What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[watchamadoodle]

Is that this Tim O'Neill?
http://www.quora.com/Tim-ONeill-1
http://www.strangenotions.com/author/tim-oneill/

Yes, I invited him to join this conversation, but I guess he wasn't interested, or maybe he didn't see my post. Deist Paladin and Minimalist also know the topic in detail, so I thought it would be educational to watch the discussion. I thought about messaging him with the invite, but I didn't want to be pushy.

[Mudhammam]

I vote invite him. He's clearly knowledgeable in the field and takes a different position than our resident amateur historians. I'd like to see just how exactly they came to their contrary conclusions, assuming they are working with the same data.

[watchamadoodle]

I vote invite him. He's clearly knowledgeable in the field and takes a different position than our resident amateur historians. I'd like to see just how exactly they came to their contrary conclusions, assuming they are working with the same data.

I think it might be more successful if one of you guys sends him a PM? I suspect I might have come across as a pesky and pushy in Rob's blog thread.

[Minimalist]

I vote invite him. He's clearly knowledgeable in the field and takes a different position than our resident amateur historians. I'd like to see just how exactly they came to their contrary conclusions, assuming they are working with the same data.

Seems to me that he is trying to make excuses for why the gospels tell different stories.

Without interviewing the authors - difficult as we have no idea who the authors were - that seems like a pointless exercise. There is one original story: What is now known as gMark. He could not be bothered with a nativity story so later traditions grew up about it which were incorporated into the fanfics which are matty and luke.

[watchamadoodle]

I vote invite him. He's clearly knowledgeable in the field and takes a different position than our resident amateur historians. I'd like to see just how exactly they came to their contrary conclusions, assuming they are working with the same data.

Seems to me that he is trying to make excuses for why the gospels tell different stories.

Without interviewing the authors - difficult as we have no idea who the authors were - that seems like a pointless exercise. There is one original story: What is now known as gMark. He could not be bothered with a nativity story so later traditions grew up about it which were incorporated into the fanfics which are matty and luke.

Are you referring to this article?
http://www.strangenotions.com/an-atheist...rt-1-of-2/
http://www.strangenotions.com/an-atheist...rt-2-of-2/

[Godscreated]

There are thousands of unidentified towns lost to history, if we had never learned to survive a couple of hours under water there would be many more things lost to history that are mentioned in ancient writings. Who knows what's waiting to be found.

GC

Sure, it may have existed. The absence of evidence is certainly not evidence of absence. Still, it's an interesting fact that nothing of the town as it may have existed in Jesus' day remains, which, if the mythicists have a point, Nazarene may have more to do with the vow of the Nazarite or the Hebrew word for branch, NZR, which I believe is featured in a Davidic psalm attributed to Jesus by early Christians.

If the world is still around in 2000 years what will they find of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, I would think nothing, yet they will exist in writings, a tale of destruction by what, what will the stories actually say. 1945 will be called ancient times and there are those who will have their tales to add to that history.

GC

[GrandizerII]

There is one original story: What is now known as gMark. He could not be bothered with a nativity story so later traditions grew up about it which were incorporated into the fanfics which are matty and luke.

But there is something about gMark's Jesus being from Nazareth rather than Bethlehem that points to the likelihood of a historical Jesus rather than a mythical one. The later nativity stories were attempts to fix that awkwardness.

I'm not saying Jesus must have existed. For all I know, you could be right at the end. But history (especially 2000 and more years go) is a very tricky thing to reconstruct in a perfectly satisfactory manner.

[Minimalist]

But there is something about gMark's Jesus being from Nazareth rather than Bethlehem that points to the likelihood of a historical Jesus rather than a mythical one.

Point #1 - if you bother to read all of Micah 5 you will see that it has nothing to do with any fucking jesus. It talks about a military leader who would arise and kick the shit out of the Assyrians....some 700 years earlier.

(That didn't work out so well either. Assyria overran Israel and relegated it to the dustbin of history. So much for 'god.')

