You know the evidence for the miracles of Jesus. So how about Zeus? Perseus? Horus? Joseph Smith? etc.
This time span of 20 + years, maybe 40 or 50, is close enough to the original events to be just as reliable as much of what we rely on for our historical accounts that we accept. Most of the historical record that we possess is from sources/authors separated from the actual events by a similar time span, and longer. This does not undermine their credibility. A proper critical or skeptical approach is taken toward them all. The accounts for the words and deeds of Jesus should be accepted on the same basis as for other historical events.
Some theologians date John as far out as 120AD. The earliest near complete copies of the Gospels we have are 200 – 300 years after the events.
In any case, the manuscripts we have for the gospel accounts are closer to the original events than those for other historical events. The time gap separating the existing copies from the original events is no reason to doubt their reliability.
If being close to events made things truer, then Islam should be very seriously considered, as the oldest extant copy comes in just 40 years after Muhammad’s death.
What events of Muhammad's time reported in those documents should we question? Do they make claims that are not credible? We're talking about reported events that someone rejects as not being factual. Like the miracles of Jesus in the gospel accounts.
We are quite confident that Joseph Smith penned the Book of Mormon, so here is another great contender based upon this notion of credibility of document proximity.
Do you mean that the events reported in the Book of Mormon are more believable than those reported in the Gospel accounts? I don't think those reported events were near to the time of Joseph Smith or that he had any sources about those events. I'm not sure what analogy you're drawing between the Book of Mormon and its content and the Gospel accounts and their content.
The comparison I'm pointing out is to other examples of reported miracle events. In all the other cases, like Gautama and Apollonius and Simon Magus, the time gap between the events in question and the written record of them is large, even centuries.
We are quite confident that Joseph Smith penned the Book of Mormon, so here is another great contender based upon this notion of credibility of document proximity.
Do you mean that the events reported in the Book of Mormon are more believable than those reported in the Gospel accounts? I don't think those reported events were near to the time of Joseph Smith or that he had any sources about those events. I'm not sure what analogy you're drawing between the Book of Mormon and its content and the Gospel accounts and their content.
The comparison I'm pointing out is to other examples of reported miracle events. In all the other cases, like Gautama and Apollonius and Simon Magus, the time gap between the events in question and the written record of them is large, even centuries.
You find the generation of miracle stories within 3 decades compelling and an anomaly, whereas most others here do not.
It increases the likelihood that the reported event is true, because it becomes more difficult to explain it as fiction. All the cases of fictional miracle legends we know of are ones which took a long time (generations or centuries) to develop, and/or centered on a widely-known celebrity figure, not an unknown person of no status such as Jesus in 30 AD.
Why can't you cite a miracle story (prior to 1000 or 1500 AD) which appeared suddenly, in less than 50 or 100 years after the alleged miracle took place? All miracle stories which appear in writing occurred a LONG TIME AFTER the alleged miracle took place.
Why is this not significant?
The only possible exception to this is that of a famous celebrity, such as Vespasian, or high-status public figure with a long career, and upon this background he might have become mythologized even during his lifetime.
For others it is generally centuries later, or maybe 100-150 years later. This is a definite pattern. The case of Jesus in the gospels is the only exception to this pattern. No one seems to be able to name another exception. This is not something subjective, apparent to some but not to others, but is a fact. You can keep denying it, but your denial means nothing unless you can cite a case of another reputed miracle-worker who did not have the benefit of the long time gap or the benefit of having a widely-recognized celebrity status.
How Jesus is uniquely different than all other reported miracle-workers
Again, so it's clear, there are these two points which separate the reputed Jesus miracles from all the other examples: 1) the timing and 2) the status of the reported miracle-worker:
1) the time gap between the written account and the actual event, which is generally several generations or even centuries, or a lengthy time span separating the actual event from the eventual written report of it; and
2) the status of the mythic hero or miracle-worker, who is generally someone of wide repute, a celebrity, a person of great power or influence. In the case of a highly-recognized celebrity the 1st factor, the time span, might be less, so that the hero's celebrity status helps to promote the mythologizing factor and shorten the time lapse between the alleged miracle event and the later report about it, so that maybe a miracle story could emerge earlier.
The miracle stories you can name are all cases of this mythologizing process that requires many generations or centuries to emerge, or in a few cases involves a recognized public figure with a widespread reputation, in which case the miracle legends emerge in a shorter time span, e.g., less than 100 years.
(Admittedly, this applies mainly to accounts far back, 1000+ years ago, and less clearly to more modern examples, because of the changes in modern publishing technology.)
