Was Jesus the god that Christians say he said he was?

[ThePuppyTurtle]

About the Faith thing. Word games will not help you. We have explained what we mean by Faith and if you feel another word is better suggest one. What you are doing is the same thing NephilimFree does with "Morphology". It is meaningless bickering over words. Read the definition of the Greek word translated faith and accept that that is what we mean. Or I will use another word that you request of me. Also about contemporary, I was looking for and asked for a number. How many years? My plain once I have this is to either select an example and argue for that dating. Or explain why it is an invalid challenge.

 

[australopithecus]

So you're the ones using a translated Greek definition of faith and everyone else is playing semantic games? Also, the concept of contemporary is well defined. It shouldn't warrant any further debate.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

I'm just going to give a quote from a historian: To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory. It has again and again been answered and annihilated by first rank scholars. In recent years, no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus or at any rate was very few and that have not succeeded in deposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant evidence to the contrary. Michael Grant.

It would be more compelling if he hadn't left off the first part of the quote, so lets look at the whole thing(emphasis mine):

British historian Michael Grant: "...if we apply to the New Testament, as we should, the same sort of criteria as we should apply to other ancient writings containing historical material, we can no more reject Jesus' existence than we can reject the existence of a mass of pagan personages whose reality as historical figures is never questioned...To sum up, modern critical methods fail to support the Christ-myth theory. It has 'again and again been answered and annihilated by first-rank scholars'. In recent years 'no serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus' -- or at any rate very few, and they have not succeeded in disposing of the much stronger, indeed very abundant, evidence to the contrary."

So, "Jesus" as a character is placed in the context of various other pagan "personages" who may have existed, but whose claims of divine connection must surely be questioned, unless Christians are willing to accept the claims of those same pagans as equal to their own?

 

[AronRa]

About the Faith thing. Word games will not help you. We have explained what we mean by Faith and if you feel another word is better suggest one. What you are doing is the same thing NephilimFree does with "Morphology". It is meaningless bickering over words. Read the definition of the Greek word translated faith and accept that that is what we mean. Or I will use another word that you request of me.

"I don't know what you mean by 'glory,' " Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don't,till I tell you. I meant 'there's a nice knock-down argument for you!' "
"But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean,neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master that's all."
Alice was too much puzzled to say anything,

You're the one playing word games, boy. TaylorX04 and I both already showed the true meaning of 'faith' -not according to one extrapolated definition, but from a consensus of combined definitions from all authoritative sources on that particular topic.

"Assurance of things hoped for conviction of things not seen"
--Hebrews 11:1
"We look not at things seen, but at things not seen"
--2 Corinthians 4:18
"we walk by faith not sight"
--2 Corinthians 5:7
"how blessed are they who have not seen but yet believe"
--John 27:29

"Confident belief in the truth, value, or trustworthiness of a person, idea, or thing, that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence."
--Bartleby.com, Dictionary.com

"complete trust or confidence. 2 strong belief in a religion. 3 a system of religious belief."
--AskOxford

"Belief; the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another, resting solely and implicitly on his authority and veracity; reliance on testimony."
--OneLook

"a firm belief in something for which there is no proof"
--Merriam Webster Online Dictionary.

"Belief in, devotion to, or trust in somebody or something, especially without logical proof,."
--Encarta

"For quite a lot of people, faith or the lack thereof, is an important part of their identities. E.g. a person will identify him or herself as a Muslim or a skeptic. Many religious rationalists, as well as non-religious people, criticize implicit faith as being irrational. In this view, belief should be restricted to what is directly supportable by logic or evidence."
--Wikipedia

"To see by faith is to shut the eye of reason." --Benjamin Franklin
"Faith means not wanting to know what is true." --Frederich Nietzche`
"Faith is believing what you know ain't so." --Mark Twain
"Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding," --Reverend Martin Luther
"Faith is a cop-out. It is intellectual bankruptcy. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits." -Dan Barker, Losing Faith in Faith; From Preacher to Atheist

There are many more where these came from. You're the one using a different definition than everyone else.

