things that interest you that others dont care about probably thread

[sral]

Originally Posted by uh-oh

word. the problem lies in the fact that the sole reason jesus is spoken of is because of a religious text. not because of any historical writings. if the new testament was never written, no one would remark on a common jewish name mentioned in passing. even if they referred to him as "the messiah" since there was plenty of false claimants to the title, who had false followings.

so while i agree with the sentiment, that argument is only brought up from a defensive stance, because the bible is being "attacked".

but the whole argument falls apart when you realize that these other ancient figures we scrutinize, are written of in depth outside of any religious texts, across different cultures. even someone as unimportant to the grand scheme of politics of the time as pontius pilate.

LOL I'm not religious, though, I've no reason to be defensive about the Bible being attacked?

I just find it odd you're so adamant a Jesus of Nazareth didn't exist when - to me at least - the circumstantial evidence is more than enough to suggest he probably did.

Most of Jesus' disciples were uneducated fishermen and whatnot, with a few notable exceptions. Probably very few of them could read. Many of his sayings and teachings, such as the beatitudes and parables, are designed to be easy to remember.

I'll also bet (but don't know for a fact) that writing tools -- styluses and scrolls or whatever they used -- were prohibitively expensive and impractable for an itinerant preacher to carry around with him.

One common hpothothesis is that indeed, the sayings and preachings of Christ were written down during Jesus's life. These writings are called "Q" (for Quelle, German for Source). (There is also the "TDH" hypothesis, too, but it still has Q).

However, these collected sayings were just that- no history, "Jesus did this, here on this day" and so forth. Just stuff like the Sermon on the Mount (which was likely several Sermons).

So, they did "write something down" before any of the Gospels were written.

As a member of the sub-peasant artsan class of Galilee, Jesus would have been almost certainly illiterate unless he got some kind of formal scribal or rabbinical training as an adult.

Even if he had been able to write something down, he was preaching to non-literate peasants and used teaching techniques which are amenable to oral transmission (aphorisms and parables which are substantively easy to remember and repeat, rather than long-winded discourses, which are not).

According to New Testamant scholar, John Crossan, an estimated 95-98% of the Palestinian state was illiterate during the time of Jesus.

Suppose Jesus HAD written something down: then what would he do with it? He couldn't have sent it to a book publisher or newspaper editor, or put it up on his web page. If he wanted multiple copies, he or his followers would have had to copy them out by hand. And then who would they have given them to? Passing around copies of important writings only really became practical once Christian communities, like the ones Paul wrote to, sprang up.

In those days, if you wanted to spread a message and get it to as many people as possible (many of whom were illiterate), it would have been easier to do it orally, by word of mouth. And back in the days before printing and widespread literacy, people were better at remembering things and passing them along orally.

We have the names of rather a lot of Roman-era people who were known as teachers or other public figures. Rabbis, governors, sages. How many of them wrote anything that survives?

I think you will find that the answer is: surprisingly few. Where are the writings of Socrates?