andrewcriddle

There is a discussion of possible borrowings from the Gospels by Philostratus at apollonius by Maria Dzielska.

Andrew Criddle

PhilosopherJay

Hi Freetrader,

Thanks for your response.

We have to consider the availability of scientific knowledge at the times under consideration. Today, a child who watches a Superman movie may easily go on the internet and read that Superman is a fictional character and that the supernatural feats that he appears to do are simply movie special effects. If the child does not do it herself, she will soon meet up with someone who will set her straight about her misconception.

Two thousand years ago, there was no internet. The society was permeated with tales of supernatural feats that were sincerely believed by the overwhelming majority of people. Both Jewish and Greek/Roman mythological stories involving all manner of magical occurrences were accepted as historical fact.

There were many private libraries from the beginning of Rome, but the first public library was built in 39 B.C.E. in Rome (http://www.jerryfielden.com/essays/privatelibs.htm). While they did spread throughout the Roman provinces to major cities, it seems that they were not open to the general public, but to the aristocracy, to writers and to scholars.

We may consider that only 10% of the population was literate at this time. Thus 90% of the population who heard the gospel miracle stories would have no way of understanding them as any different from the mythological stories that they accepted as facts. Even among the 10% of literate people, probably 90% of them had no access to libraries to allow them to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction. This leaves us with only 1% of the elite of Roman society who had read enough sceptical and cynical writings that they might be able to tell the difference. According to the Greek writer Celsus in 180 C.E., these educated elite were not the people whom the Christians proselytized. Rather, they recruited mainly slaves, free workers, and widows. These were people living hard and cruel lives who enjoyed miracle stories and were most psychologically programmed to accept and believe them.

Once we realize that the great mass of people were unable to distinguish supernatural tales from historical tales, and had no technological resources to do so, we are no longer faced with the question of why an historical Jesus became more famous than the dozens of other Christ and God/men figures of the time. We are only faced with the question of why one character became more popular than other characters.

In fact the fictionality of Jesus may be seen as an advantage. The fact that Jesus was a fictional character made him more malleable than any of the historical Christ figures and gave him a greater chance of success. If we look at the relatively very few movies and television series made about actual historical heroes of the 1930's in comparision with fictional heroes like Superman, Batman, we see that having no actual historical narrative that multiple tales have to be tied to is a great advantage to mass popularity. Relatively few movies or television series have been done on J.Edgar Hoover, Charles Lindbergh, Jesse Owens, W.E.B. Dubois, Greta Garbo, Babe Ruth or Leon Trotsky, historical people who were considered great heroes by their followers of the time.

Since we can easily explain the belief in the historicity of the Jesus character, based on the normal beliefs in the supernatural and low level of scientific information transference technology of the time, there is no need to resort to the miracle hypothesis. In a similar way, if a five year old child tells us that she saw a unicorn flying, we need not hypothesize that she has seen a singular event in human history. We may take it that she is not psychologically developed enough to tell the difference between wishes and reality. In the same way, the great mass of people living in the ancient Roman empire were unable to distinguish fiction from non-fictional events and tales.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Diogenes the Cynic

People claimed that Egyptian Pharaohs were gods. Roman Emperors too. Vespasian was alleged to have performed healing miracles, including curing a blind man with spit before Mark made the same claim about Jesus. The idea that people attributing either magical or divine attributes to real people was unusual in the ancient world is simply erroneous. It was actually commonplace.

Amaleq13

That's not a bad start. Precedence or, more accurately, lack thereof is precisely why rational individuals doubt claims of magical powers. However, you are certainly incorrect to claim that there is some precedent for actual healing powers. That is simply false.

With regard to a rational inquiry there is no difference between "reported cases" and unsubstantiated gossip. There are "reported cases" of all sorts of nonsense I'm sure you aren't willing to accept. You'll need to do much better than that.

Prove it with citations rather than vague references to gossip. To my knowledge, there are hoaxes, there are inaccurate diagnoses, there are examples of the placebo effect and there are spontaneous remissions (which very frequently are only temporary but the victim generally has the decency to die well off-stage).

You've jumped here from rumors and gossip of magical powers to the conclusion that magical powers exist? There is no evidence of any "healing power" let alone any degrees of it. In fact, all efforts to study and measure "therapeutic touch" have concluded there is no such power.

Why did belief in Jesus spread? Because many folks in the 1st century were as gullible and eager to believe as you are, I suppose. They blindly accepted gossip and rumors of magical powers as real without applying any critical thought. Why? It provided a tremendous upside in a harsh and unforgiving world. It makes you feel special and it makes you part of a larger group interested in your well-being. That, alone, is sufficient explanation for popularity. Add a belief in eternal bliss as a reward and you've got a gold mine.

There is no mystery about the success of Christianity that requires one to assume Jesus genuinely had magical powers and, by your own argument the utter lack of precedent suggest we should consider it highly unlikely. :wave:

ApostateAbe

Yes, you seem correct. I think what a lot of people don't realize is that parallels are easy to find, largely because of shared ideas and shared human impulses about what elements make an interesting story or a good hero or a worthy god. It is a trick of such things as numerology and astrology and mind-reading to mislead people by treating commonplace or trivial things as somehow unique or unexpected.

mountainman

I would be interested in discussion of possible borrowings from Vita Apollonius
by the "New Testament authors" after the year c.220 CE.

I will start another thread.

freetrader

neilgodfrey:

This is a good point which requires me to state my argument more precisely.

Yes, I cannot claim that because a new religion starts up, all its claims must have been true or its founder must have been right or must have done miracles. One could speculate about the unusual events that brought about a new religious movement, and especially if that new movement sprang up very fast and spread much faster than normal.

