Jesus Christ Probably Did Not Exist

[Cyberman]

If that's you, Drich, you posted under the wrong account.

[YahwehIsTheWay]

God is also the master of hide and seek. If he doesn't want to be found, you will not find him.

Very true.

Mark 4:10 And when he was alone, they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable. And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables: That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.

I'm so glad to be among the elect that Jesus has arbitrarily and seemingly randomly selected while the rest of you are "objects of wrath" who's sole purpose seems to be to satisfy our loving lord's sadistic glee on Judgment Day. Better you than me!

---

If that's you, Drich, you posted under the wrong account.

Aw, don't tell me Drich is a poe! All this time?

[Cyberman]

It's so hard to tell, isn't it?

[Minimalist]

Sometimes, D-P you have to play a road game in the other guys' stadium. I've said many times that there had to be 100 Y'shua bar Yosef's in first century Palestine because the names were so common. So what? Unless one of them came back from the fucking dead it doesn't matter if the other 99 shoveled shit on the caravan routes.

But even if there were some sort of teacher who told peasants to keep their mouths shut, do what they were told, and they'd get their reward in heaven what relevance would such bullshit have in the 21st century where there are not a whole lot of peasants left?

This shit is designed to make morons feel comfortable. I am therefore ready to make them uncomfortable no matter what stadium we play in.

[Michael Schubert]

People will argue that the NT (full of errors) is a collection of eyewitness accounts, but if we are going to start accepting books of mythology as evidence for anything, then we also should say that Gilgamesh and Hercules existed too.

Seriously? As I've noted before, nothing in the Holy Bible is based on direct observation.

---

When Jesus ascended to heaven, all of the court records went up there with him.

God has power over all things.

God is also the master of hide and seek. If he doesn't want to be found, you will not find him.

Is this a prank?

[Bad Writer]

Poe-ish remarks...let's hope he was just being facetious.

[Cyberman]

Oh, I think he was. I was just being silly in return.

Or was I..?

[Michael Schubert]

Oh, I think he was. I was just being silly in return.

Or was I..?

Maybe it's Kent Hovind writing from jail.

[Lemonvariable72]

Don't swallow the xtian pill that says it's too fantastic not to be true. It's all rather involved and I'm sure DP and Min can fill in the gaps, but the name Nazareth probably derives from Netzer (iirc), meaning root or branch. Basically an offshoot of an earlier sect (the Essenes?) of religious ascetics. Something like that anyway.

By replacing 'city of Nazareth' with 'small obscure hamlet' or similar, you run smack into the wall of JC being an infamous rabble-rouser who pissed off the Romans to the exent they conspired with the Jewish elders to break their own sacred traditions and have him tried and executed on one of their most holy days - pause for breath - while at the same time he was obscure enough to have completely escaped the notice of history.

Apart from which, Josephus never mentions the place yet writes about precisely those tiny hamlets barely a few miles away from the modern city. Didn't he wage a campaign in the area as well? Seems he ought to have noticed.

Now I don't buy into that, I think he was obscure and didn't accomplish anything that the new testament mentions except maybe a small following.If you read the NT in order of it's writing then you start with Thessalonian's 1 and there jesus is this vague moral teacher, then he gets a little more color through the course of pauls letter's until you hit mark, where the miracles start and then they is more and more unitl john.
jesus is like a big fish story, getting bigger and bigger with every telling.

[Minimalist]

That puts a little too much credit in the story which emerged later on, after the proto-orthodox won and went back and re-wrote history...and their "holy" documents.



http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/nazareth.html

The gospels do not tell us much about this 'city' – it has a synagogue, it can scare up a hostile crowd (prompting JC's famous "prophet rejected in his own land" quote), and it has a precipice – but the city status of Nazareth is clearly established, at least according to that source of nonsense called the Bible.

However when we look for historical confirmation of this hometown of a god – surprise, surprise! – no other source confirms that the place even existed in the 1st century AD.

• Nazareth is not mentioned even once in the entire Old Testament. The Book of Joshua (19.10,16) – in what it claims is the process of settlement by the tribe of Zebulon in the area – records twelve towns and six villages and yet omits any 'Nazareth' from its list.

• The Talmud, although it names 63 Galilean towns, knows nothing of Nazareth, nor does early rabbinic literature.

• St Paul knows nothing of 'Nazareth'. Rabbi Solly's epistles (real and fake) mention Jesus 221 times, Nazareth not at all.

• No ancient historian or geographer mentions Nazareth. It is first noted at the beginning of the 4th century.