What do you admire most about Jesus of Nazareth?

[BurtWorm]

For me, this is like asking, what do you admire most about Dagwood Bumstead? Or Three-Fingered Willy? Or Peter Piper? I don't accept that there was a real person behind the Biblical figure of that name. Even if you were to ask me (or I were to ask myself) what do I most admire about the character of Jesus, I would have a difficult time answering because I don't find his character to be coherent.

But I ask the question anyway, to see what others in this forum think.

[saltpoint]

1. His refusal to affiliate himself with any religious institution

and his perception that the local authorities of the once-Republic/now-Empire were a pack of wolves.

[PhilipShore]

2. Jesus was a liberal

[blonndee]

3. I don't know if he really existed or not

but I think what I admire most is his unfailing radicalism, his willingness to challenge the religious and political leaders and always side with the disenfranchised.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

7. such a person probably existed but

such a person probably existed but not in the way he is portrayed as some magical person. As far as we know he may have been a son of a Roman soldier?

[BurtWorm]

10. I don't know why people think he "probably" existed.

The person described in the Gospels almost certainly did not--could not have, in fact. Is it likely that there was a real person on whom the Church Fathers pasted divine attributes? Why should we assume that any more than we should assume there was a real Hercules or Glooscap?

[kwassa]

15. If you repeat this enough times, does it become true?

If you wish to dismiss all the secondary evidence that he existed, you can, and you have before.

It is still a giant leap of logic to Jesus being a completely mythical figure. I simply think that this is an outcome that you prefer, with little basis for it other than your preference.

[BurtWorm]

20. It's understandable that a Christian would believe the mythological Son of God lived

and actually performed all of the miracles attributed to him. That's what Christian faith is predicated on. But I am not a Christian and am under no obligation to force myself to believe in the unbelievable. And if you take the unbelievable bits about Jesus out, there's not much left to believe in. That's what my doubts are based on.

[kwassa]

26. Who said my answers are based on faith?

burtworm:
"And if you take the unbelievable bits about Jesus out, there's not much left to believe in."

Says who?

"That's what my doubts are based on."

You don't have doubts, you assert that he didn't exist, which you have no evidence for, of course.

and to quote Carl Sagan again Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. He was refering to the idea of God, too, but it can just as well apply to the life of Jesus, too.

[BurtWorm]

30. I do not say that he did not exist.

I say he does not seem to have existed, it is unlikely that he existed, there is no evidence that he existed, the person described in the Bible could not possibly have existed. If there is a kernel of a real person on whom he is based under the thick cake of mythos the Fathers slathered on top, the kernel is so small that it could have described a bit of anybody. His name is symbolic, his hometown doesn't seem to have existed until the Middle Ages, his biography (9/10 of which is missing) is lifted straight from Old Testament prophecy with huge helpings of Pythagroean mystery cult object thrown in. I believe the evidence strongly indicates a purely mythical origin for him. But I would never, ever say he definitely did not exist.

[kwassa]

34. Virtually, you did.

"I say he does not seem to have existed, it is unlikely that he existed, there is no evidence that he existed, the person described in the Bible could not possibly have existed."

and the difference on saying he didn't exist is??????

and you are wrong on several points among these, but you chose to avoid the evidence presented to you and continue with your assertion. There is evidence, you simply set a high bar that virtually NO ONE could pass that, and this is a feature of your personal belief agenda, I think, because the facts are not there to support your beliefs.

"If there is a kernel of a real person on whom he is based under the thick cake of mythos the Fathers slathered on top, the kernel is so small that it could have described a bit of anybody."

In your personal and very subjective opinion.

"His name is symbolic, his hometown doesn't seem to have existed until the Middle Ages, his biography (9/10 of which is missing) is lifted straight from Old Testament prophecy with huge helpings of Pythagroean mystery cult object thrown in."

Only in your opinion, burtworm. The vast weight of historical scholarship is against you, but you don't acknowledge that either, and there is probably no work ever in history that has received more scrutiny by more real scholars than the Bible.

"I believe the evidence strongly indicates a purely mythical origin for him. But I would never, ever say he definitely did not exist."

What evidence suggests a mythical origin, weighed against the evidence that he existed? Why, little or nothing, burtworm.

You keep saying evidence, but you don't have evidence, only supposition. Lots of supposition.

[BurtWorm]

43. The difference is that I don't pretend to *know* he didn't exist.

I only say the evidence for his existence is weak. The person described in the Bible is a magical being. In the universe I live in, there is no magic that is not an illusion. People do not raise the dead at will, or change water into wine, or feed masses from a loaf of bread, or heal cripples via touch. The Gods don't have children with virgins. No such person could have existed. That part of the legend must be pure myth, almost without a doubt. What person is left when that part is gone? An itinerant preacher heavily influenced by the Stoics who never wrote a word of "his" philosophy down? Were those apostles hanging around Jesus because they never heard Stoic philosophy before? Is it Jesus's rehashing of Stoicism that accounts for his irresistible appeal to the mythologizers? Or is it the claim that he was God's son that they fell for, maybe? What explains his appeal without the magic? Maybe you can explain that to me.

I tend not to suppose so much as pose questions that you don't answer very satisfactorily.

[okasha]

46. Jesus' central teaching was the coming of the kingdom of Heaven.

Where does that show up in Stoic philosophy?

[BurtWorm]

50. Isn't that eschatology totally appropriated from Isaiah?

So what was so radically different about any of Jesus's teachings, then, that, if he actually existed, would have compelled a cult to completely mask him behind mythology?

[okasha]

54. Quick answer, no.

What was radically different? How about a radical rearrangment of society that did not include slavery, economic stratification, crippling debt that could result in loss of livelihood, oppression of women, the threat of starvation or near starvation for the mass of peasant laborers? A society that did not include Roman occupiers? Bear in mind that the kingdom of Heaven was intended to occur in real time, not at the end of time, and so was only eschatological in the sense that the world would be radically changed, not in the sense that it would be destroyed and remade.

The mythification came about, probably, in part because it was customary in ancient society to attribute divine characteristics to great men. Alexander fostered the idea that he was the literal son of Zeus, for instance, and Augustus was deified within his own lifetime. Both were called "Soter," "savior," because of the peace they established within their empires. Roman coins carried the legend, "Caesar divi," "Divine Caesar." How many of their subjects actually believed they were divine is another question entirely.

A second motive was probably to differentiate the Jesus movement from Judaism, identification with which became very dangerous after 66 CE or so. Maintaining contact with the faith's Jewish roots would in any case have been difficult after the destruction of Jerusalem and the resulting diaspora in 70 CE.

A third motive--see the first paragraph. Masking a social revolutionary as a semi-divine being and etherealizing his message was a good way to keep down the authorities' perceived threat-level. The Romans didn't crucify Jesus because he was preaching Stoicism or the prophecies of Isaiah. They crucified him specifically as a political criminal and a threat to Roman rule in Palestine. Playing down the political and social aspects of his message reduced its danger to its adherents.

[BurtWorm]

55. That is a very progressive reading of Jesus's words.

That's not how the early Christians read it. Not include slavery?

A disciple is not above the teacher, nor a slave above the master (Matt. 10:24)

Who then is the faithful and wise slave, whom his master has put in charge of his household, to give the other slaves their allowance of food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master will find at work when he arrives. (Matt. 24:45-46)


No economic stratification? What about rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar's? Gender equality? How did Paul come to create such a notoriously misogynistic reading of the meaning of Christianity if it was to be understood as the progressive program you make it out to be?

In order to buy the rest of your theorizing, you have to buy that there really was a Jesus who really did become a star of late antiquity to rival Julius Caesar or Alexander. But this is a problem for all the reasons you and kwassa have difficulty even acknowledging, namely that the earliest references of Christ anywhere in the world (by Paul) make no reference to the rabble rouser in the Bible, and there is no "biography" (i.e., gospel) of him available for certain until the second century, 40 to 70 years after he allegedly died. (This would be something like the first mention in history of Martin Luther King not appearing until sometime between next year and 2038.) Now if Jesus was such a star in his "lifetime," why no certain mention of him anywhere until decades after his death? Why no details of his life anywhere until a full 40 years after his alleged death at the earliest?

You're clearly not troubled by this gap. You're content to dwell in the land of "probably" as though it's a legitimate realm of historical truth. And from my perspective, this allows you to indulge in your own mythologizing about Jesus the social radical just as the earliest Christians indulged in mythologizing the Son of God.

[kwassa]

57. How do you know how the early Christians read it?

You seem to have magical knowledge into the minds of early Christians.

Care to explain where it comes from? Telepathy? Oracles? Ouija boards?

From where I sit, this is your personal and extremely subjective opinion of how early Christians thought. Disabuse me of this notion.

"In order to buy the rest of your theorizing, you have to buy that there really was a Jesus who really did become a star of late antiquity to rival Julius Caesar or Alexander."

Uh, no. Sorry, wrong answer.

"But this is a problem for all the reasons you and kwassa have difficulty even acknowledging, namely that the earliest references of Christ anywhere in the world (by Paul) make no reference to the rabble rouser in the Bible, and there is no "biography" (i.e., gospel) of him available for certain until the second century, 40 to 70 years after he allegedly died."

and the problem is ?????

This is a society where knowledge is conveyed orally, where the vast majority of information is conveyed through speaking, not reading. Knowledge is taught from one person to the next.

"Now if Jesus was such a star in his "lifetime," why no certain mention of him anywhere until decades after his death? Why no details of his life anywhere until a full 40 years after his alleged death at the earliest?"

Because there were no historians active in Judea during his lifetime. None. Of any kind.

Do you understand this point?

[BurtWorm]

64. Knowledge of minds of early Christians is possible through the miracle of reading

the thoughts of early Christians. They will disabuse you of the notion, particularly Jerome, Cyril, Tertullian and the rest of that cheerful lot.

