The Christ Myth Theory

[Politesse]

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he?

Another question is if there is a God, is he an atheist?

That's exactly right. It's time for humanity to leave the nest. Any real God would want us to grow up and make our own way, not waste our lives telling god how great he is. If a healthy human father would want us to leave the house and have our own lives, so should a heavenly one. There was a time when gods were needed, but this time has gone.

Because the humans are doing so well...

 

[1Heidegger1!]

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he?

Another question is if there is a God, is he an atheist?

That's exactly right. It's time for humanity to leave the nest. Any real God would want us to grow up and make our own way, not waste our lives telling god how great he is. If a healthy human father would want us to leave the house and have our own lives, so should a heavenly one. There was a time when gods were needed, but this time has gone.

Because the humans are doing so well...

We don't leave the nest to make our own way in the world and establish our own way of thinking about things and doing things because we are perfect and ready. Leaving is the beginning of the journey of self-discovery, not the end, and the self we discover may be very different than that of our parents/guardians. And, our father should be happy about that.

 

[Politesse]

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he?

Another question is if there is a God, is he an atheist?

That's exactly right. It's time for humanity to leave the nest. Any real God would want us to grow up and make our own way, not waste our lives telling god how great he is. If a healthy human father would want us to leave the house and have our own lives, so should a heavenly one. There was a time when gods were needed, but this time has gone.

Because the humans are doing so well...

We don't leave the nest to make our own way in the world and establish our own way of thinking about things and doing things because we are perfect and ready. Leaving is the beginning of the journey of self-discovery, not the end, and the self we discover may be very different than that of our parents/guardians. And, our father should be happy about that.

Maybe you've been walking with the wrong gods. You don't have to abandon your kids to foster their independence, or vice versa.

 

[Jarhyn]

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he? I'm tired of the Conservative Christian stance that God is to thank for everything good, but never to blame for anything bad. I suggest any God should be held up to the same moral and legal standards as we hold ourselves up to. For things like cancer and earthquakes, could God have done better? Is he legally guilty of depraved indifference murder?

In United States law, depraved-heart murder, also known as depraved-indifference murder, is a type of murder where an individual acts with a "depraved indifference" to human life and where such act results in a death, despite that individual not explicitly intending to kill. In a depraved-heart murder, defendants commit an act even though they know their act runs an unusually high risk of causing death or serious bodily harm to a person. If the risk of death or bodily harm is great enough, ignoring it demonstrates a "depraved indifference" to human life and the resulting death is considered to have been committed with malice aforethought. In some states, depraved-heart killings constitute second-degree murder, while in others, the act would be charged with "wanton murder," varying degrees of manslaughter, or third-degree murder.

If no death results, such an act would generally constitute reckless endangerment (sometimes known as "culpable negligence") and possibly other crimes, such as assault. (wiki)

As Spiderman says, with great power comes great responsibility.

This is one of the reasons I use as a philosophical tool this game I played.

I imagine that if I went in a different direction creating an immersive universe, even then there would be problems of evil; as it is, Darwinian individualism is the source of a great number of evils (like there being twisted genetic-group benefits to rape behaviors preserving their existence as genetically predisposed systems in environments that evoke the phenotype from the genotype), and is the very basis for NASA's definition of life.

And I don't know how interesting and novel mutation in a system is well supported without genetic exchange in the first place, so that right there pretty much determines that in any universe even remotely like ours, such as it is a place where "life" may arise in any richly variant way, evil will come to exist from the perspective of individualistic entities.

I just don't think such can possibly create a perfect world in the way we want.

There is no way for existence to be "perfect" forever, and the apple must always be eaten, and to do so is to be something whose death is true and substantial loss. In some ways I translate the allegory as "to know death is coming, and to lose something by it."

Such is the nature of the garden.

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he?

Another question is if there is a God, is he an atheist?

That's exactly right. It's time for humanity to leave the nest. Any real God would want us to grow up and make our own way, not waste our lives telling god how great he is. If a healthy human father would want us to leave the house and have our own lives, so should a heavenly one. There was a time when gods were needed, but this time has gone.

Because the humans are doing so well...

We don't leave the nest to make our own way in the world and establish our own way of thinking about things and doing things because we are perfect and ready. Leaving is the beginning of the journey of self-discovery, not the end, and the self we discover may be very different than that of our parents/guardians. And, our father should be happy about that.

Maybe you've been walking with the wrong gods. You don't have to abandon your kids to foster their independence, or vice versa.

When you are a single father to millions, or billions, or (CountParticles(_universe)), you don't get that much time with any of them, even if you can stop their time to hop between.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he?

Another question is if there is a God, is he an atheist?

That's exactly right. It's time for humanity to leave the nest. Any real God would want us to grow up and make our own way, not waste our lives telling god how great he is. If a healthy human father would want us to leave the house and have our own lives, so should a heavenly one. There was a time when gods were needed, but this time has gone.

Because the humans are doing so well...

We don't leave the nest to make our own way in the world and establish our own way of thinking about things and doing things because we are perfect and ready. Leaving is the beginning of the journey of self-discovery, not the end, and the self we discover may be very different than that of our parents/guardians. And, our father should be happy about that.

