(December 1, 2014 at 10:23 pm)His_Majesty Wrote: You can have the last word, for now. Right now, I have bigger fish to fry.

Come back here! After promising a case for the resurrection of Jesus you just run off without following through?

FINE!

I don't need you. I can hold my own on that thread without your help!

Just ask the atheists here. Even they will tell you that I'm doing as good a job as they could possibly expect from anyone! In fact, I'm heading back to that thread right now because I just thought of another great argument to post!

SO WHO NEEDS YOU?

*sulk*

(December 1, 2014 at 10:04 pm)His_Majesty Wrote:

(December 1, 2014 at 6:28 pm)Pickup_shonuff Wrote: He says he met Cephas, a prominent member of the Jerusalem church, distinguished from "The Twelve" in his first letter to the church in Corinth and only mythologized in the Gospels and Acts later on. So, we know little about Cephas and his supposed relationship to "Lord Yahweh Saves Christ Lamb slain from the foundation of the world of Bethlehem and Nazareth, Nazarene son of Man, God, Joseph, and the Virgin Mary."

Somebody tell this guy that Cephas is the aramaiac equivilent to the name "Peter"

Whewwww ignorance.

Some New Testament scholars have argued that they were two different people. Of course, I wouldn't expect our resident Christian ignoramus to know that, or to provide examples of Paul referring to "Peter."

Then there's your early church father Eusebius, whom you're probably unaware of, since you know, churches generally thrive when their congregants are dolts, who writes in his Book I of his Church History:

"They say that Sosthenes also, who wrote to the Corinthians with Paul, was one of them. This is the account of Clement in the fifth book of his Hypotyposes, in which he also says that Cephas was one of the seventy disciples, a man who bore the same name as the apostle Peter, and the one concerning whom Paul says, When Cephas came to Antioch I withstood him to his face."

Quote:with 32 AD being the best guess.

I can't imagine why.

Meet Lucius Vitellius Veteris



That's him seated on the right with Aulus Vitellius on the left, his son and short-lived emperor in 69. As the inscription indicates he was consul 3 times and censor.

But what is important about Vitellius is his first consulship in 34 under Tiberius. He served his year in office and then was eligible for one of the major military commands controlled by the emperor. In 35 he was appointed Imperial Legate (governor) of Syria. Normally this would be of little interest except Josephus recounts how Herod Antipas divorced his first wife Phasaelis, the daughter of King Aretas IV of Nabatea, in favour of Herodias, who had been married to his recently deceased brother Herod Philip I. While Josephus does not tie the second marriage to the death of John the Baptist the way the gospel accounts do he does repeat that it was Antipas who had JtheB killed and the gospels insist that it was after the death of JtheB that jesus kick-started his "ministry."

Now, regardless of how much bullshit they are trying to stuff into the bag it goes without saying that Herodias had to be a widow before Antipas could marry his brother's widow. Josephus dates Philip's death to 34. [6. About this time it was that Philip, Herod's ' brother, departed this life, in the twentieth year of the reign of Tiberius" Antiquites, XVIII
4,6] Tiberius reign began in 14 so adding 20 years gives us a fairly stable date of 34.

Thus we are already 2 years beyond 32 and jesus hasn't even gotten started yet according to the gospel accounts. It gets worse. Whatever arrangements Herodias and Antipas reached concerning marriage had to be ratified by Tiberius as Antipas was a client king and the idea of the marriage was to unite the late Philip's tetrarchy with Antipas.' While the Romans were always looking to dump Judaea on the Herod family no one would be so brazen as to act without even asking and Josephus duly recounts that Antipas took ship for Rome to get approval.
Let's be charitable and say that all this happened in 34. On 12-31-34, Vitellius' term as consul expires and he finds himself appointed to Syria.
It's reasonable that he would have had to gather a staff and make various arrangements to leave Rome and sailing in the winter was not preferred anyway so let's allow for Vitellius' arrival at his new post in the Spring of 35.

Meanwhile, Josephus is telling us that Aretas IV is acting like an outraged father - this was also a marriage of state and the rejection of Phaesalis is also a rejection of Aretas IV and Nabatea. He attacks Antipas, kicks his ass, and then realizes that he has just attacked an ally of Rome. Almost never a good idea. Josephus says that Antipas writes to Tiberias ( minimum 3 weeks even by the Roman military post )
who then writes to Vitellius ( another minimum 3 weeks back) and directs him to go after Aretas IV.

Let's be clear though. In order for this sequence to happen:

Philip must die. 34 AD
Herodias must agree to marry Antipas.
Antipas must secure approval from Tiberius and return.
Antipas must divorce his wife and marry Herodias.
Aretas must attack, and Vitellius must have been in position as governor of Syria to receive his orders.

I've been charitable in putting all this between 34 and 35. Josephus claims that Vitellius was in Jerusalem when he received the letters informing him that Tiberius was dead and Caligula was the new emperor. Tiberius died in March of 37 which means that given the minimum 3 week transit of news it cannot have been before April of 37 that Vitellius was moving on Aretas IV. He suspended his campaign awaiting further orders from Caligula and so Aretas IV lived for 3 more years....probably shitting his pants the whole time wondering when the Romans would get around to whupping his ass.

Now there is an awkward problem in Josephus but this is long enough for now.

[HM's response to min - with a few flourishes]
Min, old boy... how could you possibly know all that?
You weren't there!!
You have as much reliable info for that as you have for good ol' J.C.!

I was there! I saw all of this, and there was a Jesus but he just did some cheap sleight of hand tricks and said some cool sounding stuff. The rest of it people have made up.

I am right. Can you prove me wrong? Were you there, and if not how do you know I wasn't there?

If anyone wants any more details about what actually happened, I'll be happy to oblige.

I didn't want to sound all big headed by laying down the facts like this, but it's gone on long enough now. Atheism wins, unless anyone has objections.

If you're wondering about other religions, I was there too for all of that, and none of it is real either. There was some guy called Mohammad. He killed quite a few people, and had bad breath. I wasn't impressed.

Sorry about that, it seems I have an alter ego too who hijacks my keyboard and makes unfalsifiable claims to make some sort of bizarre point about logic. Take no notice, there's no point argueing with someone like that. Seems to have sprung up a lot lately. I'm glad no one tries to debate him.

Still indulging that nonsense, I see.

I'd rather had him move on to stage two, which should be much more fun.

It will be much more pointless. At least this task was possible. In the next he will be trying to make verified medical assessments of life and death and track the physical movements of corpses using textual hearsay accounts.

And after all that, he then presumably has to show what caused the resurrection and that Jesus (pronounced "hey, Zeus") ascended not just into the sky but into heaven. With crappy story books and forgeries. Otherwise we just have an unexplained phenomenon of a corpse reanimating.

Even if we had video tape of it all actually happening, it wouldn't be sufficient evidence. How exactly are you going to record him going to heaven? As far as we are concerned he will just disappear at some point, giving yet another interesting but unexplained phenomenon.

Unless the point of it is to give us all a good laugh, I urge him not to even attempt this. I'm sure David Blaine or someone could pull of a stunt like that, and not one person would believe he had gone to heaven after disappearing at the end.