, and so far, using the biblical narration as a reference they have not been disappointed.

What about that?

2 Replies

@carloslebaron,

Written recorded history goes back to the millenium BCE and there are buttloads of surviving documents that record the names of peoples and civilizations, their lifestyles, belief systems, systems of governments, folklore, etc etc. We wouldn't really lose that much if we lost the Bible. Anyway, my point is that the book wasn't written as a history book in the way that we write history these days.

What we call history now would distinguish historical events and people from mythological ones. The Bible does not do that. Historians also strive to be objective with regards to the events they depict. The Bible does not do that. Its authors were specifically writing to justify the cosmically special nature of their people and beliefs. Historians cross-check among all the available primary sources. The Bible does not do that. History texts are descriptive, not prescriptive. The same cannot be said of the Bible. The Bible is not a history book. It's a story book that includes some historical facts. It's not useless, but it's not in itself a reliable historical work. There are lots of surviving written records that provide as much or more that is useful to historians of the area and period. The Romans, for example, were obsessive about record-keeping and left behind lots of it, some of which contradicts the stories told in the Bible.

1 Reply

@carloslebaron,

There is nothing in your bible of a genuine historical nature which is not better recorded elsewhere. Most of it, however, is of no historical significance, and what christian purport there to be is flatly contradicted by the bulk of contemporary evidence, some of which is literally carved in stone. You don't know a goddamned thing about history or historiography, and should, therefore, keep your yap shut.

0 Replies

@carloslebaron,

carloslebaron wrote:

Quote:
I'm hoping you are kidding here, Carlos...or maybe just brown-nosing that vicious god of yours.

But to suppose that the "history" portrayed in the Bible is accurate, helpful, or valuable...is beyond absurd.

You will hate the following.

Historians have no other choice but to use ancient records to look for archeological sites, understand historical events, and so forth.

Historians can't avoid or evade using the bible as another source of information, and so far, using the biblical narration as a reference they have not been disappointed.

What about that?

What about it???

Fact is, "history" is often distorted by the people recording it...and in the case of the "history" recorded in the Bible...there seems to be considerable sentiment that it is self-serving.

Yes, there was a Rome and it was ruled by an emperor. And there was an Egypt ruled by a Pharaoh. The Bible gets that right.

But were the ancient Hebrews ever the "slaves" of Egypt or where they guests? Did the Hebrews "escape" from Egypt...or were they thrown out?

Did Moses part the Red Sea? Was there a flood that covered the Earth? Did a God come down and create humans out of clay?

Are you certain that "historians...have not been disappointed?"

0 Replies

@FBM,

Quote:

Written recorded history goes back to the millenium BCE and there are buttloads of surviving documents that record the names of peoples and civilizations, their lifestyles, belief systems, systems of governments, folklore, etc etc. We wouldn't really lose that much if we lost the Bible. Anyway, my point is that the book wasn't written as a history book in the way that we write history these days.

Lets see. You look at the Egyptian carved writings telling the victory obtained by King Sahure over the Libyans with the names of their subjected chiefs besides their images... and you find the exact same description, names and images attributed to the Egyptian King Pepi II "two hundred years later!!!" Lol.

Victories in battles are copies made from ancestors, you can find Ramses III copying from Ramses II and this one copied from Tuthmosis...

Hard work for historians, don't you think?

Of course books are written according to the convenience of the kingdom, empire, and modern nations. A her in one country is a murdered in another country. Even here in the US, history is written favoring the nation, but in Vietnam the war against the US is written differently.

In the past, most of the events were indication of the work of their gods. Even today, we can observe that the recent wars always imply the favoring of gods, people pray to win wars, people give thanks to their gods when they win wars. After the wars are won, the winners do whatever is possible to introduce their own religion over the losers. Religion is part of the cultures of ALL countries, and is part of history and you can't evade this fact.

Of course that the bible is not "solely" a doctrinal book, the bible contains HISTORY, even when the events are directed as the work of a god, these events indeed happened.

Lets say, running afraid from lightning a deer jumped that high that landed over a tent and continued running in the middle of a raining night. The ones inside the tent were injured and came out of the tent looking for refugee. When the storm was over and daylight came out, they didn't find any clue to explain what happened. No broken arms of trees, no footprints, nothing.

