(December 12, 2013 at 1:06 am)Minimalist Wrote: http://www.executedtoday.com/2013/10/28/...allegedly/

Quote: ...

Josephus alone offers scandalous specific triggers for these expulsions in his twenty-volume Antiquities of the Jews, which covers the history of the Jewish people from Adam and Eve right up to the First Jewish-Roman War.*

Who knows? Roman authors seem to know nothing about the more salacious details...which read more like a romance novel.

It really does sound implausible, and the only reference to this is Josephus as far as I can find in a superficial search. But if imagined, it is a pretty good imagination. And evidently it didn't take him decades of evolving stories to conjure it.

Thanks for the link to "executed today".

It is not commonly known but Greek "novels" were a definite genre beginning in the first century and, of course, we can't know what the antecedents were.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_novel

Quote:The Greek novel as a genre began in the first century CE, and flourished in the first four centuries; it is thus a product of the Roman Empire. The exact relationship between the Greek novel and the Latin novels of Petronius and Apuleius is debated, but both Roman writers are thought by most scholars to have been aware of and to some extent influenced by the Greek novels.

Although the plots of the surviving novels appear to be relatively conventional, based around the fulfilled heterosexual desire of a be

Quote:Luke 2:1-2
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria.

And that is a lie, Danny. There was no such order. As noted in the Res Gestae Divi Augustus the man who supposedly gave the order knows nothing about it.

And that makes your boy "luke" a bullshit artist!

(December 10, 2013 at 3:21 pm)rightcoaster Wrote: As for the confusing bit about genealogies, I apologize, but since you object, here goes. The detail of the exercise is left to you and perhaps a statistician of your acquaintance; I neglected to record the specifics when I did the work some years ago, when I still knew enough statistics to work the figures. The time from David to Jesus is pretty nearly 1000 years (the only external "fact" needed). Both purported genealogies are of Joseph, neither is of Mary, despite what you hope; they are just written in reverse order. Count them out yourself for the exact numbers, but one genealogy has (say) 50 names, giving an average generational length of 20 yrs. The other genealogy has (say) 25 names, giving an average generational length of 40 years. I assumed a standard deviation for generational length of the human population of some value that I can’t recall, but which made sense to me – maybe 7 years, so that 95+% would be the true population mean +/- 21 years. I realize that the curve would not have been symmetrical or true normal, but close enough for my purpose. I calculated a t-statistic for the difference of the means of the two samples, and the t-value resulted in the odds of more than two billion to one against the average generational lengths of the two samples (the two genealogies) being from the same human population. That is more than the population of the Roman world, and probably of the entire world, at the time. Thus at least one must be phony, a 2 billion to one bet, and certainly not divinely inspired.

Great information but I have to say I am a bit confused by your analysis myself.

As I figured it David precedes Jesus by some 1000 years which we can equate to 50 generations (20 per).

Assuming David's line survived, which is not unreasonable as he was a King, I got to the point working from him chronologically that every Jewish man, woman and child at the time of Jesus would, to a statistical certainty, have been a descendant. In other words both Joseph and Mary would have been descendants.

Essentially I assume 2 viable progeny from each generation so the number of potential progeny at the 50th generation is 2^50. This is obviously impossible but cousins marrying cousins explains it, effectively cutting down the total number to that of the Jewish population at the time.

What that means is that not only would Joseph be a descendent, but, there would be multiple pathways for it. I haven't done a name by name, generation by generation analysis but from what I can see, as long as you have similarity in the father and grandfather the rest could be entirely different.

I seem to recall that there is a statistical analysis kicking around somewhere on the net that proves that every man woman and child of Western European origins living today is a descendent of Charlemagne.

Very much the same thing.

RE: How did the myth of Jesus' resurrection originate?

(10th December 2013 19:21)

rightcoaster Wrote: ... The time from David to Jesus is pretty nearly 1000 years (the only external "fact" needed). …[O]ne genealogy has ... 50 names, giving an average generational length of 20 yrs. The other genealogy has ... 25 names, giving an average generational length of 40 years. I assumed a standard deviation for generational length of the human population … 7 years, so that 95+% [of the means of samples of generational lengths] would be the true population mean +/- 21 years…. I calculated a t-statistic for the difference of the means of the two samples, and … the odds [are] more than two billion to one against the average generational lengths of the two samples (the two genealogies) being from the same human population.


MG: Great information but I have to say I am a bit confused by your analysis myself….

RC: Indeed, you are confused about the point I was proving, and I apologize for not being clearer. The underlined above is the main conclusion. At least one of the purported genealogies of Jesus (really of Joseph) is false, thus both cannot be true. This gives no way to infer whether both are false, nor which one is false). But since at least one genealogy is demonstrated false, the truth-value all of the rest of the assertions in the gospels must also be doubted.

The notion that every human was related to every other after 50 generations is bogus. Not everyone reproduced, and the gene pool was not spread from royalty to every peasant, no matter how much each king might have tried.

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(December 12, 2013 at 12:21 pm)Minimalist Wrote: It is not commonly known but Greek "novels" were a definite genre beginning in the first century and, of course, we can't know what the antecedents were.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Greek_novel

Quote:The Greek novel as a genre began in the first century CE, and flourished in the first four centuries; it is thus a product of the Roman Empire. The exact relationship between the Greek novel and the Latin novels of Petronius and Apuleius is debated, but both Roman writers are thought by most scholars to have been aware of and to some extent influenced by the Greek novels.

