by zen nudist 49 Replies latest watchtower bible
http://www.impactpress.com/articles/decjan01/jesus120101.html
check this out and let me know what you think....
my personal opinion so far, with all that I have learned to date and being out of JW'dom for 13+ years
is that Jesus likely never existed.
It matters -- if you worship and cherish beliefs in an idea of God as a man. If you worship no idea of God -- it doesn't matter. j
Quite simply, one must ignore a great deal of evidence, and treat what evidence is left most unfairly, in order to deny that Jesus existed. Greco-Roman historian Michael Grant, who certainly has no theological axe to grind, indicates that there is more evidence for the existence of Jesus than there is for a large number of famous pagan personages - yet no one would dare to argue their non-existence. Meier [Meie.MarJ, 23] notes that what we know about Alexander the Great could fit on only a few sheets of paper; yet no one doubts that Alexander existed. Charlesworth has written that "Jesus did exist; and we know more about him than about almost any Palestinian Jew before 70 C.E." [Chars.JesJud, 168-9] Sanders [Sand.HistF, xiv] echoes Grant, saying that "We know a lot about Jesus, vastly more than about John the Baptist, Theudas, Judas the Galilean, or any of the other figures whose names we have from approximately the same date and place." On the Crucifixion, Harvey writes: "It would be no exaggeration to say that this event is better attested, and supported by a more impressive array of evidence, than any other event of comparable importance of which we have knowledge from the ancient world." [Harv.JesC, 11] Dunn [Dunn.EvJ, 29] provides an anecdote similar to the one above regarding Shakespeare. Referring to Wells' thesis, he writes:
The alternative thesis is that within thirty years there had evolved such a coherent and consistent complex of traditions about a non-existent figure such as we have in the sources of the Gospels is just too implausible. It involves too many complex and speculative hypotheses, in contrast to the much simpler explanation that there was a Jesus who said and did more or less what the first three Gospels attribute to him. The fact of Christianity's beginnings and the character of its earliest tradition is such that we could only deny the existence of Jesus by hypothesizing the existence of some other figure who was a sufficient cause of Chrstianity's beginnings - another figure who on careful reflection would probably come out very like Jesus!
JT,
Just curious... what does it mean to you to "worship"? I've always thought of worship as something directed to an anthropomorphic (or at least sentient) conception.
rem
A final consideration is that we have very little information from first-century sources to begin with. Not much has survived the test of time from A.D. 1 to today. Blaiklock has cataloged the non-Christian writings of the Roman Empire (other than those of Philo) which have survived from the first century and do not mention Jesus. These items are:
Of all these writers, only Seneca may have conceivably had reason to refer to Jesus. But considering his personal troubles with Nero, it is doubtful that he would have had the interest or the time to do any work on the subject.
To this Meier adds [ibid., 23] that in general, knowledge of the vast majority of ancient peoples is "simply not accessible to us today by historical research and never will be." It is just as was said in his earlier comment on Alexander the Great: What we know of most ancient people as individuals could fit on just a few pieces of paper. Thus it is misguided for the skeptic to complain that we know so little about the historical Jesus, and have so little recorded about Him in ancient pagan sources. Compared to most ancient people, we know quite a lot about Jesus, and have quite a lot recorded about Him!
Interesting, but there's some inconsistency, if I read it right.
By the acknowledgement of the document, Pilate was around from 26-36, and Paul wrote his first letter around 45.
I may be wrong, but it seems Paul believed in him, and may have been writing between 9-19 years after his crucifixion, and it seems he had been a "believer" for some time prior to this.
In the meantime a bunch of fisherman managed to concoct a story combining quite a number of popular myths.
To be honest, that idea seems more astounding than that proposed by the gospels, with perhaps a level of belief needed to swallow it.
Now, I'm not proposing that necessarily everything we read should be taken at face value, but this seems to be as extreme as the documents that it obviously seeks to debunk (i.e. the NT).
Maybe the truth lies somewhere inbetween, huh?
If Jesus Christ was not a historical figure, than who is responsible for the origin of Christianity? Some would like to assign Christianity's founding to Paul. But even Paul would contest that as he attributes Christian churches already in existence who did not know him personally when he wrote Gal. 2:21-23. While he never claims to have met the historical Jesus he states that he had a direct revelation (vision) from Christ, yet he acknowledges that he is not ignorant either of the existence of apostles at Jerusalem and finally confers with Peter and James (vs. 18-19) after three years. So Christianity is already in existence by the time of Paul and Gal. 2:9 indicates that the leaders in the Jerusalem church when he visits a second time gave Paul their blessings; they were not antithetical. Moreover, Paul was extremely concerned about the poor Christians within the already existing Jerusalem church (which Paul did not found) and made a collection for them (Rom 15:25-28; 1 Cor. 16:1-4; 2 Cor. 8 and 9). So Paul could not have begun a movement that already was in existence.
Kenn
The prepaulian movement was known as the way. Pauls group was the first to be labeled christian.
SS
JT,
Just curious... what does it mean to you to "worship"? I've always thought of worship as something directed to an anthropomorphic (or at least sentient) conception.
Rem, My definition of "worship" is very similar to yours: to give attention, admiration and devotion towards some-thing. I no longer reduce God/our Source, down to a thing or object distinctly separate from our True-being. j
P.S. To say that Paul knew only of a spiritual Christ and that it was the Evangelists who enfleshed him is ludicrous. Paul knew that Jesus had once existed as a man. (1 Cor. 15:3-8 and Gal. 4:4) He preached Christ crucified on a cross (1 Cor. 1:18, 23 and 1 Cor. 2:2); raised from the dead and that the resurrection of the dead came through a HUMAN BEING (1 Cor. 15:12-21); he speaks of Jesus' blood and flesh (Eph. 2:13, 15); he also believed in the Ascension (Eph. 1:20); he spoke about the Lord's Supper (1 Cor. 10:16-17 and 1 Cor. 11:23-26), etc. The Evangelists didn't enflesh Jesus; Paul believed that as well!
