Did Jesus Christ Exist as a historical person? If so, who was he?

[MrMan]

Did the 'really scholarly' guy say that the holy grail was brought to earth by aliens? King Arthur is supposed to be a historical figure? And so is the part about the holy grail, and he's scholarly?

There are historical documents about Jesus from that era: the New Testament. Plenty of accepted history is accepted based on much weaker evidence. I had a Hebrew Bible professor at the large state university I went to who got his PhD from Harvard. He pointed out that a lot of Ancient Near Eastern scholars would believed some theory about some Egyptian fragment they discovered, but not put any credence in the Old Testament, even though the book of Samuel reports uniquely honest and transparent... apparently court records... of the events of David's life. Writings in Egypt tell of all the great battles the Pharoah's won, very positive propoganda from their perspective. The Bible records records of David's sins.

There is the New Testament, and there are second century writings, 'orthodox' and writings from Gnostics, psuedopygriphal writings from the 2nd century, for example. Where do any of them hint at this 70 AD king theory?

As far as Arthur goes, there could have been some Celtic king (maybe even in what is not France) that served as a historical basis for the legend. But we can actually see that a lot of these legends evolved over time in fictional literature. And so who would really believe anything about Arthur and the legend of the holy grail?

[Winston]

MrMan,
LOL The NT is not a historical document man. Or shall I say MrMan. lol. Come on. It has dialogues in it and narratives. Historical documents don't have dialogue lines line Shakespeare plays. No historian thinks the NT is a historical document. No objective rational historian that is, who hasn't had their minds hijacked by religious fundamentalism. Furthermore, the Bible contains poetry lines that rhyme. Historical documents don't contain poetry. Thomas Paine pointed this out in "Age of Reason". Either way, there is NO historical documentation of Jesus from the years 30 to 33 AD. You can't dispute that.

Ralph Ellis said that King Arthur is not a historical figure. He supposedly lived in 600 AD, yet nothing is written about him until 1100 or 1200 AD. That makes no sense. See the excerpts above. Listen to the podcast interviews with him too. Ellis found historical documents that mention King Jesus in 70 AD. You gotta read his books or listen to his podcasts. The details are in there.

[Winston]

Another interview with Ralph Ellis.

Jesus: King of Edessa | The TRUE origins of JESUS CHRIST w/ Ralph Ellis

Description:

THE RUSSELL SCOTT SHOW - Was Jesus actually a Syrian King? What is the true identity of Josephus Flavius? What did the real 'crown of thorns' look like?

In fact, one could go as far as saying that this is the interview that the Catholic Church has been dreading for the last 1700 years and may end Christianity as we know it. And this is not advertising hyperbole, this really is the end of the Christian fairytale that Jesus was a mere pauper artisan.

We now know exactly who Jesus was, and he was far removed from the stereotype pauper imagery we have been told (or sold). Readers can now visit his city, see the ruins of his citadel, gaze upon his statue, and even handle his coins.

Ralph Ellis' new book: Jesus, King of Edessa. The real historical Jesus, and his real historical kingdom.

(March 2013 release on iPad, Kindle and Nook, with paperbacks from Adventures Unlimited.)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7aczBdyFw0[/youtube]

[MrMan]

Winston,

You should do a little research on Google. Poems from way back when are certainly 'historical documents.' Legal texts are too. The Bible is full of historical documents. It would be foolish for a historian to pretend to do any research on ancient Israel without familiarizing himself with the relavent Biblical texts. The Bible is not written up as a world history textbook. But all of the Bible falls into the category of 'historical documents'. Historians look at poems, laws, plays, etc., whether they are in the Bible or not. A letter to one's grandmother could also be a historical document. It isn't now, but it can become one as time passes.

The similarities of Bible the Bible to a Shakesperean play is very superficial. The main similarity is that if you happen to be using the KJV translation from the early 1600's, the language is similar to that of William Shakespeare because it was translated during his life-time. But Shakesperean plays use some awkward wording because he kept his works as poetry using iambic pentameter, and the KJV is written primarily in prose. If you use another translation, they aren't similar to Shakesperean plays. There are some dramatic and tragic stories in the Bible, and in Shakesperean plays. Both are written on paper. There aren't many similarities beyond these superficial factors.

