R. G. Price - On the Mythic Jesus

[Cinjin]

So yes, I would like to hear a counter-argument, but you can just give me the cliff notes if you don't want to spend another 20 minutes.

No, this cannot be reduced to the length of a bible verse. Some things are far too complex to be handled with a platitude.

I'll write it out on WordPerfect and then paste it here. My fellow atheists may enjoy it as well.

"I'll be back"......said the soon to be divorced ex-governor of California.

You won't be wasting your time Min ... I'm interested in reading it too.

[Minimalist]

Part I.

The position seems kind of reactionary to me, to assume a person as historically located as Jesus is false.

What historical locations might those be? Not a single Greco-Roman or Jewish writer in the early first century has anything to say about “jesus.” Before you trot out Tacitus and Suetonius know that both of these were 2d century writers. Suetonius, in Life of Claudius, mentions one “Chrestus” and predictably xtians jump on that and say he means “Christus” because what the hell...it’s only 1 letter difference. Well, “whole” and “whore” are one letter different, too and convey completely different ideas. Further, Claudius became emperor in 41 after the assassination of Caligula and xtians claim their boy was dead while Tiberius was emperor so to then assert that Chrestus/Christus was in Rome causing trouble years later seems silly even by xtian standards. But they are desperate. Chrestus was a common Greek name and meant “Good.” Suetonius also has a brief mention of xtians in the Life of Nero:

“Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition.”

This line is placed between crackdowns on crooked innkeepers and drunken charioteers. He does not say what kind of punishment. In fact, it could easily be a reference to the aforementioned followers of Chrestus ( Chrestianos rather than Christianos) which some well-meaning scribe thought he was correcting because, again, its only one letter difference. We do not have evidence one way or the other so I’ll let it pass. More to the point, Suetonius does not mention xtians with regard to the Great Fire of 64 which is so near and dear to the hearts of xtians in Tacitus. The problem is, no one else mentions this either and therein lies the rub with Tacitus.

It is important to understand that Tacitus and the heretofore unmentioned Pliny the Younger were good friends and Suetonius was a junior officer on Pliny’s staff when he was governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. C 110 AD Pliny was appointed governor of Bithynia-Pontus by Trajan and duly took Suetonius with him. Pliny died in 112 AD so we have a pretty firm date for the following correspondence between Pliny and Trajan. Pliny issued an edict forbidding secret meetings and then ended up arresting a group which called itself xtians for violating that order. He wrote to Trajan:

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.

It would have been wonderful had Pliny expanded upon what he considered “depraved, excessive superstition” ( recall the words of Suetonius!) but he did not. One wonders if he would have mentioned the silly idea that these xtians worshiped a criminal who had been crucified by a Roman magistrate but magically came back to life? Given the recounting of their activities he did give it seems that he might have thought the emperor would find such a belief amusing, but, he disappoints us with his brevity. We will never know if Pliny had run into a random gnostic group but I have always found this line “sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god “ to be an interesting choice of words. “As to a god” rather than a god himself? Odd.

Even more telling is Trajan’s reply:

You observed proper procedure, my dear Pliny, in sifting the cases of those who had been denounced to you as Christians. For it is not possible to lay down any general rule to serve as a kind of fixed standard. They are not to be sought out; if they are denounced and proved guilty, they are to be punished, with this reservation, that whoever denies that he is a Christian and really proves it--that is, by worshiping our gods--even though he was under suspicion in the past, shall obtain pardon through repentance. But anonymously posted accusations ought to have no place in any prosecution. For this is both a dangerous kind of precedent and out of keeping with the spirit of our age.

The point of all this is that no where in Pliny’s letter or Trajan’s reply is there the slightest hint of anger with xtians for having burned down the capitol a mere 45 years earlier. You would think that these Roman aristocrats would harbor some resentment for that, no? But the mildness of Trajan’s reply - allowing pardon through repentance - seems oddly misplaced to a group which the Tacitus’ story would have us believe damn near burned Rome to the ground and who were brutally punished by Nero. But not a word or even a hint of that comes through. Suetonius, who as a junior officer could easily be seen holding the stylus and writing down the confessions of these xtians that Pliny was questioning, doesn’t seem to know anything about them being involved in the fire, either.

