did jesus really exist?

[Freakaloin]

if there wuz a christian god i would choose to burn in the pits of hell...

[Freakaloin]

and where did those romans get the information? cuz there r no eyewitness accounts of jesus on earth...ANYWHERE...got it moron?

[S@M]

does this mean you now think archival documents from the Roman Empire might have some validity?

[S@M]

do you not remember that Pontius Pilot held court with Jesus, and that that would have been documented, and the documents sent to Rome....

Did you not recall that the Jewish people had their own historians
Do you honestly think the new testament has no historical accuracy at all... even Barbara Thering (?sp) accepts the historical accuracy of the NT.
do you not think someone held by the dominant religion of the day to be a dissident, and reported as such to the provinical govenor would not have any reports or documents kept, sent to Rome and archived... how long do you think such a govenor would have lasted with his head as deep in the sand as you keep yours...

[S@M]

Read Antiquities 18.3.3
If you can read this and honestly say that you think Jesus never existed, than you can also honestly say that the Boer war never happened etc etc etc If documentation is not adequate proof of history, then there is no history according to you.

[Freakaloin]

do you not remember that Pontius Pilot held court with Jesus, and that that would have been documented, and the documents sent to Rome....

Did you not recall that the Jewish people had their own historians
Do you honestly think the new testament has no historical accuracy at all... even Barbara Thering (?sp) accepts the historical accuracy of the NT.
do you not think someone held by the dominant religion of the day to be a dissident, and reported as such to the provinical govenor would not have any reports or documents kept, sent to Rome and archived... how long do you think such a govenor would have lasted with his head as deep in the sand as you keep yours...

there is no record of jesus being executed by the romans...why do u think they said jesus was killed that way by the romans? cuz they did it to tens of thousands...hard to keep track

[Freakaloin]

Read Antiquities 18.3.3
If you can read this and honestly say that you think Jesus never existed, than you can also honestly say that the Boer war never happened etc etc etc If documentation is not adequate proof of history, then there is no history according to you.

again ur talking about a dude that was born after the year jesus supposedly died...

face it dude...he never existed...

[Freakaloin]

basically if u want to make jesus a real historical figure u r being dishonest which is unchristian...and u will be crushed by the facts...its futile to deny the obvious moron...

[Pext]

so... what's the point of having a jesus thats only a historical one anyways? if he was not the son of god then there's a lot of shite written in the bible.

[Duhard]

the bible isn't real..some faggot jew simply tried to make a quick buck out of this..and it became the best selling book on the planet..but it's not different than harry potter and all the morons who read it..are you a moron?

I can help u..

[S@M]

there is no record of jesus being executed by the romans...why do u think they said jesus was killed that way by the romans? cuz they did it to tens of thousands...hard to keep track

Corneluis Tacitus
A Roman Historian and Govenor of Asia Writing of the reign of Nero:
"Christus, the founder of the naem was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberuis..."

so you think this guy just made it up hey? You think Pontius Pilate had no records of who he prosecuted, how it was done and what the result was - you think all this of the worlds greatest empire of its time???

want to read it for yourself some day

[Captain]

That could very well be a hoax.

[Coriolis]

There's more historical evidence for Jesus than for most other ancient historical figures. All four of the new testament gospels are eye witness accounts. The earliest of these were written within 10-20 years of Jesus' death, and were probably written due to circumstances that arose from the growth of the Christian church starting almost immediately after his death. The gospel books didn't need to be written when the entire Christian church was around the people who were the eye witnesses themselves. Only after it had spread enough did the church need written accounts.

The historical evidence for the existence of Jesus is far stronger than the argument you presented against it. Your argument against his existence is that some guy made a list of characteristics of fictional characters, and Jesus matches many of them, so he must logically be fictional. That just isn't a valid argument against the historical evidence for his existence. If you want to argue that he didn't exist, you have to use the rules of history to discredit all the historical evidence that attest to his existence.

