Resucitation Not Resurrection?

[Orbit]

I came across this on youtube--pretty interesting. It'a a re-reading of the gospels that comes to the conclusion that Jesus didn't die on the cross.

 

 

[Guest]

The simplest explanation is jesus never existed.  IMO, also the most satisfying explanation...

[Orbit]

We do have Roman historians like Josephus, who provide evidence that he did exist. The question is "was he the son of God?"

[mymistake]

We do have Roman historians like Josephus, who provide evidence that he did exist. The question is "was he the son of God?"

 

No we don't.

 

The Josephus quote is a later forgery.  It's like the Great Commission in Matthew and the Johanneum Comma.  Right after Rome took over and declared which beliefs were the correct beliefs they went back into old documents and changed things around so that the right beliefs would look legit.

 

Anyway about the original post 49 minutes is a bit long but I accept the premise on account that you can almost read anything you want into the Bible.  If Buddhists monks want to claim Jesus revived they stand on better evidence than fundies who want to claim Jesus is a cosmic lich who is his own father and became a human  sacrifice by dying for a few hours so that he could forgive humanity for the way he made us.

[Guest]

 

We do have Roman historians like Josephus, who provide evidence that he did exist. The question is "was he the son of God?"

 

No we don't.

 

The Josephus quote is a later forgery.  It's like the Great Commission in Matthew and the Johanneum Comma.  Right after Rome took over and declared which beliefs were the correct beliefs they went back into old documents and changed things around so that the right beliefs would look legit.

 

Anyway about the original post 49 minutes is a bit long but I accept the premise on account that you can almost read anything you want into the Bible.  If Buddhists monks want to claim Jesus revived they stand on better evidence than fundies who want to claim Jesus is a cosmic lich who is his own father and became a human  sacrifice by dying for a few hours so that he could forgive humanity for the way he made us.

 

 

And the Donation of Constantine...

[Guest]

We do have Roman historians like Josephus, who provide evidence that he did exist. The question is "was he the son of God?"

 

As noted, the Josephus passage is considered a forgery by almost all modern scholars.  There is no mention of jesus or his many "miracles"by any contemporary historian, Roman or otherwise, and those that do mention christianity do just that.  They prove the existence of early christians and some guy named Christus, which is a proper name and not a title like "the christ", and they all were writing decades if not hundreds of years after the supposed death of jesus, so are not contemporary accounts.

[Orbit]

 

We do have Roman historians like Josephus, who provide evidence that he did exist. The question is "was he the son of God?"

 

No we don't.

 

The Josephus quote is a later forgery.  It's like the Great Commission in Matthew and the Johanneum Comma.  Right after Rome took over and declared which beliefs were the correct beliefs they went back into old documents and changed things around so that the right beliefs would look legit.

 

Anyway about the original post 49 minutes is a bit long but I accept the premise on account that you can almost read anything you want into the Bible.  If Buddhists monks want to claim Jesus revived they stand on better evidence than fundies who want to claim Jesus is a cosmic lich who is his own father and became a human  sacrifice by dying for a few hours so that he could forgive humanity for the way he made us.

 

Josephus Flavius is accepted by historians ( see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus )--you're delving into conspiracy theory here. I'm not here to argue that point. The reason the doc is interesting is that it speculates that Jesus ended up in Nepal, and there is evidence from Nepal that backs it up. You'd have to watch the video to see why I find it interesting. I'm not an apologist, so you can stand down

[mymistake]

 I'm not an apologist, so you can stand down

 

 

I know you are not an apologist.  If you don't want to talk about it I will respect that.

[RipVanWinkle]

"And the Donation of Constantine."  Marty

 

 

The questionable donation of Constantine.   bill

[Wololo]

Actually Tacitus was a Roman that wrote briefly about Jesus as well. There are three sources on Wikipedia referencing that the authenticity of Tacitus' account is generally accepted.

[mwc]

     Then he moved to Japan and died.  He has a house there.  It's all real people.  And very stupid.  Open your minds to the stupidity of it all because that's when it really starts to make all sorts of sense!

 

          mwc

[Guest]

Actually Tacitus was a Roman that wrote briefly about Jesus as well. There are three sources on Wikipedia referencing that the authenticity of Tacitus' account is generally accepted.

