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There is NO Historical Evidence for Jesus

joelr

Well-Known Member
What is the evidence that the temple was destroyed in 70ad?
A temple destruction isn't a supernatural proof of afterlife and deities, it's a mundane event that doesn't require the evidence required to prove supernatural beings.
The actual evidence includes vast Roman records, the historical records by Josephus and archaeologists actually going to the temple and seeing the damage.
Josephus, Rome and Jewish records all agree on the dates.

 

joelr

Well-Known Member
The evidence for the resurrection is as strong as the evidence for any other event for ancient history that scholars (and *you *) would accept as fact.

1 When an event is attested in 2 or more independent sources , historians accept them as fact

2 events that are reported in Paul and at least 1 gospel are accepted as fact by most historian

3 historians only make an arbitrary exception, when they don’t like the theological implications of that event.

This shows that The evidence for the resurrection, is good enough for anyone that doesn’t have a bias against supernatural events.
You don't seen to understand historians at all.
The Gospels are treated as historical works. These works are based on theology which is opinion. "Matthew is writing a story about Jesus from stories that he heard" - Bart Ehrman

When studied by historical scholars The Gospels are not sourced, written as fictive biography, using older stories or updating older stories and legends, they are stories, anonymous, "as told to me by", and re-writes of Mark.
You don't have to agree with the decades of study and thousands of peer-reviewed works, books, articles all by experts, figuring this all out.
Apologists and theologians can sit back and claim it's from God and they don't need to prove anything. Fine. Hindu and Islamic apologists can do the same with their scripture and you all can believe things without evidence.

But the fact remains just like the Quran, they are not reliable history, they are theological stories. Your rules are made up and not followed by historians. That is confirmation bias and wishful thinking. If a Muslim found an outside source with Muhammad (there are many) they would consider it proven true. The moon DID split in half.
Historical scholarship does not. You would expect that as well, you would not expect a historical journal to say the Quran is proven true.
Those are theological claims. You are not going to change the history field so I don't know why you insist on pretending like these bizarre rules you make up count for anything outside your imagination?

This has nothing to do with this "bias" against supernatural events, you have made that up as well. It's about looking at all historical evidence. Something you definitely do not do. At all. You don't care about the evidence for anything that counters your beliefs and know nothing about any of the many historical topics. You just seem to want to find fallacies to use to justify why they don't actually agree?
Yet if you just read their work you would understand. At least a little.

"events that are reported in Paul and at least 1 gospel are accepted as fact by most historian"

By ZERO historians, why do you make things up?


"
3 historians only make an arbitrary exception, when they don’t like the theological implications of that event.

"

No, when the work is clearly a piece of fiction for endless reasons. It's the evidence.


Gospel authors -
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
1 Your source is full of miracles and supernatural events too, so if you reject the bible because it has miracles…….. you should reject Josephus too.

2 your source has a clear and obvious agenda, and political motivations, so if you reject my sources for “having an agenda” you should reject your sources.
Josephus writes about wars and places and some possible supernatural events.
Like the Quran we believe Arabs are real people but doubt Gabrielle came down from Heaven.
We believe Paul knew about a new Jewish mystery religion using Greek theology. The visions not so much.
We believe Joeseph smith that New York existed. Less on Moroni paying a visit.

Josephus has good accounts of wars and was passing along stories of supernatural events. Supernatural events are not going to be believed until there are actually supernatural events.
We suspect when people write about them a long time ago they are bending the truth or telling something they heard.

We see wars, places and people, even today. The supernatural is suspected to be fiction. Wouldn't you know, our current observations also show that to be true.
Also Jesus is Greek savior mythology. The odds of one of the Hellenistic mystery religions actually being real is as close to zero % as Mithras or Zalmoxis. It's not even like it's random or original supernatural stories.
 

Rival

Diex Aie
Staff member
Premium Member
That is confirmation bias and wishful thinking. If a Muslim found an outside source with Muhammad (there are many) they would consider it proven true. The moon DID split in half.
There are examples of such phenomena though. In 1178 the monks at Canterbury Cathedral saw the Moon 'split'. It didn't, of course, but they had witnessed a cosmic phenomenon that they recorded. They wrote according to what they saw. Writing these events off as 'unhistorical' without investigating where the belief may have come from is the antithesis of doing history.

"I think they happened to be at the right place at the right time to look up in the sky and see a meteor that was directly in front of the moon, coming straight towards them," Withers said. This idea was strongly suggested by others in a 1977 scientific paper.

"And it was a pretty spectacular meteor that burst into flames in the Earth's atmosphere- fizzling, bubbling, and spluttering. If you were in the right one-to-two kilometer patch on Earth's surface, you'd get the perfect geometry," he said. "That would explain why only five people are recorded to have seen it.

"Imagine being in Canterbury on that June evening and seeing the moon convulse and spray hot, molten rock into space, " Withers added. "The memories of it would live with you for the rest of your life."



 

Rival

Diex Aie
Staff member
Premium Member
Also Jesus is Greek savior mythology. The odds of one of the Hellenistic mystery religions actually being real is as close to zero % as Mithras or Zalmoxis. It's not even like it's random or original supernatural stories.
Why on earth do people still believe this? Has anyone who peddles this bs actually read the Bible?
 

Sgt. Pepper

All you need is love.
Why on earth do people still believe this? Has anyone who peddles this bs actually read the Bible?

