leroy
Well-Known Member
Ok, you obviously don’t reed the comments that you quote, that explains a lot of things
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There is NO Historical Evidence for Jesus
- Thread starter Thrillobyte
- Start date
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
No, I gave an example using your standards. You did not seem to understand that.
ppp
Well-Known Member
What dating methods?
leroy
Well-Known Member
The source about Pilate was quoted and ignored............. why did you run away?
Well this is the first time I heard of ***other sources**** apart from Josephus that date the census at 6AD.
Apart from you, nobody has ever made that claim, if the claim where true, atheist sites would be flooded with such an information.
leroy
Well-Known Member
Exactly I told you what my standards are, so that you can see why the resurrection meets those standards and the flying horse doesn’t. (or who knows I have never heard abut that story)
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
I asked you more than once to repot it. That you did not do so is running away on your part. And I tried to explain to you what you did not understand about various sources, but again you ran away from the questions that would have shown you your own error.
I need to remind you that you do tend to use bogus sources quite often . As in your use of the supposedly early creed of Paul. That was explained to you by others besides just me.
Subduction Zone
Veteran Member
Yes, but your standards are crap which could only result in dismissing their claims.
Augustus
…
And you claim to be interested in the truth? This is flat earth level nonsense that shows you have no clue about this period in history.
Destroyed "all temples from all pagan religions"? Given many still exist today and your own sources state the process of conversion was still ongoing during the Renaissance, this seems somewhat ludicrous.
And they destroyed "all material not in line with their canon"? When? How? They certainly didn't do a great job of it, then did they seeing as we know about lots of 'heretical' texts.
Power in classical and late antiquity didn't work like you seem to think.
Prior to modern transport and communication tech, there was no highly centralised power, even edicts from the Emperor were regularly ignored. Emperor says something, a memo might get to some province weeks or months later, the local governor might do something about it if it suits him, he might ignore it completely as it's not in his interests.
The Emperor will likely never know either way, and if he does usually couldn't do much about it anyway.
The idea of some all powerful centralised church is nonsense, even up into the early-modern period.
The idea they could systematically cleanse vast areas of any heretical texts is nonsense, hence the fact that there were always schisms and heresies.
There were certainly limited instances of either the state or zealots destroying texts, but the idea this was systematic and highly effective is nonsense:
I have investigated those forms of book-burning and censorship that were sanctioned or tolerated by the Roman authorities. While instances such as these can be seen as government sanctioned censorship, I have stressed that there was no systematic plan to ban certain genres of texts. Imperial censorship laws often reacted to specific conflicts or requests, and the initial scope of these laws was somewhat regionally and temporarily limited. Moreover, there is the question of whether or not these laws were enforced. While there is some evidence for legal enforcement of some of these laws and it is well possible that other instances are not recorded in the sources, it generally appears unlikely that religious laws of any kind were systematically enforced. The Roman state and provincial administration did not have the staff to put laws into effect immediately...
With regard to imperial censorship legislation, I have stressed the many practical difficulties that prevented any systematic enforcement of these laws. There is particularly little evidence for state authorities enforcing censorship or book-burning laws outwith of a few spectacular incidents. On the other hand, there is probably more evidence of clerical enforcement or incidents of book-burning by what I have called zealous Christians, who were sometimes supported by state authorities, particularly by the defensores...
While the first reported incident of Christian book-burning dates back to the Acts of the Apostles, there is no other evidence of this practice during the first two centuries...
The question of whether or not book-burning affected the transmission of pagan texts remains difficult to answer. It is likely that books that were primarily targeted (magic books, astrological books, pagan ritual books, specific philosophical attacks against Christianity) were effectively barred from circulation as a direct or indirect consequence of book searches; however, magic and astrology were not completely suppressed but continued to play some role among Christians in the centuries to follow.
Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity
Dirk Rohmann
You understand that what you posted supports what I said?