If you can't explain how the miracle legends evolved as fiction, then you have to consider the explanation that they really did happen and are not fiction.
Thus
the Jesus miracle stories are not in the same category as those of Zeus and Horus and Perseus and so on, in which cases the distance from the alleged actual event explains how a miracle story emerged even though it is fictitious. It is not true that people believed in miracle fictions that were only just invented and the mythic hero was a new character without a widespread public image.
The case of Jesus, whose reported miracle acts happened in about 30 AD and for whom we have written accounts 30-50 years later, is a jarring disruption of the pattern of miracle legends throughout those many centuries. Why is he the ONLY example of a break from this pattern?
It is not true that people simply believed any miracle claim that was made. Over time such legends could emerge, but they could not emerge in a short time period, with the possible exception of a famous celebrity, like Vespasian, who established his reputation by means of a long career. If it were possible for a non-famous figure to become mythologized into a miracle worker in a short time period, we would have examples, and yet there are none. Name one if you think there are any such cases. (I.e., other than the example of Jesus, who was not a famous celebrity in 30 AD.)
The miracle stories come with so much garnish (BS) that your main course notion is hardly noticeable. I find it far more likely that we have a 2 stage initiation of this mythos via 2 charismatic l leaders, something along the lines of Smith-Young. I find it telling that this purported miracle worker seemed to have left so little impact in Judea, even though various tales have thousands of witnesses. Jesus feeds 5,000 men (many assume the total would be much higher with women and children). He purportedly had a triumphant entry into Jerusalem with the multitude throwing down cloaks and palms down before him. So over this 1-3 years, Jesus left so little of a personal local impact that the growth in this new cult came in what is now modern-day Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Syria, Caesarea and Rome.
The sudden growth of the new Christ cult(s), especially
outside Judea and Galilee, is best explained by the fact that this Jesus Christ person
actually did perform the miracle acts described in the gospel accounts. It's not that the cult(s) grew slowly in Judea that is remarkable, but that they grew so fast far away from Judea.
A new cult usually grows fast because of the charisma of its guru. But this fascination with the guru is something that is appreciated only locally, where the guru is preaching to his disciples. But Jesus was eliminated too soon for his charisma to take hold on his disciples and inspire them to action (assuming he had charisma).
Rather, it must have been the REPORTS about Jesus, rather than his direct physical presence, that took hold on people and inspired the emergence of new communities of believers far from the original location where the "founder" instituted the new cult. These
reports, both oral and written, could have spread far beyond Judea and Galilee and made their impact on those far-away who were searching or hoping for "good news" such as the new Christ cult(s) were disseminating.
These would likely be reports of his miracle acts, as opposed to reports about his wonderful charisma or good looks or other personal attractions that would leave an impact only on direct listeners.
In post 211 you wrongly introduce Tacitus and Suetonius as witnesses to Jesus healing, . . .
No, it was the two alleged miracle healings of
Vespasian they report, nothing about the Jesus miracles. The point of mentioning this was to contrast this example of healing stories with that of Jesus. There are only these 2 accounts of the Vespasian alleged miracles, and the accounts are at least 50 years later than the actual event, if it happened.
More important, we can easily explain how the Vespasian story could have got started, being that he was a famous celebrity who already had a widespread public image, thus bringing special attention to him and leading to a mythologizing phenomenon. So the stories can easily be explained as fiction, in contrast to the miracle reports about Jesus, which cannot easily be explained as fiction.
. . . and Tacitus witness his prosecution and his execution.
No, he REPORTED it, did not
witness it. The vast majority of what Tacitus reports, as in the case of virtually all historians, consists of events way before their time, like 50 years or more. It is rare that we have historical accounts of events directly witnessed by the historian reporting them.
Tacitus wasn’t born until 56AD, 2 decades after the events. His citation is from 116AD. Suetonius wasn’t born until 69AD, over 3 decades after the events. These 2 men are witnesses to the existence of Christians and Christian stories, not Jesus. This does help the notion that something akin to the modern-day Gospels were in circulation at the start of the 2nd century.
