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Offline bosk1

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #105 on: February 02, 2012, 08:58:12 AM »
That's why Jew school is overrated.


@GP:  Yesh's post is correct in terms of which books are traditionally referred to as "history."  But others, such as Genesis-Deuteronomy, largely contain history as well.
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Offline wolfandwolfandwolf

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #106 on: February 02, 2012, 09:24:05 AM »
It is clear that the Genesis creation account was not written as a scientific text to describe the creation of the Universe and specifically, the Earth.  The Genesis account has a lot in common with the Psalms and with Job, both poetic types of literature.  That said, no telling how much time elapses from "In the beginning" to "Let there be light".  The creation "story" in particular is pretty stylized and isn't written in nearly the same way some of the other "history" books in the Old Testament are written.
I don't see Genesis having much in common with Psalms or Job at all.

I agree that Genesis isn't a scientific text.  But it is a descriptive text, and it explicitly describes creation as taking 6 days.

In English it does, absolutely.  But the Hebrew word yom, which most mainline English translations translate into the English word "day" is used in a lot of various ways throughout the Old Testament.  It is translated in the book of Joshua as "an age" or "a period of time".  Likely in Genesis it is a literal day.

You're right in saying that the Genesis account explicitly describes creation as taking six days.  However, in my reading, I've found that it describes most explicitly the creation of the Earth and her inhabitants in those six literal days.

Genesis is indeed a descriptive/narrative text.  I should have been more clear in my initial post, in that the creation account itself has more in common with Job or the Psalms stylistically in the original Hebrew than it does even with the rest of the Genesis narrative itself.

Sorry for the confusion.

Offline rumborak

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #107 on: February 02, 2012, 10:03:24 AM »
When I was in Jew school, I was in a class that asked about that seven days thing, and we decided that in "God time," a day would be like a thousand years or more.

What's the point of that? I mean, clearly an omnipotent God can create the universe in 7 days if he wants to. Creating the concept of "God time" makes the Genesis account only superficially more in line with modern cosmology. To be perfectly honest, they tried to cover up one non-truth with another, in the hope that the kids stop asking after that.

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Offline eric42434224

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #108 on: February 02, 2012, 11:14:27 AM »
I think people should stop thinking of the bible as a rulebook, playbook, textbook, or reference book for their faith.  It is a story from which lessons and wisdom can be learned.
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Offline bosk1

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #109 on: February 02, 2012, 11:24:21 AM »
Respectfully, I think people who choose not to live by any faith should stop telling people who choose to live by faith what they should believe and why.  Telling people how they should view their own religion shows a complete lack of wisdom.
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Offline eric42434224

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #110 on: February 02, 2012, 11:31:26 AM »
Respectfully, I think people who choose not to live by any faith should stop telling people who choose to live by faith what they should believe and why.  Telling people how they should view their own religion shows a complete lack of wisdom.

Respectfully, I wasnt telling anyone how to live their life or view their religion.  Just what my opinion was.  And it was coming from a viewpoint of having previously lived that life of religion and faith.  Not being able to tell the difference between someone sharing an opinion in a forum on the subject, and a person telling someone what they should do, shows a complete lack of reading comprehension.
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Offline Super Dude

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #111 on: February 02, 2012, 11:33:15 AM »
When I was in Jew school, I was in a class that asked about that seven days thing, and we decided that in "God time," a day would be like a thousand years or more.

What's the point of that? I mean, clearly an omnipotent God can create the universe in 7 days if he wants to. Creating the concept of "God time" makes the Genesis account only superficially more in line with modern cosmology. To be perfectly honest, they tried to cover up one non-truth with another, in the hope that the kids stop asking after that.

rumborak

Oh I didn't really have a point, it was just a small related anecdote.
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Offline bosk1

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #112 on: February 02, 2012, 11:46:16 AM »
I thought about going to Jew School, but it was too expensive, so I just bought "Jewism for Dummies" at Borders to save time and money.
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Offline William Wallace

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #113 on: February 02, 2012, 01:12:38 PM »
When I was in Jew school, I was in a class that asked about that seven days thing, and we decided that in "God time," a day would be like a thousand years or more.

What's the point of that? I mean, clearly an omnipotent God can create the universe in 7 days if he wants to. Creating the concept of "God time" makes the Genesis account only superficially more in line with modern cosmology. To be perfectly honest, they tried to cover up one non-truth with another, in the hope that the kids stop asking after that.

rumborak
Or, maybe kids in a classroom aren't the final authorities on Ancient Hebrew?

