That was so simple, Milton.
This thread would have died a long time ago if people would just agree.
Thank you!
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ONCE AGAIN! Facts in the Bible is supported by archaeology.
- Thread starter Kenny
- Start date
This thread would have died a long time ago if people would just agree.
Thank you!
You missed the point Josephus wrote about other messianic figures that rebelled against Rome
Prophecy is a separate issue.
Jesus claimed to be the King of the Jews. In the view of Rome this was most definitely not apolitical.It was rebellion against the State of Rome.
This one!
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Josephus IGNORED the entire Christian movement and Jesus. His one-liner about
Jesus feels fake. And being a political book, "War" had no interest in the man. Being
a Pharisee he would have been as deeply offended as any other Pharisee. He grew
up hearing those Jesus stories.
Rome watched Jesus. I am sure it wasn't for long. It was soon evident that the man
had no political aspirations, and besides, Jesus' teaching on respecting the law suited
Rome and its client kings. Jesus did not challenge Rome.
The problem was not that people agreed or not, but the fact that it was virtually universally accepted the Pontius Pilate existed before the ring was discovered, and the ring was not likely his ring, but a ring of lesser individual. This was an interesting piece of evidence, but nothing new knowledge.
Nothing here addressed my reason for referring to Josephus,
By the way there is no such thing as hard science nor soft science, Science is science,
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Well, if there's not hard and soft science (not my words, actually) then there's Rutherford's
notorious remark that there's only physics and stamp collecting.
I could care less about what Rutherford thinks. Rutherford died in 1937
Science is science.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
And on that point, yeah, maybe there IS a soft science.
"Stamp collecting" speaks to things like archaeology
where you are artifact collecting. The significant tools
like those that do carbon dating, for instance, are the
things built by the hard sciences.
No doubt you have heard this joke?
A mathematician, a physicist, and an engineer are riding
a train through Scotland.
The engineer looks out the window, sees a black sheep,
and exclaims, "Hey! They've got black sheep in Scotland!"
The physicist looks out the window and corrects the engineer,
"Strictly speaking, all we know is that there's at least one black
sheep in Scotland."
The mathematician looks out the window and corrects the
physicist, " Strictly speaking, all we know is that is that at least
one side of one sheep is black in Scotland."
When people tell me people didn't ride camels in Abraham's
day or there was no man called Moses, they remind me of
the engineer in this joke - being a little careless.
As an aside, if you follow science you will see that continually
our dating of things gets further back, ie Clovis people in America,
African hominids, earliest birds, first fish etc.. I like to tell people
that the world is older and far more marvelous than we think.
That goes for the bible, too.
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gnostic
The Lost One
You may have read Shakespeare...or you may have not...I don’t know your reading history or habits, but your questions sound utterly inane.
If you have read works that were contemporary to Caesar, and those about a generation or two later, you would see that even his enemies in Rome wrote of his campaigns in Gaul and his role in civil wars, including those whom Caesar had shown mercy.
And if you know history of the Roman republic, which you haven’t read, you don’t get “elected” to being senator. You only get automatically appointed as senator if elected as consul, which was usually the highest office in Roman’s political career. Once elected as consul, becoming senator was automatic, and you would be senator for life. The family of a senator, the sons don’t become senators themselves, until they themselves won the consulate elections.
Any Roman, such as that of Caesar, had to be earned through military posts and a series of political posts (known as cursus honorum), both in Rome itself and in the provinces. Generally, you cannot be candidate of certain magistratrial post until you reached a minimum age.
The cursus honorum required any prospective senator, to have experiences as sequence of appointments, that of quaestor, aedile, praetor and consul.
But of course, there are exceptions, for instance, Pompey, Caesar’s chief rival, and later enemy, was only 6 years older than Caesar, but political and military achievements skyrocketed at much younger age. Pompey was elected to consul (age 35, in 71 BCE), but having never served as quaestor, aedile and praetor, which was completely unprecedented.
Anyway, Caesar did earn his consul, but only after serving as quaestor, aedile and praetor. Caesar wasn’t appointed senator until after serving his time as consul in 60 BCE, although that was partly due to his alliance with Pompey and Crassus, pressuring the senate.
I think you shouldn’t make claims the 1st century BCE Rome, unless you have done some research in Roman politics and its history.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Thank you for that. I am genuinely interested in the topic. Like to watch Youtubes
on the subject from time to time.
