The Mystery of Jesus Christ.

ghostgeek
ghostgeek: Did the man we call Jesus Christ ever walk the Earth, and if he did, was he special? This man is such an ingrained part of our culture that to ask such questions seems blasphemous. Yet, outside of the Bible gospels, there is very little evidence for him. This I find strange. Yes, it's true, we're going back far in time to look him and we can therefore expect much of the evidence to have been lost. But this is Jesus Christ we're talking about, a man charismatic enough to inspire a new religion. A man who supposedly was considered such a troublemaker that the Jewish priests and the Roman authorities were of one accord in putting him to death. So why didn't the historians of the day write copiously about him? Surely, if they had, something would have come down to us? After all, there seems enough material to fill whole libraries with books pertaining to the history of the period.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: One has to start somewhere, so I'm going to begin my search for Jesus Christ with the Romans. What did their historians have to say about him? The truth is, not much. Let us consider what we have.

Cornelius Tacitus, who lived ca. 55 - 117 CE is often considered to be the foremost historian of the Roman Empire. Towards the end of his life he wrote "Annales" wherein he describes the the great fire of Rome in 64 CE. He writes:

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christian by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate."

Note that this was written almost a century after Jesus died and contains errors. For one, Pilate was a prefect, though later governors would be called procurator. Also, he should have called Jesus by name if he was using official Roman records, rather than Christus or messiah. For these reasons historians generally assume Tacitus was using the story the Christians themselves presented about their origins.

Another Roman historian, Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, writing in the year 120 CE, has this to say:

"He ( Emperor Claudius ) banished from Rome all the Jews, who were continually making disturbances at the instigation of one Chrestus."

Chrestus was a fairly common name in Rome at the time so it is unlikely this passage was referring to Jesus Christ, who supposedly was already dead anyway.

Finally we have Pliny the Younger, who was governor of the province of Bithynia et Pontus, writing to the Emperor Trajan in about 112 asking for advice on how to deal with Christians:

"They stated that the sum total of their error or misjudgement, had been coming to a meeting on a given day before dawn, and singing responsively a hymn to Christ as to God, swearing with a holy oath not to commit any crime, never to steal or commit robbery, commit adultery, fail a sworn agreement or refuse to return a sum left in trust."

Clearly, by the beginning of the Second Century, there were plenty of Christians around but we are not told anything about Jesus Christ himself. All in all therefore Rome's historians don't have much to offer.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: With little to be got from the Romans perhaps it's time to see what the Jews wrote about Jesus Christ. Sadly, it's much the same picture as with the Romans. Three names are to be mentioned. One is the historian Justus of Tiberias, who lived in Galilee in the second half of the First Century CE. None of his texts have survived but there are descriptions of them, including one in a work by Photios, a patriarch in Constantinople living in the Ninth Century. Photios reports:

"he does not even mention the coming of Christ, the events of His life, or the miracles performed by Him."

Nothing there then so lets move on to our second significant Jewish figure, the philosopher Philo Judaeus from Alexander, who was born ca. 20 BCE and died ca. 40 CE. Nowhere in his works does Philo mention the existence of Jesus or his disciples, although he does describe both the Essenes and Pontius Pilate. This leaves us with Flavius Josephus.
(Edited by ghostgeek)
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: Titus Flavius Josephus, born Joseph ben Matityahu, lived between ca. 37 - 100 CE. He was a noted Romano-Jewish scholar, historian and hagiographer, his most important works being "The Jewish War" and "Antiquities of the Jews." In the Antiquities, written around 93–94 AD, Jesus Christ appears to be mentioned twice, in books 18 and 20. In book 18 there is a passage, now called the "Testimonium Flavianum," which states that:

"About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared."

The trouble with this passage is that it is nowadays considered to be a partial, maybe even a complete, forgery by most scholars. The second passage, found in book 20, reads:

"the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James."