Over a period of 1500 years, many temples were repurposed. Some were purposely destroyed (more in some regions, like Syria, than in others), not all that many and most just fell into disuse and were repurposed which is what happens in all cultures. Pagans also repurposed pagan temples, including using them to construct walls and fortifications in times of conflict.
Today, many churches are being repurposed into cafes and apartments. Are secular folks destroying them? Should secular folk pay to maintain every church in perpetuity? Or should they just be repurposed once they can no longer support themselves?
Are you seriously unable to understand a process that you can observe today in any western country and think any temple that no longer exists as a temple must have been systematically "destroyed" by the evil and all-powerful Catholic Church?
This is all very, very basic historical fact. If you'd prefer something else more scholarly than wherever you get your alternative facts from:
The evidence has revealed that individual temples and temple sites were converted primarily because they were interesting from an architectural or topographical point of view. There is nothing to suggest that their status as former places of pagan worship made them any less or more attractive than other buildings possessed of similar architectural and topographical qualities, such as the ancient Senate House or the large hall of Vespasian’s Forum Pacis...
The conversions of temples in Rome cannot, therefore, be explained by Deichmann’s notion of an ecclesia triumphans. An oppositional model simply does not apply to the temple conversions in Rome. The accumulated evidence has shown definitively that, contrary to popular belief, the phenomenon of temple conversion in Rome was limited to the reuse of a relatively small number of buildings and sites, which occurred long after the demise of paganism and without any sign of triumphalism or wanton destruction...
When studying early Christian attitudes towards the pagan past, we find that there was apparently not a single Christian policy towards former places of worship, but there existed different modes, violent and nonviolent, of approaching them. The phenomenon of temple conversion in Rome was essentially nondestructive, quite unlike the treatment of Mithraea, which should, therefore, be treated as a separate phenomenon.
All of this adds up to the following picture, which revolves around the fact that, throughout Late Antiquity, Rome was still replete with property that could be alienated only by the emperor. Until the formation of the Papal State, many buildings and places in Rome remained officially in public use, whether they were temples, public buildings, or public places. What portion of this real estate was made available to the Church was therefore principally a matter of imperial, not Church policy.
The Conversion of Temples in Rome - Feyo L. Schuddeboom
Journal of Late Antiquity, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2017, pp. 166-186
Haha, and now some good old Constantine and Council of Nicaea myths FTW!
That's some Da Vinci Code level historical research you've been doing
I previously thought you were actually interested in the history around the historical Jesus, but seems more like you are into conspiracy theories.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Flat Earth? Ha, not according to Bart Ehrman in The Triumph of Christianity?
"In the long run, this meant that every adherent Christians gained was completely lost to paganism. No other religion demanded such exclusivity. For that reason, as Christianity grew, it destroyed all competition in its wake. And it went on like that for millennia, as Christians forged into new territories, toppling Celtic gods, Norse gods and many others."
"Indeed, some of these Christian emperors even advocated for tearing down pagan temples and forcing pagans to convert." Ehrman
"The Christianization of sites that had been pagan occurred as a result of conversions in early Christian times, as well as an important part of the strategy of Interpretatio Christiana ("Christian reinterpretation") during the Christianization of pagan peoples.[1] The landscape itself was Christianized, as prominent features were rededicated to Christian saints, sometimes quite directly, as when the island of Oglasa in the Tyrrhenian Sea was christened Montecristo."
I already sourced this. Once again, you make claims with no sources from your imagination.
The Roman Catholic Church started later in 12 AD, I didn't give a time frame. They were not kind to pagan religions.
"In Rome itself, numerous buildings including pagan temples and other sites were converted into churches, and several major archeological sites owe their preservation to this. On the Roman Forum alone, the Curia Iulia or Roman Senate building (Sant'Adriano in Foro), the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina (San Lorenzo in Miranda), and the Temple of Romulus (Santi Cosma e Damiano) were transformed into churches, and the churches of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami and San Pietro in Carcere were built above the Mamertine Prison nearby, where Sts. Peter and Paul were reputed to have been held.
