Sigh. I was hoping that I would get a break from this for a while, but apparently not. We'll start here:
Not at all. Exodus, for example, is a complete fabrication. The Bible is only reliable in areas where it can be reconciled and is consistent with [a] the archaeological record and
the extant literary record. There are many historical events in the Old and New Testament that are quite simply just made up. Exodus never happened, Herod's slaughter of innocents never happened, there never was a census in Judea before the death of Herod.
Historians examine them in terms of their worth in a sociological sense; they show the importance of the mythic circulation of legitimacy and claims to territory on the part of the Israelites, who claimed that they had some higher form of territorial legitimacy via discourses of God and promised lands. Historians do not view it as factual, but as a mythic text of an ancient civilization that mirrors some vague history, includes many fables and reflects an archaic understanding of a generic Near-Eastern mythic consciousness.
No, this is one thing he cannot fix: this is why the authors of the gospels had to do it for him. I'm going to preface this by pointing out that the authors of the Gospels continually make historical mistakes, distort history and make up events at their convenience to make sure that Jesus fits as many prophecies regarding the messiah as he possibly can. Let me explain:
Well this is a no-brainer. Anyone laying claim to any mythic legitimacy or claim of power had to be male in such a patriarchal society. This shows nothing.
Well I'm going to lump these two together, because this is extremely important. These two are mutually exclusive. If Jesus was born of a virgin, then his only possible link to David is through his mother, which would not have been recognised as fulfilling the prophecy anyway, yet a genealogy of Joseph is provided; why? Joseph has no blood relation to Jesus if the virgin birth concept is to be believed. None at all. Such a society would not have recognised a legal adoption in the same terms as blood relation is considered, and the New Testament continually states that Jesus was of the seed (Greek 'Sperma) of David; this is not a concept that can be attached to legal adoption.
So either he was born a virgin or he was a direct descendant of David; he cannot be both. The reality is that the idea virgin birth was likely stolen from other messianic cults circulating around the Near East (oh yes! there were many Jesus figures; he just had the best post-mortem PR office) in order to, again, claim a higher form of mythic legitimacy for their cult figure. Had the virgin birth been an original element of the cult of Jesus, then there is absolutely no reason for a genealogy of Joseph, to whom Jesus is not related in any biological sense, to be included. The Bible was edited ad hoc by the early Church to suit their political/theological needs and this is just one such remnant of such acts.
Let me also add that there is evidence that here, as in many other parts, Matthew, who has a clearly poor grasp of Hebrew, has mistranslated the passage here. He points to:
"Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel."
However the correct translation is not 'virgin' but 'young woman', which is a totally different thing. Hebrew has a specific word, betulah, for a virgin, and a more general word, `almah, for a young woman and `almah is the one used here. This notwithstanding, Jesus should have been named Immanuel if this is true.
This is rather vague and makes no sense. There were dozens of messianic/prophet figures in Judea at the time, many sparked by the recent Roman occupation, and it just so happens that John the Baptist fit the bill well enough that they ignore all the others. In fact John the Baptist is a far more extant historical figure than Jesus. There is far more objective historical detail available about John the Baptist than there is about Jesus and quite some deal of it contradicts the Biblical account of John the Baptist (for example John the Baptist's subordination to Jesus when he baptizes him is rather a propaganda ploy on the part of the Gospel writers.
This census is made up. No such census took place within the life of Herod. According to Matthew, Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1). According to Luke, Jesus was born during the first census in Israel, while Quirinius was governor of Syria (Luke 2:2). This is impossible because Herod died in March of 4 BC and the census took place in 6 and 7 AD, about 10 years after Herod's death. Even if it did take place there is no way that any Roman censor would order hundreds of thousands of members of an agricultural subsistence economy to pack up and move through dangerous terrain, thousands of miles across the province. It would absolutely ruin hundreds of regional economies and incite hatred in a newly-occupied province.
This is nothing more than a literary device. Jesus of Nazareth, as he is continually referred to by the Bible and other extant historical sources that refer to him, is, as everyone knows, of Nazareth. The gospel writers needed some way of getting him to Bethlehem in order to fulfill the prophecy; so they made one up that never happened.
As I said, the Gospel writers are well aware of these prophecies and simply work them into their literary records. A star acting in such a way is an astronomical impossibility.
Oh please do. You've proven nothing beyond the fact that the Gospel writers were aware of many prophecies and went to great lengths distorting the truth and fabricating events in order to fulfill them, as happens time and time again with other mythic texts.
