Coincidentally....or maybe it is one of them fucking miracles that drippy is always talking about....I ran across this comment in Richard Carrier's "On the Historicity of Jesus" last night. Sure to piss off fundies.
Better hope Ahura Mazda has a sense of humor, drippy. If not, he'll fry your friggin' ass.
Quote:These latter ideas would have infiltrated Palestinian society in two ways. Some would arrive by simple report: pagans and Jewish pilgrims retelling what they heard and knew and what they thought about it; and likewise bringing books with them, to loan, sell or read aloud; it would also be incredible to think that none of the cities in Palestine had public libraries, which were otherwise a standard feature of major cities of the time, and surely a feature of every city with a large Gentile presence, such as Caesarea or Tyre. But others would arrive through prior syncretism: diaspora Jews combined pagan religious and philosophical ideas with their own Jewish faith (as Philo of Alexandria did-and just as what were then 'mainstream' Palestinian Jews had done before when they adopted notions of hell and resurrection, and the Devil as a supernatural enemy of God, all
from their pagan Zoroastrian overlords centuries before), and then came to Judea and promulgated their new ideas as Jewish ideas rather than pagan.
-pg 165
Better hope Ahura Mazda has a sense of humor, drippy. If not, he'll fry your friggin' ass.