"Santa Maria Rotonda" (Pantheon)
The Pantheon in Rome was once a temple dedicated to the Roman gods and it was converted to a Roman Catholic church dedicated to St. Mary and the Martyrs. Eventually the prime sites of the pagan temples were very often occupied for churches, the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva (literally Saint Mary above Minerva) in Rome, Christianized about 750, being simply the most obvious example. The Basilica of Junius Bassus was made a church in the late fifth century. However this process did not really begin in Rome itself until the 6th and 7th centuries, and was still under way during the Renaissance, when the Pantheon (which had been made a church in the 7th century) and Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri and San Bernardo alle Terme made from parts of the enormous Baths of Diocletian.[4]
Christianized sites - Wikipedia
We really don't. There are many more Epistles we cannot see. The other 36 gospels are mostly lost, the 1st canon the Marcionite canon is lost. Any people speaking out against Christianity during the early period is lost. There is a known black hole in information where only the Gospels, Epistles and a few other text remains. There should be much much more.
You are answering a question I didn't ask. At least you sourced something I wasn't talking about. It isn't argued that at some point the church was able to remove all heretical material. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in a cave, hidden and sometimes unfinished.
Christianized sites - Wikipedia
In Greece, the occupation of pagan sites by Christian monasteries and churches was ubiquitous. Hellenic Aphrodisias in Caria was renamed Stauropolis, the "City of the Cross".
ubiquitous = present, appearing, or found everywhere.
joelr
Well-Known Member
That's weird coming from Mr no sources?
There you go, violent and nonviolent. So some were violent. So your idea about this as a "flat earth conspiracy" is crank.
In 395, Emperor Theodosius made Christianity Rome's new state religion. Christians, who had so long been on the defensive, turned to attacking the pagan religion. They closed temples and banned sacrifices to pagan gods. They even transformed some pagan celebrations into Christian ones. For example, the church changed the birthday of the sun god on the 25th of December into the celebration of the birth of Christ.
Christianized sites - Wikipedia
Haha, and now some good old Constantine and Council of Nicaea myths FTW!
That's some Da Vinci Code level historical research you've been doing
I previously thought you were actually interested in the history around the historical Jesus, but seems more like you are into conspiracy theories.
Uh Huh, just more weirdness from you. I'm not really into stuff this late but I know what the councils were. This isn't history around the historical Jesus. This is centuries later people buy into an old myth.
Nicaea was mainly about the Creed. The general canon was believed to be established but historians think the 4 churches with the most political power may have been each using one of the 4 gospels and they were combined.
"The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in the Bithynian city of Nicaea by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325.
The First Council of Nicaea was the first ecumenical council of the church. Most significantly, it resulted in the first uniform Christian doctrine, called the Nicene Creed. With the creation of the creed, a precedent was established for subsequent local and regional councils of bishops (synods) to create statements of belief and canons of doctrinal orthodoxy—the intent being to define unity of beliefs for the whole of Christendom.[
First Council of Constantinople in 381 was about the canons.
This is far too late to demonstrate facts about the origins of the religion and not something I know beyond the basics. Why you would think they were myths, who knows? Jesus was the myth.
joelr
Well-Known Member
There is zero evidence for the resurrection.
There is excellent evidence the gospels were all copied from Mark. Mark is writing fiction, he uses all markers of fiction, parables, fictive devices, makes a huge allegory about Yom Kippur and the scapegoat/sacrificed goat with Jesus and Barrabas who is let go and the other is sacrificed and dies for the sins of Israel.
Mark uses theology already trending and easily seen in Greek culture and admitted by Justin Maryter. Jesus was the last of a long line of savior, resurrecting demigods under a supreme God.
