Niels van der Linden wrote:

All you seem to be doing is reiterating, over and over again, without
reason or evidence, that we should read this website. Why? Can't you
express an opinion for yourself?

The reason is this: Jesus of Nazareth (and adjoining fables) might have
never ever existed. If you decide you won't ever be open to that thought,
than no, you probably won't look at it.

I'm open to the thought. What gets in the way is my knowledge of
antiquity. Faced with the extant remains and impact of his life, it's
a daft idea.

Let me take it further. If Christianity had perished in the 6th
century AD, and all its literature, and all we knew about it was two
stray sermons of St. Jerome or someone like that, not particularly
about his life, from 400 AD --- we would still reasonably suppose it
was founded by a chap called Christ living in the early empire period
who got a bunch of guys together, probably had a beard, stood on a
soapbox and said 'follow me.' Why? Because nearly all movements start
like that. We'd need evidence for something else, to consider any
other alternative suggestion. This is not rocket science. The whole
suggestion that Jesus never existed was manufactured only around 1710
by some extreme atheists, for obvious polemical use.

I'm not going to labour this. No-one seriously believes it. I know
there is a great deal of Jesus-myth stuff on the web. But if you look
at it, one and all is devoted to getting rid of inconvenient evidence.
But it's pointless -- they can't get rid of the church, and that
massive footprint in the historical record is bound to be founded by
someone like what they all talk about. It's really not complicated.

However, as he stated that such closed-thinking was the way of the
atheist and not theist (?), you would expect someone to look into it,
since it has the potential of changing one's view completely.

Surely. I hope the comments were useful. Whatever your beef about
religion, don't take on board nonsense ideas like this, tho.

The website, by the way, is anti-scholarly nonsense. Unlike either of
you, or that website author, I really do know.

Ah; indeed the master of the scientific method: 'it's crap because I say it
is'. You were talking about evidence...?

I'm not asking you to take my word for it. I'm suggesting, politely,
that you find out. Forcing education on the obtuse isn't my thing.

Now I could copy-paste the entire article here, but I'm not going to.
Just click it and read it. If you are so strong in your convictions,
you can handle it right?

Why can't you think for yourself? Explain to us your dogmatic faith in
this website.

I've been through a multitude of sources, but this one puts it together
nicely. It has nothing to do with dogma OR faith.

<smile> You need to examine the stuff *critically*. It's just a
compilation of daft stuff.

Now I could copy-paste the entire article here, but I'm not going to.
Just click it and read it. If you are so strong in your convictions,
you can handle it right?

Now I could copy-paste the entire article here, but I'm not going to.
Just
click it and read it. If you are so strong in your convictions, you can
handle it right?

Also 'stuff' isn't very scientific.

Nor is evading statements with argument-by-website.

..articles...evidence..

Have you any?

The burden of on the person who claimes the existence of something.

Excuse me. Everyone must take responsibility for his statements,
positive or negative. You don't have to justify silence; for
everything else, you do.

I'm afraid you're reading stuff that is very deleterious to your
ability to learn anything (no offence). It blocks the critical
faculty.

Consider the village idiot who decides, in his slow way, one day to
deny the world is round. He sits in the muck, and when the parson
comes round, declares his creed roundly. But when asked why he thinks
this, Hodge proudly declares that he doesn't have to prove anything;
instead everyone else has to prove him wrong.

Can you imagine a finer method for avoiding intellectual effort and
resisting education?

For instance in the 'Josephus-evidence', there are *major* signs of
forgery.

Actually scholars don't agree. None of the things you're copying from
that web-page are at all convincing.

To name a few:

"1. How could Josephus claim that Jesus had been the answer to his messianic
hopes yet remain an orthodox Jew?

1. He doesn't.

2. He isn't an orthodox Jew, but a renegade.
3. Insofar as he talks about Messiahs in the book, he means Vespasian.

2. If Josephus really thought Jesus had been 'the Christ' surely he would
have added more about him than one paragraph, a casual aside in someone
else's (Pilate's) story? [etc]

Argument from speculation. Not evidence of anything whatever. People
write their books for their own reasons, not to fit criteria invented
2000 years later.

