Accepted, and amended. Thanks.
Which Biblical Characters do you believe existed?
- Thread starter GhostWriter16
- Start date
Accepted, and amended. Thanks.
Jesus and David. Or someone like David. He corresponds with the short period where Israel was powerful relative to its neighbors. A lot of his actions correspond to what Machiavelli would espouse. Double-dealing, ambitious, intent on unification. I think his espousal of worship of the Lord was more to tie his nation together than any strong religious feelings. He broke a number of the ten suggestions and some of his children's names suggest Caananite deities.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
I love these sorts of arguments. The blanket "overwhelming evidence", but not one shred of evidence provided, and the immediate preemptive personal attack on anyone who may disagree.
Perhaps if you'd like to see substance to my arguments, you should read my arguments beyond the first paragraph.
I think advocating the existence of Christ is as crazy as you can get
Then it's a delightful thing that opinion is not correlated with fact, which is evident from the rest of your post.
What? I think therefore I am? I don't think Adam existed therefore I don't?
Already covered this repeatedly. But, if your intent was to demonstrate that you enjoy taking posts out of context and ignoring follow-ups, then you've succeeded.
I'd be glad to see the source for the survey you're basing this off of.
So various Roman historians and Christian witnesses are not credible but "the great" Plato and Xenophon are enough for you?
I already named four non-Christian historians, and there's no fair reason to discount the Gospel authors due to bias. When it comes to religion, everybody has bias. You can either be a Cartesian and therefore doubt the nature of knowledge itself, or you could take a moderate stance and weigh each source based on its historical consistency and context.
But Plato and Xenophon -- they did that for Socrates, mirite?
These sort of comments are a classic example of the tact taken by so many of the Christian Apologetics type. For example, the reference to 'repeatedly discredited'. Having proposed a counter-argument, they dust their hands, and blithely dismiss further reference to it by a blanket "oh, we've already dealt with that", and dismiss any further discussion with the insulting reference to someone's opinion as "drivel". Pure arrogant ignorance. And then, the personal attack. Note that no evidence has been submitted, no carefully constructed debate - just personal attacks and a belief they are in possession of superior knowledge which you will never understand.
At this point in my life, I know better than to argue with people who think Bush planned 9/11, the House of Windsor are lizard alien-people, and that Christianity was copied from Mithraism. Find me a single modern, credible anthropologist that gives any weight to the Mithra-Christianity theory and I'll give it a bit more respect.
Already covered this at least once in this thread. Read my posts.
None with the historical significance of Jesus, nor that fit the context he was writing in.
"As the Jews were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus, he [Claudius] expelled them from Rome" (Lives of Twelve Caesars, Claudius chp. XXV; ~110 AD).
When you compare this to other historical sources from the era, it's rather clear that Suetonius was referring to an incident where Claudius expelled Jews and Christians from Rome (who were lumped together as being the same entity by the Roman bureaucracy). More likely than not, this is referring to Jesus.
"Christ" and "Khristos" are the same word. They're both transliterations due to the fact that the Latin alphabet is not the same one as the (Koine) Greek, the former being an Anglicization and the latter being closer to the original Greek characters. Nevertheless, "Christ" and "Messiah" were used synonymously in this context, so much to the point where it's not wrong to say that "Christ" is the Greek word for "Messiah."
I'm going to presume you weren't aware of the fact that the Greeks had a different alphabet, otherwise this rebuttal makes you appear as a condescending brat that uses nitpicks as arguments.
A very, very ballsy argument. Ignore what someone said, and change it to what you think they should have said. Christians do this all time. It shows their argument is weak. Classic Christian tactics - don't let the facts stand in the way of a good argument.
I'm lol'ing at the fact that you're doing precisely to me what you're accusing me of doing to someone else. It's not just Christians that have presented this argument about Pliny's text.
Perhaps if you had quoted my statement in its context, you'd know that I was replying to something else, and it wasn't simply a continuation of the rest of my posts.
Oh, good grief. How pompous.
Once again, out of context. The person I was responding to was refusing to list any scholarly sources and asking me to take his word for it.
Humor me.
Perfection
The Great Head.
Plot sez Jesus probly existed, and that's good enough for me. Don't believe any of the others though.
Whatever.
