Crucifixion Eclipse

On Jul 23, 10:22 pm, starburst wrote:
Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:06:59 GMT, (Eugene
Griessel) wrote:

From where I'm sitting, there's frankly no real evidence that you
aren't also a load.

The Jesus story had enough currency among people who were familiar with
the events that they believed it was worth getting themselves killed
for, as happened with the Nero persecution in the year 64, chronicled by
Tacitus, who was neither a Christian nor a figment of someone's
imagination. There would have been a bunch of people floating around at
the time who remembered the actual events of Jesus' death. By the year
110, we have an exchange of letters between Pliny and Trajan describing
the Christian cult, including a reference to the torture of a few
practitioners. They were dangerous zealots, after all.

As for it being made up hundreds of years later, this interpretation
strains credulity more than doubt. Several of the epistles were written
by Paul in the 60s, and he clearly knew many of Jesus' disciples. Read
Acts, which was also written by Luke, who in turn was one of Paul's
associates. I know of precisely zero academic historians of professional
stature greater than Ajay Sharma that deny the establishment of the
Christian cult within the first fifty years, or even the first thirty
years after Jesus' death. The age of the so-called Gospels is more
problematic, but the consensus opinion of historians is that there was
an early version, no longer extant, written in the 30s or 40s, from
which the gospel of Mark was derived. If not, Mark was the earliest,
likely in circulation before the year 70. To say that it was all created
centuries later is akin to denying the moon landings.

Chris

Chris,

Well, sadly, a lot of stories have enough currency that folks are
willing to die for them. There are folks who will blow themselves and
others up today because they think God will bless them for it.

As for the early Church, it certainly wasn't "Christian" as we know
the word today. What's come down to us as Christianity is really
Paul's interpretation of Jesus, which the Jews of his day rejected and
still reject today and for the same reason. Paul claimed that Jesus'
death did away with the Law, which the Jews believe God them as the
means of reconcilliation with him forever and can never be abrogated.
Even Jesus himself said this. The first "Christians" were headed by
James, the brother of Jesus, along with Peter in Jerusalem. They were
Jews through and through and did not believe that Jesus was in any way
divine or that his death was any sort of substitutionary atonement for
sin. They worshipped in the temple as Jews and kept all the festivals
and holidays including the Day of Atonement. They thought he was the
Messiah, but that's a Jewish concept and merely means the man chosen
by God to bring about the conclusion of Judaism, i.e., The End of
Days. This was "the Kingdom of God" that Jesus often talked about,
NOT the bloodbath depicted in Revelation. The Jewish concept of a
time of world peace as the end of days rather than a time where the
majority of world's population will be slaughtered by God seems a
little more God-like! (Though I don't believe in any God concept, as
an aside). Paul's ideas very, very closely mirror theological
tenets taken from other savior, god-man cults that pre-date
Christianity and that were popular at the time. For instance,
Mithras was called The Light of the World, had 12 disciples, was born
on Dec. 25th, was nailed to a tree and resurrected three days later
for the sins of the world and his death and resurrection was
celebrated by his followers in a ritual of wine and bread. This quote
is attributed to Mithras: "He who will not eat of my body and drink
of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the
same shall not know salvation." Jesus was a Jew and had a religion,
Judaism. He lived and died trying to make people become better Jews
as he understood it, not trying to make them Christians. It would
take Paul for that and Jesus would truly be appalled at the claims
made for him that he would have never made himself.

Clyde

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:14:36 -0700, spoke
thusly:


On Jul 23, 9:25 am, Pastor Dave wrote:
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 05:11:33 -0700, Klaudio Zic
spoke thusly:

Evangelist Luke reports an eclipse of the sun, but is he correct? We
slightly modified the biblical report for the benefit of the
scientifically minded faithful. An eclipse happened at crucifixion
time as reported by the evangelists. The detailed astronomic report of
the eclipse includes biblical comments.http://www.lulu.com/astrology

Luke doesn't say it was an eclipse. He said that
the Sun was darkened. There's a difference.
There was a Full Moon at the Passover, which
means that there couldn't have been an eclipse
and it was therefore, a supernatural event,
which furthermore, was seen and shaking felt,
all over the empire, with some destruction.

--

Pastor Dave,

So you believe that the sun was darkened for 3 hours even though
there's no other record of this in history or even the other gospels?

Izar

There is a record of it. That's how I know about
the rest. Look into Thallus and Africanus.


--

Pastor Dave

When making liars happy in their word games takes
precedence over truth, Christ has been abandoned.
-unknown

Expand and go out into the ocean of your faith.
God doesn't do His deepest work in the shallowest
part of the water.

The world says that seeing is believing.
The Bible says that believing is seeing.

Doctrine is not Scripture.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:14:42 GMT, Chris L Peterson
spoke thusly:


On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:06:59 GMT, (Eugene
Griessel) wrote:

One thing we are also pretty sure of is that the crucifiction did not
take place at the time of the Jewish passover...

There's no real evidence that the whole load wasn't just made up a
couple of hundred years after the supposed events.

Speculation on the part of both of you and erroneous
to boot. You gentleman have a long way to go,
since you obviously aren't even interested in finding
out, which is why you make such statements. No
honest researcher could say such things, knowing
the facts.


--

Pastor Dave

When making liars happy in their word games takes
precedence over truth, Christ has been abandoned.
-unknown

Expand and go out into the ocean of your faith.
God doesn't do His deepest work in the shallowest
part of the water.

The world says that seeing is believing.
The Bible says that believing is seeing.

Doctrine is not Scripture.

