History or Religion. I couldn't decide so I am putting it in GD -

[Tuesday Afternoon]

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Add long haired dirty hippy

[Tuesday Afternoon]

2. yes, that too. A sandal wearing fisherman.

[lob1]

3. And a carpenter who obviously couldn't hold down a job.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. shiftless roamer he was

[lob1]

7. And he wore dresses!

[Tuesday Afternoon]

9. and he had anger issues with the Money Lenders!

[lob1]

12. He hates money lenders? Now he's gone too far. Who does this guy think he is...God?

[Tuesday Afternoon]

13. and don't ever put him on the stand because he is a smart ass when answering questions.

[stopbush]

28. They weren't money lenders. They were money changers in the Temple.

And they performed a public service.

Every Jewish male needed to make a pilgrimage to the Temple once a year and make an offering - it could be a burnt or money offering. They could bring their own animal for a burnt offering, but they risked said animal being declared unclean by the Rabbis. They could bring their own coins but the Temple accepted only Jewish coins, not Roman or Greek coins.

The solution was to have money changers and vendors of "clean" animals-for-sacrifice on hand to service people who had traveled to Jerusalem to fulfill their religious "must do" for the year. Sure, this enterprise was probably a profit-center for the Temple, but so what? The Temple money changers probably charged their Jewish customers a lower exchange fee than did the Romans. Better to budget your trip to just exchange your money and purchase your animal once you got to Jerusalem where all transactions were overseen by the Temple's priests. At least you'd know you weren't being sold an unclean animal and that you were getting a decent exchange on your money.

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild whipping the money changers and upsetting their tables is an example of his megalomaniacal behavior in action. Were he around today he'd probably upset the flower cart at the gift shop of any church-run hospital.

[Brigid]

18. Occupy the Temple!

Thanks, I needed the this morning.

[Raksha]

4. I just posted this on my Facebook page.

Shared it from someone else - it seems to be going viral.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

6. yeah, that is where I snagged it, too

[WillyT]

8. HUGE K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[Tuesday Afternoon]

10. most welcome, WillyT

[stopbush]

11. Not history in any sense of the word.

But myths can be instructive.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

14. I am pretty sure it has been determined that there was a man ... all the rest

may just be myth and legend but, a man did live that went by the name of Jesus.

Virtually all modern scholars of antiquity agree that Jesus existed historically,[e] although the quest for the historical Jesus has produced little agreement on the historical reliability of the Gospels and how closely the biblical Jesus reflects the historical Jesus.[19] Most scholars agree that Jesus was a Jewish rabbi from Galilee who preached his message orally,[20] was baptized by John the Baptist, and was crucified in Jerusalem on the orders of the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate.[21] Scholars have constructed various portraits of the historical Jesus, which often depict him as having one or more of the following roles: the leader of an apocalyptic movement, Messiah, a charismatic healer, a sage and philosopher, or an egalitarian social reformer.[22] Scholars have correlated the New Testament accounts with non-Christian historical records to arrive at an estimated chronology of Jesus' life. The most widely used calendar era in the world (abbreviated as "AD", alternatively referred to as "CE&quot , counts from a medieval estimate of the birth year of Jesus.

more at link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus

[stopbush]

15. Not a good source for a serious reply.

The text block you cited is almost entirely a fabrication of the Xian imagination.

The fact is that the very earliest sources we have for ANY New Testament book dates only back to the fourth century. Ergo, there is no way to know when the Gospels etc were actually written. People can guess, and they do. But proof? Doesn't exist.

The fact is that there exists no correlation between NT accounts with non-Xian historical records that were contemporaneous to the time Jesus supposedly lived. NONE. Oh, you'll hear the Xians claim that Josephus, Philo, Pliny, Tacitus and others "wrote about Jesus." They didn't. Some will claim they were contemporaries of Jesus. They weren't.

It is true that many history scholars who don't specialize in the Bible don't argue the existence of Jesus because they don't want to waste the time arguing with zealots about a subject that means little if anything to them.

If you have some time on your hands, this link is an excellent read on whether or not Jesus actually existed: http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm

[Demo_Chris]

17. excellent link. nt

[Tuesday Afternoon]

23. of course.

