Excavation of first century house in Nazareth.
The Jesus myth branch of the atheist movement is the worst in terms of lying and Hate. They are steeped in hate to the point that they actually try to deny the existence of the greatest man in human history. This is a guy whose existence no one ever questioned for 1900 years. Only in the sickness of modern alienation do people fuming with hate seek to deny his existence. The Jesus myth movement has to keep refining their propaganda becasue it's been disproved so many times they are constantly forced to remake it. I found a site is sitll beating the dead horse of the dying rising savior gods BS.
A new site I had never seen before, discovered by accident, "Jesus never existed.com." they exhibit all the typical characteristics of the group.
Melodramatic sense of mission, saving the world in a life or death struggle againt some overwhealming evil they hate. Take the mato on their masthead: "for all who would struggle against the tragedy of religion." The studies show that people who have religious expeirnces do way better in life than those who don't. So their noble cause is to struggle to destroy one of the most important and life-transforming thinks we ever found as a species one of the major things that defines us as human. It makes me wounder if they did succeed in destroying religion how long before they try to destroy art? "For all who struggle agaisnt the tragedy that is drama." Now there's a slogan to conjure with.
The sight exhibits all the usual over done statements of anger and hatred that mark the Jesus myth movement:
Do you really think it all began with a sanctimonious Jewish wonder-worker, strolling about 1st century Palestine? Prepare to be enlightened.
Why is he sanctimonious? Why is it important to point out that he's Jewish? They seem to do that. They are into all the usual lies their ilk have steeped themselves in.
Christianity was the ultimate product of religious syncretism in the ancient world. Its emergence owed nothing to a holy carpenter. There were many Jesuses but the fable was a cultural construct.
There is no evidence of Christianity as synchronicity. That lie was put to bed in the nineteenth century century. on Doxa I show that none of the dying rising savior gods in the real myths fit the bill. I demonstrate over and over again that they lie about the mythology and that one must go to real mythological texts, and what we find there is that None of these figures are much like Jesus. The only source that say they are, are Jesus myther books.
"Thus, for example, one must doubtless interpret the change in the efficacy attributed to the rite of the taurobolium. In competing with Christianity, which promised eternal life to its adherents, the cult of Cybele officially or unofficially raised the efficacy of the blood bath from twenty years to eternity "[p. 11].
"Another aspect of comparisons between the resurrection of Christ and the mythological mysteries is that the alleged parallels are quite inexact. It is an error, for example, to believe that the initiation into the mysteries of Isis, as described in Apuleius's The Golden Ass, IS comparable to Christianity. For one thing, the hero, Lucius, had to pay a fortune to undergo his initiation. And as Wagner correctly observes: "Isis does not promise the mystes immortality, but only that henceforth he shall live under her protection, and that when at length he goes down to the realm of the dead he shall adore her . . ." (op. cit., p. 112).
Most of the evidence for mythrism for example comes from after the Christian era was well underway so the narrowing could have come the other way.
But Mithraism was confined to the Roman Legion primarily, those who were stationed in Palestine to subdue the Jewish Revolt of A.D. 66-70. In fact strong evidence indicates that in this way Christianity influenced Mithraism. First, because Romans stationed in the West were sent on short tours of duty to fight the Parthians in the East, and to put down the Jewish revolt. This is where they would have encountered a Christianity whose major texts were already written, and whose major story (that of the life of Christ) was already formed.
"There is no real evidence for a Persian Cult of Mithras. The cultic and mystery aspect did not exist until after the Roman period, second century to fourth. This means that any similarities to Christianity probably come from Christianity as the Soldiers learned of it during their tours in Palestine. The Great historian of religions, Franz Cumont was able to prove that the earliest datable evidence for the cult came from the Military Garrison at Carnuntum, on the Danube River (modern Hungary). The largest Cache of Mithric artifacts comes form the area between the Danube and Ostia in Italy." (Franz Cumont, The Mysteries of Mithra (Chicago: Open Court, 1903), 87ff.)
The Jesus did not exist website people have appreciably read exclusively from myther sources, they tout all the old hysterical early Jesus myth BS that has been long since disproved. One of the great old chestnuts is the idea that Nazareth did not exist.
Nazareth did not exist in the 1st century AD – the area was a burial ground of rock-cut tombs. Following a star would lead you in circles. The genealogies of Jesus are pious fiction. The 12 disciples are as fictitious as their master, invented to legitimise the claims of the early churches. The original Mary was not a virgin. That idea was borrowed from pagan goddesses.
L. Michael White:
Professor of Classics and Director of the Religious Studies Program University of Texas at Austin
Where did Jesus grow up and how would that have affected his world outlook?
