Religion

[feelymcfeel]

A 2000 year old story, which was written long after it was supposed to have happened, by people who weren't even there, based on stories handed down by people who may or may not have been there. The collection of stories has been translated many times over the years, and no doubt cherry picked to highlight the juicy bits. It was then re written as the King James version, which was essentially used as a tool to control the illiterate masses.

They could've chosen to leave out the bits that make their messiah-figure seem a bit of a mental.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

I also like that Jesus actually seemed to have anger issues, so much so when a fig tree didn't have figs on it outside of fig season, he cursed it:

Mark 11:12-14 The next day as they were leaving Bethany, Jesus was hungry. Seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to find out if it had any fruit. When he reached it, he found nothing but leaves, because it was not the season for figs. Then he said to the tree, "May no one ever eat fruit from you again". And his disciples heard him say it.

The man was a fucking loon.

Jesus is as made up as any of the other stories in any of the books in any of the religions.

There is not a single bit of evidence that Jesus ever lived. In a time where the Romans wrote everything down, in a region they controlled not a single thing was ever written about him.

There are dozens of examples of Jesus stories in religions before, some thousands of years before, the Jesus story was told.

Buddha, Krishna, Oddyseus, Romulus, Dionysus, Heracles, Glycon, Zoroaster, Attis, Mythra, Horos... and many more... All have the same story as Jesus. All from earlier religions than Christianity.

All of them are simply the personification of the Sun.

The stories of Jesus and his identical predecessor stories are just the story of the Sun and the celestial movement of the stars as the year progresses:
Sun is born on the Winter Solstice (miracle birth)
First hits the stars of Aquarius (Jesus is baptised in water)
Then Pisces (Jesus gets disciples from fisherman)
Airies (Jesus becomes a shepherd)
Time of Vernal Equinox when night and day are equal and from then on the days are longer as the Sun is resurrected for the Summer, birth of a lot of animals on the wild (Resurrection of Christ, birthing= eggs at Easter/new life)
etc. etc. etc.

Through all twelve signs of the zodiac (12 disciples)...

Daytime is heaven, nighttime is hell, Jesus is the Sun, the Devil is the Moon, Summer is heaven, Winter is Hell...

All it is, is stories attached to the celestial and solar year, seasons, night and day!

 

[che_don_john]

Also that list one page 1... If you think that many of those didn't have some religious aspect to them, you're as delusional as the god botherers.

WW2? Really? Did the Nazis not murder over 6 million Jews?

Not to mention that in Mein Kampf Hitler mentioned 'doing God's work about 5 or 6 times; the SS had something like 'God is strength' as their motto (think it was written on their belts) and the Vatican not only endorsed Hitler, but celebrated his birthday! Nazi Germany was in many ways a theocracy.

There is not a single bit of evidence that Jesus ever lived. In a time where the Romans wrote everything down, in a region they controlled not a single thing was ever written about him.

To add to that: in the story of Nativity, Joseph and Mary returning to Bethlehem to take part in a census. Even ignoring the somewhat self-defeating idea that censuses required people to return to their place of birth (as opposed to staying and being accounted for in the place they were living - kind of the point of a census), there is no record whatsoever of a census taking place at that time (yet all others were recorded and kept).

 

[Henkeman]

Jesus is as made up as any of the other stories in any of the books in any of the religions.

There is not a single bit of evidence that Jesus ever lived. In a time where the Romans wrote everything down, in a region they controlled not a single thing was ever written about
him.

Mmm. That's not really very likely. It's not surprising at all that you'd find nothing in the Roman records - we have major gaps in the documented lives of emperors in the 1st century, let alone agitators in backwater provinces.

There's an at worst arguable case that the Gospel of John was written by a disciple who knew Jesus, and even if not the volume of writing, both synoptic and otherwise, in the decades afterwards make it almost certain he existed, because otherwise it would require such a vast amount of made up documentation for little good reason.

He existed alright, and the narrative is probably generally true, but gilded somewhat. Luke's nativity story is historical impossibility for a start, while most of the gospels have had bits added by other hands. John, arguably an eye witness account of the last days, misses it the nativity completely, which oddly lends credence to his writing.

There's a very good book called The Unauthorised Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible - which is a historian's take on the whole thing. Well worth checking out.

 

[Deleted member 77198]

Mmm. That's not really very likely. It's not surprising at all that you'd find nothing in the Roman records - we have major gaps in the documented lives of emperors in the 1st century, let alone agitators in backwater provinces.

There's an at worst arguable case that the Gospel of John was written by a disciple who knew Jesus, and even if not the volume of writing, both synoptic and otherwise, in the decades afterwards make it almost certain he existed, because otherwise it would require such a vast amount of made up documentation for little good reason.