Maybe you've been walking with the wrong gods. You don't have to abandon your kids to foster their independence, or vice versa.

I haven't been walking with any gods, although if one in his omnipotence can manage the miraculous feat of appearing and saying "hi," I'd be glad to get to know them.

As for independence, what I mean is if someone thinks "because the scripture says so" is a reasonable justification for their ethical worldview, then they are neither ethical nor an independent thinker. As Nietzsche did, I think Jesus' redefinition of agape/love to include love of enemy is extremely philosophically important, and it doesn't take its force from the fact that it is said in scripture. In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount Jesus redefines love saying “You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love (agapēseis) your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love (agapāte) your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Nietzsche said, “‘I have never desecrated the holy name of love’ (1888, LN1 [286]),” Eros as filling a “lack” nurses on the luster of its object, whereas agape transfigure its object to be loveable

 

[Politesse]

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he?

Another question is if there is a God, is he an atheist?

That's exactly right. It's time for humanity to leave the nest. Any real God would want us to grow up and make our own way, not waste our lives telling god how great he is. If a healthy human father would want us to leave the house and have our own lives, so should a heavenly one. There was a time when gods were needed, but this time has gone.

Because the humans are doing so well...

We don't leave the nest to make our own way in the world and establish our own way of thinking about things and doing things because we are perfect and ready. Leaving is the beginning of the journey of self-discovery, not the end, and the self we discover may be very different than that of our parents/guardians. And, our father should be happy about that.

Maybe you've been walking with the wrong gods. You don't have to abandon your kids to foster their independence, or vice versa.

I haven't been walking with any gods, although if one in his omnipotence can manage the miraculous feat of appearing and saying "hi," I'd be glad to get to know them.

As for independence, what I mean is if someone thinks "because the scripture says so" is a reasonable justification for their ethical worldview, then they are neither ethical nor an independent thinker. As Nietzsche did, I think Jesus' redefinition of agape/love to include love of enemy is extremely philosophically important, and it doesn't take its force from the fact that it is said in scripture. In Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount Jesus redefines love saying “You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love (agapēseis) your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love (agapāte) your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Nietzsche said, “‘I have never desecrated the holy name of love’ (1888, LN1 [286]),” Eros as filling a “lack” nurses on the luster of its object, whereas agape transfigure its object to be loveable

Not all gods leave scriptures. You name Eros, who did not. Actually, Jesus did not either, if indeed a god he was.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he? I'm tired of the Conservative Christian stance that God is to thank for everything good, but never to blame for anything bad. I suggest any God should be held up to the same moral and legal standards as we hold ourselves up to. For things like cancer and earthquakes, could God have done better? Is he legally guilty of depraved indifference murder?

In United States law, depraved-heart murder, also known as depraved-indifference murder, is a type of murder where an individual acts with a "depraved indifference" to human life and where such act results in a death, despite that individual not explicitly intending to kill. In a depraved-heart murder, defendants commit an act even though they know their act runs an unusually high risk of causing death or serious bodily harm to a person. If the risk of death or bodily harm is great enough, ignoring it demonstrates a "depraved indifference" to human life and the resulting death is considered to have been committed with malice aforethought. In some states, depraved-heart killings constitute second-degree murder, while in others, the act would be charged with "wanton murder," varying degrees of manslaughter, or third-degree murder.

If no death results, such an act would generally constitute reckless endangerment (sometimes known as "culpable negligence") and possibly other crimes, such as assault. (wiki)

As Spiderman says, with great power comes great responsibility.

This is one of the reasons I use as a philosophical tool this game I played.

I imagine that if I went in a different direction creating an immersive universe, even then there would be problems of evil; as it is, Darwinian individualism is the source of a great number of evils (like there being twisted genetic-group benefits to rape behaviors preserving their existence as genetically predisposed systems in environments that evoke the phenotype from the genotype), and is the very basis for NASA's definition of life.

And I don't know how interesting and novel mutation in a system is well supported without genetic exchange in the first place, so that right there pretty much determines that in any universe even remotely like ours, such as it is a place where "life" may arise in any richly variant way, evil will come to exist from the perspective of individualistic entities.

I just don't think such can possibly create a perfect world in the way we want.

There is no way for existence to be "perfect" forever, and the apple must always be eaten, and to do so is to be something whose death is true and substantial loss. In some ways I translate the allegory as "to know death is coming, and to lose something by it."

Such is the nature of the garden.

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he?

Another question is if there is a God, is he an atheist?

That's exactly right. It's time for humanity to leave the nest. Any real God would want us to grow up and make our own way, not waste our lives telling god how great he is. If a healthy human father would want us to leave the house and have our own lives, so should a heavenly one. There was a time when gods were needed, but this time has gone.

Because the humans are doing so well...

We don't leave the nest to make our own way in the world and establish our own way of thinking about things and doing things because we are perfect and ready. Leaving is the beginning of the journey of self-discovery, not the end, and the self we discover may be very different than that of our parents/guardians. And, our father should be happy about that.