On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 20:35:44 -0400, "Joe S."
spoke thusly:


"Chris L Peterson" wrote in message
.. .
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 23:06:59 GMT, (Eugene
Griessel) wrote:

One thing we are also pretty sure of is that the crucifiction did not
take place at the time of the Jewish passover...

There's no real evidence that the whole load wasn't just made up a
couple of hundred years after the supposed events. Trying to link
something that's already extremely speculative to actual astronomical
events is pretty much a waste of time. Especially when you consider that
a significant number of people who believe these things actually
happened are willing to believe that supernatural events can also occur.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

Amen -- if I may use that term.

No one is certain when "Jesus" lived or died. Speculation runs from XX "BC"
to XX "AD." Folks who try to fit celestial events into the legend find a
handy celestial event then move the Jesus life span to fit the celestial
events.

I wonder if anyone has ever said, well, okay, a "star" is supposed to have
heralded Jesus' birth and an earthquake and eclipse occurred at his death
and his birth and death were about 33 years apart. Now -- let's find all
the conjunctions that would have occurred around XX that would explain the
star, now, let's find all the eclipses that occurred 33 or so years late --
I'll bet we would find a lot of such pairings, especially if we didn't hold
too closely to the 33 year life span.

It obviously upsets you that the timing was right.
So much so, that you claim that these things
were so common. Do yourself a favor and do
some research. And no, I'm not your school.
I know better. All you'd be interested in, is
in trying to ridicule. Do it on your own.


--

Pastor Dave

When making liars happy in their word games takes
precedence over truth, Christ has been abandoned.
-unknown

Expand and go out into the ocean of your faith.
God doesn't do His deepest work in the shallowest
part of the water.

The world says that seeing is believing.
The Bible says that believing is seeing.

Doctrine is not Scripture.

On Jul 24, 8:04 am, Pastor Dave wrote:
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:14:36 -0700, spoke
thusly:



--

Pastor Dave,

So you believe that the sun was darkened for 3 hours even though
there's no other record of this in history or even the other gospels?

Izar

There is a record of it. That's how I know about
the rest. Look into Thallus and Africanus.

--


The Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, and others were quite interested in
astronomy by this time period. There is no record of a 3 hour period
of the sun being darkened. How could such an unprecedented event go
unrecorded by sky observers? Did it only happen over Golgotha? If
one chooses to believe something extraordinary without extraordianry
evidence, or even any evidence at all, that's their choice. I
certainly can't live my life that way and don't think that's how
nature intended. Blind faith and reason are not compatible.

Clyde

On Jul 24, 8:04 am, Pastor Dave wrote:
On Mon, 23 Jul 2007 15:14:36 -0700, spoke
thusly:


Izar

There is a record of it. That's how I know about
the rest. Look into Thallus and Africanus.

--

Okay, I found some info on Africanus. He was born in 160!! I hope
you don't cite him as a credible source of reporting an event that
supposedly happened 130 years earlier!! I'll check into Thallus
later, but would imagine he was born much later as well.

C.

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:06:18 -0400, Pastor Dave
wrote:

No
honest researcher could say such things, knowing
the facts.

You are sadly misinformed. In fact, a number of very credible historians
have raised valid questions as to whether Jesus existed at all. While
this is a minority position, it is not considered unscholarly. The
mainstream view (by historians without any dogmatic bias) is that Jesus
did exist, but that most of the stories that have come down to us today
were invented (or substantially altered) many years after his death, and
that there is little to be found in the gospel tales that can be trusted
historically.

What I said was simply that the claims in the stories are so
historically weak that attempting to match them to actual astronomical
events is not likely to be a fruitful line of work. Similar
"astronomical" stories about the Sun going dark, new stars in the sky,
etc are common in all mythology, and Christian mythology is no
exception. These stories tell us more about how myths form than they do
about history.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

On Jul 24, 9:45 am, Chris L Peterson wrote:
On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 08:06:18 -0400, Pastor Dave
wrote:

No
honest researcher could say such things, knowing
the facts.

You are sadly misinformed. In fact, a number of very credible historians
have raised valid questions as to whether Jesus existed at all. While
this is a minority position, it is not considered unscholarly. The
mainstream view (by historians without any dogmatic bias) is that Jesus
did exist, but that most of the stories that have come down to us today
were invented (or substantially altered) many years after his death, and
that there is little to be found in the gospel tales that can be trusted
historically.

What I said was simply that the claims in the stories are so
historically weak that attempting to match them to actual astronomical
events is not likely to be a fruitful line of work. Similar
"astronomical" stories about the Sun going dark, new stars in the sky,
etc are common in all mythology, and Christian mythology is no
exception. These stories tell us more about how myths form than they do
about history.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatoryhttp://www.cloudbait.com

Good post. Agreed on all counts.

C.

Clyde,

I'm sorry but you are not a real christian and certainly not Catholic
at all.
And because of that you have no idea what you are talking about
period.
If you did, you would know about the miracle of the Eucarist, where
wine became human blood and the host...a circular wafer of
bread..became human flesh..heart muscle in fact.

Do some research.

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 11:22:53 -0700, "P. Edward Murray"
spoke thusly:


Clyde,

I'm sorry but you are not a real christian and certainly not Catholic
at all.
And because of that you have no idea what you are talking about
period.
If you did, you would know about the miracle of the Eucarist, where
wine became human blood and the host...a circular wafer of
bread..became human flesh..heart muscle in fact.

Do some research.

This may be Catholic, but it is not Christian.


--

Pastor Dave

When making liars happy in their word games takes
precedence over truth, Christ has been abandoned.
-unknown

Expand and go out into the ocean of your faith.
God doesn't do His deepest work in the shallowest
part of the water.

The world says that seeing is believing.
The Bible says that believing is seeing.

Doctrine is not Scripture.