Ancient 'Jesus midwife' tomb to be excavated by archaeologists Associated Press

[Hugh_Lebowski]

30. "There's a ton of information about those people."

Last edited Fri Dec 23, 2022, 03:22 PM - Edit history (2)

I'm not saying those two weren't real people.

However their existence does not mean Jesus existed.

Your argument essentially presupposes that he did exist, and these are his relatives.

One cannot prove a person existed by essentially waving ones hand and saying 'well these (real people) were his brothers and sisters ... ergo he must be real'.

See what I'm saying now?

This is an interesting theory:

https://www.irishcentral.com/news/american-scholar-claims-romans-made-up-the-character-of-jesus-227110891-237782671

This is from a description of a document made that illustrated the above-author's work.

The documentary begins with a brief history of the political and religious climate of Judea in the first century CE – the era during which Christianity emerged. Judea was occupied by the Roman Empire, which required them to worship Caesar as a god.

The Jews found this blasphemous, and they waged constant rebellions against the Empire. Their religious scriptures prophesied that a militaristic warrior Messiah would defeat the Romans and lead the Jews to liberation. A string of numerous Messiahs presented themselves to lead the people in war against Rome, only to be defeated and crucified – a customary Roman punishment for insurgents of the day.

However, the Roman government was growing weaker from over a century of increasingly corrupt rule by the Julio‐Claudian dynasty — the last emperor of this lineage being Nero, who was bankrupting the Empire with his self‐indulgence.

In their greatest victory, the messianic Jews finally succeeded in burning Rome and driving the Romans out of Judea. This caused Nero to call upon his best military men, the Flavians – Vespasian and his son Titus — to crush the rebellion for good. The Flavians succeeded not only in destroying the Jewish towns of Galilee and their temple in Jerusalem, but after Nero was deposed and committed suicide, they seized the throne through a military coup and took over reign of the Roman Empire itself.

Under the Flavians, the Empire flourished, and many great monuments were built including the famous Coliseum.

In order to pacify the Jewish rebellion, they captured and burned all the Jews’ scriptures. It is around this time that a new literature emerged with the story of a very different Jewish Messiah – one who preached “give to Caesar what is Caesar’s”, “turn the other cheek”, and “love your enemy”

To which I would also add "you should welcome strangers to your land" was part of his message per the Gospels.

Once you understand what was going on at the time, Roman occupation of Judea, etc, this collection of "Jesus' wisdom" takes on a bit of a new light. Possibility definitely exists that 'The Gospels' were a Roman creation, an attempt to create a new Jewish messiah that was friendly to them and their interests. And there's a lot more reason for suspecting that besides what I quoted here.

https://www.amazon.com/Caesars-Messiah-Conspiracy-Flavian-Signature/dp/1461096405

From the back cover of the above book by Atwill: ""Challenging and provocative. If what Joseph Atwill is saying is only partially true, we are looking into the abyss." -- Robert Eisenman, author of "James the Brother of Jesus""

From the notes about the author of this work:

He spent over a decade studying hundreds of books, among them, the works of Robert Eisenman and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Together with Eisenman, Atwill wrote a paper on the dating of the Dead Sea Scrolls. While studying the two most prominent works of the 1st century - Josephus' "Wars of the Jews" and the Gospels - Atwill noticed a series of parallels occurring in sequence between the military campaign of the Roman Caesar Titus Flavius and the ministry of Jesus. His findings led him to a startling new conclusion about the origins of Christianity - that a Roman imperial family, the Flavians, had created Christianity to pacify the Jews' rebellion against Rome, and even more incredibly, they had placed a literary satire within the Gospels and "Wars of the Jews" to inform posterity of this fact.