Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

Also, I hope my above post doesn't come off as me being on one side of the fence or the other. I personally have no vested interest in whether or not Jesus was real (of course, Christians would probably therefore lump me on the OTHER side of the fence).
The thing is, it is very, very hard to prove something did NOT happen. In this case, the burden of proof lies on those professing it did.

Maybe he did, maybe he didn't....but one I thing I do believe....if he DID live, there should have been MUCH, MUCH more written historical evidence about him besides the bible.

Anyone who is bias , one way or the other, is never going to investigate and come to honest conclusions. If christianity is what you base your life on...then of COURSE you aren't going to be open to the possibility that Jesus never lived. In fact, to even be a MEMBER of the "club" of christians, you have to BELIEVE beyond any doubt that Jesus lived, and did a bunch of other stuff.

If you aren't willing to suspend your beliefs and opinions and religious convictions to allow new information to change your mind, that is FINE...but clearly you should see why this is in opposition to "truth". It means you've put your blinders on, and are only willing to see things one way.

Think about that for a minute. In order to be a "christian", you have to BELIEVE BEYOND ANY DOUBT that jesus lived. How then, can you be a christian and honestly search for the truth or whether or not he existed? Even if the evidence was RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOUR EYES.....you would either have to turn your back on it, or renounce your faith. Doesn't that seem like a contradiction to anyone else?

I will tell you this, I am a spiritual man, and was ordained years back (I will not say under what religion/school), but luckily my path doesn't require me to believe in ANYTHING or ANYONE if I decide not to . I just couldn't devote my life to a path that forces me to see things one way or another, to me, I don't see how that is a godly path.

KhaleesiSo you are saying these historians had no other source of information to draw on but the early Church? Really? No other sources whatsoever? These historians did not use their own resources of Roman history? They only drew from Church history when they wrote about Pontious Pilate? They had no means to consult Pilate's records of what he did during that time? Really? Roman historians relied solely on Church sources for this information? You know this for a fact?

With reasonable certainty, and a positive, neutral and ethical mind. Yes. Using my best faculties and in a mindset not ruled by gospel fear and church programming... Absolutely.

This argument cannot be easily dismissed.

Notice that a first reference example to Jesus by an historian (and not one of the documents of the church) is Flavius, as you cite. Josephus Flavius - and I have read all of Flavius - it is a very long work, full of things he could not personally validate and verify. He makes it clear in the preamble that he is recounting legends of a culture he wished to preserve for antiquity. Flavius makes that very clear. It comes WELL AFTER (see the end of the list) the story has already been regionally published and circulated inside the context of fervent religious bias; and published all across Anatolia, Rome (Paulinian Epistles) and the Levant. True or not, his recitation is referential and not original, at best.

Here are the listings of early Christian Writings publications (most of which was eventually codified as scripture) and their best held provenance date. Historians circa 90 ad and later would have only had this material to draw from, as they did not have access to deceased first hand sources:

The list you provided of historical references is absolutely posteriori and subjective recitation, yes. In other words, history had already been tainted. Right or Wrong. Early Christian Documents

30 ad Passion Narrative
40 ad Lost Sayings Gospel Q
50 ad 1 Thessalonians
50 ad Philippians
50 ad Galatians
50 ad 1 Corinthians
50 ad 2 Corinthians
50 ad Romans
50 ad Philemon
50 ad Colossians
50 ad Signs Gospel
50 ad Book of Hebrews
50 ad Didache
50 ad Gospel of Thomas
50 ad Oxyrhynchus 1224 Gospel
50 ad Sophia of Jesus Christ
65 ad Gospel of Mark
70 ad Epistle of James
70 ad Egerton Gospel
70 ad Gospel of Peter
70 ad Secret Mark
70 ad Fayyum Fragment
70 ad Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
73 ad Mara Bar Serapion
80 ad 2 Thessalonians
80 ad Ephesians
80 ad Gospel of Matthew
80 ad 1 Peter
80 ad Epistle of Barnabas
80 ad Gospel of Luke
80 ad Acts of the Apostles
80 ad 1 Clement
80 ad Gospel of the Egyptians
80 ad Gospel of the Hebrews
80 ad Christian Sibyllines
90 ad Apocalypse of John
90 ad Gospel of John
90 ad 1 John
90 ad 2 John
90 ad 3 John
90 ad Epistle of Jude

93 ad Flavius Josephus - The Antiquity of the Jews

reply to post by TheEthicalSkeptic


So what's your "ethical" conclusion?

reply to post by whyamIhere


The "mythical" characters of Abraham and Moses are MORE documented than the mythical character of Jesus. FACT!

signalfire
Watching the X-tian's heads explode in real time is so much fun on threads like this.