The "problem" is people like you who, confronted with an alternative view of reality from your own, can only accuse "opponents" of being devoid of facts or "proof," when all you can offer in return is excuses based on prejudiced speculation.

There were no historians in Judea during his lifetime? Then how do we know what we do know about what went on there at that time? How do we know the names of Jesus's rivals for the claim of Messiah from the same era? How do we know about the split between the Pharisees and Sadducees? How do we know about the Essenes? Did Josephus just make up all of the Antiquities out of his head?

I do not understand that silence, given the supposed big stink Jesus made in the 30s, just 40 years before Rome got made enough at the Judeans to destroy the Second Temple.

[kwassa]

71. Name one historian in Judea during the lifetime of Jesus

This should be interesting. I do mean "historian", too.

[BurtWorm]

79. You mean with a degree in history?

:eyes:

The anonymous sources for Josephus's Antiquities.

[kwassa]

81. I knew you couldn't do it.

because none existed.

Thank you very much.

[BurtWorm]

82. So Josephus did pull Antiquities out of his ass?

:o

PS: What is your definition of "historian?" A person who signs his or her name to the records of history he or she makes?

[kwassa]

85. Nope

his·to·ri·an (hĭ-stôr'ē-ən, -stōr'-, -stŏr'-) Pronunciation Key
n.
A writer, student, or scholar of history.
One who writes or compiles a chronological record of events; a chronicler.

Basically, someone who makes an attempt to chronicle a particular era in a systematic way.

Part of the probable reason that so little is written about Jesus during his lifetime is that there was no active historian working in Judea to chronicle the history of that era. None of any kind, writing about anything.

[Meshuga]

86. Recordings about Jesus

"Part of the probable reason that so little is written about Jesus during his lifetime is that there was no active historian working in Judea to chronicle the history of that era. None of any kind, writing about anything."


What was written about Jesus during his "lifetime"?

[BurtWorm]

90. Excellent question.

:think:

[kwassa]

95. Nothing, but you are ducking the point in my post.

Name That Historian!

you can play, too, if you like.

[BurtWorm]

98. Talk about ducking a point!

I take your point that I cannot *name* a historian, but are you denying that there were records Josephus must have used to base his Antiquities on? Where did those records come from? Josephus's colon?

[kwassa]

100. and you don't give the same creedence to those who speak of Jesus?

how wildly hypocritcal of you.

[BurtWorm]

103. Who speaks of Jesus outside the Gospels and Paul?

Maybe our difficulty is that you accept the Gospels as faithful renderings of history? I view them as mythological scripture.

Let me ask you something to see if we can get clearer between us: How much of the Jesus in the Gospels do you think reflects historical truth? Not theological or spiritual or allegorical truth, mind you. I mean how much do you believe literally reflects events that occurred on this planet 2,000 years ago in Gallileean and Judean Palestine?

[kwassa]

107. Who speaks of anything in Judea in that era outside the Gospels and Paul?

There is nothing else there, as histories.

You are willing to accept that there are historians whose work no longer exists that support your view and are valid, and dismiss the Gospels and Paul entirely because you view them as mythological scripture.

Big whoop.

Your criteria are your own, and as I pointed out, hypocritical.

[BurtWorm]

109. You dodged my important question in that post.

How much of the Gospels do you take as accurate reflections of history?

[Meshuga]

111. Kwassa, just because you don't know them it doesn't mean...

that they don't exist.

"Who speaks of anything in Judea in that era outside the Gospels and Paul?"

Why do you ignore the Tannaim like Gamliel of Yavne, Yochanan ben Zakai, Akiba ben Joseph, and other Tannaim?

[BurtWorm]

112. Thank you, Mr. Wiggles.

:toast:

[Meshuga]

99. Why would I have to name a historian?

I don't know of any at the time of Jesus that I know of, if you want an answer from me. But what would that prove or disprove?

[kwassa]

101. should I write it in crayon?

I don't know how to make this more simple and clear.

If no one is writing any histories in Judea in this era, how could there be any written history that speaks of Jesus? Obviously, there can't be.

So when you or burtworm complain about the lack of a written record of his life, consider that there are no written contemporaneous histories IN EXISTENCE in Judea in that time. There is not only no histories of Jesus extant, there is no histories of anything else, either.

Therefore, the lack of a written record proves nothing, except that there is no written record.

[Meshuga]

110. No need for crayons, Kwassa

And no need to be rude Kwassa. Perhaps you think your arguments are flawless that they should justify your rudeness but they aren't flawless.

But anyway, back to the discussion:

"If no one is writing any histories in Judea in this era, how could there be any written history that speaks of Jesus? Obviously, there can't be."

But just because there is no account during Jesus' lifetime it doesn't mean we shouldn't have accounts from his followers who wrote about his sacred figure. Before Ignatius (in 107 CE) there were never accounts proven to be legitimate about a historical Jesus. Paul and every other Christian writer of the first century fail to tell the story of the historical Jesus. They all speak of the mythological Jesus Christ but never mentioned he was the man, Jesus of Nazareth, recently put to death in Judea.

There were plenty of historians and records after Jesus' death in the mid to the end of the first century. I find the fact that there is nothing about a historical Jesus until later to be a bit odd which deserves questioning.

[kwassa]

117. You both have evaded my central point for a long time.

I've said it many times, no one addresses it. That is why I have a tendency to get rude.

"But just because there is no account during Jesus' lifetime it doesn't mean we shouldn't have accounts from his followers who wrote about his sacred figure."

Why?

If there is no need in the early stages of the movement to convey information in other ways than verbally, one-on-one, why should anyone write it down?

Who would they be writing to? For what purpose? It took a long time for the movement to get large enough, and move out of it's immediate geographic area. Verbal interaction, in terms of preaching and services would pretty well cover it.

The chief evangelist is Paul; there are apparently others, but they didn't write letters, or wrote letters than weren't preserved.

[Meshuga]

121. My opinion

"Why?

If there is no need in the early stages of the movement to convey information in other ways than verbally, one-on-one, why should anyone write it down?

Who would they be writing to? For what purpose? It took a long time for the movement to get large enough, and move out of it's immediate geographic area. Verbal interaction, in terms of preaching and services would pretty well cover it.

The chief evangelist is Paul; there are apparently others, but they didn't write letters, or wrote letters than weren't preserved."

It's a possibility but I find this to be pretty weak argument but that's just my opinion. You believe in what you believe.

[kwassa]

122. How is my argument weak?

You quoted my entire response without responding to it yourself.

What exactly is weak about my argument?

[Meshuga]

123. The entire thing

It is a lame apologetic answer by someone who is desperate to prove what cannot be proven. It is a possibility, I give you that, but it is pretty much all you've got to make a case for the existence of a historical Jesus.

[kwassa]

127. Lame? Desperate?

You have no rebuttal either, I see.

Oh well.

[kwassa]

124. and one other point that you might relate to ...

Talmud/Mishna/Gemara

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/talmud_&_mishna.html

For centuries, Judaism's leading rabbis had resisted writing down the Oral Law. Teaching the law orally, the rabbis knew, compelled students to maintain close relationships with teachers, and they considered teachers, not books, to be the best conveyors of the Jewish tradition. But with the deaths of so many teachers in the failed revolts, Rabbi Judah apparently feared that the Oral Law would be forgotten unless it were written down.

Sounds like Jesus was following established custom, to me.

[Meshuga]

126. We don't use the Talmud

to try to prove the existence of our sages much less trying to prove the existence of mythical figures. Quite the opposite, we create more mythical figures in the Talmud.

The Talmud (Mishna/Gemara/Midrash) serves the purpose of developing our Halachah. Because of so many of our sages were being killed it was necessary to document it and here is when the Tannaim and Ammoraim enter the picture.

Trying to use that analogy with early Christianity's "Oral Tradition" with the Jewish "Oral Law" is trying really hard to connect the dots.

The Oral Law was developed to make Jewish halachah open ended in the Pharisees saw an opportunity to take control from the sedducees who were Written Torah literalists. I will tell you more when I get back... Need to leave for a Shabbos dinner. Take care...

[kwassa]

128. No, it makes perfect sense.

"Trying to use that analogy with early Christianity's "Oral Tradition" with the Jewish "Oral Law" is trying really hard to connect the dots"

The early Christians saw themselves as Jews. They didn't define themselves as separate for a long time. The analogy is a good one. Excellent, in fact. Jesus was teaching the law, in his eyes, and the eyes of his followers.

[Meshuga]

133. "No, it makes perfect sense" -- be careful because it might hurt your case! :-)

"The early Christians saw themselves as Jews. They didn't define themselves as separate for a long time. The analogy is a good one. Excellent, in fact. Jesus was teaching the law, in his eyes, and the eyes of his followers."

Do you want to use the Oral Law as an analogy? Then be my guest and I welcome you! Once you read about how the Jewish Oral Law came about from historians you will want to take that back because it does not help the case for a historical Jesus. It might do just the opposite! ;-)

The Aronides Priests (who later became the Sedducees) had a hold on power with the canonization of the Torah and the "written Torah" was the Jewish law. That was the case until the Pharisees came into the picture to grab a hold of power. The Pharisaic class introduced the concept of the Oral Law without taking the religious power from the Aronides Priests as far as the religious functions at the Temple (by keeping the written Torah as authoritative as the Oral Law) but made sure the Pharisees were the authority as far as the Oral Law. This concept the Pharisees introduced is what is called the Twofold Law. There is an AWESOME book by a historian called Ellis Rivkin that I read last month that talks about these subjects and how the twofold law came about. The book is called "The Unity Principle: The Shaping of Jewish History" and I really recommend this book (and it does not make a case against the existence of a historical Jesus, btw -- it's a book that focus on Jewish history).

