dejuror wrote:

Svartalf wrote:well, it interesting but true that the word 'christian' appears in neither the gospels nor in Acts, I don't remember if it ever slipped in any of the epistles.

It is the same problem in the Epistle [falsely] attributed to Peter. The earliest Codex, the Sinaiticus, does not contain the Greek word for Christian in 1 Peter 4.16.

1 Peter 4.16 in the Sinaiticus Codex is evidence that there were no person known as Christian.

Surely if the author of 1 Peter claimed his Jesus was the CHRIST and was a follower or believer in the CHRIST then he should have known he was a CHRIST--IAN..

The very author of 1 Peter never heard of Christians when he composed the Epistle.

Svartalf wrote:
Well, I don't know in what language Peter I was initially composed, even if the earliest versions we have are in Koine Greek... the definintion of a christian entails believing that Jesus was Messiah, the anointed one (chrestos) of the LOrd... maybe the word took some time to crystallize, but remember, I'm the guy who believes chrestians were an identified group by 64 AD and the Great Neronian fire.

But Christian, so far as the meaning of the word is concerned, is derived from anointing. Yes, and even when it is wrongly pronounced by you Chrestianus (for you do not even know accurately the name you hate)...

Svartalf wrote:Vespasian the Messiah? no way. He did precisely the reverse of what Mashiach is expected to accomplish... As I keep saying, the person who historically is the closest to the expected Messiah is David Ben Gourion.

But now, what did the most elevate them in undertaking this war, was an ambiguous oracle that was also found in their sacred writings, how," about that time, one from their country should become governor of the habitable earth." The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular, and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian, who was appointed emperor in Judea....

Many modern historians note the increased amount of propaganda that appeared during Vespasian's reign.[33] Stories of a supernatural emperor who was destined to rule circulated in the empire.[11] Nearly one-third of all coins minted in Rome under Vespasian celebrated military victory or peace.[34] ... Construction projects bore inscriptions praising Vespasian and condemning previous emperors.[35] A temple of peace was constructed in the forum as well.[29] Vespasian approved histories written under his reign, ensuring biases against him were removed.[36]

.... The ancient historians who lived through the period such as Tacitus, Suetonius, Josephus and Pliny the Elder [spoke/wrote] suspiciously well of Vespasian while condemning the emperors who came before him.[38] , Josephus identifies Vespasian as a patron and savior, Tacitus admits that his status was elevated by Vespasian, and Pliny dedicated his Natural Histories to Vespasian's son, Titus.[39]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vespasian

Prodigies had indeed occurred, but to avert them either by victims or by vows is held unlawful by a people which, though prone to superstition, is opposed to all propitiatory rites. Contending hosts were seen meeting in the skies, arms flashed, and suddenly the temple was illumined with fire from the clouds. Of a sudden the doors of the shrine opened and a superhuman voice cried: "The gods are departing": at the same moment the mighty stir of their going was heard. Few interpreted these omens as fearful; the majority firmly believed that their ancient priestly writings contained the prophecy that this was the very time when the East should grow strong and that men starting from Judea should possess the world. This mysterious prophecy had in reality pointed to Vespasian and Titus, but the common people, as is the way of human ambition, interpreted these great destinies in their own favour ... http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R ... s/5A*.html

...5 There had spread over all the Orient an old and established belief, that it was fated at that time for men coming from Judaea to rule the world. This prediction, referring to the emperor of Rome...

"Mark introduced spittle into his story of the Blind Man of Bethsaida to create an allusion to the Vespasian stor[ies] [in Tacitus' Histories 4:81 and Suetonius' Vespasian] as part of a wider concern to contrast the messiahship of Jesus with such Roman imperial ‘messianism’."

'Spit in Your Eye: The Blind Man of Bethsaida and the Blind Man of Alexandria'
New Testament Studies 54(1), 2008: pp. 1-17.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/di ... id=1683000

RealityRules wrote:
Eric Eve argued that

"Mark introduced spittle into his story of the Blind Man of Bethsaida to create an allusion to the Vespasian stor[ies] [in Tacitus' Histories 4:81* and Suetonius' Vespasian] as part of a wider concern to contrast the messiahship of Jesus with such Roman imperial ‘messianism’."

