aa5874

HJers claim Jesus of the NT was really just a man who hardly did or said anything as stated in the Canon.

According to HJers Jesus was a man who could NOT save anyone from sin so people of the Roman Empire knew it and lied to themselves and fooled themselves for hundreds of years.

Based on HJers Paul would have preached that Jesus was raised from the dead although it was known by the people of the Roman Empire that it was FALSE.

This is a massive conspiracy theory--the whole of the Romam Empire including Jews knowingly worshiped as a man as a God and simultaneously claimed that they did NOT worship a man as a God.

Thousands of Jews were crucified in the 1st century but Jesus was singled out and claimed to be Resurrected.

The HJ theory only makes sense when it is considered to be a Conspiracy theory.

tanya

Thank you aa, two thoughts:

a. Does our oldest extant "patristic" evidence lend support for the idea that Marcion was one of the early co-conspirators? Ditto for Justin Martyr?

b. How is that "worship of a man as God", any different from the same fidelity shown to Hercules? Was a massive conspiracy afloat for that movement's success during the millenium before the Roman-Jewish wars from 70-130 CE?

We tend to ignore the enormous investment in man and material, shown Hercules, but, at the time of the earliest Christians (for me, that is mid second century), Hercules, not Jesus, was the man "worshiped as a God". So far as I am aware, the same broad distribution, i.e. the entire Roman empire, did so, until Constantine, when new construction on Herculeaen temples ceased.

I am puzzled by the failure of folks on this forum, to address the issue of the Greek mythological character, Hercules' influence on Christian doctrine, despite so many parallels to the Greek mythological character, Jesus, with forum members' attention focused instead on Judaism, as you have done, aa, in this thread, when it is clear to me, at least, that the nascent second century Christian movement depended not on Jews for support, but on wealthy Greeks, like Marcion, and adapted their dogmatic texts, to the reality of their financial backers being NOT Jews.

It seems obvious to me, reading the nonsensical gospels, that the story is one modified from Hercules, not Moses. All the huffing and puffing by various learned forum members, demonstrating this, that, or some other aspect of earliest Christianity, in terms of what is written in the Tanakh, seems utterly futile to me. Maybe a glance or two at what was known two thousand years ago, in Persia (Zoroastrianism) and Egypt (Isis) would better assist us explaining some of the silliness of Christianity, like baptism, eating human flesh, drinking human blood, waving hands about to cure epilepsy, and so on....The idea of a God requiring a son, to save mankind, is not coming from Judaism, even if one supposes that YHWH himself is Jesus. That's pure Greek mythology, in my view.

In short, I think your topic here, "conspiracy theory", is not quite on target. A conspiracy suggests UNIFORMITY of doctrine, plan, infrastructure, and so on, derived from a well organized central planning group, collective, or agency...

I don't observe that uniformity. Earliest Christianities, various versions, particularly the several different gospels, appears to me, utterly chaotic, in harmony with the mass exodus from Palestine. Maybe this is just ignorance on my part, but I will profit from your differentiating "conspiracy", to "opportunism", with the idea of the latter notion, embedded in the turmoil, and chaos, associated with the all embracing, compulsory, emigration out of Jerusalem, circa 130 CE.

With so many unemployed hucksters on the prowl, it seems to me reasonable to assume that some of them went in one direction, others following a different trail, all of them seeking to get money, all of them having a solid education, including knowledge of the Tanakh, via LXX, and none of them having internet access. Far from observing a conspiracy, I observe an inability to gain uniformity of opinion, on even the simplest ideas, like birth and death of Jesus, let alone more controversial aspects of contradictory events described in the gospels.

If you, aa, or I, or just about any other forum member, had been leading, or even a participant, back then, in some sort of conspiracy enclave, would we not have spoken up, on the need to gain some kind of uniformity in doctrine? I observe no such conspiratorial endeavor, until the arrival of Constantine. Even then, however, the business about Arius led to a decade long reversal of Constantine's policies, upon his son's ascension to the throne--hardly a formula for "conspiracy".

aa5874

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory

If Jesus was human then there must have been a secret plot by his supposed disciples and other groups to claim and propagate in the Roman Empire that Jesus was the Son of God, was God the Creator and the Resurrected Savior of all Mankind which was generally UNKNOWN to people of antiquity. Either the Roman Government was unaware of the secret plot or that the Roman Government became involved in the secret plot UNKNOWN to people of antiquity.

If Jesus was human and since 37-41 CE Paul did preach that Jesus was God's Own Son and was Resurrected then the Pauline writer is part of the secret plot which was UNKNOWN to people of antiquity.

A human Jesus MUST be a Conspiracy theory. The General public of antiquity could NOT have known Jesus was human.