Therefore, if you want to use the Oral Law introduced by the Pharisees in the second century BCE as an analogy then you are doing a terrible disservice to your case for a historical Jesus. Again, this set of Oral Law was brought about as a revolution to take over the power from the Aronides Priests and establishing the Pharisaic class as an authority. One of my arguments in an older topic here in R/T last month was just that the idea of Jesus could have been manufactured for the same purpose as the Pharisees manufactured the Oral Law.

So your analogy makes a case for the Christian Oral Tradition being used for the same purpose as the Jewish Oral Tradition. As a revolution by a sect of Jews to create a new authority and this Jesus figure would be perfect to do just that. You know, "the Pharisees tell us we achieve salvation through the twofold law and we early Christians say that is bullshit and one achieves salvation through Jesus Christ". This Jesus figure could have been made up the same way the oral tradition was made up. Capice? ;-)

[BurtWorm]

125. The outlines of the Spartacan revolt are pretty well known because history recorded it.

It caused the sort of stink in Italy that the Jesus commotion supposedly caused in Judea. Cicero and Julius Caesar who lived in that era wrote about aspects of it. Pliny the Younger recorded his personal story of the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Big events don't ordinarily go unremarked upon by history until half a century or more passes.

There may have been no reason for those closest to Jesus to write about him before and immediately after his alleged death. But isn't it interesting that once a generation passes, writing epistles suddenly becomes the mode de rigueur for Christian communication?

[okasha]

131. Drat those epistles.

They should have used the internets.

[BurtWorm]

89. You're telling me that the people of the Book who worship Jewish history

had no historians ("i.e., chroniclers") in Judea in the turbulent times of the First Century? Or that the Romans did not have chroniclers? How then did the writers at the end of the First Century marshall their facts upon which to base their histories? Did they sit in the kitchen and ask their grandmothers questions?

[kwassa]

94. You are the king of the circular argument

First, you failed to find a historian, and still can't. Thank you for not acknowledging that.

so you rely on ....

"You're telling me that the people of the Book who worship Jewish history had no historians ("i.e., chroniclers") in Judea in the turbulent times of the First Century?Or that the Romans did not have chroniclers? How then did the writers at the end of the First Century marshall their facts upon which to base their histories? Did they sit in the kitchen and ask their grandmothers questions?"

Possibly. Who knows? We will never know, because there is no written history that survives.

To insist that there must be such histories and historians, even though there is no written record, yet not to accept the life of Jesus because there is no written record of him, is completely hypocritical on your part.

It shows you have one standard for evidence that supports your agenda, and another higher standard of evidence that shows the existence of Jesus.

Not surprising.

[BurtWorm]

102. But there *is* a written history of that era that you are happy to cite

unless you're met with arguments against the Testimonium Flavianum, and that is Josephus's Antiquities. And it is silent about Jesus, except for the patently fraudulent TF interpolation. And so are other Jewish and Roman histories of that era, except possibly in Tacitus, but his reference, in referring to Jesus as "Christus," betrays Christian fiddling as well.

(Now here is where you do a song and dance about Jesus--king of the Jews, charismatic cult-leader, enemy of and threat to Phariseean authority, alleged moshiach--being too obscure a character for the history books. :eyes: )

[kwassa]

106. I have never cited those sources as proof of Jesus's existence.

Josephus wasn't alive when Jesus was, anyways, so you would never accept that as a source, anyways. You demand eyewitnesses on the other side, even when there were no historians to observe and write it all down. Fascinating. At the same time, you insist there must be historians, even if nothing that they supposedly wrote survives, as long as they support your agenda. Also fascinating.

So, I have not indulged in the fundamental hypocrisy that you have, burtworm. I never claimed for one minute that the proof for Jesus's existence came from either Josephus or Tacitus.

[BurtWorm]

108. Would you regard Jesus' life as newsworthy?

Would you say that people would have taken notice of him? Do you think he was brought before Pontius Pilate and sentenced to be crucified in front of an angry mob? That's what the Gospels claim, right? Or do you think it might not have happened quite as the Gospels claim?

[kwassa]

113. In an era where there were no newspapers? or other media outlets?

Nothing that would leave a trail.

I have no reason to doubt the details of his execution, per the NT.

[BurtWorm]

115. Why should we think any event before the age of newspapers or media outlets

would leave a trail? Why did the slave rebellion led by Spartacus leave all sorts of contemporary trails and the mob scenes caused by Jesus in Jerusalem (one of which was allegedly witnessed by the Roman prefect of Judea!) leave none?

[kwassa]

118. I don't know. Why should they leave a trail? No good reason I can see.

Spartacus wasn't in Judea. If he was in Jesus's time, he probably wouldn't get written about either.

Jesus is hardly comparable to the mass revolts led by Spartacus, anyways, who was a serious military threat, in Italy itself.

[Meshuga]

120. The NYT of the era

"In an era where there were no newspapers? or other media outlets?"

The Mishna, Baraita, and the Tosefta. My Rabbi calls them the New York Times of that era. There is a lot of cool information about the time and you can learn a lot from them. ;-)

[okasha]

130. The asses out of which Josephus pulled the Antiquities,

since you choose to use that idiom, belonged to Polybius, a Greek historian who lived approximately 200-120 BCE; Nicolaus of Damascus, a contemporary of Herod the Great, and the authors of the Old Testament and I Maccabbees. None of them was writing in Judea at the time Jesus was active.

So--how about you come up with some names of Jewish historians who were active in Judea at the time of Jesus and might plausibly have written about him?

[NotGivingUp]

4. am i at democratic underground? n/t

[More Than A Feeling]

5. What is that supposed to mean?

[jobycom]

6. Yes, in the "Religion" forum. Take a wrong turn?

:)

[NotGivingUp]

28. yes, i caught it on the latest threads...oops!

[bryant69]

22. Hmmm. One bizzarre response deserves another

Two cans of creamed corn, three live eels, and a blood elf warlock.

Bryant

[saltpoint]

8. Also I respect that he stood up for the adulteress when the shitheads

of the village were preparing to stone her to death.

I understand that accounts in the Bible are possibly apocryphal, but in that case I admire the idea of someone sticking up for that woman.

[jobycom]

9. I have little doubt he existed.

I have a lot of doubt that we know much about him. Probably many of the stories of the New Testament relating to his later life are true, to some degree. Probably many are stories that floated around and got stuck on him. Probably Saul/Paul is responsible for spreading many stories about him, so it boils down to whether Paul was honest, and to what degree Paul shaped the stories he told to reflect Paul's opinions more than Jesus's. There were also the other Apostles, and some of their stories stuck, too.

But I find it beyond belief to claim that Jesus could have been invented in the short time between his supposed death and the first written records of his followers, or even the contemporary accounts of his followers. These sprung up within a generation, maybe three decades, of his death, and by that time there was a clear network of churches, not just in Rome, but also Egypt and Abbysinia.

That doesn't mean that the Jesus they worshipped bore a great deal of resemblance to the Jesus who really lived. But I think they do, to some degree. There were so many prophets and teachers floating around at that time that it would have been easier to just pick one you liked than to make one up out of thin air. Read the passages about John the Baptist and Jesus, and you realize that they were rival prophets, and that the story of John paying obessance to Jesus (probably a fake story) was meant to reconcile two rival camps.

Anyway, that wasn't my point, I just wanted to answer your question and got carried away. My answer to your question: I most admire that Jesus stood up for the very people that the government and religious authorities condemned. Jesus was like Woody Guthrie--He saw virtue in those doing what they had to do to survive, and he saw the duplicity in the authority figures who maybe did what they were supposed to do, but only for the wrong reasons. Jesus condemned the contemporary equivalents of those in power now--the right wing Christians, the republicans, the Pharisees and Saducces.

Whether the real Jesus did that or not, I can't say. But that's the part of the story that should live on. It's also the part that the Plebians of Rome liked the most.

[BurtWorm]

13. You mean the turning water into wine, raising the dead, curing the blind

and all that? All that stuff is probably true? Or the nonmagical stuff that the gospels all contradict each other on?

You want to see how fast a religion spreads? Think of Scientology. How far did *it* spread in three decades? How much of *it* is based on anything other than L. Ron Hubbard's imagination?

I think you may be right, however, on the likelihood that the gospels were intended to consolidate and reconcile opposing Christian camps into a *catholic* (universal) church.

PS: All that reconciliation, I think, is what accounts for Jesus's incoherence as a character.

[jobycom]

16. I mean that, as an historian who studied that era for a while

(though I'm not an historian any more), I looked at the evidence of whether he existed and can't see any strength in the argument that he didn't. It's not at all like Scientology and Hubbard, which, with my little understanding of it, wasn't based on a fictional character who was supposed to have lived thirty years earlier and the testimony of dozens to hundreds of people who claimed to have witnessed and been close to this person.

And your straw men don't prove your argument, they are just silly. Of course I'm not talking about the miracles, and I was clear that not all the stories were true, and that we had no way to be sure which were. That's the type of debate tactic a person uses to ridicule an argument without trying to answer it with facts or logic. I know you are better than that.

Many of the stories about Jesus were created, or at least altered, to fit myths of other gods. The virgin birth was a common theme in mythology--Athena, and IIRC, Hercules (there were several Hercules stories), for instance. Or the claim that he rose from the dead on the third day--Osiris, Mithras. If I were speculating on what the evidence might mean, I'd say that possibly Jesus was sentenced to die, and either didn't die, or was assumed to be dead, and that the resurection story was an attempt to explain why people saw him after his faked death. (There were several texts that argued that another Apostle, who looked like Jesus, was crucified in his place, and one text even has Jesus standing on a nearby hill watching the exectution.) Or, conversely, he did die, but people continued to claim they saw him (as with Elvis), so the resurection story sprung up. You can link other miracle stories to a need to fit a common myth pattern, as well, or to a possible misunderstanding of stories floating around. When you study myth, you don't really debate whether the stories are true or false (unless you have evidence), but more what they mean.

