(March 2, 2013 at 1:40 pm)EGross Wrote: Ah, 7th century. Maybe the Jews took it from them? There is also a Chinese story of a guy who was invulnerable to gire, his brother to water, and his other brother to the axe. I guess lots of culturs like these stories.

This could be the real reason why the same themes kept turning up. The google book which mentioned Mildred referred to the legend of the Jewish boy but I haven't been able to find out which story came first.

(March 2, 2013 at 1:40 pm)EGross Wrote: I left out that Abraham was to do this at the "end of days", since, at that time, there was no heaven/hell that Kabbilistic Judaism would be introducing several centuries later.

As far as intermarriage, the Book of Ezra shows it was a big problem whenever Jews were in exile or lived among non-Jews. Most likely this was a warning.

Thanks for the information.

(March 2, 2013 at 1:40 pm)EGross Wrote: I read a while back that the director, not at all impressed with John Wayne saying "Now.. I... know... that... he... was... truely... the... son... of... God!" said, "John, can we gat some awe into that line?" Whereupon John wany repeated the line in the next take:
"Awwww... Now.. I... know... that... he... was... truely... the... son... of... God!"

They must have gone with the first version minus the Awwww.

(March 2, 2013 at 2:14 pm)Confused Ape Wrote: This could be the real reason why the same themes kept turning up. The google book which mentioned Mildred referred to the legend of the Jewish boy but I haven't been able to find out which story came first.

I should never read that kind of stuff on a full stomach! Jesus H. Christ! as my ex-roomate would say. He never did tell me what the "H." stood for.

Yeah, you got a lot of those "Jews are evil, but the good ones came to accept Jesus" stories. The only thing left out was that the father had the oven going to make baby-blood matzos. But given it was Medieval (according to the link), you had a heck of a lot of wacky stories. Nowaday Mary just shows up on a piece of toast and gets to be sold on e-bay.

Sweet Jesus!

(March 2, 2013 at 2:41 pm)EGross Wrote: Jesus H. Christ as my ex-roomate would say. He never did tell me what the "H." stood for.

I looked it up but nobody really knows. Jesus H Christ

Quote:the most widely accepted derivation is from the divine monogram of Christian symbolism. The symbol, derived from the first three letters of the Greek name of Jesus ( Ἰησοῦς), is transliterated iota-eta-sigma: IHS, ΙΗϹ (with lunate sigma), JHS or JHC. Since the transliteration IHS gave rise to the backronym Iesus Hominum Salvator (Latin for "Jesus, savior of men"), it is plausible that JHC similarly led to Jesus Harold Christ,[4] Harold coming from the mispronunciation of the word "hallowed" of the Lord's Prayer: "Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name."

So now we know that God's real name is Harold.

(March 2, 2013 at 2:41 pm)EGross Wrote: Sweet Jesus!

This reminds me of a Christian site which goes in for humour. They have a section called Gadgets For God. Here's an example of the kind of descriptions they give for the items.

Holy Water Bottle

Quote:Carrying holy water with you? Don't want to use a profane coke bottle? This classy plastic bottle shows Our Lord with a blue screw-top on His head. He sported something similar to gain attention before the Sermon on the Mount. It's just the ticket for keeping your dollop of H2-holy safe.

£0.75
From: St Paul Multimedia

Definitely worth a look are -

Ten plagues finger puppets in Toys, Pets and Games

Inflatable church in Church

You might also want to check out "Jesus of the Week" for lots of fun things too. This week is about bird poop in the shape of Jesus found on a guys windshield.

(March 2, 2013 at 3:54 pm)EGross Wrote: You might also want to check out "Jesus of the Week" for lots of fun things too. This week is about bird poop in the shape of Jesus found on a guys windshield.

I think my favourite is Sailing With Jesus where one of his companions looks like he's about to throw up.

The existence of Jesus Christ is a historical fact that is attested by many scholars, even scholars that are hostile to Christianity. Bart Erhman just wrote a book on it, himself not a Christian.

I thought everyone by now had just accepted that Jesus was a human being?

Yeah, yeah...we've heard all your shit before. Where is the EVIDENCE? That is where the argument breaks down.

No one alive at the time ever heard of your godboy. When you find some actual evidence feel free to present it and you might tell all those scholars you rely on, too.

(March 2, 2013 at 7:09 pm)jstrodel Wrote: The existence of Jesus Christ is a historical fact that is attested by many scholars, even scholars that are hostile to Christianity. Bart Erhman just wrote a book on it, himself not a Christian.

I thought everyone by now had just accepted that Jesus was a human being?

The existance of a historical Jesus is only attested by those who either (1) could have but never met him or (2) were not alive at that time. It is akin to believing that there was a mass suicide at Masada: the only person in the world who wrote about it wasn't there and his sotry does not match the physical evidence. But people like to maintain stories.

And yes, I am certain, as a believer, that you would have thought that everyone believes that Jesus had existed. But due to the lack of any real physical evidence (and believe me, if the Vatican had any of that, they would have been pimping that monkey years ago).

I live a short drive from one of the 2 places where he was born and if I drive another 20 minutes, I can be by one of the two places where he is buried. The Church can't even agree on that.

