Merry Christmas to all!

This too shall pass.
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Alexis
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Merry Christmas to all!

Post by Alexis »

On this eve of Christmas, a newspaper here published a very interesting and enlightening conversation with the historian Jean-Christian Petitfils. I have found it useful to translate it to English.
Here is the original: What do we know about Jesus of Nazareth?.
Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus. Is historical existence of Jesus a fact?

The existence during the 1st century of a Jewish rabbi named Ieschoua (Jesus) - contraction of Yehoshoua' (Josuah), «God saves» -, who attracted the crowds through his charisma and teachings, and his crucifixion in Jerusalem by order of Pontius Pilatus, governor of Judea from 26 to 36, under request of high priests Hanne and his son-in-law Joseph called Caiph, are nothing problematic to historians.
His existence is attested by several authors external to Christianity and independently of Christian sources (the canonical Gospels - including one from a live witness John -, Acts, letters of Paul, Peter and the same John…): Tacitus former governor of the Asia province, Pliny the Younger governor of Bithynia at the beginning of 2nd century, Suetonus high civil servant for emperor Hadrian a bit later…
A very important text was that of a Romanized Jewish author, Flavius Josephus, born in year 37, four years after Jesus’ execution, who had known in Jerusalem the first Judeo-Christian communities. He wrote: “In this time lived a wise man named Jesus. His behavior was right and he was known as a virtuous man. And a lot among Jews and other nations became his disciples. Pilatus condemned him to crucifixion and death. But those who had become his disciples continued to be. They said he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive: therefore he might have been the Messiah that the prophets had told marvelous things about”
The Sanhedrin Treaty of Babylonia Talmud, who gathered ancient Jewish traditions, also cites his name: “The day before Easter, was hanged (to the cross) Yeshu ha-notsri (Jesus the Nazarethan) because he practiced witchcraft, seduced and led Israel astray”. Even Platonist philosophe Celsus (2nd century), a violent polemist who hated Christ “a character who ended in infamous death a miserable life” did not put his existence into question at all. What he questioned were his miracles and his Resurrection. Christianity, religion of Incarnation, is founded on the existence of a real man, not a mythical creature who would have fictively fulfilled Old Testament prophecies, like a few marginal thinkers started to claim 19th century, like Michel Onfray still claims.

Gospels indicate census in the Roman empire, a family moving from Nazareth to Bethlehem and birth in a stable. Are there historical tracks of these events?

Even if it is not historically proven, birth of Jesus in the village of Bethlehem, the “city” of David, which Gospels of Matthew and Luke report, is very possible. Jesus belonged to a small Jewish clan, the Nazoreans, who had come back from exile in the second century BC, and claimed to descend from King David. Those people awaited birth of a messiah from among them, like Isaiah had prophesized (“A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse”), they had founded in Lower Galilea a village named Nazara (Nazareth), from netzer the “sucker” (that is the “shoot” of Jess, father of David).
The census by Quirinus, governor of Syria, which Luke told so as to justify the move of a pregnant Mary from Nazara to Bethlehem however poses chronological problems, because this fiscal census dates of year 6. It had to be a previous census, began around 8 before our era and lasting two or three years. Note that it could not have been an imperial census for “all Earth” like Luke emphatically wrote.
As for the precise place of Jesus’ birth, saint Justin, a Palestinian from Nablus, is the first around 160 to speak of a venerated cave close to Bethlehem that emperor Hadrian had profaned a few years before. “Since Joseph did not have enough money for a place in the village, he settled in a cave close to Bethlehem, and it’s while they were there that Mary gave birth to Christ and put him into a manger”.

What do we know about Jesus’ parents?

