BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 May 06 - 09:21 PM

That's not an ad hominem attack, GUEST. I'm calling the logic of the statement into question, and that's fair game.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 May 06 - 09:22 PM

>>AR282 told us, in part:

The name "Jesus" means "savior."

That's news to me. What's your citation for that etymology?<<

I'm only going to do your homework for you this once:

"Jesus Christ, or more properly Jesus the Christ, Jesus, which is the given name of our Lord, was the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua, meaning savior."--J. G. Ferguson KJV, 1965, p.21 of the "Scriptural Directory."

"'Jesus' is a rendition of the original Yeshua both in the Hebrew temple language or in Aramaic, the common language of daily life in first century Palestine. It means 'one who shall help, save, or deliver' God's people."--James C. Winston KJV, 1993, p. 1377.

After this, if you try to pull this on me, I will simply reply, "What is your evidence to the contrary?"

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 21 May 06 - 09:23 PM

Sorry, all the last few GUEST posts were by me in case you didn't know.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 May 06 - 09:24 PM

>>That's not an ad hominem attack, GUEST. I'm calling the logic of the statement into question, and that's fair game.<<

Calling me Dick Cheney in the middle of an argument about the historicity of Jesus is not an ad hominem attack. Right.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 21 May 06 - 09:26 PM

>>Hello, Guest. Could you please use the word mouthy as your name so that people don't get us mixed up?<<

Apparently your moniker was correctly chosen.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 May 06 - 09:29 PM

"Show me how it was determined that the upper case of the Josephus quote was added to the lower case words already supposedly there. "

The earlier (Arabian) version in teh same reference omits the stuff mentioned in RED capitals...

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 21 May 06 - 09:30 PM

And if "Jesus" means "savior", then so does Isaiah, which is another form of the same name.


On another subject,
Peace gave us a link to an essay about the writings of various ancient writers, and the article says, at one point, discussing Pliny the Younger:

Some eighty years after Calvary, somebody was worshiping a Christ (Hebrew equivalent for Messiah)!

That parenthetical comment is entirely different from the etymology I've always understood.

As I understand from what I was taught in confirmation class 62 years ago, "Christ" is not Hebrew, or Aramaic; it's Greek, from "christos", and doesn't mean "messiah" but "anointed one".

The parenthetical in the quote I suspect is not from Pliny the Younger, as it seems to imply, but the insertion (probably the editorial guess or self-serving argument) of an uninformed present-day commentator.

Can anyone show any authoritative etymological source that "Christ" is "Jewish for "messiah"?

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 21 May 06 - 09:50 PM

AR282 said:

"Jesus Christ, or more properly Jesus the Christ, Jesus, which is the given name of our Lord, was the Greek form of the Hebrew Joshua, meaning savior."--J. G. Ferguson KJV, 1965, p.21 of the "Scriptural Directory."

"'Jesus' is a rendition of the original Yeshua both in the Hebrew temple language or in Aramaic, the common language of daily life in first century Palestine. It means 'one who shall help, save, or deliver' God's people."--James C. Winston KJV, 1993, p. 1377.

"One who shall help" is not the same as "messiah". I assume that Winston would have said "Messiach" if that's what he meant. That terms was around when the King James Version was written, and also in 1993, I believe.



And AR282 went on: After this, if you try to pull this on me, I will simply reply, "What is your evidence to the contrary?"

I didn't say that it was not so; I merely said it was news to me, and inquired as to a source.   I didn't and don't claim that I HAVE evidence to the contrary, but merely that I didn't know that to be the case. I said (and I quote), "That's news to me!" And it was. I also implied, I suppose, that I had doubts about the accuracy of that attribution, which I think I am allowed to do even in the absence of proof.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 May 06 - 09:52 PM

AR 282, I didn't call you Dick Cheney, I said your were pulling a Dick Cheney. That's questioning your reasoning, not attacking you personally. Unless, of course, you regard someone's questioning your reasoning as an ad hominem attack. Please don't tell me about logical fallacies. Recognizing them is one of my areas of expertise.