As the Oxford Annotated Bible explains the characters in scripture are not considered historical and the gospels are stories:
The traditional authors of the canonical Gospels—Matthew the tax collector, Mark the attendant of Peter, Luke the attendant of Paul, and John the son of Zebedee—are doubted among the majority of mainstream New Testament scholars. The public is often not familiar, however, with the complex reasons and methodology that scholars use to reach well-supported conclusions about critical issues, such as assessing the authorial traditions for ancient texts. To provide a good overview of the majority opinion about the Gospels, the Oxford Annotated Bible (a compilation of multiple scholars summarizing dominant scholarly trends for the last 150 years) states (p. 1744):
Neither the evangelists nor their first readers engaged in historical analysis. Their aim was to confirm Christian faith (Lk. 1.4; Jn. 20.31). Scholars generally agree that the Gospels were written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus. They thus do not present eyewitness or contemporary accounts of Jesus’ life and teachings.
Unfortunately, much of the general public is not familiar with scholarly resources like the one quoted above; instead, Christian apologists often put out a lot of material, such as The Case For Christ, targeted toward lay audiences, who are not familiar with scholarly methods, in order to argue that the Gospels are the eyewitness testimonies of either Jesus’ disciples or their attendants. The mainstream scholarly view is that the Gospels are anonymous works, written in a different language than that of Jesus, in distant lands, after a substantial gap of time, by unknown persons, compiling, redacting, and inventing various traditions, in order to provide a narrative of Christianity’s central figure—Jesus Christ—to confirm the faith of their communities.
So the evidence for a resurrection is that it's an event in a fictional story. Mark clearly was educated and schooled in rhetoric and wanted to try his hand at an emerging mythology. He was also familiar with the geography.
Nothing here suggests it's a real historical event.
In fact it isn't even a question outside of fundamentalism. The only question to scholarship is was Jesus a real human who the myths were put onto?
"All mainstream scholars agree Jesus as demigod is a mythical savior deity. They all agree the Gospels are myths about him. They simply conclude that those myths contain some kernels of fact, and that Jesus was originally not a flying, magic-wielding supergod. But they agree the super-Jesus, the only Jesus about whom we have any accounts at all, didn’t exist. They think some mundane Jesus did, who was dressed up with those legends and beliefs later. But that still admits he belongs to a reference class that the Hannibals of the world do not: that of mythically-attested savior gods who speak to their followers in dreams and visions. So we actually need more evidence for Jesus than we have for Hannibal, to be sure Jesus isn’t just like all other mythical savior gods, who also had amazing stories about them set on earth history, and who also appeared to people in dreams and visions—yet never plausibly existed."
So What About Hannibal, Then? • Richard Carrier Blogs
This kind of argument has been tried again and again and again. I’ve discussed every one. (See Okay, So What about the Historicity of Spartacus?) It’s always of this form: P1. We should not doubt [x] existed. P2. The evidence for Jesus is better than for [x]. P3. The same standards of evidence...
www.richardcarrier.info
Paul heard of nothing in the Gospels except the basic story, Jesus died in a battle with "Archons of this Age" which can mean demons or humans in context. No crucifixion. So clearly the story was just forming. Everyone had a religion in those societies, Mithriasism, Attis, whatever, so belief in a myth wasn't proof it was real, it was expected of people. Paul switching from Judaism to Christianity makes no statement about it's truth just as a believer in the Phoenician religion suddenly switching to the Hellenized version (Bacchic Mysteries), with a savior deity, doesn't suggest that religion is true. Conversion isn't evidence in any other instance.
So where is this evidence for any resurrection? All savior Gods were resurrected, all have the same evidence.
joelr
Well-Known Member
Internal Evidence
To begin with, the Gospels are all internally anonymous in that none of their authors names himself within the text. This is unlike many other ancient literary works in which the author’s name is included within the body of the text (most often in the prologue), such as Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (1:1), which states at the beginning: “Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, as they fought against each other.” The historians Herodotus (1:1), Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1.8.4), and Josephus (BJ 1.3) all likewise include their names in prologues. Sometimes an author’s name can also appear later in the text. In his Life of Otho (10.1), for example, the biographer Suetonius Tranquillus refers to “my father, Suetonius Laetus,” which thus identifies his own family name.
