Who was Jesus

[Messenger]

I vote other, because the information that we have (including) the bible does not prove or disprove the existence of Jesus

Actually it can disprove the existence of Jesus as God or the Son of God

So Jesus if he existed maybe he was a man, teacher, prophet, a good man, a liar, etc., but not God or the his Son (for sure)

[wheels5894]

I put 'good teacher' too as I think he must have existed and must have passed on something. However, the Christ of the Gospels and of Paul I think is almost a new character, though based on an historical one probably.

[Messenger]

I put 'good teacher' too as I think he must have existed and must have passed on something. However, the Christ of the Gospels and of Paul I think is almost a new character, though based on an historical one probably.

Why you said "must"? do you think that any character mentioned in a famous book existed!

What about Zeus for example? did he existed as well

The Bible has many errors and illegalities, which make it the product of imperfect people and never from God  

[wheels5894]

I put 'good teacher' too as I think he must have existed and must have passed on something. However, the Christ of the Gospels and of Paul I think is almost a new character, though based on an historical one probably.

Why you said "must"? do you think that any character mentioned in a famous book existed!

What about Zeus for example? did he existed as well

The Bible has many errors and illegalities, which make it the product of imperfect people and never from God  

Well, I say 'must' because there is some evidence that a Jewish Christian group was in Jerusalem, led by James, and Acts details their argument about gentiles. Now I know that we can't necessarily take the bible as 'gospel' but I do think this [assage in Acts 15 does give credence to the existence of the group.

Now if we grant the existence of the group in Jerusalem, then It seems unlikely that they would be including a person in their worship who was said to have died in their lifetime if he had not existed and actually died.

[Messenger]

Well, I say 'must' because there is some evidence that a Jewish Christian group was in Jerusalem, led by James, and Acts details their argument about gentiles. Now I know that we can't necessarily take the bible as 'gospel' but I do think this [assage in Acts 15 does give credence to the existence of the group.

Now if we grant the existence of the group in Jerusalem, then It seems unlikely that they would be including a person in their worship who was said to have died in their lifetime if he had not existed and actually died.

We can say that Jesus probably existed but not for sure

We can not prove who actually wrote the Bible and was he honest in doing that or not, but we can prove that he did not put the whole truth in it  

[Zarathustra]

We can say that Jesus probably existed but not for sure

We can also say that Jesus propably did not exist, but not for sure.

We can not prove who actually wrote the Bible and was he honest in doing that or not

We can prove that more than one person contributed, and that it has been changed repeatedly over the centuries. So honesty is quite irrelevant.

We can prove that he did not put the whole truth in it  :hide:

[Kyuuketsuki]

Actually, history doesn't support your version and yes I see that as entirely possible.

Look at it this way ... whether or not he existed, once Jesus was dead, you no longer need the primary to support the tale as it is self-supporting. IOW from, say, 50CE you only have the stories (by which I mean tales, not necessarily fiction), there's no body (because it has supposedly risen to the heavens) and all you really have is word of mouth to be later codified by various individuals. So what we're really arguing about here is that 50 year period.

However, there is the fact that the people who supposedly saw him rise were willing to DIE for their beliefs. If it was indeed a fiction then they would have sacrificed everything for nothing.

It is NOT a fact, it is as yet an unsubstantiated claim ... you want it to be more then support it.

Add to it this ... was Haile Selassi a good man? Some say that he was the most brutal dictator to his people and upon his death left 11 billion dollars in a Swiss account yet he is revered by millions of Rastafari as their god emperor on Earth. Ghandi is revered/remembered as a good man and maybe he was but I am willing to bet that he wasn't as good as current day claims of him say he was. Mother Teresa is held up (was held up within her lifetime) as an icon of virtue and ran one Bombay's most well funded Catholic institutions for the poor & needy yet she is believed to have re-used hypodermics, left patients screaming in pain because she believe pain brought you closer to "God" and funnelled most of the funds she got (intended by the donors to support her clinic) back to the coffers of Rome. What was she doing? Paving her way to Heaven?

1. Those who were closest to Haile Selassie were not willing to die for the Rastafarians belief that he was God on earth. There is a strict deviation in the accounts. The early early church was willing to die for Jesus when they were the ones who claimed to have seen him rise from the dead.
2. Ghandi and Mother Teresa have not been deified.
3. I don't defend people's wrong views on Christianity.

Again it is NOT fact, Ghandi has rather been escalated to the level of sainthood in a very, very large number of people's eyes (and I wasn't aware there was deification concept in his religion), Mother Teresa was well on the books for it with the Rat Catchers (no idea what her current saintly status is) and you should because it all reflects on your rather naïve & childish belief system.

What I am trying to get across to you is that people are not necessarily what they appear to be even when they are alive and the person vs the publicly perceived persona (particularly a long time after they lived and died or rose into the clouds) are two distinct things which may or may not closely align but more to the point that the principal of a given tale is not needed after a time and may not be needed at all if something was there in its place.  

