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RBphoto wrote:Heaven is... not xperiencing internet problems with greendot
chulo45 wrote:RBphoto wrote:Heaven is... not xperiencing internet problems with greendot
Then I in heaven. Had greendot for 3+ years and no problems.
stev wrote:chulo45 wrote:RBphoto wrote:Heaven is... not xperiencing internet problems with greendot
Then I in heaven. Had greendot for 3+ years and no problems.
LOL
i wonder if people actually listen to their selves,
Habit7 wrote: For example, did I "misquote" Surah 98:6 above? I am not of the worst of creatures?
A yes or no answer is not a "lengthy explanation."
ruffneck_12 wrote:heaven is.... not hell
Was Jesus of Nazareth real?
By By Kevin Baldeosingh
Story Created: Dec 20, 2014 at 9:43 PM ECT
Story Updated: Dec 20, 2014 at 9:43 PM ECT
Nearly everyone in the Western world knows about Jesus Christ. Even non-Christians and non-believers know something about his life and death—that he was born under a threat, became a well-known religious leader, and was crucified for his ideas. Many people believe that Jesus had miraculous powers, such as being able to heal the sick and walk on water. And even persons who don’t believe in supernatural abilities generally accept that a man named Jesus lived and was a great and exemplary leader.
Yet there are arguments that Jesus of Nazareth may not have existed at all.
Philosopher and historian Richard C Carrier, in his book Proving History, writes: “Apart from fundamentalist Christians, all experts agree the Jesus of the Bible is buried in myth and legend. But attempts to ascertain the ‘real’ historical Jesus have ended in confusion and failure.”
But Bible scholar Barth Ehrman, a born-again Christian turned agnostic, argues that Jesus was certainly a real historical figure. In his book How Jesus became God, Ehrman says: “When it comes to Jesus, people seem to think that they simply know who he was, what he said, or what he did—almost as if they gained this knowledge by osmosis from the environment. In fact, however, anything you know about Jesus, or think you know, has come to you from a source...And the only way to know whether a detail from Jesus’s life is historically accurate is to investigate our sources of information.”
Ehrman lists these sources as the four canonical Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John), the Gospels of Thomas and Peter, and lost documents called Q, M, and L. “These three were probably independent of each other and independent of Mark, and John was independent of them all. In other words, we have numerous streams of tradition that independently all go back, ultimately, to the life of Jesus.”
Carrier is one of a small group of scholars (labelled “mythicists”) who argue that the Historical Jesus (HJ) who was nailed to a cross is just as much a myth as the Supernatural Jesus (SJ) who rose from the dead. Ehrman himself does not believe in SJ, but holds that the sources provide good evidence for HJ. “Nearly everyone agrees that even though these canonical Gospels are highly problematic as sources for the historical Jesus, they nonetheless do contain some historically accurate recollections of what he said, did, and experienced amid all the embellishments and changes,” he writes.
But author Earl Doherty in The End of an Illusion, a book-length rebuttal of Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? holds that Ehrman has simply “pointed to all these “sources” and designated them as reflecting the historical figure he is trying to defend, and in the same breath proceeds to make part of that defence the existence of all these independent sources to him. A gigantic circular exercise.”
Raphael Lataster, a PhD student in Religious Studies, argues in his book There was no Jesus, There is no God, that “the ‘Christ of Faith’ and the ‘Historical Jesus’ are derived from the same sources...It seems that the ‘Historical Jesus’, or each scholar’s version, is a stripped-down version of the ‘Christ of Faith’; the Biblical Jesus with varying parts omitted, and with no sources of his own. Yet the Gospels do not mention this hypothesised ‘Historical Jesus’, they tell the story of the ‘Christ of Faith’, the ‘Biblical Jesus’...” Lataster argues that such an approach is equivalent to reading the Harry Potter novels, dismissing the scenes about magic as impossible, and
concluding that Harry was therefore a real boy who lived with his aunt and uncle in London since this is possible. He adds that Ehrman is “all too happy to discredit the Gospels when it comes to opposing the resurrection of Jesus, yet somehow (and inconsistently) when it comes to the existence of Jesus, he concludes that the Gospels ‘make a convincing case’.”
