(March 19, 2012 at 12:17 pm)picto90 Wrote:(March 19, 2012 at 12:07 pm)FallentoReason Wrote: I don't know how they manage to come to that conclusion, but jeez this guy is well hidden.
Not really aiding anyone's viewpoint here but it would be far stranger if there was much documentation from the life of Jesus as:
1. There are very few manuscripts of ANY text written during the time of Jesus
2. Jesus was active for a very short period time (just three years)
3. Jesus ministered in a remote corner of the Roman Empire
Whoa, hold on there.
1. There are few INTACT manuscripts but there are thousands of fragments which form the basis of the historical-critical method. It is the comparison of these fragmentary writings which have shown us how these so-called inerrant, word of god, bullshit texts have been edited by careless scribes and/or obvious liars. Moreover, the church to a large degree in Byzantium ( and to an even larger degree in the West ) determined what was saved and what was lost. The case of Justus of Tiberias is relevant here. Photius, a bishop of Constantinople, read through Justus' history..which ended in the reign of Trajan, and noted that he made no mention of "Christ." Tiberias being a major town in Galilee, allegedly where "jesus" did most of his work, one would think that his countryman Justus might have mentioned such an important figure but Photius tells us he did not and thus with no reason to retain Justus' history it was allowed to vanish.
Had there been actual, historical references, about "jesus" the church would have been highly motivated to trumpet those references. Instead, we find them inventing shit through clumsy forgeries like Josephus, though this is far from the only case, because they lacked the real thing.
2. The gospel fairy tales cannot even agree on this. "John" the last and most fantastic of the 4 says 3 years. The others suggest merely a single year.
3. Is simply wrong. Herod the Great built the port city of Caesarea which enriched his kingdom through commerce and tied it to the trade routes of the Empire. Jerusalem itself had grown to a city of perhaps 30,000 which was triple the size it had been at its maximum before mainly through the construction of aqueducts which increased the water supply so that a larger population was possible. Moreover, Sepphoris and Tiberias were major towns. The prefecture sat astride the coastal road from Syria to Egypt. Judaea was not the remote backwater you portray. Had something happened as earth-shattering as a criminal condemned by a Roman magistrate coming back to life it would have been BIG NEWS all across the Empire and word would have traveled along those same trade routes.
Instead....we hear nothing....except the insipid whining of later xtians that "oh, yes...it really happened just as we say. Take it on "faith."
