Did Jesus exist, Part II

I especially like this one--seems a bit like a "Giving up on Godot" stage direction.

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What I refuse to accept is your insistence that your beliefs about your beliefs constitute evidence in support of your beliefs.

Eh, thanks Omni,I had to stare at it for a few seconds before I finally saw the typo. My brain was once again auto correcting visual input for me. But yeah, I could see myself wearing a black t-shirt with that printed in white on it.lfen

It's a tool to get the mind from meaning to direct perception. A thorn to remove a thorn and then to be thrown away.I'll try a different approach. Is God an object? Of what?
Are you an object? of what? Who is the subject for which you or God is the object?Everything that becomes offered becomes an object for the subject of consciousness. Can the subject then know itself? But if it could then it would be an object to itself.The conservative western religious tradition in effect asserts that it's language, it's linguist syntax is reality and this is the mechanism by which the ego is supported in a delusion of a separate existence.The attempt is to destroy the syntax to destroy the illusion and thus realize that the subject only imagined it was an object.Been decades since I've read "Loves Body". It's about time I reread it. The Fall is a metaphor that is a fall because the metaphor is taken literally. There was no Fall. There is no liberation because no one ever existed to fall and no one exists to be freed. It's all a dream. What lies outside the dream is awakening. It's a liberation in one sense but say you dreamed you were in jail. You wake up in your bed which is not for the sake of this example a bed in a prison. Can it be said then that you were freed from jail? You never were in jail! That was dreaming.Does it matter if Jesus existed or not? No, the only thing that matters is if you believe Jesus existed or didn't exist.lfen

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the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve; and,
like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are
such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a
sleep. -- Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV

My apologies for the delay in response, due to admin instruction and other duties.
Let's analyze the text:
1. "At this time...."
2. "...there was a wise man called Jesus...."
3. "His conduct was good....."
4. "....he was known......"
5. "...Many...... became his desciples....."
6. "Pilate condemned him
These are the first six references to the man plus there's seven more in this one paragraph besides these six, making a total of 13 referrals to the man in just one paragraph. Obviously, this answers your question. I counted only four words referring to Christians who were his followers. Imo, that's irrevelant to your question. He used that term as in community.This 1st century historical undisputed reference to the man Jesus by a prestigious historian unrelated to the Bible is empirical evidence that the man Jesus existed! Josephus writes:
At this time there was a wise man called Jesus, and his conduct was good, and he was known to be virtuous. Many people among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples. Pilate condemned him to be crucified, and to die. But those who had become his disciples did not abandon his discipleship. They reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion, and that he was alive. Accordingly, he was perhaps the Messiah, concerning whom the prophets have reported wonders. And the tribe of the Christians, so named after him, has not disappeared to this day(Antiquities 20:200).AbE: There were 12, not 13 references in all, the one referring to "time" and not the man. Time was significant in that it denotes a time in which the man existed.This message has been edited by AdminBuzsaw, 01-12-2006 11:22 PMThis message has been edited by buzsaw, 01-12-2006 11:26 PM

But that is to accept the assumptions of the eastern tradition. Separate existence is not a delusion and that's why our language asserts its reality. Again, this is to accept the assumptions of the eastern tradition, but the eastern tradition is wrong. The object is not an illusion. The object is real. It may certainly be that we have many false ideas about the object, but when it comes to God He is kind to our frailties and makes room for our honest efforts to know him in spite of our confused minds. I honestly think this is some kind of mind game that is ultimately corrupting. Reality is reality. The Fall happened. Jesus' redemption is a reality. God is real. Recipe for insanity, IMHO.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-12-2006 11:41 PM

You are right. It does not matter if Jesus existed or not. As Pope Specklebird said, "To find GOD one must first abandon God himself".

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Aslan is not a Tame Lion

Whether one believes that Jesus existed may depend on whether it it can be substantiated historically or otherwise that he did exist. That's why imo, the lesser corroborating evidence added to the more emperical historical evidence is important.

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Gravity is God's glue that holds his universe together.

You really aren't looking at the links provided, are you.The paper funkaloyd provided, (for my abstract), clearly decribed the strong influences buddhism did have in the region, even in certain Jewish factions, such as the Essenes. U know...the faction , John the Baptist was part of.
I could provide you other data, but it seems pointless.You should know it better than me, that Judaism and the OT did not have that strong a hold on Jesus. If it did, you wouldn't be christian right now.

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So intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
- Pablo Neruda

I'm sorry, sometimes I have to make a judgment call as to whether it is worth it to pursue links or even a conversation with someone on a busy thread. I tend to avoid people who are often rude for one thing.The Essenes had no influence whatever on Jesus or on John the Baptist. The "evidence" is strictly conjectural. They were a sect unto themselves. As Jesus taught, Judaism, which was the religion of the Pharisees, and still is today, was not true Old Testament religion. It had become a man-made tradition that had lost the spirit of God's revelation. So no, Judaism didn't have a "hold" on Jesus, as it was a corruption of the Old Testament, and still is. Jesus denounced it, Jesus condemned it. So those who believed in Jesus were saved, as all the law and the prophets pointed to Him, but those who didn't went on in Judaism.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-13-2006 01:21 AMThis message has been edited by Faith, 01-13-2006 01:34 AM