Point #2. Jewish usage for a male would have been X son of y. So, jesus bar joseph would be a proper patronymic for an allegedly jewish figure. The idea of X from Y as in Antipater of Sidon, Antipater of Tarsus, Antipater of Thessalonica, Antipater of Tyre was a Greek styling. If there was a Nazareth at the end of the first millennium and somebody named "jesus" was from there that would cast a high degree of doubt on his jewishness....and I doubt that fundie assholes like drippy and the prof are willing to go that far. More likely is that the author of mark was some Greco-Roman who mistook the word nazirite for nazareth and applied his own formulation.

[Godscreated]

John's gospel wasn't written as chronology of Christ's life, actually none were intended as a chronology.

You keep saying that but it doesn't make it so.

They writers were not interested in preserving a chronology of Christ's life and the writings show this. They were interested in getting His message across and the perfect life He lived. They were not historians nor did they claim to be properly educated writers. So yes it is so a chronologically historic detailed recording of Christ's life wasn't their purpose.

The Gospel of John uses language like "this day he did this, the next day he did that, the third day he did something else". This is the language an author uses to communicate the order of events over a passage of time.

I just finished reading a book that was anything but historic and that same language was used, it was used to convey events within the story in an orderly manner for a certain short period of time. Those phrases are used all the time in many different kinds of non-historic writings, those phrases fit into many different types of writings.
The phrases in John and the other gospels were denoting short time periods and it's obvious that time gaps exist in all the gospels.

And frankly, for a book said to be "The Word of God", my standards are apparently higher than yours. I believe the very being that gave me sense, reason and the capacity to communicate should be expected to understand three basic elements of good communication which are "clarity", "brevity" and "consistency". These are not qualities of the Bible. To write a book that jumbles the events around for no reason is, at best, confusing, and at worst, a sign of being a terrible writer. Yet this doesn't stop Christians from making one feeble excuse after the next for their vaunted scriptures, from "it's not supposed to be a chronology" to "oh, picky, picky, picky; it's not supposed to be perfect".

It doesn't matter whether you or I would want the gospels written to our specific liking, they were done in a manner acceptable to God, the men He chose were not scholars actually they were anything but, and if you had cared to pay attention to the whole Bible God rarely used a man trained in an area H used them in. He chose me to do several things in my church and I assure you I wan't qualified for any of them. So pick all you want it will never change the truth and purpose of the scriptures, what it will do is drive you mad.

The Word of the very Creator of the universe and the very being that endowed us with reason, to quote Shakespeare, "should be made of sterner stuff".

Who, who is this Shakespeare, where was he from, what did he do before and after the writings credited to him, where was he born, live die and where is he buried. What were his credentials, what type of worldly experiences did he have.

There is no time designated between the time Jesus starts his ministry and John testifies to his previous encounter with Christ.

Did Jesus start his ministry (1) after JtB was put in prison or (2) before JtB was put in prison?

Christ's ministry started before John was imprisoned, it started when He was baptized. This was His announcement by John to the Jews.

So how do you feel about revising much of ancient history because a timeline was not written into those ancient accounts, do we call all we have fiction because timelines were not established with absolute accuracy as you demand from the Gospels.

Historical accounts written by God is held to a higher standard than historical accounts written by humans.

You are now trying to deflect by using something you can't prove, you're stating your feelings and calling them absolute, shame on you.
The gospels were inspired by God and written by man, God didn't stand over them an tell them each word to write nor the order in which to place things, He inspired the spiritual matters revealing spiritual truths, for us to be saved and live by.

Furthermore, we do have standards from stories from more ancient times and whether or not they're considered reliable or not. We don't use "The Iliad" to understand what happened during the Trojan War. We don't use the grade school song about "Davy Crocket, King of the Wild Frontier" as a reliable biography of the man. Historians do make an effort to separate fanciful folklore and sectarian mythology from our understanding of real events.

I want disagree with this, yet most all things even a song holds bits of truth. Even with what you've stated there is no evidence the gospels are not correct reporting of events and ect. in Christ's life. The only ones who want to make the gospels myth are the ones the gospels offended. Now is that a good reason to dismiss them as myth, is this a standard used for other text? If one is offended by the scriptures doesn't that show they have life in them, yes maybe disagreeable to some, but nevertheless they have a life that is offensive to some.

All four gospels show the division of Christ and the priest, scribes and pharisees, all laid the blame on them for the crucifying of Christ. Your story holds no water on many accounts.