Also about contemporary, I was looking for and asked for a number. How many years? My plain once I have this is to either select an example and argue for that dating. Or explain why it is an invalid challenge.

That was already explained on the first page of this thread: "Living or occurring at the same time."

 

[Gnug215]

Faith without evidence is extolled as a virtue in the Bible, for instance here as AronRa points out:

"how blessed are they who have not seen but yet believe"
--John 27:29

This is also corroborated in the story about Thomas the Doubter.

So why is it that so many theists want to redefine faith and make it reasonable?

And here we have WLC admitting that baseless, personal faith trumps reason and evidence:



(At about 30+ seconds in.)

And this is from the author of "Reasonable Faith". But to him, reason is seemingly only reasonable when it agrees with your own special, gooey faith inside. If reason and evidence controvert what you really feel so strongly in your heart, then they're wrong, and that's just Satan messing with your mind.

I don't always agree with Dawkins' methods and choices in this whole debate, but his decision to not debate WLC is absolutely spot on. By his own admission in this video, WLC disqualifies himself from ANY reasonable debate or discourse with his stance. We can never expect this man to be honest or trustworthy.

 

[Laurens]

As far as I'm aware 'Son of Man' and 'Son of God' in the context of the ancient Hebrews didn't mean literally God's son, they meant someone who is held in high favour by Yahweh (Ehrman, 2009). Christianity seems to be almost entirely based upon a fundamental misunderstanding of that...

EHRMAN, BART D. (2009), Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them), Harper Collins Publishers

(and yes I am anal enough to Harvard reference even the shortest of posts )

 

[AronRa]

Refusing to deal with my inquiries directly or systematically, he made another video instead.



In this video, he criticizes me for ignoring points I actually did address, and [deliberately?] missed the point of practically everything else I said in this thread too. Of particular note is where he said that I 'ignored', or am purposefully misunderstanding his belief about YHWH being an 'essence'. If only he had answered the short quiz I prepared for him, he would have known better than that. Worst of all, he says that I am refusing to understand -what I am trying to explain to him. I gave up on this boy half way in. I think it pretty obvious why he would not submit to a systematic analysis of his argument here.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

I asked aaronk1994 if he would post a transcript of his video to this thread and I got this response back:

aaronk1994[/url]"]No. I have no, desire for AronRa to post another nonsense response to me - making up points and ignoring the majority of mine.

Dustnite, if you would be so kind, could you run this through your AI in order to create a transcript for anyone to read. I would much rather read something from him than listen to his video. It would be nice because more people will be able to respond to it as well

 

[AronRa]

Since aaronk1994 refuses to meet the challenge, how about you, PuppyTurtle? Have you found any extra-Biblical evidence for any of your favorite fables yet? Just let me know how long I have to wait before you man-up and apologize for calling me a liar.

 

[SirYeen]

It is sad we live in a society where it is absolutely ok to get called on your bullshit and not have the decency to admit you were wrong. That's what eventually got to me. At some point you just realize that you're either going to be an intellectual coward or an atheist, not taking the jump into the void just wasn't an option anymore.

So I know it's not completely ontopic but to those who once called me out on my bullshit. Thanks. I really do appreciate it.

 

[g0dh4x]

No.

 

[brettpalmer]

Refusing to deal with my inquiries directly or systematically, he made another video instead.

I'm left without a kind word to say so maybe I'll just say nothing at all....

 

[AronRa]

According to Wikipidia,

Sir Isaac Newton saw a monotheistic God as the masterful creator whose existence could not be denied in the face of the grandeur of all creation. Although born into an Anglican family, by his thirties Newton held a Christian faith that, had it been made public, would not have been considered orthodox by mainstream Christianity; in recent times he has been described as heretical to orthodoxy.

Newton was born into an Anglican family, and remained part of the Anglican establishment for the majority of his life. However, Newton's private religious views were not in line with Anglican doctrine.[citation needed]

According to most scholars, Newton was Arian, not holding to Trinitarianism. 'In Newton's eyes, worshipping Christ as God was idolatry, to him the fundamental sin'. As well as being antitrinitarian, Newton allegedly rejected the orthodox doctrines of the immortal soul, a personal devil and literal demons. Although he was not a Socinian he shared many similar beliefs with them. A manuscript he sent to John Locke in which he disputed the existence of the Trinity was never published.

