Entirely too many people give a shit about a shitass collection of bronze age bullshit in the first place.
I don’t know who you are, where you live, or what you do for work, but if you talk crap about the quality copper ingots of Ea-nāṣir, I’m gonna whip your ass. That stuff is dope!
Or is there something else to say about that time?
Iron Age*
Get your ages straight
I think they’re talking about Abrahamic belief as a whole
Yahweh is an Iron Age god. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahwism
And the God of Abraham was El. There is historical evidence of the conquests of Canaan which placed them around 1400 BCE.
In the Bronze Age.
There’s also a later period with another round of conquests and sackings in ~1250 BC that oh-so-coincidentally coincides with the infamous Sea Peoples.
There’s obviously a lot that isn’t true in the Biblical accounts but the general time period is confirmed archaeologically for when the hillbilly Israelites conquered at least some of the coastal Canaanites.
(Their cities didn’t have walls, which is interesting)
(Also it wasn’t a purge, the “Canaanites” for a certain value of the term were doing fine in Alexander’s time)
I don’t care if he was purple, his message was be kind to each other and we’ve failed to grasp even that simple philosophy.
If he actually lived it might even matter.
There are historical records of somebody named Jesus that lived at the time. The Bible story is just horse shit. He was an apocalyptic preacher just like today, and probably had undiagnosed schizophrenia, thought he could talk to God, and was the son of God. Plenty of people think that today, and we put them in Institutions instead of create a whole ass religion out of their life.
I will say this, I can’t think of a thing Jesus says in the Bible that isn’t pretty based. He prioritized pragmatism over rules and protocol, compassion and understanding over judgment, generosity over greed, forgiveness over scorn, acts over words. Everyone following his death like Paul seem to be the ones that start to miss the point.
The desire to control people who follow compassionate teachings is what turned sound advice into the dogma we see today. It’s an unfortunate history, not unique to Christianity.
It’s the institutionalisation of religion that’s a problem.
If everyone would just focus on finding their own connection with god/the universe/whatever, nobody would have a problem.Fuck churches and using religion for politics.
That’s why we have the separation of church and state at least - although not enough and currently it’s backpedaling…That’s why we have the separation of church and state
Weeps in Utahn
I agree he said a lot of cool stuff for sure but ultimately he was an apocalyptic preacher. I think it’s immoral to tell people they need to accept your God or you’ll go to hell, personally, so that’s one not cool thing.
“Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned.”
Pretty messed up given that belief is not something you can even really choose.
Yup. Born and die in a place where it wasn’t possible to believe because knowledge hadn’t spread yet? Believe it or not straight to hell.
There’s no such thing as hell in the Bible. Jesus said sinners would cease to exist.
Honestly ceasing to exist sounds like my heaven, good thing I’m gay. Will miss out on the gay orgy but at least I won’t be here.
37 He answered, “The one who sowed the good seed is the Son of Man. 38 The field is the world, and the good seed stands for the people of the kingdom. The weeds are the people of the evil one, 39 and the enemy who sows them is the devil. The harvest is the end of the age, and the harvesters are angels.
40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. 41 The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. 42 They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on them.
If you’re pious, you live forever in heaven. If you’re sinful, you die. No eternal torment, no hanging out with demons. Dead.
While forgiveness is good, I’m not sure forgiving all sin just for following Jesus is so great.
It’s literally thoughts are more important than acts. I’m not convinced.
I’m not a biblical scholar but my understanding was there was biblical basis for it. Especially mentioned by Jesus as he was an apocalyptic preacher. Something like this sounds like it fits the bill pretty well:
The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Like I said though I’m not a biblical scholar. Although I’m not sure simply being denied an infinite reward is that much better really. It’s still effectively an infinite punishment for something you have no control over.
The closest thing to hell in the Bible is shoal. And that’s just the word for the ground people are buried in.
Hell came long after either Bible was canonized.
What’s the whole weeping and gnashing of teeth thing, is that something different to hell?
