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Post by timoneill on Nov 10, 2017 0:49:38 GMT
Why on earth would something as ordinary as a peasant preacher preaching to other peasants in Galilee being not well known outside of his backwater be "improbable"? Here's what I think is a very relevant passage from Matthew 4:24: Jesus is portrayed here as being a very notable person. His fame spread throughout all Syria. If that's true, then we should expect the historians of his day to have written of him. They didn't write about him. Now, like I have already posted, we can contrive an ad hoc explanation by arguing (like you and Bart Ehrman do) that he was an "ordinary peasant preacher" who might go unnoticed. But to argue that way we are altering the story to fit our preconception that he must have existed. That is, to save the historical Jesus we must change him to fit our model of him. The key point about that very specific claim in Matt 4:24 is captured in your own words: "IF this is true". But we have no good reason to accept that this IS true. This is a laudatory account by a later source seeking to boost his significance as much as possible. But even in the gospels we see no other indication that he was very significant at all. Most of his preaching is depicted as being restricted not only to the backwater of Galilee, but minor towns and villages in the north of that territory. He isn't even depicted as going to major centres in Galilee, such as the city of Sepphoris. There is no indication, other than this claim in gMatt, of anyone anywhere else even being aware of him before he goes to Jerusalem and gets himself killed. Even then, despite claims about rapturous crowds greeting his arrival, he is depicted as being arrested without more than a minor scuffle and even the gospels have to depict crowds baying for his blood (with the crowds that supposedly greeted him suddenly vanished from the story). There is nothing in all this that indicates he was anything more than a minor peasant preacher. And he was small time even compared to other preachers of his type. Several others mentioned in Josephus were much more prominent and seem to have had much larger followings and, unlike Jesus, required major mobilisations of troops to suppress. Yet we get no mentions of any of them in sources of the time. Around 44 AD Theudas had a following of "a great part of the people" and led them to the Jordan with the promise that he would miraculously divide the waters. His following was large enough that the procurator Cuspius Fadus had to dispatch a cohort of cavalry to disperse them. How many contemporary mentions of these events? Zero. Or there is the Egyptian Prophet, who is said to have led "30,000 men" out of the wilderness to the Mount of Olives with the promise that they would see the walls of Jerusalem miraculously fall down. All they actually saw were the swords of the several cohorts of both auxiliary infantry and cavalry that the Roman procurator Antonius Felix sent out to kill them, but how many contemporary references do we have to these large scale disturbances? None. So even if we were naive enough to take the gospel stories at face value, there is no reason to think that we should find contemporary references to Jesus' career in far off Galilee. These other troublemakers were operating in Roman occupied Judea (not in the unoccupied client state of Galilee) and were clearly a threat to Roman rule, yet we don't get a squeak about them in any sources of the time. The idea that Jesus doing some preaching and alleged miracles in Galilee would get a mention is obviously absurd. So, no, Ehrman and I don't present him as a peasant preacher as an "ad hoc explanation". We do so because that is what even, apart from obvious exaggerations like Matt 4:24, the gospels depict him as. And even if he were much more than that and was like the more significant preacher-prophets of the time, we still wouldn't expect the sources of the time to mention him. Because the writers of those sources were simply not interested in Jewish preacher-prophets, whether they were minor ones from Galilee or more significant ones in Judea. So your argument fails completely. It's been a couple of hundred years since any critical scholars thought any such thing. And, again, the nature of the evidence for Jesus is totally different. It's pretty weak to keep waving around other figures once (uncritically) accepted as historical and later debunked as legendary. This indicates nothing much other than Jesus may be another of these, which doesn't get you very far given that no-one has claimed he couldn't be. The fact remains that the evidence all points to him most likely being a historical figure and the fringe alternative ideas simply don't stand up to Occam's Razor. If you can't see that it's not because you are some mighty clear-eyed sceptic, it's just that you don't understand the material.
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 10, 2017 4:14:18 GMT
The key point about that very specific claim in Matt 4:24 is captured in your own words: "IF this is true". But we have no good reason to accept that this IS true. This is a laudatory account by a later source seeking to boost his significance as much as possible. But even in the gospels we see no other indication that he was very significant at all. Most of his preaching is depicted as being restricted not only to the backwater of Galilee, but minor towns and villages in the north of that territory. He isn't even depicted as going to major centres in Galilee, such as the city of Sepphoris. There is no indication, other than this claim in gMatt, of anyone anywhere else even being aware of him before he goes to Jerusalem and gets himself killed. Even then, despite claims about rapturous crowds greeting his arrival, he is depicted as being arrested without more than a minor scuffle and even the gospels have to depict crowds baying for his blood (with the crowds that supposedly greeted him suddenly vanished from the story). There is nothing in all this that indicates he was anything more than a minor peasant preacher. I must be reading different gospels than the ones you read. I can also cite Luke 4:14, Mark 1:28, Matthew 14:1, and Matthew 4:23-25 to document that the gospel writers portrayed Jesus as a very famous man. I do agree, though, that we do not know if what we read anywhere in the New Testament is true. Yes, believing what the gospels say would be naive. OK, then you obviously don't accept the claim of the "multitudes" that followed him as in Mark 3:7, for example. Here's where your argument really fails, in my opinion. If Jesus was so unnoticeable in his day, then he'd be even less likely to have been noticed decades later when the New Testament was written! Yet this obscure figure became a sensation long after he was dead and gone. Sorry, but that's a very tough sell. Speaking of failed arguments, I think you just destroyed the main sources of information about Jesus, the gospels. What do you have left to claim he was a real man? The epistles of Paul? It appears that the history of Biblical scholarship is one of moving the goal posts for whatever evidence is acceptable. The evidence that sufficed for Adam and Noah no longer is accepted (no doubt because biologists have discovered our ancestors go back millions of years, and geologists have proved that there was never a worldwide flood.) How much longer can any evidence for Jesus remain acceptable? Are you referring to that letter that mentions Jesus? I wonder what the lynch mob would do if I insulted you that way. Finally, I found a good book on Amazon about Biblical scholarship. It's The End of Biblical Studies by Hector Avalos. The Amazon Preview says: A rather damning indictment of your profession, is it not?
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Post by timoneill on Nov 10, 2017 7:31:27 GMT
I'm not sure why I'm even bothering, but anyway ... The key point about that very specific claim in Matt 4:24 is captured in your own words: "IF this is true". But we have no good reason to accept that this IS true. This is a laudatory account by a later source seeking to boost his significance as much as possible. But even in the gospels we see no other indication that he was very significant at all. Most of his preaching is depicted as being restricted not only to the backwater of Galilee, but minor towns and villages in the north of that territory. He isn't even depicted as going to major centres in Galilee, such as the city of Sepphoris. There is no indication, other than this claim in gMatt, of anyone anywhere else even being aware of him before he goes to Jerusalem and gets himself killed. Even then, despite claims about rapturous crowds greeting his arrival, he is depicted as being arrested without more than a minor scuffle and even the gospels have to depict crowds baying for his blood (with the crowds that supposedly greeted him suddenly vanished from the story). There is nothing in all this that indicates he was anything more than a minor peasant preacher. I must be reading different gospels than the ones you read. I can also cite Luke 4:14, Mark 1:28, Matthew 14:1, and Matthew 4:23-25 to document that the gospel writers portrayed Jesus as a very famous man. Thanks for giving us yet more evidence that you don't have the faintest idea how to critically assess the relevant material. Try to focus. I said that even in the gospels' clearly exaggerated accounts Jesus is depicted as a small time preacher who operated mainly in Galilee and with few credible indications that he was known at all beyond that very small and highly insignificant backwater. You then cited four texts from the gospels first three of which ... agree completely with what I said: Your first was Mark 1:28: "News about him spread quickly over the whole region of Galilee." You also cited the gLuke cognate of that same text from gMark, Luke 4:14: "Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside." Then you cited Matt 14:1 "At that time Herod the tetrarch [ of Galilee] heard the reports about Jesus" And then you tried Matt 4:23-25: "Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues ... News about him spread all over Syria, [and] large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea and the region across the Jordan followed him." Only the last makes any claims about people from anywhere other than Galilee knowing anything about