I don't know if I can listen to your whole video. The man is a contrarian nay-sayer, repeating some liberal German ideas from the 1800s about James and Paul being so at odds with one another over circumcision. Non-Christian Judaism hashed out the issue of Gentile circumcision a generation or so later (as recorded a hundred + years later) and came to similar conclusions as are recorded in Acts 15. Pharisees had not reached a consensus that Gentiles had to be circumcised to be righteous in the first century and eventually agreed that they did not. So it is unreasonable to assume that James must have believed that way. The New Testament does not present Paul as differing from James on this matter. They are shown to have been in agreement in Acts. In Galatians, Paul does not attack James either. He says that James gave him the right hand of fellowship.

Your commentator rather loose and innaccurate. He says that Jesus Christ means 'King Jesus', which is so loose as to be inaccurate and incorrect. Is that what you are referring to when you say he discovered references to King Jesus. In John 1, Nathaniel calls Jesus the 'King of Israel' when Jesus said he saw him under the fig tree before Philip called him. This little piece of supernatural knowledge amazed Nathaniel.

Also, even historians would acknowledge that Paul existed and wrote epistles in the 60's in the first century, before 70 AD. Even this guy acknowledges that Paul (whom he calls Saul) existed. He thinks Paul made up the religion. But there is other evidence, like Mark's Gospel, Peter's letters, etc. If Paul was writing about Jesus in 60 AD, and if even secular historians acknowledge the books of Romans and I Corinthians, then it makes no sense to argue that Jesus led a revolt in 70 AD. How could Paul get a following among people who accepted his teaching that Jesus died, rose, and ascended to the right hand of God if Jesus was still walking around on earth getting an army together to lead a revolt in 70 AD? There were other men named Yeshua or Yehoshua back then, btw.

Fragments of the Gospel of Mark have been found indicating that it is a first century document, too.

The idea that Josephus wrote Luke and Acts sure sounds like a crackpot theory. So does the theory that Jesus of Nazareth was really the son of King Edessa. Yehoshua was the name of one of the national leaders of Israel, right after Moses, in Jewish history.

In the video you posted, he said that Mary means priest or bishop in the Syriac. That sure comes off as plain ignorant. Miriam was the name of Moses' sister. Apparently, it was a very common name back then, with other women in the New Testament also having that name. Why is he looking at the Syriac language to interpret Hebrew names?

Not every interesting conspiracy theory is true. If someone wants to debunk what historians generally accept as true, he needs to show some really solid evidence, not speculative reinterpretations. I know conspiracy theorists thrive on reinterpreting everything.

If you think about it, his propaganda approach to history doesn't make sense. The reality of the first century would have been so starkly different from what Josephus wrote, if this guy were right, that no one would have believed the propaganda in that generation. There needs to be some connection between reality and the propaganda the state uses. If Hitler had released propaganda that said that Winston Churchill was actually a professional boxer who broke into people's houses at night and robbed them, then people would have known that was a lie because they already knew who Churchill was. The idea that Josephus wrote his history to re-write a king of Odessa to be a Jewish carpenter Messiah is ridiculous. The theory that Josephus wrote Luke and Acts is just plain stupid. Why would Rome want to invent a more palatable Jewish religion? Christians would have been a relatively small chunk of the empire in 70 AD. If Rome had an immortal genius emporer who wanted to get rid of the influence of Judaism in the empire over several generations, maybe the theory would make a little more sense. But emporers are not omniscient. They don't know the future. And governments tend to think somewhat short-term. Romans were pagans, so why would they want to invent Christianity, so they could persecute it over the centuries, while it eventually took over. There is no motivation to have Josephus write up Christianity as propaganda. This conspiracy theory makes no sense.

It does sound like this author has collected and research a lot of information. But his contrarian, irrational, unreasonable conspiracy-theory method of putting the information together is not going to produce reliable historical writings.

It is a lot more reasonable to believe that Jesus of Nazareth actually lived in the first century than to believe that aliens brought us the holy grail.

