/lit/ - Literature

>>11592442
You're not going to achieve faith by asking for evidence, anon. I think you knew that already, though

>>11592442
history is just a bunch of shit some guys wrote down at various times, there is no way to check any of it. Archaeology is slightly better but also basically just inference from absurdly small samples.

The discipline is almost entirely nonsense

You posted it. Unbelievers can reject the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament as *unconvincing* evidence (and as a Christian I agree--the religion is based on faith), but when they deny that this body of work is evidence *at all* then they at best betray their ignorance and at worst show they are arguing in bad faith. "Evidence" and "proof" are different words. A judge does not refuse to admit to court any and all exhibits that on taken their own with no other context absolutely succeed or fail to prove the guilt or innocence of the accused. A piece of evidence does not need to be definitive to retain its status as evidence. Defining evidence that way demonstrates a lack of understanding of basic epistemology.

Anyway, for extrabibilical evidence there is the writings of the early Church Fathers and other early Christians who were taught by some of the Apostles or at least received their traditions ultimately from them. Some of these individuals were isolated from the others to varying degrees, giving some amount of independent corroboration. Their records are consistent.

If Christ had been a fabrication from whole cloth by the Apostles, or if Jesus had been a real man but the Apostles had never really thought that He is the Son of God, it's remarkable that the traditions descended from them are all united in saying otherwise. If the Apostles had all been lying, cynical, sociopaths who engaged in a conspiracy to spread a fabricated religion for their own personal benefit of living on the run in abject poverty and being tortured to death rather than renounce Jesus as the Son of God, then that's also remarkable for how little sense it makes. Apparently Jesus had been a real man Who had somehow convinced these twelve people that He is the Son of God. You can disagree with the Apostles' belief that Jesus is the Son of God, but their writings and the writings of their followers demonstrate that a man named Jesus lived Who the Apostles believed is the Son of God.

Outside of Christianity, there's Josephus referencing Jesus in a positive light, which is commonly interpreted as a later Christian interpolation, but could just as easily be interpreted as Josephus being ironic or even sarcastic.

Then there's Jesus in the Talmud passages based on oral histories of Pharisaical Rabbis going back to Christ's ministry. These are remarkable because they admit that Jesus performed miracles, but attributed His power to sorcery, just like the Pharisees in the Gospels did.

>>11592442
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilate_stone

>>11592446
>Archaeology is slightly better
I have a degree in anthropology. I remember studying Marxist Archaeology and Feminist Archaeology lol. What sites get dug and what artifacts get incinerated is entirely determined by political interests. Anything that might, say, threaten aboriginal land-claims is reburied deeper than it was found.

Sounds like a job for >>>/his/

>>11592510
anthro is literally garbage and im sorry that you have a degree in it, what you say about material being destroyed for poltical purposes doesn't even slightly surprise me. Actual archaeology is ok, it at least tries.

>>11592515
Archaeology is a subfield of anthropology in the Americas. Archaeologists there are required by law to hand over prehistoric human remains to the local Indian tribes for reburial without examination, even if the remains predate the existence of those tribes (or the arrival of the wave of immigration from Siberia that they descend from) by thousands of years. In Europe I think archaeology is treated as a subfield of history and they're mostly busy these days with boxing up or destroying any artifacts that might give nationalists any "support" and applying blackface to forensic reconstructions.

watch lectures by gary habermas
if you want a more critical look, watch debates between james r white and bart ehrman or bart ehrman and william lane craig

>>11592532
I freely admit my ignorance about contemporary archaeology, but i have read genuinely fascinating papers from that discipline, flawed as the methodology innately has to be, whereas from anthropology i have only ever seen absurdly delusional political fuckery.

>>11592539
There was some good theoretical and ethnographic work done by anthropologists back until the early 1960s or so, but I'm sad to agree that the field has been completely overtaken by political ideologues now. I think you're underestimating how badly archaeology has been subverted, but there had been movements after the 1960s to make archaeology more scientifically grounded (these schools of thought have since mostly lost ground), while the trend in anthropology as a whole has been more toward being consumed by politics. You're probably thinking back to works produced by the processual archaeology school, who reached their peak in the 1990s or earlier.

>>11592573
i guess all of academia has just been progressively aligned with leftist ideals

Im curious what it was like for you in school, was it surreal or was it just normal, par for the course stuff?

