Chris,

I'm sympathetic with your reluctance to read my thread all the way through.  I never intended it to become the longest thread ever developed on this site.  You're essentially correct about what you say about Seth.  The relevant post is reply #1 on p. 1 of this thread. 

I agree with Firebird that the evidence for Christ's crucifixion is verified by "overwhelming" evidence.  But one's assessment of evidence regarding a controversial figure is in the eye of the beholder.  There are groups who insist that the Apollo moon landing has little evidence to support it and that the moon landing was faked in a New Mexico hangar.  As for Jesus' crucifixion, Firebird can capably speak for himself. 

I would make three claims about this question:
(1) The Gospels can be connected with eyewitness testimony.  But of course eyewitnesses can be misinformed and can be deceptive.  However, I think the Gospel witness is basically reliable.  There is an overwhelming SECULAR  scholarly consensus that Jesus was in fact crucified. But I concede that "overwhelming" is perhaps too leaded a term for arguments about ancient events.

(2) We can even piece together the negative version of Jesus' life circulated by His first and second century detractors.  This version is substantially a tissue of lies, but even it concedes that Jesus was in fact crucified.  If you  wish, I can develop (1) and (2) in detail.  I hesitate to do so because this does not really advance the purpose of Bruce's site. 

(3) I will take the liberty of refuting one false claim made recently on this site.  Posters clamed that Josephus is the only early non-Christian witness to Jesus' crucifixion and that his references to Jesus can be dismissed as later Christian interpolations.  These posters are wrong on both counts.

(a) Josephus was born a few years after Jesus' death.  The Greek version of his fullest allusion to Jesus seems too sympathetic for a Pharisee like Josephus and has apparently been revised by a later Christian hand.  But the Arabic version of this allusion reflects Josephus's style and lacks the bias of the Greek version.  It seems to preserve the original wording.   It reads:

"At that time there was a wise man who was called Jesus, and he was known to be virtuous.  And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples.  Pilate condemned him to be crucified and to die.  And those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship.  THEY REPORTED that he had appeared to them after his crucifixion and that he was alive.  Accordingly, he was PERHAPS the Messiah concerning whom the prophets hav recounted  wonders (Josephus, Antiquities 18.3.3)."   

Note that Jpsephus is positive, tentative, and  yet ultimately neutral about Jesus. 

(b) Modern scholarship accepts the other allusion to Jesus in Josephus is beyond dispute:

"He [the high priest Annas] assembled the sanhedrin of the judges, and brought before them JAMES, THE BROTHER OF JESUS THE SO-CALLED CHRIST, and some of his companions, and when he had levelled an accusation against them as breakers of the Law, he delivered them to be stoned (Josephus, Antiquities 20.9.1)."

(c) It is wrong to claim that no other ancient non-Christian historian referred to Jesus.  Two non-Christian first century historians bear independent witness to the awesome events described in Matthew 27, but interpret this bizarre phenomenon as a 3-hour solar eclipse:

"From noon on, darkness came over the whole land, until 3 in the afternoon...At that moment [Jesus' death], the curtain of the Temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.  The earth shook and the rocks were split (Matthew 27:45, 51)."   

Both Thalles (52 AD) and Phlegon (also first century) were freedmen of Tiberius, the emperor at the time of Jesus' crucifixion.  Both of their histories are now lost, but are quoted by the Christian historian Julius Africanus in 220 AD.  Julius takes issue wth their interpretation of the darkness as a 3-hour solar eclipse from noon till 3 PM during Jesus' crucifixion.  Others apparently dismissed this event as a mass 3-hour hallucination.  Julius Afircanus feels strongly that they are underestimating the supernatural character of what actually happened that day in Jerusalem:

"On the whole world there passed a most fearful darkness, and the rocks were rent by an earthquake, an many places in Judea and other districts were thrown down.  This darkness, THALLES, IN THE THIRD BOOK OF HIS HISTORY, calls, as appears to me without reason, an eclipse of the sun.  For the Hebrews celebrated the Passover on the 14th day according to the moon, and the passion of our Savior falls on the day before the Passover; but an eclipse of the sun takes place only when the moon comes under the sun...But let opinion pass and carry the majority with it, and let the portent of the world be deemed an eclipse of the sun, like others, a portent only to the eye (i.e., a hallucination).  PHLEGON RECORDS THAT, in the time of Tiberias Caesar, at full moon, there was a full eclipse of the sun from the 6th hour to the 9th (i.e. noon to 3 PM)--manifestly that one of which we speak.  But what has an eclipse in common with an earthquake, the rending of rocks, and the resurrection of the dead, and so great a perturbation throughout the universe?  Surely no such event as this is recorded for a long time (18:1)." 

A Roman inscription in Greek from time of Emperor Claudius (40 AD) has been found near Jesus' home town, Nazareth.  The inscription warns the residents against grave-robbing and apparently reflects the Roman belief that Jesus' disciples stole Jesus' body and then claimed that He had risen from the dead.