Newton , like many contemporaries (e.g., Thomas Aikenhead) , faced the threat of severe punishment if he had been open about his religious beliefs. Heresy was a crime that could have been punishable by the loss of all property and status or even death (see, e.g., the Blasphemy Act 1697). Because of his secrecy over his religious beliefs, Newton has been described as a Nicodemite.

In a minority view, T.C. Pfizenmaier argued Newton was neither "orthodox" nor an Arian, but that, rather, Newton believed both of these groups had wandered into metaphysical speculation. Pfizenmaier also argued that Newton held closer to the Eastern Orthodox view of the Trinity rather than the Western one held by Roman Catholics and Protestants. However, S. D. Snobelen has argued against this from manuscripts produced late in Newton's life which demonstrate Newton rejected the Eastern view of the Trinity.

He spent a great deal of time trying to discover hidden messages within the Bible.

Newton was a strong believer in prophetic interpretation of the Bible and considered himself to be one of a select group of individuals who were specially chosen by God for the task of understanding Biblical scripture.

Unlike a prophet in the classical sense of the word, Newton relied upon existing Scripture to prophecy for him, believing his interpretations would set the record straight in the face of what he considered to be, "so little understood".

 

[Dustnite]

Here's the transcription from the Final Response to AronRa video. I have noted where spelling may be incorrect. Aaron may choose to interject if it is not correct somewhere but should be fairly accurate.

Hey everyone, this is Aaronk1994. I am here with the final time with AronRa. I am making this into a video because I was going to talk about his response which would will be linked down there at about the third page of the forum. I was going to talk about this response in the Fish of Time show yesterday but just never got around to it. So I will be responding to it in a video. This will be the final word in this subject.

So the link is down there, you can read it if you want to double check me or whatever. So let's go. First of all, I think it's rather ironic when he says at the beginning of the response, he says that he already knew everything that I would bring up in my response, except he ignores the majority of my points completely. He ignores my point about the right hand of power, I am doubting Thomas, and he doesn't address my point about being inconsistent by accepting the quotes of Jesus of the gospels but rejecting everything else they say. So, if you knew everything that I and presumably how to respond to everything I said. Why did you ignore almost all my points? He really isn't very consistent.

Secondly, I like to clarify the Trinity again. It's getting ridiculous honestly, because it appears at this point that AronRa simply refuses to actually understand what the Trinity is. Yahweh is an essence. Yahweh is not exclusively the father. The father, the son, and the Holy Spirit all share in Yahweh's divinity. They are all Yahweh or Lord. It is not Yahweh, the son and the Holy Spirit. It is father, son and Holy Spirit all these persons are Yahweh. The father being God, Yahweh, and Lord does not exclude Jesus God, Yahweh, and Lord. They are persons of God and they all equally share in God's or Yahweh's or lord's divine essence. You are simply refusing to understand it.

He says that, it's a very humorous point, and that the mere existence of Unitarians, those people that deny the Trinity believes that God is one person and essence that still claim to be Christians. He said that the mere fact that they exist proves that the Trinity is not actually supported by scripture. It is only something that is interpreted by others. This is absolutely ridiculous. For example, Jehovah's Witnesses deny that the Bible, not just what Jesus or the gospels says, but the bible as a whole. They deny that it teaches Jesus is God despite numerous explicit verses that he is. For example, Colossians 2:9; "For in Christ, all the fullness of the deity draws bodily." 1st Corinthians 8:6; "For us there is but one God the Father from where all things came and for whom we live and there is but one LORD Jesus Christ through whom all things came. God is Lord. Lord is God." It also claims that Jesus is the Creator. Despite these explicit verses, obviously teaching the deity of Christ, people in the Jehovah's witnesses still deny that the bible teaches it. Does this prove that these verses don't actually refer to Christ as a deity? Of course not. People denying something has nothing to do with it, I could say Why do creationists deny evolutionist if the evidence is so supportive of it. I am an evolutionist btw I support it. Why do they deny it? That proves that it is misinterpreted it, it's not supported by evidence right. It's basically the same logic.