Umm there’s a few
When he spoke of division instead of peace (Matthew 10:34-36, Luke 12:51-53)
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Acting like a gate keeper of Salvation (John 14:6)
“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Slavery and servanthood (Luke 12:47-48)
“The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows.”
Gentiles as ‘Dogs’ (Matthew 15:21-28)
When a Canaanite woman asks for help, Jesus initially replies: “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
There’s a few more, but I’m too lazy to keep going. The problem with the bible is it tried to be too many things at once. Especially trying to sell the concept of fear and love in one, which isn’t possible.
I grew up Christian and no longer believe but with the exception of Matthew 15:21-28, which you only quote a piece of, you are taking these out of context.
Matthew 10 is Jesus sending his apostles to preach his word. The bit about not bringing peace but a sword is a reference to the changes he promised and the suffering he tells the apostles they will face for preaching his word. This is also where Jesus tells them to separate from family that turns their back on Jesus’ word.
It’s not an endorsement of violence.
John 14:6 is properly read in context. You cannot follow a path different than the one Christ set and get to heaven. The guy who constantly steals, cheats, abuses people, and only pursues wealth or the praise of others isn’t a “good guy” in most religions. This isn’t as controversial as you make it out to be.
Luke 12:47-48 is part of a parable which discusses how since you cannot know when Jesus would return you always need to be ready.
This isn’t an endorsement of slavery nor is it a refutation of it, rather, it is part of a metaphor and wasn’t taken literally. If you got this one off a website or infographic rather than your own knowledge of the texts it’s a trash tier source. If this came from your own knowledge WTF this is one of the most famous passages in the whole book you shouldn’t be fucking this one up if you know the NT.
The last part is the only thing actually taken correctly in context. Jesus wasn’t there for the gentiles. The idea he was here for all comes from all the Paul related writings aka the gentile who never met Jesus IRL.
When you see something that looks as off as these quotes do you should look at the larger passage because they rarely mean what the atheists think they do.
Matthew 15, yes, shows the point.
I highly disagree on Matthew 10, that seems like strong apologetics. I don’t see how saying he brings the sword means his people will suffer from spreading his word.
John 14, still is gatekeeping. Also theres some irony there with the wealth of the church
On Luke 12, yeah I get it. He also doesn’t condone slavery when having that discussion at all. Yes he uses the metaphor of servants awaiting their master’s return to illustrate accountability and judgment. But damn that’s a bad metaphor, equating followers to slaves. If you read further you also see v47 refers to someone who understands what God expects but willfully ignores it. Jesus warns that such a person will face severe consequences. Kinda like a slave being beaten for not listening, cool… Then in v48 he goes on that if the servant still does wrong but does not fully understand their responsibility. As a result, their punishment is lighter. Again, equating followers to slaves, and still punishing someone for something they don’t understand, very chill. Not only does he seem to not have issues with slavery, he seems to agree with some of the principles of it.
The quotes don’t seem off to me, they seem to express the point I was trying to make. Maybe I could have offered more color or explanation but I stand by what I called out.
Go read all of Matthew 10. It might take 2 minutes tops. It’s very clear. It isn’t violent in a “imma kick your ass violent” it is about breaking apart families that refuse to follow Christ which IMO is a different problem.
John 14 makes sense in context and at the time it was written the Church was poor.
I think your perception of John is colored by a misunderstanding if the place slaves had in society and how they were viewed. Jewish slavery laws are NOTHING like chattel slavery. Slaves were humans and while less than their master it isn’t as evil as a modern American might think. Literally every society had slavery at this time.
The don’t look off to you because you don’t see them in their fuller context and you seem to not understand how specific things like slavery were different.
I won’t argue Matthew since either way you look at it, it’s bad. Right there we’ve shown not everything he says is loving.
Yes, everyone had slaves. But slavery is slavery, I’m not interested in the different flavors of slavery or justifying it because everyone did it. Jesus speaking about it and relating his people to slaves while not condemning it seems evil af to me. It’s owning people, it’s clearly wrong.