Even more to the point, no other ancient writer...xtian or otherwise...makes reference to that passage in Tacitus, either.

http://carrington-arts.com/cliff/Nero.htm

According to Tacitus, alone, Nero blamed the Christians for the fire in Rome. Annals, XV. This passage is not referred to in any other pagan, nor Christian writings until 400 CE. The Fantastic details of the sufferings of the Christians - dressed in animal hides and torn apart by dogs, crucified, and used as human torches - fits the pornographic masochistic obsession of the early Church. The sordid details of flesh torn and blood copiously shed is repulsive to the modern mind. For some reason the early Church wallowed in graphic descriptions of virgins violated and gored to death by bulls, old men crucified suffering horrific tortures and not to mention the over-fed lions of the Colosseum. By the way, the Romans did not feed their lions exclusively on Christians, any old mal-content would do; and more often did.



Eusebius, when the Church was triumphant in the 4th century, after the ‘persecutions’ could only find 146 martyrs in the history. As we shall see, in Lactantius, between Domitian in the nineties and Decius in the late 3rd century there was a long peace where the Church was not persecuted. There was then a brief period of political persecution, especially under Diocletian, before his successor formed an alliance with them in the beginning of the 4th century. Constantine defeated his political opponents with the assistance of the Christians and recognized the fact when he held power. This period, of the Ante & Post-Nicene Fathers, knows nothing of Nero’s fire and its Christian victims.

The reference above to 400 AD is to the Chronica of Sulpicius Severus a 5th century writer who wrote (without crediting Tacitus, btw):

CHAPTER XXIX.

Is the meantime, the number of the Christians being now very large, it
happened that Rome was destroyed by fire, while Nero was stationed at
Antium. But the opinion of all cast the odium of causing the fire upon the
emperor, and he was believed in this way to have sought for the glory of
building a new city. And in fact, Nero could not by any means he tried
escape from the charge that the fire had been caused by his orders. He
therefore turned the accusation against the Christians, and the most cruel
tortures were accordingly inflicted upon the innocent. Nay, even new kinds
of death were invented, so that, being covered in the skins of wild beasts,
they perished by being devoured by dogs, while many were crucified or slain
by fire, and not a few were set apart for this purpose, that, when the day
came to a close, they should be consumed to serve for light during the
night. In this way, cruelty tint began to be manifested against the
Christians. Afterwards, too, their religion was prohibited by laws which
were enacted; and by edicts openly set forth it was proclaimed unlawful to
be a Christian.

Contrast this with the supposed writings of Tacitus:

Yet no human effort, no princely largess nor offerings to the gods could make that infamous rumor disappear that Nero had somehow ordered the fire. Therefore, in order to abolish that rumor, Nero falsely accused and executed with the most exquisite punishments those people called Christians, who were infamous for their abominations. The originator of the name, Christ, was executed as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius; and though repressed, this destructive superstition erupted again, not only through Judea, which was the origin of this evil, but also through the city of Rome, to which all that is horrible and shameful floods together and is celebrated. Therefore, first those were seized who admitted their faith, and then, using the information they provided, a vast multitude were convicted, not so much for the crime of burning the city, but for hatred of the human race. And perishing they were additionally made into sports: they were killed by dogs by having the hides of beasts attached to them, or they were nailed to crosses or set aflame, and, when the daylight passed away, they were used as nighttime lamps. Nero gave his own gardens for this spectacle and performed a Circus game, in the habit of a charioteer mixing with the plebs or driving about the race-course. Even though they were clearly guilty and merited being made the most recent example of the consequences of crime, people began to pity these sufferers, because they were consumed not for the public good but on account of the fierceness of one man.

Note that not even Severus includes the stuff about Pilate and Tiberius and again he fails to cite as his source one of the most famous historians of the Roman world? Really? How far does one have to go to strain credulity? The failure of anyone to note Tacitus’ writing on the subject is a clear indication that this passage was a later forgery based on the obscure Severus’ fable of Nero punishing multitudes of xtians. Does it not strike you as odd that Pliny would write over 40 years later of his general unfamiliarity with xtians when there were supposedly multitudes of them in Rome itself?

