Jesus discussion

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

quite an interesting remark, so Judas could have been a member of the sicarii!! that makes it even more interesting!

where has that been written>?

M.VIB.M.

[Daniel S Peterson]

Spurius,
Even though Revelation had yet to be written in Neronian times, other passages in the Gospels alluded to Jesus returning to earth to establish his kingdom in the same generation of his apostles. Therefore, it would be understandable that the Christians might want to "help" fire Rome in their zeal. After all, the Bible is filled to allusions of the wicked being punished with "fire and brimstone". The Seraphim, in fact, are not swan-winged humanoid "angels" of Christendom, (imitated from winged Greco Roman Gods) but in the original Hebrew language, are actually winged, fire-spewing serpent-dragons!

Now we only have the Christian version of what really happend during and after the great fire, but considering the Roman empire was such a lawful place that even Paul was brought to Romen at great expense from the Levant, in order to have a trial allowed a Roman citizen, so it seems unlikely that the Christians would have been persecuted if they were completely blameless.

The truth may lie in historical accounts of the events written and preserved unedited shortly after the actual events, and before "editing" when Christianity came to power, just as the suspect versions of Josephus. For example, there could very likely be an account of the fire among the thousands of carbonized manuscripts awaiting to be deciphered from the 79 AD eruption of Pompeii.

Marcvs.
Actually much Muslim docrtine is more closely based on Christian theology that it is Judaic. Both ancient Christianity and Islam accept a dualistic theology which recognizes Satan as an opponent of God and responsible for the evil in the world, in contradiction of Old Testament scripture. During the post exile period, Judaism has similar beliefs, learned during their Persian captivitiy, but the Jewish apochryphal books of that era are now regarded as non-canonical. The Satan of Judaism is not an enemy of God, but an obedient servant, and the heavenly prosecutor of the unrighteous, long after the Garden of Eden, and nowhere in the Old Testament (the only" Bible "Jesus knew and endorsed) is Satan placed in the Genesis account, nor is he rebellious towards his master, Jehovah. The ancient Christian "Devil" is unquestionably based on the Zoroastrian Ahriman dragon, who suffers a virtually identical fate to Satan in Persian mythologies written hundreds of years before John of Patmos wrote Revelation. Both dragons are bound and cast into an abyss, both are unrepentent and escape to forment rebellion again, and both are ultimately tormented in fire.

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

that explaines a lot Dan!! thank you for the info! I should go to the library much more....

that also explains why some of the re enactors at a certain event way in the past looked very frightened when my friend and me marched around the campfire totally eeeh.... well yess too much mede does that...

chanting Ahriman, Ahriman.........

:lol:

So, what do modern scholars tend to think about who Jesus might have been, if he existed at all. I have a very nice book at home called the last days of Jesus and its an account of a symposium held in jerusalem, with lots of very good input by scholars, also substantiated with archeological finds and ancient Sanhedrin court statements. Alo during this symposium the idea was uttered that Jesus had befallen the dubious honour to be the victim of a sanhedrin / farizeic led conspiracy.

M.VIB.M.


PS:

http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/jesus.php

[FAVENTIANVS]

quite an interesting remark, so Judas could have been a member of the sicarii!! that makes it even more interesting!

where has that been written>?

M.VIB.M.

Lawrence Gardner's BLOODLINE OF THE HOLY GRAIL.

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

Lawrence Gardner's BLOODLINE OF THE HOLY GRAIL.

[size=150:2r5dpz8p]OOPS!!!!!!![/size]

I thought it was a genuine inscription or reference somewhere....

this smells of Dan Brown......

:?

M.VIB.M.

[Spurius]

Dan,

Thank you for sharing more information! I find it fascinating to learn about how things were in the latter half of the 1st Century. I find myself asking more questions about the time. It is curious that Christians like Paul were given safe conduct / transport to Rome, but yet the widely held belief is that Christians in Rome were being persecuted. I know that Paul did have safe passage to Rome on account of his Roman citizenship, but then the Christians in Rome were likely Roman citizens also, so I am curious as to how they became punished to the point of death. Supposedly, Paul was killed in AD 67 - and I wonder how closely Nero is linked.
It makes research from early unchanged manuscripts even more important. I'd love to see what the Pompeii manuscripts will yield!

