Historical Jesus

[TomC]

I will take your word for it.

You could just look at the evidence. It's right here on this thread.
Tom

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

Revised ranking of reputed miracle-workers

If there are "Jesus Parallels," this listing is the way to understand their significance. Claims are made that there have been other miracle-workers (so therefore Jesus is not unique), and what that means is that there are other cases for which there is some evidence, and depending on the evidence we can rate them according to how high is the likelihood that they performed some unusual or superhuman acts. Or, how many such acts did they do, or how do they compare to the other such reputed cases.

This is mostly subjective, as to the precision or accuracy, because of the lack of information. But there is some information, or facts about the individual cases, and so it's possible to do a reasonable estimate of each case and rank them, based on objective criteria. Anyone else can do their own listing. Reasons can be given for the following rankings, based on the evidence and doing good estimates.

After reviewing further the example of Edgar Cayce, I decided I had over-rated him and so moved his name farther down the list. So here's my revised list:

.000 - 1.000 "batting average" ranking and name of miracle cult/miracle worker

.950 -------------------- Jesus Christ 30-33 AD
.300 -------------------- Asclepius Cult 400-300 BC (or -100+ AD)
.300 -------------------- Delphic Oracle
.250 -------------------- St. Francis of Assisi
.240 -------------------- Nostradamus
.230 -------------------- Prophets Elijah/Elisha (9th century BC)
.220 -------------------- Sai Baba 20th century
.210 -------------------- Rasputin, Russian Revolution "Mad Monk"
.190 -------------------- St. Genevieve 5th century
.170 -------------------- Edgar Cayce 20th century
.160 -------------------- Apollonius of Tyana* 1st century AD
.150 -------------------- Joseph Smith 19th century
.130 -------------------- Serapis, Egyptian god
.120 -------------------- Isis, Egyptian goddess

*No reported miracles until about 220 AD

Edgar Cayce became popular for some reason, and it seemed necessary to explain it as a result of his success rate, at prescribing remedies which worked. But it looks like the number of actual successful outcomes is not so high.

There are two possible explanations for his popularity even if his real success rate was modest: He may have succeeded in some cases because he had some medical knowledge, from natural health publications, to use for prescribing good remedies; plus also there was something about his peculiar style or methods which made him conspicuous, his unusual practice of psychic readings which brought him favorable publicity, over many years, and so he was able to "catch on" in ways that other practitioners did not.

Nothing like this could explain the reputation of Jesus to do cures, because there were no medical or health information sources available at that time. Also, Jesus had only 1 or 2 years to establish his reputation, which means he had virtually no reputation such as a typical psychic healer celebrity might establish over years of favorable publicity.


Of course many more names of reputed miracle-workers can be added to the above listing.

 

[steve_bank]

2022 Oracle Of Lumpy

 

[Lumpenproletariat]

continued response to thingsweneverdid, Aug 2 2022, #812


(continued from previous Wall of Text)

thingsweneverdid: As already mentioned,
Asclepius was also known for miraculous healings.

Mark 8-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Yale University Press, 2009), Joel Marcus:

The blind man's cryptic words about walking trees recall other passages from the history of religions, though it is difficult to know what to make of some of the parallels. Taylor (371), for example, cites the "striking Hellenistic parallel" of an inscription in which a blind man is healed by a vision of the healing god Asclepius going over his eyes with his fingers, and his first post-healing sight is of the trees in the Temple (Dittenberger, Sylloge 3.1168).

If there's any legitimate point here, about Mark, it might be that the author actually was familiar with this Asclepius inscription and decided to borrow the "trees" idea. It's a stretch, but even so it does not undermine the basic credibility of Mark. Any writer might notice an item from a previous story and make use of it for symbolic value. Nothing about this undermines the credibility of Mark's report of a blind man being cured.

But an important difference between the Mark story and the Asclepius inscription is that in the latter, the victim healed is a worshiper of Asclepius who is performing the prescribed ritual at the temple of Asclepius, as thousands of other Asclepius worshipers had been doing for generations, with some of them claiming they got cured by this popular ancient deity worshiped by millions, according to the ancient practice of religious devotees claiming the god they worshiped had done a miracle for them. Like Christians today ascribe their personal miracle experience to the ancient Jesus. But in contrast to this, the Mark story is about a blind man brought to an existing person right there who is said to have healing power, not at a religious ceremony or temple location where an ancient miracle god is worshiped; and there is no ritual procedure the victim performs or done by the ordained priests of the established religious cult performing the ancient rites.