The general opinion is that this passage is genuine, though not everybody agrees. So there you have it, the only meaningful non-biblical references to Jesus, written some sixty years after his death. References that are controversial.
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lori100
lori100: "The Secret Teachings of All Ages" by Manly P. Hall---------During the centuries just prior to the Christian Era, the secrets of the pagan Mysteries had gradually fallen into the hands of the profane. To the student of comparative religion it is evident that these secrets, gathered by a small group of faithful philosophers and mystics, were reclothed in new symbolical garments and thus preserved for several centuries under the name of Mystic Christianity. It is generally supposed that the Essenes were the custodians of this knowledge and also the initiators and educators of Jesus. If so, Jesus was undoubtedly initiated in the same temple of Melchizedek where Pythagoras had studied six centuries before.-------------Jesus was reared and educated by the Essenes and later initiated into the most profound of their Mysteries. Like all great initiates, He must travel in an easterly direction, and the silent years of His life no doubt were spent in familiarizing Himself with that secret teaching later to be communicated by Him to the world. Having consummated the ascetic practices of His order, He attained to the Christening.--------------------Within the last century several books have been published to supplement the meager descriptions in the Gospels of Jesus and His ministry. In some instances these narratives claim to be founded upon early manuscripts recently discovered; in others, upon direct spiritual revelation. Some of these writings are highly plausible, while others are incredible. There are persistent rumors that Jesus visited and studied in both Greece and India, and that a coin struck in His honor in India during the first century has been discovered. Early Christian records are known to exist in Tibet, and the monks of a Buddhist monastery in Ceylon still preserve a record which indicates that Jesus sojourned with them and became conversant with their philosophy.-------------------------George Faber declares the original name of Jesus was Jescua Hammassiah. Godfrey Higgins has discovered two references, one in the Midrashjoholeth and the other in the Abodazara (early Jewish commentaries on the Scriptures), to the effect that the surname of Joseph's family was Panther, for in both of these works it is stated that a man was healed "in the name of Jesus ben Panther." The name Panther establishes a direct connection between Jesus and Bacchus--who was nursed by panthers and is sometimes depicted riding either on one of these animals or in a chariot drawn by them.------------In The Greek Gospel of Nicodemus it is declared that when Jesus was brought into the presence of Pilate the standards borne by the Roman guards bowed their tops in homage to him in spite of every effort made by the soldiers to prevent it. In The Letters of Pilate the statement also appears that Cæsar, being wroth at Pilate for executing a just man, ordered him to be decapitated. Praying for forgiveness, Pilate was visited by an angel of the Lord, who reassured the Roman governor by promising him that all Christendom should remember his name and that when Christ came the second time to judge His people he (Pilate) should come before Him as His witness.------------------------------Wikipedia------Most scholars hold that Jesus lived in Galilee and Judea.[76][77][78] The Talmud refers to "Jesus the Nazarene" several times and scholars such as Andreas Kostenberger and Robert Van Voorst hold that some of these references are to Jesus.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: Looks like you've just preempted some of what I was going to say Lori. Us old stagers take time to get going.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: Before moving on, I thought I'd take one last look at the passages in Josephus I quoted above. It would seem that the earliest copies we have of the "Antiquities of the Jews" date from around the Tenth Century. We do however see the work being quoted much ealier by the Christian church fathers. Origen, ca. 182 - 251 CE., writing in 240 CE., acknowledges the reference to Jesus' brother James but fails to mention the Testimonium Flavianum. He also wrote in other texts that:

"... this writer ( Josephus ), although not believing in Jesus as Christ ..."

and

"... ( Josephus ) did not accept Jesus as Christ ..."

From this it seems reasonable to assume that the version of "Antiquities" Origen was using didn't include the "Testimonium." But something else seems to be amiss with Origen's text. According to him, Josephus interpreted the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple as the punishment of God for the Jews having executed James. Yet, though Josephus devotes much of his text to the destruction of Jerusalem, he has little to say about James, thus making it hard to explain the connection. And it appears not to be in the version we now have of the "Antiquities." Thus doubts have been raised about the text Origen was using.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: To be complete I suppose I should see what, if anything, the ancient rabbis had to say about Jesus. The Talmud contains passages that some scholars believe refer to Jesus. Others argue that the Talmud provides no evidence of an historical Jesus, but rather shows the rabbinical reaction to claims that Jesus was the Christian messiah. Anyway here's a short list of what is considered most apposite:

"It has been taught: On the eve of Passover they hanged Yeshu ... because he practised sorcery and enticed Israel astray."

"Our rabbis taught: Yeshu had five disciples - Mattai, Nakkia, Netzer, Buni and Todah,"

"It happened with Rabbi Elazar ben Damah, whom a serpent bit, that Jacob, a man of Kefar Soma, came to help him in the name of Yeshu ben Pantera."

