That statement is impossible to defend.Of course he is historical,
The Greek scholar Celsus:and even his greatest opponents have never argued otherwise.
[Jesus] invented his birth from a virgin . . . born in a certain Jewish village, of a poor woman of the country, who gained her subsistence by spinning, and who was turned out of doors by her husband, a carpenter by trade, because she was convicted of adultery; that after being driven away by her husband, and wandering about for a time, she disgracefully gave birth to Jesus, an illegitimate child, who having hired himself out as a servant in Egypt on account of his poverty, and having there acquired some miraculous powers, on which the Egyptians greatly pride themselves, returned to his own country, highly elated on account of them, and by means of these proclaimed himself a God.
Thomas Paine:
When also I am told that a woman, called the Virgin Mary, said, or gave out, that she was with child without any cohabitation with a man, and that her betrothed husband, Joseph, said that an angel told him so, I have a right to believe them or not: such a circumstance required a much stronger evidence than their bare word for it: but we have not even this; for neither Joseph nor Mary wrote any such matter themselves. It is only reported by others that they said so. It is hearsay upon hearsay, and I do not chose to rest my belief upon such evidence
How does one come to the conclusion that a person named Jesus Christ was known to have NOT lived in some house occupied by a couple named Mary and Joseph, who are said to belong to a cult called Nazarenes? I'm not sure if I follow you.And in the years immediately following his "alleged' life and death, if his opponents could simply have declared that there never was such a person, don't you think they would have gone that route?
You mean there is legend which testifies to that, not any actual witnesses. Paine:It would be a pretty airtight argument against a man whose followers insisted he rose from the dead.
The resurrection and ascension, supposing them to have taken place, admitted of public and ocular demonstration, like that of the ascension of a balloon, or the sun at noon day, to all Jerusalem at least. A thing which everybody is required to believe, requires that the proof and evidence of it should be equal to all, and universal; and as the public visibility of this last related act was the only evidence that could give sanction to the former part, the whole of it falls to the ground, because that evidence never was given. Instead of this, a small number of persons, not more than eight or nine, are introduced as proxies for the whole world, to say they saw it, and all the rest of the world are called upon to believe it. But it appears that Thomas did not believe the resurrection; and, as they say, would not believe without having ocular and manual demonstration himself. So neither will I; and the reason is equally as good for me, and for every other person, as for Thomas.
I'll retract my statement about pot calling the kettle black, recognizing that you were distancing yourself from the lunatic extremists within Christianity.For all the rest of what you have to say, I know that many people who claim to be Christians are just awful people.
No I won't. But I respect your intelligence in rejecting the barbarity and stupidity of such groups.However, I also know you are not going to let me off as easy as my saying, 'Well, the Inquisitors and the Fundamentalist, aren't true Christians,"
That's your call. Readers here understand you're a Christian simply because you say so. We regard truth as another thing.but neither would I dare to say that I myself am a true Christian.
Paine:Sure, I accept Jesus as the redeemer of my sins, but whether I am making my soul as slight a burden for him as possible is not for me to say.
The Christian mythologists tell us that Christ died for the sins of the world, and that he came on Purpose to die. Would it not then have been the same if he had died of a fever or of the small pox, of old age, or of anything else?
The declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon Adam, in case he ate of the apple, was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but, thou shale surely die. The sentence was death, and not the manner of dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any other particular manner of dying, made no part of the sentence that Adam was to suffer, and consequently, even upon their own tactic, it could make no part of the sentence that Christ was to suffer in the room of Adam. A fever would have done as well as a cross, if there was any occasion for either.
This sentence of death, which, they tell us, was thus passed upon Adam, must either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live, or have meant what these mythologists call damnation; and consequently, the act of dying on the part of Jesus Christ, must, according to their system, apply as a prevention to one or other of these two things happening to Adam and to us.
That it does not prevent our dying is evident, because we all die; and if their accounts of longevity be true, men die faster since the crucifixion than before: and with respect to the second explanation, (including with it the natural death of Jesus Christ as a substitute for the eternal death or damnation of all mankind,) it is impertinently representing the Creator as coming off, or revoking the sentence, by a pun or a quibble upon the word death. That manufacturer of, quibbles, St. Paul, if he wrote the books that bear his name, has helped this quibble on by making another quibble upon the word Adam. He makes there to be two Adams; the one who sins in fact, and suffers by proxy; the other who sins by proxy, and suffers in fact. A religion thus interlarded with quibble, subterfuge, and pun, has a tendency to instruct its professors in the practice of these arts. They acquire the habit without being aware of the cause.
The declaratory sentence which, they say, was passed upon Adam, in case he ate of the apple, was not, that thou shalt surely be crucified, but, thou shale surely die. The sentence was death, and not the manner of dying. Crucifixion, therefore, or any other particular manner of dying, made no part of the sentence that Adam was to suffer, and consequently, even upon their own tactic, it could make no part of the sentence that Christ was to suffer in the room of Adam. A fever would have done as well as a cross, if there was any occasion for either.
This sentence of death, which, they tell us, was thus passed upon Adam, must either have meant dying naturally, that is, ceasing to live, or have meant what these mythologists call damnation; and consequently, the act of dying on the part of Jesus Christ, must, according to their system, apply as a prevention to one or other of these two things happening to Adam and to us.