But the claim I'm making is about something more unique than that. I'm not just saying a new religion started here and spread fast and so that proves Jesus must have done miracles.

No, what is unique here is that an individual whose career in public was very short (probably only one year -- some say 3, others insist it had to be more like 5-10, but they're wrong) -- this individual, who was eliminated so fast that the records of the time missed him, somehow got made into a God or Son of God or messiah-redeemer figure within 100 years or so and became the god of a new religion that swept through the western world.

This is the unusual element which needs an explanation. This new religion, which arguably would have arisen in some form anyway whether Jesus of Galilee had existed or not, chose a highly unlikely figure to serve as its god or its messiah. Why did it choose this unknown fly-by-night Galilean if he did nothing noteworthy?

There had to be something which compelled the founders of this new religion to choose this figure for its deity or savior. What brought this Galilean to their attention? What caused them to pick him out from among all the reputed saviors and messiahs and prophets and wise sages and wonder-workers who are said to have been all around at the time and who had a wider reputation than this nobody who lasted only a year?

Until someone brings up the point, I won't argue here yet about the shortness of his public career. Except to mention that the almost total lack of any mention of him by Josephus (and you could add other writers too) is actually an indication of the shortness of his public career. How did he pass under the radar screen, so to speak? A good explanation is that his public career was just too short, as compared to the many other reputed prophets and wonder-workers and messiahs, all of whom were active for decades and had a long time to build up their reputation and become noticed by the historians.

So to your original point, my argument is valid for any case of this description: an unknown individual unrecognized during his lifetime and snuffed out before gaining fame somehow later is worshipped as having been a miracle-worker savior and elevated to divine status as the central deity of a new rapidly-spreading religion.

I believe this is unprecedented, i.e., it stands out uniquely in the history of reputed miracle-workers and prophets and founders of new religions.

So we're not talking just about a new religion that came about, or even a new religion that spread rapidly. No, we're talking about an unknown figure who was on the scene for a fleeting moment in history, with no credentials and no time to amass a following, but who for some reason was swept into Heaven, so to speak, to sit at the Right Hand of God and become the Savior of all mankind. How did he do that? Or how did someone do that to him? and why? assuming he didn't do anything noteworthy and was overshadowed by many other likely messiahs who were more noteworthy during that time?

This is the basic question being asked. I hope it's clearer now. And my argument then is that the best explanation for this might be that in fact he DID do superhuman acts, i.e., the miracle cures and also the resurrection. This would have made him stand out from the others, because of the impact, and cause people to want to make a god of him, and also motivate crusaders looking for a god to choose him because they knew he would have the necessary "drawing power" to give their movement the "shot in the arm" it needed.

But if he did no such acts and thus did not stand out from all the other messiahs out there in the marketplace, how did he get seized upon and thrust into this messianic savior role? and why? Why did the the messiah-seekers choose such a nobody for their purpose?


Yes, you could draw that conclusion if the argument was that any new or fast-growing religion must be true or its founder must have done miracles. But that is not the argument here, but rather that the individual Jesus of Galilee played a unique role, unlike that of any other figure in history, having had such a short public career and no recognition during his life, yet soon being made into a god for no apparent reason by people who had nothing to gain from making a god out of him; and since this scenario is just too unlikely, the premise that he did nothing noteworthy must be false, i.e., he must have done something highly irregular which made him popular among masses of unimportant people who had no influence and drew no attention from historians or those in power, except that when crowds formed he became seen as a threat and so was arrested and snuffed out, and then followed a rise of new cults worshipping him and claiming he resurrected.

To conclude from this that he really must have done those miracle acts, because there's no other explanation, does not lead to any similar conclusion about Hinduism or Wikkism etc., i.e., that they must be true or must also have been founded by a miracle-worker. No, these religions or how they originated are irrelevant to this point and are not examples of the kind described here, because the case we're describing here is unique and unprecedented. And it's not about comparing one religion with another, but rather about comparing one individual in history, who was made into a god by a new religion, with all others and finding that his case is unique or that there are no other cases resembling this, where such an unlikely person was made into a god.

Toto

Logical error. This scenario may be too unlikely, but there are other possibilities, among them that the religion formed around a mythical Christ, and the story of Jesus - with a short, miracle filled career - was invented and back dated as a founding myth for the new religion.

You have been referred to Richard Carrier's Not the Impossible Faith (or via: amazon.co.uk), which addresses this very issue. At least read the free version on the II Library: Was Christianity Too Improbable to be False? before you continue to repeat old discredited claims.

aa5874

Which healing deeds of Jesus are likely to have been done with positive results?

There are many healing miracles written in the Gospels and they are all just as incredible or even more so than walking on water or turning water to wine.

Look at some outrageous healing deeds supposedly carried out by Jesus.

Matthew 12:22-37 - These are all SuperMiracles with a sucess rate of ZERO.


What miracle in the NT defies explanation and still appears to be genuine ?

The conception, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, or when he simply talked to people and made them see, talk, hear and come back to life after being dead for four days?


Now, from where would Jesus get his Healing Power? You must have a good explanation.

Please tell us what happened? Did something highly unusual happen in history? What century and to whom?

thedistillers

There's plenty of people who claim to have seen aliens, and using the same "logic" as some Christians, the best explanation would be that they DID see aliens, as we are sometimes not able to find a rational explanation to explain what they have seen.

Sorry but just because we're not able to explain a particular case in details doesn't mean that magic is the best explanation. It just means we are lacking details, and it's always when humans are ignorant about something that they think magic somewhat "explains" it best.

Magic would only be the best explanation if we would have exausted all naturalistic explanations. If you can't think of at least one naturalistic explanation to explain the rise of Christianity, the problem is probably that you lack imagination.