There's no evidence that Jesus ever existed. As a matter of fact, the Archetype his relatively common. A young man is called upon to led a Rebel Army against the forces of evil... and etc...
Ah, no, that's not the case. The Talmud was written down well and truly after the (supposed) events with most of the characters having been made-up and/or copied from other people's more interesting myths.
I've been there and it looks like a desert to me. In fact if you look at Mecca from the air, the city itself is very tiny. I think you could go across in less than 15 minutes by car if it were not so crowded. Its surrounded by barren lands and shrub Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Medina is where Mohammed moved to when the Quraysh kicked him out, and its surrounded by desert too although its an important oasis Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! From the air most of Saudi Arabia looks like this Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! except where there are mountains, where it looks like the vicinity of Mecca and Medina p travelling into Jeddah is quite an experience, the mountains are so desolate. Going into the cities is sometimes a sudden, shocking contrast. I would say the absence of water would be a significant deterrent to traveling across the Arabian desert and probably explains why Arab traders used shipping lanes to reach Egypt and India Wish I could add more pics, but here is an Arab lateen or dhow http://nabataea.net/s3.jpg I speculate that the first Arabs might have been immigrants from Indian shores since it makes more sense to me that they came to the desert in boats.
The tradition of a written Talmud did not begin until about 200CE, long after the time when Jesus is said to have lived. When the Second Temple was destroyed ca 70CE, the Jews lost their center of scholarship. As time wore on, they became uncomfortable with the tradition of rabbis arguing the points of their religion and culture orally, so the tradition of writing them down eventually came about. As I noted in a previous post, it is unremarkable for no record of a normal flesh-and-blood human being, who lived in the era before printing, to exist more than a thousand years later, especially if he lived in a region noted for tumultuous discontinuities in government. Therefore, it's possible that Mohammed existed. I'm not going to accuse anyone who believes that he did of being deluded. The supernatural aspects of his life can easily be embellishments added to "make a good story better," as we Americans put it. But supernatural embellishments are not merely accretions to Jesus's biography, they are the essence of it. If he did not actually rise from the dead, then there's no point in perpetuating his legend! As for Moses... As I've noted in other discussions, the entire story of the "bondage in Egypt" and the "wandering in the desert" is now regarded with intense skepticism. It's much more likely that the Jews in Egypt were simply what today we call "guest workers," recruited by the Pharaoh's managers to keep a project on schedule, paid whatever was considered a fair wage by despotic rulers in those days, and dismissed when the project was completed. Moses is a part of that exaggerated story and, like Jesus, supernatural embellishments are the meat-and-potatoes of his biography too. We don't doubt Moses's existence because we can't find his chiseled-in-stone birth certificate; we doubt it because everything that is written about that existence invokes the Rule of Laplace: Extraordinary assertions must be supported by extraordinary evidence before we are obliged to treat them with respect. The original Hebrew name is יְהוֹשֻׁעַ , pronounced Ye-ho-shu-ah. It means "Yahweh delivers/rescues." The Greeks transcribed this name as Ἰησοῦς, transliterated Iesous and pronounced ye-SOOS. In Greek it's impossible to have an H in the middle of the word, so it vanished. Greek also lacks the phoneme we write as SH, so they changed it to S. I'm not quite sure why they added the S to the end of the name; perhaps to conform to the grammatical rules of their language. The Romans were already familiar with the name Yehoshuah. In vernacular speech the first H had already been elided so it became Yoshuah. The Romans wrote this as Joshua, since they used Y to transliterate Greek ypsilon, an umlauted vowel, whereas their J was the equivalent of our Y. I would have expected the Romans to use their own name Joshua. But for reasons I don't understand, they borrowed the Greek equivalent ye-SOOS, which they spelled phonetically as Jesus. Notice that in modern Spanish the accent is still on the second syllable. We anglophones moved the accent to the first syllable because: A) The coincidental ending -us makes it look like a normal Latin name and Latin names are not accented on the last syllable; and B) English is a Germanic language and we have a strong tendency to accent words on the first syllable. Aramaic was the common language of the Middle East in biblical times (and for almost two thousand years after). Aramaic is a Semitic language, closely related to Hebrew and Arabic, and the Aramaic version of this name is Yeshua. So to answer your question: Jesus, Iesous, Joshua, Yeshua and Yehoshuah are all different renderings of the same name in various languages. All of the extraordinary events in his life, which are unsupported by extraordinary evidence and therefore put us under no obligation to treat them with respect: the virgin birth, the walking on water, the loaves and the fishes, the resurrection, etc. The rude word for this kind of stuff is bullshit, but a more polite way to refer to it is a myth. This confers to it much more respect than it deserves, but still rejects all claims that it is literally true. Myths are metaphors, and as scholars are quick to point out, a metaphor lies halfway between a truth and a lie. The whole Bible. It is one long series of extraordinary assertions for which there is... not just no extraordinary evidence, but no respectable evidence of any kind at all! Sure, it contains bits of factual history, but the majority of it is metaphors, or simply fiction created by the storytellers of the various eras.