But none of the other three refer to "The Jews" as a separate rival sectarian group. Christianity did emerge as a separate sect eventually from Judaism. Texts that refer to "The Jews" as a rival sect are clearly written once this separation had taken place. Forgive the tautology of my explanation, "they refer to them as separate when they became separate" but you seem a little slow to grasp the idea.

The priest, pharisees and scribes in each gospel are in direct opposition to Christ at every turn, each gospel tells of their plotting to rid themselves of Him. There are no other text that I'm aware of that that show the priest, pharisees and scribes threatened by any other individual as they were Christ. So, separation starts with the beginning of Christ's ministry. The only way what you have suggested could work, would be that Christ was not real, and there is absolutely no proof of this.

John himself says, as you noted above, he was sent to introduce Christ as the Savoir.

Only in Christian mythology. Josephus tells us nothing of the kind.

You mean the one who was a traitor to his people, who was a Jew at heart and needed to look as such by writing about what would please the ones he offended. Who actually had a reason to write mythology as history, I would say the one needing to recover his grace. Christ and his disciples certainly did not look to bring themselves into the good graces of the Jews, their concern was with God alone.

I've heard some tales before but this is as ridiculous as it gets. All four gospels tell of John being the messenger to announce Christ, it's made very clear in each one.

But my point is that tale got better with the telling.

The stories were written by individuals with no thought of conspiring to make a story better or more exciting.

GOSPEL OF MARK: JtB baptized Jesus and told everyone he was just a forerunner of Jesus. JtB got out of the way, being arrested, and then Jesus took the stage.

GOSPEL OF MATTHEW: JtB recognized how awkward it was baptizing his better but Jesus ordered him to do it anyway and JtB complied. JtB was arrested and Jesus took the stage.

GOSPEL OF JOHN: JtB was totally Jesus' bitch boy! We won't mention the baptism at all, because that's really theologically awkward with JtB baptizing his better. Jesus didn't have to wait for JtB to exit the stage. In fact, Jesus started his own rival ministry, stole some of John's disciples, kicked John's ass at his own game and John was cheer leading for Jesus the whole time.

The progression is not lost on you, I hope.

Now prove these stories were written in that given order and the intent of Christ and John the Baptist were as you say, I hope that the reality of the times places and people are not lost on you. What I do believe I see is that these very gospels offend you and, you have a desire to make them into a myth so you do not have to concern yourself with their living truth.

John nor Jesus could help that some men would not listen to the message given that Jesus was the Christ.

Really? A cult leader tells his followers to follow another man. In fact, that's the whole point of his ministry. In the Gospel of John, JtB does everything but get down on his knees and .... in front of all his followers. And you're telling me it's perfectly believable that his followers said "meh, what does our rabbi know?"

The red dots are removed text by me, they're offensive in my view and it's a poor and childish attempt to anger me and deflect from the discussion, I thought you a better person, guess everyone gets disappointed from time to time. John the Baptist in all four gospels has stated his purpose given to him by God and was pleased to be given the task. He was there to pave the way and announce the Christ, period.

This, by the way, is one of many reasons why I reject Islam. According to Islam, Jesus was Mohammad's forerunner. The Muslim Jesus told everyone to be monotheists and wait for the great prophet to come. Three years after the Muslim Jesus flew up into the sky to go to Heaven, along comes the heretic Paul who tells everyone, "pay no attention to what Jesus said and instead worship him as your lord and savior, thereby committing blasphemy in the highest order since that would be idolatry." And all of Jesus' followers went "duh, OK."

I've already stated why I believe you reject Christianity and there's no need to say it again, I'm not discussing Muslim beliefs, the discussion is of the gospels. Anyone who reads the writings of Paul and gets from them what you have is either blind or stupid, I do not believe you to be stupid.

When you understand why the story of the Muslim Jesus seems silly to you, you understand why the Christian story of the Christian John the Baptist seems silly to me.

Sounds like a personal problem, since there was no Muslim jesus, heck there wasn't even a holy person as the leaders of the Muslim belief. Jesus was from before the beginning, the Muslim belief came only after the Arabs needed a leader to try and control Christianity.

Tell me if Christ was so insignificant how is it that Christianity ever made it, it over took the Roman empire and then the world, this happened through a handful of believers. With a world full of other gods to choose from and the carnal pleasures afforded people through them, Christianity shouldn't have stood a chance, yet it raced to the forefront in short order.