Indeed, I have. I've read and studied the Bible many times during the thirty years I was a Christian, including extensive study of the Bible and Christian theology while I was training to be an evangelism team leader and extensively studying the Bible and Christian theology while I assisted my nephew in obtaining his Master of Theological Studies (MTS) degree. I essentially studied my way out of believing the Bible, which led to further study and research in and out of Christianity. That ultimately led me to renounce my belief in God and faith in Jesus. Other circumstances also contributed to my decision to reject my belief in God and Christianity, but I essentially studied my way out of believing in the Bible. My nephew did as well, eventually admitting that he no longer believes. It took him awhile to finally admit it. He was studying to be a preacher, but he has abandoned that. He's now an agnostic, like myself.
 
All Mystery religions have personal savior deities
- All saviors
- all son/daughter, never the supreme God (including Mithriasm)
- all undergo a passion (struggle) patheon
- all obtain victory over death which they share with followers
- all have stories set on earth
- none actually existed
- Is Jesus the exception and based on a real Jewish teacher or is it all made up?

That's not correct. Not all mystery religions have personal saviour deities, they weren't about dying and rising gods and some deities in mystery religions existed.

From a recent scholarly monograph on mystery religions:


‘the variety of mystery cults makes them exceptionally difficult to summarise both briefly and accurately’.28 Consequently, the most recent attempts to define the Greek Mysteries are much more cautious and abstain from a catch- all definition.29 They usually agree that important characteristics shared by all these cults are secrecy and an emotionally impressive initiatory ritual.30 To this I would add their voluntary character (passim),31 nocturnal performance (Ch. I n. 57), preliminary purification (passim), the obligation to pay for participation (passim), rewards promised for this life and that of the next (passim), and the fact that the older Mysteries were all situated at varying distances from the nearest city (passim). With the exception of the Mithras cult (Ch. V.2), they also seem to have been open to male and female, slave and free, young and old (passim)...

In later antiquity, the Mithras cult developed a specific cosmology and soteriology, which was not a feature of the earlier Mysteries (Ch. V). This variety means that we should probably be content to stress the Wittgensteinian family resemblances of the various Mysteries rather than attempt to offer an all-encompassing definition...



when the emperor Hadrian’s much younger boyfriend Antinoos drowned in the Nile before the emperor’s very eyes in AD 130, several Mystery cults were instituted in memory of him, such as in Antinoopolis, the city that Hadrian founded on the site of the accident, in Klaudiopolis, Antinoos’ birthplace in Asia Minor, but also in Mantineia on the Greek mainland, presumably in order to gain privileges from the emperor.54 We know virtually nothing about how this new cult was organised, but it is striking that his memory was celebrated through a Mystery cult.

We are somewhat better informed about our second example: Mysteries created as part of the cult of the emperor. Not surprisingly, these new Mysteries were modelled on the most prestigious Mysteries of the ancient world, the Eleusinian Mysteries. In these imperial Mysteries, which we know only through a few inscriptions, there were singers of hymns, as in Eleusis, as well as a hiero- phant and a sebastophant, in other words, functionaries who displayed holy objects and the image of the emperor, respectively, perhaps instead of the display of a statue of Demeter as probably happened in Eleusis (Ch. I.3). There was also heavy eating and drinking, and initiation into these Mysteries was clearly not for free.55

JN Bremner - Initiation into the mystery cults of the ancient world

So we have mystery cults based on real people, and they emerged close to the lifetime of the deified humans.

You seem to think if all the others were myths, then this would be strong evidence Jesus was a myth, but you don't apply the same logic to the idea that if all the gods whose cults appeared close to their purported lifetimes were deified humans, then this would be evidence that Jesus was likely to be a deified human.

These saviors also existed. Possibly in "real time".

Name one that existed in near real time then. I keep asking you and you keep insisting there are but haven't been able to name one.

They exist is standard mythic time, if you think otherwise just name one. Should be easy.

Jesus died in 30 AD. The religion formed over centuries.

But people wrote about him Jesus within a couple of decades of his purported life.

Plutarch was accurate. However the Jesus story was not in it's modern form for centuries either.
Romulus was sourced by many different authors. Dio, Livy, Plutarch, and others.

Plutarch was not "accurate". He was writing moralistic narratives based on historical and mythical event.

Some is true, some confected, some just imaginary. As you have noted re the Gospels, people didn't write straight history.

The fact remains there is absolutely no evidence of a cult of Romulus near 750BC and no reason to believe one existed. In fact it is incredibly implausible.
 
Also, how does this relate to Jesus?

You made an argument that the lack of evidence for your position was because the church had destroyed it all via a systematic destruction of temples and texts.

I was explaining why you were vastly overestimating the ability of the church to do this.

The person not reading posts isn't me. Guess who that leaves.

"The archaeological evidence that has now been collected for most parts of the Roman Empire, however, shows overwhelmingly that the destruction of temples and their reuse as churches were exceptional rather than routine events,...and merely two aspects of the changing sacred landscape in late antiquity."

Every time you add something it confirms exactly what I've been saying.

Either you are not reading carefully enough or you are attacking something that only exists in your mind.

Every source says it was limited, which is unsurprising as that is the modern scholarly consensus that has replaced the outdated 'destruction' view popularised by Gibbon in the 18th C. Scholarship has progressed since then.

