Freethought Nation

17 thoughts on “Come join us on the winter solstice!”

1. I’ll look forward to this. 5 pm PST is 9 am here (UTC +8 hours). It’s the rebirth of the Suns of God again. Since Christianity is a derivative of solar and nature worship from antiquity, sometimes I wish religions would focus on taking care of nature instead of inciting religious violence and mind-control.

   P.S. I managed to piss some fundies coming to my mother’s house when I added your Solstice Song in my Christmas playlist. Give love on Solstice Day.

2. I’ll try to not be square. Just heard you on Secret Teachings. You are an Easter Egg in the human game. I would guess that you have far more Jane Goodall moments than I do.

3. Once again Murdock displays her lack of knowledge in ancient Greek. In her radio interview she states that the biblical gospel refer to Jesus as “Jesus the Nazarene”. She conveniently disregards passages like Mark 1:9, which states, “Iesous apo Nazareth” (Jesus from Nazareth). She either does not know Greek very well or she ignores information that contradicts her agenda. This is not very scholarly on her part.

   1. Once again, your disrespectful snideness exposes your own ignorance. In my ebook “Was There a Historical Jesus of Nazareth?” I examine all instances of “Nazareth” or “Nazarene” in the New Testament, and my summary in my radio program was accurate. If you actually knew my work, you would know about my ebook on this subject, but you do not know my work, so again you are being dishonest.

      Here is a relevant snippet from my ebook, for the edification of others who may be reading these comments:

      However, Christ is actually never called “Jesus of Nazareth” in the Greek gospels. He is “Jesus the Nazoraios/Nazarene,” “Jesus the one from Nazareth” or “Jesus the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee,” this latter as at Matthew 21:11:

      Ἰησοῦς ὁ προφήτης ὁ ἀπὸ Ναζαρὲτ τῆς Γαλιλαίας

      Mark 1:9 comes next close of the evangelists to writing “Jesus of Nazareth”:

      And it came to pass in those days, that Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee, and was baptized of John in Jordan. (Mk 1:9)

      The relevant Greek here is ἦλθεν Ἰησοῦς ἀπὸ Ναζαρὲτ τῆς Γαλιλαίας, which could be rendered “came Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.” In this case, however, the phrase is not a moniker or demonym; rather, “in those days he came from Nazareth to the Jordan” refers to a journey at that time.

      I’m quite sure that I know Greek better than you do, and I assuredly know about this specific subject better than you do as well, so, again, quit with your arrogant pretenses, as all your behavior does is reflect that your cultic views have made you dishonest.

   2. Sorry, but I am not going to be bullied or badgered into responding to you or putting through your nonstop harassing and disrespectful posts. I stand by what I have written, and your attempt at nitpicking is a failure. It is quite clear from the Greek that “Jesus of Nazareth” is a mistranslation when “Jesus the Nazarene” or other form is employed most often in the Greek.

      Moreover, I disproved your repeated calumny that I don’t know Greek – which I’ve been studying both formally and informally for 40 years – but you continue with your dishonest harassment and offer no apology for your vile defamation.

      You seem to have some serious issues, obvious also from your anonymity and use of proxies to harass me. I suggest you find another target for your obsessions and seek some help.

   3. The mere fact that the term “Nazareth” is not mentioned in the OT, Josephus, and Talmud means that the gospels are fictional tales and the gospels didn’t appear in the historical records until the last quarter of the 2nd century. Also, the likes of Richard Carrier, Earl Doherty, David Fitzgerald, Dr. Price, etc had made a negative review of his work so why aren’t you going against them? As Albert Eisntein said, “Condemnation without investigation is the height of ignorance.”

      You may want to check out other people calling Ehrman’s book DJE crap. Now I know that Ehrman and his lackeys didn’t read any of mythicists books properly and rellied on mere cliff notes and index card summaries. http://www.mythicistpapers.com/2012/10/02/80-mythicist-responses-to-b-ehrmans-did-jesus-exist/

      “And when we say that DJE, a mendacious work of him, and that he, Bart Ehrman a NT scholar, was ignorant of the mythicist position, and caught lying to cover his mistakes, we propound nothing different from what other mythicist say regarding those whom he lied about in his book.” – a parody of Justin Martyr’s Analogies to the History of Christ

      1. John,

         As I’ve stated before, I have no association with Ehrman. So, references to him are a mute point. However, you logic is flawed. There is a several hundred year gap between the Old Testament and New Testament. So, it is not necessary for the Old Testament not mention the New Testament. Furthermore, why would Josephus and the Talmud mention a small town like Nazareth? They would have no reason to. You are making an appeal to ignorance, which, as you should know, is a fallacious argument.