And please don't try to pick a fight when there isn't one. Now, back to our regular broadcast:   

I have a tendency to think that Yeshua or Joshua was, probably not as common as the name "Mohammed" is currently in the Middle East, but certainly common. There were a whole heap of Joshuas running around back then, including the one who fit the battle of Jericho. Probably just about every Jewish mother would have liked it if her son grew up the be the savior of his people.

Everyone's name has some kind of meaning. For example, my first name is Donald. Celtic, it means meaning "proud chief, world leader." My middle name is Richard, French, German, or Old English, and it means "powerful ruler."

With a pair of names like that, how come everybody bosses me around!??

I think that questioning the actual existence of Jesus on the basis that the name means "savior" is just a bit weak.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:03 PM

"On today's BBC TV programme "The Heaven and Earth Show", presenter Gloria Hunniford stated that there is more historical evidence to back up the existence of Jesus than there is for the existence of Julius Caesar"

That is the typical sort of statement made by many people of 'Faith' - if you have 'Faith' - who needs 'Facts' anyway. And the "Pauline-Constanian-Conspiracy" generated from of 'Christianity' has always been obsessed with blind obedience and lack of critical thinking by its followers, let alone anybody else - Control Freaks All! For support of this - see the canonical passages that mention that only those with the unquestioning minds of naive children can have 'Faith'!!!

It's In The Book!

Sorry... :-)

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:17 PM

>>The earlier (Arabian) version in teh same reference omits the stuff mentioned in RED capitals...<<

One more time: what historian or commentator prior to Eusebius mention this passage?

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:18 PM

Actually, Don, "Yeshua" was a fairly common name in Palestine in the 1st Century or so CE. Jesus ben Sirach lived as early as 200 BCE; many ossiaries and other "name" records have been found with the name on them. It is even thought by some that "Barrabas" may have had the full name of "Yeshua bar Abbas" or Jesus Barrabas -- a revolt by a person of that name was recorded by the Romans.

As for the "Gospels" -- reputable scholars list Matthew, Luke, Thomas, John, and the Egerton Gospel as derivative from M, Mark, Q, L, Thomas (an earlier version from which the later Thomas was derived), Signs, and an earlier Egerton. Another early writing appropriate to study is called the Didache.

Then there are the Dag Hammani manuscripts, the Gospel of Magdala, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of James...not to mention the "Dead Sea Scrolls."

Albert Schweitzer wrote "The Quest for the Historical Jesus" nearly a century ago. It's hard going, but quite good scholarship.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:23 PM

>>"One who shall help" is not the same as "messiah".<<

Yes, well, we were discussing the meaning of the word Jesus not the meaning of the word messiah. If you're going to waste my time like this, please stop. We were never discussing the meaning of messiah and you know it. You're the one who asked me to cite a source for Jesus meaning savior and I have done that. Now if you have nothing else, I'd say we're through.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: flattop
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:24 PM

The the history of Jesus and the evolution of many religeous beliefs were covered nicely in Winwood Reade's outstanding book, The Martyrdom of Man, published in 1872. His book covers history in a passionate way that many later works missed. He seems to have understood the excitement and emotions of people and their beliefs as they battle through time. He also seemed to have access to historical material that has since disappeared from the mainstream of history. This scholarly work, which mentions Hull as well as Hell, is chocked full of human details from times when beliefs were a matter of life and death, long before they became catnip for web-pussies.

You can read the book on-line or download a zipped file. Three long paragraphs on the rise of Christianity in Ancient Rome will give you the flavour of Winwood Reade's writing:
___

