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What a sneaky pompous protagonist of fraud you are.  I have been reading your posts and they are riddled with suppositions such as the above.  You cannot provide ANY reliable source of anti-Christian Jewish sources that date back to the 1st century.  You and the other theological contortionists you cite wallow in a sea of suppositions and declarations that cannot be supported by reliable evidence.  Some of us appreciate that testimonies about gospel events by early patristic apologists could easily have been foisted into the literature of the early Dark Ages to buttress the emerging dogmatic authority of the day and obliterate the remnants of any other surviving belief paradigm in Europe.  None of the autographs of the early literature survive and earliest manuscripts are often centuries after subjectively interested theological exegetes allege them to have been originally composed.

In consideration of the topic of early Christianity, Churchill's caveat applies well: "History is written by the winners."  Pity the poor soul who is not acutely conscious of this aphorism  where Christianity and its derivation is concerned.  A hypocrite such as yourself is hardly in a position to label anyone else "kook" or "New Ager".  This is the bottom line of evidence where you and your "theologian" cronies are concerned and you all frequently try to weasel out of it with your weak arguments about oral traditions and "obscure rabbi" arguments (that flagrantly contradict NT scripture)  --  there is no extra-gospel evidence for Jesus of Nazareth as having existed contemporary to his alleged lifetime: no nativity, no ministry, no resurrection, nothing, nada, nyet !!!

The only reason theology is taught at Harvard, there is Yale Divinity School, a Union Theological Seminary, seminaries anywhere is because there are still so many millions in our population who are captive to this metaphysical, supernatural archaic belief paradigm.  Too many deluded believers would be offended if they shut these falsely venerable operations down.  So you can continue on to be a parasite to pointless education and instruction. 

Go ahead and be dismissive of others who may pose either valid or invalid arguments that  detract from your position.  But where rationality is concerned, from the the standpoint of evidentiary inquiry and scholarship, everyone has good reason to dismiss you.                           

-  Horrified Heartlander

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Wow, where do I start?  Are you familiar with Eisenman, or for that matter, Philo of Alexandria?  How are you so certain that any of the NT was written in Palestine, with an audience intended initially to be just Palestinian Jews?  The gospels frequently were in error about place names an locations, offering some evidence that at least some of the NT was not written in Palestine.  None of the recipient churches of the Pauline epistles were in Palestine.    Someone with sound theological training I would presume would be well aware of Hellenistic Jews from the pre-Maccabean era to throughout Greco-Roman times who would be well aware of the religious beliefs and maxims of their pagan neighbors (hardly distant).  Are you aware that over a third of all Alexandrians were Jews?  Are you aware that one of the earliest synagogues excavated revealed a zodiac, complete with Greco-Roman iconography for the 12 constellations?  Saul/Paul was allegedly from Tarsus and an ongoing Diaspora posited Jews throughout the Greco-Roman world, or perhaps you were unaware of this information?

Are you aware that the Hebrew Bible was regarded with some esteem by pagan Gentiles for its eschatological content, so much so that Jews were granted a reprieve from observance of  pagan ritual sacrifice once a year on behalf of the Emperor?  Why did Paul so strenuously argue in favor of faithful Gentiles being reprieved from observing lawful circumcision and dietary laws?  Under these circumstances, is it entirely remote to you that the gospels and Acts of the Apostles were written to evangelize also to pagan Gentiles?   

Your argument that syncretization from other pagan traditions could not be a contributing factor to the composition of the gospels does not pass muster.

This quibble about the morning star and your little "catch" qualification about it not being in the gospels is a transparent diversion.  Wherever it is, it could well have been both an iconographic reference to both Judaic scriptural and Egyptian (or even other) traditional culture.  Dr. Robert Price (of the Jesus Seminar) and Randel Helms write of the duality of both pagan and Jewish midrashic parallels in the composition of the NT in more than one of their books.

