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Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by babs787(m): 1:30pm On Feb 21, 2007

@ 4 get me THE WORD "WE" IN THE HOLY QURAN Posted by 4 get me By the way, if on the other hand, Muhammad is said to have taught monotheism, how many deities were speaking with plural pronouns (WE, US, and OUR) in the Qur'an in precisely the same position as Allah? When we read "We created man" in the Qur'an, to whom does the ""WE" refer - and is that not disguised polytheism? How do you defend a "monotheism" of the "Allah" in the Qur'an when clearly there are several of them? Lots of christians have been challenging muslims to the use of the word 'we'. Some say it speaks of not only one God but many Gods (Polytheism). I will try to shed light on the above to enlighten christians that ALLAH is one and not three or four. The word 'we' in the Quran It is a feature of literary style in Arabic that a person may refer to himself by the pronoun nahnu (we) for respect or glorification. He may also use the word ana (I), indicating one person, or the third person huwa (he). All three styles are used in the Qur’an, where Allaah addresses the Arabs in their own tongue. (Fataawa al-Lajnah al-Daa’imah, 4/143). Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, sometimes refers to Himself in the singular, by name or by use of a pronoun, and sometimes by use of the plural, as in the phrase (interpretation of the meaning): ‘Verily, We have given you a manifest victory” [al-Fath 48:1], and other similar phrases. But Allaah never refers to Himself by use of the dual, because the plural refers to the respect that He deserves, and may refer to His names and attributes, whereas the dual refers to a specific number (and nothing else), and He is far above that.” (Al-‘Aqeedah al-Tadmuriyyah by Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyah, p. 75). These words, innaa (“Verily We”) and nahnu (“We”), and other forms of the plural, may be used by one person speaking on behalf of a group, or they may be used by one person for purposes of respect or glorification, as is done by some monarchs when they issue statements or decrees in which they say “We have decided…” etc. [This is known in English as “The Royal We”] In such cases, only one person is speaking but the plural is used for respect. The One Who is more deserving of respect than any other is Allah, may He be glorified and exalted, so when He says in the Qur’an innaa (“Verily We”) and nahnu (“We”), it is for respect and glorification, not to indicate plurality of numbers. If a verse of this type is causing confusion, it is essential to refer to the clear, unambiguous verse for clarification. Every time Allaah uses the plural to refer to Himself, it is based on the respect and honour that He deserves. Maa Salam

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by Nobody: 12:49pm On Oct 02, 2007

@babs787 if they need more info on how the Bible(a story book) was collated they should visit http://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/Books/MB_BQS/default.htm

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by Jen33(m): 7:09pm On Oct 02, 2007

Just because we see some curious object with pontius pilate scribbled on it doesn't mean any person by the name of Jesus Christ existed. In a lot of the legends and tales from the ancient world, real people and place names are used when fabricating stories of heroes. The various written legends of Hercules for instance, are filled with real people and places, even though everyone knows that Hercules was a mythcal figure. Intriguingly, many of the bible stories - miracles, virgin birth etc with regard to Jesus are also contained in the Hercules stories, Meanwhile, the earliest written word about a man named Jesus was around 45 years after ''the lord'' had ascended into heaven, according to bible myth. None of the gospels are eyewitness accounts, as every bible scholar knows. That's like nobody writing about Martin Luther King Jnr till the year 2020! If that ain't a fraud, what is?

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by ricadelide(m): 7:28am On Oct 03, 2007

i just need one line of your statement to show the fallacy in your whole post; Jen33: None of the gospels are eyewitness accounts, as every bible scholar knows. even though that statement is not true, if that is the basis for your denial of Jesus then it is laughable; because the majority of the so-called 'bible scholars' are in agreement as to the historicity of Jesus. So what do you bring to the table that should make us believe you over them? Are you aware of facts these 'scholars' aren't aware of? Your personal incredulity is of no consequence to any honest historical observer. cheers .

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by Jen33(m): 11:58pm On Oct 03, 2007

