Who doesn't eat meat on good friday?

[Johno]

Like what? Like the fact that nobody thought it was important or notable enough to take note of until thirty years later?

That\'s an interesting point - but you\'re thinking too much in the mindset of a 21st century person. Here\'s where a bit of ancient history training comes to play.

See, you come from a literate and literarary society where printing and electronic texts are readily available. EVERYTHING is written down, and published immediately. If something is important to you, you put it out on the \'net, where it is disseminated to thousands of others like you. It\'s also archived electronically, and possibly put into print, usually within days of being committed to text.

Remember that when we\'re talking about the time of Jesus, we\'re talking about a society with NO printing. If you want a written document, it has to be hand-written. And whilst the Jews were exceptional in that nearly half the population had some degree of literacy, the majority of people couldn\'t read.

This has a couple of impacts - one which is obvious, and the other which may not be.

The obvious impact is that today your chances of finding historical documents on any given event in the ancient world are extremely low. This is particularly striking when you compare them with other big events today - for example, documents about world war 2 are easily found. There are newspapers, military orders, personal memoirs of people involved, photographs and movies. These are primary sources[1]. Histories of these events are written in vast numbers. However, if you are seeking information about, say, the wars involving Pompey, you will have to rely on the one or two secondary sources[2] that are still extant. Reconstructing events in any kind of unbiased fashion is nearly impossible. The fact that we have 4 complete biographies of Jesus (the Gospels found in the New Testament)[3] is remarkable - it makes him one of the better-attested historical characters from his era. We even have a few fragmentary references from enemies and people who don\'t have an axe to grind - useful in fixing events.

The less obvious impact is in the way people think. If you (you personally!) want information disseminated quickly you have a lot of options - for example, you can email, facebook, tweet or comment on a forum. Even fifty years ago, since printing was easily available and most people were literate, you could send a circular letter or have a pamphlet made.

If you wanted to disseminate information quickly in the ancient world, written words were unreliable. You had to handwrite each copy, and whilst people were good at making accurate copies, such copies took time (and money - one of my AHST lecturers used to point out that to people in the first century AD a single book would be equivalent in value to a family car today!) to produce. And they were really only useful to the educated elite, which comprised a very small proportion of the early Christian population. So the reliable way to communicate information was by word of mouth.

Now, the early Christians DID publish books. Huge numbers of books. In fact, by 30 years after Christ\'s death and [alleged] resurrection, we have so many copies of the basic story of his life as to be unprecedented in the ancient world. We have enormous numbers of handwritten copies of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and they are quoted so widely in other Christian books and letters that we could reconstruct them from fragments if somehow all the manuscripts in existence were destroyed. However, the main method the early Christians used to communicate stories of Christ was simply memorising the story (with the aid of poems and songs, some of which are still extant today).

I\'m just looking back at what I have written. Please forgive me the wall of text - I studied the history of the New Testament at University (Macquarie University, Sydney - a secular university, but still proudly one of the world\'s great centres of learning regarding early Christianity). This issue happens to be a passion of mine, and one I studied at length.

[1] Primary sources: Eyewitness accounts of a particular event.

[2] Secondary sources - documents written as a conscious attempt to record history.

[3] Not to mention maybe another 10 late biographies. These don\'t really say much the four Gospels don\'t[4], and since they\'re dated 200-500 years later historians also consider them less reliable.

[4] There are one or two sensational claims used by characters like Dan Brown. Note that they\'re not touted by any serious historians. . . .

[Guest GroundHOG-2010]

It\'s also interesting to note that almost every religion has a story of a great flood.

And how many of those religions have been around the Mediterranean. In some cases, this might be used as way of describing the reason for sea creature remains or fossels inland, or could be litiral, as there were two tsunamis around that time.

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

[RC1062]

Oops... I had a steak...

I\'d never heard of it before though... ;D

[bandit4910]

Before my mom came down I ate a hot dog .

So much for not having meat yesterday...

[Johno]

And how many of those religions have been around the Mediterranean. In some cases, this might be used as way of describing the reason for sea creature remains or fossels inland, or could be litiral, as there were two tsunamis around that time.

