I think it's interesting to research the number of people that were writing back in that area and time. That NONE OF THEM wrote ANYTHING AT ALL about some guy named Jesus should tell you a lot.
Then....when you research "Similarities of Jesus and Vishnu" and "Similarities of Jesus and Mithra" you should be able to piece the puzzle together.
Once again I will repeat what I said earlier on here:
"...there are probably no documents on him or the apostles because to the Romans and others they were not seen as important or worthy people to write about. Many of the stories of the gospels and the people involved were orally passed down from generation to generation and were eventually written about when the time was right. You and I both know Christians were tortured and killed the few hundred years after Jesus' death, so why would they hold on to any documents? If there were, they were destroyed..."
I am a History major in college and one thing you learn is that you will never find the primary sources you truly want sometimes. In the time when Roman's ruled, they only wrote about worthy people. They only cared for worthy people. Why would they write about the Jews, who were looked down upon, especially one who said he was King of the Jews?
When looking at history, you have to get in their mindset.
Why did the Jewish historian, Josephus, in his 20 volume history of the jews, make no mention of Jesus?
As for minor characters in historical records, there are millions of them. The historical records of the Greeks and Romans, and also of the Chinese, for that matter, contain the records of countless minor officials, statesmen, dissidents, criminals, and military officials, e.t.c.
Why are you pretending that there is no mention of Jesus because he was supposedly an unremarkable person who went largely unnoticed in his lifetime? If he was so insignificant then why did the Romans have him put to death?
I think it's interesting to research the number of people that were writing back in that area and time. That NONE OF THEM wrote ANYTHING AT ALL about some guy named Jesus should tell you a lot.
Then....when you research "Similarities of Jesus and Vishnu" and "Similarities of Jesus and Mithra" you should be able to piece the puzzle together.
Exactly. He was just an amalgamation of a number of earlier Mediterranean mystery religions, such as those you mentioned, and Dionysus, and Osiris, e.t.c.
Still, it does make perfect sense why Americans living in the 21st Century would base their outlook on life on a bastardization and co-option of a disparate 2000 year old Middle-Eastern belief system.
No wonder the Native Americans think the white man is crazy.
I think it's interesting to research the number of people that were writing back in that area and time. That NONE OF THEM wrote ANYTHING AT ALL about some guy named Jesus should tell you a lot.
Then....when you research "Similarities of Jesus and Vishnu" and "Similarities of Jesus and Mithra" you should be able to piece the puzzle together.
Once again I will repeat what I said earlier on here:
"...there are probably no documents on him or the apostles because to the Romans and others they were not seen as important or worthy people to write about. Many of the stories of the gospels and the people involved were orally passed down from generation to generation and were eventually written about when the time was right. You and I both know Christians were tortured and killed the few hundred years after Jesus' death, so why would they hold on to any documents? If there were, they were destroyed..."
I am a History major in college and one thing you learn is that you will never find the primary sources you truly want sometimes. In the time when Roman's ruled, they only wrote about worthy people. They only cared for worthy people. Why would they write about the Jews, who were looked down upon, especially one who said he was King of the Jews?
When looking at history, you have to get in their mindset.
Why did the Jewish historian, Josephus, in his 20 volume history of the jews, make no mention of Jesus?
As for minor characters in historical records, there are millions of them. The historical records of the Greeks and Romans, and also of the Chinese, for that matter, contain the records of countless minor officials, statesmen, dissidents, criminals, and military officials, e.t.c.
Why are you pretending that there is no mention of Jesus because he was supposedly an unremarkable person who went largely unnoticed in his lifetime? If he was so insignificant then why did the Romans have him put to death?
Actually he did, you just don't want to believe he did. To be honest, I don't know much on Josephus, but I saw both arguments and I can believe both, but even if he didn't write it wouldn't make me think or believe differently.
I am not pretending to think anything. Jesus portrayed himself as the Son of God, so to some he was just some loony guy probably. Romans put him to death because of what he was saying. So they ended his life and moved on. They didn't want him spreading "lies." Technically, the Romans never even put him to death. The people decided.
~Carter~
You can spend your time alone, redigesting past regrets, oh
or you can come to terms and realize
you're the only one who can't forgive yourself, oh
makes much more sense to live in the present tense - Present Tense
Actually he did, you just don't want to believe he did.
Actually, this has nothing to do with me. The mention in Josephus is a forgery. This is accepted by the majority of historians. It has nothing to do with me.
Actually he did, you just don't want to believe he did.
Actually, this has nothing to do with me. The mention in Josephus is a forgery. This is accepted by the majority of historians. It has nothing to do with me.
Actually he did, you just don't want to believe he did.
Actually, this has nothing to do with me. The mention in Josephus is a forgery. This is accepted by the majority of historians. It has nothing to do with me.
The article content of this page came from Wikipedia
Not that there's anything wrong with Wikipedia. And there are counter arguments from many scholars on that same page detailing why the mention of Jesus is a forgery.
Actually he did, you just don't want to believe he did.
Actually, this has nothing to do with me. The mention in Josephus is a forgery. This is accepted by the majority of historians. It has nothing to do with me.
Again,...be careful.
The extent of the Josephus interpolation appears to be a much debated issue. There is by no means a scholarly consensus willing to dismiss it in its entirety - there are equally informed parties on both sides of the debate.
You make much grander, more definite claims than most of the experts actually qualified to comment.
It's interesting that not one writer before the 4th century – not Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, etc. – in all their condemnations of paganism, makes a single reference to Josephus’ words about jesus.
The 3rd century Church 'Father' Origen spent half his life and a quarter of a million words contending against the pagan writer Celsus. Origen drew on all sorts of proofs and witnesses to his arguments in his fierce defence of Christianity. He quotes from Josephus extensively. Yet even he makes no reference to this 'golden paragraph' from Josephus, which would have been the ultimate rebuttal. In fact, Origen actually said that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ."
Origen did not quote the 'Jesus paragraph' because this paragraph had not yet been written. It was added later by Christian scribes in an attempt to promote the historicity of Jesus.
The mention of Jesus in Josephus 'At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one should call him a man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. He was the messiah. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. For he appeared to them on the third day, living again, just as the divine prophets had spoken of these and countless other wondrous things about him. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not died out.'(Antiquities 18.3.3)
'The problems with this passage should be obvious to anyone with even a casual knowledge of Josephus.... He was thoroughly and ineluctably Jewish and certainly never converted to be a follower of Jesus. But this passage contains comments that only a Christian would make: that Jesus was more than a man, that he was the messiah, and that he arose from the dead in fulfillment of the scriptures. In the judgment of most scholars, there is simply no way Josephus the Jew would or could have written such things. So how did these comments get into his writings?' (Bart Ehrman - 'Did Jesus Exist?')
It's interesting that not one writer before the 4th century – not Justin, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Tertullian, Cyprian, Arnobius, etc. – in all their condemnations of paganism, makes a single reference to Josephus’ words about jesus.
The 3rd century Church 'Father' Origen spent half his life and a quarter of a million words contending against the pagan writer Celsus. Origen drew on all sorts of proofs and witnesses to his arguments in his fierce defence of Christianity. He quotes from Josephus extensively. Yet even he makes no reference to this 'golden paragraph' from Josephus, which would have been the ultimate rebuttal. In fact, Origen actually said that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ."
Origen did not quote the 'Jesus paragraph' because this paragraph had not yet been written. It was added later by Christian scribes in an attempt to promote the historicity of Jesus.
The mention of Jesus in Josephus 'At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one should call him a man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. He was the messiah. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. For he appeared to them on the third day, living again, just as the divine prophets had spoken of these and countless other wondrous things about him. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not died out.'(Antiquities 18.3.3)
'The problems with this passage should be obvious to anyone with even a casual knowledge of Josephus.... He was thoroughly and ineluctably Jewish and certainly never converted to be a follower of Jesus. But this passage contains comments that only a Christian would make: that Jesus was more than a man, that he was the messiah, and that he arose from the dead in fulfillment of the scriptures. In the judgment of most scholars, there is simply no way Josephus the Jew would or could have written such things. So how did these comments get into his writings?' (Bart Ehrman - 'Did Jesus Exist?')
And there you go again, mining for quotes. Did you read on? I did.
The "such things" to which he is referring is not the entry in its entirety, but the "extraordinary claims about Jesus in this passage" (About 6 lines further down on p60.)
"The majority of scholars of early Judaism, and experts on Josephus, think that...one or more Christian scribes "touched up" the passage a bit. If one takes out the obviously Christian comments, the passage may have been rather innocuous,..."
And that in its core form, "Josephus had some solid historical information about Jesus's life: Jesus was known for his wisdom and teaching; he was thought to have done remarkable deeds; he had numerous followers; he was condemned to be crucified by Pontius Pilate because of Jewish accusations brought against him; and he continued to have followers among the Christians after his death." p61
He goes on to say, regarding the extent and nature of the alleged interpolation that "there is in fact little in the Testimonium that is more like Eusebius than Josephus. It is far more likely that the core of the passage actually does go back to Josephus himself." (he references two additional scholars for that comment, Paget and Whealey.) - p64
He dedicates a large section of the chapter to this topic - read it all.
And there you go again, mining for quotes. Did you read on? I did.
The "such things" to which he is referring is not the entry in its entirety, but the "extraordinary claims about Jesus in this passage" (About 6 lines further down on p60.)
"The majority of scholars of early Judaism, and experts on Josephus, think that...one or more Christian scribes "touched up" the passage a bit. If one takes out the obviously Christian comments, the passage may have been rather innocuous,..."
And that in its core form, "Josephus had some solid historical information about Jesus's life: Jesus was known for his wisdom and teaching; he was thought to have done remarkable deeds; he had numerous followers; he was condemned to be crucified by Pontius Pilate because of Jewish accusations brought against him; and he continued to have followers among the Christians after his death." p61
He goes on to say, regarding the extent and nature of the alleged interpolation that "there is in fact little in the Testimonium that is more like Eusebius than Josephus. It is far more likely that the core of the passage actually does go back to Josephus himself." (he references two additional scholars for that comment, Paget and Whealey.) - p64
He dedicates a large section of the chapter to this topic - read it all.
'...there is little reason not to go further and conclude that, in the case of the TF, those interpolating scribes wrote the entire passage, to be inserted into the text by subsequent copyists.
...There are many reasons to suspect the Josephus passage/Testimonium Flavianum as a whole to be a forgery, a recounting of which can be found in my excerpted article "The Jesus Forgery: Josephus Untangled" and in the writings of Earl Doherty and Ken Olson, among others. I will only address a few of the arguments against authenticity here. For example, it has been noted previously that Josephus uses the exact phrase σοφὸς ἀνήρ or "wise man" elsewhere at Ant. 10.237, in a discussion of the biblical prophet Daniel (and the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar), about whom Josephus waxes on over several pages (Ant. 10.10 [Whiston]). It is Daniel here who is the σοφὸς ἀνήρ or "wise man," and he is afforded tremendous respect.
Yet, later in Josephus a mere 89 words - or only 60, in the "uninterpolated" passage - are reserved for this "wise man" and "doer of startling deeds," Jesus Christ, who had an entire "tribe" named after him (using an anachronistic term, as we shall see)! Meanwhile, Josephus writes at length in the next section about "a woman named Paulina," a great beauty whose seedy ravishing in the temple of Isis at Rome warrants almost 700 words.
Moreover, Josephus indicts his own people - the "leading men among us" - as fatally accusing the wondrous and wise Jesus, basically agreeing that these Jews were "Christ-killers," a calumny used in later centuries by Christians. It is difficult to believe Josephus would not have explored that admission of guilt to see if it was merited.
And there you go again, mining for quotes. Did you read on? I did.
The "such things" to which he is referring is not the entry in its entirety, but the "extraordinary claims about Jesus in this passage" (About 6 lines further down on p60.)
"The majority of scholars of early Judaism, and experts on Josephus, think that...one or more Christian scribes "touched up" the passage a bit. If one takes out the obviously Christian comments, the passage may have been rather innocuous,..."
And that in its core form, "Josephus had some solid historical information about Jesus's life: Jesus was known for his wisdom and teaching; he was thought to have done remarkable deeds; he had numerous followers; he was condemned to be crucified by Pontius Pilate because of Jewish accusations brought against him; and he continued to have followers among the Christians after his death." p61
He goes on to say, regarding the extent and nature of the alleged interpolation that "there is in fact little in the Testimonium that is more like Eusebius than Josephus. It is far more likely that the core of the passage actually does go back to Josephus himself." (he references two additional scholars for that comment, Paget and Whealey.) - p64
He dedicates a large section of the chapter to this topic - read it all.
'...there is little reason not to go further and conclude that, in the case of the TF, those interpolating scribes wrote the entire passage, to be inserted into the text by subsequent copyists.
