Freethought Nation

Okay - I'm playing devil's advocate here -

A Yale professor presents his evidence for an historical Jesus - mainly in the 2nd half of this video. His main evidence is that in all 4 Gospels, the phrase, or derivation of the phrase, "King of the Jews" was written on the sign above the head of Jesus on the cross. He claims that this exact phrase is from at least 2 independent sources and is not something the early Christians would have made up - as they did not think of Jesus as the "King of the Jews".

Any thoughts on this and his other evidence?

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"..the phrase "King of the Jews" was written on the sign above the head of Jesus.."

It is likely that such a sentence has been really written by the Jews on the sign, however, this same sign was not placed on the top of the cross, since the historical Jesus was never crucified, but on the branch of the tree to which the his body was hanged, after being stoned .. (this, in fact, was the punishment inflicted on Jesus, according to Jewish custom: see Talmud)

Greetings

Littlejohn

excellent!



this says a lot about Yale doesn't it, that they have a professor so compromised he can't recognise the difference between literary metaphor and history, hope he's not an english lit lecturer.



this is like saying that all the earliest books that feature "humpty dumpty" mention that he had a great fall, so it is likely true. (literalism strikes again)



this is like saying that all the kings men would have prevented humpty falling if they could and so we have no reason to doubt that humpty did actually fall, especially as they record having so much trouble putting him back together again, which reflects badly on them as officers of the king.



to me it's just the same old literalist tosh.

the bible is a book of symbol, metaphor and allegory, unfortunately not many people seem to detect the deeper levels of the metaphor.

they can see the lion and the lamb as metaphors for christ but they cant see christ as a metaphor for themselves. when i read about the christ staggering down the street carrying the cross with thorns and briars cutting into his brow it is obvious what it means:

my spiritual part dragging my physical part through life with lies and misconceptions cutting into my mind.

to paraphrase an old pop song, these wheels are made for rolling, and one of these days they are going to roll right over the top of the literalist stupidity that has caused so many so much trouble.

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The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

Historical Jesus? I'm very skeptical. The Yale professor seems to start with the "King of the Jews" bit at around 28 minutes. He is quick to accept a list of things as historical without much investigation at all. It's like, "Yep, that sounds historical therefore, it IS historical."

Where is the sign?

Mark 15:26 (NIV 2010) "The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS."

Matthew 27:37 (NIV 2010) "Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS."

Luke 23:38 (NIV 2010) "There was a written notice above him, which read: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS."

John 19:19 (NIV 2010) "Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS."

Pliny, Tacitus and Suetonius: No Proof of Jesus

The Jesus Forgery: Josephus Untangled

The "Historical" Jesus?

The Gospels: A 2nd Century Composition

The figure Jesus Christ Never existed

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2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

Well, the fact that the first christians were supposed to have been Jews aside, of course the christians did not make up this epithet, since they didn't make up the character of the messiah in the first place. The concept of the messiah and many of his epithets, and the aniticipation of his advent, were all already well in place long before christianity came along with it's Johnny-come-lately candidate to fill this position.

The point being, even IF the earliest christians were already anti-semetic enough to not acknowledge Jesus as "king of the Jews", what they DID do, was acknowledge Jesus as the MESSIAH, and thus by default, they acknowledge him as "king of the Jews" and "son of David", etc., etc. because all of those things were already attached to the profile of the coming messiah.

this yale professor is a jew and is only adding idiocy to the issue,(the jesus is "King of the jews" is not a claim he made and jew as a word was not even invented at that time. rather that the talmud reserves some choice comments about jesus ,that is why he must have been real because the talmud takes time out to specifically comment on him.also his mother.A new analysis of the shroud finds coins dating from the time of pontius pilate laid over the eyes of the body in the shroud,Proves jesus was not a jew as the coin over the eyes they not do as it is a waste of coins.

"..the jesus is "King of the jews" is not a claim he made.."

Only knowing the true historical profile of the character Jesus of Nazareth, one can realizing how wrong is your conviction ...

Unfortunately, the hallucinating deceptions and lies of the forger fathers of the origins , have created into mind of people this kind of misunderstanding and false images of the characters so called 'evangelical' ..

