ADL Colin

Not sure. I grew up attending Baptist Church and never once heard anything about Jesus' siblings until after I abandoned religion.

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Sunshine McGillicutty

Yeah, I'm somewhat familiar with Josephus from comparitive religion classes and personal study. That second passage is considered reliable for the reason that Josephus was a decent historian othewise, he had no reason to lie about Jesus, and it does not bear the crass exaggerations of other xtian forgeries.

There is always the possibility both passages are the result of later xtian interpolations, but I don't see much reason for believing the 2nd one is.

Joe Sixpack

One thing that bothers me about these quotes from Josephus is that even if both of them are authentic why wouldn't Jesus, who created quite a stir at the time surrounding his crucifiction, get more than one or two quotes from one Jewish historian. To me, it seems absurd especially since he openly went around proclaiming that he was the son of God and supposedly performing all kinds of wondrous miracles.

Personally, I think the whole thing absolutely screams "myth". The Jesus story contains all the hallmarks of a classic myth. A miraculous birth, a humble and chaste life and a sacrificial death. I reckon its the greatest con in the last 2000 years.

Religion is simply another monkey mankind needs to throw off its back.

Sunshine McGillicutty

I got dragged around Evangelical churches for most of my childhood and early teens. I remember hearing references to Jesus' family, including his brother, but they never figured prominently in the lessons. Funnily enough, the xtian summer camp my parents shipped me off to in the summer was the first place I got high on weed, drunk, and laid.

How old were you when you decided to abandon religion?

ADL Colin

To believe that there never was any historical figure named Jesus, one would really have to ask why Paul was running all around the Empire proselytizing and writing letters to any church/synagogue that he could.

So much effort.

Without a historical Jesus, Paul is an even more interesting figure in history. What were his motives
if there was no Jesus (or was he duped?) ? Why were there enough trouble some Christians already by c. 35 AD that Paul was ordered to arrest them? Why did Paul convert?

Paul must have been a hell of a well-networked man. He seemed to have really had some good connections in Rome.

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[Labret]

The book of Acts answers every questions you just asked.

You have never heard the Paul on the road to Damascus conversion story?

Paul was on his way to Damascus to kill some christians when he was struck by a blinding light, fell to the ground, and heard Jesus ask him "Paul, Paul, why are you so cruel to me?". yada yada, Paul is now blind and upon reaching Damascus is cured of his blindness by whom? Christians of course.

Joe Sixpack

But this still doesn't answer why Jesus didn't get more than two fleeting mentions (at most) in the writing of Josephus. And there are those that still dispute those.

I don't believe you can use The Bible as its own proof, you must look to other sources to verify people and events. What I want to know is when is comes to Jesus, where are they?

ADL Colin

Those were rough times in Judaea. There were many supposed messiahs at the time and a historical Jesus might not have stood out against them but also consider that Caligula, Claudius, and Nero might have put a damper on writings. Nero was persecuting them. Caligula declared himself a God. Then there was Herod Agrippa. More persecutions.

How many Jewish historians living in Judaea at the time have writings that have survived? How many historians would have dared to write about
such a blaspemous sect at the time and risked their life to do so?

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Sunshine McGillicutty

Many christians would likely respond "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" and accuse you of arguing from silence. I agree tho. If Jesus was who Christians today claimed he was, and performed the miracles he they say he perfomed, then we can reasonably expect that he should have garnered far more attention than he did.

There might not been much of a stir surrounding his crucifixtion though. There were many "messiahs" who claims to be the savior of the Jews in first century Judea. Jesus was probably considered just another insurrectionist, a minor figure until his followers increased their numbers sevreral centuries later.

Remember that Christianity didn't REALLY begin to grow until the 3rd century.

The most parsimonious explanation, in my opinion anyway, is that there was a Jesus who taught iand was crucified n the first century, but he was not the son of god, and he didn't perform many of the 'miracles' attributed to him by overzealous followers long after his death.

I agree. The virgin birth story itself is a gross distortion of the OT passage that purportedly 'prophesied' it. It was obviously written by a simpleton attempting to justify his belief by twisting the meaning of various OT passages.

Dunno if I'd cast the net that wide.. I think some forms of religion can be good for certain kinds of people. Conservative forms of Christianity seem to persist so pervasively because conservative xtian evangelists (at least in the US) are skilled at keeping the sheeple away from modern biblical scholarship.

ADL Colin

Yes, and that still begs the questions where did these original Christians come from? If no man (Mr. Jesus) lived that was their founder, who made it all up and why?

