rationalskepticism.org

Moonwatcher wrote:
I'm surprised you did not mention Tacitus (or did I miss it?).

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind".

There is difficult to dismiss as a forgery for reasons that have been rehashed endlessly.

If it is a forgery, why state that these people were hated for their abominations? Maybe say they were falsely hated for assumed abominations. But it does not say that. It says they are hated for their abominations that they committed, statement of fact.

Then, reference to an unnamed something but clearly a superstition, not reality. But it became a popular "superstition".

And these people, these followers of this Christus [insert dejuror saying it was Chrestus- case closed] are guilty of hatred of all mankind.

Oh yeah, this is definitely a Christian forgery written by a guy who loves Christianity and believes it all.

I realize one explanation is that it was disguised as anti-Christian in order to provide evidence that this historical person existed. Of course, the problem is that it seems written to an audience both unfamiliar with the events and in a time when nobody was questioning that the guy at least existed minus the "popular superstitions" about him.

Home run, Moonwatcher. Tacitus is as central as Antiqs. XX! I must have left it out purely because I was in an insensate rage and not thinking.

In addition, I find it peculiarly ironic that the blas-e l'on dit from some ignorant mythers is that whether or not he was historically real, why we surely know even less about anything he said than we do about anything he did, right?

W R O N G !!!

In fact, the analysis of various textual strata shews that some of the sayings material goes way further back than any of the narrative stuff, including most of GMark. That's why Wells, an erstwhile myther, decided there was some sort of historical figure behind it all, after all. It was the parallel sayings that proved more persuasive than the narrative junk.

Your timely reminder of the Tacitus Annals underscores the greater paucity of narrative bio that we have, compared to all the parallel sayings. In fact, it helps remind me of the other early stratum that I overlooked in my previous posting, alongside Annals: the authentic Paulines.

Laid end to end, the Arabic version of Antiqs. 18, Antiqs. XX, Annals 15 and the biographical references in the authentic Paulines* are not just the only reliable stuff we really have biographically; they also come to far less text than the parallel sayings. That's why the Q material in the Synoptics are where we get the most that has survived of the basic guts of the guy. This stuff is not only older; it is also more extensive.

He's important to history not because of fanciful woo that his ignorant followers foisted on him posthumously; he's important because of the more colloquial and Aramaically tinged reflections that have survived in the teeth of all the magic woo. Those reflections on what it means to be a complete human being to everyone around one will resonate far more in the coming centuries than the later narrative woo. In fact, it will also resonate more than some of his own metaphysical speculations like Luke 11:17, etc. The latter are not unique to him anyway and therefore less important to the history of the time.

But the reflections on how we treat others, like Luke 6:35 ff. and a few others, with unprecedented stuff like "Love your enemies", are of real historic importance and textual integrity, and remain unique to Jesus the rabbi down through the centuries. Sure, Buddha and others had already said that one should never return hate with hate, yup, but these Q sayings are the first time that anyone explicitly says that one should pro-actively love one's enemies.

The reason why this stuff will resonate more in coming centuries than the foisted magic junk is because humanity will be in the grip of the most dire climate change that we've had in many millennia, and we will have to adapt to it by working together or perish. Suddenly, the pragmatic will be fused with the idealistic, and all that the Grahams and the McCains and the Putins and the Assads and the Cruz's and the Khameneis and the Baghdadis and the Cheneys and the rest of the creeps who get their rocks off at the thought of war will be able to do is gnash their teeth in fury at the cooperation that will emerge in spite of their bloodlust, a cooperation emerging solely because normal people don't relish the thought of being killed by snuffed out oxygen or continual flooding. Practical survival will dictate a mode of cooperation that will resemble the earliest Q material from Jesus the rabbi far more than the sectarian bullshit of Jesus's posthumous handlers.

Now, cue the snarkers and their fucking violin emoticons.

Mind you, I'm not saying it's a foregone conclusion that the bloodlusters will be put out of countenance. It's still possible that they will have their way, and so we'll go the way of the planet Venus in sheer idiocy and ostrich-headed fuckery. But we have a chance of stemming such an ending if we don't treat the written reflections of the Gandhis, the MLKs, the Jesuses, the Gotamas, the Socrateses, the Confuciuses, the Urukaginas, the Ben Franklins, the Mandelas and the Eleanor Roosevelts in the same fucking way that ISIS has treated the treasures of Palmyra, or that mythers treat the hard-won victories of modern professional historians who've routinely bucked the thought-control jackboots of organized religion during the past century, or that fundies treat the painstaking work of scientists tracing evolutionary data.

Stein

* First Thessalonians (ca. 51 AD)
Philippians (ca. 52–54 AD)
Philemon (ca. 52–54 AD)
First Corinthians (ca. 53–54 AD)
Galatians (ca. 55 AD)
Second Corinthians (ca. 55–56 AD)
Romans (ca. 55–58 AD)

Galatians 4:4
born of a woman, born under law
Romans 1:3
who as to his human nature was a descendant of David
Galatians 1:19
I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord's brother.
1 Corinthians 9:5
Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?

Phillipians 2:7
but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
8 And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death — even death on a cross!
1 Corinthians 2:8
None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.
1 Thessalonians 2:15
who killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets and also drove us out.
1 Corinthians 15:3
that he was buried

1 Corinthians 7:10
To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband.
1 Corinthians 9:14
In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should receive their living from the gospel.

Galatians 1:18
Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter and stayed with him fifteen days.
1 Corinthians 9:5
Don't we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?

1 Corinthians 11:23
The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread,
24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, "This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me."
25
In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the
new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in
remembrance of me."