Koyaanisqatsi

I should add (but can't as the editing time has passed) into "10" above the following right after "and that their true enemy is their own Jewish leaders (if not Judaism itself)" as there is a "meta" message obviously intent in the whole propaganda, which is that adherence and allegiance to Judaism is wrong; that the message of their messiah (who their fathers and grandfathers killed) was of this "new covenant" that ultimately has nothing to do with Judaism and is in fact a repudiation of Judaism in favor of pantheism.

This is the broader stroke that you picked up on, only that makes more sense coming from Romans who would naturally have the most vested interest in destroying the fanatical Jewish beliefs of their conquered peoples.

wordy

For exactly the same reason a rational atheistic materialistic Marxist would die for socialism or communism cause they had faith in the lie of Utopian social engineering. Not much different at all. Both are social constructs that make short cuts on reality. They cheat on how complex reality is. So they die cause they are humans and humans do have altruistic tendencies to give their life for the groups then feel solidaric to.

spamandham

This is the part that doesn't make any sense to me. If the yeshua movement were an underground military movement, Paul could not get away with claiming the Jews had killed their own deified leader, when others in the organization knew that to be false. Further, what you are saying requires that Paul's works be basically fictional works of propoganda as well, which is certainly possible, but if they are, then we know even less about early Christianity than the scant little that is believed to be known.

I also don't see how claiming the Jews killed their own messiah would be an effective bit of propoganda for Roman infiltrators. This too would be rejected by Jews.

So yes, it's possible that the story is somehow intertwined with a real person, but the scenario you are presenting has too many unsupportable interdependent components to be probable.

spamandham

This part I agree with, but your proposed scenario doesn't follow from it. If we are to believe anything Paul wrote, there was a gentile movement of Christianity at the time he was writing. Why would that be the case if the yeshua movement was an underground Jewish military organization?

Koyaanisqatsi

That's right. He doesn't get away with it as I pointed out. His propaganda only works on Gentiles and the fringe "Hellenized" Jews and even then not so much. That's the reason for a new propaganda attempt with Mark as I stated in the section you quoted.

Correct on both counts.

How many times do I have to go over this? If the reason they are so fanatical is due to their beliefs in Jesus the Martyr, then the Romans would need to destroy that fanaticism by subversion, turning a Martyr into a Christ (because there's no way for them to turn him back into just a man).

Those are two distinctly and completely unrelated symbols. A Martyr is someone killed by your enemy; a Christ is a Jewish Messiah sent by God to destroy your enemies. If the fathers and grandfathers--the "elders" of the new insurrectionist movement--lied to their children about the Romans martyring Jesus and instead it was they who killed their own Messiah, then that would be devastating to hear during a time of revolution; there would be no reason for any of those fanatical insurrectionists to fight the Romans and mass confusion in the ranks, etc.

Or so the propaganda mentality of the Romans would hope it would go.

Propaganda doesn't have to make sense or even work for it nevertheless to be propaganda. Do you really think that dropping thousands of tons of pamphlets in Arabic had any real effect in Iraq? Yet we still did it.

Do you really think that putting "Work Shall Set You Free" on the gates of a death camp in Germany fooled anyone? Yet the Nazis still did it.

:huh:

It was (and still is). Are you not paying attention? It doesn't work on the Jews it is targeted to work on. That's why the Romans had to send in the military to attempt genocide to stop the Jewish revolution. It does however work on some of the "fringe" Jews and the Gentiles, but we have no way of knowing how well or how many it worked on.

What we do know is that the Romans were the victors and Christianity is the antithesis to Judaism, not merely a reformed Judaism, or "non-orthodox" Judaism, but anti-Judaism that has at its dark heart the implicit command to kill all Jews for they killed God.

As centuries of mellenia of persecution (that exists to this day) attests to.

I obviously disagree and should point out that every single time you have repeated this allegation I have demonstrated that you are not only incorrect in your counter, but that your objection is already addressed in what I wrote, for which you seem to just curiously ignore or otherwise miss as you did above.

My theory is not only logically consistent, but it is historically consistent from the perspective of real-world propaganda techniques, which, again, we in the West owe almost entirely to the Romans, so if we didn't get them from that primary demarkation point creating what we call the "Western World," then where did we get them from?

spamandham

A militant organization would likely kill him for trying to subvert them, not just ignore him and let him spread lies about their deified leader (from their perspective) among gentiles. Further, why would gentiles be interested in this Jewish yeshua movement?