         1. First of all, the entire gospel drama is only a dinky 90 miles stretch of land so you should wonder why no historian from 4 BC to 100 AD mentions the town of Nazareth. It is illogical that people like Josephus would not mention the town. In Luke’s gospel, there are places and events that matches Josephus’s records like:

            -The census under Quirinius/Cyrenius
            -The three Jewish rebel leaders
            -The death of Herod Agrippa
            -Various aspects of Felix’s life
            -The tetrarch Lysanias
            -The “parable of the hated king”
            -The famine during the reign of Claudius
            -Pilate’s aggressions

            Assuming apologists are right that Josephus is using Luke, then Josephus must have been so sloppy in paraphrasing Luke because Josephus did not recorded Nazareth. (see Luke & Josephus by Richard Carrier http://goo.gl/44Dscq)

            In other words, the gospel writers are using the technique called “Midrash” or the relying on their own imagination, engaging in the Jewish practice of interpreting and adding texts. You are the ones raising a fallacy called strawman because not showing any proof, you also committed the most egregious arguments. Also, a lot of popular historians who lived and traveled in that dinky 90 miles stretch of land, they did not mentioned the town of Nazareth itself.

            Aulus Perseus (60 ad)
            Columella (1st cent. ad)
            Dio Chrysostom (c. 40-c. 112 ad)
            Justus of Tiberius (c. 80 ad)
            Livy (59 bc-17 ad)
            Lucanus (fl. 63 ad)
            Lucius Florus (1st-2nd-cent. ad)
            Petronius (d. 66 ad)
            Phaedrus (c. 15 bc-c. 50 ad)
            Philo Judaeus (20 bc-50 ad)
            Phlegon (1st cent. ad)
            Pliny the Elder (23?-69 ad)”
            “Plutarch (c. 46-c. 119 ad) Pomponius Mela (40 ad)
            Quintilian (c. 35-c. 100 ad)
            Quintus Curtius Rufus (1st cent. ad)
            Seneca (4 bc?-65 ad)
            Silius Italicus (c. 25-101 ad)
            Statius Caelicius (1st cent. ad)
            Theon of Smyrna (c. 70-c.135 ad)
            Valerius Flaccus (1st cent. ad)
            Valerius Maximus (fl. c. 20 ad

            Either they are very bad historians or the entire gospel story is a 100% fictional tale. It seems to me you are not reading the proofs presented so your’re having a tunnel vision. (see Nazareth: The Town Theology Built by Kenneth Humphreys http://goo.gl/R7C4f6)

            1. Thanks, Jon M.

               With that list, you will undoubtedly encounter the spurious apology that most of these individuals were not historians so they wouldn’t mention Jesus.

               As you probably know, my response to this fallacious deflection can be found in my rebuttal to Chris Forbes:

               Forbes Claim No. 21: “One of the things that really got up my nose as I watched the movie was that they showed a list of about 20 people who they claimed were historians writing in the first century who never mentioned Jesus, and the claim was that because not one of these people mentioned Jesus, clearly he couldn’t have been a real historical figure.”

               Here Forbes assails the list from my book Who Was Jesus? of the various writers of antiquity alive during the purported advent of Jesus Christ but who never mentioned him, his movement or followers, saying that this list consists of “geographers, literature professors, poets, philosophers and writers on farming or gardening.”

               Exposing the fact that the writers of the first century—considered one of the best documented periods in history—never recorded the existence of Jesus Christ, Christians or Christianity is a vitally important exercise that should not “get up the nose” of any serious historian. Only a biased Christian historian interested in shoring up the faith at all costs would not want that shocking fact exposed. How many millions of Christians have never been told that there is no credible, scientific and independent evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ from the contemporary record of when he allegedly walked the earth?

               Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE-50 AD/CE)

               In addition, these writers of the time are not all “Roman” as claimed by Forbes, who omits that some of them, such as Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, a Jew who specifically wrote about religion, including and especially the Jewish faith, comparing it to Paganism. Philo’s writings on the subject are extensive and were published before Christ allegedly began his ministry. A tremendous amount of Philo’s thoughts appear to have been lifted wholesale and turned into Christian doctrine. Philo even describes the anthropomorphized “Word of God” in a way that fits Jesus to a “T”; yet he evidently had no idea whatsoever that during his very lifetime his Word supposedly had manifested miraculously in his Jewish homeland. (See Murdock, CIE, 466ff) It is simply egregious to omit this highly important source proving the lack of a contemporary record for Christ, Christians and Christianity and to wave one’s hand in dismissal of the significance of pointing out this deficit in the writings of the time, regardless of their specialty.

               Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 1 BCE-65 AD/CE)

               The same analysis can be made concerning the Roman statesman and philosopher Seneca, whose philosophical musings appear to have been pilfered either by “St. Paul” or by his pseudepigraphical pretenders. If Christ had existed at any point near Seneca’s lifetime, surely the philosopher would have mentioned him, particularly when there are so many points of contact between Seneca’s and Paul’s ideologies.

               “If Christ truly had lived and had the impact claimed of him in the New Testament in some two dozen verses that he was famed far and wide, there is little reason why several of these authors would not write about him.”