[MrMan]

Here is a little link to a page which debunks some of Ralph Ellis' claims. The 'barbarian' example was pretty telling. How much of this man's theories are based on folk etymologies and similar etymological guesswork?

https://tomverenna.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... -mr-ellis/

Even PhDs can have silly or crackpot theories. (I've got a doctorate, so I can say that.) And it is theoretically possibly to become a language scholar without the degrees, but very unlikely. From what little I've read and heard of them, he doesn't seem to be one.

[Winston]

This theory from the documentary "Empire of the City: Ring of Power" says that Jesus was the son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. lol. What do you think?

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCnU6P9Y858[/youtube]

[Citizen]

Here is a little link to a page which debunks some of Ralph Ellis' claims. The 'barbarian' example was pretty telling. How much of this man's theories are based on folk etymologies and similar etymological guesswork?

https://tomverenna.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... -mr-ellis/

Even PhDs can have silly or crackpot theories. (I've got a doctorate, so I can say that.) And it is theoretically possibly to become a language scholar without the degrees, but very unlikely. From what little I've read and heard of them, he doesn't seem to be one.

Having a PhD doesn't mean a person is super smart. It means that they serve the system and likely were in a city (area) not being poisoned (like the San Fernando Valley). Super geniuses are like Will from Good Will Hunting. They just are. PhD's read the works of somebody else and do their own little study. Then the system gives the good little doggie a job and some paper. It lets him have some toys because he is a good little doggie that licks masters a*s and is likely too stupid to know he is licking masters a*s. The great inventors usually don't have PhD's. Haven't people noticed that real innovation has slowed right down since the retards in gov't, our formal education system of read a book and think what somebody else thinks and our poisoned food/water/air has made the great people dumb? But stupid dogs they don't even know they are stupid. Out of interest Take a look at the life of Brian Wilson (Beach Boy fame) musical super genius and the parasitic little demon Eugene Landy that damn near ruined it all.

To quote Freeman Dyson...super genius; "Dyson: I would abolish the PhD system. The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don’t have PhDs."

http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/freeman- ... -and-phds/

For the sake of information I have no PhD. I will NEVER willingly serve a thief (anyone who of their own free will lives on credit).

[MrMan]

Winston,

I don't really have time to watch all the videos. My question is this, if they are going to come up with some alternative theory for Jesus, why make him some other historically famous person, out of all the millions of people in the world at the time? The theory must be a solid generation off, since Caesar died about 40 years before Jesus Christ was born.

[MrMan]

Having a PhD doesn't mean a person is super smart. It means that they serve the system and likely were in a city (area) not being poisoned (like the San Fernando Valley). Super geniuses are like Will from Good Will Hunting. They just are.

Yeah, Hollywood movie writers are qualified to tell us about geniuses.

PhD's read the works of somebody else and do their own little study. Then the system gives the good little doggie a job and some paper. It lets him have some toys because he is a good little doggie that licks masters a*s and is likely too stupid to know he is licking masters a*s. The great inventors usually don't have PhD's.

Just out of curiousity, was this intended as a swipe at me since I said I have a doctorate? That's a deroggatory way of describing academic work. Is academic work any less servitude than the thousands of other job choices that people have?

Why would we expect great investors to have PhDs? In some fields, PhDs may be inventors, but that is unlikely outside of certain tech fields. Would you expect a PhD in accounting or philosophy to be an inventor? Their PhD would have little to do with invention, at least of the technological variety. PhD's are trained to do research. Some of them come up with new theories or figure new things out. PhDs were involved in inventing the American venture capital model of investing, so PhDs in the financial arena have contributed toward invention indirectly at least. And there are PhDs in the tech and science fields who work in industry inventing things.

When it comes to the field under discussion, if the man had some academic training, he probably wouldn't have made that nonsense argument about 'Barabbas' name indicating that he was one of those bearded men from the east as opposed to his name meaning 'son of the father.' He might also have the good sense to realize that 'Miriam' was a common woman's name, the name of Moses' sister, which means 'bitter', as opposed to try to figure out an esoteric meaning (bishop or priest) from Syriac. From what I've read, some of his linguistic connections sound like junk etymology, the kind of stuff a language scholar would not do. A masters or PhD in some kind of related language field, or at least in religion or theology with language training, might have taught him not to draw such nonsense conclusions.

There is some value to learning the accepted body of knowledge as opposed to just pulling stuff out of you-know-where.

