Zeitgeist

[JM76]

As for the second thing you said, it was very silly. Jesus is claimed to have lived +/- 30 years from year 0. Alexander the great crucified 2000 people in tyre in 300's BC. Herodotus, who DIED in 425 BC told us about persian crucifixion. Now, and if this offends you excuse me, if you are honestly saying that people had made mentions and allusions of jesus dying on a tree or being crucified 400 years BEFORE Herodotus, than you're insane. As nice as you think it would be, there is NOTHING from before 800 BC that mentions Jesus. NOTHING. I can make allusions and claim mentions about anything I want, but that doesn't make that true. Furthermore, there is NOTHING from 500 BC talking about jesus. And there is NOTHING from before 100 BC mentioning Jesus.

You mean besides the Old Testament prophecies that were written between 1000 BC-600 BC? You can call some of them off and say, "well, that's so vague, that could mean anything," and then there are others where it is so obvious that the passage in question refers to Jesus. Just on the top of my head, Psalm 22, particularly the first half, is very similar to the New Testament accounts of Jesus' death by crucifixion. Even if you don't believe the Bible is divinely-inspired or what have you, you can't deny the fact that those prophecies are much older than Jesus.

as a matter of fact, Josephus, a jewish historian who was born at 37 AD and wrote most of what we know about life in Canaan at the time makes not a single mention of jesus, the great wizard, magician, healer or what have you. Keep in mind jesus is claimed to have only died 7 years prior to that. forgot him that quickly?

http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/1stC_Hist.htm

Josephus does mention Jesus in a short passage in passing (he says something like, "there was a man named Jesus, brother of James, who was called the Christ"), however, other passages relating to Jesus have been assumed to have been tampered with. In addition, both Tacitus - a Roman historian who documented the rules of the early Caesars - and Lucian - a playwright and satricist who mentioned Christians and their gullibility in one of his plays - mention Jesus, the latter not in a kindly fashion. Neither of them are contemporaries, but at the same time, Tacticus was a reliable historian. You can't just reject his small segment on Jesus because its supposedly hearsay.

None of the historians who lived at the time of Jesus documented him, in my opinion, because he was simply considered a rabble-rouser who occasionally caused trouble, and was eventually executed by the Romans and Jewish leaders. His influence did not become widespread until after his death. Keep in mind, Judea would have been considered a 'backwater' province back then; most historians would most likely focus on the events happening in Italy, specifically Rome.

 

[The Agriculturist]

You mean besides the Old Testament prophecies that were written between 1000 BC-600 BC? You can call some of them off and say, "well, that's so vague, that could mean anything," and then there are others where it is so obvious that the passage in question refers to Jesus. Just on the top of my head, Psalm 22, particularly the first half, is very similar to the New Testament accounts of Jesus' death by crucifixion. Even if you don't believe the Bible is divinely-inspired or what have you, you can't deny the fact that those prophecies are much older than Jesus.



Josephus does mention Jesus in a short passage in passing (he says something like, "there was a man named Jesus, brother of James, who was called the Christ"), however, other passages relating to Jesus have been assumed to have been tampered with. In addition, both Tacitus - a Roman historian who documented the rules of the early Caesars - and Lucian - a playwright and satricist who mentioned Christians and their gullibility in one of his plays - mention Jesus, the latter not in a kindly fashion. Neither of them are contemporaries, but at the same time, Tacticus was a reliable historian. You can't just reject his small segment on Jesus because its supposedly hearsay.

None of the historians who lived at the time of Jesus documented him, in my opinion, because he was simply considered a rabble-rouser who occasionally caused trouble, and was eventually executed by the Romans and Jewish leaders. His influence did not become widespread until after his death. Keep in mind, Judea would have been considered a 'backwater' province back then; most historians would most likely focus on the events happening in Italy, specifically Rome.

No....there are no prophecies. That'e the thing, again those prophecies are only evidence if you believe in Jesus, otherwise they mean absolutely nothing. To believers, anything and everything will be taken as evidence of god and Jesus. If you find me a passage from psalms where it says "1000 years from now there's going to be a guy named Jesus son of Joseph and Mary, who will have some reforming ideas about judaism in his time, and he will be crucified, die, rise from the dead, and save the world" then I will believe you. Good luck.