Scholars fall into two categories on how and why this dramatic change took place: the long established traditional catastrophists who view the rapid demise of paganism as occurring in the late fourth and early fifth centuries due to harsh Christian legislation and violence, and contemporary scholars who view the process as a long decline that began in the second century, before the emperors were themselves Christian, and which continued into the seventh century. This latter view contends that there was less conflict between pagans and Christians than was previously supposed.[13] In the twenty-first century, the idea that Christianity became dominant through conflict with paganism has become marginalized

Temple destruction is attested to in 43 cases in the written sources, but only 4 of them have been confirmed by archaeological evidence.

43 cases eh, that certainly supports your claim about all of the temple being destroyed.

AND ANOTHER reason for the archaeological report you are talking about.

"
Problems with this view have arisen ( a tide of violent Christian iconoclasm that continued throughout the 390s and into the 400s) in the twenty-first century. Archaeological evidence for the violent destruction of temples in the fourth century, from around the entire Mediterranean, is limited to a handful of sites.[90] Temple destruction is attested to in 43 cases in the written sources, but only 4 of them have been confirmed by archaeological evidence.[33]



"Trombley and MacMullen say part of why discrepancies between literary sources and archaeological evidence exist is because it is common for details in the literary sources to be ambiguous and unclear.[93][94] For example, Malalas claimed Constantine destroyed all the temples, then he said Theodisius destroyed them all, then he said Constantine converted them all to churches.[95]: 246–282 [90] "According to Procopius, in the 530s Justinian destroyed the temples of Philae widely identified as the last bastion of paganism in Egypt. But no priests are attested to after the 450s, ..."

They are explaining why the sources overstate the degree of violence.

No, you are going by one archaeology report where it's been admitted there is too much confusion on what really happened.

It is not "one report", it is the standard view of modern scholars.

I'll put it in bold and red to see if it helps:

No one doubts there was some destruction and some oppression, they just reject the old fashioned "Christian triumphalist" in favour of a more the much more nuanced and complex story you could educate yourself on by simply reading the sources you are quoting.

"Archaeological evidence, on the other hand, indicates that, outside of violent rhetoric, there were only isolated incidents of actual violence between Christians and pagans.

Excellent, another quote that supports what I said, keep them coming.

I've never seen anyone post so much material that explicitly argues against the point he is trying to make.

ANOTHER tactic to destroy temples - "Constantine's principal contribution to the downfall of the temples lay quite simply in his neglect of them"

I can only imagine how contemptuous you would be if a Christian fundy claimed "another tactic of atheists to destroy churches is simply to neglect them".

How much of your tax money do you want to spend preventing the closure of the hundreds of churches that close every year?

Not actively supporting ≠ destroying

Note also the decline started long before Constantine:


“Many of the changes in religious practice in the late empire can be tied to the vicissitudes of the Roman economy. During the upheavals of the third century, the lack of public money and changes in attitudes toward private benefaction weakened many public ceremonies.22 Under Diocletian, resources were again available to repair temples and reinvigorate festivals (and to renew the persecution of Christians). But Constantine would soon shift imperial favor to Christianity, while many of the old cults had not fully recovered from the neglect brought on by the financial collapse...

Epigraphical and literary evidence, on the one hand, demonstrates that some pagans continued to conduct sacrifices into the sixth century. On the other hand, epigraphical evidence also suggests a steep decline in cult practices starting in the third century...

“Broad estimates suggest that more than half of the population still identified with the traditional religions, but, according to our sources, they did not openly embrace the return of public money and social prestige to the worship of the gods. Julian’s revival appears to have failed because ritual sacrifice had never recovered from its decline in the third century. Comments from Julian’s contemporaries confirm the impression that animal sacrifice was by then uncommon and, therefore, nonessential to pagan identity.”



The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
That's not correct. Not all mystery religions have personal saviour deities, they weren't about dying and rising gods and some deities in mystery religions existed.
I didn't say all saviors were dying.rising deities?






From a recent scholarly monograph on mystery religions:

2014. A Mystery religion in this context is - any Hellenistic cult in which individual salvation was procured by a ritual initiation into a set of mysteries, the knowledge of which and participation in which were key to ensuring a blessed eternal life.
‘the variety of mystery cults makes them exceptionally difficult to summarise both briefly and accurately’.28 Consequently, the most recent attempts to define the Greek Mysteries are much more cautious and abstain from a catch- all definition.29 They usually agree that important characteristics shared by all these cults are secrecy and an emotionally impressive initiatory ritual.30 To this I would add their voluntary character (passim),31 nocturnal performance (Ch. I n. 57), preliminary purification (passim), the obligation to pay for participation (passim), rewards promised for this life and that of the next (passim), and the fact that the older Mysteries were all situated at varying distances from the nearest city (passim). With the exception of the Mithras cult (Ch. V.2), they also seem to have been open to male and female, slave and free, young and old (passim)...

In later antiquity, the Mithras cult developed a specific cosmology and soteriology, which was not a feature of the earlier Mysteries (Ch. V). This variety means that we should probably be content to stress the Wittgensteinian family resemblances of the various Mysteries rather than attempt to offer an all-encompassing definition...