I don’t misunderstand the difference, but you seem to think Jewish slavery was apparently not that big of a deal. I think owning someone, even if they seem like part of the family, is still wrong. Indentured servitude is wrong. Trying to split hairs is just justifying it. Jesus said “and a servant who knows what the master wants, but isn’t prepared and doesn’t carry out those instructions, will be severely punished.” Doesn’t sound loving to me.
Here are some of the rules for Jewish slaves, and the consequences for hurting them
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A master who knocked out a slave’gs eye or tooth must let him go free. No punishment, you just get to be free without an eye now.
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If a master beat or harmed a slave, the slave could go free. Again no punishment, you just get to actually be free
Kind seems like they aren’t treated fair. Jesus could have said something about that, but he never did. In fact he spoke to it without issue.
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Most of that was written hundreds of years later (and rewritten several times since), so who knows what was added later for religious control purposes.
He could have sat around all day stoned off his nut.
I like stoned Jesus. Weed stoned, not biblical punishment stoned that is.
There is a stoner band called Stoned Jesus. Look them up, it is pretty rad if you are into that kind of music.
Fucking paulists ruined Christianity
I agree. His motivations were purely political in order to keep people in line when he realized this new movement wasn’t going away any time soon.
Which is why on one hand we have Jesus calling for freedom of oppression, while Paul was telling slaves to obey their masters, even the cruel ones
Religion has always been politically motivated to control people.
Reminds me of the classic Bill Hicks bit about Jesus and crosses.
He never claimed to be the literal son of God, this is something that was addded into the dogma 2 to 3 centuries after his death during the Council of Nicaea (check Arianism).
Knew a theology professor (ended up in his class for credits somehow) who went with the “multiple Jesus’s” theory. Apparently it’s quite possible that stories of a variety of healers/figures got combined into the Jesus mythos. Explains a lot of the time and geographical inconsistencies with the historical record iirc
Could be, it always interesting to get theology professors take on it. A lot of times they were preachers who went into it to understand “god” more, or historical Jesus, and rhen come out of it an atheist or agnostic at least.
I feel like this professor pissed off a lot of students who joined his class expecting sermons or something. Did more to reinforce my atheism than anything else. He was a good dude
There are historical records of somebody named Jesus that lived at the time.
No, there are no contemporary primary sources about him from his purported lifetime. All sources stems from several decades to centuries after his purported death.
The consensus about his existence is established based on the likelihood of him existing, but his existence can never be verified with absolute certainty. And what he actually did or said is impossible to determine as well. On that we can only rely on what people living relatively long after his purported death wanted him to have said.
It’s like how Saint Nicholas really existed but wasn’t Santa Claus. My go to rebuttal whenever someone tries to bring up historal evidence as existence of Jesus. If you believe in the mythological version of Jesus, then you must also believe in Santa Claus
We have no idea if he was apocalyptic. We suspect he was a reformer as reformist movements were popular at the time.
The best argument for Jesus’ existence comes from Christopher Hitchens.
It goes like this: We know the nativity story is made up because of the census. There was a census near the time, but it was after Harrod’s death and cannot fit the story. But why fabricate the nativity? Probably because Jesus of Nazareth is supposed to be born in the “city of David”: Bethlehem. So then, if Jesus was invented whole cloth, why not make him Jesus of Bethlehem and save the aggravation?
Yeshua of Nazareth is a historically confirmed individual. He was real, really the son of a god? Probably not.
Yeshua of Nazareth is a historically confirmed individual.
He is not. We have no contemporary primary sources for his existence. However there is a general historical consensus that he most likely did exist. But absolute confirmation is an impossibility.
Since it was a fairly common name, you might as well say John from Richmond is a confirmed individual.
Yes, because historians were like “yeah there was a guy named that, so this religious book must be right about him existing.”
Don’t be daft.
Right, that’s kind of what I’m saying, the book mentions a person with a name and location (ish). Then finding a guy there when the name is fairly common does not equate all things said about him to be true. Far from it it seems. Especially if the book has fantastical claims outside the realm of reality about said person and is inconsistent on his story.