'Spit in Your Eye: The Blind Man of Bethsaida and the Blind Man of Alexandria'
New Testament Studies 54(1), 2008: pp. 1-17.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/di ... id=1683000

It's possible and even probable that the account in Mark is based on the accounts about Vespasian

82 These events gave Vespasian a deeper desire to visit the sanctuary of the god to consult him with regard to his imperial fortune: he ordered all to be excluded from the temple. Then after he had entered the temple and was absorbed in contemplation of the god, he saw behind him one of the leading men of Egypt, named Basilides, who he knew was detained by sickness in a place many days' journey distant from Alexandria. He asked the priests whether Basilides had entered the temple on that day; he questioned the passers-by whether he had been seen in the city; finally, he sent some cavalry and found that at that moment he had been eighty miles away: then he concluded that this was a supernatural vision and drew a prophecy from the name Basilides.

83 The origin of this god [Serapis; see 81] has not yet been generally treated by our authors: the Egyptian priests tell the following story, that when King Ptolemy, the first of the Macedonians to put the power of Egypt on a firm foundation, was giving the new city of Alexandria walls, temples, and religious rites, there appeared to him in his sleep a vision of a young man of extraordinary beauty and of more than human stature, who warned him to send his most faithful friends to Pontus and bring his statue hither; the vision said that this act would be a happy thing for the kingdom and that the city that received the god would be great and famous: after these words the youth seemed to be carried to heaven in a blaze of fire. Ptolemy, moved by this miraculous omen, disclosed this nocturnal vision to the Egyptian priests, whose business it is to interpret such things. When they proved to know little of Pontus and foreign countries, he questioned Timotheus, an Athenian of the clan of the Eumolpidae, whom he had called from Eleusis to preside over the sacred rites, and asked him what this religion was and what the divinity meant. Timotheus learned by questioning men who had travelled to Pontus that there was a city there called Sinope, and that not far from it there was a temple of Jupiter Dis, long famous among the natives: for there sits beside the god a female figure which most call Proserpina. But Ptolemy, although prone to superstitious fears after the nature of kings, when he once more felt secure, being more eager for pleasures than religious rites, began gradually to neglect the matter and to turn his attention to other things, until the same vision, now more terrible and insistent, threatened ruin upon the king himself and his kingdom unless his orders were carried out. Then Ptolemy directed that ambassadors and gifts should be despatched to King Scydrothemis — he ruled over the people of Sinope at that time — and when the embassy was about to sail he instructed them to visit Pythian Apollo. The ambassadors found the sea favourable; and the answer of the oracle was not uncertain: Apollo bade them go on and bring back the image of his father, but leave that of his sister.9

84 When the ambassadors reached Sinope, they delivered the gifts, requests, and messages of their king to Scydrothemis. He was all uncertainty, now fearing the god and again being terrified by the threats and opposition of his people; often he was tempted by the gifts and promises of the ambassadors. In the meantime three years passed during which Ptolemy did not lessen his zeal or his appeals; he increased the dignity of his ambassadors, the number of his ships, and the quantity of gold offered. Then a terrifying vision appeared to Scydrothemis, warning him not to hinder longer the purposes of the god: as he still hesitated, various disasters, diseases, and the evident anger of the gods, growing heavier from day to day, beset the king. He called an assembly of his people and made known to them the god's orders, the visions that had appeared to him and to Ptolemy, and the misfortunes that were multiplying upon them: the people opposed their king; they were jealous of Egypt, afraid for themselves, and so gathered about the temple of the god. At this point the tale becomes stranger, for tradition says that the god himself, voluntarily embarking on the fleet that was lying on the shore, miraculously crossed the wide stretch of sea and reached Alexandria in two days. A temple, befitting the size of the city, was erected in the quarter called Rhacotis; there had previously been on that spot an ancient shrine dedicated to Serapis and Isis. Such is the most popular account of the origin and arrival of the god. Yet I am not unaware that there are some who maintain that the god was brought from Seleucia in Syria in the reign of Ptolemy III; still others claim that the same Ptolemy introduced the god, but that the place from which he came was Memphis, once a famous city and the bulwark of ancient Egypt. Many regard the god himself as identical with Aesculapius, because he cures the sick; some as Osiris, the oldest god among these peoples; still more identify him with Jupiter as the supreme lord of all things; the majority, however, arguing from the attributes of the god that are seen on his statue or from their own conjectures, hold him to be Father Dis.

