What was Jesus' endgame? Did he sincerely wish to create a more just society or was he trying to rid Israel of Roman rule? Was his nonviolence a way to criticize belligerent Roman policy?
Also, do scholars believed be called himself the Son of God, or was this an embellishment by his early followers?
>>336592
Trinity didn't exist, nor did people believe Jesus was the son of God, for around 3 centuries after Christ. Eventually people decided they wanted to deify and worship him and built a whole doctrine around it because thats what humans are naturally inclined to do.
>>336592
Is there even proof that Jesus existed?
>>336604
yes
>>336608
present it
>>336612
no
>>336612
The gospels
Tacitus
>>336617
>The gospels
lack historical validity
>Tacitus
more than 100 years later, probably only knew of him for the gospels
>>336620
>I will dismiss any evidence as fake
Ok.
The Gospels are 4 books which document the life of a man. they're as valid as Plutarch on Caesar.
>>336592
Jesus was a zealot. He was a troublemaker who questioned and challenged the religious authority of the time, and the religious authority was tied up with secular authority (Roman authority) and he paid for his actions with his life.
Rome was assessing the country in order to start directly taxing them. At that time, someone called Judas the Galilean and someone known only as "Saddok" founded what Josephus calls the "Fourth Philosophy", a new "philosophy which our people were previously unacquainted with" (Antiquities 18.10).
>>336620
>>The gospels
>lack historical validity
not really
not any more than literally any other ancient text.
and the real thing about the gospel is the shear amount of writing that survives on the topic, there are stronger and more accurate records of Jesus than there are of Caesar or Socrates.
Hell Socrates could have been completely fabricated by Plato for all we know.
for a time period where we might have something like 10-100 copies of a work worldwide (and often in poor condition) there are tens of thousands of supporting copies from varying time periods relating to the new testament supporting their accuracy over time.
beyodn that the initial gospels were written within the apostolic generation following Christ's death, people might scoff at a 40 year difference, but in the case of Roman biography that is astounding because almost all others have several century difference.
the fact that only a couple decades after his death Christians were actually being singled out by the Romans as something more than just some strange eastern cult is telling for their strong presence.
>>336629
>4 books which document the life of a man
they also say that the man walked over water and multiplied bread
>>336592
>What was Jesus' endgame?
pic related
>>336650
And historical sources on battles say there was hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
You don't have to take the entire thing at literal value just to accept the basic truths within it. Jesus existed, his miracles are either made up or exaggerated or he was a magician.
>>336663
one thing is not knowing how to count or exaggerating your forces or the enemies if they won, another one if saying a guy talks directly to god.
I mean, Jesus probably existed, but he was not the guy from the gospels or the idea of Jesus we have now.
>>336604
I'm an atheist, but come on, you'd have to be the biggest fedora tipper ever to deny the man even existed. Most scholars agree he did.
Joshua is such a bloody common name in the area during the time so hard to tell if the bugger was just one guy.
Was Muhammed even common name among Arabs before durka durkas started giving it to basically every one of their sons?
>>336691
I think he existed, but he was a normal guy that wanted to renew the jewish faith. He was nothing more than Luther, for example.
As to lineage, birthplace, time, and lifestyle, Jesus matched the Messianic predictions of the Hebrew Scriptures.
>>336592
>What was Jesus' endgame
>>336693
its not even a real name desu, but more like a title
>>336592
>What was Jesus' endgame?
Salvation of the souls of man
>>336691
The Jewish Roman historian Josephus wrote about John the Baptist and Jesus' brother James.
>>336649
>Hell Socrates could have been completely fabricated by Plato for all we know.
Not really, since other contemporaries (Xenophon and Aristophanes spring to mind) also mention the guy.
>>336600
>nor did people believe Jesus was the son of God, for around 3 centuries after Christ
source that shit
>>336604
There is a bevy of evidence for a "Jesus cult" existing within 200 years after the man's death. It's unlikely that, this quickly, people would begin to follow somebody who never existed.
Jesus was a charismatic cult leader like Muhammad, Joseph Smith, or Jim Jones, who managed to elude most records of the Romans due to not causing much significant trouble during his lifetime.
>>336711
It's likely that either Jesus or his immediate followers (who wrote the Gospels) also resisted Roman rule.
Not too dissimilar from Bar Kokhba or other mellinarians
>>337178
There's also a bevy of evidence that said Jesus cult almost immediately started fragmenting on questions of doctrine, such as what was the exact nature of Jesus's divinity and messianic status, as well as issues of practice.
It's also unlikely that you'd get such rapid disintigration if there was a central leader who was spreading teachings; as you'd think things would only gradually drift apart after he was no longer teaching.