He guesses the four Gospels claims that God sought for (change Jesus as a god). John 1:1. In the beginning was the word and the word were with God and the word was God. Not a god. God. The one and only monotheistic God. Jesus is Yahweh. The Jews believed in one God. There no a gods. What are you even talking about? This is a Jewish monotheistic context. A god didn't exist. There were no gods, there just the God. John says Jesus is the God. You are simply making this up as usual. He says that the gospels that the biggest exaggeration of course comes at the end. He is referring of John's portrayal of Jesus as God in the flesh. Basically he applies here is that the deity of Christ was a later development; it was not present in early Gospels.
This is a blatant falsehood as previously noted in Colossians 2:9, the epistles of Paul who were earlier than even Synoptic (sp?) Gospels explicitly and unequivocally portray Jesus as God. Again Colossians 2:9; For in Christ Jesus all the fullness of the deity draws bodily. The earliest writings do say that Jesus is not only God, not only the God, but God in the flesh. So you are simply wrong.

AronRa also, not sure why he brought this up, says that Luke is the only one of the four Gospels that links Jesus to King David. David's name is in the genealogy in the Gospel of Matthew too. The other Gospels do not contain genealogies. So Luke is the only one that tries to link David, also Matthew does. He claims that there is no contemporary evidence for Jesus. Obviously you aren't very familiar with the historical method. Contemporary evidence is not required to establish the existence a historical figure or the validity of a historical event. Actually, the majority of history lacks contemporary corroboration. Please cite a historian that agrees with you that says that a lack of contemporary evidence means that is likely that a person existed. It is simply ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous standard. You are not going to apply that to anything else. The annals of Tacitus (sp?) were written decades after the event, yet historians consider them to be the best articles of history that we have. No one, the historians dismiss the annals of Tacitus (sp?) because they aren't contemporary and neither are you I presume. You are simply special pleading and you won't apply that standard of evidence to anything else.

He says there is quite a bit of debate in the historical community regarding the existence of Jesus. No there isn't. I am going to discuss the quote from Michael Grant in a minute. Bari Ehrman (sp?), a rather liberal scholar who is not even in the mainstream that he has never heard of a historian that even questioned the existence of Jesus. Bari Ehrman (sp?) said that. This is hilarious. When addressing the quote that I cited by Michael Grant, "To sum up modern critical methods fail to support the Christ myth theory, etc. etc." He simply dismisses him as someone who "shares my bias". This just demonstrates how petty AronRa is and how he really doesn't research his claims. Michael Grant was not a Christian, he was a secular historian. In fact, the book that the quote is from is from Jesus: A historian's review of the Gospels where Grant highly questions the reliability of the Gospels. Where did you come from this conclusion where he shares my bias? Oh you made it up. That's really the only way; you obviously didn't research it since if you did you would know he doesn't share my bias. Well making things up is typical.

I'm not going to comment on his thing about the definition of faith. I think Puppy Turtle wants to have a go at that so I will leave it to him. He claims that the Hindu Trimurti (sp?) is almost identical to the Christian trinity so the context between the two religions is the same. Those were my main points in the other video that the context between Jewish monotheism and Hindu polytheism, pantheism is completely different. He says no because the Hindus had a trinity too so the context is the same. This is ridiculous I have said that a lot.
First, a key point in the trinity is monotheism. It's not just three persons, one god, but three persons that make the only God. There is only one god and that god exists as three persons. Hindu are not monotheists in any capacity. They believe in millions, millions of gods they are not monotheists at all. So it fails right there. Secondly, the Hindu Trimurti (sp) is not three persons in one god. The Trimurti (sp) is made up of three separate gods who are manifestations of the Brahmin. They are not coeternal persons nor are they three persons in one god. If anything parallels, it is the heresy of modalism, not trinitarianism. They are not persons that make up one god. They are three separate gods that make up one god Brahmin. They are not coeternal as the Christian trinity is. Thirdly, the Trimurti (sp) did not even develop in Hinduism until 4th century AD. This has relation to what AronRa apparently thinks; at least I got this implication. He seems to think that Christians borrowed the idea of the trinity from Hinduism. He is sadly mistaken because the Trimurti (sp) didn't even start developing in Hinduism until the 4th century. This is long after the scriptures are written and this is even after Tertullian's (sp) material on the trinity and the trinity at this point in time is already becoming well developed in Christianity. So, if you are going to argue that the Christians borrowed this idea from the Hindus because you are simply mistaken because the concept wasn't even there until the 4th century, long after Christian documents on the trinity.