Why do cults take off at all? Why did everyone commit suicide when Jim Jones told them to drink the Kool-Aid? Why does anyone follow a religion made up by a bad science fiction writer? Why did anyone follow David Koresh with all his crazy claims? Why did people give up all their worldly possessions to follow Bagram Shri Rashnish? None of these cults and their popularity require any supernatural explanation.

Those cults you listed have died out most extremely quickly and none had the following of Christ, billions, none lasting and growing over 2000 years, none effecting the world in such a profound way. Throwing up a few cults in no way explains why Christianity has grown the way it has, nor does it dismiss it's truth. Truth is why Christianity has accomplished what it has, people recognize truth, well most do.

An absolute perfect description of all the other religions, however not Christianity.

A more perfect example of special pleading would be hard to invent.

This would more accurately describe your attempts at dismissing the gospels and there truths.

By the way to read anything with critical thinking at the forefront means one is looking to dismiss it before one begins, so sure the message is lost on the reader, bias has that tendency and/or result.

Um, no.

That's not "critical thinking" at all.

Um, yes. See I can dismiss you with a couple words also.

Holocaust deniers, 9/11 Truthers and Global Warming Conspiracy Theorists are not "skeptics", however much they claim to be.

So now you can speak for others, what gives you the right to adjust what they believe, is it to make a false point.

Reading history or an "official account" with the mind-set that "it's not true" is not critical thinking.

Yet most here have, if they've even read the scriptures. I know most say they have, but when it comes to their knowledge of scripture they betray themselves.

Critical thinking is where you're open-minded to claims but you don't accept them as true either until they've met the burden of proof, with mundane claims being accepted with testimony and outlandish claims being accepted with extraordinary evidence.

There are those who have never read the scriptures and claim to be atheist, how is that possible. No critical review of scriptures, no knowledge of what's actually claimed, just rejection of the scriptures, period. There are some here who have admitted they've never read the Bible let lone study it enough to have an opinion on what it says.

I'm not letting you get away with calling skepticism a "worldview" and drawing a false-equivalency between that and your religious view, with a flippant "you see it your way, I see it mine."

That's what every argument here comes down to, Christians want give up the truth they know and atheist want accept the truth we know.
The Christians here live a life of delusion and want accept the way of logic.
It always boils down to this, and it's beginning to get a bit boring. If it were not for the invisible I think I would call it quits here, man I bet some here would throw a party.

They are not both equally rationally valid. Faith is believing things without reason and against all reason. Apologetics is about finding reasons to believe things people already believe without reason and against all reason. At best, it is inherently irrational and, at worst, inherently dishonest.

You have a huge problem here, I know God is real, can I prove it to your satisfaction, no. You want even accept the obvious things of the NT, yet you call what you do rational and critical thinking. So why would I expect you to ever accept biblical truth. By the way the scriptures say it's important for me to know God for my own salvation and the same responsibility lies with you, outside that, honesty with myself is ultimately the only thing that counts.

GC

[DeistPaladin]

They writers were not interested in preserving a chronology of Christ's life and the writings show this. They were interested in getting His message across and the perfect life He lived. They were not historians nor did they claim to be properly educated writers. So yes it is so a chronologically historic detailed recording of Christ's life wasn't their purpose.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. The Gospels do make references to time and order of events. But you go on believing your favorite excuse for Gospel errancy.

Christ's ministry started before John was imprisoned, it started when He was baptized. This was His announcement by John to the Jews.

Bold emphasis mine:

Mark 1:14 Now after that John was put in prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God,

Matt 4:12 Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee;
...
4:17 From that time Jesus began to preach, and to say, Repent: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Luke 4:14-15 And Jesus returned [from the Wilderness] in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there went out a fame of him through all the region round about. And he taught in their synagogues, being glorified of all.

The Synoptic Gospels all make it clear that JtB was imprisoned first. At that point in the telling of the story, JtB was still a big enough force that he had to exit the drama before Jesus could take center stage. The Gospel of John would escalate the propaganda by having Jesus eclipse JtB, making a point that he was running a more successful ministry even before JtB was put in prison.

