Robert Tulip

Is Christianity meaningless without Jesus?

The problem with the Historical Jesus is that the story comes embedded in an obsolete magical worldview, but can be better understood through a scientific worldview. We cannot hope to disentangle a real Jesus figure from the context of his fictional identity as a miracle worker.

Can we extract a vital real meaning within the Christian story while arguing that the traditional historicism misses this meaning? I believe so. Various metaphors suggest this reading is in line with the original intent of the story, notably the refiner's fire in Malachi, the wheat and tares in the Gospels, and the passion idea that Jesus was crucified for bearing witness to the truth.

What these parables indicate is that there is a deep truth within the Christian message, but this truth has been concealed, like a field of wheat that is overgrown with weeds, or gold mixed with dross. If we take this seriously, the wheat is envisaged as the actual truth, not just what the tradition has claimed as the truth. If the tradition is bewildered by dross, finding the actual reality behind the story becomes a project of deconstructing conventional faith to examine what its real origins might be.

Mythicist analysis has persuasive evidence that Jesus Christ was invented, notably in the coherence of the invention model with the textual record, and the absence of any credible attestation to Jesus as real. If it is indeed the case that Jesus was invented, then the `wheat' referred to in the Gospel is not the claim that events occurred historically, but the hidden meaning within these stories. The false historicism of conventional belief in Bible fictions then can be seen as weeds that cover over the essential truth, while Malachi's golden prophetic seam is a metaphor for what actually happened.

Truth is a scientific concept. Where claims lack evidence and logic, they lack any right to be considered as true. We cannot say there is Biblical truth on the one hand and scientific truth on the other hand. Truth is one. All true statements are mutually compatible. We cannot say Jesus existed and yet all historical and scientific evidence indicates he was invented. You cannot live with a contradiction.

But then, the question arises whether the Bible has the internal resources for its own redemption against a scientific analysis. I argue yes, in that firstly, Jesus explicitly says that everything told to the general public is a parable. This seems to indicate that even the birth and passion stories are parables, intended to convey a deeper real meaning.

Furthermore, if the authors of the Gospels knew that Jesus was imaginary, they must have had their reasons for presenting him as real. We can therefore postulate an actual process of the construction of the Gospels, against the framework of the Roman War, the new religious syncretism forced by empire, the desire to give ongoing life to spiritual traditions, and the massive conflict surrounding all this.

The passion story itself is centred on the idea that truth is rejected by the world, but returns in triumph. I don't think you can just say the writers had a false picture of truth; rather we should respect their integrity and wisdom, and see the obvious errors in religious tradition as the product of lesser minds.

The cross and resurrection remain as archetypes for the confrontation between truth and the world. Even if the real truth behind the Calvary story is nothing like what tradition says, the archetypal symbolism of the crucifixion remains that people are crucified for telling the truth, but truth will out.

Christianity survived Copernicus and Darwin, and it can also survive a social consensus that its central stories are fictional. In fact I see this change as key to any moral integrity for Christian faith. Theologians should have courage to engage in dialogue with critics rather than cast them into the outer darkness.

Mythicism presents a modus vivendi, an accommodation between atheism and theism. By recognising that physics describes reality, and God and Jesus are allegory, faith can turn the tables on its critics. Belief in the historical Jesus has become more a hindrance than a help to the legitimacy of Christianity.

Robert Tulip

Juma

One rather central part of christianity is the message that god became human and died to free us of our sins. Thats a rather empty symbol if it never happened. Central is the story of the life of jesus, if that never appened, christianity becomes very boring. Nah. Without a historical jesus christianity will die.

Robert Tulip

Seemingly empty symbols can be filled with new life. The magical tradition of 'washed in the blood of the lamb' is just silly. But that does not mean atonement is meaningless.

God did not make the earth in six days. When this became scientifically indefensible it was dropped by sensible Christians without the acceptance of evolution detracting from their faith (except that 'Christ as Second Adam' came to be seen allegorically rather than literally).

Same with the link between flat earth/geocentrism and conventional triple decker concepts of heaven and hell. Former popular literal conceptions are now seen as myths.