So passed the Roman street-life day, and with the first hours of darkness the noise and the turmoil did not cease; for then the travelling carriages rattled towards the gates, and carts filled with dung-the only export of the city. The music of serenades rose softly in the air, and sounds of laughter from the tavern. The night watch made their rounds, their armour rattling as they passed. Lights were extinguished, householders put up their shutters, to which bells were fastened-for burglaries frequently occurred. And then for a time the city would be almost still. Dogs, hated by the Romans, prowled about sniffing for their food. Men or prey from the Pontine Marshes crept stealthily along the black side of the street signalling to one another with sharp whistles or hissing sounds. Sometimes torches would flash against the walls as a knot of young gallants reeled home from a debauch, breaking the noses of the street statues on their way. And at such an hour there were men and women who stole forth from their various houses, and with mantles covering their faces hastened to a lonely spot in the suburbs, and entered the mouth of a dark cave. They passed through long galleries, moist with damp and odorous of death-for coffins were ranged on either side in tiers one above the other. But soon sweet music sounded from the depths of the abyss; an open chamber came to view, and a tomb covered with flowers, laid out with a repast, encircled by men and women who were apparelled in white robes, and who sang a psalm of joy. It was in the catacombs of Rome, where the dead had been buried in the ancient times, that the Christians met to discourse on the progress of the faith; to recount the trials which they suffered in their homes; to confess to one another their sins and doubts, their carnal presumption, or their lack of faith; and also to relate their sweet visions of the night, the answers to their earnest prayers. They listened to the exhortations of their elders, and perhaps to a letter from one of the apostles. They then supped together as Jesus had supped with his disciples, and kissed one another when the love feast was concluded. At these meetings there was no distinction of rank; the high-born lady embraced the slave whom she had once scarcely regarded as a man. Humility and submission were the cardinal virtues of the early Christians; slavery had not been forbidden by the apostles because it was the doctrine of Jesus that those who were lowest in this world would be highest in the next, his theory of heaven being earth turned upside down. Slavery therefore was esteemed a state of grace, and some Christians appear to have rejected the freeman´s cap on religious grounds, for Paul exhorts such persons to become free if they can-advice which slaves do not usually require.

As time passed on, the belief of the first Christians that the end of the world was near at hand became fainter and gradually died away. It was then declared that God had favoured the earth with a respite of one thousand years. In the meantime the gospel or good tidings which the Christians announced was this. There was one God, the Creator of the world. He had long been angry with men because they were what he had made them. But he sent his only begotten son into a corner of Syria, and because his son had been murdered his wrath had been partly appeased. He would not torture to eternity all the souls that he had made; he would spare at least one in every million that were born. Peace unto earth and goodwill unto men if they would act in a certain manner; if not, fire and brimstone and the noisome pit. He was the emperor of heaven, the tyrant of the skies; the pagan gods were rebels, with whom he was at war, although he was all-powerful, and whom he allowed to seduce the souls of men although he was all-merciful. Those who joined the army of the cross might entertain some hopes of being saved; those who followed the faith of their fathers would follow their fathers to hell-fire. This creed with the early Christians was not a matter of half-belief and metaphysical debate, as it is at the present day, when Catholics and Protestants discuss hell-fire with courtesy and comfort over filberts and port wine. To those credulous and imaginative minds God was a live king, hell a place in which real bodies were burnt with real flames, which was filled with the sickening stench of roasted flesh, which resounded with agonising shrieks. They saw their fathers and mothers, their sisters and their dearest friends, hurrying onward to that fearful pit unconscious of danger, laughing and singing, lured on by the fiends whom they called the gods. They felt as we should feel were we to see a blind man walking towards a river bank. Who would have the heart to turn aside and say it was the business of the police to interfere? But what was death, a mere momentary pain, compared with tortures that would have no end? Who that could hope to save a soul by tears and supplications would remain quiescent as men do now, shrugging their shoulders and saying that it is not good taste to argue on religion, and that conversion is the office of the clergy? The Christians of that period felt more and did more than those of the present day, not because they were better men but because they believed more; and they believed more because they knew less. Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all.

In that age the Christians believed much, and their lives were rendered beautiful by sympathy and love. The dark, deep river did not exist-it was only a fancy of the brain: yet the impulse was not less real. The heart-throb, the imploring cry, the swift leap, the trembling hand out-reached to save; the transport of delight, the ecstasy of tears, the sweet, calm joy that a man had been wrested from the jaws of death-are these less beautiful, are these less real, because it afterwards appeared that the man had been in no danger after all?

