Ancient Confession Found: "We invented Jesus Christ"

ThatOwlWoman said:
All religions are "fake." As a lib I don't see any difference between Islam, Christianity, Shintoism, or what the indigenous ppls of the world believe. They are every single one human attempts to explain the world, to comfort each other, to impose rules of behavior, as an excuse to attack other humans for being the wrong religion, to reassure that death isn't permanent, etc. But nice try attempting to excuse the zealous idiots on your side by making up shit about the left.
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Your religion, atheism, is fake.
 
Jack said:
Many have pointed out that nothing had been written in the Lifetime of Jesus. That's kind of a Red Flag.
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You are thinking about this from the perspective of modern bias.

Writing and record keeping in antiquity cannot be compared to the modern world-- and oral tradition held sway for much of human history. Writing was secondary to oral tradition for thousands of years.

We do not have a single word written by Homer. But we are reasonably sure that the Iliad and the Odessy, which were written hundreds of years after the Trojan War, are attributable to a Greek poet named Homer.

Socrates never wrote a single word. We only know about him posthumously through the dialogues of Plato, years after the execution of Socrates. But I am confident that professional scholars consider Socrates of Athens a real person based on the weight of evidence. I do not believe there is a serious scholar who does not believe Socrates was real.

We do not have a single word written by Confucious or anyone during his lifetime. I believe the Annelects of Confucious were written a couple hundred years after he died, by students and disciples that had maintained the oral tradition of his teachings. I do not think any serious scholar doubts that a Chinese philosopher named Confucious actually existed.
 
Real people do real things.
Mythological Beings do Magic. You'd think someone might have jotted that down.


Cypress said:
You are thinking about this from the perspective of modern bias.

Writing and record keeping in antiquity cannot be compared to the modern world-- and oral tradition held sway for much of human history. Writing was secondary to oral tradition for thousands of years.

We do not have a single word written by Homer. But we are reasonably sure that the Iliad and the Odessy, which were written hundreds of years after the Trojan War, are attributable to a Greek poet named Homer.

Socrates never wrote a single word. We only know about him posthumously through the dialogues of Plato, years after the execution of Socrates. But I am confident that professional scholars consider Socrates of Athens a real person based on the weight of evidence. I do not believe there is a serious scholar who does not believe Socrates was real.

We do not have a single word written by Confucious or anyone during his lifetime. I believe the Annelects of Confucious were written a couple hundred years after he died, by students and disciples that had maintained the oral tradition of his teachings. I do not think any serious scholar doubts that a Chinese philosopher named Confucious actually existed.
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Jack said:
Real people do real things.
Mythological Beings do Magic. You'd think someone might have jotted that down.
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I just think the point is that before we express "shock" that we have no written records mentioning Jesus during his lifetime, we need to take a step back and realize the exact same thing can be said of Homer, Confucious, and Siddhārtha. And yet, most serious scholars will agree that Homer, Confucious. Jesus, and Buddha are avatars at a minimum for real people that acutally existed.

People in antiquity tended to transmit information by oral tradition. Not only was writing not that common - it would be incredibly unlikely in general for writing to survive 2,000 years and make it into our hands.
 
It seems like a Red Flag to me so little outside the Bible is written about Jesus. Either way, the Philosophy is not for me. (I can forgive the magic stuff, ... up until Jesus becomes a Man-God, then it becomes ridiculous)



Cypress said:
I just think the point is that before we express "shock" that we have no written records mentioning Jesus during his lifetime, we need to take a step back and realize the exact same thing can be said of Homer, Confucious, and Siddhārtha. And yet, most serious scholars will agree that Homer, Confucious. Jesus, and Buddha are avatars at a minimum for real people that acutally existed.

People in antiquity tended to transmit information by oral tradition. Not only was writing not that common - it would be incredibly unlikely in general for writing to survive 2,000 years and make it into our hands.
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kudzu said:
There's the rub.. Josephus and Tacitus were members of the Piso family along with Vespasian.
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I have no idea how much of that is true, but it is worth noting there are more sources confirming the historicity of Jesus, including Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor who mentions Jesus in a letter to the Emperor in the first century AD.

I believe there are almost no serious religious scholars who do deny the historicity of Jesus. I am going to come down on the side on the consensus of experts unless and until there is a compelling case that changes the minds of international experts and scholars. Claims about vast conspiracies requires extraordinary evidence to support the claims.