But Jesus wasn't one of these wise men myths who only a couple of people claimed to have seen. He was a public figure, with close friends who were somewhat public, and even a mother whom many people claimed to have met after his death. Thus, when the stories began to be written down, some people were alive who knew him, and many were alive who knew someone else who knew him, since the Apostles and other followers spread around and tried to meet people. Like Socrates, who we mainly know about through the writings of two of his followers, both of whom used him more as a literary device than an historical figure.

[BurtWorm]

19. Where is this testimony of these witnesses outside of the gospels?

Where is the reliable textual evidence outside of the gospels? There isn't any. If Jesus was a Jew from Galilee whose apostles were also allegedly Jews from Judea, why are the gospels written in Greek? Why is the "Old Testament" source for them, not the Hebrew Torah but the Greek-language Septuagint? Which are the genuinely historic figures who knew him and lived on to spread the word of him? Where do we find reliable evidence that they existed at least?

[Meshuga]

23. Aramaic would be the language

Not Hebrew but I am with you. I don't find it beyond belief to claim that Jesus could have been invented in the short time between his supposed death and the first written claims of his followers.

Learning about history of Judaism and about the Aronides Revolution (which brough about the finalized Torah) and the Pharisaic Revolution (which brought about the finalization of the Tanakh and introduced the Twofold Law) it's not out of the question to suggest the invention of Jesus. I'm not saying that Jesus was invented but I am saying that it is a possibility.

Whether Paul was honest or not there is a big possibility he ideed was honest, given the fact he never met Jesus. Paul was an ardent pharisee who believed very much in salvation and resurrection (an idea introduced into the mix by the pharisees) via following the twofold law. When Paul, a fearing pharisee, heard about a person named Jesus who was defiant of the pharisaic authorities who instead of being damned for his audacity, he was actually resurrected from the dead, you can make an argument that Paul believed in what he wrote. Jesus was his savior from his own guilt of not following the twofold law. Jesus was his way out.

I would like to know about written accounts by people who actually met Jesus. Do we have any names or examples?

[BurtWorm]

27. Wouldn't the Torah have been in Hebrew? Or would that have been Aramaic?

In any case, correct me if I'm wrong: The Pharisees were the conservative, legalistic sect that eventually won the battle for the soul of Judaism over the Sadducees and other sects, weren't they? They were the ones who had the scribes, who eventually moved to get the Talmud in writing and created a sort of cult around the written word--is that fair to say? Weren't the Sadducees the very welathy priests who were influenced by Epicureanism, from which the Hebrew word for "heretic" apikoros (or something like that) comes from? I think I just read all this in a wonderful book by Rebecca Goldstein called Betraying Spinoza. (Or did I imagine it? :crazy: )

The reason I ask is that I was recently led to believe that Paul was actually probably a Sadducee, given his Greekness. But I could be wrong.

[Meshuga]

33. The Torah was written in Hebrew

And it was written throughout a few centuries and finalized in the 7th century BCE. Way before the time of Jesus. The Pharisaic Judaism is the one that survived after the fall of the temple and was established as what we know today as Rabbinic Judaism.

Paul was a Torah observant Jew of the sect of the Pharisees. "...I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee..." (Acts 23:6).

The Seduccees were the priestly class of the temple who rejected the Oral Law. Their interpretation of the Written Law was literal so, for example, they did not believe in an afterlife, since it is not mentioned in the Torah. The main focus of Sadducee life was rituals associated with the Temple.

Since their religion was based on the rituals at the temple they obviously disappeared around 70 CE after the destruction of the Temple.

The pharisees were not Bible literalists and the written Torah (the first five books of moses) was as important as the Oral Torah (hence the name "twofold law").

The Oral tradition was eventually written down as the Mishnah, Gemara, Midrash which forms the Talmud.

In a nutshell the Torah was written by different groups at different times (J,E, D, and P). The Torah was finalized by the Aronides priests (who eventually became the sedducees) in order to phase out the competing prophet class (around 7th century BCE). In the second century BCE the pharisees, in order to come to power, introduced the twofold law but still kept the Aronides priests in charge of the religious rites at the Temple. With the destruction of the temple the sedducees were no more.

On edit: what Jews today call Torah is the combination of the written Torah (the Five books of Moses) and the Oral Torah (the Talmud).

[kwassa]

24. how many times do we got through this?

this same lame arguments over and over again
"Where is the reliable textual evidence outside of the gospels? There isn't any."

There is little reliable textual evidence of anything at all from that time. All we have is Josephus, and there literally are NO other historians writing in Palestine in that era.

"If Jesus was a Jew from Galilee whose apostles were also allegedly Jews from Judea, why are the gospels written in Greek?"

Previously answered. Greek was the language used throughout the eastern Roman Empire, including Judea, which was a Roman possession, and a former Greek possesion. Greek was the international and universal language of that region.

"Why is the "Old Testament" source for them, not the Hebrew Torah but the Greek-language Septuagint?"

Because that was the authoritative source spread throughout the eastern Roman Empire, written by Jews in Alexandria in Greek.

"Which are the genuinely historic figures who knew him and lived on to spread the word of him? Where do we find reliable evidence that they existed at least?"

Paul existed, and he met Jesus's brother James, and the apostle Peter, and another apostle. Paul is certainly well-known historically. Paul did not meet Jesus, but met those around him in a short time after Jesus's death.

You are asking for a level of historical proof, by the way, that doesn't exist for most things in ancient Greece or Rome. Scholars have pointed out that we often have only a single source for any information from that era, with nothing else to compare it do, and totally verify it's factualness.

[BurtWorm]

29. What language were the Dead Sea Scrolls in?

[kwassa]

31. Uh, do you have a rebuttal, burtworm?

I addressed your note point for point.

You did not extend me the same courtesy.

[BurtWorm]

35. I am addressing one of your points by asking this question.

This point:

"Previously answered. Greek was the language used throughout the eastern Roman Empire, including Judea, which was a Roman possession, and a former Greek possesion. Greek was the international and universal language of that region."

So my question again is, what language were the Dead Sea Scrolls written in? I think you didn't answer it because you know the answer is not "Greek." Am I right?

The point I am trying to make is that the authors of the Gospels give away in several places that their OT source was the Septuagint--most notably in the embarrassing confusion of "virgin" as a description of Mary because that is how the Septuagint erroneously translated the Hebrew term for "young maiden" in the description of the promised Messiah's mother in prophecy. As Mr. Wiggles says in another post in this thread, Judaean Jews would have used the Torah as a source, so clearly the authors of the Gospels were not Judaean Jews.

What say ye to that?

[kwassa]

39. I say this.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were written in Aramaic. What does this have to do with the writing of the Gospels?

Nothing, as far as there was no connection between Essenes and Christians.

"As Mr. Wiggles says in another post in this thread, Judaean Jews would have used the Torah as a source, so clearly the authors of the Gospels were not Judaean Jews."

Says who? Sounds like supposition from Mr. Wiggles, with no proof to back it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Septuagint#Jewish_use

Jewish use

By the 3rd century BCE, Jewry was situated primarily within the Hellenistic world. Outside of Judea, many Jews may have needed synagogue readings or texts for religious study to be interpreted into Greek, producing a need for the LXX. Alexandria held the greatest diaspora Jewish community of the age and was also a great center of Greek letters. Alexandria is thus likely the site of LXX authorship, a notion supported by the legend of Ptolemy and the 72 scholars. The Septuagint enjoyed widespread use in the Hellenistic Jewish diaspora and even in Jerusalem, which had become a rather cosmopolitan (and therefore Greek-speaking) town. Both Philo and Josephus show a reliance on the Septuagint in their citations of Jewish scripture.


http://orvillejenkins.com/reviews/heathorthodox.html

Greek the Jewish Language

Heath paints the cultural and linguistic scenario which shows that Greek had become the de facto language of the Jews, even in Palestine, though Aramaic remained the common currency of much social exchange. Greek became the language of commerce and political administration well before the Romans came into that part of the world, and continued even more strongly under the Roman use of Greek as the common language of Empire.

(jump)

Heath reviews the evidence that indicates that these Greek versions of the ancient scrolls, still circulating in various Hebrew versions, came to be the common form of Tanakh (what the Christians came to call the Old Testament) used even in Judea, Galilee and other eastern areas of the Jewish people. Aramaic continued to be the common language in Judea more that in Galilee, apparently, from various other sources.

The Earth Shifts
But Greek replaced the Hebrew as the working form of the Hebrew Scriptures. Various sources indicate that a common practice in the synagogues in Jesus' time seems to be to read the scripture selection in Greek, then discuss it in Aramaic. Often the memorized scriptures would still be in the Hebrew, but Hebrew was no longer a viable working language.

(jump)

Greek Old Testament
...the real contribution Heath makes, as a scholar who has spent his life studying, clarifying, and teaching the Old Testament, from Hebrew and Greek, is to set forth the role of the LXX (Septuagint) for the new messianic sect of the Christians. It is strongly evidenced that the LXX was the version of the Hebrew scriptures used by the Christians. Direct quotes as well as similarities in vocabulary and sentence structure in even the rough paraphrases occur all through the New Testament writings.

http://members.aol.com/Wisdomway/deadseascrolls.htm
on the Dead Sea Scrolls

The scrolls at Qumran, however, because they were written before any of these events occurred, give us an unbiased picture of the original state of Jewish scripture at the time of Jesus Christ.

They show us, for instance, that there was not just one rescension of the Hebrew scripture being used at the time of Christ -- there were dozens; and they show us that the Greek (Septuagint) Old Testament was used extensively in Judea, and without the onus that it later received from the Rabbinical scholars.