...There are many reasons to suspect the Josephus passage/Testimonium Flavianum as a whole to be a forgery, a recounting of which can be found in my excerpted article "The Jesus Forgery: Josephus Untangled" and in the writings of Earl Doherty and Ken Olson, among others. I will only address a few of the arguments against authenticity here. For example, it has been noted previously that Josephus uses the exact phrase σοφὸς ἀνήρ or "wise man" elsewhere at Ant. 10.237, in a discussion of the biblical prophet Daniel (and the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar), about whom Josephus waxes on over several pages (Ant. 10.10 [Whiston]). It is Daniel here who is the σοφὸς ἀνήρ or "wise man," and he is afforded tremendous respect.
Yet, later in Josephus a mere 89 words - or only 60, in the "uninterpolated" passage - are reserved for this "wise man" and "doer of startling deeds," Jesus Christ, who had an entire "tribe" named after him (using an anachronistic term, as we shall see)! Meanwhile, Josephus writes at length in the next section about "a woman named Paulina," a great beauty whose seedy ravishing in the temple of Isis at Rome warrants almost 700 words.
Moreover, Josephus indicts his own people - the "leading men among us" - as fatally accusing the wondrous and wise Jesus, basically agreeing that these Jews were "Christ-killers," a calumny used in later centuries by Christians. It is difficult to believe Josephus would not have explored that admission of guilt to see if it was merited.
I doubt you did little more than cut and paste whatever quotes were made available to you from your one-stop-shop websites.
Bottom line - you are being intellectually dishonest in pressing Ehrman's work into the service you insist on.
Everything in his book, even his analysis of Jospehus is presented as evidence in favour of a historical Jesus, hence the strap line,...The Historical Argument FOR Jesus of Nazareth.
Bottom line - you are being intellectually dishonest in pressing Ehrman's work into the service you insist on.
Everything in his book, even his analysis of Jospehus is presented as evidence in favour of a historical Jesus, hence the strap line,...The Historical Argument FOR Jesus of Nazareth.
I'm sure it is. But he still admits that no written evidence exists to support an historical Jesus. And there's good reason for that - there is no evidence.
Bottom line - you are being intellectually dishonest in pressing Ehrman's work into the service you insist on.
Everything in his book, even his analysis of Jospehus is presented as evidence in favour of a historical Jesus, hence the strap line,...The Historical Argument FOR Jesus of Nazareth.
I'm sure it is. But he still admits that no written evidence exists to support an historical Jesus. And there's good reason for that - there is no evidence.
Back to square one.
He admits no such thing - again, he's written an entire book explaining the evidence. Your refusal to even consider what he might have to say (by reading the book, not just quotes that someone else mined for you, quotes which in isolation do not represent their purpose) in advance of reading it makes you appear somewhat fanatical, not to mention staggeringly arrogant.
He admits no such thing - again, he's written an entire book explaining the evidence. Your refusal to even consider what he might have to say (by reading the book, not just quotes that someone else mined for you, quotes which in isolation do not represent their purpose) in advance of reading it makes you appear somewhat fanatical, not to mention staggeringly arrogant.
So the original quote with the picture of him I posted above is a fake, is it? Did he say that, or didn't he?
He admits no such thing - again, he's written an entire book explaining the evidence. Your refusal to even consider what he might have to say (by reading the book, not just quotes that someone else mined for you, quotes which in isolation do not represent their purpose) in advance of reading it makes you appear somewhat fanatical, not to mention staggeringly arrogant.
So the original quote with the picture of him I posted above is a fake, is it? Did he say that, or didn't he?
You must've been asleep - I fear I'm at risk of repeating myself.
Yes he said it, but the implications are not as cut and dry as you'd like them to be. After that quote, he arrives at a very different conclusion to you, and has dedicated a book to explaining why. You've decided to take that little soundbite, (like any good quote miner) to characterise or otherwise dismiss the rest of his work without reading it. This is arrogance.
It's not entirely dissimilar to those religious apologists who very selectively quote Einstein and Hawking on the topic of god, and yet the slimy dishonesty of that particular move is probably quite obvious to you.
Were you not so obviously beholden to your biases and ready to reject any new informational source that challenges them, I'd keep insisting that you actually read the book.
Were you not so obviously beholden to your biases and ready to reject any new informational source that challenges them, I'd keep insisting that you actually read the book.
And if I did then I'd find the following:
'My main point is that whether the Testimonium is authentically from Josephus (in its pared-down form) or not probably does not ultimately matter for the question I am pursuing here. Whether or not Jesus lived has to be decided on other kinds of evidence from this. And here is why. Suppose Josephus really did write the Testimonium. That would show that by 93 CE - some sixty or more years after the traditional date of Jesus's death - a Jewish historian of Palestine had some information about him. And where would Josephus have derived this information? He would have heard stories about Jesus that were in circulation. There is nothing to suggest that Josephus had actually read the Gospels (he almost certainly did not) or that he did any kind of primary research into the life of Jesus by examining Roman records of any kind (there weren't any).'- Bart Ehrman - 'Did Jesus Exist?' (p.65)
Sure, he finds ways to try and prove the historicity of Jesus, but none of them have anything to do with the non-existent written record.
Let me guess? I'm being slimy in my dishonesty and arrogance, and a touch disengenuous?
The Roman dogma vs history
The history of Jesus and the history of Christianity that we know today is the dogma that the Roman empire forced on all its provinces. When Constantine converted to Christianity, Rome became the center of power also for Christianity and any challenging center was wiped out. What Jesus really said and meant will probably never be known.
A new wave of "Historical Jesus" research has emerged in the wake of the discovery in 1947 in Egypt of the ancient manuscripts that are known today as the "Nag Hammadi library" and as "Gnostic Gospels", and of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. Until then, little was known about the early Christians known as the Gnostics. "We've listened to the winners, and their story doesn't make any sense. So let's listen to the losers and see if their story makes more sense" (Freke).
The other gospels
Many gospels were written, including and besides the four official ones. The four official gospels were written in Greece in Greek, the earliest (Marks') dating from the year 70 and the last one (John's) dating from the second century after Christ. (The oldest manuscript of the gospels that we found dates from the fourth century, but we have fragments that have been dated from the mid second century and we can deduct the date of composition from references in the texts). There is general agreement that three of the official ones (the "synoptic" gospels) derive from a common source (or Luke's and Matthew's simply derive from Mark's), whereas John's is inherently different. One hypothesis is that John's and this common source derive, in turn, from a pre-existing text, called "Q", that has never been found. One of the banned gospels, the gospel of Judas Thomas, has been considered a potential candidate for "Q" or for something closer to "Q" than anything else we have found. Note that the very first gospel (70AD) was written when Christianity had already spread throughout the Roman Empire, and emperor Nero had already started persecuting Christians (64AD).
John's gospel is markedly different from the other three gospels: it names many people who are anonymous in the other three gospels and it includes two episodes (the wedding at Cana and the raising of Lazarus) that the other gospels seem curiously unaware of. It "sounds" more knowledgeable: it provides details about the early proselytizing of Jesus and the rivalry between Jesus' sect and John the Baptist's sect. The account of Jesus' trial and crucifixion is more credible. Yet, John's gospel is unquestionably a later work than the other three official gospels.
It is also likely that the gospels as we know them have been heavily rewritten after they were originally written. Papias of Hierapolis in 110 talks of the gospel of St Matthew as a collections of oracles, not of miracles.
All four official gospels were written after Paul wrote his letters. Paul's letters are the oldest Christian documents. But Paul admits he never met Jesus and, in fact, his letters contain almost no reference at all to Jesus' lives.
Irenaeus (at the end of the second century) is the first Christian writer who mentions the dogma of the four gospels. Before him there is no mention of those gospels as being the only "good" ones. Justin Martyr (150) does not mention a New Testament, does not mention Mark, Matthew, Luke or John. On the other hand, he mentions the "memoirs" of the apostles, which could be the letters and the "gospels" attributed to Peter and others (mostly not recognized by the Church) besides the letters of Paul and the acts of the Apostles. In 170 Tatian admits he was working on a new gospel that would summarize all the other ones, thereby implying that Christians were still writing and rewriting gospels based on their own assumptions and preferences, not on historical facts. Also in the second century, Clement of Alexandria admits that two versions of Mark's gospel existed but one was being suppressed because it contained two passages that should not be viewed by average Christians (both passages could be interpreted as Lazarus being Jesus' lover and his "resurrection" as being an "initiation" to some kind of sexual rite, the way most pagan "mysteries" implied a death and a rebirth). Thus, the texts were being chosen, edited and purged for the first two centuries of the Christian era. That process had solidified by the time Irenaeus wrote that there were only four gospels.
Irenaeus' choice was formalized in 325 at the council of Nicaea, where those four gospels became the official dogma of the Roman Church and all other histories of Jesus were banned.
Irenaeus picked only a fraction of the available literature on Jesus. He excluded some of the most popular texts, such as the gospel of Thomas and the gospel of the Hebrews (by far the two most popular texts among early Christians). Either the memory was lost of what was old and what was new (Irenaeus claims that Mark and Luke were eyewitness which of course they were not) or the Church was already at work to completely reinvent the story of Jesus to suit whatever ideology. For example, if one wanted people to believe in Paul's letters, then he would probably choose those four gospels over all the other ones. The fact is that the dogma immediately ignited a very contentious issue.
Texts outlawed by Rome paint a very different picture of Jesus' teaching, especially the ones written by the "gnostic" Christians. Sometimes Jesus appears as a sort of communist revolutionary, sometimes as a sort of Buddhist thinker. In the most ancient texts he rarely appears as the Jesus who makes miracles and ascended to heaven, and sometimes does not appear at all. Sometimes he barely appears at all, while others (James, Paul) are the predominant characters. Peter, the most famous of Jesus' followers, is actually a very minor figure in early Christian documents.
Today, it is sometimes difficult to understand why some gospels were banned. Several of the banned gospels are apparently consistent with the dogma: why ban them? The devil is probably in the details: in 325 Christianity had become the religion of the Roman empire and it was not nice to emphasize that it was the Romans who had killed Jesus; in 325 Christianity had taken the beliefs that would become the Catholic dogma, and it was not nice to emphasize that Jesus had brothers (although even the official gospels say so) or that Mary Magdalene was always with him (although even the official gospels say so) and it was nice to undermine Jesus' miracles. Most of the gospels may have been considered redundant (they didn't add anything meaningful to the story) and dangerous (they could stress aspects of Jesus' story that the Church would rather downplay).
The gnostic Christians were persecuted after Rome converted to Christianity and most of their texts were burned. The church also outlawed all other histories of Jesus but the four official ones.
The councils
Initially, there was strong disagreement among Christians about what Christianity was all about. The Christian dogma was formalized by a series of councils, whose conclusions were largely arbitrary. The council of Nicaea (325) mandated that only four gospels were true: the others were heretic. The council of Ephesus (431) sanctioned that the divine nature of Jesus was superior to his human nature. The council of Calcedonia (451) accepted pope Leone I's theory that Jesus was both human and divine (and this was based on Greek philosophy, not on historical evidence or on the gospels' testimony).
The historians
Other than the gospels, we know of early Christianity mainly through the Jewish historian Josephus (37-96 AD), but he himself became a Roman citizen and even an advisor to two emperors. Two centuries later, Eusebius and Irenaeus wrote about the origins of the Christian religion. Both of them basically codified Christianity as we know it. Irenaeus makes the oldest known claim that there are only four official gospels and the others are work of the devil. Eusebius (who was working for Constantine and even wrote his biography) compiled a history of the Roman church from Peter on (Eusebius wrote that the emperor is the vehicle of God on earth).
The early Christians
Rome was obviously not the place where Christianity had been born and was not the cultural center of the world. Christianity first spread in Palestine and Syria, then east to Armenia (the first country to convert) and to Greece, that was the cultural center of the empire. When the apostles spread, Peter went to Rome, but others went elsewhere. Notably, Taddeus went to Armenia.
Later, Paul went to Greece. The first community to call themselves Christians was in Syria. The man whom most (including Paul) considered the head of Christianity was James the Just, who remained in Palestine. These were all equal centers of Christianity. It was only after the Roman conversion that the Roman branch of Christianity became the official one, and the lineage back to Peter (the popes) was recognized as the only lineage worth knowing. It was then that only four gospels (probably written in Greece between 66 and the end of the second century) were accepted as true, even if for centuries several others had circulated. It was then that competing branches of Christianity were persecuted and annihilated.
What accounts for the rapid spread of Christianity around the Roman empire? It is not clear how many Christians there really were before Constantine forced the entire Roman empire to convert to Christianity, but it is reasonable to assume that at least a good number of them lived in Rome and in various provinces of the middle East. In the year 70, following a Jewish rebellion, Roman legions destroyed Jerusalem and expelled the Jews. That act may be responsible for the spread of Christianity: Jews of the Christian faith certainly ended up (as slaves) in Rome and probably (as refugees) in several middle-eastern provinces. While it is a mystery how they could make so many proselytes so quickly, it is quite normal that they could be found all around the eastern Roman empire. The number of proselytes (if it was indeed as high as the Church wants us to believe) could be explained in a simple way by assuming that there were already many Christians in Palestine itself, which, of course, would be possible only if Christianity was widely more popular than the official gospels admit and if Christianity predated Jesus.