As consensus builds that the exclusion of mythicist views from debate is wrong, hitching mythicism to the atheist horse of opposition to religion is highly questionable. Gleefully saying that without their fairy story the whole church edifice will come crashing down is a way to polarise and stall the debate.

Christianity was able to modernise somewhat at the Reformation. A further modernisation would involve keeping conventional stories while finding new meaning in them, recognising that their real content is more symbolic than tradition has said.

The idea that reform of historicism is impossible illustrates the mixed motives at play here. For some people, an end to religion is a primary goal, whereas for others it is more about putting religion onto a sound understanding. Opponents of religion need a fixed target, but faith could adapt to a new scientific world. Sure there are petrified dinosaurs who will never change, but the popular scorn that religion faces suggests it should try engaging with reason.

Chili

The short answer here is that Christianity is not real as we know it but Jesus is real as we do not know him.

To say that Christianity is the condition of being Christian, and that is the end of religion for each and every Christian now with a mind of his own. To reach this point in life Jesus is real as the transformer of human minds, and for this he must die in each one of us, as second Adam now.

So Christians have everything just backwards, and so good luck with your plan that will never work as they will die by the millions in defense of their own idol. You are talking about the removal of carved pathways in the human mind here that always takes shock treatment to remove, and nobody wants to be in charge of that.

Science is great and science is fun, but is and remains the ambition of Cave dwellers who do not quite realize that omniscience is prior to them, and is from where they extract the primary premiss while in the dark as scientist so that the 'aha' moment can illuminate them.

Here is Aristotle on this:
The above quote is from the last paragraph of his Book 2.

http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/a/aris...poa/book2.html

In the end this is not so important, but it does show that we have the potential to be God and know the fullness of our own mind as Christian, lets say.

To spare the details, this now makes Christianity the anti-christ and that is what you are up against. Solution? Burn the bibles for sure and bring Indulgences back as the treshing machine to get the job done, ie. to pull the old hide off of him (and the women will be happy to do it for you ).

What makes the earth flat is because the TOK is a blank slate at birth, while the soul is intergenerational or transpersonal upon us, and therefore is also created in the plural in Gen. 1 to show that the 'flat earth' model makes reference to that (I understand that some bibles have just one heaven for us).

So there is no argement there, and the Intelligent Design is contained inside the species that so is the leading edge of evolution, and so now, Darwin obviously was a flatlander too, who really did not know his ass from a whole in the ground, one could say, for had he known himself whe would have known that too.

And be careful with Jesus as he was the spiritually empowered Adam after the first stage enlightenment when he did a 180 (metanoia) to get back to Eden again. He so is a figment of the imagination still with the woman in charge with the only difference that the lesser serpent is no longer in function as temple tramp inside the TOK.

So now the infancy is real and her job is to annihilate the pathways we carved in the TOK that so created the Cave that Joseph had hewn, as if with his own own hands, and therein we bury the Jesus in us and so fill the void in our TOK and just walk away from the grave. Note here that Jesus worship is never part of the show with the woman in charge and we are responder to her . . . which likely is a different intimacy then we know.

Clivedurdle

FnG I think argue cogently that xianity has always been without an hj, and that it will have no problem acknowledging that.

Lots of xians believe Jesus is with them personally. Humans have no problems imagining stuff.

wordy

I think this point in the right direction. The Jesus Christ
that really matters are the one alive now and the historial Jesus
is used as an explanation for how there can be a Jesus Christi alive now.

I trust it to be very similar to how atheists make use of the argument
from etymology of the word atheism. Despite me telling them that
the origin of this interpretation did happen around or after 1974 many of them
insist it has always been that way. Similar kind of historical back projection

The etymology is invented around 1974 but referred to as if it existed
since before common era among the Old Greeks.

Similar to how them invented Jesus and then back projected him to have lived
at 0 to 33 when they invented it hundred of years later.

Chili

He is alive, they say, and is alive in me, they sing, and is that not good enough for him to be? . . . and they will die for that to prove it is true?

What they forget is the temple ruckkuss that followed, and a trip to Siberia would be their reward in Russia as an indulgence to serve them right.

Here they are celebrated as 'one of them' and will sing and sing until the novelty wears off and then will sing patient endurance songs on their own until they die and so missed their chance to do it right. Oh sorry, they are not supposed to be doing it if the woman is in charge, unless we are the idiot, still thinking he is in charge of destiny.