Sounds like a kind of sadistic "fun" . . . to me.

Sounds like obviously a value system I don't need to give a gnat's fart's worth of concern to.

reply to post by ltheghost


Nope, the idea that Jesus never was didn't come around until about at least 1,400 years after he was on earth, and why is that? because it is hard to deny the existence of someone until enough time passes. Jesus is probably the most well documented person in history, even documented by those who were not Christian or sympathetic to his cause.
Outside the Bible you have multiple historians speaking of him.

See if Jesus was fake then his enemies back then would have said he wasn't real to stop all his followers that came after him, but none of his enemies could say that because not enough time passed, so all they could do is attack who he was etc and his followers.

This idea Jesus wasn't real is pretty much rejected by most if not all legit historians, even atheist ones.

AfterInfinity
reply to post by TheEthicalSkeptic

 

So what's your "ethical" conclusion?

LOL!! Hey After I wish there were a better word. All this is in the realm of humanities, and is not chemistry, medicine, math or physics, so we have to make our best judgement calls sometimes.

My thought is that Flavius regarded the Christian movement as a peripheral facet of Judaism, and his inclusion of the movement in "The Antiquity of the Jews" - indicated that he really did not know much about nascent Christianity per se - simply recounting the history of the region.

I have to side with the locus of historians (from Wikipedia): "The general scholarly view is that while the Testimonium Flavianum is most likely not authentic in its entirety, it is broadly agreed upon that it originally consisted of an authentic nucleus with a reference to the execution of Jesus by Pilate which was then subject to Christian interpolation."

Recounting of a legend, from church documents alone, which was further then altered by the church to make it conform with what later became scripture.

I hate that answer, but that is what I feel is the best explanation.

reply to post by whyamIhere


You're correct but Jesus was a popular name during the period of his supposed life. But his name wasn't actually "Jesus" The name was Yeshua or Joshua. The name Jesus seems to be more or less just a big # up in translation between languages

He must have been real, the Jews Killed Him !!!

windword
reply to post by whyamIhere

 

The "mythical" characters of Abraham and Moses are MORE documented than the mythical character of Jesus. FACT!

If we our being honest with ourselves nothing from that period is a Fact.

It requires a huge imagination to call anything from that era a fact.

You can call Jesus a mythical figure. You just can't prove it.

Nor can I prove you wrong. But one thing is sure, none of us have all the facts.

reply to post by ltheghost


I could actually believe this I mean being that "Jesus" is a made up name anyway. And that a lot of his life's stories have been found to come from stories of previous religions. You know kind of like the cross was stolen from the Druids because the cross which he would have been crucified on was more of a capital T.
Then there is the whole "Noah's flood" story which was taken from the story of Gilgamesh which was probably taken from a much older story. To me the entire Christian bible is more or less a childrens fairytale book made up of a bunch of popular stories of the time and someone just threw it together and found a creative way to make people believe it all

reply to post by Cumingsj

I could actually believe this I mean being that "Jesus" is a made up name anyway. And that a lot of his life's stories have been found to come from stories of previous religions. You know kind of like the cross was stolen from the Druids because the cross which he would have been crucified on was more of a capital T.

Because sooner or later this is what happens to all fairytales

Khaleesi

TheEthicalSkeptic

Khaleesi
Actually there is more non biblical documentation of Jesus than there is Ceasar. Research it. Yes by proper name.

Yes, I read Jesus' famous work "The Gallic Wars."

As I said there are 3 Primary sources for Julius Caesar, one of them being Caesar himself. Non Biblical primary sources for Jesus include, Flavius Josephus, Gaius Suetonius, Cornelius Tacitus, Babylonian Talmud, Pliny the Younger, Trajan, and some even include the Koran.

eta Tacitus even mentions Pontius Pilatus by name as the man that sentenced Jesus to crucifixion.

edit on 9-10-2013 by Khaleesi because: (no reason given)

You quote all these people who wrote about Jesus, how many met him? How many knew him? Hmm that would be none, considering they were all born after the event, after he died and the koran is evidence? Written some 600 years after he died? Really... Even the new testament was written long after he died by people who had never met him, or are you going to alleged that they were writen by the apostles?