Pre-existing legends and the gospels
The Roman dogma is a mixture of historical and pre-existing themes. Mithraism, a religion derived from Zoroastrism, was very popular in Rome at the same time that Christianity was spreading. Mithras was believed to be the son of the sun, sent to the earth to rescue humankind. Two centuries before the appearance of Jesus, the myth of Mithras held that Mithras was born of a virgin on December 25 in a cave, and his birth was attended by shepherds. Mithras sacrificed himself and the last day had a supper with twelve of his followers. At that supper Mithras invited his followes to eat his body and drink his blood. He was buried in a tomb and after three days rose again. Mithras' festival coincided with the Christian Easter. This legend dates from at least one century before Jesus. It was absorbed in the Roman dogma. Jesus' attitude often resembles the legendary greek philospher Socrates (eg, the way he refuses to respond to Pilate).
The Egyptian god Osiris was also born on the 25th of December, died on a friday and resurrected after spending three days in the underworld.
The Roman god Dionysus was hailed as `The Saviour of Mankind' and `The Son of God'. Dionysus was born (on December 25) when Zeus visited Persephone. Therefore, his father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin. Announced by a star, he is born in a cowshed and visited by three Magis. He turns water into wine and raises people from the dead. He is followed by twelve apostles. Dionysus' resurrection was a popular myth throughout the Roman empire, although his name was different in each country. The rituals in honor of Dionysus included a meal of bread and wine, symbolizing his body and blood. An amulet of the 3rd century has been found that depicts a crucified man (unmistakably Jesus) but bears the inscription "Orpheus Bacchus", which was yet another name for Dionysus. The 5th century Egyptian poet Nonnus wrote two long epic poems in Greek, one on the conquest of the world by Dionysus, and the other a verse paraphrase of one of the Christian gospels. Unfortunately, we know little of the Dionysus' faith because in 396 a mob of fanatical Christians destroyed the sanctuary of Eleusis, likely to have been the largest religious center in the world. We only know that the rituals were very popular and lasted several days.
The early Christians revered Dionysus's birthday as Jesus's birthday (Christmas) and the three-day Spring festival of Dionysus roughly coincides with Easter. Jews had their own version of this festival (the "therapeutae") since at least the year 10 (it is reported by Philo of Alexandria), which is 23 years before the crucifixion of Jesus (Armenians still celebrate the birthday of Jesus on january 6).
(The most credible theory of why the Christians of the third century chose the 25th of december as Jesus' birthday instead of the first of january is that the 25th of december was already a major holiday, a festival called "Dies Natalis Solis Invicti" instituted before 220 AD).
Jesus lived right at the beginning of the Roman empire. The first emperor, "Augustus", had the title of "saviour of the human race". The legend was that Augustus had been born nine months after his mother was "visited" by the god Apollo. The greatest Roman poet of all time, Virgil, had foretold in 40BC that a king would be born of a virgin. It was false, but it was widely believed by ordinary Romans that, in the year of Augustus' birth, the Roman senate had ordered the murder of all other children. Incidentally, Augustus had launched a puritanical campaign to restore traditional moral values in a Roman empire that had been devastated by 20 years of civil war.
Pre-existing legends and current events influenced the way the official gospels were selected and doctored. Some scholars have even suggested the entire history of Jesus is a myth, based on pre-existing myths that were assembled by "gnostic" jews.
The official gospels were carefully chosen and edited to reflect a view acceptable to the Roman authorities and audience. For example, the official gospels blamed the Jews for killing Jesus, even if, of course, it was the Romans who killed him (for sedition). The earliest account of the life of Jesus, St Mark's gospel, was written during the Jewish rebellion of 66. It was not a time to claim that Jesus was a Jewish revolutionary. Jesus, in fact, is presented as a victim of the Jews.
Roman reaction to Christians
The only Roman reaction to Christians that is popular today is the persecution that killed thousands of them. No doubt those deaths truly happened. But Christians forget to add that all sorts of people were executed by the Roman empire. The Roman empire showed no mercy for the slightest indication of sedition.
There is another reaction, though, that is almost unique to the Christian case: mockery. Several Roman commentators seemed to be less than impressed by the new faith. Celsus, in particular, pokes fun at Christian beliefs and rites as if it was merely a modern variation on pagan beliefs and rites. His attitude can be compared to the attitude of conservative adults towards the hippies in the 1960s.
The great historian Tacitus mentions the Christians as a degenerate bunch, and talks of their "degrade and shameful practices". Hardly the description one would use for spiritual people.
Several early Christian writers such as Justin and Tertullian felt that they had to defend Christianity from such accusations. Early Christian literature is full of references to pagan legends and myths as work of the Devil for the simple reason that Christians adopted the very same legends and myths and the only explanation would be that the Devil was playing a prank on them by pretending that those legends and myths had existed before Jesus.
Paul's Christianity
Christianity as it is today is really what Paul wanted it to be, but Paul was not one of the twelve and candidly admits that he never met Jesus in person. Paul, a Roman citizen and proud of it, favored equal treatment for Jews and non-Jews, but there is no evidence that this was also the view of the other Christians.
It is interesting that Paul only wrote two facts about Jesus' life: that he was crucified, and that he had several brothers, including one named James whom he also refers to, implicitly, as the leader of the Christians. Either he didn't know much about Jesus, or whatever he knew was "espunged" from the New Testament as embarassing to the Roman dogma. It is interesting that the Roman dogma (Christianity as we know it today) is based on Paul's understanding of Jesus' message, even if Paul was the least acquainted with Jesus of all the early leaders. But he was the only one who was a Roman citizen, and who preached Christianity for all, not just for the Jews.
The New Testament includes Paul's letters as an appendix, but they may be the reason the New Testament is the way it is: first Paul coded Christian religion as a Greek and Roman-friendly dogma, then some gospels (written in Greece in Greek) were chosen as the official ones because they reflected that dogma. Paul's letters date from about the year 50, while the earliest gospel is from 60-70. Paul's letters came first and it sounds like the gospels were chosen and edited to justify what Paul wrote (as if to say "you see? that's precisely what Jesus had said").
Paul's letters may be the real foundations of modern Christianity, whereas original Christianity perished in the Roman persecutions of the "disposyni/desposini" (Jesus' heirs in Palestine) following Constantine' conversion.
Paul represented a different kind of Christianity than the one preached in Palestine. He was very young when he was admitted in the Agora of Athens. He must have had good credentials, otherwise educated people would not even have listened to him. Paul was a Roman citizen, and younger than the apostles (he was not one of the twelve). There are speculations that he may have been a member of the Herodian family. He represented the view that Christianity was not only for Jews, but for everybody.
James the Just
James the Just was the leader of the early Christians in Palestine. His importance was recognized by early Christians and by Paul himself, who treats him like a leader and seems more interested in James' leadership than in Jesus' teachings.
James was one of Jesus' brothers and appears to have been a revolutionary, more interested in rebelling against the Romans than in the kingdom of heaven. His ideology was probably very different from Paul's: where Paul admitted non-Jews into Christianity, it is likely that James was a "purist" who did not tolerate the contamination.
Paul preached that everybody could be a member of the sect. James probably preached that only Jews could be members. Paul was in favor of opening Jerusalem to Roman citizens. James was against foreigners. James was the product of a resistance that had lasted centuries, first fighting against the Greeks and then the Romans.
Paul was probably not a traitor but a pragmatic: he wanted to win and realized that compromise was essential. James was an idealist: he wanted to the right, no matter what. Martyrdom is not inherent in Paul's preaching, it is in James' ideology.
He is but one of many blood relatives of Jesus who left their mark on early Christians in the Middle East. When Rome converted, they were wiped off. Some were killed, some were forced to disband. The "disposyni/desposini" (blood relatives of Jesus) disappeared from Christian genealogy.
His life ended in the years immediately preceding the Jewish rebellion of 66-70 and his stoning may have been related to the upheaval that caused that war, which in turn may have been related to his fundamentalist ideology, which in turn may have been a source of conflict with Paul.
Documents of that era spend more time talking of James than of anyone else. In the New Testament he is hardly mentioned, as if someone carefully removed any reference to the man who was the most influential Christian of the era.
An inscription in stone, found in 2002 near Jerusalem and written in Aramaic, with the words "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus", is the oldest known reference to Jesus: it is dated 63 AD.
John the Baptist
Christian literature is reluctant to deal with John the Baptist, although he was the one who "initiated" Jesus and he was the first one to be killed (beheaded by Herod's son Herod Antipas). The Jewish historian Josephus did not know Jesus but he did know very well John the Baptist. Josephus reports how John the Baptist created a large movement that came to threaten Herod Antipas. In the gospels Jesus seems to be one of the Baptist's disciples that somehow started his own movement (the gospels mention that he made his first recruits among John's disciples). John's movement disappears with his death, but John was still revered over the centuries (as attested by countless legends and paintings about his beheading).
(The Mandaeans, a religious sect centered on the Iran/Iraq border, claim that the Baptist was their greatest leader (although they deny he was the founder of their religion) and that Jesus, who started his career as one of John's disciples, was a false prophet who stole John's teachings and corrupted them, then misled the people who followed him with corrupt teachings. Andrew Rush )
Simon Magus
The story of Simon Magus, a Samaritan (Turkish) magician in the time of Claudius (41-54) who became popular in Rome, is strikingly similar to Jesus': he too was originally a disciple of John (in fact, he may have succeeded him at the head of his movement), he too performed miracles, he too traveled with a former prostitute, he too started a religious sect. Early Christian writers like Justin, Irenaeus, Eusebius and Epiphanius mention Simon Magus as a demon who proclaims to be god and his followers as performing sexual rites and living "immorally". They seem to imply that some people believed him a saint (or Jesus himself). At least, early Christian writers deemed it worth to mention Simon Magus as an evil man.
Simon Magus is mentioned in the Acts and in early Christian legends as competing with Peter for divine legitimacy.
Simon Magus wrote books but they were all destroyed. All the information we have on Simon Magus comes from his enemies.
The disposyni/desposini and Islam
Islam is much closer to James' ideology than to Judaism or Christianity. It could be that James' ideology of faith and goodness ("believe and perform good actions") spread south to the Arabs and survived centuries later in Mohammed's Quran. The Romans, after all, persecuted the (real) Christians, the "disposyni/desposini", and forced them to disband and flee. They could have moved south to escape the Romans. Muslims believe in the prophets and in Jesus, but claim that the "books" were changed by evil people. Isn't this what a disposyni/desposini would claim today? Those books were indeed changed, forcing the whole Christian world to believe that Christianity started in Rome and that Paul's doctrine was Jesus'. The original books were banned. Christians who knew about those books were forced in exile. What Muslims tell us is exactly what a surviving Jamesian Christian would tell us.
After the Jews' Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, the Jews, led by Bar Kochba, recaptured Jerusalem, but eventually the legions of emperor Hadrian won the war. Hadrian changed the name of the city of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, ordered the building of a temple of Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple, and expelled Jews from the city. Most Judeans (Jews) fled to Arabia, that already has a sizeable Jewish community (Medina itself was originally a Jewish settlement)
Jewish rebellions and early Christians
The legend of Jesus may also have a political aspect. The Jews of Palestine never accepted the rule of Rome. Their prophets were telling them that a "fifth kingdom" was coming (the previous ones being the occupations by Assyrians, Medes, Persians and Greeks), and it would be a Jewish kingdom, created by a messiah imbued with divine powers. For some or most of Jesus' followers, Jesus may have been identified with that messiah. The Jews then fought three bloody wars against the Romans, each one with "messianic" fervor. They lost all three and the third one ended with the Romans banning Jews from Jerusalem. Then it became impossible to deny that the Romans, not the Jews, were the fifth kingdom. Jesus was obviously not the messiah that prophets had predicted would free the Jews from external domination. No wonder most Jews made fun of Christians and even today do not recognize Jesus as the messiah.
The historian Josephus chronicles the events of the first century. The Jews believed in the prophecy that one of them (the messiah) was destined by god to rule over the entire world. Therefore they kept revolting against the Romans. As the Romans kept winning, that belief moved further and further in time. But the Jews who fought the Romans in 66 and then again in 132 probably did so because 1. they were opposed to accepting Roman rule (i.e., Herod and the Herodians) over Palestine (that had been ruled by the Maccabeans) and 2. they were convinced that one of them (the messiah) was meant to rule over the world (not the Roman emperor). Jesus' blood relatives (the "disposyny/desposini") were probably among the leaders of the rebellions. In 136 emperor Hadrian definitely crushed the Jewis resistance and forbad Jews from ever entering Jerusalem again. That is the time when the "gnostic" attitude is born: instead of interpreting Jesus as the messiah, some Jews started interpreting his message as a message of knowledge (of love, fraternity, piety, etc). And the kingdom moved to the heavens.
The people who did not participate in the various uprisings were the Pharisees (who, like Paul, favored coexistence with the Romans), the Herodians (members of the royal family) and the high priests (who had been appointed by Herod and the Romans). These must have been viewed as enemies by James and the early "Christians" of Palestine. These may well be the same "Zealots" that killed the high priests and led the crusade against Rome.