Jesus grew up in Nazareth, a village in the Galilee. Now the Galilee, by most of the traditional accounts, is always portrayed as a kind of bucolic backwater ... cherubic peasants on the hillsides. And yet, our recent archaeological discoveries have shown this not to be the case. Nazareth, itself, is a village ... a small village at that. But, it stands less than four miles from a major urban center, Sepphoris. Now, we see Jesus growing up, not in the bucolic backwater, not... in the rural outback, but rather, on the fringes of a vibrant urban life.
And what kind of a city or town was Sepphoris?
Sepphoris was founded as the capitol of the Galilee. And so, it was really invested, much like Caesarea Maritima, with all the trappings of Greek or Roman city life as a major center of political activity for that region of the country. As a result, the excavations at Sepphoris have found extensive building programs, theaters, amphitheaters, and that sort of thing, just like Caesarea.
The other statements it makes about the fictional nature of the Apostels and so on are all conjecture based on their initial false assumption. It's that they make of their most outrageous lies.
Scholars have known all this for more than 200 years but priestcraft is a highly profitable business and finances an industry of deceit to keep the show on the road. "Jesus better documented than any other ancient figure" ? Don't believe a word of it. Unlike the mythical Jesus, a real historical figure like Julius Caesar has a mass of mutually supporting evidence. In a nutshell – Nailing Jesus.
Scholars have known what for 200 years? They did the excavations that prove Nazareth was inhabited in the 30's, 50's and 90s. So obviously if there were scholars who thought it wasn't (as assertion not in evidence) they were wrong. The work to disprove that was not done 200 years ago so saying that is rather foolish. They were wrong if they even thought it but they did not have the evidence to think otherwise. Then it makes santimonious statment about "priestcraft." If you agree with them you are a scholar and if you disagree with them then you are under the sway of priestcraft. That mean evdience can ever count against their view becuase all contrary evidence must be a lie.This the way brain washing makes one think. It's not scientific and it's no logical. If nothing can ever count against your view that proves your view is propaganda rather than proving that it's true.
Then use the old BS fallacy about Cesar had more documentation so therefore Jesus was made up. That's so stupid. The leader of the world empire had more documentation than this in a backwater who was controversial and was of no interested to the world rules becuase they weren't interested in back waters. What does that prove? That's like saying Gorege Bush is better documented than the guy who did the guy who does the Jesus did not exist website. So guess that guy doesn't exist then. They are using to contradict the statement that Jesus is better document but they get the statement wrong in the first place. It's not that there are more sources for Jesus but more personal information supplied about Jesus in the sources we do have of him than in all the sources of Caesar. That's true, just becuase we have many sources telling us Cesar existed doesn't mean each source tells us more about him. It's not even an important point anyway.
Yet another statement of buffoonery:
Still holding to the idea that some sort of holy man lies behind the legend? Better check out
Godman – Gestation of a Superhero
It is intuitively satisfying to think that someone was behind the towering legend. Yet like the worship of Horus or Mithras a human life was neither necessary nor helpful. As it happens, we have an excellent witness to events in Judaea in the first half of the first century AD: Philo of Alexandria (c25 BC-47 AD). Yet Philo says not a word about Jesus or Christianity!
This is nothing but a bald faced lie. In all of this garbage they are quoting they quote no actual schoalrs only Jesus mythers. The fact is scholars say we don't have good evidence of first century, not at all. Philo was not in Jerusalem during the time of Christ's ministry he was in southern Europe. So he was not there and that's a good reason why he didn't write about Jesus.The fact remains we don't have many first century sources.
In my Doxa article overview on historical Jesus.
form JP Holding--Teckton Apologetics]
"A final consideration is that we have very little information from first-century sources to begin with. Not much has survived the test of time from A.D. 1 to today. Blaiklock has cataloged the non-Christian writings of the Roman Empire (other than those of Philo) which have survived from the first century and do not mention Jesus. These items are":
* An amateurish history of Rome by Vellius Paterculus, a retired army officer of Tiberius. It was published in 30 A.D., just when Jesus was getting started in His ministry.
* An inscription that mentions Pilate.
* Fables written by Phaedrus, a Macedonian freedman, in the 40s A.D.
* From the 50s and 60s A.D., Blaiklock tells us: "Bookends set a foot apart on this desk where I write would enclose the works from these significant years." Included are philosophical works and letters by Seneca; a poem by his nephew Lucan; a book on agriculture by Columella, a retired soldier; fragments of the novel Satyricon by Gaius Petronius; a few lines from a Roman satirist, Persius; Pliny the Elder's Historia Naturalis; fragments of a commentary on Cicero by Asconius Pedianus, and finally, a history of Alexander the Great by Quinus Curtius.
Of all these writers, only Seneca may have conceivably had reason to refer to Jesus. But considering his personal troubles with Nero, it is doubtful that he would have had the interest or the time to do any work on the subject.
* From the 70s and 80s A.D., we have some poems and epigrams by Martial, and works by Tacitus (a minor work on oratory) and Josephus (Against Apion, Wars of the Jews). None of these would have offered occasion to mention Jesus.