85 1 But before Domitian and Mucianus reached the Alps, they received news of the success among the Treviri. The chief proof of their victory was given by the presence of the enemy's leader, Valentinus, who, never losing courage, continued to show by his looks the same spirit that he had always maintained. He was given an opportunity to speak, but solely that his questioners might judge of his nature; and he was condemned. While being executed, someone taunted him with the fact that his native country had been subdued, to which he replied that he found therein consolation for his own death.

Svartalf wrote:the Jewish traitor Flavius Josephus wrote his books to curry favor with Vespasian and Titus, I don't see whatother authors could have written that. I certainly did not notice such a qualification in Suetonius' Life of Vespasian, and Tacitus is full of later additions by bad authors.

And as this good-will to Vespasian was universal, those that enjoyed any remarkable dignities could not have patience enough to stay in Rome, but made haste to meet him at a very great distance from it; nay, indeed, none of the rest could endure the delay of seeing him, but did all pour out of the city in such crowds, and were so universally possessed with the opinion that it was easier and better for them to go out than to stay there, that this was the very first time that the city joyfully perceived itself almost empty of its citizens; for those that staid within were fewer than those that went out.

But as soon as the news was come that he was hard by, and those that had met him at first related with what good humor he received every one that came to him, then it was that the whole multitude that had remained in the city, with their wives and children, came into the road, and waited for him there; and for those whom he passed by, they made all sorts of acclamations, on account of the joy they had to see him, and the pleasantness of his countenance, and styled him their Benefactor and Savior.......

dejuror wrote:........It was the Fall of the Jewish Temple c 70 CE and supposed prophecies about the coming of Jewish Messianic rulers in Jewish writings as stated in writings attributed to Josephus, Tacitus and Suetonius that motivated people to invent conspiracy theories which would later become the foundation of a new religion sometime in the 2nd century.

RealityRules wrote:
I can't disagree with this, though I'm not sure it was "conspiracy theories" which would later become the foundation of Christianity.

7. But why, O prophet, tell us, and for what reason, was the temple made desolate? Was it on account of that ancient fabrication of the calf? Was it on account of the idolatry of the people? Was it for the blood of the prophets? Was it for the adultery and fornication of Israel? By no means, he says; for in all these transgressions they always found pardon open to them, and benignity; but it was because they killed the Son of their Benefactor, for He is coeternal with the Father.....

...... you alone may suffer that which you now justly suffer; and that your land may be desolate, and your cities burned with fire; and that strangers may eat your fruit in your presence, and not one of you may go up to Jerusalem.' For you are not recognised among the rest of men by any other mark than your fleshly circumcision. For none of you, I suppose, will venture to say that God neither did nor does foresee the events, which are future, nor fore-ordained his deserts for each one. Accordingly, these things have happened to you in fairness and justice, for you have slain the Just One, and His prophets before Him...

Now this writer, although not believing in Jesus as the Christ, in seeking after the cause of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the temple......... he ought to have said that the conspiracy against Jesus was the cause of these calamities befalling the people, since they put to death Christ, who was a prophet......

Accordingly the times must be inquired into of the predicted and future nativity of the Christ, and of His passion, and of the extermination of the city of Jerusalem, that is, its devastation. For Daniel says, that both the holy city and the holy place are exterminated together with the coming Leader, and that the pinnacle is destroyed unto ruin. And so the times of the coming Christ, the Leader, must be inquired into, which we shall trace in Daniel.....

