rizdek

Neat, thanks. I wonder, what the chances are that this myth, passed on for centuries, eventually found its way into the minds of people in the eastern Mediterranean region and got turned into the Jesus myth?

Joan of Bark

Many others endured much more suffering while being crucified. One of the interesting aspects of the story is how quickly Jesus 'died'.

Joan of Bark

The Nicene creed also makes no mention of sacred writings. The Bible clearly wasn't particularly revered by mainstream Christianity at that time.

spin

It had to be a sinless person freely willing to give up his life for the good of others that was necessary. The notion that Jesus was god mocks the gesture of the sacrifice. He is not really a common man, someone who is under the curse, notwithstanding any desire to fulfill the role. It's like having Tom Cruise as savior of the Japanese, as the last samurai. It's a cheap trick, despite good intentions.

The lamb of god is not god.

Where do they say his divinity?

"[A]pparent" wouldn't be good enough for the earliest theologians. Either Jesus fit the bill or he didn't.

But how would Paul's Jesus actually save the souls of those who were dead??

Yes, free will is essential. Someone who is superhuman is out of the race.


spin

judge

The xtian myth goes something like this.
Adam has the chance for immortality, but instead sins and falls (with the rest of mankind in his loins) into mortality.
Jesus (born of a virgin) escapes Adams mortality, and comes "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Romans 4-5),and after a sinless life is deserving of immortality.
At the transfiguration (Matt 16) Jesus is ready to take up the immortality now due to him. Instead he go to Jerusalem and "tastes death" (Hebrews 4), on behalf of mankind.
Then after tasting death on behalf of Adams descendents he resurrects himself.

aa5874

But, Jesus was FULLY God, the WORD who WAS God and was with God, the Creator of EVERYthing in heaven and earth.

It is makes NO sense for a GOD to SACRIFICE itself to itself.

How is it even logical that the WORD that was GOD sacrificed its own WORD of itself?

It is just absurd that a GOD that CANNOT die is claimed to have GIVEN UP his LIFE but is STILL living.

What ridiculous nonsense.

The so-called sacrifice of Jesus, the WORD who was GOD, is an insult to people's intelligence.

Tom Sawyer

Ya, the cruxification was a pointless waste of time. I really don't get the necessity of some guy sacrificing himself to himself in order to get him to do something he was obviously planning to do anyways (since he set up the sacrifice to get himself to do it).

I've heard the argument that it was the most painful way imaginable to die, which is lame. He could have given himself ebola or something or just have the local Romans go through with one of the more imaginative execution methods they had available. Cruxifiction's kind of a doddle in terms of ways to die.

I've heard the argument that he spent those three days in Hell, where a moment is the equivalent of an eternity of torture, and it's his going through that which makes it a valuable sacrifice. That's nonsense, too. The people doing the torturing are the guys whose asses he kicked and tossed down there in the first place. I suppose it would be kind of cute for him to let them torture him for a bit, sort of like when I let my four year old punch punch me and I pretend that it hurts, but it's not actually a big deal and fairly irrelevant.

The entire concept is just inane.

Elijah

I’m not looking for the most recent I’m looking for the Gnostic take on the sacrifice that Toto mentioned. From my impression of the texts the sacrifice is not something that makes a lot of sense to them and isn’t something they focus on. Generally it’s his metaphysics teachings that bring salvation, not his sacrifice and faith in him as the messiah.

It’s two camps both thinking the other camp is crazy for how they plan on saving people. One thinks you can save a person’s soul if you get them to connect/focus on the intellectual side which is the ideology seen in GJudas where the focus of the text is to try and layout an understanding of the spiritual side.

The other side believes that the afterlife won’t be found in moving your soul over to the constant side of the universe but by being a part of the upcoming resurrection of the dead. Now to the Gnostic side this is crazy talk because of two things probably. These communities are connecting mystically to try to understand the universe and its workings behind the scene. The Christian idea comes from mystically trying to look into the future and eventually someone saw that they would raise the dead in the future and that became a popular concept of life after death and getting to the day of the resurrection was a form of salvation and a forgiveness of your sins since the wages of sin is death and your death is repealed.

The Gnostics also didn’t seem to be believers in faith the way some Jews were, in that with it you could walk on water and be healed so the idea that they would advance their ability enough to start raising the dead in the distant future wasn’t that much of a stretch for some Jews. The problem for them was how were they going to get called up when Jesus puts forward the idea of, I’ll bring back everyone who has faith in me, as we build a new kingdom and one day when I’m brought back, then everyone who helped me get here, get’s brought back, martyrs first. A pyramid scheme to get on the to-be-resurrected list that really took off.

To the Gnostics this is all crazy talk because they couldn’t see the possibility in the future unlike today when we have technology instead of faith saying that it’s possible in the distant future. (The comic I’m working on) So they focus on his teachings and turn him into a teacher instead of a messiah.

What humor in GJudas?

Elijah

Credit to J-D for showing it to me. I think there is a good chance of an influence. Christianity is a product of the hellenization movement which means there could have been early proto Christians reading Greek texts directly talking about it. Also it has two really good tales that would travel in related communities to the early Christians. The messianic communities would be attracted to the david vs goliath one man beating a nation idea that is there and the prophetic communities would have liked the following of a prophecy producing such positive results.

I’m not a believer in myth theories but if you were going to make a case I think this would offer a much stronger base than a sun god or Zeus’s kid story being confused for history.

The wiki on the list of Athean’s Kings says it is from Eusebius of Caesarea so there is some evidence of them knowing the tale at that time at least maybe.

WVIncagold

So true i am sure as a god he could of made a mountian so big he would just keep falling for a year breaking bones and smashing himself repeatedly for the entire time. now that would be more painfull. He could of slowly microwaved himself for a month that would of been pretty painfull. and thats just two right off the tip of my mortal head. imagine what a god could of come up with that was more painful. So that old argument holds water like cheese cloth.