This distinction tells us which story is more likely a true event. It was common for religious devotees to falsely ascribe miracles to the deity they worshiped, especially at the temples where they went precisely to have the healing ritual done to them because they were already believers and disciples of the ancient deity they would claim had healed them. Whereas it was virtually unknown for people to report being healed by someone they didn't know or who was not part of the priesthood they recognized and not practicing the ritual procedure of their ancient popular miracle god.

The Jesus healing acts are this latter kind, where the healer is a real physical person right there rather than an invisible ancient deity or a deity seen only in dreams as the victim to be healed sleeps overnight in the temple. The disciple who already worships the ancient deity is very likely to claim a miracle was done by the deity even if nothing unusual really happened. A popular religious tradition is generally upheld by the general population, going along with the widely-accepted legends and customs widely known within the culture, and prayers are offered to the god and everyone pretends that the prayers are answered, which is the politically-correct thing to do. Not unlike our culture pretends to believe the Santa Claus story because it's politically correct and socially accepted.

But it was totally uncommon for an upstart miracle-worker, real physical human, to appear in person, with no established credentials or recognized ordination, and reportedly perform healing to victims and cure them outside the standard accepted traditional practices. All charlatans presuming to perform such miracles were rejected in the ancient pagan and Jewish culture, rejected by the commoners as well as the upper classes, and there are no written accounts reporting any such miracle-workers, other than a few reported cases of charlatans, described as charlatans in a few written accounts from the period.

The reported case of Jesus appearing from nowhere and doing such acts is totally unique, having no resemblance to anything else in all the ancient literature prior to about 50-100 AD. These Jesus miracle healing claims appear as a totally unique phenomenon in the 1st century, with no explanation what led up to them in that culture to which such miracle claims were totally unfamiliar. Whereas the Asclepius stories were typical, maybe the leading example, of the worship of ancient healing gods which were widely popular in the culture.

If there's only one source reporting a miracle-worker it's not strong evidence. But when we have 4 different sources reporting the same miracle-worker, some of which overlap in reporting the same incident, we have strong evidence that the event(s) really did happen, regardless if a later author borrows a particular word or symbol from something earlier.

We have to allow that the Mark author was familiar with some of the Greek literature, as some scholars maintain. So possibly his accounts could have elements in them which were borrowed from that literature. This doesn't undermine the general credibility, but only about the particular details which might have been borrowed.

Faith in Jesus and Paul A Comparison with Special Reference to 'faith that Can Remove Mountains' and 'your Faith Has Healed/saved You' (Mohr Siebeck, 2002), Maureen W. Yeung:

Serapis was probably introduced to Palestine by soldiers from Eygpt who served in the Roman armies. Later Serapis grew in importance, absorbed the other gods like Zeus, Hades, Osiris, Dionysus and Asclepius until he finally became "le centre du développement du syncrétisme". The rising importance of Serapis accounts for the great number of Serapis coins from Jerusalem (Aelia Capitolina)... A remarkable example of syncretism can be found in the instance of Aristides, a devout Greek worshipper of Asclepius in the second century A.D. Aristides worshipped not only Asclepius, but also Isis, Serapis, Zeus and other gods (e.g., The Sacred Tales 3.45-48). It should be noted that Aristides saw an intimate relationship among these gods. Furthermore, he worshipped Isis and Serapis as well as Asclepius as saviour-healers. Not only did Asclepius heal him (passim), but also Serapis (e.g., The Sacred Tales 3.47).

This is further indication that it's only worshipers who get healed by the pagan gods, or reportedly healed. Whenever they recover from an illness, they automatically attribute the recovery to their pagan healing god(s). Even if we misinterpret this Aristides case as a miracle healing claim, which is not indicated, the explanation is that this literature source dates to around 150 AD and so falls into the period of the new explosion of miracle stories beginning about 90-100 AD (after the Jesus miracle stories were circulating), showing that Aristides is one of those writers influenced by the new wave of miracle beliefs which started in the 1st century and probably also inspired the Vespasian story. Which again raises the question: What happened in the early 1st century to cause this unexpected surprise onslaught of new miracle stories, totally contradicting the obvious trend away from this during this period leading up to 30-50 AD? Before this time there were no reported miracle events in the writings. I.e., no pattern of miracle claims which provides a context for the sudden appearance of the Jesus miracle-worker in about 30 AD.

