patcleaver

The audience lies down in tall grass and can not see that Jesus' assistants are retrieving baskets of bread and fish from a hidden cache.

I think its likely that there were originally hints in the gospels so someone who knew the Jewish scriptures and carefully read the gospels could figure out how Jesus faked all his miracles. I think that most of the hints have been erased.

Its another guessing game - how did the fake messiah in the story fake the miracle?

Jeffrey Gibson

In which Gospel can we find a description of those whom Jesus feeds as "lying down" in grass, and of the grass that they allegedly "lay down" in as being "tall"?

Jeffrey

patcleaver

There are lots of places where people have tried to figure out how Jesus faked his miracles. For example: http://www.geocities.com/logic_faith/miracles.htm

I do not think that Jesus was a real person faking miracles. I think its more likely that Jesus was a fictional character who faked miracles in a fictional story for our entertainment.

(Mk 8:22-26) They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. 23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man's eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, "Do you see anything?" 24 He looked up and said, "I see people; they look like trees walking around." 25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 25 Jesus sent him home, saying, "Don't go into the village."

Read the material carefully. We are supposed to try to figure out how Jesus did this fake miracle.

--------------------

A real blind person would not have known what people looked like or what trees walking around would look like. This is obviously a story about a shill being used to perform a fake miracle.

Ben C Smith

Why not?

(Or are you assuming that the man had been blind from birth? If so, why are you assuming this?)

Ben.

patcleaver

(Jn 6:5-10) When Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” 6 He said this to test them, because he himself knew what he was going to do... 9 There is a boy here who has five barely loaves and two fish; but what good are these for so many. 10 Jesus said, “Have the people recline.” Now there was a great deal of grass in that place. So the men reclined about five thousand in number.

Read it carefully - its supposed to be a mystery. You are supposed to try to figure out how Jesus faked the miracle.

There was a great deal of grass, and Jesus asks them to recline, and they do, and then he has his assistants get the bread and fish out of the hidden cache.

patcleaver

NO - there was no real blind man. This is fiction. The story is supposed to be a mystery. You're supposed to look for the clues and try to figure out how Jesus faked the miracles. The gospel is a game.

For each pericope, you're supposed to try to figure out what the pericope was based on. Its a mystery game for people who were familiar with Psalms and the book of Danial and possibly other literature that we do not even have. When you read about Jesus' cruxifiction, you're supposed to be trying to figure out where it came from, and realize that its from Psalm 22.

Jeffrey Gibson

I see you are still doing your exegesis of a Greek text on the basis of an English translation of it.

Can you please show me that the word here translated as "much" ever meant "tall" in Greek? Or that the word translated here as "recline" meant "lie down in" as you claimed it did?

It is? Says who besides you? And on what grounds?

I am? And you know this how?


I see no reference to a cache, let alone a hidden one, in either the English translation you give or in the Greek text from which it is translated. Nor is there any mention there that Jesus used assistants to distribute bread and fish to those that were seated.

What am I missing?

Jeffrey

Ben C Smith

I know that is what you are claiming. And at least part of your reasoning in support of this was:

My question again: Why not?

Ben.

Ben C Smith

A willingness to approach the text with a mighty host of untested assumptions and outright misconceptions.

Ben.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Ben,

I agree that John is likely departing from main storylines about Jesus.

The passage in John at 20:30 seems to contain a closely related reflection to the ending at 21:25:

20.30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 20.31 but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name

21.25 But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.

In the first statement, the writer seems to be saying that he has selected his signs (miracles) only for the purpose of getting people to believe that Jesus is the Christ and Son of God and thus making Christian converts.

He could very well be thinking that he has left out a lot of miracles included in other gospels. He is, perhaps, thinking that these other miracles do not help in Christian conversion, so it is best to leave them out, although fans of the genre will criticize him for it. He seems to be making a defense of his work, saying, "I've selected the best stories about Jesus to turn people into Christians."

We may suppose that he is responding to a real or suspected criticism that he left out a lot of stuff about Jesus.

In the second statement, he is again answering the charge that he left out a lot of stuff. This time he defends himself by saying that the tales about Jesus is infinite. He simply didn't have space or time to include everything.

I am not sure that we can say that he is referencing any other specific gospels here, but we can say that he expects to be criticized for leaving out some very important miracles. His defense is 1) I have selected the best ones for conversion purposes and 2) there are so many, it is impossible for me to include them all.

While not, perhaps, exactly declaring his narrative to be fiction, these defensive statements do undercut his authority and the idea that he is telling absolute unvarnished truth. He has done a selection process from an infinite number of sources. This may be considered hyperbole about the number of previously written deeds done by Jesus, but it may also be considered the expression of the difficulties faced by a fiction writer, who has an infinite number of choices.

I think either way, he undercuts his claims to authenticity in the same way that Stone undercuts his in Alexander the Great, when he pronounces that the history text he has led us to believe he has been following does not exist.

Another recent movie Atonement (Wright, 2007), also does a similar thing. At the end, the main character/author reveals that key scenes that the movie has shown us never took place. They were simply scenes that she included in her novel because she wished they had happened. This confession undercuts everything we thought we knew about the plot.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay