Senate Dunk It Or Debunk It! Now disc: The Oak Island Money Pit

And as I was telling you on IM before I had to go, my point isn't that because Plato said it it must be true. Obviously not. I just think that because Plato said it, there's a likelihood that it's something people thought was true. He and many other contemporary historians (and hell, many since then as well) have exaggerated existing oral 'history'. But he most likely didn't just completely make up a new legend that no one had talked about before. It's much more likely that he just piled onto an interesting bit of oral legend he'd heard.

One thing about ancient accounts of supposedly historical events is that they can tell us just as much about the cultures that produced them as they do about the events themselves. I find that interesting.

So anyway, my point is that we may never know whether there was any island city that became the basis for a greatly exaggerated tale of "Atlantis". But Plato's account is reasonable evidence that at least some people in his day and before had been passing around such a tale.

Maybe my idea of 'recent' is a bit broad, since it's more like since the 50s and 60s To me, that's pretty recent in Western history. Although I was thinking a bit more of the actually very recent datings of cave paintings to thousands of years earlier than previous records.

 

That's all well and good, but at that point, I don't think you can discount the size. That is clearly not on the same size as what Plato describes, by orders of magnitudes. The area in question is around 30,000 square miles, and that simply doesn't point to the large landmass that is described by Plato. It's also described as being in front of the mouth of the pillars of Hercules, and this doesn't appear to fit that bill, either. Those are both fairly broad descriptions that it falls short on. It also makes it part of Europe, not a continent in it's own right. That's particularly troublesome as navigators would notice that it's unbroken shoreline from Greece to your 'Atlantis' and that wouldn't work with the description.

I also don't see how you'd cover the earthquakes that destroy it part, since this isn't a geologically active region with present fault lines. If anything, it belies that this is a myth from a region that has earthquakes setting a story somewhere where that isn't common, but they don't realise that.

 

The island of Santorini in the Aegean Sea was destroyed by a huge volcanic eruption and earthquake in 1400 BCE (approx.) and may be the source of the Atlantis legend. There have been several stories about it on the History Channel, including one within the past year that covered the event in depth. It was really very sad, because the island dwellers had no idea what was happening and of course, blamed it on the gods. They even went as far as making human sacrifices to appease the gods and get the volcano to stop erupting.

Plato may have misread an Egyptian heiroglyphic and made the land mass too large to fit in the Mediterranean sea, so most ancient historians put Atlantis in the Altantic ocean.

 

Lowie... two things.
1. Who said earthquake?
2. If Atlantis stretched from Portugal to London, you'd have your huge kingdom at the mouth of the pillars of Hercules.

 

This Plato guy did. Using the translation here:
"But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth"
This clearly seems to mention earthquakes as a key part of the destruction.

Atlantis stretching Portugal to London may be large, but it also removes the key descriptor of it being an island. Had it been a kingdom and island was inferred because it's location put it in an ocean, that would be one thing, but putting it elsewhere in Europe like that scenario would also makes it not an island, and I'd argue that's one of the most significant points in the whole story. It's certainly one of the biggest takeaways people have.

 

Jackson County Missouri obviously.

 

According to one Pavel Andreievich Chekov, Russia.

 

Oh god no. Too much snow. (And Judaism is a Middle Eastern religion).

 

Alright, well, if you're going to reference Jowell I have to throw in the towel. I have no reply to that, and I will not urge you to go on and read his interpretation of the Atlantis account.

If anybody has any arguments against Lowbacca_1977s positions, let's hear 'em before tomorrow this time (18:00h EST), otherwise I'm going to declare him winner of ROUND 1!

 

I particularly love how that article warns us that the source material for the "Atlantis" legend may be suspect as the "Atlantis" story "is preceded by an account of the sun god's son Phaethon yoking horses to his father's chariot and then driving them through the sky and scorching the earth".

No arguments here. Happy for round one to be "debunked" and to go to Lowie.

 

Okay, Lowie, forget you talked to Neil Degrasse-Tyson today...
You won Dunk It Or Debunk It!!!



Tomorrow: the highly anticipated, ragingly controversial SECOND ROUND!

 

Can we speculate? I say the next topic will be "Bigfoot".

 

I hope so!! I watched an entire season of Finding Bigfoot and all the guys did was scare each other. Never found Bigfoot.

 

Easiest way to disprove the existence of Bigfoot: How come no one has found any dead Sasquatch remains laying out in the woods or by the side of a road in the Pacific Northwest?

 

Not really. They are very shy and may even bury their dead.

 

Dunk It Or Debunk It! brings popular myth and conspiracy theories before the scrutinizing eyes of the JC Senate Floor! With each topic, I will try to promote the positive claim: I'm the believer!
Then it´s up to you to debunk it, and put me back on the ground. Or will you dunk it and make us all believe?

SECOND ROUND: WERE JESUS CHRIST AND JULIUS CAESAR THE SAME PERSON?

In 2002, the Italian historian Francesco Carotta published the book 'Jesus Was Caesar´. In it, the Venetian claims that the true identity of the humble Jesus Christ of Nazareth is actually that of one of the most famous rulers of the Roman Empire.



According to the author, his 'evidence leads to such an overwhelming amount of similarities between the biography of Caesar and the story of Jesus that coincidence can be ruled out'.