 

But he wasn't alive when jesus supposedly was, so what he writes about jesus is dependent on what others have told him or he discovered in other written accounts.  So all he can add to the discussion is that there were christians in Rome during his lifetime and what they may have believed.

[mymistake]

Christos is not the name Jesus.

 

In Jewish culture many people were anointed.  Kings were always anointed.  So the Old Testament is full of messiahs.  There are entire books dedicated to the long strings of anointed men.  If the Jewish people had raised up any figure they wanted to follow they would have had a priest anoint him with oil so in Latin the guy would have been called Christos.

[Fernweh]

Actually Tacitus was a Roman that wrote briefly about Jesus as well. There are three sources on Wikipedia referencing that the authenticity of Tacitus' account is generally accepted.

 

There's a guy who does the lawn next door named Jesus but that doesn't mean he's the Son of God.

[LifeCycle]

So, the "Son of God" walks the earth and some historian mentions him. Not his divinity, not the miracles, not the resurrection... Nope, he barely gives him a paragraph in all of his historical accounts.

 

Sounds legit.

[Orbit]

Since you guys hijacked my thread, I might as well reply. I have absolutely no problem with Jesus being a historical person. You don't get mass movements based on nothing in human history. Now as to the Gospels being accurate, I have to say I doubt the miracles but I'm sure there is a grain of truth about his movements and the general circumstances. He was just another messiah in a long line of messiah-claimants in the Jewish tradition. I tend to look at the whole thing as history/anthropology. I'm not really invested in having a hard on for proving or disproving my opinion, because to me it's just not that important. It is fun to speculate why there is a Jesus story in Nepal, of all places, and a very old one. I file it under "huh, weird shit"...

[mwc]

     You have a point.  Movements just don't start around people that don't exist.  They can't be literary misunderstandings or something.

 

 

Ebion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article relies on references to primary sources. Please add references to secondary or tertiary sources. (February 2011)

Ebion (Greek: Εβιων) was the presumed eponymous founder of an early Christian group known as the Ebionites. The existent historical evidence indicates that the name "Ebionite" is derived from a Hebrew word, "ebion" (אביון) meaning "poor"^[1][2] and thus not from someone's name. Ebion is generally seen today as a purely literary figure, whose reputed existence in antiquity was used to explain where the Ebionites got their inspiration. However, once he had been accepted as real, a small tradition developed around him that lasted in early learned Christian circles for a few centuries.

Ebion according to the church fathers

Main article: Ebionites

Tertullian is the first writer noted for mentioning Ebion, which he does a number of times, mainly related to the notion that Jesus was a man and not divine. As an example, Tertullian writes, if Jesus "were wholly the Son of a man, He should fail to be also the Son of God, and have nothing more than 'a Solomon' or 'a Jonas,'--as Ebion thought we ought to believe concerning Him."^[3] In a text called "Against All Heresies", an anonymous work once attributed to Tertullian,^[4] Ebion is referred to as the successor to Cerinthus. This places Ebion in the early 2nd century and as part of a particular heretical tradition. By the time Epiphanius wrote his text on heresies, "The Panarion", nearly a century after Tertullian, Ebion had received a birthplace, a hamlet called Cochabe in the district of Bashan, was thought to have travelled through Asia, and even come to Rome.^[5]

Jerome believed that Ebion lived at the time of John the Apostle^[6] and had been refuted by John for not believing Jesus existed before Mary.^[7] He thought that Ebion translated the Old Testament himself^[8] and refers to Ebion's baptism.^[9]

     It would be odd that someone that didn't exist could ultimately wind up with a place of birth, had traveled and even met other, let's say "real" people during their supposed lives.  But here's an example of that happening and with the founder of a rather important sect at that.  I suppose we should assume it could happen with some sect but not the very foundation.  That would be silly, right?  Founders always exist...except when they don't?  I guess they mostly exist?  The founders we want to exist, exist?  Well, Jesus existed.  That's for certain.  Because he did.  He's not an Ebion.  We know this because we have books that tell us of his birth, life and travels and...er...wait.  Never mind.

 

          mwc

[Guest]

You don't get mass movements based on nothing in human history. 

 

One word: Scientology.