Offline Scheavo

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #114 on: February 02, 2012, 01:24:14 PM »
You know, the fact that there can even be an argument surrounding the language used in the Bible really sorta undermines the authority of the Bible. For one, it shows you how interpretable the entire thing is, no matter what language you are using, and how no one today can possibly pretend to know what the author originally meant. You can put forward interpretative understandings of the Bible, but there is no way to verify that such is objectively true. And it also reminds us of how language evolves, and how such a process mirrors the process of evolution.

Why look for truth in a book, when the worlds all around you?

Offline William Wallace

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #115 on: February 02, 2012, 02:00:55 PM »
You know, the fact that there can even be an argument surrounding the language used in the Bible really sorta undermines the authority of the Bible. For one, it shows you how interpretable the entire thing is, no matter what language you are using, and how no one today can possibly pretend to know what the author originally meant. You can put forward interpretative understandings of the Bible, but there is no way to verify that such is objectively true. And it also reminds us of how language evolves, and how such a process mirrors the process of evolution.

Why look for truth in a book, when the worlds all around you?
You know, the fact that people fight over evolution sorta undermines its status as a valid theory. For one, it shows that basic facts about the natural world are open to interpretation and nobody can know whether Darwin was right or not. You can put forward interpretative understandings of the data, but you can't know if they're objectively true. This also reminds us of how science evolves to reflect the modern assumptions of would-be philosophers and armchair scientists.

Why study science when you can just make things up as you go?

Offline GuineaPig

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #116 on: February 02, 2012, 02:11:08 PM »
The difference in rigor between the scientific method and a layman making interpretations of scripture makes that comparison pretty off-base.
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Offline William Wallace

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #117 on: February 02, 2012, 04:22:33 PM »
The difference in rigor between the scientific method and a layman making interpretations of scripture makes that comparison pretty off-base.
As I said, lay interpretations of a text are not what should matter. And I humbly suggest that historians are no less rigorous in their pursuit of the original meaning of an ancient text than biologists are with evolution. 

Offline Super Dude

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #118 on: February 02, 2012, 04:25:54 PM »
Except a theological text can only be read as legitimate history to such a limited degree, given their propensity to exaggeration and straight-up fabrication.
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Offline William Wallace

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #119 on: February 02, 2012, 04:39:15 PM »
Except a theological text can only be read as legitimate history to such a limited degree, given their propensity to exaggeration and straight-up fabrication.
You guys maul anybody who comes in here and makes uninformed claims about science. Be consistent and don't say dumb things about topics you haven't bothered to investigate. The Bible's theological nature has nothing to do with elucidating a particular passage's original meaning.

Offline Scheavo

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #120 on: February 02, 2012, 06:15:57 PM »
You know, the fact that there can even be an argument surrounding the language used in the Bible really sorta undermines the authority of the Bible. For one, it shows you how interpretable the entire thing is, no matter what language you are using, and how no one today can possibly pretend to know what the author originally meant. You can put forward interpretative understandings of the Bible, but there is no way to verify that such is objectively true. And it also reminds us of how language evolves, and how such a process mirrors the process of evolution.

Why look for truth in a book, when the worlds all around you?
You know, the fact that people fight over evolution sorta undermines its status as a valid theory. For one, it shows that basic facts about the natural world are open to interpretation and nobody can know whether Darwin was right or not. You can put forward interpretative understandings of the data, but you can't know if they're objectively true. This also reminds us of how science evolves to reflect the modern assumptions of would-be philosophers and armchair scientists.

Why study science when you can just make things up as you go?

 :rollin Do you really even think before you type this? I mean, actually think about what you're saying, and what it implies?

Science is based upon the idea that it is an interpretation of facts. Science, if it is indeed science, is inherently falsifiable. Science does indeed evolve, it acknowledges this, and it has no problems with this fact of life. For instance, compare Newtonian physcis with modern physics; Newtonian physics is one interpretation of facts, and it's applicable for a large variety of every day experience; however, we also know for a fact that Newtonian physics is basically false and based upon faulty premises. Science is continually upturning former scientific discoveries, shedding new and more appropriate light upon it, and continually modifying itself. This is the scientific method, it is extremely skeptical and it never assumes it actually knows the truth, only that this seems to work, and it allows us to do such and such, but it never makes the jump to outright Truth, especially some objective religious truth as espoused by Religion.

