Did Jesus Actually Exist?

I don't insist on being right. There's nothing parochial in History being a humanity.

Yes, you do insist on being right, as you should. That is precisely WHY you are pissed off when i insist on being right... :-)

But it's also important to remember that it could happen to anyone of us, as the present thread shows. All it takes is a little hatred, + a facile, condescending approach to evidence, + ignorance combined with too high a view of one's own information level.

Don't assume you know what the evidence is for anything, if you haven't studied the matter for a few months at the very least. It's easy to miss and misinterpret evidence where you're not a specialist.

How far have you gone towards your climatology PhD, Krumpy? Did you finish it yet?

I'm just amazed at how stubborn you are, to the point of verging on the absurd. Science is based on hypothesis which are then tested by experiment(s). If the methodology to carry out experiments does not exist the hypothesis remains untested. That's true of Social Sciences, all government economic policies are experiments in economics. Social sciences have more variables.

There's no experiments in History, people come to a conclusion based on looking at the available evidence. It's academic but it's not scientific.

Now you may want to continue arguing black is white, but I'm really not interested.

Could you stop insisting stubbornly on being right all the time?

Or you could stop taking absurd positions on things.

Absurd = not British.

Jesus existed and was a good dude.

He cared for the less fortunate, and tried to easy their lives from the claws of the Pharisees, who were practically fanatics of their own personal doctrines instead of following the ancient doctrines given by Moses.

The Pharisees sentenced him to be hung on the eve of Passover, but they have doubts if Jesus was in reality the son of their god.

So, the Pharisees used the Roman authority to fulfill their plan and "wash their hands" on the innocent.

The plan was performed as planned. The Roman authority fell in the trick and Jesus was ordered to die by Pilate when he gave green light to the execution.

Jesus was a kind of modern Martin Luther King.

I would have thought that MLK was more of a modern Jesus.

You are confusing the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The latter were mainly from the priesthood, an inherited religious aristocracy bent on applying the written Law without alterations. Any of the gospels stories happening on temple grounds (the merchants, the adulteress...) is about a critique of the Sadducees.

In contrast, the Pharisees were proposing the Law as a 'living document', continuously re-interpreted as time passes and the social or historic context changes, through a process of infinite glosses. The oral Torah.

It's obvious from the texts that the Pharisees were ideologically closer to Jesus, or vice versa. Especially Hillel. There are clear parallels between the Gospels and the Talmud. The only reproaches Jesus has 'on the record' so to speak on the Pharisees are 1) that they act as gatekeepers to knowledge rather than teachers of the people (a process later called the 'treason of the clerks'); and 2) that they tend to take things too literally, attaching too much importance to the letter of the Law as opposed to its 'spirit'.

The Gospels probably amplified this critique because at the time of their writing after the fall of Jerusalem in the first Roman-Jewish war (66-70) and the burning of the temple, the Sadducees were no more and the Pharisees had become the dominant Jewish religious authorities, and direct competitors...

According to others' research, the whole group of Priests, Pharisees and seduces were enemies of Jesus.

http://searchingthescriptures.net/main_pages/sermon_outlines/The%20Mind%20of%20Christ%20-%20PDF/Mind%20of%20Christ%2016c%20-%20The%20Enemies%20of%20Jesus%20Part%203.pdf

This dude Jesus put all of them in trouble when finding their weak and corrupt side.

All of them worked together to kill Jesus.

I knew a guy who was a hard liquor drinker, who used to be at the job drunk sometimes. But he used to hate his supervisor, who was corrupt as hell in the work place, but a priest in a Church.

This drunk guy, used to say that he was a sinner and that he recognized it in front of everybody. And that his hatred against his supervisor was because the other was a hypocrite.

Jesus called Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites because they were playacting to be righteous, but that they weren't.

One thing is that one comes to you in private and tell you about your mistakes, and another thing is seeing Jesus telling it all in front of witness by lots.

A poster's reply in this other forum.

http://forums.jewsforjesus.org/thread-4567.html

Then came together to him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which came from Jerusalem. And when they saw some of his disciples eat bread with defiled, that is to say, with unwashed hands, they found fault. For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders. And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables. Then the Pharisees and scribes asked him, Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat bread with unwashed hands? He answered and said to them, Isaiah has prophesied of you well, hypocrites, as it is written, This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. Howbeit in vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

You might try to justify one group over another, but all of them committed the conspiracy against Jesus.

Jesus WANTED to end up on that cross. Anyone who helped him get there should get a medal...

Oh so asking why his god forsook him was just a slip of the tongue?

Probably just an unforced error made by the people making up the mythological part of the story.

Sorta like the one made in Genesis involving the Garden and punishment for people doing things they did not know were wrong.

Jesus wanted to climb on that cross because he wanted to provoke God into action. Didn't work.

Talk about reading the mind of someone we have no proof he existed..

My thoughts exactly, we should be grateful to Oliver for sorting everything out.

You're most welcome.