Posted on 08/31/2014 8:18:05 PM PDT by Mean Daddy
Most antiquities scholars think that the New Testament gospels are “mythologized history.” In other words, they think that around the start of the first century a controversial Jewish rabbi named Yeshua ben Yosef gathered a following and his life and teachings provided the seed that grew into Christianity.
At the same time, these scholars acknowledge that many Bible stories like the virgin birth, miracles, resurrection, and women at the tomb borrow and rework mythic themes that were common in the Ancient Near East, much the way that screenwriters base new movies on old familiar tropes or plot elements. In this view, a “historical Jesus” became mythologized.
(Excerpt) Read more at jobrny.com ...
People can choose to believe whether Jesus was
1) nonexistent
2) a fraud (in which case other numerous scholars of the period such as Josephus are also frauds)
3) a well-intentioned and philosophical but zealous delusional nut
4) the Son of God
I think CS Lewis would have said something like, you choose #4 if you are a Christian, in which case Christianity means everything. Or if not, it matters not at all.
In true Christianity there is no middle ground.
I think you make a choice. Then choose to live it with peace of mind.
That is really the most thoughtful response I have seen. You can either argue till you are blue in the face with "scholars" or people who accuse you of being "anti-science". You can throw out juvenile "so there" type answers that just prove that you are thin skinned about it. None of it helps or matters. When confronted about why I believe, but these types, I simply say that it is because I choose to. End of story.
Then we are back to the fact that there are a large number of historical documents attesting to those people and what they did, far more than can attest to people like Plato, Homer, etc.
This is a case of people not wanting to believe, so they find any kind of justification for that disbelief.
Actually, ‘they’ cannot explain away Jesus. Too many witnesses and their behavior after the resurrection is too affirming of His presence.
“I think you make a choice. Then choose to live it with peace of mind”
If the choice you make is “no Jesus” then there can be no [true] peace.
Here was a man a man who was born in a small village the son of a peasant woman He grew up in another small village
Until reached the age of thirty he worked as a carpenter
Then for three years he was a traveling minister
But he never traveled more than two hundred miles from where he was born
And where he did go he usually walked
He never held political office he never wrote a book never bought a home
Never had a family he never went to college
And he never set foot inside a big city but yes here was a man
Though he never did one on the things that you'd usually associate with greatness
Here was a man he had no credentials but himself
He had nothing to do with this world
Except through the devine purpose that brought him to this world
And while he was still a young man the tide of popular opinion turned against him
Most of his friends ran away one of them denied him
One of them betrayed him and turned him over to his enemies
Then he went through the mockery of a trial
And was nailed to a cross between two thieves
And even while he was dying his executioners gambled
For the only piece of property that he had in the world and that was his robe
When he was dead he was taken down from the cross
And laid in a borrowed grave provided by compassionate friends
More than nineteen wide centuries have come and gone
And today he's a centerpiece of the human race
Our leader in the column to human destiny
And I think I'm well within the mark when I say
That all of the armies that ever marched all of the navies that ever sailed the seas
All of the legislative bodies that ever sat and all of the kings that ever reigned
All of them put together had not affected the life of man on this earth
So powerfully as that one solitary life here was a man.
People die for Jesus because he’s the only reason to. If someone tries to force a person to turn away and renounce him, they had better not and just take the death. Life on earth is but a blink of an eye compared to eternity.
Different ballgame entirely. The ones dying didn’t personally know Ismael or Mohammed.
+1.
“Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
Reason and science can make no claims as to what is extraordinary and what is not....only the pre-biased mind does that! The pre-biased mind contaminates reason and logic by declaring that those assertions not immediately testable must always be considered false, preposterous,and therefore “not worthy” of further consideration!
It is ironic that you speak of a “newspaper” boy since Christ is referred to in John 1 as the “word” made flesh who brought the “good news”(or Gospel) of salvation to man!
Western language,idioms,proverbs and traditions are so chockfull of Judeo Christian themes that even you can’t escape them...not even the Rulers of the Earth as referred to in Psalms 2(Why do the nations so furiously rage, why do the people imagine a vain thing? ...the kings of the Earth rise up, the rulers take council together against the Lord and his Anointed...saying..”Let us break their bonds asunder let us cast their yokes from us....”). It is ironic that men should struggle against such a yoke when Christ has promised that his yoke “is easy and his burden light” that it would bring us peace and into Fellowship with God!
There is no escaping God and the intense reality of His Being...at least once in their eternal experience, all men will encounter it; some to their shame and some to everlasting life. You have a choice now to experience it to the good of your soul!
Have you read Bart's 2013 book "Did Jesus Exist?"
Per Wiki on Jefferson’s Religion
Jefferson variously refers to himself as “Christian” (1803),[6] “a sect by myself” (1819),[7] an “Epicurean” (1819),[8] a “materialist” (1820),[9] and a “Unitarian by myself” (1825).[10] Historian Sydney E. Ahlstrom associated Jefferson with “rational religion” or deism.[11]
Notes refer to Wiki Footnotes for the Jefferson’s Religion article.
I find it very interesting that your comment, an excellent one, is from 1 John 4 on testing spirits.
1 John 4 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Testing the Spirits
4 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God,
3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. And this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming; and now it is already in the world.
I suggest that you watch the movie Heaven is for Real or read the book this is based on.
Also I believe that Josh Mc Dowell wrote a two volume set on Evidence That Demands a Verdict where he set out to disprove the Bible and its teachings and found it to be verifiable and true and changed him in the process.
These are just two of the accounts of many who do believe and know. It is up to each of us to decide for ourselves.
I know for myself what is true it is now up to each to decide for them what is true in their mind.
Thanks for the post. It of course explains exactly why Jesus wasn’t mentioned in the secular literature of the time. By their standards his life and death were utterly unimportant, quite literally beneath contempt.
Until Christians spread widely enough to become viewed as a problem, the chattering classes of the 1st century were never even aware he’d existed. Why should they be?
Wow!
Unbelievers don’t believe?
Who could have guessed?
What about The Great Commission?
To believe that Jesus is a myth involves a high level of self-deception.
“I am someone who has yet to be provided ...”
In placing responsibility for Faith out side of yourself you’ll be waiting for a long long time. The element left out of these sterile “academic” discussions is the fact that God plainly requires that YOU invite Him in and that your sense of Him then becomes the basis of your Faith. Turn your back on Him and he will turn his face away from you.
Your reasoning is faulty. It is one thing to die for a belief system...it is another to have walked, talked and lived with someone for three and a half years, see him brutally tortured to death, run for you life and hide because you fear the same will happen to you...and then a mere few weeks later, be out in the open declaring that your “belief system” is alive again. And not only that, but to then face a horrific death yourself and refuse to recant what you know to be true, because you have personally witnessed it. Would you, personally, die for something you knew to be a lie? Ten of the apostles died horrible deaths because they refused to say that what they were preaching was a lie. Paul was beheaded rather than recant, and John was banished to a penal colony.
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