These gods offered salvation to him... Thus, in view of the syncretistic character of Palestinian paganism, it is necessary to take other related gods into consideration when we assess the influence of Asclepius in first-century Palestine.

Whatever the influence, there are no reported Asclepius miracles during this period, but only normal treatments or therapies and healing rituals. Even if there was some activity of this cult at the time, in Palestine, there were no Asclepius miracle claims until the cult experiences a revival beginning about 100 AD.

(A Diodorus of Sicily quote, coming up in a later continuation of this Wall of Text, confirms that there were no Asclepius miracles being reported during this period (after 200 BC), because, according to Diodorus, "the Greeks" have no evidence for the miracles of their gods, while they offer only legends from the past, unlike the goddess Isis who performs current miracles in the time of Diodorus (according to Diodorus).)

We do not as yet possess indisputable evidence that the Asclepius cult was firmly entrenched in Palestine during Jesus' time or that Jesus himself had knowledge of Asclepius. Nevertheless, the ample archaeological evidence, both geographically and chronologically, points to the probable existence of Asclepius' worship in first-century Palestine.

Yes there was "worship" -- as always. But there are no reported Asclepius miracle healings in this period.

The numerous finds on both the east and the west shores of the Sea of Galilee and at Jerusalem, both before and after Jesus, indicate that the worship of Asclepius as saviour-healer was not only contemporaneous to but also coexisting with the worship of Jesus as saviour-healer.

Of course there was "worship" of this ancient healing deity, as there was of many others, throughout all historical periods and places. But what evidence is there of actual healing miracles taking place and being reported in the record? None. There's a difference between mere worship of popular miracle gods and actual reports of miracle healings taking place.

There are no miracle healings reported in the Asclepius inscriptions during this time. They are all back before 300 BC (or maybe 280 or so), followed by the long gap until about 100 AD at which point they resume suddenly, for reasons no one has explained. There are many cases of worship, praying to the gods, healing rituals, etc., in the record -- these are common for ALL periods and places, not only 1st-century Palestine -- but there are no reports of actual miracle healings. There are the usual cases of someone having a normal recovery from an illness and this being attributed to the healing god, just like today, like all times in history, as people pray to their gods. But the instant healing narratives, contrary to the known medical science, are mostly absent, or totally absent during this period -- about 300 BC to 100 AD. (But prior to about 300 BC we see a few reported cases, some of them strange or bizarre, in the Asclepius inscriptions.)

For the Asclepius cult there are a few of these reported actual healing miracles happening, all before 300 BC or after 100 AD. And otherwise there are virtually none in the ancient accounts. The Jesus miracle acts of about 30 AD are the only exception, where suddenly we have 20-30 of these reported cases, on many pages of the Gospel accounts.

And from the Hebrew scriptures you might add the three Elijah/Elisha healing miracles, but these are less credible because they are from one source only, II Kings, which is dated about 300 years later than the reported event(s). By contrast the Asclepius inscriptions have some credibility because they are dated close to the reported event, setting them apart from other ancient miracle legends which appear in literature many centuries later than the event reportedly happened. These are not reports in the literature, but inscriptions on the Temple walls.

Although it is difficult to assess how receptive the Jews were to the Asclepius cult, it is reasonable to assume that the Jews were exposed to the influence of the Asclepius mentality. The use of the title 'saviour' in the sense of healer for God in some Hellenistic-Jewish healing texts exemplifies perhaps the contact between the Greek and Jewish healing developments in the first-century A.D. It is also possible that syncretism between Asclepius and Yahweh worship had already occurred in Palestine in view of such syncretism in Spain in the second century...

What is significant is not the terminology ("savior" etc.), but the described events, or healing acts, or reports of miracle healings in the written accounts from the time. And there are none. All we have evidence for is the religious activity, some "influence of Asclepius mentality" and worship, etc. Just that there was religious activity taking place is irrelevant. Of course there was much worship and religion and superstition. There's always religion and praying and rituals, at any time and place.

