Jesus stems from Greek mythology. Several of the Greek mythological Gods had sons with earthling virgins, particularly Zeus. One son died and rose again on the third day. There was a large Greek community in Judea and in the New International bible, Jesus is said to be a Greek.
Zeus lived at the top of a mountain and had 12 'guards'.
It was King Akenartun of Egypt [ He existed, not a myth] that first introduced an invisible God, as the moon and sun were not following his people's prayers.
When the new invisible God came to the notice of the Greeks, they then invented the story that Mary was a virgin and gave birth to his son.
There is quite a lot in the bible where, disciples travel to the Greek islands.
The book of Revelations refers to John being in Patmos
Also in Revelations it says....God told John that he would send Satan to the four corners of the earth, there aren't any corners, its a sphere. If there was a God and he created everything, he would know that there aren't any corners on a circle/ball/sphere and so would have said 'round the earth.' It was thought in those times that the earth was as a carpet and the mountains were there to weigh it down so that it didn't float off.
Also the 12 disciples/guards are the 12 signs of the stars [astrology]
The prophets would be the clairvoyants/mediums of that time. The medium these days, are often mocked but yet they were so revered then. Dreams/messages from the other side were taken seriously. Some prophets would love the attention they got by saying they'd received messages and would elaborate on those so called messages.

Paul letter's don't matter then, so who wrote the first so-called "Gospel"?

(June 17, 2012 at 6:59 am)cratehorus Wrote: Paul letter's don't matter then, so who wrote the first so-called "Gospel"?

Quote:“Although the Gospel is anonymous, an ancient tradition ascribes it to John Mark, who is supposed to have composed it in Rome as a summary of Peter’s preaching. Modern scholars, however, find little evidence to support this tradition. …Mark appears to have drawn upon a rich variety of oral traditions of Jesus’ actions and teachings… Mark ends abruptly at 16.8. …In some later manuscripts, Mark’s story was ‘completed’.”

-New Oxford Annotated Bible, NT, p57

I remember reading through the first couple books of the New Testament in the KJV. I do not recall the details, but Jesus was performing a "miracle" of some kind and his audience sent him running as they threw stuff at him, calling him a something similar to a phony. At that point, I started to think Jesus was probably a magician who got chased away by a skeptical crowd. I am sure the Bible ripped off of other myths and added them into the mix, but I think that accounts for part of the story.

That sounds to me like Luke 4, in which JC was being his usual pious self and upset his home crowd to the point where they "were filled with wrath, And rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and brought him to the precipice of the mountain that their city was built upon, that they might cast him down headlong." Which, given that Nazareth is actually in a shallow basin, is one of the lesser-known miracles of the bible.

(Yes, I understand that the text can be interpreted to mean "brow of the hill" instead of precipice; that's how wonderfully flexible scripture is. You can get it to say anything!)

I think you are probably referring to this particular bullshit story in Luke 4:

Quote:Jesus Rejected at Nazareth

14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[a]

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

24 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy[b] in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Whoever wrote Luke assumed that "Nazareth" was an actual city, complete with a good-sized population and a "synagogue." In short, the author knew fuck all about early first century Galilee. Perhaps by the time this nonsense was written there was a town on the spot but archaeological evidence from the site shows no sign of any sort of actual "town" when xtians claim their godboy was there. At best, the noted xtian scholar Stephen Pfann has found a single-family farm. After the bar Kochba revolt when Jews were thrown out of Judaea we have evidence that some settled at Nazareth in the mid 2d century. Prior to that, we have only tombs and some pottery shards and it is fairly easy to see that the tombs could have belonged to the upper classes of the nearby city of Sepphoris.

In recent years xtians have tried to get around the findings of archaeology and history (the name Nazareth appears no where in the OT or in Josephus in spite of his detailed travelogue of the area over which he led his army) by making "Nazareth" smaller and smaller. "It's not a "city" just a small hamlet." Well, a small hamlet would not have a fucking synagogue for their godboy to visit and it would also have a population which was all interrelated to the point that no one would ask “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” He would have been related to most of them yet they expect us to believe that they were going to throw a kinsmen off a cliff - there are no cliffs at the site -
because they were so angry.

Just a silly story to serve as a backdrop for whatever the author was trying to say.....like so much of the fucking bible.

---

Take a peek at this.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/syncretism.html

(June 18, 2012 at 12:25 pm)goddamnit Wrote: I remember reading through the first couple books of the New Testament in the KJV. I do not recall the details, but Jesus was performing a "miracle" of some kind and his audience sent him running as they threw stuff at him, calling him a something similar to a phony. At that point, I started to think Jesus was probably a magician who got chased away by a skeptical crowd. I am sure the Bible ripped off of other myths and added them into the mix, but I think that accounts for part of the story.

Wha?