Please provide evidence for a sect that believed their leader to be a messiah and were willing to die for that cause that has gone on to live and survive with even nonbelievers respecting the achievements of the "messiah."[/quote]

And yet again it is NOT fact that Christians died in any kind of excessive number in Roman times (IOW that they were specifically prejudiced against) and besides I do believe that all Christianity has it's roots as a global religion via the Roman Catholic Church (Emperor Constantine) so even if it were true I'd have said they have MORE than balanced the books.

Your Jesus Christ may have existed but equally he may not have because they never had long distance communications beyond the spoken and written word (no camera, no video, no radio, no TV) so all the information people got would have been through other and not through a medium you could at least partially trust. IOW many, many Christians in that time (probably the vast majority) would never even have seen their Christ if he existed and given the lack of hard evidence and eyewitness accounts for him it is not a huge leap to assume he never existed at all.

It's that simple and I take the basic position that I want evidence before I accept he existed ... I will not assume he did. Why? Because I can.

The problem is that the Gospel tradition is so counter culture that it doesn't make sense unless it is a first hand account and not a fabrication. For instance, women played a vital role in testifying about the Lord's return. But women at the time were not even trusted as witnesses in the courts. If they had wanted to make a story around this man or if they were trying to prop up their beliefs they would have excised this portion of the text in order to make their religion more plausible.

You'd like to believe that wouldn't you but until you demonstrate evidence for that it's just another happy clapping Christian claim isn't it?

Logic isn't whatever we want to be. There are real forms of logic and I hope to pull you towards Christianity with true logic and rationality.

Well you haven't succeeded so far so good luck with that particular piece of futility.

Again, I'm not giving up on you that easily.

Go ahead and waste your time if you want but as I said to Zarathustra, "Atheism is not a choice or a philosophy, it arises from things that are so I ingrained (reason. logic, scientific method) that I cannot simply stop being an atheist, I would have to stop thinking the way I do (in essence move from a position or logic & reason to one that not characterised by either)." ... even if you do move me more towards a religious POV why the hell would I choose to adopt such a stupid & oppressive religion as Christianity?

Of course it matters though I concede not much to this discussion if you're not claiming it (the modern discovery) is his tomb.

I'm not.

Fair enough (and I do hope this isn't going to go like that atheism philosophy  one).

And, given the evidence historians have of such transcription errors and personal interpretations (including many other historical works not necessarily biblical) along with a through knowledge of how people tend to do such things, you know that how?

But the personal interpretations represent a clear distinction from the volumes that are practically identical. You are talking about transcription errors of small spelling mistakes not edited texts.

And I repeat, you know this how?

The Wako people, led by David Koresh, died defending their beliefs that that the second coming of Christ was about to occur but they key point is that they believed so utterly in their leader. Arguably it isn't a good example because of the claims and counter-claims over who was to blame for the deaths of so many.

1. It's Waco (with a C).
2. There are many uncertainties about what transpired there...not that I'm defending the actions of those in the house.
3. I don't defend Christians with irrational outworks of Christianity but Christianity itself. How is that not getting across to you?

1. OK
2. Agreed.
3. You should (see above).

Scrap Wako (I accept it was a poor example, at least for now) ... what about the other evidence you need to prove your persecution claim?

I'll reference Augustine and the fact that Christianity was one of the few religions that many Roman emperors and citizens did not view as a mere social activity. They saw it as being detrimental to the empire as a whole.

You're quoting as evidence someone who was born 320 plus years after your claimed messiah supposedly died? Are you serious? You're aware that Christianity was the formal Roman religion from several decades before Augustine's birth?

What if you said you burped and an elephant fell out of your mouth and 20 people adamantly agree even if they have nothing to gain from the story.

There're 2 billion Christians worldwide who believe they have the right saviour, there's another 2 billion Muslims, who knows how many Jews and other religions who all think they have the right saviour or other answer ... what do you think I am going to say to that?

Oh I don't know ... maybe that there's bugger all evidence that ANY OF You have the right idea? Just a thought.

As I said earlier, I couldn't care less whether you burped elephants, I would care a lot more if you said those elephants would lead us to spiritual paradise meaning Earthly life was irrelevant and defined a moral code by which should now live (though in truth I'd just piss myself laughing)!

I think that it is pretty easy to demonstrate how those religions are pointless or false.

Humour me ... tell me exactly how you would do that.

Don't be foolish, I can no more do that than I can give you the specific evidence for the big bang, but my understanding is that the historians have such evidence. However, from the "Report of the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Automated Personal Data Systems" July, 1973 it says, "Systematic record keeping in the ancient world reached a high point during the Roman Empire and then degenerated with the decline of strong central government." So no doubt you'll realise that what I am saying in general terms at least (I have few doubts you'll object to specifics) is correct about the Romans ... they were meticulous record keepers.

They were meticulous about keeping records but not about everything, and that is why I was asking where they talk about the various religious groups that were arising.

And that, I'm afraid, is just special pleading on your part. If you cannot demonstrate why the Romans, meticulous record keepers that they were, do not validate your given religion of choice's history then at least have the good grace to admit you take your religion's claimed historicity on faith rather than fact.

And I repeat that you have to justify that claim first ... I am not accepting it from you without good reason.

