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Bringing you atheist articles and building active godless communities takes hundreds of hours and resources each month. If you find any joy or stimulation at Atheist Republic, please consider becoming a Supporting Member with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a good dinner.
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um actually no i am not... this is the frist time in general being on here. Is it because i have a strong belief in God that you ask me such a question? because if it is, i grew up in a family whose belief over powers anything else
Ok since you answered that relatively quickly and did not just go on posting at infinitum while clearly ignoring the question like other identities I thought were his have in the past, I will give you the benefit of the doubt though you have already shown yourself to share several traits with the one who calls himself Shock of God. I apologize if I was wrong about you.
You really should before learn more about science (how it works) and what others believe though it may help to open your mind to more meaningful debate.
and who exactly is "Shock of God"? if i may ask
Shock of God was this guy who came on here with a similar name to yours who viewed the bible as evidence and quoted scripture as though it were proof even though the bible is not evidence and scripture is not proof. Shock of God did not really respond directly or fully to questions asked, and shut down when ever he was put in a situation where he could not push his agenda which was solely to prove that that his god was the one true god and he was blind to reason and young. He eventually threatened us with hell and likened us to Hitler Stalin and Mao and despite lenghtly debate showing how these people were not all atheist he still ignored all "supporting evidence" (Very important term there) to be contrary of his claims. Seemingly as observed by Shock of God's Commentary Atheist were all that was bad in this world. Shock of God proved himself ignorant of other religions, history and science. As if all that was not enough, I am fairly sure he appeared under various screen names that also exhibited all these traits Shock of God and several other incarnations I believe to have been him were ultimately I think given the boot for being in violation of the forum guidelines mainly hate speak, condemning us to hell and encouraging suicide of other people on here.
While shock of God did share many of the same traits when I made these earlier comments i may have had him confused with another poster we have had on these forums. Aparently Shock of god does not believe in the bible as a reputable source of information or the word of God.
See thats the difference between me and him, or whoever he is. As a Christian we do not tell someone to simply go to hell because we knew how bad it is and how torturous it is, i wouldnt even wish hell upon my worst enemy let alone suicide. Growing up, i learned from my family 2 small but important things that got me all the way to high school; the way you judge others is how God will judge you, so i never judge people i get to know them first and even with all their judgemental flaws im still their friend because I know its something God would be proud of me for. and in Romans 12:9 it says "Don't just pretend to love others. Really love them. Hate what is wrong. Hold tightly to what is good." thats why i try to defend Gods name and try my hardest to prove that he exists because if someone doesnt i believe that all of this world would come into ignorance and its something God doesnt want.
Thing is and im deadly serious i would chose hell over worshiping your god he is amoral and offends my sense of ethics.
Lucky for me hes made up.
So you would rather choose the worst place ever and be tortured every minute than to be in what we Christians LOVE to call PARADISE where you can see all your loved ones who believed and you never age nor be the age you were when you died? i find that very interesting
CoG
No ... that will not do....that will not do at all...
2:17 refers to the "weeping in Ramah"
and NOT to "the Nazarene".
Similarly ...
1:20 refers to Joseph's dream (and in passing , a subsequent reference to Isaiah 7:14 (the mistranslated prophecy of a virgin birth))
and also NOT to "the Nazarene".
So ... to repeat .....
What I want to know is which prophet/s and where are these prophecies recorded. That's all.
(by the way ..it IS ok to say ,"I don't know")
ok... my bad... in that case i assume by prophets they are saying the angels of God... and the recording of the profecies i dont understand what exactly you are asking
"i assume by prophets they are saying the angels of God"
That's not what your book says........
You're making stuff up.
Your assumptions mean nothing.... evidence please.
The point Im coming round to ...
is that there is no prophecy regarding "the Nazarene" ...
it does not exist....any where....not in the new testament ...not in the old testament ... not in the Torah ..not in any of the literature associated with Jewish messianic texts.
It is a complete fabrication ... perpetrated by the dishonest scribe who authored the supposed gospel of Matthew.
So ,now what price the inerrant bible ?
Now you were earlier asking for some science related posts..... how about the science of archaeology ?
How about ....
The City of Nazareth looms large in the story of Jesus and his family.
And yet what do we really know of this holy City.