Quote:You have just made a positive claim.IE "Jesus was not a real person". That attracts the burden of proof;let's see yours.

I agree.

Quote:My position; I'm agnostic about the existence of an historical Jesus. I think it's possible, even likely he existed and began a small,orthodox Jewish sect.

I do not think his sect was classified as Orthodox, at any point. If you look at the end of the first century edicts, which banished the Nazarenes from the Synagogues, and also the heretical teachings regarding; no Sabbath, Pork, no circumcision, etc, I think it would be a stretch to prove that his (if he in fact existed) sect was 'Orthodox'.

Quote:However, I also think the Jesus of the New Testament is almost certainly myth.

So then, upon what records do you rely for an historical Jesus? Josephus, Tacitus, Seutonius, Pliny (Younger)?

Quote:Christianity as it is today was invented more by Saul of Tarsus* than any other person.

Not to pick on you, but before making this positive claim, I am sure you would agree, you need to provide proof, or at least reliable evidence re; the following two points:

1. Paul existed; and
2. He was the originator of what we now refer to as, Pauline Christianity.

I appreciate that the 2nd limb seems to be a given, but is it? How do we know that he was the inventor of this more Gentile friendly form of Christianity. Again, we must rely on somewhat spurious Christian records for this assertion to survive.

Quote:The religion contains NO new ideas,moral code or theology. Of course some basic ideas were lifted from the Torah,including an emasculated version of Mosaic Law. Other ideas,such as the resurrecting god and hell are found in other religions, so who knows from which ones they were taken,or indeed if they were invented independently?

I pretty much agree with you here, although I see it as highly unlikely, given the cultural associations in the regions, in which Pauline Christianity first spread, that it could have been invented in its own right.


Interesting Stuff.

---

(June 18, 2012 at 1:00 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I think you are probably referring to this particular bullshit story in Luke 4:

Quote:Jesus Rejected at Nazareth

14 Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside. 15 He was teaching in their synagogues, and everyone praised him.

16 He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[a]

20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

22 All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

23 Jesus said to them, “Surely you will quote this proverb to me: ‘Physician, heal yourself!’ And you will tell me, ‘Do here in your hometown what we have heard that you did in Capernaum.’”

24 “Truly I tell you,” he continued, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown. 25 I assure you that there were many widows in Israel in Elijah’s time, when the sky was shut for three and a half years and there was a severe famine throughout the land. 26 Yet Elijah was not sent to any of them, but to a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. 27 And there were many in Israel with leprosy[b] in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed—only Naaman the Syrian.”

28 All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. 29 They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. 30 But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way.

Whoever wrote Luke assumed that "Nazareth" was an actual city, complete with a good-sized population and a "synagogue." In short, the author knew fuck all about early first century Galilee. Perhaps by the time this nonsense was written there was a town on the spot but archaeological evidence from the site shows no sign of any sort of actual "town" when xtians claim their godboy was there. At best, the noted xtian scholar Stephen Pfann has found a single-family farm. After the bar Kochba revolt when Jews were thrown out of Judaea we have evidence that some settled at Nazareth in the mid 2d century. Prior to that, we have only tombs and some pottery shards and it is fairly easy to see that the tombs could have belonged to the upper classes of the nearby city of Sepphoris.

In recent years xtians have tried to get around the findings of archaeology and history (the name Nazareth appears no where in the OT or in Josephus in spite of his detailed travelogue of the area over which he led his army) by making "Nazareth" smaller and smaller. "It's not a "city" just a small hamlet." Well, a small hamlet would not have a fucking synagogue for their godboy to visit and it would also have a population which was all interrelated to the point that no one would ask “Isn’t this Joseph’s son?” He would have been related to most of them yet they expect us to believe that they were going to throw a kinsmen off a cliff - there are no cliffs at the site -
because they were so angry.

Just a silly story to serve as a backdrop for whatever the author was trying to say.....like so much of the fucking bible.

---

Take a peek at this.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/syncretism.html

Excellent comments.

If Nazareth wasn't a real city, and only appears in Luke, then Luke doesn't matter. Who wrote the oldest gospel, Mark?

(June 9, 2012 at 11:06 pm)cratehorus Wrote: Jesus was not a real person, so where did this Jesus myth come from? Was it based on a single other faith? Was it a combination of other faiths? Or was it completely invented out of nothing?

The question is nonsensical. The vast majority of religious and secular scholarship for the last 2,000 years has not held the position that you assume in the question. That being the case, I would say that your ability to explain the Jesus Myth has probably failed befor it's begun. You've tied all useful limbs behind your back, shut your ears, plucked out your eyes, and become mute. If you want answers as to how the stories about Jesus came about, then I suggest you avoid assuming the nonexistence of the very events and corresponding material that might shed light on the origin of the stories.