Btw - you will find a fascinating chapter on Constantine in the HBHG. You'll love it - they prove that he wasn't a Christian at all but was initiated into the Sol Invictus cult.
This is why he moved the Sabbath from Saturday to sunday and instituted Sol's day (Dec 25) as the celebration of his cult.
On his death bed when he was too weak to resist the Xian religious toadies railroaded him into accepting their doctrine and when he was safely dead they set about re-writing history to portray him as a Christian.
Don't read that Holy Blood Holy Grail shite, not when there's real work done on early Christianity. An excellent critique of the religious claims made in the Davinci Code is Bart Ehrman's book. It gets in to the Constantine stuff, was Jesus married, etc., but it doesn't go into the secret societies and all that. And it's actually based on real scholarship, not tripe like that HBHG.
Also, MarcUK, CT has a long article on DVC, Ehrman, lost Gospels, etc.
I'm glad you posted that, to give Ehrman some cred. So many of the DVC criticisms have been religious in nature - "DVC is bad because it will harm people's faith!" Ehrman's book is quite tough on DVC, but not from a religious perspective, from an historical one.
sego, rather than quote you, ill just ask the question as it's meant for you.
I cant help but feel a huge "So What" coming on. Perhaps its my ignorance again, but if Jesus is an archetype or meme of astrological origin and/or a gnostic system of spiritual revelation, isn't this whole bloodline/marriage/children stuff in the context of 'historical secrecy/coverups/conspiricy' just a bunch of 'clever' bullshit?
Im just saying that I think its a bit silly to "assume" Jesus was really married in a literal historical context and has a bloodline and children, and provide evidence of such, because the first wrong assumption is that Jesus ever existed in the first place.
I don't doubt that there are mysteries and conspiricies connected to him, and all the artifacts, such as grails, swords, codes in davinci's work etc are 'real', but all these things happened because these people thought Jesus was 'real'.
But thats making one assumption too far. How can you have a real 'spear' that was thrust into Jesus side? The spear might exist as a 'real' physical object, but Jesus wasn't.
ps I'm not commentating on Constantine, or the church grafting a history onto him, just the claim that Jesus married and has kids in a real historical context.
MarcUK, you seem pretty convinced that Jesus didn't exist. That seems pretty hard to believe, and takes quite a conspiracy. I certainly believe that much of his life was "revised" by Christians in the decade or so after his death. If that's the case, a Jewish apocalyptic preacher named Yeshua that had many followers and was executed by Rome is hardly difficult to believe.
I'll give you an example: In DVC, brown says that Jesus has a "royal" bloodline because he was related to King David, and therefore his ancestors are also "royal" in a way. But I believe that early Christians invented Jesus' relation to David in order to buff up his credibility as the messiah. He was really from Nazareth, not Bethlehem, the city of David. It's interesting that DVC buys into a far-fetched historical notion that most scholars reject - that Jesus was Jewish "royalty" - while asserting an implausible claim with no evidence - that Jesus was married and had children.
This term referred to the blood relatives of Jesus: that is, his brothers James and Jude and possibly Thomas who was called 'the twin', though this last's actual blood relationship is a matter of debate.
Yeah, although I believe Jesus was unmarried, I find it hard to believe that he wasn't an uncle.
Yes, I don;t think the Virgin Mary is a Virgin anymore - does this invalidate all prayers and visions of her I wonder or did she somehow re-Virginize herself?
And if so why? Wasn't it enough she was a Virgin at the time of Jesus birth? Did she have to stay one? And if so why not have all the other sprogs miraculously also?
Questions, questions....
It's interesting that so many of the Biblical literalists and social conservatives think that sex is only for procreation, and yet they hold in such high esteem this woman that procreated without having sex.
Ok, let's see your best argument with hard evidence that he never existed. What is it based on?
As far as I can tell it is just something you choose to believe (the reasons why this might be so are far more interesting than the overt discussion actually) but I have yet to see any evidence to back it up other than the fall-back 'there is no evidence he did'.
You can apply that logic to many, many historical figures, many far more recent. Shakespeare being the classic example as I often have to trot out.
There is not a single manuscript in Shakespeare's hand ever know to anyone, not a single not, three alleged signatures on wills of dubious authenticity and absolutely no proof whatsoever that he existed in the form he is known to us today.
There is a dubious grave. But then there is a grave of Jesus in Kashmir.
But what 'Jesus' are we talking about?
The 'gospel' Jesus? - Astrology Jesus, A montage of many different religious characters and pagan wisdoms rolled into an archetypal personification. It would be silly to argue this Jesus never existed.
The 'gnostic' Jesus? - A symbolic system of self awareness where the aim is to become a Christ. Im real, you're real, if we follow gnosticism to its goal, then we could both become Jesus as have many other people in history, it would be silly to argue that this Jesus never existed.
"Josephus' Jesus's" - Smalltime agitators, terrorists, thugs, hippies and travellers, but little nothing to do with a religion called Christianity or sons of God. Bit silly to argue these Jesus' never existed.
SO, it comes down to the age old problem of context and understanding.
So if you believe in 'gospel' Jesus, but dont understand the astrology/pagan wisdom that forms its foundation, im sorry your Jesus never existed.