There is very little actual evidence that Jesus lived, All the written evidence seems to start some 70 - 100 years after he died, and by people who never met him or knew him, never listened to his sermons, never witnessed any miracles. You have to accept Jesus on faith alone for there is no evidence

Cumingsj
reply to post by whyamIhere

 

You're correct but Jesus was a popular name during the period of his supposed life. But his name wasn't actually "Jesus" The name was Yeshua or Joshua. The name Jesus seems to be more or less just a big # up in translation between languages

Not really.

Yeshua (pronounced yay-shoo-a), transliterated into Greek is Iesous (pronounced ee-yay-soo), which was then transliterated into Latin as Jesu (yay-soo) and finally into the English Jesus (gee-zus).

So it wasn't a mess up or conspiracy, just transliteration issues. Jesus and Jeshua (Joshua) became distinct rather late in the game, with the King James Bible in 1611.

But, yeah, if you went back in time 2,000 years and went up to Jesus at the wedding of Cana and said "yo, Jesus, 'sup?" he would have no idea who this "gee-zus" you speak of is.

I've shared this before, but feel the need to do so again:

The first words out of my 4-year-old daughter's mouth when able to talk after heart surgery was: "Mommy, Jesus came and held my hand".

No one will ever convince me that Jesus does not exist.

reply to post by PrinceDreamer

All the written evidence seems to start some 70 - 100 years after he died, and by people who never met him or knew him, never listened to his sermons, never witnessed any miracles.

No, that is not the case -- typically accepted dating (by scholars who know what they're talking about, not by kooks,) is that all of the books of the New Testament were written in a timeframe that is reasonable to assume Jesus' contemporaries (ie: Apostles) lived in. Whether the Apostles wrote them all is debatable, but claiming that they weren't written until a hundred years after the fact is not.

I would again point people to Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Bauckham, which uses historical evidence and statistical data to pretty much prove that whoever wrote those texts was in Palestine at the time they occurred, and likely were eyewitnesses to the events in question.

whyamIhere

windword
reply to post by whyamIhere

 

The "mythical" characters of Abraham and Moses are MORE documented than the mythical character of Jesus. FACT!

If we our being honest with ourselves nothing from that period is a Fact.

It requires a huge imagination to call anything from that era a fact.

You can call Jesus a mythical figure. You just can't prove it.

Nor can I prove you wrong. But one thing is sure, none of us have all the facts.

The only thing that I'm calling a "fact" is the fact that Abraham and Moses are more documented then Jesus ever was. Are going to argue with that?

reply to post by adjensen


The book of Mark is the book that most scholars say that the other gospels are derived. The book of Matthew was, in it's fragments, nothing more than a list of sayings, not the narrative that we have today. The book of Mark was added to and interpolated up to 1000 later.

The Bible that we use today was hundreds, if not thousands of years in the making. And, if you look at more modern versions, it''s still being re-worked.

I pity The thought Of your kind, lost, confused, and "powerless", and naive. I pity your society and its rules that must be followed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer, and i pity your lost ambitions and your lost hope, you for billions of man power cannot move a man to mars and beyond. I pity your reasoning that there is no way to feed your peoples of billions while creators have made hydro food of 100 sqr acres in only a 1 sqr acre land... wake up, smell the fumes of the time not spent, and arise to this pitiful system and regain your position to advance your life. remember They will try to down us by means of bullets

SuperFrog
reply to post by Khaleesi

 

You really can't be serious...

Flavius Josephus (37 – ca. 100)
Gaius Suetonius (c. 69 – after 122)
Cornelius Tacitus (56 – after 117)
Babylonian Talmud (3rd to 5th centuries)
Pliny the Younger (61 – ca. 112)
Trajan (18 September 53 – 9 August 117 AD)
Koran. (after 22 December 609)

How do you imagine any of your 'sources' as reliable?

Let's just take something not even 10 years old - war in iraq - who and why started it? You will see that different historians will have different opinion, but imagine what someone born today will have in 20-30 years... and we live in media age... back than you did not have that... folk tales and myths... at the best... very small literacy... and people believing in many things, including Mars, Jupiter, Aphrodite....

edit on 9-10-2013 by SuperFrog because: (no reason given)

Did you read my subsequent posts? I explained it. Would you like me to spoon feed you my posts or are you capable of finding and reading ALL of my post to get the explanation. I shouldn't have to post the same thing multiple times for those that insist on jumping to the end and want someone to give them a 'Cliff's Notes' version of the entire thread.