Heartland

There is apparently valid scriptural backing to the SSPX quote; Matthew's gospel in particular places blame for the crucifiction on the Jews, while ironically being composed at least in part from midrash of the Septuagint.

You're making a rather hefty assumption about the gospel accounts; none of them are first-hand eyewitness testimony. Matthew and Luke are both expanded versions of Mark (incorporating some material in common, a hypothetical lost source document known as 'Q') and they were all written in Greek.

The Suetonius account isn't quite as persuasive as you make out http://earlychristianwritings.com/suetonius.html Most Christians prefer Josephus, even if his testimony is... problematic. No Jew would say of Jesus, "he was the Messiah"?

I do see your point about the importance of church unity.

I'm just taking the Bible as literal for the sake of the debate!=P But for every Scriptural reference, there's something in the Apocrypha that contradicts it, or tells a totally different story.
Am sure my copy of "Lives of the Caesars" said he was crucified! Again, translations differ, but I doubt something like that would just be an error, I must have misread it. I was only reading it in hope of graphic orgy descriptions anyway! In fact, I'm pretty sure Suetonius was born nearly seventy years after Christ's death anyway, so even he's just hearsay.

Fair enough

Yep, I think Suetonius is about 70AD to 150AD off the top of my head.

markfiend wrote:The Suetonius account isn't quite as persuasive as you make out http://earlychristianwritings.com/suetonius.html Most Christians prefer Josephus, even if his testimony is... problematic. No Jew would say of Jesus, "he was the Messiah"?

Tacitus is usually cited too although, from memory, his account is a little vaguer than many would like to think.

markfiend wrote:Fair enough

Yep, I think Suetonius is about 70AD to 150AD off the top of my head.

Which means that the only one of the Caesars he could have written about with any real first hand knowledge was Domitian. And he's considered authoritative! He does a complete hatchet job on Nero, yet by other accounts Nero was personally popular with the people.
Bit unrelated, but it sounds a lot like the smearing of Richard of York's name. People get the whole deformed villain caricature from the works of Sir Thomas Moore who had to be about five when Richard died, and was writing for the Tudor family. By other accounts Richard was popular with the people and extremely liberal,brave and loyal.

DeWinter wrote:...Bit unrelated, but it sounds a lot like the smearing of Richard of York's name. People get the whole deformed villain caricature from the works of Sir Thomas Moore who had to be about five when Richard died, and was writing for the Tudor family. By other accounts Richard was popular with the people and extremely liberal, brave and loyal.

Whilst we often have serious differences in political outlook (I just stay out of the melee ), I tip my hat to you. Another Yorkist - yay!!!

7anthea7 wrote: Whilst we often have serious differences in political outlook (I just stay out of the melee ), I tip my hat to you. Another Yorkist - yay!!!

I'm an extremely partisan Yorkist! Anyone who mentions Richard in a derogatory way gets a very stern and doubtless tedious historical lecture!

A lot of the popular image of Richard III of course comes from Shakespeare.

Edit: Did he nick it from Moore then?

markfiend wrote:A lot of the popular image of Richard III of course comes from Shakespeare.

Edit: Did he nick it from Moore then?

Yep, pretty much. People take Moore's version as given based rather more on the kind of man he was, rather than evidence. He can't have even seen Richard, never mind known him well enough to critique his charachter. So his information must have come from someone else, probably his work is a tarting up of a former authors work, influenced by his loyalty to the Tudor's.

And Shakespeare's play would (probably) have been written under a Tudor monarch.

markfiend wrote:A lot of the popular image of Richard III of course comes from Shakespeare.

Edit: Did he nick it from Moore then?

Bollocks..Everyone's image of Richard da third comes from the history of one Edmund Blackadder..


baaaaaaaaaaay

markfiend wrote:A lot of the popular image of Richard III of course comes from Shakespeare.

Edit: Did he nick it from Moore then?

Nope. Like most of Shakespeare's histories, his source is reckoned to be Holinshed. But you're right about it being written under a Tudor monarch ie Elizabeth I.