him prior to the last week of his life, and we've already noted it stands alone on this and so is most likely an exaggeration. And compare even this modestly exaggerated claim to the information I gave you about Theudas and the Egyptian Prophet, who were clearly far more prominent than even the most exaggerated depiction of Jesus and yet still did not get mentioned in any sources of the time. Read that last sentence until you understand. Nonsense. Joseph Smith went relatively unnoticed in the scheme of things during his lifetime, making a local stir a few times before his death. But within a few decades the whole of the US had heard of him thanks to the success of his sect. Muhammad went unnoticed in any non-Muslim sources in his lifetime, yet within 20 years of his death Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia and Persia had fallen to his followers. Both these arguments of yours show that you are, either due to bias or simple incompetence, seemingly incapable of thinking things through clearly. You are one of the most muddled and confused thinkers I've encountered in quite some time. Seriously - the world does not need a book from someone as hopeless at this stuff as you clearly are. And your writing style is painfully bad. Take up gardening or something.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Nov 10, 2017 8:21:24 GMT
The key point about that very specific claim in Matt 4:24 is captured in your own words: "IF this is true". But we have no good reason to accept that this IS true. This is a laudatory account by a later source seeking to boost his significance as much as possible. But even in the gospels we see no other indication that he was very significant at all. Most of his preaching is depicted as being restricted not only to the backwater of Galilee, but minor towns and villages in the north of that territory. He isn't even depicted as going to major centres in Galilee, such as the city of Sepphoris. There is no indication, other than this claim in gMatt, of anyone anywhere else even being aware of him before he goes to Jerusalem and gets himself killed. Even then, despite claims about rapturous crowds greeting his arrival, he is depicted as being arrested without more than a minor scuffle and even the gospels have to depict crowds baying for his blood (with the crowds that supposedly greeted him suddenly vanished from the story). There is nothing in all this that indicates he was anything more than a minor peasant preacher. I must be reading different gospels than the ones you read. I can also cite Luke 4:14, Mark 1:28, Matthew 14:1, and Matthew 4:23-25 to document that the gospel writers portrayed Jesus as a very famous man. I do agree, though, that we do not know if what we read anywhere in the New Testament is true. Okay, Tim already dealt with this, but I had it prepared and reiterating it presumably won't hurt. Texts are from the NRSV. Mark 1: 28 Matthew 4: 23-25 (which you already cited, so it's not in addition) Matthew 14: 1 Luke 4: 14 Things to note about these texts: 1. Of these only Matt. 4: 24 claims his fame spread all over Syria. 2. Sources embellishing their material by playing up their subject's significance is extremely common. Historians know very well that these should not be taken at face value. 3. Liberal use of hyperbole with "all" or "entire" was pretty typical for Semitic languages of the period in this region. So the Greek of the gospels, especially that of the gospel of Mark, would have been influenced by this feature of Semitic languages. Speaking of failed arguments, I think you just destroyed the main sources of information about Jesus, the gospels. What do you have left to claim he was a real man? The epistles of Paul? You need to read what he writes more carefully. Tim didn't "destroy" the gospels, he just made some very basic points about how some claims in the gospels - in this case those that exaggerate Jesus' renown - are not historically reliable. Honestly, I find it hard to believe you really engaged with scholarship at any meaningful level if you make arguments like this. It appears that the history of Biblical scholarship is one of moving the goal posts for whatever evidence is acceptable. The evidence that sufficed for Adam and Noah no longer is accepted (no doubt because biologists have discovered our ancestors go back millions of years, and geologists have proved that there was never a worldwide flood.) How much longer can any evidence for Jesus remain acceptable? You are comparing an OT text from the first millennium BC about a mythological couple who supposedly lived several thousand years ago to first century AD writing about a man who lived decades earlier. Yes, the writers of those OT passages probably believed that Adam and Eve and Noah were historical, but even if they were historical the odds that the sources could provide any historically reliable information are practically zero. So it is evident that one type of text probably contains barely any historical information about the subject, while the likelihood that the other texts do have some reliable information is quite high. Why do you believe it is reasonable to lump these texts together like that? Finally, I found a good book on Amazon about Biblical scholarship. It's The End of Biblical Studies by Hector Avalos. The Amazon Preview says: A rather damning indictment of your profession, is it not? What Avalos writes, regardless of how relevant it is to this discussion, isn't an indictment of Tim's profession anyway.
