The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #91654   Message #1745652
Posted By: Rapparee
22-May-06 - 05:40 PM
Thread Name: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
1. The NT and the apocryphal and gnostic writings present extremely different Christs not only from each other but within the bodies of these works. No one historical 2000 years ago could be that mythologized in only 2 or 3 centuries unless there was a deliberate attempt to hide his identity and why would that be unless he was a criminal?

Yes, it could. And in Roman eyes he WAS a criminal -- Yeshua attempted to set himself up as "King of the Jews." Moreover, there are very different Yeshuas presented because there were additions and deletions from the writings about him -- usually to substantiate a claim or supposed role. Call it a result of "greed for power." I refer you to, among many other sources, the work of the Jesus Seminar.

2. He is called a savior and his name just happens to mean savior. Obviously, Jesus was as much title as Christ.

My name translates as "Who Is Like God", but no one that knows me considers me Godlike. Yeshua was a rather common name, just as you can meet the occassional Jesus or Joshua today.

3. He was not the first crucified savior much less the only one.

"Savior" is a name given by a belief that he died for the sins of Mankind. And not, he was certainly not the only person crucified -- not even the only one nailed to a cross (bodies which were so nailed have been found).

4. No historians or chroniclers of his time or the generation after have anything to say about him historically.

Not strictly true, as we've discovered as more and more writings from that period come to light. You'd better do some reading in recent archealogical studies from Isreal and elsewhere.

5. The gospel writers were unfamiliar with the geography of Palestine and his travels as laid out by them are often impossible and many of the cities mentioned in the bible are fictitious.

Well, no. They may no longer exist, but they are mentioned in other writings of the period. Also, if Yeshua was a hunted man (which he was) he wouldn't have followed the obvious path then any more than a person on the dodge does so now.

6. Josephus was governor of Galilee and visited every part of it, wrote a history of it and made detailed maps of it. No mention of a Nazareth or Jesus Christ. Origen couldn't find Nazareth despite being born and raised in that very area and he was an early Church Father!!

Nazareth is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible, nor in Josephus, nor in the Talmud. Jerome in the 5th century says it was a viculus or mere village, and modern estimates of its size in the first century are in the low hundreds. It was a satellite village of Sepphoris, a Hellenistic Roman city 6.5 km (4 miles) away. [Now known to have been built by Herod.]

In 1962 a Hebrew inscription found in Caesarea, dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century, mentions Nazareth as one of the places in which the priestly divisions were residing after the Great Jewish Revolt. From the three fragments that have been found, it is possible to show that the inscription was a complete list of the twenty-four priestly courses (cf. 1 Chronicles 24:7-19; Nehemiah 24:1-21), with each course (or family) assigned its proper order and the name of each town or village in Galilee where it settled.

There's more in the Wikipedia....

7. Philo invented the concept of the Logos made flesh, was a friend of Pontius Pilate and wrote a biography of the man. He also was in Jerusalem when Christ supposedly went there. Nowhere does he mention Christians, Christ or Jesus. No does he mention any trial or crucifixion of any such person.

And this proves only that he never heard of this man. Don't forget that Yeshua was Jewish, not Christian, and he founded and led a Jewish sect -- and a rather small one at that, no matter what the NT says.

8. Paul never wrote a word about a historical Jesus and did not place him in Palestine. In his own words, he stated he learned the Jesus story from no man but instead met with Christ in the third heaven--probably a drug-induced vision.

Paul never met the "historical" Yeshua. I can't speak to the drug thing, but he did place him in Israel.

9. Strip away the myth from the man and tell me what you are left with.

One of the several "Messiahs" who were running around at the time. An itinerant rabbi, of which there were also many.

10. Try to reconcile the gospel stories (no you can't add or omit anything from any of the gospels since you have no way or knowing what might be factual and what isn't) and tell me how this was an historical account. In fact, just tell me what the last words of Jesus were.

Sure! "Peter...Peter...I can see your house from up here!"

Actually, I suggest that you review the work of the Jesus Seminar and other scholars. You cannot get to the true teachings of this rabbi by accepting everything in the NT (whatever books make it up)


11. And if you cannot make the case for a historical Christ, then what was Jesus originally and how did belief in him arise and what did that belief signify to those who held it?

Read Tabor's The Jesus Dynasty.