That it does not prevent our dying is evident, because we all die; and if their accounts of longevity be true, men die faster since the crucifixion than before: and with respect to the second explanation, (including with it the natural death of Jesus Christ as a substitute for the eternal death or damnation of all mankind,) it is impertinently representing the Creator as coming off, or revoking the sentence, by a pun or a quibble upon the word death. That manufacturer of, quibbles, St. Paul, if he wrote the books that bear his name, has helped this quibble on by making another quibble upon the word Adam. He makes there to be two Adams; the one who sins in fact, and suffers by proxy; the other who sins by proxy, and suffers in fact. A religion thus interlarded with quibble, subterfuge, and pun, has a tendency to instruct its professors in the practice of these arts. They acquire the habit without being aware of the cause.
I wondered the same thing when you brought it up. But you're right about one thing. Just as no one knows if he ever sported a beard, no one knows any of his identifying features, where he lived, etc., and there are no artifacts to indicate that any of the significant events in the story ever took place (other then a few actual historical figures like Herod the Great / Pontius Pilate, and events like the destruction of the Temple), even if we extricate all the smoke and mirrors of magic and claims of divinity.I can't imagine why it is important whether Jesus had a beard or not. I think it's generally assumed that he did as he was an adult male in a certain time and place where it would have been rather odd not to. But, who cares?
I don't understand your cynicism. He would immediately recognize that we don't have to leave our helpless members to die on Mt Olympus. We have all kinds of safety nets, if only despite stubborn resistance from your estranged Anabaptist cousins. Besides there are a huge number of scholars and philosophers today that would far exceed anything he could have hoped for as far as the global enshrinement of his ideas. The world has certainly been a lot worse off than it is today.I've read some Plato too, and I think he is just about the most clear-eyed writer I have ever come across.
I really believe if he could visit this 21st century of ours not one thing would surprise him. Sure, the technology might baffle and amaze him for a time, but he'd immediately suss out our characters and find our society wanting, and say, "Yep, I thought as much. 2400 years passed and nothing to show for it.'
According to your patriarch Origen, Celsus enumerated the ideas taken from Platonism and incorporated into Christian theology:However, I don't think he's as original and radical thinker as Jesus.
For he [Celsus] has quoted a considerable number of passages, chiefly from Plato, and has placed alongside of these such declarations of holy Scripture as are fitted to impress even the intelligent mind; subjoining the assertion that these things are stated much better among the Greeks (than in the Scriptures), and in a manner which is free from all exaggerations and promises on the part of God, or the Son of God.
No one is suggesting that this matters. I was alluding the overriding themes taken from Plato.Just consider Jesus' reference to things like Hebrew marriage laws, and the way the Pharisees tithe. How and why would Plato know or care anything about all that?
You've also read about the Magi paying homage at the Nativity of Jesus. This is an indication that the legend needed to brace itself against Mithraism, by having the Persians seem to willingly bow to the Christian version of the story. How else would Mithra have migrated from Parthia to the catacombs of Rome, where there are still preserved chambers with banquet tables for celebrating the ritual banquet, which are the earliest relics resembling the Catholic mass? It was a syncretic fusion. This was not unprecedented either. If you recall the Persians liberated the Jews from captivity in Babylon. And there was considerable Persian presence in the Levant around the same time, so the homeland Jews would have encountered them as well.And I've read that Mithra and even the Egyptian corn gods who rise again actually post-date Christ.
As I recall, Mithraism in this incarnation, placing Mithra as the defender of good over evil, dining with his "12 followers" (orginally the 12 signs of the zodiac) on the eve of his crucifixion, was the lore along the same crossroads between Persia and Greece (Thrace/Anatolia) that had been tramped by both sides during the earlier Greco-Persian engagements. This had to affect Paul. His mother had been expatriated from Judaea by a Roman soldier who carried her off as his bride to Tarsus, which was on that ancient crossroads. In had been occupied by Persians, then Greeks, and now Romans. Imagine the fantastic stories Paul must have heard growing up as a child, from the soldier who may have been complicit in the Roman atrocities in Judaea, and the woman whose family must have perished from it, to the neighbors steeped in the native Mithraic traditions of their Persian antecedents, to include this heroic demigod who was celebrated through a sort of Greco-Roman feast. Somewhere in the middle of all of this was the genetic memory of Socrates and his sacrificial cup, his stoic suicide as a matter of principle, to somehow improve the fate of his fellow Greek citizens. After all it's understood that Paul did write in Greek, which required not only understanding the Greek lexicon, but the cultural context in which words acquire their meaning.
If you were from California or any of the vast regions held by the Spanish, and the Aztecs had defeated Cortez, and for some reason had gone on to expand their civilization into all the lands held by Spain, you would likely by advising me that Quetzalcoatl is the one true god.Oh, and I'm not from Texas, but I have lived in El Paso and I would be proud to have been born in The Lone Star State.
If you had been born in some remote village among Sherpas of Tibet, odds are you would have never heard of Jesus Christ,It has never been my habit to just be the religion I was born with. I know quite a lot about the other major religions, and it was the liberal-minded sisters in my Catholic high school that put me on that path.
Indeed Catholics are a friend to just about every idea held sacred by atheists, except for their opposition of abortion and gay rights and the atheist's aversion to religious indoctrination.You will find that Catholics are a very tolerant people: eager to know about everything from evolution to Kali the destroyer.