Name:mikegs •
Title: What is there to gain? •
Date posted: 03/01/07 14:11
Q: What did the eyewitnesses of the resurrection have to gain from saying that they had seen the risen Christ? Persecution, death, people's hatred. They had no reason to make those claims unless they were just saying what they had seen, and therefore knew that they must share this good news.
What do those who make up stories of Jesus marriage, children and tomb have to gain? Well, I don't think that Dan Brown will release the figures, though I understand that it is hundreds of millions of dollars. Sounds like it might be very profitable to be dishonest about the evidence...
Name:Xare •
Date: 03/01/07 15:16
A: This is always a good question to ask.
Some would say that they want you to believe that the Merovingian line is the divine line descendant from Jesus. And that the "Family" wants to reveal itself and use this to claim its Divine Right of Kings.
Name:Nate Spain •
Date: 03/01/07 16:14
A: Non-Christians, as well as Christians, have a right to question the doctrines of Christanity. And here's at least one reason. Christianity presents itself as a package: The life, death, crucifixion, and return of Jesus.
He ain't returned. It's been 2000 years. Now, Christians, as a matter of faith, believe in that package. Others do not. There is no reason, for instance, for a Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, etc., to take a Christian's word about Christian doctrine. For what?
There now exist non-Christian, Asian/Indian books that record the sojourn of Jesus throughout Asia. There is no reason AT ALL for non-Christians to NOT read those books, or excerpts from those books, and to simply take a Christian's word for it that the Bible is the "only" authoritative book on Jesus.
Christians will point to the Bible where it supposedly says that no one knows when Jesus will return, and then EXPECT everyone else to be satisfied with that, just because the word "Holy" precedes the word "Bible."
The Bible is a book. Just as the Bhavishya Mahapurana, a Hindu book, is a book. The Bhavishya places Jesus in India long after the crucifixion, and he meets and talks with King Shalivahana in the mountains of Kashmir.
Why should a non-Christian NOT read Indian books, for instance, that mention the sojourn of Jesus to India? Why? Any non-Christian has every right to investigate ANY book, theory, monument, bones, tomb, inscription, sarcophagus, parchment that says something about Jesus, whether or not it turns out to be bogus.
Also, no non-Christian should be expected to believe that the Bible itself is not bogus. It's a book. SOMEBODY sat down and wrote it. A human wrote it. Yes, it may be divinely inspired, or the "word of God." But it cannot be expected to be accepted as such by non-Christians.
I would also suggest that Christians also have a right to investigate non-Christian views of Jesus, or, for instance, the subject matter of this website. It should not be assumed that money is always the driving force.
I can tell you, from first hand knowledge, that the authors of The Tomb of Jesus Christ Website ( www.tombofjesus.com ) did not make a penny. Their interest is to expose a theory about Jesus.
For centuries, the Christians MADE A POINT (often, at the point of a GUN) to try to force Christian doctrine on the world. But, now that that doctrine is being challenged, in our FREE information age, the Christians want to cry foul.
Hundreds of years ago, if a European anti-Church man cried foul in Christian Europe, he'd be burned at the stake. So, Christians now have to learn how to take it on the chin, or take it with grace. Or, intelligently refute what they deem anti-Christian views.
But please cut the belly-aching.
Name:Mark-Tao •
Date: 03/01/07 16:30
A: You can find people today who claim to have literally seen Jesus. That still doesn't mean that he took his physical body with him to Heaven.
Read the gospels, and you will see that Jesus wasn't concerned with making sure that people had their dogma right. He was always concerned with how people treated each other. Faith, as Jesus taught it, is a measure of a person's ability to act with love and hope and mercy. It is not a measure of one's belief in miracle stories.
Look at Jesus talking about the Final Judgement in Matthew. He doesn't say that people joined the right church or took the bible litteral and that saved them. He says that people treated others with kindness, and that in so doing they treated him with kindness. As for the ones he rejects, it's not for their religous ideas, but for how they treated other human beings.