Maybe you've been walking with the wrong gods. You don't have to abandon your kids to foster their independence, or vice versa.

When you are a single father to millions, or billions, or (CountParticles(_universe)), you don't get that much time with any of them, even if you can stop their time to hop between.

Ultimately, we all can look at the same evidence and come up with very different interpretations and assessments, like a liberal vs conservative interpretation, or a pro life vs pro choice interpretation. What rings true to me is with better planning God could have avoided the estimated 801,000 children younger than 5 years of age, mostly in developing countries, that die from diarrhea every year. It's contaminated water. Latest figures reveal that 1 in 3 people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water. As a result, more than 3.4 million people die from waterborne diseases. In my eyes, if there is a God he was irresponsible and could have done better. What is reasonable to me is that the world looks exactly the way you expect it to if there is no God. But as I say, you can spin the evidence to fit with your preconceived context. Pastor Marcus Lamb, the former head of the Daystar network was ripped from this world recently because of Covid. If I was his family I'd be angry with God. How did his family reconcile this horrific tragedy of the special pastor with the idea of a powerful loving God? They framed it as "God promoted Marcus." The theist has the scent of the politician in my nostrils.

 

[Jarhyn]

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he? I'm tired of the Conservative Christian stance that God is to thank for everything good, but never to blame for anything bad. I suggest any God should be held up to the same moral and legal standards as we hold ourselves up to. For things like cancer and earthquakes, could God have done better? Is he legally guilty of depraved indifference murder?

In United States law, depraved-heart murder, also known as depraved-indifference murder, is a type of murder where an individual acts with a "depraved indifference" to human life and where such act results in a death, despite that individual not explicitly intending to kill. In a depraved-heart murder, defendants commit an act even though they know their act runs an unusually high risk of causing death or serious bodily harm to a person. If the risk of death or bodily harm is great enough, ignoring it demonstrates a "depraved indifference" to human life and the resulting death is considered to have been committed with malice aforethought. In some states, depraved-heart killings constitute second-degree murder, while in others, the act would be charged with "wanton murder," varying degrees of manslaughter, or third-degree murder.

If no death results, such an act would generally constitute reckless endangerment (sometimes known as "culpable negligence") and possibly other crimes, such as assault. (wiki)

As Spiderman says, with great power comes great responsibility.

This is one of the reasons I use as a philosophical tool this game I played.

I imagine that if I went in a different direction creating an immersive universe, even then there would be problems of evil; as it is, Darwinian individualism is the source of a great number of evils (like there being twisted genetic-group benefits to rape behaviors preserving their existence as genetically predisposed systems in environments that evoke the phenotype from the genotype), and is the very basis for NASA's definition of life.

And I don't know how interesting and novel mutation in a system is well supported without genetic exchange in the first place, so that right there pretty much determines that in any universe even remotely like ours, such as it is a place where "life" may arise in any richly variant way, evil will come to exist from the perspective of individualistic entities.

I just don't think such can possibly create a perfect world in the way we want.

There is no way for existence to be "perfect" forever, and the apple must always be eaten, and to do so is to be something whose death is true and substantial loss. In some ways I translate the allegory as "to know death is coming, and to lose something by it."

Such is the nature of the garden.

My question is if there is a God, could he have done better, and if so why didn't he?

Another question is if there is a God, is he an atheist?

That's exactly right. It's time for humanity to leave the nest. Any real God would want us to grow up and make our own way, not waste our lives telling god how great he is. If a healthy human father would want us to leave the house and have our own lives, so should a heavenly one. There was a time when gods were needed, but this time has gone.

Because the humans are doing so well...

We don't leave the nest to make our own way in the world and establish our own way of thinking about things and doing things because we are perfect and ready. Leaving is the beginning of the journey of self-discovery, not the end, and the self we discover may be very different than that of our parents/guardians. And, our father should be happy about that.

Maybe you've been walking with the wrong gods. You don't have to abandon your kids to foster their independence, or vice versa.

When you are a single father to millions, or billions, or (CountParticles(_universe)), you don't get that much time with any of them, even if you can stop their time to hop between.

Ultimately, we all can look at the same evidence and come up with very different interpretations and assessments, like a liberal vs conservative interpretation, or a pro life vs pro choice interpretation. What rings true to me is with better planning God could have avoided the estimated that 801,000 children younger than 5 years of age, mostly in developing countries, that die from diarrhea every year. It's contaminated water. Latest figures reveal that 1 in 3 people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water. As a result, more than 3.4 million people die from waterborne diseases. In my eyes, if there is a God he was irresponsible and could have done better. What is reasonable to me is that the world looks exactly the way you expect it to if there is no God. But as I say, you can spin the evidence to fit with your preconceived context. Pastor Marcus Lamb, the former head of the Daystar network was ripped from this world recently because of Covid. If I was his family I'd be angry with God. How did his family reconcile this horrific tragedy of the special pastor with the idea of a powerful loving God? They framed it as "God promoted Marcus." The theist has the scent of the politician in my nostrils.

I guess my point is, I can forgive even a God I know is shit at his job and probably doesn't even exist, because quite frankly I would have been just as bad at it. Have been.