In the early 2nd century, two other Roman historians, Tacitus (115 AD) and Suetonius (120 AD) refer to Christ.  Suetonius refers to Christ as "Chrestus" and Tacitus refers to Christians as "Chrestians,"  but it is clear that Christ is intended.  "Chrestus" is a common name in Latin, whereas "Christus" is unprecedented.  So the spelling is altered to make it more familiar to Romans.  Tacitus refers to Jesus' execution by Pontius Pilate (Annals 15:44).  Lucian, another 2nd century pagan dismisses Jesus as "a crucified idiot." 

Don

Quote:


Hey Don, nice to chat with you again.
Thanks for your opinion.
Reliable? is that the same as infalible or inerrant.
Reliability when relying on second or third hand account of events and then written down many many years after the fact, and relying on those documents to remain unchanged, unedited, un 'picked-a-part' in archaic time seems to me highly unreliable in my OPINION.

As for the matter of Jesus being cruicified, no one has yet put forth any reliable overwhelming evidence that a switcharoo didn't take place.

Well I never learnt so much about christianity before the whole debate started about Jesus on this forum lol

I can't find any historian right now But realying on later historians is rather problematic for sure...

Anyhow I discovered this that could give me more credibility.

source : http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_jcno.htm

Quote:

Axel, I KNOW that Yeshua is/was real as I was there in the body of Peter but there is no way that I can prove it so the debate will go on and on and on. Only when people stop arguing and debating this and go within where all answers lie will the debate end.  We have all answers to every single thing within each of us.

Peace,
Mairlyn

I want to mention a form of channeling that is rarely discussed on this board.  A few weeks ago, I attended a talk by the local owner of a well drilling company.  He mentioned that his dowsers are 90% accurate in their location of underground water.  Their accuracy is important because it can cost $10,000 per drilled hole!  He then told the story of how one of his dowsers went off the deep end and started asking his rod questions about his personal life.  Should he divorce his wife, etc.?  The rod "just jumped" in his hand as it provided clearcut answers.  But the psychic answers soon started deceiving him and messed up his personal life to the point where a well drilling co-worker suspected demonic deception!  The thought occurred to me that this misuse of dowsing rods probably operates on the same principles as a Ouija board.  The dangers of Ouija boards have often been discussed on this site.  Both dowsing rods and Ouija bards can channel both spirits and, more mundanely, the hidden recesses of the unconscious.

Don
 

I wonder if this is a possibility. A person starts out by pretending to channel some entity. A person does this partly because he or she has tendencies that are dishonest, manipulative and greedy. Without knowing it, this person attracts an unfriendly spirit to his or herself, this unfriendly spirit feeds a person misleading thoughts without this person being aware that he or she is being fed misleading thoughts. Or in other words, a misleading spirit finds a person who unknowingly becomes the misleading spirit's voice piece.

I have communicated with friendly spirits many times, yet a number of times an unfriendly spirit has come along. Sometimes unfriendly spirits make their presence obvious. Sometimes they'll try to mislead me by sending me a message with the hope that I'll believe it comes from a being who represents the light. It can become confusing at times.

I know about the like attracts like principle, but there are other factors.  I once had a dream which basically said that if you don't do what they (unfriendly spirits) do, don't go where they go, and don't mess with them, they won't mess with you. I didn't let this message deter me from getting involved with light oriented spirit work that made it possible for some unfriendly spirits to become aware of me.

There have been a few occasions where I was in contact with a friendly spirit while feeling love, peace, and divinity, and an unfriendly spirit still managed to get its peanut gallery comments into the conversation. The nature of such random occurences was easy to read, because the unfriendly spirits presented themselves with a lot of anger, hate and maliciousness.

Perhaps because lower realm spirits are located somewhere between this physical World and higher realms, it is possible for an unfriendly spirit to find its way into the conversation, even while one is connected to a higher level of consciousness.

Don:

In the past a couple of people on this forum contended that Groeschel isn't a good witness to Schuchman's fate. Going by how Mark Cuneo speaks of Groeschel in his book Exorcism in America, Groeschel was an honest man who wouldn't exagerate Schuchman's state of mind.

Schuchman's ACIM's collaborator William Tetford had parents who were also into Christian Science. He was also a mind control expert who worked for the CIA.  Both ACIM and Christian Science speak of this World with a Vendantic interpretation, it is nothing but an illusion.

It is hard to believe that a person who supposedly received information from Christ for a number of years, would end up in the state of mind Helen ended up in.

It is also hard to believe that Christ would chose a lady who was closely associated with a man who was involved with mind control projects.

I tend to be pretty good at interpreting what I read, and many of the paragraph's that can be found within ACIM just don't make sense. The course takes the stance that you should assume it is your own error when you don't understand something. I don't agree.

I find it really hard to believe that Christ would choose a means of communication that matches the ACIM format. For example, a 365 day affirmation course that suits the needs of all people? This is really hard to believe.

I can see how the course has a brainwashing effect.