aa5874

What a load of BS. You must mean FAKE "health" care. It is most remarkable that you believe in miracles.

Toto

Name a professional who thinks that Jesus provided "free health care."


I don't find any reference at that url to health care or doctors or healers.

In the first place, the gospels do not portray Jesus providing health care to poor peasants. He did a few miraculous healings, but often for people who were apparently wealthy.

In the second place, this was well before the invention of modern scientific medicine and before it had been commodified. People didn't have "health care." They were born, and a lot of babies died before the age of 1 year; if they survived, they lived a natural life style based on physical activity and organic foods. If they got sick, they might have gotten some remedy from the local village herbalist, or visited a local pagan temple, or they might have just died, as most people did before the 20th century. There were physicians, but the state of medicine was such that you were probably better off avoiding them. Just read up on the history of medicine, if your stomach can take it.

It is true that Rodney Stark claims that Christians flourished in Rome because they provided care to the sick during times of disease, but this wasn't the poverty stricken backwaters of Galilee.

In short, the peasants of Galilee might have needed health care, but they probably didn't get it, and they didn't get it from Jesus.

outhouse

I'll pull my sources and provide that name/names shortly


Is it not mentioned 65 times ? in the NT, at no charge, other then dinner scraps?

Of course the Roman version wouldnt know anything about healings in Galilee, other then cross cultural oral traditions.



Understood, I had the exact percentage at one point for children under 5. It was high.

One reason for large families then.

Oh I understand, its gruesome.

But if "you" read up on the cultural anthropology of first century Galilee, you would understand Rabbis and other teachers/healers exactly like the Jesus charactor, were quite common as physicians were to costly for the common hard working peasant. Disease and starvation were rampant and getting out those pesky demons causing all these said afflictions were important to these people.

And yet that is not even why Rodney claims they flourished. backwaters of Galilee needed a rural application, and a traveling teacher/healer looking for food scraps fits the bill, perfectly.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontl...sociology.html


Christianity did not grow because of miracle working in the marketplaces (although there may have been much of that going on), or because Constantine said it should, or even because the martyrs gave it such credibility. It grew because Christians constituted an intense community, able to generate the "invincible obstinacy" that so offended the younger Pliny but yielded immense religious rewards. And the primary means of its growth was through the united and motivated efforts of the growing numbers of Christian believers, who invited their friends, relatives, and neighbors to share the "good news."

From Rodney Stark, The Rise of Christianity pp.196-215 (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ) 1996

outhouse

Was the Jesus charactor written in as not charging people?

Was he written in as a traveling teacher who healed people?


Did not Pauls message include healing at no charge as well?

outhouse

Do you really want quotes from Crossan, have you not read it many times already ?


or do you want Borg and Reed as well? maybe a little Meyers?

http://www.ars-rhetorica.net/Queen/V...les/Heller.pdf

Crossan claims, Jesus was trying to do no less than reestablish peasant community life
based on what Crossan calls “open commensality” or “shared egalitarianism.” Open
commensality or shared egalitarianism are Crossan’s terms for indicating the brokerless
and, in some senses, classless and perhaps genderless community Jesus was trying to
establish among poor peasants and, significantly, between poor peasants and the
desperately poor landless classes below them. Crossan argues that these mutual and
reciprocal obligations of open commensality are key to understanding Jesus’ instructions
to his followers.
The missionaries do not carry a bag because they do not beg for alms
or food or clothing or anything else. They share a miracle and a
Kingdom, and they receive in return a table and a house. Here, I think,
is the heart of the original Jesus movement, a shared egalitarianism of
spiritual and material resources. I emphasize this as strongly as
possible, and I insist that its materiality and spirituality, its facticity
10
and symbolism cannot be separated.

Toto

We aren't informed if Jesus "charged" people for his faith healing, but we do know that faith healers today are not poverty stricken. (e.g. Benny Hinn.)

Crossan does not say that Jesus provided free health care. He says that the point of Jesus or early Christianity was to build community based on a sort of primitive communism, from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. The implication here is that the healers shared in the material wealth of the community. Interpreting the "table and the house" as table scraps is reading something into Crossan that is not there. For the faith healing to work, or to appears to work, the healer must have some sort of high status or charisma, and he would presumably be rewarded accordingly.

outhouse

Crossan states Jesus healed for free, that is free health care.

http://www.ars-rhetorica.net/Queen/V...les/Heller.pdf

He is persuaded that Jesus deliberately
directed his followers to travel in small teams, possibly two by two (which in some cases
may have been male-female teams traveling as spouses to protect the woman), and their
mission was to heal and exorcise demons just as Jesus did (earlier, presumably, for them).
Of special significance, they were to travel and dress in a distinctive way, taking no
money or purse, no sandals, no bread, and no bag on their journeys

As they entered each house they to were to heal the sick and
exorcise demons, eat what was offered, rest, and then move to the next house. However,
Crossan argues that the food and shelter offered the missionaries should not be viewed as
payment for services rendered, but rather as a way of establishing a series of mutual and
reciprocal obligations between the householders and the missionaries.


By the way it is 40% mortality rate by age 5.


And i'm still looking for the exact proffessor that im using her direct quotes.

We are informed by biblical quotes that the Jesus charactor, does in fact tell his followers not to charge. It was in the last link I provided.




If we follow the most current cultural anthropology done in Galilee, Crossan, Borg, Reed, and Meyers and Ehrman all follow a peasant poverty stricken society around Nazareth. James Charlesworth makes a case for a more middleclass lifestyle. But when looking at James work, it really is lacking and follows apologetics and in my opinion, assumptions that are not backed in cultural anthropology. James raises to many questions, atleast in my opinion.


There is no high status charisma as your claiming. These poor people needed all the help they could get. It was quite common for people to run demons off. I'm sure there was some doctoring/nursing going on, and use of local herbs. These healers are nothing new to history, and the Jesus charactor had rivals doing the same exact thing. He would have been nothing special worth writing about for these actions. I would posit, any leader including homegrown rebel leaders would have known how to heal their men as well.

aa5874

Crossan cannot make miracles happen. Jesus could NOT have healed anyone as described in the NT.

Crosaan opinion is irrelevant. The healings of Jesus in the NT are fiction events.

The NT is loaded with FAKE 'health care'.

Sheshbazzar

What happened to Justin and the HJ and HP ?

outhouse

Candida Moss, University of Notre Dame

States that word for word.