The christian faith hinges on the "resurrection" and nothing more. The fact that this event never happened is a problem for christians. The actual story of the resurrection doesn't appear until 325 ADE when the Council of Nicea was formed by Emporer Constantine to consolidate his authority. There is no record of the crucifixion nor the resurrection until that time when several chapters were ADDED to the book of mark!
The origin story in mark describes 3 cleaning women that went to the tomb and found it empty and were afraid to tell anyone about it. It is not until some 300 + years later that 500 witnesses were added to embellish the story. An account that is highly fictional. Even the part of the story where an angel appears doesn't happen until the embellished additions were put in place.
So no resurrection, no holy ghost, no christian faith. Now we can concentrate why islam and judaism are hoaxes. Which is extremely easy. There, nearly the entire world is freed from the mental slavery that is christianity!
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I don't know what to think. I don't give a shit what the book says one or the other
@ Myk
Spot on. One would have thought that the crucifixion, accompanied by 'darkness at noon' thunderclaps and all the rest of the phenomena reported would have stirred some spark of interest in a roman trained scribe. Enough to send in a report at least. Then on Resurrection day we have all those other zombie Rabbi milling about the place and visiting family and preaching plus the 500 witnesses apart from the apostles, Miriam, et al. Again was not one Roman curious about all this upheaval in what was a hotbed of revolt in Roman terms? Curious enough to maybe report it to the Governor and a copy to Rome?
Yet, not one report escapes Jerusalem or the whole of Judea.
Your point about the Resurrection being added (about the time of the conversions of Romae, Mr and Mrs Constantine) is amplified by the similarities between Mithras and Jesus in legend, ritual practice and liturgy. Also the inclusion of St Micheal as patron saint of soldiers, about this time, after all a hardened legionnaire would hardly be inclined to worship a deity that urged him to "turn the other cheek" and bash his sword into a ploughshare.
Also the care that christians took to destroy all the texts and temples of Mithras makes it obvious they saw the existence of Mithras worship as a real threat.
Would that the world be free from these depressing tales and becoming obvious fantasies. We are overdue for a session of rational man.
@Old man shouts...
I wonder if those zombies wanted their land and money back? Oh, the court cases, the legal wrangling! Caesar, himself, would have heard the ruckus!
With the Easter season almost upon us this time period is lent for me as a Christian; The whole Easter story is about resurrection Sunday around 33 A.D. The apostles went to their deaths for the belief in Jesus miracles death and rising again .How you can make such an dogmatic assertion that this never happened comes from your arrogance here .Jesus proved that he was God in the flesh by his miracles his wisdom and his dying and resurrection tell me how did this get off the ground then, this way this Christianity the early church The only way that this could have taken place is if something supernatural occurred The church grew and became more popular then any other faith claim .your completely wrong in saying that the resurrection wasn`t know to the time of Constantine, what constantine did was make Christianity the religion of Rome the official religion over then paganism. Which eventually died out .The resurrection was spread down from the apostles and early church members meeting in peoples homes orally Not as you say the year 325 AD What happened at the council of Nicaea was the resolving of the Arianism controversy. It had nothing to do with the resurrection that was already settled fact .So please check your sources here, because your misleading so many people here.
You are so WRONG FIG it isn't even funny. There is no "resurrection" before the Council of Nicea except Mirtha and other religions. Prove one fucking "miracle" jesus performed. You can't do it because it never happened, and if you only cite the bible then you are more disingenuous than I thought. Everything written about "jesus" is second hand (or greater) knowledge and is written decade if not centuries after the fact. In fact, everything written before 325ADE is edited, altered and modified. Jesus didn't prove anything. You can't even prove that there was a jesus! There is no "easter" there is only the spring equinox. Constantine made christianity his religion so he could consolidate his power. It gave him the one thing he needed to do that and that was HE and ONLY HE became the "voice of god". So anything he said became not only an edict from the Emperor by a command from god. It gave him the power to eradicate anyone that didn't become a christian which he did. Power, that is the only reason that Constantine did it and he used it to hang on to a rapidly failing empire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_early_Christian_writers
All of these "writings" date after the 1st century and none are prove to have actually existed.
The only website I found that specifically states any christian writings are from people of the time that "knew" jesus was an anti-Liberal political website that spews racial hatred.
well here is the story of the church and the institutions that came before emperor Constantine. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&cad=rja&...
@ FIG/AB/Billy
And your point is? The Mithran temples did much the same thing for veteran legionaries and their widows, It is entirely possible, like today there were several religions acting as charities for t various segments of Roman society such as service widows, orphans and the like.
This article even says so!
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&cad=rja&... is some more information supporting my claims about early Christianity leading up to but before Constantine:
And this link is just an extract for your 'school of divinity" paper. sheesh billy.
faith in God fo...
"Jesus proved that he was God in the flesh by his miracles his wisdom..."
Moses did far more impressive miracles than Yeshua did. And Moses produced a greater body of religious dogma than Yeshua did.
Paul said that if the dead do not rise then Yeshua didn't rise either. Have you ever seen any corpses return to life? How many of your dead relatives have visited you lately? Did you feed them or did they eat your brains?
@ FiG
"Jesus proved that he was God"
Is there still a god today? If so, then he did not die.
The entire Christian faith is constructed on "he died for our sins". But jesus did not die because he was God (in your own words). He just took the weekend off.
And if jesus did not die for our sins, then everything said about jesus is woo woo blather.
@David Killens,
And the whole idea of dying for someone's sins is just weird! An intelligent alien would be more concerned with educating people so that they do what is right. Since when did dying for someone justify forgiving his crime? That, and the Trinity! Leave it to religion to come up with the really weird ideas.
