Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Peter Metcalfe on March 31, 2011 at 3:21am

Even Dawkins and Hitchens say Jesus probably existed and I have to agree but if he really did rise from the dead then the story would have spread like wildfire across the entire planet within weeks. Instead it was largely kept a secret from the world until decades later when a few people wrote about it. That makes no sense at all.

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Permalink Reply by Adam Weber on March 31, 2011 at 4:15am

Kept a sacred? Not at all. Christianity did spread like a wildfire. It went into Africa, Asia and Europe very quickly.

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Permalink Reply by Peter Metcalfe on March 31, 2011 at 5:40am

But not for a long time after.

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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on March 31, 2011 at 6:46am

There wasn't even an attempt to assemble the rumours until, at earliest, 70 AD.  No contemporary writers even found the story interesting enough to note - which is a strong indication that it was rooted in rather meager events that took, at the very very least, 40 years to grow into somewhat interesting folktales.  Even then, the authors of the original gospels had to massage the folktales quite a bit to fit them into a 'prophetic' context.

 

It's a wonderful example of how mythology is developed and I'm glad that I've returned to at least a pedestrian study of it.

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Permalink Reply by Adam Weber on March 31, 2011 at 8:36am

You are forgetting that oral tradition played a huge role in the ancient world.

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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on March 31, 2011 at 9:08am

Then perhaps an almighty deity that could flood a planet or rain down fire and brimstone might have thought about giving his devoted followers the gift of writing. As it was, I am very aware of the oral tradition of the ancient Semetic pantheon, the tradition of Yahweh and his wife Asherah and the family squabbles with his brother, etc. If there weren't so much evidence of the polytheistic Judaism then there might actually be some credibility to their monotheistic assertions.

Unfortunately they did a terrible job of editing out the polytheistic references in their earliest history, an obvious give away that they were still polytheistic well into the age of writing. Aside from talking about the 'sons of god' (which kinda undermines that 'only begotten son' part) and the numerous references to Asherah (the fertility goddess off the time and recognized throughout the region as the wife of Yahweh), their most central tenets are a complete give away:

"You shall have no other gods before me"

If the author truly thought of Yahweh as the only god in existence, he would have written, "I am the one and true god" but that wouldn't have been an actual commandment. It's obvious that the people worshiped a pantheon and the author is trying to focus political power on the territorial god Yahweh in order to bolster the authority of the king of that territory - Judea.

Anyway, if you are here to rationalize scripture, I suggest you study under Mr. Kevin Harris (another Christian apologist member here) for a while, because all though he can't actually deal with the hard ball questions either, he does a wonderful job at obfuscating the irrationality of scripture when it comes to softball issues such as these.

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Permalink Reply by Adam Weber on March 31, 2011 at 6:37pm

Do you have any credible scholars to back yourself up? or is the pseudo-scholarship?

The Jews were monotheistic but lived in a polytheistic world. Granted the Jews probably spent most of their time being polytheists (Read 1st & 2nd Kings) but Judaism was a monotheistic religion.

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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on March 31, 2011 at 6:47pm

My sources are cited in another reply that I'm sure you will get to shortly.

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Permalink Reply by Paul Carrollton on March 31, 2011 at 5:05pm

Oral tradition?  Maybe so for the Temple scribes, whose full-time job it was to record scripture, but not for the disciples, whose job it was to evangelize the earth.  If Jesus would have just told his disciples to write it down, maybe people would have believed it for the truth instead of legend.

 

Of course, if Jesus could have just walked up to the Temple on resurrection day, Caiaphas would have had the scribes add it to the Jewish bible.  Then the christians would have been known as Jews.

 

Jesus could have met the apostle Paul in life, or resurrection, instead of smoting him down on the road to Damascus.  Jesus could have given Paul personalized instruction. However, it's more dramatic when Jesus appears as a spirit, then allowing for Paul's miraculous conversion.

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Permalink Reply by Adam Weber on March 31, 2011 at 6:41pm

Christians were known as Jews ;). Christianity started as a Jewish sect and quickly evolved due to become anti-semitic, or at least not very semetiic.

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Permalink Reply by Heather Spoonheim on March 31, 2011 at 6:49pm

You missed the point entirely.

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Permalink Reply by Justin P. on March 31, 2011 at 7:06pm

I think the point that needs to be made is that whether or not he did exist as a carbon based, flesh and bone product of this planet as we... That OUR point is we don't believe in the majestic unicorn riding apostles of fear that the gospel tries to shove down our free-thinking throats everyday.

As an atheist, I feel this question is not entirely irrelevant, but is a little rhetorical amongst our mindset (no offense, Sophie). Maybe it's just I who perceieves it that way, but just putting in my two- to three-cents.

Live well, you free-thinking defectors :P

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