So how reliable are the historical sources which attest to the earthly existence of Jesus? Ehrman points to several criteria that Bible scholars use to determine the reliability of a source document. These include:
Criterion of independent attestation: If a story is found in several of these independent traditions, then it is more likely that this story goes back to the life of Jesus.
Criterion of Dissimilarity: If a tradition about Jesus is dissimilar to what early Christians would have wanted to say about him, then it is more likely to be historically accurate. (This is also known as the Argument from Embarrassment.)
Criterion of Contextual Credibility: Stories about Jesus’s teachings must agree with what a first-century Palestinian Jew would have said.
However, the mythicist scholars argue that none of these criteria is sufficient to support the argument for HJ. There are, for example, no reliable sources outside the Gospels which attest to the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. Ehrman himself admits that “We do not have any accounts of Jesus from Greek or Roman (pagan) sources of the first century, no mention of his name until more than eighty years after his death.” He does reference two brief mentions by the Jewish historian Josephus, but fails to note that many scholars now consider the passage which references Jesus to be a later insertion by a Church historian, probably Eusebius.
Ehrman also argues that the letters of the Apostle Paul provide reliable evidence for Jesus’s existence, starting with Paul’s assertion about the resurrection of Christ. “Paul indicates that he did not devise this statement himself but that he ‘received’ it from others, “writes Ehrman, adding, “it is believed far and wide among New Testament specialists that Paul is indicating that this is a tradition already widespread in the Christian church, handed over to him by Christian teachers, possibly even the earlier apostles themselves.” This, he said, may point to a Pre-Pauline tradition that could have gone back to Jesus’s lifetime.
The problem with this argument, as the mythicists point out, is that it is contradicted by Paul himself. In Galatians 1:11-12, Paul says: “For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Theologian Robert M Price in his book Killing History, notes that “Paul’s letters have almost nothing to say about any historical Jesus...Paul does not know of Jesus as an itinerant teacher. Nor does he speak of Jesus as a miracle worker...He never mentions Nazareth.” Doherty writes: “Ehrman also conveniently ignores that in the entire body of epistles, not a single statement is made indicating that ANY apostles of the Christ were followers of a Jesus on earth, or trace any authority or correct preaching back to him” and points out that “there is no mention of Nazareth outside Mark and his redactors, and there seems to be no archaeological support for Nazareth in the first century.”
Lataster argues that “The Pauline Epistles are generally dated substantially earlier than the Gospels, which open the possibility than the Pauline Epistles actually provide the more accurate picture of Jesus.” (See Box.) The mythicists’ view is that Jesus was always considered by early Christians to be a demi-god (the “Christ” or saviour) and only came to be seen as a human being later. Which raises the central question: if the man Jesus never existed, how did he come to be regarded as a historical person?
Doherty sums up the mythicist position as follows: “The invention of the historical Jesus of the Gospels was first begun in the Q sect as an artificial wisdom-preaching apocalyptic prophet...Mark took that ‘symbolic Jesus’ and expanded him in a biographical direction, essentially creating a life for him. And as part of that life, he wedded him, again in symbolic fashion, to the spiritual Christ of the Pauline cult by leading him to a sacrificial death and redeeming resurrection on earth.”
Carrier notes that “Mark has full reason to invent Jesus’s baptism by John specifically to create his sinless state, so Jesus can be adopted by God and then live sinlessly unto death...Mark had a clear motive to invent the story, particularly as he needed to cast someone as the predicted Elijah who would preceded the messiah and ‘reconcile father and son’...”
All of this, if accurate, makes Mark not only the world’s first novelist but the creator of the most famous fictional character ever known, including Sherlock Holmes. But, if the scholarly consensus eventually accepts the mythicists’ argument that Jesus never existed as a man who walked the earth, does this mean that Christians will stop believing in him? This is highly unlikely, if only because most Christians have always considered Jesus to be a god.
Habit7 wrote:Kevin Baldeosingh, chairman of the Humanist Association of Trinidad and Tobago, writing about the existence of Jesus is like Anthony Phillip, chairman of WITCO, writing about the health effects of tobacco.
