How come no Roman historian ever wrote anything about Jesus when he was alive? Is Christianity a Jewish cult of Paul of Tarsus? Why nobody doesn't give a shit about Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel Of Barnabas? As a deist, I got questions.
he just had a small cult in the beginning and if I recall correctly some roman historian did mention a cult leader from isreal but not by name or something
Why would roman historians write about some shithead cult leader? The place was filled with them. Also they did write his execution order down as far as im aware.
>>1403153
>>How come no Roman historian ever wrote anything about Jesus when he was alive?
Isn't obvious? the historical Jesus was not actually an incarnated deity, he was a jewish religious/political dissident who got executed by the authorities for stirring shit up in an already unstable province.
Contemporary sources in the ancient world are extraordinarily rare. We don't have any for Boudicca either.
>>1403175
>A guy that can perform shittons of miracles is worth writing about.
Which indicates he couldn't.
>>1403226
This. We've lost countless sources from the ancient world. Many lost works, including the third work by Homer and a shitload of books by Livy. Some of the most famous ancient authors survived only in a single manuscript, for example what remains of Catullus' poems.
And that's just the main authors. Jesus was probably written about in the archives in Palestine, but those records have in all likelihood disappeared.
It gets worse with non-Western sources. There is not a single archive of Islamic civilisation before the Ottomans, even though they were known to exist in history. There are large collections of documents, but they're uncategorized, fragmentary and can't be considered archive material in the same way Western sources can. A shitload of them haven't even been read, because fuckall Western academics know Arabic.
>>1403153
>How come no Roman historian ever wrote anything about Jesus when he was alive?
Why would they? He was relatively insignificant at the time
>Is Christianity a Jewish cult of Paul of Tarsus?
Of course [Paul, the Usurper]
>Why nobody doesn't give a shit about Gospel of Thomas and The Gospel Of Barnabas?
We do! But you mean the church. Because the "Church" didn't want them included in the canon. They detracted from the narrative.
It's pretty simple really
>A guy that can perform shittons of miracles is worth writing about.
You're right. That sort of answers some question.
It's all pretty simple
Peace be with you
>>1403153
>How come no Roman historian ever wrote anything about Jesus when he was alive?
Because presumably, as historians they would be writing about history, not current events.
>>1403175
>Why not? A guy that can perform shittons of miracles is worth writing about.
You think some Roman scholar is going to take word of mouth seriously? It's doubtful word of mouth about Christ's miracles would even get back to the Roman academics, let alone be considered more than a laughable superstition by them.
>>1403622
You're kidding, right?
>>1403622
This.
>How come no Roman historian ever wrote anything about Jesus when he was alive?
He was probably too insignificant at the time. Messiahs like him were really common at the time. They were the game youtubers of ancient Israel
>>1404585
>He was probably too insignificant at the time. Messiahs like him were really common at the time.
THIS. Can't state it enough, between 0 and 70 AD there was a truckload of random Jews claiming to be the Messiah. And some of them actually led armed rebellions or participated in banditry/terrorism while Jesus did fuck all and just got crucified because he offended a bunch of priests. He wasn't notable.
>>1403175
There were lots of miracle workers like Jesus in the near East. He's not a unique or important person in the period. He's a guy who stirred up some shit in backwater towns, then went to a major city and got executed two days later for the shit he started there.
>>1403153
It might not be that none did, its just that none survive. Keep in mind even really popular shit like Menander we only knew from quotations until relatively recently.
>>1404585
Christ is the one they crucified, and also the one that lines up with the prophecies of the OT but the simplicity of His teachings presented a threat to the priest class which abused it's power.
>>1404605
Pretty notable. He has little historical evidence that we found and is widely renowned 2000 years later
>>1404670
Not notable at all until long after his death.
>>1404619
That's just a bias generalization.
>>1404670
Historical Yeshua ≠ Mythical Christ
The historical Jesus is in no way widely renowned. The renowned one is an entirely fictional character with invented attributes.
Christian doctrines are not exclusive to Rome.
Paul sees an apparition of Christ, but the people who followed Christ when He was alive were busy practicing His teaching which extends way more than the Gospel and their basic teachings.
>>1404679
Historical Yeshua = Mystical Christ
>>1404580
Don't encourage them
>>1404672
He was notable before His death, which is why they killed Him. And notable after His death because the Ressurection, and because Paul 20 years later keeps up the noteworthy-Ness of Christ which then stayed alive until present day and still does
>>1404698
>He was notable before His death
Nope.