@FIG Re: "...what constantine did was make Christianity the religion of Rome the official religion over then paganism. Which eventually died out "
Well, to be more technically accurate, I would probably say that Paganism (along with most other religious practices) was actually killed/slaughtered out by those "loving Christians" who wanted no opposition to their belief system. But - hey - killed.... died.... perhaps I'm just being picky about semantics. *shoulder shrug*
@ TM
I was going to quote that bit...and destroy the little fuktard with historical, irrefutable sources. But you got there before me..damn this time difference!
Kudos oh Aluminium one...All Hail Tin Man...the little clanker.
Spot on , mykcob4! If it were not for the miraculous claims Christianity would be mundane. No teachings of Jesus were unusual. Any of us could have come up with the parable of the Good Samaritan over tacos and a beer.
@ Chimp 3
Or tacos and a near corpse lying by the roadside that the republicans/conservatives won't go near in case they sully their clean shoes.
If there was a jesus, this fable was something he should a fucking said.
Resurrection stories were a dime a dozen during the supposed life of Jesus and it was common practice to assert resurrections from the dead throughout Jewish and Roman History. The idea that Jesus was somehow special or that resurrection itself was happening all over the place is absolutely absurd.
Adonis (from 600 BCE) is a Greek god who was killed and then returned to life by Zeus
Attis (from 1200 BCE) is a vegetation god from central Asia Minor, brought back to life by his lover Cybele.
There are many more such gods—Mithras, Horus, Krishna, Persephone, and others—that don’t seem to fit as well. In fact, Wikipedia lists life-death-rebirth deities from twenty religions worldwide. Then there is the Bible....l
Elisha was also involved in raising the third person. "When the body touched the dried bones of Elisha it came back to life (2 Kings 13:20 - 21).
A widowed woman from Nain (Luke 7:11 - 18).
The young daughter of Jarius (he was a ruler in the synagogue, see Mark 5:35 - 38, Luke 8:49 - 52, Matthew 9:23 - 26).
In Joppa, Peter resurrects a person, (Acts 9:36 - 41)
Paul resurrects the young man named Eutychus who fell from a window (Acts 20:7 - 12).
Paul himself is resurrected after being stoned by an unruly mob in Lystra (Acts 14:19 - 20)!
Thousands of people are resurrected in Mark, "And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared to many. (Mark 52 and 53.)
Despite assertions to the contrary, there were in fact many religions which included beliefs and practices centered around dying and rising deities. One such god was Romulus, the legendary founder of Rome. And common knowledge to all!
https://discoveringancienthistory.wordpress.com/2017/01/15/romulus-the-s...
There was absolutely nothing about the assertion of the resurrection of Jesus that made him any more real or any more special than any other imagined deity of the time.
Can you imagine all of those stinking rotting corpses walking around town looking for brains to eat? The folks who came up with those stories were on some powerful drugs. The Sadducees didn't believe belief in that stuff. You would think that if it happened they would have became believers. I suppose they never saw those delusions.
As to the ending in Mark:
"Scholars agree today that 16:9-20 differs considerable from Mark's vocabulary, style, and concepts and contains elements drawn from the other Gospels and the Acts. It is probably a second-century addition to the Gospel of Mark." (Blair, p.246)
Apparently, some later church officials thought that the Gospel of Mark could use some post-resurrection beefing up!
"It is widely agreed today that the events leading immediately to the cross and the Resurrection were the first to be drawn together into a continuous narrative. These events explain why Jesus, the Messiah, died - a problem for faith, as we have seen. By drawing on individual stories and groups of stories circulating in the church, Mark extended the explanation backward from the first events to the beginning of Jesus' ministry in Galilee." (Blair, p.244)
Thus, the story explaining why Jesus had to die. The messiah was supposed to overthrow Rome and lead the Jewish state into glory--not die on the cross! Explanation was seriously needed.
"Early church tradition…held that this Gospel was based on Mark's memory of the preaching of Peter, whose companion and interpreter Mark was.
Many scholars strongly challenge this tradition today, since form criticism (see p.229) has made it likely that Mark's Gospel was put together from many independent, or loosely associated, pieces of early Christian tradition." (Blair, p.244)
"Mark" was not an eyewitness writing an historical narrative! He (whoever he was) collected traditions and stories and assembled and arranged them as needed. Mark, as some scholars have pointed out, also seems to have problems with the geography of Palestine and a limited grasp of Jewish customs and institutions. Not good for an eyewitness! Matthew and Luke basically copied from Mark, adding some new material of their own creation.
Dr. Edward Blair's "The Illustrated Bible Handbook" is an older but readable work that will still give the reader some insight into what real scholars know about the Bible. I cite him not because I agree with everything he says, but because he can hardly be accused of being unfair. He bends over backwards to let the conservatives have their say, but he does not sell real scholarship short. A copy of the most recent NAOB (New Oxford Annotated Bible) will, in its essays and commentaries, catch any important developments since Blair wrote his handbook. The NOAB is cheap and another very good way to get some in-depth knowledge about the Bible.
From the inside flap:
Dr. Edward P. Blair (Ph.D., Yale) was a professor of biblical interpretation for thirty-three years at Seattle Pacific University, New York Theological Seminary, and Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois. He has done archaeological work at Roman Jericho and Shechem (Mt. Gerizim), Israel.
Now, guys, don't feel obligated to become Bible students! (Of course, being thoughtful, you would not shock me thus. No danger there!) These resources are useful as basic, painless references to take some point to the next level should you, against all odds, accidentally bump into a Christian who actually has some concept of apologetics. It's a long ways from my favorite subjects, but at one time I did have a hankering to know what was REALLY going on with the Bible.