Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

nationalgeographic.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 102 posts

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#71

Post by MilStdJunkie »

AlbertCory wrote: post #60
MilStdJunkie wrote: post #35

Christ's period in some ways is evocative of our own. An ancient sky-god-worshipping ethnicity having their first attempt at integrating into a secular culture, but then violently rejecting it, searching for God quite literally among the common straw. It sounds like the origin story for Flat Earth, or any of the other new faith movements we've been seeing lately, as the technocracy has spun out of democratic control.…

I think the story of Paul is the real story of Christianity. He was the one, with his partners, who went all over the ancient world and converted people to this idea. Your analysis seems to ignore all that completely. Jesus' brother James was in Jerusalem long after the crucifixion, and he and his followers thought Jesus' preaching was just for Jews. Paul had the radical idea of preaching to the Gentiles. They didn't…

Not considering Paul at the moment because it's not his historicity the article's about. But yes, Paul (or the Hellenized Jewish community) is the reason we remember Christianity at all, or even have the word "Christian" in our vocabulary. Without Paul it would have been some other messianic religion, maybe the Mithraism of the Roman soldiery, or some collision of Mithraism and Buddhism, or some other prophet(s) from the Empire's outlands. Who knows?

But Paul's Hellenization, and just as importantly, that of the Jewish world at the time, is hugely influential, not just for Christianity but Judaism as well. The Book of Luke and Acts, taken together as a single authored unit (which it almost certainly was), as a single example, could be read as a sort of Odyssey, and it actually sort of reads that way even to godless contemporary such as myself.

This is really interesting comparing it to the development of Gnosticism across Greek, Judaic, and Christian, how they passed along a philosophic school across faiths. Almost a sort of "meta-Pythagoreanism".

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#72

Post by AlbertCory »

delecti wrote: post #70
AlbertCory wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 hist…

At this point, someone needs to do a whole lot of research. I think that "someone" is you. I'm not going to do it for you.

From what I've gathered, scholars compare the various pieces of evidence for consistency with what else is known. That's why they know that the canonical Gospels weren't written until the latter part of the first century, for instance, and there is one lost text that three of them derived from.

"it seems far more likely that a variety of Jewish men named Yehoshua" -- ok, to you. I don't care to argue that because I'm not a scholar of that period. I suspect you're not, either.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#73

Post by readthenotes1 »

kcartlidge wrote: post #61
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

God does miracles, whoop-de-doo. God avoids temptation, whatevs.

God suffers as the sacrificial goat to expiate our sins? Yeah, right .

A good guy doing those? That is the essential point of Christianity, that God became man in order to walk in our shoes but still show us how to walk better.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#74

Post by tadfisher »

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.)

I completely agree. They are all grifters.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#76

Post by JKCalhoun »

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.…

> There almost certainly was a man from Nazareth named Jesus (we have pretty good unbiased sources there).

Josephus is the only one I've heard put forth (and I am aware that many believe the one mention of Jesus by Josephus was a more recent edit).

It wasn't clear to me that it was an open and shut case that there was a man from Nazareth named Jesus.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#77

Post by BigCryo »

Read Joseph atwill's book Caesar's Messiah.. he argues that the New testament was written by the Roman empire specifically the flavian dynasty in order to pacify the Hebrews and integrate them into the Roman empire.. the Romans had a history of merging Roman mythology and culture with the mythology and culture of subjugated lands... I find his thesis compelling and probably true, but then again I've suspected since I was a little kid that the New testament was bogus

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#78

Post by RC_ITR »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #76
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.…

> There almost certainly was a man from Nazareth named Jesus (we have pretty good unbiased sources there). Josephus is the only one I've heard put forth (and I am aware that many believe the one mention of Jesus by Josephus was a more recent edit). It wasn't clear to me that it was an open and shut case that there was a man from Nazareth named Jesus.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(Tacitus)

Tacitus talks abut Jesus in The Annals, and if we don't take that collection at face value, a lot of our understanding of Rome becomes shaky.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#79

Post by JKCalhoun »

RC_ITR wrote: post #78
JKCalhoun wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There almost certainly was a man from Nazareth named Jesus (we have pretty good unbiased sources there). Josephus is the only one I've heard put forth (and I am aware that many believe the one mention of Jesus by Josephus was a more recent edit). It wasn't clear to me that it was an open and shut case that there was a man from Nazareth named Jesus.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annals_(Tacitus) Tacitus talks abut Jesus in The Annals, and if we don't take that collection at face value, a lot of our understanding of Rome becomes shaky.

I had not heard of that one.

Personally, while atheist, I believe there likely was a Jesus of Nazareth. I just reason that if they were going to invent someone out of whole cloth they would have made up someone more interesting than a carpenter from Nazareth. It's kind of the coolest part of Jesus to me, how ordinary and humble his beginnings are.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#80

Post by RC_ITR »

delecti wrote: post #30
AlbertCory wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you actually read the article? Or any of the other historical scholarship?

I did read the article, and it seems to be entirely things like "there's no evidence Jesus was there, but historians say he could have been" or "according to the Gospels". Neither of those rise remotely to the level of what I'd call "evidence". The former establishes that the historical Jesus is plausible, but that could just as easily mean that the authors who invented Jesus were aware of the real-world setting thei…

I see you got in a debate below, but Jesus is mentioned in Tacitus's Annals, and if you don't believe those, then you don't believe a lot of what we accept for fact about Rome in the First Century.
Post reply on HN