[Meshuga]

42. You said this...

"Says who? Sounds like supposition from Mr. Wiggles, with no proof to back it up."

No proof to back what up? That Jews used the Torah as a source? I'm confused! :-)

Judean and Babylonian Jews wrote mishnaic text (look up "tannaim" who started writing the Mishnah from 70 CE and "amoraim" who continued from the 3rd century on) and the Gemara in Aramaic. This is not my supposition, I'm affraid it's a fact. Sorry!

Burtworm is right because the confusion with the word "almah" (young woman) when translated from Hebrew to Greek as "virgin" is ridiculous (not to say painfully dishonest).

The book of Matthew 1:22-23 states: "Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, "Behold a virgin shall be with child and will bear a son and they shall call his name Emmanuel,' which translated means, God with us." Christians "scholars" claim that this is the fulfillment of a prophecy stated in Isaiah 7:14 that actually says: "Behold, the young woman is with child and will bear a son and she will call his name Emmanuel."

There are a bunch of inaccuracies in the Christian translation. The Hebrew word, "almah" means a young woman, not a virgin (a fact recognized by biblical scholars). The verse says "ha'almah," "the young woman," not a young woman, specifying a particular woman that was known to Isaiah during his lifetime and The verse says "she will call his name Emmanuel" not "they shall call."

Even apart from these inaccuracies, if we read all of Isaiah Chapter 7 it is obvious that Christians have taken this verse out of context.

This chapter speaks of a prophecy made to the Jewish King Ahaz to allay his fears of two kings (of Damascus and of Samaria) who were preparing to invade Jerusalem, about 600 years before the time of Jesus. Isaiah's point is that these events will take place in the very near future (and not 600 years later, as Christianity claims). Verse 16 makes this very clear: "For before the boy will know enough to refuse evil and choose good, the land whose two kings you dread will be forsaken."

In fact, in the very next chapter this prophecy is fulfilled with the birth of a son to Isaiah. As it says in Isaiah 8:4, "For before the child shall know to cry, "My father and my mother' the riches of Damascus and the spoils of Samaria shall be taken away before the king of Assyria." This verse entirely rules out any connection to Jesus, who would not be born until much later.

[kwassa]

60. I apologize, because I misstated something in my post

burt:
"As Mr. Wiggles says in another post in this thread, Judean Jews would have used the Torah as a source, so clearly the authors of the Gospels were not Judean Jews."

me:
"Says who? Sounds like supposition from Mr. Wiggles, with no proof to back it up."

I meant, because I did not proofread my post, that it was supposition from Burtworm.

I was addressing the logic jump of Burtworm in the above post. I posted several sources of how the Septuagint was in use in Judea, so Burtworm is wrong. This is not to say that the Torah was not also in use.

Burtworm's illogic is that the Gospel writers could not have been Judean Jews because they also referenced the Septuagint. That is clearly not the case. The idea that they would only use the Torah, when virtually no one understood Hebrew in that society, but did understand Greek, is the big fat supposition.

[BurtWorm]

65. Which language did Judaean Jews speak amongst themselves ordinarily?

Would you agree that Aramaic is the most likely candidate? Do you seriously believe that educated, literate Aramaic speakers would turn to a Greek text when studying Torah, a text written in a Semitic language? Are you seriously going to argue that Aramaic-speaking Jews of the first century were less capable of reading Hebrew than the Jews of the Diaspora in every age since?

I am going to anticipate a possible response, that the followers of Jesus were probably not educated and literate as the Pharisees and Sadducees were. You might even want to argue that maybe most of them were from Galilee where Greek may have been the koine of the realm, so to speak. Would you like to argue that?

[kwassa]

73. Actually ...

"Are you seriously going to argue that Aramaic-speaking Jews of the first century were less capable of reading Hebrew than the Jews of the Diaspora in every age since?"

This appears to be another supposition on your part. Much of your arguments are constructed this way.

Yes, I am, actually, because this is precisely what I have read. Hebrew was later revived, but far more Jews spoke Greek in Judea in the era of Jesus, and virtually no one knew classical Hebrew.

I look up the reference for you later, it is bedtime now.

[BurtWorm]

78. Much of everyone's arguments on the historicity of Jesus is based on supposition, kwassa.

You may cite as many Biblical scholars as you'd like, but behind every "fact" I've ever encountered about the historical Jesus, there's a "probably" or "appears likely." Supposer, unsuppose thyself!

I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about:

"The pattern appears to be that Aramaic was the common formal and informal language, also used in local commerce, Greek the language of administration and international commerce, and of the Jewish international meetings (like Passover or Pentecost), even in Jerusalem."

Recognize this quote? It's one you cited to support your claim that Judean Jews would use the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew Torah.

Now here's an interesting Internet discourse on the use of Hebrew in the first century, by Deborah Millier of Jerusalem University College (a Christian school based in Jerusalem and Rockford, Illinois--so take the historic supposition about what Jesus might have done with a grain of salt):

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-hebrew/2003-June/015607.html

CONTINUING WITH THE SURVEY:

12. In Aristea’s letter (200-100 B.C.E.) Demetrius is
quoted speaking to the king thus:

“Translation is needed ….
They are assumed to use Aramaic , but
such is not the case; it is
a different kind ”

We know that Demetrius, and hence the writer of
Aristea’s letter, refer to Hebrew and not Aramaic
because the books in question were from the Hebrew
Bible.

13. In the countryside of Judea decrees of marriage
were written in Hebrew while in more cosmopolitan
Jerusalem they were composed in Aramaic (Ketubot
4:12).

14. Traders and Babylonians wanting to communicate
better with Jerusalemites learned Hebrew (Yoma 6:4, B
Pesakhim 116). Presumably they already knew Aramaic.

15. In one telling recorded instance, some students of
Yehudah Ha-Nasi, the compiler of the MISHNA who lived
in Tziporri in the Galilee (c. 200 C.E.), could not
figure out the meaning of a few Hebrew words so they
asked the maid, who explained the words to them (B.
Megillah 18). This lends evidence that Hebrew was
still alive among at least some of the more common
people in the Galilee region at this time.

16. Targumim were not so much translations of the
Bible to explain the “lesser-known” Hebrew, but
repositories of exegetical traditions. Because of
this they had value to Hebrew speakers (also fluent in
Aramaic), but were always distinguished from the
biblical text itself. The congregational “translator”
of a targum (itself a kind of translation) reading was
called a METURGEMAN, but the sermons following the
Scripture readings were, in the second temple period,
given in Hebrew. To the common people.

17. The Pharisees utilized Hebrew (not Aramaic) for
their *oral* transmissions of their traditions. They
found popularity (except for details on tithing and a
few other minutia) among the common people—and were
apparently understood.

18. The structure of the Magnificat (Luk. 1:46-55)
shows that it came from a Hebrew, not Aramaic, source,
and that it is not merely a lukan composition based on
the LXX. If it came from Mary’s own mouth then she
could compose beautiful Hebrew poetry. If it came
from a later Christian community, then they too were
capable of producing exceptional poetry in Hebrew.
Evidence of a living language.

19. The evidence of Aramaic in the Gospels does not
prove that Hebrew was no longer widely used. In fact,
some words attributed to Aramaic are just as likely to
have been good MH (e.g. ABBA).

20. Jesus’ many references to someone (himself?) as
“the son of man,” an obvious allusion to the enigmatic
BAR ENOSH figure in Dan. 7, does not necessarily
signal that he was communicating to the masses in
Aramaic, since he just as easily could have been
teaching in Hebrew (standard rabbinic practice of the
time) and speaking the “son of man” title in Aramaic.

21. Luke’s portrayal of Paul as speaking EBRAIDI no
longer poses a problem if one accepts that Hebrew was
indeed spoken at the time in Judea (Act. 22:2). In
fact, SYRISTI would be the most common way in Greek to
refer to Aramaic.

CONCLUSIONS:

1) Hebrew certainly was vibrantly alive as a literary
language during the second temple period, particularly
in Judea.

2) Hebrew was also certainly utilized by some among
the scholarly and upper classes, and even among the
less-learned as a spoken language. Again,
particularly in Judea.

3) In the Galilee, Aramaic was probably the most
common tongue to converse in, except when religious
discourse was going on.


<BW: And what language, kwassa, do you think she means to imply was spoken in Galilee when religious discourse was going on?>

[kwassa]

83. I don't know who you are quoting, but it isn't me.

care to reference it?

I would also point out that the Second Temple period covers five hundred years before and including Jesus, up to the destruction of the temple in AD 70. This author claiming such vibrance in usage is quite vague.

and none of this has anything to do with the price of rice in China. Is there a point to your speculations?

[BurtWorm]

87. Actually, I'm quoting one of your sources, but from a different article

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=214&topic_id=110904&mesg_id=110992

My quote, which is very similar, came from here:

http://orvillejenkins.com/languages/hebrewfirstcentury.html

I mistook the latter quote for the one you cited.

As far as the vagueness of my citation goes... I think we must have a different understanding of the word "vague." I thought Millier's points were pretty clear about place and time, and even included citations to her sources. But your statement ("This author claiming such vibrance in usage is quite vague.") is vague according to *my* definition. I have no idea why you think she's "vague." She's making the case quite clearly that Hebrew was spoken in religious contexts in Judea and Gallilee at the time in question, that Aramaic was the colloquial language among Jews throughout the region, but that a form of Hebrew was still spoken even in Gallilee into the second century. Does that clear up the point for you?

The point again is that early Christian writing seems to have stemmed from somewhere outside of Judea, and maybe even outside of Gallilee. It seems to have come from a place, like Alexandria, where the Septuagint was *the* source for anyone reading what Christians refer to as the OT. If Paul really did come from Tarsus, perhaps it came from Anatolia.