Haven't people noticed that real innovation has slowed right down since the retards in gov't, our formal education system of read a book and think what somebody else thinks and our poisoned food/water/air has made the great people dumb?

When did they do that exactly? Was it before or after missile technology was developed so that they could hit small targets? Did they do that before or after the IPad was invented? Blackberry sold a couple of million units back in , 2004, I think it was. Why did their sales drop so much? Consider the typical cell phone in 2004 and compare it to a cell phone today. Has technology improved a bit? It seems to me that innovation keeps progressing.

But stupid dogs they don't even know they are stupid. Out of interest Take a look at the life of Brian Wilson (Beach Boy fame) musical super genius and the parasitic little demon Eugene Landy that damn near ruined it all.

I know little or nothing about these men's lives or the point you are making. Why don't you just make your point? I don't care to do a google search on them.

To quote Freeman Dyson...super genius; "Dyson: I would abolish the PhD system. The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don’t have PhDs."

Most PhDs aren't trained to invent. That is not what a PhD is about, not in most fields.

http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/freeman- ... -and-phds/

Inventors can make money in the regular economy and don't need Nobel Prize money. Why does this guy care so much about PhD's respecting each other and not inventors? Why does he want their approval.

[Winston]

MrMan,
His point was that PhDs are just good memorization machines. They dont think outside the box or follow evidence that supports unconventional theories. They dont think for themselves. They dont create or innovate.

Did thomas edison or nikola tesla have a PhD? Did henry ford? Did bill gates or steve jobs? Or mark zuckerberg?

Academia contains a lot of lies you cant question. If you challenge darwinian evolution or atheism for example, you wont get published in academia and you may get fired from your teaching position too. It happened to many people already and is well documented. Academia is filled with censorship and agendas and biases too. It is like a cult in many ways.

PhDs also wont know about lies in textbooks that are only discovered by reading source documents. Only a good researcher can find that out.

[Kradmelder]

MrMan,
His point was that PhDs are just good memorization machines. They dont think outside the box or follow evidence that supports unconventional theories. They dont think for themselves. They dont create or innovate.

Did thomas edison or nikola tesla have a PhD? Did henry ford? Did bill gates or steve jobs? Or mark zuckerberg?

Academia contains a lot of lies you cant question. If you challenge darwinian evolution or atheism for example, you wont get published in academia and you may get fired from your teaching position too. It happened to many people already and is well documented. Academia is filled with censorship and agendas and biases too. It is like a cult in many ways.

PhDs also wont know about lies in textbooks that are only discovered by reading source documents. Only a good researcher can find that out.

If you question the holocaust you are slandered and put in prison. Far worse.

Academia works on established existing knowledge. if you want to question that, there is a rigourous process to go through. Einstein did it with relativity. Regularly, foods that are bad for you are revised. Science does allow revision of existing knowledge. There are processes like falsification. You have to prove a theory is false.

Religion does not. It is heresy. You cannot question existing dogma. You can only start anther church. Challenging atheism is religious not scientific as there are no facts. It is faith.

[Winston]

Einstein was a jew. He never proved relativity. It was accepted by academia because they could not explain why the michelson morley experiment in the late 1800s failed to show that the earth is moving or rotating. So rather than change the heliocentric model of the solar system, they decided to put in an ad hoc explanation by einstein to have an excuse to keep the heliocentric model. So einstein saved the establishments heliocentric model.

Einstein was way overrated. He never invented anything. He just wrote equations and formulas on paper that no one could understand. He also plagiarized some of his theories too.

On the other hand, nikola tesla had a long list of inventions. Real inventions that were observable and testable.

Science is not that easy to change. Ask michael cremo. He submitted evidence that human civilizations were older and more advanced than what the official record says. But his evidence and discoveries were suppressed. Also tons of artifacts and fossils submitted to the Smithsonian that contradicts official history of mankind were destroyed or never seen again. So the scientific establishment is not an objective process like they claim. Its full of censorship and suppression.

[MrMan]

MrMan,
His point was that PhDs are just good memorization machines. They dont think outside the box or follow evidence that supports unconventional theories. They dont think for themselves. They dont create or innovate.

Did thomas edison or nikola tesla have a PhD? Did henry ford? Did bill gates or steve jobs? Or mark zuckerberg?