The Dead Sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran are probably the best preserved document of pre-Christian ideology. They are from the Roman era, but they were never "edited" by the Roman empire. Both the writing style and the contents reflect the real thinking of the pre-Christian era. The date of the Dead Sea Scrolls has not been determined for sure yet. One theory has it that the Essenes who wrote it predate Jesus (they are not mentioned in the New Testament), and that therefore Jesus was just one of them. One theory is that they were written right after Jesus' death and that they represent early Christian thinking (the Essenes are not mentioned in the New Testament precisely because the New Testament is written by Essenes). In the latter case, James the Just would then be a protagonist of the story, whereas Jesus would be only a marginal figure, a sort of magician who happened to become famous.
But there is disagreement on when the Dead Sea Scrolls were written. They deal at length with a good man and with an evil man who were fighting for control of the "movement". If the Dead Sea Scrolls predate Jesus, then Jesus was the product of a culture that had been around for a while and we may never find out who the two protagonists were. If the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the early Christians, then a strong possibility is that James is the good man and Paul is the evil man (challenging James' doctrine). But then the Dead Sea Scroll don't talk of Jesus at all. Why wouldn't a Christian text talk of Jesus at all?
Nag Hammadi and the gnostics
Nag Hammadi is the place in Egypt where a library of ancient scripts was found in the 1940s. It includes a number of Christian documents, known as the "gnostic" gospels. These gospels provide a glimpse of what Christianity may have been at the very beginning, before being contaminated by political power. For example, one gospel clearly states that it is the gospel of the "twin of Jesus" Judas. That gospel is completely different from the official gospels not only because it doesn't chronicle miracles but because it depicts Jesus as a Buddhist-style cryptic wise man.
The gnostics (as well as the disposyni/desposini) disappeared after 381, when Theodosius made heresy a crime and (presumably) persecutions began against anybody who argued with the Roman dogma.
For a long time gnostics have been viewed as opposed to "Pauline Christianity", Christianity as it is today. But now we know that the gnostics actually revered Paul and considered one of theirs. We also know that only seven of the 13 letters attributed to Paul are authentic and one can suspect that the other six were written to prove something that was not proven in the original seven. (Some of the letters appear for the first time with Irenaeus, in 190, the same man who codified the official gospels and must have been to be fakes because not even the Christian historian Eusebius included them in his version of the bible). If one removes the fakes, the originals are strikingly similar to gnostic literature and not a single attack against the gnostics remains. So much so that early Roman letters (such as Clement's and even Peter's) accuse Paul of being a heretic. Commentators have long speculated that there may have been a rift between Paul and James.
Paul's authentic letters talk of allegories (Galatians, 4/24) and symbols (Corinthians 10/6) as if to warn against a literal interpretation of the old testament, and depict a philosophy not too different by the Platonism preached by Philo of Alexandria (a contemporary of Jesus). Could it this be the reason why he was so disliked by Peter and James and why he was so popular with Romans and Greeks?
One can toy with the idea that Paul was such an influential person from the very beginning of Christianity that he could not be dismissed by the Roman church. At the same time, Paul may have been the true founder of Christianity, but not what today we regard as Paul's Christianity, rather just about the opposite: the gnostics may have been closer to Paul's ideology. When the gnostics were persecuted, Paul's ideology was simply "tweaked" with the fake letters so that it would support the Roman ideology. Thus Paul could be involuntarily be regarded as the founder of today's Christianity when in fact he was preaching something else and had no idea future generations would distort his teachings.
Irenaeus and the dogma
The Christian historian and bishop Irenaeus, who lived between 125 to 202, was probably the first one to state what was legal and what was not in Christianity. He banned books that would remain banned for thousands of years. Those books were sometimes early accounts of the life of Jesus and of the spread of Christianity, but conflicted somehow with the Greek-Roman version of events. When Rome became Christian, Irenaeus' view became dogma.
It is certainly odd that Irenaeus chose gospels written by people who had not been eye-witnesses and discarded gospels such as Thomas' and Peter's. It is certainly odd that such a crucial role is played by the letters of Paul, who had never met Jesus.
The twin
One of the books that became illegal and was long lost was the gospel of Didymos Judas Thomas, one of the apostles and the one who was sent east. Didymos in greek and Thomas in aramaic both mean "the twin". It sounds too much of a coincidence. This is consistent with a belief among early Christians that Jesus had a twin brother. Even in one of the official gospels (Matthew's), Pilate asks the people who they would like to crucify: Jesus Messiah or Jesus Barabbas. While this is interpreted as a choice between Jesus and a bandit, it could be that Pilate was trying to ascertain which of the two twins was the one accused of sedition, the other one being a mere thief.
A version of that gospel was found in Nag Hammadi. It is likely that the apostle Taddeus and Judas "the twin" are the same person. Taddeus reached Armenia and then possibly traveled further east. The gospel of Judas Thomas has always intrigued historians and theologians because it doesn't sound Christian at all: its style is closer to Buddhist meditation scripts than to Christian chronicles of Jesus life. After Rome converted, eastern Christianity was forgotten. The truth is that it probably stayed closer to Jesus' thought precisely because it was not contaminated by Roman power.
Taddeus and the Jesus of the east
Thomas/Taddeus may have reached India. There is a place in Srinagar (Kashmir) that is considered Jesus' tomb. If Thomas was a twin brother of Jesus, or simply a spokesman for Jesus, and did reach India this could explain the misunderstanding. Jesus (Yuz Asaf, Yus Asaph, Yesu, San Issa) is mentioned in several documents of Kashmir and even Tibet and all refer to him after his death.
Jesus' tomb
We know the burial places of most early Christians, except one: Jesus himself. If you believe that the body of Jesus disappeared when he ascended to heaven, as the Church does, you don't have to explain where his bodily remains are. Everybody else should at least wonder why we haven't found the tomb of the very man who is at the center of the Christian faith (the four official gospels list four different burial places). Jesus' date of birth and death are also disputed. Herod died in 4 BC, so (if the gospels tell the truth) Jesus can't be born after that date. The Acts of Thomas record that Jesus was in Taxila at a marriage ceremony in the year 49. Irenaeus himself (not a heretic) writes that Jesus reached an old age.
Was Jesus still alive when James the Just, Paul, Peter and Taddeus were spreading Christianity around the world?
The historian Jesophus mentions a "Jesus" who was alive during the years of the Jewish war (66-70 AD), who was an oracle and who was tried in front of Pilate (except that Pilate released him, not crucified him).
If the body of Jesus was buried somewhere, at least two people must have known and visited that place: his mother and his closest friend.
Mary (the mother of Jesus, James the Just and Taddeus) is known to have traveled to Turkey and may have died near Ephesus (according to local legend). James was almost certainly with her. They were, de facto, exiles.
Mary Magdalene was closer to Jesus than anyone else. "Miriam" was the "apostle of the apostles", and the first witness of the resurrection. The gospels give different accounts of her whereabouts and movements before and after the death of Jesus. There is a legend that she traveled to France, to La Sainte-Baume (near Marseilles), and lived in solitude in a cave for the rest of her life. There is a legend that she followed the Virgin Mary to Turkey and died there.
Herod
Herod became king in 37 BC because his father Antipater had helped the Roman general Pompej conquer Jerusalem in 63 BC. Herod was a ruthless ruler whose first and main goal was to destroy the Maccabeans who had ruled before him. He killed all of them, except the princess Mary whom he married. Mary committed adultery with Herod's brother Joseph while Herod was in Rome (29 BC). When Herod returned and was informed of the adultery, he executed Mary. He then executed her sons because they were more popular than him with the Jews: they had Maccabean blood. This story is somehow reflected in the legend that Jesus was the son of Mary and Joseph and that Herod wanted to kill all the Jewish children to make sure none of them would claim the title of king. It is unlikely that Jesus was the illegitimate son of the historical Mary and Joseph, because it would make him too old, but the coincidence is striking.
Who was Jesus?
And what was Jesus' name? "Jesus" simply means "Savior" in hebrew, just like "Christ" is the Greek for "anointed" (a term used in the Old Testament for many kings). But what was his real name?
The family name Barsabas is attributed in the Acts to both a Joseph and a Judas. There is evidence pointing to the fact that Judas Barsabas could be Thaddeus, who is also Judas the "twin brother" of Jesus (Thaddeus is a contraction of "Judas Thomas", that in turn means Judas the brother). Names similar to Barsabas (and Barabbas) recur in Jesus' relatives. The very bandit Barabbas could just be a split in the story, that separated the prophet from the bandit (they were one for the Romans).
Irenaeus himself writes that "Iesous... is a symbolic name".
The Romans kept accurate records of every political and judicial event. There is no record of Pontius Pilate trying and executing a man named Jesus. Only two Roman writers of Jesus' time mention Christians (Pliny and Svetonius) but they don't mention Jesus. The first Roman to mention Jesus is Tacitus, but almost a century after the death of Jesus.
The Jewish historian Josephus certainly mentions Christians, but his words about Jesus are generally considered a later forgery (the Christian historian Origen of the third century wrote that Josephus never mentioned Jesus).
The Jewish philosopher Philo, who lived in Egypt at the time of Jesus does not seem to know anything about Jesus or Christians (he died in the year 40).
Paul himself, one of the founders of Christianity, never talks about Jesus' life, while he definitely talks about his brother James.
A synthesis
By analyzing the historical records, one possible explanation of the events emerges. Jesus, whether because related by blood (via his mother) to the Maccabeans that Jews still revered, or because related to Herod whom Jews feared, claimed to to be the king of the Jews. Some Jews liked him because they recognized his credentials (especially if he was indeed a Maccabean), some Jews despised him as a madman. Eventually, his claims came to the hears of the Romans, as well as his teachings (he was probably a sort of "communist" philosopher, preaching that all humans are equal), and that is what the Romans killed him for. He was probably killed with no trial, just like many other "rebels" of the time that Rome did not deem worthy of any bureaucracy. That is the reason why nobody knows where his tomb is: the Romans did not bother to bury him or return his body.
Paul, heir to the Jewish establishment that wanted to coexist with the Romans and adopt Greek philosophy, was the first Roman citizen to become Christian and spread the Christian word around the world. He was also the first to claim that Greeks and Romans could be as Christian as Jews. In Rome, it was a natural decision to adopt his version of Christianity. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity was "relocated" from Palestine to Rome: instead of recognizing the thread that starts with Jesus and continues with James and the following disposyni/desposini, Rome decided to start counting with Peter (the first Christian martyr in Rome) and his descendants, the popes.
The Shroud of Turin
I frequently get asked for an opinion about the Shroud of Turin. This is a shroud that has preserved the body image of a crucified man in his 30s. For centuries devout Catholics believed that it is the shround in which Jesus was wrapped after the crucifixion and that a miracle preserved the body image. Historical records only go back to the 14th century. Then it came into possession of the Savoy family that ended up uniting and ruling Italy, and today the Shroud belongs to the Vatican and is stored in Turin (the old capital of the Savoy kingdom in northern Italy). Countless theories have been advanced to explain the "miraculous" image. Scientists were allowed to conduct tests in 1978 and delivered a verdict: the Shroud was manufactured in the Middle Ages. However, the scientific method was rather unscientific and it did not settle the question at all. Personally, i suspect that the Shroud is indeed real: it dates from Jesus' time and it might well be that the corpse wrapped in it was the corpse of Jesus. It is just implausible that someone (someone with an amazing knowledge of chemistry) would create such a perfect fake that would last for centuries and fool everybody for centuries. There is no other artifact from the Middle Ages that even remotely belongs to the same category. There is no document of anyone having discovered a technique to manufacture this kind of images. It is simply implausible that someone would achieve this feat but no record would remain of it, and that person would never take credit for such an amazing creation, and nobody else would ever learn that craft and continue it. The first skeptic was John Calvin, who objected that the Gospels never mention this quasi-magical Shroud. There might be two simple reasons: 1. It was discovered later, during the Roman persecutions, and the Christians had no motivation and no power to publicize it; 2. It was already known at the time of the Gospels but the Gospels were meant to tell the story of Jesus by people who already believed him to be a divine being, and did not need to mention a shroud as further evidence after having listed much more spectacular miracles. In fact, i suspect that the Shroud (and possibly other relics that we have never found or that are not as dramatic as the Shroud) is the very reason that so many people believed in Jesus' superpowers: in an age awash in all sorts of irrational legends, the Shroud must have looked like a very rational proof of Jesus' divine status even to those who never met Jesus and who would not have otherwise believed the tales of the apostles.
Henk Meeter writes: On the question of Jesus being the son of (or Son of) God...
This was routinely a title for the Jewish king. One could argue quite convincingly that the earliest of the Gospels show no more than "this" (whatever "this" meant, given the complexity and newness of Jesus's message) as the first understanding of Jesus's divine sonship, and that allegations of, or belief about, it being something more only cropped up later - with the movements associated with Paul perhaps, or those associated with the Gospel of John.
