Their name is Legion

Jack said:
I never heard the Theory until recently. Outside of the Religious World, nobody ever heard of this guy. Hey, don't shoot the Messenger.
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No worries. The Romans executed thousands. Can't remember them all.
 
AProudLefty said:
What if the real history was destroyed or hidden? :eek:
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It is what it is. Legends grow. Like pebbles in the water, people create ripples in history. Those ripples can be backtracked to a fact that something emotionally powerful happened in Jerusalem around Friday, April 3, 33 A.D. and it still resonates in the 21st century.

People can argue divinity all day long, but the ripples created back then have had a far reaching effect on the world. Only a fucking moron believes nothing happened.
 
AProudLefty said:
What if the real history was destroyed or hidden? :eek:
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Or just made up?

Didn't 300 years pass until some King guy said "Hey, let's pick and choose what we want to include and exclude from all the Sayings, Visions, Dreams, and Stories". And then, ... we will call this 'The Bible'.
 
Jack said:
Or just made up?

Didn't 300 years pass until some King guy said "Hey, let's pick and choose what we want to include and exclude from all the Sayings, Visions, Dreams, and Stories". And then, ... we will call this 'The Bible'.
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Uncle Dutch has a good point. Clearly something has happened. What exactly it was we'll probably never know. At least the Muslims have the space rock.
 
AProudLefty said:
Uncle Dutch has a good point. Clearly something has happened. What exactly it was we'll probably never know. At least the Muslims have the space rock.
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"There is very little written about Jesus' early life. The Gospel of Luke (2:41-52) recounts that a 12-year-old Jesus had accompanied his parents on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and became separated. He was found several days later in a temple, discussing affairs with some of Jerusalem’s elders. Throughout the New Testament, there are trace references of Jesus working as a carpenter while a young adult. It is believed that he began his ministry at age 30 when he was baptized by John the Baptist, who upon seeing Jesus, declared him the Son of God."
https://www.biography.com/religious-figure/jesus-christ

Seems like a typical person ... until he runs into this 'John' guy.
 
Jack said:
"There is very little written about Jesus' early life. The Gospel of Luke (2:41-52) recounts that a 12-year-old Jesus had accompanied his parents on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and became separated. He was found several days later in a temple, discussing affairs with some of Jerusalem’s elders. Throughout the New Testament, there are trace references of Jesus working as a carpenter while a young adult. It is believed that he began his ministry at age 30 when he was baptized by John the Baptist, who upon seeing Jesus, declared him the Son of God."
https://www.biography.com/religious-figure/jesus-christ

Seems like a typical person ... until he runs into this 'John' guy.
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I bet it was John Titor. :eek:
 
Dutch Uncle said:
It is what it is. Legends grow. Like pebbles in the water, people create ripples in history. Those ripples can be backtracked to a fact that something emotionally powerful happened in Jerusalem around Friday, April 3, 33 A.D. and it still resonates in the 21st century.

People can argue divinity all day long, but the ripples created back then have had a far reaching effect on the world. Only a fucking moron believes nothing happened.
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there is no serious scholar of antiquity who denies a historical person named Jesus of Nazareth existed.

We simply don't know if anything contemporary was written about Jesus.

Almost no papyrus scrolls from 2000 years ago survived, or were hand copied for future generations of posterity.

There were not journalists, newspapers, or mass media in the first century AD.

It is extraordinary that anything was written at all in the first century about a peasant teacher from Galilee.

The NT accounts of miracles are undoubtedly embellished. During his life, Jesus was an itinerant peasant with a ministry of a few dozen people in a backwater, rural Roman province.

Not exactly something that was on the Roman radar

Only emperors, kings, and the high artisticracy were thought worth committing to written record on papyrus.

Almost all information was passed around by oral tradition in the Late Bronze Age..

The fact that multiple, intelligent independent sources attest to a historical peasant named Jesus within a few decades of his execution is remarkable in the context of the first century.

It is substantially more compelling evidence than we have for the existence of the founders of Buddhism, Confucianism.

Confucius is not even mentioned in history until hundreds of years after his death, when his teachings passed down orally began to be written down.

The information we have about Sidartha Guatauma was written down hundreds of years after he died.

But the consensus among almost all reputable religious historians is that Confucius and Sidartha Guatauma were real people who at least inspired the writing of the Analects and the Buddhist canon.
 
Cypress said:
there is no serious scholar of antiquity who denies a historical person named Jesus of Nazareth existed.

We simply don't know if anything contemporary was written about Jesus.

Almost no papyrus scrolls from 2000 years ago survived, or were hand copied for future generations of posterity.

There were not journalists, newspapers, or mass media in the first century AD.

It is extraordinary that anything was written at all in the first century about a peasant teacher from Galilee.

The NT accounts of miracles are undoubtedly embellished. During his life, Jesus was an itinerant peasant with a ministry of a few dozen people in a backwater, rural Roman province.

Not exactly something that was on the Roman radar

Only emperors, kings, and the high artisticracy were thought worth committing to written record on papyrus.

Almost all information was passed around by oral tradition in the Late Bronze Age..

