Frontline special: "From Jesus to Christ: The First Christians"

[Renew Deal]

This is originally from 1998, but it aired last week. You can watch it online. Enjoy!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/watch

[RoccoR5955]

1. It's nice that they run these fiction pieces once in a while.

I wish that they would run one on the birth and life of the Flying Spaghetti Monster as well.

[stray cat]

2. So Frontline is fictional fluff in your opinion?

[stopbush]

3. Stories about Jesus are fictional fluff, all of them.

The guy didn't exist. End of "the greatest story ever made up."

[kwassa]

4. What proof do you have he didn't exist?

This should be interesting.

[rd_kent]

6. The better question is what proof do you have that he DID exist?

Any proof other than "its in the bible"?

[kwassa]

7. no, not at all.

Stopbush asserted that Jesus was fiction, he must have some kind of proof.

Do you have proof he didn't exist?

[rd_kent]

9. I make no such claim. I claim that there is no PROOF that jesus ever existed.

I further claim, that without any proof, any claim that he DID exist is totally false without corroborating evidence. I am, however, open to reviewing evidence to the contrary. Do you have any evidence to the contrary?

[kwassa]

11. but I'm not talking to you, you just butted your way into this conversation

Rather rude of you, really.

"I further claim, that without any proof, any claim that he DID exist is totally false without corroborating evidence"

Claim what you want. Your claim has no proof attached to it either, it is simply your assertion. It doesn't make any sense, either, and I thought atheists were thought to be rational.

"Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". Carl Sagan said that. But you don't accept the word of this well-known atheist. You want corroborating evidence in an area where there is little about almost everything of what happened in that era.

I tend to accept the word of professional historians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus

the money quote at the end of a long and interesting article:

"the historicity of Jesus is accepted by almost all Biblical scholars and classical historians."

[rd_kent]

13. Last time I checked, this WAS a public discussion forum, not a private chat room.

So, now that that is cleared up.

Claim what you want. Your claim has no proof attached to it either, it is simply your assertion. It doesn't make any sense, either, and I thought atheists were thought to be rational.

From the dictionary....

ex⋅ist –verb (used without object)
1. to have actual being; be: The world exists, whether you like it or not.
2. to have life or animation; live.
3. to continue to be or live: Belief in magic still exists.
4. to have being in a specified place or under certain conditions; be found; occur: Hunger exists in many parts of the world.
5. to achieve the basic needs of existence, as food and shelter: He's not living, he's merely existing.


How can any claim of not existing not be accepted if evidence of existing does not exist? By the meaning of the word, something either exists or it does not exist. There is no gray area. Therefore, if something exists, then there is evidence to prove it exists, and if there is no such evidence, RATIONAL thought and logic tells us that it must not exist.

"the historicity of Jesus is accepted by almost all Biblical scholars and classical historians." Biblical scholars? Thats an oxymoron to start with. If you don't see the hypocrisy in that, then we have nothing further to discuss.

[kwassa]

20. oh please.

"Therefore, if something exists, then there is evidence to prove it exists, and if there is no such evidence, RATIONAL thought and logic tells us that it must not exist."

What an irrational statement.

Billions of people have lived and died on this planet. We know this. We nothing about almost all of them. This does not mean that they didn't exist, this only means that we know nothing about them. Why? There were no records of these that people persisted into modern times. For most, there were simply no records.

If your claims were to be rational, it would mean that these people didn't exist. Who were the numerous residents of these countries, then?

Got a list of names?

[moobu2]

21. Yeah, but you’re not talking about an average goat herder here,

you‘re talking about the son of God. Seems like there would be something besides the Bible to go on. On the other hand, there's a mountain of evidence, the size of MT. Everest, that all the stories in the Bible are just warmed over fairy tales from earlier much older cultures. I'll stick with it all being made up.

[kwassa]

22. considering the only extant historian was Josephus

who was active some 40 years after the death of Jesus, and no one else ..

and that would leave only him mentioning Jesus in passages that are disputed, but many scholars believe to be original.

You are free to stick with your belief that is is all made up. I'm just waiting for proof from anyone that Jesus is made up.

I notice that stopbush has stoppedresponding.

[rurallib]

8. What is interesting is that most of the Christian teachings are from Paul

If Jesus did exist (and there is a lot of reason to believe he didn't), the basis of Christianity is Paul.

[rd_kent]

10. Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!

[tiny elvis]

17. it is very interesting

http://jesuspuzzle.humanists.net/home.htm

[customerserviceguy]

5. While I agree that the Jesus story is made up

this Frontline piece traces the history of how the stories formed the early church organization, and interprets the writings alongside the independent history of the region that we know from Roman historians. Even an atheist like myself found it informative.

It made no efforts to say that anything that is a matter of faith was "true", it merely cross-referenced NT writings with histories from people like Josephus (Roman historian) and the Dead Sea Scrolls. It made it perfectly clear that "miracle working" was something that was attributed to many religious figures of the day, and was not surprising that it would have been part of the Jesus movement.

Give it a look, and see what you think. It's not preaching.

[LuvNewcastle]

12. I thought it was interesting too, especially

from a historical perspective. The part about the miracles, in particular,, was thought-provoking. They said that all sorts of miracles were attributed to Roman emperors and others in the empire, so it shouldn't be surprising that miracles were also associated with Jesus. I'd love to show this documentary to some fundies.:evilgrin: Although I'm not a Christian, I don't dismiss out of hand that there was a real Jesus. However, I think that it's near impossible to tell much about him or his teachings. It's possible, for instance, that he and John the Baptist were the same person and that people began to embellish John's story. I know all this is conjecture, but I just think it's interesting to think about.

[onager]

15. I hope they didn't call Josephus a "Roman historian."

Since he was a Jewish historian, whose real name was Yosef Ben Matthias.

The stories of his life written by his own hand don't even match up, so I think it's pretty funny when people quote him as "proof" that Jesus existed. Or pretty much proof of anything else.

In honor of the season, though, Josephus pretty much proves that Herod's Biblical "slaughter of the innocents" was a load of hogwash. Josephus absolutely despised Herod The Great. His writings are full of bitter screeds against the entire Herodian family, sometimes over fairly minor and petty things. (And they are very entertaining reading, being the First Century CE equiavlent of a gossip column.)

It is just not possible that Josephus would have missed stories about a rug-rat massacre and not written them down. Though Josephus could have only heard about the event second-hand, since he wasn't born until somewhere around 37 CE.

[customerserviceguy]

16. Come to think of it, they did only call him a Jewish historian

but they did note that he went over to the Roman side before Jerusalem was sacked. That's why his histories survived.

Your point is well taken, one cannot claim to be "educated" by a mere TV show, all it can do is inspire a desire for further study on the subject. This Frontline program did indeed inform me that the subject is worth continued pursuit of knowledge, it wasn't just some preachy crap designed to make Christians feel comfortable with their little Sunday School knowledge of religion.

[RoccoR5955]

18. No, as I said, it's nice that they run these fictional pieces

ONCE IN A WHILE, which does not imply that EVERYTHING that Frontline does is fiction.

If you have proof of Jesus, and they do a "documentary" piece, then I have proof of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and believe that Frontline should do a similar "documentary" piece on His Noodlyness.

Arrgh and Ramen!

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

19. This thread is dildoes.

Doesn't he know there's no such things as religion?

[cprise]

14. Interesting video lecture here: Archeology vs Biblical history

Part 1
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2569440864215926514&ei=4S0vS8eVC8eclAe44ITRBQ

Part 2:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2260956154287964220&ei=4S0vS8eVC8eclAe44ITRBQ