But... my point is, if the military campaigns of Joshua and Moses never happened
because they are only in the bible, and Jesus wasn't the Messiah though eight
authors wrote of him - who are we to say there was a Caesar?
joelr
Well-Known Member
At 15:40 it's explained how scholarship knows that the NT is a re-write of the OT,
But again, did I not list 10 out of 229 failed OT prophecies?
Nostradamus got some right also.
Why do you have such weird confirmation bias?
When I was Christian I would at least tell people the evidence is simply not there. It's just faith.
joelr
Well-Known Member
The evidence for Caesar is overwhelming. The evidence for Jesus is literally zero. All of the facts support mythology, I'm not selecting anything.
If I should believe a demi-god at face value with no evidence then why not believe in all other religions and cults?
No outside mention of Jesus shows anything real about Christianity except that there were Christians at some time.
The gospels are clearly OT re-writes and blatant copies of Pagan gods.
3 are copies of Mark.
We even have 1st century apologists saying this exact thing. I gave examples of 2 earlier.
It's not even likely to be a little bit true.
There isn't even any evidence of Jesus as a real person.
How dare you say there are only "selective facts". Had I known your head was buried that far in the sand I would have just dipped out long ago.
joelr
Well-Known Member
So what don't you agree with in Thompson's work about Moses forever being myth which the field considers the current standard?
Of course you wouldn't know. Nor will you ever read what scholarship has to say. But why the false front like you know what you're talking about?
This is a better joke.
Archeology seems great to you when it's telling you something about camels or King David. But everything else is way off base and can't ever be correct until it proves your myth as true.
If the camel discovery didn't support your beliefs it would be not considered reliable. If King David wasn't in the OT the find would be rubbish, or wrong, or waiting a better discovery.
The weird thing is that even if Moses was a real person, this would be no evidence for Abraham's imaginary god?
We have much better evidence for Jesus being a pagan savior copy and not real so speculation about the OT goes nowhere?
I'm still waiting to hear how 1st century apologetics were "infantile" when they recognized Jesus as being very much like all the other pagan gods.
How was the church infantile when they coined the latin term for the devil re-writing history to fool Christians into thinking Jesus was a pagan copy?
joelr
Well-Known Member
Well I looked into this and the Biblical Archaeology Society doesn't think so:
Did Camels Exist in Biblical Times? - Biblical Archaeology Society
Nor did this biblical archeological reference:
Biblical Views: Did Abraham Ride a Camel?
but wiat an apologetics article titled
"
The Bible Wins the Debate with Carbon-Dated Camel Bones"
Bible Wins Debate Carbon-Dated Camel Bones
seemed to think the camel issue was ok for bible fundamentalists.
I wondered why. I saw his "news source"
Camel bones suggest error in Bible, archaeologists say
which once you click on says "ERROR IN BIBLE"
so what the heck is he talking about?
I had to dig deep, get ready, now camels may be ok according to this apologetics master because our dating of Egyptain events is off!
HA HA HA HA HA.
So because of carbon dating’s fallible calibration as well as a "a quick look at a map" we can rule the findings of both archeology and scientific dating out.
Of course they don't mention that other techniques are used in dating bones and that we also see the camel bones coincide with dramatic changes in the local copper mining operation.
I thought at least the camel thing was legit. It's just more desperate apologetics?
"To determine exactly when domesticated camels appeared in the southern Levant, Dr. Sapir-Hen and Dr. Ben-Yosef used radiocarbon dating and other techniques to analyze the findings of these digs as well as several others done in the valley. In all the digs, they found that camel bones were unearthed almost exclusively in archaeological layers dating from the last third of the 10th century BCE or later -- centuries after the patriarchs lived and decades after the Kingdom of David, according to the Bible. The few camel bones found in earlier archaeological layers probably belonged to wild camels, which archaeologists think were in the southern Levant from the Neolithic period or even earlier. Notably, all the sites active in the 9th century in the Arava Valley had camel bones, but none of the sites that were active earlier contained them.