And the growth rate is no more impressive than those funny Mormons:
http://commonsenseatheism.com/?p=95
The math is pretty simple. Let’s do it ourselves. We need two numbers: a early starting count of Christians and a count around 300 C.E. Here’s Rodney Stark writing about the starting number:
For a starting number, Acts 1:14-15 suggests that several months after the Crucifixion there were 120 Christians. Later, in Acts 4:4, a total of 5,000 believers is claimed. And, according to Acts 21:20, by the sixth decade of the first century there were “many thousands of Jews” in Jerusalem who now believed. These are not statistics. Had there been that many converts in Jerusalem, it would have been the first Christian city, since there probably were no more than twenty thousand inhabitants at this time… As Hans Conzelmann noted, these numbers are only “meant to render impressive the marvel that here the Lord himself is at work” [1973:63]. Indeed, as Robert M. Grant pointed out, “one must always remember that figures in antiquity… were part of rhetorical exercises”.
<snip>
So let’s say there were only 1,000 Christians by the year 40, a full decade after Jesus’ death.
As for the ending number, at 300 C.E., historians have made many estimates, usually around 5-8 million.
So, Christianity may have grown from about 1,000 believers in 40 C.E. to about 5-8 million in 300 C.E. – just 260 years. That would require a growth rate of 40% per decade…
<snip>
That really is tremendous growth. Now we can ask, does this kind of growth require mass conversions?
As it turns out, this matches almost exactly the growth rate of the Mormon church over the past century. Mormonism has grown at 43% per decade, and without mass conversions.
Exponential growth explains the explosion of Christianity perfectly.
No, the "explanation" and the thing "explained" have to be two different things. What explains the "growth" or "explosion" of Christianity? The same can be asked about the growth of Mormonism. But the "growth" can't explain the "explosion" because these are the same thing. So, what does explain it?
In fact, it also explains why Christianity seemed insignificant until about 300, when it suddenly became a huge force in the Roman Empire. The growth rate remained the same, but in terms of absolute numbers, Christianity would indeed explode around that time – from 6 million to 33 million adherents – if it tracked with the growth rate of Mormonism.
So, the early growth of the Christian church is impressive, but no more impressive than the growth of Mormonism.
The rapid growth needs an explanation in either case. In the case of Mormonism it is probably at least these two: 1) Joseph Smith's charisma, and 2) his message about Christ appearing in the Americas.
And the latter, the special message of Joseph Smith, might be the main factor, apparently having a strong impact on many Christ believers and satisfying a need that continues to the present and still has an impact:
Of course it is true! In the Bible how many times does Jesus Christ say that he has other sheep that he needs to go and teach? Those "Other Sheep" were the people not in the middle east. They were the People in the Americas. God is a just God he would not keep His gospel (teachings) Away from His children so of course He had Jesus Christ appear to them and to teach them.
http://www.mormon.org/faq/christ-in-america
This message is quite unique throughout religion and history and stands out as something that would attract an unusually favorable response, and setting this new cult apart from others historically.
By contrast, neither of these explanations, charisma and special message, can apply to Jesus, for whom there is no such singular message that had a strong impact, because instead the "teachings of Jesus" are very diverse and reflect conflicting currents of thought among Jews and gnostics and focusing on no single message of any kind.
And neither can the charisma of Jesus explain the rapid spread of the new Christ cult(s) in the first century AD, because this rapid spread was almost entirely among people who never saw him or heard anything he said. Virtually all his "followers" joined AFTER he was gone, and thus it was in response to something they heard about him, not their direct physical encounter with him.
Whereas in the case of Joseph Smith, the first several thousand followers joined while he was still alive so that most of them saw and heard him and experienced his charisma. Then later of course others joined who were impacted by the ones who had experienced his charisma. And also, they all joined as a result of his message, about Christ in America, which he clearly spoke and about which there is no doubt as to its authenticity and its origin from Smith himself.
Probably the special message, Christ visiting the Americas, is the much greater factor, because Joseph Smith's career was somewhat short compared to most gurus who establish themselves first by means of a long career. So his charisma had only a few years in which to impact his followers.
So whatever caused the new Joseph Smith cult to spread has to be something totally different than whatever it was that caused the new Christ cult(s) to spread in the 1st century. No analogy between these two is plausible. You cannot claim to have explained why the Christ cult(s) in the 30s and 40s AD spread by comparing them to the Joseph Smith cult, which was a singular movement with a singular message and a charismatic living cult leader during the early spread of the cult.
We know the authors of the Quran and the Book of Mormon (BM). Lacking 29 Jesus style miracles, really isn’t any more a show stopper than say lacking authorship, or say lacking it being written down until up to half century later.
Most facts of history come to us from sources more than a half century later than the reported events. The gap between 30 AD, when the Jesus Christ events happened, and the reports we have about them, 20-50 years later, is a relatively SMALL gap by comparison to the usual gap between the historical events and the later reports of them that we have.