And lets not forget that he historical Jesus was the deceiver to give cause for the temple ruckuss that so put an end to him, which now means that we need to go in the wrong direction first before a temle ruckuss can be ours and do the 180 we are meant to do.

So I have no problem with religion, but skip the Jesus worship in it as the Christ who died for us, as that totally contradicts the "follow me' and do as I did to show you how it is done . . . so you also may be free from sin and slavery.

Just crazy, all 20.000 of them and no less.

Robert Tulip

Clive,

Freke and Gandy, in my reading of their book The Jesus Mysteries, do not say Christianity will have no problem acknowledging there is no historical Jesus.

That is ridiculous. A prominent Christian, Anglican Bishop NT (Tom) Wright, suggested he would no more speak to Freke and Gandy than suggest the moon was made of cheese.

Christianity has a big problem getting over its fundamentalist taboos about Jesus.

Chili

To put this in proper context let's take Matthew and Mark's Son of God, who indeed was the Son of God but was forsaken on the cross and actually not only died in vain but became the spiritually empowered impostor with a mandate now to convert the world around him instead of just inside his own mind.

This makes the 'temple upset' crucial and that also is missing in Matthew and Mark where he went preaching inside the synagogues as well (Mt 5:17 and 23; Mk.1:21 and in 2:23 to lord it over on the sabbath even).

So if the temple ruckuss is the triggger it already means that religion must send believers in the wrong direction, which is not North or South but straight West from East of Eden, where then [finally] religion will get the blame for sending the believer in the wrong direction and so there parts company with her and go back home himself, but not alone. This then is said where the historical Jesus comes alive in the believer as second Adam now to redeem that which he left behind.

Golding has a nice line on this wherein we can not even have 'one eye asquint' to that event lest the virgin will be raped and we be 'from our mother's womb untimely ripped,' which then is a slam-dunk against Jesus worship here, and I added Shakespeare to say the same.

To be sure, the historical Jesus is vaguely known to us while the temple tramp is alive in us as the lesser serpent of Gen.3:15 who we married on the way out. She is Magdalene in the Gospels and she is replaced by Jesus who comes alive in us, and who's dagger she becomes in the anti-movement to undo or loose what she caused to shine in us in a life that we called our own.

So in essence was she the slave in us to make both light and darkness known as the sting send by her own [mother] superior in the TOL (Gen.3:15 again).

It is all over in the arts in many clever ways, but it is also in Gen.2:10 where the river of life divides and becomes 4 branches.

The first one is called Pishon that winds thought the entire land of riches, as humans will search for destiny in life, where there is gold, and this gold is good to have as riches of our own, and blellium and lapis lazulli are also there to decorate our chest to show.

The second river Gihon is much like the first except that it brings pain and sorrow in the absense of joy, still as handed out by the woman above, and you may read Luke 1:25 on this and see exactly who she is and why the 'end of our world' is also 'mother superior's' choice for us.

The third river does not wind but rises from the place that we first left behind and there we meet the Tigris now herself who so becomes our inspiration as the second Adam now alive in us. It is here that our vehicle named desire is left behind and she becomes our apology to the victims we have slain in our effort now to conquer mastery itself.

It is in this fashion that the fourth river is seen that is called Eu-phrates to mean bright mind as final destiny where now the woman is crowned queen of heaven and earth.

There is a good line with regard to intelligence itself in Zamjatin's "WE." It is found on the second page of Record Eight and goes like this:

"Oh, to the deuce with knowledge. Your much-heralded knowledge is but a form of cowardice. It is a fact! Yes you want to encircle the infinite with a wall, and you fear to cast a glance behind the wall. Yes, sir! And if ever you should glance beyond the wall, you would be dazzled and close your eyes--yes--"

Plato called sophistry [such as bible reading] a privation of human being and at the same time a deprivation of the being who really wants to know.

Iskander

In the catholic world the importance of the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus, is enormous and the influence of some of the many saints is also important.

Would Catholicism survive the disappearance of the Virgin, Rosary and Saints?

Perhaps our friend Chili will give us his opinion.