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What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

nationalgeographic.com

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Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#61

Post by kcartlidge »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #51
nathan_compton wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From some Christians' points of view the important part of the Jesus story is that he is sacrificed by God as a way of dealing with a fundamental break between humanity and God having to do with the Jewish priesthood.

That is the other important aspect of the Jesus story. He was the son of God in human flesh, exemplified by the manner in which he lived ("good guy") and by his teachings. Yet he was betrayed by one of his disciples, and died a distinctly "low death". I think it's more correct to say that God sent Jesus down to Earth and Jesus sacrificed himself / God forsake him, than "he is sacrificed by God". This is probably a bi…

> i.e. by disagreeing with a person who says that Jesus being a "good guy" is an important aspect of the Christian faith

To be fair - and without offering an opinion either way on the thread itself - they never disagreed it was important.

What they said was "If you think Jesus being a 'good guy' is the most important part of Jesus, that's absolutely missing the point of Christianity".

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#62

Post by AlbertCory »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #51
nathan_compton wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From some Christians' points of view the important part of the Jesus story is that he is sacrificed by God as a way of dealing with a fundamental break between humanity and God having to do with the Jewish priesthood.

That is the other important aspect of the Jesus story. He was the son of God in human flesh, exemplified by the manner in which he lived ("good guy") and by his teachings. Yet he was betrayed by one of his disciples, and died a distinctly "low death". I think it's more correct to say that God sent Jesus down to Earth and Jesus sacrificed himself / God forsake him, than "he is sacrificed by God". This is probably a bi…

Not disagreeing with you, but from my reading of early Christian history, there's a third fundamental belief:

(3) He rose physically from the dead. That's why Easter is the most important Christian holiday.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#63

Post by calvinmorrison »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #51
nathan_compton wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From some Christians' points of view the important part of the Jesus story is that he is sacrificed by God as a way of dealing with a fundamental break between humanity and God having to do with the Jewish priesthood.

That is the other important aspect of the Jesus story. He was the son of God in human flesh, exemplified by the manner in which he lived ("good guy") and by his teachings. Yet he was betrayed by one of his disciples, and died a distinctly "low death". I think it's more correct to say that God sent Jesus down to Earth and Jesus sacrificed himself / God forsake him, than "he is sacrificed by God". This is probably a bi…

Thanks for writing this. I think you put it more accurately than I could have - I was just trying to head of the endless other religions, athiests, and non christians saying "Yeah jesus was a great guy! super nice!" and missing the point that, just being a good teacher or a kind person, or even a perfect person makes a new religion called Christianity.

Without the divine nature of Christ, he would have been more of a Jewish reformer against the Pharisees. Sure there's the law, and I'm here to talk about it and to spread my thoughts and feelings on it and how we should interpret and use it. But that's not even the half of it.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#64

Post by surgical_fire »

jononomo wrote: post #34

Once I was convinced of the existence of God by considering the fact that life exists, it became easier for me to accept Christianity. Frankly, it's a relief. But, unfortunately, Christianity has a bad reputation now because of Trump.

Christianity has a bad reputation in different parts of the globe for reasons way more profound than Trump.

Not everywhere is the US, you know.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#65

Post by AlbertCory »

delecti wrote: post #58
AlbertCory wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. The historical Jesus did exist, and as they say, no scholar believes otherwise. Bethlehem, miracles, etc. do indeed have no proof. Why he was crucified: no proof there either.

I'm not sure which of the many things I said your "No, it isn't" is in response to. I care less about what the scholars believe, than I do about wanting to hear some scrap of evidence for it. There's a ton of evidence that the stories in the bible could have happened (churches existed at the right places and right times, it references real-world people and places), I just haven't seen any evidence that they did .

> I'm not sure which of the many things I said your "No, it isn't" is in response to.

It was the very top: "it seems to be entirely things like ..."

"a scrap of evidence" -- you mean like video or something? What do you expect?

No one can provide a link that'll convince you. For something this ancient, scholars spend their lives weighing all the evidence and determining what's most probable. So if you think that just dismissing all that as "no evidence" is reasonable, then there's nothing to debate here.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#66

Post by delecti »

tenpies wrote: post #47
jononomo wrote: post #34

Once I was convinced of the existence of God by considering the fact that life exists, it became easier for me to accept Christianity. Frankly, it's a relief. But, unfortunately, Christianity has a bad reputation now because of Trump.

> Christianity has a bad reputation now because of Trump. I don't mean you, but it is somewhat comical that the side that hates Trump and Christianity, is also the side that gladly voted in a Catholic into the highest public office. Now granted, we can get into a discussion about Biden's adherence to Catholic teaching and morality, but there is no denying that he is Catholic and Christian. Politics is very weird, esp…

> the side that hates Trump and Christianity

I'm not sure why you'd think any significant number of Americans hate Christianity. I think Christianity is incorrect, but I don't hate it. I also didn't gladly vote in Biden, and his Catholicism wasn't even a factor, his politics were simply the least objectionable option.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#67

Post by PeterWhittaker »

For an alternate take, read Pagan Christ by Thomas Harpur ([1]), a former Anglican (Episcopalian for yanks here) priest who began to have doubts based on his own scholarly research and eventually came to the conclusion that never was such a person, but that “Christ” was essentially a personification of “christos”, a then-common divinity-within mysticism.

Fascinating stuff.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Harpur

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#68

Post by AlbertCory »

peterfirefly wrote: post #44
tadfisher wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Book of Mormon was written by a grifter in the 19th century.

Weren't Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Q grifters from the 1st century? I see no reason to consider Joseph Smith any worse than the others. (Except for his abuse of power maybe.)

Whereas we know almost nothing about Paul, Matthew, etc., we do know quite a bit about Smith: he lived only 190 years ago.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#69

Post by thomasahle »

RC_ITR wrote: post #4

The Historicity of Jesus is such an interesting topic. There almost certainly was a man from Nazareth named Jesus (we have pretty good unbiased sources there). However, unless you are a follower of his (or potentially some related religions), there are obviously mystical things associated with him that you likely do not believe to actually have happened. Even followers disagree about the veracity of certain stories.…

It can probably also teach us a lot about how to start successful movements today.

Though the part where you get your ideology integrated into the ligitimacy of large countries is maybe hard to achieve.

Perhaps Marx and socialism is the closest analog.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#70

Post by delecti »

AlbertCory wrote: post #65
delecti wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure which of the many things I said your "No, it isn't" is in response to. I care less about what the scholars believe, than I do about wanting to hear some scrap of evidence for it. There's a ton of evidence that the stories in the bible could have happened (churches existed at the right places and right times, it references real-world people and places), I just haven't seen any evidence that they did .

> I'm not sure which of the many things I said your "No, it isn't" is in response to. It was the very top: "it seems to be entirely things like ..." "a scrap of evidence" -- you mean like video or something? What do you expect? No one can provide a link that'll convince you. For something this ancient, scholars spend their lives weighing all the evidence and determining what's most probable. So if you think that just…

The apocryphal Jesus traveled a fair bit, led a religious sect, was a somewhat known public figure, and was publicly executed with some amount of fanfare. Basically anything contemporaneous would be a good start. Given that multiple of the supposed references to him refer to multiple people by the name, it seems far more likely that a variety of Jewish men named Yehoshua were after the fact agglomerated into one historical invention.
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