Most PhD fields aren't about making inventions. What kind of invention is getting a PhD in sociology or history going to prepare you to make? For the most part, a PhD is not designed to train you to become an inventor. That's not what it is. PhDs in certain types of engineering might be trained to invent, or they may get that training in a master's degree before continuing on to a PhD. Some PhD's do original research and come up with new theoretical frameworks. Then other PhDs synthesize existing theory. The really innovative ones are the minority. But PhD research is expected to add something knew to the literature.

Academia contains a lot of lies you cant question. If you challenge darwinian evolution or atheism for example, you wont get published in academia and you may get fired from your teaching position too. It happened to many people already and is well documented. Academia is filled with censorship and agendas and biases too. It is like a cult in many ways.

You paint with a broad brush. There are fields besides biology. But it is true that a lot of academic fields are resisitant to change and it can be difficult to publish something innovative in top journals. I read an article about revolutionary finance papers that were hard to publish. The Black Shoales formula paper was hard to publish. More recently, in Marketing, Vargo and Lush's paper on service dominant logic went through many revisions with a higher ranked journal until it was published in a lesser ranked journal.

PhDs also wont know about lies in textbooks that are only discovered by reading source documents. Only a good researcher can find that out.

What lies are those? In my field, PhDs rarely use textbooks. They look at academic articles. I don't know that much about historians and archeologists, but I suspect some historians spend quite a bit of time with archeologists. PhDs in the social scientists collect their own source data and write academic papers on it. Some PhDs write textbooks. Undergraduate and masters coursework may use textbooks. I suppose it depends on the field.

I did use textbooks for Statistics seminars and seminars that combined computer programming with Statistics. I can't think of any other PhD seminars where we actually used a textbook for the class except for research methods seminars. Most seminars required us to read stacks of academic articles from peer reviewed journals.

There are a lot of criticisms that can be leveled at how PhD research is conducted. For example, journals publish statistically significant results. But non-statistically significant results have some value too, and don't make it into the journals. Those who do metanalysis may be dealing with biased data since unsuccessful results aren't published. There is a temptation to violate the assumptions of the standard approach to statistics that uses p-values by inappropriate forms of data mining. In some fields in the social sciences, an accepted theory can be based on one piece of evidence that gets accepted into a good journal and cited quite a bit. Other tests verifying the data are not included like in the hard science.

Academic theories can be resistant to change and it can take some doing to overturn them.

[Kradmelder]

Winston, my thesis defence I was giving an alternative explanation to a current theory. The person whose theory I was contradicting was one of the referees for my oral and written defence. Guess what. I passed.

Ja it is one case.but by the theory of falsification it disproves your allegation.

Of course there is an alternative explanation. Maybe they only wanted to pass me to get this arrogant racist white man out of their country and back to his violent one as soon as possible

Or maybe the answer is more personal. I spent years in the bush. And months tramping the bush in their country with data to back it up. Some guy who only makes theories from some institution may not want to back it up.

I prefer to think they were genuine and accepted an alternative explanation as equally valid

[Winston]

I've been listening more to Ralph Ellis.

He says that in the Jewish Talmud, Jesus is mentioned and blamed for the Jewish revolt of 70 AD. So he must be a historical figure if even the Talmud, which hates Jesus, mentions him. And if he was part of the Jewish revolt of 70 AD, then he must have been alive by then. Interesting.

He also said that after Emperor Nero committed suicide, Jesus and another man competed for the throne. Jesus lost and the other guy, Vesapia (sp?) won. That's why Jesus was crucified. But he was pardoned and let go on certain conditions. So he survived the crucifixion and was banished to England, known then as Britannia. The Freemasons have a similar story about Jesus that they only tell their initiates. In fact. Ellis claims that Jesus was a Freemason. That is odd because I thought the Masons began as a stone maker guild in the Middle Ages. Maybe it goes back farther than that?

Ellis also said that Jesus was Kind of Edessa, a province in Syria. But that part of history was destroyed, yet it still exists in historical texts that the Romans didn't have control over.

Wow if all this is true, it's mind blowing!

You can listen to Ralph Ellis talk about all this for nearly 3 hours here.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hn42_mOtyQ[/youtube]