Interesting Links for 3-1-2011

[andrewducker]

• The joy of making model aircraft
  (tags: toys funny)
• UN defends human right to WikiLeaked info.
  (tags: wikileaks un)
• What Could Have Been Entering the Public Domain on January 1, 2011 if 1977 copyright laws were still in effect.
  (tags: copyright law culture publicdomain publishing)
• The New Year's resolutions of various tech companies. I love Apple's.
  (tags: technology funny)
• New clues uncover how 'starvation hormone' connects insulin, fat levels and cancer.
  (tags: hormones health fat insulin diabetes)
• Why Star Wars is not Entertainment (although it sure as hell entertained me).
  (tags: scifi sf starwars movies)
• Women working in technology discuss whether they would recommend the profession to other women.
  (tags: career feminism work computers technology)
• The Female Character Flowchart
  (tags: feminism)
• Bill Sienkiewicz speaks about Big Numbers #3
  (tags: BillSienkiewicz alanmoore comics)
• Good Lord, government ministers want stable house prices. Altogether too sensble.
  (tags: housing uk government)
• Microsoft not allowing NES emulator on WP7 phones - this kind of thing is why I won't be getting one.
  (tags: mobile_phones microsoft censorship)
• Calories, fat or carbohydrates? The problems with current diet studies
  (tags: science health food diet nutrition research)
• Jesus not actually related to Mithras (or Horus, or Dionysus).
  (tags: religion christianity jesus)

Comments

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

Historical records kept by the Romans themselves strongly suggest that a mass crucifixion to put down potential revolt was Pilate's standard practice.

Hence the following rewrite of what was the more-likely way that scene would've played out. (Granting, of course, that there was an historical Jesus which is a debatable issue.*)

TEMPLE PRIEST: Governor, we seem to have a problem with a heretic.

PONTIUS PILATE: Well, that's your problem more than mine, isn't it?

TP: Not really. I mean he once bust into the Temple and started trashing the place, preaching up a storm about the moneychangers and corruption and such.

PP: Your silly doctrines are not my problem so long as you don't make them Rome's problem. I'll put a stop to rabble-rousing in temples, though. That's nasty business.

TP: It gets worse. He's even claiming to be our people's chosen leader who will free us from bondage.

PP: Preaching rebellion, eh? [pounds desk] Not on my watch; I'll nail the bastard to the wall for that.

-- Steve suspects that his rewrite won't go over too well in certain circles.

*Myself, I think it's entirely possible that there may have been a Jeshua ben Joseph, carpenter's son turned radical rabbi, in the area at the time and maybe even crucified for acts against Rome. However, there are no supporting documents for this; no census record indisputably lists him, and there is no record of his execution.

I do think that Biblical texts tend to overemphasise how important such a person would be in a Roman province, and that much of the vitriol around the crucifixion reflects more the schism between early Christians and mainstream Jewish faith than anything else. One more support for the "Bible as fanfic" argument, I guess.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Granting, of course, that there was an historical Jesus which is a debatable issue.
You do realise this isn't a position supported by scholars, right? And by that I mean conservative and liberal Christians, other theists, agnostics, and atheists...

There are only a handful of people who support this hypothesis and their methods and conclusions are not well regarded in academia. Quoting from the relevant Wikipedia article:

More recently, arguments for non-historicity have been discussed by George Albert Wells, Earl Doherty (The Jesus Puzzle, 1999), Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy (The Jesus Mysteries) and Robert M. Price and the idea has been popularized in the early 21st century by some of the writers like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, representing the New Atheism movement.

The scholarly mainstream not only rejects the myth thesis, but identifies serious methodological deficiencies in the approach. As such, New Testament scholar James Dunn describes the mythical Jesus theory as a "thoroughly dead thesis".