The Jewish canon wasn't fixed until later, but the Septuagint gives you a good idea of the books considered normative, and worthy of being translated in Greek.

Jesus himself most probably read scripture from a "targum" ie a translation in Aramaic. That's already an interpretation, literally.

I meant: people understand / interpret scripture the way they like.

As you must be aware of already, people read whatever they want in scripture.

They invest into it. Readers, midrashers, commentators, translators have always taken sides, made interpretative choices... Hiding or dismissing something important, highlighting something else that might be trivial, as might be necessary to buttress their own view. And nobody is immune to this.

I think the idea of a direct filiation between Greek and Jesus' ideas is improbable, a kind of wishful thinking for convergence between two great literary, religious and philosophical traditions of the Mediterranean sea, the Semitic and Greek, PRIOR TO JC. But historically (the way I see it) this convergence happens after Jesus, not before.

Now, a general terrain favorable to convergence existed at the time, be cause of the population mixing brought about by successive empires, as we were saying.

In this terrain, there was some demonstrated interest on the Greek side for understanding Judaism, and vice versa for Jews to read Greek philosophy. But there were also very strong prejudices on both sides, that prevented convergence.

At least they had this reputation among among Jerusalemites, but I suppose you are right, that having to live with other nations and religions, you might be forced to take a distance with the letter of your own religious law here or there.

It is true that Galilee at the time was hosting a variety of folks and tribes. It's already called 'Galilee of the nations' in Isaiah, written well before the Greeks came in.

But it doesn't necessarily follow that it was a 'melting pot'. It was a place where you could meet Greeks, Cananeans and Phoenicians, as well as many Samaritans IF YOU WANTED to meet them.

Interestingly, at the time of Jesus, Galilean Jews were reputed less observant of the Law than Judeans. Less literal too.

Samaritans are originally from the Hebraic tribe of Ephraim and the kingdom of Israel. They have a slightly different Torah and tradition than the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, aka 'Jews', who lived predominantly in the kingdom of Judah. Today the Samaritans are almost instinct.

it's unfortunate that a small number within that community have gone down that path and declared the Rebbe the Messiah. It detracts from the real message, but this is a thread about Jesus, so I won't annoy anyone here with the teachings of the good Rebbe, but I do think it is in his spirit to portray events in their most positive light. — Hanover

In a way, the same thing applies to Jesus: the messianic and son-of-god 'mythology' has come at the expense of the message. What the man had said became largely irrelevant once he was made a god. His idealization trumped his ideas; his exaltation was his humbling (Matthew 23:12).

Today he is best characterized as just another empty idol. Which of course has been the official rabbis' view him all along but I think it's a bit unfair.

Muslims, as is well known, did not make of Jesus a god. For them he is a prophet, ie a human being inspired by Allah. In fact he is one of the most important if not the most important of all of Allah's prophets, after the top boss Mohamad. Isa ben Mariam (Jesus son of Marie) is the most frequently cited guy in the Qoran. Peace be upon him -- literally, in that you don't pronounce his name in an muslim context without adding 'la isalam'. Eg: "Jesus, peace be upon him, was the son of Mariam, peace be upon her." It can get tedious.

Little is reported of his message in the Quran except universal love and kindness, and then the miracles, once again more 'newsworthy' than the philosophy ... Many Quranic miracles by Jesus are not from the canonical gospels, like the miracle of the table (a bit like the multiplication of fish and bread, but with a table coming from the sky with delicious food on it). Or the story that when Jesus was a child he fashioned birds out of clay, then he breathed on them and they flew away... So cute.

The Bar Kochba rebellion may have represented an irrevocable split between the Jewish Christians and other Jews, especially ones supporting Bar Kochba. — schopenhauer1

Importantly, the Roman supression of the Bar Kochba revolt killed millions of Jews and left Palestine unrecognisable, "ethnically cleansed". So what may have been left of the Ebionites or any other Jewish Christian sect in Palestine at the time was simply killed by the Romans with the rest of the nation.

killed off most of the original Jewish Jesus Movement around Jerusalem, and that was that. — schopenhauer1

Hadrian did that. I mean, the region was devastated by Hadrian's legions circa 130 AD, with millions of deaths. Jewish presence was purposefully erased from the area. Hence the Jewish Christians disappeared together with the Essenes, the Saducees and scores of other groups, and what was left was gentile Christians on the one hand and rabbinical Jews on the other.