My own suspicion, or rather, what I like to believe, is that Jesus was not only the Son of God, he was actually, more or less exhaustively, God Himself, in human form, come to subject Himself to all the worst that His obviously flawed Creation had to offer - and that His death, and subsequent resurrection, not only represented, but also accomplished, the elimination of the gulf between Him and His world - not just figuratively or conceptually, but in reality.
I also suspect, or rather like to believe, that though Jesus himself may have had inklings of this, and may have hinted about these inklings to his followers, by and large he was as unsure about it as we would have been if we were in his shoes - because the idea that God became man means literally that - again, that God subjected Himself to all the worst that the world had on offer, or in other words, in essence, that God became, for a time, quite finite, and that He may have taken a gamble which He (just) might have lost.
What I'm quite sure about is this: that, if Jesus actually did rise again from the dead, and did spend some time with his followers thereafter, much of what he said and did was so terribly mysterious to them that it left them in a state of (awestruck)bafflement, which they then spent years trying to come to grips with.
Regarding the belief of the Jews, as to their being the chosen people...
It's one of Wright's contentions that this is precisely what got Jesus killed. Because there was in many of the Old Testament prophets the idea that salvation (whatever that was) would come to the whole world, and that what it meant to be God's chosen people was that they would be the instrument of that salvation, for the whole world - and that Jesus was picking up on and elaborating on that message (hence his condemnation of Temple worship, the precise incident which, according to more or less everybody, occasioned his arrest and trial) .
there is more to this page that are about other people on this subject.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Were you not so obviously beholden to your biases and ready to reject any new informational source that challenges them, I'd keep insisting that you actually read the book.
And if I did then I'd find the following:
'My main point is that whether the Testimonium is authentically from Josephus (in its pared-down form) or not probably does not ultimately matter for the question I am pursuing here. Whether or not Jesus lived has to be decided on other kinds of evidence from this. And here is why. Suppose Josephus really did write the Testimonium. That would show that by 93 CE - some sixty or more years after the traditional date of Jesus's death - a Jewish historian of Palestine had some information about him. And where would Josephus have derived this information? He would have heard stories about Jesus that were in circulation. There is nothing to suggest that Josephus had actually read the Gospels (he almost certainly did not) or that he did any kind of primary research into the life of Jesus by examining Roman records of any kind (there weren't any).'- Bart Ehrman - 'Did Jesus Exist?' (p.65)
Sure, he finds ways to try and prove the historicity of Jesus, but none of them have anything to do with the non-existent written record.
Let me guess? I'm being slimy in my dishonesty and arrogance, and a touch disengenuous?
It looks like you are focusing on whether or not he existed as evidenced by writings about him (which there really aren't any.)
But how do you reconcile the issues of the story of Jesus being plagiarized from the story of Vishnu? or Mithra? Or a myriad of other messiahs that pre date Jesus?
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018) The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
It looks like you are focusing on whether or not he existed as evidenced by writings about him (which there really aren't any.)
But how do you reconcile the issues of the story of Jesus being plagiarized from the story of Vishnu? or Mithra? Or a myriad of other messiahs that pre date Jesus?
It looks like you are focusing on whether or not he existed as evidenced by writings about him (which there really aren't any.)
But how do you reconcile the issues of the story of Jesus being plagiarized from the story of Vishnu? or Mithra? Or a myriad of other messiahs that pre date Jesus?
Wouldn't try to. Haven't read enough about it.
Well I would say that you are ignoring very important information there.
Remember the Thomas Nine !! (10/02/2018) The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago 2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy 2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE) 2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston 2020: Oakland, Oakland:2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana 2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville 2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
It looks like you are focusing on whether or not he existed as evidenced by writings about him (which there really aren't any.)
But how do you reconcile the issues of the story of Jesus being plagiarized from the story of Vishnu? or Mithra? Or a myriad of other messiahs that pre date Jesus?
Wouldn't try to. Haven't read enough about it.
Well I would say that you are ignoring very important information there.
Didn't say I'd not read anything. Only, the book I'm currently reading "Did Jesus Exist?" By Bart Erhman goes to some length criticising the evidence for many of those comparisons, so I just feel as though I need to read a bit more from both sides before jumping on a bandwagon - (Had you asked me previously, I'd have been all over the Horus/Jesus similarities, but new information should make one cautious, and if necessary, willing to change one's mind)
Ultimately though, it's largely irrelevant - I'm by no means suggesting that the historical Jesus was magic or divine. I don't think the existence of a Rabbi to which myths and miracles were attributed forces me to give up any of my atheistic ground whatsoever.
Plus, mapped onto the context of the religious cults we continue to see develop in real time, a charismatic/bat shit crazy leader seems typical.
how did this topic go from fox to Jesus ? the long and short of the derailment of this thread is that we will find out in the end....all your questions will be answered.
how did this topic go from fox to Jesus ? the long and short of the derailment of this thread is that we will find out in the end....all your questions will be answered.
Godfather.
The Lord works in mysterious ways. Fox , as it turns out is really a spokeschannel for the almighty Yehwah Allah Jones , as hes known by his full name.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
how did this topic go from fox to Jesus ? the long and short of the derailment of this thread is that we will find out in the end....all your questions will be answered.
Godfather.
As the original poster I am saddened by the derailment of this thread.
~Carter~
You can spend your time alone, redigesting past regrets, oh
or you can come to terms and realize
you're the only one who can't forgive yourself, oh
makes much more sense to live in the present tense - Present Tense
how did this topic go from fox to Jesus ? the long and short of the derailment of this thread is that we will find out in the end....all your questions will be answered.
Godfather.
The Lord works in mysterious ways. Fox , as it turns out is really a spokeschannel for the almighty Yehwah Allah Jones , as hes known by his full name.
Comments
Why did the Jewish historian, Josephus, in his 20 volume history of the jews, make no mention of Jesus?
As for minor characters in historical records, there are millions of them. The historical records of the Greeks and Romans, and also of the Chinese, for that matter, contain the records of countless minor officials, statesmen, dissidents, criminals, and military officials, e.t.c.
Why are you pretending that there is no mention of Jesus because he was supposedly an unremarkable person who went largely unnoticed in his lifetime? If he was so insignificant then why did the Romans have him put to death?
Exactly. He was just an amalgamation of a number of earlier Mediterranean mystery religions, such as those you mentioned, and Dionysus, and Osiris, e.t.c.
Still, it does make perfect sense why Americans living in the 21st Century would base their outlook on life on a bastardization and co-option of a disparate 2000 year old Middle-Eastern belief system.
No wonder the Native Americans think the white man is crazy.
Actually he did, you just don't want to believe he did. To be honest, I don't know much on Josephus, but I saw both arguments and I can believe both, but even if he didn't write it wouldn't make me think or believe differently.
I am not pretending to think anything. Jesus portrayed himself as the Son of God, so to some he was just some loony guy probably. Romans put him to death because of what he was saying. So they ended his life and moved on. They didn't want him spreading "lies." Technically, the Romans never even put him to death. The people decided.
You can spend your time alone, redigesting past regrets, oh
or you can come to terms and realize
you're the only one who can't forgive yourself, oh
makes much more sense to live in the present tense - Present Tense
Actually, this has nothing to do with me. The mention in Josephus is a forgery. This is accepted by the majority of historians. It has nothing to do with me.
Princeton disagrees with you
http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/ ... Jesus.html
The article content of this page came from Wikipedia
Not that there's anything wrong with Wikipedia. And there are counter arguments from many scholars on that same page detailing why the mention of Jesus is a forgery.
Again,...be careful.
The extent of the Josephus interpolation appears to be a much debated issue. There is by no means a scholarly consensus willing to dismiss it in its entirety - there are equally informed parties on both sides of the debate.
You make much grander, more definite claims than most of the experts actually qualified to comment.
The 3rd century Church 'Father' Origen spent half his life and a quarter of a million words contending against the pagan writer Celsus. Origen drew on all sorts of proofs and witnesses to his arguments in his fierce defence of Christianity. He quotes from Josephus extensively. Yet even he makes no reference to this 'golden paragraph' from Josephus, which would have been the ultimate rebuttal. In fact, Origen actually said that Josephus was "not believing in Jesus as the Christ."
Origen did not quote the 'Jesus paragraph' because this paragraph had not yet been written. It was added later by Christian scribes in an attempt to promote the historicity of Jesus.
The mention of Jesus in Josephus
'At this time there appeared Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one should call him a man. For he was a doer of startling deeds, a teacher of people who receive the truth with pleasure. And he gained a following both among many Jews and among many of Greek origin. He was the messiah. And when Pilate, because of an accusation made by the leading men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who had loved him previously did not cease to do so. For he appeared to them on the third day, living again, just as the divine prophets had spoken of these and countless other wondrous things about him. And up until this very day the tribe of Christians, named after him, has not died out.' (Antiquities 18.3.3)
'The problems with this passage should be obvious to anyone with even a casual knowledge of Josephus.... He was thoroughly and ineluctably Jewish and certainly never converted to be a follower of Jesus. But this passage contains comments that only a Christian would make: that Jesus was more than a man, that he was the messiah, and that he arose from the dead in fulfillment of the scriptures. In the judgment of most scholars, there is simply no way Josephus the Jew would or could have written such things. So how did these comments get into his writings?' (Bart Ehrman - 'Did Jesus Exist?')
And there you go again, mining for quotes. Did you read on? I did.
The "such things" to which he is referring is not the entry in its entirety, but the "extraordinary claims about Jesus in this passage" (About 6 lines further down on p60.)
"The majority of scholars of early Judaism, and experts on Josephus, think that...one or more Christian scribes "touched up" the passage a bit. If one takes out the obviously Christian comments, the passage may have been rather innocuous,..."
And that in its core form, "Josephus had some solid historical information about Jesus's life: Jesus was known for his wisdom and teaching; he was thought to have done remarkable deeds; he had numerous followers; he was condemned to be crucified by Pontius Pilate because of Jewish accusations brought against him; and he continued to have followers among the Christians after his death." p61
He goes on to say, regarding the extent and nature of the alleged interpolation that "there is in fact little in the Testimonium that is more like Eusebius than Josephus. It is far more likely that the core of the passage actually does go back to Josephus himself." (he references two additional scholars for that comment, Paget and Whealey.) - p64
He dedicates a large section of the chapter to this topic - read it all.
Yeah, I did read it all: http://www.freethoughtnation.com/contri ... jesus.html
'...there is little reason not to go further and conclude that, in the case of the TF, those interpolating scribes wrote the entire passage, to be inserted into the text by subsequent copyists.
...There are many reasons to suspect the Josephus passage/Testimonium Flavianum as a whole to be a forgery, a recounting of which can be found in my excerpted article "The Jesus Forgery: Josephus Untangled" and in the writings of Earl Doherty and Ken Olson, among others. I will only address a few of the arguments against authenticity here. For example, it has been noted previously that Josephus uses the exact phrase σοφὸς ἀνήρ or "wise man" elsewhere at Ant. 10.237, in a discussion of the biblical prophet Daniel (and the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar), about whom Josephus waxes on over several pages (Ant. 10.10 [Whiston]). It is Daniel here who is the σοφὸς ἀνήρ or "wise man," and he is afforded tremendous respect.
Yet, later in Josephus a mere 89 words - or only 60, in the "uninterpolated" passage - are reserved for this "wise man" and "doer of startling deeds," Jesus Christ, who had an entire "tribe" named after him (using an anachronistic term, as we shall see)! Meanwhile, Josephus writes at length in the next section about "a woman named Paulina," a great beauty whose seedy ravishing in the temple of Isis at Rome warrants almost 700 words.
Moreover, Josephus indicts his own people - the "leading men among us" - as fatally accusing the wondrous and wise Jesus, basically agreeing that these Jews were "Christ-killers," a calumny used in later centuries by Christians. It is difficult to believe Josephus would not have explored that admission of guilt to see if it was merited.
I doubt you did little more than cut and paste whatever quotes were made available to you from your one-stop-shop websites.
Bottom line - you are being intellectually dishonest in pressing Ehrman's work into the service you insist on.
Everything in his book, even his analysis of Jospehus is presented as evidence in favour of a historical Jesus, hence the strap line,...The Historical Argument FOR Jesus of Nazareth.
I hope I didn't make you sspit your dummy out.
I'm sure it is. But he still admits that no written evidence exists to support an historical Jesus. And there's good reason for that - there is no evidence.
Back to square one.
He admits no such thing - again, he's written an entire book explaining the evidence. Your refusal to even consider what he might have to say (by reading the book, not just quotes that someone else mined for you, quotes which in isolation do not represent their purpose) in advance of reading it makes you appear somewhat fanatical, not to mention staggeringly arrogant.
So the original quote with the picture of him I posted above is a fake, is it? Did he say that, or didn't he?
You must've been asleep - I fear I'm at risk of repeating myself.
Yes he said it, but the implications are not as cut and dry as you'd like them to be. After that quote, he arrives at a very different conclusion to you, and has dedicated a book to explaining why. You've decided to take that little soundbite, (like any good quote miner) to characterise or otherwise dismiss the rest of his work without reading it. This is arrogance.