I know you want to believe but there comes a point when you have to say, enough.

I’ll deal with Paul next. This is getting too long.

[Minimalist]

Wow, are you also questioning the historicity of Paul?

Part II - Saul/Paul

There are few historical markers in Paul but the few that there are cause problems.

One of them is in 2 Corinthians which is, ironically, considered one of the authentic Pauline epistles by scholars. It contains this escapade.

2 Corinthians 11

32 In Damascus the governor, under Aretas the king, was guarding the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desiring to arrest me; 33 but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and escaped from his hands.

Now, for reasons which should soon be obvious, xtians try to twist their scrotums into knots showing that the Aretas in question was Aretas IV, king of Nabatea who died in 40 AD. Aretas is not mentioned in any of the gospel accounts but Josephus steps in to save the day. Aretas’ daughter was married to Herod Antipas and when he divorced her in order to marry Herodias, wife of his brother Philip, Aretas attacked Antipas’ territory and whipped his army. This was a bad idea as attacking a Roman ally usually was. When last we hear of Aretas IV he is fleeing the army of the governor of Syria, Lucius Vitellius, who had been ordered to go after Aretas IV by Tiberius around 36 AD. Vitellius took the opportunity to replace the long-serving praefect of Judaea, Pontius Pilate as well as the high priest Caiaphas. Before he could catch up with Aretas word came that Tiberius had died and Vitellius suspended his campaign awaiting further orders from the new Emperor Caligula. So Aretas survived.

Now xtians have concocted all sorts of explanations for this discrepancy. Aretas IV never ruled Damascus. It was a Greco-Roman town, part of what was known as the Decapolis under the eye of the governor of Syria who was based in Antioch. Xtians have suggested some sort of “settlement of the east” but ancient writers do not seem to know anything about it. What we do know is that when the aforementioned Philip died his territories were ordered added to Syria by Tiberius. Upon his accession to the throne, Caligula countermanded that order and appointed his boyhood friend, Herod Agrippa to the vacated throne. Then, in 39, Caligula booted Herod Antipas into retirement and added Galilee and Perea to Herod Agrippa’s realm. That’s it. In 41 Caligula was murdered and Herod Agrippa (who had spent most of his time in Rome with Caligula) was involved in the ascension of Claudius ( another boyhood friend!) to the throne. Claudius promptly gave Judaea and Samaria to Herod Agrippa thereby reuniting the kingdom of Herod the Great under one ruler for the first time since 4 BC. In all of this...there is not a word about Damascus OR Aretas IV who was probably still trying to get the shit out of his pants after his fortunate escape. However, with typical circular logic xtians insist that the Romans must have “given” Damascus to Aretas because “Paul” says so. A glance at a map will show the utter absurdity of the idea.



Damascus is far to the north whereas Nabatea is well to the south. Suggesting that the Romans “gave” Damascus to Aretas would be akin to the US telling Mexico “sorry about the Mexican War...you can have Nevada back. Oh, and good luck getting to it, because we are keeping Arizona, New Mexico and California.” Moreover, when Jewish rebels attacked the 12th legion as it withdrew from Jerusalem in 66, Josephus recounts that the good citizens of Damascus rose up and massacred the Jews in residence which certainly makes it seem as if it were a Roman town.

So....is “Paul” full of shit? Maybe not.

There was a king Aretas III of Nabatea who did take and rule Damascus for a while. The only problem for xtians is that he captured it c 84 BC and lost it to Pompey the Great when he came rolling through with his legions in 64 BC. The Romans controlled Damascus after that. It was a valuable piece of real estate as the western terminus of the silk road. The Romans did not give prime real estate away to people who not so long before were on the top of the Most Wanted list.

Of course by now you must have sensed the problem. We actually DO have a King Aretas ruling Damascus which makes “Paul’s” James Bond style escape at least possible. The only problem is the time. 84-64 BC is inconvenient to the bible story. In fact, inconvenient is the wrong word... it blows it out of the fucking water.

