JCC I'm sure no one will have a problem with this at all. Nope. Not one bit.

Discovery to be presented that Roman aristocracy fabricated Jesus Christ and was just a government project to pacify Roman subjects

Nothing to here. Move along.

 

Roman 1: So our empire is made up of so many diverse peoples of differing cultures and religions... maintaining order is so challenging.
Roman 2: Quite, quite...
Roman 1: Wait... I've got it! We create a religion based on that Jewish faith and say that their Messiah has come!
Roman 2: Well I suppose that may cement their loyalty... but it certainly won't have any effect on our countless non-Jewish peoples.
Roman 1: But we'll have the Jews hate him and we'll kill him because they ask us to and because we also hate him and they will never accept him as their messiah.
Roman 2: Wait... what?
Roman 1: But a few will and they will now spread the new 'faith' to gentiles.
Roman 2: So... we use the Jewish religion to anger the Jews and attract a few Gentiles... so we make this our new state religion?
Roman 1: No, no, no... we persecute it off and on for a few hundred years, then eventually it'll grow so widely accepted that one of our generals in one of our civil wars will convert to it, and then eventually it will be our state religion, we'll split our empire in two, then our western half will be slowly eroded by new barbarian tribes until only our 'church' remains. Which will then have a religious schism with the church in the eastern half the empire.
Roman 2: This plan seems completely idiotic.

 

I hate saying this, but I doubt Christians will threaten anyone or run rampant through the streets of a major city like, say Sydney...

 

You forgot the part where they plot to kill Kennedy.

And Elvis.

 

I think religion will still find a way to keep itself profitable for a few more years anyway.

 

I love the fact that the people who have spent decades harping on how the ancient texts in the Bible are totally unreliable will now be presenting an ancient text as the support for that theory.

 

Says the guy with the website that's making sure he gets sent straight to hell.

 

as much as i think religion is bogus and jesus christ likely non-existant or at best some kind of delusional quack, this is just a couple of guys trying to make money/promote themselves and their books. £25 a ticket to hear some old dudes trying to prove something which doesn't need proving? meh.

 

Is this thread also where we put news about Gavin Menzies' theories that the Chinese got to America first?

 

This sort of criticism is unproductive.

 

Atheist biblical scholar Bart Ehrman is so scornful of the "Jesus is a myth" hypothesis that his book about it is written at what looks like a fifth grade reading level to make absolutely sure that no one will be able to miss the point. Unless of course they're in the fourth grade.

 

"If Jesus had been on earth, he would not even have been a priest." -Hebrews 8:4

 

As much as I think the non-Biblical evidence for Jesus is scant (despite numerous, extensive searches) and unconvincing, I'm just a little bit skeptical that he was the product of a Roman pagan conspiracy. Just a little bit. This is some Da Vinci Code-grade bull**** right here.

 

The interesting story about Jesus is his transformation from millennial doomsday cult leader into a divine being. When the doomsday failed to materialize, Christians reoriented their emerging faith around a reinvented Jesus the son of god. And then they fought for a few hundred years about what that meant until the trinity faction won out.

 

What's the line from South Park? "It was only the world's most intricate and flawlessly executed plan ever, ever."

 

I'm with DG on the DaVinci code feel here...

"the Roman Caesars left us a kind of puzzle literature that was meant to be solved by future generations, and the solution to that puzzle is 'We invented Jesus Christ, and we're proud of it.'"

Riiiiiiiight

 

This is based off of the Piso family theory which has been thoroughly debunked. Regardless of their belief/disbelief of Jesus' divinity, every reputable scholar of that era believes that Jesus did exist and that the Piso theory is, at best, based upon shoddy research and people playing fast and loose with the historical record.

 

Right. I don't believe in the historicity of the New Testament because it sounds crazy, and you know what? This sounds just as crazy.

Reza Aslan's new book handles this subject pretty well. He says that Jesus was Jewish messiah figure (there were hundreds of others around his time) who claimed he was going to come back from the dead but didn't, causing his followers to create the myth of the resurrection and, basically, the religion of Christianity after his death. While this may be wrong too, it seems a lot more logical than "OMG CONSPIRACY THE GUBNENT DID IT"

 

As much as I'd love to stick it to god botherers, this is probably not true.