There weren't even bodies to put in tombs.

Their parents never even got to know what happened to them!

Also, I can accept that such is most likely an atheist and prefers we stay that way if for no other reason than to prevent corrupt motives.

To be fair, they all had fewer transistors operating them than there are neurons in the brain of a fucking ant... But still it haunts me.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

As I said, we all read these things differently. I can think of a number of things God deserves, but forgiveness isn't one of them.

"11 For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope. (Jeremiah 29:11)"

Each day, 25,000 people, including more than 10,000 children, die from hunger and related causes.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

The Hebrew scriptures appear to be awash in atoning blood:

• Godfrey, Neil (4 January 2019). "Why a Saviour Had to Suffer and Die? Martyrdom Beliefs in Pre-Christian Times". Vridar.

The blood of the martyr atones for the sin of his people -- Deut. 32.43; II Mac. 7.37 f; IV Mac. 1.11; 6.28 f; 12.7 f; 17.21 f; SB, II, 274 ff; 281 f; MidrHL. on 7.9; MidrPr. on 9.2

• Godfrey, Neil (15 January 2019). "Salvation through a Saviour's Death -- Another List". Vridar.

[T}he blood of Jewish martyrs was believed to purify and cleanse the nation; the martyrs’ blood led to God’s forgiveness of the sins of the nation and the salvation of all.

Hi, sorry I missed this comment. I appreciate your time and effort in finding these references. I would like to reiterate the point I made above that:

The Levitical background of Hebrews shows that the sacrifice of the one animal is meant to purify the location so God can be present amidst a sinful people. The other Levitical animal here, scapegoat that the sins are placed upon, is not killed, but in fact released into the wilderness, so this isn't a model that can be used to prooftext Christ's death as being responsible for the sin debt being wiped clean.

I don't think anyone is arguing sacrificial imagery is not present. For my historicist reading it is Christ's blood / brutal torture and death that awakens what Paul calls the law written on our hearts and, following Luke, awakens our guilt and hence is a catalyst for our repentance. It may even be awakened guilt that prompted Paul's conversion experience, as he had relatives such as Junia high up in the early Jesus movement he was persecuting = cognitive dissonance.

It is not a question of going back into the Hebrew Scripture and prooftexting this or that, but asking how is the crucifixion/resurrection of Jesus solving a problem. Neil mentioned 4 Maccabees somewhere on this thread regarding the idea of substitution. That's fine, but it doesn't seem to make the best sense of the NT evidence. This is the problem with prooftexting. McGrath comments against the sin debt interpretation:

Yet the New Testament does not use the language of punishment and exchange in the way 4 Maccabees (which was written after the early Christians had already interpreted the death of Jesus in atoning, sacrificial terms) does. Paul can talk about sacrifice (and discussing what sacrifice meant in the Judaism of this time would be a subject of its own), but he prefers to use the language of participation. One died for all, so that all died (2 Corinthians 5:14). This is not only different from substitution, it is the opposite of it. Jesus is here understood not to prevent our death but to bring it about! This fits neatly within his understanding of there being two ages, with Christ having died to one and entered the resurrection age, and with Christians through their connection to him having already died to the present age and thus made able to live free from its dominion. see: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionprof/2007/12/whats-wrong-with-penal-substitution.html

This is my argument for Paul: Paul was apocalyptic. He called the resurrected Jesus the "firstfruits" of the general resurrection of souls at the end of the age which had begun in his eyes. In other words, judgment was coming soon. For the people to be judged favorably they needed to repent. The Lukan moral influence interpretation of the cross paints the cross as a tool for making our hidden guilt conspicuous so that we can be convicted by the law written on our hearts and repent. A Carrier/Doherty celestial sin-debt-wiped-clean-cross doesn't accomplish this because how do demons executing Christ in the sky inspire my repentance, and even if my current sin debt is wiped clean what if I sin horribly again (does Christ have to die again?).

So I think Moral Influence is a better interpretation of the cross than Penal Substitution (paying the sin debt), and historicism makes a good case. The cross loses all effect to make manifest my guilty if I don't identify and see in myself those who killed Jesus. The relenting/repenting Roman soldier seems to both function on the individual level I outlined above, and on the societal level with Jesus as Israel and the soldier as Rome, because remember Joel 3 said the nations would be judged for mistreating Israel, so there needed to be societal repentance too. But these are all individual and societal issues grounded specifically in human history, not having to do with Jesus as a great angel never having been on earth and crucified by demons in outer space.

 

[ramoss]

The Hebrew scriptures appear to be awash in atoning blood:

• Godfrey, Neil (4 January 2019). "Why a Saviour Had to Suffer and Die? Martyrdom Beliefs in Pre-Christian Times". Vridar.

The blood of the martyr atones for the sin of his people -- Deut. 32.43; II Mac. 7.37 f; IV Mac. 1.11; 6.28 f; 12.7 f; 17.21 f; SB, II, 274 ff; 281 f; MidrHL. on 7.9; MidrPr. on 9.2

• Godfrey, Neil (15 January 2019). "Salvation through a Saviour's Death -- Another List". Vridar.

