felixir

Makes me wonder... how do you think the society would react if, out of the blue, the portrayal of Jesus shifted to this picture? Do you think people would take it offensively despite its realism, guilty of racism?

quite right, indeed that the news of his existence was greatly convulated, just as chirstianity itself is in essence, facts of the templar knights, facts of empires built on the base of Chirstianity and so on. It would have been normal for a convulated religion to be as convulated with its leader or founder, presumed that he did indeed existed.

ManiacDC

Jesus was NOT written about in historical documents by anyone who lived at the same time he had lived.

This is incorrect, the jewish historian Josephus (born a few years after Jesus' death) wrote about Jesus existence. People who were alive when Jesus was alive would have still been around when he recorded this also...

There really isn't much debate over whether or not Jesus existed... this is widely accepted. .

He did, but little detail would have came across as a third person documentation of the story, rather, at the time with the churches and religional insitutions and their offered power, they could have substituted the knowledge as the "truth" to be written. Just like the news, you think the government would have given every fact to the citizens to criticize and know? I am sure that if the proper documentation would have been wrote, it should also encompass the knowledge by first person as well. For example, yet again, say Gandhi, his personal exploits and accounts are recorded in detail and precision, rather than him being dead and recorded, records are also dated ones around the time when he is still alive, hence there is little denial since there was first person accounts.

With also the convulated images portrayed over the years onto the general "white jesus" the idea would have been wholly different, not to mention at that time, with the tongue of ancient jewish or greek being spoken, possible mistranslation after the death of Jesus would have occured, hence a possible way of depicting him in actual nature of being alive is doubtful.

Now, onto your question of whether or not it is relevant, like I said in one of the earlier posts, the possibility say if it was truth that a religious sect employed the use of a fictional character to lead the religion can be beneficial. Like such, using say a figurehead of a man, and using the sect's power to spread a successful cult onto the land would have been easy.

We call this a marketing image (no offense, but think about it, consider jesus as a product of the human mind to be sold to gullible citizens of the time in need of something to guide them). So instead of a religious sect going out there to sell the religion to believers, they use a common man, empowering him to bring forth a religional reformation for the times.

This can prove to be a turning point, imagine if he was indeed like that, and that christianity would change in the modern era no? Your religion was a huge fiasco planned by a sect set forth to spread their cult to the world ( FYI, any religion without a huge basis of followers would have been regarded as a cult instead ), your bibles and faith may have been shaken a little.

No mistake here, I would have been shocked if I am to be revealed the same thing, say imagine if Buddha (I am Buddhist by family inheritance, but am atheist) was not a real person, and again, some fictional fiasco.

andricon-girl

As for the history.. yeah, it seems weird to me.. I've read the bible and well, I thought it was a load of crap. (no offense to anyone.) When you think about it, the bible was written by others who have mostly only heard the encounters.. and that getting travelled down and translated through time.. I think some of the things written would get off a bit.

the misconception :
a girl walks in the bar, man A told her a joke in an attempt to hook her up :" so the chicken crossed the street to get the worm...etc" , and then girl walks to her friends in the bar and told the joke one by one, so it happens that one of the friends decided to retell the joke to another man, say man B, and man B is man A's friend.
So one of the friends retold the joke to man B, and man B was bewildered and asked what man A said about " so the worm crossed the road with the chicken flying on its' back"

nolimitz

Hmmm.. An Interesting Thread! Even I wasn't a Christian, but from some fact in the bible, prove that Jesus is trully the Son of The God.. You must be ever heard about the story when He sacrafice Himself in the cross.. The sky immidiately became dark and the thunder became freak'in crazy! Did God will do all that thing just for a normal human sacrafice? That's all what I can say..

faith records everything with overblown propotions, including dinosaurs living alongside man in ancient times. (which was already proven against)

emeraldnite99

As Family Guy stated, there probably was a man named Jesus, but his powers were probably greatly exaggerated. I personally think, if he really did do wonderous things, that Jesus was a time traveller who thought he was going to the time of Jesus, only to get stranded in the past and BECOME Jesus. using futuristic technology and medicine to perform his miracles. Eerie, isn't it?

Interesting, but I doubt that, after all, time physics are not at a stage where science can be explained, if anything, this statement would be same as the bible itself in guise of science fiction, greatly exagerated.

