Evidence for Jesus outside the Bible?

[Hannah]

One could easily make the argument that a true Christian would not die for his beliefs so he/she could have more time on Earth to spread the gospel and save more souls.

Serious amounts of blood are being squeezed out of this stone.

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SHELL B

Randall Baer....converted to Christianity from the New Age. I don't know him but I listened to his testimony and found out about him. He used to be a very well known crystals expert. He converted but carried on going to conferences and events and would, instead of talking about crystals as expected by the audiences, talk about the dangers of the New Age and his conversion. Of course, it didn't go down too well as most people in the New Age are making money from it. One day, after leaving a conference at which he had spoken on stage, he was killed in a car accident. It was a lonely road, the car was run off the road, he had no car crash injuries and his briefcase had been opened and riffled through. He had just sent off the manuscript for his book, which he had probably discussed in the conference. I think new converts to Christianity are the most enthusiastic and prepared to take risks.

I think the comment has been blown out of proportion. It was a generalisation because we were not discussing real/genuine Christians. We were discussing martydom. I do believe the threat of the sword is a very good way of distunguishing between those who do and those who just say they do. Surely that generalisation is ok?? I really don't understand why this point is being focused on so much.

I posted the 'true Jew' quote to highlight the fact everything I say gets racked over with a fine tooth comb and anything deemed unacceptable receives pages of comments from lots of people. I think that is pretty noticeable.

[Shell B]

Randall Baer....converted to Christianity from the New Age. I don't know him but I listened to his testimony and found out about him. He used to be a very well known crystals expert. He converted but carried on going to conferences and events and would, instead of talking about crystals as expected by the audiences, talk about the dangers of the New Age and his conversion. Of course, it didn't go down too well as most people in the New Age are making money from it. One day, after leaving a conference at which he had spoken on stage, he was killed in a car accident. It was a lonely road, the car was run off the road, he had no car crash injuries and his briefcase had been opened and riffled through. He had just sent off the manuscript for his book, which he had probably discussed in the conference. I think new converts to Christianity are the most enthusiastic and prepared to take risks.

That's not even an example of martyrdom. His being killed was irrelevant. No one asked him to renounce his Christianity or die. I have no idea why you even posted this.

I posted the 'true Jew' quote to highlight the fact everything I say gets racked over with a fine tooth comb and anything deemed unacceptable receives pages of comments from lots of people. I think that is pretty noticeable.

Why direct that at me? I have disagreed with plenty of people here, many of them people whom I respect. I disagree with you on a few points. Why are you trying to paint me as a hypocrite or a bully because of it?

[The Grand Nudger]

A "Well Known Crystals Expert"

You may have taken a dip in the pools of delusion one too many times. I think I was more confident of your sanity when you were posting scripture, and that's saying something.

[Faith No More]

One could easily make the argument that a true Christian would not die for his beliefs so he/she could have more time on Earth to spread the gospel and save more souls.

Serious amounts of blood are being squeezed out of this stone.

I wasn't saying it was a valid argument, but it has as much basis in reality as any claim you've made. You recognize how much of a stretch this is, but somehow you think your claim is legitimate. I was just trying to show you that this argument is as valid as yours.

[Godscreated]

Hannah I understand what you are trying to say, I've recently made that statement about myself on this forum. However I am in a dispute with certain members of my church on this subject and I am taking the side of dying for Christ and they are not, yet I know they are true christians, they would die for their faith but believe they have the right to defend themselves if necessary and I do not. So you see it is a matter of believing what Christ taught and how much one thinks of there life. This is a subject of debate among christians (do you have the right to defend yourself when threatened as a christian). As I see it there is no precedent in the NT for defending yourself against an attack for being a christian. There are a few examples of flight.
I must disagree with you when you said that you would have died at the height of your christian belief, your statement was that no true christian would ever deny their faith in the face of death, yet you denied your faith for far less than your physical life and now you have given up the one eternal thing you have that is your soul. Do not get me wrong I'm not saying that at one time you were not a christian, though I have my doubts, a christian can give up their salvation, this is your right under the freewill God has given man.

[Hannah]

A "Well Known Crystals Expert"

You may have taken a dip in the pools of delusion one too many times. I think I was more confident of your sanity when you were posting scripture, and that's saying something.

What the hell is wrong with saying that??? I'm not a New Ager. I'm not into crystals. He was a crystals expert. That's a fact whether you believe in the power of crystals or not.

'what I write gets raked over with a fine toothed comb' springs to mind again.

[The Grand Nudger]

I love how you refer to your antique books when deciding whether or not you have a right to defend yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_self-defense
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_doctrine

Would seem to be all over that one.

