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Jesus, Fact or friction?

Naturefarm2

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Amazingly, the question of an actual historical Jesus rarely confronts the religious believer. The power of faith has so forcefully driven the minds of most believers, and even apologetic scholars, that the question of reliable evidence gets obscured by tradition, religious subterfuge, and outrageous claims. The following gives a brief outlook about the claims of a historical Jesus and why the evidence the Christians present us cannot serve as justification for reliable evidence for a historical Jesus.

No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus got written well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings.

The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer]

The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names.

Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occured at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110.

John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the unknown author(s) of this gospel wrote it in Greek near the end of the first century, and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong]

Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelist
report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories.

Continue
 

Naturefarm2

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OTHER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS

Even in antiquity people like Origen and Eusebius raised doubts about the authenticity of other books in the New Testament such as Hebrews, James, John 2 & 3, Peter 2, Jude, and Revelation. Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James calling it worthless and an "epistle of straw" and questioned Jude, Hebrews and the Apocalypse in Revelation. Nevertheless, all New Testament writings came well after the alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors (with the possible exception of Paul, although still after the alleged death).

Epistles of John: The epistles of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation appear so different in style and content that they could hardly have the same author. Some suggest that these writings of John come from the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor who followed a "John" or they came from the work of church fathers who aimed to further the interests of the Church. Or they could have simply come from people also named John (a very common name). No one knows. Also note that nowhere in the body of the three epistles of "John" does it mention a John. In any case, the epistles of John say nothing about seeing an earthly Jesus. Not only do we not know who wrote these epistles, they can only serve as hearsay accounts. [2]

Epistles of Peter: Many scholars question the authorship of Peter of the epistles. Even within the first epistle, it says in 5:12 that Silvanus wrote it. Most scholars consider the second epistle as unreliable or an outright forgery (for some examples, see the introduction to 2 Peter in the full edition of The New Jerusalem Bible, 1985, and [3]). In short, no one has any way of determining whether the epistles of Peter come from fraud, an unknown author also named Peter (a common name) or from someone trying to further the aims of the Church.

Of the remaining books and letters in the Bible, there occurs no other stretched claims or eyewitness accounts for a historical Jesus and needs no mention of them here for this deliberation.

As for the existence of original New Testament documents, none exist. No book of the New Testament survives in the original autograph copy. What we have then come from copies, and copies of copies, of questionalbe originals (if the stories came piecemeal over time, as it appears it has, then there may never have existed an original). The earliest copies we have came more than a century later than the autographs, and these exist on fragments of papyrus. [Pritchard; Graham] According to Hugh Schonfield, "It would be impossible to find any manuscript of the New Testament older than the late third century, and we actually have copies from the fourth and fifth. [Schonfield]

The editing and formation of the Bible came from members of the early Christian Church. Since the fathers of the Church possessed the texts and determined what would appear in the Bible, there occurred plenty of opportunity and motive to change, modify, or create texts that might bolster the position of the Church or the members of the Church themselves.

Take, for example, Eusebius who served as an ecclesiastical church historian and bishop. He had great influence in the early Church and he openly advocated the use of fraud and deception in furthering the interests of the Church [Remsberg]. The first mention of Jesus by Josephus came from Eusebius (none of the earlier church fathers mention Josephus' Jesus). It comes to no surprise why many scholars think that Eusebius interpolated his writings. In his Ecclesiastical History, he writes, "We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity." (Vol. 8, chapter 2). In his Praeparatio Evangelica, he includes a chapter titled, "How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived" (book 12, chapter 32).

The Church had such power over people, that to question the Church could result in death. Regardless of what the Church claimed, people had to take it as "truth." St. Ignatius Loyola of the 16th century even wrote: "We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides."

In 1945, an Arab made an archeological discovery in Upper Egypt of several ancient papyrus books. They have since referred to it as The Nag Hammadi texts. They contained fifty-two heretical books written in Coptic script which include gospels of Thomas, Philip, James, John, Thomas, and many others. Archeologists have dated them at around 350-400 C.E. They represent copies from previous copies. None of the original texts exist and scholars argue about a possible date of the originals. Some of them think that they can hardly have dates later than 120-150 C.E. Others have put it closer to 140 C.E. [Pagels, 1979]

Other Gnostic gospels such as the Gospel of Judas, found near the Egyptian site of the Nag Hammadi texts, shows a diverse pattern of story telling, always a mark of myth. The Judas gospel tells of Judas Iscariot as Jesus' most loyal disciple, just opposite that of the canonical gospel stories. Note that the text does not claim that Judas Iscariot wrote it. The Judas gospel, a copy written in Coptic, dates to around the third-to fourth-century. The original Greek version probably dates to between 130 and 170 C.E., around the same tine as the Nag Hammadi texts. Irenaeus first mentions this gospel in Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) written around 180 C.E., so we know that this represented a heretical gospel
WHAT ABOUT WRITINGS DURING THE LIFE OF JESUS?