Nazareth was a small village with a few houses, far from the bigger roads. Joseph, Jesus’ adoptive father according to Christians, was no peasant nor worker, like some have said, but a skilled craftsman, a technician of wood, which put him in a slightly higher social class. He might have been considered heir to the Davidic clan, from whom the Messiah was to be born. One of Jesus’ great difficulties while he was preaching was to struggle against his identification with a political and warrior messiah, that everybody was dreaming about so as to oust the Romans.
As for Mary (Meriam in Hebrew and Aramean) she very probably belonged to the same Davidic clan as Joseph. Her parents, which James’ gospel (a Christian apocryph of the 2nd century) called Anne and Joachim, seemed to have lived in Sepphoris, the nearest city to minuscule Nazareth. Marriages were arranged between families and it was nearly impossible to escape those constraining customs. Like Hegesippus, a converted Jew who collected precious details about Jesus’ family, was writing in the 2nd century “Mary seems to be from the same tribe as Joseph because, according to Moses’ law, it was not allowed to marry with other tribes than one’s own”. She was not just an ordinary daughter of Israel. A descendent of David, having fed on Holy writing since early childhood, she knew the promise to her royal ancestor through Nathan: “Your house and your royalty will endure forever in front of my Face”. Hence, for Christians, Mary’s “let it be” after the angel had announced to her. She sings in Magnificat “the Lord had remembered his forgiveness, according to what was announced to our fathers, in favor of Abraham and his progeny, forever”.
The historian cannot obviously pronounce of what is known as virginal birth of Jesus, which is affirmed in New Testament, the Apostles symbol, the Credo of Nicaea and which even Luther and Calvin admitted. The fact is that this information, more problematic than valorizing, embarrassed the first disciples of Christ since it could lead to understanding their master was born illegitimately. During his life, Jesus’ adversaries did not refrain from accusing him of being “born of fornication”. For a long time it was thought that virginity of a woman was perceived negatively in Jewish tradition (“Grow and multiply” says the Bible), until discovery in 1967 by an Israeli archeologist Yigael Yadin of a text among the Dead Sea scrolls speaking of consecrated virgins and of a vow of perpetual virginity within marriage itself: if a maiden “commits by herself in the house of her father to a vow”, her husband may disavow her and relieve her of her commitment. Then she is free. If he keeps mum, this vow will remain worthy. Is this the situation Joseph, husband of Mary, encountered, he who according to Matthew Gospel had resolved to repudiate her secretly?

Did Jesus have brothers and sisters?

The word « brothers of Jesus », which is found in Gospels, does not necessarily mean brothers through blood but, like saint Jerome remarked, close parents. In Hebrew as in Aramean, ‘ah (or hâ) means indeed indifferently brother, half-brother, nephew or cousin. Those who the Gospels called “brothers of Jesus” were at least James and Joseph, Jesus’ first cousins, sons of a Mary of Clopas, wife of the brother of Joseph, Jesus’ adoptive father. As for the others, Simeon and Jude, they were farther cousins, much younger than him (Simeon died around 105). Mary is never presented by the Gospels as somebody who would have had several children. On his death, Jesus entrusts her to John the beloved disciple, which would have been unimaginable had she had other children. “Woman, here is your son”, says Jesus and to the disciple “Here is your mother”. Let us also note that if Mary had had numerous other children, she would not have had to go to Jerusalem once a year. Still we see her doing the pilgrimage with Joseph and only Jesus, then aged 12 (Luke 2, 41-50).

Is it credible for Herod to have taken an interest in birth of a child in Bethlehem?

Yes, because Herod the Great, who was king of Judea when Jesus was born, was not only the most prodigious builder of Antiquity, whose architectural genius and megalomania transformed the landscapes of Israel, he was a cruel tyrant whose dream was to be recognized as Messiah by the Jewish people. The massacre of the Innocents, ten or twelve children of Bethlehem, is quite possible, looking at the pathological paranoia of that king, who had decapitated one of his wives, his brother, his mother-in-law, two of his sons and a lot of his officers…

How was born the story of the Biblical Magi?