5. From all these passages are revealed to us, not merely the particulars of the apostasy, and [the doings] of him who concentrates in himself every satanic error, but also, that there is one and the same God the Father, who was declared by the prophets, but made manifest by Christ. For if what Daniel prophesied concerning the end has been confirmed by the Lord, when He said, "When ye shall see the abomination of desolation, which has been spoken of by Daniel the prophet" (and the angel Gabriel gave the interpretation of the visions to Daniel, and he is the archangel of the Creator (Demiurgi), who also proclaimed to Mary the visible coining and the incarnation of Christ), then one and the same God is most manifestly pointed out, who sent the prophets, and made promise of the Son, and called us into His knowledge.

In addition to these the same author records many other tumults which were stirred up in Jerusalem itself, and shows that from that time seditions and wars and mischievous plots followed each other in quick succession, and never ceased in the city and in all Judea until finally the siege of Vespasian overwhelmed them. Thus the divine vengeance overtook the Jews for the crimes which they dared to commit against Christ....

dejuror wrote:The evidence is clear and overwhelming. Church writers did engage in conspiracy theories attempting to explain the destruction of Jerusalem and the Fall of the Jewish Temple.

Jesus of Nazareth was a mere conspiracy theory without a shred of history.

Stein wrote:Ignorance, amateurism and historical amnesia CAN KILL --

http://on.theatln.tc/dNC1yBt

Stein

. . . It is a notorious fact that the Monarchs of Europe and the Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening the extinction of our political, civil, and religious institutions. We have the best reasons for believing that corruption has found its way into our Executive Chamber, and that our Executive head is tainted with the infectious venom of Catholicism. . . . The Pope has recently sent his ambassador of state to this country on a secret commission, the effect of which is an extraordinary boldness of the Catholic church throughout the United States. . . . These minions of the Pope are boldly insulting our Senators; reprimanding our Statesmen; propagating the adulterous union of Church and State; abusing with foul calumny all governments but Catholic, and spewing out the bitterest execrations on all Protestantism. The Catholics in the United States receive from abroad more than $200,000 annually for the propagation of their creed. Add to this the vast revenues collected here. . . .

Cito di Pense wrote:

Stein wrote:Ignorance, amateurism and historical amnesia CAN KILL --

http://on.theatln.tc/dNC1yBt

Stein

Harper's Magazine, 1964, "The paranoid style in American politics"

https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the ... -politics/

. . . It is a notorious fact that the Monarchs of Europe and the Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening the extinction of our political, civil, and religious institutions. We have the best reasons for believing that corruption has found its way into our Executive Chamber, and that our Executive head is tainted with the infectious venom of Catholicism. . . . The Pope has recently sent his ambassador of state to this country on a secret commission, the effect of which is an extraordinary boldness of the Catholic church throughout the United States. . . . These minions of the Pope are boldly insulting our Senators; reprimanding our Statesmen; propagating the adulterous union of Church and State; abusing with foul calumny all governments but Catholic, and spewing out the bitterest execrations on all Protestantism. The Catholics in the United States receive from abroad more than $200,000 annually for the propagation of their creed. Add to this the vast revenues collected here. . . .

[Texas newspaper opinion, 1855]

Cito di Pense wrote:

Stein wrote:Ignorance, amateurism and historical amnesia CAN KILL --

http://on.theatln.tc/dNC1yBt

Stein

Harper's Magazine, 1964, "The paranoid style in American politics"

https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the ... -politics/

. . . It is a notorious fact that the Monarchs of Europe and the Pope of Rome are at this very moment plotting our destruction and threatening the extinction of our political, civil, and religious institutions. We have the best reasons for believing that corruption has found its way into our Executive Chamber, and that our Executive head is tainted with the infectious venom of Catholicism. . . . The Pope has recently sent his ambassador of state to this country on a secret commission, the effect of which is an extraordinary boldness of the Catholic church throughout the United States. . . . These minions of the Pope are boldly insulting our Senators; reprimanding our Statesmen; propagating the adulterous union of Church and State; abusing with foul calumny all governments but Catholic, and spewing out the bitterest execrations on all Protestantism. The Catholics in the United States receive from abroad more than $200,000 annually for the propagation of their creed. Add to this the vast revenues collected here. . . .

