mindovermyth

I have not read the NT for a while now so I might have forgotten some info. supplied there to explain my following question. I am however too lazy to go in there and recap so I put forth this question which has been bugging me a little.

Jesus was according to the gospels performing miracles and preaching in various places thus gathering quite a large following of believers. In fact, in one instance the pressure of devout followers was so great that a sick man was lowered through the roof of a building where Jesus was healing the sick as a solution to "get to" Jesus. In other instances we learn that crowds of four to five thousand people had gathered exclusively to hear Jesus preach. Yet in the setting where Pilate (unwillingly) is condemning Jesus to death, there was a huge crowd (my hunch feeling from the text is that the crowd was unusually big for this type of event, correct or not I do not know) unanimously screaming out their demand for a death sentence for Jesus. They were so adamant about this that they rather see the release of a known, feared and hated murder than the release of Jesus. No mentioning of discerning voices.

So my question is, how did the transformation take place from being a revered figure with huge following to being a so vehemently and (in Jerusalem), universally hated and despiced figure?

mindovermyth

No reply?

I hoped that I had found "new" a conceptual inconstency in NT here, I guess that was rather optimistic.

Bright Life

Perhaps BC & H will yield more results.

BL
GRD MOD

Tom Sawyer

Maybe the same way that it happened for Michael Jackson or OJ Simpson. People loved them and then some accusations were made against them and most of those people started to hate them.

Everybody likes to see celebrities put on trial and whenever it happens, lots of folks want to see those celebrities get punished, because it's funny to see famous people get knocked around by the Man just like regular people do. I don't see why this would have been any different 2,000 years ago than it is today.

Vivisector

Hello, Mind,

One of the things I found very early on my path to deconversion was that there is almost nothing that hasn't been written about, discussed, or thought about when it comes to the topic of Christianity. On many occasions, I've had what I thought was a flash of brilliance, only to learn that Celsus or some other smartass thought of it nearly 2,000 years ago. It was a humbling experience, but I'm happy to report that I survived it.

The corollary to the above is that many, many, many of the topics I've been interested in have been discussed at great length here by some pretty damned smart folks (no, I don't number myself among them). In a way, though, all of this is good news - it's fairly easy to get a sense of what's the thinking on a particular issue when you get the hang of searching through the archives (which I'm still working at) or when someone else is kind enough to supply you a link to an earlier discussion.

With regard to your question - yes, it does seem rather improbable that Jesus would so quickly make the transformation from being universally adored to universally despised. In my thinking, this is simply one more indication that the Gospels contain such a high amount of hearsay, legend, myth and otherwise unreliable elements, that it's tough - if not impossible - to know anything about what the man did, assuming he existed. So yes, it's an inconsistency, but the larger questions might be, was he ever revered by a large following, and was he ever universally despised (to which some might add, did he even exist)?

V.

spacedOut

Interesting that just a week before Jesus supposedly made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey (or in the case of Matthew a donkey and a colt) with the Jews cheering and laying palm leaves in his path.

The usual explanation is that the Jews, expecting a Messiah to overthrow the Roman occupation, were sorely disappointed when this guy wouldn't even throw a punch when arrested. In other words, they thought he was a fake...

Diogenes the Cynic

Far be it from me to apologize for this stuff but one anser I've seen is that the crowd screaming for Jesus' head was planted by the priests.

Some slightly more sophisticated attempts at apology include speculations that the mob was shocked and appalled by the Temple incident (especially if they thought Jesus had threatened to destroy the temple) or spacedOut's suggestion about the crowd's disappontment at a wussy Messiah.

In reality, Mark's bloodthirsty crowd is just a fiction.

While there is some plausibility to the basic assertion that a real HJ had a following and performed ritual healings, the descriptions of multitudes would still be a huge exaggeration and the triumphant welcome into Jerusalem is fabricated from passages in the HB.

Amaleq13

According to the Gospels, Jesus was beloved by the common people both in and outside Jerusalem but despised by the Jewish leaders because of the threat he posed to their authority. The depiction of Pilate's clemency offer, however, depicts these leaders convincing the crowd to choose Barabbas instead of Jesus.

lpetrich

This total turnaround fits Lord Raglan's Mythic-Hero profile remarkably well; what is remarkable in such mythical turnarounds is that there are no die-hard followers or admirers, as there often are in real life.

Also, JC's Temple temper tantrum would certainly have made the Roman authorities come after him; Josephus describes how a Roman soldier exposed himself at the Temple, causing a riot that the Roman authorities tried to fight off.