If you believe in 'gnostic' Jesus, (i cant imagine how you could be foolish enough to believe 'gospel' Jesus ever existed as a historical person anyway if you follow this path of Jesus), but dont understand the symbolism behind it, then this Jesus never existed.
Perhaps you believe in 'terrorist' Jesus, but then WTF? This isn't Jesus of the gospels, this isn't gnostic Jesus, this isn't Jesus who Christianity is founded on, so in the context of what were speaking about, Jesus never existed.
As for proving Jesus never existed, 1) Why should i? 2) Cant be bothered 3) Faith vs knowledge
Lets expand on that a bit more...
1) Everyone who's claiming Jesus existed should provide the evidence. But there isn't any. Why should it be my responsibility to prove he didn't? Anymore than its possible to prove there isn't a golden giraffe in orbit around Pluto. There is a very very small possibility there is a giraffe, but given every possible understanding of how a golden giraffe could get into orbit around Pluto, short of being a 'miracle' how could there be? Same with 'Gospel' Jesus.
2) Attempting to prove he didn't exist is a waste of time. The fact that people believe he did because of the gospels shows that noone really cares much for truth. I could spend weeks giving evidence, but for the large part I would only convince 'believers' that I have been really really tricked by Satan and am going to a fiery pit on my death. Unfortunately after 2000 years of telling lies and having 'cute' answers for everything - which only serve to re-inforce a 'believers' belief in the gospels when faced with unbelievers, there is no point. Its perverse reverse psychological trickery. All that happens is that 99% of the evidence gets ignored, and they just look for you to 'slip up' on something, then run with it for all their life. I cant be bothered with people like that. You're either are open to a genuine debate about truth, or youre a professional shister. 99% are shisters.
3) There comes a point when arguing about it - providing evidence etc, becomes a test of your own faith. I had hundreds of links on various texts that show exactly what/who Jesus is, should I be confronted with such a question. But its pointless. All it shows is that I have 'faith' and can defend my position. It is an expression of my weakness and doubts. But that position of faith that 'Jesus never existed', was replaced by an understanding of what Jesus is, I dont doubt it, dont need to have a thousand pages of backup to prove it. I know it, and am at peace with it.
I think it was you who told me the story of a man carrying a boat around on his back so he could cross a river - well the river is symbolic of moving from 'faith' to 'knowing'. You only need to cross it once, so carrying the boat around after the crossing is unwise - a burden.
Holding all the evidence of Jesus' non-existance is a boat. I crossed over and discarded the boat by deleting every bookmark I had on the subject. The consequence of that is that I cant make myself look really clever and shove a thousand links down your throat, but thats just a stupid game which proves my own weakness, and I am done with that.
MarcUK, you seem pretty convinced that Jesus didn't exist. That seems pretty hard to believe, and takes quite a conspiracy. I certainly believe that much of his life was "revised" by Christians in the decade or so after his death. If that's the case, a Jewish apocalyptic preacher named Yeshua that had many followers and was executed by Rome is hardly difficult to believe.
I'll give you an example: In DVC, brown says that Jesus has a "royal" bloodline because he was related to King David, and therefore his ancestors are also "royal" in a way. But I believe that early Christians invented Jesus' relation to David in order to buff up his credibility as the messiah. He was really from Nazareth, not Bethlehem, the city of David. It's interesting that DVC buys into a far-fetched historical notion that most scholars reject - that Jesus was Jewish "royalty" - while asserting an implausible claim with no evidence - that Jesus was married and had children.
considering you are open to the fact that many of Jesus' attributes are 'inventions' - something you can only ascertain by gaining knowledge, why dont you complete the journey and gain the knowledge that Jesus himself is purely an 'invention'.
Why is it that there needs to be a 'real' person and 'real' rewards of heaven, or 'real' threats of hell for people to get off their lazy asses and make some positive change to their life. These things only need to be 'real' when you are in contempt of the wonder of life and hate yourself.
Is the Bible (or for that matter any other religious document) worthless, meaningless and fake because there exists no 'real' Jesus, heaven or hell? Cant you extract the wisdoms from it if Jesus never existed? Can you even accept the wisdom in it if it turns out to be justpagan astrology? Would you even bother if there exists no reward of eternal life?
As i've said before, if you are in such contempt of life that you cannot live it without a 'real' Jesus, heaven or hell, then its probably better that you do deceive yourself and believe it to be true, lest you end up being a miserable, lazy, bum. But for some of us that don't have this issue, the path of truth awaits.
@MarcUK: Ok, re Jesus's historical existence - let's nail this bad boy down once and for all.
You say that the Jesus never existed but when pressed fall back on "the Jesus portrayed by the Church is a fiction".
Agreed, there is no need for an historical figure for the gospels, because as we know, it is based on the pagan/sun astro motif.
Also, there is no need for an historical figure for 'gnosticism' becuase it is a spiritual path, very similar to alot of other spiritual paths where to claim a historical figure existed as the centre of their theology, would border on insanity.
