steve_bnk

For the Jewish depiction of JC his being a bastard without a mother/father would have been scandalous as I understand it. One of the few clear moral statements
attributed to JC was his reinforcement of the ban on divorce and fornication as sin.

looking at JC as a demigod in the Roman or Greek mythology he would have had to have had a human mother.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demigod


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heracles

'...Many popular stories were told of his life, the most famous being The Twelve Labours of Heracles; Alexandrian poets of the Hellenistic age drew his mythology into a high poetic and tragic atmosphere.[8] His figure, which initially drew on Near Eastern motifs such as the lion-fight, was known everywhere: his Etruscan equivalent was Hercle, a son of Tinia and Uni.

Heracles was the greatest of Hellenic chthonic heroes, but unlike other Greek heroes, no tomb was identified as his. Heracles was both hero and god, as Pindar says heroes theos; at the same festival sacrifice was made to him, first as a hero, with a chthonic libation, and then as a god, upon an altar: thus he embodies the closest Greek approach to a "demi-god".[8] The core of the story of Heracles has been identified by Walter Burkert as originating in Neolithic hunter culture and traditions of shamanistic crossings into the netherworld.[9]..'


To me as myth created by later Roman converts or Roman Jews the JC story makes ;perfect sense.

JC was a god-man. The Christian interpretation is that as human JC suffered for the remission of sin for all to come who believe.

The Greek demigods were not invulnerable and could ask for divine intervention.

The more I think about it the more it seems like the mythical symbolism in the gospel story in the times would be obvious.

As myth and literature for the plot he would have had to be born of a human mother.

Tenorikuma

Steve, I agree that Matthew and Luke created the kinds of supernatural nativity stories any Hellenistic reader would have expected of a demigod. But where did they get the idea that Jesus' mother's name was Mary, and why did John reject that?

steve_bnk

Expected disputes between different writers offset in time, along with variations in the myths that were probably being passed around for years.

Exactly why, who knows. You can see it happening today, and not Just in Christianity.

I knew an evangelical Christian I worked with for several recent years. He absolutely believed in faith healing and laying of hands. I attended one of his groups private meetings and watched it.

There was set of stories that appeared to be in the evangelical community lore such as blindness and cancers going away while people watched, but never an eye witness.

The stories get passed by word of mouth and by written words. Once it gets passed around in the culture it becomes self reinforcing.

Bingo the Clown-O

What a coincidence. I was going to start a thread about this too – but I’m too busy to do it justice.

Yep, in GJohn Mary was Jesus’ aunt! :hysterical:

Four women in GJohn 19:25?

Now standing beside Jesus’ cross were his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.

Or three women?

Now standing beside Jesus’ cross were his mother, his mother’s sister Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.

Three women in Mark 15:40

There were also women, watching from a distance. Among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome.

Three women in Matthew 27:56

Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.

Three women in Luke 24:10

Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles.

Bingo the Clown-O

How come William Lane Craig never talks about this stuff?

Is it because he is good and decent?

Tenorikuma

It's like that Monty Python sketch in which everyone is named "Bruce".

Bingo the Clown-O

Yep. Evidently there was a concentrated effort to add the name “Mary” to the gospels. (I wonder who she was.) And so they added her in different ways.

It looks to me like the authors of GJohn 19:25, Mark 15:40, Matthew 27:56, and Luke 24:10 all knew that they had a problem on their hands. They all knew that there were too many Marys – and they knew that they had to tweak their respective gospels to correct a “Mary overflow” condition.

Maybe it was the same guy who tweaked all of them. - I don’t know. I wasn’t there.

The “mother” character in the Wedding at Cana in Galilee/ Water Into Wine episode in GJohn 2:1-12 was not original. She is a stand-in replacement for the bride. She was Jesus’ bride. She was the "Samaritan woman" from chapter 4. The original story was about Jesus’ wedding with the Samaritan woman.

Tenorikuma

Hm, I thought the Wedding at Cana was an infancy Gospel story about juvenile Jesus doing miracles at his mother's request.

Robert Tulip

The origins of the Blessed Virgin Mary are deep in the matrifocal female worship cults that were destroyed and subordinated by the alienated supernatural politics of patriarchal monotheism.

A good introduction by Acharya S is at http://www.truthbeknown.com/mary.html

Duvduv

What was so much a matrifocal worship cult about some girl named Miriam who had an illegitimate son named Yeshu? The ancient archives in Rome or Constantinople would presumably have included all that information along with everything else just waiting to be incorporated into the new State religion....