Quote:Insisting that there wasn't a Jesus in any shape or form is an optional point of view where atheists are concerned.

Don't put words in my mouth. On other threads hereabout I have opined that there could well have been 100 jesus bar josephs walking around loose in first century Palestine. The names were that common. So what?
Forgive me for shouting but THERE IS NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER for any lesser jesus. The only evidence are the rather silly gospel stories but they do not speak of these lesser jesuses. This is exactly the problem with every attempt to find "the historical" jesus. They don't like the miracles so they write them out of the story. But there is no evidence at all for any other jesus. And the one that the gospels talk about is flat-out fucking ridiculous.

(February 28, 2013 at 2:41 am)Minimalist Wrote: Don't put words in my mouth. On other threads hereabout I have opined that there could well have been 100 jesus bar josephs walking around loose in first century Palestine. The names were that common. So what?

Yes, there probably were a lot of them but not all of them got associated with Christianity.

(February 28, 2013 at 2:41 am)Minimalist Wrote: Forgive me for shouting but THERE IS NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER for any lesser jesus.

You're entitled to your opinion the same as Richard Dawkins is entitled to his opinion.

Well, this whole "Jesus bar Joseph" thing is hard since any name that Christians fine with a yud-shin-ayin root they go "THAT is Jesus!!!". because even the Church fathers struggled with a name/ While the most likely would be "Yeshua" (not Yashua, please), it was a corrupt form of the Joshua that appears in the Book of Ezra, so it was probably not such an uncommon name. But I have seen peope go "ga ga" over "Yohushua", "Hoshea" and other variants.

But the fact is that not a single person who lived at the time seems to have noticed the dead rising from their graves and interacting with the townspeople, or the curtain of the Temple tearing itself in half, and all of the other things. Nobody. Nada. They write that Pontius Pilate was a jerk and tried to sack the Temple treasury, but don't mention thousands of babies massacred by Herod, while speaking a lot about herod doing other atrocities.

It's a story, people! Voldemort is not real! No matter how many wands you keep looking for, you won't find his!

Indeed, even if there was some itinerant jewish rabbi wandering around annoying people it means nothing when you take away all of the miracles that validate the claim for divinity.

This is the REAL Hercules......

+1 and more kudos

As a side point about Antoninus, the Talmud has him as a great person because he was best friend with Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi (Rebbi), and it is written that neither of them were in want of fresh fruits and vegetables (while others starved). And that Antoninus would secretly visit Rebbi, bringing a slave to accompamy him, and then slashing his throat before going in to visit (he didn't want his friendship to be known). Or that he would lay down and let Rebbi use him for a footstool. Lots of weird stories like that which don't make a lot of sense until you come to the one item that they credit him for.

It is written that Antoninus spoke with Rebbi and told him that if he wanted to keep Judaism going, he needed to produced a systematic organized collection of rules for all to live by. (Jews had attempted this a number of times). Under Antoninus' watch, Rebbi created the Mishna, the "Oral Law", that became the foundation for Jewish law, upon which the Talmud would stand.

Antoninus appears behind the scenes a number of times that makes one wonder if the Jews were not a sort of a pet project of his. He is honored for having encouraged Rebbi to put exiting ideas into a coherent order, but I wonder how much he actually did alone. Perhaps that was the purpose of these secret visits. Not to keep them secret from the Romans, but from the Jews as well, and his being a footstool was a metaphor for his participation of this project, without which, rabbinical Judaism would have died.

There didn't need to be a real Jesus to start a religion, just a bunch of real suckers.

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I agree with your statement in principle - however I cannot go as far as calling them suckers - as calling them easily deluded.

Once must remember that today - we are educated and can actually read the bible and see the nonsense.

Back then - most people could not.