"Once I was walking on the upper street of Sepphoris, and found one of the disciples of Yeshu the Nazarene."

So what can we say about this list? Well, for starters, Yeshu was an extremely common name. Josephus himself mentions at least ten. Also, here we have five disciples with unrecognizable names, rather than the twelve mentioned in the Bible. There is also the fact that the Nazarenes were a Jewish religious sect and does not imply coming from Nazareth. Oh, and yes, it seems the Talmud wasn't written until about 200 AD. Hardly what I would call substantial evidence for the existence of a real Jesus.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Ghost: "This man is such an ingrained part of our culture that to ask such questions seems blasphemous."

No, its just absurdly ridiculous. Something can't come out of nothing. To argue recorded events in the life of someone in the distant past is a fool's errand. To even argue recorded events in MY life, in the here and now, is equally bizarre.

Wherever you find a maverick, you'll find those who disbelieve in the possible. All Trailblazers have their antagonists who will shoot them in the back at first opportunity - it's an inescapable dynamic, well known from the outset by those meteoric lights. Clearly, those same must display a level of courage others around them don't possesses. That's their high calling, to which no other can rise.

How easy for the many little Indians to criticize the only Chief.
(Edited by Zanjan)
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Ghost: "So why didn't the historians of the day write copiously about him?"

That's like expecting Don Cherry to narrate the history of the Lev Tahor.

The Romans were pagans; they wrote their own history, carving their battles into stone. This was their chief occupation. Who wants to write about the weather, of farmers and goat herders? Where's the glory?

What do those kind of battles mean to us? What has any political war taught mankind?

Look around and count how many ancient statues they built to honour great thinkers, poets and philosophers- compare to the number of statues they built to memorialize crowned kings, warriors and conquerors. (include those which are now rubble) Then make the same comparison in modern times and ask who built them.

Jesus was a teacher amongst many; His ministry last 3 years. In that time, how many followers did He have? Yet you expect kings and generals to on-the-spot record the 3 year - long adventure of this band of 13 unarmed fishermen?

Finally, as for sectarian references in writing about a religion, even Wikepedia gets things wrong about my own. Walk into any Christian book store and you can find some (actually many) ugly mentions of non-Christian religions. Who is the authority here?

(Edited by Zanjan)
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: Zanjan, you may very well be right. It may be extremely foolish to look for evidence of a physical Jesus but that hasn't stopped people trying. Nor should it. If we just assume that things are a certain way how can we possibly progress? It is in the act of looking that we begin to learn. What we find may not please us, but surely, that is better than living in a state of willful ignorance?
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: A little more digging has turned up some interesting references in the Talmud that may possibly link to Jesus. They concern someone named ben Pantera, Yeshu ben Pantera or ben Stada, who is trying to lead the Jews away from their religion:

'Rabbi Eliezer said to the sages, “Did not Ben Stada bring spells from Egypt in a cut on his flesh?” They replied, “He was a fool and one does not prove anything from a fool.” Ben Stada is Ben Pandira. Rabbi Hisda [a Babylonian teacher of the third century] said, “The husband was Stada, the paramour was Pandira.” The husband was Pappos ben Jehudah; the mother was Stada. The mother was Miriam [Mary], the dresser of women’s hair—as we say in Pumbeditha {a Babylonian town where there was a famous rabbinical college], “Such a one has been false to her husband” [Shaddath 104b]'

Another variant is this:

'And this they did to ben Stada in Lydda, and they hung him on the eve of Passover. Ben Stada was ben Pandira.

Rabbi Hisda said: "The husband was Stada, the paramout Pandira."

( Another said ) "But was not the husband Pappos ben Judah? - His mother's name was Stada." (Another said ) "But his mother was Miriam, the dresser of womens's hair? - As we say in Pumbeditha: 'S' - tath da ( lit., 'she has turned away from' - ) her husband."'
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Why live in the past? When you find nothing meaningful in what Jesus said, why is He so important to you? Why not look to modern Prophets? Is it because you think there's no such thing? Most people don't pursue something they believe doesn't exist.

" If we just assume that things are a certain way how can we possibly progress? "

We'd look at the present and project to future. Hindsight is great IF you learn something from it, but if you're looking backwards, you can't see what's ahead of you.

