Why were some alleged miracle-workers credible and others not? And why --
-- why was Jesus Christ the most credible, even though he violated the norms for credibility?
I could post pages citing the linkage between Jesus and Judaism. But let me cite this one verse that is in all 3 Synoptic Gospels (and 2 others)
Mat 22:31-32: But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God: 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
&
Matt 24:37 (Luke 17:36) "For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah…
&
Matt 5:17 “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. 18 For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not [h]the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished”
Of course there are such quotes attributed to Jesus in the gospels, which he may or may not have said. We don't know which quotes are really from him and which ones not.
However, in all the healing miracle stories of him, he is never quoted as performing his miracle healing acts in the name of
Yahweh or
Moses or
Elijah or
Elisha etc. He did not invoke any such names in his miracle acts.
But by contrast, all the reported miracles of
Joseph Smith were done by him in the name of Jesus Christ, who was invoked by him every time. Likewise all the modern faith-healers do their healing acts in the name of Jesus, though there are a few Eastern mystics who invoke other ancient gods like
Krishna. E.g.,
Sai Baba, who had a reputation for doing miracles and who enjoyed a very long career of winning disciples with his charisma.
Also, the ancient healing miracles at the
Asclepius temples were done in the name of the god Asclepius, never by a recent miracle-worker acting on his own, a "free-lancer" as it were. They all invoked the name of the ancient healing god. There were also some other pagan gods invoked by the healers, but Asclepius was by far the most common.
So it's not that Jesus is unconnected to any ancient deity -- obviously he is put into the Jewish tradition of the land where he carried on his mission, and he is quoted citing Moses and others, but never naming them as the source for his miracle healing acts or doing these in their name, as in the case of Joseph Smith and all other reputed faith-healers. So we know these practitioners have always relied upon the already-existing traditions of the ancient healing gods, invoking them by name, without which their followers would not have believed in them.
So again, no one would have believed Joseph Smith had he not named Jesus as the source for his power or claim to be able to heal. He would not have acquired miracle healing stories in his reputation and his new religion would not have attracted followers had he not invoked by name the ancient faith healing tradition.
It's true that at least some of the earlier Jewish ideas are artificially added to him. Jews put words into his mouth, based on the Hebrew Bible, probably. But also Greeks put some words into his mouth. So it's not just the Tanakh tradition the writers tried to connect him to. So the later writers were not a united single group, but were different or separate cliques, each giving their particular interpretation in contrast to the other groups.
And we cannot easily separate out the part which Jesus really said vs. the part put into his mouth by the later writers. All that is conjecture, and yet one must try to do this separating of the original from the later.
You could reasonably argue that anywhere from 2% to 98% of the "teachings of Jesus" were really words put into his mouth by later Christian writers. I.e., Jewish and Hellenistic writers.
Well, at the upper end of your own estimated insertions, it pretty much deep sixes any point you are trying to make…
No, the point is that Jesus did perform the miracle healing acts, regardless whether he said any or all of the words attributed to him in the gospel accounts. Even if he did not say one word of it, the evidence is that he did perform those acts, and the words must have been added by others who used him as a mouthpiece for their teachings. But he probably did say some of it.
But the main point here is that he did not attribute his healing acts to earlier healing gods, as the other reputed faith-healers always did and still do today.
WHY was Jesus "written up" to promote earlier (Jewish/Greek) teachings, traditions, BS, etc.?
There is nothing about this that contradicts the miracle stories. Rather, it's precisely his power, demonstrated in the miracle acts, which explains the attention he attracted and his becoming an object of theologizing and mythologizing by later writers who put words into his mouth.
That Jesus performed the miracle acts explains WHY he "was written up" by later Jews and Hellenists to promote their teachings. Without those miracle acts, it's difficult or impossible to explain why they did this. Why didn't they put those words into John the Baptizer's mouth, e.g.? There were many celebrated prophets and wise men and rabbis of the time into whose mouths they could have put their teachings. Jesus was less famous in 30 AD than a number of others who would have been more appropriate as mouthpieces for these writers.
And, if Jesus performed NO miracles, as you assume he didn't, then he was probably less famous than these other possible mouthpieces even as late as 40 and 50 AD. Even 60 AD. Without those miracle acts he did as the explanation, there is no way to account for this epidemic among so many writers to use Jesus as their mouthpiece instead of someone else. Can you name JUST ONE other 1st-century figure who was used as a mouthpiece by so many diverse writers? How do you explain why they all wanted just this one person to be speaking their teachings? What did he do to gain this widespread recognition? recognition even from different crusaders who hated each other and would have killed each other in some cases?
What explains how he so suddenly became the widely-celebrated Teacher to whom everyone wanted to attribute their ideas? (hint: he did something the others did not do -- What was it? hint: it starts with the letter "m")
Back to your hobby horse I see. Why did LDS blossom and grow at a rate like the initial spread of Christianity?