There's also the last thing I mentioned: science examines the real world, not the book of some long dead author. What do you think is going to be more accurate, looking for truth in a old book, based upon faulty and ignorant worldviews, or actually examining the world around you?

And I do think you can come closer to a better understanding of a text, in this case the Bible, but you can never actually verify for sure that such is the truth, or the most accurate way of understanding said text. Which is why people can study the exact same text, come to deeper understandings, and still disagree with other experts about what the text means.

Offline Super Dude

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #121 on: February 02, 2012, 07:53:34 PM »
Except a theological text can only be read as legitimate history to such a limited degree, given their propensity to exaggeration and straight-up fabrication.
You guys maul anybody who comes in here and makes uninformed claims about science. Be consistent and don't say dumb things about topics you haven't bothered to investigate. The Bible's theological nature has nothing to do with elucidating a particular passage's original meaning.

Why not? After all, that's what the Bible is; a piece of religious scripture. Sure it can be seen as history, but considering much history in that era was mythologized for the sake of cultural and political legitimacy (case in point: the Roman survivor of Troy), how do you separate the legitimate from the embellished?
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Offline wolfandwolfandwolf

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #122 on: February 02, 2012, 09:15:33 PM »
The difference in rigor between the scientific method and a layman making interpretations of scripture makes that comparison pretty off-base.
I can agree with this.  A layman interpreting scripture some times leads to pretty terrible things, not limited to just a misunderstanding culturally of a text.  We can see this in some of the atrocities that have been committed in the name of God and scriptures over time by various religions, including Christianity.

I suppose that someone without much knowledge of science could also simply say "it's science" just as someone without much knowledge of God could say "it's God".

I won't claim that I have all the answers, I certainly don't.  All I know is what I've studied of the Bible itself and how it works together with science and reason and all of the other things in this world that are simply not mutually exclusive.

And I don't think there is a reason to get angry about it either.  I'm just stating what I've read/studied and what I know.

Offline hefdaddy42

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #123 on: February 03, 2012, 07:45:06 AM »
Except a theological text can only be read as legitimate history to such a limited degree, given their propensity to exaggeration and straight-up fabrication.
You guys maul anybody who comes in here and makes uninformed claims about science. Be consistent and don't say dumb things about topics you haven't bothered to investigate. The Bible's theological nature has nothing to do with elucidating a particular passage's original meaning.

Why not? After all, that's what the Bible is; a piece of religious scripture. Sure it can be seen as history, but considering much history in that era was mythologized for the sake of cultural and political legitimacy (case in point: the Roman survivor of Troy), how do you separate the legitimate from the embellished?
Because before it can be seen as a piece of religious writing, it is a piece of writing, like any other.  Using literary study and criticism to interpret the meaning of a text has (or should have) little to do with any theology that cropped up around it later. 
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Offline hefdaddy42

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #124 on: February 03, 2012, 07:50:01 AM »
It is clear that the Genesis creation account was not written as a scientific text to describe the creation of the Universe and specifically, the Earth.  The Genesis account has a lot in common with the Psalms and with Job, both poetic types of literature.  That said, no telling how much time elapses from "In the beginning" to "Let there be light".  The creation "story" in particular is pretty stylized and isn't written in nearly the same way some of the other "history" books in the Old Testament are written.
I don't see Genesis having much in common with Psalms or Job at all.

I agree that Genesis isn't a scientific text.  But it is a descriptive text, and it explicitly describes creation as taking 6 days.

In English it does, absolutely.  But the Hebrew word yom, which most mainline English translations translate into the English word "day" is used in a lot of various ways throughout the Old Testament.  It is translated in the book of Joshua as "an age" or "a period of time".  Likely in Genesis it is a literal day.

You're right in saying that the Genesis account explicitly describes creation as taking six days.  However, in my reading, I've found that it describes most explicitly the creation of the Earth and her inhabitants in those six literal days.

Genesis is indeed a descriptive/narrative text.  I should have been more clear in my initial post, in that the creation account itself has more in common with Job or the Psalms stylistically in the original Hebrew than it does even with the rest of the Genesis narrative itself.

Sorry for the confusion.
yom is definitely a word with some flexibility, but the primary meaning is "day" and the context in Genesis (the evening and the morning) clearly indicates day.  Any attempt to render it as something other than a normal 24-hour period is usually done by someone who wants to sell you something.  I mean, believe it or don't believe it, that's up to you, but the text says "day."