But that is not the only problem. Then there is Corinth itself. In 146 BC a Roman consul by the name of Lucius Mummius sacked Corinth and, tired of the Greeks constant scheming sent a message by leveling the city. The message was clear. Cut The Shit...We Are In Charge. Corinth remained a vacant lot until Julius Caesar decided to settle a colony of his veterans there (always pragmatic those Romans...like Carthage the site was simply too valuable to be left vacant) in 44 BC.

Of course Caesar was killed in 44 and from 44 to 31 civil war raged with Greece being a primary battleground. It is unlikely that there was any great growth going on until Augustus settled things down after Actium. Supposedly by the time old Paul gets there in the 50's AD Corinth is a thriving town with a substantial Jewish population and even some xtians. But. History and archaeology suggest otherwise.

In 67 Nero decided to hack a canal through the isthmus of Corinth a monumental task using manual labor but hey..when you’re the Emperor you can do what you want. Titus Flavius Vespasianus, then campaigning in Galilee as part of his mission to crush the Great Revolt sent Nero 6,000 slaves to use in the construction. It isn’t hard to figure out where he got them from.

I took this photo of the modern canal completed in 1893.



It goes just as far in the other direction but the work did not continue after Nero’s death. The next thing we hear about Corinth is the rather disquieting news that Vespasian, now Emperor after 69, had to ‘re-found’ the colony as it was not thriving. So...on the one hand we have “Paul” portraying Corinth as a going concern with lots of Jews and on the other Vespasian regards the colony as a flop...and archaeology backs Vespasian. The city began to grow but this is not the end of the problems for old Paul.
A second century Greek geographer named Pausanias traveled extensively and left a detailed account of his travels.

http://www.theoi.com/Text/Pausanias2A.html

Corinth is no longer inhabited by any of the old Corinthians, but by colonists sent out by the Romans.

For a man who was fascinated by shrines and temples and wrote about everything he could find the fact that he found neither xtians nor Jews in Corinth nor synagogues or churches or even shrines in the mid 2d century should be a problem.

When you add Pausanias to Vespasian to Nero and the failure of Caesar’s colony to grow you end up with a serious credibility problem for old Paul....and we haven’t even considered the nonsense written in the book of acts.

I’ll give you some time to digest.

[DeistPaladin]

Thank you, Min. As always a trove of historical data. I'd like to add some problems with the Christian story from a theological-scriptural angle.

Bart Ehrman has written extensively on the problems of interpolation, later additions and pseudo-epigraphy with sacred writings of that time. It wasn't uncommon if you wanted to push a certain theological agenda to "discover" the writings of a more famous past theologian (your own writings signed with his name). Roughly half the epistles attributed to Paul are considered to be of questionable authenticity by Bible scholars.

Scriptures could be altered too, to suit the needs of a particular church. The Ebionite Christians had a variation of "Matthew" while the Marcionite Christians had their own version of "Luke" (the divisions between the two brands are apparent in the differences between the Jesus character of both Gospels). Even the modern Bible contains well-known examples of later additions. The ending of Mark 16 (verses 9-17) was not part of the original. Surely the resurrection narrative would have been something the "eye-witness accounts" would have gotten right the first time but apparently not.

So you can see already if you're trying to use scriptural testimony as historical verification, you're already standing on shaky ground before we even get into close examination of any verses.

Now you've used the "would they die for a lie" apology often touted by defenders of the faith. Beyond the problems of obvious special pleading with this argument (I'm guessing you don't use it to validate the followers of David Koresh, Jim Jones or the Hale-Bopp "Heaven's Gate" cultists, and these are examples who live in the modern day, not during a time of ancient superstition), you're using folklore to prove mythology.

I could just as easily ask, if Superman was not who he said he was, why would Lois Lane allow herself to be taken off the top a skyscraper in his arms. She was a smart, perceptive woman and a reporter. Surely if she had any doubts about Superman's ability to fly, she would never have agreed to be carried off a skyscraper in his arms. Furthermore, a man of such moral character as Superman could not have been either crazy or lying about what he was. And did he not match his words with great deeds? We are left with the only possibility that he was who he said he was. Oh, sorry, that's the "Liar, Lunatic or Lord" argument. I digress.