SAM your pictures are interesting. In the time of Mohamed I would believe there were no roads which we understand now. The distance between Medina and Elatt about 800 Km. that is a lon distance for Camel ride and If you were to conquest Levant first you might need a large number of man. So what is your view and what direction did Mohamed have taken to evangelize Islam ?
They used Arabian horses. And they travelled as an encampment. All men and women over the age of 15 could travel with the army. In those days, wars were not fought in the streets, they were fought in battlefields. So even though the Arabs were guerilla fighters, they would move as a camp not as a bunch of men, with tents and food and water probably from one Arab settlement to another. Also Muhammed did not evangelise outside the Arab tribes, although he invited all people to Islam. In his Medina declaration he defined the ummah as all people of the community, not just the Muslims. So his large number of men were actually the Arabs and other tribes which, at the time, were under Persian and Byzantine occupation. He recruited the local people where he went For 100 years after the Arabs reached Morocco, it was only the Arabs who were Muslims. The Levant began to adopt Islam much later after the first madrassa was established by a lady of Tunisian origin. see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spread_of_Islam
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! are you out of your mind? what about banu-quraydah and banu-qaynuqa and banu-annadir? kaybar and its battle? what about the different sieges and wars with or concerned with the jews and the plethora* of verified sahih hadiths about them? what about abdullah ibn salam? what about the jewish lady that poisoned the prophet? it is well known in the penensula's history that jews were a major power in medina, they controlled the weapons and gold shops and were the major (only?) supplier of them. they also had a lot of palm trees. each of the arabian tribes had an ally from the jewish tribes which helped them in their wars against each other, that's how the outnumbered jews stayed in business and made a living in medina, they were also the richest in it, AND they always bragged about the final prophet who will be revealed and who they'll follow to rule the world, bragged to the barbaric paganic illiterate desert nomads always killing each other and feeding their stone statues, their assumption that the final prophet would be jew was of course because all(most) prophets of the abrahamic faith were of isreali lineage, so you can imagine how they felt when the final prophet was chosen from the good for nothing nomads they always made fun of. anyway, jews are an important part of the arabian peninsula's history, i find it hard to believe you haven't come across them more than what you have mentioned in your linked post. arabian history without jew is well, like the animal kingdom without cats or dogs Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ------ *sahih al bukhari, i chose 3 different chapters, a,b,c, just press ctrl+f and type "jew".
Go on look it up. See the source and the year. The problem with the hadiths is that a verified hadith just tells you that the commentator is[are] verified. What tells you that the source is correct but what he said has no independent verification? Show me independent verification of the presence of Jewish tribes in Mecca and Medina. For example, did any of the Jews who travelled to Mecca from Jerusalem write about them? The Romans wrote about the Arabs so we know they lived there. Who wrote about Jews in Arabia besides Bukhari born 100 years after Mohammed died? ALL the sources come back only to this ONE man. How is that credible?\ The oldest documentary evidence of Yemenite Jews is from the 9th century. They are Hebrew Bibles with Masoretic introductions and Arabic commentaries. All evidence of Jews in Arabia proper come from after Mohammed reached the Levant Not saying that they were not there. Just saying that we have no evidence of it.
Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! the sources of a hadith are the prophet himself, i don't understand what you're saying. the book of al-bukhari has been published and preserved, in it is what i like to think of is applying the[a] scientific method to verify and filter the word of mouth accounts of the prophet's words and actions..what do you mean by independent verification? and there's something i think called "tawatur", in which something is proved for all practical purposes when the sources claiming it are alot and separate to be all decided to lie the same lie.