Yes, it specifically describes the creation of the Earth, but it doesn't differentiate between the Earth and anything resembling any wider Universe; the ancient Jews had no concept of such things, so that makes sense.

I still see no real similarities between the creation account and Job or the Psalms.  But to each his own.
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Offline Super Dude

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #125 on: February 03, 2012, 07:52:13 AM »
Except a theological text can only be read as legitimate history to such a limited degree, given their propensity to exaggeration and straight-up fabrication.
You guys maul anybody who comes in here and makes uninformed claims about science. Be consistent and don't say dumb things about topics you haven't bothered to investigate. The Bible's theological nature has nothing to do with elucidating a particular passage's original meaning.

Why not? After all, that's what the Bible is; a piece of religious scripture. Sure it can be seen as history, but considering much history in that era was mythologized for the sake of cultural and political legitimacy (case in point: the Roman survivor of Troy), how do you separate the legitimate from the embellished?
Because before it can be seen as a piece of religious writing, it is a piece of writing, like any other.  Using literary study and criticism to interpret the meaning of a text has (or should have) little to do with any theology that cropped up around it later.

Later? The written Bible is the centuries-old culmination of Oral Torah (Torah b'al peh), the religious tradition of the Jews. That predates the written Bible by at least a thousand years. And if the New Testament is based on the Good News of Jesus, that too is then simply a recorded form of religious principles.
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Offline hefdaddy42

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #126 on: February 03, 2012, 10:07:00 AM »
All of that aside, it still doesn't have anything to do with the point he is making.  Any piece of writing, whether religious or secular, is a text.  Analysis of the text itself has nothing to do with whether you believe in what the text purports to say.
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Offline Super Dude

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #127 on: February 03, 2012, 10:23:30 AM »
True, but my point was that that very religious nature, and also given the time period in which it was converted into text, you risk mistaking embellishment for fact, and oftentimes the historical facts or the chronology could be deliberately changed to assist in maintaining some internal logic of the text. I mean, the Gothic (and Frankish) Chronicles are a damn good example of that. Not to mention it's a textual adaptation of a centuries-old oral tradition, meaning it's subject to all sorts of generational and regional distortions.
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Offline Nekov

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #128 on: February 03, 2012, 10:44:06 AM »
Very interesting discussion here. My point of view is that most of the information I have about Jesus comes from the Bible. There may be tons of historians that talk about him that I haven't read so I am a little skeptical about his existence.
Going back to the Bible, I went to a Jewish high school (I am not religious) and for the last three years I had to choose between learning Hebrew or studying the Jewish bible and I went for the later. What I found very interesting was that every time we went over a passage, the teachers always told us we should not take what the Bible says literally but that we should consider them metaphors. One example I can remember clearly was Jonah and the whale. We read the passage and then started analyzing it and the first thing our teacher told us was that we shouldn't believe Jonah was really trapped inside a whale because we know that's not possible, but instead that it meant he went through a dark time in his life where he felt alone and desperate. Also she told us that this characters don't necessarily existed.
Taking that point of view, I have a hard time taking anything the gospels say literally because I think it makes a lot more sense that this stories about supernatural events be meant as metaphors than that they actually happened.

@William Wallace: I think you are a very clever poster and tend to make good arguments but you are jumping on people in this thread when they try to establish an argument that goes against your point of view. The arguments may be weak but if someone is unable to believe in Jesus then you should let them be.
« Last Edit: February 03, 2012, 11:34:42 AM by Nekov »
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Offline William Wallace

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #129 on: February 03, 2012, 12:03:52 PM »
True, but my point was that that very religious nature, and also given the time period in which it was converted into text, you risk mistaking embellishment for fact, and oftentimes the historical facts or the chronology could be deliberately changed to assist in maintaining some internal logic of the text. I mean, the Gothic (and Frankish) Chronicles are a damn good example of that. Not to mention it's a textual adaptation of a centuries-old oral tradition, meaning it's subject to all sorts of generational and regional distortions.
You must know something textual critics don't know. Critical study of a text requires that you look out for embellishments and changes introduced through transmission. Ironically, that principle has been applied more rigorously to the Bible than any other ancient writing.

Offline Super Dude

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #130 on: February 03, 2012, 12:42:02 PM »
Alright, well consider this: what if I told you that not only did the story of Passover and Jewish slavery in Egypt not occur, but that what would eventually become Iron Age Israel actually never even left Canaan in the first place?