The martyr angle that evolved from a failed messiah story. Brilliant — god must be atheist

Thanks for the kind words.

-------

Just to be clear, my point was NOT to try and mock Jesus or anybody else, or to say that he was 'just another rabbi'. I have a lot of respect for the man, for his creativity, his witt and his courage. His immense influence, too.

Hillel might have been a nice guy but he didn't change the world. Jesus did try a little harder.

My take is to try and understand better what Jesus said and did by placing it in a historical context, and trying to plot his influences. I do this out of respect for him, in an effort to understand him better, as I would do for any philosopher I like.

What do you think of the idea that Jesus was influenced by Greek philosophy? I mean Hillel must have been influenced by it. So perhaps Jesus was influenced by Greek thought through Hillel? — Dermot Griffin

I don't think so. There's a taboo on heathen books at the times, they were not considered worthy of study by a lawful Jew.

"Cursed is the person who raises pigs, and cursed is the person who teaches his son Greek wisdom." (Sota 49b, BQ 82b, Men. 64b)

So learning Greek was not necessarily for the religiously-inclined, more for businessmen, and also for girls of rich families. Greek was recognised by the rabbis as a beautiful language for poetry and hence would add to a young woman's attractiveness. But it was not okay for boys.

I seriously doubt Hillel (a fortiori Jesus) read Plato.

This said, Greek was the first language in which the Jewish Bible was translated. So they were some learned Jews who could speak Greek, notably in Egypt. E.g. Philo of Alexandria.

I don't think Gandhi gave his life to be a symbol to his people. I think he risked his life as part of a tactic to gain freedom for his people. — T Clark

Clearly, but I don't think Jesus intended to die on that cross either... My guess is he was expecting a miracle or divine intervention, hence the "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?"

Gandhi was not a martyr. Peaceful disobedience is not martyrdom. — T Clark

Gandhi spent a lot of time in jail, together with many other Congress leaders. The Brits were not Pontius Pilates, but the struggle for independence involved some massacres (eg the Amritsar massacre) and some cases where people voluntarily exposed themselves to violence from British cops for hours. It's not martyrdom indeed, but the idea is very similar: the weak testifies of a scandal by facing the strong in a totally asymmetric manner.

That's the martyr script, which he stumbled upon. — Olivier5

Or that he helped theorize, if you consider the non-violent 'show the other cheeck'.

Coming back to the premises of 'separation of church and state' during the age of empires.

Of course there was no such thing yet, but the Jews had lived through a period where this principle applied to a degree, under the Persian emperor Cyrus who let let rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. This is seen as a blessed period and Cyrus is called 'messiah' in the Bible (ie indeed: anointed by God) for it.

After Alexander the Great, under the Seleucid, greek efforts to subjugate the Israelites cult led to much upheaval and ultimately the restoration of independence under the Hasmoneans for a century or so, until they argued with one another. The Saducees (priests) vying for one Hasmonean king, the Pharisees for his brother. After some bloodshed, one of them called on Pompey for help. Pompey was just finishing off Mithrades at the time in Asia Minor. He seized the occasion to grab the Levant for the Roman republic.

This was very fresh history back then (-63).

Since then, the Jews had tried to reestablish the Cyrus system: we pay you Romans taxes, and you leave our religion alone. It worked for a while, the Romans were prudent not to entice revolt.

So the question put to Jesus and his response to it has to do with the current deal, that is, we pay our taxes to Caesar SO THAT we can pray our God as we wish. The separation spoken of here between Caesar and God can be seen as a deal made by the conquered with the conquerer, to protect the religion of the weak against the religion of the strong.

A national religion like Judaism could only survive the age of empires by delinking itself from politics. Otherwise, if national gods intervene in politics and war, like it was thought during the bronze age, then the conclusion must be that Jupiter won, and Yahweh lost.