Non-sequitur. No one has made Joseph Smith the mouthpiece for their religious teachings like so many writers from 70-300 AD (and later) made Jesus their mouthpiece.
There are millions of reasons why a new religion grows fast. That's not the point. What's different here is that everyone wanted to adopt this Jesus person as the mouthpiece for their philosophy, and there's virtually no other example of such a thing --
virtually no other. We do see some of this in the case of a few famous prophets/gurus, like
Confucius,
Socrates,
Buddha. All of whom had long careers in which they became widely-reputed celebrities.
But there's only a tiny few examples of such cases where a prophet/teacher is used as a mouthpiece by later writers. And in the case of Jesus this was happening in less than 100 years from his life, and by multiple writers, which is a singular case. And also in this case the one used as a mouthpiece had a public career of only 3 years or less, which sets him way apart from any other example you can offer of a revered prophet/guru used by later writers as a mouthpiece for their words.
Why did the LDS flourish while the Church of Christ, Scientist has floundered? Why did Hinduism become the 3rd largest faith in the world, and Jainism barely make a dent? Why has the Christian faith stalled over the last century; and sagging as a percent of the world population?
Irrelevant to anything. There are millions of reasons why one religion spreads faster than others. What's unique about Jesus is that everyone wanted him to be their mouthpiece. And no one can explain why. Even less than 100 years from his life he was being quoted saying the gnostic and rabbinical and apocalyptic teachings, which had nothing to do with each other. And yet during his life he was not famous or very influential (except very locally), like all the others who were famous celebrities during their lifetime.
John the Baptizer had a few words put into his mouth (maybe he really said them -- we don't know), but there are so very few other examples of this.
The question is: Why did so many writers do this with Jesus? And the best answer: They believed (or many believed) that he had power which he demonstrated in those miracle acts, and this gave authority to anything he said. So if you put your words into his mouth, your words were given authority they wouldn't have otherwise.
So it's further evidence that he did the miracle acts. Or that so many believed he did, and yet they didn't believe anyone else did such acts or showed any such power. What other person was used this way by crusaders, putting their words into his mouth because he was recognized as an authority?
. . . even though you admit that the Deluge, Joshua’s day the sun stood still, the Exodus, et.al. are largely BS.
Even if those stories are not literally true, this in no way undermines the credibility of the Jesus miracle stories as literally true. There are plenty of true and false stories. You can't condemn all of them as fiction simply because some appear to be fiction. If you do that consistently, you have to throw out all our historical facts as fiction.
Yeah, in fact it does undermine Christian theology.
It does not undermine the miracle stories in the gospel accounts. That one particular claim is lacking evidence does not disprove another claim for which there is evidence, even if there's a similarity between the 2 claims.
But there's probably much in the various "Christian theology" doctrines you can find fault with, though not because of earlier dubious miracle legends. These don't undermine other unrelated claims or beliefs.
If earlier miracle fictions in the record cast doubt onto the later reports of events, then your logic results in tossing out ALL claims about any past events, or at least about any ancient history events, because some such claims in the ancient documents are false, and by your reasoning that undermines ALL of them.
Now you have built up this custom MHORC quasi-Christian theology to try and get away from the tons of problems.
I've only "built up" the Jesus miracle acts as real events in history, or as real acts which he did 2000 years ago, and am not emphasizing much "theology" here.
You haven't presented any "problems" to worry about. Rather, with your repeated gaffs which would force us to throw out all our history books, it appears you have "problems" you keep tripping over and can't "get away from" -- Why don't you work on it and quit imposing criteria on the writings which would require us to reject all the historical record and not just the gospel accounts? You haven't been able to get away from that problem so far.
You acknowledge that the miracle birthing narratives are most probably BS. “But hey pay no attention to all that, but believe the miracle max part, cuz I like that part”.
There are good reasons to believe the miracle healing accounts, and the resurrection, but not the virgin birth story. Why do we have to lump them all together and give them equal credibility? There's nothing wrong with believing that for which there is evidence, but disbelieving the part that lacks evidence or is contradicted by evidence.
You keep saying this, but it doesn’t make it any more true… They are lumped together because it comes in a big package that most people call Christian theology.
Nothing says we have to believe everything in the package just because someone has "lumped" it all together and called it "theology" or other designation.
"Christian theology" has so much stuff in it that any Christian you can name rejects some of it. There are obviously some Christians who do not believe literally the virgin-birth story.
It doesn't matter who believes it or whether it's part of someone's "Christian theology" or if it's in the catechism or creed. All that matters is how much evidence there is for it.
Without the earlier Yahweh tradition, there could have never been the Jesus cult tradition….
This makes no more sense than saying: Without the earlier
Apollo tradition, there could never have been a
Socrates tradition. Or: Without the earlier Romulus & Remus tradition, there could never have been a Caesar Augustus tradition, or a Cicero tradition.
You can't just take any two names or events happening in the same geographical region and proclaim that the later of the two could never have existed without the existence of the earlier one.
That is just nuts! The Christian sect clearly emerged out of the Judaic faith.