You never addressed the data I provided for why Luke was written prior to A.D. 68 (at the latest) and if that is true then you have all of the apostles who were being killed right and left for their beliefs.

OK ... where was that again?

Josephus

From Wikipedia:

"He makes references to the Sadducees, Jewish High Priests of the time, Pharisees and Essenes, the Herodian Temple, Quirinius' census and the Zealots, and to such figures as Pontius Pilate, Herod the Great, Agrippa I and Agrippa II, John the Baptist, James the brother of Jesus, and a disputed reference to Jesus."

I'm making special note of James the brother of Jesus...a pretty clear depiction of a character who lived at the time.

On the other hand, while this argument asserts that Josephus could not have written the Testimonium in its current form, it also demonstrates, according to some scholars, that the version of the Antiquities known to Origen must have written something about Jesus, for otherwise Origen would have no reason to make the claim that Josephus "did not accept Jesus as Christ."

Which is what I argued...not that the work in its entirety was true but that Josephus did mention Jesus.

OK ... the passage concerning James is as follows:

"But the younger Ananus who, as we said, received the high priesthood, was of a bold disposition and exceptionally daring; he followed the party of the Sadducees, who are severe in judgment above all the Jews, as we have already shown. As therefore Ananus was of such a disposition, he thought he had now a good opportunity, as Festus was now dead, and Albinus was still on the road; so he assembled a council of judges, and brought it before the brother of Jesus the so-called Christ, whose name was James, together with some others, and having accused them as law-breakers, he delivered them over to be stoned."

In favour of it being genuine is the fact that it doesn't go overboard as the other strongly suspected interpolation did, that Origen mentions this passage (which allows over a century for the passage to have been interpolated) and the claim that the words reflect Jewish rather than Christian usage are inconclusive. Another objection to this passage is that the Greek does not contain the concept of "so-called" so the actual phrase would be "Him called Christ" which then raises the interpolation spectre again.

It DOES NOT prove there was no Christ it simply weakens the case for that person existing by removing (invalidating) a major piece of supporting evidence and as I have repeatedly said mine is an assumptive position ... I take the position there was no Christ because I can, because you & your fellows have no evidence that can be validated. In one sense I genuinely don't care whether your Messiah existed or not but I do what I do from the philosophical position that if I take this point of view it either stops you dead or we have to move on leaving the existence of Jesus Christ as explicitly assumed.

Wow, first of all your position at the end isn't one of trying to understand history but of stopping a philosophy. If you were truly rational you would not take a stance for the purpose of arguing against something but you would take a stance because you believed it to be true...this makes me question your intentions. Secondly, you did not answer my point about your circular reasoning. Why did he mention Jesus at all?

Josephus? There is no surety that he (himself) did. And am I biased? Yes ... primarily I'm biased against the use of assumption as evidence for something that cannot be factually demonstrated as having occurred. You OTOH are biased towards all things Christian and at least I can say that my bias leaves us where we should be i.e. that something cannot be assume to be unless that something has supporting evidence.

Kyu

[Messenger]

We can also say that Jesus propably did not exist, but not for sure.

Yes

We can also prove that the Bible holds no valid claim, which implies that there is no truth in it at all.

There is a difference here, We can not be sure if it has some truth in it or not
But any way, The Bible should be discard as it can not be from God
A book from God must have no single Error or contradiction
God must provide a proof for his existence and for his book authenticity

If not, we should not accept blind beliefs

[Zarathustra]

We can also prove that the Bible holds no valid claim, which implies that there is no truth in it at all.

There is a difference here, We can not be sure if it has some truth in it or not

Agreed! I wanted to provoke you since what you wrote was that the bible, didn't hold the whole truth. What you wrote now is a lot more correct. What I ment to say was, that so far most of it has been proven wrong.

But any way, The Bible should be discard as it can not be from God
A book from God must have no single Error or contradiction

Agreed

God must provide a proof for his existence and for his book authenticity

If not, we should not accept blind beliefs

And the current case is: He hasn't! So we should not accept the christian god.

Glad we are in agreement. Let's take on the next deity  

[Improbable]

Improbable which verse on slavery are you referencing. Because I am pretty sure you are taking it out of context.

I admit that it is nothing specific that *I* know of. Sam Harris said it. But I am inclined to believe him. Especially considering the times.
     Also according to SAB there are many many bad things about Jesus in fact and even if half or most of them were incorrect. Surely they can't all be incorrect: http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/cruelty/long.html
      There is the cruelty and violence section. Just search for the Jesus. I doubt they're all incorrect. You can go ahead and falsify them all if you want if you can actually show that they're not actually what the bible says and/or means.
      Sam Harris also said, and I paraphrase: 'Jesus actually said those who don't follow me shall be slain before me'.
     Also the key thing for me in SAB about Jesus, and I believe Harris might have said this also is that: Jesus did not disprove of the OT. He came to promote it not to change it.

[Sophus]

Jesus did not disprove of the OT. He came to promote it not to change it.

This is very true. Jesus tought from the Old Testament. Which is why folks like Tolstoy are wrong in thinking only the New Testament or teachings of Christ matters. Sorry Titan, it's all or nothing.