It is striking that though Josephus confirms everything the Christians could
wish for, he adds nothing not in the gospel narratives, nothing that would
have been unknown by Christians already.

I don't recall the gospels stating that Jesus was arrested twice. But
what if they did? Of what is this evidence?

3. The passage is out of context. ...
Chapter 3 starts with a sedition against Pilate who planned to slaughter all
the Jews but changed his mind. Pilate then used sacred money to supply water
to Jerusalem, and the Jews protested. Pilate sent spies among the Jews with
concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre.

Then comes the paragraph about Jesus, and immediately after it, Josephus
continues:

'And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the Jews
...'

Josephus, an orthodox Jew, would not have thought the Christian story to be
'another terrible misfortune.' It is only a Christian who would have
considered this to be a Jewish tragedy.

But if you have to copy someone else's words.... HINT *someone else's*
HINT

All you seem to be doing is reiterating, over and over again, without
reason or evidence, that we should read this website. Why? Can't you
express an opinion for yourself?

The reason is this: Jesus of Nazareth (and adjoining fables) might have
never ever existed. If you decide you won't ever be open to that thought,
than no, you probably won't look at it.

I'm open to the thought. What gets in the way is my knowledge of
antiquity. Faced with the extant remains and impact of his life, it's
a daft idea.

Let me take it further. If Christianity had perished in the 6th
century AD, and all its literature, and all we knew about it was two
stray sermons of St. Jerome or someone like that, not particularly
about his life, from 400 AD --- we would still reasonably suppose it
was founded by a chap called Christ living in the early empire period
who got a bunch of guys together, probably had a beard, stood on a
soapbox and said 'follow me.' Why? Because nearly all movements start
like that.

We'd need evidence for something else, to consider any
other alternative suggestion.

This is not rocket science. The whole
suggestion that Jesus never existed was manufactured only around 1710
by some extreme atheists, for obvious polemical use.

I'm not going to labour this. No-one seriously believes it.

I know
there is a great deal of Jesus-myth stuff on the web. But if you look
at it, one and all is devoted to getting rid of inconvenient evidence.

But it's pointless -- they can't get rid of the church, and that
massive footprint in the historical record is bound to be founded by
someone like what they all talk about.

It's really not complicated.

However, as he stated that such closed-thinking was the way of the
atheist and not theist (?), you would expect someone to look into it,
since it has the potential of changing one's view completely.

Surely. I hope the comments were useful. Whatever your beef about
religion, don't take on board nonsense ideas like this, tho.

The website, by the way, is anti-scholarly nonsense. Unlike either of
you, or that website author, I really do know.

Ah; indeed the master of the scientific method: 'it's crap because I say
it
is'. You were talking about evidence...?

I'm not asking you to take my word for it. I'm suggesting, politely,
that you find out.

Forcing education on the obtuse isn't my thing.

Now I could copy-paste the entire article here, but I'm not going to.
Just click it and read it. If you are so strong in your convictions,
you can handle it right?

Why can't you think for yourself? Explain to us your dogmatic faith in
this website.

I've been through a multitude of sources, but this one puts it together
nicely. It has nothing to do with dogma OR faith.

<smile> You need to examine the stuff *critically*. It's just a
compilation of daft stuff.

Now I could copy-paste the entire article here, but I'm not going to.
Just click it and read it. If you are so strong in your convictions,
you can handle it right?

Now I could copy-paste the entire article here, but I'm not going to.
Just
click it and read it. If you are so strong in your convictions, you
can
handle it right?

Also 'stuff' isn't very scientific.

Nor is evading statements with argument-by-website.

..articles...evidence..

Have you any?

The burden of on the person who claimes the existence of something.

Excuse me. Everyone must take responsibility for his statements,
positive or negative. You don't have to justify silence; for
everything else, you do.

I'm afraid you're reading stuff that is very deleterious to your
ability to learn anything (no offence). It blocks the critical
faculty.

