Posted: Jan 31, 2012 2:15 am
proudfootz wrote:dogsgod wrote:TheOneTrueZeke wrote:Stein wrote:
And why would Christian scribes sprinkle the Antiquities with references to OTHER Jesus wannabees whose followers sometimes end up in pitched battles with Roman soldiers? What Christian purpose would that serve? Obviously, these descriptions of these wannabees come from Josephus, not meddlesome scribes.
Stein
Well, Stein, we're talking about the nefarious and cunning Christian Hegemony™ here and it doesn't pay to underestimate them.
No, sir.
They peppered in these other references to make the two references to JC seem more natural. To make them fit in better and seem less suspicious. A brilliant masterstroke of forgery displaying their awesome powers of manipulation and foresight in anticipating a problem no one would take seriously for over 1500 years!
Except, of course, they forget to insert references into Philo to complete the picture! Oh, well, they're cunning forgers when needed and bumblers when not...they're just convenient like that.
Are you forgetting that Eusebius promoted the legend that Philo met Peter in Rome? Jerome (345-420 C.E.) even lists him as a church Father. http://www.iep.utm.edu/philo/
It kind of makes one wonder how all these church fathers became church fathers. Do you think Philo knew he was a church father?
This is just another line of evidence that what we know as 'christianity' is a gathering together of a lot of disparate hellenic/judaic mixing that had been going all over the eastern part of the Mediterranean region on for a couple of centuries.
If an anonymous street preacher got swept up with everything else,there's no need to postulate such a person started the process that had been going on for generations before the time of the Roman takeover of Judea.
On a somewhat similar note, the church can be traced back to the fourth century, prior to that the history of the church appears to be folklore in that bishops can be linked all the way back to the original apostles, the apostolic succession as it were, in response to gnosticism, as if there is such a link. I wonder how many got swept up and were posthumously appointed as bishops by Eusebeus.