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(154,021 posts)Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)lob1
(3,820 posts)Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)lob1
(3,820 posts)Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)lob1
(3,820 posts)Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)stopbush
(24,396 posts)And they performed a public service.
Every Jewish male needed to make a pilgrimage to the Temple once a year and make an offering - it could be a burnt or money offering. They could bring their own animal for a burnt offering, but they risked said animal being declared unclean by the Rabbis. They could bring their own coins but the Temple accepted only Jewish coins, not Roman or Greek coins.
The solution was to have money changers and vendors of "clean" animals-for-sacrifice on hand to service people who had traveled to Jerusalem to fulfill their religious "must do" for the year. Sure, this enterprise was probably a profit-center for the Temple, but so what? The Temple money changers probably charged their Jewish customers a lower exchange fee than did the Romans. Better to budget your trip to just exchange your money and purchase your animal once you got to Jerusalem where all transactions were overseen by the Temple's priests. At least you'd know you weren't being sold an unclean animal and that you were getting a decent exchange on your money.
Gentle Jesus, meek and mild whipping the money changers and upsetting their tables is an example of his megalomaniacal behavior in action. Were he around today he'd probably upset the flower cart at the gift shop of any church-run hospital.
Brigid
(17,621 posts)Thanks, I needed the this morning.
Raksha
(7,167 posts)Shared it from someone else - it seems to be going viral.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)WillyT
(72,631 posts)Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)stopbush
(24,396 posts)But myths can be instructive.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)may just be myth and legend but, a man did live that went by the name of Jesus.
more at link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus
stopbush
(24,396 posts)The text block you cited is almost entirely a fabrication of the Xian imagination.
The fact is that the very earliest sources we have for ANY New Testament book dates only back to the fourth century. Ergo, there is no way to know when the Gospels etc were actually written. People can guess, and they do. But proof? Doesn't exist.
The fact is that there exists no correlation between NT accounts with non-Xian historical records that were contemporaneous to the time Jesus supposedly lived. NONE. Oh, you'll hear the Xians claim that Josephus, Philo, Pliny, Tacitus and others "wrote about Jesus." They didn't. Some will claim they were contemporaries of Jesus. They weren't.
It is true that many history scholars who don't specialize in the Bible don't argue the existence of Jesus because they don't want to waste the time arguing with zealots about a subject that means little if anything to them.
If you have some time on your hands, this link is an excellent read on whether or not Jesus actually existed: http://rationalrevolution.net/articles/jesus_myth_history.htm
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)John1956PA
(2,656 posts)Last edited Mon Apr 21, 2014, 09:52 AM - Edit history (1)
Here is a link to a page on Humphreys' site which sets forth points suggesting that Jesus never existed.
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/ehrman.html
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)I always like it when a man makes a suggestion.
stopbush
(24,396 posts)The Bible doesn't even rise to the level of suggestion. We are talking about magical, supernatural miracles, people arising from the dead, disease being caused by evil spirits, etc etc. All clothed in the mantle of racism, misogyny and absolute a-historic fiction.
THAT'S what you're going to go to the mat for by blaming the messenger?
stopbush
(24,396 posts)Both sites have their merits.
Another good site is Pagan Origins of the Christ Myth: http://www.pocm.info/
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)"I wanted to approach this question as an historian to see whether that's right or not," Ehrman tells weekends on All Things Considered host Guy Raz.
The answer is straightforward and widely accepted among scholars of all faiths, but Ehrman says there is a large contingent of people claiming that Jesus never did exist. These people are also known as mythicists.
"It was a surprise to me to see how influential these mythicists are," Ehrman says. "Historically, they've been significant and in the Soviet Union, in fact, the mythicist view was the dominant view, and even today, in some parts of the West in parts of Scandinavia it is a dominant view that Jesus never existed," he says.
more at link:
http://www.npr.org/2012/04/01/149462376/did-jesus-exist-a-historian-makes-his-case
stopbush
(24,396 posts)Ehrman is one author. Check out Earl Doherty on the subject of what St Paul thought about Jesus.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)Non-Biblical Historians don't spend a lot of time on "Jesus" because he's simply not on the radar during the time of his alleged life.
Outside the Bible there is a complete vacuum of evidence for the existence of "Jesus", aside from the Josephus account which contains numerous dubious elements indicating it- again, to historians who study these things- to be a likely forgery, not the least of which is the completely out of character narrative tone of the account, which reads far more like a retroactive piece written by a 4th century Christian authority than a contemporary Jewish Historian of the time of "Jesus", which is what the actual Josephus was.
I think John the Baptist was probably a historical figure, and some elements of his life may have been incorporated into the narrative of the life of "Jesus". That said, I am of the belief that early Christianity began as one or more "mystery cults" which were popular at the time, and which combined elements of Deity death and rebirth (a la Osiris) as well as a wholly spiritual redemptive Christ figure, which was retroactively changed in the first few centuries of Christianity (as the undeniable historical process went down of winnowing out 'real' Christianity from the multiple variants which existed) to an objective historical existence of Jesus-as-a-person.
JMO, and it's not going to be answered one way or the other, so it's pretty much a pointless debate.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)more at link:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Evidence_for_the_historical_existence_of_Jesus_Christ
Iggo
(47,565 posts)stopbush
(24,396 posts)the scourge he fashioned for himself.