Historian A.L .Basham (sp) notes that the parallel between the Trimurti and the trinity is "not very close". Scholars don't agree with you, sorry. Also on a humorous note, AronRa misspells Trimurti not sure why I brought that up. The Hindus are not monotheists, this is what I meant by the context. They have no idea of the word of God, son of man, the great I am, the right hand of god or any of these Jewish monotheistic concepts. They didn't know what they were. He claims to be God in the Jewish monotheistic context in which he existed. Again, the Hindus had no idea of these titles of God. You can't apply standards of Hinduism to Christianity. They are completely different.

AronRa claims that all Christians worship Jesus above the father. Some Protestants do indeed do this even if even they do it unknowingly. Protestantism is not mainstream Christianity. In Orthodoxy Roman Catholicism, we worship the three persons of the Trinity equally. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit each fully possess the attributes of deity. We do not worship Christ above the other persons. This is him simply using his very poorly thought out logic.

AronRa claims that, paraphrasing; Christians conjure up the notion of the trinity to account for the contradiction between the Unitarian claims of the OT and the claims of Jesus Christ in the NT. Again, he makes this up. Ancient Judaism was not Unitarian as reveled in the pre-Christian Aramaic targems (sp) where there are often two Yahwehs or two persons of God described. Very interestingly, they replace one of these Yahwehs with the word, where Jesus claims to be the word which he claims to be divine wisdom, which is equivalent to the Logos (sp), which is equivalent to the word. Jesus Christ claims to be the word and actually in the Aramaic targems (sp) the word is considered to be God and it's very simple.

Last point, in an attempt to respond to Daniel 7 , That is the son of man, I saw someone coming out of the closet like the son of man, etc. He says that if God, Yahweh is encouraging the worship of Jesus then Jesus is lesser god just like Aquinon (sp) was. This is ridiculous this is the person of the father encouraging the worship of the son of man. Again, trinitarinism holds that there are three persons, one god. One person the attributes of deity does not forbid another person equally possessing those attributes. This is a Jewish monotheistic context; no one is to be worshipped but the one true God. There no lesser gods. There is the one god who exists as three persons as the Unitarianism's actually refuting the Aramaic targems (sp) as before.

The father encouraging the worship of someone else means that person is also God. The son of man is God. The son of man is Yahweh just as the father is Yahweh. Jesus claims to be son of man therefore Jesus claimed to Yahweh. It is literally that simple. He does claim to be explicitly to be Yahweh, the creator, etc. To be God the one true God. I could go on.

He adds some other stuff, but all those points are irrelevant or were already answered already by my clarifications about the trinity and stuff like that. This is the final response to AronRa. Again I have a little time again, I deeply apologize if I have been arrogant or condescending in this discussion not just in this video, and because I know I have. It's just really my natural tone. I know that sounds like a pathetic little cop out but it really is because if I really just abstain from it I would either sound really fake or sarcastic or sound incredibly bored and I already do sound boring"¦ So, yeah. AronRa, thank you for this discussion I have enjoyed it. This is my final word on the subject and yeah. Thank you guys for sitting through this video. Bye.

 

[VyckRo]

I found this topic to be interesting, I will read it, and because it is still open, ( it is this a active debate?)I will add my observation.
The arrogant atheist, for example has many mistakes.