Getting back to Paul, he offers very little in his epistles about the life of Jesus, and what he does say is either of theological problems or doesn't fit with the Christian folklore about the history of their church. For example, 1Cor 15 is often touted by notable apologists like Habermas as documentation of the history of the "early church", and it is full of problems. I can go verse-by-verse but the biggest issue is in verse 8 where he flatly denies that this "Christ" had lived during his lifetime.

1Cor 15:8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he was seen to me

Indeed, one of the most curious things about Paul's story in my mind was how could such a man have been the chief prosecutor of the Jews and yet not a witness to Jesus at any point during the latter's controversial three-year career? Second, if Paul was such a star prosecutor, why does his betrayal and conversion to the persecuted Christians go unmentioned by Jewish authorities? For that matter, why do the Jews have nothing to write about Christianity during the first century, since by Christian accounts they were such a big problem for them?

[Hunted By A Freak]

http://www.rationalrevolution.net/articl...tory.htm#3

The majority of people in the world today assume or believe that Jesus Christ was at the very least a real person. Perhaps he wasn't really "the Messiah", perhaps he was not "The Son of God", and perhaps he didn't actually perform miracles and rise from the dead, but he really was a great moral teacher who traveled around Galilee with followers and got arrested by the Jews and crucified by the Romans right?

Not likely. In fact, a close examination of the evidence shows that the best explanation for the story of "Jesus Christ" is what we call "mythology". The case that I will be outlining here is that there never was any "Jesus Christ" nor any meaningful real life basis for the story of "Jesus Christ".

It's funny how skeptics think they understand the bible in it's totality. Never realizing that they only have a small glimpse of the overall picture

Like many other religious figures, "Jesus Christ" began as a theological concept, was later used as a character in allegorical stories, and was then historicized as someone whom people believed really existed. The belief in a literal "human" Jesus most likely emerged as eucharist rituals and theology developed around the concept of the "flesh" and "blood" of Christ and these concepts merged with allegorical narratives about the figure.

Can someone here give me a time frame for when this theological concept was first started or by whom? Fine I'll read the article....let you know what I think some other day, but really this is to easy to debunk.

[Faith No More]

It's funny how skeptics think they understand the bible in it's totality. Never realizing that they only have a small glimpse of the overall picture

It's funny how Christians always assume that those in disagreement with the bible just can't understand it. Get off your high horse.

[SleepingDemon]

It is always amusing how fervently christians will argue historical accuracy in regards to a history that does not follow history. Is it simple coincidence that a man so vital to the human race seems to be little more than a combination of mythologies rolled into one? Demigods were a popular concept, in fact almost every mythological hero in antiquity was the son of one deity or another. Greek mythology has a lot written concerning Hera's jealousy concerning Zeus' many affairs and subsequent offspring with mortals. Christian mythology itself fancies the idea with both Jesus and the nephilim in the old testament. Christian's version of history has themselves being a scourge of the Roman empire, but actual history shows them as being little more than small cults until Constantine legalized christianity. Furthermore, Rome's adoption of christianity as it's state religion later on, and the subsequent rewriting of its history, combined with the early church's widespread practice of book burning more than sufficiently explains the discrepancy between biblical history and actual history. Christianity itself was manufactured over the course of centuries during 1000 and some odd years of Roman rule of Europe.

---

Jesus as a purely mythological figure isn't that much of a stretch when you compare him to someone like Cleopatra, who was purposefully removed from history by her brother, yet we have more evidence supporting Cleopatra's existence than that of Jesus. And Min, you are my Jesus.

[Minimalist]

but really this is to easy to debunk.

That promises to be entertaining.

[Zenith]

However, when you go on to say,

b) I do believe that people are rather to take a historical person and fill him with fairytales, rather than creating one from scratch.

most xtians will draw the line as soon as you say "so, then you think that Zeus and Osiris and Thor and Quetzlcoatl and Shiva and Enki and Borvo and Asshur and Astarte and Sin and Marduk, etc., etc, etc. also have an actual person behind them.

Well, it is possible, at least for some of them.

Again we come full circle to the idea of a "founder." Was Osiris real? If not, explain how Egyptian religion lasted from sometime before 3000 BC to the 4th century AD when it was forcibly stamped out by xtians? Greek mythology begins in the Middle Bronze Age and continues for 2 millenia....how could it have done so without an actual Zeus?