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 10, 2017 14:49:26 GMT
I'm not sure why I'm even bothering, but anyway ... Look at it this way: If you cannot convince me that you're right, then you might convince others. Will it make any difference if I point out that your presumption about my abilities has nothing to do with what we are discussing and that your efforts are better served by sticking with the issue? "Try to focus!" These passages are in agreement with your claiming that Jesus was a "small time preacher"? I think you are going wrong with describing Jesus that way. What exactly is "a small time preacher"? You should clarify what you are posting. I haven't studied Joseph Smith that much, so I cannot comment on how he might compare to Jesus. As for Muhammad, a 20 year delay is obviously much shorter than the time it took for the Jesus cult to take off. In any case, I'm not saying that it's impossible for Jesus to have been dead and buried in a lonely mass grave for many decades only to have people make a religion out of him. It's possible, but as your buddy Bart Ehrman has said, history deals in probabilities. I find it unlikely that an obscure peasant Jew executed under the Romans suddenly became a supposed god much later. I might be wrong, but at least for now that seems to be the best conclusion I can arrive at. Sheesh, Tim, do you eat babies for breakfast? If I'm that bad, then why not just leave me to my own devices? If I go down, then you can dance and spit on my grave enjoying every minute of it. Whatever the future brings, at least for now I'm having a lot of fun discussing the historicity of Jesus. It's quite possible that I might end up agreeing with you. If I do find errors in what I argue, then I will correct them. I can live with being wrong and admit it. Can you?
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Post by timoneill on Nov 10, 2017 16:41:03 GMT
Will it make any difference if I point out that your presumption about my abilities has nothing to do with what we are discussing One of the things we are discussing is whether you have the capacity for objective critical analysis and general capability to write any kind of useful book on this subject. So your abilities or lack thereof are actually directly relevant. And I don't have to "presume" anything - your lack of capacity for objective critical analysis, dismal lack of relevant knowledge and general lack of ability is abundantly evident from the way you keep bungling things, For example: Yes. Obviously. Anyone with any grasp of the geography would understand that. Galilee was tiny - about 25 kms by 40 kms. That's a mere 1,000 square kilometres in area. You could walk from one side of it to another in a leisurely afternoon. Yet here are texts - ones that are exaggerating his significance - declaring that his reputation spread "over the whole region of Galilee". Gosh. Just so you have no excuses for continuing to not understand this very simple and completely obvious point, here is a map: So there you can see how tiny the whole region of Galilee" was. Even if we accept the exaggerated version of his fame in Matt 4:23-25, you can see those wider territories are not much larger. So the very simple point that it seems you still can't grasp is that even the gospels, even when they try to pump up his fame as much as possible, are still only claiming he became known as far as two days walk away and most of them are simply saying he was known in places half a day's stroll distant. Not exactly big time. Do you understand now or do I need to use smaller words? That is simply idiotic. See above. Nothing needs to be "clarified", anyone can see exactly what I'm saying. Again, even the most exaggerated claims about his fame, the very ones YOU cited, only say he was known in a tiny area. And when we compare these same accounts' claims about his impact we find the stories about huge crowds seem exaggerated as well and that he is able to be arrested by a few Temple guards with minimal resistance. So we can compare that to the other examples of Jewish preacher-prophets I gave you: Theudas and the Egyptian. Here we have a hostile source (Josephus) telling us their followings were huge ("a great part of the people" and "30,000 men) and that they needed whole cohorts of Roman infantry and cavalry to suppress. Yet - and here is the point you keep skipping over - WE HAVE NO CONTEMPORARY REFERENCES TO THESE TWO GUYS AT ALL. In fact, if Josephus didn't mention them briefly some decades later we would not know they even existed. So if people who were clearly much more significant than this peasant preacher did not get noticed by the sources of the time, why the hell are you arguing that Jesus should have?How about you actually answer that question this time. And I've given you two of many examples why this is simply garbage. These things happen. They actually happen quite a bit. Pretty much all sects that grow into larger religions whose origins that we trace have similar stories. I gave you two, I can give you many more. Haile Selassie I was a tinpot Third World monarch who was removed in a military coup in 1975, was imprisoned and died, and was ignominiously buried under a concrete slab. Yet he was declared Messiah and God while he was alive and is the focus of Rastafarianism to this day. Sergey Anatolyevitch Torop was born in an obscure corner of the then Soviet Union, served as a infantryman in the Red Army and then got sacked a a police patrol officer. He now calls himself "Vissarion" and already has around 15,000 followers who regard him as the Messiah, with his cult spreading into Germany, Bulgaria and Serbia. These things happen all the time. So your inability to understand the simple geography of the region relevant to this point, your failure to even grasp let alone account for the argument about Theudas and the Egyptian and the complete nonsense that it is somehow "unlikely" that a small sect could grow to a slightly larger sect over several decades, making its founder a bit more noticed in the process, are all testament to your complete incompetence. Or your boneheaded recalcitrance. Or both. Whatever your problem is, these patent failures are why no-one here is taking you seriously and why no-one is going to take your book seriously and why you are wasting your time. Try stamp collecting. Or perhaps model trains.
