Religious

[Greyfox]

Originally Posted by TJDave

Yeshua ben Yosef

Shouldn't that be Yeshua bar Yosef??

[TJDave]

Originally Posted by Greyfox

Shouldn't that be Yeshua bar Yosef??

Ben...the son of.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

The problem does not come from "Divergent Details" but from major contradictions of historical fact, e.g., one writer says Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great while another places his birth in the year of the census of Quirinius. Herod died in 4 B.C.E. while the census took place in 6 C.E. There's a 10 year discrepancy and the accounts cannot both be true. This is not a "detail."

We have discussed this fictional contradiction in some detail -- more than once. The whole argument is based on an argument from silence. And there was more than one Herod.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

Whose lives were transformed? A bunch of fictitious characters.

There's a literary term for this. It's called an "arc." In Gone With the Wind Scarlett's arc is that she goes from being a simple antebellum teenager to a wealthy, worldly woman of power. Rhett Butler's arc is that he finally realizes he can never have Scarlett.

The fact that the dramatis personae of the drama have arcs does not make the story true.

So, let me see if I have this right: There were writers but they wrote anonymously. Why? Who would believe anonymous authors? Or was their intention was to write fiction to a readership who understood that it was fiction? But if their intention was write fiction -- then for what purpose?

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

Actor,

Flip it the other way around.

Given that Jesus was theoretically such a huge rabble rouser against both the Jews and Romans, if He never even existed, I think we'd have a lot of documentation from the first century refuting the claim that He existed as the movement grew and possibly became threatening to the establishment.

I know of no significant documentation from the Jews, Romans, or anyone else of that period claiming the whole story was BS.

It seems to me that virtually everyone of that time must have accepted that He existed. The debate was about who He was, just as it is now. That some of the minor details got distorted as the story got passed down verbally until it was eventually written down is hardly significant. That's to be expected.

Getting 2-1 (33%) on just his existence would be such a laughable overlay it would be like getting 100-1 on Secretariat in a 2K NW2 claimer at Finger Lakes. The best chance of losing would be a miracle. And if there is no God as you believe, there are no miracles.

Thank you, sir. Someone here gets it. I've been saying as much for a very long time to Mr. Actor. Repeatedly, I have asked him to provide any first century evidence that Jesus didn't exist. But he's been content to live with his circular reason for believing Jesus never existed.

Actor: Jesus never existed
Boxcar: Why do you say this?
Actor: Because I say so.

When someone's mind has been riding on that kind of merry-go-round for as long as Actor has, it would take a miracle for him to jump off.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by Actor

How so? What do you mean by "natural reading?"

Prove that Snow White and the seven dwarfs did not exist. The two stories have a lot in common. The origin of both is an ancient document. There were seven dwarfs and twelve disciples. Seven and twelve are both magic numbers in ancient cultures. Both stories have magic and a resurrection.

You don't even know what circular reasoning is.

I thought I had made it clear that my position is that he probably did not exist. Through Bayes analysis historian Richard Carrier assigns 0.33 as the probability that he did exist.

No. Because there is no evidence for his existence outside Christian propaganda. Please don't misquote me.

I'm not responsible for other skeptics. The dates 100-110 C.E. is supportable.

But there doesn't have to be extra-biblical evidence. Don't you understand that the bible consists of 66 books written by 40 authors? All those books in one way or another -- directly or indirectly -- speak of either Jesus' impending first coming or his actual arrival, ministry and redemptive work.

Also, as discussed often in the past, other extra-biblical do speak to Jesus' existence.

And yes, I do know what circular reasoning is: You, sir, are the epitome of such.

Actor: Jesus never existed.
Boxcar: Why do you say that?
Actor: Because I say so.

Talk about cat mindlessly chasing its tail.

[TJDave]

Originally Posted by boxcar

And there was more than one Herod.

Only one King Herod.

[boxcar]

Originally Posted by TJDave

Only one King Herod.

Why do you insist on embarrassing yourself? You should brush up on your history of the Herod dynasty.

[TJDave]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Why do you insist on embarrassing yourself? You should brush up on your history of the Herod dynasty.

Wrong. I am familiar with the Herodian lineage. The operative word is King which refers, in Matthew 2, to Herod the Great.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by classhandicapper

There is no major problem with my logic.

If the basic story of Jesus is true, then there is no debate. He existed.

That basic story tells us that Jesus was a rabble rouser against against both the Romans and Jews in His lifetime.

If He did not exist and a movement was growing based on this false story, IMO someone would have said something because they'd be highly motivated to discredit the story. Obviously, I have no data on the exact growth rate of Christians, but apparently there were enough that they were spreading out into multiple countries and even formed various sects. It also appears there were some attempts to put it down forcefully! But no one thought to say it was all BS in any documentation we have from non Christian sources? IMO, that's because everyone believed He existed. Some just didn't believe He was God and thought He was a pain the butt.

