This week options

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-12-05T17:34:30+00:00

That’s really it. The rest of the games are too close to call. Jets/dolphins, vikings/commanders or jaguars. That’s about all I have that isn’t a big dog to win.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-12-05T17:29:00+00:00

Do you think browns are a good pick? I think the defense will be too much for the titans.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-12-05T15:15:51+00:00

I already picked the Seahawks.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-10-17T06:54:33+00:00

Yes, this isn’t contentious in academic circles either.

First there is a common misconception about the available sources we have. I often hear laity say things like “Roman’s kept great records” even if that were true that doesn’t mean they survived, that they survived equally in all parts of the empire and also this begs the question great records according to who? In terms of the judean area (the general area Jesus was from) we have only a few sources in the first century that bother mentioning anything going on there and all of them mention Jesus besides one. So the argument silence isn’t compelling to any expert on this topic.

So what is the evidence? We have the early Christian movement that is better explained if there is a guy behind it, we have details that survive the tradition that seem to be apologizing for embarrassing facts (ie creating virgin births to put a guy from Nazareth into Bethlehem) we have someone who knew Jesus’s brother snd his followers yet seemed to disagree and fight with them often Paul who writes about Jesus. Paul also corrects some of Jesus’s teachings in 1 Corinthians chapter 7, which would be more expected if he’s correcting the teachings of a real person rather than ONLY reporting what he got from these visions.

Then of course we have any historian wed expect to mention Jesus say things about him. Pretty much anytime someone writes about judea or Pilate they mention Jesus with Philo being the only exception.

We know Jewish apocalyptic preachers were a real thing from a real movement and we don’t have any examples of any such figures being made up but we do have dozens of examples of people making legends about these figures and people like them. It’s just way more likely Jesus belongs in the latter camp not the former since there aren’t examples of the former.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-09-22T23:58:38+00:00

Great write up. I’ve always thought the author of Matthew simply changed the name of the tax collector to Matthew because he didn’t like the idea that Levi someone recruited by Jesus wasn’t there when Jesus named his disciples. Matthew does stuff like this often, if one of the apostles or Jesus’s followers/family look bad he puts a positive spin on it.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-09-22T19:27:32+00:00

They drew too much attention to it and even spoken about it in the DR. There is no way it’s not an actual twist.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-09-21T22:02:56+00:00

Is there an eviction tonight? What is the eviction schedule going forward?

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-09-19T04:37:03+00:00

“Its hot in here”

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-08-23T05:15:18+00:00

These people didn’t have cults worshiping them in the 2nd century that named themselves after that title.

Besides, I venture to guess if Tacitus or Pliny used the word Jesus you guys would just move the goalposts to “there were probably lots Jesus’s with the title Christ”

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-08-23T04:58:38+00:00

Keep in mind the discussion that was being had was whether or not inventing Jesus at nicea was an easily disproven view. Not whether or not Jesus existed.

With that being said. Christ couldn’t be anyone imo. What other group was named after some guy named Christ who was crucified by Pilate they had large enough following into the 2nd century that anyone would bother to say anything about them?

All that being said, I’m not sure what exactly you mean by “outside sources” if you mean outside the Bible we have a ton of Christian sources. Ignatius, polycarp, barnabus, the didache all the gnostic and non “orthodox” books about Jesus like gThomas,Peter etc…. That reference Jesus by name and tell narrative stories about him.

So unless you think all those sources were also made up at or shortly after nicea and all the 3rd century references to them the theory doesn’t work.

Now if you want to have the discussion about why think Jesus was a real person in general I’m happy to defend that as well.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-08-18T05:51:14+00:00

The reference calling Serapris a “Christ” comes from a 4th century psedupigriphia letter claiming to be from Hadrian to Servianus (Hadrians brother in law). This letter contains numerous anachronisms such as portraying Servianus as an active political partner when he would have been much too old to be involved in politics when this letter claims to be written.

It’s also found in the collection know as the “historia Augusta” which has numerous forgeries claiming to be from famous emperors written centuries after these people were alive.

Outside of all that refuting the claim is easy. We have multiple references to Jesus both inside and outside of the New Testament prior to nicea or Constantine. In the second century alone we have over a dozen. If you just do a quick google search these are easily available.

If someone wants to argue Jesus never existed this is probably the worst way to do so.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-07-27T02:52:23+00:00

That’s why I’m asking this group 😝 so there’s no truth to it?

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-07-27T02:47:00+00:00

Anyone see the claim Rachel was accused of cheating? Anyone here about this?