* From the 90s, we have a poetic work by Statius; twelve books by Quintillian on oratory; Tacitus' biography of his father-in-law Agricola, and his work on Germany. [Blaik.MM, 13-16]"To this Meier adds [ibid., 23] that in general, knowledge of the vast majority of ancient peoples is "simply not accessible to us today by historical research and never will be." It is just as was said in his earlier comment on Alexander the Great: What we know of most ancient people as individuals could fit on just a few pieces of paper. Thus it is misguided for the skeptic to complain that we know so little about the historical Jesus, and have so little recorded about Him in ancient pagan sources. Compared to most ancient people, we know quite a lot about Jesus, and have quite a lot recorded about Him!"
So there just aren't that many overall sources to go by in the first palce. But why wouldn't more of Jesus' contempoaries write about him?
The Jesus myth mania can be taken out very easily with two points that invalidate their entire thesis. Once you know that the dying/rising savior god theory depends upon a lie about the mythical sources, then you can take up the web of deceptions. There's a true web of history and it binds together all the basic facts of eye witnesses and people who knew eye witnesses and so on. This can be proved and demonstrated through strict attention to scholarship. There are two kinds of proofs here: one deals with the actual claims of those who knew eye witnesses and the other with the overall verification of the texts. The mythers make a big deal of redaction and writing lots of texts, and they make the assumption that it's all just a made up lie. This is reflected in the Jesus did not exist website:
There are actually some 200 gospels, epistles and other ancient documents concerning the life of Jesus Christ. Writing such material was a popular literary form, particularly in the 2nd century. The pious fantasies competed with Greek romantic fiction. Political considerations in the late 2nd century led to the selection of just four approved gospels and the rejection of others.
That is invalidated by textual criticism which can be traced back and demonstrated an early version of the basic story that included the empty tomb and was circulating by AD 50. I have demonstrated eight layers of verification that textual critics have search through in tracing back to this proto Gospel story. This is a source that was circulating in writing at AD 50 0r so, and that was used and coped and became part of the four Gospels and the Gospel of Peter. That's just 18 years after the original events. These eight layers demonstrate it's not just a simple matter of one guy makes something up and starts being copied. its' show eight different tragediennes form the same era from which we find mutually reinforcing evidence flowing in terms of eye early witness. So that's the first point that destroys the Jesus myth propaganda. Their understanding of scholarship is non existent and their claims are disproved by the facts: the orignial communities that produced the gospels were the witness. The web of historicity proves that the claims of those communities are verified because they come from eight different trajectories of witness.
The second point is the witness of Celsus and what he tells us about Jesus proves that Jesus was a historical figure. Clesus tells us he got his information on the "truth" about Jesus from Jews. What he says coincides with what's in the Talmud form the early strand that goes back to the first century. These two points destroy the whole theory. The site in question is quite inferior. They have done no real research but just read a bunch of mythers stuff that confirms their prejudices and without thinking crank out a bunch of galling hateful statements.
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here's the list of sources of real mythology books I used to check the real myths the way they were actually presented. You will find these are very different than the way the Jesus mythers tell them. None of the figures were crucified and one resurrected. that includes mythra. These are lies told by the Jesus myth cult. The list of sources has no Christian books. Just scholars o mythology not religious. You find Cumont who the mythers love to quote but he actually does not back up their thesis.
Conze, Edward. Buddhist Scriptures, ,Penguin:1959.:35)
Cumont, Franz. The Mysteries of Mithra. New York: Dover, 1950.
Gordon, Richard. Image and Value in the Greco-Roman World. Aldershot: Variorum, 1996.
Hamilton, Edith. Mentor edition, original copywriter 1940 Mythology, 172). See also World Book Encyclopedia, "Hercules" 1964)
Klausner, Joseph. From Jesus to Paul (New York: Macmillan, 1943), 104
Kramer, S.N. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, No. 183 [1966],
Mithraic Studies: Proceedings of the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies. Manchester U. Press, 1975.
La 'resurrection' d'Adonis," in Melanges Isidore Levy, 1955, pp. 207-40).
Meyer, M. (editor) The Ancient Mysteries : A Source Book , San Francisco: Harper, 1987, pp.170-171).
Robinson, Herbert Spencer. Myths and Legends of all Nations, New York: Bantum Books, 1950, 13-16
Seltman, The Twelve Olympians, New York: Thomas Y. Corwell Company, 1960.p 176).
Ulansey, David. Cosmoic Mysteries of Of Mithras (website).
________________.The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World. New York: Oxford U. Press, 1989.
World Book Encyclopedia, "Hercules" 1964
2 comments:
Glad to see you are posting up such useful information, in a world where the information highway is cluttered with so much stuff.
Peace,
Eric.
Thanks Eric I appreciate that.
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