Originally Posted by RareBird

The mythology of Jesus makes perfect sense to me as a non-supernatural being who may never have existed at all.....Jesus, like any brilliant man able to step out of his own time and reason on the highest individual level,

Originally Posted by JonA

No. I don't. I specifically said that the explanations could be anything you wanted them to be.

The rest of your post is nonsense.

Jon

Originally Posted by Steven Carr

Jon A
After __________, the first century 'Christians' expected a man named Jesus to come to Earth for a second time and bring in the kingdom of God (or some such kingdom) within their lifetime.

CARR
Where does Paul say Jesus will come to Earth for a second time?

Or rather, third?

The first time , according to Paul, was during the Exodus when Jesus came to Earth as the rock which accompanied the Israelites.

When else does Paul say Jesus came to Earth?

Originally Posted by JonA

What has always been a hindrance for me in accepting the non-historical Jesus position—because I really do not care one way or the other whether there was a Jesus or not—is the lack of explanation I see given by ahistoricists for certain phenomena that an historical Jesus well explains.

I've done some research on the matter and haven't been able to find any straight-forward and coherent explanation offered in place of the historical Jesus proposition to explain these phenomena. I'm currently going through the book The Jesus Mysteries (or via: amazon.co.uk). I started reading it in hopes of getting a better understanding of some of the ahistoricist arguments, but being now half way in I find the book full of so many even simple errors as to be useless to anyone wishing to understand anything.

This book was one of my last hopes, however, for understanding the ahistorical explanations. I am unable to find other resources that might lay out an argument that actually argues something in any clear fashion. Thus, I have decided to post this thread in hopes that ahistoricists could lay out their favorite explanations.

These are the basic things I'd like to see explained:

Thought Revolutions

Messianic Thinking

Before __________, Messianic Jews believed the Messiah was to be a king who raised an army, expelled the foreign rulers from Israel, and established Jewish reign in the region. (Some variations exist.)

After __________, a small group of Messianic Jews believed the Messiah was not a king; he did not raise an army; he did not expel the foreign rulers from Israel; he did not establish Jewish reign in the region. Instead, he was a peasant; he had a rather small following (even if many people 'supposedly' knew about him); he was executed by the foreign rulers (Romans); he was resurrected; he ascended into heaven with a promise to return and fulfill all of the traditional Messianic expectations.

Apocalypticism

Before __________, no one expected a man named Jesus to come to Earth for a second time and bring in the kingdom of God (or some such kingdom) within the lifetime of the first century 'Christians'.

After __________, the first century 'Christians' expected a man named Jesus to come to Earth for a second time and bring in the kingdom of God (or some such kingdom) within their lifetime.

Belief in Jesus

Before _________, there was no one who believed that a Jewish man named Jesus had lived and had been crucified and raised from the dead.

After __________, there were people who believed that a Jewish man named Jesus had lived and had been crucified and raised from the dead.

Tenets of Belief

Messiah

Because of __________, Jesus is always called the Messiah/Christ.

Apocalypticism

Because of __________, all of the earliest 'Christian' sects/cults were apocalyptic.

Jesus

Because of __________, the figure head of the movement always has the same name: Jesus (the Hellenized form of the Hebrew/Aramaic 'yeshua').

Crucifixion

Because of __________, all of the Jesus story traditions involve the notion of crucifixion, no matter how down-played they make the event.

Explanation and Topic

Comparison to Other Explanations

Given the pattern laid out based on the above, are there any other religious sects/cults/etc. that have followed this same pattern in their inception?

What are they and (briefly) how do they follow this pattern?

Quality of Explanation

The explanation can involve as few or as many assumptions as you desire.

The explanation can be as probable or as improbable as you desire.

The explanation can be as good or as bad as you desire.

Topic

Absolutely no discussion here on an historical Jesus.

Absolutely no discussion here on an ahistorical Jesus.

The before-and-after sections should have the same item for each pair of line blanks. Feel free to copy-paste the above layout when filling in the blanks. There is no need to limit yourself to how many different things you introduce as explanations; everything can be given one explanation or everything can be given a different explanation. I'd prefer to avoid lengthy back-and-forth discussions on particular explanations; it is already accepted that an explanation can be as good or bad as imaginable, and pointing out where explanations fail certain criteria of quality doesn't offer anything to the thread. I'm just collecting explanations for now; judgements relating to their quality can come later.

I don't think discussing an historical Jesus is at all relevant in this thread, since my hope is to see arguments that do not rest on an historical Jesus. Likewise, denying a certain explanation is not itself an explanation, so the denial of an historical Jesus (though likely a consequence of the explanations presented) is not acceptable as an explanation in and of itself for anything (indeed, any hypothesis that affirms nothing can explain nothing).