I didn't mean that: Zeus was not the founder of the greek 'religion', neither Osiris the founder of the egyptian 'religion'. And It doesn't matter how much time the religion lived.

Anyway, regarding the existence of Jesus Christ, it's like this:
- we have Islam, the Qur'an, the stories about Muhammud, what he did, etc. Did Muhammud exist or was created afterwards? (and I've heard no one so far claiming that Muhammud is actually the result of a conspiracy)
- We have Buddhism - though I didn't study Buddhism, I know it's about the teachings of Buddha. Now, who denies the existence of Buddha?
- We have (or, had) Zoroastrism, which seems to have been based on Zoroaster. But who claims that Zoroaster never existed?
As about Judaism, we don't say that if Judaism existed, then YHWH exists, but that if Judaism existed, then most surely its founder, Moses, existed.

These above are other reasons I think it's foolish to firmly claim that the Christianity's founder never existed.

And the least seed of truth about Jesus Christ should be something like: A Jewish man in the land of the Jews claiming to be the Messiah, who was ok (i.e. did not teach blatant things against the law, like "go and rape every child and virgin you find!"), and lived by the jewish laws as other jews, but taught somewhat strange things for the jews, like proselytism, and finally got killed by the romans - all these seem very plausible.

That goes against what you've quoted:

The majority of people in the world today assume or believe that Jesus Christ was at the very least a real person. Perhaps he wasn't really "the Messiah", perhaps he was not "The Son of God", and perhaps he didn't actually perform miracles and rise from the dead, but he really was a great moral teacher who traveled around Galilee with followers and got arrested by the Jews and crucified by the Romans right?

Not likely. ...there never was any "Jesus Christ" nor any meaningful real life basis for the story of "Jesus Christ".... "Jesus Christ" began as a theological concept, was later used as a character in allegorical stories, and was then historicized as someone whom people believed really existed.

And if you believe that the guy you've quoted is right and I'm wrong, then perhaps you can prove me how the hypothesis I wrote above is refuted.

most xtians will draw the line as soon as you say "so, then you think that Zeus and Osiris and Thor and Quetzlcoatl and Shiva and Enki and Borvo and Asshur and Astarte and Sin and Marduk, etc., etc, etc. also have an actual person behind them. At that point they bail out and resort to special pleading that they only mean the "real god."

I didn't make an objective of life to convert people to my beliefs (i.e. my "truths"). I don't care what everyone believes, or what most believe.
As about methods used: if it is very possible that a Jesus ever existed, with a "seed of truth", I don't agree with using lies (e.g. promoting something that is perhaps impossible) to convince people of the "truth". That's politics: picking one side and doing everything you can to protect it and to throw dirt on all others, to promote your theory and convince people of your truth, never caring who's right and who's wrong about anything. This is politics, which everybody does - christians, muslims, jews, atheists, satanists, wiccans, etc.

There had to be 100 people named Jesus, son of Joseph wandering around 1st Century Palestine. The fact still remains that we have no historical record of any of them doing anything....least of all coming back from the dead after being crucified by a Roman magistrate.

First off, I don't think there were quite 100 of people named Jesus. It is possible for that name not to be unpopular or fantastic, but the number you suggested is quite impossible. It is possible, however, to have been 100 people calling themselves the Messiah (i.e. Christ). And they needn't be sons of Joseph - it wasn't written anywhere in the Jewish Bible that the Messiah's father should have been called Joseph.

As about historical record, this looks a bit tricky: If Jesus Christ did indeed miracles, then anyone who could have written a historical record about them should have been or have become christians. Except stuff like the darkness during the death of Jesus (which should not quite be called a miracle, if it is possible to have been a solar eclipse or something like that).