You know, I wrote about my high school friend, Ralph Schmidt, in my teen diary. I've wondered if he's still alive. Once, I thought about looking for him until I realized how many Ralphs there are in this country. I know I wouldn't look for Ralph Schmeed because only females change their last name.

Then again, I used to have an accountant who bought a porche and changed his full name to JR Ewing. Seriously.

(Edited by Zanjan)
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: We are clearly very different people Zanjan, you and I. Just because I don't believe that Jesus is God or a prophet doesn't mean I can't find him interesting in an historical sense. Years ago I wrote a thesis on Manet's "Bar at the Folies Bergere." I detest Manet's art but, as history, the period he lived in I find fascinating. So I wrote my little thesis and discovered that what most people claimed, that the mirror behind the barmaid was behaving strangely, was just nonsense. Twelve academics wrote a book about this picture, all trying to explain the behaviour of the mirror. They were all talking tosh. There's nothing amiss with the mirror, everybody was just looking at it wrong. See, until you delve into a subject you cannot say what you might find. Now I'm looking at Jesus. Odds are I'll find nothing of interest but unless I look I'll never know. Call it curiosity.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Maybe not so different Ghost - I've been to the Folies Bergere - in the Yukon, that is. It was an historically accurate production in the historically accurate Dawson City Opera House. It was living art - you had to be there, ya know. There wasn't a bar but the lobby was lovely.

The painting - if art doesn't make you think, it hasn't done its job.

If you want to travel back in time, to 1898, Dawson's the place to go - same streets and wood buildings, wallpaper, doors and signs, even the original glass in the shop windows. Always the Indian, who comes out of nowhere, asking if you need help to fix that broken thing. It's quiet. No vehicles. There's an echo of sound, of voices and hammers and horses.

Every place has its aura that mixes today with the past. One can feel the presence of the souls gone before - you can touch the things they touched, smell the air they breathed, travel the trails they walked, point to the hills they saw and taste the water they drank. Certain spirits are drawn to certain places.

Maybe if you traveled to Israel, you'll get your answers. I remember standing on a hillside, overlooking the Sea of Galilee....such a magnificent view....on looking to my right, the thought of Jesus came to me..... and I wept. That never happened to me before. Funny, I found myself apologizing for all the rotten humans.

(Edited by Zanjan)
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: I'm not much of a traveller but I've seen a few old things. Stonehenge, the tooth of a mammoth, that sort of thing. The local museum has a few cannon balls from the English Civil War. For the most part though, the past only exists in books. Lucky for me then that I like looking through them. That's what I'm doing at the moment with our friend Jesus. It would be nice to think that if one only looked hard enough all the questions about him could be answered. Well, I'm not expecting that any time soon but so what? The scraps of information that are available sure make up an interesting puzzle.
(Edited by ghostgeek)
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: I guess the repeated references to ben Pantera, Pandera, Panthera etc., are the basis for the claim that Jesus was fathered by a Roman soldier, that Jesus was illegitimate. Whatever the truth of the matter, it is quite certain that this rumour is old. No less a person than Origen tells us that he heard about it from the second century pagan philosopher Celsus, who in turn claimed to have heard it from a Jew.

The name Pandira or Pantera appears to actually have been used as a personal name. In 1859 some Roman gravestones were found in Germany from the first or second century CE. One of them had this inscribed on it in Latin:

"Tiberius Iulius Abdes Pantera from Sidon, aged 62 years served 40 years, former standard bearer(?) of the first cohort of archers lies here."

There is no reason to suppose that this is the gravestone of the father of Jesus Christ, yet the possibility lingers on.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: You know, I used to know guys who claimed they had sexual relations with their wife 7 days a week. Seriously, what makes you think that just because somebody said something, they're credible people?

When you read the Bible, you get to know something about its figures just from the things they say and the way they say it. The narrators were careful not to malign anyone, revealing a wrong doing while not mentioning names unless it was connected to something very important, like the deeds of Herod, already known to the people, whose lives revolved around those events.

The Bible speaks of spiritual lessons, great deeds, the conditions of the time and trials of the early followers. Caliber of character is what you're looking for and integrity can't be hidden.