And the BM silly magical history in the Americas, is no sillier than the Noah, Moses, Joshua, tales, nor any less historical.
I’m not sure why you went all binary on eye-witness testimony. Did either of my links say just throw it all out? Clue: they didn’t. The point of both links was that unless one treats eye-witnesses with care, it is quite susceptible to being led towards false information. Throw in a charismatic leader, and many humans are quite susceptible to thinking crazy shit they wouldn’t have otherwise.
Again, the spread of the Jesus cult(s) cannot be explained by any reference to a "charismatic leader."
If by "crazy shit" you mean miracle stories, this does not apply to the case of the Jesus miracle acts. If the Jesus miracle stories are fiction, they were not invented by anyone who saw him or heard him, and thus these inventors could not have been impacted by his charisma. Rather, the miracle stories as later inventions would have to be from new followers who joined years later, from followers not impacted by his charisma, and followers not even from Judea or Galilee but other places far away. So charisma has nothing to do with the reported Jesus miracle acts (unless you mean those reports originate from the first disciples who saw him directly, which obviously is not what you mean).
You have to choose one of these: 1) those reports are from the earliest disciples, and thus are likely authentic, or 2) those reports are from some later myth-makers, in which case
the CHARISMA of Jesus has NOTHING to do with the origin of those miracle stories, and thus no "charismatic leader" explanation can apply to them.
Just because you imagine that people believe in instant miracles because they are stupid does not make it so. You cannot name a case where people are gullible in this way. If they were, we would have hundreds of Jesus-type reported miracle-workers in the history books, with evidence attesting to their acts within 50-100 years after the reported events. But we do not have such cases, because humans are simply not the stupid brainless idiots that your theory imagines them to be. It requires a long time, decades, for a charismatic charlatan to gain hold over a large number of disciples and convince them that he possesses miracle power.
You are fixated on “flawed” witness testimony, thereby expecting lots of random and very different Jesus stories.
No, I expect minor discrepancies between the reports about him, just as we generally get discrepancies in differing accounts of the same event.
But the many different Jesus-type miracle stories or mythic hero cults I've said we should have seen are the ones we should expect if it were true that humans are the gullible idiots your theory requires. If they were so quick to believe in Jesus miracle fictions, then they would also believe in the fictions of hundreds of other charismatics, which they do not. There are not other cases of similar miracle-worker cults and evidence attesting to the miracle events, such as in the case of Jesus. This is what discredits the thesis that humans typically believe any charismatic charlatan alleged to have done miracles. They do not. The examples of it do not exist.
For them to believe those miracle claims there has to be something very unique about the miracle-worker figure or hero. He has to have a recognized special status or unusual celebrity-type public image or an impressive career -- it cannot be an unknown figure who pops up overnight. It's not true that miracle fictions about an unknown non-established figure are believed or accepted by a gullible audience. You cannot name such a case.
That is hardly the only way eye-witness testimony changes. Witnesses are malleable. It is easy enough to see cases, where people are led towards a common fantasy.
No, not unless certain conditions exist that produce such deception. There are NO cases where miracle stories are widely believed, attributed to a new unknown unrecognized figure of no status, and arising in a short time period, like 50 years. You cannot name a case where "people are led towards" any such miracle fantasy hero, no matter how "malleable" they are.
And of course there are cases of people being led toward a fantasy, but in any large numbers this is only by the influence of a guru with a wide reputation and long career, not a sudden charlatan pretending to do miracles. It typically requires decades for the guru to establish his reputation. (And again, this pattern applies mostly to a long time ago, 500 or 1000 years or earlier, and less to modern times when advanced media and publishing have an impact.)
Do you mean that the events reported in the Book of Mormon are more believable than those reported in the Gospel accounts? I don't think those reported events were near to the time of Joseph Smith or that he had any sources about those events. I'm not sure what analogy you're drawing between the Book of Mormon and its content and the Gospel accounts and their content.
If you think the Joseph Smith (JS) miracles didn’t happen in his time, or weren’t reported in his time, you have obviously been ignoring Atheos’ posts.
No, it's the Book of Mormon you referenced. The events in that book, if they happened, date far back many centuries before Joseph Smith.
Is the case of Joseph Smith special? Is he analogous to the Jesus case?
It's time to focus on the case of Joseph Smith. This example has been raised repeatedly, so it requires some extra attention. This means another long post, but what is the alternative? If you insist that this example explodes my theory, then I have to respond to it, so let's not have a lot of whining about the extreme length of this post. What makes Joseph Smith special and explains the rapid growth of this "cult"? This cannot be dismissed with a couple quick one-liners.
