(August 27, 2010 at 6:15 pm)RachelSkates Wrote: Minimalist:
EXACTLY!! ('Maybe"). And most likely.....NOT.
He is a creation of many myths and stories. Like if we mixed Santa Claus, Eater Bunny, and Tooth Fairy -------and people believed the final product!
It seems bizarre to me that there is no clear cut mention of Jesus by even his relatives.
Are we to believe some guy raised from the dead in the middle of a VERY literate Roman society and it is not till a couple hundred of years later (yes it was....not 70) that someone finally says, "Oh that guy that raised from the dead really did.......it was not just a story. Oh, and he's god."
Please.
The earliest reference to "Christians" ( but not to any "Jesus" ) is Pliny the Younger's letter to Trajan concerning his investigations into what he considered a subversive group while he was serving as governor of Bythinia in Asia Minor. Pliny was appointed governor (legatus augusti) in 110 and died in 112 AD so this gives us a short window of time for this letter. In it, he mentions that he dealt with a group who called themselves Christians and who were holding secret meetings in defiance of the law against such meetings. ( Note, they were not arrested for being "christians", per se.)
Quote:They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.
Questioning them under torture failed to reveal any mention of a resurrection or an execution by a Roman official, or a virgin birth.....yada, yada, yada. It seems unlikely that Pliny would have failed to mention such tidbits considering the mundane nonsense that he actually reported. As we can be reasonably certain that Pliny was just learning about christians (hold that thought) it seems as if he had no preconceived notions about them. Instead, he records that they sing a hymn to Christ ( as to a god, or as if he were a god - the translation of the Latin "quasi" works in either case. This is not the same as saying that Christ WAS god. Presumably the ideas had not fully coalesced at such an early point in time.
There is a school which holds that the Pliny reference is a forgery but, this makes no sense. If someone were going to forge something they would make it measure up to the doctrines they were pushing. Pliny also comments
Quote:Others named by the informer declared that they were Christians, but then denied it, asserting that they had been but had ceased to be, some three years before, others many years, some as much as twenty-five years. They all worshipped your image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ.
This is completely at odds with the bullshit story that 4th century christians were putting out. This was a time when they were fabricating the stories of mass martyrdom and how early Christians won over the Romans by the steadfast belief in the face of death. What forger would go through the trouble of writing something which says "Fuck jesus - Hail Caesar!" Had Pliny said " rather than sacrifice to your image they all preferred death and torture " THAT would be a typical xtian forgery.
In any case, Pliny's report is not a "history" or an editorial. It is a real time report. He seems to know next to nothing about xtians prior to arrival in Asia Minor and in his earlier career Pliny had been a military tribune with the 3'd Legion stationed in Syria. He was not unfamiliar with the Near East. Further, he had an extensive legal career in Rome but never seems to know anything about xtian trials. Finally, neither he nor Trajan gives the slightest hint that xtians were implicated as arsonists in the burning of Rome. Trajan's reply is mild. It does not suggest any rancor at a group which the later forgery of Tacitus' work would try to convince us had tried to burn down the capitol a mere 40 years before.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark, here.