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Of course this is true. Imo it is a fiction based on the astro/sun pagan motif of which you are so enamoured. These too are a fiction imo, so you have a fiction on a fiction. The latter one even being a lie while the first at least was sincere.
well, i was thinking about this the other day when a friend asked me a question. Here's roughly what I said.
Take for instance a well known story "snow white and the seven dwarves", (lets assume for arguments sake its a completely ficticious story), if we looked back how this story developed, we might find there were only five dwarves to start with, a different culture might have "sun yellow and the six elves", another "crystal green and the eight pixies" or even "coal black and the ten giants"...Yet are any of these alternate versions lies or corruption? NO, because its just a fun story, a myth, and each culture, each era has evolved a different meaning or tale of the original for their own purposes and maybe just for fun.
Infact the only way you can really misunderstand and corrupt a myth or story is if you suddenly thought "Snow White" was a real historical person.
As it is with Jesus, the story goes back far beyond 3B.C, you can see it in every culture, religion from all over the world. The closer to 1AD you get the story is more similar than it is if you look back to 3000B.C, but its still there.
Yet noone is foolish enough to believe the likes of Horus, Krishna, Buddha, Apollo, Hercules, Mithra, Dionysus ad infinitium are anything more than personifications of nature, spirit and soul.
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BUT where we differ from each other is on that knowing that the second is a lie/fiction you infer that the central figure of the myth could have had no existence.
ok, so we differ...
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1) When a myth accrues around a central figure it makes it all the more likely that they did exist in order for it to be grafted successfully - it is when the myth is dispersed amongst a nebulous 'group' or various figures such as in folklore (Till Eulenspiegel, Nasrudin, Joha, Ponchinello etc) that it is more likely the 'target' is completely fictitious. Also such motifs tend to be culturally exclusive and, where they do cross cultures, transmute into terms defined by that culture, updating over time.
I've italicized some of the above. You just shown exactly why Jesus is ficticious. His story was built up amongst many groups, who all disagreed somewhat with eachother, taking several hundred years to be completed. If thats not positive proof that the stories aren't based on a ficticious character, what is? - and when the final story echoes exactly what has become before it, a collage of all the 'ficticious' characters i mentioned above, where is the 'historical person' in that?
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2) There are historical inaccuracies and contradictions in the Bible. All sane people know and accept this.
But, oth, there are factual accuracies also. Ones that place the Gospel accounts (or the originals they are based on) very near the time they claim to be written.
At very best, the gospels would be akin to you writing an historical account of WWII now, if no-one had bothered to document it at the time, and its history and events had only been transmitted by word of mouth for 60 years. No doubt such 'truths' such as "Germany, Hitler, Churchill, Pearl Harbour, Atom Bomb" would remain, but i wouldn't fancy your chances of getting anything else historically correct.
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This does not constitute any proof but it does mean that if you are correct and Jesus never had a historical reality then a conspiracy involving hundreds of people - and the Roman/Jewish authorities knowledge if not consent - was under way very early on with no-one talking.
This is a serious flaw in your argument.
Hardly! we know there were hundreds of people working on the story of Jesus for hundreds of years, we know that alot of it got rejected, and we know that for several hundred years, people were debating, critisizing, even taking the piss out of the Christians for their story - and even that the Christians were pleading for their story to be accepted - because it was - paraphrasing - "little different than the mythology that came before it". Who needs an historical catalyst for that?
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3) Following on from the above: The Church weren't even around at this point to do the conspiring. Nor was Paul. The only people who could have done this would be a group who wished to position themselves as the mundane equivalent of the 'Disciples' who would also be fictitious necessarily and who this Group X would have invented at the same time.
So you need to posit TWO conspiracies and TWO bad guys with TWO different agendas.
a) The 'Disciples' - a group inventing the original lie to aproject a teaching we don't know.
b) The Later Church warping the original lie into the lie we do know.
IMO, the Jesus story wasn't intended to be centered around a physical person from its outset, very few people could have been that stupid. Considering all the other similar myths around at the time, this would have been seen as just another. The only reason we have difficulty recognising it as a myth today, is that all the others have been exterminated by force.
All that really happened was the 'spiritual, mythical' Jesus story developed alongside other myths and a few psychotics ran with it to create an historical Jesus and then wriggled their way into power, and then conspired to destroy all evidence of the myth. No big leap of faith there.
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Obviously this is possible and it would explain my first point n the post about the problem of a 'fiction on a fiction' but it is unwieldy and yiou need to continually resort to new theories and explanations to support it.
I think I've been pretty consistant in my theory, im not changing it every other week, yet as new things are uncovered by me, I incorperate them into my understanding.
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Why not just accept the easiest obvious solution?
A man - a human being - called Jesus lived in Palestine 2000 years ago and, as humans do (as we are doing now) he talked a lot about religious stuff and philosophy. People even listened.
Well that isn't the easiest obvious solution. The easiest is that I just accept the gospels, ignore everything contradictory and shout off like a fundie. Thats easy.
Of this man called Jesus living in Palestine 2000 years ago? What do you know about him? How can his story be related in the gospels, when we know it is just a mismash of astrology and syncretization. Is this the same guy Paul was preaching in Rome about? Was he divine? Was he one of the many Jesus' Josephus mentions?