My summary response would be to point out that arguments for Christianity generally tend to fail outright, which is no different than arguments for other religions

The video presented by AronRA, begins with a giant fallasy

A - "All religions claim to be true"
B - Christianity claims to be true
C- Christianity is false

it is as if, I say:
A - Obama claims to be the U.S. president.
B - Jou claims to be U.S. president
C - because there are many people who claim the same thing, the Obama claim is probably false.

Was Jesus the god that Christians say he said he was?

This is an old argument that originates in Islam, today it is presented in a new form, namely that Jesus never claimed to be the Son of God,or if he did, that was a common practice at that time, to use the words "Son of God" which probably meant something different (then).
This immediately raises the question ... why was Jesus killed?

see this videos, include arguments that I would generally use

Show More Hide

{TEXT}

"They all make the same sorts of claims that your religion does, and no religious claims can withstand scrutiny."

The problem is what would face the "scrutiny" of a skeptic, who has put in his mind to destroy all the arguments of his enemies?
~To every argument an equal argument is opposed"
see:
Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhoniene Sketches, I, 12

Before I start to read all this topic I want to point out some mistakes:
1. Akenathon, was not a "simple prophet" but God (Like all pharaohs), not only him but his family, also.
see for more info: Mircea Eliade, Histoire des croyances et des idées religieuses, tome 1

2. The Council of Nicaea The main achievements of this were theformulation of the Creed and, establishing the date for Pasca, and the Council did not established or created any doctrine relatedt to the Christ deity.

"The main controversy concerned then, did not related to the existence of the Trinity, as
one Divinity in three persons (hypostasis `ὑπόστᾰσις`), God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit, but to the relations between them. How to counsel one God with three persons? [...]Supporters of the doctrine of Arianism, claimed that the Son is a creation of the Father. The doctrine of Arianism, is condemned, and the Council of Nicaea solemnly declare that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are the same substance"

See:
Byzance (guide) - Michel Kaplan 2007

There were five Ecumenical Councils , which have issued decision related to the relationship between the human nature and the Divine of Christ.
Council of Ephesus (431)
Council of Chalcedon (451)
Second Council of Constantinople (553)
Third Council of Constantinople : (680-681 )
Second Council of Nicaea (787)
(none to establishing the Divinity - my note)
see:
Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes, John Meyendorff 1974, 1979

3. Bible. AronRa, was born in the Protestant world where ~Sola Scriptura" seems to be the default position. In orthodoxy the scripture is a book ( from several), a book that spring from the "tradition" (2 Thessalonians 2:16) and that it was validated by our Church (1 Timothy 3:15).

Therefore, before the Gospels to be written there was the tradition, and to validate, which Gospels are accepted and which are not there was the Church.
The Bible could not contain all that Jesus preached in about 4 years(4 years-if I am not wrong), so are dozens of doctrines that the vast majority of Christians believe which are not shown explicitly in the Bible.
some examples: that: Jesus is fully man and fully God, that we must pray to the God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit which are the Holy Trinity, and ...more! (These are found in the tradition, and the tradition is to be found in the patristic texts.)
So to determine a doctrine to be true, all three elements mentioned above must coincide.

There are also the "church fathers" Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, who by their encyclopedic knowledge of ancient philosophy polished the doctrine, to be accessible to anyone.

4.Krishna&Christ analogy
Krishna, is a very strange "God" .
- It can be taken by surprise, and I so he will starts to cry.

"Although she was tired, she somehow reached her naughty child and captured Him. When He was caught, Krisna was almost on the point of crying"
Krsna "the Suprem Personality of Godhead" Vol1, p 65.

- steal Yogurt (p61)

- He kills Shishupala ( a kind of rival) for insulted him and his friends
Krsna "the Suprem Personality of Godhead" Vol2, pp38-39.

So it is his Krishna that scares is vengeful and stealing yogurt is the model for Christ?

PS
Till now I only read the first page LoL!

 

[VyckRo]

Before I respond, What is Contemporary? Is it while Jesus was alive? Does it allow for some number of years after? If so How Many?

