(February 12, 2013 at 3:53 am)catfish Wrote: You're not understanding me... You don't have to do or believe anything. What you need to do is simply recognise is that some people do believe some things and those things are real to them because they believe. The question is why does a person believe? You keep asking me why you should believe, and I'll keep telling you to make up your own mind. If you like it, believe it, if not, don't. How it affects your behavior is all that matters.

Who here has at one time or currently believes in the "infallible" theory? Who here once believed in "hell" (or currently believes)?
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"How it affects your behaviour is all that matters."

So it doesn't matter how much of the Bible is true theologically or historically, if at all. As long as the placebo effect is in place, you're justified in what you believe. Correct?

You keep asking me. Make a statement instead.
If someone wants to believe that the Bible is infallible, I ask why? Because someone else said to?
You implied the Bible was infallible, I want to know why you would imply that or why you think others would imply that. When someone feeds you the "all scripture is inspired blah blah blah", do you see that as a command to believe everything? Or do you make up your own mind? I can accept that verse literally and still acknowledge the Bible has errors...
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(February 12, 2013 at 4:11 am)catfish Wrote: You keep asking me. Make a statement instead.
If someone wants to believe that the Bible is infallible, I ask why? Because someone else said to?
You implied the Bible was infallible, I want to know why you would imply that or why you think others would imply that. When someone feeds you the "all scripture is inspired blah blah blah", do you see that as a command to believe everything? Or do you make up your own mind? I can accept that verse literally and still acknowledge the Bible has errors...
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You know what, I'll let you in on a secret. I'm a closet Christian. I believe that murder is wrong just like the Bible says. I believe that turning the other cheek is usually the best thing to do when in conflict with someone. There are things about me that are reflected in scripture, which means I undeniably believe in those portions of scripture.

Now that the truth about me is out there, I might as well keep going. I'm also a closet Taoist. I acknowledge the polar opposites of this world like night & day, life & death, male & female etc...

Buddhism makes sense to me because my real experiences of deja vu indicate to me that I have been reincarnated before.

Do you see some sort of pattern here? Our beliefs are bound to be found in superstitious scribblings of less civilized people. To then go further and idolize those scribblings to the extent of relabelling things according to those scribblings (e.g. intellectual dissonance -> demons) is your choice. My advice to you is to simply let go of the book. There's nothing miraculous about finding your values/morals to be reflected in scripture. Religions of the world don't have a monopoly on values/morality/experiences/philosophy. Just let go and be you.

(February 11, 2013 at 5:51 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Are you suggesting that there was a real "Osiris?" Or "Zeus?" Or "Odin?" Or "Marduk?" Or "Quetzlcoatl?" Or "Shiva?"

The whole point of this topic is that everyone is supposed to be taking the attitude there was no historical Jesus. This means no man behind the myths and legends who could be classed as an historical Jesus. I'm asking people to come up with ideas about how a weird cult in Judea about someone who didn't exist got started and how it spread to Greek speaking gentiles and then Rome.

I wish people would read my opening post properly instead of assuming I'm saying that Tacitus's report proves that Jesus exists.

(February 11, 2013 at 5:51 pm)Minimalist Wrote: was not writing in 64 AD....he was 8 years old. At best, Tacitus reflects a second century viewpoint but the fact remains that this passage in the Annales was unknown to any other ancient writer which leads strongly to the idea that it was a (much) later xtian interpolation.

See end of this post for what various scholars have said about Tacitus's report of what Christians believed. This doesn't mean that the Christians believed something which was actually true.

All four Gospels mention the crucifixion which means that some Christians believed it had happened when the Gospels were written. None of the Gospels were eye witness accounts and the contradictions in the accounts show that it's all hearsay, not history. It's what Christians had come to believe, though, and the estimated dates for when the original Gospels were written are as follows -

Gospels Dating

Quote:Estimates for the dates when the canonical gospel accounts were written vary significantly; and the evidence for any of the dates is scanty. Because the earliest surviving complete copies of the gospels date to the 4th century and because only fragments and quotations exist before that, scholars use higher criticism to propose likely ranges of dates for the original gospel autographs. Scholars variously assess the majority (though not the consensus [29]) view as follows:

Mark: c. 68–73,[30] c. 65–70[31]
Matthew: c. 70–100.[30] c. 80–85.[31]
Luke: c. 80–100, with most arguing for somewhere around 85,[30] c. 80–85[31]
John: c. 90–100,[31] c. 90–110,[32] The majority view is that it was written in stages, so there was no one date of composition.

Tacitus wrote the Annals in 116 AD so it doesn't look as if the early Christians waited until his book was published before deciding to believe that somebody had been crucified.

I'm now going to a modern cult as a way of illustrating what this topic is supposed to be about - Raëlism

Quote:Raëlism, or the Raëlian Movement, is a UFO religion that was founded in 1974 by Claude Vorilhon, now known as Raël.

