What sucks is that there aren't any documents we can look at that were written BY this dude.
Just the He said He said gospels.

Yet most of them paint a picture of a guy who didn't like the status quo of religious leadership, and even attacked people who used the church to make a profit.

A guy who had some really Buddhist-esque views, and preached them.
What it was that made him so famous that so much was written about him, I'll never know. But the fact is that people who do worship him are supposed to be called Christians, and Christianity defiles Jesus unwaveringly.

It doesn't take a genious to see that Xtianity needs a change. You have several hundred thousand Xtian americans who were justifying a vindictive war with thier religion, instead of turning the other cheek.

This kind of stuff ticks me off to no end. It's too hypocrytical.

There's no way around it such an organized religion. One where the Pope is president.

If something was to be done about this, what would we do?

Well, it's certainly true that Jesus -- or the idea of Jesus, which varies from person to person (Christian or not) -- has a lot of power.

Wondering why is good. To me, it goes like this:

1- first, we have the question of whether the Jesus described in the gospels actually existed. I've explored this one in The Historical Jesus. If he didn't, then, well, some people simply made it up 2000 years ago, and not even then could dream that it would last so long.

2- if it's shown that Jesus -- meaning the guy the Gospels, written 70 to 100 years after his supposed life, are about -- did exist, then there's another question: are the Gospels true? Or did they take a real guy and create a fictionalized story around him? It certainly can happen. Perhaps Jesus was simply a prophet, or even a rabbi. Or, instead, more of a political leader (though at the time religion and politics weren't that separate). Perhaps he didn't really do anything like raising the dead, turning water into wine, healing the sick, and so on. A common theory, for instance, is that Jesus was indeed a Jewish political leader, was executed by the Romans (and the Jews didn't call for his death, as is described in the Gospels) as a revolutionary (we'd call him a "terrorist" these days), and the Gospels were "romanized", turning him into a meek, turn-the-other-cheek purely religious teacher: "render unto Caesar", obey your leaders (Jesus didn't actually say so, but Paul did -- a lot), your reward is not here but in the afterlife, and so on.

3- even if he did do some of the things described in the Gospels, I think it's extremely doubtful that those are trustworthy. There's at least one case known of the Church fathers, in 200 or 300 A.D., removing a part of the Gospel of Mark, because it didn't "agree" with what they were teaching. If that case is well documented, how many more aren't? I've read that some other writings at the time show a very different "Christianity" than the one we have now, with quite unorthodox beliefs.

Can we know for sure? Without a time machine, probably not. But my guess is that, if Jesus existed, he was completely different from whom Christians worship - to a point that Christianity is completely independent of whoever may have lived 2000 years ago.

In other words, not only Christianity, but "Jesus Christ", is man-made.

This post was last modified: 11-21-2006 08:29 PM by Pedro Timóteo.

Read
"All In the Mind; A farewell To God" By Ludovic Kennedy

Pretty much, Jesus was, according to the evidence given in this text, another Guru, simply a man who believed in helping people etc, but who came to believe he was in direct contact with god.

Theres a passage in the bible where Pilot (massive sic) is questioning Jesus before his crucifixion, and when read by a priest it sounds like Jesus is almost enlightening Pilot (how do you spell it?), saying something like "I come from the kingdom of heaven" etc, but, most likely he was rambling like your common day hobo, he was simply another crazy guy.

So where does all this mystical nonsense come from?
Why, Jesus happened to come into existence right when the later-day gospel writers needed a prophet. A prophet to fulfill the prophecy in the old testament about a messiah. So they hurriedly built Jesus up, making him seem Divine and full of wonder etc.
This is why there are many different accounts of many events that Jesus, the real person, turned up at.

I can't list them here, I suggest you read the book, as it will explain the above and more.

Thanks guys,

Pedro, It's true that the Gospels themselves have been alterred time and time again by the Church's status quo.

Not sure if anybody can answer this question, but why would all of Jesus quotes, the ones that made it to todays bible be so contradictory to the rest of the bible, and so... un Churchy?



The last question of the post was what can we do about it? I was referring to the problem of the Church itself.