It is for this reason that I suggested more times not to waste too much time behind the unlikely thesis of a non-historical Jesus and to explore in depth all the literature, christian and extra-christian, in a position to provide useful data about the historical research on the various evangelical characters, just beginning with the same Jesus of Nazareth.

Greetings

Littlejohn

Okay Yoda, any facts, evidence or primary sources to back up your claims? Or is this going to be another wild claim like last time with your John the Baptist was an adult married with children at the time of Jesus' birth nonsense?

People in the Old Testament were claimed to have been King of Jews too so it's not even original with Jesus. The entire claim is lame.

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

Yoda?!...Did you mean to say Littlejohn ...

"..any facts, evidence or primary sources to back up your claims.."

I have already provided many clues about my statements, and not only here but also at the forum called freeratio.org ( http://www.freeratio.org/forumdisplay.p ... 8e00a&f=60 ), available to every (other material even much I have exposed in the Italian forums moreover, although with a 'nickname' different from Littlejohn).

Any person with a mind free from dogma of whichever kind, whether 'fideists' and 'deniers', could get a lot by what I posted until now. It is obviously not your case, since you are continuing to confute me with vapid sarcasm. When the truth will result as public domain, not only others will laugh at you, but maybe even yourself ...

A singular scholar, known with the pseudonym Allan Kardec, who lived in France in the first half of the nineteenth century and founder of the so-called 'christian spiritism ', amongst its many 'prophecies' has predicted that in the century successive to his own, namely in the twentieth century, an Italian would reveal to the world the truth about the origins of Christianity

I do not know how all this could happen, even because I'm fundamentally skeptical with regard to the spiritism and 'medium' world, however the fact remains that today I am more than convinced that I just came to understand about everything: everything of what is need to understand about the origins of Christianity and the real historical profiles of the characters involved in the Gospel story...

The twentieth century has elapsed since 10 years, however I started to expose the first results of my historical researchs (of course uncomplete) since the end of the 90s (1995-2000).

I have often wondered how he could do Kardec to arrive to formulate such a 'prophecy'. It was obvious that he, having lived in a tumultuous period in history, with its revolutionary discoveries and industrial revolutions because of them, could have imagined that from there at a century later, surely the 'galloping' science would allowed scholars to come at head of a mystery that lasted far too long: namely that related to the origins of Christianity. But the thing that seemed to me inexplicable, and it still seems to me, it's why an Italian ....


Littlejohn

You may want to check yourself, little John. All I've seen from you is you making things up however you wish and making connections (giant leaps of faith) where none exist. As per usual your link doesn't take us to anything that would substantiate your claims. Your so-called evidence is reliant upon faith and euphoria. I'm still waiting for your evidence to back up your previous claims regarding John the Baptist. You're going to have to do much, much better if you're going to keep posting here.

_________________
2013 Astrotheology Calendar
The Mythicist Position
Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection
Stellar House Publishing at Youtube

LittleJohn, Yoda, hell, I'm leaning more towards "Simple Jack" from Tropic Thunder at this point. "...you ma, ma, make me happy..." real Gnostic Jesus.

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?

A "Messiah" would have been the expected saviour and king who would free the Jews from being oppressed. In the first century there were several "messiahs" who tried to start revolts to create a free Jewish state, but they were all executed, so being an executed "king of the Jews" messiah was not uncommon.

Perhaps not, but what was uncommon was that such a figure would have been then shortly become a God to Gentiles. There is no rational explanation for how that could have happened.

It's more likely that Gentiles obtained and adapted the Septuagint for liturgical purposes first, and a Christ myth eventually grew out of that theology, rather than the other way around. The purpose of the myth was to explain why Gentiles were using Hebrew scriptures.

^The creation of the book of Acts contributing tremendously to the same intentional effort.

_________________
The Jesus Mythicist Creed:
The "Jesus Christ" of the New Testament is a fictional composite of characters, real and mythical. A composite of multiple "people" is no one.

The celestial Origins of Religious Belief
ZG Part 1
Jesus: Hebrew Human or Mythical Messiah?