Arrival in Jerusalem of magi from the East is told in Matthews Gospel as well as in the Slavonic version of Flavius Josephus’ Jewish Antiquities (however not linked to Jesus birth in the latter). It is Tertullian, a Christian author of the 3rd century who, taking inspiration of Psalm 72 speaking of “kings of Tarcis and islands” and “kings of Seba and Saba” coming to bring gifts to Messiah, described them as kings, symbolically coming from the three known continents, Europe, Asia and Africa. The story of the Magi is linked to that of the star.
Cuneiform tablets discovered in Sippar in Mesopotamia attest that in year 7 before our era, a very rare conjunction of planets Jupiter (symbol of royalty) and Saturn (symbol of Israel) occurred thrice in the constellation of Pisces (symbol of Amarru, the country of Amorrheans, that is Syria and Judea). Modern astronomical computation has confirmed that. Matthew, speaking of the star of the Magi, says that a celestial body had appeared, disappeared, then reappeared… This seems to correspond. Jesus would then be born in -7. Note that in the 16th century, Portuguese rabbi Isaac Abravanel, who was awaiting the Messiah like any other Jewish master, announced his coming when precisely this planetary conjunction would appear.

When did we start to celebrate Christmas?

It’s only in the 4th century that pope Liberius established the solemnity of Nativity, so as to Christianize the feast of the winter solstice. Jesus was not born on December 25th year 1, like the tradition would have him. According to Matthew and Luke, he was born in the time of king Herod. However, that one died 4 years before our era. It’s following a computation error by a 6th century monk, Dionysius Exiguus, that the date for year 1 was defined…
The most important for Christians today is to celebrate Christmas – this outrageously re-paganized feast, hijacked for hedonist and consumerist purposes – as the celebration of the Incarnation of the God of Love, therefore the hope of Salvation offered to humankind. That’s what theologians call kenosis, the burying of Divine condition in the humblest and most marvelous figure of a perfectly innocent newborn.
Merry Christmas to all!
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Nonc Hilaire
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Merry Christmas to one and all!
“Christ has no body now but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks with compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks among His people to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses His creation.”

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Typhoon
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みなさんメリークリスマス。| Merry Christmas to everyone.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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YMix
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Merry Re-paganized Holiday!
“There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What, do you think our country’s so innocent? Take a look at what we’ve done, too.” - Donald J. Trump, President of the USA
The Kushner sh*t is greasy - Stevie B.
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kmich
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Post by kmich »

Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate today, December 25. Since Russian Orthodox use the old 'Julian' calendar for religious celebration days, I will be observing the day on January 7.

Q5bCYWT_s-o
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Parodite
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Prettig Kerstfeest alias Merry Christmas to you all!
Deep down I'm very superficial
Simple Minded

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Post by Simple Minded »

Merry Christmas to my virtual family and fellow cyberspace adventurers!
noddy
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Post by noddy »

merry christmas to everyone.

i dont normally do new years wishes but this year im making an exception, let it be less crap than this year.
ultracrepidarian
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Re: Merry Christmas to all!

Post by Simple Minded »

noddy wrote:merry christmas to everyone.

i dont normally do new years wishes but this year im making an exception, let it be less crap than this year.
We heard you the first time!

In Merika, in the past that sentiment was phrased as "Change you can believe in!"

I like the Strine version better.
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Apollonius
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Re: Merry Christmas to all!

Post by Apollonius »

Happy Boxing Day!


We're snowed in here. It's a nice feeling. I've got my stash of turkey, cookies, books, and music. What more does a person need.



Hope everyone has a wonderful 2017!
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Doc
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Re: Merry Christmas to all!

Post by Doc »

Apollonius wrote:Happy Boxing Day!


We're snowed in here. It's a nice feeling. I've got my stash of turkey, cookies, books, and music. What more does a person need.



Hope everyone has a wonderful 2017!
Same for you Apollonius
"I fancied myself as some kind of god....It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out.” -- George Soros
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Parodite
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YMix wrote:Merry Re-paganized Holiday!
OWPsk2JBA7Y
Deep down I'm very superficial
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NapLajoieonSteroids
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Re: Merry Christmas to all!

Post by NapLajoieonSteroids »

Merry Christmas one and all,

it is...*counting toes*....the 5th day of Christmas and so far, so good on this end.
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