Although the plots of the surviving novels appear to be relatively conventional, based around the fulfilled heterosexual desire of a be

Aren't Daniel and Revelation apocalypse novels, and Esther a novel of some other genre?

(November 10, 2013 at 1:29 pm)xpastor Wrote: Many would answer that it was borrowed from the Osiris myth.

Perhaps. However, I start from the premise that Yeshua was a historical figure, an itinerant rabbi with considerable rhetorical prowess, who got himself crucified by the Romans and remained dead.

So my answer is cognitive dissonance.

When people believe something intensely, and it fails to happen, they can't live with that. They have to invent a story to prove that it really did happen in an unexpected way.

We have seen this in the recent history of apocalyptic prophecy. William Miller predicted that Jesus would return on October 22, 1844, and it obviously did not happen. The result was the birth of Seventh-Day Adventism, which "arrived at the conviction that Daniel 8:14 foretold Christ's entrance into the Most Holy Place of the heavenly sanctuary rather than his second coming." (Wikipedia) I have no idea what that is supposed to mean, but it satisfied them. Likewise, the first Jehovah's witnesses predicted that Jesus would return in 1914. When no one spotted him, they said he had returned "invisibly."

Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet expecting the Son of Man to come and usher in the Kingdom of God within his own lifetime.

Of course he died without seeing any such event. I suppose his followers said things like, "I just can't believe he's gone." Denial is the start of the grief process. Given Jesus' very real abilities as a preacher and the credulous nature of the era, they never moved on to the later stages of grief. Someone came up with the idea that he must have risen from the dead, and then others started to fill in the details, that so-and-so had seen him post-crucifixion, that there were angels there, that he showed his wounds, that he had dinner with his associates, that he ascended into heaven.

Christians will protest that no one would make up the story of the resurrection, but they do in fact come up with all sorts of fictional details to promote their faith. To take a few trivial cases, I have received an email which presents the young Albert Einstein as a defender of the Christian faith against his atheistic professor although Einstein was a non-observant Jew who explicitly disavowed any belief in a personal God. Or there is Lady Hope's well-known story of Charles Darwin's deathbed reversion to Christianity, although Darwin's children say she was nowhere near the great scientist in his last years.

It's certainly plausible that cognitive dissonance accounts for the majority of the bible's tall tales, but on the other hand, if a person is willing to look, a lot of the stories and bible passages carry idiom and philosophical figure-of-speech that westerners (majority of) don't understand.

Personally I don't even accept that Jesus actually died on the cross. It's meant to take anywhere from three days onward, yet he 'died' in less than six hours. Consider medical knowledge back then, if he appeared to be dead, they'd have thought him dead. And if he was resuscitated, they'd have thought him resurrected. It's well accepted in Muslim faith that he only appeared to have died to the romans. The word for 'resurrected' in the greek doesn't even have to mean resurrected, it can mean 'resuscitated'. Not only that, in Hindu circles it's widely accepted that he went to Kashmir and lived out his life there, and that in his teens and twenties (that coincidental huge gap in the canonized, sanctioned bible's narrative of his life) he studied the Theravadas and Buddhist philosophy in Kashmir.

That would explain why so many of his sayings are parallels to Buddha.

Then you get crazy popes, holy-wars and King James and post-crusades England making a complete muck-up of most of the bible. We're left with hellheim-God of eternal love that, contradictory to that, tortures people for all time unless a person hears the one-stop fast-track pop-culture checklist to tick that let's whoever pretends to accept it get in past the non-existent pearly gates, as long as they use phrases like 'grace-through-faith' and go to church on Sundays.

Jesus was a Jew with a buddhist way of looking at it, and he wasn't the son of God anymore than the other 'sons of God' were biologically related to their creator.

Saying that, the man was a philosophical Rembrandt, and if it weren't for fundamentalist christians he might get shown for the wisdom he had.

(December 13, 2013 at 4:04 am)Aractus Wrote: AR: It's not "way wrong". Acts 5:37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census … This refers to the Quirinius Census as we know it …

RC: That agreed Quirinius census was in 6 CE. “Judas of Galilee or Judas of Gamala led a violent resistance to the census imposed for Roman tax purposes by Quirinius in Iudaea Province around AD 6.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_of_Galilee

AR: Luke 2:1-2 “ In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Luke uses different language to describe what you presume to be the one and the same census. Can I prove to you that he's talking about a different census? No I can't, but the internal evidence alone supports the theory.

RC: Where is the external evidence of a Quirinius census in Judea prior to 6 CE, and even before Herod’s death in 4 BCE so that Herod had time to meet with the Magi? The context for the Lukan invention is to set the stage for a ridiculous, unnecessary-anyway Bethlehem trip and a birth in the city of David, to justify a baloney prediction. Your “internal evidence” is not proven to be other than a fiction. See also next, which you ignored.