If there was such a Jesus, face the fact, that whatever he said or did, died with him the moment he died. There is no religion or church formed around him or his teachings, and give up your Bibles, Qurans and Talmuds, because they have nothing to do with him.
Infact, your theory makes no sense. You chose to claim that there was a historical figure, yet everything you do/think concerning religion or spirituality has nothing to do with him.
considering you are open to the fact that many of Jesus' attributes are 'inventions' - something you can only ascertain by gaining knowledge, why dont you complete the journey and gain the knowledge that Jesus himself is purely an 'invention'.
The reason I don't "complete the journey" and conclude that Jesus is an invention is that I don't believe it's logical to do so. Segovius said it well above, but I'll just say this: You're a gnostic, MarcUK. Your gnosis is this secret knowledge that Jesus never existed. "Completing this journey" is, for you, a kind of gnostic quest for truth. Well, congratulations, but I've always found gnosticism kind of creepy.
The reason I don't "complete the journey" and conclude that Jesus is an invention is that I don't believe it's logical to do so. Segovius said it well above, but I'll just say this: You're a gnostic, MarcUK. Your gnosis is this secret knowledge that Jesus never existed. "Completing this journey" is, for you, a kind of gnostic quest for truth. Well, congratulations, but I've always found gnosticism kind of creepy.
I would say that it is illogical not to complete the journey.
To start off along the path seeking the truth, as everyone does who picks up a bible or quran or whatever - must mean that you are prepared to find it, or you were never genuine about the search in the first place. You cant just stop when you have found enough to make you feel 'fuzzy' and ignore the rest. If you really want to know that bad, you have to be prepared to destroy yourself finding out. If you find that everything you thought you believed was a lie and you're staring the abyss of nothingness straight in the face - Do you jump in or backtrack to a more comfortable place? If you are genuine in your search, it is illogical not to jump in whatever the consequences.
Then comes the question of how you label yourself, I've thought about being a gnostic, a Christian, agnostic, athiest, or just making up some cute title for my belief, like Apollonian, but I think Athiest is probably the best fit.
No doubt that draws some critisism from people who would like to frame me as making a decision about something impossible to answer - but I think their claim that it is impossible is not true. I think it is possible, and their claims are just ways of getting their hooks back into you to try to make you reconsider.
But i've thought of a very simple test for God's existance and it comes out a resounding NO.
"If I was the only person on earth, and I had no knowledge of anything, would I end up believing in God, be him Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Mithra, Dionysus? Would I end up a gnostic? Would I end up a Christian, a Muslim or a Satanist?"
If any of these things were 'literally' real, you could say that some way or another that this truth would be sent to me.
If however these things are just the product of thousands of years of refinement of slowly gained knowledge, then it would be impossible to find out any of this in my sole 80 odd years on Earth.
Therefore God cannot be a 'literal' truth, and must be a product of the refinement of Science and Knowledge of mankind.
PS. Whats creepy about gnosis anyway? Whats more creepy is wanting to know the truth and deliberately not finding it.
It seems my hypothesis about what this book claims is wrong
What this book really is, is a cold calculated plot to undermine the chances of the 'truth' ever getting out.
Certainly there is an awful lot of 'factual' evidence in this book that has given me some 'glee' when I've been reading it, virtually confirming everything I have been studying for the past few years. But it's there not because some wise author is trying to get some real truth out into the public domain.
It exists in a phrase i'd call "guilt by association". Alot of this stuff is easily found in many 'critical' books of Christianity, including some I have read myself. Books by real scholars, collecting real evidence and making real arguments. These books are the 'evidence' of the truth, and pose a real threat to the established orthodoxy.
The reason it is 'guilt by association' is because this book will evidently be exposed as a pile of crock. And its by design. When certain aspects of this are rightly exposed as crock, it will take down all the genuine evidence with it, and thus discredit all the good work that has been done into the real truth of the Church, Christianity and Jesus.
So while certain elements of Christendom are publicy throwing a strop, behind closed doors, they must be laughing so hard their lungs are exploding.
This book is just their plan to discredit all the evidence that exists that they are a bogus operation.
Dan Brown has started writing for NBC daytime...watch for it this fall, I have his first script right here...here is a brief synopsys...
Announcer: Like sand through an hourglass, so were the days of our Lord...
Jesus to a set of distrout sisters: Where is this Lazarus fellow...
Sister 1: It is so terrible; He is in...(whipes away a tear)
Cue dramatic stepdown...dun-dun-dun
sister 2: a coma!
Thomas: Come hither, let me comfort you... Giggidy Giggidy!
Cue announcer guy: Will Jesus be able to help Lazarus? will Thomas score a two way with the sisters and deny it...thrice? for the answers to those questions and more; tune into the next chapter in the saga of the Days of Our Lord!
Will it sell?
</comic releif>
It is BS, it is a work of fiction, nothing less nothing more, I'd rather just watch a good Batman flick...
Anyway, whatever you believe is almost irrelavent to me, the only issue I have with religion is fundamentalism. Jesus, buddha, krishna, paganism, wicca are all fair game to me, if thats the path you chose, im fine with it.