ricadelide, I think you need to read some home truths about the nature of your present beliefs: Did a historical Jesus exist? by Jim Walker Amazingly, the question of an actual historical Jesus rarely confronts the religious believer. The power of faith has so forcefully driven the minds of most believers, and even apologetic scholars, that the question of reliable evidence gets obscured by tradition, religious subterfuge, and outrageous claims. The following gives a brief outlook about the claims of a historical Jesus and why the evidence the Christians present us cannot serve as justification for reliable evidence for a historical Jesus.   ALL CLAIMS OF JESUS DERIVE FROM HEARSAY ACCOUNTS No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. All documents about Jesus got written well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources derive from hearsay accounts. Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge. Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modern scholarship. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we should dismiss it. If you do not understand this, imagine yourself confronted with a charge for a crime which you know you did not commit. You feel confident that no one can prove guilt because you know that there exists no evidence whatsoever for the charge against you. Now imagine that you stand present in a court of law that allows hearsay as evidence. When the prosecution presents its case, everyone who takes the stand against you claims that you committed the crime, not as a witness themselves, but solely because other people said so. None of these other people, mind you, ever show up in court, nor can anyone find them. Hearsay does not work as evidence because we have no way of knowing whether the person lies, or simply bases his or her information on wrongful belief or bias. We know from history about witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts that hearsay provides neither reliable nor fair statements of evidence. We know that mythology can arise out of no good information whatsoever. We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts, or monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies believed as fact taken from nothing but belief and hearsay. It derives from these reasons why hearsay cannot serves as good evidence, and the same reasoning must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any other historical person. Authors of ancient history today, of course, can only write from indirect observation in a time far removed from their aim. But a valid historian's own writing gets cited with sources that trace to the subject themselves, or to eyewitnesses and artifacts. For example a historian today who writes about the life of George Washington, of course, can not serve as an eyewitness, but he can provide citations to documents which give personal or eyewitness accounts. None of the historians about Jesus give reliable sources to eyewitnesses, therefore all we have remains as hearsay. THE BIBLE GOSPELS The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer] Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995] Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels existed during the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies. The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark, " [Pagels, 1995] The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names. Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occured at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110. The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove. [Helms] * Most Bibles show 678 verses for Mark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses came later from interpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark 16: 9-20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transition between verse 8 and 9 appears awkward. Even some of  today's Bibles such as the NIV exclude the last 12 verses. The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felt theologically important, and heightened the miracles and magic. The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a hellenized Jew and even possibly a woman. He (or she) wrote at a time of tension in the Roman empire along with its fever of persecution. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke got derived from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source". [Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources. John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the unknown author(s) of this gospel wrote it in Greek near the end of the first century, and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong] Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories. OTHER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS Even in antiquity people like Origen and Eusebius raised doubts about the authenticity of other books in the New Testament such as Hebrews, James, John 2 & 3, Peter 2, Jude, and Revelation. Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James calling it worthless and an "epistle of straw" and questioned Jude, Hebrews and the Apocalypse in Revelation. Nevertheless, all New Testament writings came well after the alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors (with the possible exception of Paul, although still after the alleged death). Epistles of Paul: Paul's biblical letters (epistles) serve as the oldest surviving Christian texts, written probably around 60 C.E. Most scholars have little reason to doubt that Paul wrote some of them himself. However, there occurs not a single instance in all of Paul's writings that he ever meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor does he give any reference to Jesus' life on earth. Therefore, all accounts about a Jesus could only have come from other believers or his imagination. Hearsay. Epistle of James: Although the epistle identifies a James as the letter writer, but which James? Many claim him as the gospel disciple but the gospels mention several different James. Which one? Or maybe this James has nothing to do with any of the gospel James. Perhaps this writer comes from any one of innumerable James outside the gospels. James served as a common name in the first centuries and we simply have no way to tell who this James refers to. More to the point, the Epistle of James mentions Jesus only once as an introduction to his belief. Nowhere does the epistle reference a historical Jesus and this alone eliminates it from an historical account. [1] Epistles of John: The epistles of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation appear so different in style and content that they could hardly have the same author. Some suggest that these writings of John come from the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor who followed a "John" or they came from the work of church fathers who aimed to further the interests of the Church. Or they could have simply come from people also named John (a very common name). No one knows. Also note that nowhere in the body of the three epistles of "John" does it mention a John. In any case, the epistles of John say nothing about seeing an earthly Jesus. Not only do we not know who wrote these epistles, they can only serve as hearsay accounts. [2] Epistles of Peter: Many scholars question the authorship of Peter of the epistles. Even within the first epistle, it says in 5:12 that Silvanus wrote it. Most scholars consider the second epistle as unreliable or an outright forgery (for some examples, see the introduction to 2 Peter in the full edition of The New Jerusalem Bible, 1985, and [3]). In short, no one has any way of determining whether the epistles of Peter come from fraud, an unknown author also named Peter (a common name) or from someone trying to further the aims of the Church. Of the remaining books and letters in the Bible, there occurs no other stretched claims or eyewitness accounts for a historical Jesus and needs no mention of them here for this deliberation. As for the existence of original New Testament documents, none exist. No book of the New Testament survives in the original autograph copy. What we have then come from copies, and copies of copies, of questionalbe originals (if the stories came piecemeal over time, as it appears it has, then there may never have existed an original). The earliest copies we have got written more than a century later than the autographs, and these exist on fragments of papyrus. [Pritchard; Graham] According to Hugh Schonfield, "It would be impossible to find any manuscript of the New Testament older than the late third century, and we actually have copies from the fourth and fifth. [Schonfield] LYING FOR THE CHURCH The editing and formation of the Bible came from members of the early Christian Church. Since the fathers of the Church possessed the texts and determined what would appear in the Bible, there occurred plenty of opportunity and motive to change, modify, or create texts that might bolster the position of the Church or the members of the Church themselves. Take, for example, Eusebius who served as an ecclesiastical church historian and bishop. He had great influence in the early Church and he openly advocated the use of fraud and deception in furthering the interests of the Church [Remsberg]. The first mention of Jesus by Josephus came from Eusebius (none of the earlier church fathers mention Josephus' Jesus). It comes to no surprise why many scholars think that Eusebius interpolated his writings. In his Ecclesiastical History, he writes, "We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity." (Vol. 8, chapter 2). In his Praeparatio Evangelica, he includes a chapter titled, "How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived" (book 12, chapter 32). The Church had such power over people, that to question the Church could result in death. Regardless of what the Church claimed, people had to take it as "truth." St. Ignatius Loyola of the 16th century even wrote: "We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides." The orthodox Church also fought against competing Christian cults. Irenaeus, who determined the inclusion of the four (now canonical) gospels, wrote his infamous book, "Against the Heresies." According to Romer, "Irenaeus' great book not only became the yardstick of major heresies and their refutations, the starting-point of later inquisitions, but simply by saying what Christianity was not it also, in a curious inverted way, became a definition of the orthodox faith." [Romer] The early Church burned many heretics, along with their sacred texts. If a Jesus did exist, perhaps eyewitness writings got burnt along with them because of their heretical nature. We will never know. In attempting to salvage the Bible the respected revisionist and scholar, Bruce Metzger has written extensively on the problems of the New Testament. In his book, "The Text of the New Testament-- Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, Metzger addresses: Errors arising from faulty eyesight; Errors arising from faulty hearing; Errors of the mind; Errors of judgement; Clearing up historical and geographical difficulties; and Alterations made because of doctrinal considerations. [Metzger] With such intransigence from the Church and the admitting to lying for its cause, the burning of heretical texts, Bible errors and alterations, how could any honest scholar take any book from the New Testament as absolute, much less using extraneous texts that support a Church's intolerant and biased position, as reliable evidence? GNOSTIC GOSPELS In 1945, an Arab made an archeological discovery in Upper Egypt of several ancient papyrus books. They have since referred to it as The Nag Hammadi texts. They contained fifty-two heretical books written in Coptic script which include gospels of Thomas, Philip, James, John, Thomas, and many others. Archeologists have dated them at around 350-400 C.E. They represent copies from previous copies. None of the original texts exist and scholars argue about a possible date of the originals. Some of them think that they can hardly have dates later than 120-150 C.E. Others have put it closer to 140 C.E. [Pagels, 1979] Other Gnostic gospels such as the Gospel of Judas, found near the Egyptian site of the Nag Hammadi texts, shows a diverse pattern of story telling, always a mark of myth. The Judas gospel tells of Judas Iscariot as Jesus' most loyal disciple, just opposite that of the canonical gospel stories. Note that the text does not claim that Judas Iscariot wrote it. The Judas gospel, a copy written in Coptic, dates to around the third-to fourth-century. The original Greek version probably dates to between 130 and 170 C.E., around the same tine as the Nag Hammadi texts. Irenaeus first mentions this gospel in Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies) written around 180 C.E., so we know that this represented a heretical gospel. Since these Gnostic texts could only have its unknown authors writing well after the alleged life of Jesus, they cannot serve as historical evidence of Jesus anymore than the canonical versions. Again, we only have "heretical" hearsay. NON-CHRISTIAN SOURCES Virtually all other claims of Jesus come from sources outside of Christian writings. Devastating to the claims of Christians, however, comes from the fact that all of these accounts come from authors who lived after the alleged life of Jesus. Since they did not live during the time of the hypothetical Jesus, none of their accounts serve as eyewitness evidence. Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, lived as the earliest non-Christian who mentions a Jesus. Although many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities) came from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius), Josephus' birth in 37 C.E., well after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, puts him out of range of an eyewitness account. Moreover, he wrote Antiquities in 93 C.E., after the first gospels got written! Therefore, even if his accounts about Jesus came from his hand, his information could only serve as hearsay. Pliny the Younger, a Roman official, got born in 62 C.E. His letter about the Christians only shows that he got his information from Christian believers themselves. Regardless, his birth date puts him out of the range of eyewitness accounts. Tacitus, the Roman historian's birth year at 64 C.E., puts him well after the alleged life of Jesus. He gives a brief mention of a "Christus" in his Annals (Book XV, Sec. 44), which he wrote around 109 C.E. He gives no source for his material. Although many have disputed the authenticity of Tacitus' mention of Jesus, the very fact that his birth happened after the alleged Jesus and wrote the Annals during the formation of Christianity, shows that his writing can only provide us with hearsay accounts. Suetonius, a Roman historian, born in 69 C.E. mentions a "Chrestus," a common name. Apologists assume that "Chrestus" means "Christ" (a disputable claim). But even if Seutonius had meant "Christ," it still says nothing about an earthly Jesus. Just like all the others, Suetonius' birth occurred well after the purported Jesus. Again, only hearsay. Talmud: Amazingly some Christians use brief portions of the Talmud, (a collection of Jewish civil a religious law, including commentaries on the Torah), as evidence for Jesus. They claim that Yeshu (a common name in Jewish literature) in the Talmud refers to Jesus. However, this Jesus, according to Gerald Massey actually depicts a disciple of Jehoshua Ben-Perachia at least a century before the alleged Christian Jesus. [Massey] Regardless of how one interprets this, the Palestinian Talmud got written between the 3rd and 5th century C.E., and the Babylonian Talmud between the 3rd and 6th century C.E., at least two centuries after the alleged crucifixion! At best it can only serve as a controversial Christian and pagan legend; it cannot possibly serve as evidence for a historical Jesus. The above sources get quoted the most as "evidence" for Jesus by Christians. All other sources (Christian and non-Christian), some of which include: Mara Bar-Serapion (cira 73 C.E.), Ignatius (50 - 98? C.E.), Polycarp (69 - 155 C.E.), Clement of Rome (? - cira 160 C.E.), Justin Martyr (100 - 165 C.E.), Lucian (circa 125 - 180 C.E.), Tertullian (160 - ? C.E.), Clement of Alexandria (? - 215 C.E.), Origen (185 - 232 C.E.), Hippolytus (? - 236 C.E.), and Cyprian (? - 254 C.E.). All these people got born well after the alleged death of Jesus. Not one of them provides an eyewitness account, all of them simply spout hearsay. As you can see, apologist Christians embarrass themselves when they unwittingly or deceptively violate the rules of historiography by using after-the-event writings as evidence for the event itself. Not one of these writers gives a source or backs up his claims with evidential material about Jesus. Although we can provide numerous reasons why the Christian and non-Christian sources prove spurious, and argue endlessly about them, we can cut to the chase by simply looking at the dates of the documents and the birth dates of the authors. It doesn't matter what these people wrote about Jesus, an author who writes after the alleged happening and gives no detectable sources for his material can only give example of hearsay. All of these anachronistic writings about Jesus could easily have come from the beliefs and stories from Christian believers themselves. And as we know from myth, superstition, and faith, beliefs do not require facts or evidence for their propagation and circulation. Thus we have only beliefs about Jesus' existence, and nothing more. FAKES, FRAUDS, AND FICTIONS Because the religious mind relies on belief and faith, the religious person can inherit a dependence on any information that supports a belief and that includes fraudulent stories, rumors, unreliable data, and fictions, without the need to check sources, or to investigate the reliability of the information. Although hundreds of fraudulent claims exist for the artifacts of Jesus, I will present only three examples which seem to have a life of their own and have spread through the religious community and especially on internet discussion groups. The Shroud of Turin Many faithful people believe the shroud represents the actual burial cloth of Jesus where they claim the image on the cloth represents an actual 'photographic' image left behind by the crucified body. The first mention of the shroud comes from a treatise (written or dictated) by Geoffroi de Charny in 1356 and who claims to have owned the cloth (see The Book of Chivalry of Geoffroi De Charny). Later, in the 16th century, it suddenly appeared in a cathedral in Turin, Italy. (Note that thousands of claimed Jesus relics appeared in cathedrals throughout Europe, including the wood from the cross, chalices, blood of Jesus, etc. These artifacts proved popular and served as a prosperous commercial device which filled the money coffers of the churches.) Sadly, many people of faith believe that there actually exists scientific evidence to support their beliefs in the shroud's authenticity. Considering how the Shroud's apologists use the words, "science," "fact," and "authentic," without actual scientific justification, and even include pseudo-scientists (without mentioning the 'pseudo') to testify to their conclusions, it should not come to any surprise why a faithful person would not question their information or their motives. There also has appeared several television specials which purport the authenticity of the shroud. Science, however, does not operate though television specials who have a commercial interest and have no qualms about deceiving the public. Experts around the world consider the 14-foot-long linen sheet, which has remained in a cathedral in Turin since 1578, a forgery because of carbon-dating tests performed in 1988. Three different independent radiocarbon dating laboratories in Zurich, Oxford and the University of Arizona yielded a date range of 1260-1390 C.E. (consistent with the time period of Charny's claimed ownership). Joe Zias of Hebrew University of Jerusalem calls the shroud indisputably a fake. "Not only is it a forgery, but it's a bad forgery." The shroud actually depicts a man whose front measures 2 inches taller than his back and whose elongated hands and arms would indicate that he had the affliction of gigantism if he actually lived. (Also read Joe Nickell's, Inquest On The Shroud Of Turin: Latest Scientific Findings) Walter C. McCrone, et al, (see Judgment Day for the Shroud of Turin) discovered red ochre (a pigment found in earth and widely used in Italy during the Middle Ages) on the cloth which formed the body image and vermilion paint, made from mercuric sulphide, used to represent blood. The actual scientific findings reveal the shroud as a 14th century painting, not a two-thousand year-old cloth with Christ's image. Revealingly, no Biblical scholar or scientist (with any credibility), cites the shroud of Turin as evidence for a historical Jesus. The Burial box of James Even many credible theologians bought this fraud, hook-line-and-sinker. The Nov./Dec. 2002, issue of Biblical Archaeology Review magazine announced a "world exclusive!" article about evidence of Jesus written in stone, claiming that they found the actual ossuary of "James, Brother of Jesus" in Jerusalem. This story exploded on the news and appeared widely on television and newspapers around the world. Interestingly, they announced the find as the "earliest historical reference of Jesus yet found." Since they claimed the inscription on the box occured around 70 C.E., that would agree with everything claimed by this thesis (that no contemporary evidence exists for Jesus). (Note that even if the box script proved authentic, it would not provide evidence for Jesus simply because no one knew who wrote the script or why. It would only show the first indirect mention of an alleged Jesus and it could not serve as contemporary evidence simply because it didn't come into existence until long after the alleged death of Jesus.) The claim for authenticity of the burial box of James, however, proved particularly embarrassing for the Biblical Archaeology Review and for those who believed them without question. Just a few months later, archaeologists determined the inscription as a forgery (and an obvious one at that) and they found the perpetrator and had him arrested (see 'Jesus box' exposed as fake and A fake? James Ossuary dealer arrested, suspected of forgery). Regrettably, the news about the fraud never matched the euphoria of the numerous stories of the find and many people today still believe the story as true. Letters of Pontius Pilate This would appear hilarious if not for the tragic results that can occur from believing in fiction: many faithful (especially on the internet) have a strong belief that Pontius Pilate actually wrote letters to Seneca in Rome where he mentions Jesus and his reported healing miracles. Considering the lack of investigational temper of the religious mind, it might prove interesting to the critical reader that the main source for the letters of Pilate come from W. P. Crozier's 1928 book titled, "Letters of Pontius Pilate: Written During His Governorship of Judea to His Friend Seneca in Rome." The book cites Crozier as the editor as if he represented a scholar who edited Pilate's letters. Well, from the title, it certainly seems to indicate that Pilate wrote some letters doesn't it? However, unbeknownst or ignored by the uncritical faithful, this book represents Crozier's first novel, a fictionalized account of what he thought Pilate would have written. During the first publication, no one believed this novel represented fact and reviews of the day reveal it as a work of fiction. Crozier, a newspaper editor, went to Oxford University and retained an interest in Latin, Greek and the Bible. He wrote this novel as if it represented the actual letters of Pilate. Of course no scholar would cite this as evidence because no letters exist of Pilate to Seneca, and Seneca never mentions Jesus in any of his writings. The belief in Pilate's letters represents one of the more amusing fad beliefs in evidential Jesus, however, it also reveals just how myths, fakes, and fictions can leak into religious thought. Hundreds of years from now, Crozier's fictionalized account may very well end up just as 'reliable' as the gospels. WHAT ABOUT WRITINGS DURING THE LIFE OF JESUS? What appears most revealing of all, comes not from what got later written about Jesus but what people did not write about him. Consider that not a single historian, philosopher, scribe or follower who lived before or during the alleged time of Jesus ever mentions him! If, indeed, the Gospels portray a historical look at the life of Jesus, then the one feature that stands out prominently within the stories shows that people claimed to know Jesus far and wide, not only by a great multitude of followers but by the great priests, the Roman governor Pilate, and Herod who claims that he had heard "of the fame of Jesus" (Matt 14:1)". One need only read Matt: 4:25 where it claims that "there followed him [Jesus] great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jersulaem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordon." The gospels mention, countless times, the great multitude that followed Jesus and crowds of people who congregated to hear him. So crowded had some of these gatherings grown, that Luke 12:1 alleges that an "innumberable multitude of people,  trode one upon another." Luke 5:15 says that there grew "a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, " The persecution of Jesus in Jerusalem drew so much attention that all the chief priests and scribes, including the high priest Caiaphas, not only knew about him but helped in his alleged crucifixion. (see Matt 21:15-23, 26:3, Luke 19:47, 23:13). The multitude of people thought of Jesus, not only as a teacher and a miracle healer, but a prophet (see Matt:14:5). So here we have the gospels portraying Jesus as famous far and wide, a prophet and healer, with great multitudes of people who knew about him, including the greatest Jewish high priests and the Roman authorities of the area, and not one person records his existence during his lifetime? If the poor, the rich, the rulers, the highest priests, and the scribes knew about Jesus, who would not have heard of him? Then we have a particular astronomical event that would have attracted the attention of anyone interested in the "heavens." According to Luke 23:44-45, there occurred "about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour, and the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst." Yet not a single mention of such a three hour ecliptic event got recorded by anyone, including the astronomers and astrologers, anywhere in the world, including Pliny the Elder and Seneca who both recorded eclipses from other dates. Note also that, for obvious reasons, eclipses can't occur during a full moon (passovers always occur during full moons), Nor does a single contemporary person write about the earthquake described in Matthew 27:51-54 where the earth shook, rocks ripped apart (rent), and graves opened. Matthew 2 describes Herod and all of Jerusalem as troubled by the worship of the infant Jesus. Herod then had all of the children of Bethlehem slain. If such extraordinary infanticides of this magnitude had occurred, why didn't anyone write about it? Some apologists attempt to dig themselves out of this problem by claiming that there lived no capable historians during that period, or due to the lack of education of the people with a writing capacity, or even sillier, the scarcity of paper gave reason why no one recorded their "savior." But