Consider the village idiot who decides, in his slow way, one day to
deny the world is round. He sits in the muck, and when the parson
comes round, declares his creed roundly. But when asked why he thinks
this, Hodge proudly declares that he doesn't have to prove anything;
instead everyone else has to prove him wrong.

Can you imagine a finer method for avoiding intellectual effort and
resisting education?

For instance in the 'Josephus-evidence', there are *major* signs of
forgery.

Actually scholars don't agree.

None of the things you're copying from
that web-page are at all convincing.

To name a few:

"1. How could Josephus claim that Jesus had been the answer to his
messianic
hopes yet remain an orthodox Jew?

1. He doesn't.
2. He isn't an orthodox Jew, but a renegade.
3. Insofar as he talks about Messiahs in the book, he means Vespasian.

2. If Josephus really thought Jesus had been 'the Christ' surely he would
have added more about him than one paragraph, a casual aside in someone
else's (Pilate's) story? [etc]

Argument from speculation. Not evidence of anything whatever. People
write their books for their own reasons, not to fit criteria invented
2000 years later.

It is striking that though Josephus confirms everything the Christians
could
wish for, he adds nothing not in the gospel narratives, nothing that
would
have been unknown by Christians already.

I don't recall the gospels stating that Jesus was arrested twice. But
what if they did? Of what is this evidence?

3. The passage is out of context. ...
Chapter 3 starts with a sedition against Pilate who planned to slaughter
all
the Jews but changed his mind. Pilate then used sacred money to supply
water
to Jerusalem, and the Jews protested. Pilate sent spies among the Jews
with
concealed weapons, and there was a great massacre.

Then comes the paragraph about Jesus, and immediately after it, Josephus
continues:

'And about the same time another terrible misfortune confounded the
Jews
...'

Josephus, an orthodox Jew, would not have thought the Christian story to
be
'another terrible misfortune.' It is only a Christian who would have
considered this to be a Jewish tragedy.

The next passage is a scandal about the temple of Anubis in Rome. Not
in sequence either. This sort of argument can only work if the work
doesn't chop around. It does.

Paragraph 3 can be lifted out of the text with no damage to the chapter.
It
flows better without it. Outside of this tiny paragraph, in all of
Josephus's voluminous works, there is not a single reference to
Christianity
anywhere.

What about the paragraph in Ant. 20?

4. The phrase 'to this day' confirms that this is a later interpolation.
There was no 'tribe of Christians' during Josephus's time. Christianity
did
not get off the ground until the second century.

Since Nero tied large numbers of them to crosses in AD 64, this is a
palpable falsehood. It also suggests this page is being compiled from
19th century atheist leaflets. There was a crank book put out then by
a Mr. Ross with some very daft ideas in it, and some atheists found
them convenient. The idea of no first century church was one of them.

5. The hyperbolic language is uncharacteristic of the historian:
'... as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other
wonderful things concerning him."

I'd prefer to judge that in Greek, not from an English translation!
But when you consider the things he says about other figures, it
doesn't seem so odd to me.

http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/josephus-etal.html

It's feeble stuff. Do you see what I mean? There wasn't a single cold
hard fact in the lot of that.

What sort of things *really* identify forgeries? The first text so
identified was the Donation of Constantine. I read through Lorenzo
Valla's expose of it a few years back, and wrote some notes on the
value of his approach. Have a read, if you're interested.

http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/donation/donation_of_constantine.htm

One reason I could never be an atheist is that they can never offer any
reason for their endless silent demand conformity to societal values
rather than some intelligently stated and reasoned way of life.

And now for the translation: ??

I think the word 'please' should probably appear around here.

Another is their utter unwillingess to think for themselves.

Why do you think that?

Because they all say the same things in the same words.

I believe theists are the ones who, at least to some extent, aren't
thinking
for themselves, because of the way supernatural memes are passed on.
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Dawkins/viruses-of-the-mind.html

<chuckle>

But if you have to copy someone else's words.... HINT *someone else's*
HINT