Jesus was part of this evolution towards a religion which accepts that temporal powers will be different from religious authorities. But historically it's an evolution that was forced on Israel by the bitter experience of imperialism. By 'what belongs to Caesar'.

if Jesus was the messiah, the promise was broken. He died. — Fooloso4

He died miserably, thinking he had failed. But then, as he had himself theorized, a bizarre thing happened: his weakness became his strength. From his defeat came his fame. We only remember him today because he died on that cross.

That's the martyr script, which he stumbled upon. It is indeed different from the Messiah script(s). I see it as a realist variation, without the angels and the trumpets, a variation where the just loses to the unjust in the end, but where, by his or her struggle and sufferings, the just testifies loudly of the scandal that defeat of justice is, and in doing so helps spread a thirst for justice. Martyr means "testimony bearer".

This martyr script will be applied again and again by his followers during the persecutions, to great publicity effect. It was used by Gandhi (drawing from another tradition). One could argue it works better than the messiah script, which proved a recipe for disasters.

I only read the Go Master. I found it rather mystic, or zen. Though of course I know nothing about zen.

You have a cool telescope, even if you say it's basic. — ssu

Ok, I was lying. Through the lenses of my very basic telescope, the Orion Nebula looks like this:



To my defense, it's not easy to find such a low quality pic of it on the Internet, precisely because everyone posting pics of it nowadays have better equipment than I do...

This one above was taken by Henry Draper, an American amateur astronomer, on September 30, 1880 with his Clark telescope of 11 inches aperture and an exposure of 51 minutes. It was the first photograph ever taken of any nebula.

https://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/t2png?bg=%23FFFFFF&/seri/MNRAS/0042/600/0000367.000&db_key=AST&bits=4&res=100&filetype=.gif

The problem here is it feels like us modern secular and atheistic readers are imagining the whole of ancient religion to be some sort of farce wherein the religious elite were crafting ways to maintain control over their population with full knowledge that it was all bullshit. I — Noble Dust

This is precisely the problem I see with the mythicists: they want us to believe that the authors of the Gospels were liars, insincere, manipulative. I don't think so. To me the evangelists tried to write accurate accounts, by and large. They made mistakes no doubt, they exaggerated many things, but they didn't sit every morning at their desk saying: "Hey, I'm gona bullshit a few more naïve readers today."

was looking for specific sources, though, from the literature; some books if they exist. — Noble Dust

Many such sources exist, the connection between Hillel and Jesus was first noted in the academic literature at the end of the 19th century and it's now a well-researched topic. It was already mentioned in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1913?). I was pointed at it by a rabbi.

Eg:
Halakic (legal) controversies between Bet Hillel, Bet Shammai and Jesus, by Bradford, Johnnie Edgar
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/30177

(Haven't read it, but that's the kind of thing I am talking about)

Some saw the messiah as a warrior. But here it is the weak who will inherit the earth. It is an acknowledgement of powerlessness against the forces of Rome. The battleground has shifted to heaven from earth. — Fooloso4

I agree. There's a rather thick book I once read about the way the messiah concept evolved and diversified prior and after Jesus: The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Johnny J. Collins. The thesis is that it all started as you say from the hope for a Davidic Mesiah, i.e. a rightful Jewish king successful in battle, restoring the fame and glory of Israel in the faces of nations. This is a long-sought situation in the Bible: rightful king, rightful people, success in battle granted by God in exchange.

The problem is that he never came. Most kings after David were disappointments, and the rare and few who were walking in the path of God often lost spectacularly and tragically all their holy wars...

It's always the same story: a prophet exhorts a Judea or Israel king to be holly and revolt against the heathens, God will surely help! And the king listens (the fool) and gets devastated in battle and/or siege, losing much blood and treasure to the Babylonians, the Arameans or the Romans in the process, if not his head...

It's the time of empires. Judea is a small place, it cannot hope to remain independent for long from some tutelage or another.

God is neutral now, He doesn't seem to hate the heathen so much after all.

The time of empires means that the 12 tribes must mix up with the nations, with heathens, make business with them goyim, often live under their rule even, and pay taxes to them.

And the Torah says very little about how to deal with that. Moses didn't foresee the problem. We're in uncharted halakhic territory. Basically the Torah prevents a good Jew from mixing up (marrying, eating, etc.) with goyim, so as to preserve his purity.