RC: Other external evidence against the Luke census story is that Romans didn’t care about birth cities for tax purposes, so the trip to Bethlehem, even if you accept for argument’s sake that there was such a trip, would have been entirely unnecessary for Roman taxation. There’s a Galilee/Judea problem also with this notion, but I forget the detail – maybe Quirinius’ census could not apply to Judea {that is, before 4 BCE}? Further, the notion of taking a terminally pregnant woman 100 km over the mountains on a donkey for a tax census is bizarre – how long does it take to be counted? Finally, the Magi in the other NT Bethlehem story came to a house, not a manger. Where did the house come from, and if it existed why did they stay in a manger?

AR: The wise men - Magi - are only in the book of Matthew, and they don't come to the birthplace.

RC: I left my whole argument in place since you failed to comment on it. As for the Magi, who cares where they are only in? They are there for the same fictional literary purpose as the census and the trip to Bethlehem: To help with the other, a-historical silly story of Pharaoh Herod wanting to kill off all the newborn Jewish males so there would not arise a new Moses. Of course the Magi didn’t come to the fictional birthplace-in-manger, they came to the fictional house. So, how can the two fictions be reconciled as truth? Is Luke’s contrived Bethlehem/manger story true, or is Matt’s contrived Magi/house story true, or are neither true? Sort of like the two genealogies, in that both cannot be true, at least one is false. What does this say about the truthiness of the gospels?

RC: As for Is 7:14, .. in “Search for the Septuagint”, … you know the NT text to be quite wrong… .

AR: Well, no the translation of Is 7:14 as "virgin" rather than "maiden" isn't wrong. … Hebrew is not as precise a language as English, and the Hebrew word almah only appears 7 times in the Bible … refers to a young unmarried woman who is assumed to be a virgin. … focus of the meaning… I argue that [it is] on youth … only in hindsight do you translate into English "virgin". But that's not to say that "almah" doesn't mean virgin, in fact it does.

RC: You are wrong for the most part. There is a male version of almah, “elem”, which appears at least twice in Samuel. There is no male equivalent for “betulah”, which is undeniably a physical virgin. That alone should be conclusive. The translation “young woman” proves the only defensible one anyway, see next.

AR: … MT/DSS: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

RC: This is text-mining, taking snippets out of context. Also shows that you apparently do not know Hebrew. The context is clear if you read the whole section, not just your snippet. The prophet is talking about an upcoming invasion, doom, to the king. The transliteration of the mistranslated Hebrew is “hineh ha’almah harah”. The translation unquestionably (given the context) is “Here is a young woman, [she is] pregnant”. If it were future tense, “she will become pregnant”, the Hebrew should be something like “ye’hareh”.

RC: …The time from David to Jesus is pretty nearly 1000 years (the only external "fact" needed). …

AR: … I don't know the length of time from David to Jesus.

RC: Now you do: [David’s] reign over Judah c. 1010–1002 BC, and his reign over the United Kingdom of Israel c. 1002–970 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David

RC: Both purported genealogies are of Joseph, neither is of Mary … ; they are just written in reverse order.

AR: … It's one possibility, and it isn't the only explanation - but rather the most likely.

RC: It is impossible, if 2 billion to one is close enough to “impossible” for you, regardless of whose genealogy is it, because the two samples do not come from the same human race.

AR : … you're assuming the genealogy is complete, without skipping any generations … [removed for sake of propriety of AR’s nasty crack about RC pulling numbers from his rectum]

RC: I got numbers only from external, independent history and the phony NT genealogies as-written, not from any bodily orifice of mine. I did have to infer a value for standard deviation, but it seems reasonable; if you don’t like it, choose another when you calculate your own t-statistic and refer to your own table of t-values. I am proving the NT is not reliable as a source of the genealogical information that you insist elsewhere (without proof, as always) was readily available. The gospeler’s fact-checker went to sleep? That’s not a way to gain credence if the other story can recall and relate 50 generations.

What benefit is there to relating but 25 of 50? If skipping is allowed, why did he not simply say, “David begat Solomon, and then there were a bunch of others, and then somebody begat Joseph, the father of Jesus”? Skipping a few or skipping all have exactly the same value in conveying the story, and the latter wastes less parchment.

RC: 1. “Who” is most reasonably the workers [who] had to dig graves. 2. The “Roman seal” seems … nonsensical … : Once the body was handed over to the Jews for burial, of what interest would it have been to the Romans,… that a Roman seal would have been applied? How does one Roman-seal [the] large stone …? Assume there was a seal, if one of the tomb-owner’s family were to die, what then? 3. …[I]t can’t take long to chop a hole … in … limestone. Shabbat ended when the third star was visible after sundown, … plenty of time [to dig it] … Too early? Torchlight existed … My version is [far less] nonsensical than resurrection, … no law of nature is violated, the time and the technology were available, and the story is consistent with Jewish law and practices of the time. Yours requires miracles [and a-historicity] … , mine doesn’t.

AR: You have to ignore key facts for your version to make any sense.
RC: Please tell me which “key facts” I needed to ignore. Your reply is void of specifics.

RC: [Wouldn’t a lamb-less seder be heretical, highly offensive to the religious Jews who were the disciples]?

