Originally Posted by bollywood:
“Yes that's correct. No contemporary accounts. You said that many times now.
If it meant something to real historians it would be important.”
by 'real' historians i assume you mean the biased biblical scholars.
no 'real' historian overlooks the known facts and makes something up to fill in the holes, or in this case a huge chasm.
Originally Posted by bollywood:
“ Many scholars think he got it from a passion narrative that was written years earlier, on Jesus' arrest, trial and death.”
so they are guessing. theres no evidence for this.
Originally Posted by bollywood:
“Even if Jesus were not born in a manger, but in a spare room of a house where animals came inside at night, would that change Christianity? Are believers able to accept that words in the gospels may have different meanings, or things may not have occurred exactly as once thought, does it matter?
What does all this picking at the Bible accomplish?”
lol.. this bullshit is one of the very reasons i rejected christianity...
the bible is either 'the truth' or it isnt, if it isnt what else is untrue? and how can any right minded person construct a religion on such doubt, contradiction, uncertainty? it does not make any sense and certainly isnt a sound basis for building a 'religion of truth' on. whatr you are saying here is - ignore what the bible says and make your own mind up, interpret it as you want!
Originally Posted by ags_rule:
“I said I was bowing out of this thread but I must address this again.
You act as though TSTS has stumbled on some sort of holy grail of factual information that proves Jesus didn't exist.”
it doesnt prove jesus didnt exist, it presents the facts that shows that jesus MIGHT not have existed and should be assumed he did.
Quote:
“It does no such a thing.
All it does is interpret the same facts we use to prove Jesus DID exist in an entirely different way. The references from Tacitus, for example, are interpreted as interpolations - there is NO EVIDENCE from TSTS to back this up. Only conjecture.”
lol... nonsense! it doesnt prove he existed at all... sir, not even in 'a different way' and if he existed 'in a different way' to what the bible depicts then the religion collapses anyway!
Quote:
“Please, please PLEASE stop going on about the "hard evidence" that Christ mythicists apparently have for proving he didn't exist. There is no such a thing. It is pure conjecture and interpretation.”
you fail to grasp the truth.... i did NOT say that mythicists have 'hard evidence' that proves jesus didnt exist... i said that there is no hard, contemporary evidence that he did. and all the 'evidence' can be traced back to a biased source. no conjecture there, just cold hard facts.
Quote:
“Richard Carrier describes Demonax as an "obscure" philosopher.
Yep, so obscure the people of Athens gave him "gave him a magnificent public funeral, long lamented him, worshipped and garlanded the stone seat on which he had been wont to rest when tired".”
.... and?....
Quote:
“He also casually name-drops Lucian, who was actually Demonax's pupil. And you know what? The only evidence we have that Demonax ever existed comes from Lucian! There are even some who believe that Demonax is just a character invented by Lucian - here was someone who supposedly had a massive public funeral and yet is not mentioned by any other contemporary writer, or indeed at all until the fifth century. This is pitiful compared to the evidence that we have for Jesus' existence, yet Richard Carrier uses the example of Demonax to try and make his argument stronger?! It beggars belief. Use your brain and actually research the claims made in TSTS and it absolutely falls apart.”
yet again you play down jesus... it matters not whether lucian or demonax existed, it matters like hell whether jesus existed or not... they were not sent to save mankind from hell (the same hell god allows to exist) .
i have researched the claims, the relevant ones, made by asts.... the salient points made are that there are NO contemporary accounts of jesus, and all early sources can be traced directly to biased sources. this is true.
oh and if you claim that you have identified 1 point asts makes which is wrong therefore the whole blog is wrong or 'falls apart' as you put it..... then the same thing applies to the bible, just 1 point thats untrue destroys the whole book....
the very basis for your religion is on very dodgy ground, no evidence for any of the claims needed to verify it.
it is entirely probable that jesus didnt exist, and the miracle man the bible describes certainly didnt - for reasons ive already mentioned.