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To: alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan,alt.christnet.christianlife,alt.religion.wicca,alt.religion.angels,alt.atheism
From: "angelicusrex" 
Subject: Re: Was Jesus Christ a fairy tale?
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 13:10:19 -0700

Jesus was considered by his followers to be the prophesied savior of his own
people, the Jews. Not the world. Nor was he "God made Flesh." Rather he was
the "Word of God" made flesh. The Word of God being the Law and the Prophets
incarnated into the soul and body of Jesus. He was considered a Rabbi, a
prophet and a healer. he was considered to be the Messiah. The anointed of
God. A prophet, who, bearing the Holy Spirit of God could speak for God to
men.

Now the older Jewish religion was indeed influenced by and probably arose
out of Paganism. But this would be a misnomer, as all "pagans" were just
other worshipers of other gods, Baal, Moloch, Mithras, whomever...The point
being all peoples had gods or goddesses of one type or another. And all had
their attributes.

When people from Greece (Paul was from Tarsus, not Judea BTW. Tarsus being a
Greek/Asian city), decided to proclaim Jesus a God it was well after the
incidents of Jesus' life and he himself had passed from this earth. Much was
put into the gospels later to give this god status a jumpstart. No one is
saying that the Jesus we know today is not a composite of other god's
attributes. What I am saying is that he was a real, live, living person,
known for his good deeds and for speaking from the point of view of God. The
Hebrew God. He himself derided the Gentiles as being unworthy of salvation
before his own People attained it. However his own people treated him so
badly that often he was amazed to find pagans who seemed to have a deeper
faith. This is because all people are looking for an answer. Paul's
admonishment to the Pagans in Greece was that they had an altar of sacrifice
to an "Unknown God." He claimed that the Hebrew God was this Unknown God and
that they had been worshiping Him all along. That was his answer to them two
thousand years ago. Later Christian Theologians knew all about the Pagan
Miracles and gods. And their answer was that these were fantasies made up
and attributed to wooden or stone idols of gods which did not exist but were
simple reflections of the real life and activities of Jesus. So everyone has
an answer one can read in a book or on-line. Yet it is all based on opinion
in the end. The fact remains. Jesus was a real man, no matter what was
attributed to him later. Just as many recent Rabbinical Saviors and Messiahs
were also real men, who their adherents thought would "Save the Jews." My
question is, what if all of our religions, Judaic, Christian Muslim, Hindu,
Buddhist, Sikh, or whatever are nothing more than reflections of what Plato
would call the Metaphysical Reality, the Supreme or Absolute Reality? Maybe
every one of our gods and goddesses are nothing more than archetypes made up
to reflect...ourselves?


Saint

"Dirk Hartog"  wrote in message
news:acf48a55.0311251543.356bc491@posting.google.com...
> penitent leper  wrote in message
>
> >
> > >Now the ancient world, see, it had it's own culturally recognized
> > >symbols. And, yeah, many of these symbols were attached to religious
> > >figures. In other words, you knew so-and-so was a god when you
> > >heard his stories, because so-and-so performed X, Y and Z, which are
> > >of course culturally recognized symbols of divine powers/origins.
> >
> >   In the ancient Jewish world,  JC's followers knew that Jesus was the
> > Jewish messiah of the Jewish God, who brought in the Jewish kingdom of
> > heaven through his Jewish miracles, Jewish exorcisms, Jewish healings,
> > Jewish way of life, Jewish worship, Jewish theology, and Jewish
> > mysticism.
> >   Those who need to invoke paganism to explain the major features of
> > Jesus' ministry are extremely uncritical, uninformed, and behind the
> > times.
>
> A _godman_ as _Jewish_ theology? LOL.  Jews were radical monotheists
> and they decidedly didn't worship godmen.  Christianity was a Jewish
> splinter group exactly because the idea of a godman was as pagan as
> you could get.
>
>
> As to "Jewish" miracles:
> Jesus healed the sick.        Pagan Gods healed the sick first.
> Jesus walked on water.        Pagan Gods walked on water first.
> Jesus turned water into wine. Pagan Gods turned water into wine first.
> Jesus calmed the storm.       Pagan Gods calmed storms first.
> Jesus fulfilled prophecy.     Pagan Gods fulfilled prophecy first.
> Jesus prophesied correctly.   Pagan Gods prophesied correctly first.
> Jesus raised the dead.        Pagan Gods raised the dead first.
> Jesus rose from the dead.     Pagan Gods rose from the dead first.
> Jesus apostles performed miracles.  Pagan Gods' apostles performed
> miracles first.
>
> "In the healing miracles the encounter of the sick person with Jesus
> is usually followed by a remark about the severity of the disease.
> The healing is either accomplished through a word of Jesus (magical
> terms from Aramaic are sometimes preserved; cf Mark 5:41; 7:34),
> through some manipulation (Mark 8:23), or a combination of both; the
> conclusion tells of the success of the healing and the applause of the
> bystanders.  ALL THESE FEATURES CORRESPOND TO THE STANDARD FORMS OF
> THE TELLING OF EXORCISMS AND HEALING NARRATIVES IN [PAGAN]
> ANTIQUITY… Nature miracles (e.g., the Stilling of the Tempest,
> Mark 5:35 - 41) are comparatively rare in the Synoptic
> traditions….  THEIR BASIC FORM AND NARRATIVE SCHEMA, HOWEVER,
> CLOSELY CORRESPOND TO THOSE OF ANALOGOUS STORIES FROM THE GRECO-ROMAN
> WORLD, including those that can be found in the apocryphal acts of the
> apostles."
> [Koester, Helmut.  History and Literature of Early Christianity,
> Volume 2, Introduction to the New Testament, 2d edition.  (2000), pg.
> 63]
> Amazon link:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/3110146924/paganoriginofthe
>
> 'Nuf said.
>
> Dirk Hartog