Well they are legitimate writers, but you're still just throwing names around. Flavius Josephus was very neutral in his description, when his actual words are distinguished from later Christian interpolations.
Thallus maybe made a comment about an eclipse during a time where Jesus may have been executed, but such an eclipse is simply impossible. Even the writer from which we draw our quote, Sextius Julius Africanus, had worked out in the 3rd Century that an eclipse cannot occur at Passover when the moon is full and therefore diametically opposite the Sun.
Finally Mara bar Serapion says nothing that is relevant, so you really are just throwing a name out. He references a 'wise king' that was executed:
What advantage did the Athenians gain from putting Socrates to death? Famine and plague came upon them as a judgment for their crime. What advantage did the men of Samos gain from burning Pythagoras? In a moment their land was covered with sand. What advantage did the Jews gain from executing their wise king? It was just after that that their kingdom was abolished. God justly avenged these three wise men: the Athenians died of hunger; the Samians were overwhelmed by the sea; the Jews, ruined and driven from their land, live in complete dispersion. But Socrates did not die for good; he lived on in the teaching of Plato. Pythagoras did not die for good; he lived on in the statue of Hera. Nor did the wise king die for good; he lived on in the teaching which he had given
The problems with the implied interpretation that this king was Jesus are many.
- The Gospels firmly place the blame for the execution on the Romans, so the Jews did not execute him.
- The 'Kingdom' he refers to that fell had already fallen to the Romans before the death of Jesus.
- He names Socrates and Pythagoras, figures from hundreds of years earlier, yet does not name the 'wise-king'. The identity is indeterminable and this text proves nothing.
It is quite likely that he is referencing the 7th century BCE Jewish king Amon of Judah (reigned ca. 643/642-641/640 BCE) who, as Wiki nicely summarises for me, "was, according to the Bible, assassinated by his servants in retaliation for his idolatry (2 Kings 21 18-26; 2 Chronicles 33:20-25), and that his assassination preceded the Siege of Jerusalem by Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in 589 BCE. This interpretation is similarly reconcilable with the passage's allusion to Jews having been "driven from their land", as the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem and subsequent Babylonian Exile are considered the historical roots of the Jewish diaspora".
Even if it were Jesus, it does not show anything in and of itself, as bar Serapion quite simply would have been repeating the myth that was circulating around the Mediterranean. It makes no comment on the historicity of Jesus.
So many logical flaws with this. God did make up the box of rules and he did insist people live by them or die for hundreds of years in a very barbaric and torturous way. Even so, Jesus says on numerous occasions that he did not come to abolish these laws but fulfill them; anything else is wishful thinking on your part.
Even so, the idea that God issues these rules, in his perfection and omniscience, that were so impossible to live by that he had to say "fuck it, I need to fix this and the only way I can do this is through brutal human sacrifice" is just idiotic.
Your theology is entirely logically inconsistent and idiotic.
It's straightforward to you because you simply don't understand the history, logical or science.
All you have, in the end, is the statement that "it can't be a coincidence that the literary accounts written years after the death of a figure, the authors of which had a vested interest in promoting his divinity, are semi-consistent with prophecies that the authors were entirely aware of". No, it can't be. I'll give you a hint: they wrote it that way, and in doing so, they made a metric fuckload of mistakes and were forced to invent history and distort the truth in order to do so. That's precisely why we can trace it so well.
Continuing on where I left off!
So when Paul wrote that women were not allowed to speak when a man was speaking, and that they should keep silent on theological matters in public and cover themselves and their hair, he was promoting women's rights?
This is an excuse, and a poor one at that. Being selective about what you believe is the only way one can be a sane religious person in the modern era. If you followed the entirety of the Bible you would be bigoted, violent, insane and a dribbling idiot to boot.
The fundamentalists are the only ones that follow the entirety of the Bible without hypocritical cherry-picking. If you must ignore large chunks of butchery, slaughter, rape, theft, genocide and other filth in your Holy Book to be considered sane, there is something deeply wrong with your Holy Book, and this is true for basically every religion.
No. They happened. Fact. Whether or not you choose to ignore it is another thing entirely.
This really is just shifting the goalposts. If you believe such a vague translation is still does not account for the total ignorance of the writers of the Bible on the natural origins of the human species, the Earth and other phenomena that children in our society have a better understanding of before they reach high school; yet these writers were supposedly inspired by a God that created the whole shindig? What nonsense.
