Christ's History ~ Why the Delay In Recording It?

reply to post by pushmepullu

Dear pushmepullu,

I may not be able to say anything intelligent, or maintain such a conversation, but let me offer a thought.

because there would have been too many witness's to critique certain aspects or call bs on entire account.

Do you think that the two eyewitnesses who wrote Gospels, and all the people Luke interviewed who were eyewitnesses were lying? All of the Gospels (except John's) were written in the first 35 years after Jesus' death. Do you think the other witnesses would be pretty much all dead?

You have an intersting theory, but I don't know of any evidence to support it.

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by charles1952


obviously,by your civil reply i was not referring to you.i question everything thats put before me,my beliefs and motives as well as others beliefs and motives.i was stating one of many possible answers to the question in original post. you get a star friend everyone would not have had to lie ,only the few "writers".or taken dramatic license.not that anyone lied just a possibility.

Originally posted by PrimalWisdom
Perhaps its because his story is stolen from various others?
Just saying the facts are there - Jesus' story is not a new one, even though the church want you to believe it is.

Perhaps he was just a reincarnation of all those people?

I love topics such as this. Faith seems to strip people of common sense (and cash). 1. Would any of us send our children to an eternal fire of misery and torment - eternal meaning FOREVER 2. Do you think if anyone saw an actual man walk on water or turn water into wine (I'm digging the latter!) that it wouldn't have found it's way into "current" history writings of the time it happened?!?!? I mean like EVERY freaking writing, carving, cave painting! LOL! 3. I'm assuming everyone here already knows how many "Jesus" stories are out there, pre-dating the "christian version by.... a lot

I'm not saying there is no God. Man created religion to control the people. People went along with religion for acceptance and protection. If you want to find God, separate yourself as far as possible from religion, quiet your mind, leave the cities, embrace nature, and you will see. Most will never.

Originally posted by Azadok2day

Originally posted by pro-all
I find it rather funny that people would hint that the apostles had no need to document the life of Jesus because they felt he would return in their life time. This alone shows that christianity was flawed from the very beginning. There was no blue print to spread the so-called good news and the apostles were deluded. Everything about this religion doesnt add up for me. If Jesus intended his message to be futuristic and universal, he would put a mechanism in place to achieve that. All we have now are people talking of oral tradition. How do one memorize whole books containing thousands of verses? Isn`t it suspicious that modern christianity as we know it today was founded by Paul, a known murderer instead of one of the apostles? I personally prefer to remain on the fence rather believing a fairy tale.

Deny ignorance do not embrace it , if you had any clue how stupid this statement sounds you would not have posted it . First off Jesus said the end would not come until the gospel was preached to the whole world , sounds like he had a long term idea going on in that statement . Then you state a mechanism was needed for this to happen , uh hello Einstein the bible is here and has more proof of its authenticity than any other ancient document ever . The fact it is poured over by both believer and non believer alike is a testament to its power to provoke thought and change . You sir or madam are a hypocrit that opines out of hate and ignorance , keep up the good work.

How sad that christians are so far removed from reality that they fail to comprehend the simplest of things? I guess their greatest problem is that they bellittle their own god. If their god created trillions of galaxies, is capable of knowing every atom, can communicate instantly with every being, can alter the thought of all beings, then why the need to send his son to change the earth which is by the way insignificant on the cosmic scale? It is either that christians are stuck in time or are brain dead. It is said by christians that the gospel would be preached to the four corners of the earth before the end. Hello, we are now in 2012, when will the billions of Chinese, Indians and Arabs who have nothing to do with xtianity hear the good news? Give it another million years. What of nature tribes who are yet to be discovered? What if a people choose not to allow preachers in their domain? Have they no right to ward off foreign preachers who are trying to infiltrate their culture? The other thing is that the bible is like a library, it is an assembly of many books. But you believe it was dropped from the sky already bounded in golden rims. Wake up from your delusion and question things. Jesus was said to have 12 apostles, all men. What is the need for the apostles if they were deluded into believing their christ would come back in their own life time? For anyone who has a brain the size of a pea, it is more logical to believe: 12 apostles= 12 zodiacs, Jesus= sun. Please answer how a human being can memorize whole books for hundreds of years.

buddha walked on water too.
i think there must be something there about mind over matter. don't get all retentive about this unless you want retentive rebuttals. i'm kinda doubting you do. sun is not son.. mercury is not daughter. pluto is not uncle.
hieratics for son not the same as hieratics for sun.
hieroglyphs not the same either.
not the same in sumerian, akkadian, babylonian, hebrew, aramic, chaldean, or greek.
come on, you can do better than that. don't insult my intelligence.

Originally posted by knows_but_doesnt
Would any of us send our children to an eternal fire of misery and torment - eternal meaning FOREVER

i think, well you don't want to know what i think in its entirety, but suffice it to say, i don't think hell is what people say it is. i certainly wouldn't send my worst enemy to a place with such a description so, the idea of sending people i love there, is totally out of my frame of reference. to quote robot: "does not compute."

it's likened to and even put inside, the lake of fire. the lake of fire was an egyptian thing. ive seen drawings of it. it doesn't look like a lake. it looks like a reflecting pool. there's something very suspect about the entire topic.

That my Friend is one of the great mysteries of Life. I too often ponder that same Question !

reply to post by undo


This is all about semantics. I´m perfectly aware of the sun/son wordplay but what I stated is just about Jesus being a metaphor for the sun. Christianity is a creation of occultists who wanted to hide some truths from the masses.

For me the main reason for the wait was because many people were still alive from the time of Jesus to actually come up and say "hold on a second, this never happened like that" and the myth of Jesus would fade away.
Instead we get this unprovable superstitious nonsense that sounds amazing even though we only have hearsay to go by.

