Magdlyn

Paul's docetic Christ had not come yet. His Christ was an in-dwelling spirit. His "Parousia" would have been Christ's first coming, not his second.

mrmoderate

So....basically, the detractors of Christianity's writings is that it was all a big conspiracy theory? That's it? It was all just made up after the fact by unknown persons attempting to achieve.....exactly what were these conspirators attempting to achieve?

Where's the advantage to make up a person such as Jesus Christ?
Where's the motivation to perpetuate the teachings of Jesus Christ?
Why incorporate so many known historical persons in Jesus's story that could be easily contested?
Was Josephus part of this conspiracy?
What was Josephus's motivation?
Did Josephus really exist?
What evidence do we have that Josephus existed?
How about Ghengis Khan? Did he exist? How do we know? Where are his artifacts? Where are his remains? How do we know that Ghengis Khan's existance was not made up by conspirators to have a fierce leader to scare their enemies?
What's the difference between biblical writings and so many other ancient writings that only the bible is considered a big conspiracy?

Roland

If there was a "conspiracy," it probably began with the Church Fathers in the 2nd Century. The earliest Christian writings (those of Paul) are so vague about the time and circumstances of Jesus' alleged death and resurrection that Paul may not even have intended people to connect his saving Christ with the flesh-and-blood Jesus we are familiar with from the gospels.

Who can say what was in "Mark"'s mind when he penned the first gospel? Was he attempting to put some meat on the bones of Paul's Christ figure, culling material from the Hebrew scriptures and, perhaps, Homer (see MacDonald's "The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark"). Also, it is not true that the existence of no other "historical figure" has been called into question. Homer, in fact, is one; William Tell another.

Koyaanisqatsi

You're leaping to an extreme not in evidence here.

"All" just made up? Vorkosigan's point was that a later author could have very easily added the destruction of the temple into the already formed (and forming) "words of Jesus" in order to make a present condition prophesied by Jesus after the fact; to take a known and devastating event appear to have been predicted by a fringe sect's messiah.

"Our temple was destroyed!"
"Yes and Jesus predicted it!"

Did he? How could anyone possibly verify such a thing? There were no photographers in the region at the time. The only recording devices were humans who were already (apparently) followers and who did not all consider Jesus to be God, merely a son of God (a term that has different meanings to us than it no doubt did to them). This is the problem with considering the Bible to be absolute, God-breathed truth and not merely the extremely fallible writings of cult members intent on glorifying, deifying and justifying their beliefs.

In reality, if Jesus existed, he was a man preaching his beliefs. In the idealized, fanatical imaginations of cult followers, however, well..."reality" doesn't factor into the equation.

Again, he needn't have been entirely made up, just things that were attributed to him after the fact, but to answer your question, the advantage is historically obvious. All cultures have made up such deities for specific and known reasons. Primarily to control, but also to govern. Don't forget that human history has only had about two hundred and fifty odd years of a separation between Church and State (and, arguably, not even now, but that's a different argument). Every ruling elite has created and/or relied upon deification in order to force its will upon the masses; a means to claim an objective authority as well as a means to scare ignorant people into doing whatever it is the ruling elite wants them to do. It's many fold, but historically present.

That depends upon what "teachings" you're actually talking about. Again, look to history. It was over a thousand years before lay people could even have access to Jesus' alleged actual words and teachings; everything came through the hierarchy of the Catholic cult, itself an extension of the Roman Empire.

Just like today, people were told what to believe in (often under penalty of victimization, torture and even death). Why? Because the dogma is one of complacency and obedience to earthly authority. Read the Sermon on the Mount without the blinders on and you'll see that Jesus was actually teaching his followers to rejoice in their suffering because it meant they were blessed by God. It's a completely useless theology so far as anything earthly is concerned, while at the same time constantly preaching that the masses be meek, obedient slaves to earthly authority. It couldn't be a more perfect brainwashing ideology as evidenced by the fact that its followers don't even object to being refered to as "sheep" and like children!

It was also extremely pro-Roman, which, as many here may recall is another pet topic of mine that I won't go into again here .