What's different and noteworthy during this period is the sudden appearance of the Jesus miracle acts reported in the 1st-century written accounts, for which no one can give an explanation, and which are totally out of character for the period.


(this Wall of Text to be continued)

 

[Unknown Soldier]

So what is the evidence to support the claim there was a Historical Jesus?
I'm not aware of any and don't think there is any so this should not take long. ...
Bring it,

Who, in the Roman Empire, could possibly have gained from making him up?

I assume your question is actually asking who would have sought to gain by making up Jesus. It's not unusual for people to make up figures for some reasons we may not know. For example, Joseph Smith made up the angel Moroni, as I'm sure you will agree (unless you're Mormon, of course). What gain was Joseph Smith seeking when he made up Moroni? Although we might not know the answer to that question, it's obvious that Moroni is a fictional character. Therefore, any difficulties we may have answering the question why anybody would make up Jesus lends little to the case for his historicity.

Read the two different accounts of Socrates (who undoubtedly existed), then go back to the NT - they are far less consistent than the Gospels, which are manifestly by different people.

So since the Gospels are less contradictory than the accounts of Socrates, we should conclude that Jesus existed? Logically, any problems with the historical Socrates in no way makes Jesus any more probably historical. The historical problems associated with Jesus are every bit as troubling.

American conspiracy theories are way out of hand!

I don't see how doubting that Jesus existed is a conspiracy theory. Even if it is a conspiracy theory, it is a fact that sometimes people do conspire and conspire to hoodwink people with claims of the supernatural.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

The only explanation I've heard that makes me think a historical Jesus might have existed is the Criterion of Embarrassment.

That criterion has become a bit of an embarrassment to whoever came up with it. It suffers from numerous difficulties not the least of which is our inability to know who was ever really ashamed of Jesus and his story. If his followers were embarrassed by some aspects of his life, then why would they have reported any of that?

Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist kind of makes Jesus look less than godlike.

Sure, if you ignore the part about God's voice booming out of the sky praising Jesus as God's son.

Being hung or nailed to a tree is also usually the fate of the most worthless people according to Jewish tradition, so it's less likely to be made up.

Like any culture, Jewish society valued its heroes and martyrs. So if one of them "died for the cause," they were hardly considered to be worthless. Also, you ignore the context of the crucifixion: The story goes on to have Jesus raised from the dead. Such post-tragedy climactic events are common motifs in works of fiction.

But it does seem a bit odd that none of the Roman historians mentioned this guy during his lifetime if he was supposedly performing miracles all over the place.

Some real-Jesus apologists argue that Jesus was a "small-time preacher" to explain away the fact that historians of his day never said anything about him. So to save the historicity of Jesus, they contradict the main sources of of information they have for him: the Gospels.

If the story of Jesus is supposed to be the most important message from God that mankind ever received, you would hope God would make the story a little more different than all the other myths we have created.

I suppose Jesus is just another failed God from the world of religion. Why think he was any more than that?

 

[steve_bank]

Mesmer in the 18th century used magnets as a prop. When someone reported have a seizure it spread, and others sted reporying having seizures.

Today it ks called the placebo effect.

Jesus is the ultmate placebo.

Franz Mesmer - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In 1774, Mesmer produced an "artificial tide" in a patient, Francisca Österlin, who suffered from hysteria, by having her swallow a preparation containing iron and then attaching magnets to various parts of her body. She reported feeling streams of a mysterious fluid running through her body and was relieved of her symptoms for several hours. Mesmer did not believe that the magnets had achieved the cure on their own. He felt that he had contributed animal magnetism, which had accumulated in his work, to her. He soon stopped using magnets as a part of his treatment.

Procedure​

Mesmer treated patients both individually and in groups. With individuals he would sit in front of his patient with his knees touching the patient's knees, pressing the patient's thumbs in his hands, looking fixedly into the patient's eyes. Mesmer made "passes", moving his hands from patients' shoulders down along their arms. He then pressed his fingers on the patient's hypochondrium region (the area below the diaphragm), sometimes holding his hands there for hours. Many patients felt peculiar sensations or had convulsions that were regarded as crises and supposed to bring about the cure. Mesmer would often conclude his treatments by playing some music on a glass harmonica.[12]

By 1780 Mesmer had more patients than he could treat individually and he established a collective treatment known as the "baquet." An English doctor who observed Mesmer described the treatment as follows:

In the middle of the room is placed a vessel of about a foot and a half high which is called here a "baquet". It is so large that twenty people can easily sit round it; near the edge of the lid which covers it, there are holes pierced corresponding to the number of persons who are to surround it; into these holes are introduced iron rods, bent at right angles outwards, and of different heights, so as to answer to the part of the body to which they are to be applied. Besides these rods, there is a rope which communicates between the baquet and one of the patients, and from him is carried to another, and so on the whole round. The most sensible effects are produced on the approach of Mesmer, who is said to convey the fluid by certain motions of his hands or eyes, without touching the person. I have talked with several who have witnessed these effects, who have convulsions occasioned and removed by a movement of the hand...

In 1784, without Mesmer requesting it, King Louis XVI appointed four members of the Faculty of Medicine as commissioners to investigate animal magnetism as practiced by d'Eslon. At the request of these commissioners, the king appointed five additional commissioners from the Royal Academy of Sciences. These included the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, the doctor Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, and the American ambassador Benjamin Franklin.[13]

The commission conducted a series of experiments aimed not at determining whether Mesmer's treatment worked, but whether he had discovered a new physical fluid. The commission concluded that there was no evidence for such a fluid. Whatever benefit the treatment produced was attributed to "imagination". One of the commissioners, the botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu took exception to the official reports. He wrote a dissenting opinion that declared Mesmer's theory credible and worthy of further investigation.

The commission did not examine Mesmer, but investigated the practice of d'Eslon. In doing so using blind trials in their investigation, the commission learned that Mesmerism only seemed to work when the subject was aware of it. The commission termed it as "Imagination," but their findings are considered the first observation of the placebo effect.[14]

Mesmer was driven into exile soon after the investigations on animal magnetism although his influential student, Armand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis de Puységur (1751–1825), continued to have many followers until his death.[15] Mesmer continued to practice in Frauenfeld, Switzerland, for a number of years and died in 1815 in Meersburg.[16]

Abbé Faria, an Indo-Portuguese monk in Paris and a contemporary of Mesmer, claimed that "nothing comes from the magnetizer; everything comes from the subject and takes place in his imagination, i.e. autosuggestion generated from within the mind."

 

[TomC]

That criterion has become a bit of an embarrassment to whoever came up with it. It suffers from numerous difficulties not the least of which is our inability to know who was ever really ashamed of Jesus and his story. If his followers were embarrassed by some aspects of his life, then why would they have reported any of that?

I think you're missing the point to the CoE. It's not that His followers were ashamed. It's that the stories aren't what someone would make up, if they were inventing a Divine Superpower entirely.

The JtB baptism is an example. If Jesus were entirely fictional, why put that in the story? If Jesus were a real person, who had a relationship with JtB and all His followers knew that, adding the voice of God part makes sense. If Jesus were entirely fictional, why put it in at all? Or why not pose Jesus as teacher of JtB?

This is the point to CoE. There's a ton of supernatural details that look like later folks explaining stuff that people knew happened.

There really was an historical Jesus. Christ is a legend/myth that developed later and far away. If you leave out the implausibly miraculous parts the rest of the story is both plausible and inspirational.
Tom

 

[bilby]

That criterion has become a bit of an embarrassment to whoever came up with it. It suffers from numerous difficulties not the least of which is our inability to know who was ever really ashamed of Jesus and his story. If his followers were embarrassed by some aspects of his life, then why would they have reported any of that?

I think you're missing the point to the CoE. It's not that His followers were ashamed. It's that the stories aren't what someone would make up, if they were inventing a Divine Superpower entirely.

The JtB baptism is an example. If Jesus were entirely fictional, why put that in the story? If Jesus were a real person, who had a relationship with JtB and all His followers knew that, adding the voice of God part makes sense. If Jesus were entirely fictional, why put it in at all? Or why not pose Jesus as teacher of JtB?

This is the point to CoE. There's a ton of supernatural details that look like later folks explaining stuff that people knew happened.

There really was an historical Jesus. Christ is a legend/myth that developed later and far away. If you leave out the implausibly miraculous parts the rest of the story is both plausible and inspirational.
Tom

Yeah. The CoE is a very simple bit of logic:

"Our beliefs are so embarrassingly dumb that nobody would be stupid enough to make them up".