They can have different conclusions, like a ghost, a UFO, a weird raining water, a branch of a tree that flew with the wind after its falling, they can obtain tens of conclusions to explain how the tall tent was smashed down from the top.

The event indeed happened, and whatever they have as a conclusion, that will be the accepted story, after all, they were there.

So, the same happens with several historical records of the past. The events indeed happened, and we heard from these events thru the explanation given by the peoples who lived when the events happened. They can tell about them on their own words the way they think will explain better why, how, etc.

After reading those historical records, we can analyze the words, and analyze the land, the geology, the elements, etc. and explain what happened according to conclusions obtained after new evidence is reached.

What was a "mythological poem" of the past, describing the sea covering the land in one night over rocks 20feet high in a town, centuries later, samples from that shore confirmed the poem claims. What is was for the ancient populations the anger of the sea god, it was later explained as a tsunami that happened in the middle of the night when no one saw the sea retreating and coming back with gigantic waves. And earthquake happened thousands of miles away from that town.

As I said before, just because the biblical records input the cause of events to "a god", such is not a reason to diminish its veracity.

And historians are aware of this.

1 Reply

@carloslebaron,

You and I are not talking the same language. You are talking theology, I am talking history.

In my view, it was a good thing to take the Law less literally and focus on its 'spirit' instead, because no actual particular law can be permanently good and relevant. Times change. By the time of Jesus, the written Law was totally outdated, less and less applied. In fact it was becoming a matter of international disrepute for the Jews, with the Greeks and Romans were taking aim at it from different angles, e.g. trying to stop circumcision which they rightly viewed as a barbarian practice. Something had to be done. Jesus stressed the spirit of the Law. Paul opted to radically cancel the Law, and I think he was right. The Rabbis could not follow of course -- that would have meant the end of their own livelihoods and justification in society -- so they opted for another approach: the Mishna aka the expounding of the "oral law". Less efficient than Paul's outright cancellation but it does the trick of updating the Law, somewhat more painstakingly.

2 Replies

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

You and I are not talking the same language. You are talking theology, I am talking history.

In my view, it was a good thing to take the Law less literally and focus on its 'spirit' instead, because no actual particular law can be permanently good and relevant. Times change. By the time of Jesus, the written Law was totally outdated, less and less applied. In fact it was becoming a matter of international disrepute for the Jews, with the Greeks and Romans were taking aim at it from different angles, e.g. trying to stop circumcision which they rightly viewed as a barbarian practice. Something had to be done. Jesus stressed the spirit of the Law. Paul opted to radically cancel the Law, and I think he was right. The Rabbis could not follow of course -- that would have meant the end of their own livelihoods and justification in society -- so they opted for another approach: the Mishna aka the expounding of the "oral law". Less efficient than Paul's outright cancellation but it does the trick of updating the Law, somewhat more painstakingly.

I agree at least partially to what you are saying here. It wasn't so much that the law was outdate, but instead there were just too many laws around 600 in total. That is just too many laws and many of them the punishment for breaking them was death. A group can only be suppressed for so long before it becomes stifled and the people seek freedom from it.

This is why I refer to christianity as judaism-lite. Essentially christianity is just a dumbed down version of judaism. Fewer rules makes it so the followers can not only memorize them but also fewer chances of making mistakes which would end your life over silly superstitions.

The romans themselves also had issues with this since they were not only VERY superstious but they also had multiple gods and these gods needed to be propitiated by purchasing trinkets and offering them to the gods.

This is one of the things Jesus objected to because the Jews started mimicking the Romans by selling trinkets to sell to followers and the temples were creating a lot of revenue. Not unlike today it's just even more dumbed down through the idea of collection plates and tithing.

There is currently a recent attempt of radification of christianity going on as an attempt to errase the angry history and replace the wrathful vengeful god with a hippy all loving compassionate one. It is because our society has changed to become more "peaceful" and vengeance and wrath are no longer acceptable traits for a god to have.

This is why there is a discrepancy between islam and christianity even though they are pretty much the same thing. They really are focused on the same god it is just that christianity took another branch creating islam. The problem is islam has maintained it's cruel anti-apostate clause which forces it's followers to maintain islamic or face death. It is wildly outdated making modern christians seem docile compared to their ancient counterparts despite what most modern muslims attempt to advocate that only extremists take such a harsh perspective and practice.

