Michael Larkin
Member
I think he meant OT/T'orah prophecies.
AP
I thought he might. But for the record, which precisely does he have in mind? It would be useful also to have a reference to the bit in Josephus' account that relates to it.
I think he meant OT/T'orah prophecies.
AP
A handy link of these (from [URL='http://christianity.about.com/bio/Mary-Fairchild-16017.htm']Mary Fairchild)[/URL].I thought he might. But for the record, which precisely does he have in mind? It would be useful also to have a reference to the bit in Josephus' account that relates to it.
A handy link of these (according to one source).
Of the 44 "prophecies" about Jesus listed on that page, I would count only 8-9 of them as being possible to verify. This means that whether or not the remaining items are true is irrelevant because they either are not specific enough (born of a woman) or cannot be validated physically (ascended to heaven).
AP
But that's exactly what the New Testament is: a word game designed by the Flavians as part of the literary genre called Typology!Reducing the bible to word games does not address the underlying message.
Since the Flavians had invented Christianity and preconfigured Titus using a character named Jesus who in the story--satisfying the prophecies of Daniel--lived exactly 40 years before the end of the Jewish war, they needed to fill in the gap; the Flavian historians achieved this by putting blame on their enemies of the previous dynasty: the Julio-Claudians. No contemporaries writing at the time of Nero, for example, described such events.But in 64 AD, five years before the first Flavian came to power, Nero was persecuting Christians, who must definitely have been around for about 30 years. So what would have had to happen is that the Flavians retrospectively moulded the Christian message and sold it to a credulous populace who previously had bought a different message. Why? Apparently, the idea is to soften a threat: the Messiah as a worldly figure who intended to overthrow the state by the sword; not only that, but in disguised form to cast New Testament characters as Flavian heroes.
Where did the Flavians get the idea of portraying Christ as a gentle character, who brought a message not of a worldly kingdom, but a heavenly one? That implies that they invented, or borrowed from some pre-existing sect, the spiritual message of Christianity. So here we have this cynical bunch of manipulators who nonetheless must have in some sense grasped that message and how it could affect the minds of people: make them docile and purportedly more malleable. It seems inconsistent that cynics like this could have invented the main thrust of the message of the Gospels. My bet is that if they interfered, they would have had to have appropriated it from an already existing sect, and dressed it in Flavian garb. Why couldn't that sect have been Christianity as it actually already existed? And if it was some other sect, so what? It was still a message of peace and love that resonates to this day.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that the Gospels as they have come down to us couldn't have been influenced by politics, but the message seems hardly one that Romans of all people could have cut from whole cloth as early in Christian history as is being suggested. The reason Christians were disliked by some was that they didn't fit in: they didn't have a religion, so much as a "superstition", which at the time meant it didn't conform to the Roman idea of religion, which was meant to bolster the state and its ruling classes. Moreover, after the Flavians and before Constantine, the persecutions persisted--see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Roman_Empire
If the Flavians had constructed something that was designed to keep the Christians malleable and fit in better, they apparently failed, judging by the ongoing persecutions. Also, if there are parallels between what is said in the Gospels and what is written in Tacitus, in which direction was the influence? Did Roman satire influence the content of the Gospels, or was Roman satire applied to that content retrospectively and appear in Tacitus' account?
Finally, Atwill is not a linguist: there seems to be some doubt whether he can read the Gospels in Greek. If so, the conjectures he makes about the similarities of names and words in general are based on how they sound and are written in English.
Are you not able spot the patterns between the gospels and the official history of Titus' military campaigns as existing by design? Did you even bother reading those crucifixion parallels I posted on the previous page? If so, how are you interpreting the evidence?You are Dan Brown and I claim my five pounds.
all of this has been hashed over pretty well. Nero persecuted a lotta folks it's unclear who the "Christians" were at this time. there's no evidence that they were anything like what we would call Christians, or followers of this one guy.But in 64 AD, five years before the first Flavian came to power, Nero was persecuting Christians, who must definitely have been around for about 30 years. So what would have had to happen is that the Flavians retrospectively moulded the Christian message and sold it to a credulous populace who previously had bought a different message. Why? Apparently, the idea is to soften a threat: the Messiah as a worldly figure who intended to overthrow the state by the sword; not only that, but in disguised form to cast New Testament characters as Flavian heroes.