However, one would imagine the change, if your faith was really shaken over this.

personally think, if he really did do wonderous things, that Jesus was a time traveller who thought he was going to the time of Jesus, only to get stranded in the past and BECOME Jesus. using futuristic technology and medicine to perform his miracles. Eerie, isn't it?

This kind of thing I read in a book;'Sam of de plutterdag' writhen by van Herck. It tells the tale of man going back in time. There he starts to wright about hewbrewic religion... he gets back to his own time to find out he wrote the bible.. The book is sience fiction of course but it still is something to think about

The man also found his bank account multiplied several times since his book turned out to be a best seller...
As I said this book is fiction.

I wasn't able too read the whole treath by now, but I want too say something about the Head sentence.
"What if everything you believed was man-made?"

To this a Voltaier (the famous man in the Age of Enlightenment) told one beuatifull sentence.
"If god don't exist, we have to creat one"

I think who cares, if Jesus have existed or not. More important is the effect of the is existents.

Krono

I think who cares, if Jesus have existed or not. More important is the effect of the is existents.

This I completly agree with, some people deticated their lifes completly to a religion. At the end when it all turned out to be a made up something priests have killed themselves all over the world, though the religion itself (made up or not) brougth support and hope to numerous people. There was wisdom in it even if it was created by people.

Why do people find it so important if there is a god or not? If you look at the Christian religion, you can see that you must live an honoust life and be kind to others. Do you need a god to believe in this and do so? I think not, just look at the intentions. Either it was Jezus or a person who just spoke his thougts and created a life lesson, he was right wasn't he? that is al what counts

For me it is not a god that is important. I don't have a religion and I don't want one either. What I do is seeking wisdom in all kinds of religions, taking out the things I believe in, being kind to each other, celebrate life, or anything that I think is worth remembering or use in the rest of my days.

You could call me an atheist... But you could also call it common sense.

Ironically, AP blessed me with this:
http://www.thegodmovie.com/

I do indeed agree, with human compassion, most people irrelevantly relate themselves to loving a God or a figurehead of biblical or overblown porpotions.
Which surprisingly, even during my short time once as a community worker, I learned that I do not need those religion and what is not to help me be compassionate towards others.
However, I think because of this God and promising of eternal life and an afterlife, that we become so engrossed in achieving to love a being that is yet to be proven to exist, we waste ourselves in living a life that said "being" was providing am I not right?
I mean, how do you justify praying 10 times a day...? I don't, and I certainly doubt if you waste your life away you will be welcomed to heaven. I also think that if he delivered the message and it was out of good will, and if only, if only Jesus or whoever responsible could have taken out the magical tales details, perhaps then, it would have been more believable.

Again, Christianity, like it or not, is really convulated in truth and fiction.

Im not christian at all or religeous in general and i believe he existed. i have done extensive research into christianity and have found no reason to believe he didnt. whether or not he is the messiah or the son of god is an entirely different matter.

whether he existed or not, does this take away from the messages his story conveys or the principles and philosophies he lived by and wanted others to live by. the answer is no it doesnt because in this case the concepts are more important then the facts! even in buddhism, the philosophies and ideas of christ are accepted and considered important because they hold a universal truth for the concept of "humanity", not that they believe he was the son of god.

I think he did exist. It is written in the bible which is a sacred book. I think thats enough to make you believe. I guess some thing are kinda odd. Because jesus was human but still had magical powers and could heal people like ordinary people couldn't. But yes I do believe. I believe even if some things seem a bit odd.

Even if Jezus existed and created a religion. his words would be so much twisted and reformed already that the treu religion is lost if you ask me. For example; A girl from your class comes to you and tells you something about your friend. She has heard it from somebody else and he hes heard it from his friend etc etc. You ought not to believe those things since it is not relieble anymore and became a rumor. As a kid we played games where you had to wispher something to the person next to you, he said the same thing to the kid next to him and so on, at the end the words I wisphered and the words the last kid heard weren't the same at all.

So if people don't believe rumors since their its not relieble anymore (and to make something unrelieble does not need more then a small amount of people or time) how can be said Jezus words are still exactly the same as all that time back. It is believed that Jezus could multiplie fish and bread, but I think its just blown up by people, that he did something symbolic but people turned it to a miracle.