Do you mean brat as a pejorative term for child? Or just contemptuously, as in spoiled child? Or, also called a spoiled brat? Or both? Ummm, professional people are unwilling to use that label because it's quite vague and derogatory. Prehaps you mean grandiose, or narcissistic, or even egocentrically-regressed? Mmmm.
The Greeks have a different alphabet? You're kidding!
LightSpectra
me autem minui
I dunno, what does the great Socrates say?
sophie
Break My Heart
Luckymoose
The World is Mine
Jesus was a criminal, Moses never existed. Solomon did. And so on and so on. All of them are silly exaggerations of their uncertain existences.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
How are you sure they're exaggerations if you don't know they actually existed?
GoodGame
Red, White, & Blue, baby!
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Example of mass delusions: scientology.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
The higher-ups are running a monetary scam, and the common folk are joining because there's celebrities at the top. I'd hardly think it's a delusion in the same way suicide cults are.
GoodGame
Red, White, & Blue, baby!
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That's one M.O. of scientology. But once they get you to believe what's the difference of the M.O.? Mass Delusion is Mass Delusion however the masses got to that state.
Berzerker
Deity
so what does "the Messiah" mean? I aint talking about "the annointed one", that needs to be explained too. I thought it meant king of the jews, hence the crown of thorns and a crime against the state (Roman), the jewish monarchy had been outlawed.
LightSpectra
me autem minui
The Messiah and "the Anointed One" refer to the same person. It's a particular man that would both save the Jews from their sins as the legitimate successor to David (Jeremiah 23:5), while retaining the humility that a poor man has (Zechariah 9:9, he will enter Jerusalem on a colt and an ass). This website documents all of the prophecies of the Messiah and how Jesus fulfills them according to scripture.
Yes, I agree.
Professor of sociology Stephen A. Kent says 'Scientologists see themselves as possessors of doctrines and skills that can save the world ...'
Christians also see themselves as possessors of doctrines and skills that can save your "soul" ...
A delusion is a fixed belief that is either false, fanciful, or derived from deception.
There appears to be many people who argue both Scientologists and Christians are delusional. Probably, Christians and Scientologists (and 'mass-suicide cults'?) whould claim that critics (and there being so many) are suffering from mass delusion.
It is an argument destined to continue until:
1. The 'Final Coming' of a fictional dead man called Jesus Christ, apparently born of a virgin and the 'son of a god', and those who (according to the Bible) 'believe and are baptized' will be 'saved' at the 'judgement'; and/or
2. One moves along the 'Bridge to Total Freedom' (the rate and distance moved dictated by your income), and upon dying and being reincarnated, returning to a symbol carved on the ground in Sacramento, USA, a return point that 'loyal staff members' know where they can find the founder's works when they arrive from other places in the universe; and/or
3. The natural end of mankind/Earth.
---------------------------------------
'Quote wars are symptomatic of a poor argument.' - Dachs
'Oops!... I did it again.' - Britney Spears
LightSpectra
me autem minui
Perhaps you should prove that they're wrong before you list possible reasons for incorrectness.
That's a lot of people that are delusional, then. Which is perhaps true if we're using the word "deluded" to be synonymous with "holding wrong beliefs," in which case the entire human race short of the infallible man can be called delusional about all subjects.
Suicide cults, yes. The others, obviously not.
A fictional man that is attested to by at least a dozen that have no staked interest in doing so, apparently. But I guess anybody that holds an opposite opinion to you is deluded -- which is a great way to publicize your credibility, by the way.
Reinventing the wheel.
Maybe
Obviously?
Allegedly.
---------------------------------------
'Quote wars are symptomatic of a poor argument.' - Dachs
'Oops!... I did it again.' - Britney Spears
LightSpectra
me autem minui
With such rigid arguments like that, it's no wonder such prestigious figures like Nicolaus Copernicus, Gottfried Leibniz, Louis Pasteur, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel, Leonhard Euler, Blaise Pascal and Isaac Newton dismissed religion as a delusion and didn't bother thinking about it beyond the work being worth reinventing the wheel.
So I typed this response the day before yesterday, but a combination of power cuts, CFC being down, and me having to spend yesterday running around Bristol led to its not being posted. Ah well.