Other savior gods within this context experienced “passions” that did not involve a death. For instance, Mithras underwent some great suffering and struggle (we don’t have many details), through which he acquired his power over death that he then shares with initiates in his cult, but we’re pretty sure it wasn’t a death. Mentions of resurrection as a teaching in Mithraism appear to have been about the future fate of his followers (in accordance with the Persian Zoroastrian notion of a general resurrection later borrowed by the Jews). So all those internet memes listing Mithras as a dying-and-rising god? Not true. So do please stop repeating that claim. Likewise, so far as we can tell Attis didn’t become a rising god until well after Christianity began (and even then his myth only barely equated to a resurrection; previous authors have over-interpreted evidence to the contrary). Most others, however, we have pretty solid evidence for as actually dying, and actually rising savior gods.
when the emperor Hadrian’s much younger boyfriend Antinoos drowned in the Nile before the emperor’s very eyes in AD 130, several Mystery cults were instituted in memory of him, such as in Antinoopolis, the city that Hadrian founded on the site of the accident, in Klaudiopolis, Antinoos’ birthplace in Asia Minor, but also in Mantineia on the Greek mainland, presumably in order to gain privileges from the emperor.54 We know virtually nothing about how this new cult was organised, but it is striking that his memory was celebrated through a Mystery cult.

We are somewhat better informed about our second example: Mysteries created as part of the cult of the emperor. Not surprisingly, these new Mysteries were modelled on the most prestigious Mysteries of the ancient world, the Eleusinian Mysteries. In these imperial Mysteries, which we know only through a few inscriptions, there were singers of hymns, as in Eleusis, as well as a hiero- phant and a sebastophant, in other words, functionaries who displayed holy objects and the image of the emperor, respectively, perhaps instead of the display of a statue of Demeter as probably happened in Eleusis (Ch. I.3). There was also heavy eating and drinking, and initiation into these Mysteries was clearly not for free.55

JN Bremner - Initiation into the mystery cults of the ancient world

So we have mystery cults based on real people, and they emerged close to the lifetime of the deified humans.
So this says literally nothing to your original point? So a mystery religion emerged because someone died?
Was there a savior element to the hero character? If a mystery religion emerged based on a real person then great. Jesus however is not in "real time". His death was 30 AD. Paul wrote 20 years later. The 1st official canon, Marcionite, was around 144 AD. The entire 2nd century was at odds between different sects of Gnostic Christians and people looking for a power structure, as we see from the letters of Bishop Irenaeus.

The canon may have been largely formed by the first council OR the council was responsible for putting the 4 gospels together.
We are now in the 3rd century. 200 years later.

Between 64 and 95 CE we have no credible or explicit record of what happened. Possibly as late as 100CE. We can barely construct what happened ten years on either side of that. This makes for 50 years of largely untracked development within the movement. The inconsistent list of Apostles scattered across the four gospels demonstrates that "by the time the Gospels were composed, which disciples belonged to the 12 was no longer known, and thus fundamental facts about the cult's own history and leadership had been already in the course of the first century" (R. Funk , Finding the Historical Jesus)




You seem to think if all the others were myths, then this would be strong evidence Jesus was a myth, but you don't apply the same logic to the idea that if all the gods whose cults appeared close to their purported lifetimes were deified humans, then this would be evidence that Jesus was likely to be a deified human.

Jesus did not appear close to his life. He died in 30 and in 50 Paul knew NOTHING about any of the common Gospel stories of family, birth, carpentry, his ministry, crucifixion (kind of a big one?), sermon on the Mount, parents, nothing.
Then a highly trained writer clearly uses older stories - Kings/Elija, Psalms, Romulus, Hero narrative, Oddessy, Jesus Ben Ananus and crafts a highly fictional (no sources, explanations, improbable events like fishermen leaving their families), literary devices used only in fiction and the other Gospels use this and make changes they want to see.

There is no life here? This is all comprised out of other stories. The theology is Greek/Persian and newer Jewish teachings. (Hillel)



That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah, and the rest is its commentary. Now go and study. Hillel, born 60 BC.

Christianity does confirm to the 4 trends seen in Hellenistic religion, written about in Petra Pakkanen, Interpreting Early Hellenistic Religion



Name one that existed in near real time then. I keep asking you and you keep insisting there are but haven't been able to name one.
All of these cults are unique and different from the rest, the general features are what they share in common.
We know very little about Mystery religions, other than Christianity because Christians chose not to preserve and of their sacred literature - sometimes deliberately destroying it. as we might infer from the fate of books 2 and 3 of Hippolytu's Refutation of All Heresies (in which, according to what he says at the end of book 1, he exposed all the secrets of the mystery religions, yet those chapters were mysteriously removed and remain lost to this day).
Enough evidence survives to reconstruct all the common features. The Golden *** of Apuleius, (a kind of Acts for the Isis cult) tells many things about the religion. Isis involved a baptism similar to the Christian baptism

They exist is standard mythic time, if you think otherwise just name one. Should be easy.
Plutarch (On Isis and Osirus) talks aboit Euhemerus, that all such tales are the mythification of past Kings into current gods, but rejects it as absurd. Insted, "better" he says, is the theory that these earthly tales are the sufferings not of gods or men, but of "great divinities", divine beings with incarnate bodies capable of suffering and corruption. He lists many mystery religions this explanation fits. Paul also speaks of the "sufferings" of Christ, just as Plutarch speaks of the sufferings of other savior gods in other mystery cults.


Jesus started out as a demigod or in Jewish terms an archangel, who was later historicized


But people wrote about him Jesus within a couple of decades of his purported life.