You are now trying to deflect by using something you can't prove, you're stating your feelings and calling them absolute, shame on you.

What are you babbling about?

I want disagree with this, yet most all things even a song holds bits of truth.

...and historians sort through folklore, parcing what we can be confident in vs. what is fanciful addition. This is why they are confident that there was a Troy which was apparently destroyed in a war, as archaeological evidence indicates, but they don't use the Iliad to claim to know certain details.

Even with what you've stated there is no evidence the gospels are not correct reporting of events and ect. in Christ's life.

In your bizzaro world where skepticism is an agenda to reject the Truth with a capital "T", it's up to a skeptic to prove that a given claim is not true.

This is not how logic works in the world the rest of us live in. You don't have to prove Mohammad didn't receive his revelation from the angel Gabriel. You don't have to prove that "theatens" aren't attached to your soul as Scientology asserts. You don't have to prove Athena didn't spring from the brain of Zeus. The burden of proof always rests upon the one who asserts that a religion or some other claim is true.

The stories were written by individuals with no thought of conspiring to make a story better or more exciting.

Prove it.

You can start by explaining how we know who these individuals even were, let alone what their true motive was.

Now prove these stories were written in that given order

This is not disputed by Christian scholars.

and the intent of Christ and John the Baptist were as you say

This is the story as it is presented.

What I do believe I see is that these very gospels offend you and, you have a desire to make them into a myth so you do not have to concern yourself with their living truth.

That's what you need to believe about skeptics of your religion. You need to believe that skepticism is an agenda to deny the Truth with a capital "T" for any variety of reasons you like to attribute. You need to at least make it a clash of "worldviews" so you can feel justified in your faith in assertions you can't otherwise defend.

In reality, it is not equally rationally valid to choose faith over skepticism. Faith is belief without reason and against all reason. Skepticism is simply a critical evaluation of claims and whether or not they've met the burden of proof. You share my skepticism of other religions. The difference between us is I believe in one less holy book than you.

The red dots are removed text by me, they're offensive in my view

The depiction of JtB in John's Gospel as little more than Jesus' bitch-boy was doubtlessly equally offensive to the followers of John the Baptist.

Nonetheless, I shall repeat my question with the ridicule removed. Do you consider it believable that a cult leader would tell all his followers to follow another, on terms so certain that it was the very purpose of his ministry, reinforced with such displays as prostrating himself before Jesus in the manner he did in John's Gospel, and his followers would ignore their leader and his cult would continue to revere him instead?

When you understand why you don't believe Muslim assertions about Jesus, you understand why I don't believe Christian assertions about John the Baptist. Neither depiction is consistent with the behavior of his followers.

Those cults you listed have died out most extremely quickly and none had the following of Christ, billions, none lasting and growing over 2000 years, none effecting the world in such a profound way. Throwing up a few cults in no way explains why Christianity has grown the way it has, nor does it dismiss it's truth. Truth is why Christianity has accomplished what it has, people recognize truth, well most do.

You can assert what you like. At the end of your speech, the success of Christianity doesn't require a supernatural explanation. By Occam's Razor, it's not necessary to invoke a supernatural explanation when a natural one will do.

This [special pleading] would more accurately describe your attempts at dismissing the gospels and there truths.

How?

How is skepticism "special pleading"?

Code:

Um, yes. See I can dismiss you with a couple words also.

True but my dismissal of you was correct.

Critical thinking is not denial of claims where the burden of proof has been met. Critical thinking is evaluating with an open mind whether a claim has met its burden of proof.

There are those who have never read the scriptures and claim to be atheist, how is that possible.

The same way it is possible for you to not be a Hindu even if you have not read the Baghavad Gihta. The same way it is possible for you to not be a Muslim even if you have not read the Koran. The same way it is possible for you to not believe in Zeus even if you have not read the Iliad and the Odyssey. Lack of belief in a religion does not require you to read the scriptures of that religion.

That's what every argument here comes down to, Christians want give up the truth they know and atheist want accept the truth we know.

It is not that we won't accept the truth. It's that you can't meet your burden of proof and want to complain that we're just being unfairly closed minded. Yet you apply this same skepticism to other religious claims. You understand how the burden of proof works with other religions. You just want special treatment for yours.