Contested how? Do you make it a regular practice to stand up in your Church or Synagogue and question your Reverend/Priest/Rabbi?

Remember that most of the New Testament was written long after any alleged facts and preached to people miles away from the scenes of any alleged crimes. Preached in most cases to the already converted ignorati who were already predisposed to believe such things to begin with (although the Greeks didn't buy the resurrection, apparently).

Who would they talk to even if they had the skeptical abilities we all take for granted?

"I've just come from Greece where a guy named Paul told me some stories. Is there a 'Pontius Pilate' here I could speak to? Or a Barrabus? Oh, no, wait, that was Mark, not Paul. What's that? Dead for a hundred years? Oh. Well, thanks."

Not to mention the fact that the dogma is entrenched in threats for disbelief. Again, consider the history and the region and the people being talked to. It wasn't as if Paul was speaking to a meeting of the Atheist Society of Crete or the Critical Thinking Party of Thessolonia. These were, by and large, uneducated, lower class peasants who already had a disposition to believe in fantastical stories about demons, gods and ghosts.

Hell, if I had lived back then and some nut case was speaking down by the wharf about a resurrected "savior" I would have simply laughed at him as I do now.

Ironically, yes, if indirectly, since we know his writings were altered and therefore proof of some element of conspiracy.

A far better question and more to the point, what was the motivation of the person or people who altered his writings? The same one, I would venture, for altering any of the dogma.

Yes, just as, no doubt, there was a Rabbi named Jesus that really existed, but that's not the point, of course. There have been many millions of people named Jesus that actually existed. The question is, did any of them resurrect from the dead or claim to be the only way to salvation or any of the other things claimed about the character "Jesus of Nazareth" deified in the cult writings commonly known as the "New Testament" and to what extent his life was fictionalized by fanatic cult followers?

Since dead people don't resurrect and its impossible to turn water into wine without a grape press and fermentation cycles and humans can't walk on water or summon storms or the like, the question goes to the fictionalized, mythological claims, of course, and not to whether or not there was a guy named Jesus living at that time, so when most people ask "Did Jesus really exist?" you now know in what context such a question is asked (though there are some who do claim that no such historical person existed either, which I think is taking it a bit far, but hey, to each his own).

Since the rest of your questions are based on this mistake, I'll bypass them and get to your final one:

Nothing. The question is, how deep is the conspiracy and what actually happened as opposed to what cult bias imagines or wishes happened? My money's on Jesus being a popular, radical freedom fighter who was arrested and sentenced to death by the Romans for leading insurrectionist attacks against Roman occupiers (sound familiar?). His martyrdom grew over the decades and more freedom fighters joined the cause (chanting his name before killing Roman citizens) so the Roman psyops teams attempted to turn a martyred "resurrected" hero of Jewish liberation into a pro-Roman, anti-Jewish icon by using their own cult mindset against them. It failed on the Jewish front, but worked on the Gentile front and the later opportunists saw a good thing working and went with it.

And that's how the Holy Roman Empire became the longest lasting empire on record, still going strong today with a name change: Catholocism.

But, back on point, when writing propaganda one must always hide the truth with gigantic lies so that no one sees through the smoke. One way of doing that, ironically, is to tell bits of the truth all around the gigantic lies so ignorant people don't even think they're being lied to. It's older than Jesus, believe it or not and it was perfected, IMO, by the Romans, so, you be the judge. If I want you to believe my lie, then I will tell you bits of the truth so that you don't see which part is the lie. Simple, really.

Some theists would accuse me of this very thing in my own speculations about who actually wrote Mark, so there you have it. All sides accounted for.

doubtingthomas

If this verse was written after the fact then why didn't they mention it as being fulfilled? It seems to me that the authors, when mentioning a prophecy, always gave its fulfillment in order to add to the veracity of their claims.

As to the question about the phrase "this generation", I think it is widely held that "genea" in this passage means the people alive at the time jesus spoke those words. The only people I have ever heard claim differently are christians who want to say that it means "race" in order to dodge the obvious error of Jesus' failed second coming prophecy. I think its safe to say that some of the people alive at the time of Jesus lived to see 70 A.D.