Grog

This, indeed, is the very point where the Jesus to Christ Hypothesis begins to unravel. Ehrman says that the followers of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth "just started to say" that he had risen from the dead. Does Ehrman mean they started to spread a lie about what happened? Is he saying that Christianity is based on a massive lie believed for 2000 years? Is that any better than the theory that the Jesus-idea evolved and that what Paul says about his Jesus is what he really believed? A question comes to mind then: Was Paul a dupe or a liar?

Let's try this on for size.

Jesus' disciples see him arrested, questioned, flogged, crucified (or hear about it since they all dispersed). He clearly died. Every source we have about Jesus of Nazareth says he did indeed die. What happens then? They come together (breathless from running?). They say, "Ok, let's just start saying he came back to life and talked to us."

IF the Jesus to Christ Hypothesis is true, THEN Paul hears his story from eyewitnesses who would know what happened first hand. Either, then, we accept that Jesus rose from the dead or we have to consider the possibility that the the disciples lied about it (or, I suppose 500 people could have had a massive communal hallucination).

aa5874

If Jesus was human and had disciples then the Entire Canon is a Conspiracy theory that was carefully concealed. The Whole Roman Empire was eventually deceived by 12 illiterates and Paul.

Again, if Jesus was human with diciples somebody MUST have removed his body to FAKE the resurrection and then Conspired to claim Jesus was the Son of God who was raised from the dead.

The disciples MUST know where the dead body of Jesus was hidden, RE-BURIED or BURNT in order to preach that Jesus was Resurrected.

A human Jesus who was claimed to be the Son of God, the Creator that was resurrected MUST be a Conspiracy theory that was UNKNOWN to the General Public of antiquity.

Horatio Parker

I agree with this, in a sense.

HJ has some significant theological value. Eternal principles which derive from temporal incidents gain authority as time passes ie the older and closer to Jesus the better. Any of us could have divine inspirations, but they could never carry the weight of Jesus or his disciples because mainly because of our distance in time. The problem that Gnosticism presented, that everyone can find God, is avoided with HJ. The church's survival as an institution is more important than anyone's enlightenment.

mountainman

The C14 evidence available to investigators (via gJudas) provides a chronology for the Coptic Gnostic reaction (via the physical manufacture of Gnostic codices) to the Heresiological Canonical Historical Jesus that is scientifically dated between the years of 220 and 340 CE.

Therefore we may tentatively date the invention of the Canonical HJ Conspiracy to these years which, as careful investigators might note, does not preclude a Nicaean conspiracy. In fact, we find a brand new and strange barbarian driven organization assuming control of the Roman Empire just prior to the Council of Nicaea.

The problem that Gnosticism presented, that everyone can find God, is heresiologically avoided with HJ. Platonism as defined in the literature of the 3rd century Platonists is therefore also to be regarded as a major form of Gnosticism. A study of the interaction between the 3rd century Christian heresiologists and their Platonist counterparts is therefore a fascinating element to this jig-saw puzzle of history.

The Master Heresiologist Eusebius seems to have indulged in the criminal activity of identity theft of important Platonist theologians in order to assemble a history of the 3rd century Christian lineages of bishops and heresiologists. The most highly revered 3rd century Platonists Ammonius, Origen, Anatolius and Porphyry all seem to be names of authors of most highly revered Christian tractates. What was going on in the scriptoria of Eusebius?


Any investigator examining the mechanism of a conspiracy for the HJ will sooner or later have to study Constantine's heresiologist Eusebius, IN WHOM WE TRUST.

aa5874

Who was Eusebius anyway??

May I remind you that all of the authors of the Canon are unknown. We have 100% FAKE authorship of the Canon.

What did Eusebius write??? When did he write them???

I expect the figures for FAKE authorship of Apologetic sources that mentioned the FAKE authors of the Canon to Match the Canon.

If someone did NOT Expose the Donation of Constantine as a Forgery we would still believe that it was written in the 4th century.

Horatio Parker

I had in mind as a conspiracy more of a group think among politically minded types, coupled with inertia.

I don't know much about Gnosticism, but I do know that Plotinus was critical of it. Also that it's tradition is traced to Hermes Trismegistus. I know there are some who argue that HT predated Plato and influenced him, but most think it's a post-Plato development.

rizdek

I wonder why we assume that the "Jesus" Paul heard about was all about just one person? Can't we consider that if what he's hearing are stories that had been passed down that they might not be the end result of various groups of followers passing on their particular story from their particular charismatic leader and that, over decades, these stories merged, separated and re-merged into the garbled and inconsistent accounts we have of the crucifixion/resurrection of JC? So if some leader(s) of small group(s) got himself/themselves executed, and others wandered off, and others lived on, might we not eventually get some sort of a convoluted story that yes, there was an execution and that later, wow, low and behold, folks...hundreds of folks...saw 'him" walking about still teaching? These aren't eye-witnesses passing on the stories, but advocates just passing on the story(ies) they heard from folks who heard it from other folks, etc.