Plutarch was not "accurate". He was writing moralistic narratives based on historical and mythical event.

Some is true, some confected, some just imaginary. As you have noted re the Gospels, people didn't write straight history.

The fact remains there is absolutely no evidence of a cult of Romulus near 750BC and no reason to believe one existed. In fact it is incredibly implausible.
Osirus also became historicized, moving from a cosmic god to given a whole narrative biography set in Egypt during a specific historical period, complete with collections of wisdom sayings he supposedly uttered, same as Jesus.

You do not know when the stories of the Jewish messiah began to be circulated. Philo speaks of a potential arcangel, firstborn son, Gods favorite, (and other similar phrases to Jesus) and this could be the angel used for the model.

Regardless Romulus was a mythology that influenced the Jesus story.

We don't know exact timelines of all deities, including when myths about Jesus began. During his "childhood" stories of a firstborn arcangel may have been circulating. Philo speaks on the Septuagint and speaks of an earthly high priest that he wers an emblem of that Logos which holds together and regulates the universe, for it is necessary that the earthly high priest who is consecrated to the father of the universe should have as his paraclete His son, the most perfect in virtue, to procure the forgiveness of sins."
Calls him firstborn son, high priest, anatole (East which translates to Joshua/Jesus).
So there is evidence Jesus existed before he came to Earth. There is no evidence of a timeline of a human man.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
You made an argument that the lack of evidence for your position was because the church had destroyed it all via a systematic destruction of temples and texts.

I was explaining why you were vastly overestimating the ability of the church to do this.

No, that discussion is all later, 3rd century. The missing material is in the 50 year blackout period. Missing Epistles, missing anti-Christian writings.
Every time you add something it confirms exactly what I've been saying.

Either you are not reading carefully enough or you are attacking something that only exists in your mind.
Yes I included the quote you were reffering to. I also included quotes of destruction. Quotes saying destruction may just mean taking the statue, quotes that say laws were used to combat Christians.
Every source says it was limited, which is unsurprising as that is the modern scholarly consensus that has replaced the outdated 'destruction' view popularised by Gibbon in the 18th C. Scholarship has progressed since then.

Scholars fall into two categories on how and why this dramatic change took place: the long established traditional catastrophists who view the rapid demise of paganism as occurring in the late fourth and early fifth centuries due to harsh Christian legislation and violence, and contemporary scholars who view the process as a long decline that began in the second century, before the emperors were themselves Christian, and which continued into the seventh century. This latter view contends that there was less conflict between pagans and Christians than was previously supposed.[13] In the twenty-first century, the idea that Christianity became dominant through conflict with paganism has become marginalized



43 cases eh, that certainly supports your claim about all of the temple being destroyed.



They are explaining why the sources overstate the degree of violence.
And a quote explaining the sources are difficult to read and gather information.





It is not "one report", it is the standard view of modern scholars.

I'll put it in bold and red to see if it helps:

No one doubts there was some destruction and some oppression, they just reject the old fashioned "Christian triumphalist" in favour of a more the much more nuanced and complex story you could educate yourself on by simply reading the sources you are quoting.
Yes they used psychological warfare, as sourced, they just took the idol, as sourced, the actual records of who did what is difficult to parse, as sourced. Could you drag this out longer? You cannot win. It's not even in the correct timeline?







Excellent, another quote that supports what I said, keep them coming.


Yes, to show you many other quotes demonstrate other forms of warfare were used. It's all there. Laws were enacted, idols taken down and Christians moved in. They got it done.
I've never seen anyone post so much material that explicitly argues against the point he is trying to make.


So you didn't read my post. Ok? I don't care. I've proven my point. It's all there. I'm done reposting the same stuff.
I can only imagine how contemptuous you would be if a Christian fundy claimed "another tactic of atheists to destroy churches is simply to neglect them".
Whatever is true, I am interested in. If that is how they destroyed churches then that is how they did it.

Looks like you did read a few. Won't admit to it. Huh.





How much of your tax money do you want to spend preventing the closure of the hundreds of churches that close every year?

Not actively supporting ≠ destroying

Note also the decline started long before Constantine:


“Many of the changes in religious practice in the late empire can be tied to the vicissitudes of the Roman economy. During the upheavals of the third century, the lack of public money and changes in attitudes toward private benefaction weakened many public ceremonies.22 Under Diocletian, resources were again available to repair temples and reinvigorate festivals (and to renew the persecution of Christians). But Constantine would soon shift imperial favor to Christianity, while many of the old cults had not fully recovered from the neglect brought on by the financial collapse...

Epigraphical and literary evidence, on the one hand, demonstrates that some pagans continued to conduct sacrifices into the sixth century. On the other hand, epigraphical evidence also suggests a steep decline in cult practices starting in the third century...

“Broad estimates suggest that more than half of the population still identified with the traditional religions, but, according to our sources, they did not openly embrace the return of public money and social prestige to the worship of the gods. Julian’s revival appears to have failed because ritual sacrifice had never recovered from its decline in the third century. Comments from Julian’s contemporaries confirm the impression that animal sacrifice was by then uncommon and, therefore, nonessential to pagan identity.”



The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity
Scott Fitzgerald Johnson
Great.
AND
From 313, with the exception of the brief reign of Julian, non-Christians were subject to a variety of hostile and discriminatory imperial laws aimed at suppressing sacrifice and magic and closing any temples that continued their use.


