Slm/kwu

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I'm shokht, simply shokht.

Keeping a low profile Rich?

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I'm shokht, simply shokht.

Faith ain't fact, man.

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I'm shokht, simply shokht.

True, but many with a religous perspective do not distinguish between the two. I think religion is valuable both to individuals and our society but one has to be very careful about how they discuss it.

 

Dr. Douglas,

No, but I'm not so sure that the record WOULD be very robust, whether Jesus really existed or not.

When the Romans ("HOW many Romans?? But that implies motion TOWARD!"-Monty Python) decided to off an average Jew, they didn't issue a death certificate.

The Nazis were the first mass murders of Jews (and others) who had the advantage of IBM technology. As a consequence, it's really rather remarkable how many of thier victims can be traced.

As a Jew, I naturally don't accept any of the Christians' claims of Jesus' divinity or messianic status. But I do think that there's enough evidence to think he probably existed.

 

Okay, I'm confused. On the one hand, you note the absence of proof, but on the other you say there's strong enough evidence. This seems contradictory.

Beyond the divinity issue, is there a record that he even existed? And then, is what we know strong enough to leap from fact to faith? (The second one is a personal choice, of course, but putting one's faith in someone/thing that wasn't even there seems odd to me.)

 

Oh!

Only that the easiest explanation for the appearance and development of the early Christian Church would be that Jesus existed. That's all. There's no compelling reason to think that he didn't exist.

Moses has much better documentation but if you asked to prove that he existed, I couldn't do it in any other way than this.

Well, actually, the picture of Moses IS a little easier to accept since he really isn't a "mythic" figure in the way Jesus is, or became. There's really nothing about Moses that is supernatural other than the revelations on Mt. Sinai and the various (unwitnessed) visitations in Egypt. Certainly there's no more reason to think that Moses is fictitious than to claim that, say, Joseph Smith was fictitious.

 

Shouldn't that be the definition of a mill?


Those that sell instant "diplomas" are simply passing along fraudulant documents. What they offer does not fit the definition of a diploma as no education took place and no school exists.

Dan

 

Just so. And a "school" that grants a bachelors (four years' work) for a semester's amount of courses--and those of dubious rigour--is peddling crap.

Oh. Yeah. Thanks, Dan, for getting this thread back on topic.

 

This is not where this belongs but I don't want to neglect this.

If you read the works of Cornelius Tacitus, Pliny the Younger, and Josephus, you have historical records Jesus existed.

Also, do you honestly think a nation such as ours, with some of the finest seminaries in the world, with instructors who hold impeccable academic degrees and possess superior scholarship, would fall for and propagate a myth?

Do you honestly think such men as Norman Geisler, Wayne Grudem, Louis Berkhof, Lloyd Ogilvie, Barbara Brown Taylor, Robert Schuller, James Kennedy, and from yesterday, Dietrich Bonhoffer, Emil Brunner, Harry Emerson Fosdick, Norman Vincent Peale, James K. Pike, and Martin Luther King, Jr., are (were) idiots who believe(d) in fairy tales?

Do you honestly think professors at Harvard Divinity, Yale Divinity, Fuller Theological Seminary, Dallas Theological Seminary, Eden Theological Seminary, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, Earlham School of Religions, etc., are teaching their students fiction?

Do you honestly think men on this forum like Uncle Janko, Bill Grover, BLD, Boydston, et. al.. are wasting their time in the pursuit of their profession and vocation on a superstition?

 

Uncle:

I was wondering what happened!

Regarding faith it is a real leap of faith to regard KWU as anything other than less than wonderful.

 

Myth? Yes. Idiots? No. Fairy tale? Certainly. A waste? How would I know? (Or care to suppose?)

Thank you for the references. I see Pliny the Younger wasn't a contemporary of Jesus. Neither was Cornelius Tacitus. Nor Josephus.

Now, I don't claim to be a scholar--I had to look those guys up--but their perspectives are no better than current ones. They weren't there and neither were any of us. If the historical record was strong enough for them, it's strong enough for us. So who needs them? They weren't there, so they're relying on other forms of documentation. Cut out the middle man and let's go to the documentation itself. You know, the direct evidence. Is there any?

 

We have the record of His contemporaries in the New Testament, but you won't accept their accounts.

To discount Josephus seems inconceivable to me. He was a respected Jewish historian and although not a contemporary of Jesus, certainly lived within a close enough time frame of Jesus' life to give his accounts credence.

If you discount part of his work, how can you believe any of his work? Much of his work has been authenticated.

Now, do you deny the historical record that Christians were persecuted and fed to the lions within the lifetimes of people who knew Jesus? Do you really believe they made Jesus up and were willing to die for Him?

Do you deny the existence of Mahavira and Buddha?

 

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: I'm shokht, simply shokht.

Rich: Hypothetically speaking, if there had really been an historical individual named Jesus of Nazareth who worked as a carpenter and offbeat theologian in Israel during the period of the Roman oppression and who was executed by the Roman government, what sorts of non-Christian historical records would prove his existence? Would such records be expected to survive to this day?

 

Now that we have five, count 'em, five super moderators, is there not one who will undertake to move this stuff to the "Off-Topic Discussions" or better still to a newly-created "Religion, other than religious credentials" forum, so I can unsubscribe to that, as well as Politics.

 

Not just now, apparently--and with good reason. Considering that the original, highly offensive post (by a poster who routinely vituperates elsewhere about degreeinfo) which started the derangement of this thread was reported to the moderators--and it was not removed--one can only conclude that, in light of the repeated churlish attacks on one of the new moderators and the endless Monday-morning quarterbacking of the appointment of new moderators tout court, all of the moderators are at the moment unwilling to do anything proactive which would set the rancid peanut gallery in a witless uproar. In this reticence, the moderators are prudent. I commend them for their sagacity just as I deplore the deliberately offensive material in this thread.

 

I'll go one better, and lock the thread. If people want to debate KWU, etc., then start a new thread and keep it on-topic.

If you want to debate religion, that's what the Off-Topic and Political sections are for.