On a related tangent, I personally find Biblical scholarship to be fascinating, probably because it appeals to the armchair historian in me. Man, I love this kind of stuff!

Jesus is mentioned in the first century Jewish historiographical work 'The Antiquities'.

The briefer of the two references indicates that he was called by some the messiah and that he had a brother named James.

The longer reference gives more detail, indicating that Jesus was known to be a wise man, who did spectacular deeds and had a following among both Jews and Gentiles. He was brought up on charges by the Jewish leaders, appeared before Pontius Pilate, and was crucified. His followers formed a community that continued to thrive, first in Judea, then elsewhere, even in Rome.

Source credit - Professor Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina
"The Historical Jesus" course guidbook
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Cypress said:
I have no idea how much of that is true, but it is worth noting there are more sources confirming the historicity of Jesus, including Pliny the Younger, a Roman governor who mentions Jesus in a letter to the Emperor in the first century AD.

I believe there are almost no serious religious scholars who do deny the historicity of Jesus. I am going to come down on the side on the consensus of experts unless and until there is a compelling case that changes the minds of international experts and scholars. Claims about vast conspiracies requires extraordinary evidence to support the claims.

On a related tangent, I personally find Biblical scholarship to be fascinating, probably because it appeals to the armchair historian in me. Man, I love this kind of stuff!
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Can't remember where I posted it, but I found a good case for debunking the claim.
 
ThatOwlWoman said:
All religions are "fake." As a lib I don't see any difference between Islam, Christianity, Shintoism, or what the indigenous ppls of the world believe. They are every single one human attempts to explain the world, to comfort each other, to impose rules of behavior, as an excuse to attack other humans for being the wrong religion, to reassure that death isn't permanent, etc. But nice try attempting to excuse the zealous idiots on your side by making up shit about the left.
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I prefer to take what is good from the words the great religions confer on their leaders.


Humans are mostly good and smart


thinking and doing for others for as a society is a good thing for all people


all the major religions contain some good writings of noble things



Not one of them contains the unvarnished truth


merely TIME could do that to them but in many cases they ( because they were organized) were altered thoughout history to benefit someone with the power at the moment.



lets just embrace the good words in each of them and quit pretending they are TEAMS and one will win and beat all the others to death.



organizing religion destroys its goodness


believe whats in your heart
 
Cypress said:
The bar I try to set is that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and this source honestly just not seem up to snuff to me.

The historicity of Jesus has been confirmed by sources independent of the bible, including 1st century Roman historian Tacitus, and 1st century Jewish historian Josephus, giving independent confirmation that Jesus was a real person who was executed on Pontius Pilate. The weight of evidence comes down on the side of Jesus being a real person, a Jewish radical teacher, and any attempt to claim he is a myth requires extraordinary evidence, serious scholarship, and the consensus of trained and educated religious scholars.
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No, they didn't confirm his historicity. They merely referenced other sources referencing him.
 
what ever the answer to whether he was real or not doesn't change the beauty of his words of kindness to others



why cant we all just accept that we will never really know the true history and just embrace the clearly good messages?
 
evince said:
what ever the answer to whether he was real or not doesn't change the beauty of his words of kindness to others
why cant we all just accept that we will never really know the true history and just embrace the clearly good messages?
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Ra-men.

I agree with this quote attributed to Gandhi: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
 
CharacterAssassin said:
No, they didn't confirm his historicity. They merely referenced other sources referencing him.
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Cite your credentials, which divinity school you went to, where your PhD in religious history is from.

Otherwise, you can attempt to make the case for why I should place greater weight on the opinion of an obscure message boarder, rather than the worldwide consensus opinion of trained religious scholars educated at the best universities and seminaries on the planet.
 
evince said:
what ever the answer to whether he was real or not doesn't change the beauty of his words of kindness to others



why cant we all just accept that we will never really know the true history and just embrace the clearly good messages?
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I agree that in the grand scheme of things, the insightful and profound lessons Jesus preached could and should be followed irrespective of the historicity of Jesus. The Golden Rule just makes sense in any context or culture.

From another point of view, I believe in respect for the traditions of scholarly pursuit of knowledge and truth, I believe in scholarly expertise and higher education, and I generally place little stock or weight in armchair experts and conspiracy theories. I owe that to myself as a matter of respect for intellectual honesty and scholarly integrity.
 
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