Historical Jesus

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HansMustermann said:
While I'll agree with that, but for what I was saying, my emphasis wasn't on "fan fiction" but on "very late". One trick the bible accuracy proponents tend to do is claim that suspiciously the same arbitrary set of sources in Irenaeus are the real deal because they date them as early and possible, so supposedly those had to have had witnesses and whatnot. (I'll disagree with the last part too, but there we go.) So basically if the limits imposed by studying the content and/or lettering say it's written anywhere between 75 CE and 125 CE, then it gets dated as 75 CE. Whereas the sources they don't like get pushed as late as possible, and dismissed as basically by that point they were only pulling fanfic out of the butt.

Unless they decide they like them again, in which case they get pushed early too. Which is what those who want Thomas to be Q do with its dating.

What I was pointing out is just that even that trick doesn't get rid of all inconvenient sources.
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Afaik, and we have discussed this point countless times in these threads (and over many hundreds, if not actually thousands of posts), those claims of first century dates are hugely misleading anyway.

Because we do not have any of that writing from anywhere near the first century (except for a few fragmented bits, which some people have dated as early as maybe 125AD, but which could easily be much later anyway).

The writing that we do actually have, and that which is the actual source of all the information and all the detail about what those writers thought Jesus had done, that is afaik all more credibly/accurately dated to the 3rd and 4th centuries & later, or else in many other cases (eg the non-biblical mentions of Jesus) as late as the 11th century!!

So afaik - we really don't have anything that could be said to be remotely useful (as information about Jesus), until at least several hundred years after his supposed lifetime.
 
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acbytesla said:
I don't disagree with any of that. I was trying not to throw the baby out with the bath water. I didn't want to say I was an atheist. I was part of the church even though I barely believed any of it. I enjoyed the company and the community. I think the message that we are our brother's keeper and to love one another were something worth holding on to.

But when it came down to it, I felt like a fraud going along with it. And no amount of having Pascal's Wager being thrown at me would ever change that the stories are not believable.

I remember having this discussion with my pastor. I couldn't choose to believe what my mind told me was false. And if there were a god who knew my thoughts, pretending I believed was not going to save me.
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OK, well that does seem like a familiar story, and especially in the USA. That is - people going to church and maintaining some sort of slowly dwindling religious belief, mostly because the enjoyed the sense of community etc. But where in the end it just seemed to them like they were "living a lie" as far as the actual religion was concerned.
 
IanS said:
Well just on the highlighted stuff about Bart Ehrman - the point is that he does insist that he knows as a matter of complete certainty that Jesus was a real individual, and that he certainly was the individual who people worshiped as the Son of God and who they wrote about in gospels and letters that later became the NT bible ... point is that Ehrman has been repeatedly and emphatically clear saying that Jesus was a certainty lol!
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Well, I certainly won't disagree. Just saying that even if I were to accept that he actually reconstructed the right guy that the story is based on, that's still not what a lot of us would call "the historical Jesus".
 
IanS said:
OK, well that does seem like a familiar story, and especially in the USA. That is - people going to church and maintaining some sort of slowly dwindling religious belief, mostly because the enjoyed the sense of community etc. But where in the end it just seemed to them like they were "living a lie" as far as the actual religion was concerned.
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I really don't think I ever believed it. I distinctly remember going to Sunday School at church thinking the adults were nuts. I understood what fairy tales were, we were told them in elementary school. The Ugly Duckling, the Emperor's New Clothes, Little Red Riding Hood, etc, etc, etc. But the teachers in school never tried to say these stories were true.

Yeah, Noah gathered two of every animal on a big boat and everyone else died because of the flood.:rolleyes:

Yeah, Jonah lived three days in the belly of a fish. :rolleyes:

Yeah, Moses parted the Red Sea. :rolleyes:

Yea, Joshua knocked down the walls of Jericho by blowing a big horn.:rolleyes:

Yeah, Samson had the strength of 20 men and became weak because a woman cut his hair.:rolleyes:

Yeah, the Earth was created in 6 days.:rolleyes:

Yeah, Eve tempted Adam with an apple and God got pissed.:rolleyes:
 
I really don't want to get drawn back into this endless back-and-forth about Jesus, but I thought some readers of this thread might find this documentary interesting:

Who Was The Real Jesus Christ...
 
acbytesla said:
I really don't think I ever believed it. I distinctly remember going to Sunday School at church thinking the adults were nuts. I understood what fairy tales were, we were told them in elementary school. The Ugly Duckling, the Emperor's New Clothes, Little Red Riding Hood, etc, etc, etc. But the teachers in school never tried to say these stories were true.

Yeah, Noah gathered two of every animal on a big boat and everyone else died because of the flood.:rolleyes:

Yeah, Jonah lived three days in the belly of a fish. :rolleyes:

Yeah, Moses parted the Red Sea. :rolleyes:

Yea, Joshua knocked down the walls of Jericho by blowing a big horn.:rolleyes:

Yeah, Samson had the strength of 20 men and became weak because a woman cut his hair.:rolleyes:

Yeah, the Earth was created in 6 days.:rolleyes:

Yeah, Eve tempted Adam with an apple and God got pissed.:rolleyes:
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To be fair, some people are daft regardless of whether it's about religion or not.