It should be noted that the Gospels’ internal anonymity also stands in contrast with most of the other books in the New Testament, which provide the names of their authors (or, at least, their putative authors) within the text itself. As Armin Baum (“The Anonymity of the New Testament History Books,” p. 121) explains:
While most New Testament letters bear the names of their (purported) authors (James, Jude, Paul, Peter, or at least “the Elder”) the authors of the historical books [the Gospels and Acts] do not reveal their names. The superscriptions that include personal names (“Gospel according to Matthew” etc.) are clearly secondary.
Two exceptions are the Book of Hebrews and 1 John, which are anonymous texts, later attributed to the apostle Paul and John the son of Zebedee, respectively. Modern scholars, however, also doubt both of these later attributions. As the Oxford Annotated Bible (p. 2103) explains about the authorship of Hebrews:
Despite the traditional attribution to Paul … [t]here is not sufficient evidence to identify any person named in the New Testament as the author; thus it is held to be anonymous.
And about the authorship of 1 John (p. 2137):
The anonymous voice of 1 John was identified with the author of the Fourth Gospel by the end of the second century CE … Since the Gospel was attributed to the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, early Christians concluded that he had composed 1 John near the end of his long life … Modern scholars have a more complex view of the development of the Johannine community and its writings. The opening verses of 1 John employ a first person plural “we” … That “we” probably refers to a circle of teachers faithful to the apostolic testimony of the Beloved Disciple and evangelist. A prominent member of that group composed this introduction.
As such, it is not unusual for scholars to doubt the traditional authorship of the Gospels, considering that the authorial attributions of the other anonymous books in the New Testament are also in considerable dispute.
joelr
Well-Known Member
part 2:
The internal anonymity of the Gospels is even acknowledged by many apologists and conservative scholars, such as Craig Blomberg, who states in The Case for Christ (p. 22): “It’s important to acknowledge that strictly speaking, the gospels are anonymous.” So, immediately one type of evidence that we lack for the Gospels is their authors identifying themselves within the body of the text. This need not be an immediate death blow, however, since ancient authors did not always name themselves within the bodies of their texts. I have specifically chosen to compare the Gospels’ authorial traditions with that of Tacitus’ Histories, since Tacitus likewise does not name himself within his historical works. If the author does not name himself within the text, there are other types of evidence that can be looked at.
First, even if the body of a text does not name its author, there is often still a name and title affixed to a text in our surviving manuscript traditions. These titles normally identify the traditional author. The standard naming convention for ancient literary works was to place the author’s name in the genitive case (indicating personal possession), followed by the title of the work. Classical scholar Clarence Mendell in Tacitus: The Man And His Work (pp. 295-296) notes that our earliest manuscript copies of both Tacitus’ Annals and Histories identify Tacitus as the author by placing his name in the genitive (Corneli Taciti), followed by the manuscript titles.[1] For the Histories (as well as books 11-16 of the Annals), in particular, Mendell (p. 345) also notes that many of the later manuscripts have the title Cor. Taciti Libri (“The Books of Cornelius Tacitus”). This naming convention is important, since it specifically identifies Tacitus as the author of the work. An attribution may still be doubted for any number of reasons, but it is important that there at least be a clear attribution.
Here, we already have a problem with the traditional authors of the Gospels. The titles that come down in our manuscripts of the Gospels do not even explicitly claim Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John as their authors. Instead, the Gospels have an abnormal title convention, where they instead use the Greek preposition κατα, meaning “according to” or “handed down from,” followed by the traditional names. For example, the Gospel of Matthew is titled ευαγγελιον κατα Μαθθαιον (“The Gospel according to Matthew”). This is problematic, from the beginning, in that the earliest title traditions already use a grammatical construction to distance themselves from an explicit claim to authorship. Instead, the titles operate more as placeholder names, where the Gospels have been “handed down” by church traditions affixed to names of figures in the early church, rather than the author being clearly identified.[2] In the case of Tacitus, none of our surviving titles or references says that the Annals or Histories were written “according to Tacitus” or “handed down from Tacitus.” Instead, we have a clear attribution to Tacitus in one case, and only ambivalent attributions in the titles of the Gospels.[3]
Furthermore, it is not even clear that the Gospels’ abnormal titles were originally placed in the first manuscript copies. We do not have the autograph manuscript (i.e., the first manuscript written) of any literary work from antiquity, but for the Gospels, the earliest manuscripts that we possess have grammatical variations in their title conventions. This divergence in form suggests that, unlike the body of the text (which mostly remains consistent in transmission), the Gospels’ manuscript titles were not a fixed or original feature of the text itself.[4] As textual criticism expert Bart Ehrman (Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium, pp. 249-250) points out:
Because our surviving Greek manuscripts provide such a wide variety of (different) titles for the Gospels, textual scholars have long realized that their familiar names do not go back to a single ‘original’ title, but were added by later scribes.