the area in and surrounding Jerusalem served, in fact, as the center of education and record keeping for the Jewish people. The Romans, of course, also kept many records. Moreover, the gospels mention scribes many times, not only as followers of Jesus but the scribes connected with the high priests. And as for historians, there lived plenty at the time who had the capacity and capability to record, not only insignificant gossip, but significant events, especially from a religious sect who drew so much popular attention through an allegedly famous and infamous Jesus. Take, for example, the works of Philo Judaeus who's birth occurred in 20 B.C.E. and died 50 C.E. He lived as the greatest Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher and historian of the time and lived in the area of Jerusalem during the alleged life of Jesus. He wrote detailed accounts of the Jewish events that occurred in the surrounding area. Yet not once, in all of his volumes of writings, do we read a single account of a Jesus "the Christ." Nor do we find any mention of Jesus in Seneca's (4? B.C.E. - 65 C.E.) writings, nor from the historian Pliny the Elder (23? - 79 C.E.). If, indeed, such a well known Jesus existed, as the gospels allege, does any reader here think it reasonable that, at the very least, the fame of Jesus would not have reached the ears of one of these men? Amazingly, we have not one Jewish, Greek, or Roman writer, even those who lived in the Middle East, much less anywhere else on the earth, who ever mention him during his supposed life time. This appears quite extraordinary, and you will find few Christian apologists who dare mention this embarrassing fact. To illustrate this extraordinary absence of Jesus Christ literature, just imagine going through nineteenth century literature looking for an Abraham Lincoln but unable to find a single mention of him in any writing on earth until the 20th century. Yet straight-faced Christian apologists and historians want you to buy a factual Jesus out of a dearth void of evidence, and rely on nothing but hearsay written well after his purported life. Considering that most Christians believe that Jesus lived as God on earth, the Almighty gives an embarrassing example for explaining his existence. You'd think a Creator might at least have the ability to bark up some good solid evidence. HISTORICAL SCHOLARS Many problems occur with the reliability of the accounts from ancient historians. Most of them did not provide sources for their claims, as they rarely included bibliographic listings, or supporting claims. They did not have access to modern scholarly techniques, and many times would include hearsay as evidence. No one today would take a modern scholar seriously who used the standards of ancient historians, yet this proves as the only kind of source that Christology comes from. Couple this with the fact that many historians believed as Christians themselves, sometimes members of the Church, and you have a built-in prejudice towards supporting a "real" Jesus. In modern scholarship, even the best historians and Christian apologists play the historian game. They can only use what documents they have available to them. If they only have hearsay accounts then they have to play the cards that history deals them. Many historians feel compelled to use interpolation or guesses from hearsay, and yet this very dubious information sometimes ends up in encyclopedias and history books as fact. In other words, Biblical scholarship gets forced into a lower standard by the very sources they examine. A renowned Biblical scholor illustrated this clearly in an interview when asked about Biblical interpretation. David Noel Freeman (the General editor of the Anchor Bible Series and many other works) responed with: "We have to accept somewhat looser standards. In the legal profession, to convict the defendant of a crime, you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil cases, a preponderance of the evidence is sufficient. When dealing with the Bible or any ancient source, we have to loosen up a little; otherwise, we can't really say anything." -David Noel Freedman (in Bible Review magazine, Dec. 1993, p.34) The implications appear obvious. If one wishes to believe in a historical Jesus, he or she must accept this based on loose standards. Couple this with the fact that all of the claims come from hearsay, and we have a foundation made of sand, and a castle of information built of cards. CITING GEOGRAPHY, AND KNOWN HISTORICAL FIGURES AS "EVIDENCE" Although the New Testament mentions various cities, geological sites, kings and people that existed or lived during the alleged life of Jesus, these descriptions cannot serve as evidence for the existence of Jesus anymore than works of fiction that include recognizable locations, and make mention of actual people. Homer's Odyssey, for example, describes the travels of Odysseus throughout the Greek islands. The epic describes, in detail, many locations that existed in history. But should we take Odysseus, the Greek gods and goddesses, one-eyed giants and monsters as literal fact simply because the story depicts geographic locations accurately? Of course not. Mythical stories, fictions, and narratives almost always use familiar landmarks as placements for their stories. The authors of the Greek tragedies not only put their stories in plausible settings as happening in the real world but their supernatural characters took on the desires, flaws and failures of mortal human beings. Consider that fictions such as King Kong, Superman, and Star Trek include recognizable cities, planets, and landmarks, with their protagonists and antagonists miming human emotions. Likewise, just because the Gospels mention cities and locations in Judea, and known historical people, with Jesus behaving like an actual human being (with the added dimension of supernatural curses, miracles, etc.) but this says nothing about the actuality of the characters portrayed in the stories. However, when a story uses impossible historical locations, or geographical errors, we may question the authority of the claims. For example, in Matt 4:8, the author describes the devil taking Jesus into an exceedingly high mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world. Since there exists no spot on the spheroid earth to view "all the kingdoms," we know that the Bible errs here. John 12:21 says, "The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee. . . ." Bethsaida resided in Gaulonitis (Golan region), east of the Jordan river, not Galilee, which resided west of the river. John 3:23 says, "John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim. . . ." Critics agree that no such place as Aenon exists near Salim. There occurs not a shred of evidence for a city named Nazareth at the time of the alleged Jesus. [Leedom; Gauvin] Nazareth does not appear in the Old Testament, nor does it appear in the volumes of Josephus's writings (even though he provides a detailed list of the cities of Galilee). Oddly, none of the New Testament epistle writers ever mentions Nazareth or a Jesus of Nazareth even though most of the epistles got written before the gospels. In fact no one mentions Nazareth until the Gospels, where the first one didn't come into existence until about 40 years after the hypothetical death of Jesus. Apologists attempt to dismiss this by claiming that Nazareth existed as an insignificant and easily missed village (how would they know?), thus no one recorded it. However, whenever the Gospels speak of Nazareth, they always refer to it as a city, never a village, and a historian of that period would surely have noticed a city. (Note the New Testament uses the terms village, town, and city.) Nor can apologists fall on archeological evidence of preexisting artifacts for the simple reason that many cities get built on ancient sites. If a city named Nazareth existed during the 1st century, then we need at least one contemporary piece of evidence for the name, otherwise we cannot refer to it as historical. Many more errors and unsupported geographical locations appear in the New Testament. And although one cannot use these as evidence against a historical Jesus, we can certainly question the reliability of the texts. If the scriptures make so many factual errors about geology, science, and contain so many contradictions, falsehoods could occur any in area. If we have a coupling with historical people and locations, then we should also have some historical reference of a Jesus to these locations and people. But just the opposite proves the case. The Bible depicts Herod, the Ruler of Jewish Palestine under Rome as sending out men to search and kill the infant Jesus, yet nothing in history supports such a story. Pontius Pilate supposedly performed as judge in the trial and execution of Jesus, yet no Roman record mentions such a trial. The gospels portray a multitude of believers throughout the land spreading tales of a teacher, prophet, and healer, yet nobody in Jesus' life time or several decades after, ever records such a human figure. The lack of a historical Jesus in the known historical record speaks for itself. COMPARING JESUS TO OTHER HISTORICAL FIGURES Many Christian apologists attempt to extricate themselves from their lack of evidence by claiming that if we cannot rely on the post chronicle exegesis of Jesus, then we cannot establish a historical foundation for other figures such as Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, Napoleon, etc. However, there sits a vast difference between historical figures and Jesus. There occurs either artifacts, writings, or eyewitness accounts for historical people, whereas, for Jesus we have nothing. Alexander, for example, left a wake of destroyed and created cities behind. We have buildings, libraries and cities, such as Alexandria, left in his name. We have treaties, and even a letter from Alexander to the people of Chios, engraved in stone, dated at 332 B.C.E. For Agustus Caesar, we have the Res gestae divi augusti, the emperor's own account of his works and deeds, a letter to his son (Epistula ad Gaium filium), Virgil's eyewitness accounts, and much more. Napoleon left behind artifacts, eyewitness accounts and letters. We can establish some historicity to these people because we have evidence that occurred during their life times. Yet even with contemporary evidence, historians have become wary of after-the-fact stories of many of these historical people. For example, some of the stories of Alexander's conquests, or Nero starting the fire in Rome always get questioned or doubted because they contain inconsistencies or come from authors who wrote years after the alleged facts. In qualifying the history of Alexander, Pierre Briant writes, "Although more than twenty of his contemporaries chronicled Alexander's life and campaigns, none of these texts survive in original form. Many letters and speeches attributed to Alexander are ancient forgeries or reconstructions inspired by imagination or political motives. The little solid documentation we possess from Alexander's own time is mainly to be found in stone inscriptions from the Greek cities of Europe and Asia." [Briant] Inventing histories out of whole cloth or embellished from a seed of an actual historical event appears common throughout the chronicle of human thought. Robert Price observes, "Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Cyrus, King Arthur, and others have nearly suffered this fate. What keeps historians from dismissing them as mere myths, like Paul Bunyan, is that there is some residue. We know at least a bit of mundane information about them, perhaps quite a bit, that does not form part of any legend cycle." [Price, pp. 260-261] Interestingly, almost all important historical people have descriptions of what they looked like. We have the image of Augustus Caesar cast on denarius coins, busts of Greek and Roman aristocrats, artwork of Napoleon, etc. We have descriptions of facial qualities, height, weight, hair length & color, age and even portraits of most important historical figures. But for Jesus, we have nothing. Nowhere in the Bible do we have a description of the human shape of Jesus. How can we rely on the Gospels as the word of Jesus when no one even describes what he looked like? How odd that none of the disciple characters record what he looked like, yet believers attribute them to know exactly what he said. Indeed, this gives us a clue that Jesus came to the gospel writers and indirect and through myth. Not until hundreds of years after the alleged Jesus did pictures emerge as to what he looked like from cult Christians, and these widely differed from a blond clean shaven, curly haired Apollonian youth (found in the Roman catacombs) to a long-bearded Italian as depicted to this day. This mimics the pattern of Greek mythological figures as their believers constructed various images of what their gods looked like according to their own cultural image. Historial people leave us with contemporary evidence, but for Jesus we have nothing. If we wanted to present a fair comparison of the type of information about Jesus to another example of equal historical value, we could do no better than to compare Jesus with the mythical figure of Hercules. IF JESUS, THEN WHY NOT HERCULES? If a person accepts hearsay and accounts from believers as historical evidence for Jesus, then shouldn't they act consistently to other accounts based solely on hearsay and belief? To take one example, examine the evidence for the Hercules of Greek mythology and you will find it parallels the "historicity" of Jesus to such an amazing degree that for Christian apologists to deny Hercules as a historical person belies and contradicts the very same methodology used for a historical Jesus. Note that Herculean myth resembles Jesus in many areas. Hercules got born as a human from the union of God (Zeus) and the mortal and chaste Alcmene, his mother. Similar to Herod who wanted to kill Jesus, Hera wanted to kill Hercules. Like Jesus, Hercules traveled the earth as a mortal helping mankind and performed miraculous deeds. Like Jesus who died and rose to heaven, Hercules died, rose to Mt. Olympus and became a god. Hercules gives example of perhaps the most popular hero in Ancient Greece and Rome. They believed that he actually lived, told stories about him, worshiped him, and dedicated temples to him. Likewise the "evidence" of Hercules closely parallels that of Jesus. We have historical people like Hesiod and Plato who mentions Hercules. Similar to the way the gospels tell a narrative story of Jesus, so do we have the epic stories of Homer who depict the life of Hercules. Aesop tells stories and quotes the words of Hercules. Just as we have a brief mention of Jesus by Joesphus in his Antiquities, Joesphus also mentions Hercules (more times than Jesus), in the very same work (see: 1.15; 8.5.3; 10.11.1). Just as Tacitus mentions a Christus, so does he also mention Hercules many times in his Annals. And most importantly, just as we have no artifacts, writings or eyewitnesses about Hercules, we also have nothing about Jesus. All information about Hercules and Jesus comes from stories, beliefs, and hearsay. Should we then believe in a historical Hercules, simply because ancient historians mention him and that we have stories and beliefs about him? Of course not, and the same must apply to Jesus if we wish to hold any consistency to historicity. Some critics doubt that a historicized Jesus could develop from myth because they think there never occurred any precedence for it. We have many examples of myth from history but what about the other way around? This doubt fails in the light of the most obvious example-- the Greek mythologies where Greek and Roman writers including Diodorus, Cicero, Livy, etc., assumed that there must have existed a historical root for figures such as Hercules, Theseus, Odysseus, Minos, Dionysus, etc. These writers put their mythological heroes into an invented historical time chart. Herodotus, for example, tried to determine when Hercules lived. As Robert M. Price revealed, "The whole approach earned the name of Euhemerism, from Euhemerus who originated it." [Price, p. 250] Even today, we see many examples of seedling historicized mythologies: UFO adherents who's beliefs began as a dream of alien bodily invasion, and then expressed as actually having occurred (some of which have formed religious cults); beliefs of urban legends which started as pure fiction or hoaxes; propaganda spread by politicians which stem from fiction but believed by their constituents. People consider Hercules and other Greek gods as myth because people no longer believe in the Greek and Roman stories. When a civilization dies, so go their gods. Christianity and its church authorities, on the other hand, still hold a powerful influence on governments, institutions, and colleges. Anyone doing research on Jesus, even skeptics, had better allude to his existence or else risk future funding and damage to their reputations or fear embarrassment against their Christian friends. Christianity depends on establishing a historical Jesus and it will defend, at all costs, even the most unreliable sources. The faithful want to believe in Jesus, and belief alone can create intellectual barriers that leak even into atheist and secular thought. We have so many Christian professors, theologians and historical "experts" around the world that tell us we should accept a historical Jesus that if repeated often enough, it tends to convince even the most ardent skeptic. The establishment of history should never reside with the "experts" words alone or simply because a scholar has a reputation as a historian. Historical review has yet to achieve the reliability of scientific investigation, (and in fact, many times ignores it). If a scholar makes a historical claim, his assertion should depend primarily with the evidence itself and not just because he or she says so. Facts do not require belief. And whereas beliefs can live comfortably without evidence at all, facts depend on evidence. THEN WHY THE MYTH OF JESUS? Some people actually believe that just because so much voice and ink has spread the word of a character named Jesus throughout history, that this must mean that he actually lived. This argument simply does not hold. The number of people who believe or write about something or the professional degrees they hold say nothing at all about fact. Facts derive out of evidence, not from hearsay, not from hubris scholars, and certainly not from faithful believers. Regardless of the position or admiration held by a scholar, believer, or priest, if he or she cannot support their hypothesis with good evidence, then it can only remain a hypothesis. While the possibility exists that an actual Jesus lived, a more likely possibility reveals that a mythology could have arrived totally out of earlier mythologies. Although we have no evidence for a historical Jesus, we certainly have many accounts for the mythologies of the Middle East and Egypt during the first century and before that appear similar to the Christ saviour story. If you know your ancient history, remember that just before and during the first century, the Jews had prophesied about an upcoming Messiah based on Jewish scripture. Their beliefs influenced many of their followers. We know that powerful beliefs can create self-fulfilling prophesies, and surely this proved just as true in ancient times. It served as a popular dream expressed in Hebrew Scripture for the promise of an "end-time" with a savior to lead them to the promised land. Indeed, Roman records show executions of several would-be Messiahs, (but not a single record mentions a Jesus). Many ancients believed that there could come a final war against the "Sons of Darkness"-- the Romans. This then could very well have served as the ignition and flame for the future growth of Christianity. We know that the early Christians lived within pagan communities. Jewish scriptural beliefs coupled with the pagan myths of the time give sufficient information about how such a religion could have formed. Many of the Hellenistic and pagan myths parallel so closely to the alleged Jesus that to ignore its similarities means to ignore the mythological beliefs of history. Dozens of similar savior stories propagated the minds of humans long before the alleged life of Jesus. Virtually nothing about Jesus "the Christ" came to the Christians as original or new. For example, the religion of Zoroaster, founded circa 628-551 B.C.E. in ancient Persia, roused mankind in the need for hating a devil, the belief of a paradise, last judgment and resurrection of the dead. Mithraism, an offshoot of Zoroastrianism probably influenced early Christianity. The Magi described in the New Testament appears as Zoroastrian priests. Note the word "paradise" came from the Persian pairidaeza. The Egyptian mythical Horus, god of light and goodness has many parallels to Jesus. [Leedom, Massey] For some examples: Horus and the Father as one Horus, the Father seen in the Son Horus, light of the world, represented by the symbolical eye, the sign of salvation. Horus served the way, the truth, the life by name and in person Horus baptized with water by Anup (Jesus baptized with water by John) Horus the Good Shepherd Horus as the Lamb (Jesus as the Lamb) Horus as the Lion (Jesus as the Lion) Horus identified with the Tat Cross (Jesus with the cross) The trinity of Atum the Father, Horus the Son, Ra the Holy Spirit Horus the avenger (Jesus who brings the sword) Horus the afflicted one Horus as life eternal Twelve followers of Horus as Har-Khutti (Jesus' 12 disciples) According to Massey, "The mythical Messiah is Horus in the Osirian Mythos; Har-Khuti in the Sut-Typhonian; Khunsu in that of Amen-Ra; Iu in the cult of Atum-Ra; and the Christ of the Gospels is an amalgam of all these characters." Osiris, Hercules, Mithra, Hermes, Prometheus, Perseus and others compare to the Christian myth. According to Patrick Campbell of The Mythical Jesus, all served as pre-Christian sun gods, yet all allegedly had gods for fathers, virgins for mothers; had their births announced by stars; got born on the solstice around December 25th; had tyrants who tried to kill them in their infancy; met violent deaths; rose from the dead; and nearly all got worshiped by "wise men" and had allegedly fasted for forty days. [McKinsey, Chapter 5] The pre-Christian cult of Mithra had a deity of light and truth, son of the Most High, fought against evil, presented the idea of the Logos. Pagan Mithraism mysteries had the burial in a rock tomb, resurrection, sacrament of bread & water (Eucharist), the marking on the forehead with a mystic mark, the symbol of the Rock, the Seven Spirits and seven stars, all before the advent of Christianity. Even Justin Martyr recognized the analogies between Christianity and Paganism. To the Pagans, he wrote: "When we say that the Word, who is first born of God, was produced without sexual union, and that he, Jesus Christ, our teacher, was crucified and died, and rose again, and ascended into heaven; we propound nothing different from what you believe regarding those whom you esteem sons of Jupiter (Zeus)." [First Apology, ch. xxi] Virtually all of the mythical accounts of a savior Jesus have parallels to past pagan mythologies which existed long before Christianity and from the Jewish scriptures that we now call the Old Testament. The accounts of these myths say nothing about historical reality, but they do say a lot about believers, how they believed, and how their beliefs spread. In the book The Jesus Puzzle, the biblical scholar, Earl Doherty, presents not only a challenge to the existence of an historical Jesus but reveals that early pre-Gospel Christian documents show that the concept of Jesus sprang from non-historical spiritual beliefs of a Christ derived from Jewish scripture and Hellenized myths of savior gods. Nowhere do any of the New Testament epistle writers describe a human Jesus, including Paul. None of the epistles mention a Jesus from Nazareth, an earthly teacher, or as a human miracle worker. Nowhere do we find these writers quoting Jesus. Nowhere do we find them describing any details of Jesus' life on earth or his followers. Nowhere do we find the epistle writers even using the word "disciple" (they of course use the term "apostle" but the word simply means messenger, as Paul saw himself). Except for two well known interpolations, Jesus always gets presented as a spiritual being that existed before all time with God, and that knowledge of Christ came directly from God or as a revelation from the word of scripture. Doherty writes, "Christian documents outside the Gospels, even at the end of the first century and beyond, show no evidence that any tradition about an earthly life and ministry of Jesus were in circulation." Furthermore, the epistle to the Hebrews (8:4), makes it explicitly clear that the epistle writer did not believe in a historical Jesus: "If He [Jesus] had been on earth, He would not be a priest." These early historical documents can prove nothing about an actual Jesus but they do show an evolution of belief derived from varied and diverse concepts of Christianity, starting from a purely spiritual form of Christ to a human figure who embodied that spirit, as portrayed in the Gospels. The New Testament stories appears as an eclectic hodgepodge of Jewish, Hellenized and pagan stories compiled by pietistic believers to appeal to an audience for their particular religious times. A NOTE ABOUT DATING: The A.D. (Anno Domini, or "year of our Lord" dating method derived from a monk named Dionysius Exiguus (Dennis the Little), in the sixth-century who used it in his Easter tables. Oddly, some people seem to think this has relevance to a historical Jesus. But of course it has nothing at all to do with it. In the time before and during the 6th century, people used various other dating methods. The Romans used A.You.C. (anno urbis conditae, "year of the founded city," that being Rome). The Jews had their own dating system. Not until the tenth century did most churches accept the new dating system. The A.D. system simply reset the time of January 1, 754 A.You.C. to January 1, of year one A.D., which Dionysius obliquly derived from the belief of the date of "incarnation" of Jesus . The date, if one uses the Bible as history, can't possibly hold true. * Instead of B.C. and A.D., I have used the convention of B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era) as often used in scholarly literature. They correspond to the same dates as B.C. and A.D., but without alluding to the birth or death of an alleged Christ. * Dionysius believed that the conception (incarnation) of Jesus occurred on March 25. This meant that the conception must have occurred nine months later on December 25, probably not coincidentally, the very same date that the Emperor Aurelian, in 274 C.E., declared December 25 a holiday in celebration of the birth of Mithras, the sun god. By 336 C.E., Christians replaced Mithras with Jesus' birth on the same date. Dionysius then declared the new year several days later on January 1, probably to coincide with the traditional Roman year starting on January 1st. Dionysius probably never read the gospel account of the birth of Jesus because the Matthew gospel says his birth occurred while Herod served as King. That meant that if he did exist, his birth would have to occur in 4 B.C.E. or earlier. He made another mistake by assigning the first year as 1 instead of 0 (everyone's birthday starts at year 0, not 1). The concept of zero (invented from Arabia and India) didn't come into Europe until about two hundred years later. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by Jen33(m): 5:49pm On Oct 06, 2007

