A Gallilean philosopher and ex-slave was teaching a class on Paul, known Christian.
"Before the class begins, you must get on your knees and worship Jesus Christ and accept that he is the greatest deity ever, even greater than Jupiter Optimus Maximus!"
At this moment, a brave, patriotic, Centurion who had served 30 years duty and worshiped the Emperors every day stood up.
"Who is the son of god?"
The arrogant philosopher smirked and smugly replied "Jesus Christ, you stupid pagan"
"Wrong. It’s Augustus Caesar. If it was Jesus Christ, as you say... then why did he die pathetically on the cross instead of creating an IMPERIVM SINE FINE?"
The philosopher was visibly shaken, and dropped his chalk and copy of the Gospel of Luke. He stormed out of the room crying those crocodile tears. The same tears Christians cry for the conquered Gauls and Britons (who today live in such luxury that most even visit baths every week) when they jealously try to claw justly earned riches from the deserving legionaries. There is no doubt that at this point the "learned" Christian wished he had joined the auxilia and become more than a cultist preacher of barbarian superstitions. He wished so much that he had a gladius to disembowel himself with due to the shame, but he had none for he himself had always preached unconditional pacifism!
The students applauded and all joined the legions that day and accepted the Emperor as their lord and savior. An eagle flew into the room and perched atop the SPQR symbol and shed a tear on the chalk. The 12 tables were read several times, and the Emperor himself showed up and sentenced all Christians to die in the Flavian Amphitheatre.
The philosopher lost his tenure and was sent to the lions the next day. He died with a thunderous applause and was tossed into Tartarus for all eternity.
Which brings up a question I’ve yet to have a Christian answer properly for me- Why did Jesus live and die in a backwater rather than bring his world-saving gospel to Rome?
I mean even ignoring the fact that Jesus never got around to telling the indigenous people in places like Australia that he existed and humans had to do it, going to Rome seems like it would have been the best place to spread the message at the time.
It walks a very fine line that appeals to both Christians and non-Christians. It's more about the drama and struggle around Jesus, without ever directly addressing his divinity or lack thereof. Judas has all the banger songs, though. He's the protagonist, really.
I learned long ago that there is no point in a response to such Christians because they want you to respond.
And I should add that there are plenty of Christians who are absolutely not like this. Even evangelicals. My wife’s evangelical family has never been anything but completely welcoming of me. No one has so much as tried to convert me, let alone said anything antisemitic.
Yes, it’s real. As I said, it’s happened to me more than once. In fact, I can remember one time where I was kind of worried about the level of anger for my personal safety, although nothing happened.
It is perpetually disappointing the extent to which so many people who claim to be Christians fail to understand even the CliffsNotes version of the Gospel.
Jesus’ arrest was probably bound to happen sooner or later though. As noted Biblical scholar Andrew Zaltzman has often pointed out, Pontius Pilate was a law and order administrator, and Jesus was absolutely guilty under the law at the time.
You all can have your little LARP and potluck, but kindly leave the rest of us the fuck out of it. I get that the world sucks and thinking someone will give you cookies for taking all the shit rich folks pile on you day after day is appealing, but it’s just excusing your own exploitation. I’m not about that life.
I feel like the stigma of sin is vastly overplayed when it’s just an element of being human. Adultery and murder are the same as existing? Alrighty, almighty!
Valhalla seems pretty chill, I’ll look forward to seeing you there… or maybe I’ll go chill with my pa in the sky people’s city. Honestly, I think I’d probably want to be an afterlife tourist… I wonder how early I need to book that.
Also, without Jesus’ arrest and crucifixion, he wouldn’t have died and been resurrected, saving everyone’s souls. So shouldn’t Marjorie be thanking Jews for that?
And when the flying spaghetti monster flew out of his butthole and pasta for our sins we were saved a second time. Making humans the most saved beings in this universe at least.
the smell test is irrelevant. This is a conversation about whether the scientific / historian community is at a concensus on the historical existence of the person in question.
really, mine and your individual opinions are also irrelevant, because even if both you and I never existed- the historical, academic consensus suggests the guy lived.
I’m happy to be the bad guy in that conversation because it’s really not me thats on trial here - it’s your personal faith/belief, that’s as vulnerable to subjectivity as a belief in the spritual Christian (or Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, etc) deity’s existence.
