Evidence found of Jesus's origins

All I know is that Jesus was a white Republican.

It makes a lot of the questions I had in church as a kid make a whole lot of sense. I just hope he didn't approach this from a destroy Christianity perspective and then fit the evidence accordingly.

Makes more sense than the bible

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1. This is alahunters schtick.

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frick him I do what I want.

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I'm going to go with yes he did approach it in that way.

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stating a fact doesn't mean he went at it from that way. it just means that he lives in reality.

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3)It really kinda shot the Romans in the foot if true. Just saying. The spread of Christ in the Roman dominion did NOT do them any favors. And if so why would they have killed Christians in the Collesium?

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What better way to get a bunch of rebels on the side of something you want than to make it look like they have a common enemy.

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you don't have to make the point that your an atheist/agnostic/whatever, but let's not pretend like the guy was neutral on the issue and went on a spiritual truth finding mission here. You don't make those claims if you don't have a pretty strong opinion on the matter. Even Richard Dawkins is more ingenuous than that.

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What was inaccurate with the statement?

This will end very well for this guy.

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I don't know if this guy is full of shite or what but what do you think?

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I'm not religious, but I've always been interested in religion as a cultural and historical force.

The fact is that Jesus (real name Yeshua--"Jesus" is a hellenized version of Yeshua/Joshua--greek thought looms large over the history of christianity) was one of many, many Jewish religious reformers stirring the pot in Rome around that time. Messianism and the idea that God would intervene to save the Jews from the evil Roman state were ideas that were already circulating before Yeshua arrived on the scene. There are many accounts of charismatic leaders of the era herding their disciples together like Yeshua did and preaching of a time of divine intervention that would come soon. He was one of many--but he just happens to be the one we talk about now. Crucifixions were not uncommon for those who tried to stir the political pot--it was one of Rome's preferred execution methods. Yeshua was a radical political rabble rouser, and like other radical political rabble rousers in Rome at the time, the Roman state wanted them exterminated.

No one really gave a crap about Christianity for about the first 100 years after Yeshua was killed, and no one even wrote anything much about him until about 40 years after he was gone. So, of course, there was a lot of time for legends to be built, for historical accounts to be manipulated, etc. Almost all scholars agree that stories about Yeshua were circulated only in oral form for the first forty years after his death, and if you've ever heard of the game "Chinese Telephone," you realize how easy it is for oral traditions to take on a life of their own.

Historians are pretty sure, though, that Yeshua was real. He existed at a time when the outlook was bleak for Jews in Rome, and he was part of a larger tradition of Jewish reformers. It just so happened that his story made it to the present day, and the stories of the others didn't. It's entirely possible that Yeshua's story has mixed together with elements of the stories of other leaders.

All of the info in this post is taken from a scholarly (not religious) History of Christianity textbook, ISBN 0-7674-1436-4.

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what do you think?

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The guy is an avid atheist who has had many theories trying to debunk Christianity.

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Atwill openly contradicts himself, for he claims he cannot see how Judaism could produce such diametric opposites, yet he argues that Christianity was built to make these opposites attract. He supposes, in other words, that Judaism would not produce such a group; but he hypothesizes that Jews then converted to such a group.

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?One also wonders why in the world Titus would care to start a new religion for Jews that he had already soundly beaten on the battlefield. One also wonders how and why a mission to the Gentiles got started; indeed, why Titus would allow his own "Frankenstein's monster" to get loose onto persons with whom he had no problems of loyalty.
?Even more problematic for Atwill is what is said by Roman writers whose works he ignores. Tacitus' comment in Annals 15.44 places the origins of Christianity, and Roman reaction to it, nearly a decade before Titus' final victory. Atwill says nothing at all about this critical passage; nor does he mention Pliny's letter to Trajan asking what to do about Christians.

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Atwill makes no effort to explain how Christianity spread; he offers a single paragraph on this saying that "wicked priests" introduced the religion to the masses (Jewish?); but then, "The first people to hear the story of Jesus would most likely have been slaves (Gentiles???) whose patrons simply ordered them to attend services. After a while some began to believe, then many." [258] End of explanation.

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Atwill also freely roams all over the texts to make his tenuous connections. He treats the Gospels as a uniform whole (in other words, the conspiracy is assumed in order to prove it) so that, for example, he pulls the use of the word "Gethsemane" from Mark and combines it with Jesus' bloody sweat (mentioned only in Luke) to create a whole parallel [108] to what are also two separate stories in Josephus.

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•Atwill uses the invented Pope Leo X "fable" quote though he somehow manages to attribute it not to Leo, but to Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI (who was 10 years before Leo). No source is cited for this attribution.
•Atwill carelessly attributes the words of John the Baptist to Jesus

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To the criticisms above and more to his works, part of his reply was:

The idea that Christianity was intended to prevent the spread of messianic Judaism to the provinces ignores the fact that Jews of the Diaspora were Hellenized enough that they did not support such a movement in the first place (the misplaced hopes of the rebels, recorded by Josephus, notwithstanding).

Atwill deems this false, and calls upon Wikipedia (!) for proof to the contrary, but he isn’t paying attention very well. His reference is to the Kitos War, which occurred 115-117 AD, but he is ignoring the fact that he has this setup precisely backwards when he appeals to it. The Kitos War was a reaction to the injustice which started in 70 AD when Rome trashed Judaea. In contrast, what I am referring to is the alleged introduction of Christianity by the Romans (as Atwill so foolishly theorizes) at a much earlier date than the Kitos War, and THAT time is my frame of reference for my comment that “that Jews of the Diaspora were Hellenized enough that they did not support such a movement in the first place”. My reference to Josephus should have made this clear to even someone as poorly educated as Atwill, but apparently this is what it took Atwill all those years to come up with.

mmmhmm. yep.

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As far as Biblical teachings, archaeology is beginning to uncover many artifacts, cities and the likes that coincide with Biblical stories and timelines.

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Just curious do you have any examples?

Science has already disproved Genesis which is a bad start for a book written by god