It's not entirely dissimilar to those religious apologists who very selectively quote Einstein and Hawking on the topic of god, and yet the slimy dishonesty of that particular move is probably quite obvious to you.
Were you not so obviously beholden to your biases and ready to reject any new informational source that challenges them, I'd keep insisting that you actually read the book.
And if I did then I'd find the following:
'My main point is that whether the Testimonium is authentically from Josephus (in its pared-down form) or not probably does not ultimately matter for the question I am pursuing here. Whether or not Jesus lived has to be decided on other kinds of evidence from this. And here is why. Suppose Josephus really did write the Testimonium. That would show that by 93 CE - some sixty or more years after the traditional date of Jesus's death - a Jewish historian of Palestine had some information about him. And where would Josephus have derived this information? He would have heard stories about Jesus that were in circulation. There is nothing to suggest that Josephus had actually read the Gospels (he almost certainly did not) or that he did any kind of primary research into the life of Jesus by examining Roman records of any kind (there weren't any).' - Bart Ehrman - 'Did Jesus Exist?' (p.65)
Sure, he finds ways to try and prove the historicity of Jesus, but none of them have anything to do with the non-existent written record.
Let me guess? I'm being slimy in my dishonesty and arrogance, and a touch disengenuous?
http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/jesus.html
The Roman dogma vs history
The history of Jesus and the history of Christianity that we know today is the dogma that the Roman empire forced on all its provinces. When Constantine converted to Christianity, Rome became the center of power also for Christianity and any challenging center was wiped out. What Jesus really said and meant will probably never be known.
A new wave of "Historical Jesus" research has emerged in the wake of the discovery in 1947 in Egypt of the ancient manuscripts that are known today as the "Nag Hammadi library" and as "Gnostic Gospels", and of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1947. Until then, little was known about the early Christians known as the Gnostics. "We've listened to the winners, and their story doesn't make any sense. So let's listen to the losers and see if their story makes more sense" (Freke).
The other gospels
Many gospels were written, including and besides the four official ones. The four official gospels were written in Greece in Greek, the earliest (Marks') dating from the year 70 and the last one (John's) dating from the second century after Christ. (The oldest manuscript of the gospels that we found dates from the fourth century, but we have fragments that have been dated from the mid second century and we can deduct the date of composition from references in the texts). There is general agreement that three of the official ones (the "synoptic" gospels) derive from a common source (or Luke's and Matthew's simply derive from Mark's), whereas John's is inherently different. One hypothesis is that John's and this common source derive, in turn, from a pre-existing text, called "Q", that has never been found. One of the banned gospels, the gospel of Judas Thomas, has been considered a potential candidate for "Q" or for something closer to "Q" than anything else we have found. Note that the very first gospel (70AD) was written when Christianity had already spread throughout the Roman Empire, and emperor Nero had already started persecuting Christians (64AD).
John's gospel is markedly different from the other three gospels: it names many people who are anonymous in the other three gospels and it includes two episodes (the wedding at Cana and the raising of Lazarus) that the other gospels seem curiously unaware of. It "sounds" more knowledgeable: it provides details about the early proselytizing of Jesus and the rivalry between Jesus' sect and John the Baptist's sect. The account of Jesus' trial and crucifixion is more credible. Yet, John's gospel is unquestionably a later work than the other three official gospels.
It is also likely that the gospels as we know them have been heavily rewritten after they were originally written. Papias of Hierapolis in 110 talks of the gospel of St Matthew as a collections of oracles, not of miracles.
All four official gospels were written after Paul wrote his letters. Paul's letters are the oldest Christian documents. But Paul admits he never met Jesus and, in fact, his letters contain almost no reference at all to Jesus' lives.
Irenaeus (at the end of the second century) is the first Christian writer who mentions the dogma of the four gospels. Before him there is no mention of those gospels as being the only "good" ones. Justin Martyr (150) does not mention a New Testament, does not mention Mark, Matthew, Luke or John. On the other hand, he mentions the "memoirs" of the apostles, which could be the letters and the "gospels" attributed to Peter and others (mostly not recognized by the Church) besides the letters of Paul and the acts of the Apostles. In 170 Tatian admits he was working on a new gospel that would summarize all the other ones, thereby implying that Christians were still writing and rewriting gospels based on their own assumptions and preferences, not on historical facts. Also in the second century, Clement of Alexandria admits that two versions of Mark's gospel existed but one was being suppressed because it contained two passages that should not be viewed by average Christians (both passages could be interpreted as Lazarus being Jesus' lover and his "resurrection" as being an "initiation" to some kind of sexual rite, the way most pagan "mysteries" implied a death and a rebirth). Thus, the texts were being chosen, edited and purged for the first two centuries of the Christian era. That process had solidified by the time Irenaeus wrote that there were only four gospels.
Irenaeus' choice was formalized in 325 at the council of Nicaea, where those four gospels became the official dogma of the Roman Church and all other histories of Jesus were banned.
Irenaeus picked only a fraction of the available literature on Jesus. He excluded some of the most popular texts, such as the gospel of Thomas and the gospel of the Hebrews (by far the two most popular texts among early Christians). Either the memory was lost of what was old and what was new (Irenaeus claims that Mark and Luke were eyewitness which of course they were not) or the Church was already at work to completely reinvent the story of Jesus to suit whatever ideology. For example, if one wanted people to believe in Paul's letters, then he would probably choose those four gospels over all the other ones. The fact is that the dogma immediately ignited a very contentious issue.
Texts outlawed by Rome paint a very different picture of Jesus' teaching, especially the ones written by the "gnostic" Christians. Sometimes Jesus appears as a sort of communist revolutionary, sometimes as a sort of Buddhist thinker. In the most ancient texts he rarely appears as the Jesus who makes miracles and ascended to heaven, and sometimes does not appear at all. Sometimes he barely appears at all, while others (James, Paul) are the predominant characters. Peter, the most famous of Jesus' followers, is actually a very minor figure in early Christian documents.
Today, it is sometimes difficult to understand why some gospels were banned. Several of the banned gospels are apparently consistent with the dogma: why ban them? The devil is probably in the details: in 325 Christianity had become the religion of the Roman empire and it was not nice to emphasize that it was the Romans who had killed Jesus; in 325 Christianity had taken the beliefs that would become the Catholic dogma, and it was not nice to emphasize that Jesus had brothers (although even the official gospels say so) or that Mary Magdalene was always with him (although even the official gospels say so) and it was nice to undermine Jesus' miracles. Most of the gospels may have been considered redundant (they didn't add anything meaningful to the story) and dangerous (they could stress aspects of Jesus' story that the Church would rather downplay).
The gnostic Christians were persecuted after Rome converted to Christianity and most of their texts were burned. The church also outlawed all other histories of Jesus but the four official ones.
The councils
Initially, there was strong disagreement among Christians about what Christianity was all about. The Christian dogma was formalized by a series of councils, whose conclusions were largely arbitrary. The council of Nicaea (325) mandated that only four gospels were true: the others were heretic. The council of Ephesus (431) sanctioned that the divine nature of Jesus was superior to his human nature. The council of Calcedonia (451) accepted pope Leone I's theory that Jesus was both human and divine (and this was based on Greek philosophy, not on historical evidence or on the gospels' testimony).
The historians
Other than the gospels, we know of early Christianity mainly through the Jewish historian Josephus (37-96 AD), but he himself became a Roman citizen and even an advisor to two emperors. Two centuries later, Eusebius and Irenaeus wrote about the origins of the Christian religion. Both of them basically codified Christianity as we know it. Irenaeus makes the oldest known claim that there are only four official gospels and the others are work of the devil. Eusebius (who was working for Constantine and even wrote his biography) compiled a history of the Roman church from Peter on (Eusebius wrote that the emperor is the vehicle of God on earth).
The early Christians
Rome was obviously not the place where Christianity had been born and was not the cultural center of the world. Christianity first spread in Palestine and Syria, then east to Armenia (the first country to convert) and to Greece, that was the cultural center of the empire. When the apostles spread, Peter went to Rome, but others went elsewhere. Notably, Taddeus went to Armenia.
Later, Paul went to Greece. The first community to call themselves Christians was in Syria. The man whom most (including Paul) considered the head of Christianity was James the Just, who remained in Palestine. These were all equal centers of Christianity. It was only after the Roman conversion that the Roman branch of Christianity became the official one, and the lineage back to Peter (the popes) was recognized as the only lineage worth knowing. It was then that only four gospels (probably written in Greece between 66 and the end of the second century) were accepted as true, even if for centuries several others had circulated. It was then that competing branches of Christianity were persecuted and annihilated.
What accounts for the rapid spread of Christianity around the Roman empire? It is not clear how many Christians there really were before Constantine forced the entire Roman empire to convert to Christianity, but it is reasonable to assume that at least a good number of them lived in Rome and in various provinces of the middle East. In the year 70, following a Jewish rebellion, Roman legions destroyed Jerusalem and expelled the Jews. That act may be responsible for the spread of Christianity: Jews of the Christian faith certainly ended up (as slaves) in Rome and probably (as refugees) in several middle-eastern provinces. While it is a mystery how they could make so many proselytes so quickly, it is quite normal that they could be found all around the eastern Roman empire. The number of proselytes (if it was indeed as high as the Church wants us to believe) could be explained in a simple way by assuming that there were already many Christians in Palestine itself, which, of course, would be possible only if Christianity was widely more popular than the official gospels admit and if Christianity predated Jesus.
Pre-existing legends and the gospels
The Roman dogma is a mixture of historical and pre-existing themes. Mithraism, a religion derived from Zoroastrism, was very popular in Rome at the same time that Christianity was spreading. Mithras was believed to be the son of the sun, sent to the earth to rescue humankind. Two centuries before the appearance of Jesus, the myth of Mithras held that Mithras was born of a virgin on December 25 in a cave, and his birth was attended by shepherds. Mithras sacrificed himself and the last day had a supper with twelve of his followers. At that supper Mithras invited his followes to eat his body and drink his blood. He was buried in a tomb and after three days rose again. Mithras' festival coincided with the Christian Easter. This legend dates from at least one century before Jesus. It was absorbed in the Roman dogma. Jesus' attitude often resembles the legendary greek philospher Socrates (eg, the way he refuses to respond to Pilate).
The Egyptian god Osiris was also born on the 25th of December, died on a friday and resurrected after spending three days in the underworld.
The Roman god Dionysus was hailed as `The Saviour of Mankind' and `The Son of God'. Dionysus was born (on December 25) when Zeus visited Persephone. Therefore, his father is God and his mother is a mortal virgin. Announced by a star, he is born in a cowshed and visited by three Magis. He turns water into wine and raises people from the dead. He is followed by twelve apostles. Dionysus' resurrection was a popular myth throughout the Roman empire, although his name was different in each country. The rituals in honor of Dionysus included a meal of bread and wine, symbolizing his body and blood. An amulet of the 3rd century has been found that depicts a crucified man (unmistakably Jesus) but bears the inscription "Orpheus Bacchus", which was yet another name for Dionysus. The 5th century Egyptian poet Nonnus wrote two long epic poems in Greek, one on the conquest of the world by Dionysus, and the other a verse paraphrase of one of the Christian gospels. Unfortunately, we know little of the Dionysus' faith because in 396 a mob of fanatical Christians destroyed the sanctuary of Eleusis, likely to have been the largest religious center in the world. We only know that the rituals were very popular and lasted several days.
The early Christians revered Dionysus's birthday as Jesus's birthday (Christmas) and the three-day Spring festival of Dionysus roughly coincides with Easter. Jews had their own version of this festival (the "therapeutae") since at least the year 10 (it is reported by Philo of Alexandria), which is 23 years before the crucifixion of Jesus (Armenians still celebrate the birthday of Jesus on january 6).
(The most credible theory of why the Christians of the third century chose the 25th of december as Jesus' birthday instead of the first of january is that the 25th of december was already a major holiday, a festival called "Dies Natalis Solis Invicti" instituted before 220 AD).
Jesus lived right at the beginning of the Roman empire. The first emperor, "Augustus", had the title of "saviour of the human race". The legend was that Augustus had been born nine months after his mother was "visited" by the god Apollo. The greatest Roman poet of all time, Virgil, had foretold in 40BC that a king would be born of a virgin. It was false, but it was widely believed by ordinary Romans that, in the year of Augustus' birth, the Roman senate had ordered the murder of all other children. Incidentally, Augustus had launched a puritanical campaign to restore traditional moral values in a Roman empire that had been devastated by 20 years of civil war.
Pre-existing legends and current events influenced the way the official gospels were selected and doctored. Some scholars have even suggested the entire history of Jesus is a myth, based on pre-existing myths that were assembled by "gnostic" jews.
The official gospels were carefully chosen and edited to reflect a view acceptable to the Roman authorities and audience. For example, the official gospels blamed the Jews for killing Jesus, even if, of course, it was the Romans who killed him (for sedition). The earliest account of the life of Jesus, St Mark's gospel, was written during the Jewish rebellion of 66. It was not a time to claim that Jesus was a Jewish revolutionary. Jesus, in fact, is presented as a victim of the Jews.