I've been meaning to ask you about Apollonius of Tyana. I think by far the most influential person in the 1st Century.
How do you think he fits into all of this mystery?
Comments
Originally posted by segovius
Can't say, have never read his stuff.
Btw - you will find a fascinating chapter on Constantine in the HBHG. You'll love it - they prove that he wasn't a Christian at all but was initiated into the Sol Invictus cult.
This is why he moved the Sabbath from Saturday to sunday and instituted Sol's day (Dec 25) as the celebration of his cult.
On his death bed when he was too weak to resist the Xian religious toadies railroaded him into accepting their doctrine and when he was safely dead they set about re-writing history to portray him as a Christian.
He never was. Far from it.
Hi ho, hi ho, off to amazon I go...
Help me out.
In the bottom right, "O Draconian Devil" anagrams "Leonardo Da Vinci", but what's "O Lame Saint"? "Alias, Not Me"? No...
Originally posted by OccamsAftershave
How can an Apple forum with a thread like this not yet have a link to http://www.icryptex.com/
Help me out.
In the bottom right, "O Draconian Devil" anagrams "Leonardo Da Vinci", but what's "O Lame Saint"? "Alias, Not Me"? No...
a transsexual.
Originally posted by dmz
Also, MarcUK, CT has a long article on DVC, Ehrman, lost Gospels, etc.
I'm glad you posted that, to give Ehrman some cred. So many of the DVC criticisms have been religious in nature - "DVC is bad because it will harm people's faith!" Ehrman's book is quite tough on DVC, but not from a religious perspective, from an historical one.
I cant help but feel a huge "So What" coming on. Perhaps its my ignorance again, but if Jesus is an archetype or meme of astrological origin and/or a gnostic system of spiritual revelation, isn't this whole bloodline/marriage/children stuff in the context of 'historical secrecy/coverups/conspiricy' just a bunch of 'clever' bullshit?
I don't doubt that there are mysteries and conspiricies connected to him, and all the artifacts, such as grails, swords, codes in davinci's work etc are 'real', but all these things happened because these people thought Jesus was 'real'.
But thats making one assumption too far. How can you have a real 'spear' that was thrust into Jesus side? The spear might exist as a 'real' physical object, but Jesus wasn't.
I'll give you an example: In DVC, brown says that Jesus has a "royal" bloodline because he was related to King David, and therefore his ancestors are also "royal" in a way. But I believe that early Christians invented Jesus' relation to David in order to buff up his credibility as the messiah. He was really from Nazareth, not Bethlehem, the city of David. It's interesting that DVC buys into a far-fetched historical notion that most scholars reject - that Jesus was Jewish "royalty" - while asserting an implausible claim with no evidence - that Jesus was married and had children.
Originally posted by segovius
This term referred to the blood relatives of Jesus: that is, his brothers James and Jude and possibly Thomas who was called 'the twin', though this last's actual blood relationship is a matter of debate.
Yeah, although I believe Jesus was unmarried, I find it hard to believe that he wasn't an uncle.
Originally posted by segovius
Yes, I don;t think the Virgin Mary is a Virgin anymore - does this invalidate all prayers and visions of her I wonder or did she somehow re-Virginize herself?
And if so why? Wasn't it enough she was a Virgin at the time of Jesus birth? Did she have to stay one? And if so why not have all the other sprogs miraculously also?
Questions, questions....
It's interesting that so many of the Biblical literalists and social conservatives think that sex is only for procreation, and yet they hold in such high esteem this woman that procreated without having sex.
Originally posted by segovius
Ok, let's see your best argument with hard evidence that he never existed. What is it based on?
As far as I can tell it is just something you choose to believe (the reasons why this might be so are far more interesting than the overt discussion actually) but I have yet to see any evidence to back it up other than the fall-back 'there is no evidence he did'.
You can apply that logic to many, many historical figures, many far more recent. Shakespeare being the classic example as I often have to trot out.
There is not a single manuscript in Shakespeare's hand ever know to anyone, not a single not, three alleged signatures on wills of dubious authenticity and absolutely no proof whatsoever that he existed in the form he is known to us today.
There is a dubious grave. But then there is a grave of Jesus in Kashmir.
But what 'Jesus' are we talking about?
The 'gospel' Jesus? - Astrology Jesus, A montage of many different religious characters and pagan wisdoms rolled into an archetypal personification. It would be silly to argue this Jesus never existed.
The 'gnostic' Jesus? - A symbolic system of self awareness where the aim is to become a Christ. Im real, you're real, if we follow gnosticism to its goal, then we could both become Jesus as have many other people in history, it would be silly to argue that this Jesus never existed.
"Josephus' Jesus's" - Smalltime agitators, terrorists, thugs, hippies and travellers, but little nothing to do with a religion called Christianity or sons of God. Bit silly to argue these Jesus' never existed.
SO, it comes down to the age old problem of context and understanding.
So if you believe in 'gospel' Jesus, but dont understand the astrology/pagan wisdom that forms its foundation, im sorry your Jesus never existed.