Religous leaders have a lot to gain by keeping people focused on dogma. Jesus didn't found a religion, Paul did. Jesus lived as an example of faith, not a pronouncement of dogma.
What do you have to gain, by defending dogma? Is the world still flat?
Name:Nate Spain •
Date: 03/01/07 20:41
A: Mark-Tao, I do not know, of course, if you are aware of this. But, a number of the researchers (and I suspect this will come out in the Discovery Channel broadcast this month) who are concerned with the HISTORICAL Jesus point out precisely what you have pointed out: That the real importance of Jesus is his TEACHINGS, and even the universality of those teachings.
I was raised Christian (I am not now). And many of us who were raised Christians witnessed hypocrisy in our own households. Such as, for instance, coming home after Sunday church service, sitting at the dinner table, and hearing our parents talk about, "The Niggahs."
But!! As long as they, "believed on the Lord Jesus Christ," and in his "death and resurrection," then they were GOOD CHRISTIANS. You could sit there at the dinner table, wishing that "niggahs" would either disappear, or all be killed. But, you were STILL a "good Christian."
Many people of the 1960s generation (and, prior to them, the Beatnick generation) got sick and tired of this hypocrisy, and they actively sought to find out who the REAL Jesus was. Because they knew perfectly well that "Christianity" was NOT that which was being fed to them by priests, preachers, and their family members.
If you take away death, descent into hell, resurrection, and "return," is Christianity dead? NO! "Christianity" is what Christ TAUGHT. As you say, the dogma stuff ain't the deal. Muslims have the SAME problem, really, but that's another story.
Anyway, the writings found in Hemis; the oral traditions all along the route from Jerusalem to India encompass the teachings of SOMEONE who spoke and talk like Jesus. And this guy, whoever he was, traveled **after** the crucifixion.
I would venture to guess [and I'd only be guessing] that the people who put this site together might themselves have it in mind the importance of focusing on Jesus teachings, rather than...
Indeed, within Christianity (not outside of it) there is a struggle amongst the scholars regarding precisely that: What is important? Jesus as "god," or WHAT HE SAID.
Name:mikegs •
Date: 03/02/07 19:17
A: Thanks, Xare, for your reply.
For clarification.
1) I don't deny you or anyone else the right to read texts. Go ahead!
2) I don't 'expect' you to be satisfied with the suggestion that Jesus will return in his good time. I expect people to find the idea of the return of Christ ludicrous. The New Testament expects people to have such a perspective. 2 Peter 3:3-6. 3First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. 4They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation." 5But they deliberately forget that long ago by God's word the heavens existed and the earth was formed out of water and by water. 6By these waters also the world of that time was deluged and destroyed.
Now, if you want to talk about ancient texts and events they record, the flood is fairly much universally recorded in all ancient acounts of origins. Yet people deliberately forget that not everything will always go on the same way, because it is uncomfortable to think about the fact that we are answerable for the way we live our lives before God.
Sadly, this forgetting of coming judgement leads to an ignoring of the one way in which people can escape such judgement: the 2000 year delay has been an extraordinary display of patience, so that people may come to believe in the crucified & risen Christ and be saved from the coming judgement. God is not 'slow' he is 'patient'.
As far as my original allegation, it was not a question of those who have made this website - I don't know where the advertising revenue goes: rather it was a suggestion that this would be an economically advantageous time to release a 'documentary' that gives 'evidence' that Dan Brown's claims (which he made only with utterly refuted evidence) might after all have some semblance of plausibility.
Name:mikegs •
Date: 03/05/07 15:41
A: Mark Tao,
With respect, Jesus seems very concerned that people both believe the truth AND live lives of love.
He is particularly concerned about what people think about him, becuase he knows that he is the only one who can impart spiritual, eternal life to people.
John 5:39-40 "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life."