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

One thing I say is this - the flood was definitely a memory of a real event. How much of it is mythologised is up to you to judge; but there definitely was a flood that wiped out most of humankind.

In fact, there were probably a number. According to the geneticists (and don\'t ask me how they actually figure this out! ), humankind has been through a genetic bottleneck 8 times . . . . that means, 8 times humans were wiped out down to one population.

To me this says God really wants us there . . .

[GOOMH]

Like what? Like the fact that nobody thought it was important or notable enough to take note of until thirty years later?

Well about that here\'s a non bias account which kinda explains why it took so long.

Plus don\'t we have historical record about a few floods that happened around those times?

[Johno]

That video is actually pretty good. A couple of minor inaccuracies - fails to recognise that written records of Jesus DID exist (but see my wall of text above) and seems not to recognise that even in the Roman world Greek was actually the main language. Other than that, however, an excellent treatment of the historical context of Jesus and the early Christians.

[Caesar15]

That video is actually pretty good. A couple of minor inaccuracies - fails to recognise that written records of Jesus DID exist (but see my wall of text above) and seems not to recognise that even in the Roman world Greek was actually the main language. Other than that, however, an excellent treatment of the historical context of Jesus and the early Christians.

Whhaaaaatttt

[RedDwarfIV]

You\'re attributing humankind\'s survival through eight genetic bottlenecks [at one point we were down to 1000 mating pairs] to a God, when really you should be attributing it to the simple fact that Humans are awesome at not dying. Whilst only a semi-non-fictional book, it is wholly relavent: Walking With Cavemen describes a Homo Sapiens couple walking across the Savannah during a drought. They come across a tree, and from underneath it the woman takes an ostritch egg. She removes a plug of grass from a hole in the top. Inside the egg is a large amount of water. The couple, and their child, share this water. They put the egg under the tree back when it last rained, knowing they would later need it. That human intelligence is exactly why we survived. No divine intervention nescersary.

I think my family discovered I was atheist when the priest came round our house to ask if I wanted to be confirmed. I was evasive. Eventually, he asked me if I believed in God. I didn\'t answer.

I still go to Church, and I sing the hymns and say the prayers. But the main reason I go is because I operate the Public Address System.

[Sordid]

That video is actually pretty good. A couple of minor inaccuracies - fails to recognise that written records of Jesus DID exist (but see my wall of text above) and seems not to recognise that even in the Roman world Greek was actually the main language. Other than that, however, an excellent treatment of the historical context of Jesus and the early Christians.

I\'d also add to that the bit where he says that 'people at the time believed that Jesus was the messiah'. Technically true, some people did believe that. But he fails to mention that the number of those people was extremely small. To the vast majority of people at the time Jesus was a nutter and his little following a suspicious religious sect. The messiah was thought to be this powerful, glorious figure who would come in force and establish an actual Kingdom of God on Earth. And along comes this nobody from some backwater village without a penny to his name and claims to be this messiah? Bart Ehrman made the point in one of his books that at the time Jesus was viewed in a similar way that today we view David Koresh - a radical religious figure who got in trouble with the law and got himself killed as a result. Hence why his disciples were viewed with extreme suspicion when they went around claiming that he was the son of God and rose from the dead, much like people making such claims about Koresh would be viewed today.

DayOne: That WOULD be crazy. Unless he was right. But big claims require big demonstrations; that\'s why Christians are big on Jesus\' resurrection. We think that coming back from the dead is a pretty good demonstration.

The problem is that you don\'t have a resurrection as evidence. What you have is a story about a resurrection. If you see a resurrection, then yes, that is quite impressive and unambiguous. But when you\'re told a story? That\'s a second hand account, and in that case there are a number of possibilities to choose from. It might be true, sure. But it\'s also possible that the story is false, either because the person telling it is mistaken, has been deceived, or is outright lying. Those possibilities seem a lot more likely than that an event which we know to be impossible happened.

