RE: Imagine this...
May 2, 2021 at 11:47 pm
(This post was last modified: May 2, 2021 at 11:47 pm by Jehanne.)
(May 2, 2021 at 11:34 pm)Belacqua Wrote:(May 2, 2021 at 11:01 pm)Peebo-Thuhlu Wrote: At work.
You really should add emoticons to your posts when you're being facetious, Bel.
Jus' sayin'.
I'll summarize, in case your work schedule doesn't allow you to follow the conversation closely.
The OP's analogy puts Anderson Cooper in the role of the four evangelists, reporting an event that happened decades before.
I contend that Cooper is not a good candidate for that role, because he is a mouthpiece for the current oligarchy. (Just like Rachel Maddow, Tucker Carlson, and all the other big shots you can name.) The evangelists were not in the service of the Roman oligarchy, justifying violent policies and foreign wars.
If you only want to say that certain people have an agenda and are not to be believed in a literal sense, then I guess this applies to both the evangelists and Cooper. Nonetheless their place in the hierarchy and their goals vis a vis power were very different, so the analogy is misleading at best.
Much later, the New Testament was put into the service of power, and was defended as credible by the sheeple, just as Cooper's credibility is defended today. However at the time of writing the evangelists were not like this.
Read my OP. CNN reports the "news flash" first, followed by one of their lead anchors. Here's a quote from Josephus' The Jewish War (again, composed in 75 AD):
Quote:"On a later occasion he provoked a fresh uproar by expending upon the construction of an aqueduct the sacred treasure known as Corbonas; the water was brought from a distance of seventy kilometers. Indignant at this proceeding, the populace formed a ring round the tribunal of Pilate, then on a visit to Jerusalem, and besieged him with angry clamor. He, foreseeing the tumult, had interspersed among the crowd a troop of his soldiers, armed but disguised in civilian dress, with orders not to use their swords, but to beat any rioters with cudgels. He now from his tribunal gave the agreed signal. Large numbers of the Jews perished, some from the blows which they received, others trodden to death by their companions in the ensuing flight. Cowed by the fate of the victims, the multitude was reduced to silence." (Josephus, The Jewish War 2:175-177).
And, so, Pilate built an aqueduct, which caused some trouble among the locals. Why does Josephus never mention the historical Jesus, some guy who was supposedly going around raising people from the dead, curing the blind, etc.?