At best you get a King Arthur story, was there a king or ruler in said period for (part of) England? Probably. Did he become king because he pulled out a magical sword from the rock? I would assume not.
There are even stories that Arthur never died and will return one day…
This is more “there’s thousands of people following a guy who was crucified named Yeshua” vs “we have proof of a guy named Yeshua”.
What historians seemingly agree upon is that there was a guy who preached something that was probably reformist in nature named Yeshua. We don’t have much more than that.
There are historical accounts that align with some of the events that as recorded in the Bible. The person existed and went around claiming to be the son of a god. This we know. The rest of it is myth and legend.
We don’t know that, because there are no such sources. But we have concluded that a Jesus most likely did exist. What this likely existing person did and said is not concluded in the slightest.
He existed alright but we have zero idea if he claimed to be the son of God. That was added much later after his death.
Jesus could in fact be an algamation of various men at the time who led the religious/social movement that would eventually become Christianity, and not all early versions claimed him to be the son of God. Some even claimed him to be a new God here to rescue us from the original God who was harsh, vindictive and punishing. Lots of wild shit.
So even the “he said he was the son of God” is a myth and legend.
But there definitely was a dude who was alive back then who had a LOT of complaints concerning the church and the government.
Can I see evidence or info you have of those historical accounts?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historicity_of_Jesus
This article is well sourced. There is a section on non-christian sources as well. Although that section does not list all the sources I am aware of. It may be excluding Jewish scholars.
It even highlights the view that he didn’t exist as a fringe stance.
I like my sky wizards to be of authentic skin color thank you very much.
If The Christ was, in fact, directly descended from David, then this guy would have been one of his Niblings/ Cousins, many many generations removed. The Christ probably would have looked very similar to the man in this photo.
I’m not really up on the Bible, but wasn’t it Joseph who was allegedly descended from David? Joseph, who definitely wasn’t the father of Jesus?
It’s kind of like being European and being descended from Charlemagne, or having almost any Middle Eastern, Russian, Tibetian, or Siberian ancestry, and claiming to be descended from Chingis Khan. Yes, it’s probably technically true for the majority of the people in those immediate geographic areas.
If David was one historical figure, and not an amalgamation of people, kinda like Shakespeare might have been, at the time that The New Testaments would have been written, then, David would have been dead for a few thousand years. We know from DNA that a single figure, namely Chingis Khan, fathered so many children that something like 20% of all people alive are descended from him. He existed less than 1000 years ago.
Charlemagne existed about 1000 years ago and fathered about 20% of Europeans that exist today, again according to DNA.
Even in the time of the Christ, David would have been a few thousand years old, and was similarly prolific with his wives as Khan and Charlemagne. It’s entirely probable that Mary was also descended from David since most of The Tribe of Israel would have intermarried a lot more frequently than we would today.
Also… A lot of The Torah especially doesn’t hold up with archeological evidence, but even with The New Testament, there definitely seems to be some historical fuckery going on. Did The Christ even exist? Probably, seems to be the answer there. Did the historical person do everything they are credited with doing? Unlikely seems to be the answer to that question. Doesn’t seem to be the authors’ faults though. In both cases they were writing from perspectives that seemed reasonable at the time.
David was not a historical figure tough.
Handsome devil.
Considering the makeup of the population of the region back when Jesus lived, he could have had white skin due to the Roman, Greek and Anatolian (modern Turkey) presences, though light hair would be super unlikely. Of course, the most likely appearance would’ve been that of a common Egyptian, almond-ish skin,
#D5915A, and black hairThis guy is directly descended from David, and therefore would have been from the same family as The Christ, just many many generations removed. The Christ probably looked very similar to the guy in this photo.
The first person of color to be killed by the police.
I mean I know it’s a joke but it’s not even biblically accurate bud.
Plus everyone knows old testament god was an ex cop with tendencies towards beating his kids.
Dad nailing his son ? That’s Eww on so many levels…
Absolute fire my man
In todays standard Jesus would be a communist.