>>1404700
If He wasn't noteworthy there would be no cause to kill Him. All the other "messiahs" everyone on this board mentions weren't crucified nor were they really recorded as much a s Christ was
>>1403153
Because he was a literally who for decades after his death. There were dozens of Jewish prophets calling themselves Messiah in the 1st century AD.
>>1404670
>and also the one that lines up with the prophecies of the OT
How do you know the Gospel writers didn't just write his life to fit the prophecies? Seems more plausible to me.
they did
There are several letters from Roman officials discussing the Christ movement
>>1404704
>If He wasn't noteworthy there would be no cause to kill Him.
What kind of retard logic is this? Thousands of people get killed every day and they aren't noteworthy at all.
>>1404704
Yes they were. Crucifixion wasn't a punishment reserved for noteworthy people. Mass crucifixions were common.
There are not many contemporary sources on anyone from that time period.
How many contemporary texts on Epictetus do we have nowadays? Only what Arrian has written down. And he was extremely famous in his era.
How many contemporary sources on Socrates? 3. Plato, Xenophon and that of a political opponent.
>>1404712
Can you provide any source?
>>1404728
yea gimme a second, I need to find my textbook from my course on biblical history
>>1403175
>He expects the bible to conform to reality
>>1404704
Crucifixion was an incredibly common method of execution for peregrini in the empire (i.e. people who did not have Roman citizenship).
>>1404704
>All the other "messiahs" everyone on this board mentions weren't crucified nor were they really recorded as much a s Christ was
Crucifixion was a punishment very much inflicted on the lowest of the low, idiot... Thieves and robbers, highwaymen, murderers...
>>1404728
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/maps/primary/pliny.html
not quite as concrete as I remembered, however this is very shortly post-death, and the Christ movement was still a very small sect at the time of this writing
>>1404768
>however this is very shortly post-death
Pliny was writing like 70/80 years after Jesus' death. Same with Tacitus. Both are pretty good sources though generally.
>>1404773
right right but in the larger canon of things, john's gospel wasnt even written yet at this time iirc. it seems to establish a prior roman awareness before the time of the writing, too
>>1404768
Thanks, going to read in 10 mins
>>1404704
None of them were stupid enough to cause a ruckus in the holist place in Judaism the day before the holist day in Judaism.
>>1404713
Everyone is noteworthy.
But in this context, Christ posed a threat to the common religious structure at the time. Because He taught about God in a way contrary to what religious elite at the time did, He was killed for it.
If He did not teach in the way He did, the circumstances of Hid death would not have been the same.
>>1404719
In looking at the context of Christ's crucifixion, there is more recorded about His teachings in pair with His crucifixion, plus He lined up with the Prophecies of OT. If some other messiah lined up with those prophecies, they would be in the NT instead.
Also, Christ comes from the lineage of Abraham, and David, which is the one they were looking for.
>>1404742
Crucifixion is savage. The world is more willing to trust the historians who paired their legal judgment with nailing people to crosses than to simply understand the basic teachings of Christ without all of their preconceived ideas about what they think Christianity is.
>>1404792
Because none of them were the Truth
>>1404784
>right right but in the larger canon of things, john's gospel wasnt even written yet at this time
True.
>it seems to establish a prior roman awareness before the time of the writing, too
Not necessarily. The Romans only really became aware of the Christians, as Tacitus implies in 15.44 after the Great Fire of Rome in 69 AD. They only came to prominence upon this event.
>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 Christians 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 Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.
Paul and the other Gospel authors were Roman historians.
For some reason their accounts don't count which I don't understand why.
>>1404793
>If some other messiah lined up with those prophecies, they would be in the NT instead.
There are some prophecies he could have (and probably did) purposely fulfill. Some might have been fulfilled by chance. The rest could easily have been the result of a little embellishment by Gospel authors.
>Also, Christ comes from the lineage of Abraham, and David, which is the one they were looking for.
Again, according to the genealogies as written out by Luke and Matthew. No way to know if they are accurate or not.
>>1404826
Because they're full of the supernatural and the fantastic.
No one takes the Odyssey at face value either, for that reason.
>>1404826
Modern scholars have tended to sharply delineate ecclestiastical texts and more typical historical writing, e.g. compare Sozimus or Socrates with Tacitus or Arrian. I don't think anyone needs to explain to why they would do that, I doubt you're retarded Anon.
>>1404834
So is Herodotus but we still accept the general underlying stuff.
The Odyssey is also very important to us as it shows us what came down of the Greeks before the bronze age collapse, myth form or not, we can read between the lines.
