The Jesus myther nonsense

[Scott1328]

[Stein]

As I was saying --

why is it a win for the mythers? Free believe in the literal truth of the babble?

No, he doesn't believe in the literal truth of the babble. Free is a professional historian and an atheist. Professional secular historians like Free are fully aware of the philological analysis and research that has been made of both the apologetic and non-apologetic texts of the 1st century c.e. relating to the Roman execution of an eccentric rabbi called Jesus during the time of Tiberius and his brother James's stoning by Ananus.

Non-apologetics include Tacitus's Annals, in which Tacitus directly references Roman sources for everything connected with the Fire of Rome, including Nero's scapegoating of the Christians whom Tacitus explicitly names as having been founded by this same executed rabbi. Another non-apologetic is Josephus's Antiquities XX, in which Josephus, a contemporary of James living in the same city where James was stoned, describes James as this rabbi Jesus's brother.

Similar philological analysis and research of apologetic texts, like the early Paulines and parallel sayings in Matthew/Luke, indicates that early orally derived strata and discrete sequences with Aramaic verbal structures rub shoulders with much more self-conscious more literary Greek verses that appear to have been cobbled together much later and have little in common with the more oral and Aramaic flavored sequences. This is what the most modern analysis has shown and Christian fundies are not happy about it. Why? Because the more oral the passages seem, and the more they smack of Aramaic flavoring, and thus the earlier they appear to be, the less the proportion of magic nonsense and the less the proportion of supernatural claims we find. Coincidence? The most extravagant claims, like Resurrection appearances at a fish fry(!!) and/or Mary knocked up by a god(!), all stem from the more self-consciously literary purely Greek passages of a later vintage that appear to have originated as written material and not oral.

Christian fundies don't like the way this analysis of early and late textual strata in both non-apologetics and apologetics points to a strictly human rabbi without a shred of the supernatural about him. The only likely scenario that fits with both the decidedly unsympathetic descriptions like the non-apologetic Tacitus on one hand and the earliest strata in the Paulines and the Synoptics on the other involves a necessarily human rabbi who is not supernatural in any way and is a troublemaker who ends up permanently dead at the occupying Romans' hands.

That is what professional historians who are atheists and not cowed by the church will tell you. A professional historian like Free will tell you no different. So to term anyone like that as nothing but a believer in "the literal truth of the babble" is to open up one's big fat diarrheic ass and SHIT on the courage of all the secular specialists in ancient history who have braved the wrath of the church in generations past by developing the rigorous disciplines in historiography we use today. These modern methods are just as invaluable to the progress of modern secular civilization today as all the invaluable science of today coming out of the brave efforts of Darwin and Einstein.

Got it?

Stein

[hackenslash]

Free is a professional moron

FIFY.

[Stein]

What the fuck am I blathering about, shilling for know-nothing liars and woo peddlers?

FIFY.

Stein

[pErvinalia]

Where am I?

[Svartalf]

Is it not bleedin' obvious? Do you know what omnipresent means?

I dunno about omnipresent, but the bible is fucking clear that its god is NOT omniscient, or it would not have dickered with Abraham and asked him to find good men in Sodom, or ever chosen Saul as king of the Hebrews...

[mistermack]

A religious preacher/teacher called Jesus definitely existed. How do I know? Because Jesus was the name of one in ten or more males at the time. And a high proportion of men became rabbis.
There were probably loads of rabbis called Jesus around that time.

Or yeshua, as it was then. Obviously these stories grew up around one of them. Most of it invented.
But why should anyone care, unless they have been indoctrinated in the crap that grew up around the original story? To claim that he never existed is trying to prove a negative, when it's odds-on that there was some nutter at the root of the original stories.

It doesn't matter if he existed or not. It doesn't make the fables any more likely.

[piscator]

...

Non-apologetics include Tacitus's Annals, in which Tacitus directly references Roman sources for everything connected with the Fire of Rome, including Nero's scapegoating of the Christians whom Tacitus explicitly names as having been founded by this same executed rabbi. Another non-apologetic is Josephus's Antiquities XX, in which Josephus, a contemporary of James living in the same city where James was stoned, describes James as this rabbi Jesus's brother.
...

Got it?

Stein

Tacitus was an 8 year-old in maybe Gaul when Rome burned, and was 12 when Nero died. "Directly referencing" some man-on-the-street story about The Big Fire 20 years previous is not going to make the evening news.
The Testimonium Flavianum suffers from a similar lack of provenance, The Antiquities of the Jews having been heavily retouched by Xian hands centuries after supposedly being written 70 years after the fact.

Yet you carry on like you're not aware of this, and that the Emperor is fully clothed. Sad.