Really more of a communal theocracy. It says right in the New Testament that you are expected to give all of your wealth to the church, with the implicit trust that the church is meant to distribute those resources fairly, starting with those most in need.
Yeah, in some kind of merger of state, church, and corporate power.
What’s the name for that again?
https://www.biblestudying.net/communal_living.html
Pretty much.
ICE would say “Papers, please” to him
I think “Gotcha, filthy Mexican!” would be more likely
In all fairness, most men named Jesus they would come across are either Mexican or have Mexican ancestry.
They can tell the difference between a Hispanic person and a Middle Easterner. I know because they call the latter group an extremely offensive racist slur while wearing their ICE gear.
Lemmy moment
According to the usa census it you are from the Middle East you have to put caucasian. My family on my dads side came from Syria
Very nice episode about this came out lately on the 99% Invisible podcast. Here’s the link: https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/615-your-own-personal-jesus/
Levantine people don’t have very dark skin, they definitely aren’t as white as Western Europeans though
All the applying of modern ethnic categories here is making my head spin.
I mean, rendering Jesus as a blonde guy is weird, but the way the pushback is parsed is just about as weird in the exact same way.
Modern Levant and Levant people three thousand years ago are both different in appearance. You can thank the Romans and Crusaders from Europe for changing this.
Ancient Romans weren’t even really white. More olive toned.
There aren’t any white people in the Bible.
All Europeans are white… You mean to tell me Italy is not in Europe or that the amount of melanin in their skin is inconsequential?
no white people in the Bible
What about the Greeks?
I could give two shits about the Bible, but what you are saying is dumb as fuck.
Italians and Irish weren’t considered white just 100 years ago. Haven’t you seen the photos of signs posted on US shops that read “Help Wanted, Irish and Italians need not apply!” ?
Like I said, more Olive toned. Sorry it offends you but ancient Europeans, especially people in the Italian peninsula and Greece didn’t exactly look like the Europeans of today, being as most of them came from a different part of the world
They weren’t white people who left the middle east, they were middle eastern people who eventually turned white due to the different climate conditions of the area.
Not dumb as fuck, nuanced. History is neat like that
The Ashkenazi Jews seem to have bred with people in the area of Russia/Ukraine millennia ago and that’s why you have more Eastern European looking Jewish people. It isn’t because of climate per se.
Good info. Looks like I’m the one here who is dumb as fuck.
Even relatively recently, Italians weren’t really considered “white”, especially by Americans. The KKK considered them “coloured” people with their olive skin and dangerous Catholicism. There was a big wave of “italiapobia” in the late 19th/early 20th century.
The governer of Louisiana in 1911 described Italians as “just a little worse than the Negro, being if anything filthier in their habits, lawless, and treacherous”.
People can be pretty terrible when it comes to race and ethnicity.
Sicilians weren’t seen as Italians by other Italians because Arabs had held Sicily for centuries. This is also why some did not see the Spanish as white.
My grandmother’s mortgage paper from 1955 had a clause to check to see if the Italian quota had been hit before offering the home for sale to Italians. Of course you couldn’t sell to black or Jewish people. This was in Northern NJ.
Got any further readings for this? Thank you for sharing that knowledge. Yeah racists are going to racist
You’re not dumb as fuck.
It’s a common misconception. Wasn’t even really until around the time of Queen Isabella (Might have the wrong queen as it’s pretty late here) that fair skin was considered preferable and a sign of religious purity.
Humans are a weird species.
To expand on this with some small context albeit way older than the Romans. Egyptians gave the Peleset land in the Levant. Theorised that they were warrior peoples of the sea and the Philistines of biblical text somewhere in the late second millennium BC before the bronze age colapse. There is an incredible documentary by Pete Kelly (History Time) on youtube. Well worth the watch. Another great video he did about the Akkadians called The first Empire. He also did a great video about the Hittites. His whole channel is a goldmine of knowledge of the ancient world.
Any way the ancient world is filled with peoples from all over, moving around. Trade was a major factor. War was another. People from all over the Mediterranean and beyond mixed knowledge, their trades, their crafts, blood on battlefields and likely genes. Probably long before there was a written word pressed in clay.