>>337197
>There's also a bevy of evidence that said Jesus cult almost immediately started fragmenting on questions of doctrine, such as what was the exact nature of Jesus's divinity and messianic status, as well as issues of practice.
Sources please.
Because the councils were rather unanimous on matters of faith.
>>337215
Do you want the arguments between Paul and the disciples you see in the NT itself, to say nothing of the mention in Luke about how some people argued that John the Baptist, not Jesus was Christ, and whose disciples would argue with Jesus. What about the fact that the lists of who the 12 disciples are vary in gospel manuscript to manuscript? What about the existence of groups like the Ebionites and the Cerinthus?
>>337197
The Jesus Cult didn't exist much until his death.
>>336592
Please don't pretend that a historical Jesus existed, it just encourages bad theology.
>>336592
>Also, do scholars believed be called himself the Son of God, or was this an embellishment by his early followers?
That's actually something most scholars try to avoid. But I had a professor who was pretty convinced that Jesus wouldn't have referred to himself as the son of God, and I agree. If you read a bunch of second temple period Jewish documents, you can get a pretty good view of what Jewish culture, especially apocalyptic sects thought about things at the time. Basically, the idea that God would have a son would have been ridiculously blasphemous, and kind of nonsensical because of how Jews of the time viewed God. It's something that a Jewish preacher probably wouldn't have said. The idea of a "son of God" is much of a Greek/Roman thing. It makes sense that later followers like Paul would have added that part in to appeal to gentiles.
>>336620
"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"
From Tacitus, in 64 AD, just a tad over 30 years after Jesus' assumed death.
Fuck's sake, he didn't give a shit about Israel or Rome, that's why the Jews of Jerusalem hated him. They expected some kind of new Judas Maccabeus who would lead the Jews to smite their enemies.
His goal was to end all violence. His non-violence was just teaching by example, but yes it also served to expose the injustice of the violence used against him, and by extension of all violence. That's the Revelation.
What I don't get is his death.
He "died for our sins" and in turn opened the gates of heaven, right?
But he didn't intentionally die, he just got fucked over. What if he didn't die in that way? What if he lived happily and died of old age? Would he still have "died for our sins"?
Was everything predetermined or something? He knew he would die how he did all along?
My problem with it is that he didn't "sacrifice himself" for man, he just got executed because he made too much noise.
The time period of Jesus was marked by a great many messiah cults centered around someone claiming to be the messiah in the holy land. This sort of thing is what happens when people have a gripe--in that instance it was Roman taxes. In modern times it's more akin to forming political movements like the Tea Party or the many hashtag movements we've seen recently. People were unhappy, and some people were claiming to know how to stop all this unhappiness. In the case of Jesus, it was by (mostly) non-violence, self-reflection, piety, charity, and maybe stabbing a centurion every now and then. There wasn't really anything that the Romans had specifically against Jesus, he just got a bit too prominent and had to be cut down. His cult stuck around for a while, and eventually some of them got to writing down their oral history. Then, some Roman guy a while later read some of this stuff and decided it seemed legit, so he stuck with it.
Though there was one report a couple years back about some Romans record claiming they invented Christianity to pacify the poor. Not sure if that meant they claimed to have fabricated the man entirely or if they just adopted Christianity as a political decision. I don't know for sure whether that report was even corroborated with anything else; I haven't bothered to look much into it.
>>342405
But he knew that he made the pharisians butthurt. He knew that being honest, speaking against the ruling parties and preaching Love would guarantee him atleast some hate from the scholars.
He could´ve shut his mouth. But he didn´t. So it doesn´t matter if he was the Son of God or not, he was an honest man, who´d rather die than keep quiet.
>>336629
>"The past exudes legend: one can’t make pure clay of time’s mud. There is no life that can be recaptured wholly; as it was. Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction."
Bernard Malamud, Dubin’s Lives (1979)
>>343172
i gotta admit, that's pretty honorable.
Still can't believe my family worship the guy and I was made to
>>336669
If you're creating the story of your battle, you embellish, just like you would if you were writing a doctrine of faith.
Jesus was a spoiled brat who left his family to "discover himself", joined a cult, but left because the rules were too hard and tried to start his own. He made a big ruckus because he was a fucking addict who would yell racial slurs at others in the street when he was running low on "the spirit". Eventually the Romans executed him for being a nuisance but his drugged out followers claimed it was a conspiracy by the pharisees. Eventually the cult was remade by some guy named Saul who knew how to actually run a cult. Like changing his name to Paul for tax purposes, a genius move.
>>342109
Is there any truth to theories that he went East and studied Buddhism as a teen? That would explain the non-violence.
>>345543
No, while he was probably a wannabe deep teen he developed that shit personality independently and had no contact with Buddhism.