I will say that I am not in complete agreement on the Christians being zealous and further propagating the fire, or starting it. It is a possibility, true, but one of the Christian tenets discourages people from taking judgement into their own hands. My opinion is that this teaching is emphasized more in the Christian Gospels than are Apocalyptic upcoming events. As mentioned, the book of Revelation was not written until some time after Nero's reign, and probably during the reign of Domitian (which is regarded as one of greater persecution against Christians). I wonder how the perceptions of Christians were different, perhaps making them more likely to take vengance on Rome at the later time, but I don't know of any incidents at that time taking place. I know much emphasis has been placed on Rome - equating it to being the center of evil, even though Babylon is the name of the city mentioned in Revelation. But then, seven hills are also mentioned in Revelation as well.

Sorry for my rambling, sometimes the ancient 'unsolved mysteries' really spark my curiousity.

[Thiudareiks Flavius]

So, what do modern scholars tend to think about who Jesus might have been, if he existed at all.

That depends on the scholar. Christian scholars range from fundamentalist apologists (eg Luke Timothy Johnson), who argue the historical Jesus was precisely what traditional Christianity says he was, to the more liberal and radical 'Jesus Seminar' scholars (eg John Dominic Crossan, Robert W. Funk, Marcus Borg), who are much more sceptical about how reliable the gospel accounts are and try to get behind them to the 'real' Jesus.

Then there are non-Christian scholars like Bart Ehrman, Paula Frederiksen and Geza Vermes, who see him as a Jewish prophet, preacher and healer and very much a man of his time. The late, great Michael Grant wrote a book on Jesus from the perspective of an atheist historian, which is certainly worth reading (though it's a little dated).

Off on the lunatic fringe are the Kook Patrol with a grab-bag of wild theories which, like all kook books, probably have a larger readership than any of the real scholars mentioned above. These include the 'Jesus Myth' crowd who try to argue (rather unsuccessfully) that Jesus never even existed. The less kooky of these kooks are Earl Doherty and Robert M. Price, but the ones who have the largest readership are Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.

The books I'd recommend for a purely historical analysis of the evidence would be:

Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium

Paula Frederiksen, From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ

Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew:A Historian's Reading of the Gospels

Dale C. Allison Jr., Jesus of Nazareth: Millenarian Prophet

Books to avoid like the plague are any of the 'Jesus never existed' stuff, anything by Barbara Thiering, anything by the authors of Holy Blood Holy Grail or anything by fundamentalist campus evangelists like Josh McDowell.

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

Thank you for the list!

I also dont agree with the Jesus never existed, the accept jesus or be damned, the jesus was married and his bloodline continues to france, and anyone into templar, free-mason, rose cross nutters and any and all new age weirdos! and a lot more for that matter...... like people wearing red strings around their wrists, and what have you........ did i mention Tom Cruise? YUCK!!!!!!!

there were things happening out there in the first century that i find very interesting, not that much from religious point of view, but to see how things back then have had a profound impact onto situations we find ourselves in today!

to get to the bottom of it is very difficult, but the search at least is on!

M.VIB.M.

[Daniel S Peterson]

Spurius,
I agree that the Christians probably did not "plot" to start the fire, and we know fires were not such an uncommon thing in Rome. But if this fire was of extraordinary size (which it must have been), and perhaps started by unusual means (like lightning), or if unusual omens were seen in the sky (like comets - with their long tails resembling "fiery dragons"), Christians may well have believed the fire was created as divine retribution, and they could easily have been swept up in the euphoria that Jesus' second coming was close at hand.

We know that despite their violent "entertainments", many Romans were outraged and disgusted by Caesar's wholesale slaughter of civilian "barbarians" so casually reported in Gallic War, so it is therefore hard to imagine the terrible persecution of the Roman Christians if they were entirely "blameless". in "burning Rome".

[Spurius]

We know that despite their violent "entertainments", many Romans were outraged and disgusted by Caesar's wholesale slaughter of civilian "barbarians" so casually reported in Gallic War, so it is therefore hard to imagine the terrible persecution of the Roman Christians if they were entirely "blameless". in "burning Rome".

That is an excellent point that I had not considered! So is there little or no evidence to suggest that Christians were persecuted before the great fire? Or, (I am guessing) that the fire was when things really reached a point where the public outcry was great, thus leading to hard times for the Christians?

I am curious to discover more of how things were re-written, to find out how it probably was before bias changed the way we look at things.

[Thiudareiks Flavius]

That is an excellent point that I had not considered! So is there little or no evidence to suggest that Christians were persecuted before the great fire?

