I said 'in the form of...' I didn't say 'so-and-so were...' so maybe it was unclear and maybe there was a slight misunderstanding.

Whoever wrote Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John each had a specific audience that person was concerned with and whoever that person was who wrote that Gospel (whether the writer either had first or maybe second hand information) that person had a record for that community of believes, the (anonymous) writer was (something like) a mediator between those who knew Jesus Christ and that community where that specific Gospel was used.

I believe he was a real person.
But, I do not believe in his morals, and powers, and his story.

Don't believe any of it.

If you're doubting the existence of Christ, then you are essentially denying ancient history as a whole. The Roman historian Tacitus and ancient hebrew historian Josephus have chronicled the life and times of Jesus in their writings and histories. So to deny them would essentially be the equivalent of denying all written history.

Not really. A little digging on the topic reveals that it's not as ironclad as some people would have you believe.

it could have been another Jesus, i think this was mentioned earlier

Also, both Tacitus and Josephus were writing about it decades after the fact. It's not as if they were witnesses or even contemporaries of Jesus.

Buzzov*en is a troll, no need to even reply to his posts.

Per the ideals of the thread, I believe that there is sufficient evidence for the existence of a man named Jesus. His existence is usually a given, seeing as how he has been named in numerous religious texts. It's usually his works that are brought into question, not his mere existence, so this seems like a step backwards to me.

They might not have been contemporaries but usually most written histories come after the fact of an event anyway. Furthermore, Suetonius and Pliny the Younger also wrote of Christ. I don't see why pagan writers would have a reason to conspire and make up Jesus for future generations. They were simply chronicling the issue of Christians stirring up trouble by refusing to conform to the Greco-Roman pantheon of gods that all conquered cultures were expected to buy into.

The historical proof of Jesus as a man is about as solid as anything else in ancient history. Obviously historiography plays a huge role in what is given to us in that the victor always gets to tell the story but that's all we have to go off of.

the entire Bible is based on what the victor tells is true

if Lucifer's, Baal's or Beelzebub's tribe were victorious, instead of Yahweh's, we'd have a very much different Bible

I'm not sure I follow, the gospels were selected during the Council of Hippo around 400 AD or so. The Edict of Milan had only been issued a few decades before which allowed for Christians to worship freely and not be persecuted. I don't know if would classify the early Christians as victors.

If by victor you mean God triumphing over Lucifer then yes, I suppose they are victors. It's all about perspective, I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to Satanic or occult doctrine but I'm sure whatever manifestos are central to that sort of faith has a completely different spin on the Christian tradition in terms of the struggle between God and Lucifer.

i meant during the old Testament days, there were these few tribes who worshipped a particularly deity

the one which worshipped Yahweh triumphed over the other tribes

Lucifer was actually one of the kings of these others tribes

of coz, the tribe that triumped would call these others deities and kings "demons" or "Satan"

if it had been otherwise, "Yahweh" would've been a demon, and the story of the Old Testament would have been completely different

And the Gallic tribes could've actually been bespectacled, thrifty, environmentally conscious hipsters who listened to LCD Soundsystem but just got a bad rap from the mainstream Romans. We'll just never know the events as they actually happened

and we never will

the time of the Patriarchs was so long ago

Moses' leading of the exodus occurred around 1312 BCE

I would place this triumph (?) by Yahweh's tribe slightly just before Abraham's time (the first Patriarch)

Would you direct me to where it says Lucifer, Baal, or Beelzebub had any tribes?

It wasn’t until the fourth century at the Council of Hippo in AD393 that our present New Testament was officially accepted by the orthodox Church. Although it should be stated, leading up to this event, the twenty-seven books that make-up the corpus of our New Testament was in circulation among the early Christians. In order to understand its development, however, we should first define what is meant by the term, “Canon” of scripture.

The word Lucifer is found in only one place in the Bible -- Isaiah 14:12 -- but only in the King James and related versions: "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! . . ."