So the situation is a scandal. Force never worked. A new paradigm appears: what Collins calls the Priestly Mesiah: a saint messiah, a holly man or perhaps not quite a man, who would be able to summon the angels to fight against them goyim.

Collins traces the figure of a priestly messiah to Daniel, who calls him the one like a son of man (Daniel 7.13). It's a different expectation from the Davidic Messiah, and Collins' thesis is that the "Son of Man" in the Gospel is close to this kind of priestly messiah figure.

I think this to be connected to such things as the advent of the messiah, the kingdom of God or Heaven on Earth, and teachings from the sermon on the Mount s — Fooloso4

Yes. The distinction made between the things (or share) to be paid to Caesar and the things (or share) to be paid to God, stems from a cosmology where this world, the kingdoms of men, is seen as deeply corrupt, and put in opposition to the Kingdom of God.

Of course God cannot tolerate the corruption of a world He created, so ultimately, any time now, the big kaboom on the end of days ought to happen. That's basically the messianic script.

In the meantime, we have to tolerate the world as it is, and pay our taxes. There is a share to be paid for Caesar -- perhaps seen as the devil's or the demiurge's representative on earth, or simply as the most powerful and most corrupt king in a corrupt world -- and a share for God.

If you want to live in this world, you must pay Caesar's share.

If you want to be on the right side of things when the big kaboom happens, and live forever, you must pay God's share.

This is a probable mythical or metaphysical exposition of the saying but in summary the idea is that religion should be about a search for spirituality, not about whether or not taxes should be paid to this guy or to that guy. It's about making the distinction between temporal and religious matters, be it as it may be a religious view point / argument for it.

she didn’t mention a similarity between Hillel and Jesus. The next chapter is on Christianity, though, so we’ll see. Any references on that specific topic you’re aware of? — Noble Dust

Ok, you asked...

An interesting question that crops up when you consider Jesus as a historical man rather than as the son of God, is the question of his sources and influences.

As was amply commented on, the Qumran sect aka the Essenes were probably a major influence, traceable through the bread and wine sharing ceremony and other things e.g. the ideological proximity with John the Baptist. The Essenes were a sect, ie the core group lived in the desert, outside of society, and hated the temple establishment. Though there might have been people living in cities and villages, in society, that had essenian sentiments.

So there were other groups than the rabbis -- it's complicated -- but to make it clear, the rabbis were teachers (and students) of the Law, both in its written and oral tradition. So they teach. When Jesus is addressed as "Rabbi", it means "Teacher".

During his education, however short, it is natural to assume that Jesus would have been taught scripture by a rabbi or another, or several, each with his own interpretations and inclinations. He would have been exposed to these arguments and disputes between rival rabbinical schools. These issues are described in some length in the Talmud, although very little original material from Hillel himself has been preserved (destruction of Jerusalem etc.). But we have a reason able idea of where the fault lines with Sammai were.

And so, apparently when Jesus in the Gospels is asked a question by a Jew who is not from his entourage, a random passerby, another rabbi, etc., oftentimes the question can be traced back to the opposition between Hillel and Shammai -- it is as if the questioner was trying to position Jesus on the Hillel-Shammai axis, which structured the rabbinical world at the time, by using the main issues debated among them.

By comparing the Talmud and the Gospel, we can surmise that Jesus was influenced by Hillel. Because he nearly always come down on the side of Hillel on this type of questions (except on divorce where he sides with Shammai in forbidding it).

For another indication, one of the very few quotes by Hillel preserved by the tradition, from Pirkei Avot (Teaching of the Elders, a Talmudic section) is:

"My humiliation is my exaltation; my exaltation is my humiliation."