Consider this:
a) During Jesus' life: the Jesus of the Gospels preached and walked only in Jewish areas. Now, if there were Jews that did consider him a false messiah and a deceiver, then they would have done everything possible to forbid and deny the jews' possibility to believe him (and saying, "look what wonderful miracles this Jesus did!" the effect was right the opposite) - so they would not mention them, so that no jew would have come to believe Him by them (i.e. people are usually very attracted to miracles), while among each other they would have called them sorcery or something. As about romans, like Pilate, they did not stand near to Jesus to see everything he did, but could have only heard that the jews say that he did some kind of supernatural things. The Pagans were also believing in their own miracles and foolish fairytales, while a politician/governor was most likely regarding such things he would have heard with skepticism, perhaps even superstitions, like all the rest, and was seeing of his own business (rather than asking everybody and going to that Jew, filled with enthusiasm).

b) After Jesus died: It is very possible that no one wrote anything about Jesus Christ during his life. So we talk about who could have written about this "failed messiah" that didn't redeem his people, which discouraged all people and all his followers that everything he did had worthed anything, because he was killed. There were a bunch of Jews that afterwards claimed that Jesus has resurrected - they are the ones who could have written about Jesus' miracles, and all that believed them. But all the other Jews that saw Jesus as a failed false messiah, would have never propagated the 'signs of the prophet', because they wanted to erase any trace that would have led to the deceiver, the "false messiah", especially because some people started to claim that Jesus got resurrected, and He started to get followers, again.

Secondly, "sons of god" walking around was far from a foreign concept in the Greco-Roman world.
Asclepius was the son of Apollo who in turn was the son of Zeus and a mortal woman. Hercules was also a son of Zeus and another mortal woman.....randy old goat that Zeus! These were far from unique examples.

I am aware of that. The "son of a god" was popular in the time of Jesus, even long before the time of Jesus. However, there is the difference that the Jews had also a definition (i.e. an understanding) of "son of God" which did not correspond to the greek version. And the Jewish culture has been lost by Christianity, in time, being replaced with the greek fashion.

One might almost think of this as part of the "sales pitch" to a Greco-Roman audience. As indeed the early xtian writer Justin Martyr wrote to Emperor Antoninus Pius c 160.

And when we say also that the Word, who is the first-birth of God, was produced without sexual union, and that He, Jesus Christ, our Teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven, we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter. For you know how many sons your esteemed writers ascribed to Jupiter: Mercury, the interpreting word and teacher of all; AEsculapius, who, though he was a great physician, was struck by a thunderbolt, and so ascended to heaven; and Bacchus too, after he had been torn limb from limb; and Hercules, when he had committed himself to the flames to escape his toils; and the sons of Leda, and Dioscuri; and Perseus, son of Danae; and Bellerophon, who, though sprung from mortals, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus.

Can you imagine a later xtian equating jesus to pagan gods and not being declared a heretic for it?

Well, you know, that's how religions pervert themselves to keep up with the fashion and new theories that become popular and to all which is modernism and "current thought". The same as nowadays you see a lot of people denying the violence in their religious scriptures (even muslims) because everywhere it is taught how evil such things are (so they struggle to turn them into metaphors). The same happens with embracing the modern science in their scriptures: We have "micracles in the Qur'an", and in the Christian Bible, even Hindu scriptures (I believe I do not mistake, it is Hindu scriptures) claim the Big Bang in their scriptures! And not to mention how all religions have embraced the theory of evolution! (And we see the Qur'an and the Bible mentioning a literal creation, while they say that it's metaphorical and it actually means... I don't know what). This way Justin the Martyr, in order to show Christianity more pleasant and acceptable, has struggled to make a bridge between paganism and Christianity, so that Christianity would become more close for the pagans to reach.

As far as the messiah goes, the Jews expected a military leader who would vanquish their enemies and gather all jews together and rebuild the temple. One can hardly blame them for rejecting what they were handed by the rather inept jesus.

Yeah, that's a good reason why they were satisfied with Jesus being thrown to the romans to be killed: if he was the messiah they expected, then He could have not died. And their great desire for a military savior that would relieve them of the romans is very understandable: nationalism, politics, their own desires. And the Christian theory is that Jesus Christ was supposed to be both the suffering (Isaiah 52.13-53.12) and the reliever (Zechariah 14, Jeremiah 33.15). The problem is that the prophecies about the Messiah are not compact: they are not found all in one place claiming "this is about the Messiah, only about the Messiah, all that must be known about Him, and nothing about him would be said afterwards or elsewhere: ...", which makes the verses quite interpretable, and could have allowed the Jews to pick the version they yearned for.

