On 10/01/2012 03:36 AM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> On 1/9/2012 8:31 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> The contents of the Bible may or may not be real, but the book itself is
>> quite real. Interestingly, according to Wikipedia (which is inerrant),
>> it seems that at least a few of the things in the Bible might actually
>> be true. In particular, there might actually have been a real person
>> actually called Jesus, who at least /claimed/ to be a messenger of God.
>
> Based on what? The census data that, supposedly, was collected when he
> was born, but doesn't mention him? The total lack of anything written
> "during his own life", by anyone at all, that mentions him.

I won't claim to be an expert in such fields. But it appears that a 
couple of non-Christian sources do mention him (though never first-hand 
accounts).

To be clear: I didn't say there is /proof/ that he existed, I merely 
said that some evidence suggests that he /might/ have existed.

> And, that doesn't even go into the problem with how nothing claimed
> about his wasn't basically stolen from other religions, from virgin
> births, to raising the dead, and walking on water (or turning it into
> whine).

I have seen absolutely no evidence at all that this person was actually 
God incarnate, or that he actually performed any miracles. I only said 
he might have been a real person, who /claimed/ to be a messenger from God.

I see nothing particularly implausible in a man being born, walking 
around giving speeches and stuff, and then after his death the stories 
being gradually embellished until we end up with the current Bible myth 
about him being the son of God and rising from the dead and performing 
other miracles. Obviously the Bible story is fiction; that doesn't mean 
that it isn't at least loosely based on a real person, or on events that 
really happened. And it seems possible that some of the words he is 
credited as having said might be words that a real person actually 
spoke. (Mind you, the words could have been altered somewhat over the 
years too.)

> Or, the really big one, that nothing at all in the Bible's NT
> has *ever* been found, in any form, earlier than roughly 50 years
> "after" he was supposedly crucified. You would think someone, some
> place, would have made mention of it, kept and old copy, accidentally
> stuffed a wall with a manuscript that contained mention of "any" of his
> speeches, describing any of the events, etc.

We're talking about something which [may have] happened two *thousand* 
years ago. It's a miracle we have any documents at all.

> Basically, nothing exists, prior to roughly 50 AD that even mentions
> him.

I'd argue that nothing much of /any/ documentation survives from 50 AD. 
It's a hell of a long time ago, after all. Also, some people believed 
that Jesus was a prophet, messiah, or even the son of God, but to most 
people he was just some random guy who talked a lot. Probably not 
especially noteworthy to mention.

> The NT might be an
> attempt to invent religion, which Titus tried to take advantage of, or
> something they came up in parody of his real campaign, then decided a
> lot of people liked, so decided to use to gain power that they couldn't
> via politics, or.. who knows. But, there really isn't one single scrap
> of actual evidence, at all, that Jesus himself ever existed.

I didn't say Jesus was real. I said he might be real. Some limited 
evidence suggests he was real.

...or the entire thing might be a forgery from start to finish. 
Interesting that there's only one version of that forgery, but it's not 
completely implausible. I doubt we'll ever know one way or the other.

> In point of fact, assuming that any of the events "sort of" happened,
> for which there isn't any, "from the time they supposedly did",
> documentation of them, its far more likely that someone stitched
> together an absurd number of random bits of stuff, tacked on some common
> stories/traits of existing gods/sons of gods, and when it proved popular
> enough, some group figure that they needed to consolidate power, by
> "reworking" all of it, into something that made more sense than the
> hodgepodge of nonsense that they had originally.

You realise that this entire paragraph is one sentence, right? With the 
wonky punctuation, it's almost unparsable.

I doubt we'll ever know the true origins of the Bible. It's interesting 
that some evidence suggests that bits of it might be real. But I won't 
lose too much sleep wondering about which bits or how real. ;-)

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