There literally are people out there writing letters to the address Sherlock Holmes had in the novels, for example. The street didn't even have that number IIRC, they just added that number for the letters to Sherlock Holmes, because it's really that many letters.

There's literally a tomb of Romeo And Juliet. They're not historical characters, but so many people kept asking to see their tomb, that, sure, the locals made one.

There are people going to Castle Bran just to see Dracula's residence. And while, sure, you could say it's based on the historical Vlad Tepes, he never really lived there. The only actually historical connection between Vlad and Bran is that he once laid siege to it, and was rather unsuccessful at that. They also go look for his ghost in a place about a couple hundred miles north of where he actually died. But if a frikken novel told them about those places, by Odin's iPatch, there's where they'll go look. (And again, the locals are more than happy to prey on idiot tourists.)

Etc.

I guess some people just are gullible.
 
HansMustermann said:
To be fair, some people are daft regardless of whether it's about religion or not.

There literally are people out there writing letters to the address Sherlock Holmes had in the novels, for example. The street didn't even have that number IIRC, they just added that number for the letters to Sherlock Holmes, because it's really that many letters.

There's literally a tomb of Romeo And Juliet. They're not historical characters, but so many people kept asking to see their tomb, that, sure, the locals made one.

There are people going to Castle Bran just to see Dracula's residence. And while, sure, you could say it's based on the historical Vlad Tepes, he never really lived there. The only actually historical connection between Vlad and Bran is that he once laid siege to it, and was rather unsuccessful at that. They also go look for his ghost in a place about a couple hundred miles north of where he actually died. But if a frikken novel told them about those places, by Odin's iPatch, there's where they'll go look. (And again, the locals are more than happy to prey on idiot tourists.)

Etc.

I guess some people just are gullible.
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This is all true. But there aren't 50,000 churches dedicated to Vlad the impaler or giving 10 percent of their earnings to Sherlock and Dr. Watson.
 
Not sure if spending one's savings for the year to see "Dracula's castle" (which he actually only briefly sieged once, but was never inside) and buy crap Dracula sovenirs is all that much smarter, tbh. I mean, technically it's not IDENTICAL, but I'm not entirely sure it's any smarter.
 
HansMustermann said:
Not sure if spending one's savings for the year to see "Dracula's castle" (which he actually only briefly sieged once, but was never inside) and buy crap Dracula sovenirs is all that much smarter, tbh. I mean, technically it's not IDENTICAL, but I'm not entirely sure it's any smarter.
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It's a bit different. Thats a tourist trap and for almost all these people, it's just for fun. Hardly different then going to Disneyland or Hogwarts Castle or Hobbittown.
 
Going mad. Thought I'd already posted this!

Given the tourism drummed up by the Da Vinci code I wonder if Bethlehem back in 150 CE was plagued with tourists trying to find the locations mentioned in their tour book, sorry Bible? :)
 
Darat said:
Going mad. Thought I'd already posted this!

Given the tourism drummed up by the Da Vinci code I wonder if Bethlehem back in 150 CE was plagued with tourists trying to find the locations mentioned in their tour book, sorry Bible? :)
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Tour book seems like the right words. After all, people not only visit Jerusalem, they visit the Vatican not to mention the Ark exhibit in the buckle of the Bible belt. Although, it's having issues staying afloat.

Doesn't the Koran serve the same purpose for Muslims? I mean seriously, would anyone travel to Mecca if not for the Koran? Hey Honey, let's spend our vacation in 120 degree heat.

But hey, I drove 5 miles out of my way to see Paul Bunyan and the Blue Ox.
 
acbytesla said:
Tour book seems like the right words. After all, people not only visit Jerusalem, they visit the Vatican not to mention the Ark exhibit in the buckle of the Bible belt. Although, it's having issues staying afloat.

Doesn't the Koran serve the same purpose for Muslims? I mean seriously, would anyone travel to Mecca if not for the Koran? Hey Honey, let's spend our vacation in 120 degree heat.

But hey, I drove 5 miles out of my way to see Paul Bunyan and the Blue Ox.
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Way, way back in the day, the last time I went to the USA, I went to Tombstone to watch the re-enactment of the "Gunfight at the OK Corral", but unlike the bible, that wasn't a fable - it really happened, involving real historical figures, in a place that really exists.
 
acbytesla said:
Tour book seems like the right words. After all, people not only visit Jerusalem, they visit the Vatican not to mention the Ark exhibit in the buckle of the Bible belt. Although, it's having issues staying afloat.

Doesn't the Koran serve the same purpose for Muslims? I mean seriously, would anyone travel to Mecca if not for the Koran? Hey Honey, let's spend our vacation in 120 degree heat.

But hey, I drove 5 miles out of my way to see Paul Bunyan and the Blue Ox.
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You can go see the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota, just don't let Bernie take your picture with your Instamatic
 
Darat said:
Going mad. Thought I'd already posted this!

Given the tourism drummed up by the Da Vinci code I wonder if Bethlehem back in 150 CE was plagued with tourists trying to find the locations mentioned in their tour book, sorry Bible? :)
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Dude. Like, dude. Dunno about Bethlehem, but Nazareth had an empress go on pilgrimage there in the early 4th century and decree that a big ass church be built there. How's that for both spending big on vacation and building a better tourist trap?
 
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