Where did the Flavians get the idea of portraying Christ as a gentle character, who brought a message not of a worldly kingdom, but a heavenly one? That implies that they invented, or borrowed from some pre-existing sect, the spiritual message of Christianity. So here we have this cynical bunch of manipulators who nonetheless must have in some sense grasped that message and how it could affect the minds of people: make them docile and purportedly more malleable. It seems inconsistent that cynics like this could have invented the main thrust of the message of the Gospels. My bet is that if they interfered, they would have had to have appropriated it from an already existing sect, and dressed it in Flavian garb. Why couldn't that sect have been Christianity as it actually already existed? And if it was some other sect, so what? It was still a message of peace and love that resonates to this day.
Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that the Gospels as they have come down to us couldn't have been influenced by politics, but the message seems hardly one that Romans of all people could have cut from whole cloth as early in Christian history as is being suggested. The reason Christians were disliked by some was that they didn't fit in: they didn't have a religion, so much as a "superstition", which at the time meant it didn't conform to the Roman idea of religion, which was meant to bolster the state and its ruling classes. Moreover, after the Flavians and before Constantine, the persecutions persisted--see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_Christians_in_the_Roman_Empire
If the Flavians had constructed something that was designed to keep the Christians malleable and fit in better, they apparently failed, judging by the ongoing persecutions. Also, if there are parallels between what is said in the Gospels and what is written in Tacitus, in which direction was the influence? Did Roman satire influence the content of the Gospels, or was Roman satire applied to that content retrospectively and appear in Tacitus' account?
Finally, Atwill is not a linguist: there seems to be some doubt whether he can read the Gospels in Greek. If so, the conjectures he makes about the similarities of names and words in general are based on how they sound and are written in English.
cool. looks like we're half way in agreement... let me try and walk you a couple steps closer :)I'll have to reread Josephus to answer this. The last time I read it (and I have read a lot of these Roman historians) was about four years ago. At the time I thought it was much less interesting than Seutonius or Tacitus (my favorites). The Christian material, or the material about Christians, as I remember it, was thin. However, I'm no historian. My feeling about the messiah prophecies has always been that they referred to the 73AD destruction of the temple and related events. I hadn't thought of it as influenced by the Roman court, but don't see how they could be taken to refer to anything else given that those events are the only ones that fulfill the conditions of the prophecy. I know I've had dreams about Jesus being a messiah, but that is a separate issue. Based on the historical record, I don't see any legitimate way to support an argument that those prophecies did not refer to the first century temple destruction and attendant events.
AP
pls remove this post. refrain from this kinda stuff.You are Dan Brown and I claim my five pounds.
Yes, but none of the debunkers, including Chris White, address the system of sequential parallels that Joe has presented as proof of the Flavian invention of Christianity; so they are simply debunking a straw man. They probably have not read the book.
Consider a world in which there are paranormal processes, there are people who are living in some kind of spiritual world(s) after their bodily deaths, and the whole show is under some kind of good overall management:Bravely said, Ian. It's somewhat incongruent, is it not, that Alex is a great proponent of psychic phenomena, and yet thinks it unlikely that some prophetic source or other could ever have gotten something right?
That source doesn't have to be a prophet to whom we currently apply a specific name. Who knows what went on back in the mists of time before the discipline of historical documentation and research had developed? Myth and folklore will always be with us and are still being created in the modern world despite advances in scholarship. It's not beyond imagining that someone, somewhere, could have made predictions that turned out to be true, but which have been attributed to a mythical figure and woven into some story or other.
Chris White quotes Atwill extensively.Yes, but none of the debunkers, including Chris White, address the system of sequential parallels that Joe has presented as proof of the Flavian invention of Christianity; so they are simply debunking a straw man. They probably have not read the book.