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[Labret]

Oh, there is no doubt Jesus (Yeshua) existed. You cannot find any historical records of probably 98% of the prophets wandering the wilderness. Rome was occupying Israel, the zealots were in overdrive, everyone was looking for the savior mentioned in OT prophecy. Many came and claimed to be the one. Alot of them undoubtedly had followers. Evidently Jesus made more of an impact on his.

There was a small Church composed of the original disciples spread around the area. They were not Christians, they were Jews. They felt no need to spread the word so to speak because they all expected that the Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of, was coming soon. Very soon.

And Jesus said...



What happened?

Sunshine McGillicutty

Jesus was full of shit, but they refused to believe it?

Evidence for this: Much of Christian theology is to this day dedicated to explaining away the stuff in the bible that if taken literally to any degree would falsify xtianity.

ADL Colin

So you believe there was a figure named Jesus then?

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[Labret]

Bah. Kneejerk response.

Nobody said the Kingdom of God that Jesus spoke of was a physical one. Many feel that Jesus was speaking about the spiritual Kingdom of God (the church) that would be established before those around him would "taste death". Which it was.

ADL Colin

Labret,

So you believe the same thing I do then.

Now I am not even sure why you responded to me.

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[Labret]

For sure.

Sunshine McGillicutty

Many feel that because they want to believe in spite of the facts. The Messianic Prophecies in the OT state that when the Messiah comes he will establish his kingdom and rule on earth.

This is why Christians invented the "second coming." Obviously jesus did not fulfill the prophecies the first time around, so why not give him a second chance?

[Labret]

And that literal translation of OT prophecy is why Judaism denies the divinty of Jesus.

You can blame that on Jesus himself. He said he was coming back. They just listening to what he said. The second coming idea was not invented by christians.

Joe Sixpack

Cults develop all the time. Look at the likes of Jim Jones, David Koresh and L. Ron Hubbard. Of course, starting up a cult these days is a lof harder. Science has, to a large extent, thrown a wet blanket on the fire of superstition. It still exists today, of course, but not to the same degree as it did in Jesus' day.

The biblical Jesus could have been based on an individual who went by that name at the time. I'm not ruling that out. All I'm saying is if that's the case then we don't really have much of a chance of ever knowing who Jesus really was or what he was like.

The Bible is the Hollywood Jesus who performs miracles, casts out the money changers and hangs out with prostitutes and lepers etc. Surely this has to be taken with a grain of salt, especially since the New Testament wasn't even started until anywhere up to a century after the supposed crucifiction of Jesus.

And we have two brief quotes from Josephus on the side of the secular historians which doesn't really amount to much.

If Jesus did exist we'll probably never know anything much about him.

mika

"You will never get the crowd to cry Hosanna until you ride into town on an ass. "


(inspired by quiet - thank you)

Sunshine McGillicutty

More accurately, they said that he said he was coming back. In any case, granting the accuracy of the Gospel report on that matter, I agree partially. They would have listened and believed, but after the promised coming of the Kingdom did not happen, then what? It was then that some believers chose to start inventing "second comings" and other such nonsense to explain the faliures of Jesus promises, rather than admit they were simply mistaken.

Its for that reason that I feel they bear a great deal of the responsibility. Its one thing to be overly credulous, its another to then participate in deliberately misleading others because of an inability to own up to ones own folly.

ADL Colin

I agree with that.

It is generally believed that Paul started writing his letters to the church around 50 AD. They're in the New Testament. Anyway, Paul was dead by about 67 AD, so it didn't take that long for the Christian Machine to start chugging.

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ADL Colin

In the 1950's, the psychologist Leon Festinger infiltrated a cult that believed the end of the world was coming in order to study the group. He wrote a book about it called "When Prophecy Fails". When the end of the world didn't come on the predicted date, instead of admitting they were mistaken, they went out to seek new converts. This was said to be an attempt to seek "social proof". If they could convince others, they must be right.

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quiet

haha Assorted Opinions and Maxims i believe

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Sunshine McGillicutty

I wonder if we're the only species in the universe with the ability to decieve ourselves so thoroughly? CS Lewis once speculated that perhaps the astronomical distances between galaxies exist as gods way of quarantining homo sapiens sapiens from other forms of life.