Compare with Matthew 23:12 - For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

It is found in the name Israel. — Fooloso4

And in many other names. A list from Wikipedia with their meanings in Hebrew:

Abdiel – Servant of God
Abiel – God my Father
Abimael – A Father sent from God
Adbeel – Disciplined of God
Adiel – Witness of God
Adirael – Magnificence of God
Adriel – Flock of God
Advachiel – Happiness of God
Ambriel – Energy of eloGod
Ammiel – People of God
Ariel, Auriel – Lion of God
Armisael – Mountain of Judgment of God
Azael – Whom God Strengthens
Azazel – God Strengthens
Azrael – Help of God
Barakiel, Baraquiel – Lightning of God
Barachiel, Bardiel – Kindness of God or Ray of God
Bethel – House of God
Betzalel – Shadow/Path of God
Bithiel – Daughter of God
Boel – God is in Him
Chakel – Wisdom of God
Chamuel – He who Seeks God
Cassiel – Speed of God
Denzel – Fortress of God
Daniel – Judgement of God
Elad – God Forever
Eliana – My God Answers
Elijah (Elias) – Whose God is Jah, God Jah
Elisha – Salvation of God
Elishama – My God Hears
Elishua – God is my salvation
Eliezer – My God Helps
Elimelech – My God is King
Elizabeth – My God is Oath
Elkanah – God has Possessed, or God has Created
Emmanuel – God is with us
Ezekiel – God will Strengthen
Ezequeel – Strength of God
Ezrael – Help of God[2]
Gabriel, Gavriel – Strong Man of God
Gaghiel – Roaring Beast of God
Gamaliel – Reward of God
Hamaliel – Grace of God
Hanael – Glory of God
Harel – Mountain of God
Immanuel – God with us
Imriel – Eloquence of God
Iruel – Fear of God
Ishmael, Ishamael – Heard by God, Named by God
Israel, Yisrael – Struggles with God
Jekuthiel – God will support
Jerahmeel – God's exaltation
Jeremiel – God's mercy
Jezreel – God will sow
Joel – Jah is God
Jegudiel – Glorifier of God
Katriel – Crown of God
Kazbiel – He who lies to God
Kushiel – Rigid One of God
Lee-El, Lee-el, Leeel – For God
Leliel – Jaws of God
Lemuel – Dedicated to God
Mahalalel – The blessed God
Malahidael – King of God
Matarael – Premonition of God
Michael – Who is like God? a question
Mishael – Who is what God is? a question
Nathanael, Nathaniel – Gift of God
Nemuel – Day of God
Othniel – Hour of God
Peniel, Penuel, Phanuel – Face of God
Priel – Fruit of God
Rachmiel – God is my Comforter
Ramiel/Remiel – Thunder of God
Raphael – God is Healing
Raziel – Secret of God
Rameel – Mercy of God
Reuel – Friend of God
Sachiel – Price of God or Covering of God
Sahaquiel – Ingenuity of God
Samael – Venom of God
Samiel – Blind God, epithet for Baal or the Demiurge
Samuel – Name/Heard of God
Sariel – Command of God
Sealtiel – Intercessor of God
Shamsiel – Lonely Conqueror of God
Shealtiel – I asked God [for this child]
Suriel – Moon of God
Tamiel – Perfection of God
Tarfiel – God Nourishes
Tzaphkiel – Beholder of God
Tzaphquiel – Contemplation of God
Uriel – Sun of God, Light of God or Fire of God
Uzziel – Power from God
Verchiel – Shining of God
Yophiel – Beauty of God
Za'afiel – Wrath of God
Zadkiel – Righteousness of God (rabbinic)
Zagzagel – Splendor of God
Zaphkiel – Knowledge of God
Zeruel – Arm of God
Zophiel – Watchman of God
Zuriel – Rock of God

The high god "El" from Ugaritic culture is one of the names of God in the Hebrew Bible. It is found in the name Israel. Beth El (House of God) is the name of numerous synagogues, cemeteries, and hospitals. — Fooloso4

"El" is also cognate to "Allah" (= "the El"), BTW.

"Elohim" is the plural. It means "gods" but is generally translated as "God" or "God and angels" to hide its polytheist origin.

You've been very kind, thank you.

l hadn't thought of "render unto Caesar" as another way of saying separation of church and state. That makes sense to me. — T Clark

It is of course a modern interpretation of the saying. His parables have a way of being timeless, maybe due to their simple, real-life setting. They lend themselves to modern reinterpretations quite easily, a plasticity which is part of his appeal I think.