AR: Because it's not heretical … Every meal in the unleavened period is a "special meal". The only thing that sets the Passover meal apart from any other is putting the lamb's blood on the door, and eating the lamb on that day. Since they didn't eat a lamb, that doesn't apply. They were free to enjoy a Passover meal sans-lamb any time during the unleavened period as were any other Jews.

RC: What is your source for the above? I have participated in seders (pl. sedarim), as you might imagine. Have you ever read through a Hagadah? For centuries, if not millennia, there has been a great deal more to the seder than lamb. Seder means “order”, and it is a ceremonial comprised of symbols/meal/prayer/Exodus-story-relating. I’d be curious to know where you obtained accurate information about the seder meal and related activities at the time of Jesus or close to it. For one thing, I’m not aware that blood was put on any doorpost then; rather, the mezuzah with its Torah quotes is the symbolic replacement of that blood, still used today. The NT is of course not acceptable as such a source. And as far as I know, the “unleavened period” refers to the seven days after the aforesaid seder, which occurred (in Judea then as in Israel today) only on 15th Nisan eve, if not the whole eight days of the holiday. Where do you get the notion that every meal during the “unleavened period” is “special”, in any sense like the seder is special? The only "Passover" meal during the eight-day holiday is the seder, and no other (ignore that outside Israel there are sedarim on the first two nights for reasons unrelated to this discussion either in time or in substance); and "Passover meal sans-lamb" is an oxymoron.

RC: A further theological-contrivance note: … [U]nder Jewish law the lambs sacrificed at Passover had nothing to do with atonement for sin, but were in remembrance of the Exodus … The sin-atonement with which this [was] conflated was at the Day of Atonement, … one goat was loaded up with the sins of the people (the “scapegoat”) and sent into the wilderness.

AR: Correct, the unleavened bread represented atonement for sin and not the lamb, and it is eaten throughout the whole period.

RC: Tell, me, Rabbi Aractus – what are your authorities for this innovative halakhic interpretation? I am utterly ignorant of the notion that matzah represents atonement for sin. As seems quite clear from a hagadah, or even from Wikipedia, you do not seem to know whereof you speak. I apologize for the length of the following clip from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzo, but will explain it to you, since you seem not to know it at all; emphasis mine:

“There are numerous explanations behind the symbolism of matzah. One is historical: Passover is a commemoration of the exodus from Egypt. The biblical narrative relates that the Israelites left Egypt in such haste they could not wait for their bread dough to rise; the bread, when baked, was matzah. (Exodus 12:39). The other reason for eating matza is symbolic: On the one hand, matza symbolizes redemption and freedom, but it is also lechem oni, "poor man's bread". Thus it serves as a reminder to be humble, and to not forget what life was like in servitude. Also, leaven symbolizes corruption and pride as leaven "puffs up". Eating the "bread of affliction" is both a lesson in humility and an act that enhances the appreciation of freedom.

Another explanation is that matza has been used to replace the pesach, or the traditional Passover offering that was made before the destruction of the Temple. During the Seder the third time the matza is eaten it is preceded with the Sefardic rite, "zekher l’korban pesach hane’ekhal al hasova". This means "remembrance of the Passover offering, eaten while full" …”

Thus the reference to the korban pesach is 1) only at the third ritual eating of the matzah during the seder, as an aggregation of symbols – and 2) as I already pointed out and you agree, the korban pesakh had zilch to do with sin. Thus matzah has nothing to do with atonement for anything, either at the seder, or for the whole week. You make it up as you go along, Aractus!
ster' pid='560202' dateline='1386703272'][hide]AR:

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[quote='Medi' pid='562953' dateline='1386994172']


Personally I don't even accept that Jesus actually died on the cross. It's meant to take anywhere from three days onward, yet he 'died' in less than six hours. Consider medical knowledge back then, if he appeared to be dead, they'd have thought him dead. And if he was resuscitated, they'd have thought him resurrected.
...

This is very good. A big concern of the Jews is that a living person would be interred, given that the obligation is to bury quickly. That's why there are "shomrim" in Judaism, who watch over the body to make sure it is really dead.

Now, as to whether Jesus was actually dead when removed (some here argue nothing of this at all happened, but that does not lead to any discussion, and what is life without a good argument?), he was also scourged beforehand. As I understand that process, the person is pretty well flayed open. Seems to me one could lose a lot of blood if an artery were nicked in the process, maybe bleed to death in well under six hours.

(December 14, 2013 at 1:15 pm)rightcoaster Wrote:

(December 13, 2013 at 4:04 am)Aractus Wrote: AR: It's not "way wrong". Acts 5:37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census … This refers to the Quirinius Census as we know it …

RC: That agreed Quirinius census was in 6 CE. “Judas of Galilee or Judas of Gamala led a violent resistance to the census imposed for Roman tax purposes by Quirinius in Iudaea Province around AD 6.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_of_Galilee

AR: Luke 2:1-2 “ In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Luke uses different language to describe what you presume to be the one and the same census. Can I prove to you that he's talking about a different census? No I can't, but the internal evidence alone supports the theory.

RC: Where is the external evidence of a Quirinius census in Judea prior to 6 CE, and even before Herod’s death in 4 BCE so that Herod had time to meet with the Magi? The context for the Lukan invention is to set the stage for a ridiculous, unnecessary-anyway Bethlehem trip and a birth in the city of David, to justify a baloney prediction. Your “internal evidence” is not proven to be other than a fiction. See also next, which you ignored.