This is a pretty nonsensical argument. Scholars of the Bible and the Gospels in particular are the major experts on the historical Jesus, for the very good reason that the Gospels are by far the most important source for Jesus. To say that they're the only ones who believe in the historical Jesus, as if they're some kind of lunatic fringe group, and say that most mainstream historians do not, is rather like making some assertion about the Second World War which historians of that war reject, and saying that only those weirdo WWII experts would disagree with you. I must say that we've had many arguments of one kind or another in this subforum, but I don't think I've ever seen such a naked expression of an anti-intellectualist, "trust the uninformed over the experts" view here.
I have no idea what American school textbooks say, or why, and I don't much care; but it is a simple fact that the vast majority of biblical scholars accept that Jesus really existed. And by "biblical scholars" I mean secular academics, not religious types who you seem to take to be intrinsically biased (although I'm not convinced that religious people are any more biased than non-religious ones - but that's an argument for another day). Now certainly scholars disagree over how much we know about Jesus and what, precisely, it is that we know about him; and disagreements of that kind are closely connected to disagreements over how faithfully the Gospels report his words and actions. Some will think that we know quite a lot about Jesus and others will not. I remember when I was an undergraduate sitting in one of John Ashton's lectures on Mark's Gospel - and if you think he is some kind of biased religious apologist, you have some catching up to do - and someone asked if he thought some story in Mark was historically accurate. He said that in his opinion the most one could say about that story, or any story in the Synoptics, was that there was a reasonable probability that Jesus might well have done or said something along those lines. But neither Ashton nor almost any other mainstream New Testament scholar would deny that Jesus existed at all. That was a view that was fashionable in some scholarly circles in the 1920s, but scholarship has moved on rather considerably since then.
Again, that is ridiculous - you seem to be suggesting that the various top-tier journals in New Testament history or biblical studies are "biased" and do not count as "peer-reviewed" or meet "exacting scientific standards" in the way that other historical or classical journals do. If that's really what you think then I'm afraid it's not possible take what you're saying seriously. Indeed it's actively and gratuitously insulting. I suggest you go and have a look at some of those journals, and if you still think they and the scholars who publish in them are sub-standard, to explain why.
I'm thinking, by the way, of journals such as the Journal of Theological Studies (published by Oxford University), the Scottish Journal of Theology (published by Cambridge University), New Testament Studies (published by Cambridge University), the Harvard Theological Review (published by Harvard University), etc. If you have evidence that these journals are not living up to scholarly standards then quite a lot of people would be interested to hear it.
Your outrage, justified or not, at LightSpectra's arguing style unfortunately seems to have led you to overlook the substantial point he was making there, which happens to be quite true. The notion that Christianity drew many of its key ideas from Mithraism has been thoroughly discredited. In brief, modern studies of Mithraism were kick-started by Franz Cumont, who about a century ago published a big study of the movement in which he argued that the Roman religion we call Mithraism was simply a later stage of an older religion from Persia, and that it was highly influential on Christianity. Cumont was writing from the perspective of the tail-end of the movement we call the "history of religions school", a largely continental movement of the nineteenth century which worked on the premises that (a) any given religious movement could be explained, pretty much, in terms of ideas it took from previous religious movements; and (b) Christianity, in particular, could be explained pretty much in terms of ideas drawn from paganism, not from Judaism. Obviously this involved the assumption that religious people hardly ever innovate. In the twentieth century, scholars came to reject both premises of the history of religions school; in the case of premise (b), they came to see that Christianity might be explained pretty much entirely in terms of its relation to Judaism, never mind paganism. In the past few years the pendulum has swung back a bit the other way and there's more acceptance of the probability of the influence of pagan ideas on Christianity, but nothing like what the nineteenth-century scholars envisaged.
In the case of Cumont and his views on Mithraism, pretty much all scholarly work in the past century has gone against it. The First International Congress of Mithraic Studies, which was held in 1971, explicitly examined and rejected his ideas. Although the details remain sketchy and controversial, scholars now generally regard Mithraism as a phenomenon of the Roman empire - partly inspired by older, eastern religions, certainly, but distinct from them. That in itself rules out the notion that Christianity took its basic ideas from Mithraism, because it means that Christianity is older than Mithraism; the oldest clearly Mithraic artefact that we know of is from the closing years of the first century CE, i.e. after the writing of most of the New Testament.
There is a good summary of the issues and evidence here.