[T}he blood of Jewish martyrs was believed to purify and cleanse the nation; the martyrs’ blood led to God’s forgiveness of the sins of the nation and the salvation of all.

There translation of Deuteronomy 32:43 is a bit off. A Jewish translation is

42I will intoxicate My arrows with blood, and My sword will consume flesh, from the blood of the slain and the captives, from the first breach of the enemy.'
43Sing out praise, O you nations, for His people! For He will avenge the blood of His servants, inflict revenge upon His adversaries, and appease His land [and] His people.

It's basically taking a mistranslated out of context too.

2 Macabee is also is a very strange interpretation .

 

[neilgodfrey]

The Hebrew scriptures appear to be awash in atoning blood:

• Godfrey, Neil (4 January 2019). "Why a Saviour Had to Suffer and Die? Martyrdom Beliefs in Pre-Christian Times". Vridar.

The blood of the martyr atones for the sin of his people -- Deut. 32.43; II Mac. 7.37 f; IV Mac. 1.11; 6.28 f; 12.7 f; 17.21 f; SB, II, 274 ff; 281 f; MidrHL. on 7.9; MidrPr. on 9.2

• Godfrey, Neil (15 January 2019). "Salvation through a Saviour's Death -- Another List". Vridar.

[T}he blood of Jewish martyrs was believed to purify and cleanse the nation; the martyrs’ blood led to God’s forgiveness of the sins of the nation and the salvation of all.

Hi, sorry I missed this comment. I appreciate your time and effort in finding these references. I would like to reiterate the point I made above that:

The Levitical background of Hebrews shows that the sacrifice of the one animal is meant to purify the location so God can be present amidst a sinful people. The other Levitical animal here, scapegoat that the sins are placed upon, is not killed, but in fact released into the wilderness, so this isn't a model that can be used to prooftext Christ's death as being responsible for the sin debt being wiped clean.

I don't think anyone is arguing sacrificial imagery is not present. For my historicist reading it is Christ's blood / brutal torture and death that awakens what Paul calls the law written on our hearts and, following Luke, awakens our guilt and hence is a catalyst for our repentance. It may even be awakened guilt that prompted Paul's conversion experience, as he had relatives such as Junia high up in the early Jesus movement he was persecuting = cognitive dissonance.

It is not a question of going back into the Hebrew Scripture and prooftexting this or that, but asking how is the crucifixion/resurrection of Jesus solving a problem. Neil mentioned 4 Maccabees somewhere on this thread regarding the idea of substitution. That's fine, but it doesn't seem to make the best sense of the NT evidence. This is the problem with prooftexting. McGrath comments against the sin debt interpretation:

Yet the New Testament does not use the language of punishment and exchange in the way 4 Maccabees (which was written after the early Christians had already interpreted the death of Jesus in atoning, sacrificial terms) does. Paul can talk about sacrifice (and discussing what sacrifice meant in the Judaism of this time would be a subject of its own), but he prefers to use the language of participation. One died for all, so that all died (2 Corinthians 5:14). This is not only different from substitution, it is the opposite of it. Jesus is here understood not to prevent our death but to bring it about! This fits neatly within his understanding of there being two ages, with Christ having died to one and entered the resurrection age, and with Christians through their connection to him having already died to the present age and thus made able to live free from its dominion. see: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionprof/2007/12/whats-wrong-with-penal-substitution.html

This is my argument for Paul: Paul was apocalyptic. He called the resurrected Jesus the "firstfruits" of the general resurrection of souls at the end of the age which had begun in his eyes. In other words, judgment was coming soon. For the people to be judged favorably they needed to repent. The Lukan moral influence interpretation of the cross paints the cross as a tool for making our hidden guilt conspicuous so that we can be convicted by the law written on our hearts and repent. A Carrier/Doherty celestial sin-debt-wiped-clean-cross doesn't accomplish this because how do demons executing Christ in the sky inspire my repentance, and even if my current sin debt is wiped clean what if I sin horribly again (does Christ have to die again?).

So I think Moral Influence is a better interpretation of the cross than Penal Substitution (paying the sin debt), and historicism makes a good case. The cross loses all effect to make manifest my guilty if I don't identify and see in myself those who killed Jesus. The relenting/repenting Roman soldier seems to both function on the individual level I outlined above, and on the societal level with Jesus as Israel and the soldier as Rome, because remember Joel 3 said the nations would be judged for mistreating Israel, so there needed to be societal repentance too. But these are all individual and societal issues grounded specifically in human history, not having to do with Jesus as a great angel never having been on earth and crucified by demons in outer space.

The problem with the view that Paul or the gospels meant to convey a message that we are all guilty and in some vicarious sense responsible for the death of Jesus is that Paul nowhere expresses such guilt himself and doesn't try to tell his converts that they should, either. And it doesn't appear in the gospels, either. Stendahl's piece still holds: -- The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West. (Or my own post on that article: https://wp.me/p3H3CD-ix9) That's a Protestant interpretation of Paul and the gospels. Paul never expresses any guilt or shame for being even partly responsible for Jesus' death.

