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Jesus: Truth Or Myth?

Saw a lovely Sky Arts programme in the week, 'Passions', about the artist Alison Lapper's admiration for William Blake.
Lapper is herself an inspiration and it was interesting to see how caught up with Blake she became at art school, as of course many artists have before and still do today.

I was going to mention Blake's vision of Christ's visit to England, as described in the poem Jerusalem, and how there arose a mediaeval myth about Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury. In the programme Lapper meets a fellow Blake enthusiast who believes all this and claims to have met the man himself, while walking along the holiest street in London.

However, it all got a bit intense - too much to write down - so I'm going to watch the programme again later. I love Blake.
 
Saw a lovely Sky Arts programme in the week, 'Passions', about the artist Alison Lapper's admiration for William Blake.
Lapper is herself an inspiration and it was interesting to see how caught up with Blake she became at art school, as of course many artists have before and still do today.

I was going to mention Blake's vision of Christ's visit to England, as described in the poem Jerusalem, and how there arose a mediaeval myth about Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury. In the programme Lapper meets a fellow Blake enthusiast who believes all this and claims to have met the man himself, while walking along the holiest street in London.

However, it all got a bit intense - too much to write down - so I'm going to watch the programme again later. I love Blake.

Sounds great that :) I'm a big Blake fan as well :)


The below is a documentary I found very interesting and enjoyable, postulating the question - "Was Jesus a Buddhist monk?"

 
Sounds great that :) I'm a big Blake fan as well :)

It's on the Sky arts catch-up bit on satellite. If you can't get that I bet you can hunt it down online. WELL worth the effort.
 
Tablet thought to have guarded tombs after Jesus’s death may not be what it seems

Source: sciencemag.org
Date: 28 February, 2020

A marble tablet warning grave robbers away from tombs soon after the disappearance of Jesus’s body may not be what it seems. That’s the conclusion of a new chemical analysis of the marble, which finds that the object was quarried in Greece, not the Middle East. Instead, the famous “Nazareth inscription” was likely created to guard the grave of a Greek tyrant who died a few decades before Christ.

A former curator at the Louvre, Wilhelm Froehner, acquired the tablet in Paris in 1878, probably from an antiquities dealer from Greece or the Middle East, and kept it in his private collection until his death. He left behind a cryptic note that it “came from Nazareth.” That led the French archaeologist Franz Cumont to propose in 1930 that it was connected to Jesus’s disappearance.

Other clues come from the 22 lines of Greek inscribed on the 60-centimeter-tall tablet. These include an “Edict of Caesar,” in which he threatens capital punishment for anyone who robs the grave or “casts forth the persons buried there.” This suggested to some biblical scholars that the tablet represented the Roman emperor’s reaction to the news that Jesus’s body was missing from his tomb—and to the controversial claims of his resurrection. The tablet was considered by many biblical scholars to be the oldest physical artifact connected to Christianity, says epigraphist John Bodel of Brown University, who was not involved in the new study.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/202...-after-jesus-s-death-may-not-be-what-it-seems
 
More on the Nazareth Inscription's origins.

A mysterious tablet bearing a Roman emperor’s orders from around 2,000 years ago has long been thought by some scholars to refer to
early Christian claims of Jesus’ resurrection from a tomb in the Middle Eastern village of Nazareth. But new research has opened up an entirely different possibility —that the marble slab issued a general demand for law and order after Greek islanders vandalized the tomb of their recently deceased ruler.

For the Christian theory to be correct, the document bearing 22 lines of Greek text — known as the Nazareth Inscription — would probably have been written on a piece of Middle Eastern marble. That also would make the tablet the oldest object linked to early Christianity.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nazareth-inscription-origins-may-refute-ties-jesus-resurrection
 
More on the Nazareth Inscription's origins.

A mysterious tablet bearing a Roman emperor’s orders from around 2,000 years ago has long been thought by some scholars to refer to
early Christian claims of Jesus’ resurrection from a tomb in the Middle Eastern village of Nazareth. But new research has opened up an entirely different possibility —that the marble slab issued a general demand for law and order after Greek islanders vandalized the tomb of their recently deceased ruler.

For the Christian theory to be correct, the document bearing 22 lines of Greek text — known as the Nazareth Inscription — would probably have been written on a piece of Middle Eastern marble. That also would make the tablet the oldest object linked to early Christianity.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/nazareth-inscription-origins-may-refute-ties-jesus-resurrection

Speaking as a Christian archaeologist... the new research seems much more likely to me!

Attested provenance (sounds well dodgy) starts 1878, inscription first published 1930.

I'll go with the stone analysis I think.
 
Just a fake like all these kinda things, surely. Why would an edict be “in stone”? Vindolanda tablets which are military documents etc are on bits of wood.

The usual dodgy provenance for these things... a randomer “found” it in Paris in 1878? I’m surprised anyone’s even giving it the slightest bit of attention apart from as a fake and nothing to link it with the Middle East at all.

