Death of the author

That was one of the things about vikings, they accepted that EVERYTHING died. Even the gods would die during ragnarok. To have something cheating death was a new tale and an anomaly.

@Fanouriou Wow that makes sense. I never looked at it from that perspective.

@Fanouriou Well, Odin spent nine nights hanging from Yggdrasil with a spear piercing him to learn the secrets of death. Though I've seen a lot of speculation over how much that legend might have been influenced by the Crucifixion, given that pretty much all Norse mythology was written down after the Norse had converted to Christianity.

I like Grandpa North's view on things. It does match how Jesus were depicted by the Vikings, who preferred strong gods to worship. (Strength being relative and counted in many different ways).

Vikings: Wow, so your god beats death... he must be one hell of a warrior, tell me, is he in Valhalla or?

Jesus looks like he could strangle me with his beard and I'd thank him.

All fun n games till jesus starts doing crossfit
Ba dum tssss

@Oliwia One of the best puns I've heard, I applaud you

If Jesus as described ever existed then he certainly didn't die for anyone's sins looking at the Christian mythology. At lest there is no support for this in the bible directly attributed to Jesus. He asked god (himself) to forgive the Romans for executing him but that is about it.

@IceEB Never did sit right with me that the son of God was reduced to the same role as a sacrificial goat. Not to mention the dodgyness of this sacrifice making you get a spiritual "get out of jail free" card and making you less responsible for your own actions. I feel like if you sin, ya'll should have to work to make up for it yourself. I like the whole message of forgiveness and redemption though. I hate when religion dictates absolutes when the world is not black and white but a messy grey area.

@Mojo The tale of Jesus is basically that God made a sacrifice of himself to himself in order to create a loophole in a law that he'd made in the first place. Yeah.

@Mojo Funny enough. That's what Judaism teaches (what Christianity was an offshoot from), and is more "Karma-centric" (aka. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you either when you're alive, or in the afterlife. And one should do their best to live a virtuous and good life to get into heaven.).

And most people in Xianity mistake forgiveness with "an excuse to do whatever you want.". It's like "A parent might forgive their child for doing bad things, but that doesn't mean the child doesn't get punished for their actions." Same thing really, and yeah. Agree that if a person does something bad, they should work to make things right ... yet. It's sad that most Xian's believe that since they are Xian's they live a life without consequence since "it's okay, anything we do, we'll be forgiven, and anyone we don't agree with is in the wrong. Thus evil, and we have full right to call them evil, and condemn them to hell." (utterly ignoring Jesus saying "if you judge others, you'll be judged in the same measure.")

(You'll see that judgement everywhere. Catholics, Protestants, all the splinter groups. Worship the same god, yet each judge the others into the pits of hell. We just sit back laughing our 45535 off because they're damning their souls with hate. While ignoring not only Jesus's clear warning, but the actual written word on what their god hates (Proverbs 6:16-19 (1)Liars, 2) the Arrogant, 3) those who hurt the innocent; 4) A Heart that devises wicked schemes; 5) Those who rush into evil; 6) Those who bare false witness; and 7 (what he finds an abomination), those who disrupt peace and harmony within the faith.

Kind of have to find the humor that with a strong message of forgiveness, redemption, and not casting judgement upon others. With an even clearer message, that hate and harming the innocent is what their God hates above all. They chose to lie, hate, and condemn others. Where Jesus would preach the opposite, and tell others what they are doing is a grave offense ... yet. They ignore any message of peace, for a message of "I'm better than anyone else, and everyone who's against me will suffer." or "If I 'say' I worship Jesus, than I won't get in trouble for anything I do. *Cue #AllTheFacePalms*".

@IceEB

Well, we do know that the historical Jesus did in fact exist - so he's not entirely mythological.
The historical person Jesus is mentioned in roman sources, that he preached to the people of Judea and was executed by the Romans as some kind of a local troublemaker.

Most of the rest of the story is impossible to verify and some things are even clearly untrue - again based on historical records from the time.

As an agnostic myself I say that most of it is pure myth - invented by people hundreds of years later - to give their leader a fitting story.
The very Bible itself wasn't a fixed set of texts until hundreds of years after Jesus's death and was decided by people who had never seen or heard him themselves.

They just decided on the story they thought would best sell their new religion - that's my interpretation.

@Nisse_Hult
"Local Troublemaker" is a bit of an understatement.. The cult included Simonites, it's right there in the famed Book.. They made ISIS look positively tolerant.. And *definitely* didn't play by the rules of Pax Romana.. And Roman law was pretty clear on what'd happen if you attempted to break Pax Romana..

Not that the early christians were more tolerant.. on the contrary.. As a group and a cult within the roman empire they were about as play-nice as ISIS nowadays. This too is accurately documented. Shame it isn't taught in History 101...

@Nisse_Hult It's actually not entirely clear whether a historical Jesus existed. The Roman sources we have either report what Christians at the time believed or are evident interpolations (new passages added into older writings by later writers). As a result, we are really only left with Christian sources.

Problematically, the oldest sources we have mention little about Jesus or the events of his life with these details only coming as sources get further from the supposed events. Perhaps worse, our oldest sources come from Paul whose only recorded interaction with Jesus was a vision. This is then complicated further by the general disregard for so-called ''apocryphal'' sources, despite a number of them being older than those accepted in Biblical canon.