RC: Other external evidence against the Luke census story is that Romans didn’t care about birth cities for tax purposes, so the trip to Bethlehem, even if you accept for argument’s sake that there was such a trip, would have been entirely unnecessary for Roman taxation. There’s a Galilee/Judea problem also with this notion, but I forget the detail – maybe Quirinius’ census could not apply to Judea {that is, before 4 BCE}? Further, the notion of taking a terminally pregnant woman 100 km over the mountains on a donkey for a tax census is bizarre – how long does it take to be counted? Finally, the Magi in the other NT Bethlehem story came to a house, not a manger. Where did the house come from, and if it existed why did they stay in a manger?

AR: The wise men - Magi - are only in the book of Matthew, and they don't come to the birthplace.

RC: I left my whole argument in place since you failed to comment on it. As for the Magi, who cares where they are only in? They are there for the same fictional literary purpose as the census and the trip to Bethlehem: To help with the other, a-historical silly story of Pharaoh Herod wanting to kill off all the newborn Jewish males so there would not arise a new Moses. Of course the Magi didn’t come to the fictional birthplace-in-manger, they came to the fictional house. So, how can the two fictions be reconciled as truth? Is Luke’s contrived Bethlehem/manger story true, or is Matt’s contrived Magi/house story true, or are neither true? Sort of like the two genealogies, in that both cannot be true, at least one is false. What does this say about the truthiness of the gospels?

RC: As for Is 7:14, .. in “Search for the Septuagint”, … you know the NT text to be quite wrong… .

AR: Well, no the translation of Is 7:14 as "virgin" rather than "maiden" isn't wrong. … Hebrew is not as precise a language as English, and the Hebrew word almah only appears 7 times in the Bible … refers to a young unmarried woman who is assumed to be a virgin. … focus of the meaning… I argue that [it is] on youth … only in hindsight do you translate into English "virgin". But that's not to say that "almah" doesn't mean virgin, in fact it does.

RC: You are wrong for the most part. There is a male version of almah, “elem”, which appears at least twice in Samuel. There is no male equivalent for “betulah”, which is undeniably a physical virgin. That alone should be conclusive. The translation “young woman” proves the only defensible one anyway, see next.

AR: … MT/DSS: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

RC: This is text-mining, taking snippets out of context. Also shows that you apparently do not know Hebrew. The context is clear if you read the whole section, not just your snippet. The prophet is talking about an upcoming invasion, doom, to the king. The transliteration of the mistranslated Hebrew is “hineh ha’almah harah”. The translation unquestionably (given the context) is “Here is a young woman, [she is] pregnant”. If it were future tense, “she will become pregnant”, the Hebrew should be something like “ye’hareh”.

RC: …The time from David to Jesus is pretty nearly 1000 years (the only external "fact" needed). …

AR: … I don't know the length of time from David to Jesus.

RC: Now you do: [David’s] reign over Judah c. 1010–1002 BC, and his reign over the United Kingdom of Israel c. 1002–970 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David

RC: Both purported genealogies are of Joseph, neither is of Mary … ; they are just written in reverse order.

AR: … It's one possibility, and it isn't the only explanation - but rather the most likely.

RC: It is impossible, if 2 billion to one is close enough to “impossible” for you, regardless of whose genealogy is it, because the two samples do not come from the same human race.

AR : … you're assuming the genealogy is complete, without skipping any generations … [removed for sake of propriety of AR’s nasty crack about RC pulling numbers from his rectum]

RC: I got numbers only from external, independent history and the phony NT genealogies as-written, not from any bodily orifice of mine. I did have to infer a value for standard deviation, but it seems reasonable; if you don’t like it, choose another when you calculate your own t-statistic and refer to your own table of t-values. I am proving the NT is not reliable as a source of the genealogical information that you insist elsewhere (without proof, as always) was readily available. The gospeler’s fact-checker went to sleep? That’s not a way to gain credence if the other story can recall and relate 50 generations.

What benefit is there to relating but 25 of 50? If skipping is allowed, why did he not simply say, “David begat Solomon, and then there were a bunch of others, and then somebody begat Joseph, the father of Jesus”? Skipping a few or skipping all have exactly the same value in conveying the story, and the latter wastes less parchment.

RC: 1. “Who” is most reasonably the workers [who] had to dig graves. 2. The “Roman seal” seems … nonsensical … : Once the body was handed over to the Jews for burial, of what interest would it have been to the Romans,… that a Roman seal would have been applied? How does one Roman-seal [the] large stone …? Assume there was a seal, if one of the tomb-owner’s family were to die, what then? 3. …[I]t can’t take long to chop a hole … in … limestone. Shabbat ended when the third star was visible after sundown, … plenty of time [to dig it] … Too early? Torchlight existed … My version is [far less] nonsensical than resurrection, … no law of nature is violated, the time and the technology were available, and the story is consistent with Jewish law and practices of the time. Yours requires miracles [and a-historicity] … , mine doesn’t.

AR: You have to ignore key facts for your version to make any sense.
RC: Please tell me which “key facts” I needed to ignore. Your reply is void of specifics.