How did Bukhari meet the Prophet when he was born in Uzbekistan 100 years after Mohammed died? Also don't forget, Mohammed banned the collection of Hadith and so did the Rashidun. Bukhari only began collecting the Hadith after a short visit to Mecca when he was 16 - after all the Rashidun were dead and people once again began collecting Hadith - and most of his collection was collected outside Arabia from people in the Persian Empire. This is also before the sanad was codified much of which was done after the fact by Muslim and others. In fact, there is no evidence of any collection before 722 something interesting I read:
If Bukhari lived 100 years after Mohamed and he wrot Mohameds history we should not believe because he was not a contemporary of Mohamed , I think this is a wrong concept . A person that write have an opportunity to see several steps and analyse , while the contemporary writer mighr not have all the fact because he writes only a particular segment of the action of particular event in time.
Reading that "The" Prophet did this and "The" Prophet did that... is kind of comical. There simply is no evidence "The" Prophet even existed - let alone arguing he did this or that. Which is why all your "first hand" "witnesses" are a generation or more later. There's no sense going over that ground. What I would like to know is if there is ANY contemporary evidence at all that Khalid exited. All armies are paid, there'd have to be minted coins at the very least. As it stands, it seems more and more of the "glorious" Islamic battles were actually wars fought between Persians and Byzantine with the Persians names being Arabified and the stories re-written to suggest Arabs fought these wars. What we do have evidence of is the greatest plague known to mankind at that time decimating most cities in the middle east and near east. In some cases up to 80% of city populations were lost. Now, that did happen. Seems more a case of nomadic horsemen moving into cities or rebuilding nearby, creating yet another set of hero myths based on the classic Jesus-archetype. We also know the Star and Crescent were common Zorostrian symbols (now Islamic) and the word Mohammad was being used as a Title for Jesus PRE-ISLAM. Most people thinking clearly and not deluded by their own religious bias can add two and two. So, ANY contemporary evidence for Khalid? Surely he's not myth as well? Surely there's ample coinage as there is for all the other great military leaders from Egyptians, to Chinese, to Roman and Greek. Anything? Anything at all?
There's other forms of contemporary evidence. Coins being one of the most common. In the case of Egyptians, we even have their freaken bodies from 3500 years ago! We know various Chinese emperor's existed because, among other things, they minted coins: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Even the uncivilized nomadic Mongols living on the steps in tents, who drank horse blood and rode straight into battle on their third horse... minted war coins! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Get this, his DNA is in about 3% of the world population. NOW, this in interesting. I can't wait to find out if all these supposed "sons of Mohammad" have a genetic leg to stand on! Haaaa! Soon we'll be able to tell the year they were last related to a common ancestor Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Ohhhh THAT is going to be ssaaaweeet! So? Where are Khalid's coins? ANY contemporary evidence at all this person existed? Surely contemporary Persian and Byzantine historians would have all sorts of documents about this "great" general.
You are enjoying yourself good for you . But as for me, the teaching of Jesus is great for humanity on how to get along among us , even for me with the atheists .Atheists are a great challenge for the believers. As Jesus said and I paraphrase " when he comes back will he find many believers on the earth "
I asked: Is there contemporary evidence that Khalid (or Mohammad) existed. I didn't ask: Did they exist. See the difference? Sure, we can't "prove" the flying spaghetti monster (FSM), invisible pink unicorn (IPU), Zeus, Hercules, Mohammad, Jesus, Smurfs, Leprechauns, Pixie Fairies, Mosses, and all sorts and manner of bullshit .... do not exist. So, we instead ask is if there is any contemporary evidence such things existed. It's not at all surprising there's no evidence of Mohammad existed. What we do have are contemporary evidence in the form of Syrian coins using the word Mohammad as a Title for Christ, PRE-Islam. Unlike ANYTHING Islamic from that period, this actually does exist. You can touch it. It's good evidence that the word Mohammad later became a person. This isn't unusual at all. Title and Names are often interchangeable. Take the name Caesar. Used by numerous Emperors as a TITLE following Caesar. But, the word itself possibly mean "Hair" long before the General who popularized it or his family who used it. Note that the Qur'an has Christian stories mixed into it. This adds further evidence of being derived from a Christian sect. Any rational logical person can easily see the obvious. Asking me if evidence of my mother