>>1404836
I find it hard to believe that everything in the Gospels would simply be 100% fiction.
The miracles are but the character cannot be.
>>1404845
Of course not, Paul, Augustine and Lactantius for example are valuable historical sources. But they are dangerously unreliable in many ways.
>>1404826
Even if we accept that, historians at the time were often more concerned with "moral" truth than literal truth. Its a bias you have to be aware of when looking at period pieces
>>1404845
>I find it hard to believe that everything in the Gospels would simply be 100% fiction.
100% fiction would be hard, but the facts could be so distorted they may as well be. Look at how Scientologists describe the life of L. Ron Hubbard. And that's in the 20th century!
>>1403153
>How come no Roman historian ever wrote anything about Jesus when he was alive?
How sure are we they didn't? Roman literature didn't survive nearly as well as Greek writings. I've seen it explained like this;
>"The sum total of surviving Greco-Roman texts up to and including "late antiquity" is equivalent to roughly a gigabyte of uncompressed ASCII text. Latin texts account for about 80 MB of that. Not that much, really."
It's also often speculated that less than 1% of ancient literature survives;
http://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2009/10/26/reference-for-the-claim-that-only-1-of-ancient-literature-survives/
>>1404709
This
And some of the prophecies aren't cut and dry as to whether they're even prophecies, requiring significant bullshit to even reach the conclusion that they're not describing past events.
>>1404827
That is the main written source of Christ is the Gospel, so if you want to deny that piece as not being historically accurate because of your own bias against religious text being considered historical than you are the only one denying pieces of historical evidence. So the books of Matthew and Luke would be considered as accurate.
The prophecies were fulfilled, like a puzzle, all the pieces fit (at least for Christians)
>>1404977
Yes, I am leery of trusting any text which claims supernatural events, Pagan or Christian. Why is that an unfair bias?
>>1404984
You can still accept the dates in which they are written.
It is supernatural that we are even here right now, using a computer to type something wirelessly to each other. We call it logical now.
So why not then, when people healed each other and somehow fulfilled texts written about then thousands of years before, something we call supernatural now, but back then they were literally waiting for it completely logically.
>>1405002
I believe there's a lot of valuable historical information in the Gospels, I'm just skeptical about the miracles, which include the supposed fulfillment of all those Hebrew prophecies.
>>1405018
Pic related. I know its only a small start but its general enough. It isn't that outrageous to say someone can perform certain miracles, like acupuncture works unless the person goes there believing it won't, so strongly that they just hang onto their doubt rather than trusting it.
>>1405058
I think it is more plausible that the gospels were written by people who knew about the prophecies and went out of their way to prove the fufillement of said prophecies, don't you think?
>>1405018
I've seen all of this.
See >>1404827
Not to mention some of those prophecies' supposed connections are dubious at best.
rFor example, the Hebrew of Psalm 22:16 is a bit murky in exact meaning and is therefore subject to biased translation by both Jews and Christians alike. It's been argued that it would better read "they tore at my hands and feet like a lion".
>>1405142
Not really. 2000 years ago, they obviously didn't record everything right away. even in 64 Christians were being persecuted by Nero and the temples were destroyed somewhere around 70.
So even a 20 to 40 years gap back then isn't really a big gap of time. Even John the Apostle wrote a lot later.
People write books about Martin Luther King Junior how many years after he died? They still contain the same info as the older ones do, and the writings of him when he was alive were of a different nature than the texts that came out after his death.
Especially considering esoteric teachings are through word of mouth and symbols, and through practice not doctrine. Christ didn't invent a religious creed, but He taught people about God philosophy and a practice to strengthen their connection to spiritual pursuit. They weren't all about taking notes, they would literally just listen and change their routine after each lesson.
>>1405166
All general interpretations are bias. Even the "historically objective scholarly consensus" because rather than application of teaching, they only look at words and what they generally believe them to mean
>>1403258
The Talmud, the oral history of the Pharisees, records Jesus performing miracles, but attributes them to sorcery.
>>1404839
But whenever archeology or anything else we can verify contradicts Herodotus, we accept that instead. The Gospels are held to the exact same standard, it's just that they have much less underlying "correct stuff" than Herodotus does.
>>1404836
So bias, then.
Ancient people framed history in supernatural terms. Rejecting every text wholesale that mentions the supernatural is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
>>1405184
The Talmud was penned quite a while after Christ's death, the diaspora, and the death of anyone who'd ever been present, or even those with second-hand accounts.
