Thursday, December 22, 2016

A Growing Number of Scholars Are Questioning the Historic Existence of Jesus


"St. Paul is the only one to write about events chronologically. Even then, few facts about Jesus are divulged. Paul’s Epistles rest on the “Heavenly Jesus,” but never mention the living man. For such an important revolutionary and religious figure, there are surprisingly no eyewitness counts."

An Orthodox Church in Belarus during Easter. Getty Images.

by Philip Perry

Christmas is a time of year where people are supposed to put aside their differences and come together to celebrate in peace, love, and understanding. Though few question the traditions of the season, many of them predate Christianity in Europe. A lot was borrowed from the Norse tradition of Yule—the celebration of the winter solstice. Others originate with the Roman festival of Saturnalia. Ancient pagans brought pine branches into their houses, lit up the night with bonfires and candles, gave gifts, and burned the yule log.  

Even Santa Claus comes from a variety of sources. Of course one of them is St. Nicolaus of Turkey. But earlier renditions look far more like the iconography associated with Odin or the Anglo-Saxon god, Woden. Ancient proselytizers when converting the continent found it was much easier if people could keep their traditions, and merely put a Christian stamp on them. And that’s how these were incorporated into the season. Some even question whether or not Jesus was born on December 25. The Orthodox Church for example celebrates Christmas on January seventh, as according to the Julian calendar which predates the Gregorian, a date they claim is more accurate.  

Today more and more, historians and bloggers alike are questioning whether the actual man called Jesus existed. Unfortunately, many of the writings we do have are tainted, the authors being religious scholars or atheists with an axe to grind. One important point is the lack of historical sources. In the bible, whole chunks of his life are missing. Jesus goes from age 12 to 30, without any word of what happened in-between.  

Historians have measures in terms of a burden of proof. If an author for instance is writing about a subject more than 100 years after it occurred, it isn’t considered valid. Another important metric is the validity of authorship. If the author cannot be clearly established, it makes the record far less reliable.

What we do have are lots of sources completed several decades after the fact, by authors of the gospels who wanted to promote the faith. The gospels themselves are contradictory. For instance, they tell competing Easter stories. Another problem, there aren’t any real names attached to many of them, but rather an apostle’s who “signed off” on the manuscript. There is also evidence that the gospels were heavily edited over the years.


Some accounts of the Christmas story have no mention of the star or even the three wise men.

St. Paul is the only one to write about events chronologically. Even then, few facts about Jesus are divulged. Paul’s Epistles rest on the “Heavenly Jesus,” but never mention the living man. For such an important revolutionary and religious figure, there are surprisingly no eyewitness counts. And the writings we do have are biased. Roman historians Josephus and Tacitus do make a few, scant remarks about his life. But that was a century after Jesus’s time. So they may have garnered their information from early Christians. And those threadbare accounts are controversial too, since the manuscripts had been altered over time by Christian scribes whose job it was to preserve them.

Today, several books approach the subject, including Zealot by Reza Aslan, Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed at All by David Fitzgerald, and How Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman. Historian Richard Carrier in his 600 page monograph: On the Historicity of Jesus, writes that the story may have derived from earlier semi-divine beings from Near East myth, who were murdered by demons in the celestial realm. This would develop over time into the gospels, he said. Another theory is that Jesus was a historical figure who become mythicized later on.

Carrier believes the pieces added to the work of Josephus were done by Christian scribes. In one particular passage, Carrier says that the execution by Pilate of Jesus was obviously lifted from the Gospel of Luke. Similar problems such as miscopying and misrepresentations are found throughout Tacitus. So where do all the stories in the New Testament derive? According to Carrier, Jesus may be as much a mythical figure as Hercules or Oedipus.

Ehrman focuses on the lack of witnesses. “What sorts of things do pagan authors from the time of Jesus have to say about him? Nothing. As odd as it may seem, there is no mention of Jesus at all by any of his pagan contemporaries. There are no birth records, no trial transcripts, no death certificates; there are no expressions of interest, no heated slanders, no passing references – nothing.”


According to universal archetypes, dying on a hill is a prerequisite for becoming a mythic hero. 

The Rank-Raglan Mythotype is a set of traits that heroes across cultures share. There are 22 of them including a virgin birth, the audience knowing little to nothing about his childhood, being the son of god, dying on a hilltop, and the mysterious disappearance of his remains. Jesus meets 20 of the traits total. In fact, no one else meets the hero archetype quite as well.

One biblical scholar holds an even more radical idea, that Jesus story was an early form of psychological warfare to help quell a violent insurgency. The Great Revolt against Rome occurred in 66 BCE. Fierce Jewish warriors known as the Zealots won two decisive victories early on. But Rome returned with 60,000 heavily armed troops. What resulted was a bloody war of attrition that raged for three decades.

 Atwill contends that the Zealots were awaiting the arrival of a warrior messiah to throw off the interlopers. Knowing this, the Roman court under Titus Flavius decided to create their own, competing messiah who promoted pacifism among the populous. According to Atwill, the story of Jesus was taken from many sources, including the campaigns of a previous Caesar.   
  
Of course, there may very well have been a Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef (as would have been Jesus’s real name) who gathered a flock around his teachings in the first century. Most antiquarians believe a real man existed and became mythicized. But the historical record itself is thin.

To learn more about Atwill’s radical view click here:



Source: BigThink.com

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Thursday, July 21, 2016

An Insight into Why Donald Trump Loves Vladimir Putin





A perfect business opportunity for the global community.
 You won't believe this, but it's true!