Textual critics who rely on extra-Biblical accounts and other forms of contrast would be harder pressed to explain that than, say, archaeologists.
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Offline bosk1

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #131 on: February 03, 2012, 12:49:26 PM »
What if I told you that not only did Augustus Caesar not exist, but that Obama is an Irish Muslim man born in New Guinea?

Not sure I'm following your point.
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Offline GuineaPig

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #132 on: February 03, 2012, 12:52:24 PM »
What if I told you that not only did Augustus Caesar not exist, but that Obama is an Irish Muslim man born in New Guinea?

Not sure I'm following your point.

His point is that the accepted view of the Books of Exodus and Joshua is that the events they recount are not historical, and instead present an origin myth for the Jewish people, and that any textual study of the Bible would not reveal this.
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Offline bosk1

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #133 on: February 03, 2012, 12:55:24 PM »
And as with Obama's birth or the first of the Caesars, it's an origin myth that appears from all available evidence to be true and uncontradicted.
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Offline yeshaberto

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #134 on: February 03, 2012, 12:57:21 PM »
a proffessor of mine had actually written a massive volume showing how the egyptian dates are off and how when adjusted astonomically the facts align with history.  I sat through the class and found it fascinating.
at the time it was being considered by the scientific community, but that was years ago. 
hadn't heard since what came of it
your point is taken, though, that our current dating does not coincide with the history recorded in Exodus.

Offline hefdaddy42

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #135 on: February 03, 2012, 12:57:50 PM »
True, but my point was that that very religious nature, and also given the time period in which it was converted into text, you risk mistaking embellishment for fact, and oftentimes the historical facts or the chronology could be deliberately changed to assist in maintaining some internal logic of the text. I mean, the Gothic (and Frankish) Chronicles are a damn good example of that. Not to mention it's a textual adaptation of a centuries-old oral tradition, meaning it's subject to all sorts of generational and regional distortions.
Your assertion that the Bible is a textual adaptation of a centuries-old oral tradition is a theological perspective, not a literary/historical one.  Which is what I'm talking about.

I mean, there is no doubt that the legends and traditions collected in the Pentateuch are largely based on stories handed down over time, but that is a very small part of the Bible.
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Offline William Wallace

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #136 on: February 03, 2012, 01:01:27 PM »
What if I told you that not only did Augustus Caesar not exist, but that Obama is an Irish Muslim man born in New Guinea?

Not sure I'm following your point.

His point is that the accepted view of the Books of Exodus and Joshua is that the events they recount are not historical, and instead present an origin myth for the Jewish people, and that any textual study of the Bible would not reveal this.
But experts don't study the text in English and absent any background knowledge of the history and original language. How do you think you know about the different interpretations that exist? It's because the people I'm referring to do the research and write about it. Then, little bits of that scholarship are filtered into whatever silly sources you rely on.

Offline Super Dude

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #137 on: February 03, 2012, 01:36:50 PM »
What if I told you that not only did Augustus Caesar not exist, but that Obama is an Irish Muslim man born in New Guinea?

Not sure I'm following your point.

His point is that the accepted view of the Books of Exodus and Joshua is that the events they recount are not historical, and instead present an origin myth for the Jewish people, and that any textual study of the Bible would not reveal this.

Pretty much this.

What if I told you that not only did Augustus Caesar not exist, but that Obama is an Irish Muslim man born in New Guinea?

Not sure I'm following your point.

His point is that the accepted view of the Books of Exodus and Joshua is that the events they recount are not historical, and instead present an origin myth for the Jewish people, and that any textual study of the Bible would not reveal this.
But experts don't study the text in English and absent any background knowledge of the history and original language. How do you think you know about the different interpretations that exist? It's because the people I'm referring to do the research and write about it. Then, little bits of that scholarship are filtered into whatever silly sources you rely on.

See Nekov.
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Offline William Wallace

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #138 on: February 03, 2012, 01:50:46 PM »

See Nekov.

Quote from: Nekov
My point of view is that most of the information I have about Jesus comes from the Bible. There may be tons of historians that talk about him that I haven't read so I am a little skeptical about his existence.
Precisely the problem.

Offline Super Dude

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Re: Jesus never existed?
« Reply #139 on: February 03, 2012, 02:28:33 PM »
I was referring more to:

@William Wallace: I think you are a very clever poster and tend to make good arguments but you are jumping on people in this thread when they try to establish an argument that goes against your point of view. The arguments may be weak but if someone is unable to believe in Jesus then you should let them be.
Quote from: bosk1
As frequently happens, Super Dude nailed it.
:superdude: