Theos-Talk Archives (January 2006 Message tt00096)

Gregory,

Your posting below is quite informative but
my correspondent was, I believe, more interested
in comparing the evidence for Jesus as compared
to Morya.

So I repeat again the questions:

Is there more evidence to support the existence
of Jesus than of Morya or vice versa?

What is the evidence for the existence of Jesus?

What is the evidence for the existence of Morya?

What is the quality of the evidence, the amount of
evidence for Jesus as compared to Morya?

Primary sources, secondary sources and accounts for
Jesus as compared to Morya?

Eyewitness accounts versus third hand accounts for
Jesus as compared to Morya?

******In other words, if one used the standards of evidence,
etc. used to assess the existence of Jesus to assess
the existence of Morya, what would be the conclusion?

Gregory, it would interesting to hear your views on
this.

Daniel
http://hpb.cc





Daniel
http://hpb.cc

 


--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, gregory@z... wrote:
>
> (1) Did Jesus exist?
> 
> This is not the same as "Was Jesus the Son of God?" or some such 
question. It is
> simply a question for the historian (as are questions like "Did 
Socrates exist?"
> or "Did Herod exist?").
> 
> That anyone in the 21st century would bother to assert that Jesus 
did not exist
> is indeed extraordinary, given the vast weight of scholarship (as 
opposed to
> "psychic revelation") that has been devoted to this question! 
Scholars who are
> agnostics, humanists or atheists have reached the conclusion that 
his existence
> is a simple matter of historical fact.
> 
> For those whose intellects can't face the burden of serious 
scholarship on the
> subject, a good, basic introduction (written from a distinctly non-
or even
> anti-Christian point of view) is Ian Wilson's "Jesus. The 
Evidence" [Weidenfeld
> and Nicolson, London, 1984].
> 
> (2) Did Jesus live 100BC (or BCE) ?
> 
> Although this claim is put forward by Blavatsky, it was 
essentially G.R.S.Mead
> who promoted it in his endlessly-reprinted "Did Jesus Live 100BC?" 
(which, it
> might be remembered, was based more on Leadbeater's 
clairvoyant "revelations"
> than on anything else, although this is not acknowledged).
> 
> Insofar as Mead attempts to use any "ancient" source, he relies on 
what he calls
> the Toldoth Jeschu. Alas for Mead, and his imitators, 
this "ancient" source is
> at best a mediaeval satire and at worst a mediaeval forgery.
> 
> The Toledot Yeshu ( literally Generations of Yeshu), is the title 
of several
> mediaeval manuscripts containing legends and folktales but are not 
part of
> rabbinic literature and are not considered canonical or normative. 
The original
> text came into being in the 5th century, at the earliest, and more 
probably (and
> according to most scholars) in the 10th century, and subsequently 
spread, in
> Hebrew and Yiddish versions. Jewish scholars do not claim any 
historical basis
> for it, and most critics suggest that it appeared during periods 
of widespread
> persecution of the Jews (for example, the Crusades). The Oxford 
Dictionary of
> Jewish Religion says of it, ".the work is an expression of vulgar 
polemics
> written in reaction to the no less vulgar attacks on Judaism in 
popular
> Christian teaching and writing [of that time]".
> 
> The Toledoth Yeshu blends and blurs the stories of three men who 
lived from the
> second century BC to the second century AD: the late 2nd century 
BC religious
> leader Yeshu Ha Notzri who was executed; an early second century 
AD Ben Stada
> who was alleged to have practiced some form of "sorcery"; and an 
early first
> century AD Ben Pandera whose disciples were healers.
> 
> The Toledoth Yeshu combines stories about of these three men, and 
others like
> the 5th century AD Rabbi Tanhuma Bar Abba, creating what one 
commentator has
> described as "one satirical and cautionary would-be messiah tale".
> 
> There is nothing in the way of a scholarly work supporting Mead's 
thesis: G.
> Nevin Drinkwater, an English Theosophist and Liberal Catholic 
priest, wrote a
> vast (and apparently unpublished) work to "prove" the case. I 
have a
> manuscript of it in my archives. In the light of modern (post-
1975) Biblical
> scholarship such a labour seems more a tragic waste of time and 
energy than
> anything else.
> 
> Those who want to argue that either (1) Jesus did not exist, or 
(2) he lived
> (more or less) 100 BC (or BCE) needs to "come up with the goods". 
Those who
> argue that he lived, and around the time traditionally claimed, 
have produced
> vast volumes of heavy research and scholarship. Medieval forgeries 
and "psychic
> revelations" may impress the gullible; that some people are 
gullible is about
> all that proves.
> 
> Dr Gregory Tillett
>