S E C T
S -- plural. There were MANY of these sects/cults, not just one.
The first Christ believers were people at the same place where he was -- obviously. It was a land where Judaism was the main religion, so those followers of Jesus were Jews. Had he made his appearance somewhere else on the planet, who knows what religion would have got attached to him!
In India they would have made him a Hindu Avatar, probably a reincarnation of Krishna. In Egypt, perhaps they would have made him into another Osiris. In Mexico he would have been identified as that Quetzal-something-or-other, or Son of Quetzalquotzl, etc. (don't check my spelling).
If he really did those miracle acts, any place he made his appearance would have adopted him as Son of their ancient deity, and so on. They would have put their words into his mouth and spread the "good news" of salvation to the current and future generations, making him a great Teacher of their ancient traditions, and creating a Church of some kind with rituals and liturgy etc., combining the old symbols/traditions with new elements based on his life and deeds.
There is nothing in the Judaic tradition to explain the outburst of miracle healing stories in the New Testament. This happened at a time when there was no such thing happening in Judaism. The
Dead Sea Scrolls and virtually all the
Jewish literature after I-II Kings has virtually nothing in it about any healing miracles. Or about a resurrection of a historical person -- someone killed and coming back to life. It's impossible to explain how these events, or claims or stories of such things, suddenly pop up in the Jewish tradition, out of nowhere.
You don’t happen to be reincarnated from a follower of Marcion?
No, but maybe of some other similar heretic, and one totally forgotten.
There were many other variant Christ cults than this one. Marcion became famous/notorious because he was wealthy and could afford to publish his version of the gospel, but there were many others. Those ideas did not originate from him. Others had said similar things earlier, but Marcion had the means to promote the ideas on a grand scale.
But we can say correctly that the LDS tradition could never have existed without the earlier Jesus tradition, because everything the LDS religion teaches is explicitly based on the Jesus of the gospels, or is an extension of this. Joseph Smith in his writings, and in his Book of Mormon, names Jesus Christ as the Son of God who performs the miracle acts he (JS) is credited with. He connects himself to the Jesus tradition, despite being thousands of miles away from where the Jesus events happened.
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But the only connection of Jesus to "Yahweh" is the close geographical proximity, so that those encountering Jesus were inheritors of the "Yahweh" tradition, and so their explanation of Jesus contains some of their "Yahweh" language or symbolism. Jesus did not perform his healing acts in the name of Yahweh or any other earlier god. No such expressed connection to an earlier belief system was the basis for his miracle acts.
Uh, can you share some of those shrooms? Well in most versions of the Christian faith, Jesus is part of that Trinitarian god-head, so of course he wouldn’t need to heal in the name of Yahweh/Lord/Father.
What you're saying is only about later Christian believers and has nothing to do with how Jesus became a reputed miracle-worker in the 1st century. The question is how the belief in his miracle power happened in the first place, sometime from 30-60 AD, when he was not a famous celebrity and there was not a centuries-old religious tradition to produce a popular belief in him and create fiction miracle stories, such as was the case for all other miracle legends.
By contrast, the miracle legend
Elijah/Elisha required 300 years to evolve and become recorded in I-II Kings. Or the
Apollonius of Tyana legend which evolved over 150 years before being written down in about 220 AD, many generations after the celebrity hero's life.
The only reputed miracle events we know of, from any of the literature or evidence (like inscriptions), were those performed in the name of an ancient deity, with
Asclepius being the foremost example. There were priests at the temples who invoked the name of Asclepius, and without this there would have been no credibility and no alleged miracle event. Over many centuries this tradition had evolved, based on some ancient myths, so that it became a widespread cult with millions of worshipers. That's the only way healing gods had any credibility.
There was no such thing as an instant miracle-worker-healer popping up and doing such acts and being taken seriously, except practitioners who invoked an ancient healing deity, generally practicing the established rituals for that deity. Of course there were charlatans here and there, but virtually nothing about them is preserved, in contrast to Asclepius, because their following was too small for them to get notice. Because people did not believe in instant miracle-workers.
The best way to explain the Jesus case, which is an exception, is that the described miracle acts really did happen, and it was this which brought him the favorable attention, whereas the usual way to gain credibility was to be a priest at a temple of Asclepius and perform the standard ancient rituals. And in this way some alleged "healings" did take place and were recorded.
Joseph Smith never claimed to be a god/demigod, so your point is pointless.
He claimed to be a miracle healer, and he based this on the ancient Jesus miracle stories, healing in the name of Jesus, and this brought him credibility. This wins followers/believers even if no healing really takes place, because of the popular centuries-old tradition. Just like today's televangelist healers perform their acts by invoking the Jesus name and winning believers, whether the victim prayed for recovers or not. The followers believe anyway, because of the popular tradition, and of course the evangelist's charisma is a necessary part in combination with the ancient popular miracle tradition. That's what JS did -- not claiming to be a god, but invoking the ancient Jesus tradition, and having the necessary charisma.
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