Was Jesus A Myth?
An American Biblical scholar, Joseph Atwill, is presenting the idea that Jesus was a purely fictional character invented by the Roman Emperor Titus to trick the Jews into becoming pacifists and turning the other cheek so they could be easier to control. This is apparently getting a lot of press and a video can be found on it here:
A reviewer at Amazon made some great points on Atwill’s previous book. Here is a partial quote:
“Furthermore, it is clear that Atwill fails on the point of ancient social psychology. He supposes that Jesus was invented to attract militaristic, messianic Jews; yet the figure of Jesus is precisely what a dedicated Sicarii would least follow. Indeed, Atwill openly contradicts himself, for he claims he cannot see how “Judaism could produce such diametric opposites, yet he argues that Christianity was built to make these opposites attract! He supposes, in other words, that Judaism would not produce such a group; but he hypothesizes that Jews then converted to such a group!
Even more problematic for Atwill is what is said by Roman writers whose works he ignores. Tacitus’ comment in Annals 15.44 places the origins of Christianity, and Roman reaction to it, nearly a decade before Titus’ final victory. Atwill says nothing at all about this critical passage; nor does he mention Pliny’s letter to Trajan asking what to do about Christians. Atwill wishes to posit convenient forgetfulness as the cause of the loss of knowledge about Christian origins; and how credible is it that Hadrian and Pliny “forgot” this, or did not know about it? How credible is it that Domitian [himself a Flavian!] persecuted Christianity and forgot that his own relatives had created it in the first place? Why would some of those relatives actually become Christians? Atwill makes no effort to explain how Christianity spread; he offers a bare paragraph on this saying that “wicked priests” introduced the religion to the masses [Jewish?]; but then, “The first people to hear the story of Jesus would most likely have been slaves [Gentiles???] whose patrons simply ordered them to attend services. After a while some began to believe, then many.” End of explanation!” LINK
A good objective book on the subject of Jesus’ existence was written by a non believer named Bart D. Ehrman who decided to check into it through studying the historical record. Even though he doesn’t believe Jesus to be the Messiah he did conclude that the historical record does prove quite conclusively that the gospels were based on a real person.
Here is one quote from his book, “Did Jesus Exist?” – Page 171
“The evidence is abundant and varied. Among the Gospels we have numerous independent accounts that attest to Jesus’ life, at least seven of them from within a hundred years of the traditional date of his death. These accounts did not appear out of thin air, however. They are based on written sources—a good number of them—that date much earlier, plausibly in some cases at least to the 50s of the Common Era. Even these sources were not fabricated purely from the minds of their authors, however. They were based on oral traditions that had been in circulation year after year among the followers of Jesus. These oral traditions were transmitted in various areas—mainly urban areas, we might surmise—throughout the Roman Empire; some of them, however, can be located in Jesus’s homeland, Palestine, where they originally circulated in Aramaic. It appears that some, probably many, of them go back to the 305 CE. We are not, then, dealing merely with Gospels that were produced fifty or sixty years after Jesus’s alleged death as the principal witnesses to his existence. We are talking about a large number of sources, dispersed over a remarkably broad geographical expanse, many of them dating to the years immediately after Jesus’s alleged life, some of them from Palestine itself. On the basis of this evidence alone, it is hard to understand how Jesus could have been “invented.” Invented by whom? Where? When? How then could there be so many independent strands of evidence?”
Perhaps the greatest evidence for the existence of Jesus is something overlooked by all the scholars and that is his actual words quoted in the New Testament. It is difficult to believe that some scheming fraudulent Romans could have written the greatest spiritual teachings and words of all time, quoted more than any other on the planet for spiritual edification. Roman philosophers and historians did write many words but all of them together are not quoted as much as a paragraph from the Jesus of the New Testament. His words are Eternal Words that will not pass away. The words of the Romans are just words.
Hands of God
Question: If I were to get a serious illness and had to get surgery, who do I place my faith in and thank when it’s all done? The surgeon or God?
JJ: Both. We are in the image of God and as such are extensions of the Deity. The surgeon thus represents the arms and hands of God doing his work.
Shamballa and Crystals
…in a Near Death Experience book I ran across a guy who toured Shamballa but who was not given its name. He described a great room that held two crystals coming up out from the floor. He was told that advanced souls with permission and training could place hands on those crystals “see” and influence anyone or anything on Earth. So this NDE account dovetailed right in when I read JJ’s fiction story a few years later.
JJ: Interesting. For the record I have never read this guy’s work or any other about crystals in Shamballa.
Question; Have they discovered the God particle?
They have discovered the Higgs Boson, often called the God Particle on July 4, 2012. If anything, its existence shows that the foundations of our creation are much too complex to have begun with no intelligence involved. And the Higgs is not the ultimate particle but one of many yet to be discovered.
Question: Say a man found a way to cure cancer and he was in the middle of writing a scientific paper that would revolutionize the world but he has a heart attack and dies but before he does he gets the paper published….. How will good karma serve him now? Will it manifest in his next life.
JJ: You don’t get much good Karma for just coming up with ideas. Karma depends on what you do with the time you have here.
The man who came up with a cancer cure but died will create a lot of good carry over effects because he dedicated his life to an endeavor to help the many. This will enable him to be born in a good situation in the next life so he will be able to do much good and possibly retrieve the ideas he had from the past life. After all, each life is a continuation from the past one just as each day continues after the past day after some sleep.
Be wiser than other people, if you can, but do not tell them so. – Lord Chesterfield (1694 – 1773)
Oct 13, 2013
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