The crescendo of silence is so strong as to shatter my eardrums.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by babs787(m): 5:56pm On Oct 06, 2007

@mdsocks @babs787 if they need more info on how the Bible(a story book) was collated they should visit http://www.witness-pioneer.org/vil/Books/MB_BQS/default.htm Salam brother, I have the book with me and could you believe that it was his research into the two religions that made him accept ISLAM. May Allah increases our knowledge. Maa Salam

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by KAG: 6:25pm On Oct 06, 2007

Jen33: The crescendo of silence is so strong as to shatter my eardrums. Could it be because most people don't have the patience for long, overdrawn copy/pastes? I mean, if it was an argument in your own words you might have a case, but as it is, I can understand the silence. Anyway, just some minor points I noticed while skimming that I would like to address (bear in mind I agree that tangible evidence for a Jesus as portrayed in the Bible is virtually non-existent): The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. I think Mr Walker has made an error. If I understand correctly, the term apostles, especially as applied to the Gospel writers, means someone that follows and believes in Jesus. Basically, a Christian, not as Mr. Walker imagines, someone that met and walked with a physical Jesus. Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Evidence? Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. Um, they - the writers - didn't bestow sainthood on themselves: the Church did.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by Jen33(m): 10:10am On Oct 07, 2007

KAG, sorry I don't buy your explanation for their silence. Unless the forumers here are barely literate, lazy dolts, your rationalisation for their silence makes no sense. And what does it matter in whose words they are written? I'm pretty sure if I'd pasted an article providing conclusive evidence of Jesus' existence, such considerations as you're suggesting would not come into play. Put simply, I reckon its the silence of surrender. Afterall, WHAT can they possibly argue against there? It's such a heavily researched article that you just have to read it and chill.  No point arguing. Like Fela would have said, the author really 'opened book' for them. The most they can do is to pick up little inconsequential things like you did. The central point  -total lack of evidence for Jesus' existence + the church's self-admitted history of lies and  myth peddling -  will remain unchallenged, because quite simply, it cannot be challenged. It cannot be challenged because it cannot be refuted. As for your other points, I consider them far too minor and pedantic to constitute any form of credible riposte to the article. I even sensed a slight embarassment on your part at the paucity of viable objections to the article, perhaps explaining your haste to include yourself among the skeptics.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by Jen33(m): 5:41pm On Oct 07, 2007

Um, they - the writers - didn't bestow sainthood on themselves: the Church did. I think the writer is stressing here the basic dishonesty of the church, by stressing that the insertion of ''St.'' in the some bibles constitutes an interpolation.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by ricadelide(m): 2:47am On Oct 08, 2007

Jen33: The crescendo of silence is so strong as to shatter my eardrums. i didn't reply you because i sincerely do not have the time nor the patience for overly long treatises; this is meant to be a discussion forum, not a copy/paste forum. i could easily have copy pasted a reply. How would that have advanced the discussion? Would the copy/pastes begin to argue for us? Or would the arguement had been won by the person with the longer copy/pastes? Anyways, i'd really go out of my way this time to reply you. Jen33: KAG, sorry I don't buy your explanation for their silence. Unless the forumers here are barely literate, lazy dolts, your rationalisation for their silence makes no sense. i'll take that as a complement; long i receieved such. Put simply, I reckon its the silence of surrender. Afterall, WHAT can they possibly argue against there? It's such a heavily researched article that you just have to read it and chill.  No point arguing. Like Fela would have said, the author really 'opened book' for them. The most they can do is to pick up little inconsequential things like you did. The central point  -total lack of evidence for Jesus' existence + the church's self-admitted history of lies and  myth peddling -  will remain unchallenged, because quite simply, it cannot be challenged. It cannot be challenged because it cannot be refuted. LOLZ @ the points in bold. You cannot challenge them because you swallowed his lies hook line and sinker. Those are not intelligent statements to make i'm sorry. Anything, can be argued against or refuted. By the time i'm done i'll wonder what anthem you'd sing then.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by ricadelide(m): 2:47am On Oct 08, 2007

Jen33: ricadelide, I think you need to read some home truths about the nature of your present beliefs: LOL . . . . "home truths"? Give me a break; more like home lies and illogical statements stemming from the author's own personal incredulity and good old absence of common sense. Did a historical Jesus exist? by Jim Walker Ok Mr Walker, let's Walk Amazingly, the question of an actual historical Jesus rarely confronts the religious believer. The power of faith has so forcefully driven the minds of most believers, and even apologetic scholars, that the question of reliable evidence gets obscured by tradition, religious subterfuge, and outrageous claims. The following gives a brief outlook about the claims of a historical Jesus and why the evidence the Christians present us cannot serve as justification for reliable evidence for a historical Jesus. I take it that secular historians that accept the vericity of a historical Jesus are also deluded like we are eh? The 'power of faith has (likewise) so driven the minds of most (secular historians)'. Pity. ALL CLAIMS OF JESUS DERIVE FROM HEARSAY ACCOUNTS No one has the slightest physical evidence to support a historical Jesus; no artifacts, dwelling, works of carpentry, or self-written manuscripts. All claims about Jesus derive from writings of other people. There occurs no contemporary Roman record that shows Pontius Pilate executing a man named Jesus. Obviously the introduction to this part of the writeup is so illogical; in his bid to bring a moot point of hearsay, the author begins to allude to lack of physical evidence and evidence by the romans and all sort (all of which can be disputed). Again, in order to bring in a point of hearsay. First, Mr Walker, how do they preclude from eyewitness accounts and neccessitate hearsay? Second, who said there isn't archaelogical evidence of Jesus; perhaps they should have preserved his carpentry works eh? That would have done it for you - 'Here lieth the door constructed by Jesus (who later claimed to be Christ) in Year 28AD'. How nice. Devastating to historians, there occurs not a single contemporary writing that mentions Jesus. Ok, Mr Walker, there is no contemporary ('contemporary' meaning during the short life of Jesus) account of the life of Jesus, how devastating. Jesus did most of the great things he did in the last 3 and half years of his life - what a long period for a contemporary writer eh? who is the wise contemporary writer that would not, in the light of the strange occurences in the life of the said Jesus, wait a few years to see what turns out ie the outcome, before putting pen to paper? Even if they waited 2 or 3 years (which is extremely short) Jesus would still have died by then. On the other hand, what is the purpose of a biblical documentation of the life of jesus when he had not died - considering the importance of his death? Except Mr Walker lives in space, are all contemporary (here meaning 'modern day') biographies written during the lifetime of the protagonist? All documents about Jesus got written well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources derive from hearsay accounts. FALSEHOOD Many of the accounts about the life of Jesus, both in the gospels and in the epistles are by eyewitnesses, not hearsay. And not just mere eyewitnesses, credible ones. They each write from their own perspective in detail and precision and do not collude nor contradict one another. If the traditional ascriptions of the authorship of the synoptics are correct; we can;t be 100% because the authors do not include their names in the text, then Matthew was an eyewitness, Luke and Mark were involved directly with eyewitnesses (see Luke 1;2), thus very credible third-parties - Luke's case is very clear (in the book of Acts). Mark was constantly with Paul and Barnabas (who also had been with Peter, James and John at various times). This very fundamental point undermines the whole of your argument becuase you keep repeating your unsubstantiated claims as your justification. Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge. Courts of law do not generally allow hearsay as testimony, and nor does honest modern scholarship. Hearsay provides no proof or good evidence, and therefore, we should dismiss it. that is very wrong. This is not hearsay. However, even for the sake of argument, if it were hearsay, third-parties can and do write accurate, historically verifiable documents if they do their research properly and consult relevant authorities on the subject matter. It is very obvious that the writers of the synoptic gospels had eyewitnesses that they consulted, and the writer of Luke clearly alludes to this in his introduction (see Luke 1;1-4). There's also a huge similarity between Mark and Matthew which, amongst many things, can suggest that they had good, reliable sources; some have even suggested that both Matthew and Luke consulted the book of Mark; although not proven, it is a workable theory for some. If you do not understand this, imagine yourself confronted with a charge for a crime which you know you did not commit. You feel confident that no one can prove guilt because you know that there exists no evidence whatsoever for the charge against you. Now imagine that you stand present in a court of law that allows hearsay as evidence. When the prosecution presents its case, everyone who takes the stand against you claims that you committed the crime, not as a witness themselves, but solely because other people said so. None of these other people, mind you, ever show up in court, nor can anyone find them. False analogy. David Herbert Donald is a biographer of Abraham Lincoln. DHD is still alive and didn't live at the time of Lincoln therefore his writing is hearsay. Conclusion: AL did not exist. QED Hearsay does not work as evidence because we have no way of knowing whether the person lies, or simply bases his or her information on wrongful belief or bias. We know from history about witchcraft trials and kangaroo courts that hearsay provides neither reliable nor fair statements of evidence. We know that mythology can arise out of no good information whatsoever. We live in a world where many people believe in demons, UFOs, ghosts, or monsters, and an innumerable number of fantasies believed as fact taken from nothing but belief and hearsay. It derives from these reasons why hearsay cannot serves as good evidence, and the same reasoning must go against the claims of a historical Jesus or any other historical person. Your logic is appalling. A lot of the things you roped together there have nothing in common, and are not entirely ruled out. Your personal incredulity does not constitute evidence nor proof. Authors of ancient history today, of course, can only write from indirect observation in a time far removed from their aim. But a valid historian's own writing gets cited with sources that trace to the subject themselves, or to eyewitnesses and artifacts. For example a historian today who writes about the life of George Washington, of course, can not serve as an eyewitness, but he can provide citations to documents which give personal or eyewitness accounts. None of the historians about Jesus give reliable sources to eyewitnesses, therefore all we have remains as hearsay. OK. Now the gospels don't have any citations, i'm waiting for more lies. A writer at any point in history can research about the life of any person and write about them, and merely not making a citation (which is not even the case here) does not mean the author's work is invalid. those historical writers must have been very ignorant. Again read Luke 1;1-3. The most "authoritative" accounts of a historical Jesus come from the four canonical Gospels of the Bible. Note that these Gospels did not come into the Bible as original and authoritative from the authors themselves, but rather from the influence of early church fathers, especially the most influential of them all: Irenaeus of Lyon who lived in the middle of the second century. Many heretical gospels existed by that time, but Irenaeus considered only some of them for mystical reasons. He claimed only four in number; according to Romer, "like the four zones of the world, the four winds, the four divisions of man's estate, and the four forms of the first living creatures-- the lion of Mark, the calf of Luke, the man of Matthew, the eagle of John (see Against the Heresies). The four gospels then became Church cannon for the orthodox faith. Most of the other claimed gospel writings were burned, destroyed, or lost." [Romer] The first statement in bold is ridiculous. Authors don't push for the inclusion of their works in the bible; its not politics. And i really wonder what point you intend to make there. The second in bold also is another empty assertion without proof. there probably were many writings that were around (can easily be inferred from Luke 1;1), but they were not included not necessarily because they were heretical but because they weren't considered to be inspired as scripture. Again, whether they chose 4 or 50 is inconsequential, it does not advance your argument in any way. Elaine Pagels writes: "Although the gospels of the New Testament-- like those discovered at Nag Hammadi-- are attributed to Jesus' followers, no one knows who actually wrote any of them." [Pagels, 1995] they were attributed to them as early as the late first century; while many of them were still alive or just died, could the people who ascribed it to them not have verified the authenticity of the claims and the person of the authors? How foolish do you really imagine those early scholars and christians to have been? Let's even assume they were entirely anonymous works, does that connote that they are fables? Not only do we not know who wrote them, consider that none of the Gospels existed during the alleged life of Jesus, nor do the unknown authors make the claim to have met an earthly Jesus. Add to this that none of the original gospel manuscripts exist; we only have copies of copies. Keep adding to your pack of lies. And stop repeating that illogical point in bold. John clearly claims to have met Jesus, and the synoptics could not have known certain things (eg the details in the mount of transfiguration) if they didn't have access to first-hand witnesses, even the so-called inner caucus (as mentioneded by Luke in 1;3), a point which i have clearly illustrated above. The consensus of many biblical historians put the dating of the earliest Gospel, that of Mark, at sometime after 70 C.E., and the last Gospel, John after 90 C.E. [Pagels, 1995; Helms]. This would make it some 40 years after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus that we have any Gospel writings that mention him! Elaine Pagels writes that "the first Christian gospel was probably written during the last year of the war, or the year it ended. Where it was written and by whom we do not know; the work is anonymous, although tradition attributes it to Mark, " [Pagels, 1995] the same scholars acknowledge the existence of a historical Jesus - what have you to say to that? In any case, there is no real evidence that they were written at the time alluded to them. if anything there is evidence that they were written before that time. For instance, the synoptics contain a prophecy about the temple; secular historians will not accept the possibility of that being a prophecy and since it was fulfilled to the letter, would like to place it after 70AD, that however poses a lot of problems; the turmoil around the time, the persecution etc. Most importantly, the authors should have mentioned it as a historical event if indeed they wrote it after 70AD (as is the case with other biblical prophecies that are fulfilled before the books were written). Likewise Luke did not mention the persecution by Nero, death of Paul, Peter etc all of which happened by the early 60s AD. So there. Thus the weight of evidence is for the traditionally accepted dates (by the early church) of 37-60AD (with John being written later), that is just a meagre 4-30 years after the life of Jesus during which time many of the folks that saw Jesus were still alive. Even if there were exaggerations, the could have been corrected in the writings of Peter et al and this was not the case. Myths do not spring up during the lifetime of the eyewitnesses. People develop myths about things that happen centuries before their time (or in the case of sci-fi for example, after their time) - there are no contemporary myths of this magnitude. The traditional Church has portrayed the authors as the apostles Mark, Luke, Matthew, & John, but scholars know from critical textural research that there simply occurs no evidence that the gospel authors could have served as the apostles described in the Gospel stories. Ok. the traditional church within 50 -100 years didn't know, and historians 2000 years later now "know from critical textural research" Give me a break. Perhaps we assume that those early church folks were fools and 'we' are the wise ones now eh? They don't 'know' that they didn't write them, they 'assert' that they didn't. there's a load of difference Yet even today, we hear priests and ministers describing these authors as the actual disciples of Christ. Many Bibles still continue to label the stories as "The Gospel according to St. Matthew," "St. Mark," "St. Luke," St. John." No apostle would have announced his own sainthood before the Church's establishment of sainthood. But one need not refer to scholars to determine the lack of evidence for authorship. As an experiment, imagine the Gospels without their titles. See if you can find out from the texts who wrote them; try to find their names. Maybe Mr Walker should go ahead and say that there are verses and chapters in the bible and since the authors didn't include them, they are all false. First, you don't know the meaning of the word disciple, neither do you know the meaning of the word saint. Perhaps when you do we can have a discussion Even if the texts supported the notion that the apostles wrote them, consider that the average life span of humans in the first century came to around 30, and very few people lived to 70. If the apostles births occured at about the same time as the alleged Jesus, and wrote their gospels in their old age, that would put Mark at least 70 years old, and John at over 110. pray where did the author get his 30 figure? from the life of Jesus ? First, there is no evidence to the statement in bold - if i may recall for example Luke mentioned Anna as being 84 years old (Luke 2;37) Second, let's even say there is evidence, averages are averages. I mean, consider this list; 0,2,4,6,8,10 average = 5 yet i don't have any number of the value '5' in my list. Go figure. Third, the time that the scriptures were written according to modern scholars is not proven. Scholars (if i may call them that) at the time of the early church, place the dates much earlier and you can't readily wash them aside. The gospel of Mark describes the first written Bible gospel. And although Mark appears deceptively after the Matthew gospel, the gospel of Mark got written at least a generation before Matthew. From its own words, we can deduce that the author of Mark had neither heard Jesus nor served as his personal follower. Whoever wrote the gospel, he simply accepted the mythology of Jesus without question and wrote a crude an ungrammatical account of the popular story at the time. Any careful reading of the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) will reveal that Mark served as the common element between Matthew and Luke and gave the main source for both of them. Of Mark's 666* verses, some 600 appear in Matthew, some 300 in Luke. According to Randel Helms, the author of Mark, stands at least at a third remove from Jesus and more likely at the fourth remove. [Helms] First in bold, not proven, just a theory. Traditionally, the first is ascribed to Mathew. Second in bold, evidence? Third, it seems Mr Walker does not know the difference between 'story' or 'oral testimony' and 'mythology' as he seems to substitute them at will. From there on you just have a whole load of empty bull. * Most Bibles show 678 verses for Mark, not 666, but many Biblical scholars think the last 12 verses came later from interpolation. The earliest manuscripts and other ancient sources do not have Mark 16: 9-20. Moreover the text style does not match and the transition between verse 8 and 9 appears awkward. Even some of today's Bibles such as the NIV exclude the last 12 verses. Ok, so now this is your evidence for it being a myth? The author of Matthew had obviously gotten his information from Mark's gospel and used them for his own needs. He fashioned his narrative to appeal to Jewish tradition and Scripture. He improved the grammar of Mark's Gospel, corrected what he felt theologically important, and heightened the miracles and magic. Empty assertion that doesn't add anything to further your argument. The author of Luke admits himself as an interpreter of earlier material and not an eyewitness (Luke 1:1-4). Many scholars think the author of Luke lived as a gentile, or at the very least, a hellenized Jew and even possibly a woman. He (or she) wrote at a time of tension in the Roman empire along with its fever of persecution. Many modern scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew and Luke got derived from the Mark gospel and a hypothetical document called "Q" (German Quelle, which means "source". [Helms; Wilson] . However, since we have no manuscript from Q, no one could possibly determine its author or where or how he got his information or the date of its authorship. Again we get faced with unreliable methodology and obscure sources. Here's the introduction to the book of Luke "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, 2 just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, 3 it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order, most excellent Theophilus; 4 so that you may know the exact truth about the things you have been taught." (Luke 1;1-3) Looking at the statements in bold, a lot of things can be inferred here; (1)there were many written accounts circulating at the time (probably lost due to aging and not being copied to a very high degree),  (2)those things they were referring to happened 'among them' even if they weren't eye-witnesses (just as i was not an eyewitness of the VT shootings, yet a contemporary) (3) there were oral testimony from those who witnessed those events first-hand (4)Luke's account is a product of thorough and carefull investigation of the facts (5)Luke had access to these eye-witnesses (6)the purpose of Luke was not to establish that Jesus existed (too simplistic, a non-issue), but to establish the truth (as distinguished from lies and exaggerations that circulated around) about those things (7)in the light of all these, it could not by any stretch of the mind have been a myth, neither does it claim to be one Furthermore, Luke is widely regarded as a thoroughly researched document written in the style of historical narratives at the time, with lots of detail and references to various events and locations at the time which have been confirmed by archealogy. The book can easily be placed within AD57 -63. Less than 30 years after the death of Jesus, during which time eyewitnesses AND apostles were still alive who could have served as sources and correct any mistakes about the account of Jesus' life if any. Get your facts straight. John, the last appearing Bible Gospel, presents us with long theological discourses from Jesus and could not possibly have come as literal words from a historical Jesus. The Gospel of John disagrees with events described in Mark, Matthew, and Luke. Moreover the unknown author(s) of this gospel wrote it in Greek near the end of the first century, and according to Bishop Shelby Spong, the book "carried within it a very obvious reference to the death of John Zebedee (John 21:23)." [Spong] In bold, evidence? Perhaps, you should have told us what the historical Jesus was likely to have said. Second in bold LOL, evidence? Am not surprised that your tune of 'hearsay' has suddenly stopped playing - probably because John claimed to be an eyewitness, no? Lastly, you saw 23, i'm guessing you didn't read it up to 24? Please understand that the stories themselves cannot serve as examples of eyewitness accounts since they came as products of the minds of the unknown authors, and not from the characters themselves. The Gospels describe narrative stories, written almost virtually in the third person. People who wish to portray themselves as eyewitnesses will write in the first person, not in the third person. Moreover, many of the passages attributed to Jesus could only have come from the invention of its authors. For example, many of the statements of Jesus claim to have come from him while allegedly alone. If so, who heard him? It becomes even more marked when the evangelists report about what Jesus thought. To whom did Jesus confide his thoughts? Clearly, the Gospels employ techniques that fictional writers use. In any case the Gospels can only serve, at best, as hearsay, and at worst, as fictional, mythological, or falsified stories. This is appalling. Now, narrative style is evidence against the existence of Jesus (i guess anything goes now eh?).Just an example, Luke wrote Luke in third person, and wrote Acts in mixture of first and third person. It's called narrative style. Luke was not present (like he said) in the events of Jesus, thus it would be foolish of him to write it in first person. He was present in Acts and wrote it in first person. Mr Walker, continuous repitions and assertions does not constitute proof or logic. The traditionally ascribed authors are known. And because some people do not accept them as the authors does not constitute evidence to the contrary. To show how blinded you are by your fanatical zeal, the second and third statements in bold does not make it obvious to you that they had to have been eyewitnesses or third-parties who had access to eyewitnesses? I mean, what kind of logic (or lack thereof) is this. OTHER NEW TESTAMENT WRITINGS Even in antiquity people like Origen and Eusebius raised doubts about the authenticity of other books in the New Testament such as Hebrews, James, John 2 & 3, Peter 2, Jude, and Revelation. Martin Luther rejected the Epistle of James calling it worthless and an "epistle of straw" and questioned Jude, Hebrews and the Apocalypse in Revelation. Nevertheless, all New Testament writings came well after the alleged death of Jesus from unknown authors (with the possible exception of Paul, although still after the alleged death). Lol . . . possible exception of Paul even though he wrote about 50% of the NT? Again, empty assertion; they were not from unknown authors. Epistles of Paul: Paul's biblical letters (epistles) serve as the oldest surviving Christian texts, written probably around 60 C.E. Most scholars have little reason to doubt that Paul wrote some of them himself. However, there occurs not a single instance in all of Paul's writings that he ever meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor does he give any reference to Jesus' life on earth. Therefore, all accounts about a Jesus could only have come from other believers or his imagination. Hearsay. Keep repeating your follies. "Evidence from other believers is not evidence." Give me a break. Just two points for space. Paul obviously claimed to have had a supernatural (albeit public) encounter with Jesus. This is recorded by Luke - a third party/contemporary with access to eyewitnesses. In Paul's own writings he claimed severally to have met the Lord (notably 1Cor 9;1) and, noteworthy, he mentions a public quote from the Lord which is not recorded in the gospels, and with the way thay verse is written, we can infer that he (and probably the whole of the early church) was very aware of Jesus, his actions, and his teachings/sayings. (see Acts 20;35 compare Acts 1;1b). Paul's conversion was as early as AD34 -37 and his writings as early as AD55. In your mind, that's a very good amount of time for him to have gulped the fables eh? The creed that Paul records in 1Cor 15;3-4 shows that he clearly considers Jesus life, death and ressurection a historically verifiable event. Paul's scholarship, his zeal, his integrity, his persecution and eventual killing are also without any question by any sane historical scholar. You have absolutely NO case here whatsoever. Epistle of James: Although the epistle identifies a James as the letter writer, but which James? Many claim him as the gospel disciple but the gospels mention several different James. Which one? Or maybe this James has nothing to do with any of the gospel James. Perhaps this writer comes from any one of innumerable James outside the gospels. James served as a common name in the first centuries and we simply have no way to tell who this James refers to. More to the point, the Epistle of James mentions Jesus only once as an introduction to his belief. Nowhere does the epistle reference a historical Jesus and this alone eliminates it from an historical account. [1] Of course you have no choice but to deny this one; for mythological figures do not have brothers. This was written by James the half-brother of the non-existent (you wish!!) Jesus (Gal 1;19) and yes, Paul wrote that. He also wrote 1Cor 15:7, where he(James) saw the ressurected Lord. It is not hearsay; but first-hand. Furthermore, this James did not believe in his brother as the Saviour (normal eh? i wouldn't have either) until probably after the ressurection (when he appeared to him). See John 7;5. Epistles of John: The epistles of John, the Gospel of John, and Revelation appear so different in style and content that they could hardly have the same author. Some suggest that these writings of John come from the work of a group of scholars in Asia Minor who followed a "John" or they came from the work of church fathers who aimed to further the interests of the Church. Or they could have simply come from people also named John (a very common name). No one knows. Also note that nowhere in the body of the three epistles of "John" does it mention a John. In any case, the epistles of John say nothing about seeing an earthly Jesus. Not only do we not know who wrote these epistles, they can only serve as hearsay accounts. [2] Educate yourself and reject lies. John was well-known to the early church to the point that he was even referred to as 'the elder'. He was one of the three "special" apostles of the Lord, and his style is different from other books because of the amount of intimacy he had with the Lord (see John 21;20,23-24). John clearly claims to have seen, touched etc the historical Jesus. "What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life— and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us— what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ" (1John 1;1-3). Myths or imaginations aren't touched nor felt. Jesus was touched AND felt. Epistles of Peter: Many scholars question the authorship of Peter of the epistles. Even within the first epistle, it says in 5:12 that Silvanus wrote it. Most scholars consider the second epistle as unreliable or an outright forgery (for some examples, see the introduction to 2 Peter in the full edition of The New Jerusalem Bible, 1985, and [3]). In short, no one has any way of determining whether the epistles of Peter come from fraud, an unknown author also named Peter (a common name) or from someone trying to further the aims of the Church. I'm tired. The statement in bold shows that Mr Walker does not even know what a stenographer is. It's not my responsibility to educate you. Peter dictated to Silas aka Silvanus who wrote the epistle as clearly stated in 1;1. I know that since Peter made the statement in 2Peter1;16, you would have to resort to claiming that it is a fraud. How sad. 2Peter 3;1 however clearly points to the contrary. Here's the statement; 2Peter1;16 "For we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty." Here it is fairly obvious that the writer was not even concerned about the historicity of Jesus, because as at the mid-first century when this was written that was not even an issue; what was paramount to the apostle was his Majesy and His Power especially as demonstrated on the mount (see verses 17-18) and that was why he restated the fact that they witnessed it with their very own eyes. Of the remaining books and letters in the Bible, there occurs no other stretched claims or eyewitness accounts for a historical Jesus and needs no mention of them here for this deliberation. As for the existence of original New Testament documents, none exist. No book of the New Testament survives in the original autograph copy. What we have then come from copies, and copies of copies, of questionalbe originals (if the stories came piecemeal over time, as it appears it has, then there may never have existed an original). The earliest copies we have got written more than a century later than the autographs, and these exist on fragments of papyrus. [Pritchard; Graham] According to Hugh Schonfield, "It would be impossible to find any manuscript of the New Testament older than the late third century, and we actually have copies from the fourth and fifth. [Schonfield] Of course it is true that we don't have the autographa - perhaps you could have helped with their preservation for around 2000 years on parchment. As to your second statement in bold, don't stretch it. The manuscript evidence for the bible is overwhelming and no other books from antiquity even comes close. Contrary to the lies above, the earliest copies are as early as the early to mid 2nd century - that just a few decades from the autographa. No other ancient work has such a short timespan between the autograph and available manuscripts. From the abundance of the biblical manuscripts, the exact contents of the original documents can be determined, simply by cross-checking the thousands of manuscripts - because they contain very minor errors like the ommission of a letter etc. There are over 5000 different kinds of manuscripts available, the only document that comes close is a very distant 650 (Homer's Iliad). ***Had to split it into two because of the exceeding great length (lol). The second half of Mr Walker's is mainly bull and reptition though. Sorry***