The Shroud got debunked. The edited Josephus got debunked (an older version without "Jesus" got discovered, which is a problem with reality). Not a single Roman, Jewish, or Greek historian speaks of any of the tremendous miracles (or the object of them) - you would think that the living dead ("Zombie Alert"!) would have been noticed! Or that the Jews would have included in their dirge poetry from that period, mention of the massacre of all of their baby boys.

Nada.

You keep bringing up how it is well known and accepted, just like everyone knows that Rudolph gets to ride at the front of the sleigh should be a well known fact and proof that Santa exists. (Despite that fact that I have a picture of myself at age 3 getting a present from him, I still hold that it was a plot to fool us kids!)

The Church has decreed that the empty tomb proves that Jesus existed, because it requires an act of faith, which is the cornerstone of Christianity - faith despite appearances.

(March 2, 2013 at 7:09 pm)jstrodel Wrote: The existence of Jesus Christ is a historical fact that is attested by many scholars, even scholars that are hostile to Christianity. Bart Erhman just wrote a book on it, himself not a Christian.

I thought everyone by now had just accepted that Jesus was a human being?

I don't want to type it all out again so see Post #268 and read about Antinous and Alexander the Great.

In Post #278 there's more related to the deification of humans.

(February 28, 2013 at 11:40 am)Minimalist Wrote: But we don't know how many steps there were in that process. Ignoring the xtian writings ( biased and edited as they are) we seem to go from chrestus to christus to "jesus" itself a derivation of yeshua meaning "god is salvation."

My reply -

Quote:This just leaves a couple of references by pagan Roman historians which may or may not be genuine. The main reason why Christians are supposed to have got up Roman noses is their refusal to worship other gods etc. If they hadn't been so obstinate, nobody would have cared about their beliefs because what was one more deity associated with Bacchus/Dionysys and Osiris?

Once the Christians really got going they wanted everything - divine father, virgin mother, sacrificial king, resurrection, anything they thought fitted from the cult of Mithras plus a biography which fulfilled Old Testament prophecies. If there ever was a real man buried under that lot it's impossible to find him now.

Trying to get any details of a real man from the deified Jesus story is like trying to write a factual biography about Alexander the Great from information in later versions of the Alexander Romance.

Even if there was a real man somewhere, can we be sure that his name was Yeshua? What if he was only referred to as Christ or the Lord so that people forgot what his actual name was? When deified Christ was given a biography where he fulfilled Old Testament prophecies he'd have needed a name so Yeshua could have been chosen because of its meaning.

All we can be certain of is any real man didn't lead a revolt which was put down by the Romans because that would have been recorded. Maybe he just caused enough of a local disturbance for the authorities to think, "Here comes trouble. Get rid of him now before it goes any further." As far as the majority of the population was concerned it would have been a non-event.

"Another Messiah wannabe got arrested this morning."

"That's the third this year. When are we going to get a real one?"

(March 3, 2013 at 1:32 am)EGross Wrote:

(March 2, 2013 at 7:09 pm)jstrodel Wrote: The existence of Jesus Christ is a historical fact that is attested by many scholars, even scholars that are hostile to Christianity. Bart Erhman just wrote a book on it, himself not a Christian.

I thought everyone by now had just accepted that Jesus was a human being?

The existance of a historical Jesus is only attested by those who either (1) could have but never met him or (2) were not alive at that time. It is akin to believing that there was a mass suicide at Masada: the only person in the world who wrote about it wasn't there and his sotry does not match the physical evidence. But people like to maintain stories.

And yes, I am certain, as a believer, that you would have thought that everyone believes that Jesus had existed. But due to the lack of any real physical evidence (and believe me, if the Vatican had any of that, they would have been pimping that monkey years ago).

I live a short drive from one of the 2 places where he was born and if I drive another 20 minutes, I can be by one of the two places where he is buried. The Church can't even agree on that.

The Shroud got debunked. The edited Josephus got debunked (an older version without "Jesus" got discovered, which is a problem with reality). Not a single Roman, Jewish, or Greek historian speaks of any of the tremendous miracles (or the object of them) - you would think that the living dead ("Zombie Alert"!) would have been noticed! Or that the Jews would have included in their dirge poetry from that period, mention of the massacre of all of their baby boys.

Nada.

You keep bringing up how it is well known and accepted, just like everyone knows that Rudolph gets to ride at the front of the sleigh should be a well known fact and proof that Santa exists. (Despite that fact that I have a picture of myself at age 3 getting a present from him, I still hold that it was a plot to fool us kids!)

The Church has decreed that the empty tomb proves that Jesus existed, because it requires an act of faith, which is the cornerstone of Christianity - faith despite appearances.

Might I also add that the Church and it's resources after it became the official religion of the Roman Empire would have meticulously preserved any extra-biblical works which attested to the events in the Gospels. Also "Church fathers" would quoted the same works in their apologetic works, however the reality is none of this occurred, which is significant in itself.

If you doubt they would have done this, look at all the works of various "church fathers" that have been preserved in their entirety to the present day. Not to mention the large number of manuscripts of the Bible which we have which date back to the 4th century (just after Constantine made Christianity a state religion). That is because the church made a serious effort to preserve those works at the expense of everything else that was written in the Classical world.