RBphoto wrote:If you don't believe that the bible was written in England by a bunch of monks just to Please the ruling class... just consider.... where the fack Jesus found guys named Andrew, Peter, James, John, Simon, Thomas, Matthew and Bartholomew.... In the Middle East?
megadoc1 wrote:This guy is a troll he did a whole article but only with arguments against the historical Jesus,this should be considered an insult to his readers but then again he has a following
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/news/Was-Jesus-of-Nazareth-real-286476011.htmlWas Jesus of Nazareth real?
By By Kevin Baldeosingh
Story Created: Dec 20, 2014 at 9:43 PM ECT
Story Updated: Dec 20, 2014 at 9:43 PM ECT
Nearly everyone in the Western world knows about Jesus Christ. Even non-Christians and non-believers know something about his life and death—that he was born under a threat, became a well-known religious leader, and was crucified for his ideas. Many people believe that Jesus had miraculous powers, such as being able to heal the sick and walk on water. And even persons who don’t believe in supernatural abilities generally accept that a man named Jesus lived and was a great and exemplary leader.
Yet there are arguments that Jesus of Nazareth may not have existed at all.
Philosopher and historian Richard C Carrier, in his book Proving History, writes: “Apart from fundamentalist Christians, all experts agree the Jesus of the Bible is buried in myth and legend. But attempts to ascertain the ‘real’ historical Jesus have ended in confusion and failure.”
But Bible scholar Barth Ehrman, a born-again Christian turned agnostic, argues that Jesus was certainly a real historical figure. In his book How Jesus became God, Ehrman says: “When it comes to Jesus, people seem to think that they simply know who he was, what he said, or what he did—almost as if they gained this knowledge by osmosis from the environment. In fact, however, anything you know about Jesus, or think you know, has come to you from a source...And the only way to know whether a detail from Jesus’s life is historically accurate is to investigate our sources of information.”
Ehrman lists these sources as the four canonical Gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John), the Gospels of Thomas and Peter, and lost documents called Q, M, and L. “These three were probably independent of each other and independent of Mark, and John was independent of them all. In other words, we have numerous streams of tradition that independently all go back, ultimately, to the life of Jesus.”
Carrier is one of a small group of scholars (labelled “mythicists”) who argue that the Historical Jesus (HJ) who was nailed to a cross is just as much a myth as the Supernatural Jesus (SJ) who rose from the dead. Ehrman himself does not believe in SJ, but holds that the sources provide good evidence for HJ. “Nearly everyone agrees that even though these canonical Gospels are highly problematic as sources for the historical Jesus, they nonetheless do contain some historically accurate recollections of what he said, did, and experienced amid all the embellishments and changes,” he writes.
But author Earl Doherty in The End of an Illusion, a book-length rebuttal of Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist? holds that Ehrman has simply “pointed to all these “sources” and designated them as reflecting the historical figure he is trying to defend, and in the same breath proceeds to make part of that defence the existence of all these independent sources to him. A gigantic circular exercise.”
Raphael Lataster, a PhD student in Religious Studies, argues in his book There was no Jesus, There is no God, that “the ‘Christ of Faith’ and the ‘Historical Jesus’ are derived from the same sources...It seems that the ‘Historical Jesus’, or each scholar’s version, is a stripped-down version of the ‘Christ of Faith’; the Biblical Jesus with varying parts omitted, and with no sources of his own. Yet the Gospels do not mention this hypothesised ‘Historical Jesus’, they tell the story of the ‘Christ of Faith’, the ‘Biblical Jesus’...” Lataster argues that such an approach is equivalent to reading the Harry Potter novels, dismissing the scenes about magic as impossible, and
concluding that Harry was therefore a real boy who lived with his aunt and uncle in London since this is possible. He adds that Ehrman is “all too happy to discredit the Gospels when it comes to opposing the resurrection of Jesus, yet somehow (and inconsistently) when it comes to the existence of Jesus, he concludes that the Gospels ‘make a convincing case’.”