[qadeshet]

Virtually any explanation is more likely than a dead man resurrecting after a few days. I read a book many years ago called The Passover Plot by Hugh Schonfield. The basic idea was that Jesus and his followers faked his death in order to fulfill OT prophecies. If Jesus existed, and if Jesus was executed, and if Jesus was buried in a tomb, then the most probable explanation is that his followers simply stole his body. The question of whether or not Jesus actually existed should be discussed in a different topic.

[Orbit]

 

You don't get mass movements based on nothing in human history. 

 

One word: Scientology.

 

It was based on the hard work of  ex-Sci-Fi writer L. Ron Hubbard, who was real. I think that analogy is quite a stretch. I'm really not interested in debating historical Jesus--why don't you start your own thread for that?

[Guest]

 

 

You don't get mass movements based on nothing in human history. 

 

One word: Scientology.

 

It was based on the hard work of  ex-Sci-Fi writer L. Ron Hubbard, who was real. I think that analogy is quite a stretch. I'm really not interested in debating historical Jesus--why don't you start your own thread for that?

 

 

So scientologists worship L. Ron Hubbard as a god?  Or do they believe in the fiction he made up based on nothing but his imagination?

 

And I thought this thread was about alternate theories of jesus' resurrection.  Perhaps you should have been more specific in what you wanted to discuss in your OP.

[Orbit]

 

 

 

You don't get mass movements based on nothing in human history. 

 

One word: Scientology.

 

It was based on the hard work of  ex-Sci-Fi writer L. Ron Hubbard, who was real. I think that analogy is quite a stretch. I'm really not interested in debating historical Jesus--why don't you start your own thread for that?

 

 

So scientologists worship L. Ron Hubbard as a god?  Or do they believe in the fiction he made up based on nothing but his imagination?

 

And I thought this thread was about alternate theories of jesus' resurrection.  Perhaps you should have been more specific in what you wanted to discuss in your OP.

 

Yes, a real person made up a mythology. I was clear in my OP--this wasn't at all a debate about historical Jesus, which is to me an annoying tangent in this context.

[mwc]

Fine.  We'll just stick with the OP.
 
     But rather than waste an hour of my life watching some documentary I'll just cut to the chase (from Wikipedia on Jus Asaf):

There is no record of the shrine during Kashmir's Buddhist period, nor during the Kashmir Sultanate (1346–1586) when many Buddhist temples were converted into mosques, such as the Shankaracharya Temple or "Throne of Solomon."^%5B12%5D
...
Hassnain's translation follows Ghulam Ahmad in dividing the name of Yuzasaf, found in the Bilhawar and Yuzasaf tradition about Gautama Buddha, into two syllables, "Yuz Asaf."^%5B19%5D Yuzasaf, Arabic Yūdhasaf or Būdhasaf, is derived from the Sanskrit Bodhisattva. The Sanskrit word was changed to Bodisav in Persian texts in the 6th or 7th century, then to Budhasaf or Yudasaf in an 8th-century Arabic document (from Arabic initial "b" ﺑ to "y" ﻳ by duplication of a dot in handwriting).^%5B20%5D[/sup]
...
Ghulam Ahmad's theory that Jesus died in India is distinct from the 1894 suggestion of Nicolas Notovitch that Jesus travelled to India in his earlier years (before the start of his ministry) during the unknown years of Jesus and Ghulam Ahmad specifically disagreed with Notovitch.^%5B37%5D Notovitch's claims to have found a manuscript about Jesus' travels to India have been totally discredited by modern scholarship as a hoax.^%5B38%5D Notovitch later confessed to having fabricated his evidence.^%5B39%5D Modern scholars generally hold that in general there is no historical basis to substantiate any of the claims of the travels of Jesus to India.^{%5B40%5D%5B41%5D}
...
The claim that this text relates to Isa (Jesus) and not Barlaam and Josaphat originates in Ahmad's earlier 1902 use of the same text. Ahmadiyya claims that this section of the Ikmal al-din of Ibn Babawayh relates to Isa (Jesus) is rejected by Shia Muslims.^%5B44%5D The Orientalist Max Müller had already translated this section into German (1894) when refuting the claims of Nicolas Notovitch.^%5B45%5D

     So, no, I don't think it's plausible that this happened.  I think it might make for good television.

 

     If old Jesus existed he never traveled to India before or after he might have pretended to die.

 

          mwc

[Guest]

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