By the end of the period of Antiquity and the institution of the Law Codes of Justinian, there was a shift from the generalized legislation which characterized the Theodosian Code to actions which targeted individual centers of paganism.[10]: 248–9  The gradual transition towards more localized action, corresponds with the period when most conversions of temples to churches were undertaken: the late 5th and 6th centuries.




Peter Garnsey strongly disagrees with those who describe the attitude concerning the "plethora of cults" in the Roman empire before Constantine as "tolerant" or "inclusive".[17]: 24  In his view, it is a misuse of terminology.[17]: 25  Garnsey has written that foreign gods were not tolerated in the modern sense, but were made subject, together with their communities, when they were conquered.


Brown reminds his readers, "We should not underestimate the fierce mood of the Christians of the fourth century", and, he says, it must be remembered that repression, persecution and martyrdom do not generally breed tolerance of those same persecutors.[21]: 73  Brown says Roman authorities had shown no hesitation in "taking out" the Christian church which they saw as a threat to the peace of the empire, and that Constantine and his successors did what they did for the same reasons. Rome had been removing anything it saw as a challenge to Roman identity since Bacchic associations were dissolved in 186 BCE; this had become the pattern for the Roman state's response to anything it saw as a religious threat.




Therefore, private divination, astrology, and 'Chaldean practices' (formulae, incantations, and imprecations designed to repulse demons and protect the invoker[50]: 1, 78, 265 ) all became associated with magic in the early imperial period (AD 1–30), and carried the threat of banishment and execution even under the pagan emperors.[51]


Church restrictions opposing the pillaging of pagan temples by Christians were in place even while the Christians were being persecuted by the pagans.[59] More common than destruction was the practice of "desacralization" or "deconsecration".[70] According to the historical writings of Prudentius, the deconsecration of a temple merely required the removal of the cult statue and altar, and it could be reused.



Constantius also shut down temples,[5] ended tax relief and subsidies for pagans, and imposed the death penalty on those who consulted soothsayers.[12]: 36 [80] Orientalist Alexander Vasiliev says that Constantius carried out a persistent anti-pagan policy, and that sacrifices were prohibited in all localities and cities of the empire on penalty of death and confiscation of property





Anti-pagan legislation reflects what Brown calls "the most potent social and religious drama" of the fourth-century Roman empire.




AND your big report on archaeology may be in ERROR:

Trombley and MacMullen say part of why such discrepancies (between the literary sources and the archaeological evidence) exist is because it is common for details in the literary sources to be ambiguous and unclear.[184][185] For example, Malalas claimed Constantine destroyed all the temples, then he said Theodisius did, then he said Constantine converted them all to churches.[7


you call this "conspiracy theory"? Nope.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
There are examples of such phenomena though. In 1178 the monks at Canterbury Cathedral saw the Moon 'split'. It didn't, of course, but they had witnessed a cosmic phenomenon that they recorded. They wrote according to what they saw. Writing these events off as 'unhistorical' without investigating where the belief may have come from is the antithesis of doing history.

"I think they happened to be at the right place at the right time to look up in the sky and see a meteor that was directly in front of the moon, coming straight towards them," Withers said. This idea was strongly suggested by others in a 1977 scientific paper.

"And it was a pretty spectacular meteor that burst into flames in the Earth's atmosphere- fizzling, bubbling, and spluttering. If you were in the right one-to-two kilometer patch on Earth's surface, you'd get the perfect geometry," he said. "That would explain why only five people are recorded to have seen it.

"Imagine being in Canterbury on that June evening and seeing the moon convulse and spray hot, molten rock into space, " Withers added. "The memories of it would live with you for the rest of your life."



Right but that isn't an example. If something is unknown then the best explanation is it's unknown. Not magic. Or if there was a confirmed meteor then that is a good explanation as well.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
Why on earth do people still believe this? Has anyone who peddles this bs actually read the Bible?
Jesus is a Persian and Hellenistic savior deity.
There are many sources, I'll start with a summary of Hellenism




Changes that religions began taking from Hellenistic religions (this describes Judaism to Christianity exactly) - how many times is salvation mentioned.


-the seasonal drama was homologized to a soteriology (salvation concept) concerning the destiny, fortune, and salvation of the individual after death.


-his led to a change from concern for a religion of national prosperity to one for individual salvation, from focus on a particular ethnic group to concern for every human. The prophet or saviour replaced the priest and king as the chief religious figure.


-his process was carried further through the identification of the experiences of the soul that was to be saved with the vicissitudes of a divine but fallen soul, which had to be redeemed by cultic activity and divine intervention. This view is illustrated in the concept of the paradoxical figure of the saved saviour, salvator salvandus.


-Other deities, who had previously been associated with national destiny (e.g., Zeus, Yahweh, and Isis), were raised to the status of transcendent, supreme


-The temples and cult institutions of the various Hellenistic religions were repositories of the knowledge and techniques necessary for salvation and were the agents of the public worship of a particular deity. In addition, they served an important sociological role. In the new, cosmopolitan ideology that followed Alexander’s conquests, the old nationalistic and ethnic boundaries had broken down and the problem of religious and social identity had become acute.