has been published in a peer reviewed archeological journal is not my question. I said: Is there any contemporary evidence of their existence (this would of course BE published in a journal). Although it doesn't have to be. That's one measure for validity. There's no point posting Islamic propaganda hence the reason why Scientists (this form) value the peer-review manuscript process. It weeds out most (not all) of the bullshit. Is there contemporary evidence for my mother's existence? Yes, she's still alive. You can speak to her. So, is there any contemporary evidence for Mohammad? No, there is not. What I would like to know is this: Is there any contemporary evidence for the existence of the "Great" Islamic military hero Khalid? I don't think so. Which is very interesting to me. Not that shocking, but interesting. It sort of makes sense. Actually, if you take a look at the middle east, it makes very good sense. If any people needed to make up a glorious "Islamic" Golden Age repeat with total "Islamic" history, a "perfect" God book, a "Perfect" prophet it'd be Arab Muslims. Without such mythology, they'd pretty much not have a history. Just nomadic people living off the scraps of truly great Empires like the Persians, Egyptians, Greeks or Romans. No wonder they attempted to emulate these nations great cultures with poorly understood facsimiles of their myths. In their rush to create an "Islamic" myth, they missed the central point in what made Christianity a powerful message. Forgiveness. Leaving them with a mix of nonsensical Bronze Age superstitions similar to what Jews used 1000 years earlier. Anyway, the nice thing about the truth, is it finds it's way into being known. I'm really looking forward to the day when DNA tests can show explicitly and mathematically that the hundreds and thousands sons of Mohammad (haa! I even know someone who thinks he's a descendant of Mohammad) all have no common ancestor from 1300 years ago Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Until then, any contemporary evidence for Khalid? Or was he made up bullshit as well Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! By the GODS that is sooooo funny! I mean, not even Khalid is real!!! Hahahahaahaa! Too funny. :roflmao:
haha... just thinking about it again, surely there's SOME contemporary evidence of the existence of Khalid? You can't wage war against two empires and not a single contemporary write about it. Especially the Greeks, they kept records of everything from numbers of olives eaten at dinner to great sagas. Not to mention the need for coinage to pay the army. It must be shocking to realize your entire foundation myth is just that, a myth. Actually, it's not all THAT shocking, some of the greatest Greek philosophers understood there were no Gods or Goddesses on Mount Olympus. Of course, the vast majority of people are quite simple (hence that term: simpletons) they didn't get it or they didn't want to get it. Much better to keep believing what they were taught to believe rather than question their belief. Much like the way most people today think.
michael's mom isn't real, because there are no coins from her era, then she couldn't've conceived michael, which i find interesting too :scratchin: haha haha that is soo funny i made a joke i think i should laugh haha :roflmao: oh scientific community! the joke michael is claiming Galileo doesn't exist, after all, the only coin with his face on it dates to 2009, hardly contemporary. kinda interesting, that galileo didn't exist.. time to abandon this idiocity michael and return to us a week later with a newer one..
Wow, this is a watertight argument, I guess your fairytale is real Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Here, let me restate a couple of things. (#1) Existence of contemporary evidence is just that. (1A) Coins are an EXAMPLE of #1 (1B) Existence of evidence is different than existence of the individual. (#2) This is a type of evidence (contemporary), it answers a question about the existence of evidence. Simple enough for you? Can you understand that much scifes? As for mother's: There IS contemporary evidence for my mother's existence. It does not have to take the form of a coin. Get this: There IS contemporary evidence for the WORD mohammad on a coin. The word mohammad is being used as a TITLE (noun) for another fictional character, Jesus. As of now, I've yet to see any contemporary evidence of Khalid. Think of it like this. Imagine Harry Potter (a fictional protagonist) was given the Wizardly Title of Triwizard (for winning a contest). Triwizard Harry Potter was minted a coin. A century and several generations later people are worshiping the word Triwizard as a person! Even to the point of murdering other people. That's Islam scifes. Now, imagine how messed up a society you'd create with such an idiotic foundation - as compared to, say, one based on Rational Thought (Greek Philosophy). OK, rational thought time over, go back to your fairytale. Triwizard (PBUH) pffff..... :roflmao:
What your logic about Manco Copac the founder of the Inca empire his descendent are Athaualpa and Huascar Do you think they are or were real. ?