What appears most revealing of all, comes not from what people later wrote about Jesus but what people did not write about him. Consider that not a single historian, philosopher, scribe or follower who lived before or during the alleged time of Jesus ever mentions him!

If, indeed, the Gospels portray a historical look at the life of Jesus, then the one feature that stands out prominently within the stories shows that people claimed to know Jesus far and wide, not only by a great multitude of followers but by the great priests, the Roman governor Pilate, and Herod who claims that he had heard "of the fame of Jesus" (Matt 14:1)". One need only read Matt: 4:25 where it claims that "there followed him [Jesus] great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jersulaem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordon." The gospels mention, countless times, the great multitude that followed Jesus and crowds of people who congregated to hear him. So crowded had some of these gatherings grown, that Luke 12:1 alleges that an "innumberable multitude of people... trode one upon another." Luke 5:15 says that there grew "a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear..." The persecution of Jesus in Jerusalem drew so much attention that all the chief priests and scribes, including the high priest Caiaphas, not only knew about him but helped in his alleged crucifixion. (see Matt 21:15-23, 26:3, Luke 19:47, 23:13). The multitude of people thought of Jesus, not only as a teacher and a miracle healer, but a prophet (see Matt:14:5).

So here we have the gospels portraying Jesus as famous far and wide, a prophet and healer, with great multitudes of people who knew about him, including the greatest Jewish high priests and the Roman authorities of the area, and not one person records his existence during his lifetime? If the poor, the rich, the rulers, the highest priests, and the scribes knew about Jesus, who would not have heard of him?

Then we have a particular astronomical event that would have attracted the attention of anyone interested in the "heavens." According to Luke 23:44-45, there occurred "about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour, and the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst." Yet not a single mention of such a three hour ecliptic event got recorded by anyone, including the astronomers and astrologers, anywhere in the world, including Pliny the Elder and Seneca who both recorded eclipses from other dates. Note also that, for obvious reasons, eclipses can't occur during a full moon (passovers always occur during full moons), Nor does a single contemporary person write about the earthquake described in Matthew 27:51-54 where the earth shook, rocks ripped apart (rent), and graves opened.

Matthew 2 describes Herod and all of Jerusalem as troubled by the worship of the infant Jesus. Herod then had all of the children of Bethlehem slain. If such extraordinary infanticides of this magnitude had occurred, why didn't anyone write about it?

Some apologists attempt to dig themselves out of this problem by claiming that there lived no capable historians during that period, or due to the lack of education of the people with a writing capacity, or even sillier, the scarcity of paper gave reason why no one recorded their "savior." But the area in and surrounding Jerusalem served, in fact, as the center of education and record keeping for the Jewish people. The Romans, of course, also kept many records. Moreover, the gospels mention scribes many times, not only as followers of Jesus but the scribes connected with the high priests. And as for historians, there lived plenty at the time who had the capacity and capability to record, not only insignificant gossip, but significant events, especially from a religious sect who drew so much popular attention through an allegedly famous and infamous Jesus.

If, indeed, such a well known Jesus existed, as the gospels allege, does any reader here think it reasonable that, at the very least, the fame of Jesus would not have reached the ears of one of these men?
 

commoner

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aiya, in the beginning nobody expects Jesus to be famous,,,, they do not have video recording to to tape the birth and beginning of Jesus,,,, so historical Jesus existed based on records of Romans,,,,did anyone record the birth and works of Deng Xiao Peng or Pol Pot or Hilter, what was their childhood like? they when young, not someone important,,, so Jesus was nobody in his young days,,,,

not many people write biography or historians record these matters in a small place called Bethelhem or Nazarus,,,,

all writings are based on faith, and faith SOMETIMES exceed reasoning,,, that is Faith.... Bible, is a collection of writings, not necessarily written by who we deemed as "authors",,, it is a collection of writings the council of Trent? selected who they deemed fit,,,,

believe or not? have faith or not
 

UseYourBrain

Alfrescian
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commoner said:
believe or not? have faith or not
Yet many are being blackmailed by these so called bible thumpers and seasonal missionary that if the don't believe in these speculated and unfounded writtings that put Jesus equivalent to God shall have their destiny in hell. Surprisingly many so called educated Singaporean buy into the unconfirmed theory and turn the novel into faith and now into business. Anything western the swallow all hook and sinkers and their ability to resoning were on OFF mode when accepting anything western. Amazing Singaporean.
 