As for Josephus, you obviously didn't check the link i supplied because it talks about exactly that. Josephus does not mention Jesus christ. Jesus is not a hebrew name, it's a greek version of hebrew name 'Yeshua', which is derived from 'Yehoshua' which today is known as Joshua. Go and read that link, and see that there were many Jesuses (Jesusi?) that existed both before and after Cristo, and that Josephus' 'short passage' describes one of them. You're talking about a man who would write pages about petty robbers, and 40 volumes about a king. So the son of freaking god get's 13 words? My bullshit alarm is really going off.

You're Tacitus claim also doesn't help much, as The Annals, Tacitus' work that mentions Jesus, was written in 116 AD. That's after the gospels were written (Mark wrote his in 65 AD), and those are the first mentions of jesus (big shock). Again, Tacitus also mentions Jesus for a whole of one sentence, and even that short mention is suspected to have been tampered with by christian scribes (who had all the knowledge of the ancient world available to them in their churches from 300+ AD)!!!

As for your other reference with Lucian (who wasn't even born until 125 AD, almost 100 years AFTER jesus died), I quickly checked the list of his works on wikipedia, and lo and behold, the play that supposidly mentions Jesus is (drum roll please).....fake, and was not written by Lucian. In fact, the closest (to jesus' time) modern estimate for when this written is during the times of Julian the apostate....361 AD, 230 years after the death of jesus.

You say there are no contemporary accounts of Jesus because he lived in the backwater Palestine and was a trouble maker (so were the petty robbers that Josephus wrote pages on rather than a sentance). I say there are no contemporary accounts of Jesus because he never existed. Not until he was conjured up for the gospels.

 

[Will]

I didn't.

People didn't travel back then. Merchants barely did. And your point about pre-judaism religions is moot because we have no evidence that there was a monotheistic religion which followed similar tenets which they could have stolen from.

I think that with as much knowledge and study as there has been poured into excavating the truth as to correct biblical teachings, along with many other things, we would have heard about this a long time ago if it had any merit.

Another thing to consider. Do you honestly think that people in that time wouldn't have noticed a direct rip off of Egyptian beliefs? If it really was such a direct copy, how do you think they would have ever gained any devout Jewish converts, when the Jews were so explicitly set against pagan religions?

People did travel... All life came from Africa... And there was a lot of travel, empires were forged by the egyptians, and there were obvious sea based traders before even egyptian times.

We may not have records because Judaeism evolved out of a paganistic religion. There may well have been ancient monotheistic religions, worshiping an astral body of some sort, or maybe a huge ol' rock. This religion may have disappeared as it fell out of favour for a more logical Judaeism.

Can you show me these excavations and such that tried to disprove bible teachings? I have honestly never heard of any.

People probably would not notice a rip-off of Egyptian beliefs, as it was probably changed enough so that the basic tenants are the same, but what they are hung on is different, like different toyota cars. All have a toyota combustion engine, but they may have different chassis', bodywork and electrics.

 

[The Agriculturist]

There may well have been ancient monotheistic religions, worshiping an astral body of some sort, or maybe a huge ol' rock. This religion may have disappeared as it fell out of favour for a more logical Judaeism.

Judaism evolved from paganism into henotheism into monotheism, then slipped a bit back to henotheism for a little while, and then returned to monotheism. Then christianity came.

Also, even pagan religions are somewhat monotheistic; All religions have at some point held incredible reverence for the sun. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if Sun worshiping was the first 'religion', even predating animism.

 

[Tsar Fire]

Fact 1: people tried to use the biblical reference of hittites as proof the bible was untrue, and then years later, archaeologists discovered the hittite civilization.

Fact 2: Old testament prophecies have repeatedly been accurate, and do mention Jesus, but also are written in prophetic style which is not. X will happen at Y time. So interpretation begins.

Fact 3: Faith is called faith for a reason boys, and you'd better get used to that. You have faith that what your "scientists" have told you is true. If we have no archaelogical evidence from before a certain time, you cannot honestly say you know anything about that time period, and more importantly, you cannot honestly even say scientific dating is always correct, because the primary dating method, Carbon dating, is highly innacurate after a certain time period.

People tried to use a list of 100 useless organs in human body as proof for something, and then found a use for almost all of them. Goes to show science is EXTREMELY fallible, and should always be taken with a grain of salt, or the whole shaker.

