rationalskepticism.org

willhud9 wrote:

Corky wrote:

proudfootz wrote:

Corky wrote:
See, the trick is you have to understand the bible and HJers understand it better than the other 38,000 sects of Xianity.

While the HJ community is not necessarily a christian cult, it is an interesting parallel that the early christians believed they understood jewish scripture better than the jews. The 'good news' about Jesus was hidden from the jews in scripture and finally revealed to people like Paul.

There isn't a thing that Jesus said or did that didn't come from pre-existing scripture and, for some strange reason, that's the only place Jesus does actually exist. Everything else is simply presumption based on hearsay. Christians didn't even know when Jesus supposedly lived until the destruction of the temple. Then it was easy (using scripture) to figure it out. It all happened in that one scriptural 40 year generation.

Tell me Corky, can you tell me the events surrounding the formation of Hannukah? Can you tell me the life that history knows of Judas Maccabeus? The events of the revolts of the Maccabees is well accepted by historians. Yet, the man history says started the revolt is only known in 2 sources. First Maccabees and Josephus. Just 2 bleeding sources for one man. Yet history does not challenge his existence. Why? Because there is no need to challenge his existence. He doesn't matter in history. But you get this Jesus fellow. He is mentioned in several Roman documents (but they can be forgeries), he is mentioned in Jospehus' works (but they can be forgeries or mistranslated), he is mentioned in Paul's epistles (but he can be talking about a spirit or even better he could not exist and could be a 2nd century fabrication). This is at the core, what the MJ argument comes down to. But if we held the same level of scrutiny to other figures of antiquity we would find we can wipe out history books. Many of histories lesser figures, the people historians did not care about are mentioned in passages long obscure. Does this mean these people did not exist? Jesus was during the 1st century a back water preacher. Why should historians focus greatly on his life? Even the Christian sect was a weak and powerless sect, but we know the Christian sect existed. Jesus was a nobody to Romans and it wasn't until the Christians started getting a following that they were taken any notice and they were not seriously considered. So why should Suetonius, Tacitus, and even Jospehus write a lot about Jesus? He was a nobody. he did not lead a revolt like Judas Maccabeus, he did not preach zealotry, or even try to work the people up. He was a simple preacher. Hardly worth writing about when Roman historians were occupied writing about the affairs of Rome and Josephus was occupied writing about the history of the Jews and how Jews related to the world. Jesus, again, was a nobody. But yet we do have mentions of him, and Christ, we have mentions of Christians. We have Paul's letters which mention Jesus Christ. There is historical evidence that a Jesus existed. But to dismiss that evidence without proper historical scrutiny is superfluous. As I said, you can, inevitable do that to entire history books.