The specific wording of the Gospel titles also suggests that the portion bearing their names was a later addition. The κατα (“according to”) preposition supplements the word ευαγγελιον (“gospel”). This word for “gospel” was implicitly connected with Jesus, meaning that the full title was το ευαγγελιον Ιησου Χριστου (“The Gospel of Jesus Christ”), with the additional preposition κατα (“according to”) used to distinguish specific gospels by their individual names. Before there were multiple gospels written, however, this addition would have been unnecessary. In fact, many scholars argue that the opening line of the Gospel of Mark (1:1) probably functioned as the original title of the text:
The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ…
This original title of Mark can be compared with those of other ancient texts in which the opening lines served as titles. Herodotus’ Histories (1.1), for example, begins with the following line which probably served as the title of the text:
This is the exposition of the history of Herodotus…
A major difference between the Gospel of Mark and Herodotus’ Histories, however, is that opening line of Mark does not name the text’s author, but instead attributes the gospel to Jesus Christ. This title became insufficient, however, when there were multiple “gospels of Jesus” in circulation, and so, the additional κατα (“according to”) formula was used to distinguish specific gospels by their individual names. This circumstance, however, suggests that the names themselves were a later addition, as there would have been no need for such a distinction before multiple gospels were in circulation.
So, in addition to the problem that the Gospel titles do not even explicitly claim authors, we likewise have strong reason to suspect that these named titles were not even affixed to the first manuscript copies. This absence is important, since (as will be discussed under the “External Evidence” section below) the first church fathers who alluded to or quoted passages from the Gospels, for nearly a century after their composition, did so anonymously. Since these sources do not refer to the Gospels by their traditional names, this adds further evidence that the titles bearing those names were not added until a later period (probably in the latter half of the 2nd century CE), after these church fathers were writing.[5] And, if the manuscript titles were added later, and the Gospels themselves were quoted without names, this means that there is no evidence that the Gospels were referred to by their traditional names during the earliest period of their circulation. Instead, the Gospels would have more likely circulated anonymously.
joelr
Well-Known Member
there is still a part 3 and part 4 JUST to theI INTERNAL EVIDENCE.
Then there is the EXTERNAL EVIDENCE.
The Gospels are not historical.
Augustus
…
Your claim was that they destroyed “all temples from all pagan religions”.
Can you work out why your claim is flat earth wrong yet? If not go back and read more carefully with an open mind and you’ll be able to enlighten yourself.
To support your vapid claim, you showed some temples were repurposed.
My claim, supported with multiple peer reviewed sources, was that you were talking nonsense about all temples as it was merely some being replaced, and mostly not destroyed but repurposed like modern churches are being because they are no longer financially viable.
You can lead a horse to water…
Never understood posters who pretend not to be able to see multiple quotes from multiple scholarly sources within posts.
Very strange form of cognitive dissonance.
Doesn’t remotely support your claim if all temples of all pagan religions. Try reading more carefully next time.
Well you said the following " It's about the Roman Catholic church who went back and destroyed all temples from all pagan religions and also destroyed all material not in line with their canon."
Are you now accepting you were talking nonsense?
I was trying to help you become slightly better informed of the impossibility of systematic destruction of texts in the ancient era.