>>1405209
No one is doing that though, just exercising a bit more skepticism when it comes to texts that record explicitly supernatural occurrences.
I don't know anyone except maybe retard Christ Mythicists who disregard the Gospels and other Biblical writings completely as a source of historical info.
>>1405213
Oral tradition and penned writing are the same with the exception of when it was written. It is the same information, but the words are before the writing.
>>1405217
Christian Mystics do regard the Gospel and the Bible as important, historical, informative, etc, otherwise they aren't Christian
>>1405213
Oral histories can pass down reliable records of historical events over centuries. I studied archeology in North America. Native Pre-Contact oral histories can describe events verified by the archeological and geological record like landslides and earthquakes 500 years after they happened. This isn't a game of "telephone."
You get a group of very smart people who all know the same narrative verbatim sitting around in a circle with one guy recounting it and if he flubs a word he has dozens of people tripping over each other to correct him. People dedicated their entire lives to memorizing stories and they were good at it.
The Pharisees believed that they had a religious duty to memorize and pass down the Talmud, which they called the Oral Torah, because they were forbidden to write it down. Don't you think the Pharisee commentator who origininated the narrative of Jesus the sorcerer would have simply denied that Jesus had performed any miracles at all instead of attributing them to evil magic if the Pharisees hadn't from the beginning considered Jesus a witch? Oh and look at the Gospels, written centuries before the Talmud. We have Pharisees there attributing Jesus' miracles to demons. Seems like that party line was toed at a pretty early date if it shows up in both traditions.
>>1405267
What is pretty cool is that even though back then they did not love Christ or believe in Him, now their stance against Christ also serves as historical evidence of Christ as Himself.
>>1405280
The neatest part is when they talk about the miracles of the Temple mysteriously ceasing around 40 years before the Temple's destruction. Really makes you think.
>>1405286
>The Romans Destroy the Temple at Jerusalem, 70 AD. In the year 66 AD the Jews of Judea rebelled against their Roman masters. In response, the Emperor Nero dispatched an army under the generalship of Vespasian to restore order.
So it would be wise to start writing / rewriting the Gospels after your Temple was destroyed because you realize if you don't your Master's teachings would die off in vain.
>>1405225
Christ Mythicists are people who believe Jesus was not real in any way, shape, or form and the Gospels are complete fiction.
>>1405267
>on't you think the Pharisee commentator who origininated the narrative of Jesus the sorcerer would have simply denied that Jesus had performed any miracles at all instead of attributing them to evil magic if the Pharisees hadn't from the beginning considered Jesus a witch?
Not necessarily. A divide between the natural and supernatural worlds was nonexistent for so much of the ancient world.
If some guy heard about another guy performing supernatural feats, He would just as likely ascribe it to demons or witchcraft as believe it to being a fiction entirely.
>>1405303
Christ Mystics are people who believe Yeshua is the Messiah, and is real historically, and that the Gospels are minor accounts of His teachings.
A Christian IS NOT about denying the source Christ comes from, the Gospel and the validity of His existence. People think this is what Gnostics believe and that is an inaccurate stereotype
>>1405300
"They" in my post refers to the Pharisees, not Christians. The Talmud talks about the miracles of the Temple (which had supposedly occurred for centuries) ceasing around AD 30 and offers only bewilderment as to why.
>>1405267
Kinda unrelated but, doesn't it simply mean some myths/legends that many people observed might be real? Like Sumerian rulers that lived for 36000 years, or giants etc?
>>1405318
That's pretty cool info, do you have any quotes from the Talmud ?
>>1405323
They all mention a flood and giants too..
>>1405313
MYTHICIST is not the same word as MYSTIC
Learn to read you nigger.
>>1405326
Big deal, there are also dragon stories all over the world.
Werewolves and witches too.
>>1405300
I'm pretty sure that Christians weren't headquartered at the Temple in AD 66-70 lol
Read Acts.
>>1403153
Literally the greatest Roman historian ever wrote of Jesus.
Tacitus (56-120AD)
Cornelius Tacitus was known for his analysis and examination of historical documents and is among the most trusted of ancient historians. He was a senator under Emperor Vespasian and was also proconsul of Asia. In his “Annals’ of 116AD, he describes Emperor Nero’s response to the great fire in Rome and Nero’s claim that the Christians were to blame:
“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 Christians 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 Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.”
>>1405338
https://carm.org/when-was-acts-written
>2. A.D. 70. No mention (in Acts) of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem (Luke 21:20). 1.The fall of Jerusalem in A.D 70 is hugely significant, and Acts leaves you with the impression that the temple is still standing.