[bandit4910]

You\'re attributing humankind\'s survival through eight genetic bottlenecks [at one point we were down to 1000 mating pairs] to a God, when really you should be attributing it to the simple fact that Humans are awesome at not dying. Whilst only a semi-non-fictional book, it is wholly relavent: Walking With Cavemen describes a Homo Sapiens couple walking across the Savannah during a drought. They come across a tree, and from underneath it the woman takes an ostritch egg. She removes a plug of grass from a hole in the top. Inside the egg is a large amount of water. The couple, and their child, share this water. They put the egg under the tree back when it last rained, knowing they would later need it. That human intelligence is exactly why we survived. No divine intervention nescersary.

I think my family discovered I was atheist when the priest came round our house to ask if I wanted to be confirmed. I was evasive. Eventually, he asked me if I believed in God. I didn\'t answer.

I still go to Church, and I sing the hymns and say the prayers. But the main reason I go is because I operate the Public Address System.

...

Yeah I don\'t go to church.

My parents found out about a month ago.

My mom snooped through my MP3 player.

Which now is code locked...

[Kryten]

Johno; Are you claiming that the gospels can be considered as different sources, independent of each other? And that historians agree with this view?

EDIT: Let me put it another way. Guru Nanak Dev is attested by at least three independent sources, two of them complete biographies, written shortly after he died. In the region, at this time period, printing was unheard of, and books uncommon; however, copies of these sources became extremely widely disseminated within a relatively short timeframe. Ergo, Nanak Dev was a genuine prophet of the Godhead.

[Grove]

Religion =

[Sordid]

Johno; Are you claiming that the gospels can be considered as different sources, independent of each other? And that historians agree with this view?

Some of them can, yeah. Mark and John are completely separate and Luke and Matthew were composed of bits of Mark and the hypothetical Q document along with some original material. So as far as separate sources go, that\'s three out of four. Not that bad, actually.

Yeah I don\'t go to church.

My parents found out about a month ago.

My mom snooped through my MP3 player.

Huh? I don\'t follow. How does snooping through your MP3 player lead to that discovery?

[bandit4910]

Some of them can, yeah. Mark and John are completely separate and Luke and Matthew were composed of bits of Mark and the hypothetical Q document along with some original material. So as far as separate sources go, that\'s three out of four. Not that bad, actually.

Huh? I don\'t follow. How does snooping through your MP3 player lead to that discovery?

The music i listen to and the fact I\'ve written stuff in there..

My parents are very nosy sometimes.

I can\'t wait until I can legally move out...

My plan is to move across the country so my family cant find me.

Of course that also means a name change...

The reason is whenever my mom comes down here she gets made cause we don\'t clean.

And when we do my mom wants us to clean the way she did like 30 years ago.

So she should know by now that people in this generation don\'t take extra time to clean precisely.

[RedDwarfIV]

The music i listen to and the fact I\'ve written stuff in there..

My parents are very nosy sometimes.

I can\'t wait until I can legally move out...

My plan is to move across the country so my family cant find me.

Of course that also means a name change...

The reason is whenever my mom comes down here she gets made cause we don\'t clean.

And when we do my mom wants us to clean the way she did like 30 years ago.

So she should know by now that people in this generation don\'t take extra time to clean precisely.

My cleaning routine:

-Move the spare desktops into the cupboard.

-Pick up bits of rubbish, put them in the bin.

-Ensure no loose pieces of metal are on the floor.

-Vacuum carpet.

-Declutter desk.

Done.

[bandit4910]

My cleaning routine:

-Move the spare desktops into the cupboard.

-Pick up bits of rubbish, put them in the bin.

-Ensure no loose pieces of metal are on the floor.

-Vacuum carpet.

-Declutter desk.

Done.

That\'s my way of cleaning.

My parents way of cleaning:

-Move the TV.

-Dust behind the TV.

-Dust the edges of the stairs.

-Clean the mirrors.

-Dust the ceiling fans.

-Vacuum.

-Move the furniture.

-Vacuum under the furniture.

Done

I am not doing all of that, it will take most of the day.

So I have perfect reason not to clean.

OT:

Another way they found out was keeping a chatlogger on my PC.

[Sordid]

Oh em gee, does this thread meander about! From dietary habits to historicity of Jesus to cleaning tips. Wow.