I admire his imagination, but not his theology.

mika

Failure of one prediction could have potentially destroyed the coherency of the whole of their belief system. People need proof, when one proof fails, they move to the next

Sunshine McGillicutty

While we're talking about psychologists, have you ever heard of Phil Zimbardo? Zimbardo used to do a humorous and insightful late night spot on the local cable channel about unethical psychological experiements and what they revealed about human nature.

Maybe not surprisingly, he conducted a large and ethically questionable psychological experiement himself:

http://www.prisonexp.org/

Very interesting reading

quiet

has anyone heard of Stanley Milgram - and his experiments focusing on human obedience to authority?

since the thread has already shifted towards psychology

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mika

Yep. The electric shock tests.

ADL Colin

Yeah .. he researched where I went to school ... though he was dead by that time.

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Sunshine McGillicutty

Milgrams "Obediance and Individual Responsibility" was the first psychological experiment I took an interest in reading.

ADL Colin

My first was Peterson and Peterson on the primacy and recency effect. I also like Solomon Asch's work on compliance.

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quiet

for me, it was Donald Hebb's experiments on sensory depravation. amazing stuff.

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Jer

God wasn't born here. He created the world, then he thought of a great and beautiful place to people live (and were the gorgeous girls would born), and where he would like to born: BRAZIL. Then, millions of years later, he sent the portugueses to the paradise.

That's why GOD is Brazilian.... and the Pope is "Carioca" (from Rio de Janeiro).

Jer

ADL Colin

The pope sure screwed Portugal with that Line of Demarcation, eh?

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Fletch XXX

From Darkness came light.

Its called Chaos not some God creating us.

God threads are sure fun to watch.

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pimplink

I am not sure about this assertion.

The key ingredients of any religion/religous type belief system was broken down by Prof. Mircea Eliades as roughly 1) explanation of the beginning/cause of things 2) explanation of why things are the way they are presently 3) explanation of what will come next.

If you use this structuralist approach, there are many modern philosophies that fit the religious mold which satisfies the same psychological/spiritual urges -- Marxism, Objectivism, you name it.

Traditional religion may seem weakened by "modern" science but modernity has definitely given rise to new belief systems that, while seemingly objective and "scientific", fill the same psychological/spiritual needs that religion traditionally filled.

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Fletch XXX

Hubbard is a cult leader now?

geez, I thought he was a Fiction Writer, not his fault everyone took hisbooks serious and started worshipping them.

hell if tyhats the case, you can say George Lucas is the largest Cult Leader today, next to gene Roddenberry, and CNN.

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pimplink

All I can say regarding this controversy is:

Requiring proof of faith removes the need for faith. If it can be proven, no faith is required. Faith must be pursued in the absence of proof and sometimes in the face of "evidence" to the contrary.

As for atheists, isn't belief in no God, still a belief?

Maybe Salman Rushdie was right when he wrote [in Satanic Verses] "the opposite of faith is not disbelief but doubt. Disbelief, in its certainty, is another form of faith. Doubt erodes faith and ultimately destroys it."

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brazz

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Colin


So you believe there was a figure named Jesus then?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Labret's answer:

For sure.




Edited to (try) to fix the quotations.










I won´t say I believe or I don´t believe in the existence of Jesus (though I say that I loved Brian´s Life, by the Monthy Python).

But I ask you: what difference does it make the appearance now of the tomb of a supposed brother of Jesus, to make you believe or not in the existence of a Jesus Christ?
For centuries, inside the Holy Church, in Jerusalem, anyone can see the tomb of Jesus Himself; right beside the Golgota (the hill where Jesus was crucified), right at the end of Via Dolorosa (the path followed by Jesus carrying the cross; btw, that`s the way it reads in Jerusalem signs: Via Dolorosa, which is exactly the Portuguese translation of Painful Path or Path of Sorrows). I was there a few years ago, any Israeli here can confirm it.

So, I wonder again: why would the recent discovering of the supposed tomb of a supposed brother of Jesus be more influential in your believings than the already undisputed existence of Jesus grave itself?

ADL Colin

I'll pray for you, Fletch.

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ADL Colin

L. Ron Hubbard. Founder. The Church of Scientology of California. 1954.

1955. Moved to Washington DC to found the "Founding Church of Scientology"

Best quote ever - "if a man wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion." - L.R. Hubbard. 1949

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ADL Colin

And the conclusion is ...

JERUSALEM (AP) -- (July 24) Police have arrested an Israeli antiquities dealer suspected of creating two forgeries that shook the religious and archaeological world, including a burial box purported to be that of Jesus's brother James.

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Mr.Fiction

Anti-semite!

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