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by ricadelide(m): 2:53am On Oct 08, 2007

LYING FOR THE CHURCH The editing and formation of the Bible came from members of the early Christian Church. Since the fathers of the Church possessed the texts and determined what would appear in the Bible, there occurred plenty of opportunity and motive to change, modify, or create texts that might bolster the position of the Church or the members of the Church themselves. Evidence? Adding verses or titles to the synoptic gospels does not constitute modifying text. Furthermore, the biblical canon isn't 'determined', it is 'discovered' based on certain principles Take, for example, Eusebius who served as an ecclesiastical church historian and bishop. He had great influence in the early Church and he openly advocated the use of fraud and deception in furthering the interests of the Church [Remsberg]. The first mention of Jesus by Josephus came from Eusebius (none of the earlier church fathers mention Josephus' Jesus). It comes to no surprise why many scholars think that Eusebius interpolated his writings. In his Ecclesiastical History, he writes, "We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity." (Vol. 8, chapter 2). In his Praeparatio Evangelica, he includes a chapter titled, "How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived" (book 12, chapter 32). The Church had such power over people, that to question the Church could result in death. Regardless of what the Church claimed, people had to take it as "truth." St. Ignatius Loyola of the 16th century even wrote: "We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides." The orthodox Church also fought against competing Christian cults. Irenaeus, who determined the inclusion of the four (now canonical) gospels, wrote his infamous book, "Against the Heresies." According to Romer, "Irenaeus' great book not only became the yardstick of major heresies and their refutations, the starting-point of later inquisitions, but simply by saying what Christianity was not it also, in a curious inverted way, became a definition of the orthodox faith." [Romer] The early Church burned many heretics, along with their sacred texts. If a Jesus did exist, perhaps eyewitness writings got burnt along with them because of their heretical nature. We will never know. In attempting to salvage the Bible the respected revisionist and scholar, Bruce Metzger has written extensively on the problems of the New Testament. In his book, "The Text of the New Testament-- Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration, Metzger addresses: Errors arising from faulty eyesight; Errors arising from faulty hearing; Errors of the mind; Errors of judgement; Clearing up historical and geographical difficulties; and Alterations made because of doctrinal considerations. [Metzger] With such intransigence from the Church and the admitting to lying for its cause, the burning of heretical texts, Bible errors and alterations, how could any honest scholar take any book from the New Testament as absolute, much less using extraneous texts that support a Church's intolerant and biased position, as reliable evidence? This is ridiculous. The institutionalized church did not come into existence until much later after many of the books had been written and accepted as the writings of the apostles and disciples. The collected writings of Paul were circulating in their current from as early as the late 1st century. Likewise by mid second century the 4 gospels were already accepted as inspired by the time of the earlier-mentioned Iraneus. At that time the church had no political power whatsoever. The early church was persecuted and killed. If anything, the catholic church made the scriptures inaccessible to the general public, wanting to keep the people in the dark, hence the abundance of heretic and unbiblical practices in the institutionalized RCC. It seems there is no end to the lies you'd bring up to justify your errant position. Your point is moot. GNOSTIC GOSPELS <snip> this does not advance your case in any way so i'll pass. NON-CHRISTIAN SOURCES Virtually all other claims of Jesus come from sources outside of Christian writings. Devastating to the claims of Christians, however, comes from the fact that all of these accounts come from authors who lived after the alleged life of Jesus. Since they did not live during the time of the hypothetical Jesus, none of their accounts serve as eyewitness evidence. Josephus Flavius, the Jewish historian, lived as the earliest non-Christian who mentions a Jesus. Although many scholars think that Josephus' short accounts of Jesus (in Antiquities) came from interpolations perpetrated by a later Church father (most likely, Eusebius), Josephus' birth in 37 C.E., well after the alleged crucifixion of Jesus, puts him out of range of an eyewitness account. Moreover, he wrote Antiquities in 93 C.E., after the first gospels got written! Therefore, even if his accounts about Jesus came from his hand, his information could only serve as hearsay. Pliny the Younger, a Roman official, got born in 62 C.E. His letter about the Christians only shows that he got his information from Christian believers themselves. Regardless, his birth date puts him out of the range of eyewitness accounts. Tacitus, the Roman historian's birth year at 64 C.E., puts him well after the alleged life of Jesus. He gives a brief mention of a "Christus" in his Annals (Book XV, Sec. 44), which he wrote around 109 C.E. He gives no source for his material. Although many have disputed the authenticity of Tacitus' mention of Jesus, the very fact that his birth happened after the alleged Jesus and wrote the Annals during the formation of Christianity, shows that his writing can only provide us with hearsay accounts. Suetonius, a Roman historian, born in 69 C.E. mentions a "Chrestus," a common name. Apologists assume that "Chrestus" means "Christ" (a disputable claim). But even if Seutonius had meant "Christ," it still says nothing about an earthly Jesus. Just like all the others, Suetonius' birth occurred well after the purported Jesus. Again, only hearsay. Talmud: Amazingly some Christians use brief portions of the Talmud, (a collection of Jewish civil a religious law, including commentaries on the Torah), as evidence for Jesus. They claim that Yeshu (a common name in Jewish literature) in the Talmud refers to Jesus. However, this Jesus, according to Gerald Massey actually depicts a disciple of Jehoshua Ben-Perachia at least a century before the alleged Christian Jesus. [Massey] Regardless of how one interprets this, the Palestinian Talmud got written between the 3rd and 5th century C.E., and the Babylonian Talmud between the 3rd and 6th century C.E., at least two centuries after the alleged crucifixion! At best it can only serve as a controversial Christian and pagan legend; it cannot possibly serve as evidence for a historical Jesus. The above sources get quoted the most as "evidence" for Jesus by Christians. All other sources (Christian and non-Christian), some of which include: Mara Bar-Serapion (cira 73 C.E.), Ignatius (50 - 98? C.E.), Polycarp (69 - 155 C.E.), Clement of Rome (? - cira 160 C.E.), Justin Martyr (100 - 165 C.E.), Lucian (circa 125 - 180 C.E.), Tertullian (160 - ? C.E.), Clement of Alexandria (? - 215 C.E.), Origen (185 - 232 C.E.), Hippolytus (? - 236 C.E.), and Cyprian (? - 254 C.E.). All these people got born well after the alleged death of Jesus. Not one of them provides an eyewitness account, all of them simply spout hearsay. As you can see, apologist Christians embarrass themselves when they unwittingly or deceptively violate the rules of historiography by using after-the-event writings as evidence for the event itself. Not one of these writers gives a source or backs up his claims with evidential material about Jesus. Although we can provide numerous reasons why the Christian and non-Christian sources prove spurious, and argue endlessly about them, we can cut to the chase by simply looking at the dates of the documents and the birth dates of the authors. It doesn't matter what these people wrote about Jesus, an author who writes after the alleged happening and gives no detectable sources for his material can only give example of hearsay. All of these anachronistic writings about Jesus could easily have come from the beliefs and stories from Christian believers themselves. And as we know from myth, superstition, and faith, beliefs do not require facts or evidence for their propagation and circulation. Thus we have only beliefs about Jesus' existence, and nothing more. First, if there were writings around the time of Jesus, they probably would have been lost if they were not copied and widely circulated, so the fact that we don't have documents now does not necessarily mean they may not have existed. Second, the statement in bold is so foolish, perhaps they should have used before-the-event writings eh? Just like science fiction of time travel constitutes evidence of the existence of time machines? You have not disputed the evidence of secular writers, if anything, studying them clearly shows that the corroborate the details, descriptions and documentation found in scripture. Evidence from secular historians at the time is very clear (there are at least 45 ancient references that are authoritative) and that is why skeptics do not even argue against the historicity of Jesus. (Except of course, conspiracy theorists like your hero, Walker) FAKES, FRAUDS, AND FICTIONS Because the religious mind relies on belief and faith, the religious person can inherit a dependence on any information that supports a belief and that includes fraudulent stories, rumors, unreliable data, and fictions, without the need to check sources, or to investigate the reliability of the information. Although hundreds of fraudulent claims exist for the artifacts of Jesus, I will present only three examples which seem to have a life of their own and have spread through the religious community and especially on internet discussion groups. <snip> Hmmn . . . . . enlighten us on the religious mind. Considering the argument thus far and your so-called evidence i wonder who has the deluded mind. Outright rejection of clear and authoritative evidence thus not help you keep your sanity; it makes it wanting. Again, the secular historians that have accepted the historicity of Jesus must be relying on belief and faith. WHAT ABOUT WRITINGS DURING THE LIFE OF JESUS? What appears most revealing of all, comes not from what got later written about Jesus but what people did not write about him. Consider that not a single historian, philosopher, scribe or follower who lived before or during the alleged time of Jesus ever mentions him! If, indeed, the Gospels portray a historical look at the life of Jesus, then the one feature that stands out prominently within the stories shows that people claimed to know Jesus far and wide, not only by a great multitude of followers but by the great priests, the Roman governor Pilate, and Herod who claims that he had heard "of the fame of Jesus" (Matt 14:1)". One need only read Matt: 4:25 where it claims that "there followed him [Jesus] great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jersulaem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordon." The gospels mention, countless times, the great multitude that followed Jesus and crowds of people who congregated to hear him. So crowded had some of these gatherings grown, that Luke 12:1 alleges that an "innumberable multitude of people, trode one upon another." Luke 5:15 says that there grew "a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear, " The persecution of Jesus in Jerusalem drew so much attention that all the chief priests and scribes, including the high priest Caiaphas, not only knew about him but helped in his alleged crucifixion. (see Matt 21:15-23, 26:3, Luke 19:47, 23:13). The multitude of people thought of Jesus, not only as a teacher and a miracle healer, but a prophet (see Matt:14:5). So here we have the gospels portraying Jesus as famous far and wide, a prophet and healer, with great multitudes of people who knew about him, including the greatest Jewish high priests and the Roman authorities of the area, and not one person records his existence during his lifetime? If the poor, the rich, the rulers, the highest priests, and the scribes knew about Jesus, who would not have heard of him? Ok. Now i'm gettin tired. How many times do you need to recycle this same thrashed point? How long was this so-called lifetime? Anyways this point is already addressed above. Then we have a particular astronomical event that would have attracted the attention of anyone interested in the "heavens." According to Luke 23:44-45, there occurred "about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour, and the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was rent in the midst." Yet not a single mention of such a three hour ecliptic event got recorded by anyone, including the astronomers and astrologers, anywhere in the world, including Pliny the Elder and Seneca who both recorded eclipses from other dates. Note also that, for obvious reasons, eclipses can't occur during a full moon (passovers always occur during full moons), Nor does a single contemporary person write about the earthquake described in Matthew 27:51-54 where the earth shook, rocks ripped apart (rent), and graves opened. Matthew 2 describes Herod and all of Jerusalem as troubled by the worship of the infant Jesus. Herod then had all of the children of Bethlehem slain. If such extraordinary infanticides of this magnitude had occurred, why didn't anyone write about it? Some apologists attempt to dig themselves out of this problem by claiming that there lived no capable historians during that period, or due to the lack of education of the people with a writing capacity, or even sillier, the scarcity of paper gave reason why no one recorded their "savior." But the area in and surrounding Jerusalem served, in fact, as the center of education and record keeping for the Jewish people. The Romans, of course, also kept many records. Moreover, the gospels mention scribes many times, not only as followers of Jesus but the scribes connected with the high priests. And as for historians, there lived plenty at the time who had the capacity and capability to record, not only insignificant gossip, but significant events, especially from a religious sect who drew so much popular attention through an allegedly famous and infamous Jesus. Take, for example, the works of Philo Judaeus who's birth occurred in 20 B.C.E. and died 50 C.E. He lived as the greatest Jewish-Hellenistic philosopher and historian of the time and lived in the area of Jerusalem during the alleged life of Jesus. He wrote detailed accounts of the Jewish events that occurred in the surrounding area. Yet not once, in all of his volumes of writings, do we read a single account of a Jesus "the Christ." Nor do we find any mention of Jesus in Seneca's (4? B.C.E. - 65 C.E.) writings, nor from the historian Pliny the Elder (23? - 79 C.E.). If, indeed, such a well known Jesus existed, as the gospels allege, does any reader here think it reasonable that, at the very least, the fame of Jesus would not have reached the ears of one of these men? Amazingly, we have not one Jewish, Greek, or Roman writer, even those who lived in the Middle East, much less anywhere else on the earth, who ever mention him during his supposed life time. This appears quite extraordinary, and you will find few Christian apologists who dare mention this embarrassing fact. To illustrate this extraordinary absence of Jesus Christ literature, just imagine going through nineteenth century literature looking for an Abraham Lincoln but unable to find a single mention of him in any writing on earth until the 20th century. Yet straight-faced Christian apologists and historians want you to buy a factual Jesus out of a dearth void of evidence, and rely on nothing but hearsay written well after his purported life. Considering that most Christians believe that Jesus lived as God on earth, the Almighty gives an embarrassing example for explaining his existence. You'd think a Creator might at least have the ability to bark up some good solid evidence. Again, the same old thrashed points. The statement in bold is one of your many lies. Here's a quote; "Circa AD 52, Thallus wrote a history of the Eastern Mediterranean world from the Trojan War to his own time. This work itself has been lost and only fragments of it exist in the citations of others. One such scholar who knew and spoke of it was Julius Africanus, who wrote about AD 221, In speaking of Jesus' crucifixion and the darkness that covered the land during this event, Africanus found a reference in the writings of Thallus that dealt with this cosmic report. Africanus asserts:  'On the whole world there pressed a most fearful darkness; and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, and many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down. This darkness Thallus, in the third book of his History, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.'' Source - Josh McDowell 'A Ready Defense' That the historical writings about Jesus were written after his death does not prove that he did not exist. We're not talking 100 years here, we're talking 10-30 years. In many cases the authors still remembered verbatim his statements (see John). Give me a break. Do myths develop within 20 years? HISTORICAL SCHOLARS Many problems occur with the reliability of the accounts from ancient historians. Most of them did not provide sources for their claims, as they rarely included bibliographic listings, or supporting claims. They did not have access to modern scholarly techniques, and many times would include hearsay as evidence. No one today would take a modern scholar seriously who used the standards of ancient historians, yet this proves as the only kind of source that Christology comes from. Couple this with the fact that many historians believed as Christians themselves, sometimes members of the Church, and you have a built-in prejudice towards supporting a "real" Jesus. In modern scholarship, even the best historians and Christian apologists play the historian game. They can only use what documents they have available to them. If they only have hearsay accounts then they have to play the cards that history deals them. Many historians feel compelled to use interpolation or guesses from hearsay, and yet this very dubious information sometimes ends up in encyclopedias and history books as fact. In other words, Biblical scholarship gets forced into a lower standard by the very sources they examine. A renowned Biblical scholor illustrated this clearly in an interview when asked about Biblical interpretation. David Noel Freeman (the General editor of the Anchor Bible Series and many other works) responed with: "We have to accept somewhat looser standards. In the legal profession, to convict the defendant of a crime, you need proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil cases, a preponderance of the evidence is sufficient. When dealing with the Bible or any ancient source, we have to loosen up a little; otherwise, we can't really say anything." -David Noel Freedman (in Bible Review magazine, Dec. 1993, p.34) The implications appear obvious. If one wishes to believe in a historical Jesus, he or she must accept this based on loose standards. Couple this with the fact that all of the claims come from hearsay, and we have a foundation made of sand, and a castle of information built of cards. Keep repeating your empty lies. I asked your protege a question, now let me ask you; the common concensus among historical scholars is that the historical Jesus existed; can you give me any sane reason we should believe you over them? Are you privy to facts they're not aware of? CITING GEOGRAPHY, AND KNOWN HISTORICAL FIGURES AS "EVIDENCE" Although the New Testament mentions various cities, geological sites, kings and people that existed or lived during the alleged life of Jesus, these descriptions cannot serve as evidence for the existence of Jesus anymore than works of fiction that include recognizable locations, and make mention of actual people. Homer's Odyssey, for example, describes the travels of Odysseus throughout the Greek islands. The epic describes, in detail, many locations that existed in history. But should we take Odysseus, the Greek gods and goddesses, one-eyed giants and monsters as literal fact simply because the story depicts geographic locations accurately? Of course not. Mythical stories, fictions, and narratives almost always use familiar landmarks as placements for their stories. The authors of the Greek tragedies not only put their stories in plausible settings as happening in the real world but their supernatural characters took on the desires, flaws and failures of mortal human beings. Consider that fictions such as King Kong, Superman, and Star Trek include recognizable cities, planets, and landmarks, with their protagonists and antagonists miming human emotions. Likewise, just because the Gospels mention cities and locations in Judea, and known historical people, with Jesus behaving like an actual human being (with the added dimension of supernatural curses, miracles, etc.) but this says nothing about the actuality of the characters portrayed in the stories. However, when a story uses impossible historical locations, or geographical errors, we may question the authority of the claims. For example, in Matt 4:8, the author describes the devil taking Jesus into an exceedingly high mountain to show him all the kingdoms of the world. Since there exists no spot on the spheroid earth to view "all the kingdoms," we know that the Bible errs here. John 12:21 says, "The same came therefore to Philip, which was of Bethsaida of Galilee. . . ." Bethsaida resided in Gaulonitis (Golan region), east of the Jordan river, not Galilee, which resided west of the river. John 3:23 says, "John also was baptizing in Aenon near Salim. . . ." Critics agree that no such place as Aenon exists near Salim. There occurs not a shred of evidence for a city named Nazareth at the time of the alleged Jesus. [Leedom; Gauvin] Nazareth does not appear in the Old Testament, nor does it appear in the volumes of Josephus's writings (even though he provides a detailed list of the cities of Galilee). Oddly, none of the New Testament epistle writers ever mentions Nazareth or a Jesus of Nazareth even though most of the epistles got written before the gospels. In fact no one mentions Nazareth until the Gospels, where the first one didn't come into existence until about 40 years after the hypothetical death of Jesus. Apologists attempt to dismiss this by claiming that Nazareth existed as an insignificant and easily missed village (how would they know?), thus no one recorded it. However, whenever the Gospels speak of Nazareth, they always refer to it as a city, never a village, and a historian of that period would surely have noticed a city. (Note the New Testament uses the terms village, town, and city.) Nor can apologists fall on archeological evidence of preexisting artifacts for the simple reason that many cities get built on ancient sites. If a city named Nazareth existed during the 1st century, then we need at least one contemporary piece of evidence for the name, otherwise we cannot refer to it as historical. Many more errors and unsupported geographical locations appear in the New Testament. And although one cannot use these as evidence against a historical Jesus, we can certainly question the reliability of the texts. If the scriptures make so many factual errors about geology, science, and contain so many contradictions, falsehoods could occur any in area. If we have a coupling with historical people and locations, then we should also have some historical reference of a Jesus to these locations and people. But just the opposite proves the case. The Bible depicts Herod, the Ruler of Jewish Palestine under Rome as sending out men to search and kill the infant Jesus, yet nothing in history supports such a story. Pontius Pilate supposedly performed as judge in the trial and execution of Jesus, yet no Roman record mentions such a trial. The gospels portray a multitude of believers throughout the land spreading tales of a teacher, prophet, and healer, yet nobody in Jesus' life time or several decades after, ever records such a human figure. The lack of a historical Jesus in the known historical record speaks for itself. Frankly, as every neutral observer can empathize, i'm knackered. Suffice it to say that the archeaological evidence for a historical Jesus is staggering. You have no point in choosing to reject the evidence by citing a false analogy. The authors never mentioned fictitous locations or impossible figures. All the so-called cases you mentioned can be disputed. If your underlying point that geographical locations and historical figures do not constitute evidence made sense, then there would be no ancient historical narratives, because they all make allusions to geography and known historical figures and events. And in case you didn't realize, the authors of the gospels weren't citing those as their evidence; they just wrote them as casually as any/every historical writer would. Scholars can evaulate such and see if it were plausible for those events to have occured around those figures and/or locations. However, considering that many changes have taken place within 2000 years, they (scholars) cannot come to a negative conclusion even if evidence for certain sites mentioned aren't immediately found. If anything, they'd need to keep looking. That said however, scholars can readily allude to loads of archeological evidence and are in consensus as to those claims. COMPARING JESUS TO OTHER HISTORICAL FIGURES Many Christian apologists attempt to extricate themselves from their lack of evidence by claiming that if we cannot rely on the post chronicle exegesis of Jesus, then we cannot establish a historical foundation for other figures such as Alexander the Great, Augustus Caesar, Napoleon, etc. However, there sits a vast difference between historical figures and Jesus. There occurs either artifacts, writings, or eyewitness accounts for historical people, whereas, for Jesus we have nothing. Alexander, for example, left a wake of destroyed and created cities behind. We have buildings, libraries and cities, such as Alexandria, left in his name. We have treaties, and even a letter from Alexander to the people of Chios, engraved in stone, dated at 332 B.C.E. For Agustus Caesar, we have the Res gestae divi augusti, the emperor's own account of his works and deeds, a letter to his son (Epistula ad Gaium filium), Virgil's eyewitness accounts, and much more. Napoleon left behind artifacts, eyewitness accounts and letters. We can establish some historicity to these people because we have evidence that occurred during their life times. Yet even with contemporary evidence, historians have become wary of after-the-fact stories of many of these historical people. For example, some of the stories of Alexander's conquests, or Nero starting the fire in Rome always get questioned or doubted because they contain inconsistencies or come from authors who wrote years after the alleged facts. In qualifying the history of Alexander, Pierre Briant writes, "Although more than twenty of his contemporaries chronicled Alexander's life and campaigns, none of these texts survive in original form. Many letters and speeches attributed to Alexander are ancient forgeries or reconstructions inspired by imagination or political motives. The little solid documentation we possess from Alexander's own time is mainly to be found in stone inscriptions from the Greek cities of Europe and Asia." [Briant] Inventing histories out of whole cloth or embellished from a seed of an actual historical event appears common throughout the chronicle of human thought. Robert Price observes, "Alexander the Great, Caesar Augustus, Cyrus, King Arthur, and others have nearly suffered this fate. What keeps historians from dismissing them as mere myths, like Paul Bunyan, is that there is some residue. We know at least a bit of mundane information about them, perhaps quite a bit, that does not form part of any legend cycle." [Price, pp. 260-261] Interestingly, almost all important historical people have descriptions of what they looked like. We have the image of Augustus Caesar cast on denarius coins, busts of Greek and Roman aristocrats, artwork of Napoleon, etc. We have descriptions of facial qualities, height, weight, hair length & color, age and even portraits of most important historical figures. But for Jesus, we have nothing. Nowhere in the Bible do we have a description of the human shape of Jesus. How can we rely on the Gospels as the word of Jesus when no one even describes what he looked like? How odd that none of the disciple characters record what he looked like, yet believers attribute them to know exactly what he said. Indeed, this gives us a clue that Jesus came to the gospel writers and indirect and through myth. Not until hundreds of years after the alleged Jesus did pictures emerge as to what he looked like from cult Christians, and these widely differed from a blond clean shaven, curly haired Apollonian youth (found in the Roman catacombs) to a long-bearded Italian as depicted to this day. This mimics the pattern of Greek mythological figures as their believers constructed various images of what their gods looked like according to their own cultural image. Historial people leave us with contemporary evidence, but for Jesus we have nothing. If we wanted to present a fair comparison of the type of information about Jesus to another example of equal historical value, we could do no better than to compare Jesus with the mythical figure of Hercules. Let's compare Plato to mythological Prometheus; hmmn . . . they were both intelligent. Also their names both start with letter 'P'. Therefore, Plato did not exist. IF JESUS, THEN WHY NOT HERCULES? <snip> That question should be directed at you. Probably because one was real and the other not, no? THEN WHY THE MYTH OF JESUS? <snip> After you answer that, then, why the folly of Mr Walker? A NOTE ABOUT DATING: <snip> I'd be surprised if you hadn't tried to lie to us here yet again. Historians didn't name A.D. after myths. This is a very embarrassing attempt at research and scholarliness. It takes more faith (and loads of absense of logic and counter-logic) to accept Mr Walker's claims than to accept the historical consensus among noteworthy scholars (both religious and secular) as regards the historicity of Jesus. Mr Walker needs to get his head and his facts straightened (and so must his followers). Cheers.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by ricadelide(m): 3:08am On Oct 08, 2007

Mr Jen33, Even I, who amn't a flunky of walker, could have easily summarized Mr Walker's arguments into a few points which can easily be addressed rather than copy/pasting almost a whole website. Here are his points: Hearsay - thrashed. The bible cannot be trusted - thrashed there is no contempary (during the life of Jesus) account of him - thrashed Jesus is a myth - thrashed etc etc - irrelevant There's no pont in copying the whole christianity section of stupidreligion.com (or wherever you got it) in order to put me off into not replying and then start dancing around that i don't have a case and that i have 'surrendered'. Indeed! Some of us are more busy than that. If i littered this thread with overly long posts like you did, what would be acheived? I did not in all my post exhaust the amount of evidence that can be provided for the historicity of Jesus but only confined myself to refuting Walker's arguement, as the burden of proof is on him. I had asked you a very simple question and you have not answered it. It is one thing to deny the bible's claims about the divinity of Jesus, its another thing entirely to deny the historicity of Jesus as a living person. The majority of sane (i had to include this adjective for the sake of conspirators like the one you run to) historical scholars (including secular historians) are in agreement as to the historicity of Jesus; why do we have to beleive you over them? For the sake of your personal incredulity? If you can answer that, then this discussion might continue. If you can also succintly refute my discussion on Walker's rambling, then the discussion might continue. If you resort to another long-drawn copy/paste then you won't see me here. You can then conclude that since the christians on nairaland forum did not reply you, then the historical Jesus could not have existed. That would make for a very sound arguement. Cheers .

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by Jen33(m): 5:59pm On Oct 08, 2007