-Most of these groups had regular meetings for a communal meal that served the dual role of sacramental participation (referring to the use of material elements believed to convey spiritual benefits among the members and with their deity)


-Hellenistic philosophy (Stoicism, Cynicism, Neo-Aristotelianism, Neo-Pythagoreanism, and Neoplatonism) provided key formulations for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim philosophy, theology, and mysticism through the 18th century


- The basic forms of worship of both the Jewish and Christian communities were heavily influenced in their formative period by Hellenistic practices, and this remains fundamentally unchanged to the present time. Finally, the central religious literature of both traditions—the Jewish Talmud (an authoritative compendium of law, lore, and interpretation), the New Testament, and the later patristic literature of the early Church Fathers—are characteristic Hellenistic documents both in form and content.


-Other traditions even more radically reinterpreted the ancient figures. The cosmic or seasonal drama was interiorized to refer to the divine soul within man that must be liberated.


-Each persisted in its native land with little perceptible change save for its becoming linked to nationalistic or messianic movements (centring on a deliverer figure)


-and apocalyptic traditions (referring to a belief in the dramatic intervention of a god in human and natural events)


- Particularly noticeable was the success of a variety of prophets, magicians, and healers—e.g., John the Baptist, Jesus, Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander the Paphlagonian, and the cult of the healer Asclepius—whose preaching corresponded to the activities of various Greek and Roman philosophic missionaries


and a few Journal papers:


Hellenistic Ideas of Salvation, Author(s): Paul Wendland (excerpts)


Source: The American Journal of Theology , Jul., 1913, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Jul., 1913), pp. 345-351


-Christian and Hellenistic ideas of redemption cannot be sharply separated.


-The deity's resurrection from the dead gives to the initiates, who see their own destiny prefigured in his adventures, hope of a life after death.

The deity's resurrection from the dead gives to the initiates, who see their own destiny prefigured in his adventures, hope of a life after death…. the soul, conscious of its divine origin, strives for redemption from its foreign and unrelated companion, the body. It seeks deliverance from things sinful, material, and mortal. But the fundamental motive in these various representations is the same; it is longing for elevation above the earthly world and its ruling powers, i.e., for deification. The end of redemption is a life of eternal blessedness. The redeemer is the deity to whose service one devotes his whole life in order to obtain his help and favor.

But notions and expressions akin to Hellenistic mysticism are already present in, the Pauline doctrine of redemption. Sin is traced back to the flesh and to the natural man. According to Rom. 8:19-22 perishable, degenerate creation looks for deliverance from transitoriness and for the revelation of the sons of God. As the apostle fervently longed for freedom from the body of death (Rom. 7:24), so also redemption is for him deliverance from aiv e'VeCrd, (Gal. 1:4). This leaning toward a "physical" and cosmic extension of redemption is an approach to Hellenistic conceptions. Paul's representa- tion of the believer as living and suffering in Christ, as crucified, buried, and raised with him, recalls the similar way in which the Hellenistic mystery-religions relate the believer to the dead and risen god (Attis, Osiris, Adonis). Thus Paul actually appears to be indebted to Hellenistic mysticism for certain suggestions. As Plato used Orphism, so Paul appropriated forms of expression for his faith from the mysticism of the world to which he preached the gospel.

The relationship of Christianity to Hellenism appears closer in the Ephesian letter. Here Christ is the supreme power of the entire spirit-world, exalting believers above the bondage of the inferior spirits into his upper kingdom (1: 18-22). Christians must struggle with these spirits, among whom the sKoopoipdrope6 (astral spirits) are named. In like manner from the second century on Christ is more frequently extolled as a deliverer from the power of fate.' When Ignatius regards Christ's work as the communication of ryv^oaR and &0c9apria, and the Eucharist as food of immortality, he, like the author of the Fourth Gospel, shows the influence of Greek mysticism. Irenaeus' realistic doctrine of redemption also has, in common with Greek mysticism, the fundamental notions of deification, abolition of death, imperishability, and gnosis.
 

joelr

Well-Known Member
Why on earth do people still believe this? Has anyone who peddles this bs actually read the Bible?

The Relationship between Hellenistic Mystery Religions and Early Christianity:
A Case Study using Baptism and Eucharist


Jennifer Uzzell
February 2009


Early apologists admited similarities and blamed them on Satan.



Even allowing for these caveats, it is clear that substantial ideological and ritual similarities did exist. In fact they were sufficiently obvious to the early Christian apologists that they felt obliged to offer some explanation for them, particularly since, to their embarrassment, it was clear that the Mystery rituals predated their own. The most common explanation, offered by many Christian apologists including Firmicus Maternus, Tertullian and Justin Martyr, was that demons had deliberately prefigured Christian sacraments in order to lead people astray. This explanation has sufficed for Christians over countless centuries, and indeed scholastic bias towards the assumed uniqueness, primacy and superiority of Christianity is one of the major methodological pitfalls encountered by those engaged in the comparative study of Christianity and the Mysteries. Many Christian scholars have been so certain that Christianity alone, of all the world’s religions, is an original and unique revelation that at times it seems that they might almost prefer the “demonic intervention” explanation to the unthinkable possibility that Christianity was influenced by its philosophical and theological environs.



Baptism has been widely compared with initiation into the Mystery cults. In many of the Mysteries purification through ritual bathing was required as a prerequisite for initiation.


