From: billg@bony1.bony.com (Bill Gripp)
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic,alt.messianic
Subject: Re: What did Judas betray?
Date: 17 Nov 92 04:33:58 GMT
Organization: LA&W RR

In article <1992Nov11.203736.12929@imagen.com> avi@seal.imagen.com writes:
>>Four parallel
>>accounts of high consistancy (not necessarily complete agreement) should
>>be considered more reliable than a single account.  After all, isn't
>>there something in the Tanach which requires more than one witness to a
>>crime to accept testamony as valid?  A single witness is not sufficient.
>                                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
>That's exactly my point ! John is the only witness to Jesus since he was the
>only one (out of the 4 gospels authors) who actually LIVED in his time. All the
>3 other gospels authors did NOT know Jesus personally and lived years afterwards
>(some as late as 120-150 years later!) and are thus NOT acceptable witnesses !!

Nice try, but Matthew was also one of the twelve apostles.  In addition,
John Mark's gospel was written by Mark as told to him by the apostle
Peter.  Luke's gospel is written based upon information relayed to Luke
by Mary (Jesus's Mother) and Paul (Saul of Tarsus).  This is from the
Columbia Encyclopedia BTW.

So two were written by eye witnesses, two are from interviews with eye
witnesses, or others close to the source.  To say that these are invalid is 
akin to denying the validity of newspaper reports, textbooks, etc as well. 
As has been pointed out by another poster, the four gospel can be traced back
to the first century A.D.


>>According to the New Testament they were concerned that some Jews were
>>following Jesus.  It says that many false Messiahs will follow Jesus
>>claiming to be him, where does it say that "there were MANY False
>>Messiahs before Jesus and NONE was crucified"?
>
>First and foremost, it is said in the New Testament (sorry can't remeber the 
>chapter and verse number or even book, but you'd recognize it) that one of the
>members of the Sanhedrin, quieted the others by saying something like: don't
>worry about him there were others before him and they appeared and disapperaed
>and teh Jewish people forgotten about them, so this will also be his fate.

I only recognize this as the end of a movie often on TV around Easter
(The Greatest Story Ever Told?), spoken by Martin Landau.  If it's
actually in the New Testament, I'd like to see a reference.  Please try
to keep the poetic license of Hollywood out of this discussion, it's
totally irrelevant.


>As for his rate of success in convincing jews of his messianship (sp?) -
>the New Testament is NOT a valid proof for the New Testament, now is it ?

Not any more (or less) than the Old Testament is a valid proof for the Old
Testament.


---comparison of Jesus vs false messiahs deleted and left for more
knowledgable readers of alt.messianic to dispute---  =B^]


>>Uh, Jesus taught that citizens were subject to their governments.  Give
>>unto Caesar what is Caeser's, a slave should not seak to be free, etc.
>>Each person serves God from the place they are in in life.  Nothing
>>there for the Romans to have a problem with.
>
>That's a common mistake, as you're judging the "potential threat" that Jesus
>posed to the Romans from Jesus' point-of-view, not from the Romans' point of 
>view !
>
>To the Romans, a guy who is being followed and obeyed blindly - and is the
>"King of the Jews" does not sit well with the DICTATORSHIP of the Roman
>Emperor. Further, the Romans did not carefully listen nor care if his kingdom
>was or was not of this world. To them, NO competetion should be for RULERSHIP
>of a conquered country or its people. Further, the Romans, were highly suspicious
>of any organized jewish gathering, as a forum for underground activity. It is
>known that Jewish rebels gathered for purposes of overthrowing the Romans rule,
>disgusing it as religious and social gatherings. Now, Jesus being an organizing
>factor and perfect disguise for "religious" activities, was too much a risk to
>take. Even if he was no real threat, it was safer to dispose of him than to 
>take the risk. Remember, the romans crucified Jews daily by the hundreds if not by the thousands, no human rights were known or cared for by them and one more
>or less dead jew, did not make any difference to them , especially if that meant
>more peace and quiet and securing the Roman Emperor's grip on Israel.

Except that the Romans were in reality fairly tolerant of any religion.
Rome's primary concerns were 1)Maintaining peace within the empire and
2)Collecting Taxes.  If they saw Jesus, who preached submission to Rome,
as such a threat, why didn't they kill the whole Sanhedrin who would be
seen as a much more serious threat?  After all, if this Jesus with just
a handful of followers was threat enought to Rome that He had to be
execute, how much more of a threat was the whole Sanhedrin which wielded
control over the whole Jewish nation?

Since you concede that the Romans crucified Jesus (which some other skeptics
deny since this is only acknowledged in the New Testament), why do you
doubt the New Testament's account that Pontious Pilot did not want to
kill Jesus, but only succombed to Sanhedrin pressure to do so in order
to avoid apease them?


>>Where is it claimed that the Romans were involved, expect the implication
>>that they carried out the wishes of the Sanhedrin in order to avoid
>>possible civil unrest?
>
>Where is claimed that the Jews were involved except in the New Testament ?
>On the contrary, what we do have consensus of sources about (both Jewish
>and Christian and maybe Romans) is that the Romans were the ones who executed
>Jesus. To say that they did to satisfy the Sanhedrin is utterly ridiculous !!!
>Since when does a brutal vicious dictator, try to SATISFY those that he's
>trying to crush ?  It is MUCH more probable he will try to run to the ground
>those who offer competition on his mere existence as a DICTATOR !!!

If this was the case, Pilot would have taken out the Sanhedrin and
replaced them with puppets of the state, the way the Romans had Herod
installed as King in Palestine.
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