Atwill asserts that Christianity did not really begin as a religion, but a sophisticated government project, a kind of propaganda exercise used to pacify the subjects of the Roman Empire.

What is this I don't even....He does know Christianity was illegal, right? And that the Romans already had a religion to unify the populace and achieve state loyalty?

"Jewish sects in Palestine at the time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior Messiah, were a constant source of violent insurrection during the first century," he explains.

Got this a little backwards. People who claimed to be the Messiah (many did before Jesus) led insurrections.

"When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare.

No, they continued to quash the rebellions. They never "exhausted" conventional means.

That's when the 'peaceful' Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to 'give onto Caesar' and pay their taxes to Rome."

Yes, everything is a conspiracy. Conspiratards everywhere.

Atwill's most intriguing discovery came to him while he was studying "Wars of the Jews" by Josephus [the only surviving first-person historical account of first-century Judea] alongside the New Testament. "I started to notice a sequence of parallels between the two texts," he recounts. "Although it's been recognised by Christian scholars for centuries that the prophesies of Jesus appear to be fulfilled by what Josephus wrote about in the First Jewish-Roman war, I was seeing dozens more. What seems to have eluded many scholars is that the sequence of events and locations of Jesus ministry are more or less the same as the sequence of events and locations of the military campaign of [Emperor] Titus Flavius as described by Josephus. This is clear evidence of a deliberately constructed pattern.

And there we have it. The crux of the failure that is this "historian." Patterns. Patterns everywhere. Seeing meaningful patters or connections where there aren't any. The telltale sign of a conspiratard or a crank. We need go no further.

 

Yeah, I mean you can debate the exact historicity of the Gospels all you want; I take them the way I take most ancient histories: likely mostly true, but certainly at least partly fabricated. This doesn't mean that the Bible isn't the word of God, at least not to me it doesn't. It just means that the inspired word of God is meant to teach us lessons, not to give straight historical records. Jesus' sermons/parables, for instance; how can you believe that the text in the Gospels is the exact, word for word text He spoke? I find that extremely doubtful; and, anyway, God wouldn't be concerned with such niggling details. He'd be concerned with writing a story with lessons and points embedded. I mean, I'm not attempting to emulate the Jesus that actually lived; I'm attempting to emulate the Jesus explicated in the four Gospels. I think they're more or less the same, but you see what I mean (I hope). Harold Bloom is right when he says that Christians are following a literary character, in some ways. We're following a person revealed through literature. Whatever the historians find about Jesus, it won't change the Jesus revealed in the Scriptures. And, to what degree there are differences, it's clear to me that God revealed Jesus in Scripture to us as He wanted to and chose to. The Jesus revealed in the Bible is the Jesus God intends me to love, honor and emulate.

Some go so far as to be Christians without believing in the historicity at all; ie. Jesus is completely mythical. That's fine if you're in that camp; that's your thing. I don't go that far. I believe He did exist and that the Gospels have a strong foundation in historical fact. I certainly find this particular theory about the Roman government creating him to be laughable on its face.

 

From Josephus' The Antiquities of the Jews, Volume XVIII, Chapter 3, found here: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2848/2848-h/2848-h.htm#link18noteref-9

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man; for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, 9 those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; 10 as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day.

Gamaliel's words several years after the crucifixion:

But a Pharisee named Gamaliel, a teacher of the law, who was honored by all the people, stood up in the Sanhedrin and ordered that the men be put outside for a little while. 35 Then he addressed the Sanhedrin: “Men of Israel, consider carefully what you intend to do to these men. 36 Some time ago Theudas appeared, claiming to be somebody, and about four hundred men rallied to him. He was killed, all his followers were dispersed, and it all came to nothing. 37 After him, Judas the Galilean appeared in the days of the census and led a band of people in revolt. He too was killed, and all his followers were scattered. 38 Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. 39 But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.”

Why has Christianity survived and endured all these years despite attempts to discredit it? If it wasn't real, it would have collapsed long ago.

 

?

 

Umm....riiight. The Romans, in their attempts to pacify the Jews, invented the story about a guy that the Jews hated for going against their religious rites and had murdered because they thought he was a Roman tool ("Give to Caesar what is Caesar's. Give to God what is God's"), and then started an outright rebellion against the Romans, which led them to deliberately destroying the tomb of yet another perceived Roman tool and scattering his body to parts unknown.