[S@M]

That could very well be a hoax.

yoru stunning logic just made mohommad dissapear..
edit: its a historical document from someone of a non jewish background you fool

[busetibi]

That could very well be a hoax.

yoru stunning logic just made mohommad dissapear..
edit: its a historical document from someone of a non jewish background you fool

Told!

[Captain]

Oh I do believe he was a real person, but not any kind of "miracle worker". He was incredibly kind and intelligent for a person at that time which could have led to people believing he was holy. Nevertheless, the jews got rid of him.

[BlueGene]

lol jesus hostile take over.

[Scourge]

Those just aren't funny.

[S@M]

well mazda I guess this answers your whine about the lack of cartoons on Christianity.....

edit - the last one was funneh for me

[mjrpes]

There's more historical evidence for Jesus than for most other ancient historical figures. All four of the new testament gospels are eye witness accounts. The earliest of these were written within 10-20 years of Jesus' death, and were probably written due to circumstances that arose from the growth of the Christian church starting almost immediately after his death. The gospel books didn't need to be written when the entire Christian church was around the people who were the eye witnesses themselves. Only after it had spread enough did the church need written accounts.

The historical evidence for the existence of Jesus is far stronger than the argument you presented against it. Your argument against his existence is that some guy made a list of characteristics of fictional characters, and Jesus matches many of them, so he must logically be fictional. That just isn't a valid argument against the historical evidence for his existence. If you want to argue that he didn't exist, you have to use the rules of history to discredit all the historical evidence that attest to his existence.

There's also the book of Q, quotes from the Jesus figure that spread around early Christian groups. That is why the three testaments (not as much John) are similar although written at different times and places.

There's also the fact that gospel stuff didn't get written down until years after Jesus death, as the early Church still believed that Judgment day was close at hand and thus there was no reason to write any of the material down. It was only years later when the early church matured a bit that it proved necessary to write the books.

All in the all, someone who called himself Jesus the son of God did exist and die on a cross. That is pretty certain. Whether he was a liar, lunatic, or the real son of God is another question.

[Freakaloin]

thats not proof and there is no historical evidence at all of a jesus...christians who claim otherwise will burn in hell...

[[xeno]Julios]

http://www.tomharpur.com/Reviews/PaganChrist.asp

Tom Harpur would reject, outright, the philosophy behind the new Mel Gibson movie, The Passion of Christ.

Gibson, the conservative Catholic movie director, portrays the life of Christ literally from scripture and reads the Gospel narrative as actual history. Harpur would find that indefensible.

He would also differ from many modern theologians such as Jesus Seminar members John Spong and Marcus Borg, who believe there was an actual Jesus of history. Unlike Gibson-like word-for-word literalists, however, Spong and Borg try to locate and mine the core meanings of Jesus after all the accretions are stripped away.

For Harpur, both literalist and modern critical attempts to locate the Jesus of history are dead ends. Transcending both positions, he believes that the real Christ is a universal archetype; a classic, pre-existent myth, known essentially by all humanity. He believes we need to re-mythologize, not de-mythologize (or historicize) that Jesus.

Truths at the heart of Christianity flow from the deep well of the human unconscious whose core ideas were planted there by God, he says.

Harpur, formerly the religion editor of the Toronto Star and author of many books on faith subjects, believes that originally, there was one primal, central myth which emerged Undoubtedly in Egypt. All the other ancient sacred stories flow from there.

The big difference between the Jesus legacy and other mythological traditions like that of the Egyptian god Horus, was that devotees of the other religions never viewed their divinities as historical figures or their sacred stories as actual facts like Christians did.

The Pagan Christ is forthright in declaring that counter to precedent, Christianity launched a hostile takeover of the ancient salvation myths. Many early church fathers, in an attempt to declare exclusive rights to this mythological Jesus, made him an historical biblical person.

Once these ancient antecedents to Jesus were assimilated into what became Christianity, the pagans and their mythological sources were declared heretical. Since heretics and their books were determined to have no rights, they and their writings were viciously tracked down and eliminated by those who claimed to stand for the newly defined "orthodox" Christianity.

