What is the historical evidence that Jesus Christ lived and died?

Discussion in 'Religion and Spirituality' started by OddTrader, Apr 14, 2017.

  1. Furthermore, the logic of calling "Jesus' believers" as "Christians", as recorded 3 times in Paul's letters, should be fairly weak, theologically.

    There should be just One Christ, who saved the world for his work done to All others. Once his work is done, it's one-off salvation work for All others.

    There should be no need for another Christ in order to do/repeat the same work or any additional work. Otherwise, that would indicate/ prove that Jesus didn't do enough work for saving the world, and he needed someone else to back him up, doing more follow-up work for him. Of course not. Jesus definitely did enough!

    Any learners of Jesus wants to become another Christ is just a funny concept. Too proud of one's own ability, and divinity - To be another Christ! Her/his own work might not be able even to save herself/himself.

    Perhaps Paul really wanted to become another Christ, besides calling/appointing himself an Apostle - which seemed not good enough!

    Perhaps, Jesus' followers should simply learn from God, the Nature. Just like many secular people do!

    "God is (y)our teacher. Nobody else" - Jesus!

    Jesus himself purposely did not write any holy books!

    LOL
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2017
    #51     Apr 22, 2017
  2. Mtrader

    Mtrader

    They were smart. Better to give each one a part of the religions market. Kind of an oligopoly. Another smart move was to sayb that people should believe without proof. Something like a fundmanager without trackrecord.

    But a few years ago Allah started an offensive to take a bigger market share. A rather aggressive campaign, but with members that are ready to die for their boss.

    If religions would never have existed, the world would already have been over populated centuries ago. As the killed ones combined with their reproductions would make a huge difference.
     
    #52     Apr 22, 2017
    Ghost_of_Blotto likes this.
  3. It's possible that all of the above marketing acts was designed for one purpose.

    Jesus had a vision, to provide good education to everyone for free!

    He believed good education comes from good messages.

    He also believed good messages can easily reach the whole world effectively when outreaching is organised and implemented well.

    (Printing was uncommon then and very expensive.)

    Through outreaching with a network of travelling preachers - "Multiplication - Exponential compounding"!

    He was confident his messages, good or bad, can one day reach the whole world!

    Perhaps the world's first!

    Without using Multiplication approach, many pretty good religions (like Zoroastrianismor) or philosophies (like Stoicism) could not even survive well!

    LOL
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2017
    #53     Apr 22, 2017
  4. Obviously, not everyone had the required intellect and was able to become a philosopher due to its hard work. Justin finally settled down with Jesus' theory, which could be a simplified version of integrating Zoroastrianism and Stoicism.

    When Jesus presented them in a Zen approach with many easy-to-understand parables, basically almost everyone in marketplace now can understand his messages.

    Without an effective marketing scheme including outreaching, messages and parables, they would never have the chance to learn so much about Stoicism and Zoroastrianism.



    Believe it or not, Jesus mentioned to his believers that after taking now water baptism they would need about fire baptism in the future. Without much further elaboration/ exploration.

    The fire baptism I guess could well be leading to Zoroastrianism in his mind, awaiting his followers to find it out by themselves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoroastrianism . There are 20 times mentioning Fire in the page.



    The fire baptism I guess could also imply Stoic Physics as well https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoic_physics . There are about 8 times mentioning Fire in this page.


    LOL
     
    Last edited: Apr 22, 2017
    #54     Apr 22, 2017
  5. Humpy

    Humpy

    I like to think Christianity has a lot of positives. Love not hate. Construction not destruction etc.
    Unlike some others.
     
    #55     Apr 23, 2017
  6. " I just guess my religion is a better one, if not the best. I like to think it has a lot of positives. Love, not hate. Construction, not destruction/ etc. Unlike some others. " --- A positive believer with a loving heart and constructive mind
     
    #56     Apr 23, 2017

  7. What blood type? How could they verify/investigate the nails were once used for Jesus, but not others? DNA test? Based on any other blood samples from Jesus' close relatives? Who are they, and how to get their samples?


    Why was it so hard for so long time that people just could not find any hard evidence such as any relics related directly to Jesus? Such as the iron nails, trees of the cross, Crown Of Thorns (probably with blood sample), etc.

    If there were any valid relics, there should have been a proper place for people to keep them already, where is the place similar to the one for Justin's above, who died in year 165?

    Jesus is definitely a much more significant figure in Christianity history.

    Any recently new findings would be questionable, imo.
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2017
    #57     Apr 23, 2017
  8. stu

    stu

    Indeed. But those were secular values prior to their use to form the general format which became Christianity.

    In my view if those positives can't be applied purely for their own sake without the condition of a religion demanding them under instruction or with threat and fear of retribution as reason to employ them, that can only diminish their worth.
     
    #58     Apr 23, 2017
  9. Talking about Religions in general can be equally or much more complicate than this current thread. imo

    In simple words, I would think there were many of the historical traditions, family-rules, society-rules, religious-rules, myths, mysteries and phenomenons, generated either by human or by the nature, that could not be rationally explained by the common knowledge and theories of the era.

    The concept of Sin was commonly used to punish individuals due to serious lack of scientific and medical knowledge.

    e.g. A baby if born blind or disabled was considered due to the sins of its parents. The whole family could be expelled by the community, moving far far away from the community.

    With zero support from the community members (or even relatives), that would make the family's living even much harder.

    In a sense, the community simply expect the whole needy family would completely vanish/die.

    A figure like Jesus understood what to do through providing rational education/knowledge to everyone for free, in order to correct the misconceptions and mistakes people made according to this kind of bad traditions.

    Jesus himself did not invent a religion of his theory, at all. He simply told every person, whether he healed or not, just "Go home!". He did not say, "Come to my church! My name is Jesus."

    LOL
     
    #59     Apr 23, 2017
  10. Pekelo

    Pekelo

    Since scientists were marching yesterday, let's throw in a little knowledge (gnosis) into this thread:

    For anyone who comes with Josephus or anybody near contemporary of Jesus, I would like to discuss the other writings from the same time:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_apocrypha

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_of_Trent

    Now we can bet serious money that any nearly contemporary, but contradictory (to dogma) writings didn't make it through the censoring process of 20 centuries and today we simply don't even have any idea what was left out. Except when we find old writings in caves or in dry sand. My fav is this:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_Peter

    "The Gospel of Peter is one of the non-canonical gospels rejected as apocryphal by the Church Fathers and the Catholic Church's synods of Carthage and Rome, which established the New Testament canon.[1] It was the first of the non-canonical gospels to be rediscovered, preserved in the dry sands of Egypt.
    ....this gospel denies the crucifixion of Jesus which contradicts the belief of mainstream Christianity but has similarities with Docetism."
     
    #60     Apr 23, 2017