Localised, temporary and ad hoc destruction of texts occurred, but if you don't understand why long-term, systematic and empire wide destruction was impossible, then go back and read the quote.
But if you won’t read the sources, there’s not much helping you.
How many do you think should have survived if we assumed no destruction of texts?
We have lost almost all ancient texts of any genre, including orthodox Christianity (as in works of theology). Preserving any text was massively time consuming, very expensive and also relied on a fair bit of luck.
Is there any reason to believe that non-canonical tracts should have been preserved at a massively greater rate than the average texts of that era?
What is the evidence that the Church was systematically destroying them? When do you think this was happening? What were the logistics of it?
Was mainly about Arianism and had nothing to do with reconciling Gospels or 4 major churches having their own Gospels etc.
More rank nonsense you've uncritically accepted.
wellwisher
Well-Known Member
If you read the New Testament of the Bible, the one book that was written in a different style than all the rest was the book of Revelations. The rest of the books are about the life and death of Jesus. It is often bright and light. Revelations has a totally different style and topic all together. It appears to be the original text from that era. The tone is one of struggle and faith, after the death of Jesus.
In Revelations, there are warnings and complements to Seven Churches, named after cities near what would be modern day country of Turkey. This areas of the ancient world was a major crossroads for trade. There is all types of evidence of underground dwellings that supported a large number of people, living underground.
More than 85m beneath the famous fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, in Turkey, lies a massive subterranean city that was in near-constant use for thousands of years. Beneath Cappadocia's crumbling surface, a marvel of equally gargantuan proportions lay hidden away for centuries; a subterranean city that could conceal the whereabouts of up to 20,000 inhabitants for months at a time.
The ancient city of Elengubu, known today as Derinkuyu, burrows more than 85m below the Earth's surface, encompassing 18 levels of tunnels. The largest excavated underground city in the world, it was in near-constant use for thousands of years, changing hands from the Phrygians to the Persians to the Christians of the Byzantine Era.
Not only do its cave-like rooms stretch on for hundreds of miles, but it's thought that more than 200 small, separate underground cities, that have also been discovered in the region, may be connected to these tunnels, creating a massive subterranean network.
In Revelations, there are warnings and complements to Seven Churches, named after cities near what would be modern day country of Turkey. This areas of the ancient world was a major crossroads for trade. There is all types of evidence of underground dwellings that supported a large number of people, living underground.
More than 85m beneath the famous fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, in Turkey, lies a massive subterranean city that was in near-constant use for thousands of years. Beneath Cappadocia's crumbling surface, a marvel of equally gargantuan proportions lay hidden away for centuries; a subterranean city that could conceal the whereabouts of up to 20,000 inhabitants for months at a time.
The ancient city of Elengubu, known today as Derinkuyu, burrows more than 85m below the Earth's surface, encompassing 18 levels of tunnels. The largest excavated underground city in the world, it was in near-constant use for thousands of years, changing hands from the Phrygians to the Persians to the Christians of the Byzantine Era.
Not only do its cave-like rooms stretch on for hundreds of miles, but it's thought that more than 200 small, separate underground cities, that have also been discovered in the region, may be connected to these tunnels, creating a massive subterranean network.
SkepticThinker
Veteran Member
I think you've just demonstrated how your standard for evidence is so very low.
leroy
Well-Known Member
Presenting a “bugus” source is better than not presenting anything and then lie about having presented the source (as you did)
Ill ask you directly, are there any primary sources apart from Josephus that date the census at 6AD?
I you don’t answer with a clear and unambiguous “yes” ………..I will assume that your answer would be “NO”
leroy
Well-Known Member
well why do you think my standards for accepting a historical event are low?
leroy
Well-Known Member
The standards for accepting the historicity of an event are the same standards that you have, and the same standards that any historian has……………. The only difference is that I do not make an arbitrary exception and rise my standards just because an event contradicts my philosophical world view.
You would accept any event that is reported in 2 independent sources …………. Except for the events that go against your “naturalism”