If you believe in 'gnostic' Jesus, (i cant imagine how you could be foolish enough to believe 'gospel' Jesus ever existed as a historical person anyway if you follow this path of Jesus), but dont understand the symbolism behind it, then this Jesus never existed.
Perhaps you believe in 'terrorist' Jesus, but then WTF? This isn't Jesus of the gospels, this isn't gnostic Jesus, this isn't Jesus who Christianity is founded on, so in the context of what were speaking about, Jesus never existed.
As for proving Jesus never existed, 1) Why should i? 2) Cant be bothered 3) Faith vs knowledge
Lets expand on that a bit more...
1) Everyone who's claiming Jesus existed should provide the evidence. But there isn't any. Why should it be my responsibility to prove he didn't? Anymore than its possible to prove there isn't a golden giraffe in orbit around Pluto. There is a very very small possibility there is a giraffe, but given every possible understanding of how a golden giraffe could get into orbit around Pluto, short of being a 'miracle' how could there be? Same with 'Gospel' Jesus.
2) Attempting to prove he didn't exist is a waste of time. The fact that people believe he did because of the gospels shows that noone really cares much for truth. I could spend weeks giving evidence, but for the large part I would only convince 'believers' that I have been really really tricked by Satan and am going to a fiery pit on my death. Unfortunately after 2000 years of telling lies and having 'cute' answers for everything - which only serve to re-inforce a 'believers' belief in the gospels when faced with unbelievers, there is no point. Its perverse reverse psychological trickery. All that happens is that 99% of the evidence gets ignored, and they just look for you to 'slip up' on something, then run with it for all their life. I cant be bothered with people like that. You're either are open to a genuine debate about truth, or youre a professional shister. 99% are shisters.
3) There comes a point when arguing about it - providing evidence etc, becomes a test of your own faith. I had hundreds of links on various texts that show exactly what/who Jesus is, should I be confronted with such a question. But its pointless. All it shows is that I have 'faith' and can defend my position. It is an expression of my weakness and doubts. But that position of faith that 'Jesus never existed', was replaced by an understanding of what Jesus is, I dont doubt it, dont need to have a thousand pages of backup to prove it. I know it, and am at peace with it.
I think it was you who told me the story of a man carrying a boat around on his back so he could cross a river - well the river is symbolic of moving from 'faith' to 'knowing'. You only need to cross it once, so carrying the boat around after the crossing is unwise - a burden.
Holding all the evidence of Jesus' non-existance is a boat. I crossed over and discarded the boat by deleting every bookmark I had on the subject. The consequence of that is that I cant make myself look really clever and shove a thousand links down your throat, but thats just a stupid game which proves my own weakness, and I am done with that.
Originally posted by BRussell
MarcUK, you seem pretty convinced that Jesus didn't exist. That seems pretty hard to believe, and takes quite a conspiracy. I certainly believe that much of his life was "revised" by Christians in the decade or so after his death. If that's the case, a Jewish apocalyptic preacher named Yeshua that had many followers and was executed by Rome is hardly difficult to believe.
I'll give you an example: In DVC, brown says that Jesus has a "royal" bloodline because he was related to King David, and therefore his ancestors are also "royal" in a way. But I believe that early Christians invented Jesus' relation to David in order to buff up his credibility as the messiah. He was really from Nazareth, not Bethlehem, the city of David. It's interesting that DVC buys into a far-fetched historical notion that most scholars reject - that Jesus was Jewish "royalty" - while asserting an implausible claim with no evidence - that Jesus was married and had children.
considering you are open to the fact that many of Jesus' attributes are 'inventions' - something you can only ascertain by gaining knowledge, why dont you complete the journey and gain the knowledge that Jesus himself is purely an 'invention'.
Why is it that there needs to be a 'real' person and 'real' rewards of heaven, or 'real' threats of hell for people to get off their lazy asses and make some positive change to their life. These things only need to be 'real' when you are in contempt of the wonder of life and hate yourself.
Is the Bible (or for that matter any other religious document) worthless, meaningless and fake because there exists no 'real' Jesus, heaven or hell? Cant you extract the wisdoms from it if Jesus never existed? Can you even accept the wisdom in it if it turns out to be justpagan astrology? Would you even bother if there exists no reward of eternal life?
As i've said before, if you are in such contempt of life that you cannot live it without a 'real' Jesus, heaven or hell, then its probably better that you do deceive yourself and believe it to be true, lest you end up being a miserable, lazy, bum. But for some of us that don't have this issue, the path of truth awaits.
Originally posted by segovius
@MarcUK: Ok, re Jesus's historical existence - let's nail this bad boy down once and for all.
You say that the Jesus never existed but when pressed fall back on "the Jesus portrayed by the Church is a fiction".
Agreed, there is no need for an historical figure for the gospels, because as we know, it is based on the pagan/sun astro motif.
Also, there is no need for an historical figure for 'gnosticism' becuase it is a spiritual path, very similar to alot of other spiritual paths where to claim a historical figure existed as the centre of their theology, would border on insanity.
Of course this is true. Imo it is a fiction based on the astro/sun pagan motif of which you are so enamoured. These too are a fiction imo, so you have a fiction on a fiction. The latter one even being a lie while the first at least was sincere.
well, i was thinking about this the other day when a friend asked me a question. Here's roughly what I said.