Also, zero evidence for Jesus and to convince me this was real, someone would have to find hard proof he was, too. Sorry no disrespect to Christians intended. But... come on! At best he has to be a conflation of various zealots who were a PITA to the Romans. Also why would it be in Greek if it was from Nazareth? Are there extant, provenanced tablets with similar functions? I’m guessing yer average grave pillager wouldn’t even be literate let alone in a foreign to them language. The average middle class European Victorian antiquarian on the other hand, would have a grasp of Greek probably but little likelihood of fluency in Aramaic...

I call poppycock.
 
We have a lot of Jesus threads - so, eeny, meeny, miny... Here!
Sir Elton John says Jesus was super-intelligent gay man
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/8523538.stm
Actually Jesus was also the product of the first sanctioned gay marriage performed in Judaism. This is because we know that the virgin Mary didn't tell lies, and so Jesus was the product of parthenogenesis (women getting pregnant spontaneously), which is extremely rare. We also know that in cases of parthenogenesis that the offspring is always female due to the mother having an XX chromosomal loading. For Jesus to come out male would require Mary to have a Y chromosome in her genetics, meaning that she was a mosaic hermaphrodite, which follows within doctrine, as Mary was born without sin, and Original Sin applies to both men and women, but not necessarily to hermaphrodites. This means that Mary was neither man nor woman, and therefore was effectively a Transgender woman, but Joseph married her, which makes him gay, and that means Jesus is the product of a gay marriage.
 
Actually Jesus was also the product of the first sanctioned gay marriage performed in Judaism. This is because we know that the virgin Mary didn't tell lies, and so Jesus was the product of parthenogenesis (women getting pregnant spontaneously), which is extremely rare. We also know that in cases of parthenogenesis that the offspring is always female due to the mother having an XX chromosomal loading. For Jesus to come out male would require Mary to have a Y chromosome in her genetics, meaning that she was a mosaic hermaphrodite, which follows within doctrine, as Mary was born without sin, and Original Sin applies to both men and women, but not necessarily to hermaphrodites. This means that Mary was neither man nor woman, and therefore was effectively a Transgender woman, but Joseph married her, which makes him gay, and that means Jesus is the product of a gay marriage.
Amazing logic!
 
Actually Jesus was also the product of the first sanctioned gay marriage performed in Judaism. This is because we know that the virgin Mary didn't tell lies, and so Jesus was the product of parthenogenesis (women getting pregnant spontaneously), which is extremely rare. We also know that in cases of parthenogenesis that the offspring is always female due to the mother having an XX chromosomal loading. For Jesus to come out male would require Mary to have a Y chromosome in her genetics, meaning that she was a mosaic hermaphrodite, which follows within doctrine, as Mary was born without sin, and Original Sin applies to both men and women, but not necessarily to hermaphrodites. This means that Mary was neither man nor woman, and therefore was effectively a Transgender woman, but Joseph married her, which makes him gay, and that means Jesus is the product of a gay marriage.

Not true I’m afraid. Parthenogenesis can produce male offspring. Mind you, you have to be a Komodo dragon to do it.
 
Saw a lovely Sky Arts programme in the week, 'Passions', about the artist Alison Lapper's admiration for William Blake.
Lapper is herself an inspiration and it was interesting to see how caught up with Blake she became at art school, as of course many artists have before and still do today.

I was going to mention Blake's vision of Christ's visit to England, as described in the poem Jerusalem, and how there arose a mediaeval myth about Joseph of Arimathea at Glastonbury. In the programme Lapper meets a fellow Blake enthusiast who believes all this and claims to have met the man himself, while walking along the holiest street in London.

However, it all got a bit intense - too much to write down - so I'm going to watch the programme again later. I love Blake.

Me too, but I bet he was a bit punchable in real life.
 
Actually Jesus was also the product of the first sanctioned gay marriage performed in Judaism. This is because we know that the virgin Mary didn't tell lies, and so Jesus was the product of parthenogenesis (women getting pregnant spontaneously), which is extremely rare. We also know that in cases of parthenogenesis that the offspring is always female due to the mother having an XX chromosomal loading. For Jesus to come out male would require Mary to have a Y chromosome in her genetics, meaning that she was a mosaic hermaphrodite, which follows within doctrine, as Mary was born without sin, and Original Sin applies to both men and women, but not necessarily to hermaphrodites. This means that Mary was neither man nor woman, and therefore was effectively a Transgender woman, but Joseph married her, which makes him gay, and that means Jesus is the product of a gay marriage.

And was Syrian with a Greek name. Versatile!
 
Do note that many of us wouldn't give this the time of day! If we knew about it; it's hard to describe how unimportant stuff like this is to us :)

I just didn’t want to come across as rude. But yes. Dodgy nineteenth century antiquarians are very, very interesting!
 
Maybe viruses are the new lightning bolts ?
More true than you might suspect. A number of Christian miracles have involved cities being saved thanks to divine intervention via disease during sieges.
 
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