[Texas newspaper opinion, 1855]

Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse

Brill, 1 July 2019 (Value Inquiry Book Series, Philosophy and Religion)

Editor of the Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus

Professor of Bible, Society and Politics at St Mary’s University, Twickenham

RealityRules wrote:
Raphael Lataster has a new book out

Questioning the Historicity of Jesus: Why a Philosophical Analysis Elucidates the Historical Discourse

At the beginning of research into the historical Jesus, questions about proof of his existence (outside the New Testament texts) were nonetheless posed.

• In the middle of the nineteenth century, Bruno Bauer argued that Christianity born in the second century was a sort of syncretism combining different religious ideas (Jewish, Greek, Roman). Jesus is not at the origin of this Christianity, but a literary fiction to give this “new religion” a founder.

• At the beginning of the twentieth century the German philosopher Arthur Drews published a book, The Christ Myth, in which he considered the figure of Jesus as the personification of an earlier Christic myth, showing that all the epithets of Jesus were borrowed from mythologies Jewish and Greek.

These theories remained marginal however and, despite the fact that in the 1st and 2nd centuries there are no texts outside the New Testament clearly attesting to the existence of a Jesus of Nazareth, the historicity of such a character is almost no longer questioned.

• Thus Daniel Marguerat, eminent exegete of the New Testament, says: “the meaning of his deeds and actions, not his existence, is debated today” (p.13, in his Introduction to the edited volume Jesus de Nazareth. Nouvelles approches d’une énigme, Geneva, Labor and Fides, 1998).

According to Nanine Charbonnel...this distinction between the historical Jesus and the reinterpretations of his life and death in the Gospels has been detrimental to research. Relying on a “rationalization” of evangelical texts has prevented deeper understanding of these texts by questioning them almost exclusively from an idea of '​​a historical core', thus seeking an historical basis of certain pericopes as well as indications of borrowing from Judaism or reinterpretations after the death of Jesus in others. Faced with the affirmation shared by believing scholars and agnostic intellectuals that Jesus is a historical figure of whom we know almost nothing historically, the author of this book proposes to read the New Testament texts from the idea that Jesus Christ would be a “paper figure”. The philosopher’s approach includes a severe critique of hermeneutics, and in particular the current called “hermeneutic phenomenology”.

[Charbonnel] proposes reading the Gospel tales as midrashim, reminding us rightly that it is impossible to read the New Testament texts without locating them in their relation to the Old Testament (in Hebrew and Greek). As a midrash, an exegesis and reinterpretation of earlier texts, evangelical tales set up a theology of fulfillment through narratives, drawing largely on the texts and themes of the Hebrew Bible.

Charbonnel shows this in pedagogical tables indicating the different borrowing and rewriting that can be found behind the tales of the Gospels. She then details the function of the characters appearing in the Gospels, like the twelve apostles representing the twelve tribes of the new Israel, and Mary [representing] the Jewish people who begets the Messiah. Jesus is the new Adam, the new Moses, the new Elijah and the new Elishah, and also the new Joshua and the incarnation of the “suffering servant”; a messiah who brings together different messianic traits. The Gospels no longer appear as compilations but as creative works repeating and transforming statements in the Hebrew Bible ...

Thomas Römer, preface in Jésus-Christ, sublime figure de papier (2017, Berg International, in French) by Nanine Charbonnel, a specialist in hermeneutics, Université de Strasbourg, Faculté de philosophie.

RealityRules wrote:...... They are entirely symbolic texts, and entirely elaborated within the framework of Judaism of the time. Only a hermeneutical confusion -- that is to say, the taking of what was to be taken figuratively, accentuated by the multiplicity of languages ​​used at the time (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) -- explains the subsequent belief in an existing man."

Now, that we may give a simpler answer, it was not fit that the Son of God should be born of a human father's seed................ He only wanted to assume flesh, of the flesh of man without the seed of a man; for the seed of a man was unnecessary for One who had the seed of God. As, then, before His birth of the virgin, He was able to have God for His Father without a human mother, so likewise, after He was born of the virgin, He was able to have a woman for His mother without a human father.