It's very odd that a movement that purports to be "the completion" of Judaism has to refer to a faulty translation of Judaism's holy scripture, which causes so many obvious and embarrassing mistakes in its reading of Judeo-messianic prophecy. It's especially odd considering that the hero at the center of it is alleged to have been a "rabbi," if not in training, than at least in his understanding of "the Law" (i.e., Torah). Historicists are in the embarrassing position of having to explain how this alleged threat to establishment Judaism from within is fundamentally alienated from the source it allegedly sprung from, namely the Hebrew Torah. So they take great pains to repaint the portrait of first century Judea, to make it out to be as Greek as Alexandria, a place where even in the Temple the Pharisees debated points of law in Greek using the Septuagint. That defies common sense (let alone the actual facts)! But it's easier to repaint the whole of Judea as insidiously Greek than to explain the weird fact that Paul (a student of Gemaliel, they claim!) and Jesus and the apostles quote from a bad translation of Holy Law. This doesn't strike you as fundamentally bizarre?

[Meshuga]

91. Good catch Burtworm

And Kwassa was right if he cited that "Aramaic was the common formal and informal language, also used in local commerce, Greek the language of administration and international commerce..."

Aramaic was the popular language in the region. Hebrew was language of Jewish liturgy and Greek served like English is surved today as, for example, in international trade.

[BurtWorm]

92. That arrangement makes perfect sense.

But I think kwassa is also trying to foist on us the notion that the Pharisees argued over the Septuagint in Greek. If true, of course, this would make it easier to swallow Jesus and Paul's apparent ignorance of the Hebrew Torah. But I doubt it's true, and so do honest scholars of the age--even a Christian like Deborah Millier, whom I cited above.

[Meshuga]

96. Sure

Like you said, only if trying to make it easier to swallow Jesus and Paul's apparent ignorance of the Torah.

From the strictness of the Pharisees to the Torah literalists like the priestly Sedducees, I find it rather silly to think they would be using as source a translation of scripture they revered. Each letter on the written Torah was sacred and could not be changed. The Torah is the Torah, the Tanakh is the Tanakh and the Septuagint is nothing but a translation of the Tanakh for the diaspora. Language is a huge factor in Torah since the choice of Hebrew words was important for these sages.

[BurtWorm]

97. Now if we could just get this through to kwassa...

We might get somewhere!

[jobycom]

25. You can find answers to that in hundreds of books and web pages

None of your questions are conclusive evidence he didn't exist, else most historians wouldn't conclude he had lived. The "Gospels" are simply four versions of the same story accepted into as canonical at Nicaea, but there were other gospels, and many letters, not accepted, for political as well as historical reasons. Tacitus wrote about his followers and mentioned that Jesus had been executed by Pontius Pilate. Clearly the story was already in existence within 30 years of his execution, and clearly there was already a cult around him.

More than that is the preponderance of the myth. There were churches already by Nero's time, and they already had the myth of Jesus as their basis.

As for language, the Gospels weren't written by Jesus's apostles, they were written in Rome (where the common language was Greek). The reflect oral histories of Jesus, not actual written histories. That's part of why the stories are inconsistent.

Jesus was a commoner, why would he have known any historical figures? How many historical figures do you know from the time? Do you think every carpenter, rabbi, or whatever knew Josephus, or Tacitus? Jesus was a low level prophet with a couple of ambitious followers who spread his story and his teachings--kind of like Van Gogh and his sister in law. The resultant religion had little to do with him, but that hardly reflects on whether he lived or not. Christopher Columbus wouldn't recognize himself from our myths, either, but that's not evidence he didn't exist.

You don't want to believe he existed, that's fine. The majority of historians have looked at the evidence and concluded he did. Maybe your beliefs require him not to be real, I don't know.

[BurtWorm]

32. Of course my questions are not conlcusive evidence. They're questions.

That most historians accept received wisdom is no evidence the wisdom received is true.

There are problems with the Tacitus quote (which stems from about 116 AD, according to Wikipedia). He calls Pilate a procurator, for example, when Pilate's title was prefect. And he refers to Jesus as "Christus," which would be sort of like a modern historian referring to Mohammed Ali in his sole appearance in a history of the 20th century as "The Greatest." Chances are shockingly good, considering the amount of forgeries the faith committed to force history to conform to orthodoxy, that the reference is an interpolation by a zealous Christian copyist.

The common language in Rome was Latin. You probably knew that. The reason the Gospels are in Greek is that they originated in the East, where Greek was the common language. But my question was about the strange fact that these allegedly Jewish texts from Judaea were not written in a language Judaean Jews would have written in. It seems like a good question to me.

I used to accept received wisdom about Jesus myself. It's much easier to accept it than go through the trouble of challenging it. Once you do, though, it's much, much harder to just give received wisdom the benefit of the doubt any more.

[kwassa]

38. Received wisdom is called "scholarship"

As I said earlier, the vast weight of SCIENTIFIC scholarship has come to the conclusion that Jesus was a real person.

burtworm:
"But my question was about the strange fact that these allegedly Jewish texts from Judea were not written in a language Judaean Jews would have written in. It seems like a good question to me."

Indeed it is. Very good answers have been given to that question.

You don't accept them. Life goes on.

Here are some you don't accept.

1) Greek was the language of the eastern Roman empire, and all business was done in that language.
2) All of the remaining Gospel fragments from the earliest time are copies from long after the originals. They are in Greek. The original language is unknown. It might have been Aramaic.
3) Jesus may have known Greek, as Nazareth was essentially a suburb of Sepphoris, a new Roman city where many Greek inscriptions have been found. He would go there for work as a carpenter.
4) There is very little original documentation from that era extant, if at all. Josephus was the only historian in Judea close to that era, the discipline of history as we know it today did not exist, and Josephus was born after Jesus died, and often has a strong bias of his own to exercise. He was a former Jewish military commander that went over to the Roman side during the First Revolt, and expressed the viewpoint of someone from that political outlook. There are no other historical references even close.
5) The Dead Sea Scrolls are a singular exception to the idea that papyrus rots over 2000 years, due to the extraordinarily dry conditions and uniquely undisturbed locations in which it was discovered. Most biodegradable material is long, long gone. Who knows what it could be, or what evidence was contained?
6) Paul's letters pre-date the Gospel, and he clearly knew Greek, while from the same region. He dictated to professional scribes, however, which was the general practice throughout the area.

[BurtWorm]

41. 1) Sacred writing is "business?"

2) Doubtful that they were written in any language other than Greek, seeing as the OT source is the Septuagint.
3) Pure speculation.
4) Totally agree.
5) They don't support your contention that Palestinean Jews wrote on sacred subjects in Greek.
6) Of course the author of Paul's epistles knew Greek. He was culturally Greek.

[Meshuga]

44. Adding to number 4

The testimony by Josephus (and it is amazing how it is still being cited as proof of the existence of a historical Jesus) has been shown over and over for centuries to be a forgery, likely added by Catholic Church historian Eusebius in the fourth century.

[BurtWorm]

51. You're right about that.

And it is amazing that anyone still bothers to cite it in this debate, considering how battered its credibility is.

[okasha]

45. You should probably make sure you know the answers to questions

before you ask them, if you're going to take your respondents to task for what you think they don't know. Most of the Dead Sea Scrolls are written in Hebrew, some in Aramaic, and some in Greek. Greek had been the second language of the ruling elite in Palestine since Alexander's Empire was divvied up among his chief generals. The Selucids all had Greek names, as did the Herodians who followed the Hasmoneans. Herod Antipas. Antipater. Berenice. Herod Philip. So Greek was very much the language of the educated and upper classes in Palestine, just as it was in Egypt, Asia Minor and everywhere else in the Roman Empire.

Paul was not "culturally Greek." He was a Hellenized Jew, and that fact shows up in his Platonic bent. His Greek is not nearly so smooth as, say, Luke's, though; it's clearly a second language for him.

Otherwise, do yourself a favor and stop repeating the canard that Nazareth didn't exist in the 1st. century CE. The archaeology shows the site continuously inhabited from around 270-250 BCE to the present. A whole clan of Temple priests relocated to the town after the destruction of Jerusalem, a fact duly recorded in an inscription at Caesaria Maritima, so it was most certainly not only inhabited but received a wave of immigrants from the south at the end of the first century. You've stretched your misinformation to ridiculous lengths by claiming that the town may not have existed till the Middle Ages.

[BurtWorm]

49. Are you saying Greek is the language of the Sadducees and Pharisees?

They would be speaking Greek to each other in the Second Temple? Is that what you think?

How many of the scrolls are in Greek, compared to the ones in Hebrew and Aramaic? What is the content of the Greek scrolls?

Hellenized and with a Platonic bent is not culturally "Greek?"

Why don't you stop insisting that Nazareth definitely did exist in the 1st century CE, as though it means nothing that it isn't mentioned in any source, including the Old Testament, until the Gospels appeared in the second century?

[okasha]

52. Uhm, where in the Temple?

The ritual would obviously be carried out in Hebrew, which was the liturgical language of the Temple. Pharisees and Saducees might well speak Greek to each other socially and with Jewish pilgrims from other parts of the Empire, though. Greek at the time served much the same function English does today as an international language.

About 80-85% of the scrolls are in Hebrew, with the next highest number in Aramaic. I don't have a figure for the Greek mss, but they're probably around 5%. One of them may be a fragment of Mark, which would mean it was composed before 66-67 CE. In any case, the point is that the Qumrani community was an educated one, and like any other educated Jews of the period, at least some of them would be Greek speakers.

There's more to being "culturally Greek" than a liking for Plato, speaking rough-and-ready Greek and living in a Hellenized society. "Culturally Greek" would require some sort of participation in Greek culture as a whole--going to the Hippodrome, perhaps, attending the theater, the baths and the gymnasium. There's no indication Paul did any of these things. Compare him with one of the Herods, for example, if you want to measure him by a figure who was indeed "culturally Greek."