"But that is to accept the assumptions of the eastern tradition."Faith,Well, I am heavily influenced by the eastern traditions true. However the west has those who have shared this, beginning with Heraclitus "You can't step in the same river twice", and I have lost the reference for the later thinker who noted that that being true then you can't step in the same river once.Benjamin Whorf in his studies of the Hopi language, and I am here drawing on decades old memories so there is most likely memory drift to some degree, pointed out that they didn't use nouns. Everything was a verb. So instead of saying "There is a man in the room" in Hopi the sentence would be like "there is manning in the rooming". This is a process oriented language which Korzbski and others point out is a much more accurate mapping of the world we live in. Nouns are referents that deceive us into thinking identity is concrete. A river is constantly changing, as are you. As Buckminister Fuller said in the title of his book, "I seem to be a verb".We can look at the universe, the planet earth, or ourselves. What we see is change from very slow to very rapid but nonetheless changing.
"River" is a sound/symbol that refers to a process extending in time and space. The water in the river is changing. The sides and bottoms of the channel is changing. River now and river a second later are different."I gave my love a cherry without a stone.
How can there be a cherry without a stone?
A cherry when it's blooming hath no stone."From bloom to fruit to seed to seedling. The process that is you can interact with the process of fruiting at a certain stage by eating. Cherry is a dynamic process that at one time looks like a blossom, another like a fruit. To make cherry a noun, a thing is to create a mental notation or category that if taken literally misrepresents the process of cherrying.I think I'm beginning to formulate my criticism of the fundamental mis assumptions of literalism. Literalism does confuse syntax with the world.lfenedit: once time to one time and added a space that should have been thereThis message has been edited by lfen, 01-12-2006 10:56 PM

Or whether one believes the evidence and that it substantiates the historicity of Jesus. I was being a bit rhetorical for effect in my statement, but I was thinking along these lines. Mormons for example, and I could have taken Catholics, Baptists, Jews, etc will live their family and church lives the way they do and be generally happy with them whether or not there was ever an angel Moroni doing what Joseph Smith said. So it doesn't matter for a good Mormon whether or not there ever was an angel named Moroni, it's their belief in that angel that determines there satisfaction with their faith, among other important variables, of course. This is just an example case strictly for the purpose of illustrating my meaning.lfen

Meister Eckert said similiar things but I can't find any copies of his sermons on the web and don't have any of his books here. There may have been some other Christian contemplatives who wrote about the experiencing of God beyond words and concepts but I'm not as familiar with them as I am eastern sages.lfen

Try spelling his name Eckhart.http://members.wwisp.com/...nks/Meister_Eckhart/Sayings.htmlhttp://members.aol.com/heraklit1/eckhart.htm It's not that unusual an idea in Christian mysticism in general. Eckhart is generally regarded as having fallen into heresy however.The Eastern Orthodox tradition of The Philokalia has similar teachings to what you are describing as I recall:CyberDesert - Philokalia WebzineWhat comes to mind as a non-heretical Western Christian meditative approach to God beyond names is The Cloud of Unknowing: Anonymous: Cloud of Unknowing - Christian Classics Ethereal Library But none of this suggests any of the idea that language needs to be transcended that seems to be the main thing in the eastern religions. It is simply that God is above and beyond all our ability to comprehend and it is possible to seek Him beyond all that.As a matter of fact the more "mainstream" mystics have a similar idea. John of the Cross's Dark Night of the Soul is precisely about finding God in the "darkness" by which he means the meditative state when all the impressions of the senses and thoughts have been subdued. His metaphor is often misused to suggest a sense of suffering but that's not at all what he meant by it -- he meant that God is known beyond the senses. "When the house is at rest" is part of his poem, and it means roughly "when the senses are quieted and no longer interfere with the soul's ascent to God." Author info: St. John of the Cross - Christian Classics Ethereal Library {abe: It certainly DOES matter if Jesus exists, and God exists. In pursuing God through the Via Negativa, which is the elimination of the impressions of the senses and concepts in order to find God beyond them, all one is doing is affirming that He is beyond our normal methods of knowing. There is certainly no implication that what we DO know about God or anything else by these methods is in any way an illusion, and in fact to dismiss it as an illusion or as unnecessary knowledge in itself, is definitely to court dangerous heresy and get yourself way out in what really IS delusion.}{abe: Edited to remove Hildegard of Bingen, since, although she's very popular with liberals and feminists, she really isn't an example of what you are talking about. If you're interested you can always google her}This message has been edited by Faith, 01-14-2006 11:09 AM

I don't see this observation of the everchanging aspect of things as having anything to do with the reality of God. He alone is unchanging. But that doesn't mean our apprehensions in general are in any way delusional or that God is an illusion. I don't think I get what you are trying to say though.This message has been edited by Faith, 01-13-2006 03:20 AM

Of the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Essenes; which sect's belief did John's actions most closely align to?
Even from your point of reference, the Bible, it would seem to be the Essenes.This is further corroborated by the discovery of the Qumran texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, which describe Essenic life and beliefs.But i agree with you, Faith. The evidence is still quite conjectural.
And yet, there is more evidence supporting this surmise, than there is of Jesus' existence.Hmmm...makes you wonder how conjectural the latter proposition is...

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So intimate that your hand upon my chest is my hand,
so intimate that when I fall asleep it is your eyes that close.
- Pablo Neruda