He existed alright, and the narrative is probably generally true, but gilded somewhat. Luke's nativity story is historical impossibility for a start, while most of the gospels have had bits added by other hands. John, arguably an eye witness account of the last days, misses it the nativity completely, which oddly lends credence to his writing.

There's a very good book called The Unauthorised Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible - which is a historian's take on the whole thing. Well worth checking out.

But it was just a vast amount of documentation taken from older religions, it wasn’t just made up about Jesus, it was just plagiarised from all those other sources stretching back to Horos.

The story of Horos in the Egyptian religion is the story of Jesus.

 

[Henkeman]

But it was just a vast amount of documentation taken from older religions, it wasn’t just made up about Jesus, it was just plagiarised from all those other sources stretching back to Horos.

The story of Horos in the Egyptian religion is the story of Jesus.

That's a lot of the later hand additions and (especially) Acts where they shoehorn supposed prophecy into it rather than the probable raw gospels. There's a huge amount of that revised copy in the Bible, it shouldn't be assumed it was initially written that way.

Check out the book. You don't have to be religious to find it fascinating, anything but. I certainly am not for a start.

 

[Trevor Morley's Tache]

Mmm. That's not really very likely. It's not surprising at all that you'd find nothing in the Roman records - we have major gaps in the documented lives of emperors in the 1st century, let alone agitators in backwater provinces.

There's an at worst arguable case that the Gospel of John was written by a disciple who knew Jesus, and even if not the volume of writing, both synoptic and otherwise, in the decades afterwards make it almost certain he existed, because otherwise it would require such a vast amount of made up documentation for little good reason.

He existed alright, and the narrative is probably generally true, but gilded somewhat. Luke's nativity story is historical impossibility for a start, while most of the gospels have had bits added by other hands. John, arguably an eye witness account of the last days, misses it the nativity completely, which oddly lends credence to his writing.

There's a very good book called The Unauthorised Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible - which is a historian's take on the whole thing. Well worth checking out.

There is no doubt that someone called (the Hebrew/Aramaic version of) Jesus, and a whole host of characters probably lived around the time we associate with the bible. However, apart from that, we have essentially cobbled together a load of scraps of possible stories and filled in the blanks.

It's like knowing that 2 blokes called Jules and Vincent lived in LA in the 1990's, then filling in the blanks to come up with Pulp Fiction.

 

[aguero93:20]

But it was just a vast amount of documentation taken from older religions, it wasn’t just made up about Jesus, it was just plagiarised from all those other sources stretching back to Horos.

The story of Horos in the Egyptian religion is the story of Jesus.

Yeah the whole death rebirth thing is from Celtic Paganism and was added in to make the religion more palatable to Northwestern Europeans.

 

[Henkeman]

There is no doubt that someone called (the Hebrew/Aramaic version of) Jesus, and a whole host of characters probably lived around the time we associate with the bible. However, apart from that, we have essentially cobbled together a load of scraps of possible stories and filled in the blanks.

It's like knowing that 2 blokes called Jules and Vincent lived in LA in the 1990's, then filling in the blanks to come up with Pulp Fiction.

It's the other way around. There was a basic story that was added to in later years by different people. The central premise of the story is almost certainly accurate in terms of what happened, and again, John is probably an eyewitness - which doesn't make it true religiously, but does make it actually quite unusual for the time.

We take our Roman histories of the first century from the likes of Suetonius for example, yet he was writing a century later than some of the events. The primary sources are largely lost, while Tacitus was almost a contemporary of some about whom he wrote, but probably little different in distance from say Mark. We need to be consistent in our criticism. The writings about Jesus are not especially more distant to those we have about far more important (at the time, historically) figures.

 

[Fame Monster]

It's the other way around. There was a basic story that was added to in later years by different people. The central premise of the story is almost certainly accurate in terms of what happened, and again, John is probably an eyewitness - which doesn't make it true religiously, but does make it actually quite unusual for the time.

We take our Roman histories of the first century from the likes of Suetonius for example, yet he was writing a century later than some of the events. The primary sources are largely lost, while Tacitus was almost a contemporary of some about whom he wrote, but probably little different in distance from say Mark. We need to be consistent in our criticism. The writings about Jesus are not especially more distant to those we have about far more important (at the time, historically) figures.

This is true.

Jesus did exist and was crucified and lived most of his life in Judea and had disciples (probably because he was thought to be wise and non-violent), but the other 99% of stuff written about him is bollocks. A lot of stuff was omitted by the Catholic Church because it had stuff about dragons and was even more ridiculous than the stuff that got through.