The difference between Hercules, Zeus etc.. and Jesus is that there were no political and religious groups threatened by a growing movement towards those guy the way they were with Jesus and Christians. So no one had a reason to proclaim and document that they were a myth.

Your argument depends on two assumptions.

• Jesus was a rabble rouser against against both the Romans and Jews. Does the secular record provide any evidence for this idea? No, it comes entirely from Christian sources. The secular record does confirm that the Romans considered the Jewish people as a whole to be rebellious, and they were right. They rebelled three times. But there is nothing in the secular record about them considering the Christian Messiah to be a threat.
  
• The movement at a phenomenal rate. Again, where does this idea come from? Again, it's from Christian sources. There are no numbers. The claim is unverifiable and unfalsifiable.
  
  By the time Christianity had become the official religion of the empire the number of Christians was about 50,000. The population of the empire was 50,000,000 meaning that one person in 1000 was Christian. Now the growth from an initial population of 120 (Acts 1:15) to 50,000 in 300 years is a growth rate of 2% per year, hardly phenomenal.
  
  The real explosive growth of the church came after it became the official religion of the empire in the late 4th century. Of course by then it was inadvisable to profess any other religion.

Neither of your assumptions can be proven, ergo, your argument cannot be proven.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

And there was more than one Herod.

Originally Posted by boxcar

You should brush up on your history of the Herod dynasty.

The NASB is your fave translation, is it not? From the NASB, Mathew 2:19-22...

19 But when Herod died, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared in a dream to Joseph in Egypt, and said, 20 “Get up, take the Child and His mother, and go into the land of Israel; for those who sought the Child’s life are dead.” 21 So Joseph got up, took the Child and His mother, and came into the land of Israel. 22 But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Then after being warned by God in a dream, he left for the regions of Galilee,

Archelaus was the son of Herod the Great. This passage clearly places the date of Jesus' birth during the reign of Herod the Great.

Herod the Great was the only King Herod. The Romans did not allow Herod the Great's sons to claim that title.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

But there doesn't have to be extra-biblical evidence.

Yes, there does. It's either science and a material world, or magic and woo woo. You've simply chosen magic and woo woo.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by TJDave

Ben...the son of.

As in Ben Hur!


[YT="Ben Hur"]k6TUgccyzNs[/YT]

[Actor]

Originally Posted by boxcar

Talk about cat mindlessly chasing its tail.

I thought you owned cats. I've never seen a cat chase its tail. Dogs, yes, but never a cat.

[classhandicapper]

Originally Posted by Actor

Your argument depends on two assumptions.

• Jesus was a rabble rouser against against both the Romans and Jews. Does the secular record provide any evidence for this idea? No, it comes entirely from Christian sources. The secular record does confirm that the Romans considered the Jewish people as a whole to be rebellious, and they were right. They rebelled three times. But there is nothing in the secular record about them considering the Christian Messiah to be a threat.
  
• The movement at a phenomenal rate. Again, where does this idea come from? Again, it's from Christian sources. There are no numbers. The claim is unverifiable and unfalsifiable.
  
  By the time Christianity had become the official religion of the empire the number of Christians was about 50,000. The population of the empire was 50,000,000 meaning that one person in 1000 was Christian. Now the growth from an initial population of 120 (Acts 1:15) to 50,000 in 300 years is a growth rate of 2% per year, hardly phenomenal.
  
  The real explosive growth of the church came after it became the official religion of the empire in the late 4th century. Of course by then it was inadvisable to profess any other religion.

Neither of your assumptions can be proven, ergo, your argument cannot be proven.

My claim does not require proof that Jesus was a rabble rouser. It requires proof that a book existed that CLAIMED he was a rabble rouser and his movement was growing. That book is the New Testament and it existed within 100 years of His theoretical existence as the movement was growing.

It's so obvious which is more likely it's not even a conversation. Whoever said the correct probability is 33%, well, I want to gamble with that guy every day for the rest of my life.

On one side we have Jews that wrote down everything for 6 thousand years, much of which has been demonstrated to be historically accurate in modern times.

We have a book that was written within a century of Jesus's supposed existence that is highly critical of Jews and Romans on multiple counts.

We have Romans who wrote down the history of the expansion of Christianity and even joined in themselves and accelerated the process.

Yet no Jews or Romans (who would clearly have known the truth) thought to tell anyone the book was full of crap as it was trashing them and growing in significance.

On the other side we have atheists that 2000 years after the fact with no evidence or logic at all, that are desperate to prove He didn't even exist say the odds are 33%.