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Post by jamierobertson on Nov 10, 2017 16:44:33 GMT
These passages are in agreement with your claiming that Jesus was a "small time preacher"? To an upper class Roman historian living in Rome - as the majority of historians were at the time - yes, absolutely. I'm a Christian and even I recognise that Jesus made absolutely NO impact outside of Palestine in his lifetime (it was left up to his followers to do that).
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 10, 2017 18:51:48 GMT
One of the things we are discussing is whether you have the capacity for objective critical analysis and general capability to write any kind of useful book on this subject. So your abilities or lack thereof are actually directly relevant. And I don't have to "presume" anything - your lack of capacity for objective critical analysis, dismal lack of relevant knowledge and general lack of ability is abundantly evident from the way you keep bungling things, For example... If you stop the insults maybe I'll respond.
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 10, 2017 19:09:12 GMT
These passages are in agreement with your claiming that Jesus was a "small time preacher"? To an upper class Roman historian living in Rome - as the majority of historians were at the time - yes, absolutely. I'm a Christian and even I recognise that Jesus made absolutely NO impact outside of Palestine in his lifetime (it was left up to his followers to do that). This is a whole new perspective on the gospel story to me. I always understood it as portraying Jesus as a very famous man. Are you sure what you're arguing here isn't just an ad hoc explaining away of the dearth of evidence for Jesus in the time he is supposed to have lived? Just claim he wasn't really well known? One of the advantages of the mythicist perspective is that it easily explains why nobody at that time mentioned Jesus: he had not yet been invented. Your explanation is very convoluted by comparison and involves many more assumptions. Here's an excerpt from the book I'm working on that's based on the gospel story's claims about Jesus' notoriety:
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Post by timoneill on Nov 10, 2017 19:24:41 GMT
One of the things we are discussing is whether you have the capacity for objective critical analysis and general capability to write any kind of useful book on this subject. So your abilities or lack thereof are actually directly relevant. And I don't have to "presume" anything - your lack of capacity for objective critical analysis, dismal lack of relevant knowledge and general lack of ability is abundantly evident from the way you keep bungling things, For example... If you stop the insults maybe I'll respond. Weak dodge noted. If I ever choose to actually "insult" you I can assure you that you'll know about it. You may not particularly like the fact that I'm pointing out your incompetence, your lack of understanding of the material and the weakness of your arguments, but I'm afraid that doesn't make these criticisms of what you've presented here into mere "insults". You came here to present what you seem to think are good arguments, saying you're going to write a book. It's not our problem that the consensus here, among some people who have studied this stuff for decades in many cases and who are across the spectrum of belief and ideas about Jesus, is that your arguments are terrible. So stop trying to hide behind a pretence that you've simply been "insulted" and deal with the response to your weak argument. Can you now see that the evidence clearly indicates that Jesus was a small time preacher in a very small milieu? Can you see now why the examples of much more prominent preacher-prophets who also weren't mentioned at the time shows how your claim Jesus "should" have been is nonsense? Answer the questions.
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Post by timoneill on Nov 10, 2017 19:30:04 GMT
Are you sure what you're arguing here isn't just an ad hoc explaining away of the dearth of evidence for Jesus in the time he is supposed to have lived? Just claim he wasn't really well known? You don't seem to understand what an " ad hoc argument" is. If there was no evidence that Jesus was a small time preacher only known in a tiny territory that was a backwater part of an unimportant region, then invoking this as an excuse for the lack of mentions of him would indeed be an ad hoc argument. But there IS such evidence, as I've detailed in the post above that you are now trying to dodge. So this is NOT an ad hoc argument, it's the logical and most likely conclusion. Which is why it's what the overwhelming majority of scholars accept. So you need to stop whining and dodging and deal with the criticisms of your argument above. If you don't, you're done here. Put up or shut up time for you.
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Post by jamierobertson on Nov 12, 2017 14:41:38 GMT
This is a whole new perspective on the gospel story to me. I always understood it as portraying Jesus as a very famous man. It does portray him as a very famous man - in Galilee, and the immediately surrounding area. Not Rome, where most of the historians of the day lived, wrote and focused their interests and efforts. I don't claim that he wasn't well known. He was well known - in Galilee. No, my explanation is very simple - he was famous IN GALILEE. GALILEE is not ROME. They're actually quite far apart, both geographically and politically. Here, let me show you: Indeed. Jesus was very famous - IN GALILEE. NOT ROME. Even if we take Matthew's hyperbole at face value, Syria is NOT ROME. See map above. He did. IN GALILEE. Stop me if this is tricky for you to follow. Unless "seldom alone" means "seldom without a Roman aristocrat historian at his side, documenting his every move a la 'Almost Famous'", then I think you can anticipate my thoughts on this.