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Don Firth
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:28 PM

Hunniford's pronouncement sounds like the sort of desperate statement that I've heard coming from the mouths of hard-charging evangelists who find themselves failing to save some soul they are hell-bent on saving. Or when they are confronted with the current broo-ha-ha over The Da Vinci Code. But to turn around and say that Jesus didn't exist (and I readily acknowledge that it is remotely—remotely—possible that he did not, sounds to me like just as desperate a statement from those who harbor an antipathy toward Christianity, or religion in general.

". . . full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
               —William Shakespeare, who, we are pretty sure. did exist.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:29 PM

>>It is even thought by some that "Barrabas" may have had the full name of "Yeshua bar Abbas" or Jesus Barrabas -- a revolt by a person of that name was recorded by the Romans.<<

Maybe that was the real gospelic Jesus--a criminal. No wonder they cloaked him so much myth that we can't find the real man. After all Barabbas is Aramaic for "son of the father." Jesus Son of the Father. Sound familiar? Didn't Josephus make reference to a Jesus that led a band or "mariners and poor people" in Galilee who took to robbing people and vandalizing public buildings?

Funny how Christians can cite all these Jesus references in Josephus and conveniently forget to mention this one.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: flattop
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:30 PM

Sorry, the web address:

The Martyrdom of Man by Winwood Reade.
http://www.exclassics.com/martyrdom/mrtintro.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:31 PM

>>The the history of Jesus and the evolution of many religeous beliefs were covered nicely in Winwood Reade's outstanding book, The Martyrdom of Man, published in 1872.<<

I have his book on the Druids and it's one of the best things I have read on the subject.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: flattop
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:36 PM

Didn't know he had one on the Druids. Read this one years ago, after reading a bit on it by Orwell. Images still linger in my feeble mind.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:44 PM

Flattop! Where the heck did you suddenly emerge from after all this time? How goes it?

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:47 PM

Yep, he has one on the druids and if you haven't read it then you must do so. Meanwhile, I'll have to hunt this other title down.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: flattop
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:49 PM

He was a great writer. The Druid book is at:
http://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/motd/motd.htm

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Alba
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:53 PM

I agree 'The Veil of Isis' is a great Book AR282.
Jude

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:55 PM

Very interesting quote from Mr Reade, there, flattop.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: flattop
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:56 PM

Hey George,

I'm still in Cape Breton. Things are fine, or maybe not, depends on the moment, you know how it is. I've got the book, Full Catastrophe Living, on my desk (by the same author as, Wherever You Go, There You Are) but I find it unreadable. You'd probably love it.

What the 'D' stuff on your login? Are you there with little davey?

David

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: flattop
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:58 PM

Which quote? Didn't I pile it on?

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 21 May 06 - 11:24 PM

The long quote about night life in Roman cities and the Christians in the catacombs...I liked it. (No one has to convince me that organized religion can be weird.) ;-) Still, I have no difficulty imagining that Jesus/Yeshua was a real person who walked around and preached and got crucified and had a religion started afterward in his name. Some people seem to have a deep emotional need to prove he never existed....not an easy thing to do after all this time! Heh! But faith is unshakeable in both true believers and sworn non-believers. They both tend to suffer from the same kind of dogmatic obsession to prove themselves right and others wrong, in my opinion. It's a psychological illness commonly found in about 99.8 percent of humankind.

Who is "little Davey"? Do you mean Walsh?

What "D" stuff? I don't follow you. (But that's just because you aren't quite charismatic enough! Heh!)

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: flattop
Date: 21 May 06 - 11:30 PM

Yes Walsh.

One of your posts ends with ";-D"
Is that a sign?

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: flattop
Date: 21 May 06 - 11:44 PM

Bobad wrote:

> By saying no one of his time or the generation
> after him wrote of him, we're talking Claudius,
> Livy, Tacitus, Suetonius, Philo, Josephus, Pliny,
> Seneca and so on.

May not prove anything. Christians were persecuted. Literature about Christianity may have been destroyed. Pliny wrote about Christians and Christ, (Book 10, #96-97).

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST,Art Thieme
Date: 21 May 06 - 11:58 PM

Good people, we haven't even got a concensus on who or why or how many killed Jack Kennedy on Friday November 22nd, 1963. History is just the best educated guesses we can make. And then some crazy dude writes another book.

