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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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Something that is contemporary with the event in question. That is why we keep telling you there is no contemporary source for the character of Jesus.
I agree with you.
I commend you for acknowledging it.
Your so called proof of authorship is not convincing.
a Christian apologist is josh McDowell all this doesn`t really matter because Jesus is not alive nor is he returning it is one big hope it is a fantasy if you will. dead people don`t rise nor do they resurrect.the Christian faith is just that it relies on things not seen but hoped for.its that leap of faith that I don`t accept,.kieregard espoused this line of thinking.But the enlightenment shed new light on this, and biblical scholars and philosophers of the 18th and future generations centuries later have revised the earlier writings,
There were no disciples. There isn't any historicity on them in any of the period public records, or other archeological evidence, of ever existing much less put to some formal or informal trials over their relationship with a jesus character that also does not exist in any public records. The fact is, none of the biblical cast of theological characters existed. The bible's claims about their existence, and the story it portends to be true, were written in a pseudepigraphical manner at least 130 years after the bible claims the people and events occurred in history.
Why can't anyone do a little reading? Start with the Nicene Creed and understand that it was a public court record from Emperor Constantine's court of proceedings (fully 300+ years after the bible's claims) that firmly establish to all men going forward that the early so-called christians were fully aware of the ficticiousness of the trinity, and that particular court was to decide how the writers would agree to create them from...wait for it...thin air.
Stop asking inane questions and read for yourselves. Your faith is embarrassing you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arian_controversy
I have no idea if there were disciples. I would never claim to know disciples either did or did not exist. The people making the claim have the burden of proof.
Bullshit!
This just in: Little Bo Peep was real; how else could she have lost her sheep?
What's the point of this?
Nyarlathotep: Damn, I almost spat out my coffee from laughing! This quote is hilarious!
What "disciples?" Jesus is total bullshit. His "disciples" were designed as the Greek Chorus by the mythmakers who created them.
Their function was to go "Oh WOW, Lord" everytime the godboy did one of his magic tricks. Some how the dopey bastards couldn't quite remember all the prior magic tricks they supposedly saw.
Minimalist:
And dig the zodiacal number (12) of the disciples, with Jesus standing in for the sun. And, Jesus is resurrected in Easter when the sun overpowers darkness (days now longer than nights). He was born in late December (or early January in some traditions) when the "infant" sun begins it journey upward in the southern sky. Whether there was ever a dude behind these stories can be debated, but he is now fully clothed in all kinds of pagan cloth.
"3. I cannot find any sources explicit to that of individual apostles death. But there was Roman persecution and the exact time of Paul and Peter in the Roman empire, especially with Nero."
And yet no writer, xtian, pagan or jewish knows anything about Nero "persecuting" xtians for the fire in Rome. The first anyone hears of any part of this passage is in the Chronica of Sulpicius Severus c 500 AD. And it, sadly for jesus freaks, leaves out the part which you oh-so-dearly wish were true.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/35052.htm
"Chapter 29.
In the meantime, the number of the Christians being now very large, it happened that Rome was destroyed by fire, while Nero was stationed at Antium. But the opinion of all cast the odium of causing the fire upon the emperor, and he was believed in this way to have sought for the glory of building a new city. And in fact, Nero could not by any means he tried escape from the charge that the fire had been caused by his orders. He therefore turned the accusation against the Christians, and the most cruel tortures were accordingly inflicted upon the innocent. Nay, even new kinds of death were invented, so that, being covered in the skins of wild beasts, they perished by being devoured by dogs, while many were crucified or slain by fire, and not a few were set apart for this purpose, that, when the day came to a close, they should be consumed to serve for light during the night. In this way, cruelty first began to be manifested against the Christians. Afterwards, too, their religion was prohibited by laws which were enacted; and by edicts openly set forth it was proclaimed unlawful to be a Christian. At that time Paul and Peter were condemned to death, the former being beheaded with a sword, while Peter suffered crucifixion. "
Note no mention of Pilate, Christus, Procurators or Prefects....
In the one manuscript we do have of Annales ultraviolet light shows that some "helpful" scribe altered the spelling of Chrestianos to Christianos sometime in the Middle Ages. Of such little pieces of bullshit is your god made!
Also note that Severus merely recounts what was at that time a church tradition about the deaths of the so-called "peter and paul" pair.
1 Clement, itself a dubious work but much earlier than Severus, mentions nothing about paul being beheaded or peter being crucified. Sadly, it seems that jesus freaks had to invent noble deaths for their make-believe heroes.
""...but it makes it HIGHLY improbable that they were lying...""
People can be wrong and still believe they are telling the truth.
