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Originally Posted by Strange Famous
so you think it is likely that no individual named Yeshua ben Josef was born round about 5/4BC and became a religious leader in rural communities around his home town for a couple of years before he was executed?
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It's my contention that the character/individual we now know as Jesus Christ likely never existed at all. I base that purely on both a lack of historical evidence and the fact that the character in the Bible and spoken of by theologians has many, many glaring similarities with mythological figures that predate Christianity and the supposed time Jesus was alive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Famous
Disputing the Bible is not the same as saying that the person had no historical validity at all.
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I am doing both.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Famous
Was Josephus just writing fiction?
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The problem is that Josephus
likely didn't write the Testimonium Flavianum. It appears to have been an addition some three centuries later by an apologist. And the James reference is clearly a reference to a different James.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Famous
Where all of the gospels (even those written between 0-50 years after his death) just reworking of Greek mystery stories?
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It's more like 40-80 years after his supposed death. There are no eyewitness accounts of Jesus in the Bible. Paul wrote a proto-gospel that was radically different than the story of Jesus we're familiar with very early on (possibly before the supposed lifetime of Jesus), then Mark wrote a gospel based on that in the 70s AD. Matthew and Luke each copied Mark's gospel and had their own takes on it in 80 and around 90 AD, respectively. John came late to the party and probably copied Luke, probably in the late 90s AD. The entire thing falls on Paul, and Paul speaks of Jesus as a sort of abstraction.
The thing you have to realize about most religions and myths is that they evolve over time, especially in their infancy. There was a massive change between Paul and Mark, I'd say they're entirely different religions the way that Islam is different from Christianity.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Strange Famous
I think we should be clear whether we are arguing as to whether Jesus was the son or incarnation of God, or whether a person known as Jesus really walked the earth.
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I tried to be clear. I am highly skeptical of the existence of Jesus Christ, be he natural or supernatural.
---------- Post added at 02:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:31 PM ----------
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Jazz
Well, most modern historians don't use AD. They use CE, which stands for Current Era. BCE is now the standard and is BCE. They kept the same date. You're guilty of making a pretty Western-centric set of assumptions there.
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I really need to stop using AD and BC. It's a habit left over from school.