Christianity and those who wrote the gospels strove to synthesize the warring Gods of Syria, Greece, Chaldea, Rome, and Egypt at the time when the growth of the Roman Empire first made travel possible, and the intercommunication of the priests of Mithras, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Dionysus, Isis, Astarte, Venus and many scores of others and it was decided to unite all of these myths under the figure of Christ.

Traces of this recension are still visible in the Mass and in the Calendar of the Saints, all major Gods and Goddesses of universal import receiving the same honour by the same rites as before, while the local Gods were replaced by Saints, virgins, martyrs, or angels, often of the same name, always of the same character of the Christian pantheon.

Thus on the altar the Solar-phallic Crucifix is surrounded by six lights for the planets, to use one example and Christmas is at the winter solstice, the birth of Christ put for the birth of the Sun".

The Crucifixion represents the Caduceus; the two thieves, the two serpents; the cliff in the Vision of the Universal Mercury is Golgotha; Maria is simply Maia with the solar R added to her name.

The controversy about Christ between the Synoptics and John was really a contention between the priests of Bacchus, Sol, and Osiris, also, perhaps, of Adonis and Attis, on the one hand, and those of Hermes on the other, at that period when initiates all over the world found it necessary, owing to the growth of the Roman Empire and the opening up of means of communication, to replace conflicting Polytheisms by a synthetic Faith.

Compare Christ's descent into hell with the function of Hermes as guide of the Dead. Also Hermes leading up Eurydice, and Christ raising up Jairus' daughter. Christ is said to have risen on the third day, because it takes three days for the Planet Mercury to become visible after separating from the orb of the Sun.
In the beginning was the Word, the Logos, who is Mercury; and is therefore to be identified with Christ. Both are messengers; their birth-mysteries are similar; the pranks of their childhood are similar. In the Vision of the Universal Mercury, Hermes is seen descending upon the sea, which refers to Mary.

Note also Christ's relations with the money-changers, his frequent parables, and the fact that his first disciple was a publican.

Note also Mercury as the deliverer of Prometheus.

One half of the fish symbol is also common to Christ and Mercury; fish are sacred to Mercury, (owing presumably to their quality of movement and cold-bloodedness.) Many of Christ's disciples were fishermen and he was always doing miracles in connection with fish.

>>11592579
>BUT MUH ZEITGEIST MOVIE MEMES! IT IS NOT TRUE! CHRISTIANITY IS ORIGINAL! ZEITGEIST WAS A MEME MOVIE CHRIST IS TRUE

Christians and pagans alike were struck by the remarkable coincidence between the death and resurrection of their respective deities, and that the coincidence formed a theme of bitter controversy between the adherents of the rival religions, the pagans contending that the resurrection of Christ was a spurious imitation of the resurrection of Attis, and the Christians asserting with equal warmth that the resurrection of Attis was a diabolical counterfeit of the resurrection of Christ. In these unseemly bickerings the heathens took what to a superficial observer might seem strong ground by arguing that their god was older and therefore presumably the original, not the counterfeit, since as a general rule an original is older than its copy. This feeble argument the Christians easily rebutted.

They admitted, indeed, that in point of time Christ was the junior deity, but they triumphantly demonstrated his real seniority by falling back on the subtlety of Satan, who on so important an occasion had surpassed himself by inverting the usual order of nature.

Taken together, the coincidences of the Christian with the heathen festivals are too close and too numerous to be accidental. They mark the compromise which the church in the hour of its triumph was compelled to make with its vanquished yet still dangerous rivals.

My phone turned off just before sending, so now I have to write this all over again. Ah well... this time it will be shorter.

>>11592444
Wrong. Faith and evidence are not mutually exclusive. In fact, the former is wholly dependant on the latter.
Faith must be built on a foundation of tangible truth to be adamant. Else it exists not as faith, but merely as wishful thinking. Hopeful uncertainty.

We know through tangible evidence that Jesus lived and spoke, and for no other apparent reason than those was sentenced to crucifixion. We know furthermore that his disciples, despite having seen their assumed revolutionary leader die upon the cross, set forth in all directions spreading good news and hope.
It is through this these proofs that we infer the truth of Christ and build our faith upon it.

>>11592611
>We know through tangible evidence that Jesus lived and spoke, and for no other apparent reason than those was sentenced to crucifixion
Historical Jesus is the most common view among academics but is by no means a given, especially the crucifixion. Also, lots of followers of cults are willing to kill themselves for their faith. See: Jim Jones and Heaven's Gate.