Take for instance a well known story "snow white and the seven dwarves", (lets assume for arguments sake its a completely ficticious story), if we looked back how this story developed, we might find there were only five dwarves to start with, a different culture might have "sun yellow and the six elves", another "crystal green and the eight pixies" or even "coal black and the ten giants"...Yet are any of these alternate versions lies or corruption? NO, because its just a fun story, a myth, and each culture, each era has evolved a different meaning or tale of the original for their own purposes and maybe just for fun.
Infact the only way you can really misunderstand and corrupt a myth or story is if you suddenly thought "Snow White" was a real historical person.
As it is with Jesus, the story goes back far beyond 3B.C, you can see it in every culture, religion from all over the world. The closer to 1AD you get the story is more similar than it is if you look back to 3000B.C, but its still there.
Yet noone is foolish enough to believe the likes of Horus, Krishna, Buddha, Apollo, Hercules, Mithra, Dionysus ad infinitium are anything more than personifications of nature, spirit and soul.
BUT where we differ from each other is on that knowing that the second is a lie/fiction you infer that the central figure of the myth could have had no existence.
ok, so we differ...
1) When a myth accrues around a central figure it makes it all the more likely that they did exist in order for it to be grafted successfully - it is when the myth is dispersed amongst a nebulous 'group' or various figures such as in folklore (Till Eulenspiegel, Nasrudin, Joha, Ponchinello etc) that it is more likely the 'target' is completely fictitious. Also such motifs tend to be culturally exclusive and, where they do cross cultures, transmute into terms defined by that culture, updating over time.
I've italicized some of the above. You just shown exactly why Jesus is ficticious. His story was built up amongst many groups, who all disagreed somewhat with eachother, taking several hundred years to be completed. If thats not positive proof that the stories aren't based on a ficticious character, what is? - and when the final story echoes exactly what has become before it, a collage of all the 'ficticious' characters i mentioned above, where is the 'historical person' in that?
2) There are historical inaccuracies and contradictions in the Bible. All sane people know and accept this.
But, oth, there are factual accuracies also. Ones that place the Gospel accounts (or the originals they are based on) very near the time they claim to be written.
At very best, the gospels would be akin to you writing an historical account of WWII now, if no-one had bothered to document it at the time, and its history and events had only been transmitted by word of mouth for 60 years. No doubt such 'truths' such as "Germany, Hitler, Churchill, Pearl Harbour, Atom Bomb" would remain, but i wouldn't fancy your chances of getting anything else historically correct.
This does not constitute any proof but it does mean that if you are correct and Jesus never had a historical reality then a conspiracy involving hundreds of people - and the Roman/Jewish authorities knowledge if not consent - was under way very early on with no-one talking.
This is a serious flaw in your argument.
Hardly! we know there were hundreds of people working on the story of Jesus for hundreds of years, we know that alot of it got rejected, and we know that for several hundred years, people were debating, critisizing, even taking the piss out of the Christians for their story - and even that the Christians were pleading for their story to be accepted - because it was - paraphrasing - "little different than the mythology that came before it". Who needs an historical catalyst for that?
3) Following on from the above: The Church weren't even around at this point to do the conspiring. Nor was Paul. The only people who could have done this would be a group who wished to position themselves as the mundane equivalent of the 'Disciples' who would also be fictitious necessarily and who this Group X would have invented at the same time.
So you need to posit TWO conspiracies and TWO bad guys with TWO different agendas.
a) The 'Disciples' - a group inventing the original lie to aproject a teaching we don't know.
b) The Later Church warping the original lie into the lie we do know.
IMO, the Jesus story wasn't intended to be centered around a physical person from its outset, very few people could have been that stupid. Considering all the other similar myths around at the time, this would have been seen as just another. The only reason we have difficulty recognising it as a myth today, is that all the others have been exterminated by force.
All that really happened was the 'spiritual, mythical' Jesus story developed alongside other myths and a few psychotics ran with it to create an historical Jesus and then wriggled their way into power, and then conspired to destroy all evidence of the myth. No big leap of faith there.
Obviously this is possible and it would explain my first point n the post about the problem of a 'fiction on a fiction' but it is unwieldy and yiou need to continually resort to new theories and explanations to support it.
I think I've been pretty consistant in my theory, im not changing it every other week, yet as new things are uncovered by me, I incorperate them into my understanding.
Why not just accept the easiest obvious solution?
A man - a human being - called Jesus lived in Palestine 2000 years ago and, as humans do (as we are doing now) he talked a lot about religious stuff and philosophy. People even listened.
Well that isn't the easiest obvious solution. The easiest is that I just accept the gospels, ignore everything contradictory and shout off like a fundie. Thats easy.
Of this man called Jesus living in Palestine 2000 years ago? What do you know about him? How can his story be related in the gospels, when we know it is just a mismash of astrology and syncretization. Is this the same guy Paul was preaching in Rome about? Was he divine? Was he one of the many Jesus' Josephus mentions?