>>1405323
The robustness of oral histories just means that the oldest stories from millenia or longer ago still have a grain of truth to them. Corruption does happen. It's just not as frequent as people think. A few decades or centuries is nothing to a continuous oral history tradition in terms of textual corruption, contrary to what societies with writing think. Writing really makes our memories and verbal recitation skills atrophy, so we have trouble relating to oral societies, and project our shortcomings onto them.
>>1405324
I'd have to google to find the passage so give me a sec.
>>1405361
Bullshit.
Just look at all the discrepancies between that gospels that resulted from just ~50 years of being oral history.
>>1405361
Makes sense
>>1405369
Offer the top of my head I can only think of the different ways Judas is described to have died (hanging or hit by a wagon)
>>1405324
This covers it:
http://www.yashanet.com/library/temple/yoma39.htm
>>1405369
All the Gospels are in sync.
Notice they all mention Christ when He is born, a little bit about His youth, and when He is baptized and thereon, But His years from lets say 11 (guess date for what year He was when last mentioned) to when He was 30 (baptized) are not accounted for, so He must have just went somewhere else and learned or that they didn't just account for every single person and every single detail about every single person in the past so that 2000 years later we could account for every single breathe of every single person
>>1403261
Al Azhar and Cairo University have pretty massive archives of Fatimid, Ayyubid and Mameluk. It doesn't help that they are all in Arabic but they are categorized and beautiful. Spent a lot of time in there basically masturbating over tax records.
Cairo Genizah is an example of a big non-Western archive. It was in Egypt until the 50s I think but is now in Cambridge. It is now being read, translated and categorized
>>1405326
Tales of flooding and giants are probably based on prehistoric experiences of local inundations like the filling of the Persain Gulf or encounters with taller populations (ever been to Scandinavia?)
>>1405383
The term synoptic to describe the first three exists for a reason, they tell a very different story from the gospel of John.
>>1405350
Christians weren't exactly all that welcome around the Temple is what I'm saying.
>>1405386
fun fact. Baghdad had nyc archives as well. HAD, so I guess that doesn't count. Mongols and American Mongoloids, god bless them
>>1405376
They differ on the timing of the cleansing of the temple. Literally the best apologetic I've ever seen to answer that is 'he did it twice lol'.
The differ on Jesus' last words on the Cross. You could argue that he said all of them but it sounds a bit weird, and I think it's likelier they are just different tellings of the story.
That's off the top of my head.
You can explain away anything if you try hard enough but sometimes the simplest explanation is the best.
>>1405376
I think one says he hanged himself, and the other says that he fell and bled. Hanging often causes your head to pop off if you have the rope too long...
>>1405388
It is coming from a different writer, of course it is going to have differences but it is talking about the same Christ, just different stories about Him, and John doesn't mention all the material from the other Gospels because he simply didn't write every single detail. He mentions stuff from a different angle because he is a different author.
>>1405389
I see, but what we call Christian and Jew today isn't exactly how they perceived the terms Christian and Jew back then.
But thanks for the link and stuff it is important to look more into this stuff
>>1403160
The earliest to mention him are Tacitus and Josephus, both after he died, and likely the accounts were edited by Christians later on, as all we had are translated/copied documents passed down in Christian societies, with a stake in Christianity. Same with the Gospels, which were almost certainly not authored by the apostles.
This table shows you the sorts of foundations our information about the Early Church stands on: Shaky and Ruinous.
>>1405394
So minor apparent differences that can be reconciled. Also keep in mind that the Gospels come from 2-3 (probably 2) totally separate lines of transmission that were preserved from their origin rather than a single line of transmission that got corrupted. The differences are probably the result of the different perspectives of the primary sources rather than the purple-monkey-dishwasher phenomenon.
>>1403153
>>1403160
The earliest traditions in the church were oral, underground, oppressed, and consequently hearsay.
The gospels were written decades later, anonymously.
Our best bet for getting close to the living Yeshua is oral tradition, but the copies we have of oral tradition are heavily edited and likely came later.
Some think the non-canonical, non-apocalytpic Gospel of Thomas contains actual sayings from Jesus as well as apocryphal additions, while others insist that anything non-canonical has nothing to do with the real Yeshua.
All I know is that what is and isn't canonical was decided by later church authorities who never met Jesus and who collaborated with the government that killed him to establish a state-endorsed church.
Christ's apocalypse was likely in reference to contemporary Judeo-Roman politics. The language and metaphors used point to this.