This is all before considering what we mean when we say a person existed historically. Take for example Robin Hood, King Arther, and Dracula. As far as we can tell, a historical Robin Hood could have existed but basically all our stories about him and all the characters associated with him are later fictional additions. Arther appears to have been composited potentially from several kings and definitely from entirely fictional additions by subsequent authors. Then there's Dracula whom we know definitely was a historical person, but our most prolific writings about him are entirely fictional.

Can we really say a character existed when we wouldn't recognize them as the character and they wouldn't recognize our depictions of them? Can we really say that a character existed if they are a composite of several people who existed? Can we really say that the character existed when we know that the person they are based off of basically just shares their name?

@omnirahk

"The term "historical Jesus" refers to the reconstruction of the life and teachings of Jesus by critical historical methods, in contrast to religious interpretations. It also considers the historical and cultural contexts in which Jesus lived.
Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure, and attempts to deny his historicity have been consistently rejected by the scholarly consensus as a fringe theory."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus

@Nisse_Hult There's a distinct problem there, in that most Biblical scholars are themselves Christians and thus have a theological bias to believe some Jesus existed. So let's do some examining. Ideally, we'd want primary sources (documents written about Jesus during his life), but there are none. So let's examine the secondary sources. We have one source that could be second hand in the form of Paul who purportedly met with Peter and James. That being said, Paul himself claims that he neither received his gospel from man nor was he taught it (and had at least one theological disagreement with Peter). So by Paul's own admission, he is not a second hand source. Between our known authors and the dating of accounts from unknown authors, all accounts we have evidently originate far removed from the events recorded. Furthermore, sources about Jesus's life, even those apparently written around the same time, differ wildly and often contradict each other (especially evident as we've recovered so-called ''apocryphal'' gospels). As for the authors we do know, we have Church fathers who state what Christian's believe, Tacitus writing in the 2nd century and recording what Christians believed about their group's founding, other historians recording the actions and/or beliefs of Christians at the time, and Josephus with one interpolation added by Christians into text that may or may not have mentioned Jesus being crucified by Pilate prior to the alteration (we don't know) and one passage wherein he mentions James the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, being executed after a sham trial. Josephus is quite literally the best source we've got and we don't even know if he originally mentioned anything regarding what Jesus did while alive or how he died. So, at best, we've got confirmation of... a guy who Christians call Christ (and that's granting that James actually was Jesus's brother and not just believed to be by others for some reason (ex: James lied, people assumed he was because he shared a name with Jesus's brother in the story, etc...)). Let's now take a look at what is ''almost universally accepted'' about Jesus's life, that he was baptized by John the Baptist and was crucified under the order of Pontius Pilate. The evidence for the baptism are the synoptic gospels (which all either copy from or are the gospel of Mark or the postulated Q document neither of which are from an eyewitness as they both evidently drew from the same preexisting oral traditions), the gospel of John (whose author was evidently aware of at least one of the synoptics considering the numerous points it deliberately and blatantly contradicts the synoptics), and the criterion of embarrassment (the fact that this is only ever used in New Testament research speaks volumes regarding how effective it actually is). The evidence for the crucifixion are... the gospels, Tacitus, Josephus, the criterion of embarrassment (at least the rest are new), the criterion of multiple attestation (at least potentially viable assuming the passage in Josephus with the interpolation in it originally did mention Pilate ordering Jesus's crucifixion), and the criterion of coherence (not the most impressive when you remember that a fictional character using a rotary phone in a story set during the time when rotary phones were common would satisfy this). So at best for historical Jesus, we've got a guy who had a following and probably was crucified. That is the extent of the reconstruction of Jesus's life and teachings by critical historical methods. So I'll ask again but more clearly this time, can we really say the Biblical Jesus historically existed when the only traits he shares with the (probably) real Jesus is his name, popularity (evidently differing in several degrees of magnitude based on what the gospels record versus what history supports), and probably their method of execution? Technically you can say yes and be right, but then again technically Abe Lincoln from America: The Motion Picture would also have historically existed. Apologies for the block of text, my keyboard's return key has decided not to work today.

@Nisse_Hult Um ... fam ... got to have to correct you there.

The Bible, was actually originally just the Tanakh (the written Torrah / the Old Testament). Was made in 586 BC in the destruction of the first temple by the Babylonians. It was a way to preserve their cultural ethnicity when their temple culture and way of life was utterly destroyed. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKB6WduDwNE&ab_channel=OverlySarcasticProductions).

Now if you're talking about the New Testament (aka. The Christian spin off of Judaism), then https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A86fIELxFds&ab_channel=OverlySarcasticProductions, watch that. Trust us you won't lose out, and it's pretty interesting history to watch.

@Ash

No, no correction needed.
You only confuse the matter by bringing up a different text.

You talk about the Tanakh/Torah - I talk about the Bible. They are different things.
Parts of the first was later included in the second, but "The Bible" is still a unique scripture with it's own history.

And no - the New Testament is certainly not "aka. The Christian spin off of Judaism" - that's a gross mischaracterization!

Seems like it was a bad idea to get your understanding of history from some Youtuber calling themselves "Overly Sarcastic Productions".

The Vikings combined Jesus and their own gods; just look at Grandpa Norths little cute stone!
(Killergods)

"With strange eons, even death may die."
-Some xenophobic wanker.

@Dan It helps if you have a reanimator.

Jesus has achieved an ultimate skill after a fighting with a final boss

England Guy didn't read the old Testament it seems.