Joseph Atwill

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Joseph Atwill is speaking in the UK on October 19th. The basis of his talk is the following book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0059912OA/

Have any of you read this? I just bought a kindle version, but it's going to be a while before I read it. I have to get through Arguably by Hitchens, along with 4 books he recommended on the Barbary wars.

The reviews are decent enough on Amazon. Any thoughts on this?

seamus

More info:
http://uk.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11201273.htm

Piliger

Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

"American Biblical scholar Joseph Atwill will be appearing before the British public for the first time in London on the 19th of October to present a controversial new discovery: ancient confessions recently uncovered now prove, according to Atwill, that the New Testament was written by first-century Roman aristocrats and that they fabricated the entire story of Jesus Christ. "

uck51js9zml2yt

so he contradicts Josephus who was a contemporary of Jesus who makes mention of a teacher from Galilee named Jesus.

You'd be better off watching Star Trek than going to see Atwill.

uck51js9zml2yt

Quote from a contemporary - Josephus

"Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day" (Book IXVIII, Chap. iii, sec. 3).

Turtwig

Mod : Merged previous threads. Depending on the direction this goes it may all be merged into the rather excellent Historicity of Jesus thread.

robindch

Toby Shaggy Ballerina wrote: »

Quote from a contemporary - Josephus

Jesus had been dead for some years before Josephus was born - not a contemporary, though certainly close.

And that's to ignore for the time being the general academic belief that the Josephus reference was inserted much later by somebody who wasn't Josephus.

Ash.J.Williams

Toby Shaggy Ballerina wrote: »

Quote from a contemporary - Josephus

"Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works; a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was [the] Christ; and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men amongst us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day, as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him; and the tribe of Christians, so named from him, are not extinct at this day" (Book IXVIII, Chap. iii, sec. 3).

that wouldn't stand up in court!!

oldrnwisr

Toby Shaggy Ballerina wrote: »

so he contradicts Josephus who was a contemporary of Jesus who makes mention of a teacher from Galilee named Jesus.

You'd be better off watching Star Trek than going to see Atwill.

No, Josephus was not a contemporary of Jesus. He wasn't born until 4 years after the latest date for Jesus' death.

Also, the passage you quote from Testimonium is considered by most scholars to contain a degree of interpolation. A writer like Josephus would not have spoken so favourably of Jesus nor would he have acknowledged him as the Messiah. Furthermore, the earliest reference to this passage in other Christian apologetics is Eusebius. It is not referred to at all by the early church leaders such as Origen.

Josephus is a marginal source at best and substantiates, at most, the existence of Jesus. That's it. It does lend some credence to the crucifixion but only that he was crucified, nothing more.

Now, Atwill's claim does seem pretty extraordinary on the surface of it, but I'm going to reserve judgement on it until I've surveyed his evidence in more detail but denying his claims on the basis of an oblique tampered reference in Josephus is ridiculous.

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oldrnwisr wrote: »

Now, Atwill's claim does seem pretty extraordinary on the surface of it, but I'm going to reserve judgement on it until I've surveyed his evidence in more detail but denying his claims on the basis of an oblique tampered reference in Josephus is ridiculous.

Agreed.

I'm not qualified to make a decision, even after I read Atwill's work. Definitely interested to hear your thoughts on this once you have reviewed the evidence.

DamagedTrax

Just watched this yesterday and was looking for some views on it. Im not hugely up on Roman history so i cant verify the timeline or events but it was quite a good documentary and puts forward some good arguments. I find the concept of social engineering quite interesting and this seems to fit with my beliefs of religion being the greatest socially engineered scam ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aSKN0xnfsA

Agricola

Would like to hear from someone who has read the book on how the author squares the notion of christianity on the one hand being the creation of the roman hierarchy, an attempt to pacify rebellious Jewish provinces.... while on the other hand providing people with a divine figure whose authority supersedes that of the emperor himself.

Kidchameleon

Joseph Atwill = Dan Brown

nagirrac

Seems a load of poppycock. If the Romans established Christianity as a competing religion to Judaism, why were they so busy trying to eradicate it from the 1st to the early 4th century? While there is very little contemporary history of 1st century Judea (likely because most of it was destroyed when Jerusalem was destroyed in 70CE), there are a large number of sources on early Christianity for the period from the late 1st century to the early 4th century. All of them suggest the same thing which is the Romans regarded the early Christians as a royal pain in the ass and wanted rid of them, something that was aided greatly by the fervent desire of early Christians for martyrdom.

What seems in little doubt is that Christianity became a Roman religion after 313CE. At that point most of the "Jewish" Christians were long dead.