Art

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Haruo
Date: 22 May 06 - 12:01 AM

From: GUEST,AR282 - PM
Date: 21 May 06 - 10:17 PM

>>The earlier (Arabian) version in teh same reference omits the stuff mentioned in RED capitals...<<

One more time: what historian or commentator prior to Eusebius mentions this passage?

Quite likely none. After all, there were very few people prior to Eusebius. That there is direct evidence of, anyhow, as opposed to later copyists' (who may have been authors') attestations.

Eusebius is pretty shaky ground upon which to build a proof; he was clearly not an historian in any impartial "let the facts speak for themselves" sense.

But then... what evidence do we have that Eusebius existed?

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 May 06 - 12:07 AM

What seems to emerge is this:

1. There was a itinerant Rabbi named Yeshua who lived in Galillee between about 5 BCE to 30 BCE. He may or may not have claimed to be the Davidic messiah.

2. He founded a Jewish sect, such as the Quram community, the Essenes, and others of the period.

3. He was crucified by the Romans, probably for setting himself up as the King of the Jewish Nation.

4. After his death his followers scattered, probably to Galillee, and later regrouped. From there they had power grabs, theological spats, and schisms.

5. Paul (nee Saul of Tarsus) ramrodded his ideas through, remaking the original Jewish sect into the seed of what we now call Christianity.

That Yeshua probably existed is all but certain, since many people wrote down what they think he said, did and taught. The rest of it becomes matters of Faith.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Haruo
Date: 22 May 06 - 12:17 AM

It is even thought by some that "Barrabas" may have had the full name of "Yeshua bar Abbas" or Jesus Barrabas -- a revolt by a person of that name was recorded by the Romans.

See this section in Wikipedia. I don't believe every wiki I run into, but the basic thrust of this section is right on the money: the canonical gospels say that the insurrectionist released at the crowd's behest, like the one left to be crucified, was named "Jesus Barabbas": "Salvador Fatherson", so to speak. It is this sort of thing that (while not buying into any particular alternative theory of how Jesus was an amanita mushroom or a space alien or Mary Magdalene's secret hubby or anything) makes insisting on the gospels (canonical or otherwise) as straightforward historical sources problematic for me.

Haruo

PS: And DaveO, AR282 was partly right, I think; there were places where you seemed to be confusing the Jesus/Savior/Soter etymologies with the Christ/Messiah/Anointed ones.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Haruo
Date: 22 May 06 - 12:23 AM

Rapaire, I think you probably meant 30 CE? (Unless you're suggesting that, Merlin-like, Jesus lived backwards through time.)

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: CapriUni
Date: 22 May 06 - 12:47 AM

Flattop --

;-D is a way of "drawing" a person winking and grinning at the same time (imagine turning the image 90 degrees clockwise).

It's called an 'emoticon'

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: dianavan
Date: 22 May 06 - 01:08 AM

Christ was a concept long before the birth of Mary's child, Jesus of Nazareth.

The concept of the Messiah existed among the Jews, as well.

Although Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew, the Jews did not accept him as the Messiah.

(Some even say that the forty years in the wilderness, were spent in the desert among the nomadic tribes. In the Wilderness, he preached the word of Allah) It may even be that Jesus and Mohammed were one in the same.

Don't forget that these stories were told orally and passed down through time, long before they were recorded. Is it any wonder that the dates and times don't always coincide?

Many of the older religions also had the birth (usually virgin, the life, the death and a Christ that arises or is re-born). These non-Jews then adopted Jesus of Nazareth as their own and incorporated many of the ancient rites and festivals.

Peace - I think there is a big difference between Christ and Jesus.

Christ is a concept.

Jesus was a Man of God. I think there has been more than one Man of God.