- Both Caesar and Jesus start their rising careers in neighboring states in the north: Gallia and Galilee.
- Both have to cross a fateful river: the Rubicon and the Jordan. Once across the rivers, they both come across a patron/rival: Pompeius and John the Baptist, and their first followers: Antonius and Curio on the one hand and Peter and Andrew on the other.
- Both are continually on the move, finally arriving at the capital, Rome and Jerusalem, where they at first triumph, yet subsequently undergo their passion.
- Both have good relationships with women and have a special relationship with one particular woman, Caesar with Cleopatra and Jesus with Magdalene.
- Both have encounters at night, Caesar with Nicomedes of Bithynia, Jesus with Nicodemus of Bethany.
- Both have an affinity to ordinary people-and both run afoul of the highest authorities: Caesar with the Senate, Jesus with the Sanhedrin.
- Both are contentious characters, but show praiseworthy clemency as well: the clementia Caesaris and Jesus' Love-thy-enemy.
- Both have a traitor: Brutus and Judas. And an assassin who at first gets away: the other Brutus and Barabbas. And one who washes his hands of it: Lepidus and Pilate.
- Both are accused of making themselves kings: King of the Romans and King of the Jews. Both are dressed in red royal robes and wear a crown on their heads: a laurel wreath and a crown of thorns.
- Both get killed: Caesar is stabbed with daggers, Jesus is crucified, but with a stab wound in his side.
- Jesus as well as Caesar hang on a cross. For a reconstruction of the crucifixion of Caesar, see:
http://www.carotta.de/subseite/texte/jwc_e/crux.html#images
- Both die on the same respective dates of the year: Caesar on the Ides (15 th) of March, Jesus on the 15 th of Nisan.
- Both are deified posthumously: as Divus Iulius and as Jesus Christ.


So there you have it. Jesus is Julius. And Nicomedes of Bithynia is Nicodemus of Bethania.

Who disagrees?

 

The timelines do not work. Julius Caesar has a known date of death. Working forward, the historical Herod Antipater, who executed John fairly early in Jesus's ministry, was not even alive at the time of Caesar's death. Working backward, we know that Paul was killed during the reign of Nero, and working backward from there does not allow for Jesus to have been alive at the same time Caesar was.

 

I have never heard of this. Maybe I watched less crappy History Channel shows than I thought.

 

I concur with Jabba Wocky that the timelines do not work. In addition to that, I would say that there are more differences than similarities in the stories of the lives of the two subjects based upon the contemporary historical accounts of the life of Julius Caesar which appear to have been reasonably well documented. When you consider the list of 'similarites' listed above, they are completely unremarkable and an argument could be made that I am in fact Jesus based upon that criteria - for example, I too have crossed a fateful river, have had good relationships with women and one in particular, can be a contentious figure (ask my kids), have been accused of making myself king (as my wife and kids), have a traitor ( my dog prefers our neighbour to us) , have an affinity for ordinary people and have run afoul of authority, have had encounters at night (not with Nicodemus but with a Nicole of Ballarat). All I need do to seal the deal is to die on the 15th of March by way of a vicious stabbing and have the beneficiaries of my estate declare me a god (this is actually in my will). If you simply ignore all temporal obstacles (as is the case with Carotta) I am sure any number of people could lay claim to being Jesus.

I say "debunked"!

 

Laugh it away, but you have to admit that the chances of a lawyer being declared a god are slim.

Julius Caesar was declared a God, you know. And he had a cult following.



Look at that, a coin of Divus Iulius. And look what´s on the other side - a comet. Looks a lot like a star, doesn't it?

The first biography of Caesar, and the one all the others were derived from, was the peacenik Gaius Asinius Pollio's Historiae. It covers the events of the Great Roman Civil War (49-45 BC). After Caesar's death, his cult as a god lived on, and they needed texts to recite from. So all the different colonies made their own interpretation of the life and times of their Savior, based on the work of Asinius Pollio. The stories in the Gospels can all be traced back to the Historiae, and are basically a retelling of the Great Roman Civil War - just in a different location. The rest is diegetic transposition: the distortion of facts by human copying mistakes, Hoth - the process you used to debunk Atlantis.

 

I don't know, it's working for Obama.

The difference is that there are contemporary written accounts of the life and times of Julius Caesar. As I understand it, his exploits were reasonably well chronicled when said exploits actually occurred. Contemporary records are therefore pretty high on the reliability scale as they document the events as they unfolded. Compare and contrast to the exploits of Jesus and the Atlantis myth which both involve an oral tradition or oral account eventually being written down a considerable time after the events actually ocurred. In the case of Jesus and Atlantis it's not a case of 'copying error' but rather a case of how reliable the written account is of the subject matter it purpotedly 'records'. On this basis I would argue that the contemporary accounts of Julius Caesar demonstrate that he clearly was not Jesus, but perhaps the Jesus story was influenced by Caesar's story as Jesus came after Caesar, so there was already some popular material to weave into the story.

 

That is what I am arguing, yes.
Caesar = real
Jesus = the Atlantis version of Caesar

 

The proposal still doesn't make any sense. Christianity was crystallizing at the height of Jewish antipathy for Rome. The province was literally obliterated in the concurrent period. Even when relations were less fraught, the Jews revolted in support of Persian invasions multiple times, making their feelings about the Roman empire abundantly clear. Why would the Jews, of all people, have lionized a key figure in the late Roman Republic when they so clearly considered the whole imperial regime hostile? Further, if it was merely to be a reinterpretation of Caesar and the Roman Civil War, what was the point of the whole theology contained in Jesus' teachings that is distinct from either Roman or Jewish thought? Where exactly did that part come from, and why would it have been grafted on here?

 

I have to say that I like this thread, the idea, the posts, etc. Atlantis? Debate!
But the new title?
It's not even funny because it's OH HELL NO. WHAT? WHAT? WHAT? WHERE DID THIS IDEA COME FROM? WHAT?