And I think that a self-respecting lynch mob would not have said that Jesus Christ's execution will be a black mark on their records ("may his blood be on us and on our children"); they would have shouted "Death to Jesus!". And afterwards, they would have been very defensive about their conduct. "That blasphemer deserved it", one can imagine them whimpering.

Enda80

Actually, if Jesus had been as popular as the Gospels portray him, surely Philo Judaeus, Seneca, etc.* would have written about him-they did not.

http://www.nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
Here is how popular the Gospels make Jesus
If, indeed, the Gospels portray a historical look at the life of Jesus, then the one feature that stands out prominently within the stories shows that people claimed to know Jesus far and wide, not only by a great multitude of followers but by the great priests, the Roman governor Pilate, and Herod who claims that he had heard "of the fame of Jesus" (Matt 14:1)". One need only read Matt: 4:25 where it claims that "there followed him [Jesus] great multitudes of people from Galilee, and from Decapolis, and from Jersulaem, and from Judaea, and from beyond Jordon." The gospels mention, countless times, the great multitude that followed Jesus and crowds of people who congregated to hear him. So crowded had some of these gatherings grown, that Luke 12:1 alleges that an "innumberable multitude of people... trode one upon another." Luke 5:15 says that there grew "a fame abroad of him: and great multitudes came together to hear..." The persecution of Jesus in Jerusalem drew so much attention that all the chief priests and scribes, including the high priest Caiaphas, not only knew about him but helped in his alleged crucifixion. (see Matt 21:15-23, 26:3, Luke 19:47, 23:13). The multitude of people thought of Jesus, not only as a teacher and a miracle healer, but a prophet (see Matt:14:5).

So here we have the gospels portraying Jesus as famous far and wide, a prophet and healer, with great multitudes of people who knew about him, including the greatest Jewish high priests and the Roman authorities of the area, and not one person records his existence during his lifetime? If the poor, the rich, the rulers, the highest priests, and the scribes knew about Jesus, who would not have heard of him?




http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/pilate.html
The Shift in Attitude of the Crowd
Furthermore, the hostile attitude of the crowd is, to say the least, puzzling. According to all four gospels only five days before the trial, during Jesus' entry in Jerusalem, large crowds welcomed him (Mark 11:8; Matthew 21:8; Luke 19:37; John 12:12). And later we are told that the chief priests wanted to arrest Jesus but were afraid of the people:
Mark 11:18
The chief priests and the teachers of the law heard this and began looking for a way to kill him, for they feared him, because the whole crowd was amazed at his teaching.


Matthew 26:3-4
Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him. "But not during the feast," they said, "or there may be a riot among the people."


Luke 22:2
and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some way to get rid of Jesus, for they were afraid of the people.


How this crowd, which had remained favorable to Jesus up to the time of the trial could have suddenly taken a diametrically opposite position and asked for Jesus execution is not explained in any of the gospels, and, indeed, is inexplicable. [12]

.................................................. ..............................
http://www.atheists.org/christianity/ozjesus.html compares Jesus to Oz-as in L.Frank Baum, not that don't drop the soap tv show.

* People who should have written about Jesus had he been as popular as the Gospels indicate
They Should Have Noticed

John E. Remsburg, in his classic book The Christ: A Critical Review and Analysis of the Evidence of His Existence (The Truth Seeker Company, NY, no date, pp. 24-25), lists the following writers who lived during the time, or within a century after the time, that Jesus is supposed to have lived:
Josephus
Philo-Judæus
Seneca
Pliny Elder
Arrian
Petronius
Dion Pruseus
Paterculus
Suetonius
Juvenal
Martial
Persius
Plutarch
Pliny Younger
Tacitus
Justus of Tiberius
Apollonius
Quintilian
Lucanus
Epictetus
Hermogones Silius Italicus
Statius
Ptolemy
Appian
Phlegon
Phædrus
Valerius Maximus
Lucian
Pausanias
Florus Lucius
Quintius Curtius
Aulus Gellius
Dio Chrysostom
Columella
Valerius Flaccus
Damis
Favorinus
Lysias
Pomponius Mela
Appion of Alexandria
Theon of Smyrna
According to Remsburg, "Enough of the writings of the authors named in the foregoing list remains to form a library. Yet in this mass of Jewish and Pagan literature, aside from two forged passages in the works of a Jewish author, and two disputed passages in the works of Roman writers, there is to be found no mention of Jesus Christ." Nor, we may add, do any of these authors make note of the Disciples or Apostles - increasing the embarrassment from the silence of history concerning the foundation of Christianity.

http://www.atheists.org/christianity...sexist.html#FB