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Continued …

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Pliny, a contemporary of Tacitus, was Governor of Bithynia in Asia Minor. In the year 112 he wrote to the Emperor Trajan seeking advice about the troublesome group called Christians. After interrogating them Pliny wrote: ‘They maintained, however, that the amount of their fault or error had been this, that it was their habit on a fixed day to assemble before daylight and recite by turns a form of words to Christ as a god; and that they bound themselves with an oath, not for any crime, but not commit theft or robbery or adultery, not to break their word, and not to deny a deposit when demanded. After this was done, their custom was to depart, and to meet again to take food, but ordinary and harmless food’. [This reference seems to be in contrast to the food taken in their worship, i.e. the Eucharist].

Josephus, an aristocratic Pharisee, was born in AD 37. He entered Roman service and in the early 90s he wrote the Jewish Antiquities. He mentions that before the war in 66-70 which culminated in the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans the high priest
Annas (son of the Annas of the gospels) convened the Sanhedrin (the Jewish council) and brought before them ‘a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others’. (James is referred to in the New Testament in Mark 6.3 and Galatians 1.19). This James was the recognised leader of the church in Jerusalem and is recorded in Acts 15.1-21 as presiding over the crucial meeting in AD 50. There is another more explicit passage in Josephus referring to “Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man... He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Messiah...”. It goes on to speak of his crucifixion under Pilate and his resurrection. This passage, though almost certainly not authentic, possibly contains genuine elements.

I await your comments with interest…

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Dear David F,

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As you brilliantly explained to ALGOREisRICH on another thread, (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=10725&page=8:

"We must differentiate between mere advocacy of actions and actual planning and carrying out of actions".

Does this principle not apply to Karl Marx ?

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"The social emancipation of the Jew is the emancipation of society from Judaism."
Dear davidf,
this is a deep sentence if you put the proper emphasis on the second and last words. As in the Merchant of Venice, the outcast is driven to survive in a state of mercenary symbiosis.
<"reactionary, inflammatory and, irrational" are not words of rational argument. I have not used such words to describe you.>
Nor have I; I used them to describe your aggressive refusal to interrogate your prejudice.
Marx WAS a humanist. The Manifesto was written in the context of early, industrial capitalism, which was "manifestly" more vicious than the terms of resistance that might be needed to overthrow it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Condition_of_the_Working_Class_in_England_in_1844

The other measures advocated in the manifesto have to be read in the context of Marx's philosophy, not in the context of your modern, late-capitalist reality.

Dear George,
I take your point of course; despite my unbelief in doctrines, my every thought is culturally constructed ("facilitated" I would say). This is the "doctrine" of (post)structuralism. Nevertheless we have occasional geniuses like Molière..

Dear Banjo,
I don't doubt the historical Jesus, though I do doubt he was more than human. Just been browsing Albert Schweitzer; his eschatology nicely illustrates my point above about the "devaluation" of "this" world:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer
Shall try to respond to your posts later.

Squeers wrote: "Nor have I; I used them to describe your aggressive refusal to interrogate your prejudice."

Dear Squeers,

That is an exmple of loaded language.

I am prejudiced. I have an aggressive refusal to interrogate my prejudice.

You of course are objective. You of course have well founded opinions.

If you can bring yourself to use civil language to me we can continue. Otherwise I prefer to end our discussion. I don't want to use such language to describe you, and I object to being described in such terms.

Dear George,

I took/take the view that we respect each other's view on indwelling (Polanyi) or not indwelling in a faith as a means to to assess the relationship betweem science and religion. Your viewing being one needs to expereince tacitly to underdtstand explicitly. Something I presumably lack. One the other hand, I saw one major path of our discussion leading to First Cause, wherein I suggested that the gods of history are not where to look, believing said gods to ends of means (anthrpological and sociological necessities).

In another frame, spectulation of an external causation agent, beyond our comprehension, which super-adds to classical & QM, is appears a reasonable posit. Yet, the ability to test that posit is elusive. The predictions and confirmations of particle accellator experiments do provide data. The Harlte-Hawking (Paul Davis et al) views suggesting the Sagan maxium does have some traction, empirically.

When I said we agree to disagree, I felt that you saw your "world-view" through the lense of Nicaean scripture, whereas I would put the historical religions aside; while maintaining, that we do have an incomplete yet reasonable evidence that the universe (and attendant physical (for want of a better word) realms?)of a self-sustaining universe.

To remain open minded, one might consider -without endorsing- the feasible of an external causation agent beyond the understanding of our science: "God" would be a substitionary word and the heuristic held as a degraded possible when compared with the diretection of what we do know is taking us.

So for First Cause I would rank possibilities: 1. Not divine 2. An a-historical entity 3. the entity of spiritually and 4. any specific religion. Herein, I would 99% (figuratively) weight on option 1. The alternatives can still remain in the background, like the solid state universe.

Over the next six weeks, my responses will concise. Deadlines at work.

Regards.

Hi Banjo,

An articulate summary. Good one.

It raises the question of what may have been meant by a "Messiah". In the Christian bible Isiah 11.2 refers to "a shoot shall come the stock of Jesse and the spirit shall fall on him". Jesus and James, if historical, would both be shoots of Jesse, via Joseph (physical virgin birth aside. A noted by me a few posts back, Jesus' legitimacy would be doubtful among some Jews and murky the waters a bit. When Isa. 11.2 was rewritten around Jesus' time (not the Bible) the author changes the wording slightly but significantly to "The Holy Spirit shall settled on his Messiah" 4Q267 Fragment 3 (Dead Sea Scrolls). To my eyes that revision suggests the Messiah was not a part of the Trinity from the Beginning.

There wasn't only friction was not only between the Jews in general and the Romans, but between the Jews and the Heriodians (who were not really Jews). The zealots pressed this cause.

Further back:

When Herold the Great died (4 BCE) and around the time Jesus was born, there was almost a war, pushed by the zealots, over the deceased practise of placing a the Roman eagle on the Temple.

In the period leading to the 66-70 Jewish-Roman War the receipt of (unclean) gifts from feigners (the Romans) was a major issue.

Josephus is said have been the sole savivor of a Roman massacre, with claims he may been spared. I don't know enough make further comment.

There was plenty going on at the time and through Nicaea (325), not unremarkably there were plent variations on the themes of religions