Placed back in its historical context though (since this thread has touched on history), the question he is asked in this episode is what we would today call a wedge issue, revelatory of broader allegiances and positions, divisive, hotly debated. The question is explicitly about taxes raised by the Roman empire: should a law-abiding Jews pay taxes to Caesar? It points to broader attitudes toward the empire, and more generally towards gentilles. Predictably, there were two (rabbinical) schools: the House of Shammai, who was clearly xenophobic as the Torah frequently is, and the House of Hillel, who preached tolerance, friendliness and commerce with gentilles as the most rational and lawful approach.

These two rabbinical houses also argued on plenty other things. Generally Hillel is more easy going in his interpretation of the Law, while Shammai is very strict.

When things heated up, the House of Shammai ended in an alliance with the zealots who warred against Rome, after killing quite a few Hillel-followers, who preached tolerance of the empire, as narrated in the Talmud.

What followed is described in Josephus' War of the Jews. In short, the Roman legions won, after a long and grueling siege of Jerusalem. The last battle was fought for the temple, which burnt as a result. A massacre.

In a pre-war context, the question about Roman taxation is best understood as a wedge issue between the two rival poles of the rabbinical universe at the time: the Houses of Shammai and of Hillel, ie between ultra-nationalists on the one hand and more congenial, outward-looking political realists on the other. And Jesus is coming down on the side of Hillel.

(as he nearly always does; he was aligned on Hillel on most issues)

In his response, I guess he meant something like: "Your money is as impure as Caesar. Money and power are the same thing: they are this world that you need to renounce to become holly. So pay your taxes."

Or in modern parlance: God is not about whether or not you should pay your taxes. You should pay your taxes.

Without death and suffering, life would be next to impossible.
— Olivier5

A depressing view that I am glad I don't share. The Universe is vast and has plenty of space and resources for new life. — universeness

It's a biological fact that pain evolved as a warning system for animals. The system is universal and complex. It exists for a reason: because it is beneficial for your survival.

So one who sees pain as a fundamental, existential problem is like someone who would complain that a fire siren is too loud, or that the lighthouse beam should be less blinding. But if the lighthouse beam was less intense, sailors could miss it on a foggy night and ground their ship, and if the fire siren was too low, some people wouldn't hear it. These things are alerting you of a possible danger. They NEED to be deranging, blinding or loud for your own good.

This is not a depressing view, it is a realist, science-based view. People who can't feel pain exist; it is a (thankfully rare) genetic condition, and a handicap.

As for death, you've heard of entropy? That's the god of death in thermodynamics, which underpin life as we know it.

You can only self-repair for so long apparently. Especially in the animal kingdom. Animals move, so they have moving parts, which as any engineer will tell you, are parts that erode due to friction forces. Eg the animal's articulations will get old.

The rare cases of apparent eternal life of an organism are observed in plants, eg those that clone themselves forever. Plants have no moving parts, it's comparatively easier (but still quite rare) for them to beat death.

For all we know, the whole universe will probly die sometime very far in the future, in one final collision between super gigantic black holes. It will become, finally, one. One black hole.

How's that for a depressing thought?

But as one of my favorite rabbis once pointed out, unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.

He said that theologically, but it works biologically. Or at least, since it's a biological metaphor, it is evidently meant to make some sense at biological level. And to me it recalls the idea that parents must die for their children to live. If a field of grass or wheat was eternal, it would have no room for new individuals. All the available space would already be taken. For reproduction to kick in (with its significant evolutionary advantages, because children can be different from their parents) there needs to be death. Ecologically speaking, parents need to die to make room for their children to live.

Hey, maybe our universe, in dying billions of years from now, will produce many baby universes too... :-)

Centralization was important, and unity all-important. — Ciceronianus

Indeed, the context is that of the crisis of the third century, during which the empire almost exploded. In this context, the smartest emperors kept trying to promote one unique (or integrative) cult in order to forge a more common polity. What the chosen cult happened to be was irrelevant. Mithra, Sol, the cult of the emperor had one commonality: what was sought was unity. Constantinus was just more effective than others in pursuing that goal, hence Christianity as we know it.