RC: [Wouldn’t a lamb-less seder be heretical, highly offensive to the religious Jews who were the disciples]?

AR: Because it's not heretical … Every meal in the unleavened period is a "special meal". The only thing that sets the Passover meal apart from any other is putting the lamb's blood on the door, and eating the lamb on that day. Since they didn't eat a lamb, that doesn't apply. They were free to enjoy a Passover meal sans-lamb any time during the unleavened period as were any other Jews.

RC: What is your source for the above? I have participated in seders (pl. sedarim), as you might imagine. Have you ever read through a Hagadah? For centuries, if not millennia, there has been a great deal more to the seder than lamb. Seder means “order”, and it is a ceremonial comprised of symbols/meal/prayer/Exodus-story-relating. I’d be curious to know where you obtained accurate information about the seder meal and related activities at the time of Jesus or close to it. For one thing, I’m not aware that blood was put on any doorpost then; rather, the mezuzah with its Torah quotes is the symbolic replacement of that blood, still used today. The NT is of course not acceptable as such a source. And as far as I know, the “unleavened period” refers to the seven days after the aforesaid seder, which occurred (in Judea then as in Israel today) only on 15th Nisan eve, if not the whole eight days of the holiday. Where do you get the notion that every meal during the “unleavened period” is “special”, in any sense like the seder is special? The only "Passover" meal during the eight-day holiday is the seder, and no other (ignore that outside Israel there are sedarim on the first two nights for reasons unrelated to this discussion either in time or in substance); and "Passover meal sans-lamb" is an oxymoron.

RC: A further theological-contrivance note: … [U]nder Jewish law the lambs sacrificed at Passover had nothing to do with atonement for sin, but were in remembrance of the Exodus … The sin-atonement with which this [was] conflated was at the Day of Atonement, … one goat was loaded up with the sins of the people (the “scapegoat”) and sent into the wilderness.

AR: Correct, the unleavened bread represented atonement for sin and not the lamb, and it is eaten throughout the whole period.

RC: Tell, me, Rabbi Aractus – what are your authorities for this innovative halakhic interpretation? I am utterly ignorant of the notion that matzah represents atonement for sin. As seems quite clear from a hagadah, or even from Wikipedia, you do not seem to know whereof you speak. I apologize for the length of the following clip from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzo, but will explain it to you, since you seem not to know it at all; emphasis mine:

“There are numerous explanations behind the symbolism of matzah. One is historical: Passover is a commemoration of the exodus from Egypt. The biblical narrative relates that the Israelites left Egypt in such haste they could not wait for their bread dough to rise; the bread, when baked, was matzah. (Exodus 12:39). The other reason for eating matza is symbolic: On the one hand, matza symbolizes redemption and freedom, but it is also lechem oni, "poor man's bread". Thus it serves as a reminder to be humble, and to not forget what life was like in servitude. Also, leaven symbolizes corruption and pride as leaven "puffs up". Eating the "bread of affliction" is both a lesson in humility and an act that enhances the appreciation of freedom.

Another explanation is that matza has been used to replace the pesach, or the traditional Passover offering that was made before the destruction of the Temple. During the Seder the third time the matza is eaten it is preceded with the Sefardic rite, "zekher l’korban pesach hane’ekhal al hasova". This means "remembrance of the Passover offering, eaten while full" …”

Thus the reference to the korban pesach is 1) only at the third ritual eating of the matzah during the seder, as an aggregation of symbols – and 2) as I already pointed out and you agree, the korban pesakh had zilch to do with sin. Thus matzah has nothing to do with atonement for anything, either at the seder, or for the whole week. You make it up as you go along, Aractus!
ster' pid='560202' dateline='1386703272'][hide]AR:

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[quote='Medi' pid='562953' dateline='1386994172']


Personally I don't even accept that Jesus actually died on the cross. It's meant to take anywhere from three days onward, yet he 'died' in less than six hours. Consider medical knowledge back then, if he appeared to be dead, they'd have thought him dead. And if he was resuscitated, they'd have thought him resurrected.
...

This is very good. A big concern of the Jews is that a living person would be interred, given that the obligation is to bury quickly. That's why there are "shomrim" in Judaism, who watch over the body to make sure it is really dead.

Now, as to whether Jesus was actually dead when removed (some here argue nothing of this at all happened, but that does not lead to any discussion, and what is life without a good argument?), he was also scourged beforehand. As I understand that process, the person is pretty well flayed open. Seems to me one could lose a lot of blood if an artery were nicked in the process, maybe bleed to death in well under six hours.

quote='rightcoaster' pid='563260' dateline='1387050437']
[quote='rightcoaster' pid='563166' dateline='1387041324']

I tried to reply yesterday, but the post shows no text. Maybe this will work better. I apologize for any duplication, it's unintended:

To Medi: Your assessment seems very good. A big concern of the Jews is that a living person would be interred, given that the obligation is to bury quickly. That's why there are "shomrim" in Judaism, who watch over the body to make sure it is really dead.

