Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

[Rampant.A.I.]

Please enlighten me; to what dogmatic belief are atheists enchained?

I don't agree with him 100% or even 50% but on the basic premise he's right at least. Atheism and the what is taken to be "science" tend to be considered to be one and the same thing.

And I should get that cough seen to, if I were you. Might be nasty.

It's not an infection I was just taken aback.

Pascal's Wager? Seriously?

No I was just pointing out the materialistic assumption you were making without realizing you were making it. You just take it for granted that this is true unless proven otherwise.

Quite sure, thanks. As demonstrated rather beautifully by the pages and pages of evidence that atheists have presented on these very boards, compared to the equivalent number of pages of theists with their fingers in their ears and shouting "T'isn't!"

We share the same scientific evidence of the exact same universe, there is no "evidence of atheism". Where are getting this from?

And yet again, you miss the point I'm making while addressing one I didn't. I'll reiterate and clarify for you:


and its suggestion that real events within living memory would cancel out the adoption of an alternative reinterpretation of history, to put it politely, I offered an exampleof a popular belief which actually is propogated as fact despite having a much more recent origin; ie, the US Pledge of Allegiance contains the "One Nation Under God" line, therefore the country was founded as a xtain nation, even though the words were only added in 1954. I see no evidence that the reality has "killed the movement in it's [sic] tracks"

The NT already covered the possibility that the faith is a mistake.

"And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."

So this has already been covered, if you're wrong then you're wrong there's nothing you can do about it. But it goes on to give some assurance to the faithful that Christ was indeed raised from death as will we all be. That's the idea of the faith/belief. So you apparently lost your faith but we can put it down to defeatism/nihilism on your part not rationalism or science. God is perfectly rational as an existential concept and science does not or ever could in anyway disprove Gods existence. You either believe or you don't and you have the freedom of choice either way. What you believe right now could easily be an error of judgement on your part if you have have been taken in by a human made ideology which denies the existence of anything beyond this transitory world and claims it merely exists by purposeless accident. To believe in this I think there is an awful lot of stuff you just have to ignore or deny.

Summary: you can't fathom individuals forming their own opinions without indoctrination to dogmatic beliefs, so you simply perceive anything contrary to your own dogmatic beliefs as dogma you don't agree with.

When in fact, there is no competing dogma in the lack of acceptance of superstitious belief and unsupported claims. You are rejecting reality, because much of reality runs contrary to what you've been trained to believe from a young age.

You seem unable to fathom that those who have arrived at a lack of belief in primitive superstition did so by rationally examining those beliefs.

And you do it with a dogmatic bible-pounding efficiency that makes it abundantly clear you are unwilling to critically examine your own beliefs, and are projecting your own shortcomings onto others.

It's pathetic. You've given your own specific brand of irrational dogma a special pass, because you were trained to. You cannot disprove the existence of thousands of other Gods in human history, and yet you don't accept any of them because you were told you had the right one. Don't claim rations superiority when you by definition hold irrational beliefs you're unwilling to examine. It's as ludicrous as some old lady attending a Stephen Hawking lecture and announcing that he's clearly wrong because earth actually rests on the back of a giant tortoise, and "it's tortoises all the way down,"

[Minimalist]

The revolt may have been crushed, but the religion that inspired it wasn’t, and was still a threat to the Pax Romana (Roman peace.) It became obvious that Jews were still dreaming about their messiah, so Atwill thinks Titus transformed himself into the embodiment of their dreams. He had a derivative of Judaism created that worshipped him (as Jesus) without people knowing it. The agenda was to tame Judaism by transforming it into a cooperative, government friendly religion. Titus had the Gospels invented to act as a theological barrier against the spread of messianic Judaism because if he could get Jews to worship “Jesus,” it would mean they accepted Roman authority.

Well, may as well bring everyone up to date on my objections. Yes, in 70 the revolt was crushed with a few miscellaneous mop-up operations like Masada to finish. These were left to Lucius Flavius Silva and the Xth legion. But Atwill acts as if the biggest problem in the Roman world were the fucking jews and this was simply not the case. There were far more pressing issues at the beginning of Vespasian's reign. There were serious revolts in Gaul and Germany. The empire was bankrupt. The capital had been seriously burned in a battle between Vespasian's army and that of Vitellius. Vespasian was a soldier and a practical man. The notion that he would have wasted time worrying about a nation he had just fucked flat instead of the real problems he actually faced is mind-boggling.