There's no evidence of Roman (as opposed to Jewish) persecution of Christians before that event.

Or, (I am guessing) that the fire was when things really reached a point where the public outcry was great, thus leading to hard times for the Christians?

That's how it happened. That said, there is no actual evidence that any Christians really were responsible for the Fire. The blame placed on them is consistent with a degree of hysteria and rumour after that disaster. One of the main rumours was that Nero himself ordered the Fire to be lit to clear the ground for his planned new palace, so Nero had a major incentive to find another, even more unpopular, scapegoat. And this wasn't the first time the Romans had savagely repressed a 'cult' which was regarded as religio illicita.

Personally, I find the idea that the Christians actually were responsible rather far fetched.

I am curious to discover more of how things were re-written, to find out how it probably was before bias changed the way we look at things.

The major source on this persecution of the Christians is Tacitus (Annals, 15:44), who is hardly complimentary about the Christians in his account. That account seems quite genuine and not doctored by later Christian copyists. He calls the Christians 'a class hated for their abominations' - not something a Christian scribe would add or leave in. He also says that after the Fire 'an immense multitude (of Christians) were arrested .... not so much (for) the crime of firing the city, as (for their) hatred for mankind'. It seems the persecution was more of a distraction from the disaster rather than purely a result of it. Tacitus himself reports that it was Nero who was the primary suspect (rightly or wrongly) and carefully reports that this suspicicion was widespread - commenting '(the Fire was) accidental or treacherously contrived by the Emperor .... as authors have given both accounts'.

He seems to have had no problem with the persecution of the 'abomidable' Christians, but doesn't seem to have genuinely thought they were responsible.

[MARCvSVIBIvSMAvRINvS]

I also have trouble linking the Christian sekt to the fire, since i find Tacitus remarks about Nero far more plausible, and especially the proof of Nero building his own things on the vast area burnt, like the Domus Aurea etcetera, prove to me that he in fact wanted to clear out large parts of Rome for his own reasons, and therefore must have been behind the larger scale outbreak.

a little like the sound evidence we have these days from world war two that the Nazis actually stirred the fire in the Reichstag after van der Lubbe tried to start it, and fled.

But what interests me more is how after the eledged crucifixion of Jesus this religio illitica spread out from Judaea to the Roman world.
Were they part of the Essenic philosophers of Qumran? who were the earliest Christians, and what were their original teachings? for I always have found it hard to believe that a movement which had only a few followers in the beginning in a society which was so controlled by Roman law and politheistic faiths,
could have grown into the massive state endorsed religion it became.

M.VIB.M.

[Spurius]

Thank you Dan and Thiudareiks, I am getting a better picture of how events unfolded now. The Great Fire really was a significant turning point, bringing about widespread persecution of the Roman Christians. I am sure that the Christian belief of the coming of a King would not necessarily rest well with the Emperor - perhaps laying blame was a convenient way to try to alleviate what he viewed as a problem.

When persecution became prevalent in Domitian's reign, was it for reasons like this, or was it a case of bringing up old fears among the population? In my opinion, the Flavian era seems to have been one of reconstruction and setting things right after Nero.

I greatly appreciate everyone's willingness to share info - I am learning much thanks to this forum and its members!

[Praefectusclassis]

For the growth of Christianity from its origins, I believe Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (Dutch: De droom van Constantijn) is still considered (one of) the standard work(s). It's heft (i.e. 800+ pages), but very interesting.

[Spurius]

But what interests me more is how after the eledged crucifixion of Jesus this religio illitica spread out from Judaea to the Roman world.
Were they part of the Essenic philosophers of Qumran? who were the earliest Christians, and what were their original teachings? for I always have found it hard to believe that a movement which had only a few followers in the beginning in a society which was so controlled by Roman law and politheistic faiths,
could have grown into the massive state endorsed religion it became.

I have also found this fascinating. I can not think of anything like it - a major world religion originating from a few followers of a Jewish man regarded as a wise man, Rabbi, and Messiah. Amazing that within only a few decades of the crucifixion of Christ, you have Christianity extending to Rome, Asia Minor, and Spain. What began as a sect of Judiasm emerged and grew even among non-Jewish people. How does a religion like Christianity take root in a multi-theistic society like that in Rome? And then, how does it thrive even in spite of the persecutions waged against it, to one day be declared as the official religion of the Romans?