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Politics : Evolution -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Brumar89 who wrote (12033)	1/3/2011 1:39:05 PM
From: Solon	Respond to of 69300

"sometimes silence can scream to those whose minds have not been numbed by religious ndoctrination." The silence is deafening. None of that nonsense happened. That is why there is no record of it from historians who lived right in the area of these supernatural events! skepticfiles.org "All of this presumably happened, but no one in Syria, Idumea, Tyre, or Sidon left any record of the mass hysteria that the Jesus of the New Testament created. Only the New Testament gospels mention the huge crowds that he attracted. As Rob Berry points out in his article [ref004]The Fivefold Challenge (p. 10, this edition), historical silence in some matters is quite telling, and such is the case in the matter of public attention that the Jesus of the New Testament presumably attracted. If these gospel accounts are even reasonably close to being accurate, why did no one in the regions from which the multitudes came ever mention the crowds that thronged around Jesus? Why did no one in the places where the crowds gathered (with the exception of the biased gospel writers) mention these huge crowds? The answer is that such multitudes probably never existed, because the quasi-historical Jesus wasn't nearly so popular with his contemporaries as the gospel writers allege for their Jesus. The gospel writers claim that Jesus made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem just before his crucifixion and that "a very great multitude spread their clothes on the road" and "others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road" (Matt. 21:7-8; Mark 11:8; Luke 19:36) and that multitudes went before and after him shouting, "Hosanna to the son of David!" Such vast multitudes as these welcomed Jesus into the city and then just a short time later crowds were screaming for Pilate to crucify him. Who can believe it? There may have been a quasi-historical Jesus who was crucified during Pilate's administration, but it is unreasonable to believe that this Jesus was welcomed into Jerusalem so enthusiastically by huge crowds only to have mobs demanding his crucifixion just a few days later. In this sense, we can assume that the Jesus of the gospels never existed. If there was a quasi-historical Jesus who was crucified by the Romans, certainly his execution did not occur as recorded in the New Testament. All three synoptic gospels claim that while Jesus was on the cross, darkness fell "over all the land" from the sixth hour until the ninth hour (Matt. 27:45; Mark 15:33; Luke 23:44). In all three accounts of this event, the word land has been translated from the Greek word ge, which can mean "earth," so it is quite possible that all three gospel writers intended to say that the three hours of darkness covered the whole earth. In fact, the KJV even translates the word as earth in Luke's version: "(T)here was darkness over all the earth." Whether the synoptic writers intended to say that darkness covered the whole earth for three hours is really immaterial, because their language is such that they obviously didn't mean that this was only a phenomenon that was localized to the city of Jerusalem. They claimed that darkness covered "all the land" for a period of three hours, beginning at midday, so this would have been at least a regional event that would have been noticed and mentioned in the contemporary records of other nations. Who can seriously imagine a three-hour period of darkness happening in midday without references to it being recorded in Egypt, Greece, Syria, Arabia, Persia, and the other nations that would have experienced it? Even if it were merely a regional darkness, we can reasonably expect that other writers of the time would have referred to it. The fact that no such records exist is reason to believe that this midday darkness was simply another part of the legends and myths that evolved as Christianity grew. We can say the same about Matthew's reference to the "many saints" who were resurrected after an earthquake opened their tombs at the moment of Jesus's death and who later went into the city and appeared unto "many" (27:52-53). Such an event as this would have attracted far more attention than the resurrection of Jesus, because its results would have been witnessed by far more people, but no one else besides Matthew (not even Mark or Luke) mentioned this remarkable event. Rationality, then, requires us to interpret this story as just another legend that developed along with Christianity. A quasi-historical Jesus may have been crucified, but certainly his death was not accompanied by a mass resurrection. Such an event simply would not have passed unnoticed by historians of the time. Bible fundamentalists, of course, will contend that these are all arguments from silence, but sometimes silence can scream to those whose minds have not been numbed by religious ndoctrination. Since Rob Berry discusses this point quite well in his article (p. 10), there is no need to comment further on it. Suffice it to say that there are many good reasons to assume that the Jesus of the gospels never existed.