Roman reaction to Christians
The only Roman reaction to Christians that is popular today is the persecution that killed thousands of them. No doubt those deaths truly happened. But Christians forget to add that all sorts of people were executed by the Roman empire. The Roman empire showed no mercy for the slightest indication of sedition.
There is another reaction, though, that is almost unique to the Christian case: mockery. Several Roman commentators seemed to be less than impressed by the new faith. Celsus, in particular, pokes fun at Christian beliefs and rites as if it was merely a modern variation on pagan beliefs and rites. His attitude can be compared to the attitude of conservative adults towards the hippies in the 1960s.
The great historian Tacitus mentions the Christians as a degenerate bunch, and talks of their "degrade and shameful practices". Hardly the description one would use for spiritual people.
Several early Christian writers such as Justin and Tertullian felt that they had to defend Christianity from such accusations. Early Christian literature is full of references to pagan legends and myths as work of the Devil for the simple reason that Christians adopted the very same legends and myths and the only explanation would be that the Devil was playing a prank on them by pretending that those legends and myths had existed before Jesus.
Paul's Christianity
Christianity as it is today is really what Paul wanted it to be, but Paul was not one of the twelve and candidly admits that he never met Jesus in person. Paul, a Roman citizen and proud of it, favored equal treatment for Jews and non-Jews, but there is no evidence that this was also the view of the other Christians.
It is interesting that Paul only wrote two facts about Jesus' life: that he was crucified, and that he had several brothers, including one named James whom he also refers to, implicitly, as the leader of the Christians. Either he didn't know much about Jesus, or whatever he knew was "espunged" from the New Testament as embarassing to the Roman dogma. It is interesting that the Roman dogma (Christianity as we know it today) is based on Paul's understanding of Jesus' message, even if Paul was the least acquainted with Jesus of all the early leaders. But he was the only one who was a Roman citizen, and who preached Christianity for all, not just for the Jews.
The New Testament includes Paul's letters as an appendix, but they may be the reason the New Testament is the way it is: first Paul coded Christian religion as a Greek and Roman-friendly dogma, then some gospels (written in Greece in Greek) were chosen as the official ones because they reflected that dogma. Paul's letters date from about the year 50, while the earliest gospel is from 60-70. Paul's letters came first and it sounds like the gospels were chosen and edited to justify what Paul wrote (as if to say "you see? that's precisely what Jesus had said").
Paul's letters may be the real foundations of modern Christianity, whereas original Christianity perished in the Roman persecutions of the "disposyni/desposini" (Jesus' heirs in Palestine) following Constantine' conversion.
Paul represented a different kind of Christianity than the one preached in Palestine. He was very young when he was admitted in the Agora of Athens. He must have had good credentials, otherwise educated people would not even have listened to him. Paul was a Roman citizen, and younger than the apostles (he was not one of the twelve). There are speculations that he may have been a member of the Herodian family. He represented the view that Christianity was not only for Jews, but for everybody.
James the Just
James the Just was the leader of the early Christians in Palestine. His importance was recognized by early Christians and by Paul himself, who treats him like a leader and seems more interested in James' leadership than in Jesus' teachings.
James was one of Jesus' brothers and appears to have been a revolutionary, more interested in rebelling against the Romans than in the kingdom of heaven. His ideology was probably very different from Paul's: where Paul admitted non-Jews into Christianity, it is likely that James was a "purist" who did not tolerate the contamination.
Paul preached that everybody could be a member of the sect. James probably preached that only Jews could be members. Paul was in favor of opening Jerusalem to Roman citizens. James was against foreigners. James was the product of a resistance that had lasted centuries, first fighting against the Greeks and then the Romans.
Paul was probably not a traitor but a pragmatic: he wanted to win and realized that compromise was essential. James was an idealist: he wanted to the right, no matter what. Martyrdom is not inherent in Paul's preaching, it is in James' ideology.
He is but one of many blood relatives of Jesus who left their mark on early Christians in the Middle East. When Rome converted, they were wiped off. Some were killed, some were forced to disband. The "disposyni/desposini" (blood relatives of Jesus) disappeared from Christian genealogy.
His life ended in the years immediately preceding the Jewish rebellion of 66-70 and his stoning may have been related to the upheaval that caused that war, which in turn may have been related to his fundamentalist ideology, which in turn may have been a source of conflict with Paul.
Documents of that era spend more time talking of James than of anyone else. In the New Testament he is hardly mentioned, as if someone carefully removed any reference to the man who was the most influential Christian of the era.
An inscription in stone, found in 2002 near Jerusalem and written in Aramaic, with the words "James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus", is the oldest known reference to Jesus: it is dated 63 AD.
John the Baptist
Christian literature is reluctant to deal with John the Baptist, although he was the one who "initiated" Jesus and he was the first one to be killed (beheaded by Herod's son Herod Antipas). The Jewish historian Josephus did not know Jesus but he did know very well John the Baptist. Josephus reports how John the Baptist created a large movement that came to threaten Herod Antipas. In the gospels Jesus seems to be one of the Baptist's disciples that somehow started his own movement (the gospels mention that he made his first recruits among John's disciples). John's movement disappears with his death, but John was still revered over the centuries (as attested by countless legends and paintings about his beheading).
(The Mandaeans, a religious sect centered on the Iran/Iraq border, claim that the Baptist was their greatest leader (although they deny he was the founder of their religion) and that Jesus, who started his career as one of John's disciples, was a false prophet who stole John's teachings and corrupted them, then misled the people who followed him with corrupt teachings. Andrew Rush )
Simon Magus
The story of Simon Magus, a Samaritan (Turkish) magician in the time of Claudius (41-54) who became popular in Rome, is strikingly similar to Jesus': he too was originally a disciple of John (in fact, he may have succeeded him at the head of his movement), he too performed miracles, he too traveled with a former prostitute, he too started a religious sect. Early Christian writers like Justin, Irenaeus, Eusebius and Epiphanius mention Simon Magus as a demon who proclaims to be god and his followers as performing sexual rites and living "immorally". They seem to imply that some people believed him a saint (or Jesus himself). At least, early Christian writers deemed it worth to mention Simon Magus as an evil man.
Simon Magus is mentioned in the Acts and in early Christian legends as competing with Peter for divine legitimacy.
Simon Magus wrote books but they were all destroyed. All the information we have on Simon Magus comes from his enemies.
The disposyni/desposini and Islam
Islam is much closer to James' ideology than to Judaism or Christianity. It could be that James' ideology of faith and goodness ("believe and perform good actions") spread south to the Arabs and survived centuries later in Mohammed's Quran. The Romans, after all, persecuted the (real) Christians, the "disposyni/desposini", and forced them to disband and flee. They could have moved south to escape the Romans. Muslims believe in the prophets and in Jesus, but claim that the "books" were changed by evil people. Isn't this what a disposyni/desposini would claim today? Those books were indeed changed, forcing the whole Christian world to believe that Christianity started in Rome and that Paul's doctrine was Jesus'. The original books were banned. Christians who knew about those books were forced in exile. What Muslims tell us is exactly what a surviving Jamesian Christian would tell us.
After the Jews' Temple was destroyed in A.D. 70, the Jews, led by Bar Kochba, recaptured Jerusalem, but eventually the legions of emperor Hadrian won the war. Hadrian changed the name of the city of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina, ordered the building of a temple of Jupiter on the site of the Jewish Temple, and expelled Jews from the city. Most Judeans (Jews) fled to Arabia, that already has a sizeable Jewish community (Medina itself was originally a Jewish settlement)
Jewish rebellions and early Christians
The legend of Jesus may also have a political aspect. The Jews of Palestine never accepted the rule of Rome. Their prophets were telling them that a "fifth kingdom" was coming (the previous ones being the occupations by Assyrians, Medes, Persians and Greeks), and it would be a Jewish kingdom, created by a messiah imbued with divine powers. For some or most of Jesus' followers, Jesus may have been identified with that messiah. The Jews then fought three bloody wars against the Romans, each one with "messianic" fervor. They lost all three and the third one ended with the Romans banning Jews from Jerusalem. Then it became impossible to deny that the Romans, not the Jews, were the fifth kingdom. Jesus was obviously not the messiah that prophets had predicted would free the Jews from external domination. No wonder most Jews made fun of Christians and even today do not recognize Jesus as the messiah.
The historian Josephus chronicles the events of the first century. The Jews believed in the prophecy that one of them (the messiah) was destined by god to rule over the entire world. Therefore they kept revolting against the Romans. As the Romans kept winning, that belief moved further and further in time. But the Jews who fought the Romans in 66 and then again in 132 probably did so because 1. they were opposed to accepting Roman rule (i.e., Herod and the Herodians) over Palestine (that had been ruled by the Maccabeans) and 2. they were convinced that one of them (the messiah) was meant to rule over the world (not the Roman emperor). Jesus' blood relatives (the "disposyny/desposini") were probably among the leaders of the rebellions. In 136 emperor Hadrian definitely crushed the Jewis resistance and forbad Jews from ever entering Jerusalem again. That is the time when the "gnostic" attitude is born: instead of interpreting Jesus as the messiah, some Jews started interpreting his message as a message of knowledge (of love, fraternity, piety, etc). And the kingdom moved to the heavens.
The people who did not participate in the various uprisings were the Pharisees (who, like Paul, favored coexistence with the Romans), the Herodians (members of the royal family) and the high priests (who had been appointed by Herod and the Romans). These must have been viewed as enemies by James and the early "Christians" of Palestine. These may well be the same "Zealots" that killed the high priests and led the crusade against Rome.
The Dead Sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran are probably the best preserved document of pre-Christian ideology. They are from the Roman era, but they were never "edited" by the Roman empire. Both the writing style and the contents reflect the real thinking of the pre-Christian era. The date of the Dead Sea Scrolls has not been determined for sure yet. One theory has it that the Essenes who wrote it predate Jesus (they are not mentioned in the New Testament), and that therefore Jesus was just one of them. One theory is that they were written right after Jesus' death and that they represent early Christian thinking (the Essenes are not mentioned in the New Testament precisely because the New Testament is written by Essenes). In the latter case, James the Just would then be a protagonist of the story, whereas Jesus would be only a marginal figure, a sort of magician who happened to become famous.
But there is disagreement on when the Dead Sea Scrolls were written. They deal at length with a good man and with an evil man who were fighting for control of the "movement". If the Dead Sea Scrolls predate Jesus, then Jesus was the product of a culture that had been around for a while and we may never find out who the two protagonists were. If the Dead Sea Scrolls were written by the early Christians, then a strong possibility is that James is the good man and Paul is the evil man (challenging James' doctrine). But then the Dead Sea Scroll don't talk of Jesus at all. Why wouldn't a Christian text talk of Jesus at all?
Nag Hammadi and the gnostics
Nag Hammadi is the place in Egypt where a library of ancient scripts was found in the 1940s. It includes a number of Christian documents, known as the "gnostic" gospels. These gospels provide a glimpse of what Christianity may have been at the very beginning, before being contaminated by political power. For example, one gospel clearly states that it is the gospel of the "twin of Jesus" Judas. That gospel is completely different from the official gospels not only because it doesn't chronicle miracles but because it depicts Jesus as a Buddhist-style cryptic wise man.
The gnostics (as well as the disposyni/desposini) disappeared after 381, when Theodosius made heresy a crime and (presumably) persecutions began against anybody who argued with the Roman dogma.
For a long time gnostics have been viewed as opposed to "Pauline Christianity", Christianity as it is today. But now we know that the gnostics actually revered Paul and considered one of theirs. We also know that only seven of the 13 letters attributed to Paul are authentic and one can suspect that the other six were written to prove something that was not proven in the original seven. (Some of the letters appear for the first time with Irenaeus, in 190, the same man who codified the official gospels and must have been to be fakes because not even the Christian historian Eusebius included them in his version of the bible). If one removes the fakes, the originals are strikingly similar to gnostic literature and not a single attack against the gnostics remains. So much so that early Roman letters (such as Clement's and even Peter's) accuse Paul of being a heretic. Commentators have long speculated that there may have been a rift between Paul and James.
Paul's authentic letters talk of allegories (Galatians, 4/24) and symbols (Corinthians 10/6) as if to warn against a literal interpretation of the old testament, and depict a philosophy not too different by the Platonism preached by Philo of Alexandria (a contemporary of Jesus). Could it this be the reason why he was so disliked by Peter and James and why he was so popular with Romans and Greeks?
One can toy with the idea that Paul was such an influential person from the very beginning of Christianity that he could not be dismissed by the Roman church. At the same time, Paul may have been the true founder of Christianity, but not what today we regard as Paul's Christianity, rather just about the opposite: the gnostics may have been closer to Paul's ideology. When the gnostics were persecuted, Paul's ideology was simply "tweaked" with the fake letters so that it would support the Roman ideology. Thus Paul could be involuntarily be regarded as the founder of today's Christianity when in fact he was preaching something else and had no idea future generations would distort his teachings.