The King James Version is based on the Vulgate, the Latin translation of Jerome. Jerome translated the Hebrew helel (bright or brilliant one) as "Lucifer," which was a reasonable Latin equivalent. And yet it is this Lucifer, the bright one or lightbearer, that came to be understood by so many as the name for Satan, Lord of Darkness.

Some Gospels were excluded, i.e. Gnostic Gospels

I've always been under the impression Lucifer and Satan were synonyms? I'm be no means a theologian so forgive my ignorance.

Yes, many Gospels were omitted from the final edit, a lot of them showed up at excavation site of Nag Hammadi including the Gnostic Gospels

LOL, no sweat, few people are as weird as me and know these things :shycouch:

it's not in the Bible or in the Gnostic Gospels

it's just some part theory/part speculation some atheists had

i read about it somewhere

I never thought about it much. I suppose some specifics about the character Jesus may have been modeled after the life of a particularly charismatic dude.

But the overall character is just your classic hero going through the typical heroic journey. In Jesus' case, the journey culminates in the whole death and rebirth ordeal (symbolic of course, but for some reason now interpreted as literal), but really, his story isn't so different from any other hero's saga. Just an everyday guy who got tossed into a world of extra-ordinary happenings who not only survived but prevailed, and came home just in time to save the day.

Think Luke Skywaker, Frodo Baggins, or even Harry Potter :)

I agree very much with this :)

When it comes to the bible as "evidence", I figure it's as good as using the Grimm brothers writings as proof there really was a Hansel and Gretel and a cannibal witch with a gingerbread cottage.

Jesus' divinity wasn't established until the Council of Chalcedon in 491, before that he was most often considered to be just a prophet alongside Moses, Jacob etc. So I doubt Jesus ever claimed to be the Son of God during his lifetime.

That only shifts the blame, it makes Jesus no more or less likely to have been the son of god, and the parallel between the earlier stories as we know them, and the image of Jesus we have today, remains the same - Oddly, surprisingly similar.

If there really was a magical Jesus did he have special god-DNA or did all his DNA come from Mary? That's what I would like to know.

Also was Jesus physically capable of impregnating a woman? If he did, would his children be 1/4 god?

I'm sort of having trouble understanding your point, as your sentence seems a little obtuse to me, and I don't really feel like necro diving through all of the pages and pages of this thread to find your opinions on the matter. So, in other words, huh?

Jesus would not have God's DNA. God doesn't have DNA, God is a supernatural being not made of parts like DNA etc.

And how do you know this?

I can't prove he doesn't exist but you can prove he doesn't have DNA?

God only existed in human form when he was Jesus. It's not like "the Father" ever took the form of mortal flesh. The same goes for the Holy Spirit.

If you read the Bible you see it was actually the Holy Spirit, not the Father, who impregnated Mary, so I don't really see how those two are different. Maybe someone more well-versed in these matters could clarify?

Sure . . . someone besides Joseph impregnated Mary (Roman soldier?) she gave birth to Yeshua, Yeshua (Jesus) starts his own religious sect separate and in opposition in may ways from the existing Jewish sects and hundreds of years later people marry together older God/Man myths to create scriptures intending to homogenize this Belief System. :beer:

the Christian God is a Trinity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost

I know. But as the Holy Ghost was the one who impregnated Mary, wouldn't he be the Father? (Unless the Father gave his sperm to the Holy Ghost, who then knocked up Mary? :O)

Think of god like Plessy v Ferguson, separate but equal. :thumb:

it's more like a 3-in-1 shampoo - moisturizer, conditioner and cleanser

If Jesus didn't get DNA from anyone but his mother Mary, he would've been a lady as she would have no Y chromosomes to pass on, only Xs. Also, he might have been haploid then. :p:

Ah, good point! So we have to assume either half his DNA came right from god's DNA or else god conjured up DNA out of thin air to combine with Mary's DNA.

This thread got a little more scientific than I expected! :laughing:

if it is really true that Jesus had God DNA, then finding an old strand of his hair will let us discover..... the God particle

I know this was a while ago but as an observant Jew we most certainly do not believe he was any kind of prophet.

Haven't you seen The Phantom Menace?