In any case the point stands that religions must adjust to the mindsets of the populous or face extinction. So religions constantly try to adapt to appeal to the next generation who has become more accepting of the human condition.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Quote:

Essentially christianity is just a dumbed down version of judaism.

I would say "smarted up". There is something mind numbing about not trusting one's own moral sense and needing to memorize all these rules.

1 Reply

@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Quote:
Essentially christianity is just a dumbed down version of judaism.

I would say "smarted up". There is something mind numbing about not trusting one's own moral sense and needing to memorize all these rules.

Even so, I personally think that most christian rules are still immoral. If not directly, they are indirectly immoral. One example is drug use and the push to make them illegal was purely driven by christian ideals. Forced morality only created corruption and fuel for crime. You can't regulate people to become good people. Bad people will do things regardless of the law, christians included.

1 Reply

@carloslebaron,

All I can do is suggest that you broaden your education.

http://www.funsci.com/fun3_en/writing/writing.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography#Premodern_history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing
etc etc...

1 Reply

@Krumple,

If you are saying that moral laws are immoral, because "forced morality only created corruption" (?), i have to disagree. And anti-drug laws have what to see with christianity? ?

0 Replies

@Olivier5,

Quote:

You and I are not talking the same language. You are talking theology, I am talking history.

In my view, it was a good thing to take the Law less literally and focus on its 'spirit' instead, because no actual particular law can be permanently good and relevant. Times change. By the time of Jesus, the written Law was totally outdated, less and less applied. In fact it was becoming a matter of international disrepute for the Jews, with the Greeks and Romans were taking aim at it from different angles, e.g. trying to stop circumcision which they rightly viewed as a barbarian practice. Something had to be done. Jesus stressed the spirit of the Law. Paul opted to radically cancel the Law, and I think he was right. The Rabbis could not follow of course -- that would have meant the end of their own livelihoods and justification in society -- so they opted for another approach: the Mishna aka the expounding of the "oral law". Less efficient than Paul's outright cancellation but it does the trick of updating the Law, somewhat more painstakingly.

Your first understanding on the people surrounding Jesus was erroneous, and you were shown that while Jesus and his followers didn't go apart of the written law, Jesus himself accused the Pharisees of enforcing the oral laws settled by them instead of obeying the law of their god.

I can beat that you yourself believed that "washing the hands before eating" was inside the commandments given by the biblical god. You can deny it if you want, but such is my perception about your erroneous understanding.

I have no idea where you have obtained such information that in time of Jesus the law was "outdated". I beg you to provide the link, the source, the archeological finding... something.

Besides this incorrect perception of yours, when you read the words of the apostle Paul, how in the world you have found that he "canceled" the written law? I would like to read where you have such observation from.

I would like from you to show the complete text(s) about it.

I would require the complete text(s) because there is an infantile method of reading the bible by some people, when they obtain a different doctrine from the bible just by pulling one verse from here, another verse from there...

I want to advise you that the Mishna was never intended to replace the written law. According to Jesus, these oral laws were ADDED to the written law and when they were enforced, these laws became a punishment for the people, while the intention of the written law is to protect, to give safety, look for the preservation of the integrity of a person, including the same for animals and even plants.

And, ending this participation, I can tell you that giving a chronological presentation of the successive kings of Israel is HISTORY and not so theology. Narrating the origin of the first cultures, their names and locations is HISTORY, not so theology. I will recommend you to review the meaning of the world "theology" before you write erroneous loose paragraphs again.

0 Replies

@FBM,

Quote:

All I can do is suggest that you broaden your education.

http://www.funsci.com/fun3_en/writing/writing.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography#Premodern_history
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_writing
etc etc...

Thank you very much for the links.

And I wonder, what is your point when you gave those links in specific?

What part of the links are related to this topic? May you be so nice to enlighten me a little further?

When links are used, the expected from the poster is to make his point and support it with the links.

As you didn't presented any point and you just posted links perhaps trying to say that whatever is in there you have mastered it already, I got lost in the middle of the reading, and in my profound humility I asked to myself, what the hell FBM is trying to say? What is wrong with this dude?

1 Reply

@carloslebaron,

Just a suggestion that you broaden your awareness of the vast amount of surviving ancient documents containing the sorts of details you mentioned. On the whole, we wouldn't be losing all that much if we didn't have the parts of the Bible that contain actual historical information, rather than myth.