Well, it is apparently big enough to have its own synagogue, for Jesus to preach in. And it is on or near a precipice. So it should be a fairly simple process to locate this metropolitan hub of first century Galilee.
Surely either a Greek or Roman geographer can help us with this?
But, No, not a word .No Roman or Greek speaks of this 1st century city.
Well what of Jewish writers.
Josephus In his histories, Josephus has a lot to say about Galilee (only 900 square miles in area).
During the first Jewish war, in the 60s AD, Josephus led a military campaign back and forth across the tiny province.
Josephus mentions 45 cities and villages of Galilee –
yet Nazareth … not at all.
So , it appears the only reference to this elusive city is in the Bible , thus let us now examine what the “Good Book” has to say…
Well there are the obvious references in the 4 Gospels.
But looking further we start to notice strange omissions.
The Old Testament ,in its entirety, has not one mention of Nazareth.
Further, the Book of Joshua (19.10,16) – in what it claims is the process of settlement by the tribe of Zebulon in the area – records twelve towns and six villages and yet omits any 'Nazareth' from its list.
Curious … perhaps if we go the source for the Old Testament we may do better …
Lets look to the Talmud.
The Talmud, despite naming 63 Galilean towns, says absolutely nothing about Nazareth, neither does early rabbinic literature.
Perhaps Nazareth is only significant to the new cult of Christianity ?
But no .
No lesser person than Saint Paul himself , prolific letter writer and enforcer to the early church. In all his attributed works he refers to Jesus more than 220 times but Nazareth ?
Not once.
Ah well ,when all else fails we can always rely on science. The archaeologists must surely be able to nail down this elusive city.
Nope .
Despite all archaeological efforts over a period of nearly 60 years there is NO evidence of any sort for a city ,town ,hamlet or village at Nazareth during the 1st century.
What evidence there is all dates to after the Bar Kochba revolt of AD 135 when Nazareth was finally re-settled after being deserted for approximately 700 years following the Assyrian invasion of 738 BCE.
So a (so far) non existent town , fits with a non existent prophesy.
Sources…
http://jesusneverexisted.com/
or
http://www.nazarethmyth.info/naz3article.html
.
i would honestly have to say that that is where you went wrong, you looked at "sources" to try to disprove what is in the Bible. And it says that those pieces of land were given to Zebulun.
No argument there ...the fictitious narrative of the conquest of Canaan does indicate that the tribe of Zebulun was allocated the corridor of land that would include Nazareth ..... if it existed......
BUT it didn't exist ... did it ?
not in the 1st century....
you know when Jesus was supposed to have lived there...
"so that it could be fulfilled what the prophets had said that he would be called a Nazarene"
No ..
I Iooked in many places for an explanation of the missing prophecy....
I even asked you....
and found nothing...
that led to a missing city....
You might say ,"So what ,the prophecy was faked ,Nazareth didn't exist in the first century"..
But that then throws doubt on GMatthew in its entirety .... plus any other writing that refers to the character Jesus of Nazareth.
Now how many gospels does that leave ???
It did exist, it still does but for all we know people couldve changed the name. and as the "missing prophecy" WE started in the middle of Matthew, not the beginning
and by the middle of Matthew i meant the middle of Matthew chapter 2
CoG ...
"It did exist," ...
No ..it didn't.....you just saying it doesn't make it so.... you are confusing what you want to be true with what actually is true.
You as a Christian are entitled to your faith ,to your opinions ,your own thoughts.......
You are NOT however entitled to your own facts.
"it still does but for all we know people couldve changed the name."
It exists now ...certainly .... in fact I think you'll find ,if you check back that I told you when the town was re-founded (around AD 135) after the Bar Kochba revolt. We have documentary evidence for this.
"but for all we know people couldve changed the name"
Really? What to? When ? you have some evidence of this ?
or are you just making this up ...clutching at straws as it were.
Isn't it an admission of the failure of your "Truth" if you have to resort to falsehoods and lies to try to bolster it ?
As to ,"starting in the middle of Matthew 2" it really has no bearing ...
Matthew is a catalogue of provable fabrications from start to finish. From the falsified prophesies through the whole Nativity farce ,right down to the "zombie invasion of Jerusalem" Mat 27:52-53.