The Raëlian Movement teaches that life on Earth was scientifically created by a species of extraterrestrials, which they call the Elohim. Members of this species appeared human and when having personal contacts with the descendants of the humans they made, they previously misinformed (on purpose) early humanity that they were angels, cherubim or gods. Raëlians believe messengers, or prophets, of the Elohim include Buddha, Jesus, and others[3][4][5] who informed humans of each era.[6] The founder of Raëlism, members claim, received the final message of the Elohim and that its purpose is to inform the world about Elohim and that if humans become aware and peaceful enough, they wish to be welcomed by them.

The beliefs make as much sense as Jesus's miracles but we can see where the beliefs come from - existing religions and the idea that the gods came from outer space. (Erich von Däniken's Chariots Of The Gods was pusblished in 1968.) We also know the name of the man who founded Raëlism and the date that he founded it.

So back to this weird cult in Judea which had spread to Rome during Tacitus's lifetime. Somebody must have started it sometime. Could it have been around for a long time before somebody told non-Jews in other countries about it? Gullible people outside Judea wouldn't have checked if Pilate really had crucified a man called Yeshua - they'd have accepted what they were told.

Anyway, here's what various scholars have concluded about Tacitus's report concerning what Christians believed.

Tacitus Historical Value

Quote:Andreas Köstenberger states that the tone of the passage towards Christians is far too negative to have been authored by a Christian scribe.[46] Van Voorst also states that the passage is unlikely to be a Christian forgery because of the pejorative language used to describe Christianity.[40] John P. Meier states that there is no historical or archaeological evidence to support the argument that a scribe may have introduced the passage into the text.[47]

There's still argument going on about whether Tacitus's report proves an historical Jesus but we're not talking about an historical Jesus in this topic. We're talking about what early Christians believed.

Quote:Scholars generally consider Tacitus's reference to be genuine and of historical value as an independent Roman source about early Christianity that is in unison with other historical records.[5][6][7][41]

James D. G. Dunn considers the passage as useful in establishing facts about early Christians, e.g. that there was a sizable number of Christians in Rome around AD 60.[10] Dunn states that Tacitus seems to be under the impression that Christians were some form of Judaism, although distinguished from them.[10] Raymond E. Brown and John P. Meier state that in addition to establishing that there was a large body of Christians in Rome, the Tacitus passage provides two other important pieces of historical information, namely that by around AD 60 it was possible to distinguish between Christians and Jews in Rome and that even pagans made a connection between Christianity in Rome and its origin in Judea.[11]

(February 11, 2013 at 7:09 pm)TheLameMayWalk Wrote: Wouldn't it be easier for the writers of the Bible (if you don't think God wrote it) to have Jesus born in Jerusalem and call it a day? No, they had him move there. That tells me that this had to be a real person, or at least, for you atheists' sake, based on a certain person.

But then he wouldn't be fulfilling Old Testament prophecy, hence why he had to be born in Bethlehem with all that Roman census business. A Roman census that no-one appeared to notice at the time. That's not the only thing mentioned in the New Testament no-one seemed to notice at the time.

(February 12, 2013 at 6:18 am)Confused Ape Wrote: The whole point of this topic is that everyone is supposed to be taking the attitude there was no historical Jesus. This means no man behind the myths and legends who could be classed as an historical Jesus. I'm asking people to come up with ideas about how a weird cult in Judea about someone who didn't exist got started and how it spread to Greek speaking gentiles and then Rome.

I wish people would read my opening post properly instead of assuming I'm saying that Tacitus's report proves that Jesus exists.

Tacitus is an interesting piece and the most compelling evidence that there might have been a real man behind the myth. Actually, I would argue ONLY piece of evidence that there might have been a man behind the myth.

Were there any other similar pieces of evidence OR were it not for the long Christian history of forgery, interpolation and pseudo-epigraphy, OR were it not for the evidence that the document was tampered with, I might actually consider it compelling.

As it stands, we have a few problems:
1. The document is 2nd century. This is not contemporary.
2. The reference is oblique. It doesn't even mention Jesus by name. "Christos" means "the anointed one". It's a title, not a name.
3. The document refers to Pilate as "procurator", a title not in fashion until later centuries. His title was "prefect".
4. The reference was so oblique, it's plausible that he might have just been taking their claims at face value, considering Pilate killed a great many Jews and their leaders.

But even putting all this aside, dismissing my concerns as a nit-picking, and taking it all at face value, it tells us two things about the "historical Jesus":
1. There was some unnamed guy called the messiah ("Christos")
2. He was crucified by Pilate.

So we're still at square one trying to figure out what the real story might be.