And sure anyone can create a false prophecy, but having that prophecy come about is another thing.

WinAce

But were there any Christians living around 80 AD that wouldn't have known, as universally common knowledge, the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple (and with it, the city and the original church)? The evangelists do record a lot of "prophecy fulfillments"--but on a small, personally-unverifiable scale--events like betrayals and soldier's behavior at the crucifixion. Is there any analogous prediction of such a humongous and self-evidently fulfilled level in the whole New Testament corpus we could compare with to see if the evangelists recorded its fulfillment? Conversely, the only thing recording "and it came to pass" would achieve is betraying the after-the-fact nature of the prophecy, and possibly causing uncomfortable questions about why this prediction isn't attested in earlier writings. I don't think an evangelist who was creating this prophecy would like that risk-to-benefit analysis.

As Vinnie mentioned, it's not at all unreasonable to date Matthew to around 80 AD. Thoroughly mainstream Christian scholars like Raymond Brown do this. A "prophecy" recorded only after the fact is, at best, a curiosity--it has no apologetic value at all.

Matthew may be writing with a perspective on the Jewish War that looks back to it (as opposed to expects it) and can correct ambiguous, suboptimal predictions in Mark. Thus,

"A few adaptations may exemplify the history and times known to Matt, e.g., the doubled reference to false prophets leading people astray (24:11,24) may reflect a struggle with Christian enthusiasm. In Matt 24:15 the prediction of the desolating sacrilege is clearly localized in the Temple (cf. the obscurity in Mark 13:14) and thus is more applicable to the Roman profanation of the Holy Place... Mark had already indicated that there was no precise timetable for the final events, and the watchfulness material in Matt 24:37-51 underlines that one cannot know when the Son of Man is coming."
- Brown, Introduction to the New Testament pp. 198-199

Notice how Matthew 24 and Mark 13 differ in such subtle ways. Spot the main addition Matthew's author made. That's right--Matthew, but not Mark, has the Parable of the Faithful and Wicked Servants tacked onto the end of Jesus' monologue.

Matthew 24:45-51
"Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. I tell you the truth, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, 'My master is staying away a long time,' and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth."

This makes perfect sense if Matthew's writing within a decade or so of the events, when some are beginning to become complacent because the Temple was destroyed but (unlike what Mark expected imminently) Jesus hasn't come back yet, and trying to scare them back into being good Christians.

Additionally, as you noted, the "prediction" of the Temple's destruction is nested within a larger body of prophecies that failed. Second coming? Darkness and falling stars? Apocalypse? And let's not forget "For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now--and never to be equaled again." I can think of a few things in subsequent history that equaled the distress of the First Jewish Revolt...

Moreover, it's not like Jesus predicted the advent of quantum mechanics or discovery of DNA or something. Should terrorists someday manage to destroy a familiar landmark like the White House, a lot of pop-culture references depicting it would seem eerily prescient (as was, IIRC, a rap album cover with two destroyed WTC towers). But there'd be nothing supernatural about them. Notice that at least one other guy, also ironically named Jesus, apparently predicted the same thing:

"But, what is still more terrible, there was one Jesus, the son of Ananus, a plebeian and a husbandman, who, four years before the war began, and at a time when the city was in very great peace and prosperity, came to that feast whereon it is our custom for every one to make tabernacles to God in the temple, began on a sudden to cry aloud, 'A voice from the east, a voice from the west, a voice from the four winds, a voice against Jerusalem and the holy house, a voice against the bridegrooms and the brides, and a voice against this whole people!' This was his cry, as he went about by day and by night, in all the lanes of the city. However, certain of the most eminent among the populace had great indignation at this dire cry of his, and took up the man, and gave him a great number of severe stripes; yet did not he either say any thing for himself, or any thing peculiar to those that chastised him, but still went on with the same words which he cried before. Hereupon our rulers, supposing, as the case proved to be, that this was a sort of divine fury in the man, brought him to the Roman procurator, where he was whipped till his bones were laid bare; yet he did not make any supplication for himself, nor shed any tears, but turning his voice to the most lamentable tone possible, at every stroke of the whip his answer was, 'Woe, woe to Jerusalem!' And when Albinus (for he was then our procurator) asked him, Who he was? and whence he came? and why he uttered such words? he made no manner of reply to what he said, but still did not leave off his melancholy ditty, till Albinus took him to be a madman, and dismissed him. Now, during all the time that passed before the war began, this man did not go near any of the citizens, nor was seen by them while he said so; but he every day uttered these lamentable words, as if it were his premeditated vow, 'Woe, woe to Jerusalem!' Nor did he give ill words to any of those that beat him every day, nor good words to those that gave him food; but this was his reply to all men, and indeed no other than a melancholy presage of what was to come. This cry of his was the loudest at the festivals; and he continued this ditty for seven years and five months, without growing hoarse, or being tired therewith, until the very time that he saw his presage in earnest fulfilled in our siege, when it ceased; for as he was going round upon the wall, he cried out with his utmost force, 'Woe, woe to the city again, and to the people, and to the holy house!' And just as he added at the last, 'Woe, woe to myself also!' there came a stone out of one of the engines, and smote him, and killed him immediately; and as he was uttering the very same presages he gave up the ghost."
- Josephus, War of the Jews 6.5.3

Granted, Josephus was writing an ideologically-motivated work that had, as one of its main goals, showing how the First Revolt was ill-advised. But if he invented the Jesus ben Ananias prophecy of Jerusalem's and the Temple's woes after-the-fact, so could Christian evangelists do the same for their Jesus.

As a side note, I wouldn't be surprised if Christianity's founder did make a simple prediction of some sort against the temple. In fact, I think there are excellent grounds for maintaining he said he'd destroy it personally!

"Equally illuminating is the saying, about which Christian tradition became so confused, 'I will destroy this temple and rebuild it in three days' — attenuated in Matthew (xxvi, 61) 'I can destroy,' etc.; corrected in Mark (xiv, 58) 'I will destroy this temple made with hands, and in three days build another not made with hands'; while Acts (vi, 14) make it appear as a charge against Stephen. This may well have been really alleged against Jesus in the trial before Pilate, as a proof of messianic pretensions."
- Alfred Loisy, The Origins of the New Testament, p. 291

While that book is really dated, I haven't seen a good counter-argument yet. Here are the relevant verses:

Mark 14:55-59
The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree. Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: "We heard him say, 'I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.'" Yet even then their testimony did not agree.

Mark, according to the two-source hypothesis, is the earliest synoptic gospel. Curiously, it mentions this "false" (wink wink!) accusation being thrown at Jesus during his trial.

Matthew 26:59-61
The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death. But they did not find any, though many false witnesses came forward. Finally two came forward and declared, "This fellow said, 'I am able to destroy the temple of God and rebuild it in three days.'"

Matthew, copying Mark, for some reason doesn't feel comfortable with just noting it's a false accusation, but has to change it to "I am able to" instead of "I will." Why did he feel the need to further spin-doctor that tradition? (The change from "man-made temple" to "temple of God" is easy enough to explain, given that Matthew was Jewish and might have a seizure from such condescending reference to it.)

Acts 6:12-14
So they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin. They produced false witnesses, who testified, "This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us."

Here the false accusation is again leveled, but at Stephen, who apparently blabbed about Jesus intending to destroy the temple. Unlike Matthew, it's the Markan version again instead of the spin-doctored, less committed variant.

John 2:19-21
Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" But the temple he had spoken of was his body.

The same saying makes a reappearance, but now Jesus did say it, said it in a different way than Mark/Matthew/Luke record (making the Jews out to be the ones challenged to destroy the temple, not stating that he'd destroy it for them), and mixed in with a fairly obvious reinterpretation concerning the Resurrection.

Gospel of Thomas (Saying 71)
"Jesus said, 'I shall throw down [this] building, and no one will be able to build it [...].'"