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From: "angelicusrex" 
Newsgroups: alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan,alt.christnet.christianlife,alt.religion.wicca,alt.religion.angels,alt.atheism
Subject: Re: Was Jesus Christ a fairy tale?
Date: Wed, 26 Nov 2003 13:26:39 -0700
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"JTEM"  wrote in message
news:HvCdnWJvX_VT2FmiRVn-vw@comcast.com...
>
> "Anatid Bonecki"  wrote
>
> > I see,so according to your logic...all written evidence
> > you approve of on one hand is "true" whereas if it is
> > in the Bible then it is somehow no longer true?
>
> No. You're confusing "Evidence" with "Someone wrote it."

No. I am saying "written evidence" is a document produced to be given in
evidence of something. There is "written evidence" provided for the life of
Jesus. There is no "written evidence" from his peers or his time that shows
that no such Jesus person ever existed. No one from the time of the Gospels
on, including the Gnostics, disputed that Jesus existed. They simply
disputed his purposes and attributes.

Someone wrote it, as I told Hector, needs to be looked at with a jaundiced
eye. it is an unfortunate reality of history that things once written were
always considered "sacred" if not to a god, then certainly to history or to
memory. And people misused the idea of writing to influence others. Julius
Casear wrote his own memoirs. In them, he often elaborated on the truth or
lied. Other authors caught him at it. So wrtten evidence itself can be
spurious in many instances. But at least we get an idea about Julius Casear
from his own hand or others who wrote about him (who might equally have been
elaborating or lying.) However a "testament" is really supposed to be the
Truth and nothing but the Truth. So we must take it as such until further
evidence can show it was completely concocted. A lot of the Gospels do not
jibe. But certain things do jibe between them all. And the letters of Peter,
Paul and others verify that a Jesus did exist and was pretty much a regular
person like the rest of us. Since others, like the Gnostics also wrote about
him and accepted him, it is rational to assume he existed, since we have
more written EVIDENCE for it than against it.

>
> Your mistake is in thinking that because someone wrote the
> bible it must be true. Well, we know that is not correct, as
> we know that much of the bible is inaccurate, and much of
> it predates the religion & God it claims to document.

See my statement above. Just because parts are untrue does not make the
whole thing untrue. Just because parts are true does not make it all true.

I take my Bible with a grain of salt. Believe me. But this idiocy about
Jesus not even existing? Well, let's see the evidence, written or otherwise
of this. We have relics which show people became involved in Jesus' cult
nearly a few months to a year or so after his death. (inscribed ossuaries
and caskets). We have written evidence of the Jesus cult from the
progenitors of it. They did not base it on a dream or a character or some
older god, because others were alive at the time who could easily have
refuted their testimony especially in Rome at the time of Paul and Peter's
imprisonment. So where is the evidence Jesus did not exist at all? I'd love
to see it. Some say Josephus' description of Jesus was also a fake. I would
like to see the evidence of this as well, not just someone's vaunted
opinions. Someone else mentioned Tacitus has written of Jesus as well. Well,
we can toss out all written evidence and "believe" he never existed. But
then that is still just one more "belief system."

Saint