If there was such a Jesus, face the fact, that whatever he said or did, died with him the moment he died. There is no religion or church formed around him or his teachings, and give up your Bibles, Qurans and Talmuds, because they have nothing to do with him.
Infact, your theory makes no sense. You chose to claim that there was a historical figure, yet everything you do/think concerning religion or spirituality has nothing to do with him.
Originally posted by MarcUK
considering you are open to the fact that many of Jesus' attributes are 'inventions' - something you can only ascertain by gaining knowledge, why dont you complete the journey and gain the knowledge that Jesus himself is purely an 'invention'.
The reason I don't "complete the journey" and conclude that Jesus is an invention is that I don't believe it's logical to do so. Segovius said it well above, but I'll just say this: You're a gnostic, MarcUK. Your gnosis is this secret knowledge that Jesus never existed. "Completing this journey" is, for you, a kind of gnostic quest for truth. Well, congratulations, but I've always found gnosticism kind of creepy.
Originally posted by BRussell
The reason I don't "complete the journey" and conclude that Jesus is an invention is that I don't believe it's logical to do so. Segovius said it well above, but I'll just say this: You're a gnostic, MarcUK. Your gnosis is this secret knowledge that Jesus never existed. "Completing this journey" is, for you, a kind of gnostic quest for truth. Well, congratulations, but I've always found gnosticism kind of creepy.
I would say that it is illogical not to complete the journey.
To start off along the path seeking the truth, as everyone does who picks up a bible or quran or whatever - must mean that you are prepared to find it, or you were never genuine about the search in the first place. You cant just stop when you have found enough to make you feel 'fuzzy' and ignore the rest. If you really want to know that bad, you have to be prepared to destroy yourself finding out. If you find that everything you thought you believed was a lie and you're staring the abyss of nothingness straight in the face - Do you jump in or backtrack to a more comfortable place? If you are genuine in your search, it is illogical not to jump in whatever the consequences.
Then comes the question of how you label yourself, I've thought about being a gnostic, a Christian, agnostic, athiest, or just making up some cute title for my belief, like Apollonian, but I think Athiest is probably the best fit.
No doubt that draws some critisism from people who would like to frame me as making a decision about something impossible to answer - but I think their claim that it is impossible is not true. I think it is possible, and their claims are just ways of getting their hooks back into you to try to make you reconsider.
But i've thought of a very simple test for God's existance and it comes out a resounding NO.
"If I was the only person on earth, and I had no knowledge of anything, would I end up believing in God, be him Jehovah, Jesus, Allah, Mithra, Dionysus? Would I end up a gnostic? Would I end up a Christian, a Muslim or a Satanist?"
If any of these things were 'literally' real, you could say that some way or another that this truth would be sent to me.
If however these things are just the product of thousands of years of refinement of slowly gained knowledge, then it would be impossible to find out any of this in my sole 80 odd years on Earth.
Therefore God cannot be a 'literal' truth, and must be a product of the refinement of Science and Knowledge of mankind.
PS. Whats creepy about gnosis anyway? Whats more creepy is wanting to know the truth and deliberately not finding it.
It seems my hypothesis about what this book claims is wrong
What this book really is, is a cold calculated plot to undermine the chances of the 'truth' ever getting out.
Certainly there is an awful lot of 'factual' evidence in this book that has given me some 'glee' when I've been reading it, virtually confirming everything I have been studying for the past few years. But it's there not because some wise author is trying to get some real truth out into the public domain.
It exists in a phrase i'd call "guilt by association". Alot of this stuff is easily found in many 'critical' books of Christianity, including some I have read myself. Books by real scholars, collecting real evidence and making real arguments. These books are the 'evidence' of the truth, and pose a real threat to the established orthodoxy.
The reason it is 'guilt by association' is because this book will evidently be exposed as a pile of crock. And its by design. When certain aspects of this are rightly exposed as crock, it will take down all the genuine evidence with it, and thus discredit all the good work that has been done into the real truth of the Church, Christianity and Jesus.
So while certain elements of Christendom are publicy throwing a strop, behind closed doors, they must be laughing so hard their lungs are exploding.
This book is just their plan to discredit all the evidence that exists that they are a bogus operation.
Announcer: Like sand through an hourglass, so were the days of our Lord...
Jesus to a set of distrout sisters: Where is this Lazarus fellow...
Sister 1: It is so terrible; He is in...(whipes away a tear)
Cue dramatic stepdown...dun-dun-dun
sister 2: a coma!
Thomas: Come hither, let me comfort you... Giggidy Giggidy!
Cue announcer guy: Will Jesus be able to help Lazarus? will Thomas score a two way with the sisters and deny it...thrice? for the answers to those questions and more; tune into the next chapter in the saga of the Days of Our Lord!
Will it sell?
</comic releif>
It is BS, it is a work of fiction, nothing less nothing more, I'd rather just watch a good Batman flick...
Anyway, whatever you believe is almost irrelavent to me, the only issue I have with religion is fundamentalism. Jesus, buddha, krishna, paganism, wicca are all fair game to me, if thats the path you chose, im fine with it.
I've been meaning to ask you about Apollonius of Tyana. I think by far the most influential person in the 1st Century.
How do you think he fits into all of this mystery?