This is all very well, but if he wasn’t the Son of God/the Flesh of God/God Himself, ie if he didnt have some SPECIAL link with GOD, then who gives a fuck whether he was real or not? Even if he was real, he’d just be some self-help guru guy with little merit for historical posterity.
EDIT: oh and lol the resurection being historically proved by documents.
The ressurection is an entirely unprecedented event in human history. Therefore it requires extra-ordinary evidence. Documents won’t cut it for that kind of shit, folks. And that’s where your historical arguments fail: in order to prove Jesus was God, you’d need more than some crusty old parchments, yet that’s all you have. Just another book among millions and you expect people to accept that as proof for the Hugest Truth-Claim It is Possible To Make.
If video recording technology was around in Jesus’ day then he might have a better chance but as it stands, he doesnt have a leg to stand on.
Bleh, the Jesus being God stuff is already a religion debate which would get the thread locked. The topic concerning him actually existed isn’t against the rules since it’s merely dealing with history… so anything about the confirmation concerning his theology should just be googled instead of discussed here because at the end of the day, it is in your decision whether or not to credit the sources given. And just to point out from my earlier post, there is no reason to historically reject the cannoned gospels.
The support of his resurrection is from the martyrdom of his contemporaries, that’s all i can say.
How convenient for you to only be expected to prove the much easier hypothesis (that Jesus was a guy).
Are we talking about the sources claiming he was a guy, or that he was God? Because no regular physical document should convince any rational person that a man who walked this earth was God. You need more than a document to do that.
“Look, I’m the son of God! I’m the Walking Flesh of the Lord himself! You want proof? Well here, take a look at my PAPERS!”
How is that any kind of proof? Crazy people can do a lot of crazy shit for a lot of crazy reasons. What, is the martyrdom of Muslims proof of Mohammed’s direct special link with God now?
Well, that’s not how I intended it to come across. It’s more complicated than that. It’s something in the Bible considered historical based on certain criteria, I guess. I brought up the point of the women discovering the tomb because it’s something that you wouldn’t put in a legendary account. To the first century Jew it was far from the most appealing thing to make up. Remember this is accepted by neutral scholars and the opposition, such as Bart Ehrman. This is accepted purely on historical grounds, not philosophical or theological.
I included the resurrection argument to further the point about not only Jesus existing, but specifically in regard to the facts surrounding the resurrection. We’d then say that naturalistic explanations don’t really make sense of the situation. For instance, Ldemann’s hallucination hypothesis.
Well, the resurrection argument tries to do that. The “they were lying” or “it was hallucination/mass hallucination” doesn’t really make sense of the accepted historical facts. Check the numbers in my big post if you’re interested.
From there we’d say “Did God raise Jesus from the dead?” and if yes, then you go to philosophy/theology and ask who God is, look back at history and look at Jesus’s claims, etc. I think you’ll see Jesus thinking of himself as God’s unique Son. Basically that he’s God incarnate.
No, it’s not convenient, it’s just the subject on him being God will get this thread locked.
Do you mind telling me what kind of Physical evidence there is supposed to be for the Divinity subject of this man? You are right, it needs more than documentations, but the question i have for you is what kind of evidence do you feel is needed?
Why don’t you research the martyrdom of every cult/religion in history. The martydom of Jesus’ followers is great support for the divinity case, because it is obvious that no one would die (including the way the disciples died) for something they didn’t believe in right? So the question goes, what made them believe that way so seriously? Of course, we have other cults and religions who’s followers died from being deceived of their leader(s)… but what made these Jesus followers die in such a way? The type of Martyrdom those disciples faced showed the seriousness of what they believed, and they believed that their leader rose from the dead - it was Jesus’ resurrection that confirmed their beliefs about him. During early AD, Christianity was not a complete religion, it was a cohesieve group of Jews in Palestine. There was no bible to study on and inspire them, no universities dedicated in studying the religious books, no actual churches, nothing. There was no published writings about him being God and rising after death. So what basis did these men have for their beliefs? They where taught by a Man, and they eventually developed such beliefs about that Man. That Man, impacted their very lives in such a way that they literately and willing suffered to death for it. The Martyrdom and the rise of Christianity in early AD Palestine is the support of the theological belief because it’s Sociology Science that states that beliefs like that need a impacting root, not Physical - Materialistic evidence.
You can’t just make an argument that the theology of Jesus came from thin air or just out of the imagination out of men. The Theology belief originated by the Leader himself. The way he got them to believe him is for you to decide.
You mean the writings that claim he exorcised demons, walked on water, and duped fish and bread. Yes, I’m sure those were all sane, unbiased third parties giving honest accounts…
Oh, and you mean the Gnostic texts that were deemed inauthentic fabrications by orthodox dogma? You mean those myths random people made up can be appealed to in order to prove a character existed?
So all accounts of bigfoot are ‘solidly academically credible’ as long as they are sourced within 150 years of bigfoot’s birthday? Your criteria for authenticity is hilarious.
Why were the biased accounts? If you don’t want to believe that he walked on water and did all of that literately, that’s your business. Most of those gnostics are deemed legend not historical, it isn’t what their portrayal that is important in this argument. It is the mentioning that is being counted. Not all the gnostic are religiously based anyway, and their writings are inspired from other sources in the end.
There are writings dating 150 years of Bigfoots birthday? Do you have any academic proof for your statement here, because right now this just looks like you were trying and failed to be a smart ass here or just trolling my post.