I think the Christ concept will live forever because it is rooted in the cycles of the earth. Jesus didn't live forever but the Christ concept did.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 22 May 06 - 04:16 AM

Just 40 days in the wilderness Dianavan, and that hundreds of years before Mohammed, peace be upon him.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Haruo
Date: 22 May 06 - 04:59 AM

But the forty days Jesus spent in the wilderness were probably meant to recall both the forty days (and forty nights) Noah and family spent in the ark with all the clean and unclean critters and the forty years Moses and Aaron led the Israelites around the Sinai. So maybe Moses PBUH was really Muhammed, too, PBUHT.

Haruo

BTW, AR282, this means you can give all your money to your favorite mosque or synagogue and it'll be fine by God. Tell them I suggested it.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 May 06 - 06:02 AM

or maybe he liked the Micheael jackson song Billy jean, it has that line in it - I bet that's what was running through his mind when he selected that length of time......

How long shall I spend in the wilderness he was thinking, and (then God had fitted his only son with an internal ipod, a last minute thought as a Christmas present before he was born) and Michael's track came up.........

and the rest is history.....

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Keith A of Hertford
Date: 22 May 06 - 06:47 AM

Yes, you only get one present if your birthday is Christmas Day.
Bummer.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 May 06 - 09:02 AM

Yeah, CE, not BCE. Yeshua was neither Merlin nor PDQ Bach.

Why, do you suppose, the Epistle of James is rarely or never read in churches??

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 May 06 - 10:35 AM

You summed it up nicely there, Rapaire.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 22 May 06 - 11:35 AM

perhaps he should have sent it more places

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Amos
Date: 22 May 06 - 11:40 AM

I would submit that, for present intents and purposes, there may be some handful of viable policies in all the gospels stacked together, some very profound and basic and others less so.

But aside from this thin set of applicable principles, the issues of existence, un-existence, time, character and events around this person are largely smoke and mirrors, not meant for resolution or for use, and only marginally contributing to good purpose or good action.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 May 06 - 12:27 PM

Old joke from my Catholic college days:

"Hey, didcha hear? Easter's been cancelled!"
"Wow! How come?"
"They found the body."

Which brings to mind the question of what would happen if they DID find the body. With absolute proof as to identity....

I doubt that Christianity, Judaism, or Islam would much care for it.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST,AR282
Date: 22 May 06 - 01:46 PM

>>Why, do you suppose, the Epistle of James is rarely or never read in churches??<<

Probably because the epistle tells us nothing about Jesus Christ at all. Not even that he was crucified. In fact, James appears to be saying that Jesus Christ has not walked on earth yet. When he exhorts his readers to bear their suffering, he tells them to look to the prophets for their inspiration in this endeavor rather than to Jesus which would indicate he never heard the standard gospel story.

Obviously, there were very different views as to who and what Jesus Christ was. A historical man is only one of many views at that time and a very minority view at that. He couldn't be historical and have such widely divergent views about him or he lived much, much earlier than we are led to believe and so his life is shrouded in mythology but that is really the same as saying he never existed.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: GUEST,thurg
Date: 22 May 06 - 01:46 PM

flattop - Thanks for the quote from Reade - it really is compelling writing.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Little Hawk
Date: 22 May 06 - 02:24 PM

Whatever people believe about this matter...if they believe it strongly, and are willing to argue at length about it....is generally indicative of their own emotional needs, not their devotion to sorting out historical facts. This is as true of those who insist he didn't exist as of those who insist he did.

In either case, they don't know. They are engaging in speculation, conjecture, and most likely a lot of wishful thinking. ;-) They want to rain on someone else's parade. They want to PROVE that a whole bunch of other people are WRONG, totally wrong, deluded, etc., and are not as smart as they are.

Well, they can't prove it, and I wish them no luck in doing so.

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Charmain
Date: 22 May 06 - 02:45 PM

Quite a good thread at times this one but I do have a question - forget the did He exist what was His real name stuff - what I want to know is Peter, Andrew, Phillip, Bartholemew, Thomas, Matthew etc...what were all those English blokes doing hanging about with him in first millenium Palestine?

Subject: RE: BS: Julius Caesar/Jesus - fact or fiction?
From: Peace
Date: 22 May 06 - 03:30 PM

Even if he didn't exist, he does now. So do Julius Caesar and William Shakespeare.