[RedDwarfIV]

That\'s my way of cleaning.

My parents way of cleaning:

-Move the TV.

-Dust behind the TV.

-Dust the edges of the stairs.

-Clean the mirrors.

-Dust the ceiling fans.

-Vacuum.

-Move the furniture.

-Vacuum under the furniture.

Done

I am not doing all of that, it will take most of the day.

So I have perfect reason not to clean.

OT:

Another way they found out was keeping a chatlogger on my PC.

Never sweep. After four years, the dust gets no worse.

[JupiterII]

Oh em gee, does this thread meander about! From dietary habits to historicity of Jesus to cleaning tips. Wow.

The thread should be renamed, 'The life story of an atheist: His diet and cleaning habits'.

[Johno]

Whhaaaaatttt

Yes indeed. This comes as a shock to many people.

Latin was the official language of the Roman government, of course, and generally speaking Latin would be heard up and down the Italian peninsula. However, most of the Roman Empire had actually been conquered by Alexander the Great\'s Greek-speaking Macedonians.

The Roman poet Horace said 'Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit' which is usually translated 'Captive Greece took Rome Captive'. Although the Romans had largely conquered the Greek world, they became obsessed with its language and culture. One Roman philosopher I read during uni even apologised for trying to write philosophy in Latin, because it was self-evident that Greek was the 'right' language to use.

So whilst the Romans held control, most of the provinces they held retained the language and culture of the Hellenistic Greeks. The official language of the Roman world may have been Latin - but what they actually SPOKE was Greek, and more than that, that was what they wrote down. Most inscriptions and documents from the world outside of Italy at that time are in fact in Koine Greek (a form of the Greek language spoken by the Koinonia, the general community, as opposed to the educated 'Classical' Greek).

Ultimately Latin became the language of education. This was because the educated elite who actually RAN the empire were native Latin speakers; ironically, they\'d have largely seen classical Greek as the mark of their own education and culture!

[Caesar15]

Yes indeed. This comes as a shock to many people.

Latin was the official language of the Roman government, of course, and generally speaking Latin would be heard up and down the Italian peninsula. However, most of the Roman Empire had actually been conquered by Alexander the Great\'s Greek-speaking Macedonians.

The Roman poet Horace said 'Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit' which is usually translated 'Captive Greece took Rome Captive'. Although the Romans had largely conquered the Greek world, they became obsessed with its language and culture. One Roman philosopher I read during uni even apologised for trying to write philosophy in Latin, because it was self-evident that Greek was the 'right' language to use.

So whilst the Romans held control, most of the provinces they held retained the language and culture of the Hellenistic Greeks. The official language of the Roman world may have been Latin - but what they actually SPOKE was Greek, and more than that, that was what they wrote down. Most inscriptions and documents from the world outside of Italy at that time are in fact in Koine Greek (a form of the Greek language spoken by the Koinonia, the general community, as opposed to the educated 'Classical' Greek).

Ultimately Latin became the language of education. This was because the educated elite who actually RAN the empire were native Latin speakers; ironically, they\'d have largely seen classical Greek as the mark of their own education and culture!

Of course gaul, spain, and england, and africa spoke latin correct? Cause the only greek thing about those is massila

[Johno]

The problem is that you don\'t have a resurrection as evidence. What you have is a story about a resurrection. If you see a resurrection, then yes, that is quite impressive and unambiguous. But when you\'re told a story? That\'s a second hand account, and in that case there are a number of possibilities to choose from. It might be true, sure. But it\'s also possible that the story is false, either because the person telling it is mistaken, has been deceived, or is outright lying. Those possibilities seem a lot more likely than that an event which we know to be impossible happened.

Let\'s go with that, shall we?

Yes, it is true that we can\'t observe a resurrectionl happening. But the existence of the story is interesting in and of itself.

Where would a resurrection story come from in that world?

The dominant local world views were as follows:

The Jews - Pharisees, Saducees and Essenes.

The Graeco-Romans - Stoics and Epicureans.