ricadelide, your defensive, confrontational posture throughout your response is instructive. I wonder why you sound so upset. As for your 'trashing' of the article, dream on! You think you can obfuscate issues by blowing all hot, bluffing and blustering your way through, and dismissing this as ''appallng'', and that as ''ridiculous''? And what's this stuff about ''credible scholars believe in the historicity of Jesus. Why should we believe you over them?'' That sounds suspiciously like blackmail by force of majority. The majority see it this way so it must be right. The thing about such an argument is that, it was no doubt used by the defenders of a variety of ancient gods and beliefs to advance their causes. Think of Egypt back in the day - ''All scholars agree on the existence of Osiris, who are YOU to dispute it?'' Or more recently ''All scholars agree the earth is flat. Who are YOU to say it's round? Why should we believe YOU over all these esteemed scholars?'' See how SILLY and desperate you sound? Or are you taking a cue from another holy falsifier - "It is usual for the sacred historian to conform himself to the generally accepted opinion of the masses in his time.' – St Jerome (P.L., XXVI, 98; XXIV, 855). It may be ''usual'' St Jerome, but is it right? Is it moral? Is it godly? I'll get back to some of the stuff you've written up there, but really all you've done is skirted round the issue. What we need is PROOF that Jesus lived, and you've simply not furnished ANY proof. Where is the archaeologcal proof you claim exists?? It is known to all that the gospels were written WELL AFTER the alleged life of Jesus. 40 years at the earliest. Not 3 or 10 years after like you've falsely claimed. You base those figures on what 'church fathers' think. But we know, from history - and from their own admission - that 'church fathers' would think and do just about anything to further their aims, including mass murder and bare faced falsehood peddling. We need INDEPENDENT verification, and the INDEPENDENT verification places the earliest written text about a 'Jesus Christ' at no less than 40 years after he supposedly returned to heaven in the clouds. No writings contemporary to Jesus in other words, written during or shortly after his alleged life exist or have ever been known to exist. The works of hundreds of scholars of the period remain with us today, Seneca etc, you name them. NOT ONE mentions Jesus, despite the fact that they recorded a whole lot of comparatively inconsequential occurences, Those of us with brains still intact know that it is not possible for such a momentous individual to live, draw crowds of thousands, attract the ire of priests, scribes, and authorities, a man who caused an infanticide as a toddler, and yet not have anyone write about him for decades after his ''ascension into heaven''. Incredibly,  you claim no one contemporary to Jesus wrote about him because ''he only lived the last three years of his life in public glare''. But that's simply not true. According to the bible story, just as soon as he was born, he was on the run from Herod, who went on to commit infanticide, slaughtering thousands of first borns in his bid to find and kill Jesus! So it is quite crazy to state that such an occurrence would not be recorded by even ONE of the hundreds of Jewish writers present at the time, Or that the rest of this individual's life will simply be ignored by writers until 40 years after his departure. The fact we're even arguing for or against the historicity of Jesus shows there's a serious problem. Like someone said, you'd think the Creator would be able to bark up his life on earth with some good solid evidence. Oh, by the way, what's your take on the apparent false claim in the bible regarding a city of Nazareth? No such city ever existed in the first century. But then again, the Christian church, by its own admission, has a history of lies and deceit that is truly breathtaking. 'Clearly the Christians have used ,  myths ,  in fabricating the story of Jesus' birth ,  It is clear to me that the writings of the Christians are a lie and that your fables are not well-enough constructed to conceal this monstrous fiction.' – Celsus (On The True Doctrine, c178 AD) Celsus was one of the foremost thinkers of his age. His critique of the Christians was so damaging that Christians destroyed every copy of his work they could find. The 5th and 6th centuries was the 'golden age' of Christian forgery. In a moment of shocking candour, the Manichean bishop (and opponent of Augustine) Faustus said: "Many things have been inserted by our ancestors in the speeches of our Lord which, though put forth under his name, agree not with his faith; especially since – as already it has been often proved – these things were written not by Christ, nor [by] his apostles, but a long while after their assumption, by I know not what sort of half Jews, not even agreeing with themselves, who made up their tale out of reports and opinions merely, and yet, fathering the whole upon the names of the apostles of the Lord or on those who were supposed to follow the apostles, they maliciously pretended that they had written their lies and conceits according to them." 'The Church forgery mill did not limit itself to mere writings but for centuries cranked out thousands of phony "relics" of its "Lord," "Apostles" and "Saints" … There were at least 26 'authentic' burial shrouds scattered throughout the abbeys of Europe, of which the Shroud of Turin is just one … At one point, a number of churches claimed the one foreskin of Jesus, and there were enough splinters of the "True Cross" that Calvin said the amount of wood would make "a full load for a good ship." ' (Acharya S, The Christ Conspiracy) Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), the tireless zealot for papal authority –  he was the founder of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits) – even wrote: "We should always be disposed to believe that which appears to us to be white is really black, if the hierarchy of the church so decides." Martin Luther, in private correspondence, argued: "What harm would it do, if a man told a good strong lie for the sake of the good and for the Christian church ,  a lie out of necessity, a useful lie, a helpful lie, such lies would not be against God, he would accept them." – Martin Luther (Cited by his secretary, in a letter in Max Lenz, ed., Briefwechsel Landgraf Phillips des Grossmüthigen von Hessen mit Bucer, vol. I.) Bishop Eusebius, the official propagandist for Constantine, entitles the 32nd Chapter of his 12th Book of Evangelical Preparation: "How it may be Lawful and Fitting to use Falsehood as a Medicine, and for the Benefit of those who Want to be Deceived." Eusebius is notoriously the author of a great many falsehoods – but then he does warn us in his infamous history: "We shall introduce into this history in general only those events which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity." (Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 8, chapter 2). John Chrysostom, 5th century theologian and erstwhile bishop of Constantinople, is another: "Do you see the advantage of deceit? For great is the value of deceit, provided it be not introduced with a mischievous intention. In fact action of this kind ought not to be called deceit, but rather a kind of good management, cleverness and skill, capable of finding out ways where resources fail, and making up for the defects of the mind ,  And often it is necessary to deceive, and to do the greatest benefits by means of this device, whereas he who has gone by a straight course has done great mischief to the person whom he has not deceived." (Treatise On The Priesthood, Book 1). 'Golden Mouth' John is notable for his extensive commentaries on the Bible which emphasized a literal understanding of the stories; the style popular at Alexandria until then was to acknowledge an allegorical meaning of the text. Thus eminent ‘believers’ added falsehood to the beliefs of later generations. ‘For the best of reasons’ they ‘clarified’ obscure points, conjured up characters to speak dialogue that could have been said, invented scenarios that could have happened, borrowed extensively from a wider culture. And this all before they became the custodians of power and had real reasons for lies, inventions and counterfeits. As we shall see, god’s immutable laws became as flexible as putty. The 5th and 6th centuries was the 'golden age' of Christian forgery. In a moment of shocking candour, the Manichean bishop (and opponent of Augustine) Faustus said: "Many things have been inserted by our ancestors in the speeches of our Lord which, though put forth under his name, agree not with his faith; especially since – as already it has been often proved – these things were written not by Christ, nor [by] his apostles, but a long while after their assumption, by I know not what sort of half Jews, not even agreeing with themselves, who made up their tale out of reports and opinions merely, and yet, fathering the whole upon the names of the apostles of the Lord or on those who were supposed to follow the apostles, they maliciously pretended that they had written their lies and conceits according to them." Even bible writers are not exempt from this (ocassional) candour: 'Only lies have our fathers handed down to us, emptiness in which there is nothing of any avail!' Jeremiah 16.19 Still Lying in 2002 The Pope has chosen to canonise Juan Diego, supposedly a sixteenth century Mexican Indian who had the good fortune to have the Blessed Virgin (in the guise of 'Our Lady of Guadeloupe') impress her own image onto his cloak. Not surprisingly, Diego was a paragon of Catholic devotion, completely submissive to Spanish colonial authorities. Mind you, the story only surfaced a century after its alleged occurrence, at the height of the campaign to eradicate indigenous religions. Commented David Brading, Professor of Mexican History at Cambridge University: 'When the Pope canonises Juan Diego, he will have elevated to sainthood the hero of a religious work of fiction.' (The Times, 31 June 2002) Continued The Times: 'An interview with the man given the task in 1947 of restoring Diego's cloak, on which an image of the Virgin appeared, revealed this week that the image was not a miracle. Instead, he said, it had been painted on.' Whether we look at the Middle Ages and the Reformation, the first centuries of the Christian era or even today, Christianity has always been a fabrication, layer set upon layer of lies and nonsense, a fraud from its very inception. OTHER NOTABLE FORGERIES AND DECEPTIONS The Donation of Constantine – 'Without doubt a forgery, ' Catholic Encyclopedia A two-part document purporting to be from the first Christian emperor to Pope Sylvester I (314-35). In the 'Confessio' Constantine thanks Sylvester for his Christian instruction and baptism (and consequent cure of leprosy!) In his 'Donatio' Constantine confers on the pope and his successors primacy over all other bishops, including the eastern patriarchs, senatorial privileges for the clergy, imperial palaces and regalia, Rome itself and the western empire!! In truth, this monstrous eighth century forgery (peppered with anachronisms) was almost certainly written by the future Pope Paul I (757-67) while his equally ambitious brother Stephen II (752-57) sat on the papal throne. The False Decretals – A riot of more than a hundred fake letters and decrees attributed to pontiffs from first century Clement (88-97) to seventh century Gregory I (590-604). Now attributed to 'Isodore Mercator', a ninth century master forger, almost certainly a papal aide. Like the Donation, the Decretals conferred rights and privileges on the papacy. 'Thundering Legion' Decree of Marcus Aurelius – In this fabricated letter from the emperor to the Senate, Marcus is said to have forbidden persecution of Christians because, in a battle with the Quadi in 174, prayers from Christian soldiers brought on a thunderstorm which rescued the Romans from thirst and dispersed the barbarian opponents. The emperor is said to have accorded the Twelfth Legion the suffix fulminata or fulminea, that is, 'thundering.' Tertullian (c.160 - c.230), north African theologian, made up this nonsense; the twelfth legion had had the suffix legio fulminata from the time of Augustus. The stoic Marcus Aurelius had nothing but contempt for the Christians. 'Letters' of Emperor Antoninus Pius to the Greeks – More fakery, this time from the pen of fourth century Bishop Eusebius (Ecclesiastic History, IV, 13). He has the pious second century pagan forbid 'tumults against the Christians.' The Clementines – These fancies, twenty books of 'curious religious romance' (Catholic Encyclopedia), masquerade as the work of first century pontiff Clement I. Written in the fourth century, their purpose was to bolster Rome's claim to be the primary see: here we have the 'Epistle of Clement to James' which originated the notion that St. Peter was the first Bishop of Rome. Correspondence between Seneca and Paul - a fourth century invention of first century letters. They alluded to fires in Rome and to the persecution of Jews and Christians. 'Testimonium Flavianum' - The infamous 'passing reference' to Jesus Christ supposedly written by the first century Jewish historian Josephus (he adopted the family name of the imperial house). We know in graphic detail the course of the first Jewish War because – remarkably – the history recorded by Josephus somehow survived. Whereas whole libraries of antiquity were torched by the Christians, curiously, this testimony of a Jew made it through the centuries. A subsequent work by Josephus, The Antiquity of the Jews, which iterated and extended his story of the 'chosen people' also survived. The survival of these two overlapping works was no coincidence because they rather too well 'confirm' from a 'non-Christian source' the existence of the godman. In short, sometime in the fourth century, while most else of ancient scholarship was being thrown into bonfires, a Christian scribe – probably Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea– 'rescued' the histories of Josephus and 'doctored' them to provide convenient 'proof' that Christ had been flesh-and-blood and was neither a fiction (as pagan critics maintained) nor solely a spiritual being, as gnostics reasoned.    The Chronicle of Sulpicius Severus - a 5th century disciple of Bishop Martin of Tours invented the lurid story of the Neronian persecution. The Jewish historian Josephus says nothing about any "persecution" under Nero, though he is not slow to describe him as "acting like a madman" who "slew his brother, and wife, and mother, from whom his barbarity spread itself to others that were most nearly related to him; and how, at last, he was so distracted that he became an actor in the scenes, and upon the theater." (Wars, 13.1) If a bonfire of Christians had actually happened Josephus would have mentioned it – but he does not, and nor does any early Christian writer. "In reality, the Neronian persecution never occurred. It is a fiction of the Church, invented for its greater glory." (Arthur Drews, The Legend of St Peter, p63)   Chapter 16 of Life of Nero by Suetonius. This is the origin of the 'Christians burnt as torches' nonsense. The Lentulus Letter For this pious fancy the forger created a fictitious predecessor to Pontius Pilate, governor of Judaea, calling him "Publius Lentulus". The forger has his creation write to the Roman Senate, reporting Christ's "raising of the dead". He describes Jesus as "the most beautiful of the sons of men." The letter was first printed in the "Life of Christ" by Ludolph the Carthusian (Cologne, 1474). It was probably composed in 13th/14th century, based on an earlier Greek forgery. Report of Pilate to Caesar – Pilate's conversion to Christianity – and even the debauched Emperor Tiberius a closet-Christian! Another gem from the pen of Tertullian! ‘All these things Pilate did to Christ; and now in fact a Christian in his own convictions, he sent word of Him to the reigning Caesar, who was at the time Tiberius. Yes, and even the Caesars would have believed on Christ, if either the Caesars had not been necessary for the world, or if Christians could have been Caesars.’ (Tertullian Apol. xxi and Anti-Nicene Fathers, iii, 35) Letter of Jesus to the King of Edessa  Nothing less than the handwritten note of the godman himself! This fabrication was supposedly delivered by the apostle Thaddeus, together with a self-portrait by the artist – Jesus Christ (he wiped his face with the canvass)! Actually, the text is borrowed from the 'concordance' of Tatian, compiled in the second century, and known as the 'Diatessaron'. The forgery is almost certainly the work of Eusebius, Christian propagandist of the fourth century. He was the first to mention the letter and claimed to have personally 'translated' it from Syriac (Ecclesiastical History I, xii). The Virgin Birth Fraud The most colossal blunder of the Septuagint translators, the mistranslation of the original Hebrew text of Isaiah, 7.14, allowed deceitful early Christians to concoct their infamous prophecy that somehow the ancient Jewish text presaged the miraculous birth of their own godman. The Hebrew original says: 'Hinneh ha-almah harah ve-yeldeth ben ve-karath shem-o immanuel.' Honestly translated, the verse reads: 'Behold, the young woman has conceived — and bears a son and calls his name Immanuel.' The Greek-speaking translators of Hebrew scripture (in 3rd century B.C. Alexandria) slipped up and translated 'almah' (young woman) into the Greek 'parthenos' (virgin). The Hebrew word for virgin would have been 'betulah.' The slip did not matter at the time, for in context, Isaiah’s prophesy – set in the 8th century BC but probably written in the 5th – had been given as reassurance to King Ahaz of Judah that his royal line would survive, despite the ongoing siege of Jerusalem by the Syrians. And it did. In other words, the prophesy had nothing to do with events in Judaea eight hundred years into the future! Justin ‘Martyr’, a pagan Greek from Palestine, fled to Ephesus at the time of Bar Kochbar’s revolt (132 -135 AD). He joined the growing Christian community and found himself competing with the priests of Artemis, an eternally virgin goddess. Justin successfully overcame the sentiments of established Christians and had Mary, mother of Jesus, declared a virgin, citing his Greek copy of Isaiah as 'evidence' of scriptural prescience. The Greek priest who then forged the 'Gospel according to St. Matthew' went one stage further, taking the word 'harah' – in Hebrew a past or perfect tense – and switched it into a future tense to arrive at: 'Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel.' (Matthew 1.23) All this to arrive at the monstrous fiction that ancient scripture foretold of the arrival of an infant actually called Jesus! Believe it or not, St. Augustine devoted two whole treatises to the topic of lying. The first of these, 'De mendacio' ('On Lying'), written in 395, discussed the pros and cons of lying. On balance, of the eight kinds of lie which he identified (each with several sub-types!) he excused 'jocular' lies, was 'uncertain' about others (depending on motive and the likelihood of being believed) but questioned the morality of the remainder. (Great) On balance, of the eight kinds of lie which he identified (each with several sub-types!) he excused 'jocular' lies, was 'uncertain' about others (depending on motive and the likelihood of being believed) but questioned the morality of the remainder. In light of such a horrible, shocking record of deceit and lies, how can ANYBODY in their right mind possibly defend ANYTHING written or said by christians ricadelide, you truly are an example of a brainwashed African. (Assuming that you ARE an African. Sanctified deceivers, manipulators and liars staring you in the face and admitting as much, YET, like a programmed robot, you still come here to defend their record. Have you no shame? Long before ''Jesus'' was invented, the world had several godmen believed to have been born of virgins and later killed as a ransome for mankind. It's the oldest fairytale in the book. Christians simply copied, stole, and appropriated all these stories to form their own Magna Mater (Cybele, Great Mother) with the child Attis (Ostia, Rome). Attis castrated himself, bled to death, and, after 3 days, was restored to life as a tree. Hence, a spring-time fertility festival. Sound familiar? Which comes back to this: Nobody wrote about Jesus while he was 'alive', and for decades afterwards. Nobody. The record does not exist. Jesus was famous far and wide, the Bible says. King Herod tried to kill Jesus as an infant, so famed was Jesus even before he knew his own name. Yet nobody wrote about him. The Judaic and Roman cultures were literate, as we well know.  And yet, nobody wrote about the 'King of Kings'?,  It's impossible. More likely that Jesus did not exist. And from the church's self confessed record of lies + the fact of historical godmen with virgin mothers with identical stories to 'Jesus' which predate christianity, it becomes a no-brainer that Jesus was yet another fabrication from the super-efficient, indefatigable lying factories of Christendom.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by ricadelide(m): 10:16pm On Oct 08, 2007

Jen33 the professional Copy/Paster Now you blatantly refused to admit your sources eh and chose to scramble up the post and interpolate your own 10 or so sentences? So much for the 'forgery' claims you make about the christians - remove the log in your eye . . . . Anyways, i'll answer the copy/paste from jesusneverexisted.com when i get home. However, i don't think you read my post in any detail. Apart from the fact that you did not provide any riposte to my major points yet choosing to rehash the unsubstantiated claims, you chose to ignore the fact that I made a very succint plea:  NO MORE OVERLY LONG COPY/PASTES - is that too hard to ask? Even if you can't offer any arguements of your own, can't you at least take a little time off to summarize the arguments of others that you so desperately hang on to? Cheers

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by Jen33(m): 11:24pm On Oct 08, 2007

ricadelide, not sure what your problem is with 'copy and paste'. I've some input in what I just posted, but I deal in FACTS and FIGURES pal. I do not debate an issue like this off the top of my head. I will give your quotes, references, sources, from the major players in this, including your own church figures, to PROVE the accuracy of this side of the debate. I will not like you, just come on hear spouting insults, and claiming 'that's a lie, that's ridiculous' etc etc with nothing to back it up. Apart from 'the church fathers said so'. (This was your response to the well known fact that the earliest written documents mentioning Jesus were 40 yrs after his 'ascension' - 'the church fathers believe it was much earlier than that') Why should we take you seriously based on such a pathetic response? Why should peeps not read the direct quotes of Ignatius Loyola for instance, who virtually ordained LIES and LYING as a legitimate mode of operation for the church? I mean, we name SCHOOLS after this guy in Nigeria. Do you want me to remind you of his quote? Is it not a good thing that we get to read just what Loyola said and thought? Our people MUST see the truth, not off-the-cuff, bullying remarks from your type to shut everyone up. Why would you deny readers full knowledge of the truth?? Why should I 'summarise' the truth? What are you afraid of?

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by cgift(m): 10:34am On Oct 09, 2007

I've been reading this from the sidelines. Just to chip in this fact that most of the premise of Jen has been on the church fathers. If I may ask, which Church? Roman Catholic Church? That opens up a serious can of worms as that institution is not of Christ. The papacy (the pope's offic) is not of Christ. Wait and see by the end of days. The Vatican is the office of the Antichrist so dont even use their words to try and discomfit Christ's reality. That church is playing its role of diminishing truth and estalishing falsehood effectively. The proof of the existence of Christ is not for me to give cos i dont think i can satiate your schlepping appetite. So, please my dear Jen33, go on, revel, merry. Its only a matter of time. Others have done more than this and have become caught in the same Christ's love which they now share though hitherto, disbelieved. Christ can fight for himself and make himself real to you. Enjoy.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by pilgrim1(f): 2:16pm On Oct 09, 2007

@Jen33, This is interesting - refusing to admit that you have no argument of your own. Actually, IMO there may be nothing wrong with fastidiously posting the ideas of others - as long as we're willing to acknowledge the sources and not pretend them as our original thoughts. But to repeatedly hold on to arguments of others and present them as "FACTS and FIGURES" is a bit quizzical, especially such articles simply fall flat on their faces when closely examined. A few examples: Walker (whose article you had earlier reposted) made quite a few false assertions that no reasonable mind could present as "FACTS and FIGURES" on closer examination. He predicates his basic argument that Jesus as a historical figure did not exist upon several of his assumptions that: (a) the authors of the NT Gospels were not eyewitnesses of the events they wrote ("hearsays" (b) some of the authors of the epistles did NOT believe in a historical Jesus (e.g., Hebrews) (c) some of the authors of the epistles made no reference to Jesus' earthly life (e.g., Paul) (d) false assertions of how many times some authors mention "Jesus" (e.g., James) . . . and a whole lot of other mechanical devices that one could hardly take seriously for "factual" arguments. If your worry, Jen33, is that discussants should hold a basic position of honestly and integrity in their assumptions, it's really unfortunate that neither Walker himself adheres to your requests, nor have you been consistent in observing those indicators. It's a really a weltered exercise to decry "spouting insults" from other discussants when in fact that was your first aid in your reference to "barely literate, lazy dolts". Was it too much to ask you to look a bit closer at your own games?

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by ricadelide(m): 2:16pm On Oct 09, 2007