[laklak]

I honestly don't understand the problem. The vast majority of people (in the U.S., anyway) not only believe Jebus existed they believe he was the literal Son of God. How is the disbelief of a handful of atheists any threat to historical accuracy? Why do you care so much what people on a few atheist forums think? The fundies aren't going to buy your contention that Jebus was only a human rabbi under any circumstances, they'll just distort your words to buttress their own faith. See? Even the atheist egghead professors say He was real! I assume you live in the rarefied atmosphere of academia, where disagreement over arcane points of historical research are cause for concern, but out here in the Real World it matters not a whit whether the Romans nailed some dude to a cross or not. What matters is the huge number of moronic believers who want to shove their mythological bullshit down everyone's throats.

[laklak]

Honestly, we'd be better off if the world was convinced Jebus was entirely fictional, as that would undermine at least two of the three Abrahamic religions, which together have caused far, far, far more godawful nastiness than any other philosophy I can think of.

[Stein]

...

Non-apologetics include Tacitus's Annals, in which Tacitus directly references Roman sources for everything connected with the Fire of Rome, including Nero's scapegoating of the Christians whom Tacitus explicitly names as having been founded by this same executed rabbi. Another non-apologetic is Josephus's Antiquities XX, in which Josephus, a contemporary of James living in the same city where James was stoned, describes James as this rabbi Jesus's brother.
...

Got it?

Stein

Tacitus was an 8 year-old in maybe Gaul when Rome burned, and was 12 when Nero died. "Directly referencing" some man-on-the-street story about The Big Fire 20 years previous is not going to make the evening news.
The Testimonium Flavianum suffers from a similar lack of provenance, The Antiquities of the Jews having been heavily retouched by Xian hands centuries after supposedly being written 70 years after the fact.

Yet you carry on like you're not aware of this, and that the Emperor is fully clothed. Sad.

I'm talking about ANTIQUITIES XX -- T-W-E-N-T-Y -- by Josephus, NOT Antiqs. XVIII, which is the T.F. Pay attention. I even stressed James's stoning, which is exclusively Antiqs. XX.

For crying out loud!

Stein

[Stein]

I honestly don't understand the problem. The vast majority of people (in the U.S., anyway) not only believe Jebus existed they believe he was the literal Son of God. How is the disbelief of a handful of atheists any threat to historical accuracy? Why do you care so much what people on a few atheist forums think? The fundies aren't going to buy your contention that Jebus was only a human rabbi under any circumstances, they'll just distort your words to buttress their own faith. See? Even the atheist egghead professors say He was real! I assume you live in the rarefied atmosphere of academia, where disagreement over arcane points of historical research are cause for concern, but out here in the Real World it matters not a whit whether the Romans nailed some dude to a cross or not. What matters is the huge number of moronic believers who want to shove their mythological bullshit down everyone's throats.

Those "disagreements over arcane points of research" are what has made the modern world more hospitable to a secular pluralism, you jackass. If you dismiss that, you dismiss the very reason why you happen to be free to talk with strangers in a virtual environment. Human rights are also directly traceable to figures like Gotama or Yeshua, which their institutionalizing followers have done everything to blunt. Only the modern researchers have brought us to a stage where most people DO believe Jebus existed and was a historical strictly human rabbi only and stood for a template of human rights that the church did everything to subvert. In fact, you're wrong when you say the majority today still think Jebus is some son of a god. That no longer applies, thanks strictly to the modern world for which you have strict peer-vetted secular research to thank. A bare majority in the modern world are finally viewing Jebus as a strictly human rabbi who was nailed stone dead for helping the marginalized. And now myther creeps want to trash all that labor achieved in the teeth of the power-mad church and throw us all back into the dark ages.

Thanks a lot.

Stein

[Stein]

Honestly, we'd be better off if the world was convinced Jebus was entirely fictional, as that would undermine at least two of the three Abrahamic religions, which together have caused far, far, far more godawful nastiness than any other philosophy I can think of.

Nobody is better off believing a lie. Remember the title of the superb documentary on Gore's work against global warming? "INCONVENIENT truth." Some truths are inconvenient, whether or not God does or doesn't exist. If you find the historicity of a Jesus or a Gotama or an Urukagina or a Pericles or an Ulpian or a Franklin or a Tolstoy or a Gandhi or a King hard to take, tough nookies.

Deal with it.

Stein

[Hermit]

Those "disagreements over arcane points of research" are what has made the modern world more hospitable to a secular pluralism, you jackass. If you dismiss that, you dismiss the very reason why you happen to be free to talk with strangers in a virtual environment. Human rights are also directly traceable to figures like Gotama or Yeshua

Are you trying to argue that there'd be no secularism and no human rights today were it not for Gotama or Yeshua?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Stein. You take this shit far too seriously. I think you need a happy pill. Or twelve.