Like i said "FOR WHAT WE KNOW" im not saying it was or it wasnt im saying for what we know people COULDVE changed the name
CoG ..
"people COULDVE changed the name" ....
So the course of events you're proposing runs something like this....
Nazareth exists ... from some undecided time right up until Jesus' life time ,
whereupon , someone ...as yet unidentified ...
decides ,for no discernible reason to change the name of the town to something ... we don't know what ..
for a further period of time ,presumably until AD135 (we have documentary evidence for this date ) when the town's name was returned to Nazareth.
Is that it ...?
Well ,by the same token it might be that the entire town was spirited away by an alien spacecraft ... it has just as much evidence and thus is just as likely.
Both are totally Ridiculous.!
You also posted ,"FOR WHAT WE KNOW" ... which I have to say in your case seems to be very ,very little.
You go on ,"im not saying it was or it wasnt" .... No indeed ...you don't seem to be saying very much at all.
But what you must now consider is that if the prophecy doesn't exist ... and if Nazareth did not exist ... then is it not possible ...nay is it not probable that Jesus (of Nazareth) did not exist.
I've been following this discussion, and I might be wrong but it seems you're leaning on your vast intellect and cleverness to sway it a bit Watchman. Actually CoG put forward a reasonable explanation here. The names of towns did change a lot around this time, especially if the Romans took control. So that's conceivable - that it was a small town not worth mentioning, and then the Romans took hold of it as a kind of garrison town. This would explain the comment "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" It would explain why Jews would ignore it when they're listing cities. They've apparently found remains of some roman baths in the area even. And that would also explain why the Jews would want to recapture it and change the name back during the revolutions.
And I shouldn't have to say this, but just because there is no other record (outside of Matthew) of a place existing, it doesn't mean that therefore it didn't exist. There would be millions of towns that "didn't exist" if that were the case. Nazareth is lucky it got a mention at all, and you are quick to ignore the fact that it is mentioned.
I'm not sure about the prophecy about the Messiah being a Nazarene, but that's not a stretch either. The texts we have are not the only texts that the Jews wrote. That would be ridiculous. There was a lot of writing and discussion in the 2nd temple period about who the Messiah would be and what they would be like. It's easy to conceive that there might have been a prophecy that we don't have a record of.
beneames...
I have no "vast intellect" and I have no "cleverness" ... but I do my research .
"Actually CoG put forward a reasonable explanation here."
Indeed she did .... that is why I didn't patronise or belittle her.
What I did in response to her point was the same as I do to yours ....
"The names of towns did change a lot around this time," .....
Evidence ?
"especially if the Romans took control."
But the Romans did not take control of Nazareth until well after the Bar Kochba revolt. The Roman bath you mention dates from this period ...(It is documented on the Israeli Antiquities Authorities website ..at least it was 3 years ago when I did my original checking ... Although I should add there was some dispute over it .. a certain faction within Israel desperately wanted it to be recorded as a Jewish ritual bath house [Mikveh] ... which might well accord with the re founding of Nazareth in 135AD...because part of the documentary evidence for the re founding mentioned the settlement of some priestly families subsequent to the Roman removal of the Jews from Jerusalem.)
Your point about the Jews wanting to re capture Nazareth "during the revolutions" as you put it... It was Josephus who commanded the Jewish forces across Galilee at this time ... the same Josephus who I quoted as NOT mentioning Nazareth in his subsequent writings.
Your point about absence of evidence not being evidence of absence...is well made .and I would agree were it not for the total unreliability of anything that GMatthew has to say about prophesies. (It is this "unreliability" ,of all the Gospels that causes me to ignore the fact that it is mentioned).
You go on ...."It's easy to conceive that there might have been a prophecy that we don't have a record of."
Indeed it might ....Such a document might too explain the Bethlehem/nativity non-prophesy ... the virgin birth non-prophesy ....indeed it might even explain the whole Gaderene swine episode also...
But as things stand we have no such document ... so we can only base our deductions on the evidence we have......and the FACT remains there is no evidence for a 1st century Nazareth ...neither in the texts nor in the ground.
Until there is ...
I stand my ground.
"Gaderene swine episode"
it is just a parallel from Titus military campaign against the jews.
The gospels are a series of parallels from episodes of history.
This was the Jewish way of linking prophets with each other. We call it today Typology.