I am not commenting on whether I believe Jesus was a deity, nor am I commented on whether I personally believe there was a real Jesus as political and historical figure at the start of the Common Era - I am saying that to say definitively he did not exist is a faith/belief based assertion, and it’s misinformation to claim it as a fact, it is a belief/opinion that flies in the face of established, peer-reviewed consensus.
You are performing a sleight of hand here by saying “Jesus” and shifting between which one you are saying is real. “Historical” is a statistical no brainer as I stated above. You then shift to equate that guy to the supernatural founder of Christianity.
We (atheists and skeptics) securely say “Jesus the miracle worker and son of God” did not exist. The proof is not there. We fail to accept the proposal of a deity or reports of miracles. No faith involved.
Others use faith to claim the opposite.
It is bit like saying the garden of eden existed because DNA proved a mitochondrial Eve.
that the terms weren’t clearly defined in the original comment is not my fault, and equally you could’ve said that you don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus - which is a very fair statement, but note how it self-defines belief and separates it from categorical fact.
Too much sophistry and you can prove that Santa Claus exists and Joe Biden doesn’t.
You did not at any point specify you were talking about the divinity of Jesus, you just said he didn’t exist- which the simplest response is “ok so who’s the guy with long hair on a cross in every church then?” - obviously in many definitions of “exists” - he exists, including that it is generally accepted that he lived as a real person.
You’re also addressing me as if I’m saying Jesus was a diety. I am not.
Well, again, I ask you - where’s your sources? Me and another guy provided a source that also contained sources. I would genuinely like to read the first-party or academic sources for your argument for my own education.
Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure, and the idea that Jesus was a mythical figure has been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory.
Scholars differ about the beliefs and teachings of Jesus as well as the accuracy of the biblical accounts, with only two events being supported by nearly universal scholarly consensus: Jesus was baptized and Jesus was crucified
I’m leaving this one to the experts. If you don’t believe the them that’s up to you to prove. I personal don’t believe either of us is more informed than they are.
It can be summed up as, “People who have made their livelihood around a potentially fictitious persons of history all claim that said person exists because reasons.”
this conversation is split into so many parts im just trying to chase down this one key point: it’s not enough to say “well I don’t believe them” - I want to be proved wrong here, for my own education. But I want to be proved wrong - with proof. Not just a throwaway comment of “they have not met my (undefined, and unexplained) threshold of proof”
What do you have to show that Jesus didnt exist as a real human? That isn’t your own belief or thought process as your primary source?
You can’t be proved wrong. Noone can ever prove that someone never existed, but you can prove that someone did exist. If you have such proof for the existance for jesus, please share it.
Check the talk page on that (and similar) articles. There are some very zealous editors making sure that they come down harder than the sources really support on the “everyone definitely agrees that he existed” side of the argument…
To call this “Historical Jesus” is misleading at best. It is reasonable to say DOZENS of people fit that description.
Let’s try the same argument today… “A preacher named John was baptized and later was convicted of serious crimes and sentenced by a judge.” How many fit this description? Isn’t it more likely true than false? What does that prove?
This whole argument tries to equate mundane statistics with miracles. It adds nothing to any reasonable discussion outside of post-hoc theological justification.
The thing is that people are basing the magical sky wizards manifesting himself as his son as this “Jesus” character they’ve made up and have decided existed in the way they pretend because there is some tangential corroboration somewhere.
The earliest set of Pauline epistles have a consensus dating around 50, 20 years after the nominal death of Jesus.
The gospel of Mark has consensus dating to 70, 40 years after the nominal death of Jesus.
Multiple Jewish and Roman historians wrote about the existence of Jesus, who weren’t all getting their information from the Bible. There is a long and well-sourced Wikipedia article on this.
...and Pontius Pilot was one historical figure we can prove exists. In letters from Rome telling him to stop genosiding so many Jews. We are supposed to believe that if this really happened, such a guy cared what the Jews thought, and would give them a choice on who to kill? Really? He would have killed Jesus, the other guy, and the crowd for good measure.
It's clearly written to absolve Rome of any guilt since they founded the religion and all of the source material is more likely attributed to Mithra and Simon Magus.