>>11592585
>>11592579
Are you pulling this out your ass or do you have actual sources?

bruh

Gary Habermas, William Lane Craig, NT Wright
InspiringPhilosophy

>>11592579
>>11592585
You should read some Girard.
Here's a quick rundown:
https://www.firstthings.com/article/1996/04/are-the-gospels-mythical

>>11594126
>William Lane Craig
Not a Bible scholar or historian. Don't go to him for the historical Jesus. Habermas and Wright are legit scholars on the conservative end. Another good one is Daniel Wallace, although he advocated for the now discredited "first century Mark fragment." More skeptical approaches to the historical Jesus can be found in the writings of Geza Vermes and John Dominic Crossan. Another skeptical scholar, Bart Ehrman, wrote a popular-level book on the evidence for Jesus called "Did Jesus Exist?"

>>11592442
The belief that he didn’t exist is one of the edgiest possible, made by idiotic smug antitheists/anti-Christians most of the time. I have nothing against being an atheist or antitheist intellectually, I can respect these positions even though I’m not one myself; however, once you use it to make stupid claims like that, I have to laugh at you and show you your bias. If you’re going to deny Jesus existed, then deny that Socrates or Gautama Buddha existed.

Deny he was divine, deny many of the stories and miracles in the Gospels happened, but there’s as much evidence he existed as that Socrates did, if not more. The productions of the four gospels show a character with a remarkably consistent personality and with consistent sayings and teachings. Moreover, Christianity was extremely persecuted in its beginning days. You’d think the Romans brutally torturing the Christians and trying to put them down would bring up that Jesus didn’t even exist as a criticism of it? His existence is corroborated not only by the gospels written by 4 different people, but by mentions by Flavius Josephus, Tacitus, and Pliny not long after his death in historical writings.

>>11592503
>Their records are consistent.
I don't know where you got that idea from, but I think you've been misinformed - the consistencies are numerous and well documented, the church fathers were wildly inconsistent in their accounts and their interpretations

>>11594451
>If you’re going to deny Jesus existed, then deny that Socrates or Gautama Buddha existed.
Maybe not Socrates, two people who knew him personally wrote about him: Xenophon and Plato. For the Buddha, definitely, the earliest writings on his life are hundreds of years later. While the birth of Jesus is settled to a roughly 10 year range, the birth of Buddha is dated anywhere from c570 BC to c430BC.

>>11592444
fucking retard; faith and reason are not sundered

>>11592446
>history is just a bunch of shit some guys wrote down at various times, there is no way to check any of it
>inference from absurdly small samples

shut up retard

>>11594915
>sundered

>>11594491
list some then, your post is the equivalent of "no u"

>>11594921
nice reminder of how Christianity inspired the smartest people in the for centuries not to copy the most culturally valuable books because we needed to preserve four contradictory versions of one Rabbi's biography.

>>11595499
They're actually remarkably non-contradictory.

>>11595512
>Matthew: Jesus was born under Herod I (died 4 BC)
>Luke: Jesus was born during the governorship of Quirinus (started 4 AD)
LOL

>>11595609
all you have to do is google

>>11595673
This is bollocks and no one should take it seriously - it doesn't address the massive conflict at all and using The New Testament as your entire historical basis is laughable

>>11592510
t. bitter shovelbum

>>11595746
>me no like what me see

>>11595673
>Screenshot of some random unsourced website
Well Colorado me convinced

>>11595746
you realize there's probably thousands of years of study on your supposed final-nail-in-the-coffin issue right? And most of it in stacked against you lol

>>11595834
Well if you want to provide be my guest but pure speculation is stupid

>>11595832
Color got autocorrected to Colorado lol

This book is pretty good. Its about 700 pages. Only about 400 through, but it's incredibly dense and well researched. I'm not even Anglican.

>>11595832
The argument in the screenshot is reasonable.

>>11595673
good thing we managed to find TruthInFaith.biz to resolve all these pressing textual concerns

>>11592442
Do you guys know of any good hardcover versions of the KJV Bible?

I should probably read it before diving into The Divine Comedy.

>>11595832
>>11595979
This. So. Much. When will people learn that only the words of authorities count in internet discussions? Frankly, if a citation isn't from one of these four authors, it's unworthy of any response, and can just be dismissed out of hand instead of being rationally considered. Checkmate.