Elijah

Well it’s not going to make sense if you imagine a bloodthirsty anthropomorphic god whose Jesus’ death somehow makes him emotionally ok with people.

Beyond the sociopolitical ramifications of getting the people to worship a dead king instead of the living kings that are running their lives; you have to consider the resurrection of the dead deal going on to understand why his death would be necessary. The idea is that the wages of sin is death and Jesus offers forgiveness of our sins because he offers a way to eternal life when the new day arrives and they start resurrecting the dead.

aa5874

But, did Jesus really die? Can humans kill Gods? The story of the death of the God/man is just absurd and laughable. A man killed a God. What non-sense!

God made men kill his son just to show off. Jesus must have transfigured on the cross.

JABcomix

Jesus never died for our sins. What kind of God kills his own son for us? This whole idea of atonement evolved out of a warped image of God. People used to sacrifice humans and animals because they thought God was angry at them. People of the past used to attribute almost every natural disaster to God being angry at us. So in order to appease him, a blood sacrifice was needed. These are the markings of a primitive religion. Unfortunately, this idea of sacrifice has persisted in our society and people still have this idea that God, for some reason, is angry at us.

The choices that Jesus made, to preach in a hostile environment, ultimately led to his death. It was not that God wanted him sacrificed. Jesus was simply the victim of the natural out-workings of a public life route. What Jesus had to say was new and energetic and it threaten all the authority of the Jewish Leaders. Whenever any authority perceives you as a threat, they will do anything to defend themselves. Jesus in all actuality was never any threat. If only they had embraced his teachings, the Jewish way of life would still have been the light of the world. However, the Jewish leaders were blind to this new message and ultimately shunned it.

bacht

scapegoating http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapegoat

aa5874

I made an error. Based on the NT, Jesus transfigured long before he was crucified.

It would appear that a post-transfigured creature was on the cross.

bacht

Or, as Doherty has suggested, the Transfiguration is actually the vision received by the first apostles, sans any earthly Jesus ie. a similar revelation to that described by Paul of the heavenly Christ, who hasn't yet manifested on earth but will appear at the end - of course the historicist narrative won the day as we know

show_no_mercy

This is obviously false since they apparently stoned Stephen to death in Acts of the Apostles. And even in the quote from Josephus above, he kills John the Baptist for exactly the same reason that Jesus was supposed to have been killed. Are there any records of Jews being prosecuted by Rome for executing a Jew according to Jewish law? It was Jewish law that graven images weren't to be brought into Jerusalem and the Romans respected this, so I have serious doubts that Jews couldn't execute other Jews for transgressing Jewish law.

If Jesus was so popular that Herod heard about him and actually liked him, why does no one else seem to notice Jesus? The only record of Jesus' popularity and his meeting with Herod are in self-serving documents. The only thing that makes sense of this is that Jesus' popularity is a plot device to move the narrative forward.

LOL it's also against the law for Sanhedrins to be held on any day other than Mondays or Thursdays. And then we're to assume that calling oneself the messiah was blasphemy in Judaism according to the gospel narrative. There were probably hundreds of christ-claimants during the time period of Rome occupied Judea.

It also seems pretty coincidental that the very first "Jewish Messiah" in Israel's fictional history - who first leads the Jews to the promised land - is also called Jesus.

You realize that the Pilate presented in the gospels is a caricature, right? Like I said before, the historical Pilate was ruthless and loved executing people without trials. Yet the gospel Pilate seems patient and just and washes his hands of this perceived injustice. These two people are polar opposites.

The historical Pilate actually embezzled funds from the temple for his own personal/political gain. When the Jews protested in a similar mob-like fashion at Jesus' trial, he had a bunch of them killed. The historical Pilate was eventually recalled back to Rome after massacring some unarmed Samaritans who were following a messiah claimant on Mount Gerizim.

For the purposes of moving the story forward. Did the gospel authors not realize that members of the Sanhedrin were more than likely Sadducees during Jesus' lifetime? Why is the only mention of the Sadducees by the gospel authors the point about marriage and the resurrection of the dead? And it ends with the Sadducees basically saying "hey you're right!" and the uninformed reader assumes that that's the last we hear of the Sadducees.

Did the gospel authors not know that the high priest at the time was a Sadducee?

The gospels present caricature after caricature, yet we're supposed to believe that they're writing history? We have a caricature of the Pharisees as being "legalistic" when in actuality it was the Sadducees who were legalistic, we have a caricature and very uhistorical picture of the Sanhedrin, a caricature of Pilate, Jesus being swapped with his polar opposite during his trial who is also called "son of the father" in a human version of the scapegoat ceremony in Lev 16, a caricature of John the Baptist... the historical reliability of the gospel narratives is almost nil.

Jesus' popularity is only found in the gospel narratives and can't be corroborated anywhere else. Which is really odd considering how similar the stories are between John the Baptist presented in Josephus and the Jesus of the gospel narratives. Interestingly, that's the only point that they agree upon - that John was killed by Herod. Other than that, the two presentations of him are contradictory. I'll lean more towards Josephus' presentation of him being more accurate since he doesn't have a theological axe to grind in relation to John the Baptist.

andrewcriddle

Pilate held jurisdiction in Judea and Samaria. Herod held jurisdiction in Galilee and East of the Jordan.

Proceedings against Jesus in Jerusalem would be ultimately Pilate's responsibility not Herod's.

Andrew Criddle

show_no_mercy

This is what makes Pilate sending Jesus to Herod in Luke even that more un-historical.

JABcomix

Why not make the entire human history a "caricature"?

As for Pilate. His wife believed in Jesus and his gosple. This could have gone a long way in influencing Pilate. Pilate wanted to wash his hands of Jesus, he didn't want to be the one responsible for killing him, so he sends him to Herod, hoping that he would condemn Jesus. However, Herod just ended up sending him back to Pilate.

Also, I never said that Herod liked Jesus. He could care less about him. However, he wasn't going to execute him just because the Sanhedrin wanted him dead. Herod wasn't in good with the Sanhedrin because he had married his brother's wife, while his brother was still alive. So he had reason to not do what the Sanhedrin said. Also, Herod killed John the Baptist because he directly challenged Herod. Jesus never said anything against Herod.


The political atmosphere that existed around the time of Jesus in Jerusalem was so volitial that anything could have brought them into outright rebellion. This is what the Jewish leaders had to content with. Also, the Romans were there to keep law and order. If they saw a Jewish man killing another, then they would capture that man. As for the Acts of the Apostles, that happened after Jesus had died. By then, the Jews were becoming more defiant towards the Romans. Ultimately they became so defiant that the Romans destroyed the entire city. This was the threat that hung over the Jews during the times of Jesus. You think the leaders would want to risk this anger from the Romans? No, they were a lot more intelligent in those terms. It was the general population of the Jews that ultimately push forward the rebellion that led to their doom. So are there any records of the Romans prosecuting Jews? Yeah, there are, the destruction of Jerusalem.

The Romans only respected Jewish laws just enough to keep law and order. If Jewish law overstepped into Roman jurisdiction, then they had a problem. Would you imagine the US government not stepping in if a religious organization claimed it was their right to execute someone?


The Sanhedrin were made up of Sadducee and Pharisees. It's like saying "Congress". We all know it's made up of Senators and Representatives. It's not just Senators.

Now as for your last point that Jesus' popularity is only found in the gosples. Well, of course it's only found there. You think the other side is going to report that he was popular? The Romans wouldn't note his popularity because they didn't care for the religious life of the Jew. So that only leaves the Jewish Authority in recording this "popularity". They had motive enough not to mention him.