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Saturday, June 11, 2016

BREAKING! Earth Visitors' Vehicle Escorted by U.S. Fighter Jets Over U.S. Air Force Base in Izmir Turkey

E.T. Visitors Being Escorted by U.S. Fighter Jets, Izmir, Turkey June 2016
An American witness inside Izmir Air Force Base, Turkey, reports there were many people watching the strange shaped UFO in the sky that was escorted by the jet fighters. There were many witnesses to the event.

"We were all in our office when we were told to come outside and see this really strange event in the sky," the witness stated.
Turkey is one of the strategic military installations run by the US Air Force in Europe. It's one of the oldest and largest cities of Turkey. Izmir is also close to the Aegean Sea.

In Turkey, UFO events are monitored by the Sirius center. According to their records, in 2015 between April 1 and Oct. 28 there were 3,640 reports of UFO sightings; 526 of them were recorded on camera, and 468 of them could have been satellites, Chinese lanterns, birds, balloons, photoshopped photos, light reflections or simple mistakes. A total of 79 were confirmed as UFOs.
In 2012, UFO reports went up by 35% compared to the year before, and that trend continued with a 45% increase in 2013 and a 60% increase in 2014. Hakan Akdogan, the chairman of the Sirius UFGO Space Sciences Research Center, said, “We predict that UFO sightings will seriously increase in Turkey and internationally in the coming years, and 2016-2020 will be a turning point in UFO sightings. We believe that governments will then have to reveal the realities they have been concealing.”
The world has been witnessing these kinds of sightings for many years; reports keep piling up but governments are yet to acknowledge the phenomenon. Akdogan added, “The states know about it. They have evidence, but their citizens have to be prepared for this reality on a psychological level with appropriate information. This is what films accomplish right now.”

Watch the video here!




Source:  http://www.section51-ufo.com/

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Monday, May 2, 2016

Russian Origin Doctor Has Invented a Procedure to Safely Dissolve Varicose Veins in Seconds


A Russian origin doctor named Ceyhun Huseynov, has invented a procedure to safely dissolve varicose veins in seconds.   You won't believe this video!






 Best Thing Since Sliced Bread?


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Thursday, March 31, 2016

Don't be Afraid of the Rise of a New Global Political Reality, Reshaping the Entire World


by Madison Reed

I can feel the rise of a new political reality for the U.S.A. and Russian Federation.  You could call it the "R.U.S.A.".  
And this new reality is part of a larger, behind-the-scenes process that's reshaping everything that we currently think we know.  Just hold on to your britches and be optimistic!


Don't be fooled into thinking that Russia and the United States are heading toward any kind of real global conflict. This is only propaganda to appeal to the masses, for the maintenance of political power, and the continued funding of companies that manufacture military weaponry. The United States and the Russian Federation are actually secret allies. Be sure of it.

There is a future for the Human species that is dazzling, and we will likely make the leap to move into that future, as long as we REJECT AND STOP BUYING INTO THE OLD FAILED PARADIGM AND LIE that we are sinful creatures who cannot pull ourselves out of hopeless war and poverty consciousness.  Become the change that we want to see in the world.  (Mahatma Gandhi)

I firmly believe we're in store for good news, quite soon. The dark side of the global military-industrial complex is disintegrating and giving way to something that will be wonderful.  Stunning transformation is happening everywhere - even among those from the highest levels of power on our planet.  Finally there's a will to genuinely change the direction that humanity has been heading, toward an end of conflict and shortages, to a new age of endless fulfillment and peace. There are millions, or even hundreds of millions of Guardians for humanity, who are protectors, who will never sell out.  In fact, it's a certain impossibility for them to do so.

Look up and see the Light. Don't give up. The loneliness, the sadness and the insanity are nearing THE END.


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Tuesday, February 16, 2016

The Great Failure of the U.S. Republic and a Solution if We Choose it




by Madison Reed
After nearly 300 years, we have no practical, effective mechanism to remove corrupt elected leaders from office, or to effectively represent the People. We have three branches of the federal and state governments, but no institutions of the People at the various levels of government; national, state and local, that are centers of power and influence from the American people, that both counter-balance government power and influence, and exert to the utmost degree the finest of our humanity.
Voting and jury duty are not institutions. We're fond of saying that our government's power comes from the People, but it's very difficult for us to do anything about it, because we have no Peoples' institutions. This is the root of our republic's problem.   It is a lack of checks and balances on a grander scale. The people were left out.   That's why government has become a run away train heading for a wreck, and why the substitute of the corporate "person" power has taken over to fill the void.

"I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's." ~William Blake Hayes

We need institutions such as a Supreme Council of the Enlightened, a National Council of Elders, a National Center for the Study of Creation, A National Center for Conflict Resolution and Peace, a National Center for the Promotion of Happiness and Prosperity, a National Peoples' Tribunal, a National Library, a National Center for the Study of Man and Spirituality with a universal House of Worship for people of all beliefs, etc.  It's not too late to correct this mistake.

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Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Mark Zuckerberg announces Oculus Rift - a major development in virtual reality technology


Mark Zuckerberg announces Oculus Rift - a major development in virtual reality technology - a technology metaphor of what's yet to come - leading the way into the expansion and reshaping of our relationship with the universe."  ~Madison Reed

https://shop.oculus.com/en-us/cart/



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