You're missing the point. It really does mean nothing--nothing at all, zero, nada--that Nazareth was not mentioned in a surviving text until the Gospels in the late first century. The archaeology shows that the site of Nazareth was inhabited in the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE), Middle Iron (900-539) BCE and then uninterruptedly from around 300 BCE to present. The reasons why various writers failed to mention Nazareth are speculation. The artifacts from the inhabited site are--well, facts. You really ought to read an actual historian or two.

[BurtWorm]

53. And do you know a lot of Israelis in Israel who speak English to each other outside the synagogue?

You think that's a common practice? You think it would have been common for Jews in Jerusalem to speak Greek to each other in secular contexts? I'm not trying to trick you, I'm trying to get as sense if you seriously believe Greek was the language Jews spoke to each other in Palestine, and if you have anything to support it other than a sense that they "might well" have.

My understanding from what I've read about the Dead Sea Scrolls is that most are actually in Hebrew, as you say. But Aramaic is not Hebrew. In fact, a minority of the scrolls were in Aramaic. Most were in classical (Biblical) Hebrew. A small number were Greek.

Re: Nazareth:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazareth

<<Earliest History & Archaeological Evidence

Archaeological research has revealed a funerary and cult center at Kfar HaHoresh, about two miles from Nazareth, dating roughly 9000 years ago (in what is known as the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B era).<2> The remains of some 65 individuals were found, buried under huge horizontal headstone structures, some of which consisted of up to 3 tons of locally-produced white plaster. Decorated human skulls found have led archaeologists to believe that Kfar HaHoresh was a major cult center in that remote era.<3>

“Nazareth is not mentioned in ancient Jewish sources earlier than the third century AD. This likely reflects its lack of prominence both in Galilee and in Judaea,” writes American archaeologist James Strange.<4> Strange variously estimates Nazareth’s population at “roughly 1,600 to 2,000 people” in the time of Christ, and in another publication at “a maximum of about 480.” <5> However, some historians argue that the absence of textual references to Nazareth in the Old Testament and the Talmud, as well as the works of Josephus, suggest that a town called 'Nazareth' did not exist in Jesus' day.<6> The latter view is supported by the results of the excavations at Nazareth which do not furnish evidence from Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Hellenistic or Early Roman times,<7> despite many claims to the contrary made in the literature.<8> B. Bagatti (the principle archaeologist at the venerated sites in Nazareth) has unearthed quantities of later Roman and Byzantine artefacts,<9> attesting to unambiguous human presence there from the 2nd century AD onward. Thus, it is possible that the town of Nazareth came into existence only with the spread of Christianity.

In the mid-1990s, shopkeeper Elias Shama discovered tunnels under his shop near Mary’s Well in Nazareth. The tunnels were eventually recognized as a hypocaust (a space below the floor into which warm air was pumped) for a bathhouse. The site was excavated in 1997-98 by Y. Alexandre, and the archaeological remains exposed were ascertained to date from the Middle Roman, Crusader, Mamluk and Ottoman periods. <10><11><12> Boo

A tablet currently at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, dating to 50 AD, was sent from Nazareth to Paris in 1878. It contains an inscription known as the "Ordinance of Caesar" that outlines the penalty of death for those who violate tombs or graves. However, it is suspected that this inscription came to Nazareth from somewhere else (possibly Sepphoris). Bagatti writes: “we are not certain that it was found in Nazareth, even though it came from Nazareth to Paris. At Nazareth there lived various vendors of antiquities who got ancient material from several places.”<13> C. Kopp is more definite: "It must be accepted with certainty that ... was brought to the Nazareth market by outside merchants."<14>

Jack Finegan describes additional archaeological evidence related to settlement in the Nazareth basin during the Bronze and Iron Ages, and adds that "Nazareth was a strongly Jewish settlement in the Roman period."<15> The critical question now under scholarly debate is when in the Roman period Nazareth came into existence, that is, whether settlement there began before or after 70 AD (the First Jewish War).>>


The evidence is quite a bit more--ahem--"ambiguous" than you dare to admit.

[Meshuga]

56. Language

Aramaic was the language that most Jews spoke in their everyday lives before, during and after the time of Jesus. Greek might be the language of trade and commerce in the eastern Roman empire at the time of Jesus, but it was not the language spoken by ordinary Jews in Judeah.

Greek was the language of the aristocrats and Jews learned the language in Europe and Egypt. They probably wrote in Greek when studying in the Qumran caves, Babylon, Jerusalem and elsewhere for ease and for communication purposes (for the aristrocrats). But there are Greek documents of the period from Judeah and Samarea.

As far as Nazareth probably existing at the time of Jesus, that is a stretch and wanting to accept the Gospels as historical books. I'm not saying it didn't exist but there are a lot of reason for believing it didn't.

[kwassa]

58. Your point?

mr. wiggles:
"Aramaic was the language that most Jews spoke in their everyday lives before, during and after the time of Jesus. Greek might be the language of trade and commerce in the eastern Roman empire at the time of Jesus, but it was not the language spoken by ordinary Jews in Judeah."

and what does this have to do with the written version of the Gospels?

[Meshuga]

61. Nothing to do with the Gospels

The question of what language was used in the everyday lives of Jews in Judea and Samaria (and at the temple besides the liturgy) came up and I added my remarks.

[BurtWorm]

66. It raises the question why, if Jesus was so potentially essential to Judean Jewishness

almost all of the literature around early Christianity is culturally Greek. What is that about?

[kwassa]

72. The literature isn't culturally Greek, it is written in Greek.

and since we have been over this ground repeatedly as to why, I don't understand why you bring it up again.

This has been explained.

[BurtWorm]

80. Greek language isn't Greek culture?

Stoic philosophy isn't Greek culture?

The main point is, it is once removed from being fully Jewish, at least as far as mainstream Judaism of that time was concerned. Consider the case of Philo, the most famous Hellenized Jew of the period. Here's how the Jewish Encyclopedia describes his reputation among his contemporary Jews:

http://www.earlyjewishwritings.com/philo.html

PHILO JUDÆUS:

By : Crawford Howell Toy Carl Siegfried Jacob Zallel Lauterbach

Alexandrian philosopher; born about 20 B.C. at Alexandria, Egypt; died after 40 C.E. The few biographical details concerning him that have been preserved are found in his own works (especially in "Legatio ad Caium," §§ 22, 28; ed. Mangey , ii. 567, 572; "De Specialibus Legibus," ii. 1 ) and in Josephus ("Ant." xviii. 8, § 1; comp. ib. xix. 5, § 1; xx. 5, § 2). The only event that can be determined chronologically is his participation in the embassy which the Alexandrian Jews sent to the emperor Caligula at Rome for the purpose of asking protection against the attacks of the Alexandrian Greeks. This occurred in the year 40 C.E.

Philo included in his philosophy both Greek wisdom and Hebrew religion, which he sought to fuse and harmonize by means of the art of allegory that he had learned from the Stoics. His work was not accepted by contemporary Judaism. "The sophists of literalness," as he calls them ("De Somniis," i. 16-17), "opened their eyes superciliously" when he explained to them the marvels of his exegesis. Greek science, suppressed by the victorious Phariseeism (Men. 99), was soon forgotten. Philo was all the more enthusiastically received by the early Christians, some of whom saw in him a Christian.

[kwassa]

84. Not necessarily.

So why go shooting off on this Philo tangent? Someone you previously dismissed, as I recall.

What is your point here?

Everyone in Judea was affected by Greek culture because the Greeks ruled the area for awhile, and the usuage of the language persisted through the Roman era. We covered this about eighteen times now.
What is your point?

[BurtWorm]

88. You haven't shown even ONCE that Greek was the language of Jews in religious context.

You continually ignore that Hebrew was that language. You want me and anyone who reads your posts to take your word for it that rabbis in Jerusalem read from the Septuagint, but you haven't taken a single step toward backing that up with anything but your own supposition and extremely weak supporting evidence from other sources.

My point is coming to be that you apparently are bullshitting me and don't really know what you're talking about.

[kwassa]

104. I gave you the evidence and quotes

you can judge them to be weak, but I really don't care, because you haven't dealt with them.

The idea that these Jews writing writing the Gospels were not trained as priests and probably didn't know classical Hebrew. That they would write in Greek is not surprising to me. People relied on scribes, scribes clearly wrote in Greek. The apostles may not have been able to write at all, for all I know, and didn't themselves write any of the Gospels.

Your presumption that Jews would only write religiously in Hebrew is only that, a presumption, and not necessarily true.

http://www2.evansville.edu/ecoleweb/glossary/LXX.html

The LXX (as the Septuagint is usually abbreviated) was immensely popular among Hellenized and diaspora Jews and gave non-Jews their first glimpse of the "Hebrew wisdom". For early Christians, very few of whom could read Hebrew, the LXX essentially was the Old Testament; thirty-three of the thirty-seven Old Testament quotations in the New are taken directly from the LXX. These included a number of instances in which the LXX reading differs greatly from that of the Masoretes (the now-standard Hebrew version), most notably "virgin" instead of "young woman" at Isaiah 7:14. Later Christian writers also relied on LXX-specific readings, such as "they have pierced my hands and feet" instead of the certainly less natural-sounding "like a lion are my hands and feet" at Psalm 22:16.

Because of its use by Christians as a source of proof-texts, and probably for other reasons as well, the LXX was eventually abandoned by the Jewish community, in spite of a previous tendency to consider it of supernatural origin. Talmudic tradition states that the LXX is both divinely inspired and full of errors; the errors were providentially introduced to keep the Gentiles from understanding too much! Even so, according to some rabbinincal authors, mysteries were revealed to the profane, and the day the translation was finished should be kept as a day of mourning.