Let me give you an example. The eruption of the volcano, Vesuvius was recorded in brilliant detail by Pliny the Younger, son of Pliny the elder, who was at least alive at the time proposed for Jesus. Pliny the elder might have been very young at the time Jesus was allegedly crucified, but he could at least have mentioned a time that was fresh in everyone's memory when there was nine hours of darkness during the day. This event does not appear to be concordant with any solar eclipse, and not one person remembered this in writing. Not in Judea, not in Rome, no one nowhere -as if it had never even happened.

FacePlam

I can not believe that an atheist uses the eruption of the volcano, Vesuvius, in a phrase about Jesus.
I know I said I will read the whole topic, before to say my opinion but this is too good :lol: :lol: :lol:

The eruption of the volcano Vesuvius is my favorite argument, when I met Zeitgeist supporters that are questioning the existence of Jesus.
The Vesuvius, I tell them, ...

The eruption was seen on miles for 3 days, the eruption destroyed two of the most eccentric cities of the Roman aristocracy. We probably expect to have dozens or even hundreds of historical witnesses, documents, stories. However the only testimony we do have comes from 2 private letters, sent by Pliny the Younger to his friend Tacitus about the death of his uncle and written 25 years later too.
"but this has nothing to do with history, and you only asked for information about his death. I'll stop here then. But I will say one more thing, namely, that I have written out everything that I did at the time and heard while memories were still fresh. You will use the important bits, for it is one thing to write a letter, another to write history, one thing to write to a friend, another to write for the public."


Pliny the Younger tells us about those who tried to save themselves:
"Their numbers are so large that they slow our departure."

That was Italy, not far from Rome, Yet none of the survivors, have not written anything, nor the tens of scribes, historians, magistrates, who were in the area Pliny the Younger tells himself:
"You will read what I have written, but will not take up your pen, as the material is not the stuff of history. You have only yourself to blame if it seems not even proper stuff for a letter."

And the Historian Tacitus did not continued the investigation! It is clear that the ancient had another perception on history than we have, therefore we should not expect so much, from the corner of the empire called Palestine.

http://www.smatch-international.org/PlinyLetters.html

 

[VyckRo]

I read all this topic!
The arrogant atheist, AronRa behave completely irrationally, does not cite sources, and relies only on Wikipedia and other youtubers

~I never said Jesus claimed to be a mere prophet. I said that he claimed to be the son-of-God, and he claimed credit as being God's right-hand man and all of that. Obviously he is claiming to be more than a mere human. He created the trinity and included himself in it. But he never claimed to be the same person as YHWH creator of the world. I was raised by Mormons, so it is easy to distinguish Jesus from YHWH and to imagine them standing together. But tinitiarians say that is impossible because they are both the same person. Thus Jesus could not have asked of God, "Take this cup away from me, not because I will it, but because THOU will it". Jesus is obviously not talking to himself. Yet he still did what many other cult leaders do in promoting himself as being very much 'like' God and very close to God, even to the point of being lesser deities. Why don't they understand this?"

You mean after 2000 years of Christianity, we should all recognize that in fact you are right. And to proclaim you a god!

He replied:
~The ancient Christians were not mocked by the Romans and Greeks because of their belief in faith accompanied by reason/evidence. That was what the Romans and Greeks already accepted. The Christians were mocked for encouraging people to believe in spite of reason and evidence, to walk by faith, NOT by sight, and all this for a belief in one exclusive deity. If someone wants to temper their faith with evidence, that's up to them, but there's nothing in scripture to support it."

Moving over the idiot idea, that this guy legitimizes what Romans did, to Christians in the first centuries..I as a historian I have never heard the following arguments suggested in the text above:
1. That the Roman religion - Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto was "totally rational"
2. Persecution against Christians that began in 64, with the Emperor Nero, and lasted until the Edict of Nicomedia (311) , and ended whit the Edict of Milan (313), and almost restarted under Emperor Julian the Apostate ( 360-363)1 started because the Christians were"encouraging people to believe in spite of reason and evidence,"

see
1 Roman emperors by Manfred Clauss 1997

~The religious position is inflexible on these matters. So they will lie to defend their faith, but freethinkers have no reason or desire to be dishonest in our pursuit. That would defeat our whole purpose."