Then there is reality to deal with. Outside of bible horseshit there is no indication at all that xtianity spread among the "jews." Quite the contrary. If anyone picked up on it they were largely Greco-Roman and the numbers suggest that there were not very many of them either, and those not until the second century when the Flavians were long since relegated to the dustbin of history. The Jews, lacking a temple for sacrifice, re-formatted themselves into rabbinic judaism and they wanted nothing to do with any "jesus" which means that Titus' big plan was a total flop.

As far as Vespasian's message, it sunk in to the point that when the Kitos War broke out in 115 among other Jews the ones in Palestine said "no thanks, boys. We'll sit this one out."

[Mark Fulton]

The revolt may have been crushed, but the religion that inspired it wasn’t, and was still a threat to the Pax Romana (Roman peace.) It became obvious that Jews were still dreaming about their messiah, so Atwill thinks Titus transformed himself into the embodiment of their dreams. He had a derivative of Judaism created that worshipped him (as Jesus) without people knowing it. The agenda was to tame Judaism by transforming it into a cooperative, government friendly religion. Titus had the Gospels invented to act as a theological barrier against the spread of messianic Judaism because if he could get Jews to worship “Jesus,” it would mean they accepted Roman authority.

Well, may as well bring everyone up to date on my objections. Yes, in 70 the revolt was crushed with a few miscellaneous mop-up operations like Masada to finish. These were left to Lucius Flavius Silva and the Xth legion. But Atwill acts as if the biggest problem in the Roman world were the fucking jews and this was simply not the case. There were far more pressing issues at the beginning of Vespasian's reign. There were serious revolts in Gaul and Germany. The empire was bankrupt. The capital had been seriously burned in a battle between Vespasian's army and that of Vitellius. Vespasian was a soldier and a practical man. The notion that he would have wasted time worrying about a nation he had just fucked flat instead of the real problems he actually faced is mind-boggling.

Then there is reality to deal with. Outside of bible horseshit there is no indication at all that xtianity spread among the "jews." Quite the contrary. If anyone picked up on it they were largely Greco-Roman and the numbers suggest that there were not very many of them either, and those not until the second century when the Flavians were long since relegated to the dustbin of history. The Jews, lacking a temple for sacrifice, re-formatted themselves into rabbinic judaism and they wanted nothing to do with any "jesus" which means that Titus' big plan was a total flop.

As far as Vespasian's message, it sunk in to the point that when the Kitos War broke out in 115 among other Jews the ones in Palestine said "no thanks, boys. We'll sit this one out."

Re "But Atwill acts as if the biggest problem in the Roman world were the fucking jews and this was simply not the case."

Mmmmmm.....maybe. Don't forget that about 10% of the Roman Empire were Jewish. So it wasn't just the Palestinian Jews who were a problem. Jews everywhere were "different'' and could be seen to be different. Many of them dreamt about the day when Israel would rule... as predicted in their Scriptures.

Bear in mind that the average Roman (and particularly the Roman soldiers who had beseeched Jerusalem) were thoroughly pissed off with the Jews. They were a people who refused to be controlled. They had a long history of rebelling against Roman rule. There were serious revolt against Rome in four BC and six A.D. Our mate Jeebus, if he ever existed, was very likely a political insurgent. There was a triumphant procession in Rome after the first war in 70. Don't forget there was another major war in 132 A.D.(I think of it as "World War II"). I think it was only after the second war that Jewish nationalism was well and truly squashed.

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The revolt may have been crushed, but the religion that inspired it wasn’t, and was still a threat to the Pax Romana (Roman peace.) It became obvious that Jews were still dreaming about their messiah, so Atwill thinks Titus transformed himself into the embodiment of their dreams. He had a derivative of Judaism created that worshipped him (as Jesus) without people knowing it. The agenda was to tame Judaism by transforming it into a cooperative, government friendly religion. Titus had the Gospels invented to act as a theological barrier against the spread of messianic Judaism because if he could get Jews to worship “Jesus,” it would mean they accepted Roman authority.

Well, may as well bring everyone up to date on my objections. Yes, in 70 the revolt was crushed with a few miscellaneous mop-up operations like Masada to finish. These were left to Lucius Flavius Silva and the Xth legion. But Atwill acts as if the biggest problem in the Roman world were the fucking jews and this was simply not the case. There were far more pressing issues at the beginning of Vespasian's reign. There were serious revolts in Gaul and Germany. The empire was bankrupt. The capital had been seriously burned in a battle between Vespasian's army and that of Vitellius. Vespasian was a soldier and a practical man. The notion that he would have wasted time worrying about a nation he had just fucked flat instead of the real problems he actually faced is mind-boggling.