If you take the time to read Bart Ehrman you'll see that the growing anti-semitic tendencies of xtians follow an increasing tone of vehemence. And why not? The Jews were exceedingly unpopular. Between 66 and 135 there were 3 serious revolts which the Romans had to suppress. By the end of it they were a stateless people. As the second century writer Celsus wrote:

"You are fond of saying that in the old days this same most high god made these and greater promises to those who gave heed to his commandments and worshipped him. But at the risk of appearing unkind, I ask how much good has been done by those promises have done either the Jews before you or you in your present circumstances. And would you have us put out faith in such a god? Instead of being masters of the whole world, the jews today have no home of any kind."

Definitely an unpopular group!

I know about the Jewish wars with the Romans. They were very stubborn believing that the military Messiah would come and would relieve them from all occupation. That has cost them a lot, and it was foolish: they could have not forced the will/plan of God by believing that He would do as they desired.

But these can't forgive the Christians for slaughtering and persecuting the Jews since the middle ages onwards: they did that because they did not convert to their religion and because they killed the messiah! I'm sure that after the jews have finally been crushed they've ceased dreaming about the military messiah coming immediately - they were spread all around with no power and no hope at all.

In the 4th century, Constantine rewarded his xtian supporters in the war against Maxentius. While he legalized xtianity it was not until after the reign of Julian the Apostate that xtians realized they had to take steps to secure their livelihood. The pograms against the pagans began in that time period. When you give a church a sword control becomes simple. If you give me the power to torture and kill people I could have millions believing in a holy toaster in 20 years. "Greet with joy the warm bread which is the staff of life, brothers..... And if you argue I'll tie you to a stake and burn your ass."
Terrorism is not a new phenomenon.

I don't think the really violent approach began just after Justinian. The paganism was already dying in the time of Julian the Apostate, and he persecuted the christians, but not by a violent approach (i.e. he forbade them to go to the schools, because the schools were pagan, and was allowing them to go there only if they accepted the philosophers' religion as well, not only their philosophies, etc.). The violent persecution of pagans by christians began later, perhaps since 1000 or so. The first idea of a holy war in Christianity was in 1096-1099 (the first crusade), which was caused by the fact that the Roman (i.e. Byzantine) Empire was having real problems with the muslims, and a holy purpose could have convinced the Catholic Pope to give a help against the muslims, and the crusaders conquering and defending Jerusalem would have been a new target for the muslims (a bit of time to breath for the Roman Empire).

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Zeitgeist may have some good points, but I pretty much agree with Void. I dont think it is COMPLETE bullshit, but there is a hefty helping of Bullcrap in it.

This is nothing but conspiracy theory bullshit made into an emotional video.

They post the 9/11 conspiracy crap as well...that is a MAJOR red flag.

I remember a thing in the time Zeitgeist (the religious part) appeared: it had at the back the list of the "hundreds" of "son gods", the prophet Mohamed! (it was written "Mohamud or Mahomet, of Arabia"). I had also found a youtube video, after that time, in which muslims were joyful that they finally threw him out of the list :)) In that time I had also found a video on youtube defending Zeitgeist claiming that they got their info from secret, hidden, untranslated into english sources, that are hidden from the people, by some kind of christian conspiracy (as if nowadays all you hear is christian theology and no one dares to reject it publicly). And it was funny to think how the authors of Zeitgeist had access to those sources!

The funny thing about these theories of conspiracy is that they claim that no-one can see what they have seen and no-one can find out/know what they had found out and what they know, even that everybody around lies, and only that themselves are to be trusted and only they have the ultimate truth! And they use manipulation methods such as shouting, raising the voice in certain moments (emphasizing certain phrases), etc.

Oh, and I remember how a 20 years old girl said two years ago, firmly and frustrated, how the christianity has been founded by the priests in the middle age, and that in that time they decided to write the Bible! :))

[coffeeveritas]

Hey Min, I keep trying writing replies to this thread and my stupid internet drops out and erases them somehow! Looks like we're both having problems with this thread. Ok, I'm going to try to write a response in Word and paste it, if my internet will stay on for more than two minutes.