Cancel 2020.2 (10-22-2020), Into the Night (10-22-2020)
Isaiah 6:5
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
Cancel 2020.2 (10-22-2020), Into the Night (10-22-2020)
Cancel 2020.2 (10-22-2020)
Isaiah 6:5
“Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.”
anatta (10-22-2020)
Cypress (10-22-2020)
Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but rather we have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
- -- Aristotle
Believe nothing on the faith of traditions, even though they have been held in honor for many generations and in diverse places. Do not believe a thing because many people speak of it. Do not believe on the faith of the sages of the past. Do not believe what you yourself have imagined, persuading yourself that a God inspires you. Believe nothing on the sole authority of your masters and priests. After examination, believe what you yourself have tested and found to be reasonable, and conform your conduct thereto.
- -- The Buddha
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
- -- Aristotle
Doc Dutch (10-22-2020)
Unfortunately, you have exactly zero tangible evidence that God had anything to do with Paul and Constantine.
What the historical record shows is that without Paul and Constantine, the Gentiles and the Empire would barely have ever been aware of Jesus, of the obscure subsect of Judaism he led, or the religion based on him.
I would say your garden variety Roman citizen never even heard about Jesus until about three centuries after his death.
Which speaks to my insight about Jesus not being a profound part of history until centuries after his death, and his historical legacy depended on the efforts and decisions of other important Roman citizens
Scholars seem to think that illiteracy rates in the Jewish world of the first century was about 98 percent.
As a historical fact, it seems highly unlikely that a child born to peasants, in a tiny village in the obscure backwater province of Galilee would have went to school or been thoroughly trained to read and write. He purportedly trained to be a woodworker.
Anything is possible, we will never know with any certainty. To me, it does not matter if he was literate or not. He obviously had a message and a charisma that appealed to people. I merely was pointing out that a person of such lowly standing in the eyes of the Roman authorities would not have inspired them to keep and maintain written records about Jesus
Bookmarks