[DeistPaladin]

Anyone invoking the "suffering martyrs" argument ("Would they die for a lie") has two fundamental problems with their reasoning:

1. They're using folklore to prove mythology.

As Min has observed somewhere on page 6 of this thread, Christians have promoted this Hollywood-esque folklore of the early church were Christians won the Romans over by refusing to leave their faith even in the face of torture and execution. In reality, even the very documents Christians cite, such as the letters of Pliny, the Christians were willing to renounce their faith. The image of martyrs holding their heads high as they bravely went to their deaths, looking forward to their union with their celestial lord, is one promoted strictly by Christian folklore and propaganda.

2. Special pleading

David Koresh, Jim Jones and the leader of the Heaven's Gate cult are examples of cult leaders willingly going to their deaths for what a rational person would know is a lie. There are many more examples of fanatics who die for their faith as well.

[The Grand Nudger]

Hannah, Randall Bear was a nutter. He was a nutter in every conceivable way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologist
These people are well known "crystals experts".

I'm trying to point out (to you) that you appear to be suffering from a bit of magical thinking, backed up by paranoia, and hinging on a complex of persecution. Each of these the indistinguishable marks of your "former" faith.

[Minimalist]

You said you believed Christians were never martyred.

You don't listen very well, do you, Hannah? The world is not ALWAYS or NEVER. Sometimes reality is a little more nuanced than that and I'm gathering that you don't handle nuance well, either.

Xtians were most assuredly persecuted during the Roman Empire. We have actual evidence in the form of decrees but they date from the middle of the 3d century. By that time not only had xtians become numerous enough to be notable but a series of significant disasters, military and otherwise, had hit the empire and one can just see these xtian shitwits ( as they do today everytime there is a fucking earthquake!) merrily proclaiming that its good news because it means fucking jesus is coming back. The Romans, concerned with far more practical issues, took great offense to these morons and their ludicrous joy at disaster.

In January 250, Decius issued an edict for the suppression of Christianity. The edict itself was fairly clear:

All the inhabitants of the empire were required to sacrifice before the magistrates of their community 'for the safety of the empire' by a certain day (the date would vary from place to place and the order may have been that the sacrifice had to be completed within a specified period after a community received the edict). When they sacrificed they would obtain a certificate (libellus) recording the fact that they had complied with the order.[2]

While Decius himself may have intended the edict as a way to reaffirm his conservative vision of the Pax Romana and to reassure Rome's citizens that the empire was still secure, it nevertheless sparked a "terrible crisis of authority as various Christian bishops and their flocks reacted to it in different ways." [2] Measures were first taken demanding that the bishops and officers of the church make a sacrifice for the Emperor,[9] a matter of an oath of allegiance that Christians considered offensive. Certificates were issued to those who satisfied the pagan commissioners during the persecution of Christians under Decius. Forty-six such certificates have been published, all dating from 250, four of them from Oxyrhynchus.[10][dubious – discuss] Christian followers who refused to offer a pagan sacrifice for the Emperor and the Empire's well-being by a specified date risked torture and execution.[11] A number of prominent Christians did, in fact, refuse to make a sacrifice and were killed in the process, including Pope Fabian himself in 250, and "anti-Christian feeling[s] led to pogroms at Carthage and Alexandria."[11] In reality, however, towards the end of the second year of Decius' reign, "the ferocity of the [anti-Christian] persecution had eased off, and the earlier tradition of tolerance had begun to reassert itself."[11] The Christian church, though, never forgot the reign of Decius whom they labelled as that "fierce tyrant"

Try to remember that Pliny, 150 years before Decius, did not give a rat's ass about religion. The law those xtians had broken was about holding secret meetings not religion. The Romans cared about sedition. They were notoriously tolerant of religion and incorporated many foreign cults into the Empire.

We have nothing from the Romans prior to Decius that they conducted anti-xtian pogroms as a matter of direct policy. This is not to say that there may not have been sporadic incidents across the empire where xtians were killed but we do not have any record of systematic persecution on the scale that later church writers invented. As Celsus tells us c 180 AD:

We are citizens of a particular empire with a particular set of laws, and it behooves the Christians at least to recognize their duties within the present context: namely, to help the emperor in his mission to provide for the common good; to cooperate with him in what is right and to fight for him if it becomes necessary, as though we were all soldiers or fellow generals. This is what a good man does: he accepts public office for the preservation of the law and of religion, if it becomes necessary for him to do so.

Even by 180 it can thus be seen that xtians were making a fucking nuisance of themselves and had attracted the attention of the upper classes.