I don't believe in jezus myself but i have no problem with people who do at all

Even if Jezus existed and created a religion. his words would be so much twisted and reformed already that the treu religion is lost if you ask me. For example; A girl from your class comes to you and tells you something about your friend. She has heard it from somebody else and he hes heard it from his friend etc etc. You ought not to believe those things since it is not relieble anymore and became a rumor. As a kid we played games where you had to wispher something to the person next to you, he said the same thing to the kid next to him and so on, at the end the words I wisphered and the words the last kid heard weren't the same at all.

quite right, what I mentioned, due to the time of then. the bible or whatever that came later as the composing base of the bible that mentioned of his miracles are commonly and could have been filtrated information.

Like the one mentioned in the previous page, Josephus, his side of the information regarding Jesus and his existence as well as general info on christianity could have been bias and taken from sources not officially given, not to mention yet again, a third person or fourth person perspective.
For example, it was recorded that several years after Jesus presumably died, the disciples went worldwide to spread the religion and good word, unless this Joseph have went ahead to look for these disciples, it would have been impossible to get first hand info.

So deeming that information was not easily accessible and no previous record was stated, he would have logically relied on the local church or twisted augmentations of information from the local covenants and so on.
The idea and teachings may actually have changed during that stage alone.

Also, the dead sea scrolls, those would have contained a translation error and total difficulty, since if taken into account, there is NO ONE LANGUAGE that can be applied 100% to the other.
Some words do not exist, other languages may have different meanings for a similiar word and etc.

Another thing is, some churges claim to have holy artifacts, like blood or flesh from Jezus himself Or thorns from the thorncrown Jezus whore or splinters from Jezus his cross. If you would count up all blood that is claimed to be Jezus's you would have more blood then a normal person would have, you can tell me much about Jezus but you can't tell me he had more blood then a normal person. All the thorns and cross splinters would make a hundered thorncrowns and crosses to. All those things would not even last all that time till now.

More then half of those churges (and possibly even all) have fake artifacts. That means their lying, meaby without knowing it, still when you ask those churges what they think of the remarcable amount of artifacts they all say only their artifacts are real. Is that not a bad example? Their saying this without even knowing for sure if its true.'

Also I'm not so sure about the ideas of the Vatican.... All with all for me it's most likely to believe that Jezus is made up. The ideas oof the vatican seem more of personal ideas somekind of religious wisdom.
I mean saying that being homo is a deceise is kind of strange since Jezus and his apostelles kissed each other.

Of course he does. That beaner lives next door to me and he is always trying to sell me boot leg dvd's.

I can understand your feeling about a figure 2000 years with no acceptable proof of existance and historical traces whose life can only be read in a book with again no acceptable proof of the historical facts written in it. But yet, I believe the man existed before.

During its early period, Christianity can only be seen as some kind of cult. One that was a deviation from Jewish teachings with a leader who claimed the name 'Messiah' that the Jewish people had waited for centuries. Such cult must not be set free, roaming the street looking for followers who--at that time--are Jewish. The cult was rejected, loathed, despised, and called heretic by the masses. They were not welcome in their hometown, the Judean kingdom under Roman imperialistic order. This continued for about 2-3 centuries with their follower hunted, tortured, and killed, but their way of spreading the belief and words (not religion) of the Man was so effective that this cult had managed to go way up to European border and Asia. During this time also, the figure of the Man was not written in any holy scripture or holy book for such feature had not existed.

Well, not long until the whole Roman empire took this cult into their heart and put the Man as one of their Gods. Thus, began the Christian Empire. Now they need the book, a set of fixed rules that they can use as a mean for mass-dictate. But, hey, weren't they already burned the facts about this Man along with Jerusalem when they decided to rearrange its landscape a bit...? And the followers and the letters sent to them...well, weren't they also hunted these men and women down and killed them? There were only some left. Don't even think about looking in the temple mound's ruins. Weren't they also hated this Man? Why would they bother taking notes of Him? And so the second part of the bible was created (compiled) by the Nicea council. And the notes about the Man are far from complete.