Now, as to whether Jesus was actually dead when removed (some here argue nothing at all of this happened, but that does not lead to any discussion, and what is life without a good argument?), he was also scourged beforehand. As I understand that process, the person is pretty well flayed open. Seems to me one could lose a lot of blood if an artery were nicked in the process, maybe bleed to death in well under six hours.
[/quote]
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[quote='rightcoaster' pid='563166' dateline='1387041324']
[quote='Aractus' pid='562374' dateline='1386921848']

RC: I tried to reply yesterday but the posting does not show any text I can see, so I am re-posting in hopes this is not a duplication. If so,I apologize. Still new to the forum -- I can probably whine that excuse for a while longer yet. And I now see that both attempts to re-reply, the above to Medi and the below to Aractus, have been consolidated into one. I must be techno-incompetent!

..................

AR: It's not "way wrong". Acts 5:37 After him Judas the Galilean rose up in the days of the census … This refers to the Quirinius Census as we know it …

RC: That agreed Quirinius census was in 6 CE. “Judas of Galilee or Judas of Gamala led a violent resistance to the census imposed for Roman tax purposes by Quirinius in Iudaea Province around AD 6.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judas_of_Galilee

AR: Luke 2:1-2 “ In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.” This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Luke uses different language to describe what you presume to be the one and the same census. Can I prove to you that he's talking about a different census? No I can't, but the internal evidence alone supports the theory.

RC: Where is the external evidence of a Quirinius census in Judea prior to 6 CE, and even before Herod’s death in 4 BCE so that Herod had time to meet with the Magi? The context for the Lukan invention is to set the stage for a ridiculous, unnecessary-anyway Bethlehem trip and a birth in the city of David, to justify a baloney prediction. Your “internal evidence” is not proven to be other than a fiction. See also next, which you ignored.

RC: Other external evidence against the Luke census story is that Romans didn’t care about birth cities for tax purposes, so the trip to Bethlehem, even if you accept for argument’s sake that there was such a trip, would have been entirely unnecessary for Roman taxation. There’s a Galilee/Judea problem also with this notion, but I forget the detail – maybe Quirinius’ census could not apply to Judea {that is, before 4 BCE}? Further, the notion of taking a terminally pregnant woman 100 km over the mountains on a donkey for a tax census is bizarre – how long does it take to be counted? Finally, the Magi in the other NT Bethlehem story came to a house, not a manger. Where did the house come from, and if it existed why did they stay in a manger?

AR: The wise men - Magi - are only in the book of Matthew, and they don't come to the birthplace.

RC: I left my whole argument in place (the "RC:" just above) since you failed to comment on it. As for the Magi, who cares in which gospel they only appear? You posit the truth of said text. My view is that they are there for the same fictional literary purpose as the census and the trip to Bethlehem: To help with the other, a-historical silly story of Pharaoh Herod wanting to kill off all the newborn Jewish males so there would not arise a new Moses. Of course the Magi didn’t come to the fictional birthplace-in-manger, they came to the fictional house. So, how can the two fictions be reconciled as truth? Is Luke’s contrived Bethlehem/manger story true, or is Matt’s contrived Magi/house story true, or are neither true? Sort of like the two genealogies, in that both cannot be true, at least one is false. What does this say about the truthiness of the gospels?

RC: As for Is 7:14, .. in “Search for the Septuagint”, … you know the NT text to be quite wrong… .

AR: Well, no the translation of Is 7:14 as "virgin" rather than "maiden" isn't wrong. … Hebrew is not as precise a language as English, and the Hebrew word almah only appears 7 times in the Bible … refers to a young unmarried woman who is assumed to be a virgin. … focus of the meaning… I argue that [it is] on youth … only in hindsight do you translate into English "virgin". But that's not to say that "almah" doesn't mean virgin, in fact it does.

RC: You are wrong for the most part. There is a male version of almah, “elem” = "young man", which appears at least twice in Samuel. There is no male equivalent for “betulah”, which is undeniably a physical virgin. That alone should be conclusive. The translation “young woman” proves the only defensible one anyway, see next.

AR: … MT/DSS: Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.

RC: This is text-mining, taking snippets out of context. Also shows that you apparently do not know Hebrew. The context is clear if you read the whole section, not just your snippet. The prophet is talking about an upcoming invasion, doom, to the king. The transliteration of the mistranslated Hebrew is “hineh ha’almah harah”. The translation unquestionably (given the context) is “Here is a young woman, [she is] pregnant”. If it were future tense, “she will become pregnant”, the Hebrew should be something like “ye’hareh”.

RC: …The time from David to Jesus is pretty nearly 1000 years (the only external "fact" needed). …

AR: … I don't know the length of time from David to Jesus.

RC: Now you do: [David’s] reign over Judah c. 1010–1002 BC, and his reign over the United Kingdom of Israel c. 1002–970 BC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David

RC: Both purported genealogies are of Joseph, neither is of Mary … ; they are just written in reverse order.

AR: … It's one possibility, and it isn't the only explanation - but rather the most likely.

RC: It is impossible, if 2 billion to one is close enough to “impossible” for you, regardless of whose genealogy is it, because the two samples do not come from the same human race.