So how reliable are the historical sources which attest to the earthly existence of Jesus? Ehrman points to several criteria that Bible scholars use to determine the reliability of a source document. These include:
Criterion of independent attestation: If a story is found in several of these independent traditions, then it is more likely that this story goes back to the life of Jesus.
Criterion of Dissimilarity: If a tradition about Jesus is dissimilar to what early Christians would have wanted to say about him, then it is more likely to be historically accurate. (This is also known as the Argument from Embarrassment.)
Criterion of Contextual Credibility: Stories about Jesus’s teachings must agree with what a first-century Palestinian Jew would have said.
However, the mythicist scholars argue that none of these criteria is sufficient to support the argument for HJ. There are, for example, no reliable sources outside the Gospels which attest to the existence of Jesus of Nazareth. Ehrman himself admits that “We do not have any accounts of Jesus from Greek or Roman (pagan) sources of the first century, no mention of his name until more than eighty years after his death.” He does reference two brief mentions by the Jewish historian Josephus, but fails to note that many scholars now consider the passage which references Jesus to be a later insertion by a Church historian, probably Eusebius.
Ehrman also argues that the letters of the Apostle Paul provide reliable evidence for Jesus’s existence, starting with Paul’s assertion about the resurrection of Christ. “Paul indicates that he did not devise this statement himself but that he ‘received’ it from others, “writes Ehrman, adding, “it is believed far and wide among New Testament specialists that Paul is indicating that this is a tradition already widespread in the Christian church, handed over to him by Christian teachers, possibly even the earlier apostles themselves.” This, he said, may point to a Pre-Pauline tradition that could have gone back to Jesus’s lifetime.
The problem with this argument, as the mythicists point out, is that it is contradicted by Paul himself. In Galatians 1:11-12, Paul says: “For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.”
Theologian Robert M Price in his book Killing History, notes that “Paul’s letters have almost nothing to say about any historical Jesus...Paul does not know of Jesus as an itinerant teacher. Nor does he speak of Jesus as a miracle worker...He never mentions Nazareth.” Doherty writes: “Ehrman also conveniently ignores that in the entire body of epistles, not a single statement is made indicating that ANY apostles of the Christ were followers of a Jesus on earth, or trace any authority or correct preaching back to him” and points out that “there is no mention of Nazareth outside Mark and his redactors, and there seems to be no archaeological support for Nazareth in the first century.”
Lataster argues that “The Pauline Epistles are generally dated substantially earlier than the Gospels, which open the possibility than the Pauline Epistles actually provide the more accurate picture of Jesus.” (See Box.) The mythicists’ view is that Jesus was always considered by early Christians to be a demi-god (the “Christ” or saviour) and only came to be seen as a human being later. Which raises the central question: if the man Jesus never existed, how did he come to be regarded as a historical person?
Doherty sums up the mythicist position as follows: “The invention of the historical Jesus of the Gospels was first begun in the Q sect as an artificial wisdom-preaching apocalyptic prophet...Mark took that ‘symbolic Jesus’ and expanded him in a biographical direction, essentially creating a life for him. And as part of that life, he wedded him, again in symbolic fashion, to the spiritual Christ of the Pauline cult by leading him to a sacrificial death and redeeming resurrection on earth.”
Carrier notes that “Mark has full reason to invent Jesus’s baptism by John specifically to create his sinless state, so Jesus can be adopted by God and then live sinlessly unto death...Mark had a clear motive to invent the story, particularly as he needed to cast someone as the predicted Elijah who would preceded the messiah and ‘reconcile father and son’...”
All of this, if accurate, makes Mark not only the world’s first novelist but the creator of the most famous fictional character ever known, including Sherlock Holmes. But, if the scholarly consensus eventually accepts the mythicists’ argument that Jesus never existed as a man who walked the earth, does this mean that Christians will stop believing in him? This is highly unlikely, if only because most Christians have always considered Jesus to be a god.
Slartibartfast wrote:Aaaaaaaaaaand now I miss betsy. Sold her for small change a month ago cuz she seemed to be more interested in the mechanic than me.
pioneer wrote:How can christians be againts gays when jesus got nailed by another man?
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