Modern superstitions about an imminent Yeshua are unfortunate, and introduce so much political chaos to the world.
>>1405399
>of course it is going to have differences but it is talking about the same Christ
The same Christ that never ever claimed to be divine in the synoptic gospels?
Also placing this much weight on the unfalsifiable, difficult-to-investigate doctrines of someone so distant in time and space, not to mention across the barrier of death itself, is a powerful way to keep a culture distracted from its full potential for a very, very long time.
>>1405435
Christ is a humble dude, and when He had to mention His divinity, He did for good reason rather than living in His own praise constantly telling everyone how holy he is. He gives credit to God first, not "me, me, me"
One perspective aims at His divinity and others aim at His teachings, they all go together yet they all aim at His teachings and divinity.
>>1405447
>Christ is a humble dude, and when He had to mention His divinity
But he's flamboyant as fuck about it in John, which is supposedly telling the same story.
>>1405447
> rather than living in His own praise constantly telling everyone how holy he is.
It sure is difficult to be humble when you're trying to convince a handful of Jews in the Roman empire that the entire future of the human race rests on subsequent generations embracing your teachings and recognizing you as their savior, by name.
If seflessness and self-sacrifice were the values Yeshua wanted to impart, than why do we have to recognize Him by name?
Why is accepting Him, as a person, more important than the anonymous, timeless moral values he seeks to impart? Is it possible that this doctrine of accepting Him and Him alone was not something he actually said, but a rather selfish doctrine perpetuated by his followers?
>>1405449
John is a more eccentric person. They are all writing about the same dude and it is the same story it isn't like major events are totally different in John.
>>1405459
It's more than about name. It is about following the Word of God, not just a name. Every Word of God, not just what we see.
God's name is every living Word of the Living God, not just name.
It is about way more than moral code and value, it is about living at one with His teaching which teaches us something far greater than the general consensus on what Christianity "is"
>>1405469
John has Jesus saying things like "I and the Father are one".
Mark has the Dusciples constantly missing Jesus's divinity. If you want to claim they're both true, Jesus's closest followers were literal retards.
>>1405495
John is one of the ones who sees the transfiguration, as is James and Peter.
He seen more of the divinity, and the other Apostles may not have seen these qualities, so some could have been more naturally adept than the others
>>1405495
Because one focuses on divinity more, while the other 3 are more focused on teachings, but both are equally important.
If they were all about divinity, then it would be blind faith.
If it was all about teachings, then there would be no divinity.
They all mention miracles.
>>1405512
Again, if we believe John is writing about the same Jesus the Synoptics are, they hear Jesus openly proclaiming his divinity. They have to be seriously stupid at that point to reconcile them with Mark.
>>1405522
That has nothing to do with Mark's attestation that the disciples missed Jesus's divinity, which by the way has nothing to do with miracles unless you want to say Moses, Samuel, and Elisha are also all God.
>>1405595
John seen more divine attributes than the other Apostles. It's that simple. He knew Christ in a different light than the others it's about the same person
Moses and Elijah are prophets with divine blessing, and in Islam so is Isa, so it really isn't all that far off. "My Father and I are One" and the connection between these people and God are recorded. Christ is of a different phenomena than Moses and Samuel.
Gospel of Mark is but one angle of Christ. Mark didn't miss anything
>>1403261
Considering all the wars there over the years, it is amazing anything survived.
>>1404708
He's not the Messiah. He's a very naughty boy.
>>1404723
> Xenophon
That name sounds pretty strange. Dunno if we can trust him.
thomas was actually called once the "fifth gospel"
but its mostly treated as the collection of logios I believe
>>1406250
Xenophon is underrated as fuck.
What else can we say, when the wise are forcibly dragged off by tyrants, their wisdom is captured by insults, and their minds are oppressed and without defense? What advantage did the Athenians gain from murdering Socrates? Famine and plague came upon them as a punishment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea and the Jews, desolate and driven from their own kingdom, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates is not dead, because of Plato; neither is Pythagoras, because of the statue of Juno; nor is the wise king, because of the "new law" he laid down.
Mara bar Serapion
>>1406244
t. Monty
I find it stranger how no one mentioned the earthquakes and days of darkness nor the huge number of saints who were also resurrected.
It would have been pretty awsome if instead of just appearing to his followers he waltzed back to Pilate
>>1404723
>How many contemporary sources on Socrates? 3. Plato, Xenophon and that of a political opponent.
Aristophanes wasnt a political opponent