               If Christ truly had lived and had the impact claimed of him in the New Testament in sometwo dozen passages asserting he was famed far and wide, there is little reason why several of these authors would not write about him. Surely this supposedly stunning development would find its way into the writings of “literature professors, poets and philosophers” of all people! This contention is actually helpful to the mythicist case, if such individuals took no notice of someone touted as widely famous for doing stunning miracles indicative of his divinity. As concerns geographers, they too might be interested in knowing that the God of the cosmos was supposedly wandering around in the tiny 90-mile area of Judea and Palestine—such a claim would be an interesting tourist point to make for any geographers. In reality, ancient geographers such as Strabo (63/64 BCE–c. 24 AD/CE) and Pausanias (2nd cent. AD/CE) frequently discussed the religion of the people of the areas about which they were writing, as any serious historian should know.

               Expert in Agriculture and Religion

               When one considers that in antiquity writers often addressed multiple disciplines, it would not necessarily be surprising if experts on “farming and gardening” discussed such a purportedly important and allegedly widespread phenomenon, which Christian tradition claims spread like wildfire during the first and second centuries. In this regard, ancient Roman scholar and statesman Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27 BCE) wrote extensively about religion and agriculture; unfortunately, his works on religion were destroyed, leaving us to wonder why and whether or not they may have contained information damaging to Christian origins. Varro’s book about agriculture, however, survives. So, here we have an important ancient scholar who wrote about both religion and “farming and gardening.” Others would likely follow suit.

               Even if we reduce the list down to just two people, Philo and Seneca, the question still remains as to why there exists no contemporary credible scientific evidence demonstrating the existence of Jesus Christ, who, again, is claimed in some two dozen biblical verses to have been famed far and wide? As Forbes himself remarks:

               There are plenty of writers whose manuscripts written in the period we’re talking about still survive now…

               All those manuscripts, yet not one of them contains anything about Jesus, even though he was supposedly widely famed!

               Even if the historians and other writers of the day took no notice of Christ himself, they surely would have been aware of the events that allegedly accompanied his crucifixion, such as the sun going dark, earthquakes, and saints rising out of their graves and wandering the streets of Jerusalem, frightening the locals. (Mt 27:51-54; Mk 15:38; Lk 23:45) The Jerusalem temple veil was purportedly ripped apart, yet no Jew or Roman makes any mention of that destruction? There is no record of having to repair it? And if Jesus’s death caused all this mayhem, why wouldn’t someone report that fact, thus also recording Christ’s purported existence? And what about the 500 supposed witnesses of Christ’s resurrection (1 Cor 15:6)—would not someone among them have related or recorded the story him or herself?

               As we can see, this Christian apology is unsophisticated and, ultimately, risible as a defense.

         2. Since you pander so much with Ehrman that Jesus of Nazareth existed, do you also agree that the gospels as we have them aren’t originals but error ridden copies? In his statement that the gospels are forged, don’t you think that the chances of the place “Nazareth” is an interpolation, since we’ve got a lot of greek codices of the gospels with variant readings, not to mention the canonical ones didn’t apper to the historical record until last quarter of the 2nd century.

            See Supernatural Religion by Walter Richard Cassels v. I-III, it is a free Kindle ebook on Amazon, and Forgery in Christianity by Joseph Wheless, free on Internet Archive http://goo.gl/Vfq2eG

   4. David B,

      What I find pathetic is your insistence that there MUST be a real entity, god incarnate named Jesus.

      Why don’t just let it go and live without the crouches. You need a daddy?

      I find Acharya’s work enlightening, and a breath of fresh air.

      Acharya I never met you, but you have my deepest gratitude for the work you are doing.

      1. Thank you for your kind regards. I appreciate your interest in my work, and I hope you continue to enjoy it!

   5. David B- just but her E book on this matter for 96 cents on amazon for Kindle

4. Would like to know this ancient Greek manuscript, as claimed by Murdock that contains ancient Egyptian rituals. She claims she could only find it in Germany and it was removed from subsequent editions. Citation please, Murdock?

   1. Since you have been disrespectful relentlessly even though blocked repeatedly from posting at this blog, as well as harassing/cyberstalking me elsewhere, I will state frankly that your question reflects your ignorance and non-expertise. The details of this sordid tale are laid out in my book Christ in Egypt, p. 88, which is linked so you will have no excuse to continue in haughty ignorance. Fortunately, less bigoted individuals will find the information I’ve provided to be quite fascinating; hence, I provide it here for them.

      You may apologize for your egregious behavior precipitated by your rabid and irrational belief in a supernatural Jewish man allegedly born of a virgin 2,000 years ago. Otherwise, do not bother to post here again, as I am under no obligation to entertain your continued abuses. Your cultic views have not made you a better person. On the contrary, so please quit with your self-righteous snideness and arrogant pretense at knowing more about these subjects than I do, as you clearly do not.

      1. I have a feeling that this mouthy “David B” dude is one of Ehrman’s lackeys and he’s probably working on a revision of DJE.

5. I think FTL should write another polemic entitled “Stupid Things Bart Ehrman and his fans have said and done”.

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