Christian writers were also aware of the discrepencies between the LXX and the proto-Masoretic Hebrew text advocated by the rabbis after the destruction of the Temple. They explained them either by claiming either that the Jews had altered their own Scriptures, or less frequently by arguing that the LXX had indeed changed the text, but under divine guidance. Thus there was a story that Symeon, one of the 70, was instructed by an angel to translate almah as "virgin" against his own scholarly judgement; the same Symeon was said to have lived for hundreds of years and to have been the elder who received the infant Jesus in the Temple .

Modern scholarship suggests a less sinister but more radical explanation of the textual differences than claiming that either text was deliberately changed. Archæological discoveries, notably the Qumran scrolls, show that in the I Century CE (and no doubt earlier) several different Hebrew versions of the Bible were in use among Jews, even at a single location like Qumran. Thus the Dead Sea Scrolls include an essentially Masoretic version of Isaiah, but also a version of Jeremiah which is much closer to the LXX but written in Hebrew. Thus it seems likely that the translators of the LXX chose, or perhaps only had access to, a particular set of Hebrew manuscripts which formed the basis of their translation, while the Masoretes and their predecessors used a significantly different group of manuscripts to edit into a standard Hebrew text.

[BurtWorm]

105. I cite the overwhelming propensity of scrolls among the DSS to be in Hebrew

as very strong evidence that Jews in Judea at that time tended to write about Judaism in Hebrew.

Who's doing the supposing here?

[kwassa]

114. You are doing the supposing, of course.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_primacy

Mainstream and modern scholars have generally had a strong agreement that the New Testament was written in Greek. They acknowledge that many individual sayings of Jesus as found in the Gospels are translations from oral Aramaic, but hold that the Gospels' text in its current form was composed in Greek, and so were the other New Testament writings. Scholars of all stripes have had to acknowledge the presence in the Gospel of Mark of scattered, but only occasional, Aramaic expressions, transliterated and then translated. An example of how mainstream scholars have dealt with Aramaic influences within an overall view of the Gospels' original Greek-language development may be found in Martin Hengel's recent synthesis of studies of the linguistic situation in Palestine during the time of Jesus and the Gospels:

Since non-literary, simple Greek knowledge or competency in multiple languages was relatively widespread in Jewish Palestine including Galilee, and a Greek-speaking community had already developed in Jerusalem shortly after Easter, one can assume that this linguistic transformation began very early. ... issionaries, above all 'Hellenists' driven out of Jerusalem, soon preached their message in the Greek language. We find them in Damascus as early as AD 32 or 33. A certain percentage of Jesus' earliest followers were presumably bilingual and could therefore report, at least in simple Greek, what had been heard and seen. This probably applies to Cephas/Peter, Andrew, Philip or John. Mark, too, who was better educated in Jerusalem than the Galilean fishermen, belonged to this milieu. The great number of phonetically correct Aramaisms and his knowledge of the conditions in Jewish Palestine compel us to assume a Palestinian Jewish-Christian author. Also, the author's Aramaic native language is still discernible in the Marcan style.<1>

(jump)


The muddle created by the polyglot nature of the Jewish community at that time is often overlooked by both Aramaic-supporting and Koine-supporting scholars. There is no reason to disbelieve that Aramaic and Koine (and even Latin) versions of the books and oral teachings of the New Testament were circulating contemporaneously. This same phenomenon can be seen in the present day within the Orthodox Jewish community, where popular, newly written, religious works in Rabbinical Hebrew are promptly translated into English and Yiddish, certain works written in English are also current in Hebrew, and speeches in Yiddish are translated into Hebrew.

[BurtWorm]

116. "one can assume" "presumably" "probably" "compel us to assume"

Real strong supporting evidence you're citing there. ;)

[kwassa]

119. Should I accept the views of the mass of biblical scholars, or burtworm?

And your credentials in the area of biblical scholarship are precisely what?

Care to cite them? That would be fascinating.

You blow off arguments without ever addressing them, like you just did, because you are apparently incapable of rebutting them.

You clearly are a waste of time to talk to, and your hypocritcal stance on evidence makes it even more worthless to talk to you.

Sorry, I'll stick with the opinions of real biblical scholars. Bye.

[BurtWorm]

129. You should use your critical judgment.

The Biblical "scholarship" you cited is loaded with the language of supposition, telegraphing loud and clear that they do not know what they are talking about and are trying to evade the serious questions critics have been posing about the origins of Christianity. The dialogue between the two sides resembles this:

Q: If Christianity was developed by Palestinian Jews, why is the Septuagint the basis of NT citations of the OT?

A: Because Palestinian Jews used the Septuagint to study the OT.

Q: Why is there no evidence before the NT that Palestinian Jews used the LXX for Torah study?

A: Christian scholar 1 says, "There is no reason to doubt that Palestinian Jews did not use the LXX to study the Torah."

Q: Christian scholar 2 says, "Palestinian Jews studied Torah in Hebrew."

A: You are not a Christian scholar. I choose to believe Christian scholar 1.


You know what is very clear? Your arguments are entirely based on faith. But then you're a person of faith. So why do I try to reason with you?

Goodnight.

[BurtWorm]

93. PS: I don't know what you mean about my "dismissing" Philo.

I don't remember saying anything at all about Philo in this thread or any other recently. Do you think I ever implied that Philo didn't speak Greek or read the Septuagint? If I ever implied that, I shouldn't have. I firmly believe Philo was as Hellenized as a Jew of that era could be.

[Evoman]

11. Jesus brags to much for my liking.

Seriously. Every second sentence is a brag about how hes the son of god, and everyone should follow him blah blah blah blah blah.

But if I had to pick one thing I admire, its the fact that a white guy with blue eyes actually made at a time when people were afraid of those who did not look like them.

[keith the dem]

14. Check out the "Jesus Seminar"

They try to use historical evidence to determine what can actually be attributed to the historical Jesus. I haven't read the entire report, but I think you will find that his bragging was probably added by later gospel writers who needed to tie him into the scriptures.

You know that the the Jesus Seminar was on the right track when the RW preachers said that the quotes attributed to Jesus make Him look like no more than a "liberal" politician.

[Igel]

12. Humility. n/t

[Evoman]

36. It was false humility.

You can't say something like "I am the son of god. Hate your families and follow me" and still be humble.

[Geoff R. Casavant]

17. His compassion.

That and his ability to see the good in every person.

[Stanchetalarooni]

18. His ability to be "whole brained".

He was the first figure in the evolution of all of mankind to live in this world using both sides of his brain. The left and the right. "render unto Caesar what is Caesars'...render unto God what is Gods'".

[BurtWorm]

21. I never thought of that injunction as evidence of "whole-brainedness."

I always read that as an injunction not to make trouble for the state. (Which I always thought was odd, considering how much he urges his followers to make trouble in their families.)

Can you explain your reading of it?

[saltpoint]

37. I like the portrayal of Jesus of Galilee in Paul Park's THE GOSPEL OF CORAX.

It would be a portrayal that would piss off Jerry Falwell, but as far as I'm concerned that's a good thing.

Anyway, if anybody has some extra lunch money, give Park's book a try. I'm pretty sure it's available on Abebooks, Amazon, etc.

[applegrove]

40. The Love!

[varkam]

47. His shelf life. eom

[toddaa]

48. Nothing

Absolutely nothing.

[Chorophyll]

59. Having done a quick read through this thread...

I think I admire him most for not coming back to earth in 2007 and starting threads like this one.

If it turns out JC's fictional, we're not allowed to admire him? I'm fond of the Sermon on the Mount, myself.

[BurtWorm]

62. Who said you're not allowed to admire him. Admire away.

I can't, but why should that stop you?

[Chorophyll]

63. Okay. Just checking. ;)

Seriously, I would agree that JC in the Bible is inconsistent and sometimes not even all that likeable. But I tend to regard the Bible as having been written by a bunch of human beings over a very long period of time and then kind of stuck together. Some of it is uplifting, some of it can be considered poetry or literature, and a lot of it is useless for anyone living in modern times.

None of which is a problem unless you feel the need to take it as the revealed Word of God or something.

[JerseygirlCT]

76. Well, I think it's possible to find it meaningful and illuminating

and still understand that you're seeing Jesus through many different eyes. That this isn't God's dictation, but a record of mens' striving to know God, to understand.

We both may know Eunice. To you, she's the nice lady at the grocery store. To me, she's Grandma. Different takes on the same person, you know?

[Chorophyll]

77. Definitely!

And I like the Grandma Eunice analogy.

[JerseygirlCT]

70. Me too. nt

[Zebedeo]

67. His willingness to suffer and die for my sins.

His willingness to be mocked, persecuted, flogged, and crucified, without any fault of His own, all out of love and mercy for me, a creature that hasn't done anything to deserve such mercy.

[Book Lover]

68. That he was reputed to be a storyteller

Telling stories is Very Important, in my humble view.

[JerseygirlCT]

69. In Matthew:

35
For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me,
36
naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.'
37
Then the righteous 16 will answer him and say, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink?
38
When did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you?
39
When did we see you ill or in prison, and visit you?'
40
And the king will say to them in reply, 'Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me.'

That works pretty well for me. That and the very simple idea that we are here to love one another.

[Chorophyll]

74. Me too, Jersey Girl. n/t

[okasha]

75. That one's hard to beat.

But getting between a woman and her would-be executioners ties.

[Jamastiene]

132. He basically said nobody's perfect, just try your best to be kind...

and if you can't always be kind, try to do better next time. If more people would try that, we certainly wouldn't have war and we just might even learn to love those different from ourselves.

Oh yeah, edited to add, he seemed to place women in a different place than we are normally placed. He seemed to see us as human beings worthy of respect. That is a rare thing to see in the Bible, if you think about it.