Sorry i didn't make my post yesternight. Jen33: ricadelide, your defensive, confrontational posture throughout your response is instructive. I wonder why you sound so upset. I like the contradiction in bold; defensive/confrontational = balanced? no? I'm not upset. Neither did i make any insults like you claim. I will not claim to be pleased though by the overly long post. As for your 'trashing' of the article, dream on! You think you can obfuscate issues by blowing all hot, bluffing and blustering your way through, and dismissing this as ''appallng'', and that as ''ridiculous''? And what's this stuff about ''credible scholars believe in the historicity of Jesus. Why should we believe you over them?'' That sounds suspiciously like blackmail by force of majority. The majority see it this way so it must be right. The thing about such an argument is that, it was no doubt used by the defenders of a variety of ancient gods and beliefs to advance their causes. Think of Egypt back in the day - ''All scholars agree on the existence of Osiris, who are YOU to dispute it?'' Or more recently ''All scholars agree the earth is flat. Who are YOU to say it's round? Why should we believe YOU over all these esteemed scholars?'' See how SILLY and desperate you sound? LOL . . . I really doubt if i sound silly. Perhaps we could have a poll to see who does ? Its not so hard you know. If you notice, you twisted my words; first i did not say; "the majority says this, thus they must be right" neither did i say "the majority says this, who are YOU to say contrary". That's not the statements i made. I said, 'why must we believe you over them? what evidence are you bringing to the fore, that those scholars are not privy to?' there's a load of difference. Ever heard of burden of proof? Skeptics do not have any reason to accept the claim of a historical Jesus, yet they do - why? Because every evidence points that way (manuscript evidence, evidence from secular historians of the first century, biblical evidence, archeaological evidence, etc.), and it would be ignorant to say otherwise. My point is, since Mr Walker (and you i guess) has chosen to say contrary, he has to bring evidence to back of his claims, not just go about making false claims and spewing his own personal incredulity. Anybody can do that. I can wake up one morning and start crying that Plato never existed; that all the manuscripts acclaimed to be his writings are forgeries, etc. Would i be taken seriously? No. Likewise, if Mr Walker is to be taken seriously he should bring credible evidence - the burden of proof is on him - not faulty logic and skepticsm. His skepticsm does not constitute proof to the contrary. Or are you taking a cue from another holy falsifier - "It is usual for the sacred historian to conform himself to the generally accepted opinion of the masses in his time.' – St Jerome (P.L., XXVI, 98; XXIV, 855). It may be ''usual'' St Jerome, but is it right? Is it moral? Is it godly? What has a statement by St Jerome got to do with the arguement at hand? Is this now your evidence that Jesus did not exist? I'll get back to some of the stuff you've written up there, but really all you've done is skirted round the issue. What we need is PROOF that Jesus lived, and you've simply not furnished ANY proof. please do get back to me. I'll be waiting. Now you're no longer asking for evidence; its now PROOF. what will it be the next time (j/k)? Where is the archaeologcal proof you claim exists?? It is known to all that the gospels were written WELL AFTER the alleged life of Jesus. 40 years at the earliest. Not 3 or 10 years after like you've falsely claimed. You base those figures on what 'church fathers' think. Ok, how do you know when the gospels were written? What evidence do you have for your claim? But we know, from history - and from their own admission - that 'church fathers' would think and do just about anything to further their aims, including mass murder and bare faced falsehood peddling. We need INDEPENDENT verification, and the INDEPENDENT verification places the earliest written text about a 'Jesus Christ' at no less than 40 years after he supposedly returned to heaven in the clouds. Now, this is when it gets irritating. Which 'church fathers' are you talking about? Are you mistaking the early church for the Roman catholic church and the roman empire? The early church that is widely known to have been persecuted are now the ones perpetrating 'mass murders'? When are you referring to? 1st century AD? Please go and look up your history. No writings contemporary to Jesus in other words, written during or shortly after his alleged life exist or have ever been known to exist. The works of hundreds of scholars of the period remain with us today, Seneca etc, you name them. NOT ONE mentions Jesus, despite the fact that they recorded a whole lot of comparatively inconsequential occurences, Shortly after? Yes. During? NO. Why? already answered. Now, where are those works of hundreds of scholars, please let me know about them. Besides, a lot of secular historians DID mention Jesus, so i don't know where your claims stem from. Those of us with brains still intact know that it is not possible for such a momentous individual to live, draw crowds of thousands, attract the ire of priests, scribes, and authorities, a man who caused an infanticide as a toddler, and yet not have anyone write about him for decades after his ''ascension into heaven''. Thank GOd for those brains. However, skepticsm never constitutes proof. I'll address the infanticide later. Incredibly,  you claim no one contemporary to Jesus wrote about him because ''he only lived the last three years of his life in public glare''. Read Matt. 4;24, Mk 1;28. It mentions when the 'news about him spread'. Even John, who was supposed to be his foreunner, did not even know Him. How popular can i be if the person that is to introduce my ministry did not even know me until i was about to start my ministry. He became popular in the last three and half years of his life; and i'm surprised we have to argue about that. But that's simply not true. According to the bible story, just as soon as he was born, he was on the run from Herod, who went on to commit infanticide, slaughtering thousands of first borns in his bid to find and kill Jesus! So it is quite crazy to state that such an occurrence would not be recorded by even ONE of the hundreds of Jewish writers present at the time, Or that the rest of this individual's life will simply be ignored by writers until 40 years after his departure. Ok, this is a valid question and i'll address it. First, Herod knew about Jesus, not because he was popular, but becuase of the Magi. Go and look it up. If he was popular he would have at least known where he was born, but that is not the case, he had to inquire of the scribes about the prophecy (not about the particular boy Jesus, because he just didn't know him) Second, as regards the infanticide. First thing to note is this; that we do not have any other historical account does not prove anything. Second, contrary to your thinking, Bethlehem was a small village - it did not even have more than 1000 people not to talk of 1000 babies. It was a village of around 600 or so people. How many babies would have been there? Your guess is as good as mine. Third, Herod was a maniac, he killed lots of people, and killing a few babies in an insignificant village is not going to amount to much news. There were more important things for historians to write about. If you need more facts, follow this link The fact we're even arguing for or against the historicity of Jesus shows there's a serious problem. Like someone said, you'd think the Creator would be able to bark up his life on earth with some good solid evidence. the fact that we're arguing does not show anything. ANYTHING can be argued upon. I can argue that we are all a figment of each other's imagination - that does not 'show' anything. Oh, by the way, what's your take on the apparent false claim in the bible regarding a city of Nazareth? No such city ever existed in the first century. this is also false. And old. Nazareth has been discovered long ago, and this is a long dropped objection. Here is a link. <snip> as for the rest of your post about the catholic church, i don't really have to answer that, because it has nothing to do with Jesus not the gospels and you're just setting up a strawman in order to sway the discussion from the real issues. The earliest dated manuscripts have been traced to as early as the 2nd century (long before the RCC was formed) so bringing evidence of the RCC practices does not constitute proof that Jesus never lived. The questions you should ask yourself are these; Did the people you mentioned write the bible? Were they around in the first century when the gospels and epistles were already circulating? Did they edit the text of the manuscripts? If you answer that, then we'd continue. In light of such a horrible, shocking record of deceit and lies, how can ANYBODY in their right mind possibly defend ANYTHING written or said by christians Ok. when you provide evidence that the catholic church wrote the bible, then we'd yarn. ricadelide, you truly are an example of a brainwashed African. (Assuming that you ARE an African. Sanctified deceivers, manipulators and liars staring you in the face and admitting as much, YET, like a programmed robot, you still come here to defend their record. Have you no shame? LOTS of compliments. Thanks a bunch. Long before ''Jesus'' was invented, the world had several godmen believed to have been born of virgins and later killed as a ransome for mankind. It's the oldest fairytale in the book. Christians simply copied, stole, and appropriated all these stories to form their own <snip> First, the disciples and apostles who are JEWS don't need any foreign religon to copy. All the details about the life of Jesus had been prophecied in the Jewish old testament, long before those heathen religions came up with their fairy-tales. As early as the first few chapters of Genesis, the death of Jesus as a lamb had been symbolized by God and the 'seed of the woman' had been prophecised to crush the head of the serpent (see Gen. 3;15). Go figure. So if any conclusion came be made, it is that those people copied the jews and not vice versa. In fact, one of the major proofs that Jesus is the Messiah is the amount of prophecies he fulfilled. So what Jesus did was not something that just came up; they are things that had been written about him long before he came around. Second, we're talking jews here - if anything, the jews DO NOT subscribe to pagan religions believing themselves to be the special/chosen people of God. So to allege that those jews 'stole' things from pagan religions is patently false. Which comes back to this: Nobody wrote about Jesus while he was 'alive', and for decades afterwards. Nobody. The record does not exist. Jesus was famous far and wide, the Bible says. this has been severally addressed yet you keep repeating it. If that's the way with you; then there's no point seeking a discussion. King Herod tried to kill Jesus as an infant, so famed was Jesus even before he knew his own name. Yet nobody wrote about him. The Judaic and Roman cultures were literate, as we well know.  And yet, nobody wrote about the 'King of Kings'?,  It's impossible. Again, all untrue. And saying 'nobody wrote about him' is patently false. The whole of the new testament was not written eh? Go and read my objections to Mr Walker's claims. Not only that, many secular historians like mr walker quoted, tacitus, piny the younger etc wrote about him. So repeating the same old things over and over does not make for a good arguement. More likely that Jesus did not exist. And from the church's self confessed record of lies + the fact of historical godmen with virgin mothers with identical stories to 'Jesus' which predate christianity, it becomes a no-brainer that Jesus was yet another fabrication from the super-efficient, indefatigable lying factories of Christendom. Already addressed. No one is forcing you to believe that Jesus existed. You can believe anything you want; but to say that there is no evidence that he existed is patently false. Likewise to allege that he did not exist, you must provide evidence; something you don't seem capable of doing, except your own skepticsm. Skepticsm is not evidence. Cheers.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by pilgrim1(f): 2:17pm On Oct 09, 2007

@Jen33, Anyhow, as regards the outlines above, let's see how Mr. Walker plays out his own incredulity: (a) Mr Walker charges that the Gospel accounts are "HEARSAYS" rather than records of witnesses themselves: All documents about Jesus got written well after the life of the alleged Jesus from either: unknown authors, people who had never met an earthly Jesus, or from fraudulent, mythical or allegorical writings. Although one can argue that many of these writings come from fraud or interpolations, I will use the information and dates to show that even if these sources did not come from interpolations, they could still not serve as reliable evidence for a historical Jesus, simply because all sources derive from hearsay accounts. Hearsay means information derived from other people rather than on a witness' own knowledge. Although Mr Walker attempted to "show" that the Bible Gospels are not the records of witnesses, his argument was ineffective. The same rule he applies has already been flawed on the fact that many biographies are written years after the subjects had passed on; as well, the biographers in most cases were not witnesses themselves of the records they present - and for all that, they are still held as records of real events. One could therefore not assume any substance to the idea that a biographer who is not a personal witness of a subject immediately renders such biographies untennable. Quite to the contrary, the writers of the Gospels do not pretend to be fictitious characters. Nonetheless, even on closely examining the documents of the NT itself, it is a false and weak presumption to make that "all sources derive from hearsay accounts". The Gospel authors many times positively identified themselves as those who had a first hand experience of the things they wrote. Unless Mr Walker has a deficiency problem in honestly dealing with issues, he would seriously have addressed the fact of the authors being witnesses themselves in such verses as include the following: [list]MATTHEW - he identifies himself as tha tax collector who was called by Jesus as he sat at the receipt of custom (Matt. 9:9). In the Gospel accounts of 'MARK' and 'LUKE', he was positively identified by his original name 'Levi' (Mark 2:14 and Luke 5:27). Luke goes on to state that 'Levi' (i.e., the same 'Matthew') made him 'a great feast' (Luke 5:29) - which could be inferred from Matthew's own record of the event (Matt 9:10). But more to the point was that Matthew clearly identifies himself as one of those who evidently met a historical Jesus (ch. 9:9), which the other Gospel writers also pointed out (Luke 6:15 - remarkable to note that Luke uses the name 'Matthew' here rather than the earlier name 'Levi' as in ch. 5:27)[/list]. [list] JOHN - even if one were willing to tease mr Walker on his own assumptions, he surely could not have missed the references to John's own self-attestations to his positive identity. Rather than mention his name 'John' directly, he made clear indicators as to himself in several instances; particularly in this: "And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple: that disciple was known unto the high priest, and went in with Jesus into the palace of the high priest" (John 18:15). Who then was this 'another disciple' who was 'known unto the high priest'? He had just previously cited 'Caiaphas' in vs. 14, who was known to be the high priest at the time (cf. John 18:13 and Matt. 26:57); and he identifies himself as a relative to the high priest (Acts 4:6 not only shows the corruption of the priesthood, [so that even Annas also had become 'high priest'], but also inddicates that relatives to the high priests were also permitted to the religious court). John also identifies himself in another way: "the other disciple, whom Jesus loved" (John 20:2; 21:10). Having made several such positive allusions, he then stated: "This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true" (ch. 21:24). It leaves us then with the key to the perculiar features of John's writings, some of which we shall now particularly note: John is the only apostle who uses perculiar expressions for the deity of Christ: such expressions so remarkable that they were not so used by the other writers. Some of these expressions include: >> Jesus as the "only begotten" Son of God [or, of the Father] - see John 1:14, 18; and 1 John 4:9. The Greek term "μονογενής" [monogenes] as referring to Jesus' deity is found only in John's writings and in no other NT document! >> Jesus as "the WORD [of God]" - (John 1:1 and Revelation 19:13). Only in John's writings do we find the Greek term "λόγος" [log'os] in particular reference to Jesus. >> Perculiar phrases, such as "in the beginning/from the beginning" was one of John's favorite expressions in particular reference to the relationship of Jesus to the Father (see John 1:1, 2; 8:25 and 1 John 1:1; 2:13). Certainly, the phrase(s) are found in the writs of others; but in none else do we read of the perculiar use of that expression in connection with divine relationship than in Johns writings.[/list] One would have hoped to read something more to the point of Walker et al refuting thise clear pointers. But no, they do not; and rather than simply and honestly face up with the contents of the documents, they tersely dismiss them on the weak assumptions that "no one knows who the writers were". Anyone can claim such; but it simply weakens the scholarship of the one who has nothing to say in the face of clear pinters to the contrary.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by pilgrim1(f): 2:18pm On Oct 09, 2007

@Jen33, Now, we know that Walker's disciples may feel really edgy on this and so frantically appeal to other tricks of his games, the point is made: he has no serious issues to present that deals with the "FACTS". It is not enough to discredit the Gospels on the excuse that "no one knows who actually wrote any of them" (popular Elaine Pagels drivel); for in doing so, one would also be willing to provide answers to the original authors themselves. A word as to the Nag Hammadi authors: isn't it amazing that the documents comprising this volume actually do not make any serious claim to identifiable authorship? I'd be pleased to read you, Mr Jen33, take the time to please make a reasoned and seasoned identification of any author(s) of the Nag Hammadi library in such dsitinct manners as you find in the claims of the Gospel writers of the NT. Would you be willing to do that in simple terms? Thank you. (b) Another remarkable assertion Mr. Walker makes (as quoted in yours): Furthermore, the epistle to the Hebrews (8:4), makes it explicitly clear that the epistle writer did not believe in a historical Jesus: "If He [Jesus] had been on earth, He would not be a priest." Lol. Hebrews 8:4 does not argue that Jesus had not been on earth at some point in history; rather, it makes the point that having accomplished His vicarious work on earth, He had gone on to represent believers as Priest in heavenly sanctuary! In verse 1 already, the author makes clear that "We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens"; and as such, His priesthood is not based on an earthly sanctuary or tabernacle (which were a shadow of the heavenly - vs. 5). Further to the point, we understand that the author of Hebrews categorically asserted that Jesus had been on earth at some point in history - and this he made bold and clear in the following verses within that same book: Heb. 2:9 - He suffered death here on earth: "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death" Heb. 2:18 - He was tempted here on earth: "For in that he himself [Jesus] hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted" Heb. 5:7 - He experienced life on earth as human: "Who [Jesus] in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared." Heb. 7:14 - He had human ancestry on earth: "For it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Juda; of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priesthood" Now all the verses above clearly indicate that the author of Hebrews had a clear basis for a historical Jesus on EARTH prior to his statement in Heb. 8:4. Obviously, Mr Walker characteristically tore that verse out of its context to feed his agenda for a shoddy denial of the historicity of Jesus. Even after chapter 8, the author still goes on make clear pointers of a historical Jesus who was on earth - see the following: Heb. 10:5 - Jesus came into the world and experienced humanity: "Wherefore when he [Jesus] cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me" Heb. 12:2 - Jesus went to the Cross (the Crucifixion): "Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." Here again, one has to wonder if Mr. Walker carefully examined his preconceptions before attempted to cheat his readers with false claims. More to the point, Mr. Jen33, one would have to wonder at your claim to "FACTS and FIGURES" in reposting Walker's fallacies! Would it be too much to ask that you please go to the source (the Bible) and check things out for yourself before promoting the false claims of others you refer to as "FACTS"?

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by pilgrim1(f): 2:19pm On Oct 09, 2007

@Jen33, C. Mr Walker also asserts that Paul made no reference to Jesus' earthly life: However, there occurs not a single instance in all of Paul's writings that he ever meets or sees an earthly Jesus, nor does he give any reference to Jesus' life on earth. There are two sides to Walker's claims here: (i) that Paul never met an "earthly" Jesus (ii) that Paul gave no reference to Jesus' earthly life. In the first instance, that Paul may not have made reference to his having met an 'earthly' Jesus does not suggest that he therefore disavowed or argued against Christ's having been on earth at a particular time. Paul nowhere makes an argument AGAINST an earthly Jesus. Rather, Paul's epistles are clearly indicative of the 'FACT' that he recognized an earthly Jesus. A few pointers: [list]* What would Mr. Walker have said about the fact of Paul's assertion of an earthly Jesus in 2 Cor. 5:16,: "Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more"? [/list] Did Mr Walker miss that 'FACT' earlier before asserting that Paul made no such reference in any instance? What then does Paul mean by the 'WE' in "though we have known Christ after the FLESH"? >> Paul indeed may not have made a direct mention of his having met or 'followed' an earthly Jesus; but ne nonetheless convincingly mentioned his familiarity with His earthly life and ministry. Again, he makes clear reference to this 'FACT' in his doctrinal discussions to the Galatians: "O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you?" (Gal. 3:1). Some have argued that Paul was merely making allusions to his "preaching" as a man evidently sets forth a point in his arguments. Contextually, that is not what Paul alludes to in that verse. Rather, the apostle reminds them of the fact that they were familiar with an earthly historical Jesus, whose crucifixion they had witnessed! No doubt, Paul who lived his life as a Pharisee (Acts 26:4-5) was schooled under a respected Jewish scholar, Gamaliel (Acts 22:3). Could it then make sense that Paul would have been oblivious of an earthly Jesus, especially when he challenges the Galatians as in the verse quoted above? Mr Walker's arguments are hardly scholarly or honest. Appealing to such false assertions in the hope that his readers would swallow them all and not have the discipline to check him out, has not helped his case at all. >> Yet, there's the other side to his quote above: that Paul gave no reference to Jesus' earthly life? Now, Mr Jen33, in all honesty, what "references" to Jesus' earthly life would you have supposed Walker was assuming in his assertion? I'd ask that you take the time to see the weakness yet again in what you called 'FACT' in Walker's, for indeed he has not demonstrated erudition in his so-called 'research'. Indeed, Paul made remarkable references to Jesus' earthly life; see the following: "I give thee charge in the sight of God, who quickeneth all things, and before Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed a good confession" (1 Tim. 6:13; compare with Matt. 27:11 and John 18:37) That, for Paul, was a most remarkable point to make in the climax of Jesus' earthly life - a pivotal point that bears the stamp of the apostle's ministry in so far as the crucifixion was concerned (cf. 1 Cor. 1:23 & 2:2). Not only so, but perhaps we need to be reminded that Paul referenced the minsitry of John in the course of his preaching, as direct precursory to the life and ministry the earthly Jesus (Acts 13:23-25; and 19:4 & 5). Paul in his defence before king Agrippa made the point that the events of the crucifixion of Jesus were not "done in a corner" (Acts 26:26). The point here is as to whether Paul made a direct reference of having met an earthly Jesus. Perhaps he may not; but the evidence of the NT does not satisfactorily argue that he was oblivious of an earthly Jesus. Secondly, it is rather disingenuos of Walker to have asserted that Paul gave no reference to Jesus' earthly life - for he actually did! Not only so, he made reference to Jesus' earthly life as a matter of teaching and what implications they point to for the Christian (please see again Gal. 4:4-5).

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by pilgrim1(f): 2:21pm On Oct 09, 2007

@Jen33, Now, we come to the fourth problem in Walker's argument: (d) false assertions of how many times some authors mention "Jesus" (e.g., James): More to the point, the Epistle of James mentions Jesus only once as an introduction to his belief. Nowhere does the epistle reference a historical Jesus and this alone eliminates it from an historical account Contrary to Walker's claim, there are indeed TWO categorical mentions of "Jesus" in James' epistle: "James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting." (James 1:1) "My brethren, have not the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with respect of persons" (James 2:1) You could please verify the above by checking out those verses. Nonetheless, Walker believes that merely asserting (and falsely so) that Jesus was mentioned "only once" in James' epistle therefore eliminates it from an historical account. The gentleman needs to take some lessons in literary studies, for his argument on that assumption is a serious fallacy. James not only mentions "Jesus" directly by name TWICE, but he also references Him severally with other qualifiers (such as "the Lord": "Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord" (ch. 4:10) "If the Lord will" (ch. 4:15) "the coming of the Lord" (ch. 5:7 & 8 ) "anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord" (ch. 5:14) It also makes the point that Walker has simply deonstrated his inability to recognize the distinction between the GOSPELS and the EPISTLES! By making such assertions in his quote above, he obfuscates issues and pretends to establish literary weakness in the epistles by claiming that they do not mention this or that - as though he expected the epistles to be a repetition of the Gospels! When he attempted to make the argument for eliminating the epistles from 'an historical account', was he not rather sounding confused? What exactly does he mean by "historical account", mr Jen33? What do you assume would be scholarly assumed to be "historical"? So much for Walker's honesty and integrity as writer. My sypathy to those who have swallowed everything he wrote without checking them carefully. If Walker makes false and presumptious allegations, on what basis would one refer to his 'research' as "FACTS"? As cgift has also hinted earlier, it is simply another weak exercise to assume that the bloviates of the Roman Catholic figures have any bearing on the autheticity of the New Testament documents. Isn't it remarkable that the many claims by RCC and the Vatican cannot be substantiated from the Bible which they boast to have 'written' or 'canonized'? All the same, one would have supposed that the very thing you decry in others would not be present in yours; besides the urge to present arguments of your own rather than the fallacious assertions of others. Anyhow, cheers.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by pilgrim1(f): 2:23pm On Oct 09, 2007

At the end of the day, it seems this has so typically been turned into a debate between "Mr Walker" and Nairaland Forumites, lol. Could we actually hope to something of your own reasoning, Mr Jen33? Cheers.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by ricadelide(m): 2:33pm On Oct 09, 2007

pilgrim.1 and cgift, thanks for the detailed response o jare. I was put off by the long post 'cause man get exam and should be reading some papers now. How's the going? cheers.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by pilgrim1(f): 2:44pm On Oct 09, 2007

My dear ricadelide, the going is good. E be like say we plan am - why both of us get exams almost at the same time? Lol. Anyhow, Jen33 really has not carefully checked out the claims of Walker et al. So much for honesty - and we're quite familiar with that kind of mechanical assertions that simply cheats behind the counter. Anyhow, I just take break today, so I dey sidon here to play around until back to class. Much success in your exams - nothing to distract you. Enjoy.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by ricadelide(m): 3:40pm On Oct 09, 2007

oga pilgrim (hehe  . . . . now its my turn), Had to zoom off to schl. You sef get exam? Na plan . Unfortunately for me, I be 'crasher'. The way you're composed, e don too sure say you go 'destroy' that exam Anyways, thanks for the wishes. Easy on those profs o - those exam(s) no get choose. Enjoy