The 4 Maccabees reference was not a "proof text" but the expression of a theme that is found throughout the many allusions and tropes in the gospels, as Levenson has demonstrated at length in his work -- Jesus is presented as a new Isaac whose blood atones for all the sins of his race. But Stendahl's article still applies even here. (As for the Roman soldier's confession at the end of the crucifixion scene, there are reasonable arguments that that little anecdote was introduced into the first gospel as an ironic twist: "So this! was the son of God! What a joke!" Those words were turned into a serious confession by a later evangelist.

Jesus is also the personification of the "new Israel" (or the "church") that emerges out of the mass crucifixions and related deaths of the Jews in 70 CE -- and that idea comes close, even might be interpreted as another expression of, McGrath's point about "participation". That's also very much Paul's idea that is taken from Stoicism: One has to "die" to this world and be "immersed" in the Logos (for the Stoics) or Christ (for Paul) and from there "rise" to join a new community of likeminded persons living a "Logos/Christ" centred life.

But I don't think that any of this tells us about the origins of the idea of Christ and his crucifixion.

The earliest witnesses speak of Christ's death as having some mystical saving effect, however that was done. From that perspective it matters not whether it was an event in heaven, experienced by a spirit being, or on earth by a spirit being, or on earth by a real being. It was entirely a mystical process in its power to save. All sorts of theories spun off from that idea and it was still being wrestled with in the time of Luther and many of us are still reading Paul through Luther's eyes -- as Stendahl points out.

 

[Kylie]

My question is this: Outside sources that stem either directly or indirectly from the Bible, what evidence is there for Jesus?

 

[Politesse]

My question is this: Outside sources that stem either directly or indirectly from the Bible, what evidence is there for Jesus?

"The Bible" did not exist until centuries after Jesus' death. Almost none of the texts under discussion did or could "stem from the Bible" until long after the relevant period of time. Rather, "the Bible" is a concept that gradually (over several centuries) came to stem from a panoply of early sources we now have only partial access to. Paul's letters are not a Biblical source, in other words. Rather, the Bible is a Pauline source if you're thinking of these things clearly.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

The Hebrew scriptures appear to be awash in atoning blood:

• Godfrey, Neil (4 January 2019). "Why a Saviour Had to Suffer and Die? Martyrdom Beliefs in Pre-Christian Times". Vridar.

The blood of the martyr atones for the sin of his people -- Deut. 32.43; II Mac. 7.37 f; IV Mac. 1.11; 6.28 f; 12.7 f; 17.21 f; SB, II, 274 ff; 281 f; MidrHL. on 7.9; MidrPr. on 9.2

• Godfrey, Neil (15 January 2019). "Salvation through a Saviour's Death -- Another List". Vridar.

[T}he blood of Jewish martyrs was believed to purify and cleanse the nation; the martyrs’ blood led to God’s forgiveness of the sins of the nation and the salvation of all.

Hi, sorry I missed this comment. I appreciate your time and effort in finding these references. I would like to reiterate the point I made above that:

The Levitical background of Hebrews shows that the sacrifice of the one animal is meant to purify the location so God can be present amidst a sinful people. The other Levitical animal here, scapegoat that the sins are placed upon, is not killed, but in fact released into the wilderness, so this isn't a model that can be used to prooftext Christ's death as being responsible for the sin debt being wiped clean.

I don't think anyone is arguing sacrificial imagery is not present. For my historicist reading it is Christ's blood / brutal torture and death that awakens what Paul calls the law written on our hearts and, following Luke, awakens our guilt and hence is a catalyst for our repentance. It may even be awakened guilt that prompted Paul's conversion experience, as he had relatives such as Junia high up in the early Jesus movement he was persecuting = cognitive dissonance.

It is not a question of going back into the Hebrew Scripture and prooftexting this or that, but asking how is the crucifixion/resurrection of Jesus solving a problem. Neil mentioned 4 Maccabees somewhere on this thread regarding the idea of substitution. That's fine, but it doesn't seem to make the best sense of the NT evidence. This is the problem with prooftexting. McGrath comments against the sin debt interpretation:

Yet the New Testament does not use the language of punishment and exchange in the way 4 Maccabees (which was written after the early Christians had already interpreted the death of Jesus in atoning, sacrificial terms) does. Paul can talk about sacrifice (and discussing what sacrifice meant in the Judaism of this time would be a subject of its own), but he prefers to use the language of participation. One died for all, so that all died (2 Corinthians 5:14). This is not only different from substitution, it is the opposite of it. Jesus is here understood not to prevent our death but to bring it about! This fits neatly within his understanding of there being two ages, with Christ having died to one and entered the resurrection age, and with Christians through their connection to him having already died to the present age and thus made able to live free from its dominion. see: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/religionprof/2007/12/whats-wrong-with-penal-substitution.html

This is my argument for Paul: Paul was apocalyptic. He called the resurrected Jesus the "firstfruits" of the general resurrection of souls at the end of the age which had begun in his eyes. In other words, judgment was coming soon. For the people to be judged favorably they needed to repent. The Lukan moral influence interpretation of the cross paints the cross as a tool for making our hidden guilt conspicuous so that we can be convicted by the law written on our hearts and repent. A Carrier/Doherty celestial sin-debt-wiped-clean-cross doesn't accomplish this because how do demons executing Christ in the sky inspire my repentance, and even if my current sin debt is wiped clean what if I sin horribly again (does Christ have to die again?).

