Le 10/01/2012 04:36, Patrick Elliott a écrit :
> and walking on water (or turning it into whine)

I have explanation (or heresy) for that two, both due to bad translation
(well, enhanced translation), and more:

Laziness : walk on water; he took the road of water (he swam at worst,
he might have know some spot where the river was not so deep) to get to
the other side... whereas usual road on earth was longer.

Turning water into whine: Assume you have a barrel of strong whine for
twelve people, and usage is to never drink pure water (well, dirty water
really), and the meal is going to have fifty people: dilute the whine
with water, actually turning water into whine. A lighter lighter whine,
but still whine.

Multiplication of bread: well, the word for multiplication might have a
translation-side for division (indeed), he did not create more bread, he
split the bread amongst the people. There was X breads (big size) and
when done, every people (N people, N >> X) had bread, a part of bread.
(like milk: 1 bottle of milk can serve many glasses of milk)

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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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Le 10/01/2012 11:10, Invisible a écrit :
> 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.


From the Roman documentation, at least the crucifixion did happened.
It was a seditious Jewish man named Jesus, sold to the Roman ( "give to
Caesar what belong to Caesar" is about paying or not the tax to the
invader: as the coins are the coins of the invading country, he states
that the tax should be paid.), opposing local Jewish powers and local
business (expulsion of the merchants from the Temple...)

From where did he came, nothing is sure. Only the last 3 years of his
life were dedicated to propaganda and sedition. It is also well-known
that he frequented a whore (Marie Madeleine)... put that on the prudish
and puritan Church. Coherency and consistency never make it inside dogma.

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On 10/01/2012 10:59 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
> Le 10/01/2012 11:10, Invisible a écrit :
>> 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.
>
>
>  From the Roman documentation, at least the crucifixion did happened.
> It was a seditious Jewish man named Jesus

I also gather that "Jesus" was a fairly common name too. Like, if I sat 
down today and wrote a book about "John Smith", in 2,000 years' time 
historians are going to have one *hell* of a time figuring out whether I 
based it on a real person or not...

>  From where did he came, nothing is sure. Only the last 3 years of his
> life were dedicated to propaganda and sedition. It is also well-known
> that he frequented a whore (Marie Madeleine)... put that on the prudish
> and puritan Church. Coherency and consistency never make it inside dogma.

The Bible is inconsistent? SAY IT ISN'T SO! ;-)

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On 1/9/2012 10:36 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:

> 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
> wine).

Is there any evidence, beyond the circumstantial, that these things were 
stolen?

Regards,
John

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Le 2012-01-10 06:19, Invisible a écrit :
> On 10/01/2012 10:59 AM, Le_Forgeron wrote:
>> Le 10/01/2012 11:10, Invisible a écrit :
>>> 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.
>>
>>
>> From the Roman documentation, at least the crucifixion did happened.
>> It was a seditious Jewish man named Jesus
>
> I also gather that "Jesus" was a fairly common name too. Like, if I sat
> down today and wrote a book about "John Smith", in 2,000 years' time
> historians are going to have one *hell* of a time figuring out whether I
> based it on a real person or not...
>

I read somewhere (assign a random value of factuality to that statement) 
that Jesus (or Yeshua) may have been a title or nickname, rather than 
his real name.


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Le 10/01/2012 14:52, John VanSickle a écrit :
> On 1/9/2012 10:36 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
>> 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
>> wine).
> 
> Is there any evidence, beyond the circumstantial, that these things were
> stolen?

Stealing idea & such immaterial... were there any copyright at that time
? What was its duration and was it yet expired ? Was it public domain ?
Would the many Churches be liable to SOPA infringement today ?
Should a three-stricks procedure be applied to their ISP connection ?

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>> All of that aside, here's an interesting observation: There's no
>> evidence that God exists. There's no evidence that Adam or Eve existed.
>
> But we are playing "What if" game! Just assume that whatever fantasy is
> true, then tell...

What if I'm right about everything. Given that this is true, do you can 
concede that I am right about everything?

>> In fact, a lot of people regard the entire Bible as something that
>> should be in the "fiction" section. But think about this for a moment:
>> the Bible *itself* most definitely *does* exist. It's a real book, and
>> it has existed for a very long time.
>
> can you define long time ?
> The bible (which Bible ?) has been made as an assembly of various texts
> from various sources, along various translation paths, which were highly
> disputed at the beginning of the church

> Whatever is called the "New Testament" is just the final result of that
> evolution. About the "Old testament"... it should be, as of Jewish
> sources, in Hebraic texts (Torah ?).

The more I look at this, the more complicated it becomes.

Short version: The original text of the Bible has long, *long* since 
been lost to history. All that remains now is a trillion different 
versions, translations, editions, revisions, edits and alterations of 
it. If you stare hard enough, you can kinda sorta figure out how one 
version is related to some other version. We will probably never know 
what the originals said, when they were written, who wrote them, or even 
what language. (It seems even the "original" Hebrew was based on earlier 
documents.)

All of which makes it utterly laughable when people say that "the" Bible 
is inerrant. Uh, yeah, which one exactly? (Ah, but wait - isn't that why 
we have a dozen conflicting religions based on the same bundle of texts?)

Regardless, this is an *old* document.

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On Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:52:10 -0500, John VanSickle wrote:

> On 1/9/2012 10:36 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> 
>> 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
>> wine).
> 
> Is there any evidence, beyond the circumstantial, that these things were
> stolen?

You mean beyond similarities between Christianity and religions that pre-
date Christianity?

Uh, yeah, the earlier stories, myths, and traditions are evidence 
themselves that those earlier stories, myths, and traditions existed.

The idea of a "son of god", of his death and resurrection to save the 
masses - that's not unique to Christianity.  Stories (particularly oral 
traditions) get around.

Or are you seriously asking that someone *document* how an *oral 
tradition* spread from one society to another?

Jim

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Jim Henderson <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote:
> > Is there any evidence, beyond the circumstantial, that these things were
> > stolen?

> You mean beyond similarities between Christianity and religions that pre-
> date Christianity?

  Even if Christianity was completely original and didn't use anything at
all from other religions, that wouldn't really change the question of its
veracity, would it?

  Also, even if Christianity had many similarities to other religions, it
would be easy to explain from a Christian point of view: Satan likes to
copy God's work in order to distort it and confuse people, and draw people
away from the one true religion. There always is an explanation for
everything.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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