His link is better than any other link

[John1956PA]

19. Kenneth Humphreys' website is another fine source for the position that Jesus is mythical.

Last edited Mon Apr 21, 2014, 09:52 AM - Edit history (1)

Here is a link to a page on Humphreys' site which sets forth points suggesting that Jesus never existed.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/ehrman.html

[Tuesday Afternoon]

22. One man's suggestion, yes.

I always like it when a man makes a suggestion.

[stopbush]

29. And what do you consider the text of the Bible to be? Not history, I hope.

The Bible doesn't even rise to the level of suggestion. We are talking about magical, supernatural miracles, people arising from the dead, disease being caused by evil spirits, etc etc. All clothed in the mantle of racism, misogyny and absolute a-historic fiction.

THAT'S what you're going to go to the mat for by blaming the messenger?

[stopbush]

24. Humphrey's site is more in-your-face than the site I linked to.

Both sites have their merits.

Another good site is Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth: http://www.pocm.info/

[Tuesday Afternoon]

20. seems your source

suggests that he did not exist. fine.

So, did Jesus really exist? With his new book, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, Bart Ehrman, historian and professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, wanted to provide solid historical evidence for the existence of Jesus.

"I wanted to approach this question as an historian to see whether that's right or not," Ehrman tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.

The answer is straightforward and widely accepted among scholars of all faiths, but Ehrman says there is a large contingent of people claiming that Jesus never did exist. These people are also known as mythicists.

"It was a surprise to me to see how influential these mythicists are," Ehrman says. "Historically, they've been significant and in the Soviet Union, in fact, the mythicist view was the dominant view, and even today, in some parts of the West – in parts of Scandinavia — it is a dominant view that Jesus never existed," he says.

more at link:
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/01/149462376/did-jesus-exist-a-historian-makes-his-case

[stopbush]

26. I doubt you read that entire article that I linked to.

Ehrman is one author. Check out Earl Doherty on the subject of what St Paul thought about Jesus.

[Warren DeMontague]

16. "it has been determined"... no, it hasn't.

Biblical Historians agree "he" existed, but they're sort of institutionally wedded to the idea of the Bible as a historical source. Obviously.

Non-Biblical Historians don't spend a lot of time on "Jesus" because he's simply not on the radar during the time of his alleged life.

Outside the Bible there is a complete vacuum of evidence for the existence of "Jesus", aside from the Josephus account which contains numerous dubious elements indicating it- again, to historians who study these things- to be a likely forgery, not the least of which is the completely out of character narrative tone of the account, which reads far more like a retroactive piece written by a 4th century Christian authority than a contemporary Jewish Historian of the time of "Jesus", which is what the actual Josephus was.

I think John the Baptist was probably a historical figure, and some elements of his life may have been incorporated into the narrative of the life of "Jesus". That said, I am of the belief that early Christianity began as one or more "mystery cults" which were popular at the time, and which combined elements of Deity death and rebirth (a la Osiris) as well as a wholly spiritual redemptive Christ figure, which was retroactively changed in the first few centuries of Christianity (as the undeniable historical process went down of winnowing out 'real' Christianity from the multiple variants which existed) to an objective historical existence of Jesus-as-a-person.

JMO, and it's not going to be answered one way or the other, so it's pretty much a pointless debate.

[Tuesday Afternoon]

21. moot point ... indeed

Historians focusing on this era generally accept that there was likely an individual named Jesus who lived in Palestine roughly two millennia ago, had a very small following of people studying his views, was killed by the government, and whose life became pivotal to some of the world's largest religions.[2] Beyond this, however, there is no evidence over the accuracy of any of the descriptions of his life, as described in the Bible or as understood by his believers. A small minority, past[3] and present[4] believe there is insufficient justification to assume any individual human seed for the stories, representing an extreme in the other end of belief. It should be noted that at least one anthropology paper states in both its abstract and main text "there is not a shred of evidence that a historical character Jesus lived"[5]

more at link:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_for_the_historical_existence_of_Jesus_Christ

[Iggo]

25. Well, it ain't history.

[stopbush]

27. Jesus was non-violent? Tell that to the people he whipped with

the scourge he fashioned for himself.

[DirkGently]

30. Conceived out of wedlock.