I see that it's not OK for LightSpectra to make sweeping statements about the views of modern scholars, but it is OK for you to do that. Well, as far as I can tell, Josephus is regarded as a pretty biased and self-glorifying character, but not as someone who just made up stuff. There's little doubt that Josephus at least mentioned Jesus twice in his works, although one of those mentions was certainly later reworked by Christian copyists. Why Josephus should have wished to invent Jesus or repeat a Christian fiction, I don't know.
Now I do actually agree with you regarding the pagan Roman historians. Their references to "Christ" (or similar) do not, in my view, constitute very good evidence for Jesus' existence, because I don't see any good reason to suppose that they had any non-Christian sources for the name. They refer to him only in the context of discussing Christians, and it seems pretty clear to me that they knew that Christians worshipped "Christ" (from their awareness of Christianity) and repeated this information. That would be consistent with the Christians having invented Christ.
However, that doesn't apply to Josephus, because he speaks of Jesus in the context of interesting figures from the early first century, not in the context of Christianity; it seems to me that he does represent, or is likely to represent, a source indicating Jesus' existence independent of Christianity.
But this is just ephemera really. Even if there were no references to Jesus outside the New Testament we could still be confident that he existed from a careful study of the New Testament itself, which shows quite clearly that its authors did not make Jesus up - for the very simple reason that they obviously found some of his ideas difficult to handle and tried to mould them or put a spin on them of their own. I've already mentioned some of these in this thread. The hypothesis that Jesus really existed and said or did at least some things that Christians later had a bit of difficulty with (as well as, no doubt, many things that they liked) is a more plausible hypothesis that Jesus didn't exist at all - it explains the evidence better.
So my conclusion is that the assertion that Jesus didn't exist is really just that, a dogmatic assertion. It goes against the evidence, which in my view as well as the view of the majority of experts indicates fairly clearly that Jesus existed, and I think most people who think that Jesus did not exist think so for reasons of anti-Christian prejudice, not because they've carefully and dispassionately examined the evidence. It is at least notable that, as far as I can tell, assertions of Jesus' non-existence are invariably accompanied by highly negative comments about Christianity in general; no-one who has a neutral or favourable opinion of Christianity ever seems to think that Jesus didn't exist. Which should sound a few warning bells.
This is a pretty nonsensical argument. Scholars of the Bible and the Gospels in particular are the major experts on the historical Jesus, for the very good reason that the Gospels are by far the most important source for Jesus. To say that they're the only ones who believe in the historical Jesus, as if they're some kind of lunatic fringe group, and say that most mainstream historians do not, is rather like making some assertion about the Second World War which historians of that war reject, and saying that only those weirdo WWII experts would disagree with you. I must say that we've had many arguments of one kind or another in this subforum, but I don't think I've ever seen such a naked expression of an anti-intellectualist, "trust the uninformed over the experts" view here.
I have no idea what American school textbooks say, or why, and I don't much care; but it is a simple fact that the vast majority of biblical scholars accept that Jesus really existed. And by "biblical scholars" I mean secular academics, not religious types who you seem to take to be intrinsically biased (although I'm not convinced that religious people are any more biased than non-religious ones - but that's an argument for another day). Now certainly scholars disagree over how much we know about Jesus and what, precisely, it is that we know about him; and disagreements of that kind are closely connected to disagreements over how faithfully the Gospels report his words and actions. Some will think that we know quite a lot about Jesus and others will not. I remember when I was an undergraduate sitting in one of John Ashton's lectures on Mark's Gospel - and if you think he is some kind of biased religious apologist, you have some catching up to do - and someone asked if he thought some story in Mark was historically accurate. He said that in his opinion the most one could say about that story, or any story in the Synoptics, was that there was a reasonable probability that Jesus might well have done or said something along those lines. But neither Ashton nor almost any other mainstream New Testament scholar would deny that Jesus existed at all. That was a view that was fashionable in some scholarly circles in the 1920s, but scholarship has moved on rather considerably since then.
Again, that is ridiculous - you seem to be suggesting that the various top-tier journals in New Testament history or biblical studies are "biased" and do not count as "peer-reviewed" or meet "exacting scientific standards" in the way that other historical or classical journals do. If that's really what you think then I'm afraid it's not possible take what you're saying seriously. Indeed it's actively and gratuitously insulting. I suggest you go and have a look at some of those journals, and if you still think they and the scholars who publish in them are sub-standard, to explain why.