The fact that multiple, intelligent independent sources attest to a historical peasant named Jesus within a few decades of his execution is remarkable in the context of the first century.

It is substantially more compelling evidence than we have for the existence of the founders of Buddhism, Confucianism.

Confucius is not even mentioned in history until hundreds of years after his death, when his teachings passed down orally began to be written down.

The information we have about Sidartha Guatauma was written down hundreds of years after he died.

But the consensus among almost all reputable religious historians is that Confucius and Sidartha Guatauma were real people who at least inspired the writing of the Analects and the Buddhist canon.
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Oral or physical, like a martial art/yoga, leave no record behind them except their adherents. The adherents, IMO, themselves are good evidence. The ripple that can be traced back in history as it grew out of Jerusalem and Judea, then crossed the Med into Rome. That's history.

Literacy in the time of Jesus was quite high, but it was mainly limited to reading Finding a writer appears to be the major issue. No doubt there were places that sold writings like a telegraph office. The Gospel of Thomas specifically mentions the writers of Jesus; Didymos (twins) Judas Thomas. I won't assume they followed Jesus around 24/7, but it's reasonable that if Jesus gave a sermon, that someone would be there to write it down.

. : https://www.baslibrary.org/biblical-archaeology-review/29/4/4
The first factor to consider is how prevalent literacy was in Jesus’ time. Full literacy means being able to read and write proficiently, but degrees of literacy vary; people who can read, for example, may not be able to write. A common view is that of W.H. Kelber, who claims that, in first-century A.D. Palestine, “writing was in the hands of an élite of trained specialists, and reading required an advanced education available only to a few.”
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Dutch Uncle said:
Oral or physical, like a martial art/yoga, leave no record behind them except their adherents. That, IMO, is good evidence. The ripple that can be traced back in history as it grew out of Jerusalem and Judea, then crossed the Med into Rome. That's history.

Literacy in the time of Jesus was quite high, but it was mainly limited to reading Finding a writer appears to be the major issue. No doubt there were places that sold writings like a telegraph office. The Gospel of Thomas specifically mentions the writers of Jesus; Didymos (twins) Judas Thomas. I won't assume they followed Jesus around 24/7, but it's reasonable that if Jesus gave a sermon, that someone would be there to write it down.

. : https://www.baslibrary.org/biblical-archaeology-review/29/4/4
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Exactly. The history has always been recited, not written until the invention of written languages.
 
Dutch Uncle said:
Oral or physical, like a martial art/yoga, leave no record behind them except their adherents. The adherents, IMO, themselves are good evidence. The ripple that can be traced back in history as it grew out of Jerusalem and Judea, then crossed the Med into Rome. That's history.

Literacy in the time of Jesus was quite high, but it was mainly limited to reading Finding a writer appears to be the major issue. No doubt there were places that sold writings like a telegraph office. The Gospel of Thomas specifically mentions the writers of Jesus; Didymos (twins) Judas Thomas. I won't assume they followed Jesus around 24/7, but it's reasonable that if Jesus gave a sermon, that someone would be there to write it down.

. : https://www.baslibrary.org/biblical-archaeology-review/29/4/4
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nice work

The New Testament explicitly mentions that the disciples Peter and John were illiterate.

Since Jesus and rest of his disciples were generally of the same socio-economic class, it is reasonable to presume they could not write either.

Even if literacy had been one hundred percent in 33 AD, that would still not mitigate the problem of preservation. It simply defies the laws of physics and chemistry that a Papyrus scroll or velum parchment would survive 2000 years for us to read, short of an extraordinary act of preservation, or deciding the scroll is so important that hand-written copies should be produced decade after decade, century after century for posterity sake..


The moral of the story is that the cumulative evidence for a historical Jesus is compelling, and even stronger than the evidence for a historical Confucius, Laozi, or Buddha (though I tend to broadly accept their historicity too).
 
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Cypress said:
nice work

The New Testament explicitly mentions that the disciples Peter and John were illiterate.

Since Jesus and rest of his disciples were generally of the same socio-economic class, it is reasonable to presume they could not write either.

Even if literacy had been one hundred percent in 33 AD, that would still not mitigate the problem of preservation. It simply defies the laws of physics and chemistry that a Papyrus scroll or velum parchment would survive 2000 years for us to read, short of an extraordinary act of preservation, or deciding the scroll is so important that hand-written copies should be produced decade after decade, century after century for posterity sake..

The moral of the story is that the cumulative evidence for a historical Jesus is compelling, and even stronger than the evidence for a historical Confucius, Laozi, or Buddha (though I tend to broadly accept their historicity too).
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Thanks for the points on their literacy. The sayings and stories from Jesus as spoken to the writers seems important enough to keep.

Agreed it's be extremely rare for parchment to survive that long. It appears the Dead Sea Scrolls are one of those rarities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea_Scrolls#Origin

I have no doubt Jesus existed and that many of the sayings in the Gospels, including Thomas, were his. Consider the technological differences in what would have happened had Jesus arrived a thousand years earlier or a thousand years later?

There was even less writing in the region in 1000 BCE. There might not be anything in writing.
 
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