This is a most interesting variant form of the saying. It seems to be taking on a whole new apologetic spin than the rest. "...it[s] structural similarity [to other sayings about the Temple] permits the assumption that it is indeed a version of the so-called 'temple word'... Whether the lack of any reference to the temple in 71 is a secondary feature, or a primitive touch is difficult to decide. I would suspect, however, that Thomas' ending: 'and no one will be able to rebuild it' is secondary over against references to rebuilding the Temple in the various other versions. The fact that the Temple was never rebuilt would eventually prove awkward for such predictions. One way to ease off the problem would be to allegorize it, as does John, in terms of the resurrection (2:21); another way would be to ease off the prediction itself (so Thomas)."
- Stephen Patterson, The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus, pp. 109-110 (as cited by Peter Kirby's GospelThomas.com)

Patterson's analysis seems much more convincing to me than Crossan's. In the canonical gospels, we see a tendency to *explain away* this saying as it stands. gMark and gMatthew take the "false accusation" route, while gJohn lies by omission and allegorizes it to refer to something else.

So we have multiple attestation among gMark, Acts (possibly, unless the author was just transferring Mark's anti-Jesus accusation against Stephen), gJohn (which attempts to explain away the failed prediction in light of the Resurrection instead), and gThomas. And in every single source it's found in, there's some spin on it, indicating early Christians were embarrassed by this but (was it so well known that they) couldn't get rid of it (?).

Thus, I believe Jesus did predict the Temple's destruction--in a more belligerent and direct manner than usually supposed. This tradition appears heavily spin-doctored and multiply-attested, much more so than the synoptic "little apocalypse" predictions all derived from Mark's gospel.

My conclusion is that this threat was subsequently dressed up in stages and evolved until the popularity of the synoptic gospels rendered its modern, very detailed, predictive form set in stone (or rather, papyrus). Modern psychics are known to do this, dressing up their very vague predictions (but ones that can be shown to exist before the fact), modifying the wording and adding clauses until they're eerily specific. This is the second form of an vaticinium ex eventu, which I discuss at my "Prophecy for Dummies" article under Section 1j: Prophecy Aids. It's much less risky than fabricating an after-the-fact prediction out of thin air, because if worst comes to worst, plausible deniability about "misinterpretation" of the original prediction kicks in rather than demonstrable fraud.

You may find interesting, as a "control group" comparison of sorts, Joseph Smith's prophecy of the onset of the U.S. Civil War. Especially note the similarities between tying together events in the near future into an escalating apocalypse that culminates in Jesus' return to smite the sinners.

Like the gospel Jesus, Joseph Smith accurately predicted a war and some of its aftermath; like the gospel Jesus, Smith botched the rest by violating the number #1 rule of prophecy club--never, ever, EVER give such falsifiable specifics about what should happen next; and like Christianity, Mormonism has a bunch of novel and creative but improbable apologetics that aim to explain away this prophecy's obvious failure on the whole. But unlike Jesus', Smith's prophecy is attested by documents demonstrably written before the fact.

Vorkosigan

Gosh, thanks guys. This is so detailed, there is nothing for me to say.

Vinnie

Winace just laid a smackdown..... :notworthy

Vinnie

judge

Perhaps not. If we look at the language used in matthew 24 we see that this same language was used in the hebrew bible to describe Yaweh "coming" at various times.
It signified Yaweh "coming" in judgement, not a literal physical coming.
Jesus used words and language that would have been familiar to those who heard them.

When Jesus tells the high priest that he will see the son of man coming on clouds, the high priest would have understood this meant that judgement was coming on their society not that he would look into the sky and see Jesus.
Check out this link for more info

http://www.preteristvision.org/quest....html#subhead1

Around 150a.d. or so we see apologists such as Justin Martyr and the Shepherd of Hermas begin to argue for a different future coming of jesus.

It's all baloney.

One also notices that the writer of hebrews thinks that the temple is standing in his day. He is also the only NT writer to refer to the "second" appearing. But look at the context, it is of the priest entering the holy of holies and then returning back to appear before those who were waiting outside. A short time is implied.

dantonac

Those wascally apostles or writers appear to have though of darn near everything:

Luke 18:8 I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?"

2 Peter 3:3-4 First of all, you must understand that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires. They will say, "Where is this 'coming' he promised? Ever since our fathers died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation."