Are any Bodybuilders Christians here

[Psychotron]

22. Fact # 1: On the Sunday following his crucifixion, Jesus' tomb was found empty by a group of his women followers. According to Jacob Kremer, an Austrian scholar who has specialized in the study of the resurrection, "By far most scholars hold firmly to the reliability of the Biblical statements about the empty tomb."{14} According to the New Testament critic, D.H. van Daalen, it is extremely difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds; those who deny it do so on the basis of theological or philosophical assumptions.

23. Fact # 2: On separate occasions different individuals and groups saw appearances of Jesus alive after his death. According to the prominent, skeptical German New Testament critic Gerd Ludemann, "It may be taken as historically certain that...the disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ."{15} These appearances were witnessed not only by believers, but also by unbelievers, skeptics, and even enemies.

24. Fact # 3: The original disciples suddenly came to believe in the resurrection of Jesus despite having every predisposition to the contrary. Jews had no belief in a dying, much less a rising, Messiah, and Jewish beliefs about the afterlife precluded anyone's rising from the dead prior to the end of the world. Luke Johnson, a New Testament scholar at Emory University, muses, "Some sort of powerful, transformative experience is required to generate the sort of movement earliest Christianity was..."{16} N. T. Wright, an eminent British scholar, concludes, "That is why, as an historian, I cannot explain the rise of early Christianity unless Jesus rose again, leaving an empty tomb behind him."{17}

Find me some secular evidence that Jesus even existed or that the crucifixtion even occured. There is no evidence for a Jesus existing with the exception of your Gospels. The New Testament is nothing more than Old Testament midrash.

[rockinred]

Find me some secular evidence that Jesus even existed or that the crucifixtion even occured. There is no evidence for a Jesus existing with the exception of your Gospels. The New Testament is nothing more than Old Testament midrash.

The only secular writings to occur during that time were the writings of Josephus... He writes about Jesus a little... not a whole lot.. His works were historical... He states something like..."there was this man named Jesus, a wizard of a sort, etc..." It is no doubt that Jesus existed and for anyone to argue that point is sounding desperate and uninformed.

I say, believe or don't believe....it is an individual choice... but to start to go as far as saying that he never existed is really to the point of ignorance and when that rumor spread it was shutdown quick and no one who wanted to hold a credible debate over the divinity of Jesus even pulls that card anymore... I am not saying anyone is ignorant for that statement, just it really shows that a person has not really researched it and are echoing one of those word of mouth rumors that have no credibility...

maybe it is not worth looking into for some, but you should spare yourself some embarrassment if you want to hold an intellectual debate over that particular subject... I am not flaming I am being serious.

It is like saying that George Washington never existed or something...

[nojoke]

Originally Posted by Psychotron

Find me some secular evidence that Jesus even existed or that the crucifixtion even occured. There is no evidence for a Jesus existing with the exception of your Gospels. The New Testament is nothing more than Old Testament midrash.

The only secular writings to occur during that time were the writings of Josephus... He writes about Jesus a little... not a whole lot.. His works were historical... He states something like..."there was this man named Jesus, a wizard of a sort, etc..."

Just to add a little to rockinreds post...Josephus also referred to the stoning of "James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ."...

And, Tactius, a Roman historian who lived during the first century penned: "Christus, which is Laitin for "Christ", from whom the name [Christian] had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus."...This is reffering to the execution of Jesus...

With this info, the New Encyclopoedia Britannica says: "These independent accounts prove that in ancient times even the opponents of Christianity never doubted the historicity of Jesus, which was disputed for the first time and on inadequate grounds by several authors at the end of the 18th, during the 19th, and at the beginning of the 20th centuries".



NJ

[nojoke]

Originally Posted by Tock

Also, Jesus was prophesied to have been the son of King David, but if you check out the genaologies given in the New Testament, you'll find that while one version shows Jesus to be the son of Joseph who was a descendant of David, the other version shows Jesus to be the son of Mary, who was not a descendant of David.

I'm not sure where the idea comes from that Mary was not a decendant of David...From my research on it, I'm showing that she was indeed a decendant of King David, of the tribe of Judah...I believe she was the daughter of Heli...Joseph was also from the tribe of Judah as well...

One problem with this is, if Jesus was the son of a virgin, then Joseph was not his father and he was not not a descendant of King David.

U are correct in the sense of Jesus not being Joseph's biological father...However, he (Joseph) was his (Jesus') stepfather...

If Jesus was the biological son of Joseph, then he was not born of a virgin, which also becomes a problem.

No problem, Jesus was born of the virgin Mary...And she was a decendant of King David...What's interesting about this particular event to me is the fact that the gospel brings out how Joseph was going to divorce Mary...When he (Joseph) found out she was pregnant with their first child he wanted to divorce her because he had not had intercourse with her yet...So, Joseph thought Mary had been with another man...As it goes, an angel appeared to Joseph to inform him of his (Joseph's) error...Then Joe got back on track and stopped the divorce...And the rest is history...


NJ