To all those I have friended in the last two years

[fpb]

To all my more recent friends, who have not read this post: http://fpb.livejournal.com/270073.html - please do, and do it today or tomorrow. It is important, and includes the answer to one of the most widespread and groundless religious myths in existence.

Comments

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

If true, this would be awesome -- the more we know about the early life of Jesus the better. Has anyone ever pinned down the year of birth? We know it's not the year we call "AD 1," but I've heard estimates ranging from 4-9 BC based on the textual evidence.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I doubt that. The trouble is that Luke's one single screw-up was about the date of the census - he seems to have been wrong about the dates of Quirinius' governorship in Syria. He got every single other thing - including, as I pointed out, the dates of the class of Abhijah - right down to a matter of days, and his fierce accuracy with respect to dates and places, which is proved times and again by archaeology, is one of the best pieces of supporting evidence for the historicity of Our Lord.

[jordan179.livejournal.com]

I think it's extremely likely that Jesus was real -- his life is about as well documented as that of any Ancient. I think we'll eventually find some more archaeological corroboration -- both he, and some of his followers, were literate. We might even find documents written by their own hands.

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

That post was great! I did not know about that discovery, nor did I realize that the pagan Dec. 25 celebrations started after the birth of Jesus.

One of the things I find most persuasive for the case of Jesus being real is the Shroud of Turin. Every time someone claims to have figured out how it was "made", the copy they turn out looks nothing at all like the real thing to me. Add in the fact that nobody realized the shroud held a negative image until the invention of photography, and that's pretty convincing for me. Some day I would love to see the actual shroud for myself.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I wish I agreed with you about the Shroud. The trouble is that the first witnesses to it in the West were pretty sure it was a fraud, and I tend to take contemporary witnesses seriously. But we need not doubt the historicity of Jesus anyway, for a whole mess of reasons.

I just might translate the article published in Osservatore Romano (the Vatican's official daily newspaper) eleven years ago, which sets out the case in more details and mentions sources and scholars.

[elegant-bonfire.livejournal.com]

That article would be very interesting if you have time for it. I've read that although the shroud was said to be Jesus', no one realized the markings on it were a negative image until around the turn of the 20th century, when it was photographed and the positive image suddenly became visible.