That's been nearly a year, hasn't it?
...read the thread. I named it: the Slavonic Josephus... it mentions someone named "the Christ" but doesn't have the Jesus reference. So at least one of the Christian references is an interpolation and the other isn't specific to Jesus (Bar Kochba was actually officially installed as both "Christ" and "Messiah" by the Sanhedrin for example).
I swear, the reading comprehension on this board is atrocious.
The idea that Josephus, someone who actually believed in the imminent appearance of the "Logos" and even made reference to the miraculous ordained birth of Augustus, would forget to mention an historical character such as Jesus, if such existed, is ridiculous... instead we have Christian apologists defending obvious interpolations written in a different style despite the fact that the Christian Church made concerted efforts to eradicate all the versions of Josephus (and other texts) that lacked the interpolations.
What's next? Will you be defending the "Wisdom of Jesus" text, you know that one... a copy of "The Wisdom of Plato" wherein someone inserted "Jesus said:" before every paragraph? If the Vatican had managed to burn every copy of "The Wisdom of Plato" (like they did most of the gospels) you guys would be defending that as a primary source from Jesus too.
Like I said:
-There are NO primary sources for Christianity.
-There are NO contemporary sources referencing Jesus.
-There is NO historical evidence that Jesus ever existed (except that manufactured later by Christians).
...ALL the evidence insisted upon by apologists is faked or decidedly suspect in light of the very, very real evidence of Christians systematically faking such evidence ever since the founding of the Christian sect.
There is no debate on this... it is a matter of scholarly finding of long standing.
That's what makes this whole Shroud debate so laughable... Christians used to have thousands of "genuine" relics, hundreds of "genuine" historical references to an actual historical Christ and no good evidence of christs before Christ.
Now, well it's a different matter...
-every Christian relic has been exposed as a fake or a hoax
-the entire three tons of fragments of the True Cross have been exposed as fakes by dendochronology
-the entire Christian canon has been dated and traced, to centuries AFTER Jesus
-large sections of the Gnostic canon (at odds with Christian dogma) has been recovered
-the Gnostic writings have been shown to have equal, if not better provenance than their rivals
-archaeology has produced evidence of dozens of other Jesus characters predating Jesus
-every snippet of evidence for a historical Jesus has been shown to be interpolations or faked
But what has this resulted in? Bullshit arguments that accept the Canonical gospels while simultaneously dismissing the Gnostic gospels... with no rhyme or reason.
Bullshit arguments that dismiss all the precedent pagan versions of the Jesus story based on minute discrepancies, while simultaneously refusing to concede the plethora of exact similarities... justified only by hysterical blindness.
Here on this thread, we have three Christian literalists doing everything they can to defend the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin while hedging their bets with the caveat that their particular one and only true version of Christianity out of the 34,000 current Christian sects has never explicitly claimed the Shroud is Jesus' burial cloth.
You guys are hilarious.... it's a fake. Say it with me: FAKE!
A good fake, and immensely valuable both as an extant Da Vinci and an early proto-photograph... but a fake none the less.
The Luke