I don't think any number of times of going over it is going to help. If I were a member of a Jewish miltant organization with a deified martyr as our rallying cry, I would not be sympathetic to the idea he had been the messiah rather than a military leader, nor would I be open to the idea that I was responsible for his death. Your scenario does not fit the nature of insurrectionists. Such people are so heavily emotionally invested in their ideas, they prefer death over changing their minds. That's what makes them fanatics in the first place. They would not be open to these idea, which means they are not the target audience.

The rather obvious target audience is not hardcore Jewish militants, it's new agey type Hellenized Jews.

I don't think we're getting anywhere. Maybe it's time to just stop.

Koyaanisqatsi

Well, first of all, how military could you get back then as peasent nomads in an underground movement that just had it's leader brutally crucified and secondly, it would be the primary target for the propaganda, but what would be the best way to spread that propaganda? Knock on their door and say, "Here's the real story?" Of course not.

It would take some time (a matter of a few years at the very least) and likely more than just Paul, obviously, though he would clearly be the leader of the infiltration group and the primary target is just that; primary. That doesn't mean there weren't secondary targets. Perhaps the strategy was to work first on the fringe in order to get the "meme" into the core?

The overrall mission of Paul would have been to spread to as many Jews as possible (both seditionists and non) the seed that it was the San Hedrin of thirty/forty years ago that killed Jesus so that's where the modern hatred and distrust should be focused.

And, again, it doesn't work on the intended primary target. Most Jews did not buy and do not to this day buy what Paul was selling. No question about it. But, again, that doesn't change the fact that he was most definitely selling different things to different audiences, as he admits. To the Greeks he says one thing, to the Gentiles he says another and to the insurrectionists not mentioned for obvious reasons, says another?

Koyaanisqatsi

If they knew that was his goal, probably. If, on the other hand, he had mesmerized them with tales of special knowledge--of visitations by Jesus--etc.? If he slowly gained their trust and boldly took the initiative to teach as his writings imply?

I'm not talking about a Roman Clouseau who shows up one day in a mustache and trenchcoat.

You'd have to ask them. Again, we don't know how many were actually interested, only that Paul claims they were, but I can hazzard the most likely guess, which is that Paul tells them a very different story than he tells the Jews; one that probably mirrors the closest to the later propaganda of Mark, where the Romans (aka, the Gentiles) are exonerated and it is the filthy, corrupt Jewish leadership (and by extention all Jews) who the Gentiles no doubt detest or feel above, etc.

Again, Paul as much as admits to being a double agent for Jesus, so why not take him at his word? And, since we know its fictional, who is he admitting he is a double agent to and why? Freudian slip, perhaps? Hide in plain sight, perhaps?

Remember, too, that the Romans would consider such Jewish peasents the same way Americans first viewed "sand niggers" in Iraq; as vastly inferrior, superstitious, ignorant, gullible, easily manipulated nomadic slaves, etc., etc., etc.

A member of a late first century insurrectionist movement against the Roman Empire made up of nomads and ignorant shepherds; it's not like you'd have Katyusha rocket launchers.

Precisely. And they aren't and Paul's plan doesn't work. Got that? It does not work on them. That's why the need for Mark in the Roman mind.

That the then ruling San Hedrin and the more orthodox, corrupt Jews were responsible, of which you as a lowly, young, superstitious, ignorant, impressionable peasant would most assuredly not be.

Are you thinking of this in terms of a grand great blanket thrown over the whole of Judea, because that isn't the way something like this would go down? Perhaps it was my mistake for pointing out that we drop tons of pamphlets today and that put the wrong image in your head?

No, it fits the nature of occupiers quelling an insurrection.

Arbeit Macht Frei. Iraqi nationalists. Vietnam. Etc.

The fact that propaganda doesn't typically work on its intended target audience does not mean it isn't tried on its intended target audience.

Again, look at real history for evidence of this fact.

Except that we've already ruled out the fact that Jews wrote this, so why Romans target non-threats during a revolution?

Tell me why Jews (or Romans) would wish to write a story that exonerates Pilate and has Jews killing their own messiah/god in order to target Hellenized Jews who are already paganized right at the same time when massive Jewish revolt and Roman military genocide is occuring in all Jews' holiest of holy Temple/Cities and then maybe we can stop? Or rather, I can stop. You can, of course, stop at any time.

:huh:

aa5874

Well, I do not which parts of the story are not dreams. If Jesus starts as a dream, I expect the dream to continue. I cannot figure out when the dream stopped.

No historian wrote about this Jesus, son of Mary and the Holy Ghost at all in the 1st century. Jesus must have existed in the dream world or no world, at least.

But Mark ends in a nightmare, according to some, the body of Jesus, son of Mary and the Holy Ghost, disappears.

Gawen

I'd rather neither of you stopped. I'm enjoying this immensely.