Posted on 12/24/2014 8:12:24 PM PST by OneLoyalAmerican
In October, Jeffrey Tayler wrote in Salon that the Qur’an “backs up jihad, suicide attacks (“martyrdom”), beheadings, even taking captive women as sex slaves.” This was singular for Salon, which usually whitewashes the truth about Islam and jihad and excoriates those who expose it as “racists” and “bigots,” but now it is clear why Tayler was able to get away with it: he is supremely hostile to Christianity. Here, he gives a characteristic Salon Christmas greeting: Jesus likely never existed, but Muhammad’s existence is well established.
“Let’s make Bill O’Reilly’s head explode: We desperately need a war on Christmas lies,” by Jeffrey Tayler, Salon, December 22, 2014 (thanks to Scott):
Some 2,000 years after the alleged event, religious scholars, despite their best efforts, have still found no proof that Jesus even existed. Although it might seem reasonable to suppose such a one as he walked the earth in the Middle East, historical records kept by the Romans (then in charge of Judea and Samaria) and contemporary chroniclers make no mention of him. The Gospels are not historical records and don’t count; they were composed decades afterward. It has even been credibly proposed that Paul and his cohorts created the savior with strokes of their quills by mythologizing history. Footnote: If you’d still like to believe in a prophet whose existence has been established beyond the shadow of a doubt, try Muhammad.
I think Tayler is somewhat overstating his case, but I welcome investigation of the existence of Christ and the reliability of the New Testament narratives. I wonder, however, if Tayler has ever seriously investigated the existence of Muhammad, even as he takes it to be “established beyond the shadow of a doubt.” In my book Did Muhammad Exist?, I show that there is serious reason to doubt that he did. These include the facts that:
1. In the contemporary accounts written by the people the Arabs conquered, the writers describe the conquerors in detail, but make no mention of their having a new prophet, a new religion, or a new holy book. This is extraordinary, since the conquests themselves were supposed to have been inspired by that holy book and prophet.
2. Those early accounts call the conquerors “Ishmaelites,” “Saracens,” “Muhajirun,” and “Hagarians,” but never “Muslims.” They don’t seem to know this word, which is likewise extraordinary, since it is supposed to be the only word the conquerors called themselves.
3. No record of Muhammad’s words or deeds appears until more than 125 years after he is supposed to have died. No record of Muhammad’s reported death in 632 appears until more than a century after that date.
4. The Arab conquerors, in their coins and inscriptions, don’t mention Islam or the Qur’an for the first six decades of their conquests. Mentions of “Muhammad” are non-specific and on at least two occasions are accompanied by a cross. The word can be used not only as a proper name but also as an honorific.
5. The Qur’an, even by the canonical Muslim account, was not distributed in its present form until the 650s, over 20 years after Muhammad is supposed to have died. Yet no contemporary account even mentions the Qur’an until the early eighth century.
6. During the reign of the caliph Muawiya (661–680), the Arabs constructed at least one public building whose inscription was headed by a cross – a symbol abhorrent to Islam.
I await Salon’s investigation of these issues! But I won’t be holding my breath. For Salon, outside of Tayler’s October piece, Islam is non-white, non-Christian, and non-Western, and hence good, while anything associated with the heritage of most Salon writers is ipso facto evil and to be condemned.
MoHamMad teached that Jesus was a man.
Your right, America is descending into the abyss right before our eyes,
But first I would point out for those who believe like this Salon writer, that the rejection of Jesus as an historical figure is a spiritual marker,
It’s one that very specifically indicates the spirit of Antichrist,
How is it that in this day of books and huge libraries and online repositories of information, that someone well informed with historical facts and educated in the physical sciences should doubt Jesus’ historical existence at all?
Its certainly possible to doubt Jesus as the resurrected son of God if you’ve never acknowledged or received the spirit, but to deny that he “came in the flesh,” seems very strange even to the natural mind, so how is this willful blindness reconciled?
Its because its their desire that it be true, this author wants it to be so,
However its not a simple choice for them any more, this is a spirit that now has influence and authority over them, one with an absolute hatred of the truth and denying Christs work which he fulfilled in the flesh, and that completed work also means it will bring that spirits torment when a future set time (known only to God) is finished on this physical Earth,
A set time which I believe is almost up, ‘the fulness of the gentiles,’
This is the same evil spirit that was already at work even in Johns day,
“And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.” 1 John 4:3
Back to the abyss:
Demonic spirits are territorial and extremely difficult to cast out once they become established, when they become entrenched within a culture, that society/state/nation will then begin to take on recognizable aspects of that same beast,
America was physically and spiritually attacked in 2001 by the beast that empowers Islam, and soon after this spiritual attack, this nation elected a sympathetic sunni worshiper of that same beast and even began to openly embrace and seek out additional knowledge of it,
This attention provides for and now allows it greater influence here, which is continuing to increase daily, and this is directly how malevolent evil spirits work behind the scenes “principalities and powers” this is how they increase their authority over entire peoples and nations, its counter-intuitive to how we would expect their influence and power to be expanded,
God told Joshua to destroy certain cities/villages after he came into the land to claim ownership, those same locations where he did not complete Gods directive are the very ones today that are still the cause of Israels troubles and strife, Gaza and the Golan Heights,
I, like others I come in contact with, never knew either existed if it wasn't for Free Republic and other conservative sites
Some people just feel compulsively driven to be assh*les.