Life is about having faith in something, so the question is, what?

(And judiasm and christianity never held reverence for the sun. Sorry, but no.)

 

[Jaqen H'ghar]

Fact 2: Old testament prophecies have repeatedly been accurate, and do mention Jesus, but also are written in prophetic style which is not. X will happen at Y time. So interpretation begins.

Can you explain this a little more in depth please...

 

[The Agriculturist]

Fact 1: people tried to use the biblical reference of hittites as proof the bible was untrue, and then years later, archaeologists discovered the hittite civilization.

Fact 2: Old testament prophecies have repeatedly been accurate, and do mention Jesus, but also are written in prophetic style which is not. X will happen at Y time. So interpretation begins.

Fact 3: Faith is called faith for a reason boys, and you'd better get used to that. You have faith that what your "scientists" have told you is true. If we have no archaelogical evidence from before a certain time, you cannot honestly say you know anything about that time period, and more importantly, you cannot honestly even say scientific dating is always correct, because the primary dating method, Carbon dating, is highly innacurate after a certain time period.

People tried to use a list of 100 useless organs in human body as proof for something, and then found a use for almost all of them. Goes to show science is EXTREMELY fallible, and should always be taken with a grain of salt, or the whole shaker.

Life is about having faith in something, so the question is, what?

(And judiasm and christianity never held reverence for the sun. Sorry, but no.)

Seriously?

Fact 1: The Hittite civilization was discovered very late in the 19th century, with the majority of findings happening in the 20th century. First of all, before the 20th century there were not that many people trying to prove the bible untrue. Second of all, Scientific accuracy has come so far from the 19th century to today that your fact is rather useless. People also used to think the earth was the center of the universe, until evidence was found otherwise.

Fact 2: Blah Blah Blah you're saying nothing. You're prophecies belong in the top 10 consipracies thread. Do you really believe nostradamus predicted the fall of the twin towers during 9/11, or the failure of the Apollo (i forget which number) space shuttle?
Again, nothing from the old testament describes Jesus. How can I say this with certainty? NO NAME. Jesus is an ideal for the messiah, so anything you're finding in the old testament that sounds like a description of Jesus is likely a description of the messiah FROM THE JEWISH POINT OF VIEW, which sadly for you IS NOT jesus. Just because you decide to put Jesus' face on these 'prophecies' doesn't make them actual prophecies about Jesus.

Fact 3: Faith is what makes all of this not real. The fact that we can choose if something is real or not makes it not real. We can't choose to be affected by gravity, because gravity is real. We can't choose to not be burned by fire, because fire really burns, just like we can't choose not to get wet when exposed to water, because water really makes you wet. If we can choose whether or not we want to believe Jesus is real, it just goes to show you he isn't (and don't give me that crap that it doesn't matter if I believe or not because he is real anyway. That's like me saying the purple elephant on my shoulder is the real god, and overpowers your jesus, and you simply can;t see him, while I assure you he is deffinately there, trunk and all.)
Also, I don't have 'faith' in 'my' scientists. I don't believe a word until I see the evidence to back it up. Funny thing is, science actually produces evidence no one can deny. Again, regardless of where on this planet I let go of a ball, it will fall DOWN. no where on earth will the ball fall UP. Even if you have faith. that's what evidence to support gravity is. Show my ACTUAL evidence of jesus' existance (Contemporaries mentioning him by name and description)...let's not even get started about his divinity.

Show me your supposed list of 100 useless organs, and more importantly, find out WHEN it was composed. And while I agree that even science can be wrong, it is wrong much, much, much, much, much less than religion. In fact, compared to the mythologies of religion, the fallacy of science is almost negligeble. you're talking about super humans who come back from the dead and walk and water and change fundamental chemistry of compounds! If anyone told you they could do any of that you would instantly believe them insane, yet if Jesus did it it makes sense? That's HIGHLY illogical, and highly irrational.

Contrary to what you heard, life isn't about having faith in something....Life is about living. Everything else you do happens because you have a bigger brain than other animals, and is a byproduct of that (god, science, and this very conversation included).

And Judaism and christianity both held reverence for the sun in some form. There are several jewish prayers and songs from ancient times about the sun, and I'm pretty Jesus himself was called the light of the world (what is the light of our world?....the sun),as well as the bright and morning star (i hope i don't need to clarify).