-Horrified, as usual to these panderings to supernatural myths as literal truth                              

Incidentally, Horrified,

I find your prose and command of the English language to be very well developed in a venomous sort of way.  Still, none of your arguments disprove the earthly existence of Jesus, so much as to raise doubts.  I do freely admit that your point of view is interesting, and informative.  When going over your last two posts, I don't see definitive proof against the earthly existence of Jesus.  In none of the parallels mentioned about other saviours is definitive evidence to be found.  So what is one to make of it all?  As I said to Dude, I believe that there is a fair amount of evidence that you and others have given to support the embellishment of historical fact about JC with myth.  Is there church created myth?  Yes.  However, the definitive proof against the physical existence of JC has yet to be presented.  My own conclusion, after reading this thread is that no such absolute evidence is to be found.


Matthew

Dude,

First, you ignore the main points of my refutations.  Then you refuse the read the critical review of Acharya that I drew to your attnention in the hope you would respond. Then you disengenuouslly and repeatedly whined that you want to bring this Jesus debate to an end to encourage a focus on the main purpose of this AK board.  So I started thinking about how to wind this topic down, and yet, keep my promise.  But then you reveal your posturing and bring this Acharya groupie here, who has no stated interest in the board's subject.  I will have to start yet anther polemical Jesus thread to deal with him.   And finally, you make it obvious that you have no intention of keeping your promise to read Malachi Martin.  Where is yoiur integrity?

As I told you, I have no interest in reading Acharya's books.  I joined this board to seek knowledge about the afterlife.  Since yoiu claim to have OBEs, I wanted to challenge your silly claim that you can prove Jesus never existed.  I hoped you might seek astral contact with him.  But yoiu quickly proved incapable of developing your own position and instead goggled Acharya materla and tastelessly pasted reams of it on Bruce's site, when a simple set of guided references to her website would have sufficed.  So I responded to these pastings and will continue to do so.   New Jesus threads, thanks to you!

Don

Don

I did not ignore the main points of your refutations.  I read them all.  I also read the "critical review" of Acharya.  And I did respond, I responded with evidence that the reviewer did not even read Acharya's work, and his review was easily refuted by her.  I don't know why you are getting mad at me?  You are right, I did say that I was ending my contributations to the Jesus subject, and I was not lying.  I did not bring anyone here.  I don't even know who the guy is.  Perhaps your just a little mad/worried that you now have a worthy debating opponent.  

I never promised you that I would read The Devils Advocate. Or whatever its called.  Show me where I promised that I would read it, and I'll read it.  Sike!!!  Oh.. here it is, I found where I promised to read it... Quote:
 It was obviously a joke, Don.  Putting my integrity under question is quite inappropriate.  I don't see how you can blaim me for YOU starting a new JESUS THREAD.  Do I control what you do?  I've only started one Jesus thread, and that was only because YOU asked me to!  So if anyone is to blaim, its the main man Donatello.  You can continue with these threads if you feel your ego is on the line, but thats 100% your choice.  Good luck with them.

Tim, thanks for the interesting information about Rboert Monroe and ACIM.  I suspect that if we could pose our most vexing questions directly to Jesus via OBE, we would get some surprising answers not found in our Goepels.  That has already proven true in atheist Howard Storm's lengthy conversations with Jesus.  I wish astral explorers like Dude and Bruce Moen would take my suggestion and seek out such an astral contact with Jesus. 

OK, Dude I thought you had promised to read Martin, but your quote does suggest you are not serious about your pledge.  But I'm sure you misunderstand the review I have in mind.  Licona's 2nd review  responds in detail to aspects of Archarya's book that I never knew about.   Since you choose to duck these issues, i will raise them on this thread in due time.  So you ask me to believe that it is just a coincidence that we are discussuing Acharya here and this Acharya groupie just happens to show up.  you'll recall that you identified your prior connection with him.  Oh well, but please don't spam up my new Jesus thread with Acharya stuff.  Keep that here.  i want my new thread to respond to Shirley request and to quickly focus on the relevance of Jesus to astral retrievals.

Don

Don

Your thread will be safe from spam, you have my word.  In fact, I don't believe Ill be making any posts at all.  This Jesus business has gotten out of hand, I believe it has very little to do with Afterlife Knowledge and everything to do with Religion.  As we will all see one day, these two things have very little in common.  I encourage everyone to get over trying to prove or disprove Jesus and to focus on more important and relevant topics.   

Love to all