(January 14, 2013 at 9:51 am)FallentoReason Wrote:(January 14, 2013 at 7:59 am)Sciworks Wrote: Why do atheists even bother about debating Jesus? There is absolutely no evidence that Jesus is nothing but a story corrupted from previous stories. 'Christ' actually comes from two supposed Roman documents which were actually written (copied?) by Christian monks in the Medieval period. One of those shows a clear forging of the the name Chrestianos to Christianos. There are no original documents around the time in existence that mention Jesus or Christ.
So.... if you are going to believe anything those biased monks wrote, then you also have to believe that Chrestus led a rebellion against Julius Caesar. Jewish temples were not just places of worship then, they were banks and held gold and money for lending. That is why, around that time, Roman emperors and governors, like Agrippa II (Herod 2) had trouble with the priests, who were in effect the bankers of their time.
It is written that Chrestus led an uprising, it was probably about money, interest rates or something else that Julius Caesar wanted to impose on the bank.
Then, 20 years later, Nero blamed the Chrestians for burning part of Rome. We have all been told how bad Nero was, but in fact he wanted a better deal for the poor and this probably enraged the Jewish bankers (he called them Chrestians, as named from the Chrestus uprising 20 years before) who set fire to some of the city.
Chrestus and his followers were persecuted and put to death in the arena, they were probably Jewish bankers and certainly had nothing to do with mythical 'Christians' which is just a corruption of Chrestionos, followers of Chrestus.
If you think I am being anti-Semite, the fact that Jewish temples were used as banks is written online in Jewish wikkis on Jewish sites.
But how does it go from a "story" about bankers and finance to a saviour god being the redeemer of mankind..?
Stories like those told about mythical Jesus were around previously in Egyptian and Greek mythology, resurrection, healing etc. Agrippa 1 and 2 built many theatres in Galilee and especially near Nazareth, the 'Herods' were really into plays and culture. The Egyptian and Greek myths would have been played at those theatres, so it wouldn't have been hard to distort those into a story about the poor persecuted Jewish bankers, put to death by the Romans. Note that 'War & Peace' is nearly as long as the Old and New Testament, and that was written by only one man.
Also, at the time, there were two Jewish uprisings and I believe the stories and plays were adjusted to pacify the Jews, by introducing a pacifist in the plays, a person that would not be violent and would turn the other cheek. This major trait of Jesus, that we have all been taught, has served extremely well by indoctrinating the plebs into a pacifist non aggressive mode, people (named subjects, surfs, plebs etc.) that are much easier to control by a government.
Until, of course, the government needs soldiers, then the Church stirs up hatred against the unholy enemy, this method of inciting holy hatred was still being used in the First and Second World Wars.