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by Jen33(m): 7:04pm On Oct 09, 2007

Sometimes I wonder if I'm debating with illiterates. I will not turn this into a nit-picking session of what ''Paul'' said or did not say. Certainly he never claimed to have met Jesus. Except in a ''vision'' on the road to Damascus. But he never mentioned anything about Jesus' supposed life on earth - virgin birth, crucifixion, miracles etc. The very thing christians preach, he did not, no doubt because before he wrote his epistles, the Jesus stories had not yet been invented. ricadelide, the fact that you're demanding ''proof'' that the gospels were written decades after Christ signifies your extremely poor knowledge of the bible, and of modern knowledge of theologians and bible scholars. If you did a google and actually conducted some research like I do, you will QUICKLY discover that virtually no source, even church sources,  puts the dating of the first gospels at earlier than 55 AD Raymond E. Brown, in his 1996 book An Introduction to the New Testament, presented the general scholarly consensus regarding the gospel dates: Mark: c. 68–73 Matthew: c. 70–100 as the majority view; some conservative scholars argue for a pre-70 date, particularly those that do not accept Mark as the first gospel written. Luke: c. 80–100, with most arguing for somewhere around 85 John: c. 90–110. Brown does not give a consensus view for John, but these are dates as propounded by C K Barrett, among others. The majority view is that it was written in stages, so there was no one date of composition. Here are the dates given by a christian source in the modern NIV Study Bible: Mark: c. 50s to early 60s, or late 60s Matthew: c. 50 to 70s Luke: c. 59 to 63, or 70s to 80s John: c. 85 to near 100, or 50s to 70 . This in addition to the fact that nobody contemporary to 'Jesus' wrote a word about him. Now some christian scholars propose the view of an earlier dating of Matthew’s Gospel owing to claims by early church leaders such as Irenaeus, Origen, and Eusebius who recorded that 'Matthew' first wrote his gospel for Jewish believers while he was still in Palestine. In fact Eusebius, (a bishop of Caesarea and known as the father of church history), reported that Matthew wrote his Gospel before he left Palestine to preach in other lands, which Eusebius says happened about 12 years after the death of Christ. This would place the writing of Matthew as early as A.D. 40-45 and as late as A.D. 55. Now, Eusebius, Iraneus and co, are the ones whose quotes we've all read. They are the ones who propose falsehoods and lies as a modus operandi for the church. Why would anyone believe them if any of those guys wrote that 1+1 =2? Their testimonies are for all intents and purposes, worthless. I'd go with independent sources who place the gospels at much later dates. And for all your bluster, ricadelide, you've stil NOT shown us why here are no non-christian writings about a 'Jesus the Christ'. There is not one single piece of archaeological, forensic or documentary evidence that shows Jesus was ever alive. The only non Christian record of Jesus was by Josephus, and HE was born in 37 CE, long after Jesus had 'ascended'. Thus all he could spout was hearsay. Not to mention that most scholars, including christian apologists, accept that the verse where he referred to 'a Jesus known as the Christ' was an interpolation (forgery), orchestrated probably by Iraneus. Of course, there is plenty of evidence that people believed that there was a man named Jesus who was killed, but none that he was alive. By that I mean nothing exists from the time of the supposed life of Jesus. No letters exist that mention Jesus the preacher or miracle worker. No Christian letters or diaries, no Jewish ones, no Greek ones, no Roman ones. Nobody wrote about a single aspect of his life while he was living it. Just think for a moment about what the man was supposed to have done. He was supposed to have had meetings with thousands of people. He was supposed to have cured people, even raised a man from the dead. He was supposed to have entered the city of Jerusalem at the head of a triumphal procession and yet nobody wrote anything about it at the time. Not a book, not a diary, not even graffiti. Isn't that just a little hard to believe? There is not a single physical description of Jesus, not one. Isn't that a little odd? Had the man got no distinguishing features at all? The lack of evidence is quite alarming. There are many gospels, many more than are accepted in the official church canon, but none of these are contemporary. All are written in the past tense: there was a man named Jesus who died and was returned to life, and this is his story. There are no rough drafts available from the time the authors didn't know the ending. Walter R. Cassels, the learned author of "Supernatural Religion," one of the greatest works ever written on the origins of Christianity, says: "After having exhausted the literature and the testimony bearing on the point, we have not found a single distinct trace of any of those Gospels during the first century and a half after the death of Christ." How can Gospels which were not written until a hundred and fifty years after Christ is supposed to have died, and which do not rest on any trustworthy testimony, have the slightest value as evidence that he really lived? History must be founded upon genuine documents or on living proof. Were a man of today to attempt to write the life of a supposed character of a hundred and fifty years ago, without any historical documents upon which to base his narrative, his work would not be a history, it would be a romance. Not a single statement in it could be relied upon. Christ is supposed to have been a Jew, and his disciples are said to have been Jewish fishermen. His language, and the language of his followers must, therefore, have been Aramaic -- the popular language of Palestine in that age. But the Gospels are written in Greek -- every one of them. Nor were they translated from some other language. Every leading Christian scholar since Erasmus, four hundred years ago, has maintained that they were originally written in Greek. This proves that they were not written by 'Christ's disciples', or by any of the early Christians. Foreign Gospels, written by unknown men, in a foreign tongue, several generations after the death of those who are supposed to have known the facts -- such is the evidence relied upon to prove that Jesus lived. But while the Gospels were written far too late to be of authority, the original documents, such as they were, were not preserved. The Gospels that were written in the second century no longer exist. They have been lost or destroyed. The oldest Gospels that we have are supposed to be copies of copies of copies that were made from those Gospels. We do not know who made these copies; we do not know when they were made; nor do we know whether they were honestly made. Do some research yourself. Do a google of the Q document said to be the blueprint for the gospels. Nobody knows who made it! Between the earliest Gospels and the oldest existing manuscripts of the New Testament, there is a blank gulf of three hundred years. It is, therefore, impossible to say what the original Gospels contained. There were many Gospels in circulation in the early centuries, and a large number of them were forgeries. Among these were the "Gospel of Paul," the Gospel of Bartholomew," the "Gospel of Judas Iscariot," the "Gospel of the Egyptians," the "Gospel or Recollections of Peter," the "Oracles or Sayings of Christ," and scores of other pious productions, a collection of which may still be read in "The Apocryphal New Testament." Obscure men wrote Gospels and attached the names of prominent Christian characters to them, to give them the appearance of importance. Works were forged in the names of the apostles, and even in the name of Christ. The greatest Christian teachers including Eusebius, Ignatius Loyola, and Iraneus,  taught that it was a virtue to deceive and lie for the glory of the faith. Dean Milman, the standard Christian historian, says: "Pious fraud was admitted and avowed." The Rev. Dr. Giles writes: "There can be no doubt that great numbers of books were then written with no other view than to deceive." Professor Robertson Smith says: "There was an enormous floating mass of spurious literature created to suit party views." The early church was flooded with spurious religious writings. From this mass of literature, the Gospels were selected by priests and called the inspired word of God. Were these Gospels also forged? There is no certainty that they were not. But let me ask: If Christ was an historical character, why was it necessary to forge documents to prove his existence? Did anybody ever think of forging documents to prove the existence of any person who was really known to have lived? The early Christian forgeries are a tremendous testimony to the weakness of the Christian cause. Spurious or genuine, let us see what the Gospels can tell us about the life of Jesus. Matthew and Luke give us the story of his genealogy. How do they agree? Matthew says there were forty-one generations from Abraham to Jesus. Luke says there were fifty-six. Yet both pretend to give the genealogy of Joseph, and both count the generations! Nor is this all. The Evangelists disagree on all but two names between David and Christ. These worthless genealogies show how much the New Testament writers knew about the ancestors of their hero. If Jesus lived, he must have been born. When was he born? Matthew says he was born when Herod was King of Judea. Luke says he was born when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria. He could not have been born during the administration of these two rulers for Herod died in the year 4 B.C., and Cyrenius, who, in Roman history is Quirinius, did not become Governor of Syria until ten years later. Herod and Quirinius are separated by the whole reign of Archelaus, Herod's son. Between Matthew and Luke, there is, therefore, a contradiction of at least ten years, as to the time of Christ's birth. The fact is that the early Christians had absolutely no knowledge as to when Christ was born. The Encyclopaedia Britannica says: "Christians count one hundred and thirty-three contrary opinions of different authorities concerning the year the Messiah appeared on earth." Think of it -- one hundred and thirty-three different years, each one of which is held to be the year in which Christ came into the world.  He was called "Jesus of Nazareth"; and there he is said to have lived until the closing years of his life. Now comes the question -- Was there a city of Nazareth in that age? The Encyclopaedia Biblica, a work written by theologians, the greatest biblical reference work in the English language, says: "We cannot perhaps venture to assert positively that there was a city of Nazareth in Jesus' time." No certainty that there was a city of Nazareth!  Not only are the supposed facts of the life of Christ imaginary, but the city of his birth and youth and manhood existed, so far as we know, only on the map of mythology. What amazing evidence to prove the reality of the ''Son of God''!  Absolute ignorance as to his ancestry; nothing whatever known of the time of his birth, and even the existence of the city where he is said to have been born, a matter of grave question!  After his birth, Christ, as it were, vanishes out of existence, and with the exception of a single incident recorded in Luke, we hear absolutely nothing of him until he has reached the age of thirty years. The account of his being found discussing with the doctors in the Temple at Jerusalem when he was but twelve years old, is told by Luke alone. The other Gospels are utterly ignorant of this discussion; and, this single incident excepted, the four Gospels maintain an unbroken silence with regard to thirty years of the life of their hero. What is the meaning of this silence? If the writers of the Gospels knew the facts of the life of Christ, why is it that they tell us absolutely nothing of thirty years of that life? What historical character can be named whose life for thirty years is an absolute blank to the world? If Christ was the incarnation of God, if he was the greatest teacher the world has known, if he came to save mankind from everlasting pain -- was there nothing worth remembering in the first thirty years of his existence among men? The fact is that the Evangelists knew nothing of the life of Jesus, before his ministry; and they refrained from inventing a childhood, youth and early manhood for him because it was not necessary to their purpose. Luke, however, deviated from the rule of silence long enough to write the Temple incident. The story of the discussion with the doctors in the Temple is obviously mythical by all the circumstances that surround it. The statement that his mother and father left Jerusalem, believing that he was with them; that they went a day's journey before discovering that he was not in their company; and that after searching for three days, they found him in the Temple asking and answering questions of the learned Doctors, involves a series of tremendous improbabilities. Add to this the fact that the incident stands alone in Luke, surrounded by a period of silence covering thirty years; add further that none of the other writers have said a word of the child Jesus discussing with the scholars of their nation; and add again the unlikelihood that a child would appear before serious-minded men in the role of an intellectual champion and the fabulous (as in fabu  ) character of the story becomes perfectly clear. John tells us that the driving of the money-changers from the Temple occurred at the beginning of Christ's ministry; and nothing is said of any serious consequences following it. But Matthew, Mark and Luke declare that the purification of the Temple took place at the close of his career, and that this act brought upon him the wrath of the priests, who sought to destroy him. Because of these facts, the Encyclopedia Biblica assures us that the order of events in the life of Christ, as given by the Evangelists, is contradictory and untrustworthy; that the chronological framework of the Gospels is worthless; and that the facts "show only too clearly with what lack of concern for historical precision the Evangelists write." In other words, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote, not what they knew, but what they imagined. Jen33 did not write the Encyclopedia Biblica, ricadelide, Church Fathers did.  And one more thing.  If Christ performed the miracles the New Testament describes, if he gave sight to blind men's eyes, if his magic touch brought youthful vigor to the palsied frame, if the putrefying dead at his command returned to life and love again -- why did the people want him crucified? Is it not amazing that a civilized people -- for the Jews of that age were civilized -- were so filled with murderous hate towards a kind and loving man who went about doing nothing but good, who preached forgiveness, cleansed the leprous, and raised the dead -- that they could not be appeased until they had crucified the noblest benefactor of mankind? Again I ask -- is this history, or is it fiction? In all the Epistles of Paul, there is not one word about Christ's virgin birth. The apostle is absolutely ignorant of the marvellous manner in which Jesus is said to have come into the world. For this silence, there can be only one honest explanation -- the story of the virgin birth had not yet been invented when Paul wrote. A large portion of the Gospels is devoted to accounts of the miracles Christ is said to have wrought. But you will look in vain through the thirteen Epistles of Paul for the slightest hint that Christ ever performed any miracles. Is it conceivable that Paul was acquainted with the miracles of Christ -- that he knew that Christ had cleansed the leprous, cast out devils that could talk, restored sight to the blind and speech to the dumb, and even raised the dead -- is it conceivable that Paul was aware of these wonderful things and yet failed to write a single line about them? Again, the only solution is that the accounts of the miracles wrought by Jesus had not yet been invented when Paul's Epistles were written. Not only is Paul silent about the virgin birth and the miracles of Jesus, he is without the slightest knowledge of the teaching of Jesus. The Christ of the Gospels preached a famous sermon on a mountain: Paul knows nothing of it. Christ delivered a prayer now recited by the Christian world: Paul never heard of it. Christ taught in parables: Paul is utterly unacquainted with any of them. Is not this astonishing? Paul, the greatest writer of early Christianity, the man who did more than any other to establish the Christian religion in the world -- that is, if the Epistles may be trusted -- is absolutely ignorant of the teaching of Christ. In all of his thirteen Epistles he does not quote a single saying of Jesus. Paul was a missionary. He was out for converts. Is it thinkable that if the teachings of Christ had been known to him, he would not have made use of them in his propaganda? Can you believe that a Christian missionary would go to China and labor for many years to win converts to the religion of Christ, and never once mention the Sermon on the Mount, never whisper a word about the Lord's Prayer, never tell the story of one of the parables, and remain as silent as the grave about the precepts of his master? What have the churches been teaching throughout the Christian centuries if not these very things? Are not the churches of to-day continually preaching about the virgin birth, the miracles, the parables, and the precepts of Jesus? And o not these features constitute Christianity? Is there any life of Christ, apart from these things? Why, then, does Paul know nothing of them? There is but one answer. The virgin-born, miracle-working, preaching Christ was unknown to the world in Paul's day. That is to say, he had not yet been invented! The Christ of Paul and the Jesus of the Gospels are two entirely different beings. The Christ of Paul is little more than an idea. He has no life story. He was not followed by the multitude. He performed no miracles. He did no preaching. The Christ Paul knew was the Christ he saw in a ''vision'' while on his way to Damascus -- an apparition, a phantom, not a living, human being, who preached and worked among men. This vision-Christ, this ghost, was afterwards brought to the earth by those who wrote the Gospels. He was given a Holy Ghost for a father and a virgin for a mother. He was made to preach, to perform astounding miracles, to die a violent death though innocent, and to rise in triumph from the grave and ascend again to heaven. Such is the Christ of the New Testament -- first a spirit, and later a miraculously born, miracle working man. A large body of opinion in the early church denied the reality of Christ's physical existence. In his "History of Christianity," Dean Milman writes: "The Gnostic sects denied that Christ was born at all, or that he died," and Mosheim, Germany's great ecclesiastical historian, says: "The Christ of early Christianity was not a human being, but an "appearance," an illusion, a character in miracle, not in reality -- a myth. If Christ lived, if he was a reformer, if he performed wonderful works that attracted the attention of the multitude, if he came in conflict with the authorities and was crucified -- how shall we explain the fact that history has not even recorded his name? The age in which he is said to have lived was an age of scholars and thinkers. In Greece, Rome and Palestine, there were philosophers, historians, poets, orators, jurists and statesmen. Every fact of importance was noted by interested and inquiring minds. Some of the greatest writers the Jewish race has produced lived in that age. And yet, in all the writings of that period, there is not one line, not one word, not one letter, about Jesus. Great writers wrote extensively of events of minor importance, but not one of them wrote a word about the mightiest character who had ever appeared on earth -- a man at whose command the leprous were made clean, a man who fed five thousand people with a satchel full of bread, a man whose word defied the grave and gave life to the dead. A man on whose death earthquakes occurred, and the daylit sky turned black. John E. Remsburg, in his scholarly work on "The Christ," has compiled a list of forty-two writers who lived and wrote during the time or within a century after the time, of Christ, not one of whom ever mentioned him. Philo, one of the most renowned writers the Jewish race has produced, was born before the beginning of the Christian Era, and lived for many years after the time at which Jesus is supposed to have died. His home was in or near Jerusalem, where Jesus is said to have preached, to have performed miracles, to have been crucified, and to have risen from the dead. Had Jesus done these things, the writings of Philo would certainly contain some record of his life. Yet this philosopher, who must have been familiar with Herod's massacre of the innocents, and with the preaching, miracles and death of Jesus, had these things occurred; who wrote an account of the Jews, covering this period, and discussed the very questions that are said to have been near to Christ's heart, never once mentioned the name of, or any deed connected with, the reputed Savior of the world. The only reason for this is that the man known as ''Jesus Christ, the son of God'', did not exist!

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by ricadelide(m): 8:28pm On Oct 09, 2007

Learn to acknowlege your sources. Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism. Repeated spouting of another man's unsubstantiated opinion as 'FACT' and 'FIGURES' is not the way to go. Source http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/marshall_gauvin/did_jesus_really_live.html when you're ready to itemize your points, and offer your own arguments, then we'd have a discussion. However, my guess is that we'd just have to wait for your next copy/paste. Fortunately for you, them plenty for web.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by Jen33(m): 9:52pm On Oct 09, 2007

ricadelide, your objections are frivolous to say the least. Why not concentrate on the topic rather than worrying yourself about whose words I use here and there to make my argument? And there's no such thing as an ''unsubstantiated opinion'' here. ALL of what's written above comes with sources, credible, cited sources, and I have EVERY RIGHT to use another's line of argument where it corresponds with mine without unduly citing the former. Afterall, this is not an exam or thesis where such considerations are required or necessary. I've nowhere claimed to be the original author of everything I've posted, so your 'plagiarism'  charge is ludicrous and diversionary. The very length of the articles posted, on a discussion forum such as this, is in indicator on my part of the significant external input involved, and for plagiarism to apply, you need to show specific intent to deceive. This you have not shown. So your charges are ludicrous. Now if this were a Phd thesis for instance, the situation would be entirely diferent. There, there is an overt and implicit acknowledgement that one's presentation would be indigenous, in order to gauge appropriately one's academic merit, abi? So this is not an exam, my brotha. We're only seeking the truth about ''Jesus''. Now, the sources YOU ought to be worried about, I have posted. Those sources involve quotes, from relevant authors and their works, churchmen, theologians etc, and the references are generally cited. Thus where for instance Ignatius Loyola was quoted as saying that LIES and DECEPTION are ACCEPTABLE, or where Iraneus was quoted as saying likewise - the sources are posted. THAT'S what should concern you. THAT'S what you should be looking up, not whether I use another's words to elucidate the truth. Stick to the point at hand Mr MAN and stop DODGING THE ISSUE.

Re: Archaelogical Proofs That The Bible Is Fact Not Fiction by KAG: 10:29pm On Oct 09, 2007

Jen33: I think the writer is stressing here the basic dishonesty of the church, by stressing that the insertion of ''St.'' in the some bibles constitutes an interpolation. In that case, he's wrong. It is doesn't constitute as an interpolation. KAG, sorry I don't buy your explanation for their silence. Unless the forumers here are barely literate, lazy dolts, your rationalisation for their silence makes no sense. Really? It makes no sense? Don't tell me you haven't noticed the general dearth in responses to your long copy/pastes, because that would just be weird. And what does it matter in whose words they are written? It matters because copy/pastes - especially, the long ones - tend to stifle debtes and dialogue - after all, if people wanted to debate Walker, they would have said as much. Furthermore, the fact that you seem to be the kind of person that mistakes copy/pastes for debates doesn't help matters, because - as has happened in this thread - if a full rebuttal is offered to the copy/paste, without even acknowledging the many points that may have been raised in the rebuttal, you just copy/paste yet another long article. It's, basically, disrespectful and intellectually dishonest. I'm pretty sure if I'd pasted an article providing conclusive evidence of Jesus' existence, such considerations as you're suggesting would not come into play. It would. Put simply, I reckon its the silence of surrender. Afterall, WHAT can they possibly argue against there? I guess that settles it. It's such a heavily researched article that you just have to read it and chill. Cool I wouldn't say it's heavily researched - good research at most. The most they can do is to pick up little inconsequential things like you did. Don't forget I skimmed through it As for your other points, I consider them far too minor and pedantic to constitute any form of credible riposte to the article. Fair enough. I even sensed a slight embarassment on your part at the paucity of viable objections to the article, perhaps explaining your haste to include yourself among the skeptics. Wink Um, I am one of the sceptics.