The Greco-roman authors of the bible just used the same technique to link Jesus to Titus in the Gaderene swine episode.
Mark 5:1-17 (Matthew 8:28-34; Luke 8:26-38) "They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes."
Titus in Josephus history version, he goes to the same exact place during his military campaign,to the country of the Gerasenes.
Though something happens there, there was a Jewish man in one of his legions that was influencing the other Jews in the roman legions.
He actually manged to convince an entire legion to disobey Titus commands and to protest against him.
Thinking that they are an entire legion, they thought they could reason with Titus.
"My name is Legion, for we are many." See where the phrase comes from?
"And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country."
Titus then decides to kill the entire legion and this legion was driven into the sea and drowned by the rest of the roman army.
In the bible they are described as pigs and that they begged for it.
You can see the dark sens of humor being used here.
Josephus describes what he means by demon, it is a man with a rebellious spirit.
This is paralleled in the bible as: "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!"
So the gospel is just saying that the mad Jews that rebel against Rome are demons and they fear Titus so much that they would be willing to drown in the sea then to face him.
A roman of that period would have easily understood this joke since they are just poking at the defeated Jews.
When Legion was cured of his 'demons', we read of him as now "clothed and in his right mind" (Mk. 5:15). His 'demon possession' therefore referred to a sick state of mind; and the 'casting out' of those demons to the healing of his mental state.
The roman legions were now ready to proceed in their righteous path. The roman path.
The same thing we think of theists today, they are in a "sick state of mind" with their imaginary friend.
The rebellious Jews believed in a messiah that could beat the Romans, this was considered madness for the Romans so they were poking jokes in the literature like the gospels.
This happens even today in our newspapers when we put pictures of funny looking figures that represent politicians saying something that they didn't manage to do.
It is basically the same thing but the Romans had a sick sens of humor.
Fair enough. Sounds like you've done a lot more research on it than I have. Thanks. I was just trying to think about it logically.
I've just been looking up name changes (on wikipedia) so you have some evidence. Caesarea Philippi was originally Paneas, then it came under Herod's control and became Caesarea Paneas, then Caesarea Philippi. Sepphoris was changed to Autocratoris and then later to Diocaesarea. Philippi itself was renamed Colonia Iulia Philippensis and then again Colonia Augusta Iulia Philippensis. Straton's Tower was another Jewish city that was renamed Caesarea by Herod, in honour of Caesar Augustus. The Romans took control of a lot of places and put their own spin on them. No idea about Nazareth itself.
Also, "synagogue" means ten families. It doesn't have to be a building or anything - just ten families getting together regularly to pray, read the scriptures etc. So just because it had a synagogue doesn't mean it was a major town.
The book says ,,, City
Where?
It might depend who's writing it ;) The Jews might think it's a city, but to anyone else it might look like just a sheep paddock.
beneames
"Where?"
Matthew...
2:23 And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene.
Luke...
1:26 And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth
How about the prophecy where Jesus claims that by not more then a generation(40 years) the "Son of man" will come to redeem Israel.
Year 70 has passed and 1900 years added to that with many more generation.
The "son of man" has forgot Israel?
Or simply that you do not have the correct interpretation of that piece of Literature? NOT HISTORY
its both literature, history, math, science, music, etc
There are a few verses that mention something like this. Mostly they're referring to Jesus' death and resurrection, which Jesus and Paul portrayed as the vindication of the son of man.
There are also some prophecies in Matthew that refer to the fall of Jerusalem, in 70AD.
And some that talk about Jesus' future return, when God will restore everything.
The whole idea is that Jesus' resurrection signaled the beginning (the inauguration) of a new age. But the victory doesn't have an immediate effect on everything. It's like a Roman emperor going to a distant land and defeating the tyrant who was threatening to invade. The victory happens and no one back home knows about it. Then a messenger is sent to alert everyone "We've won! There's no more to fear!" And then finally after a long time the emperor himself and all his armies return, everyone goes out to meet them, and there is a glorious celebration, and then emperor sits on his throne to rule again and makes everything way better now that he's finally returned. That's not exactly the situation, but it's the general concept. The Jews and Christians have no problem with things taking a long time, because God has never been in a hurry to do things. God has his own schedule.
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