Were all muts.
Sure, but we all know you’re a liar, who tells one truth per dragonbreak. Where did you get a potion of eternal youth anyway?
M’aiq is very practical. He has no need for mysticism.
When you picture God what skin color do you see? What gender do you see?
Modern day Palestinians come in all shades from “white” to “black”. As someone who studied and argued the genealogy and ancestry of the region, here’s the gist of it:
- Ancient Egyptians and Ancient Levantines are closely related.
- The closest people to Ancinet Egyptians are modern day Egyptians.
- The closest people to Ancient Levantines are modern day Yemenis, then Saudis.
- Modern Levantines reflect millennia of migrations and conquests since the collapse of the Bronze Age.
Too
He rode into battle on his noble T-Rex named Herbert. He can be any color he wants.
We have an American commercial illustrator named Warner Sallman to blame for the canonical Jesus’ melanin deficit.
Yeah, I think Italian Renaissance painters may have pre-dated that somewhat.
Blonde, light-skinned with blue eyes? Nope.
That’s a ridiculous claim.
Here’s a picture of Jesus’ baptism from Normandy, painted in 1185.
Plenty of others here: https://smarthistory.org/standard-scenes-from-the-life-of-christ-in-art/
Europeans tended to paint Jesus as white because they didn’t understand there were no photos or movies or TV around, so someone in Norman France didn’t know there was an alternative possibility.
i think it goes back a little further than some dude from the US…
That would go against the narrative that every thing bad comes from the US
After reading that I just had an idea for what I think would be a good premise for a film. In the 70s Jesus “returns” in the US somewhere, but as someone who gets labelled as a black man, noone believes him. Because he keeps getting knocked down at every turn due to systemic racism, and because he is so fed-up with the “White Jesus” trope he joins the Black Panther Party. He ends up being shot by a cop. Final shot slow-zooms in to show cop’s name on a tag. First name Judas.
Do you think Ancient Jewish people were black? Have you ever met anyone who lives around the Mediterranean? He would look like a version of that guy who worked outdoors. He was from the Levant not sub-Saharan Africa. He wouldn’t be “black” rather he would be seen as Middle Eastern.
Have you ever met anyone who lives around the Mediterranean? He would look like a version of that guy who worked outdoors. He was from the Levant not sub-Saharan Africa.
I live in Greece, so …yes, I meet lots of them every day. Firstly when I had the script-idea I didn’t think there would necessarily be a need to “prove” that he “returns” as the same race as previously anyway. Of course just having him return “not white” would nudge people to connect dots to the historical whitewashing regardless. As an atheist I would see the whole thing as a fiction-based-on-fiction-based parable anyway. Aside from that there are quite a few who debate that he wasn’t from the Levant, as mentioned here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_appearance_of_Jesus (not that I agree with any particular theory, just that there are many competing theories, and I’m not even convinced such a human even existed).
Nah, he would have been seen as Arabic and thus be labelled as a Muslim, being even more intenselly and more widelly hated in the US than if he had been deemed a Black man.
Also in terms of probability he would’ve probably ‘return’ to somewhere in Asia or Africa since there’s were most of the population is nowadays.
Due to deep frustration with cultural imperialism and pervasive US exceptionalism I am one of the first to cheer when some popular-culture artefact dares to [shock, horror] not be based in the US. When District 9 was based in Johannesburg I remember thinking 1. Due to the apartheid subtext it makes sense, and 2. How on earth did they get decent funding without it being based in LA?! Having said that, I think the premise of such a script requires he “return” to the US in order to comment on events and prejudices there during that time (and the after-effects of events leading up to it - Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, etc).
It’s funny that District 9 is one of my favorite films and yeah, I also felt both that it was very much a comment on Apartheid and was pleasantly surprised with the quality of their production values and their cast.
Yeah, I guess that if the purpose is for Americans to “see themselves through the eyes of Jesus” then said film with the return of Christ would have to be set in America.