Maybe you should have picked a more challenging Prophet to investigate - Moses or Krishna?
(Edited by Zanjan)
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sixty 9 yrs of wanda
sixty 9 yrs of wanda: Very admiring of all the entries here . . . and not to diminish in any way the worth of same . . . I'd just like to tag on a personal thought here . . . i dont think it matters one way or the other if he was ever a living person.

if you subscribe to his existence as a deity, and the dynamic implications of that, you have no need of any proof of his past physicality.

i also think there was a lot of 'editing' and deletion of texts on the part of the early church authorities in order to preserve the 'pureness' of the christ image.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: Wanda, as Zanjan knows, I've been reading a book, on and off, called "The Jesus Mysteries" by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. Basically, it says that Jesus never existed as a real person. Their thesis is that the myth of Osiris-Dionysus was combined with Jewish scripture to produce a Jewish version of the Pagan Mysteries. If I have it right, their claim is that the Gnostics were the original and true Christians. I really don't know if their ideas are credible but they certainly sound interesting, so I've decided to take a closer look at Jesus, hence all the posts.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: Zanjan, I did look at Moses but the Egyptologists got in the way. It seems that the chronology derived from the pharaonic king lists is used to date events in the ancient world. Trouble is, it's been called into question by a number of people. This means the events described in the Old Testament may not have the dates traditionally ascribed to them. For example, depending on which date is correct, the Israelites may have invaded Canaan and destroyed Jericho, or it may be nothing other than a tall story. It made everything just too uncertain to make it worthwhile looking for friend Moses. As for you knowing guys who claimed they had sexual relations with their wife 7 days a week, well I knew someone who was having it off with his girlfriend every night. Trouble was, he was getting fed up because he couldn't find time to see his mates. I guess the moral of the story is that you can always have too much of a good thing.
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: I think this is about the right time to look at the Bible. It is here, in the New Testament, that we really encounter Jesus Christ. The four Gospels, those of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the core texts and paint a convincing picture of a real man. But there are problems. For a start, scholarly opinion suggests that none of the Gospel accounts were written by an eyewitness to the events they record. The suggested dating is as follows:

Mark ca. 68 - 73 CE

Matthew ca. 70 - 90 CE

Luke ca. 80 - 100 CE

John ca. 90 - 110 CE

All four Gospels, with the possible exception of Matthew, were originally written in Greek, despite the fact that Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic. It has been suggested that Mark was written in Rome or Syria, Matthew in Syria, Luke in Rome and John in Ephesus.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: We know for a fact that many Jews spoke several languages in the area at the time - one had to do business by trade with surrounding countries and along camel routes. Long before the time of Jesus, Jewish scribes were efficient in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek since the dead sea scrolls were written in all of these languages, alternating within the same scroll. In life, many of them would also be fluent in Latin, due to Roman occupation.

Jesus had to be multilingual. He'd have known the Egyptian language while growing up.

There's more reason to believe they were originally conveyed in all those languages - we don't know what was available when the Christians collected letters many years later, but these would have been translated into one language - the most popular for literary works.
(Edited by Zanjan)
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ghostgeek
ghostgeek: I'm not too clued up on the disciples Zanjan, but it does seem a number were fishermen and others could have been ardent Jewish nationalists. Not the sort of men I would have expected to start writing in Greek. They were Jewish, so if they'd done any writing surely they would have directed it at like-minded Jews. Considering that Aramaic was the day-to-day language of Israel in the Second Temple period, the language of large sections of the biblical books of Daniel and Ezra, and the main language of the Talmud, surely the disciples would have used this in preference to Greek.
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Zanjan
Zanjan: Fishermen weren't scribes. Since Jesus could read, one assumes He could write too but we think He was too busy so left that to His trusted disciples. Personally, I don't think I could trust anyone enough to do that, especially with something so important. Maybe He just wrote in the sand and someone copied it, eh? No one knows.

A Revelation has never been written in day-to-day language (conversational); certainly not any other literary works were either. Just isn't done. Often it was sung. The language of the spirit is flowery and poetic.




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sixty 9 yrs of wanda
sixty 9 yrs of wanda: somehow ive gotten the impression that 'traveling' prophets or teachers often arent concerned at all with the recording of their thoughts . . . they're so 'in the moment' that they literally let go of yesterday's output and even the thought process of 10 minutes ago . . . knowing full well that the key features of their awareness will return to them over and over again . . .
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