Of course, this bold claim founders on the observable fact that there's no limit to human stupidity.

 

[TomC]

That criterion has become a bit of an embarrassment to whoever came up with it. It suffers from numerous difficulties not the least of which is our inability to know who was ever really ashamed of Jesus and his story. If his followers were embarrassed by some aspects of his life, then why would they have reported any of that?

I think you're missing the point to the CoE. It's not that His followers were ashamed. It's that the stories aren't what someone would make up, if they were inventing a Divine Superpower entirely.

The JtB baptism is an example. If Jesus were entirely fictional, why put that in the story? If Jesus were a real person, who had a relationship with JtB and all His followers knew that, adding the voice of God part makes sense. If Jesus were entirely fictional, why put it in at all? Or why not pose Jesus as teacher of JtB?

This is the point to CoE. There's a ton of supernatural details that look like later folks explaining stuff that people knew happened.

There really was an historical Jesus. Christ is a legend/myth that developed later and far away. If you leave out the implausibly miraculous parts the rest of the story is both plausible and inspirational.
Tom

Yeah. The CoE is a very simple bit of logic:

"Our beliefs are so embarrassingly dumb that nobody would be stupid enough to make them up".

Of course, this bold claim founders on the observable fact that there's no limit to human stupidity.

Nope.

It's "There's a bunch of stuff in the story that wouldn't be invented if the goal were inventing a Divine Superpower."

Solid evidence that inventing a fictional character is not what was going on at the time. Jesus was a real person and the stuff people knew about Him needed to be spun.

I find the most plausible explanation for the results is that Jesus existed, but didn't much resemble the Christ of mythology. That's why I'm a "historical" believer, not a literalist or a mythicalist.
Tom

 

[bilby]

That criterion has become a bit of an embarrassment to whoever came up with it. It suffers from numerous difficulties not the least of which is our inability to know who was ever really ashamed of Jesus and his story. If his followers were embarrassed by some aspects of his life, then why would they have reported any of that?

I think you're missing the point to the CoE. It's not that His followers were ashamed. It's that the stories aren't what someone would make up, if they were inventing a Divine Superpower entirely.

The JtB baptism is an example. If Jesus were entirely fictional, why put that in the story? If Jesus were a real person, who had a relationship with JtB and all His followers knew that, adding the voice of God part makes sense. If Jesus were entirely fictional, why put it in at all? Or why not pose Jesus as teacher of JtB?

This is the point to CoE. There's a ton of supernatural details that look like later folks explaining stuff that people knew happened.

There really was an historical Jesus. Christ is a legend/myth that developed later and far away. If you leave out the implausibly miraculous parts the rest of the story is both plausible and inspirational.
Tom

Yeah. The CoE is a very simple bit of logic:

"Our beliefs are so embarrassingly dumb that nobody would be stupid enough to make them up".

Of course, this bold claim founders on the observable fact that there's no limit to human stupidity.

Nope.

It's "There's a bunch of stuff in the story that wouldn't be invented if the goal were inventing a Divine Superpower."

Solid evidence that inventing a fictional character is not what was going on at the time. Jesus was a real person and the stuff people knew about Him needed to be spun.

I find the most plausible explanation for the results is that Jesus existed, but didn't much resemble the Christ of mythology. That's why I'm a "historical" believer, not a literalist or a mythicalist.
Tom

Whoever thought the goal of making this shit up was "the creation of a divine superpower"?

The goal was (and remains) getting people to do what we want, rather than what they would want, if left to their own devices.

As the "we" hasn't remained consistent, nor have the stories.

Jesus was no more teal than any other fictional hero. All of them are based on real people (usually more than one real person), but that's no basis for claims that they were real. Superman is based on real people too. The important elements of the story are those that are purely fictional - nobody leaps tall buildings, or returns from death.

The folks who invented Superman weren't trying to create an alien with incredible strength, speed and endurance; They were telling a story designed to manipulate people into agreement with their vision of what it meant to be American.

The folks who invented Jesus were likewise trying to manipulate people into agreement with their vision of what it means to be Christian. Whether that's giving your starving neighbour a loaf, freeing slaves from bondage, burning witches, or slaughtering Muslims, or whatever other agendas they've had over the course of a couple of millennia.