As for the thing about His existence, there's no way an individual who never existed could gather followers that lasted for 20 centuries and accumulated over 25% of the planet. Well the Roman dudes (and those Vaticans high chairs) have something to do with this, true, that's why bible survived 20 centuries of tempering. Wonder? Not. Jesus did exist. Just like Mohammad or Hitler or David Beckham.

Shellova

I can understand your feeling about a figure 2000 years with no acceptable proof of existance and historical traces whose life can only be read in a book with again no acceptable proof of the historical facts written in it. But yet, I believe the man existed before.

During its early period, Christianity can only be seen as some kind of cult. One that was a deviation from Jewish teachings with a leader who claimed the name 'Messiah' that the Jewish people had waited for centuries. Such cult must not be set free, roaming the street looking for followers who--at that time--are Jewish. The cult was rejected, loathed, despised, and called heretic by the masses. They were not welcome in their hometown, the Judean kingdom under Roman imperialistic order. This continued for about 2-3 centuries with their follower hunted, tortured, and killed, but their way of spreading the belief and words (not religion) of the Man was so effective that this cult had managed to go way up to European border and Asia. During this time also, the figure of the Man was not written in any holy scripture or holy book for such feature had not existed.

If the man existed then he would have recorded his journeys personally or a scribe would have done similiarly.
and true, it was rejected at first, the whole bit only came to full light when he was at the middle stage, when he convinced people he can heal and so on.
Otherwise it was just news. So therefore, I have my beliefs that he could possibly be a doctor or a wise man of the time. Not excluding of course, he could have been a charlatan, which could possibly be a reason why he never had an official record.

Well, not long until the whole Roman empire took this cult into their heart and put the Man as one of their Gods. Thus, began the Christian Empire. Now they need the book, a set of fixed rules that they can use as a mean for mass-dictate. But, hey, weren't they already burned the facts about this Man along with Jerusalem when they decided to rearrange its landscape a bit...? And the followers and the letters sent to them...well, weren't they also hunted these men and women down and killed them? There were only some left. Don't even think about looking in the temple mound's ruins. Weren't they also hated this Man? Why would they bother taking notes of Him? And so the second part of the bible was created (compiled) by the Nicea council. And the notes about the Man are far from complete.

well not really, they burned down Jerusalem cause it was an islamic state, or a pagan state, I can't remember which, but that only happened after the templar knights rose. As for the fixed book, I figured it was like all the other artifacts, was fake reproduced third hand detail from third hand accounts. Of course, since it cannot be proven , nothing would have mattered in this case.

For your info, the Catholics were defendants of Jesus, and they did in turn the ones who opressed other religion and sects to spread christianity through his name, however, hating him was another thing, I am not too sure, but if I am correct, the evangelicans and many other diversities are actually sub-diversions from the original chirsthood that was fragmented when Christianity turned upon itself. (The original being Catholics of course.)
I assume they would have taken notes of him, after all, knowing who you are spreading your cult to would prove beneficial to your explanations and details. If they did not, it could only prove one thing, the Messiah was no more than a figment of imagination overblown in propotions to serve its direct purpose to spread the cult.

As for the thing about His existence, there's no way an individual who never existed could gather followers that lasted for 20 centuries and accumulated over 25% of the planet. Well the Roman dudes (and those Vaticans high chairs) have something to do with this, true, that's why bible survived 20 centuries of tempering. Wonder? Not. Jesus did exist. Just like Mohammad or Hitler or David Beckham.

Like I said, since no record was written in proper account, it denounced his credibility, and also, if anything, I was convinced Jesus was a rumor spread by the Vaticans (or the original Jewish or Hebrew counterparts of the original cult) that used "HIM" to market their image to the potential believers.
Not surprisingly it worked, as peasants then needed something external to rely to and necessary to fund their daily lives. Of course, perhaps they needed something different.

Nonetheless, the culture was only loathed against during its early days, at approx when he announced he was the Son of God, records has shown that a minority actually supported his role, and that minority is no small number in terms of the size of the Roman era.

The cult itself would have proven to have a religious and political standing at its times, since it actually convinced the Roman generals to kill the man who supposedly led the cult. Again, the cult itself could have considerably have several leaders, with one being the scapegoat unfortunately.

I am Jesus, whats up?