Blame the website, I just had to use the same headline. There was another article with a better headline, but as it was from the Times of Israel, I thought that it would be better to not give them advertising revenue.
I grew up in one church that loved to talk about "the synagogues of satan" and other "fun" stuff like that, so I don't think anything like that is uncommon (particularly in Baptist circles, but probably also outside of it). Some of the kids I grew up with would say "that's Jewish" for something uncool. Pretty sure there parents were full-on anti-Semitic white supremacists. This wasn't even in the south. Glad to be out of that shithole.
I grew up in Indiana, not the south and yep, that’s how it was in Indiana too. I was just on the receiving end.
Although admittedly “that’s gay” was more common for something uncool, whereas if someone was trying to get you to lower a price on a sale, they were trying to “Jew you down.” Which is something I heard at a garage sale several times, so that was nice.
Although admittedly “that’s gay” was more common for something uncool, whereas if someone was trying to get you to lower a price on a sale, they were trying to “Jew you down.” Which is something I heard at a garage sale several times, so that was nice.
Holy shit, really? I always thought I lived in a shitty area for racism, but "Jew you down" was something that would get even someone's racist old grandfather horrified looks here.
I don’t think that was unique to Indiana. I grew up in New Jersey in the late 80s through the 90s and everything bad was gay and everything cheap was jew.
I grew up in New Jersey in the '80s and '90s as well, and I never heard anybody say that. Of course, there were a lot of Jewish people in my community, so they were pretty accepted.
Southern Ontario checking in. We did that too. 'Gyped' and 'indian giver' were also things.
Although, I had an indigenous friend one summer who quickly became popular because he was very funny. He used to use slurs against all of the white kids all of the time. It was the most effective anti racist tactic I've ever witnessed. None of us were comfortable using a lot of the slurs that were baked into our culture, unless it was with our friend and a smile.
To my shame, I also did ‘Gyped’ and ‘Indian giver.’ Now I don’t even use such words in a way that isn’t intended to be disparaging. I say ‘Roma’ and ‘indigenous American’ (or Canadian in your country’s case).
If we assume Jesus was historically real - let me be clear that I don’t really care who was responsible for his death 2000 years ago. (which Christians believe was required for their own salvation anyhow).
I have never understood why anyone would hold modern Jews (or any Jews at all that weren’t present and involved) responsible for Jesus’ death.
Having said that, I have grown up believing it was more or less true that yes the Jews did kill Jesus. (But again, so what?)
This post spurred me to do some duck duck going. I found these two articles interesting. At least I can see the basis for it now. For anyone else coming at this with a similar understanding:
I will say that the first article does a pretty good job of setting up the case for why people believe that. (Unlike the second which kinda surprisingly acts like no one should ever have thought that in the first place.)
Again, even if every person involved in Jesus’ death had been Jewish, and even if Jesus were the actual earthly incarnation of God as his son, I have never seen any basis to lay this at the feet of modern Jews. But now I know more about it than I did.
Yeah there’s a weird dichotomy there - or maybe actually a consistency, but I came at it differently in my head even though I didn’t mention it.
I also think the basis for so much opposition to CRT (as a lightning rod), the shit in Florida and elsewhere (trying to remove the racial component in textbooks from even things like the Rosa Parks incident), and otherwise denying or trying to hide aspects of US history that deal with how we treated black folks is because modern white folks (of which I am one) include a contingent (of which I am not one) who somehow think they are going to be held personally responsible if they admit all these things happened and continue to happen.
There’s a heavy overlap (IME) between this group, and the group who also continues to claim modern Jews are somehow culpable for the death of Jesus. I feel like their Jew hating almost compels them to try pretending racism has been dead for decades or more, because on some level they expect to be blamed just like they still blame Jews today.
I think the biggest problem with Reparations is calling it Reparations. I’m a firm believer that generational impacts have been felt and continue to be felt by the black community after not just slavery outright, but Jim Crow, and racist influences on laws and mores that remain in effect today. I believe it’s reasonable and ethical for our nation to make some attempt to compensate for that. I don’t think it will ever pass while it’s called Reparations. That term is as much of a lightning rod to the right as anything else you could name, IMO.