(February 12, 2013 at 11:13 am)DeistPaladin Wrote:

(February 12, 2013 at 6:18 am)Confused Ape Wrote: The whole point of this topic is that everyone is supposed to be taking the attitude there was no historical Jesus. This means no man behind the myths and legends who could be classed as an historical Jesus. I'm asking people to come up with ideas about how a weird cult in Judea about someone who didn't exist got started and how it spread to Greek speaking gentiles and then Rome.

I wish people would read my opening post properly instead of assuming I'm saying that Tacitus's report proves that Jesus exists.

Tacitus is an interesting piece and the most compelling evidence that there might have been a real man behind the myth. Actually, I would argue ONLY piece of evidence that there might have been a man behind the myth.

Were there any other similar pieces of evidence OR were it not for the long Christian history of forgery, interpolation and pseudo-epigraphy, OR were it not for the evidence that the document was tampered with, I might actually consider it compelling.

As it stands, we have a few problems:
1. The document is 2nd century. This is not contemporary.
2. The reference is oblique. It doesn't even mention Jesus by name. "Christos" means "the anointed one". It's a title, not a name.
3. The document refers to Pilate as "procurator", a title not in fashion until later centuries. His title was "prefect".
4. The reference was so oblique, it's plausible that he might have just been taking their claims at face value, considering Pilate killed a great many Jews and their leaders.

But even putting all this aside, dismissing my concerns as a nit-picking, and taking it all at face value, it tells us two things about the "historical Jesus":
1. There was some unnamed guy called the messiah ("Christos")
2. He was crucified by Pilate.

So we're still at square one trying to figure out what the real story might be.

Quote:Tacitus is an interesting piece and the most compelling evidence that there might have been a real man behind the myth.

How so? Tacitus never sees a jesus. What he writes is hearsay. He is only repeating what he heard not what he saw. He is talking about Nero blaming the christians for the burning of Rome and them shouting something about a Chrestus as their saviour. That word as been forged by a later hand.

Hi ape.

I think that humans in general really underestimate the concept of conspiracy. Jesus "and all religions" are accused of being conspiracies on high scales, used to deceive people & control them.

The problem is ; things aren't that simple. A character with the size of Jesus is something really big, you need at least hundreds of people (with the same mentality,goal & capabilities) to hold to the same ideas for hundreds of years, forge thousands of bibles & books, just to invent Jesus ?

That kind of effort -especially if you're hunted by Roman soldiers- is an impossible task ; the reason stays : WHY ? why would they forge that ?

Religions were never racial ; those religions weren't forged by countries or states. All evidence proves, that people started that, not kings & emperors,the reason stays : why would medieval peasants do that ?

Sometimes, people think about the ancient humans as if they were modern. Ancient humans were simple, most of them couldn't read.

Forging religious conspiracies on this high scale is something impossible to medieval people.

(February 12, 2013 at 11:46 am)Kritter Wrote: How so? Tacitus never sees a jesus. What he writes is hearsay. He is only repeating what he heard not what he saw. He is talking about Nero blaming the christians for the burning of Rome and them shouting something about a Chrestus as their saviour. That word as been forged by a later hand.

It's a rhetorical device that I start with some gentle or generous statement about the other side, followed by a "however..." type of transition before I level the other side's point completely.

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(February 12, 2013 at 12:05 pm)AtlasS Wrote: The problem is ; things aren't that simple. A character with the size of Jesus is something really big, you need at least hundreds of people (with the same mentality,goal & capabilities) to hold to the same ideas for hundreds of years, forge thousands of bibles & books, just to invent Jesus ?

Nobody has suggested that "somebody invented Jesus one day". My post here outlines how such an urban legend could have formed.

Quote:That kind of effort -especially if you're hunted by Roman soldiers- is an impossible task ; the reason stays : WHY ? why would they forge that ?

You're blending folklore with history.

Quote:Religions were never racial ; those religions weren't forged by countries or states. All evidence proves, that people started that, not kings & emperors,the reason stays : why would medieval peasants do that ?

WTF? Medieval peasants? You've jumped 1000 years in history.

Quote:Sometimes, people think about the ancient humans as if they were modern. Ancient humans were simple, most of them couldn't read.

All the more reason why folklore and urban legend could have run unchecked.

Quote:Tacitus wrote the Annals in 116 AD so it doesn't look as if the early Christians waited until his book was published before deciding to believe that somebody had been crucified.

Early xtian writers never mention Tacitus' at all. He is not a factor in what the earliest xtian writers said or thought or wrote.

http://www.webring.org/l/rd?ring=reledne...jesus.html

Quote:The reason no commentator made reference to this passage before the 15th century is that the entire “Annals” in which it appears was unknown until the purported “discovery” made by Johannes de 1468.

Xtians with a built in bias in favor of their godboy are perfectly willing to overlook the problems with the Tacitus reference. I am not.