Then there is reality to deal with. Outside of bible horseshit there is no indication at all that xtianity spread among the "jews." Quite the contrary. If anyone picked up on it they were largely Greco-Roman and the numbers suggest that there were not very many of them either, and those not until the second century when the Flavians were long since relegated to the dustbin of history. The Jews, lacking a temple for sacrifice, re-formatted themselves into rabbinic judaism and they wanted nothing to do with any "jesus" which means that Titus' big plan was a total flop.

As far as Vespasian's message, it sunk in to the point that when the Kitos War broke out in 115 among other Jews the ones in Palestine said "no thanks, boys. We'll sit this one out."

Re "Vespasian was a soldier and a practical man. The notion that he would have wasted time worrying about a nation he had just fucked flat instead of the real problems he actually faced is mind-boggling."

Yes. But don't forget he ruled till 79, and then his son Titus ruled till 81. So we're looking at about an 11 year period in which the gospel or gospels could have originally been written. If you listen to the brief podcast about Vespasian (I have provided link) you will also appreciate that he was a great propagandist.

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The revolt may have been crushed, but the religion that inspired it wasn’t, and was still a threat to the Pax Romana (Roman peace.) It became obvious that Jews were still dreaming about their messiah, so Atwill thinks Titus transformed himself into the embodiment of their dreams. He had a derivative of Judaism created that worshipped him (as Jesus) without people knowing it. The agenda was to tame Judaism by transforming it into a cooperative, government friendly religion. Titus had the Gospels invented to act as a theological barrier against the spread of messianic Judaism because if he could get Jews to worship “Jesus,” it would mean they accepted Roman authority.

Well, may as well bring everyone up to date on my objections. Yes, in 70 the revolt was crushed with a few miscellaneous mop-up operations like Masada to finish. These were left to Lucius Flavius Silva and the Xth legion. But Atwill acts as if the biggest problem in the Roman world were the fucking jews and this was simply not the case. There were far more pressing issues at the beginning of Vespasian's reign. There were serious revolts in Gaul and Germany. The empire was bankrupt. The capital had been seriously burned in a battle between Vespasian's army and that of Vitellius. Vespasian was a soldier and a practical man. The notion that he would have wasted time worrying about a nation he had just fucked flat instead of the real problems he actually faced is mind-boggling.

Then there is reality to deal with. Outside of bible horseshit there is no indication at all that xtianity spread among the "jews." Quite the contrary. If anyone picked up on it they were largely Greco-Roman and the numbers suggest that there were not very many of them either, and those not until the second century when the Flavians were long since relegated to the dustbin of history. The Jews, lacking a temple for sacrifice, re-formatted themselves into rabbinic judaism and they wanted nothing to do with any "jesus" which means that Titus' big plan was a total flop.

As far as Vespasian's message, it sunk in to the point that when the Kitos War broke out in 115 among other Jews the ones in Palestine said "no thanks, boys. We'll sit this one out."

RE "Then there is reality to deal with. Outside of bible horseshit there is no indication at all that xtianity spread among the "jews." Quite the contrary. If anyone picked up on it they were largely Greco-Roman and the numbers suggest that there were not very many of them either, and those not until the second century when the Flavians were long since relegated to the dustbin of history. The Jews, lacking a temple for sacrifice, re-formatted themselves into rabbinic judaism and they wanted nothing to do with any "jesus" which means that Titus' big plan was a total flop."

Agreed. It was a total flop amongst the Jews. What I think happened was that the government was trying to water down Judaism by diluting it with Gentiles. Gentiles were not as patriotic and militant as fundamentalist Jews. I think this was why Paul did his thing amongst the Gentiles before the first Jewish War. If they could convert some Jews along the way all well and good but the whole big show was aimed mainly at gentiles so as to water down Judaism.

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Allow me to explain why I think there was a fundamental and long lasting antagonism between poor Palestinian Jews and the Roman world.

Yeshua the Young Man

Apart from Luke’s brief mention of him as a twelve-year-old, (Luke 2:41–47) the Gospels failed to mention any notable facts about Jesus’ life until he was aged about thirty, a remarkable omission. Writing a comprehensive biography obviously wasn’t their priority, and they probably weren’t as familiar with his story as they would have liked their readers to think they were. It’s also possible they knew facts about him that they chose not to document.