I would support of a reparations package, and would tend to vote for politicians who put such a package together or promised to do so. (making a lot of assumptions about what the rest of their politics would look like) But step one would be a unified party of Democrats willing to support it in congress, and step two after that unlikely step would be for there to be not enough R in congress to shoot it down. (also unlikely)
So I don’t know what the details of a reparations package would look like, and I sadly think we’ll never see it successfully navigate our political system, and worse, I don’t think it’s only because the kinds of folks who hate the Jews would come out against it. I think a lot of folks in congress would vote against it on what they felt were pragmatic or politically expedient reasons before it could ever stand a chance.
I don’t know if it could be done by EO. That would be interesting to see.
Reparations are a different matter entirely. I’ve been against them, but not because I don’t think our society has no debt to repay to the descendants of slaves. Quite the contrary, I think there has been generational harm that we need to be aware of and try to make up for.
But reparations gives people the impression that the previous harm can be solved with money, which cheapens it a bit. Plus, there will be people who look at the reparations and say “Racism is over, we paid the bill, here’s the receipt”. The descendants of slaves don’t need a one-time payment, they need a society where everyone is truly equal. We’re not there yet.
Here’s how I try to diplomatically look at it from the receiving end- If you believe in a world where your god has a plan, then part of his plan was to create Jews for the purposes of killing Jesus. Because of that, every Jew who ever existed, exists and will exist is only around so that Jesus’ death would happen. Therefore, all Jews are responsible for killing Jesus.
And before you say it, no, apparently Jesus wasn’t a Jew. He was the first Christian.
For sure - if Jesus had to die for Christian salvation, they should be treating modern Jews like their personal heroes if they must insist on linking them to the event.
So that there’s no misunderstanding the Jews didn’t directly kill Jesus, the Roman Empire did. The Jews of the time weren’t universally response for Jesus death either, much less the Jews existent today. If that isn’t enough Christians are missing the whole “Sons aren’t responsible for the Sins of their Fathers” thing the Bible has going on.
With that out of the way…
The problem with that first link is that Jewish Leadership, who are the ones that conspired together to have Jesus arrested and delivered to a Roman Court, DID have two very good reasons to want Jesus dead and neither of them had anything to do with Heresy.
First, as the article notes, the Jews had a tendency to be unruly so anything that got the general population worked up would bring the Roman Legions down on them and Jesus was definitely getting them worked up with large crowds, loud arguments, and miracles all over the place.
Second, which the article completely skips, Jesus and his teachings were an existential threat to the Jewish Leadership of the time. His teachings not only undermined their Religion but if his teachings were implemented the whole Jewish power structure would become unnecessary and be dissolved. This is blatantly discussed in John 11:47.
Sadly the 2nd link is kinda worthless because there’s nothing in it regarding the Pope’s argument, just that the statement was made. Now I’d go read “Jesus of Nazareth’, Part II” by Pope Benedict XVI but in a fantastic statement about the Catholic Church you have to buy the damn thing! I mean didn’t Jesus kind of have a whole tirade about that?
Anyway, this isn’t mean to be an argument. I just caught your post and was interested in the links so I thought I’d provide some feedback on them.
It is exhausting, but at least it gives me an opportunity to laugh at this crazy lady, as long as I don’t spend too much time thinking about all the other people who agree with her.
I'd like to not be reminded that this cunt exists and got breezed into Congress. We know anything she does and says is blunt catering to the psychos in the country.
Jesus was a Jew named Joshua who was against money lending in the temple.
That’s the historically accurate Jesus though, and not the M16 wielding anti-Semite white Jesus, who’s look seems to say “WTF IS A KILOMETER!!!” as eagles swoop on high.
The other guy is probably being a bit over the top, but your initial comment was kinda anti-Semitic, no?
Like, if I was reading a comment thread about black people and responded, “but is it as funny as eating fried chicken and watermelon,” I don’t think someone would be out of line saying, “are you asserting that all black people just eat fried chicken and watermelon?”
And then saying the thread isn’t about them isn’t exactly absolving the initial comment is it? The comment would still be racist, no?
Idk man, that guy got disproportionately hot about it I think, but your initial comment was a bit rough too, right?
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