I don't think much can be done about it. Believers around the world, with perhaps some infinitesimal exceptions, have long stopped caring about who the real Jesus (if he existed) was; any evidence contrary to their beliefs (say, the discovery of a real document written during Jesus' life, instead of many decades later) would be ignored by all except a few (probably non-theistic) historians.

The myth has long made the man irrelevant. (This reminds me of Babylon 5's G'Kar. )

Besides, if we could really know the specifics of Jesus' life and teachings, we would probably come to a conclusion theists would reject: that Jesus was just a man. Relevant? Worth learning something from? Sure - much like, say, Socrates or Aristotle.

But we don't worship those.

This post was last modified: 11-23-2006 09:26 AM by Pedro Timóteo.

Too bad those Buddhist-esque views aren't still with many Christians. They are too bent on "saving" the world and making everyone become their religion. Trust me, I live in the American South and I'm Jewish.

You probably already know this, but there were many, many more than 4 gospels written, but at one point (I think at the council of Nicaea, but i forgot), they burned all the books that might have even hinted that Jesus was mortal. So much for that.

And that he was born in 4 B.C.E.
And that B.C. stood for something like "before Caesar", A.D. meant Caesar. and stuff like that. (and this I, believe it or not, learned in history class)

P.S. you have 42 posts right now :-P

@ overcaffein8d
Did you know there was a gospel of Judas, in fact, it seemed to indicate that Judas was actually TOLD by Jesus to betray him, as Jesus "foresaw" that he needed to be executed. The actual gospel was probably about as true as revelations, but the fact that Judas's Gospel was cut out shows just how warped todays bible is.

I gues there were a lot more too.
I think it was in the book Chariots of the Gods. Where a few preciouse writings were destroyed in wars are sighted.

Jesus is alive and well and living in my heart this very minute.

The doctor can cure such parasites..

The fictional character of Jesus was indeed a creation of man. While there appears to have been a rabbi who was accused of being a rabble rouser roughly around the time attributed to jebus, there is no basis whatsoever for asserting that in fact there was such a guy who did all that was attributed to him. In fact the study of revealed religions of the time will reveal that in fact these same myths appear in different revealed religions at the time. They were attributed to jebus simply as a power play by the church. They were essentially telling different cults that their "god" or prophet was *really* jebus.. (never mind that it was all made up..)

Do you know what it meant to turn the other cheek, in the time of Christ? As a Jew, living in an occupied land?

I was under the impression (as it was taught to me several hundred times) that it meant to be passive to an attacker with no real reason to attack.
This method has been tried by many and it can actually work. I've even had it used on me when I was "the bad guy", and it worked.

I think it's safe to assume it means something else. That's fine.
What would exactly what he said in Aramaic some 2000 something years ago, in the correct context, mean?

Extending on this.
The gospels where not written by the apostles, John alone is thought to have many writers, and they where also written up to hundreds of years after the life of the aforementioned 'rabble-raising rabbi', put simply the Old Testament had a nice prophecy that the church REALLY REALLY needed to come true, so they found a guy who happened to be a bit of a rebel at about the right time, wrote not only incorrect but laughably absurd things about him and then called him the messiah.

Of course as the centuries went by there where different things the church really needed out of Jesus, so the bible was altered a little, after all a translated bible is a recent creation and even then it wasn't freely available for a long time after Luther's little show.

NMM, I had trouble believing at five years old that Jesus was 'everywhere and in my heart' if fact I seem to remember I was just a little scared of this bat-shit insane figure trying to get inside me. Just, just explain this to what's left of my childhood mind.
How does he fit in there?

XTimmy,

Are you sure it was jebus trying to get inside you and not merely "his" man on the scene with the nifty collar?

A Roman soldier had the lawful right to cuff anyone once if the mood struck him, but was forbidden to hit twice. By turning the other cheek, it was essentially saying " is that all you got" or "I'm a man, just like you". It was a challenge.

So some believe.

Given the use of the term for physical "love" (AKA sexual intercourse) as opposed to love in the sense of respect and caring, used between the "disciples" and jebus, are you sure that "turning the other cheek" did not have another meaning entirely?