Originally posted by troubleshooter

Originally posted by aaaiii
reply to post by troubleshooter

 

I tend to question authenticity when there is no clear provenence. The documentation may be based on earlier records. There is no proof.

Are you looking for confirmation or not?
What you find will depend on your own expectations.

Do you want it to be true or not?

I tend to go with the biblical scholars whether christian or agnostic all agree Jesus existed...
...some accept the supernatural elements some don't...
...but all agree Jesus existed.

I guess all "biblical" scholars would agree that Jesus existed, otherwise they'd be out of job. Not ALL scholars agree that Jesus existed, given the absence of tangible proof. Second and third hand anecdotes, written by god knows who, hardly qualifies as proof. Strange how "all" scholars are said to "agree" that Jesus existed, but ask them for "proof" and all you get is a blank expression.

All this is conjecture.

The only way we are going to get at some semblance of the truth is to look at the records/ manuscripts etc that the Vatican hold.

They are the only ones who know the "truth", or nearest to it......and access to those records won't be coming any time soon.
You have to ask yourself....why?.

reply to post by aaaiii


I think that disciples counted themselves friends of Jesus. They didn't see the bigger picture. Paul (Saul) was the most vociferous follower and he never met Jesus properly. He saw the reason Jesus came and died for us.
The disciples were ordinary men frightened of the Roman Rule....Eventually Peter did Jesus bidding and was martyred for it.
I think they wrote things down but kept them secret, The later Christians used the writings and stories to write what we now know as The New Testament.

In the years immediately following Christ's execution, there were more than a few political and religious problems in and about Jerusalem and Palestine and Judea. And then that messy Maccabean Revolt,

...not to mention a pretty heavy backlash by the Pharisees and Sadducees... as demonstrated by Pauls profession before his conversion and becoming Paul. Which was to hunt down, persecute, prosecute, and kill Christians.

And considering that a goodly amount of the new converts to Chritianity were from the low ends of society... they were probably also illiterate.

Not an enviroment condusive to written records and the exploits of a persecuted new fangled religion. It took a little time for the faith to get some traction.

Too often we tend to look at history through a contemporary or current paradigm instead of the more accurate and genuine window of the people that actually lived at that time... that alone distorts our interpretation and understanding.

Why didn't anyone write about Christ immeditely after His crucifiction?

Probably for some of the same reasons the US didn't have a US Constitution until almost 20 years after we won our independence.

Maybe for the some of the same reasons most books about the US Civil War didn't appear until about 20 or so years after the war was over. Same for the bulk of the memorials and monuments to the fallen.

I speculate that there was a genuine lack of comprehension as to the great impact that Jesus actually had.

Further, there was a lack of communication and written word, and that there may have been written records that were destroyed by the Jewish religious and political powers in the ensuing persecution.

The growth of this movement and the predominant figure...Jesus.. would have purposely been hidden by the Jewish authorities to keep Rome and it's governor off the back of Herod and the Jewish councils.

And if recorded, what would a persecuted and fledgling religion and it's followers have written on? ...skins...stone walls in hidden grottos and caves? We have them... they exist, but because the dates can not be pin point to within a year but more in terms of decades, centuries, or periods.. then we tend to exclude them.

There were no printing presses, no religious freedoms to keep records, no internet, no down loads or discs or CDs or DVDs or cell phone cameras. Even today... on this very sight... we have plentiful video of the 9/11 event... yet we have those that dispute it or say it didn't happen.

What should we expect from a poor drawing or glyphs on a stone wall in some hidden grotto in Palestine?

I don't know history surround the dates and such for the recording of scriptures relating to Jesus. However, the first thing that comes to my mind is how our lives today are vastly different than they were back then. In Jesus's time, from what I understand, the vast majority of people could not read or write. Oral tradition was the name of the game. These days the vast majority of people can read and write. And we have no shortage of ways to read or record information. While some of the apostles clearly could read and write, perhaps at the time it was not of immediate importance to write to record the information. Maybe their priority was to spread the message and live their lives as Godly examples.

Today we all have books, many people have Bibles, we have the internet, etc etc. Everywhere you look we have proliferation information galore. Perhaps, back then getting this out on papyrus served little purpose considering most people probably couldnt afford a copy of it, even if they could read it. They certainly didn't have a printing press. Also, I have read some of the apostles thought Jesus would be returning in their lifetimes . If this is true, then recording this wouldn't have been so urgent for them.

I could be wrong.

Just something to think about.

reply to post by aaaiii

As believer in the man, Christ, I have often wondered why his faithful waited 100 years or more to record an historical record of his life.

They didn't wait hundreds of years. The Gospels were all finished before AD 100. Mark is probably the earliest and was written around AD 50. That's two decades after the death of Christ.

If we manage to survive ( the human race ) another 1000 years.
Then the people that dig up time capsules will worship Batman.
Why anyone believes a book that was written 400 years after the said event baffles me

Another possibility would be that Revelation (the Apocalypse of John) was written very early on, before the letters of John, and the Gospel of John were written, and that it is close to the time of the Crucifixion of Jesus.
It seems to be more likely that Revelation was actually written by the Apostle John, than the others normally attributed to that person.
Revelation is the first New Testament book cited in an extant writing.

I'm learning a lot from the replies of everyone in the thread. You are much more versed on this subject than I am.

Thanks to all for your input.

Please continue the conversation.

Originally posted by jmdewey60
Another possibility would be that Revelation (the Apocalypse of John) was written very early on, before the letters of John, and the Gospel of John were written, and that it is close to the time of the Crucifixion of Jesus.
It seems to be more likely that Revelation was actually written by the Apostle John, than the others normally attributed to that person.
Revelation is the first New Testament book cited in an extant writing.

The church at Smyrna wasn't established until after the martyrdom of Paul. (62-64 ish AD)