I'm thinking, by the way, of journals such as the Journal of Theological Studies (published by Oxford University), the Scottish Journal of Theology (published by Cambridge University), New Testament Studies (published by Cambridge University), the Harvard Theological Review (published by Harvard University), etc. If you have evidence that these journals are not living up to scholarly standards then quite a lot of people would be interested to hear it.
Your outrage, justified or not, at LightSpectra's arguing style unfortunately seems to have led you to overlook the substantial point he was making there, which happens to be quite true. The notion that Christianity drew many of its key ideas from Mithraism has been thoroughly discredited. In brief, modern studies of Mithraism were kick-started by Franz Cumont, who about a century ago published a big study of the movement in which he argued that the Roman religion we call Mithraism was simply a later stage of an older religion from Persia, and that it was highly influential on Christianity. Cumont was writing from the perspective of the tail-end of the movement we call the "history of religions school", a largely continental movement of the nineteenth century which worked on the premises that (a) any given religious movement could be explained, pretty much, in terms of ideas it took from previous religious movements; and (b) Christianity, in particular, could be explained pretty much in terms of ideas drawn from paganism, not from Judaism. Obviously this involved the assumption that religious people hardly ever innovate. In the twentieth century, scholars came to reject both premises of the history of religions school; in the case of premise (b), they came to see that Christianity might be explained pretty much entirely in terms of its relation to Judaism, never mind paganism. In the past few years the pendulum has swung back a bit the other way and there's more acceptance of the probability of the influence of pagan ideas on Christianity, but nothing like what the nineteenth-century scholars envisaged.
In the case of Cumont and his views on Mithraism, pretty much all scholarly work in the past century has gone against it. The First International Congress of Mithraic Studies, which was held in 1971, explicitly examined and rejected his ideas. Although the details remain sketchy and controversial, scholars now generally regard Mithraism as a phenomenon of the Roman empire - partly inspired by older, eastern religions, certainly, but distinct from them. That in itself rules out the notion that Christianity took its basic ideas from Mithraism, because it means that Christianity is older than Mithraism; the oldest clearly Mithraic artefact that we know of is from the closing years of the first century CE, i.e. after the writing of most of the New Testament.
There is a good summary of the issues and evidence here.
I see that it's not OK for LightSpectra to make sweeping statements about the views of modern scholars, but it is OK for you to do that. Well, as far as I can tell, Josephus is regarded as a pretty biased and self-glorifying character, but not as someone who just made up stuff. There's little doubt that Josephus at least mentioned Jesus twice in his works, although one of those mentions was certainly later reworked by Christian copyists. Why Josephus should have wished to invent Jesus or repeat a Christian fiction, I don't know.
Now I do actually agree with you regarding the pagan Roman historians. Their references to "Christ" (or similar) do not, in my view, constitute very good evidence for Jesus' existence, because I don't see any good reason to suppose that they had any non-Christian sources for the name. They refer to him only in the context of discussing Christians, and it seems pretty clear to me that they knew that Christians worshipped "Christ" (from their awareness of Christianity) and repeated this information. That would be consistent with the Christians having invented Christ.
However, that doesn't apply to Josephus, because he speaks of Jesus in the context of interesting figures from the early first century, not in the context of Christianity; it seems to me that he does represent, or is likely to represent, a source indicating Jesus' existence independent of Christianity.
But this is just ephemera really. Even if there were no references to Jesus outside the New Testament we could still be confident that he existed from a careful study of the New Testament itself, which shows quite clearly that its authors did not make Jesus up - for the very simple reason that they obviously found some of his ideas difficult to handle and tried to mould them or put a spin on them of their own. I've already mentioned some of these in this thread. The hypothesis that Jesus really existed and said or did at least some things that Christians later had a bit of difficulty with (as well as, no doubt, many things that they liked) is a more plausible hypothesis that Jesus didn't exist at all - it explains the evidence better.
So my conclusion is that the assertion that Jesus didn't exist is really just that, a dogmatic assertion. It goes against the evidence, which in my view as well as the view of the majority of experts indicates fairly clearly that Jesus existed, and I think most people who think that Jesus did not exist think so for reasons of anti-Christian prejudice, not because they've carefully and dispassionately examined the evidence. It is at least notable that, as far as I can tell, assertions of Jesus' non-existence are invariably accompanied by highly negative comments about Christianity in general; no-one who has a neutral or favourable opinion of Christianity ever seems to think that Jesus didn't exist. Which should sound a few warning bells.
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