Winston wrote: ↑December 8th, 2017, 5:55 am
Btw did you all know that there was a historian named Philo who documented the history of Judea from 20 CE to 60 CE. Yet he never mentions one word about Jesus. Why? Isnt that very odd?
Philo was a Jewish theologian in Egypt, whose theology is similar to New Testament theology. In which of his documents would it have been appropriate for him to mention Jesus.
Josephus was the historian, and ancient manuscripts of his do mentioned Jesus and His works.
I just saw the documentary "caesars messiah the roman conspiracy to invent jesus". You should see it. It makes a lot of sense. I first saw it in 2013 but didnt follow it well. Now i understand it a lot better.
I've got limited time, so I don't know if or when I'll get around to watching these videos.
Some of its arguments:
- The romans distributed the four gospels in judea when they were written in 70 AD. They could have destroyed them if they hated Christianity but they didnt. That means the Romans invented Christianity and promoted it.
This looks like yet another crackpot theory. Why would pagan Romans do this? The gospels are too Jewish for the Romans to have written them, with Mark being written with a Jewish accent, using 'kai' like 'wa'--- the word for 'and' all over the place. How would the religion take off if there were no actual adherants and it just started because the Romans wrote a book.
There are some sites in Israel that are supposed to be Biblical sites because of some less-than-reliable reason like Constantine's mother saying that a certain mountain was the mount of transfiguration or because a British officer thought a hill looked like a skull. But there are also places where there has been a constant tradition that the place was a certain location, for example, the upper room site, where Jesus was believed to have had the Lord's Supper and the apostles were tarrying when they were baptized with the Holy Spirit in Acts 2. Arechologists have dug down to the first century at this site and there is a synagogue there, found with Christian 'grafitto' and the Torah niche facing the traditional burial and resurrection site of Christ, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre instead of toward the temple. This dates to the first century. How would all of this have started so early just from a book written by Romans?
Paul was going around evangelizing before the dates you mention. He mentions some figures who were in certain roles, for example Erastus, the chaimberlain of the city in Corinth, i.e. the director of public works. Archeologists have found an inscription with this man's name on it.
James (Yakov) was Jesus (Yeshua's) brother. Did you hear several years ago that an ossuary from the first century was discovered, possibly something that formerly had been stored at an Armenian church as the ossuary of St. James. This was a bone box his bones were stored in. Normally, these boxes say the name and say son of, and don't mention a brother. But this one said James the brother of Jesus the son of Joseph. Statistically, the chances were high was that this was the ossuary of THE James, and then we also have to consider his brother was important enough to mention on his ossuary.
- The gospel manuscripts are in greek. Not hebrew or aramaic. This means the authors were more roman than jewish.
Why would it mean that? Why wouldn't they be written in Latin, the language of the Romans, if that were the case? Read Edersheim's Life and TImes of Jesus the Messiah. There were a large number of Greek-speaking synagogues using the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament in the first century. Maybe one in 8 people in the empire held to Judaism as their religion, and there were synagogues all over. The ones in Judea used Greek and Hebrew. There is also a tradition that Matthew was originally in Hebrew.
- The gospels are pro roman and say that you should pay your taxes to caesar, when jesus said "render unto caesar what is caesars". Gee who benefits from that? The Romans of course.
Caesar's face was on the coin. That was a logical answer, and a brilliant one politically.
- The gospels are anti jewish and condemns jewish pharisees and tries to blame jews for jesus crucifixion and thus creating anti semitism. They cause division in judea and weaken the Jews there.
'Jews' in some instances in John may refer to Jewish leaders in Judea, as opposed to other Jews. But since the author and immediate audience was Jewish, this wouldn't create 'antisemitism.' The Old Testament is full of prophetic criticism toward disobedient Israelites and their leaders.
- The gospel narrative of jesus fits exactly the narrative of emperor Titus Flavius and his campaign. Many events are the same. And even more striking is that the exact SEQUENCE of the events are the same too! That cannot be coincidence once you see the list.
How many people did Titus raise from the dead?
- The writers of the four gospels could not be fishermen. Fishermen were not educated or literate at the time. Only professional scribes of the Roman government had the skills and education to write them. Especially since they were in greek. Jewish fishermen could not write sophisticated stories in greek.
False. First of all, only two of them were supposed to be fishermen as far as we know. Jews back then, even fishermen, learned to write. There were schools in small Jewish towns. The Pharisees set up the system. The synagogue could serve as the meeting for the school. Boys learned to read and also memorized the Torah from age five to 10. Some went on to study further on the prophets. Some of those went on for so-called rabinnical training.
- The prophecies of the gospels came true in 70 AD when the jewish temple was destroyed. Thats when they were written and backdated.
The reason some date the gospels late is that they don't realize that God can tell people future events. It's circular reasoning to say the Gospels must be back dated if you think about it.
- In 70 AD another jesus named jesus of aranais was crucified on the cross too. Perhaps there is some mix up here.
You are missing it by 40 years, and there were other men named Yeshua or Yehoshua back then. Joshua was an important historical figure. There was also a priest named Yeshua in the time of Zechariah the prophet. These were Jewish names.
- The reason the Christians destroyed the library of alexandria and killed hypatia was because the pagans at the time were exposing the fact that the romans copied the exact motifs from their pagan religions to establish Christianity. To cover up the proof that they copied pagan religions, the romans tried to destroy all proof of the linkage between paganism and Christianity by destroying the books of the library. That was the true motive.
Sounds like a theory that relies on those who hear it not looking up their history. The burning had to do with Roman generals and emperor's invading, Caesar first, then later Aurelian. Where is the evidence of the Christians being involved?
Why did the Romans feed Christians to the lions and other horrific things if they started the religion and maintained it for their purposes?
- Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire. He would not do that if it were a Jewish religion. He would only do that if it was a roman religion, which the flavian dynasty created. That makes sense. A roman ruler would only promote a roman created religion.
I recently read a statement from him about having nothing to do with the Jews. He died try to distance Christianity from Judaism. But that doesn't mean that the Romans, who persecuted the religion, had created it.
So you see, theres a lot of evidence for this theory that the romans invented Christianity to pacify the jews, so they could control them with religion rather than a standing army and continue fighting them in wars. Eventually the religion was used for political control of course. It was a brilliant plan and invention. And it makes sense if you study it and look at the big picture.
None of that constitutes evidence. Some of it is just plain false. The rest of it is asserting connections without evidence.