 

[TomC]

Whoever thought the goal of making this shit up was "the creation of a divine superpower"?

The generic term is "mythicist".

People who think that Jesus is myth. That the reason that Christianity and the Bible exist is the creation and promotion of a divine superpower.

That's who.

Doesn't seem much more plausible to me than Jesus literalism. A bit more, but not all that much. Both look like people with agendas striking a pose.
Tom

 

[bilby]

Whoever thought the goal of making this shit up was "the creation of a divine superpower"?

The generic term is "mythicist".

People who think that Jesus is myth. That the reason that Christianity and the Bible exist is the creation and promotion of a divine superpower.

That's who.

Doesn't seem much more plausible to me than Jesus literalism. A bit more, but not all that much. Both look like people with agendas striking a pose.
Tom

That doesn't appear to be a response to my actual post, but rather a knee jerk rant on the least significant sentence, in which I asked a rhetorical question about your clearly false assertion regarding the purpose of mythological narrative.

I am aware that religious people of all descriptions look like people with agendas striking a pose; Indeed, that's the main thrust of my post.

Am I to take it that you are agreeing with me, but struggling to do so coherently?

 

[TomC]

The goal was (and remains) getting people to do what we want, rather than what they would want, if left to their own devices.

I don't think so.

Christianity existed for centuries before the Roman Elite took over.

They invented the Creed. They weaponized Christianity. They got rid of Jesus and made it about a pagan demigod, Christ, and got on with the usual empire stuff.

Later, they "canonized" the old stories that supported their new religion. Left all the real stuff about Jesus to rot away in oblivion. They didn't even have to have a book burning. Everything about Jesus that didn't support the New Christianity became somewhere between "unimportant" and "heretical". Rotted away before the end of the 5th century.

That's when what you call Christianity came to be. Yeah, it was 1500 years ago. But Jesus would have been horrified by finding out that His ideology had been taken over by the people He fought so hard against. Jesus would have hated Christianity as you know it, too bad He isn't involved anymore.
Tom

 

[bilby]

The goal was (and remains) getting people to do what we want, rather than what they would want, if left to their own devices.

I don't think so.

Christianity existed for centuries before the Roman Elite took over.

They invented the Creed. They weaponized Christianity. They got rid of Jesus and made it about a pagan demigod, Christ, and got on with the usual empire stuff.

Later, they "canonized" the old stories that supported their new religion. Left all the real stuff about Jesus to rot away in oblivion. They didn't even have to have a book burning. Everything about Jesus that didn't support the New Christianity became somewhere between "unimportant" and "heretical". Rotted away before the end of the 5th century.

That's when what you call Christianity came to be. Yeah, it was 1500 years ago. But Jesus would have been horrified by finding out that His ideology had been taken over by the people He fought so hard against. Jesus would have hated Christianity as you know it, too bad He isn't involved anymore.
Tom

Nah, the folks in charge change, but the goal never does.

Even if we accept ad argumentum that Jesus existed, and that he would have hated modern Christianity, it would still remain true that the founders of 'original christianity' (Jesus and his disciples) had the goal of getting people to do what Jesus wanted, rather than just doing what they themselves wanted.

Religion is ONLY about trying to influence the behaviour of other people.

Even if there actually was a god or gods, religion would remain an attempt to get people to do what the gods want, rather than do as they please.

As there aren't any gods, it's just people manipulating people. Which is no better (nor worse), morally.

Positing a god as an attempt to justify totalitarianism is a neat trick; After all, a perfectly benevolent dictatorship would be a great place to live, it it could exist. But ultimately it's still being told what to do by an authority, so it cannot be perfectly benevolent. Gods cannot be the source of morality, it's logically impossible.

 

[TomC]

Even if we accept ad argumentum that Jesus existed, and that he would have hated modern Christianity, it would still remain true that the founders of 'original christianity' (Jesus and his disciples) had the goal of getting people to do what Jesus wanted, rather than just doing what they themselves wanted.

What makes you think you know what Jesus and His disciple's goal was?
What makes you think that they are the founders of Christianity, as we know it?

You keep making point blank assertions without providing any evidence that you have the first clue about what you're talking about.
Tom

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Christianity existed for centuries before the Roman Elite took over.