Your "would purpose" is the a priori idea, to show that Christianity is wrong, and atheism is true.

~All these people kept records of every other thing, they just couldn't remember anything whatsoever that had to do with the amazing miracles of the most important half-human god-man who ever lived. They remembered Apollonius of Tyana -who did the same things as Jesus at the same time. They even remembered the early attempts to proselytize."

yahh!!! And apparently did not remember the Vesuvius eruption, which has come down to us by accident, and not by an official inscription.

~Anyway, the reason I brought that up is that one of the lessons there was that each of the gospels was an attempt to characterize Jesus in a way that would appeal to the Jews, whom they hoped to convert. Matthew paints Jesus as the new Moses, (even ripping off Exodus to do it). Mark makes him out to be the long-awaited king of the Jews, Luke tries to link him to David, and the alleged gospel of John sought to portray Jesus as a god. Of course the biggest exaggeration has to come at the end."

I do not agree whit this explanation, I find it this one to more reasonable:

"The four Gospels present for portraits of Jesus,each in its own characteristic manner. [...]
Matthew, the Hebrew tax, collector, writes for the Hebrew mind.
Mark, the travel companion of Paul and Peter, writes for the Roman mind.
Luke, Paul`s physician-missionary, writes with the Greek mentality in view.
John`s Gospel is different by nature from the other three. It is an interpretation of the facts of Jesus life ratherthan a presentation of facts in historical sequence.
see
Liberty Commentary - on the New Testament by Jerry Falwell, D.D., Litt.1978

~Again I will reveal my ignorance in repeating that there is no evidence of the man, Jesus, neither in archaeology nor contemporary history. I see quite a lot of debate against the historicity of Yeshua bar Yossef even without the incredible legends. So rather than tell me how people who share you bias disagree with me, (what a surprise) simply show me what that evidence is, and force me to shut up about it. I'm confident you can't do it because no one else ever has either."

religion itself so "shut up about it" OK!
Christianity as Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, were founded by a "Teacher", the simplest explanation of the origins of such beliefs is the teachings of the Founder.
If you claim that Jesus did not exist, then you need to explain the origin of the Christian religion, its teachings, the faith of the apostles, and why we do not have documents to support your version! ... so "shut up about it"

 

[Inferno]

You mean after 2000 years of Christianity, we should all recognize that in fact you are right. And to proclaim you a god!

I stopped reading after this. Do you actually believe what you write or are you just out to antagonize?

 

[CosmicJoghurt]

About the Faith thing. Word games will not help you. We have explained what we mean by Faith and if you feel another word is better suggest one. What you are doing is the same thing NephilimFree does with "Morphology". It is meaningless bickering over words. Read the definition of the Greek word translated faith and accept that that is what we mean. Or I will use another word that you request of me. Also about contemporary, I was looking for and asked for a number. How many years? My plain once I have this is to either select an example and argue for that dating. Or explain why it is an invalid challenge.

I don't think any person will agree upon that definition. Oh, and by person, I mean the translated word from Greek, which means "mask". So fuck you if you have a different definition, because no mask will agree.

 

[AronRa]

VyckRo claimed to have read the whole thread, and then commented apparently having no idea what I said. First he is unaware of my explanation for the origins of Christianity. Secondly, I am not the only person to have reached this conclusion. Many Christians have shared this interpretation too, including Isaac Newton and some of the founding fathers of this country. I did not legitimize anything the Romans did either. I mentioned the eruption of Vesuvius to show that there were historians around recording notable events, but no one seems to remember anything contemporary about Jesus, and that is still apparently true. There remains no extra-Biblical evidence of the man, Jeshua bar Yosseff, nor of any of the other fables in the Bible either.

If you still had any credibility at this point, VickRo, you would have sacrificed it by citing Jerry Falwell and Liberty University. And you call me an idiot?!