It is interesting to note that the early Christian writer Tertullian (c. 160-225CE) would not have agreed with this appraisal. Not only did he believe that certain of the Mysteries practiced baptism, but also that they did so in hope of attaining forgiveness of sins and a new birth. This was so striking a similarity that it clearly demanded some form of explanation. Not surprisingly, demonic imitation was the culprit.



Dying/rising demigods


In Pagan Hellenistic and Near Eastern thought, the motif of a “Dying and Rising God” existed for millennia before Christ and there had been stories of divine beings questing into the underworld and returning transformed in some way.



Eucharist.


-Perhaps the clearest point of contact between the Mysteries and Christian Eucharist, and one of which the Church Fathers were painfully conscious, lay in a sacramental meal of bread or cakes and wine mixed with water in which initiates to the cult of Mithras participated.


They seek salvation from the debased material world through a spiritual ascent through the spheres. Mithras was expected to return to





I would read Carriers work on dying/rising saviors as well:

 

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
Why are you quoting my comment if you are not going to respond to that comment?
You said: "Once you accept the resurrection, it is easy to accept other miracles from in the gospels."

I said: "Oh I agree. Once you resign yourself to accepting fantastical claims based on little-to-no evidence, it's much easier to believe all sorts of other fantastical claims! Is that supposed to be a good thing?"


That's a direct response to what you said. I even included the exact same wording in my response.
I said

1 The evidence for the resurection is as strong (and usually stronger) than the evidence for any fact form ancient history that you would accept
I disagreed. Also, you have no idea what I accept from ancient history.
2 you have a bias against “magic”
Already responded to.
The thing that would change my mind is .... evidence.
Which point do you think is wrong ?
How about responding to MY points?
 

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
Many atheists are just so indoctrinated that they cann't reason like to have a normal dialog with others about religious topics ... They are pre-programmed to repeat the same atheists dogmas again and again and again ...
Indoctrinated to what?
What "atheists dogmas?"
Finding an atheist willing to have a rational dialogue on religious matters is like meeting a monotheistic Hindu. ;)
You're talking to one. Give me something of substance to respond to and I'll be happy to engage.
 

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
Again, please reed my comments and try to make an honest effort to understand them
That's what I've been doing the entire time we've been in discussion.
The evidence for the resurrection is as strong as the evidence for any other event for ancient history that scholars (and *you *) would accept as fact.
You have no idea what I accept as fact from ancient history.
1 When an event is attested in 2 or more independent sources , historians accept them as fact
Historians have more stringent criteria than this. They don't just accept magic claims because two people said so.
2 events that are reported in Paul and at least 1 gospel are accepted as fact by most historian
You mean Paul's encounter with light and a disembodied voice?
3 historians only make an arbitrary exception, when they don’t like the theological implications of that event.
That's your assertion, but it seems you're the one making arbitrary exceptions for magic claims.
This shows that The evidence for the resurrection, is good enough for anyone that doesn’t have a bias against supernatural events.
It doesn't.
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
Your definition of independent is incorrect.
Why did you quote my comment if you are ot going to respond to most of it?

Please support your assertion

Your reply.....

"Only the mundane ones. And some of those claims have been shown to be wrong by historians as you well know.. You need evidence for the magical ones and there is none for that."
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
No, it is not semantics.

With independnet I mean “the authors didn’t copied from each other nor form a common source”

With indpeendnet you mean “free of filtration”

If we mean different things, then by definition it is “just semantics”

You use standards that make your 'proof" garbage. Your standards fail because they are not consistent.
ok and what standards do you suggest, to determine the truth of a historical event?

why are your standarts better than mine?

And I already supported that claim more than once. Your inability to understand, as had been pointed not just by me again and again is not my problem. This is like your debates in evolution that you always lost.

I lost, because I lack the ability (and the dishonesty) to use the clever debate tactics that you use.

Our conversations always follow that pattern

1 you made an asertions

2 I ask you to support that assertion

3 you say that you already did

4 I ask you to quote the post where you supported your claim

5 you invent an excuse for not providing that quote.

In this thread

  • You sais that there are other sources apart from josephus that support the 6AD date.
  • And that some mundane claims that are affirmed in both paul and the gospels have been refuted.
And you have failed to support those assertions.

And @SkepticThinker and @It Aint Necessarily always hit like to your comments, (implying that they reed them) I challenge them to quote a post from you where you supported those claims.


At best you would not let yourself understand refutations, though to most it looked as if you were just lying eventually.
But you cant quote a single example of a lie……….. can you?
 

leroy

Well-Known Member
That's what I've been doing the entire time we've been in discussion.

You have no idea what I accept as fact from ancient history.

Historians have more stringent criteria than this. They don't just accept magic claims because two people said so.

You mean Paul's encounter with light and a disembodied voice?

That's your assertion, but it seems you're the one making arbitrary exceptions for magic claims.

It doesn't.


Historians have more stringent criteria than this. They don't just accept magic claims because two people said so

That is my point; the problem is that you seem to be interested in reading and understanding my comments……….. non of your comments goes against what I said.

1 when a *non magical* event is attested in 2 or more independent sources, typically historians accept it as a probable fact

2 non magical events that are reported in Paul + the gospels are accepted as historical facts by hostoriasn

If you don’t reject any of these 2 points explicitly I will assume that you grant them

3 but when it comes to “magic” and claims with theological implications that atheist don’t like, secular historians make an exception, and apply different criteria……… (2 or more sources are not anough)
 
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