So I think Moral Influence is a better interpretation of the cross than Penal Substitution (paying the sin debt), and historicism makes a good case. The cross loses all effect to make manifest my guilty if I don't identify and see in myself those who killed Jesus. The relenting/repenting Roman soldier seems to both function on the individual level I outlined above, and on the societal level with Jesus as Israel and the soldier as Rome, because remember Joel 3 said the nations would be judged for mistreating Israel, so there needed to be societal repentance too. But these are all individual and societal issues grounded specifically in human history, not having to do with Jesus as a great angel never having been on earth and crucified by demons in outer space.

The problem with the view that Paul or the gospels meant to convey a message that we are all guilty and in some vicarious sense responsible for the death of Jesus is that Paul nowhere expresses such guilt himself and doesn't try to tell his converts that they should, either. And it doesn't appear in the gospels, either. Stendahl's piece still holds: -- The Apostle Paul and the Introspective Conscience of the West. (Or my own post on that article: https://wp.me/p3H3CD-ix9) That's a Protestant interpretation of Paul and the gospels. Paul never expresses any guilt or shame for being even partly responsible for Jesus' death.

The 4 Maccabees reference was not a "proof text" but the expression of a theme that is found throughout the many allusions and tropes in the gospels, as Levenson has demonstrated at length in his work -- Jesus is presented as a new Isaac whose blood atones for all the sins of his race. But Stendahl's article still applies even here. (As for the Roman soldier's confession at the end of the crucifixion scene, there are reasonable arguments that that little anecdote was introduced into the first gospel as an ironic twist: "So this! was the son of God! What a joke!" Those words were turned into a serious confession by a later evangelist.

Jesus is also the personification of the "new Israel" (or the "church") that emerges out of the mass crucifixions and related deaths of the Jews in 70 CE -- and that idea comes close, even might be interpreted as another expression of, McGrath's point about "participation". That's also very much Paul's idea that is taken from Stoicism: One has to "die" to this world and be "immersed" in the Logos (for the Stoics) or Christ (for Paul) and from there "rise" to join a new community of likeminded persons living a "Logos/Christ" centred life.

But I don't think that any of this tells us about the origins of the idea of Christ and his crucifixion.

The earliest witnesses speak of Christ's death as having some mystical saving effect, however that was done. From that perspective it matters not whether it was an event in heaven, experienced by a spirit being, or on earth by a spirit being, or on earth by a real being. It was entirely a mystical process in its power to save. All sorts of theories spun off from that idea and it was still being wrestled with in the time of Luther and many of us are still reading Paul through Luther's eyes -- as Stendahl points out.

Yes, I don find your response to be convincing. Paul's "One died so that all died" certainly doesn't support your reading. You have some plausible ideas sometimes Neil, but remember Dr. McGrath banned you from his blog because you habitually distort the texts to support your hypotheses. Saying we have reason to think the Roman soldier is being sarcastic in Mark is like RG Price saying Mark was being sarcastic calling his work a gospel/good news. Anyway, I think some interesting comments were made on this thread so I've had my say and hopefully others will continue!

 

[1Heidegger1!]

(2/2) ps

Just to show Mark's Roman Soldier isn't being sarcastic as Godfrey claims, we read:

37 Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last. 38 And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom. 39 Now when the centurion who stood facing him saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, “Truly this man was God’s Son!” (Mark 15:37-39 NRSVUE)

As anyone can see, the miracle of the temple curtain being torn precedes the admission by the soldier that Jesus is God's true son, snubbing Caesar who the Romans would have seen as the son of God. The soldier has undergone a transformation. A "gospel" means propaganda, that's what kind of writing it is - exaggeration and flattering a known historical figure. Helms comments:

The syncretic flavor of Mark is at once evident from his reproduction of a piece of Augustan imperial propaganda and his setting it beside a tailored scripture quote. “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God” closely matches the formula found on a monument erected by the Provincial Assembly in Asia Minor (1st century BCE): “Whereas... Providence... has... brought our life to the peak of perfection in giving us Augustus Caesar... who, being sent to us and to our descendants as a savior..., and whereas... the birthday of the god has been for the whole world the beginning of the gospel (euaggelion) concerning him, let all reckon a new era beginning from the date of his birth.” (Helms, p. 24, in Price)

I think it's plausible Paul had his conversion experience/hallucination out of cognitive dissonance related to repressed guilt from persecuting a movement who he had relatives high up in like Junia. I think this is the meaning of the cross generally: Christ crucified as a catalyst for a person to see themselves as a microcosm of the world that wrongly executed Jesus, and thus being convicted by the Law written on her heart (Rom 2:15) , the person is inspired to repent/die to this evil age, and in this way is crucified with Christ:

I have been crucified with Christ, 20 and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. (Gal 2:20,)

14 For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. (2 Cor 5:14)

That Jesus died for us allows us to die, to be crucified with him, which is the opposite of Christ dying instead of us to appease a God who can't forgive. For a couple good blog posts on the silliness of the sin debt interpretation of the cross, see Dr. McGrath's 2 posts here:

The Odious Penal Substitutionary Theory Of Atonement

PZ Myers posted an entry on his blog with the title "Odious Christianity." He is commenting on a tract that came his way which includes the following

www.patheos.com

What's Wrong With Penal Substitution? (From The Archives)

For many people, the title of this post may be meaningless. "What is penal substitution?" would seem to them a better question. But if I explain that it

www.patheos.com

Okay, that's me 2 cents. Hopefully the dialogue will continue in my absence!