If you prefer a 'messy Darwinian system,' then that suggests you approve of a 'survival of the fittest,' and a 'chaotic' approach to progress and development which in my opinion, aggravates our problems and is not part of the solution. — universeness

That is precisely your mistake: you consider human death and sufferings as problems in need of a solution. But from God's (or nature's, same idea) POV, these things are solutions to the problems of life. They are part of a self-regulating system. Without death and suffering, life would be next to impossible.

have no problem with cultural diversity but it should never overrule the common good of others. — universeness

That made me laugh. Who could possibly be the "others" in this context? People without a culture? :-) Cultural diversity is not something confined to certain folks and not others.

I am advocating practical solutions not 'perfection' or 'utopian' nonsense. — universeness

I don't think so. Yours is a naïve messianic attitude longing for some perfect resolution of our contradictions, neglecting the value and dynamic utility of those contradictions.

The state usually makes only a rather mediocre effort in anything, hence the result of the state and the church being together is that secularization is rampant. At least in the West (as there is no religious police around). — ssu

The absence of a religious police implies that the state is leaving people make their own religious choices. The UK is not a theocracy today because it does not sanction unbelievers, in spite of its monarchs having created and headed their own cult in centuries past.

And secularization is not rampant in the UK or in France: while Christian cults are dying of boredom, Islam is rising.

Personally, I don't buy messianism. There will never be a perfect kingdom of god on this earth. I follow the Talmud on this: aspirant messiahs can wait.

Also, I am appreciative of cultural diversity, and would NOT like to contribute to an effort to erase it. I prefer a messy Darwinian system, with its in-built potential for conflict but creative, evolutive and adaptative, to a uniform, rational, central-command system where everybody is forced to fit the same mold. Because to me, these kinds of grand systems always fail in the long run.

So no, I will not help to try and make a perfect world, but count me in for trying to make it a bit better.

I want to focus on creating a better future. I don't want to ossify because of our 10000 years of tears and bloody slaughter.
No more kings, gods, rich, poor, nations, tribes, ethnicity, cultural divide, money, etc — universeness

Good luck with that.

This I don't agree with as Caesar was a tyrant and a butcher and a criminal and does not deserve to be given anything. — universeness

Politics are inherently dirty. Power forces you to do horrible things. E.g. Obama was a butcher and a criminal too: he killed many innocents with his policy of assassinating terrorist leaders. And yet we (at least I) forgive him, because we know that's part of the job.

A point Jesus made several times is that one cannot expect a king to behave honestly and morally. That is just an unrealistic expectation. This includes (I guess) the warrior messiah figure hoped for by many Jews at the time. Any such warrior messiah would have been just another butcher. Same old same old.

This is a pretty radical stance about the amorality of politics, but confirmed by Machiaveli. Politicians cannot possibly apply conventional individual ethics, their job is far more complicated than that.

If you don't give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, he might just take it, willy nilly... Sorry but taxation cannot be made optional.

The zealots who revolted against Rome a generation after Jesus ended up killing many many Jews and burning the Temple. They thought they were pure but in fact, they were just mass murderers of their own folks.

So the separation between church and state is also desirable because one cannot judge a king with the same moral standards used to judge day to day activities. A king is always amoral, if he is a real king.

God of course is even higher above the law than any king. If He exists and intervenes in human history, my guess is He must have killed a lot of innocent people... But then, his job is even more complicated than Obama's.

It's possibly because of the claim that Christ was the Word incarnate; the one true Son of God, and that he literally died for our sins. No such claims are made about the other figures you mentioned. — Janus

By this token, all the pharaohs ought to be historically suspect...

I think the reason why this kind of negationist argument tends to focus on Jesus is simply his historical importance at the root of the most popular religion on earth. They are trying to kill the father, à la Freud.

In short, a way of living ended, and only one way of living was allowed. — Ciceronianus

Or more precisely and tragically: thousands of local cults and religious traditions ended, and only one cult and tradition was allowed.

I guess that was part of the plan: it was all managed as some grand administrative simplification in empire management. One empire, one emperor, one god. Saves a lot of sesterces and trouble.

