Amaleq13

I agree. In fact, I've often had the pleasure of pointing out to theistically minded opponents, who asserted I "wanted" Jesus to be a myth to justify my atheism, that I had I found more than enough reason to reject Christianity while assuming the existence of a historical figure.

ApostateAbe

Fellas, I would like to know how well my argument holds.

John Powell

POWELL:
Not very well in my opinion, but you are "free thinking" which is very good.


POWELL:
So, Mark made it up and others copied it.


POWELL:
So, people who read Mark, etc. which indicates that Jesus should have already arrived decades earlier need some damage control, so a writer claiming to be Peter steps in to save the faith.


POWELL:
"Peter" seems to have picked a solution that worked for Christians of that day.


POWELL:
Mark taught that Jesus was alive recently. Mathew, Luke, and John followed suit.


POWELL:
The idea that Mark meant for Jesus to have lived in the distant past does not seem to work.


POWELL:
Perhaps because Mark was not looking far into the future, but just the near future. "End of the world" religious revivals work on that "soon" principle. You have to prepare NOW because the doom is imminent.


POWELL:
Information like that was not as available as you seem to think, especially after the destruction of 70 A.D.

Who would have heard of Joseph Smith back in the 1800s until Mormon missionaries showed up telling about him? God appeared to the man. He received plates of gold upon which were contained the Bible of the Americas, through him the true church of God and priesthood were restored, yet you've never heard of the man until now?


POWELL:
It's hard to get people to do things NOW when they don't see the impending doom. Try being a religious leader telling modern Christians that Jesus won't come for another thousand years and see how much that encourages them to get ready NOW for that arrival.


POWELL:
It's possible, but I don't believe that it's actual.

John Powell

Magdlyn

As well as Doherty's website (for those who have not had the pleasure of reading it yet), I also rec for more insight into the composition of the Xtian Scriptures, invention/evolution of the character of Christ, etc:

The Gnostic Gospels by Pagels, and
Jung and the Lost Gospels: Insights into the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library by Hoeller

I find it helps immeasurably to look outside the canon for more historical clues.

Amaleq13

I already stated why I did not consider it "the only remaining practical possibility" above.

I tend to accept Kloppenborg's description of Q as a layered text with the apocalyptic elements as a late development that cannot be reliably connected to the alleged founder.

Hobbs

No coming from anywhere. No angels. No rewarding anyone. No kingdom. Just shiny face and clothes and a couple of old friends.

Face it, Magus, that's a failed prophecy. Either that, or you have to say Jesus did a pitifully poor job of explaining what he meant if he said one sentence about one event (his returning with angels and judging) and then in the next sentence referred to a completely different event (his temporary "transfiguration") with, contrary to all normal modes of communication and grammar, absolutely no indication that he was switching from talking about one event to talking about a completely different and separate event. Plus, you have to add the absurdity that he meant that "some" among the crowd would not taste death in the next 6 days.

It sounds a lot more like someone writing several decades after the alleged sermon (i.e. still during the lifetime of some of the younger listeners in that crowd) who sincerely, though as it turns out incorrectly, thought that the second coming was imminent (it would be far from the only time that mistake has been made). That interpretation seems to me to make sense of the passages as they stand. Yours, Magus, has to take Jesus as at best bungling his words and inadvertently misleading his hearers, or perhaps as intentionally deceiving them: for your interpretation to work, you have to claim that these passages do not mean what they say or say what they mean. And if you are free to do that with a text, you have gone a long way toward giving up all constraints on interpreting the text; what's to stop anyone from interpreting it any way they please? How (besides pointing to your particular denomination's or church's preferred doctrines) do you critique an interpretation of a passage?

NOGO

What you say makes no sense to me.

The Jesus story was not created by one individual.
It started by a group of people interpreting the Hebrew scriptures.
They saw the Word of God creating the world. They saw the kingdom of God and the coming of the Word at the end of the world. Etc etc.

The reason you see so many, so called, "prophecies" of Jesus in the Gospels is that they saw these events in the Hebrew scriptures. If you examine any one of these prophecies you will see that they make no sense and are far fetched. Jesus' story was created from scriptures by believers not tricksters.

These people believed the end of the world to be at hand and made their hero say as much. They were later forced to change it.

So where is the problem?

If one man started Christianity then all these early Christians would be telling one story. The evidence shows that there were many Christians groups with different beliefs right from the start. What this points to is a Christianity started by interpreting Hebrew scriptures. Each group had its own interpretation.

Clivedurdle

is a character in a Roman play!!