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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

#41

Post by yamtaddle »

krapp wrote: post #32
justanotherjoe wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well according to our understanding, on stories like these they usually embelish on the 'origin' part. In the case of the bible, the story of the archangel gabriel visiting Mary is number one on the suspect of being an embelishment. And speaking of being 'historical', as in written down by a witness, there are things in the bible that strikes me as 'filled in'. I only go to church during easter, so it I had it read t…

None of the gospels (out of the hundreds that existed before canon was decided on) were written by actual eyewitnesses, much less by the apostles. All of them are embellishments written years or decades after the fact. The Religion for Breakfast has some interesting videos on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fyI1XOselI - Introduction to Biblical Archaeology https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCy7NuujCLc - H…

I think it's helpful, when considering historicity as it relates to the stories in the Gospels, to think about what a believer or outsider view of, say, Mormonism might be if our only sources were written 2nd or 3rd hand, mostly by a very small number of believers, years to decades after the actual events.

In the case of Mormonism, we have tons of other sources from outside the faith, and the claims made by the faithful were largely recorded more-or-less as the supposed events were happening. Our view, and the religion itself, would likely be a ton different if our sources for all that were more like what we have for Jesus and the events of the Gospels. Plausibly, what survived might hardly have any basis in reality whatsoever.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#42

Post by probably_wrong »

bequanna wrote: post #36
AlbertCory wrote: post #11

I was staying in Rosh Pinna and on my way to Nazareth, when my rental car had a flat. Oh well. I have a picture of the Jesus Boat. For some reason, I didn't go to that fenced-off place in Capernaum. I did go to the (supposed) room of the Last Supper. Even if you're not a believer (as I'm not), these places are very moving. Totally worth the trip. Edit: the Jesus Boat has been accurately dated to Jesus' time. There's…

Jesus Boat? I haven't heard of this. Is it some replica or an actual artifact?

It's explained in the article.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#43

Post by adamredwoods »

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.

One could also assume that life created the existence of a god.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#44

Post by peterfirefly »

tadfisher wrote: post #18
abosherid wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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.)

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#45

Post by v-erne »

calvinmorrison wrote: post #24
warent wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important thing it seems is that his myth a part of our stories, and who we are, throughout a large part of the world. Myths tell us about ourselves. The sad thing is when people distort or weaponize myth to control others for personal egocentric agendas. Ultimately many of his apparent teachings seem to be timeless: finding joy in living simply; understanding that heaven is within; etc. Lots of overlap with Budd…

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

He is just incorporating the most practical and useful aspects of Jesus teachings - the other aspects are too meaningless in context of day to day life to be useful to a nontheist.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#46

Post by giraffe_lady »

nathan_compton wrote: post #38
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.…

As a secular person I can understand Jesus as an important historical figure, but it seems to me his "historicity" is a pretty uninteresting question. I know this can be hard for a person who was raised in Christianity to understand, but from an outside perspective, the guy is pretty boring. His moral lessons are mostly facile and poorly explained and similar ideas were expressed by the greek philosophers earlier (an…

The more interesting way to approach I think is not so much through great man-style history like that about what he did or why, or even why him. But what was it about that time and place that produced so many of these movements, of which his was one (notably john the baptist who had a similar thing going first/with some overlap, and whose movement was almost certainly more popular than the jesus movement in their time)?

What made rome react to these movements the way they did, were they able to identify the real risk they posed (it did end up becoming a massive source of unrest and radicalism in the empire), did they understand the risks inherent in martyring apocalyptic religious leaders?

It's also a good entry point for understanding the process of history as a practice and discipline. For example we can be pretty sure jesus was from nazareth because it's mentioned in mark, the earliest gospel, and nazareth was a nothing place nowhere, there's no reason to fabricate an important figure being from there. Similarly his nativity story is probably a later attempt to link him to bethlehem, a city of deep significance to jews at the time. That's an interesting technique! There are lots of those, historians aren't just people who know facts about history, they are practitioners of this discipline.

It's one of the most researched, most discussed subjects in history and the movement that started there is one of the most impactful regardless of your personal relationship to it. So it's a good place to get an understanding of the concepts and techniques of history and historicity.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#47

Post by tenpies »

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, especially when it mixes with religion.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#48

Post by krapp »

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.…

>The amazing part isn't that someone thought a man was God; the amazing part is that we just remember the one guy, because EVERYONE was a potential messiah among the resentfully-semi-Hellenized Jews of the region.

It's not that amazing. Christianity would likely have remained a local sect or died out altogether if Emperor Constantine hadn't converted, then put the political and cultural weight of the superpower of the day behind the religion, with imperialist power after imperialist power carrying the torch in Rome's name.

Re: What archaeology is telling us about the real Jesus

#50

Post by dragonwriter »

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…

> 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.

The majority of Democratic voters are Christian (65% in 2020 from the Western branch of Christianity/ 42%-23% Protestant-Catholic.) [0]

The idea that Democrats "hate Christianity" is Republican propaganda that has been very effectively pushed through media, but it is also ludicrously false.

> Now granted, we can get into a discussion about Biden’s adherence to Catholic teaching and morality

Well, its pretty much impossible to be a politician in either major US party and have policy that doesn’t conflict with significant parts of Catholic social teaching, though which parts differs by party.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_and_politics_in_the_U....

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