At least SOME uniformity of creed had been sought by successive emperors for a long time. Sol Invictus was the main candidate for the role before the Constantine family took power. One of these late empire religious innovations like Mithra, it was originally a Syrian god who was actively promoted by emperor Aurelian as an official religion, alongside the traditional Roman cults, and as the main cult in his armies.

The legions of course were the source of the emperor's power. It was particularly important to limit religious heterogeneity in the legions. You have to know to which sodding gods you sacrifice a bull before the battle...

They were on the look out for something like this.

So let's campaign against both and advocate for something better! — universeness

Let me advocate, then, for indifference to religion in political matters and vice versa for religious institutions and theologians to leave politics alone. Or like one of my favorite itinerant preachers once put it: to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, to God what belongs to God.

I see no reason to question the existence of Jesus but many reasons to question the existence of "the Christ". — Fooloso4

Why of course. And that is a more interesting question about history, than the existence of Jesus. The question being (among others), how do you make a god out of a man, who most probably never ever wanted to be seen as a god?

Two wrongs don't make a right. The fact that I complain about those slaughtered in the name of God does not mean I excuse non-theistic reasons for slaughtering millions of people either. It's a bizarre projection to suggest. — universeness

The point of bringing in Stalin and Attila was to show that man never needed a theological excuse to kill man. Atheist regimes such as China are not less brutal than theocracies. Whether a god or another or none altogether is invoked by the murderers makes no difference to their victims.

So my main focus for this thread has been Jesus. — universeness

Okay so you've been addressing the paucity of evidence in favour of Moses' historicity on some other thread. Understood.

the influence of Christianity on Western Culture and the actions it performed 'in the name of' has been devastating. — universeness

Really? How do you know that those very same crimes wouldn't have been committed in the name of Jupiter or some other god, had not the Jesus character been invented by Josephus as you claim?

Stalin did not need a god to kill millions. Attila was not a saint either...

It is unfortunate that a discussion of the historical sources and influences that shaped the writings of the Bible and its various interpretations is regarded by some as an attack motivated by hatred. There is an extensive scholarly literature on these matters. While there is disagreement, which sometimes gets heated, many of the scholars, on all sides of an issue, consider themselves religious. That they agree with those who consider themselves agnostic or atheist should give us pause. — Fooloso4

What is regarded as hateful, rightly so in my atheist opinion, is the Jesus myth theory -- or absence of theory to be precise, see below. It is a set of conspiracy theories not based on facts. So what are they based on?

What are semi-obsessive conspiracy theories usually based on, if not some form of irrational hatred or another? This is what I see here in @universeness: a prejudice.

Almost all scholars specialist of the era -- believers and non believers alike -- agree that it is far more probable that an actual historical predicator called Yeshua was at the onset of the stories written about "Jesus Christ", than otherwise.

And what is this "otherwise"? What is the mythicist theory of what actually happened at the onset of what will later be called the Christian era? Who (according to the mythicists) invented the Jesus myth, and wrote the Gospels and the Acts out of sheer imagination?

To me, that's where the debate becomes really interesting. What's the rival theory?

Mythicists often don't have one, and when they do, they don't agree with one another. And no particular candidate for authorship can withstand analysis. Why, the Gospels are diverse, contradicting each other. They are embarrassing for Jesus in many ways, not least in showing him executed by the state like a criminal. Stylistically, they are written in shabby Greek laden here and there with Aramean. None of the obvious suspects, generally reputed Greek writers, could reasonably have authored something as crude and foreign (from their viewpoint) as a synoptic gospel...

Jesus is not so easily buried.

Why then focus on Jesus only? You might as well deconstruct Jeremy, Moses or Abraham... Way to go! :-)

To me, the guy Jesus seems one of the best to come out of that tradition. He was certainly not the worst Jewish prophet ever. And to my mind, the Greco-Roman world did need a little injection of Semitic wisdom, which they got through him...

This little injection almost destroyed the Roman empire, as per Gibbon.

The Babylonians contributed their stories to a section of early people who they enslaved — universeness

Beyond doubt, Genesis borrows heavily from Summerian myths. The books of the OT are human inventions mixed with plagiarism. The whole monotheist thing could therefore be called a pagan hoax right from the start, if you judge by its history.