Oh, well sorry. But in the end, you know very well that i can academically annihilate you in debates like this, regardless of what you want to say to me.
biased because they are written by followers who want to make a case for this guy,
biased because they were edited and cherry picked by priests and politicians who wanted to make a case for this guy (various councils, nicaea, etc) in order to secure power for themselves and their ideologies.
biased because the most detailed accounts of the guy are in his fan books…it’s like reading a book on Thor written by a bunch of norse vikings and selected by norse priests…come on, smarten up
Sure. Claim he is 100 years old, write shit about him.
But you missed the point. Regardless if there is or isn’t documentation about him, simply being written within 150 years of something doesn’t make it “scholarly credible”. There are plenty of lies written about Bush and Obama within 150 years of their lives…understand?
Where did you get this number from anyway? You just made it up right. 150 years? Why not 75.
biased because they are written by followers who want to make a case for this guy,
biased because they were edited and cherry picked by priests and politicians who wanted to make a case for this guy (various councils, nicaea, etc) in order to secure power for themselves and their ideologies.
biased because the most detailed accounts of the guy are in his fan books…it’s like reading a book on Thor written by a bunch of norse vikings and selected by norse priests…come on, smarten up
[/Quote]
As I stated for the four points, they wrote things that would obviously not be the best things to write and that you wouldn’t really put if you were trying to sugarcoat things. For instance, women discovering the tomb is not something that would be a good idea to put in if you were trying to appeal to people. Things like attributing limited knowledge to Jesus are considered authentic because it isn’t something that you’d preferably put down if Christ is supposed to be divine (although obviously the Hypostatic Union fixed the problem there).
Priests didn’t really cherry pick anything. If you know anything about textual criticism then you know that there are thousands of manuscripts available. These are copies made separately by different people that end up primarily saying the exact same thing. Christianity was popular but also persecuted, so prior to the Catholic church there really wasn’t any power to be gained. The manuscripts are often older than this.
Nicea had absolutely nothing to with picking what would be canon and scripture and what wouldn’t. The Gospels and Epistles were kind of like always there, so these were things that were eventually put into the Bible with Jerome’s translation. In the early church there wasn’t any question of it there should be more books, but only if there were too many. For instance, Revelations and maybe something like 2 and 3 John were even questioned. There were no “ban from the Bible!” sessions where they were like “Gnostic gospels? Hell no!” no one actually accepted them that weren’t gnostics. The Catholic church I don’t think would have even done a good job cherry picking if you know what doctrines eventually developed.
why would these followers want to make a case for him? You just forced me to repeat an earlier point, what causes followers? What causes followers is a belief, and a belief that parallels theirs has to have an impacting root in their lives. Whether you want to believe that these men where tricked or being figurative is up to your decision. But if you are suggesting that the gospel authors where intentionally making a lie then you are being illogical.
Next, what evidence do you have to show that they were edited and “cherry picked”? These gospels where picked out of the rest because they had every right to be. There where other books that talked about Jesus being God, and other things that support some of roman catholicism dogma; yet they where not included. For example, the Gospel of Nicodemus, Thomas, etc… non of those books had any contradictions concerning the Christian belief of Jesus’ identity. Yet they are only looked to as legend by the church regardless. If Nicea was that determined to biasly strengthen the Christianity in the way that you would have said. Then the Bible would have included the other books such as Nicodemus, Acts of Pilate, etc.
Now what is this? You tried to counter the “150 year” scholarly principle with a comment concerning Bigfoot. You said there are documentations that date with in 100 years of big foots life, now when i ask for you to back that up, you reply with this? So you just made some argument up in order to debunk my input, you’ve just shown that your comment has no point.
“There are plenty of lies written about Bush and Obama within 150 years of their lives…understand”
This here is also a failed argument by you, and it just shows you are not being academical in your arguments. Is it past 150 years of Obama or Bush’s life? You do know that the 150 year thing applies to the ancient times, right?
The “150 year” principle comes from Scholars. Documentations or attestations of ancient times that date with in 150 years isn’t past a generation yet which is why it is considered a academic source for the subject person. What he did or what he was isn’t part of the subject scholars are interested in.
Dawg, ain’t you philipino? You know there was no chinaman in the bible right? Jesus ain’t ever seen a slanty eye’d mother fucker like you in his life. Where Jesus lived and build his rep bar to full green was thousands of miles away from the Island of the Pililpines. Get off his dick. Go worship something people from the philipines worship like buddha or some shit. The bible wasn’t written for you, by you, about you.
Asian christians make me facepalm hard. There you go, proving that asian inferiority complex all over again making gangsta ass azn like me embarrassed.
The only thing you’ve shown in this post is that you are an idiot. The relation of Chinese culture with Filipino’s in your post just made you look stupid. You should be embarrassed of this post of yours if you are above 12 years old.
anytime you ask a question, look at how other religions would answer it. What would cause followers for Muhammed, or L.Ron Hubbard, or any random cult leader? Usually its a mixture of hope and ignorance fueled by gossip and cool superstitions they hear. And they can easily perpetuate lies intentionally (for a greater good) or mistakenly (because they belief things via faith).
Assuming he did have followers, the stories could have just been made up and his followers could have been fictional…who knows. Either way, it’s nothing special.
Apparently the comment flew over your head. I’m not going to explain why it did, but I will give you a hint.
“In Scholaraly, any source that dates with in 150 years of the person’s lifetime is solidly academically credible.” -cisco
No, you need more than just time-frame to be a credible or scholarly source. Think more, say less. Will help you online and in real life.
