I agree with you to a point. The reality is that ancient history is fluid and it changes with time. History books are flooded with people that were once vilified or exalted at one time only to see their narratives change with new evidence or with changes in what modern culture will or will not accept. Where I disagree with you is the idea that we would have found documentation from events in the outskirts of the Roman Empire over 2000 years ago. We didn’t have evidence that Pontius Pilate existed until the 1960’s; and he was the Governor of Judea. Still to this day, all we have is an inscription and drawing on stone after Pilate had died. All evidence of his rule, all the taxes, paperwork and even evidence of his aquaducts and punishment are gone as far as we know. Also, the evidence we have show that uprisings in the Roman Empire, particularly outside of Rome were common. Most information from that period of time is lost forever. Luckily we have some exceptional people that are working hard to save what we have and gather more evidence of that time and history and the early Christians. As for the crucifixion of Christ. There is little debate he was crucified because non Christian texts and sources confirm it. The counter argument I have heard is that there is no physical evidence of anyone being crucified by the Romans. Their point being there are no remains of an authentically recognized cross or nails. However this is called into question because there have been physical evidence of two crucifixions within 50 years of Jesus. One was a Jew that was causing an uprising in the Roman Empire. I basically agree with you on the struggle between the metaphorical Jesus and the supernatural Jesus. I would stay only that a lot of the support for the supernatural Jesus was from non Jews. At first the supports of Christ were almost all Jewish converts. Also women played a large roll in developing the early view of Christ.... until men decided they were to stop having as paramount position in the church.
I'm truly disappointed so many of you mock this. I have no issue with anyone who doubts the resurrection; that's what faith is all about. Just be clear that your belief about the Universe randomly happening from nothing (from an infinitessimaly small object, no less) is just as absurd as a resurrection.
Atheists have the truest Strawman argument. You're just not able to realize it. Good luck to you, child.
Ok, I wasn’t fully clear. Yes, a lot has been lost so I didn’t mean we should have expected a full story from the Roman Empire to have emerged. I just meant we do have a lot of weird minutiae that has made it down through history for late antiquity. But nothing for Christ. The Church destroyed things they didn’t like and would have kept things about Jesus yet nothing remains. So just weird. Also it is known that monks at the least altered later Jewish histories (I am looking at you, Josephus) so again it just feels muddier to me. I have honestly read nothing about physical evidence of a Jew being crucified around the time and place purported for Jesus. I would need to look into that. My position had nothing to do with physical evidence and more to do with textual. Just seemed a highly uncommon practice from what we have of that time. Different execution methods were more common. Doesn’t disprove anything, obviously. Interesting theory about the pagan converts having more to do with mythical Jesus. Of course, more pagans than Jews converted to Christianity over the first 200+ years because there were more of them. And Christianity was a mystery cult so nobody learned the theology until after they had been baptized. You are absolutely right that women had a better role in the early days but as with everything, that was turned around and new reasons to hate/love women were believed. Anyway, I enjoy this period of history philosophically, it is just impossible as a real historian to love any “facts” because there is apsuch a dearth if evidence (and there is a lot of bad, dishonest, scholarship on both sides of this issues). So it all comes down to guesswork in which case I don’t really care about some grand argument for or against. I just think he didn’t necessarily have to have existed for the same things to have happened but that doesn’t really mean anything.
Actually there is no belief. We don't know what happened. It seems like for people of religion and adhear to it their entire lives don't understand the concept of "We don't know". Just because we don't know doesn't mean physicists will attempt mathmatical models to make educated guesses of what might have happened based on our current understanding of physics and mathmatics But no rational physicist will tell you that their models are of definite certainty of what happened unlike religious folks and their fables. Even if we don't know, I'm still going to trust the mathmatics and physics that has helped generate modern computing over a fable created thousands of years ago. So to say that both are equally absurd when you yourself can't even probably do basic differential calculus and then procced to make claims about the absurdity of hypothesese that were formed with higher level physics and math is pretty funny honestly. But I'm sure you implicitly trust higher level physics and math everytime you type on your smartphone that has the power of modern computing .
I don’t mock people religious faith. I get how that work. I don’t like to compare science with faith. They don’t belong in the same plane.
However alot of science is back in faith. The Faith is in your fellow man, his methods and his 'pure ideals' Sometimes like in religion that faith is misplaced. See 'Science' telling us for 40 years tobacco did not cause cancer there were studies Rocket River
rimbaud wrote a 1000 words, with most of which I agree, yet ... To be precise, the church chose which manuscripts to preserve. Their manuscripts had a shelf life and required them to be copied. Before 200 CE, there was a boom in Christian writings, most of which did not make the cannon. Some books were heretical (which may been active sought out and destroyed) and some were well liked but not considered "divinely inspired". The latter would fall into the category of not actively destroy but not actively preserved.
One group says, we don't know exactly what happened, but we're looking into it. The other group says WE KNOW EXACTLY HOW IT HAPPENED BECAUSE THESE DESERT NOMADS FROM 2,000 YEARS AGO TALKED ABOUT IT AND SOMEONE EVENTUALLY WROTE IT DOWN AND A BUNCH OF PEOPLE TRANSLATED IT AND CHOPPED AND SCREWED IT AND TOOK AT PARTS THEY DIDN'T LIKE AND ADDED OTHER STUFF AND IF YOU DON'T BELIEVE EVERY WORD OF IT YOU'RE GOING TO BURN IN HELL.
I wasn’t really referencing Christian manuscripts. Mostly talking about straight histories. Monks destroyed or altered countless “pagan” historic texts and were the shepherds of what was presevred. Not all - there were some “classicists” but for the most part the early Church was a huge devastating blow to Prior recorded history. That is why so much of what we have/know was “discovered” randomly. The burning of the library at Alexandria and the early Christian Church were big blows to an historic continuum.
There is little debate among biblical scholars, whose funding is dependent on them holding the "company line". Please list out the non-Christian source for anything related to the live and death of Jesus Christ. I am aware of none. There is attestations for Jesus and his followers after 100 CE. But you see the problem with the date, right? The author could just be repeating what Christians were saying, 70 years removed.
I consider that trust. I consider faith as a deep knowing and abiding in something that is formed through inspection of your inner world. It's not observable, transferable, or testable to the outside world. It's a personal experience. That exists in a different plane from the observable and testable to the outside world. The latter is where Science can only exists today. There is also trust in religion, in what you were told and what you just accept. I consider that different from the "knowing" type of faith. I realize my definition of faith might be different than common definition (didn't check).
For those out there that are interested in reading the latest books on Jesus historicity ... Spoiler: Spoiled for length and maybe truth ;) Pro historicity: 2011: Forged: Writing in the Name of God--Why the Bible's Authors Are Not Who We Think They by Bart D. Ehrmam Bart Ehrman grew up as a believer. Ehrman is now a non-believer but believes still that Jesus was historical but that we reliably know nothing about him. Anti historicity: 2005: Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus by Earl Doherty This is a revision of his earler 1997 version. Free pdf is here, of which pp 3-5 gives a synopsis of his theory. https://thebibleisnotholy.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/the-jesus-puzzle.pdf Historian and atheist Richard Carrier gave a critical review of the Jesus Puzzle. https://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/jesuspuzzle.html