DamagedTrax

are there any other good documentaries with alternative rligious histories? i understand how all religions seem to revolve around certain motiffs but where does the story of the figurehead usually come from, it has to start somewhere? a few million people dont suddenly come to the same conclusion out of thin air.

nagirrac

The most common alternative history is that they all came from shamanism which is at least 15,000 years old and maybe 30,000 based on cave drawings in the south of France. Shamanism was present in all the ancient cultures, Africa, Australia, China/Korea/Japan, the Americas, Europe (Scandinavia), and Russia. One of the oldest was in North Eastern Russia / Siberia, where the Native American migrated from. They are all very similar, which is odd, given how separated these cultures were and how different other aspects of their culture is, like language for example. They all describe an alternative reality or in actual fact three realities, the one we are in, the lower world (where our human spirits go after death) and the upper world (the future world after humans leave this reality). They all have some kind of figurehead that resembles Jesus, a man God that helps people towards the upper world, there is literally a "messiah" in every ancient culture from Iceland to Siberia to South America. All of what we think of as organized religion must have stemmed from that.

The shamans though didn't go in for sin and punishment and all that stuff. The lower world wasn't a hell, it was an alternative reality to this one, where the spirits of all life forms mingle in strange ways (why you get paintings of half man half antelope or bison) in a completely different experience of time to this reality. They travelled to this other reality using entheogens like ayahuasca, peyote and various mushrooms of the magic variety. They also used sonic patterns from drums and rattles and such which can get you into the same state. None of it was ever supposed to describe the physical reality we are in or create rules, other than be nice to everything in our precious environment, sadly like a lot of other things that message got forgotten.

Mousewar

Seems unlikely that the Romans would completely fabricate a person from thin air as Atwill seems to claim. These kind of political machinations are usually based on something real and then expanded. Like the people who argue that Hitler was a tool used by shadowy powers - if he was (which I'm not suggesting), well we know there was still a man named Hitler. Likewise, here it would make more sense, if there is anything to these claims, that they would base them on a real person rather than make one up, the existence of whom might be too easily challenged.

Sarky

It's pretty well established (not beyond all reasonable doubt, before Bannasidhe tears strips out of me >_> ) that a chap called Yeshua/Jesus existed, and he caused a bit of trouble for the local authorities and got executed for rocking the boat.

That's pretty much all you'd need to fabricate a myth like Christianity.

oldrnwisr

nagirrac wrote: »

Seems a load of poppycock. If the Romans established Christianity as a competing religion to Judaism, why were they so busy trying to eradicate it from the 1st to the early 4th century? While there is very little contemporary history of 1st century Judea (likely because most of it was destroyed when Jerusalem was destroyed in 70CE), there are a large number of sources on early Christianity for the period from the late 1st century to the early 4th century. All of them suggest the same thing which is the Romans regarded the early Christians as a royal pain in the ass and wanted rid of them, something that was aided greatly by the fervent desire of early Christians for martyrdom.

What seems in little doubt is that Christianity became a Roman religion after 313CE. At that point most of the "Jewish" Christians were long dead.

I'm about halfway through Caesar's Messiah at the moment and I'm inclined to agree with you about it being poppycock. It is built on a very shaky premise, littered with poor scholarships and contains some downright schoolboy errors. Having said that, I don't think that the persecution of Christianity is a very good counterargument. Mainly, because the notion of persecution is built on a foundation which is equally shaky. Take the apostles, for example. Most of the apostles are claimed by modern Christians to have died martyr's deaths. Indeed some Christian apologists (I'm looking at you Lee Strobel) have made money from their books on the subject. However, when we look at the apostles to see if they really died for a lie, we find that their deaths are either unrecorded or unconnected to martyrdom. In fact Candida Moss has a very good treatment of the whole persecution idea here:

The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom

nagirrac

oldrnwisr wrote: »

I'm about halfway through Caesar's Messiah at the moment and I'm inclined to agree with you about it being poppycock. It is built on a very shaky premise, littered with poor scholarships and contains some downright schoolboy errors. Having said that, I don't think that the persecution of Christianity is a very good counterargument. Mainly, because the notion of persecution is built on a foundation which is equally shaky. Take the apostles, for example. Most of the apostles are claimed by modern Christians to have died martyr's deaths. Indeed some Christian apologists (I'm looking at you Lee Strobel) have made money from their books on the subject. However, when we look at the apostles to see if they really died for a lie, we find that their deaths are either unrecorded or unconnected to martyrdom. In fact Candida Moss has a very good treatment of the whole persecution idea here:

The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom

I would say there is little doubt Christian persecution was highly exaggerated, but leaving aside the Christian version of history you have Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny the Younger all writing in the early 2nd century, and there seems little doubt, even by Moss, of the later persecutions in the late 3rd and early 4th centuries. What Moss seems to be arguing is that the Romans could have been worse, which is fair enough I suppose, as long as you were not the one nailed to a cross. Her main argument seems to be that the Romans were gentle rulers compared to other empires like the Assyrians.

joseph brand

Here's a fascinating interview with Joe Atwill:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdAJl-6bLTY

If anyone has the time. (I did) This talk is about a lot more than just the history/ invention of Jesus (they talk about the Federal Reserve and Mitt Romney amongst others). Probably not very enlightening to regular posters in this forum, but interesting nonetheless.

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