0 Replies

@Finn dAbuzz,

Whether Jesus existed is of considerably less importance than whether he completed his assignment. Many great men have lived and died. Jesus' death was to have been fulfilment of prophecy. If it happened as reported, we have a secure hope. If not, we who believe are to be pitied.

1 Reply

@neologist,

If belief and hope is all a believer might have, as many a denomination teach is what is necessary of them, pitied is the word,

I would argue however that those who actively try to apply Jesus teachings do have a runners up prize in the benefits of doing so.

"Simplify your life"
"do unto others"
"love even your enemy"
"worry not about the next day for each day brings its own anxieties."

These teachings are useful whether you believe in Jesus existence or not. What I would assert is that no man of fiction or otherwise has impacted mankind quite so much as this man of questioned existence. Perhaps Mickey Mouse comes in a close second.

1 Reply

@Smileyrius,

Smileyrius wrote:

If belief and hope is all a believer might have, as many a denomination teach is what is necessary of them, pitied is the word,

I would argue however that those who actively try to apply Jesus teachings do have a runners up prize in the benefits of doing so.

"Simplify your life"
"do unto others"
"love even your enemy"
"worry not about the next day for each day brings its own anxieties."

These teachings are useful whether you believe in Jesus existence or not. What I would assert is that no man of fiction or otherwise has impacted mankind quite so much as this man of questioned existence. Perhaps Mickey Mouse comes in a close second.

Actually the Buddha did, 500 years before Jesus. So you are wrong.

These ideas are not radical or necessary to remind people. All it takes is for a person to see them selves as subject to other's behavior. If you don't want to be killed or have your property stolen then it just makes sense not to murder or steal.

Here is the thing. When a person proposes a type of behavior then another person might challenge it. However; if you try to claim that this person handing down the idea is a god then how can it be challenged? So you try to empower the ethics by claiming a god handed down these ideas so they should be followed. It is a way to try and get dumb people to submit and not to challenge them.

The Buddha proposed five precepts and more for those who renounced the home life (life of an average person who wants a family and career).

1. Refrain from killing (including all beings, not just humans) - it is far superior to just the idea of not murdering humans.

2. Refrain from telling lies. This includes false speech or defaming others or revealing their weak character.

3. Refrain from stealing (taking things without permission if they do not belong to you.)

4. Refrain from taking intoxicants (includes anything that alters your mindset or makes you waver from the ability to rationally make decisions.

5. Refrain from sexual deviance ( this refers to rape or unwanted sexual advances) - note here that the bible nor Jesus even mentions not to rape.

Buddhism is far superior in it's moral basis than christianity. Not because it includes more but the punishment for breaking them isn't death nor torture or hell. The Buddha just states that breaking these precepts will invite reaction that will lead to suffering on both yourself and those who are the victims of your actions. How would you suffer for breaking them? People will change their opinions of you, not trust you, not listen to what you have to say, or imprison you. There is no need of threats of hell and damnation in buddhism.

2 Replies

@Krumple,

You seem to be too intelligent to assert the self-serving prattle you do, Krumple. Why don't you avoid that kind of thing?

Quote:

1. Refrain from killing (including all beings, not just humans) - it is far superior to just the idea of not murdering humans.

Really? Because you say so…or because the Buddha says so? And why would it matter if you both said so? How is it “superior”…rather than “I happen to like this better than your take” (which, of course, is merely a variation on “My dick is bigger than yours.”

Quote:

2. Refrain from telling lies. This includes false speech or defaming others or revealing their weak character.

It should also include serving up guesses as truths being revealed…which you do often.

Quote:

Buddhism is far superior in it's moral basis than christianity. Not because it includes more but the punishment for breaking them isn't death nor torture or hell. The Buddha just states that breaking these precepts will invite reaction that will lead to suffering on both yourself and those who are the victims of your actions. How would you suffer for breaking them? People will change their opinions of you, not trust you, not listen to what you have to say, or imprison you. There is no need of threats of hell and damnation in buddhism.

Actually open your eyes, Krumple…and you will be able to see this as the self-serving nonsense it truly is. You will come a lot closer to enlightenment if you do than you will be continuing down the road you are on.

1 Reply

Did Jesus Actually Exist?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know