Thank-you so much. I’ve just returned from Mass ( and will go again tomorrow) when I found your recommendation. I will continue to read it with great interest. Thank-you so much for bringing it to our attention.
Sometimes, I can only concentrate on one thing at one time, and at this point I am contemplating that the author tells of Luke traveling with Paul. It illuminates so much.
Have a Blessed Christmas.
There are all kinds of Roman records proving historical Jesus’ existence. He was a rabble rouser and a thorn in their side.
You’re right. In fact, Islam teaches that Jesus was a profit in the line just ahead of Mohammed.
Not only is His historicity verifiable, He is resurrected and still very much alive today and forever more.
It’s been said, “History is His Story!”
Cordially,
Of course not. Unlike the Moses of the fiction of Exodus: Gods and Kings who carried a sword (symbol of war/Barrabas), the Moses of history carried a staff (peace/Jesus).
The Jesus who walked the earth was and is likewise a man of peace and hence not likely to be noted in historical chronicles which tend to pay far more heed to sword wielders than those who carry the staff.
There was enough notoriousness about Jesus for Him to get well attested in His Jewish religious opponents’ works. Of course they aren’t going to be kind to Him and will distort things, but they can’t quite seem to rest their case with “no such person.”
I’m not going to take faith advice from a source like Salon.
Further if they deny Jesus they’re calling Mad Mo a liar. Even the devil knows God is real.
[ Even Muhammad knew Jesus existed.
Some folks are absolutely clueless. There is plenty of historical evidence that Jesus existed. The Bible is a good starting point. ]
Mo-ham-ed existed and the Quaran is supposedly “Flawless” but Jesus supposedly doesn’t exist... even though the Quaran mentions Jesus, the Supposedly infallible Quaran....
Nice pretzel the writer of the article has contorted themselves into...
It’s just Wikepedia, but for anyone interested on the account of Josephus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Josephus_on_Jesus
The first paragraph:
“The extant manuscripts of the writings of the 1st-century Romano-Jewish historian Flavius Josephus include references to Jesus and the origins of Christianity. Josephus’ Antiquities of the Jews, written around 93–94 AD, includes two references to the biblical Jesus Christ in Books 18 and 20 and a reference to John the Baptist in Book 18.”
I’m no expert on Josephus, but then again I’m no expert on what qualifies as “no evidence” in the electronic equivalent of bird-cage liner known as “Salon”.
” historical records kept by the Romans (then in charge of Judea and Samaria) and contemporary chroniclers make no mention of him.”
What about Tacitus?
CORNELIUS TACITUS (55 - 120 A.D.) Tacitus was a 1st and 2nd century Roman historian who lived through the reigns of over half a dozen Roman emperors. Considered one of the greatest historians of ancient Rome, Tacitus verifies the Biblical account of Jesus’ execution at the hands of Pontius Pilate who governed Judea from 26-36 A.D. during the reign of Tiberius.
“Christus, the founder of the [Christian] name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea in the reign of Tiberius. But the pernicious superstition, repressed for a time, broke out again, not only through Judea, where the mischief originated, by through the city of Rome also.” Annals XV, 44
Which version of the Bible? The original started out in the Aramac tribal language, then shifted to Greek, then to Latin, then to German, and then finally to English. Over the past decade, a number of folks have gone back to compare the editions. One PhD guy found at least 2,000 revisional differences between the modern Bible and one written around 700AD. Toss in the fact that dozens of testaments were reviewed during the building of the Old Testament and they limited it to strictly 27. The rest? Thrown out. For historical purposes....anything the Bible says, needs to be verified with a second reference, which would be helpful if the second document was written at the time of the incident/episode, and not a hundred years later by most books in the Bible.
The history of the modern age is mostly about an undeclared war between the followers and opponents of Jesus Christ. Both sides know that this war is on and possibly in its final stages. Israel as a Jewish state is to be seen as a bystander, with closer ties to one side than the other but not themselves committed to the global struggle in its entirety, just to the part involving Islam.
This is because we face a double-barrelled fight against two largely separate enemies who have made some temporary alliances. The Jews generally speaking are not as opposed to our other enemy, the progressive left, in fact they rather like to hang out with them. We want to protect them anyway although there are days when it’s a case of “with friends like you, who needs enemies?”
A final stage will come in this battle. It is not the Christian forces that want this as much as their opponents who seem to know it is now or never (as we were told two thousand years ago, the end would come like this).
I don’t know when, but I sense it won’t be all that long now. The clusters are ready for harvest.
Hardly. The ancients used styli and brushes.
Except for the inscription including the name of Lucius Pontius Pilatus, praeses of Judaea in 29 AD. That was carved in gleaming white marble.
Bite me, Salon.
I believe Matthew, who was a publican and therefore fluent in Greek, the mercantile language of the eastern half of the Empire, supposedly wrote his gospel in Greek. John the Divine (Evangelist) will also have been fluent in Greek, writing his Gospel four decades after the Crucifixion when he was living on the Greek island of Patmos, where he also wrote the Apocalypse. There was a Latin-language New Testament available to readers by the end of the second century (the Italicus, so called informally) , but the canonical work of St. Jerome wasn't written until the early fourth century.
Tayler fancies himself the new Hitch
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