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

I think it's plausible Paul had his conversion experience/hallucination out of cognitive dissonance related to repressed guilt from persecuting a movement who he had relatives high up in like Junia. I think this is the meaning of the cross generally: Christ crucified as a catalyst for a person to see themselves as a microcosm of the world that wrongly executed Jesus, and thus being convicted by the Law written on her heart (Rom 2:15) , the person is inspired to repent/die to this evil age, and in this way is crucified with Christ

I've known people who have had conversion experiences. These are brain events. They are not planned. Assigning reasons to these experiences is at best post hoc adventurism and amateur psychiatry. If Paul had an event, which seems to be the case, it was not because of Jesus or anything controlled by Paul, rather it was simply Paul's brain misfiring - at least from the modern perspective of medicine.

 

[1Heidegger1!]

I think it's plausible Paul had his conversion experience/hallucination out of cognitive dissonance related to repressed guilt from persecuting a movement who he had relatives high up in like Junia. I think this is the meaning of the cross generally: Christ crucified as a catalyst for a person to see themselves as a microcosm of the world that wrongly executed Jesus, and thus being convicted by the Law written on her heart (Rom 2:15) , the person is inspired to repent/die to this evil age, and in this way is crucified with Christ

I've known people who have had conversion experiences. These are brain events. They are not planned. Assigning reasons to these experiences is at best post hoc adventurism and amateur psychiatry. If Paul had an event, which seems to be the case, it was not because of Jesus or anything controlled by Paul, rather it was simply Paul's brain misfiring - at least from the modern perspective of medicine.

Hi, I mentioned above that I'm not posting on this thread any more because I'm busy, but here are a few brief thoughts on your question:

I am secular and so find no supernatural events here. When I say the horrific torture and execution of Christ awakens guilt in us, I just mean it in the same sense that the traditional definition of marriage we've always had appears in a new and darker light when we see it doing violence to LGBTQ rights. Analogously, the more we think about Socrates, the more we are horrified at his execution in a way his society did not see. Similarly, we do not kill people for the crimes Jesus died for anymore - at least not in civilized modern society. It's all in this blog post link I provided before: https://secularfrontier.infidels.or...ast-about-mythicism-atonement-and-gnosticism/

Also, this is kind of interesting. Dr Dennis MacDonald did an Internet Infidels podcast interview with our social media guy Ed today where he basically sums up how absurd the academy thinks mythicism is:

 

[Jarhyn]

I think it's plausible Paul had his conversion experience/hallucination out of cognitive dissonance related to repressed guilt from persecuting a movement who he had relatives high up in like Junia. I think this is the meaning of the cross generally: Christ crucified as a catalyst for a person to see themselves as a microcosm of the world that wrongly executed Jesus, and thus being convicted by the Law written on her heart (Rom 2:15) , the person is inspired to repent/die to this evil age, and in this way is crucified with Christ

I've known people who have had conversion experiences. These are brain events. They are not planned. Assigning reasons to these experiences is at best post hoc adventurism and amateur psychiatry. If Paul had an event, which seems to be the case, it was not because of Jesus or anything controlled by Paul, rather it was simply Paul's brain misfiring - at least from the modern perspective of medicine.

Or maybe he ate something with some bad fungus in it, or caught an ergot ornsomething and had a hallucination.

You see things in your mindscape that, if you don't have a theory of material brain activity I am sure you might come into the idea it came from god.

Not that I deny that whoever Paul was, dude had some issues even if he too was a fictionalization of the guy who wrote him.

 

[Swammerdami]

I see that most of you are HUGELY more qualified than I to comment on Jesus' historicity. Nevertheless I will repeat my common-sense argument that early Christianity derived from a real (though not supernatural) Jesus of Nazareth.

(1) Histories refer to Christians living in Rome about 28 years after the alleged crucifixion. Could those texts have been misinterpreted or forged centuries later? Perhaps, but that seems like severe special pleading. Don't Paul and Josephus refer to the same historic James? The lack of early Gospel documents just reflects the ease with which old documents are lost.

(2) Parts of the Gospels make little sense as myth, but could be used to excuse uncomfortable facts. As just one example, why is a prophet without honor in his own country? Most likely it was to explain the uncomfortable fact that some of his early acquaintances did not think he was the Messiah.

(3) Why invent a fictitious "Messiah" when there were real claimants, e.g. John the Baptist, to choose from?