samurai1110

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yet many are being blackmailed by these so called bible thumpers and seasonal missionary that if the don't believe in these speculated and unfounded writtings that put jesus equivalent to god shall have their destiny in hell. Surprisingly many so called educated singaporean buy into the unconfirmed theory and turn the novel into faith and now into business. Anything western the swallow all hook and sinkers and their ability to resoning were on off mode when accepting anything western. Amazing singaporean.

how very true!
 

darryl_sw

Alfrescian
Loyal
Indeed, compared to other beliefs. Other religions have tens of thousands of gods. But if there's tens of thousands of gods, then who is the "leader" of them? And if there were a "leader", then are the rest considered as god at all? As far as I'm sure, a "god" cannot be created nor destroyed. If a "god" can be created, then can that "god" be known as a god? If that "god" can be destroyed, can that "god" be known as a god? And if that "god" has a superior over it, is that a god then?

Final conclusion - there is only 1 God.
 

wuqi256

Moderator - JB Section
Loyal
Naturefarm2, well done.
I have this to add, if indeed the fellowship of Christ is false, then it reverts us back to the old testament in which only 1 race is the appointed race of God. There are too many things which does not make sense anymore.
 

darryl_sw

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Naturefarm2, well done.
I have this to add, if indeed the fellowship of Christ is false, then it reverts us back to the old testament in which only 1 race is the appointed race of God. There are too many things which does not make sense anymore.

That would be if, and only if, the fellowship of Christ is false, which is quite unlikely.
 

Hock

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It's just a story book written by many authors very long ago. I
don't believe present day Shit Times. How can I believe this
old story book?:biggrin:
 

darryl_sw

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It's just a story book written by many authors very long ago. I
don't believe present day Shit Times. How can I believe this
old story book?:biggrin:

How about this - try copying the bible from cover to cover and see how long you take. It'll probably take you tens of years to cover the bible, whether in ink or using using a keyboard(you might wanna try using ink for the sake of fairness). If you agree that the bible is a story book, then you also agree that it is written by just one author. [It makes no sense that a story book is written by multiple authors. Even if it is written by multiple authors, it makes absolutely no sense on how all the books of the bibles fits together without a single error or contradiction]. Do you think that there is any ONE man on Earth that would be able to finish writing the bible in their lifetime? Sure, you'll attempt to prove me wrong by saying that it is possible to finish copying the bible in less than ten years if you put your effort into it - you just don't want to waste your time. Let me ask you something - would you be able to compose that amount of words in a hundred years? Bear in mind that those words are original - they're not copied in ink. They are all "thought up"(assuming that the bible is false).

Do you still think that the Bible is just an ordinary story book?
 

Hock

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How about this - try copying the bible from cover to cover and see how long you take. It'll probably take you tens of years to cover the bible, whether in ink or using using a keyboard(you might wanna try using ink for the sake of fairness). If you agree that the bible is a story book, then you also agree that it is written by just one author. [It makes no sense that a story book is written by multiple authors. Even if it is written by multiple authors, it makes absolutely no sense on how all the books of the bibles fits together without a single error or contradiction]. Do you think that there is any ONE man on Earth that would be able to finish writing the bible in their lifetime? Sure, you'll attempt to prove me wrong by saying that it is possible to finish copying the bible in less than ten years if you put your effort into it - you just don't want to waste your time. Let me ask you something - would you be able to compose that amount of words in a hundred years? Bear in mind that those words are original - they're not copied in ink. They are all "thought up"(assuming that the bible is false).

Do you still think that the Bible is just an ordinary story book?

I can copy the book in half an hour.....photocopy:biggrin: The world is a much more peaceful place without those(Jew, Christian & Muslim) who used the book to preach.
 

darryl_sw

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I can copy the book in half an hour.....photocopy:biggrin: The world is a much more peaceful place without those(Jew, Christian & Muslim) who used the book to preach.

Well.. People do not have photocopy machines during those ancient times do they?
 
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