Pharisees believed in a resurrection. It would be a the end of the world, and all humankind would be raised. So to say that one person had been raised would have been like saying 'The world has ended. A little bit.' Indeed if you read the Apostle Paul\'s works, it\'s something he grapples with - as a Pharisee, he has trouble coping with the idea of a resurrection. He therefore has to figure out a way to blend it into the theology he understands.

Saducees did NOT believe in a resurrection. At all. It didn\'t come from them.

Essenes, meanwhile had an idea that the spirit was good and the flesh was evil. Returning to flesh after death would seem a backward step to them, rather like someone who believes in reincarnation going back to being a cockroach. No resurrection here.

So what about the Romans and the Greeks?

Well, largely they didn\'t go for the miraculous. They had an idea that you could do a deal with a god or gods and obtain their favour, but their worldview didn\'t really have room for someone returning from the dead. Roman religion, in particular, was very much a social thing - it was something to hold the community together. To us, this seems cynical, but that wasn\'t a problem for them - to Romans, that was partly what religion was for (and another reason they distrusted Jews and Christians with their personal view of religion).

Among the Romans there were a couple of dominant philosophies. Probably the most influential were the Epicureans and the Stoics.

Stoics believed in the existence of a God, gods or at least a divine principle (called 'Ho Logos', which translates roughly as 'The word'). However, their idea was that the god or gods had set the universe going and would never involve themselves in its day-to-day runnings. Therefore to the stoics, there were no miraculous events. Life was all about accepting whatever happened to you (and studying philosophy). No way that this would lead to a resurrection.

Epicureans were the first serious atheists, but unlike many of today\'s atheists they took it to its logical conclusion. Life is essentially pointless, and the best you can do is to enjoy yourself - 'Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die' is an essentially epicurean idea. They wouldn\'t accept that a resurrection was possible, and even if it could happen, the idea that it would have any meaning at all was fundamentally opposed to their ideas.

We\'re left with natural philosophy. Well, that\'s one place it couldn\'t come from. One of the first ideas a society gets their head around is that dead people don\'t come back.

Therefore, from every possible viewpoint, a resurrection is not a likely thing for people to make up within the worldviews extant at the time. I\'m not saying it\'s impossible for someone to make it up, but it wouldn\'t be the sort of thing they would. Put simply, if it hadn\'t happened, where would such an outlandish idea come from?

I am not so foolish or inexperienced as to say that if I present you guys with a nice piece of intelligent argument you\'ll all slap your heads, say 'Of course! How stupid I\'ve been!' and immediately become Christians, sell your belongings and head off to work as missionaries to Outer Mongolia or East Yemen. But really, that\'s not my intention.

Rather what I want is for people to get their heads around the idea that religion does not equal stupid or gullible. I want people to understand that I am a highly intelligent adult, with sophisticated ideas and training - and to me the evidence for God\'s existence (and in my case the evidence for Christianity itself) is compelling.

[Johno]

Of course gaul, spain, and england, and africa spoke latin correct? Cause the only greek thing about those is massila

Probably what they MOSTLY spoke was their own native languages, whatever they were ('Barbarian' languages to Greeks or Romans!). In the areas that Alexander didn\'t go, of course, there was a little more Latin (including, as you say, Gaul, Hispania and Brittania - Africa [especially Egypt] was highly influenced by the Greeks), but even there the Roman legionaries mostly spoke Greek rather than Latin; most of them were enlisted or conscripted from conquered territories, and educated Latin-speaking types would seldom have ended up as legionaries. Typically such people would be officers.

[Caesar15]

Probably what they MOSTLY spoke was their own native languages, whatever they were ('Barbarian' languages to Greeks or Romans!). In the areas that Alexander didn\'t go, of course, there was a little more Latin (including, as you say, Gaul, Hispania and Brittania - Africa [especially Egypt] was highly influenced by the Greeks), but even there the Roman legionaries mostly spoke Greek rather than Latin; most of them were enlisted or conscripted from conquered territories, and educated Latin-speaking types would seldom have ended up as legionaries. Typically such people would be officers.

well 100\'s of years of romanization and they still spoke there native languages? i doubt they spoke nativley for awhile after being conquered.