For example, I think xtians are generally fucking morons but I don't think they are lying about what they claim to believe. They are simply delusional.
1. " His "disciples" were designed as the Greek Chorus by the mythmakers who created them.". Any proof of this?
2. Read Tacitus. Me and "Watchmen" are currently arguing over whether Tacitus is reliable in this forum. And I think there is some stuff from Josephus, although I'm not sure.
3. "People can be wrong and still believe they are telling the truth." I mentioned this statement, although word-for-word, above. The difference between people now not lying about what they believe and people back then, is that people back then were eyewitnesses to what they believe, not just reading or hearing about it.
UnKnown:
We have no eyewitness reports of Jesus and his band. That's a Christian delusion not shared by serious scholars.
Scholars know that the Gospels are not historical accounts.
1. "We have no eyewitness reports of Jesus and his band." - The Gospels
2. "Scholars know that the Gospels are not historical accounts." - In order for that statement to be 100% true, you would have to get the opinions of ALL scholars on whether they think the gospels are historically accurate.
Remember, Tacitus wrote what he wrote about Christians in 117CE, 80 years after the events supposedly took place. He was reporting what christians were saying at that time, 80 year old hearsay. As far as the writings of Josephus are concerned, Origen specifically took him to task because he had NOT mentioned Jesus in his writings, and Origen quoted Josephus 14 times in other writings. Other early Christians also quoted Josephus and none on them mentioned the quote. It turned up later, in writings by Eusebius of Cesearea in 324CE.
They did not confess under torture because they honestly believed what they did to be the truth. Just because they personally believed it to be the truth does not mean it was the truth, however.
Whether it is true or not is not the purpose the this forum. It is to determine whether 1st century disciples were actually prosecuted.
We don't know that they were tortured, we don't know if they lied; hell we don't know that they even existed.
"(W)e don't know that they even existed."
1. Why would the early church make up apostles who betrayed their God. The criterion of embarrassment clearly comes in to play as well, for there is no cogent reason why the early church should have gone out of its way to invent such a troubling tradition as Jesus’ betrayal by Judas, one of his chosen Twelve.
2. If the early church had invented the apostles, then we would expect the earliest records (such as Acts) to be filled with details about their lives and exploits. If the early church made them up, they would have likely felt the need to give us substantial details of about their lives and ministries to justify their existence.
Church tradition says they were killed and persecuted, but lets ignore that as bias could have a lot to do with it. The fact that the disciples went to Rome and other Roman provinces under persecution is testimonial that they truly believed, what they believed.
Now, you might say "ISIS kill themselves and fight for what they believe". Although this is somewhat comparable to the apostles, there is one significant difference. The apostles were eyewitnesses. Which do you think is more important the testimony of ISIS who believe something half a millennia ago, or the testimony of eyewitnesses?
Ah yes, why would they do this and why would they do that arguments.
As I hinted to before: it makes about as much sense as claiming that Little Bo Peep must have been real and must have really lost her sheep; why else would she claim it?
Please elaborate that point
What I'm saying is you are assuming the story is true, to argue the story is true.
Or in my example: I assume that Little Bo Peep was real, then make the argument that since she lost her sheep she must have been real; how else could she have lost sheep?!?
What I'm saying is that if the disciples were made up, why would the make up the fact that they rejected Jesus, didn't believe him, and even betray him?
Edit:
And when making up the authors of the Gospels, the only synoptic gospel author who was a disciple was Matthew/Levi. However he was a tax collector, barely better than a prostitute in the society values at the time.
What I'm saying is that if t̶h̶e̶ d̶i̶s̶c̶i̶p̶l̶e̶s̶ w̶e̶r̶e̶ Little Bo Peep was made up, why would the[y] make up the fact that t̶h̶e̶y̶ r̶e̶j̶e̶c̶t̶e̶d̶ J̶e̶s̶u̶s̶,̶ d̶i̶d̶n̶'̶t̶ b̶e̶l̶i̶e̶v̶e̶ h̶i̶m̶,̶ a̶n̶d̶ e̶v̶e̶n̶ b̶e̶t̶r̶a̶y̶ h̶i̶m̶ she lost her sheep?
Differences in stories:
1. Sheep did not betray Little Bo Peep
2. Sheep did not deny they knew Little Bo Peep
3. Little Bo Peep did rebuke the sheep e.g. "Get behind me Satan!"
That is a really good analogy, but when making a religion up, surely the authors would make themselves sound good. Instead, their teacher compared them to Satan, rebuked them constantly, almost insultingly, and that Jesus told them to travel poor and act selflessly, rather then richly and selfishly.
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