The miracles of Joseph Smith
No one yet has quoted from the sources for these miracle events. So that's the first step. Dig out the sources and locate the quotes which narrate the events. I am skeptical that this can be done. But let's see the quotes, and let's identify the date when they were written. It's not enough to say that the accounts exist. We have to read them to see if someone really reported such events, saying that someone was healed or whatever.
JS created his BM 1828-30. The witnessed healing miracles happened all thru the 1830’s, with several separate and known sources.
OK, but
what is the DATE OF THE SOURCES? Not the date of the reported events, but of the sources reporting on them? Were they written in the 1830s or in the 60s or 70s? It makes a difference.
Plus, you have to get to those sources and quote from them before we can say that they are real reports of alleged miracle events. It's not good enough to just refer to the reports -- YOU MUST QUOTE FROM THEM. Provide the accounts to us so we can read them and determine if these are real reports of the alleged events.
This has not yet been done.
If the Mormon Church has seen fit to exclude these reports from publication and only allows some reference to them without the actual accounts being made available to us to read, then we cannot accept these as genuine reports of alleged miracle acts.
It is suspicious that these miracle healing stories are offered as true and yet the Mormon Church does not make them conveniently available to the public. It appears that maybe the Church does not really stand behind them. If it does, then why don't they make this information easily available to us? (And this is not about any special "tablets" he spoke of, but about healing miracles he did which are supposed to be similar to the healing acts of Jesus. I.e., this is about claims of miracle acts, or acts of power, i.e., superhuman power, such as the healing acts of Jesus which showed superhuman power.)
I checked on this somewhat, and it seemed there were only two actual witnesses, though there was no actual text from them that was available. What we need in order to assess these claims is to read the actual text written by the alleged witnesses. In addition to the two witnesses, the only other witness was Joseph Smith himself, which has virtually no value.
But if there were more witnesses who wrote something, let's see it. It's not sufficient for you to simply claim that the accounts exist.
But again,
if Joseph Smith is unique, it is due to the combination of his charisma and especially his unusual message about Christ appearing in the Americas. So perhaps there were special conditions here that could lead to Joseph Smith being in a special category, so that he became mythologized sooner than was the usual pattern.
It is acknowledged that the career of Joseph Smith was relatively short, which makes him more unique than other examples of miracle mythic heroes or prophets.
The combination of 1) his unusual message of
Christ appearing in the Americas and 2) his
charisma may have had an unusually strong impact on many Christ believers. There was a special market for this particular message of Joseph Smith. A very clear belief in Christ was already a prerequisite for this message of Joseph Smith to take hold.
Of course I’m not arguing that the BM is more believable. That is like asking if I find the Character of Darth Vader more believable than the Borg. The point that the LDS provides, including set in a relatively modern era, is the gullibility of people to buy into all sorts of stupid shit.
No, only in a very special case might people buy into some kind of instant miracle-worker scenario. It in no way indicates any "gullibility of people to buy into all sorts of stupid shit." To prove that, you'd have to give 3 or 4 more examples. If Joseph Smith is the only one you can cite, that shows that it's not a general pattern of gullibility among people, but rather that we have a rare case here that departs from the norm -- and the norm is that
people demand evidence before they believe in miracle claims, or they demand a highly-reputed hero figure or celebrity as the object of the miracle claims and do not believe in instant miracles that pop up overnight.
If there's evidence or credibility to these miracle claims, similar to that of Jesus in the gospel accounts, then you can surely find the accounts from the witnesses. And there should be more believers who claim that Joseph Smith performed miracles. So let's hear from them. Or, at least find quotes from them. If you can't find as many as a dozen persons who believe Joseph Smith performed miracles, then you can't demonstrate this "gullibility of people to buy into all sorts of stupid shit."
And it is not "
all sorts of stupid shit" but only very particular limited "sorts of stupid shit" that people buy into. The "stupid shit" has to fit into a certain pattern -- in the case of Joseph Smith it was his charisma and his unusual message for which there was a ready market, as expressed in the above quote. And here is another from that same webpage:
Yes. When he appears in the Book of Mormon, Jesus tells those he appears to that they are the "other sheep" of which he spoke to his disciples in Jerusalem. He also told those he appeared to in ancient America that he would go on to visit yet more sheep who were neither in their land, nor in the land of Jerusalem. We have no idea where these other people were, but it is evident that it was important to the Father that the resurrected Christ visit them, and that they hear his voice and see him. It makes sense to me that, as Christ's redemption was important to the entire world, and not only to those in the lands surrounding Jerusalem, he would communicate that message across the globe.
