this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
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Why don't "holy books" count?
Not historical sources, full of dubious claims.
Find him in roman records, or letters about 'this hippie bastard, Christ or something, was a total dick when he came into the office to pay his taxes today. Gods, why do I even do this fucking job? I'm having serious anxiety issues, and at 23, im past middle age. I'm afraid I won't ever...' Or literally any reliable source.
Your book about fucking wizards is not a reliable source, and if you get to say Jesus definitely existed; I get to say gandalf actually existed. Also magneto (that even had pictures in the primary source!)
Flavius Josephus, Pliny the Younger, Suetonius, Celsus, Tacitus, Thallus, Phlegon, etc
How come?
Because its got wizards and makes a lot of strong claims, including about wizards, that aren't corroborated NY actual real historical documents, which we have for some of the times and places mentioned, including the Roman empire, who kept absolutely fucking anal records-in fact, when it split, we literally still use the word for half of them (byzantine)as the word for 'absolutely fucking anal retentive bureaucracy'.
Youre working with more literary analysis and like 'oh hey here's an accurate description of an eclipse, so this person probably saw one, they were in this part of the world, so we can guess when it was written' type stuff than historical details. An ancient stone dildo tells us so much more about a culture than your book about wizards.
Okay, for a start, from the time of Jesus, we don't have very many records. And the Byzantine empire didn't exist until 300 years later, coincidentally when Christianity really took on. A good example is Pompeii. Basically all evidence we have for it is archaeological. There is only one written record which is written by a guy -surprise- who also mentions Jesus. The eruption of Mt Vesuvius was likely witnessed by around 250,000 people and killed many upper-class romans. In fact, the writings about Jesus are extraordinary as so many of them survived and exist in such a close timeframe to the existence of Jesus.
Secondly,
Gonna assume by wizards you mean Jesus being God.
This is circular reasoning. "Jesus couldn't have been God because there is no proof of Jesus being God, and the Bible isn't proof because Jesus couldn't have been God because there is no proof"
Basically you're saying "Prove to me Jesus is God" "Okay, here's your proof" "I reject your evidence because it claims Jesus is God when Jesus clearly isn't God"
Thirdly, there's archeological evidence of an early Church existing and early New Testament manuscripts from the second century. There's even a stone tablet mentioning Pontius Pilate, which before it was discovered, critical atheists claimed was a fictional character.
Archaeology counts, dude.
No you can't prove to Mr that 'Jesus was god', because you would first need to prove god exists. I would've heard by now if you could do that.
So anything youre saying does that I can safely dismiss as made up fantasty nonsense.
I'm saying "prove this was a real dude who lived and was much better at community organizing than carpentry, and this is the same guy who some people think was an immortal wizard who isnt actually a wizard its complicated but whats important is he fought a balrog or whatever and helped frodo get the one ring to mordor before fucking off with him to valinor". And apparently you can't even keep the question straight.
What sort of archaeology would Jesus leave behind?
I don't know or care, I don't talk this much about the bodies of much cooler communists who I know existed.
Jesus literally rose into heaven, you can go see His empty tomb in Jerusalem as well lol.
Oh shit. Yeah, that's proof he was a real guy.
Yep. Also means heaven and hell are real places. Which one?
Pretty sure we're in hell, but youve been outside; you know this.