But he doesn't quote the system of 40+ sequential parallels that I quoted on page 2 and 3 of this topic. Most of Joe's book is about the parallel system.Chris White quotes Atwill extensively.
Luke 20:19-25 chief priests .. lay hands on Him .. seize on His words ..
deliver Him to the power and the authority of the governor ..
Caesar .. "denarius" .. Render therefore to Caesar
Mark 14:24-53 my blood .. fruit of the vine .. mount of Olives ..
Gethsemane (means "olive press") .. went forward a little ..
certain young man .. fled from them naked .. chief priests
Luke 22:39-44 mount of Olives .. his sweat was as it were great
drops of blood falling down to the ground
Gen. 49:10-12 pseu-Jon blood .. grapes .. wine press
Rom. 11:2-25 thou continue in his goodness: otherwise .. shalt be cut off ..
if thou wert cut out of the olive tree .. wild by nature, and
wert grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree
John 12:9-10 chief priests plotted to put Lazarus to death also
pressed .. Mount of Olives .. WOTJ 6,2,157-163
certain young man .. in his armor ..
seized upon .. as .. treasure ..
carried him as his captive to Caesar ..
commanded to be Pruned
tower Psephinus .. monuments of WOTJ 5,2,54-61
queen Helena .. gardens round about ..
the dangers that kings are in, under the providence of God ..
Titus .. neither his head-piece on, nor his breastplate ..
all of them missed him
certain young man .. Eleazar .. WOTJ 7,6,194-206
carried him off, with his armor ..
Eleazar .. taken up naked .. sorely whipped ..
Jews were terribly confounded ..
commanded them to set up a cross .. Eleazar ..
he was going .. to suffer a most miserable death
certain Jew .. Eleazar .. Galilee .. WOTJ 3,7,229-231
received the strokes upon his naked body
in the presence of Vespasian, Antiq. 8,2,46-48
and his sons .. Eleazar ..
commanded the demon, as he went out of the man
rue .. had lasted ever since the WOTJ 7,6,178-185
times of Herod .. lasted much longer,
had it not been cut down by those Jews ..
Baaras (a play on the word for son, bar).. root of the same name ..
drives away those called demons .. spirits of the wicked
cool. looks like we're half way in agreement... let me try and walk you a couple steps closer :)
First, Seutonius or Tacitus we also on board with the Roman talking points about Titus being the Messiah. Again, this is a very strong indication to Roman manipulation of the Gospels as it makes no sense otherwise.
Also, the details, sequential order, and sheer number of the parallels between the Gospel account and Josephus' WOTJ account seal the deal... this Gospel prophecy was derived from Josephus' book.
But that's exactly what the New Testament is: a word game designed by the Flavians as part of the literary genre called Typology!
Yes, but Joe was the first to see that the gospels are actually riddled with them from start to finish, and that they function as an interactive system in sequence. So saying that there are parallels between the books is an understatement.That there are parallels between Josephus and the Gospels has long been known and discussed, from what I've researched (take a gander at http://www.josephus.org/#warChron and particularly http://www.josephus.org/LUKECH.html). The author of that site, Gary Goldberg, shows evidence of how both Josephus and Luke may have borrowed from common sources (based on linguistic analyses). That there may have been influences on the Gospels, obviously during Roman times, doesn't seem that controversial. It's a different thing to say that it was the Roman establishment that created Christianity from whole cloth.
They were creating a religion as a government project, but did not want the hoi poloi to realise a parallel system existed, but only a select few. However, they did want it to be discovered eventually... for legacy. So they could not be too explicit. But once you realise a system is there then you can see that the verbatim parallels are really quite explicit. It's just taken researchers so long for the same reason why visitors to this forum are not spotting the patterns even when it's spoon fed to them. The sorry task has eventually fallen to Atwill nearly 2000 years later after 1000+ years of dark ages and feudal slavery under the Catholics.But Titus as the Messiah? Why not just say so explicitly? After all, the Roman emperors weren't shy about declaring themselves gods. Why aren't the Gospels treatises on how to be good Romans?