The appearance of domesticated camels in the Aravah Valley appears to coincide with dramatic changes in the local copper mining operation. Many of the mines and smelting sites were shut down; those that remained active began using more centralized labor and sophisticated technology, according to the archaeological evidence. The researchers say the ancient Egyptians may have imposed these changes -- and brought in domesticated camels -- after conquering the area in a military campaign mentioned in both biblical and Egyptian sources."
joelr
Well-Known Member
That's a tired old point completely smashed by scholars. I'm sure you don't care what educated people think but if any one is interested in what is said about this notion:
"So take note: we have actual coins and inscriptions dating from Caesar’s time and the time of his contemporaries. None for Jesus. We also have several eyewitness accounts. Caesar’s own, as Bock mentions (although he omits the most important one, the Civil War) and Cicero’s and Sallust’s, as Bock also mentions (although he omits the most important one, Cicero’s Letters). But also Pompey (surviving collections of Cicero’s letters include letters from Pompey) and Augustus (Caesar’s adopted son and successor, who commissioned many inscriptions and coins). And Livy, a contemporary of Caesar, covers Caesar in his histories—and in their poetry, so do contemporaries Virgil, Ovid, and Catullus. The Gospels are not eyewitness sources, name no eyewitness sources, and have no verifiable eyewitness sources. There are no eyewitness sources for Jesus. There are at least nine for Caesar. Bock mentions but does not make anything of this crucial distinction. It seems to be irrelevant to him. But I’m here to tell you, it isn’t to historians."
No one is claiming Caesars words are literal guides to life:
But more importantly, this has nothing to do with historicity. We do not doubt the historicity of Jesus because his biographies have transcription errors in them (even deliberate ones). So that there are transcription errors in the biographies of Caesar isn’t relevant. Transcription errors (both accidental and deliberate: see my Drunk Bible Study video for examples) only matter if you wanted to treat the biographies of Caesar as guides to life, as the inviolate and inerrant Word of God. Rather than as a problematic lens granting only distorted knowledge of their subject in varying degrees of probability. Which is how historians treat those sources.
No one argues for Caesar being mythical, Even Christians argued Jesus was:
“no one was arguing that the accounts of Jesus’s actions were fabricated or mythical.” Sorry, but, uh yeah, not only did Celsus claim that, and extensively, writing in the same time as Justin Martyr, but Trypho (the fake Jew Justin invented for his dialogue) argues the same point, too (he says the Gospel stories are just “unfounded rumor” and a Christian “invention,” Dial. 8). So when Bock cites Trypho as not making that argument, we know Bock sucks at basic homework. But that’s not the only example. 2 Peter attacks even a fellow Christian sect that was claiming the Gospels were “cleverly devised myths.” Ignatius also spends several letters attacking fellow Christians who were teaching that at least parts of the Gospels were mythical. And Irenaeus devotes books to the subject of other Christians claiming substantial portions of the Gospels were mythical. Indeed, the genealogies for Jesus are claimed to be mythical even in the New Testament itself! (1 Tim. 1.4; Tit. 3.9.)
Is Evidence for Jesus Really as Good as for Caesar? • Richard Carrier
Ten Reasons to Reject the Apologetic 10/42 Source Slogan
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
What I had argued earlier was the Carthaginian Hannibal.
He is recorded by just two writers. The claim he took an
African army across the Alps and invaded Rome, by
the standards of biblical criticism, is plain silly.
I should have stuck to him.
Jesus is recorded by eight people, I think.
And he is the most famous person in the Western World.
No coins, yes, but Christians who followed him created no
images to any person. Forget Caesar, Jesus' influence
outlasted the Roman Empire, indeed, it conquered it.
And here were people waiting for the Messiah, writing of
him for 2,000 years.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Yes, someone studied camel bones in a copper mine. But the Levant was the crossroads
for trade between Egypt, Assyria and Sumer for a long while. And camels were domesticated
in Egypt before the pyramids.
So maybe the Egyptians got off their camels and sent them home when they reached the
Levant, and hired new ones when they left? Or maybe they trudged across the deserts on
goats and sheep, never thinking for a minute that this "ship of the desert" would be useful?
And they found "wild camels"
Bit like like wild goats, wild sheep, wild dogs.
Wild camels are usually caught, trained and used for transit.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Was the Siege of Troy a myth?
Can't say.
Was Hannibal a myth?
Two writers mentioned some outlandish story.
Can't say. Prefer to believe he existed as my favorite general.
Was Moses a myth?
Can't say. I believe in him through faith.
tas8831
Well-Known Member
Interesting. I have been an atheist for 30 years and never doubted Pilate was real.