Harpur claims as one of his formative influences for understanding this mythological Jesus the Canadian, Northrup Frye (1912-1991). In Frye's book The Double Vision the great literary critic who taught for decades at the University of Toronto, states that when the Bible is historically accurate, it is only accidentally so. Reporting was not of the slightest interest to its writers. They had a story to tell which only could be told by myth and metaphor. What they wrote became a source of vision, not doctrine.

Three virtually unknown authorities used in this book are Godfrey Higgins (1771-1834), an early English mythologist who, through groundbreaking studies of ancient writings, sought freedom from the exclusivism and dogmatism of Christianity; Gerald Massey (1828-1907) an American, who studied Egyptian mythology and there discovered antecedents to images and themes appearing in the Hebrew Bible and New Testament; and Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880-1963) another American, who pursued extensive academic research into the origins of religious symbols and meanings. His work, though esoteric to untrained eyes, convinced Harpur of the validity of Egyptian sources for much of what appears in the Jewish and Christian scriptures.

Basing his ideas on these authorities, Harpur goes to great lengths to promote Horus (the son of Isis or Osiris) transforming him into Jesus, the central figure of Christianity. Horus, who receives but a paragraph of mention in the classic New Laurousse Encyclopedia of Mythology (1968), becomes, for Harpur, the metaphorical and allegorical truth behind the person of Jesus.

From his research into ancient myth, Harpur feels he has undergone a spiritual re-awakening that has revolutionized his Christian faith. Because of its links to the great archetypal themes of primal and classic spirituality, the Bible has assumed new potency and vitality for him. Harpur believes he now possesses an awareness of the cosmic Christ he has so long sought.

Ancient symbols and metaphors, existing yet hidden in biblical literature, have been clarified for him. He has come to appreciate, in a new way, the dangers of reading the Bible literally. He sees how humans must take responsibility for their own spiritual evolution and not leave it to other would-be authorities to define truth for them.

The Jesus story can become a profoundly spiritual allegory of the soul, he says. Classic festivals and rituals of our faith traditions can be infused with new meaning. Our understanding of life after death can be enhanced.

Harpur is on to something when he speaks of universal truth existing in primal myths. The collective human unconscious does influence the story of Jesus as found in the Gospels. The influential mythologist, Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) has opened the door for many to a rich inquiry into such matters. In our time of global culture, religious pluralism and the need for constructive inter-faith encounter, Harpur's insights are appealing.

But his serendipitous "discovery" of virtually unknown authorities, now long dead and his extravagant use of terms like "overwhelming and incontestable evidence" from them which is "beyond rebuttal" and about which there is "absolutely no question" seems rather overstated. They strike this reviewer, who has studied the mythologies of Canada's First Nations and comparative global mythology for many years, as excessive.

Harpur does not view this book as an attack upon Christianity or any other religion, for that matter. He goal is quite to opposite, actually. He wants to help people realize a richer, more spiritual faith as he has come to experience it.

Read this book, then, to enrich your quest for truth that breaks through boundaries of Christian insularity and exclusivism. Tap into the rich spiritual resources offered from the great cycles of classic metaphors and allegories. There is much potential here for approaching the Bible mythologically.

Mel Gibson's Passion, or Spong and Borg notwithstanding, Harpur offers a post-literal and a post-critical approach to the study of Jesus. It is one that takes myth seriously. Though it will not be the last or even the most precise word on the subject, it challenges thinking and opens new vistas to the serious religious thinker.

______________

Wayne A. Holst is a parish educator at St. David's United Church, Calgary. He has taught religion and culture at the University of Calgary.

[busetibi]

lol at jpgs,
while we're on about pedophiles,
didn't Mohammed marry Aisha when she was 9 yrs old?

[Captain]

You must have him confused with your father.

[Massive Quasars]

lol at jpgs,
while we're on about pedophiles,
didn't Mohammed marry Aisha when she was 9 yrs old?

Card carrying member of the BNP? Regardless, I've decided to feed your fire.

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