AR : … you're assuming the genealogy is complete, without skipping any generations … [removed for sake of propriety of AR’s nasty crack about RC pulling numbers from his rectum]

RC: I got numbers only from external, independent history and the phony NT genealogies as-written, not from any bodily orifice of mine. I did have to infer a value for standard deviation, but it seems reasonable; if you don’t like it, choose another when you calculate your own t-statistic and refer to your own table of t-values. I am proving the NT is not reliable as a source of the genealogical information that you insist elsewhere (without proof, as always) was readily available. The gospeler’s fact-checker went to sleep? That’s not a way to gain credence if the other story can recall and relate 50 generations.

What benefit is there to relating but 25 of 50? If skipping is allowed, why did he not simply say, “David begat Solomon, and then there were a bunch of others, and then somebody begat Joseph, the father of Jesus”? Skipping a few or skipping all have exactly the same value in conveying the story, and the latter wastes less parchment.

RC: 1. “Who” is most reasonably the workers [who] had to dig graves. 2. The “Roman seal” seems … nonsensical … : Once the body was handed over to the Jews for burial, of what interest would it have been to the Romans,… that a Roman seal would have been applied? How does one Roman-seal [the] large stone …? Assume there was a seal, if one of the tomb-owner’s family were to die, what then? 3. …[I]t can’t take long to chop a hole … in … limestone. Shabbat ended when the third star was visible after sundown, … plenty of time [to dig it] … Too early? Torchlight existed … My version is [far less] nonsensical than resurrection, … no law of nature is violated, the time and the technology were available, and the story is consistent with Jewish law and practices of the time. Yours requires miracles [and a-historicity] … , mine doesn’t.

AR: You have to ignore key facts for your version to make any sense.
RC: Please tell me which “key facts” I needed to ignore. Your reply is void of specifics.

RC: [Wouldn’t a lamb-less seder be heretical, highly offensive to the religious Jews who were the disciples]?

AR: Because it's not heretical … Every meal in the unleavened period is a "special meal". The only thing that sets the Passover meal apart from any other is putting the lamb's blood on the door, and eating the lamb on that day. Since they didn't eat a lamb, that doesn't apply. They were free to enjoy a Passover meal sans-lamb any time during the unleavened period as were any other Jews.

RC: What is your source for the above? I have participated in seders (pl. sedarim), as you might imagine. Have you ever read through a Hagadah? For centuries, if not millennia, there has been a great deal more to the seder than lamb. Seder means “order”, and it is a ceremonial comprised of symbols/meal/prayer/Exodus-story-relating. I’d be curious to know where you obtained accurate information about the seder meal and related activities at the time of Jesus or close to it. For one thing, I’m not aware that blood was put on any doorpost then; rather, the mezuzah with its Torah quotes is the symbolic replacement of that blood, still used today. The NT is of course not acceptable as such a source. And as far as I caninfer, the “unleavened period” you use either refers only to the seven days after the aforesaid seder, which occurred (in Judea then as in Israel today) only on 15th Nisan eve, or else the "unleavened period" refers to the whole eight days of the holiday. Where do you get the notion that every meal during the “unleavened period” is “special”, in any sense whatsoever the way the seder is special? The only "Passover" meal during the eight-day holiday is the seder, and no other (ignore for this discussion that outside Israel there are sedarim on the first two nights for reasons completely unrelated to this discussion either in time or in substance); and "Passover meal sans-lamb" is an oxymoron.

RC: A further theological-contrivance note: … [U]nder Jewish law the lambs sacrificed at Passover had nothing to do with atonement for sin, but were in remembrance of the Exodus … The sin-atonement with which this [was] conflated was at the Day of Atonement, … one goat was loaded up with the sins of the people (the “scapegoat”) and sent into the wilderness.

AR: Correct, the unleavened bread represented atonement for sin and not the lamb, and it is eaten throughout the whole period.

RC: Tell, me, Rabbi Aractus – what are your authorities for this innovative halakhic interpretation? I am utterly ignorant of the notion that matzah represents atonement for sin. As seems quite clear from a hagadah, or even from Wikipedia, you do not seem to know whereof you speak. I apologize for the length of the following clip from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matzo, but will explain it to you, since you seem not to know it at all; emphasis mine:

“There are numerous explanations behind the symbolism of matzah. One is historical: Passover is a commemoration of the exodus from Egypt. The biblical narrative relates that the Israelites left Egypt in such haste they could not wait for their bread dough to rise; the bread, when baked, was matzah. (Exodus 12:39). The other reason for eating matza is symbolic: On the one hand, matza symbolizes redemption and freedom, but it is also lechem oni, "poor man's bread". Thus it serves as a reminder to be humble, and to not forget what life was like in servitude. Also, leaven symbolizes corruption and pride as leaven "puffs up". Eating the "bread of affliction" is both a lesson in humility and an act that enhances the appreciation of freedom.

Another explanation is that matza has been used to replace the pesach, or the traditional Passover offering that was made before the destruction of the Temple. During the Seder the third time the matza is eaten it is preceded with the Sefardic rite, "zekher l’korban pesach hane’ekhal al hasova". This means "remembrance of the Passover offering, eaten while full" …”

Thus the reference to the korban pesach is 1) only at the third ritual eating of the matzah during the seder, as an aggregation of symbols – and 2) as I already pointed out and you agree, the korban pesakh had zilch to do with sin. Thus matzah has nothing to do with atonement for anything, either at the seder, or for the whole week. You make it up as you go along, Aractus!