Tom Sawyer

Ya, why not just say "You're all atoned!"? Why go through the dog and pony show if pretending to be crucified beforehand?

I get that eternity's a long time and immortals need to find a way to pass the day, but it still seems like a bit of a waste if time.

sotto voce

Because there would then be no sense of gratitude, no motivation to love.

John wrote, 'We love because he first loved us.' That sums up the whole Bible.

Grog

I have trouble accepting the plausibility that the founder of, or at least inspiration for, Christianity was crucified by the Romans. Koester says that this is the one fact that can be gleaned from the Passion Narrative. It's often cited as the least common denominator, the one foundation piece of Christian Origins. I have trouble, though, with the timeline of the aftermath.

Our earliest evidence of Jesus belief comes from Paul. Romans 13, seems to me to disqualify, Paul's mind, Roman culpability in the death of Jesus. The counter to this is that Paul saw Jesus's death as necessary to pay God's blood debt so he would not have held it against the Romans. I find even this explanation weak (after all Paul says that authorities hold no terror for those who did good, but Jesus was allegedly tortured and crucified, certainly terrifying even if necessary). Still, this is what I see:

30 AD (or thereabouts, I will use this as a benchmark): Jesus crucified
30-33 AD Jesus followers develop and promulgate Resurrection, Son of God Myths, Paul (then Saul) persecutes this little known, obscure cult
33 AD Paul receives vision, becomes Christian
50-60 AD (somewhere thereabouts) Paul writes that authorities hold no terror for those who do good. None of Paul's writings mention Roman culpability in the crucifixion of Jesus (besides the mention of that form of execution which implicitly identifies Romans).

It seems implausible to me that:

1) The followers of Jesus would so easily forgive Roman culpability in the execution of Jesus. NOTE: the counterargument that they accepted Jesus' execution as necessary implicitly accepts a great deal of the later gospel story.

2) That within 3 years, anybody would be persecuting this obscure cult. At this time, it would be largely unknown given the timeline and what we would expect of its growth rate in the first 3 years. If, however, the cult did not start with an execution around 30 AD, then there could be something to persecute, pushing Christian origins back into pre-Christ times (which seems more plausible to me).

3) That Paul would write Romans 13 knowing that the Romans tortured and crucified Jesus.

For these reasons, I think the crucifixion, at least a recent crucifixion is implausible.

Diogenes the Cynic

Gratitude for what?

"Motivation to love?" To love what? You're saying people did not love each other until after the crucifixion?

Grog

Josephus recounts a story (which would have occurred during his lifetime) of another Jesus who created a disturbance in the temple by foreseeing doom for Jerusalem. This Jesus was taken to the Jewish authorities, to no avail, taken to the Roman authorities, whipped to the bone and finally killed inadvertently by a Roman siege engine (he even gives up the ghost at the end). I think crucifixion at the hands of the Romans for whatever the whim of the Roman ruler was is entirely plausible. Pilate was probably a ruler willing to do that for not much reason. All of that is plausible. A Jewish troublemaker crucified by Rome, not a stretch.

A Jewish troublemaker crucified Rome, then within a few short years hailed by followers as the divine Son of God who rose from the dead, his actual life and times forgotten, Roman culpability forgiven--all of that is a little hard to swallow.

Grog

aa, I think I agree with everything in this post!

Grog

Yes, God's blood tribute. This is the underlying logic of Christianity.

God set up the rules by which the sins of the world could only be atoned for by the blood sacrifice of the human version of himself.

I fail to see the sense of this.

Diogenes the Cynic

The audience was Roman itself. They would have been blaming themselves. Paul glosses Roman culpability by implying the Romans were God's unknowing servants in carrying out the crucifixion.
I don't think we have to believe they did. Paul says he persecuted the followers of Jesus, but he doesn't say how long it was after the crucifixion.

Three years is plenty of time to generate some low level hostility from Temple authorities, though. It didn't have to be a concerted effort to wipe them out. The Jesus cult could have simply been seen as a minor irritation or nuisance which they dealt with on an ad hoc basis. Paul is pretty vague about what his alleged "persecution" of the Jesus cult really constituted, and we know he was a bullshit artist prone to self serving exaggeration, and even outright prevarication. It's entirely possible this "persecution" he was engaged in was nothing more than being sent out to toss somebody out of a synagogue, or to collect money. Maybe they had stopped paying the Temple tax or something. Paul doesn't say he killed anybody (I think we can ignore Acts). I think he's probably making both himself and Jerusalem Jesus cult sound more significant to the Temple than they really were.
Paul was talking to Romans.

Diogenes the Cynic

There is no evidence that the original followers thought he was God, or even that he physically rose from the dead.

When you talk about "forgiving" the Romans, you have to remember that these Pauline Christians were Romans. The author of Mark was Roman. Pauline Christianity was a Gentile movement, not a Jewish one, and it was rather divorced (even by Paul's own admission) from the original Jerusalem sect, which Paul says still followed the law and kept kosher. That would indicate that the Jerusalem sect was not aware of any new covenant, and had no belief that Jesus had been a redeemer of sins, so Paul was already pretty far afield from them.

I see the original Jerusalem sect and Paul's own mission as basically two different movements with different beliefs. After 70, only Paul was left.

Personally, I think the original sect was probably pretty similar to the Ebionites.

aa5874

The Pauline writer was NOT the earliest source of the Jesus story. The Pauline writer even claimed he knew people in Christ Before him and claimed there were Scriptures with the story that Jesus died for OUR SINS, was buried, resurrected on third, that he was the LAST to be visited by the resurrected Jesus after Over 500 people.

The Pauline writer even stated he persecuted the very Faith that he noe preached.

The Pauline writings [P 46] are dated by Paleography to the mid 2nd-3rd century.

The Pauline writer did NOT state that he first started to preach the Faith and No apologetic source made such a claim.

The Pauline writings are DEAD LAST in the Canon.

Now, the reason for the crucifixion of the Myth character Jesus in the Gospels varies from story to story.

In the Short-ending gMark, the non-historical [Divine]character Jesus taught his disciples that he would be killed and resurrected but NOT even his supposed disciples understood him and was AFRAID to ask him.

The earliest Jesus of gMark was NOT a Savior to the Jews or a Universal Savior but came to fulfill prophecy.

Sinaiticus gMark The Short-ending gMark author used Isaiah 6 and that very chapter will tell us when the Jews should understand why Jesus was crucified.


Isaiagh 6 The Jesus story in gMark was derived from the books of the Prophets and was NOT known by any author of the Canon "Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant , and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate" which happened c 70 CE.