Notice the desire here for a "Jesus" who visits not only the Americas but also other places far from Jerusalem (possibly even beyond our galaxy?). It only "makes sense" that the Christ savior would also visit others, in all places, to offer them salvation, so that his "good news" is made available to all, and not only a few lucky ones who were in the right geographical location.
Isn't this a kind of logic or reasoning that appeals to a great many who have questioned the exclusivity of the "gospel" as it is presented in the New Testament and is preached by churches and missionaries? Haven't you heard this kind of question raised many times? What about the "Heathen in Africa?" and so on.
In my church, as a kid, I remember the youth pastor ("Pastor Jerry") referring to this common complaint against Christian evangelism, and he called it the "Heathen in Africa" problem.
Since it is such a common complaint against traditional Christian evangelicalism, might this not explain whatever it may have been that made Joseph Smith special, if he is a special case? Perhaps he is special, among the great mythologized prophets, in that his movement took hold with greater force than usual, and even though his career was relatively short, still he "went viral" in a way that others did not because he offered a special message that struck hard in the minds of so many.
So obviously Joseph Smith was promoting an idea here for which possibly millions of Christ-believers had a strong desire. When you're supplying something for which there is a strong demand, you're going to succeed, and your "business" will grow and prosper. If it hadn't been Joseph Smith, perhaps someone else with a different version of the same thing would have appeared and launched the new "Mormon" cult under a different name.
Joseph Smith obviously built his cult on this Christ belief, or this adaptation of the Christ belief or extension of it to include people who are thought to have been left out because Christ did not visit them as he did those of Galilee and Judea and those gentiles who read or heard about him subsequently.
From the LDS humble beginnings less than 200 years ago, has been growing just as fast as the Christians did 2 millennia ago. So having purported lots of witnesses to many parlor tricks, doesn’t seem to be the only key to success.
On the contrary, the reported Jesus miracle acts ARE necessary to explain the rapid spread of the early Christ cult(s)
as well as the rapid spread of the Mormon cult, which is also due to the original Christ miracles, because the Joseph Smith message is built upon those miracle acts or on the power Christ demonstrated, and there would have been no Joseph Smith cult or Mormon religion without the original Christ belief or reported Christ miracles as the origin from which Mormonism later emerged, because the purpose of Mormonism is to extend this power of Christ to others who were seen as having been excluded.
So I'm giving a 2-fold answer to the example of the Joseph Smith miracles as analogous to those of Jesus:
1) The mythologizing process in his case may have been more pronounced because of the highly unusual nature of his message, for which there was an unprecedented widespread ready demand; and
2) Not enough information has yet been provided here about the reported miracles of Joseph Smith. We need the texts of the reports about this, and correct dating of these reports. We can't deal with the Joseph Smith reported miracles if we don't have the accounts of them to refer to and compare to those mentioned in the gospel accounts.
A further point is that by the 19th century there had been great advancement in communication and publishing and spread of information, which disrupts any analogy between a new cult arising then vs. a new cult arising in the 1st century. So that factor also has to be taken into account.
. . . the packaging of the mythos/theology, the quality of the early group of supporters, the events in the world around them, et.al. will influence the growth of a new/revised mythos/theology. And as I have already pointed out, the Jesus-cult really hasn’t outperformed the Smith-cult in growth numbers.
But again, the Smith-cult has its origin in the original Jesus-cult, upon which it depends, and without which it could not exist. The foundation of the Smith-cult is to expand the Christ person geographically to make him available to others who were seen to have been left out.
Why do some cults spread faster than others? Why did the new Christ cult(s) spread?
Who knows why this cult succeeded where others did not?
One answer is that the central figure, Jesus Christ, actually did perform the particular acts. This explains the anomaly. Of course you can just say we don't know the answer. But if one answer explains it, and there is no other good answer, then you have to seriously consider that one answer, even if it makes you uncomfortable.
Your answer is an explanation, but certainly not the only possible explanation. The Muslim sect is expected to overtake the broad Christian umbrella sect within 40-50 years in popularity.
A popularity contest between Christianity and Islam is silly and irrelevant. The question is about the reported miracle events. How do we explain the accounts of the miracle acts in the gospels? given that they occur so near to the actual time, and also that we have at least 4 sources instead of only one, and also given that