Anyway, I hope to see some really good stuff that might help me understand the ahistorical position. Let the explanations roll in!

Jon

Originally Posted by Chaucer

While I agree with you that the social-justice angle is central to the mystique _initially_ surrounding Jesus, I fail to see how a virtual committee engaged in playing virtual telephone could produce the kind of "stepping out of his own time" that you describe, rather than one individual "reasoning on the highest individual level". One individual just seems more likely to have reasoned at such a level than a whole committee. Yet you say that the one individual "may never have existed at all".

Please, how do you reconcile the two?

Thanks,

Chaucer

Originally Posted by RareBird

The mythology of Jesus makes perfect sense to me as a non-supernatural being who may never have existed at all. Discount all of the "miracles" as heaped on embellishments that people probably added on. And discount anything that is believe to have been "said" by Jesus--there have been so many translations and so many liberties taken you can't trust any verbiage. So now that we got what was "said" out of the way, let's just concentrate on the mean of what was believed to have been done.

Jesus Christ was a MAN. He was a man who questioned. He was a man who saw injustice and that injustice was concentrated in two great powers which lorded over his people--the Jewish aristocracy and the Roman Empire. Jesus, like any brilliant man able to step out of his own time and reason on the highest individual level, chose to dissent from the prevailing beliefs and authorities and lead his direct contemporaries into a new "modernity"--a "fellowship" of faith in the goodness in other persons IF THOSE PERSONS DO NOT YIELD THE WORTH to the prevailing forces of greed and control.

Jesus was not about replacing one worship with another--that is only how his story has been bastardized by the same impulses and forces Jesus rose against. ALL MEM MUST DIE. Jesus asked why should I die a nobody on bended knee to a power I had no place in negotiating into place? He looked around and saw territorialism, fear and power moving mankind forward toward something which must inevitably end. Powers killing powers until no one is left. He reasoned, what if we give each other faith? What if we extend some measure of trust first before assuming the worst? What would happen over the ages if we cease this thing called hierarchy and achieve a living spirituality? What could we accomplish? Would our kind end? Would we kill each other? Or would we discover that there is a world of potential obscured behind even the most unlikeliest of appearances?

People did not have to forsake their belief as a condition to see that Jesus was a man who tried to get men off their knees and on the ball. Power being what it is won the battle over him by way of his crucifixion but the war still rages on and can still be won. It is when we all find a way to get off our knees and get on the ball that the light of the world will never be snuffed out and mankind will fulfill its promise.

Romans then co-opted Jesus message and did absolutely everything that Jesus was against. They became the Roman Catholic Church, wrapped in gold and took over the white world with insidious cruelty that has kept good men and women on their knees and off the ball ever since.

None of this is exactly true because I know it to be. But it could certainly be. Who's to say? Christianity has been co-opted and perverted since day one. I "believe" the real intent is all within the realm of nature--not super-nature--and it's about human beings overcoming the animal impulse to subordinate other people into being mindless soldiers who do the will of others without question--and help each other up instead of pushing each other down.

Originally Posted by RareBird

I don't get what you mean by "a virtual committee engaged in playing virtual telephone could produce the kind of "stepping out of his own time". And the issue about Jesus perhaps never existing at all simply means that the whole story could have been invented and fiction used to symbolize the ideas what the author was trying to get across.

By "stepping out of his own time" I mean that all human beings can either yield at every turn and do whatever it takes to simply exist in the times and conditions into which he or she is born. Or, a person can reach a point where just one principle that they reject on good reason causes them to question everything and only acquiesce to conventionalities of the time for the sake of expediencies while keeping within themselves a detachment that grows and sets them apart as a "person for all seasons", or in a words a person who grows to become more than a product of what everyone else around him assumes to be true. Realizations like that are what creates the true philosopher rather than just the student of philosophy, or the inventor rather than the reverse-engineer-er, or the artist rather than the crafts person. In the case of Jesus he appears to have been simply a man of no other talent than courage, clarity and the ability to persuade. Other people who have co-opted his story have likely embellished the story by adding the ability to perform miracles but it can't be so that Jesus did perform miracles--or he would simply have tamed the world and commanded all to follow his new law.

Jesus--whether he was real or just a story written by someone who wanted to advance the ideas of courage in the face of enormous power and popularity to dissent from blind faith or blind subservience--had to be just a man who could feel the fear and feel the reality of what it's like to take conviction to the worst case scenario and still never buckle. It all makes sense to me until someone adds "supernature" to it. Then it all becomes something you have to "believe" is "special" and no longer the human drama intended to inspire us to emulate Chrirst rather than worship him.