Pope puts stress on 'gay threat'

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Nothing Jesus did was open armed rebellion. Nothing he did was a direct threat to Roman rule. Think about who else got crucified. Thieves and murderers. To the Roman view, he was no worse and no better than low criminal scum. If he appears on any lists of executed criminals, it would be as a footnote, and little else.

Consider the volume it is wriiten in. The Bible as we know it existed only afterwards, and was scribed by those who saw Jesus' actions as important, and would emphasise events to prove their point about their religion. A seemingly insignificant event TO A ROMAN would and did lead to situations which changed the nature of the empire at a fundamental level.

you're right. preventing the baby constantine from taking power after his christian mother's influence would have effected all history....a careless small oversight that changed all of history.

He was never actually a member of the Nazi Party. Just part of the Hitler Youth and only because it was compulsory back then.

I have volumes on my shelves of accounts written by men and women serving in the armed forces dating back to the turn of the century. These accounts describe events that would be termed "supernatural". Sightings of ghost bombers, or ghost legions, of unexplained phenomena often as not occurring on or around top secret military areas. I used to live in a town that held an RAF Bomber Command base, with several accompanying tales of supernatural events. A commonality of many of these accounts is the fact that serving personnel often fail to report such events to their superiors, for fear of ridicule, or even the threat of being sectioned, or cashiered, or otherwise removed from duty because their tales were so very odd, unusual, or just insane. Consider this: You are a Legionary on night duty, guarding some street corner of Jerusalem. The body of a saint "appears unto you".. in other words a dead man is shambling around. Assuming for a minute you even relate it to a supernatural event, what exactly do you put into your report to the Decurion in the morning? You abandoned your post because a jewish ghost chased you away? That sounds like the fast way to the stockade.

Some things are considered unbelievable, and officialdom through the ages will fail to believe or record it.

You're likening Wikipedia to the Bible?

And yes, I do trust the Bible. That's where I get most of my unsubstantiated claims. The Bible first and WrongPlanet second.

Are you claiming that these men did always see what they thought they saw? do you think their commanding officers would have been wrong to disbelieve them? is it simply a case that you credit every outlandish story you ever hear, or is it just the bible stories?

& regardless, I think it's very wrongheaded to assume a roman decurion would have the same attitude to reports of dead rising from their graves as a british raf officer of the 20th century.

I'm saying that, while very imperfect, wikipedia is a better source of factual information than the bible.

Its users? You mean its writers.

And it was around long before HTML.

Right, right. This is true.

Anyone can edit Wikipedia 'cause it's an online document. It's infinitely malleable because it has no physical substance. It's electrons.

And the Bible, though it does contain truth, was not meant as a textbook or compendium of facts. Fact and truth are not quite the same thing.

And I think that military men of any age are liable to think that the reporter is going to have been in his cups all night when he comes out with balls like that. What I am saying is that I see no reason why any of this would have been recorded by the Romans in a manner which would make it recognisable to someone searching for Biblical verification. How many "supernatural" events appear in Roman military records exactly? Are these detailed military records liberally festooned with ghosties and ghoulies and long-leggety beasties?

There are several base fallacies at work here.
1) That records were never made. Perhaps they did, or do exist, but 2000 years of history could easily have lost or destroyed them.
2) That the events described about Jesus were noted by, or considered noteworthy by the record-keepers. Maybe they saw them, maybe they didn't. Maybe they noted it as something other than "son of god, odd behaviour and miracles ascribed to.."
3) That the events as described in the Bible are an accurate record of events as they occurred. Human hands have been at work in that book for a long time, and it has passed through many translations and arguments to reach its current state.
4)That the Romans would think something "miraculous" or whatever. Perhaps to them, undead jews were a fact of life so normal that they thought it un-notable?

And I make no claim that supernatural events witnessed by anyone are "real" or not, in any era, nor espouse any belief in either way. I'm just pointing out a fact. Our collection of Roman records is incomplete. Just because we dont have the bit that says "I saw Jesus" (or just because he never made it into the records) does not automatically prove that the whole thing is utter s**t, which I believe was the original line of contention. "The Romans didnt record it so it cant have happened."

prove it.

A series of events like Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet may not be factual in that no such persons or families may have ever existed, but the story speaks volumes to the truth of the human condition. It's true to life, though not factual. Get it?

Here's another one: Sameness and equality are not quite the same.

so you're equating the bible to fiction that has a moral somewhere in it once you've filtered out all the crap (or do you think slave pricing is still relevant?).

Depends how much he pays for his slaves, I suppose.

The best slaves in life are free.

And the safeword is always "banana."