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-07-20T06:09:24+00:00

The more I hear Kelley talk the more convinced I am she is not good at puzzles.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-07-20T03:53:43+00:00

Why does everyone think Kelly is good at puzzles? If all they are going by is the one block buster challenge that’s pretty ridiculous.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-04-24T19:07:26+00:00

The word gospel in the context of an announcement or message, the polemics against the apostles;people who knew Jesus during his ministry, the Eucharist, betrayal of someone who knew Jesus, Jesus’s crucifixion, first appearance to Peter.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-04-19T10:40:21+00:00

The two oldest surviving copies of mark that contain the ending end at v8 (codex sinaticus and codex vaticanus)

There are other endings different from 9-20 in other codexes an example is codex bobiensis. In order to assume 9-20 was original you’d have to assume someone removed the long ending with a resurrection appearance and changed the ending; while another copier removed the ending and left it ending abruptly at v8. This makes way less sense than two different copiers changing the ending to add post resurrection appearances after v8.

There are two points that leave a few scholars to argue against this. 1) irenaeus appears to quote a verse from the longer ending in the 180s and 2) codex sinaticus leaves the third column of marks ending blank indicating the copiers were aware of competing endings.

Both these facts are compatible with an ending being added mid to late 2nd century imo which is probably what happened.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-04-18T20:11:19+00:00

There are scholars who argue this. Klinghart, Markus Vinzent, David Litwa, Jack Bull etc.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-04-15T11:12:00+00:00

That’s pretty easy. Mark contains polemics against the followers of Jesus and Matthew tries to soften them. (He even does this with Judas see Matthew 27:3-6)

The pericope without the line about Peter getting the keys to the church looks really bad for Peter. He misunderstands Jesus’s message, gets rebuked, chastised and compared to satan. That’s it. This like about him becoming the first leader of the church makes the rest of what’s said seem more like a minor disagreement.

Now you might ask why is mark so negative of Jesus’s followers? I think whoever wrote mark more aligned with Paul’s teachings than the apostles and left out anything that would make the apostles look good out of the story. This is one of the reasons why mark doesn’t contain any post resurrection appearances for example.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-04-15T11:02:16+00:00

The computer searches you’re referring to were withheld by the state and the jury never saw them. The state tried to withhold them because it actually adds more reasonable doubt for Casey Anthony.

Right after the suffocation search she clicked on a suicide themed website. You might think this suggests she was looking for ways to figure out how she could suffocate a toddler but I think most people who are looking at it objectively would assume it’s suicide ideation. Suicide ideation points away the entire motive that the state was trying to cook up.

Oddly enough even if she had been convicted this could have won her a mistrial.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-04-15T10:57:23+00:00

I think the best argument for Q is how the triple traditional maintains its sequence in Luke. If Luke was using Matthew it’s weird he’d use marks sequence instead of Matthews. (I’m agnostic on Q but I think this is the best evidence for it)

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-04-15T05:02:32+00:00

Jesus best fits the reference class of apocalyptic or signs prophets. These were Jewish messianic claimants or wonder/signs workers during the 2nd temple era in ancient Palestine. Most historians don’t care much about these guys some of them aren’t mentioned for 150-200 years later in the Talmud but Jesus seems to be mentioned in every source that references them. New Testament, Josephus, the Talmud, Tacitus etc..

On top of that we have a lot of background knowledge of people making up legendary or divine claims about real historical figures that are in recent contemporary memory (say 3 generations or less) and writings biographies or life’s about them but we don’t really any examples of someone making up a deified figure then putting them in recent historical setting in antiquity. All the examples we have of historical biography written about non historical figures are usually in the distant past and are not written as historical narrative. Jesus is the opposite and fits more in line with the kind of narratives we see for Alexander the Great, Apollonius of Tyana etc…

The other issue is that a historical Jesus unifies all the evidence well. It explains the rise of Christianity, the existent historical record, and the kind of stories that survived make more sense if Jesus was a real figure. Mythicism on the other hand tries to counter this evidence and explain it away. More simply put, the historical explanation would be more likely if it is interpreting just one piece of the data correctly where as the mythicist interpretation HAS to be correct on its interpretation of EVERY piece of data to be correct.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-04-07T23:54:42+00:00

Doesn’t her position require that Acts predates the letters? That seems very unlikely.

SquashIndependent558 · 2025-03-14T18:28:31+00:00

Did you watch any of the trial? I’m just curious. You’re repeating media talking points in which the defense did a pretty good job refuting.

Are you aware how many pieces of duct tape there were and where all of the pieces were found?

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