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jagella
Bachelor of the Arts
Posts: 86
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Post by jagella on Nov 12, 2017 22:05:03 GMT
Indeed. Jesus was very famous - IN GALILEE. NOT ROME. Even if we take Matthew's hyperbole at face value, Syria is NOT ROME. See map above. He did. IN GALILEE. Stop me if this is tricky for you to follow. Unless "seldom alone" means "seldom without a Roman aristocrat historian at his side, documenting his every move a la 'Almost Famous'", then I think you can anticipate my thoughts on this. I find your logic to be convoluted if not bizarre. You are saying that if Jesus was not known in Rome, then he could not be considered "famous"? What dictionary do you use? Does it define "famous" as "known in Rome"? What I'm saying is that if he was as well known as the gospels say, then it's only reasonable to conclude that some of the historians of his day would have mentioned him. (I never said he must have been known in Rome.) So Jamie, forget about Rome and read what Philo of Alexandria (didn't) have to say about Jesus: Getting back to that old canard that nobody noticed Jesus because he was a "small-time preacher," another member here attempted to compare Jesus to Joseph Smith claiming that Joseph Smith wasn't well known either but still started a major religious movement. A quick and easy web search proves him wrong about Joseph Smith. Here's what one source says: Again, I'm not a mythicist, but with this kind of sophistry coming from the historicist camp, it's no wonder that so many people doubt that Jesus existed. (1) www.reddit.com/r/DebateAChristian/comments/2u3xnm/why_didnt_philo_of_alexandria_write_about_jesus/ (Accessed 11/12/2017) (2) www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/joseph-smith (Accessed 11/12/2017)
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Post by timoneill on Nov 13, 2017 1:01:13 GMT
Indeed. Jesus was very famous - IN GALILEE. NOT ROME. Even if we take Matthew's hyperbole at face value, Syria is NOT ROME. See map above. He did. IN GALILEE. Stop me if this is tricky for you to follow. Unless "seldom alone" means "seldom without a Roman aristocrat historian at his side, documenting his every move a la 'Almost Famous'", then I think you can anticipate my thoughts on this. I find your logic to be convoluted if not bizarre. His logic is simple and perfectly clear. Jesus, even according to the exaggerated accounts in the gospels, was only "famous" in the tiny region of Galilee - a backwater territory at the other end of the Mediterranean to the aristocratic Romans and Greeks who wrote history in this period. So the idea that they would have even heard of this small time peasant preacher is ridiculous, as is the idea that they would have bothered to say anything about him even if they had heard of him. Historians of the time had no interest in Jewish preachers at the back of nowhere. Okay, so please list all the "historians of his day" who talked about Jewish preachers in Galilee or who even mentioned any Jewish preachers, prophets or Messianic claimants at all. Good luck with that. OKay, now list all the Jewish preachers, prophets or Messianic claimants of this period mentioned by Philo. Good luck with that as well. Utter crap. Philo lived in Alexandria and only visited Jerusalem twice that we know of. A Mormon source. Gosh. But even if we accept that figure, it only shows how wrong your argument here is. How does a peasant preacher manage to become famous after his lifetime despite being largely insigificant? The same way Joseph Smith did. Of course Smith had the advantage of a career spanning about a decade and half, a denser population base, newspapers, transport infrastructure, railways and a postal service.
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Post by gakuseidon on Nov 13, 2017 2:22:59 GMT
So Jamie, forget about Rome and read what Philo of Alexandria (didn't) have to say about Jesus: This is a claim that gets repeated around the internet. The problem is that no-one ever actually links to Philo himself or any other primary source. The earliest form of the quote that I've found comes from The Rational Responders website, 2007: www.rationalresponders.com/silence_screams_no_contemporary_historical_accounts_quotjesusRational Responders don't provide any links to back up these claims about Philo being in or around Jerusalem. Jagella, why are you quoting Jim Jones here, where he provides no sources about his claim that Philo was living in or near Jerusalem both at the time of Christ's purported birth (appr 4 BCE) AND at the time of Christ's purported death (appr 30 CE)? Doesn't that sound a little too convenient, even more so without listed sources backing the claims up?
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