Irenaeus and the dogma
The Christian historian and bishop Irenaeus, who lived between 125 to 202, was probably the first one to state what was legal and what was not in Christianity. He banned books that would remain banned for thousands of years. Those books were sometimes early accounts of the life of Jesus and of the spread of Christianity, but conflicted somehow with the Greek-Roman version of events. When Rome became Christian, Irenaeus' view became dogma.
It is certainly odd that Irenaeus chose gospels written by people who had not been eye-witnesses and discarded gospels such as Thomas' and Peter's. It is certainly odd that such a crucial role is played by the letters of Paul, who had never met Jesus.
The twin
One of the books that became illegal and was long lost was the gospel of Didymos Judas Thomas, one of the apostles and the one who was sent east. Didymos in greek and Thomas in aramaic both mean "the twin". It sounds too much of a coincidence. This is consistent with a belief among early Christians that Jesus had a twin brother. Even in one of the official gospels (Matthew's), Pilate asks the people who they would like to crucify: Jesus Messiah or Jesus Barabbas. While this is interpreted as a choice between Jesus and a bandit, it could be that Pilate was trying to ascertain which of the two twins was the one accused of sedition, the other one being a mere thief.
A version of that gospel was found in Nag Hammadi. It is likely that the apostle Taddeus and Judas "the twin" are the same person. Taddeus reached Armenia and then possibly traveled further east. The gospel of Judas Thomas has always intrigued historians and theologians because it doesn't sound Christian at all: its style is closer to Buddhist meditation scripts than to Christian chronicles of Jesus life. After Rome converted, eastern Christianity was forgotten. The truth is that it probably stayed closer to Jesus' thought precisely because it was not contaminated by Roman power.
Taddeus and the Jesus of the east
Thomas/Taddeus may have reached India. There is a place in Srinagar (Kashmir) that is considered Jesus' tomb. If Thomas was a twin brother of Jesus, or simply a spokesman for Jesus, and did reach India this could explain the misunderstanding. Jesus (Yuz Asaf, Yus Asaph, Yesu, San Issa) is mentioned in several documents of Kashmir and even Tibet and all refer to him after his death.
Jesus' tomb
We know the burial places of most early Christians, except one: Jesus himself. If you believe that the body of Jesus disappeared when he ascended to heaven, as the Church does, you don't have to explain where his bodily remains are. Everybody else should at least wonder why we haven't found the tomb of the very man who is at the center of the Christian faith (the four official gospels list four different burial places). Jesus' date of birth and death are also disputed. Herod died in 4 BC, so (if the gospels tell the truth) Jesus can't be born after that date. The Acts of Thomas record that Jesus was in Taxila at a marriage ceremony in the year 49. Irenaeus himself (not a heretic) writes that Jesus reached an old age.
Was Jesus still alive when James the Just, Paul, Peter and Taddeus were spreading Christianity around the world?
The historian Jesophus mentions a "Jesus" who was alive during the years of the Jewish war (66-70 AD), who was an oracle and who was tried in front of Pilate (except that Pilate released him, not crucified him).
If the body of Jesus was buried somewhere, at least two people must have known and visited that place: his mother and his closest friend.
Mary (the mother of Jesus, James the Just and Taddeus) is known to have traveled to Turkey and may have died near Ephesus (according to local legend). James was almost certainly with her. They were, de facto, exiles.
Mary Magdalene was closer to Jesus than anyone else. "Miriam" was the "apostle of the apostles", and the first witness of the resurrection. The gospels give different accounts of her whereabouts and movements before and after the death of Jesus. There is a legend that she traveled to France, to La Sainte-Baume (near Marseilles), and lived in solitude in a cave for the rest of her life. There is a legend that she followed the Virgin Mary to Turkey and died there.
Herod
Herod became king in 37 BC because his father Antipater had helped the Roman general Pompej conquer Jerusalem in 63 BC. Herod was a ruthless ruler whose first and main goal was to destroy the Maccabeans who had ruled before him. He killed all of them, except the princess Mary whom he married. Mary committed adultery with Herod's brother Joseph while Herod was in Rome (29 BC). When Herod returned and was informed of the adultery, he executed Mary. He then executed her sons because they were more popular than him with the Jews: they had Maccabean blood. This story is somehow reflected in the legend that Jesus was the son of Mary and Joseph and that Herod wanted to kill all the Jewish children to make sure none of them would claim the title of king. It is unlikely that Jesus was the illegitimate son of the historical Mary and Joseph, because it would make him too old, but the coincidence is striking.
Who was Jesus?
And what was Jesus' name? "Jesus" simply means "Savior" in hebrew, just like "Christ" is the Greek for "anointed" (a term used in the Old Testament for many kings). But what was his real name?
The family name Barsabas is attributed in the Acts to both a Joseph and a Judas. There is evidence pointing to the fact that Judas Barsabas could be Thaddeus, who is also Judas the "twin brother" of Jesus (Thaddeus is a contraction of "Judas Thomas", that in turn means Judas the brother). Names similar to Barsabas (and Barabbas) recur in Jesus' relatives. The very bandit Barabbas could just be a split in the story, that separated the prophet from the bandit (they were one for the Romans).
Irenaeus himself writes that "Iesous... is a symbolic name".
The Romans kept accurate records of every political and judicial event. There is no record of Pontius Pilate trying and executing a man named Jesus. Only two Roman writers of Jesus' time mention Christians (Pliny and Svetonius) but they don't mention Jesus. The first Roman to mention Jesus is Tacitus, but almost a century after the death of Jesus.
The Jewish historian Josephus certainly mentions Christians, but his words about Jesus are generally considered a later forgery (the Christian historian Origen of the third century wrote that Josephus never mentioned Jesus).
The Jewish philosopher Philo, who lived in Egypt at the time of Jesus does not seem to know anything about Jesus or Christians (he died in the year 40).
Paul himself, one of the founders of Christianity, never talks about Jesus' life, while he definitely talks about his brother James.
A synthesis
By analyzing the historical records, one possible explanation of the events emerges. Jesus, whether because related by blood (via his mother) to the Maccabeans that Jews still revered, or because related to Herod whom Jews feared, claimed to to be the king of the Jews. Some Jews liked him because they recognized his credentials (especially if he was indeed a Maccabean), some Jews despised him as a madman. Eventually, his claims came to the hears of the Romans, as well as his teachings (he was probably a sort of "communist" philosopher, preaching that all humans are equal), and that is what the Romans killed him for. He was probably killed with no trial, just like many other "rebels" of the time that Rome did not deem worthy of any bureaucracy. That is the reason why nobody knows where his tomb is: the Romans did not bother to bury him or return his body.
Paul, heir to the Jewish establishment that wanted to coexist with the Romans and adopt Greek philosophy, was the first Roman citizen to become Christian and spread the Christian word around the world. He was also the first to claim that Greeks and Romans could be as Christian as Jews. In Rome, it was a natural decision to adopt his version of Christianity. When Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire, Christianity was "relocated" from Palestine to Rome: instead of recognizing the thread that starts with Jesus and continues with James and the following disposyni/desposini, Rome decided to start counting with Peter (the first Christian martyr in Rome) and his descendants, the popes.
The Shroud of Turin
I frequently get asked for an opinion about the Shroud of Turin. This is a shroud that has preserved the body image of a crucified man in his 30s. For centuries devout Catholics believed that it is the shround in which Jesus was wrapped after the crucifixion and that a miracle preserved the body image. Historical records only go back to the 14th century. Then it came into possession of the Savoy family that ended up uniting and ruling Italy, and today the Shroud belongs to the Vatican and is stored in Turin (the old capital of the Savoy kingdom in northern Italy). Countless theories have been advanced to explain the "miraculous" image. Scientists were allowed to conduct tests in 1978 and delivered a verdict: the Shroud was manufactured in the Middle Ages. However, the scientific method was rather unscientific and it did not settle the question at all. Personally, i suspect that the Shroud is indeed real: it dates from Jesus' time and it might well be that the corpse wrapped in it was the corpse of Jesus. It is just implausible that someone (someone with an amazing knowledge of chemistry) would create such a perfect fake that would last for centuries and fool everybody for centuries. There is no other artifact from the Middle Ages that even remotely belongs to the same category. There is no document of anyone having discovered a technique to manufacture this kind of images. It is simply implausible that someone would achieve this feat but no record would remain of it, and that person would never take credit for such an amazing creation, and nobody else would ever learn that craft and continue it. The first skeptic was John Calvin, who objected that the Gospels never mention this quasi-magical Shroud. There might be two simple reasons: 1. It was discovered later, during the Roman persecutions, and the Christians had no motivation and no power to publicize it; 2. It was already known at the time of the Gospels but the Gospels were meant to tell the story of Jesus by people who already believed him to be a divine being, and did not need to mention a shroud as further evidence after having listed much more spectacular miracles. In fact, i suspect that the Shroud (and possibly other relics that we have never found or that are not as dramatic as the Shroud) is the very reason that so many people believed in Jesus' superpowers: in an age awash in all sorts of irrational legends, the Shroud must have looked like a very rational proof of Jesus' divine status even to those who never met Jesus and who would not have otherwise believed the tales of the apostles.
Henk Meeter writes: On the question of Jesus being the son of (or Son of) God...
This was routinely a title for the Jewish king. One could argue quite convincingly that the earliest of the Gospels show no more than "this" (whatever "this" meant, given the complexity and newness of Jesus's message) as the first understanding of Jesus's divine sonship, and that allegations of, or belief about, it being something more only cropped up later - with the movements associated with Paul perhaps, or those associated with the Gospel of John.
My own suspicion, or rather, what I like to believe, is that Jesus was not only the Son of God, he was actually, more or less exhaustively, God Himself, in human form, come to subject Himself to all the worst that His obviously flawed Creation had to offer - and that His death, and subsequent resurrection, not only represented, but also accomplished, the elimination of the gulf between Him and His world - not just figuratively or conceptually, but in reality.
I also suspect, or rather like to believe, that though Jesus himself may have had inklings of this, and may have hinted about these inklings to his followers, by and large he was as unsure about it as we would have been if we were in his shoes - because the idea that God became man means literally that - again, that God subjected Himself to all the worst that the world had on offer, or in other words, in essence, that God became, for a time, quite finite, and that He may have taken a gamble which He (just) might have lost.
What I'm quite sure about is this: that, if Jesus actually did rise again from the dead, and did spend some time with his followers thereafter, much of what he said and did was so terribly mysterious to them that it left them in a state of (awestruck)bafflement, which they then spent years trying to come to grips with.
Regarding the belief of the Jews, as to their being the chosen people...
It's one of Wright's contentions that this is precisely what got Jesus killed. Because there was in many of the Old Testament prophets the idea that salvation (whatever that was) would come to the whole world, and that what it meant to be God's chosen people was that they would be the instrument of that salvation, for the whole world - and that Jesus was picking up on and elaborating on that message (hence his condemnation of Temple worship, the precise incident which, according to more or less everybody, occasioned his arrest and trial) .
there is more to this page that are about other people on this subject.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
I rest my case.
But how do you reconcile the issues of the story of Jesus being plagiarized from the story of Vishnu? or Mithra? Or a myriad of other messiahs that pre date Jesus?
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Wouldn't try to. Haven't read enough about it.
Well I would say that you are ignoring very important information there.
The Golden Age is 2 months away. And guess what….. you’re gonna love it! (teskeinc 11.19.24)
1998: Noblesville; 2003: Noblesville; 2009: EV Nashville, Chicago, Chicago
2010: St Louis, Columbus, Noblesville; 2011: EV Chicago, East Troy, East Troy
2013: London ON, Wrigley; 2014: Cincy, St Louis, Moline (NO CODE)
2016: Lexington, Wrigley #1; 2018: Wrigley, Wrigley, Boston, Boston
2020: Oakland, Oakland: 2021: EV Ohana, Ohana, Ohana, Ohana
2022: Oakland, Oakland, Nashville, Louisville; 2023: Chicago, Chicago, Noblesville
2024: Noblesville, Wrigley, Wrigley, Ohana, Ohana
Didn't say I'd not read anything. Only, the book I'm currently reading "Did Jesus Exist?" By Bart Erhman goes to some length criticising the evidence for many of those comparisons, so I just feel as though I need to read a bit more from both sides before jumping on a bandwagon - (Had you asked me previously, I'd have been all over the Horus/Jesus similarities, but new information should make one cautious, and if necessary, willing to change one's mind)
Ultimately though, it's largely irrelevant - I'm by no means suggesting that the historical Jesus was magic or divine. I don't think the existence of a Rabbi to which myths and miracles were attributed forces me to give up any of my atheistic ground whatsoever.
Plus, mapped onto the context of the religious cults we continue to see develop in real time, a charismatic/bat shit crazy leader seems typical.
Godfather.
But I smell a few conversions!!!
:corn: :corn: :corn:
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
As the original poster I am saddened by the derailment of this thread.
You can spend your time alone, redigesting past regrets, oh
or you can come to terms and realize
you're the only one who can't forgive yourself, oh
makes much more sense to live in the present tense - Present Tense
oki doki
Godfather.