Yeshua’s family was said to be poor, so he would probably have had to toil to take care of them—perhaps as a farmer, or possibly as a laborer constructing the cities of Sepphoris or Tiberias. In about 19 CE, when Yeshua was a young man, the city of Tiberias on the banks of the Sea of Galilee was under construction, thirty kilometers from today’s Nazareth. He must have walked through its streets. Today it’s Northern Israel’s most popular holiday resort. That would have kept him busy six days a week. The seventh day was the Sabbath, on which no Jew would do any work.

The young man breathed Galilean air that was thick with anti-Roman feeling. He would have heard stories about Jewish men killed by Roman soldiers, and how their families were abducted, and maybe even seen the fighting first hand. Every day he would have had to face the ugly reality of being poor, and would have blamed the pagans with their brutal army for the way things were. This wasn’t the glorious kingdom God had promised Israel in scripture.

Many larger cities in Galilee housed Gentiles, and Yeshua would have resented their presence, yet would have had little to do with them.

The Jewish expectation for a political leader, (a Messiah or “savior”) had been introduced in parts of Isaiah, which was probably written during or just after the Babylonian captivity. It refers to the restoration of the nation of Israel. (http://www.jewfaq.org/mashiach.htm). In Yeshua’s day there was a widespread hope among Jews that a Messiah would lead the people in a revolt to establish the “kingdom of God,” in which Jews would be in charge and the world’s wealth would be distributed evenly, not condensed in Roman hands and aristocratic families. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_messiah_claimants). Josephus, writing in the late first century, explains why Jews were so inspired by these patriotic dreams:
“That which chiefly excited them to war was an ambiguous prophecy, which was also found in the sacred books, that at that time someone, within their country should arise, that should obtain the empire of the whole world. For this they had spoken of one of their nation; and many wise men were deceived with the interpretation” (Josephus, Wars of the Jews.)

Two secular Roman historians say something similar:
“There had spread all over the Orient an old and established belief, that it was fated for men coming from Judea to rule the world.” (Seutonius, Life of Vespasian, 4.5.)
“The majority [of the Jews] were convinced that the ancient scriptures of their priests alluded to the present as the very time when the Orient would triumph and from Judea would go forth men destined to rule the world.” (Tacitus, Histories 5.13.)

Throughout the first century revolutionary groups of zealots led by hopeful messianic leaders commonly formed, promised apocalyptic deliverance, but achieved nothing lasting. The Qumran community, who compiled the Dead Sea Scrolls, was one such group. They had a pathological hatred for the Romans (whom they called the “Kittim.”) They also despised the Sadducees, who they regarded as Rome’s lackeys. After years of Roman domination, they dreamed of a bloody revenge. A part of the Scrolls describes a fantasy of a battle in which the Kittim were crushed:
“This shall be a time of salvation for people of God, and age of dominion for all the members of His company, and of everlasting destruction for the company of Satan… The dominion of the Kittim shall come to an end and iniquity shall be vanquished, leaving no remnant for the sons of darkness, there shall be no escape. The sons of righteousness shall shine over all the ends of earth; they shall go on shining until all the seasons of darkness are consumed and, at the season appointed by God, His exalted greatness shall shine eternally to the peace, blessing, glory, and long life of all the sons of light” (http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/scroll...ish/07.htm). The leader of the army who led them in this fantasized battle is unequivocally called the “messiah.” They were obviously fanatical and, as things turned out, rather deluded, as neither God nor a successful messiah ever made an appearance.

The poorer classes must have pondered over this political pipe dream. It’s not hard to imagine that any charismatic Jew brave enough to claim he was the messiah could soon collect a gang of Galilean paupers to back him up, particularly if he was said to be David’s descendant. A young Yeshua must have wondered who this messiah was going to be.

As most Essenes were celibate, Yeshua may not have had a family of his own. Nor would he have been bothered with accumulating wealth. He was a man with an altogether different agenda. I think he made a career out of preaching about his political aspirations for Israel.

Most young men are irked by any imposition on their freedom. If they are poor and have little hope for a positive future, their frustration escalates. In most cultures, identity and self-respect are aligned with religious and ethnic affiliation. Bad feelings against foreigners boil over if these features of identity are compromised. Picture young Arabs in the Gaza strip for the modern equivalent.

Yeshua was young, poor, oppressed, and almost certainly a religious idealist.