ALSO (edit):

"If we have no archaelogical evidence from before a certain time, you cannot honestly say you know anything about that time period"

The problem with this is that we DO have archaeological evidence from before and during Jesus' time, and lots of it. The important bit of course is that none of it supports or proves Jesus' existence. As I've already said, Jesus isn't mentioned anywhere until the gospels. So the 'archeological evidence' of Jesus is a series of books where he is the main character. By this same argument, I can say that Superman, Spider-man and yoda are all completely real, it's just we didn't know until Jerry Siegel/ Joe Schuster, Stan Lee and George Lucas (respectively) all had divine inspiration to write about the true saviors of our world.

And
"you cannot honestly even say scientific dating is always correct, because the primary dating method, Carbon dating, is highly innacurate after a certain time period."

This is very true. Of course, what you failed to mention (or don't know) is that said certain time period happens to be 60,000 years.

 

[Dan.]

Fact 2: Blah Blah Blah you're saying nothing. You're prophecies belong in the top 10 consipracies thread. Do you really believe nostradamus predicted the fall of the twin towers during 9/11, or the failure of the Apollo (i forget which number) space shuttle?
Again, nothing from the old testament describes Jesus. How can I say this with certainty? NO NAME. Jesus is an ideal for the messiah, so anything you're finding in the old testament that sounds like a description of Jesus is likely a description of the messiah FROM THE JEWISH POINT OF VIEW, which sadly for you IS NOT jesus. Just because you decide to put Jesus' face on these 'prophecies' doesn't make them actual prophecies about Jesus.

When have you been talking to Jews? :CHappy:

They've been saying that since Jesus began ministry. And they're always wrong. Just because the OT Prophecies never say 'A man named Jesus will be the Messiah', doesn't mean that Jesus wasn't.

Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”

Also, if you own a Bible, check these verses: Psalms 72:10, Number 24:17, Micah 5:2, and Isaiah 7:14. These verses all are prophecies of the Jews Messiah. You can choose to reject these, but I accept them.

Now for some math...

To help conceptualize the remoteness of the probability that one man could fulfill the prophecies fulfilled in Jesus Christ, Dr. Peter Stoner, a renowned professor of mathematics, calculated the probability to be 1 in 10 to the 17th power that a person would fulfill 8 of the prophecies which were fulfilled in the life of Jesus Christ.

 

[Will]

People tried to use a list of 100 useless organs in human body as proof for something, and then found a use for almost all of them. Goes to show science is EXTREMELY fallible, and should always be taken with a grain of salt, or the whole shaker.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13927-five-things-humans-no-longer-need.html?page=1

Science is far les fallible than religion. Science produces results. Religion produces nothing so solid.

 

[The Agriculturist]

When have you been talking to Jews? :CHappy:

They've been saying that since Jesus began ministry. And they're always wrong. Just because the OT Prophecies never say 'A man named Jesus will be the Messiah', doesn't mean that Jesus wasn't.

Agri: Ha ha yes it does. Your little line there doesn't talk about Jesus. It talks about a man named Immanuel.....Not Jesus. Or are we allowed to call Jesus whatever we want in order for the prophecy to be real? THis is exactly what I'm talking about, you should be realizing that all of this is a bunch of nonsense because it's so free to interpretation. The prophecy doesn't fit, so you interpret that immanuel is jesus, and bingo! now you have a prophecy to tell people that your god is the best because they talk about him even in other books. Did Jesus go by that name when he lived? He lived a dual life, being Jesus by day and Immanuel by night? give me a breakkkkkkkkkkk.


Also, if you own a Bible, check these verses: Psalms 72:10, Number 24:17, Micah 5:2, and Isaiah 7:14. These verses all are prophecies of the Jews Messiah.

Agri: You're absolutely right. I'm not sure if you're aware of it though, but your helping my point. All of those verses could have prophecies of the Jewish Messiah....who ISN'T jesus. If jesus would be the messiah the jews have been talking about, then they would be called christians. Think before you say silly things.;)

You can choose to reject these, but I accept them.

Agri: You can also choose to bang your head against the wall, but I realize that I probably won't enjoy the activity so I'll pass.


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