They invented the Creed. They weaponized Christianity. They got rid of Jesus and made it about a pagan demigod, Christ, and got on with the usual empire stuff.

When approximately are you asserting that this happened? If we say the NT gospels occurred late first, early second century, when did the Jesus religion become weaponized?

 

[bilby]

Even if we accept ad argumentum that Jesus existed, and that he would have hated modern Christianity, it would still remain true that the founders of 'original christianity' (Jesus and his disciples) had the goal of getting people to do what Jesus wanted, rather than just doing what they themselves wanted.

What makes you think you know what Jesus and His disciple's goal was?

The goal of all social movements is to modify other people's behaviour.

What makes you think that they are the founders of Christianity, as we know it?

I explicitly said that I wasn't talking about Christianity as we know it. But if Jesus existed, he was by definition the founder of Christianity. And that assumption was explicit in my post.

You keep making point blank assertions without providing any evidence that you have the first clue about what you're talking about.
Tom

You keep responding to my posts without providing any evidence that you actually read them first.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

That criterion has become a bit of an embarrassment to whoever came up with it. It suffers from numerous difficulties not the least of which is our inability to know who was ever really ashamed of Jesus and his story. If his followers were embarrassed by some aspects of his life, then why would they have reported any of that?

I think you're missing the point to the CoE. It's not that His followers were ashamed.

If they weren't ashamed, then where did the embarrassment come from? According to my dictionary, embarrassment and shame are synonyms.

It's that the stories aren't what someone would make up, if they were inventing a Divine Superpower entirely.

I'm left wondering how anybody can know what people might not make up. In any case, people have made up stories that involve a god enduring some shameful circumstance. For example,

In Greek mythology Cronus was the son of Uranus (Heaven) and Gaea (Earth), being the youngest of the 12 Titans. On the advice of his mother he castrated his father with a harpē, thus separating Heaven from Earth.

If you accept the criterion of embarrassment, then you must accept this story as historical. Nobody would fabricate such shame, now would they?

The JtB baptism is an example. If Jesus were entirely fictional, why put that in the story? If Jesus were a real person, who had a relationship with JtB and all His followers knew that, adding the voice of God part makes sense. If Jesus were entirely fictional, why put it in at all? Or why not pose Jesus as teacher of JtB?

Actually, whether Jesus existed or not, then it seems odd that his writers would include his baptism by John if it was troubling for them. They could have just omitted the story if it went against their goal. Of course, they didn't omit the story, so they obviously had some reason to include that story. A very plausible explanation is that the early Christians aimed to have their sect take precedence over that of John the Baptists' sect by stuffing words of praise for Jesus into the mouth of John the Baptist, and doing so did not requre a real Jesus.

This is the point to CoE. There's a ton of supernatural details that look like later folks explaining stuff that people knew happened.

How is that more likely to be true than the early Christians fabricating a Jesus who like any God of that time had magical powers? Those "supernatural details" had been applied to many pagan gods long before the time that Christianity emerged.

There really was an historical Jesus.

So you say.

Christ is a legend/myth that developed later and far away.

Why not there and then? Legends can be created overnight.

If you leave out the implausibly miraculous parts the rest of the story is both plausible and inspirational.

How plausible is the trial of Jesus? Do you believe Pilate tolerated a Jewish mob outside of his residence harassing him?

Anyway, here's my story: Last night I was abducted by ETs. I was so frightened, that I wet my pants. Applying the criterion of embarrassment, this story is likely to be true. I would never make up such a shameful experience.

 

[Learner]

If you leave out the implausibly miraculous parts the rest of the story is both plausible and inspirational.

How plausible is the trial of Jesus? Do you believe Pilate tolerated a Jewish mob outside of his residence harassing him?

Anyway, here's my story: Last night I was abducted by ETs. I was so frightened, that I wet my pants. Applying the criterion of embarrassment, this story is likely to be true. I would never make up such a shameful experience.

Unfortunately Unknown Soldier.... It's a pity your story lacks the criterion of multiple attestation, like Joseph Smith, Mohammed, and Harry Potter's story. The four Gospels (even without Paul's writings) seems to be an advantage, rather than being problematic, apparently when people try to compare the differences between them, so that they could base some arguments on (leaving out the things in common).

Two or more witnesses, is of major importance, highly emphasized in the bible...that's the difference between the bible and the other stories!