PhilosopherJay

Hi Spamandham,

That we are getting a construction is easy to tell from the ragged edges and breaks in the discourses of the narratives. A smooth story will have a beginning that points towards the end and the middle will lead us towards the end.

Here the ending is abrupt and catastrophic. In fact, there are 10-15 different endings in the gospels. The middle meanders aimlessly and goes nowhere.

At the beginning we have John the Baptist who supposedly is making the road straight for the Lord. Unfortunately, this turns out to be false. The Lord (Yahweh) never shows up. He is just a distant voice, only there to legitimize his son. We get seduced/highjacked off the straight road where the Lord and the Kingdom of Heaven is coming and instead we get Jesus. We never get the Lord or the Kingdom of Heaven. Instead all we get is this teacher who transforms into a miracle worker and ends up dying on the cross. He is simply a cross between John the prophet, Simon Magus and the Lord. While Jesus gets to sit/stand/hang on the cross, the reader gets double-crossed. Instead of John making the road straight for the Lord, we end up on the Road to Calgary, where the son of the lord dies and goes back to heaven, John has also died, and the Lord appears nowhere. The promise of a kingdom of heaven on Earth coming soon gets turned into a promise that the Earth will be destroyed and we'll all follow Jesus up to heaven soon. So things end up even worse at the end than at the beginning.

Certainly, the gospels are misnamed and should be called the malpels or bad news about the lord. Really, we begin with John making the road straight for the Lord who is coming to Earth... We end with John dead, Jesus who is a substitute for both John and the Lord, is dead and back with the Lord, and now we're still waiting, not for the joyful kingdom of Heaven on Earth where we get to eat chocolate and huge fruits all the time, but for the destruction of the Earth and maybe a trip to heaven if we're among the lucky prize-winners, or eternal fire, if not.

We cannot imagine anybody being this psycho to actually script out such a dreadful narrative. We have to assume that it got misconstructed along the road in a haphazard fashion. For example, somebody noticed that Jesus did not have an Elijah to announce him like a good King/son of God should, so somebody hijacked the John material to make John into a trumpeter to legitimize Jesus. Likewise, God also is called upon to legitimize Jesus. So John and the Lord and the Kingdom of Heaven are simply afterthoughts brought into the narrative from a separate narrative to legitimize an illegitimate Jesus. But this doesn't work, and everybody is wondering where the hell Jesus came from, so Mary and the Lord have to be brought onstage to copulate in Matthew and Luke to provide still another legitimizing agency for the Jesus Character.

When does this re/mis/construction take place. Well, I'm pretty certain it happens between 30-200 C.E. There are a few pointers that may lead us towards more exact dates.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

andrewcriddle

Hi Philosopher Jay

I'm afraid I've been trying to avoid this thread becoming yet another HJ/MJ discussion. I don't want in this thread to discuss the argument that there was no HJ hence he didn't perform works of healing. I'm more interested in the question assuming, at least FTSOA, that there was a HJ was he thought in his lifetime to perform works of healing.

Andrew Criddle

PhilosopherJay

Hi andrewcriddle,

This is certainly fair to assume an historical Jesus and then tackle problems based on that assumption. However, if Jesus is not, in fact, an historical person, then it may lead to all kinds of difficult or insoluble problems.

For example, let us assume that Superman is a real historical character. We may ask the question why people do not realize that Clark Kent and Superman are one and the same person? We may decide that Superman has the ability to change his voice and facial expressions so drastically as Clark Kent that he can fool people. Conversely, we may decide that people in the time and place of Superman are quite stupid and unable to make the connection. Either solution is plausible, but in either case, we are simply filling in fictional details to a fictional narrative. We are expanding the narrative by filling in gaps in the narrative information with the most plausible solutions.

In fact, if we look at Superman at the time of his origin in the early comics, it was perfectly plausible that Superman could use Clark Kent as a secret identity. Superman appeared rarely, only in times of high stress and emergency. Generally, people only saw Superman flying from a great distance. It was unlikely that the criminals who saw him close up would travel in the same circles as Clark Kent, a middle-class newspaper reporter. Victims being rescued would be in highly emotional states and unable to remember his features accurately. Thus it was quite plausible that Superman would not be identified as Clark Kent in his first few adventures. The reader could easily suspend disbelief and accept that Superman could keep his identity secret.

However, as Superman appeared more and more, and more people became interested in identifying him, for example, Lex Luthor and Lois Lane, it became more difficult to believe that they would be unable to discover his secret. For the reader, suspending disbelief became harder and he/she had to accept the non-identification as simply a convention of the genre.

Still, as identification technology has advanced, it has become seemingly an insoluble problem, not only for Superman, but for all superheroes with secret identities. Perhaps, the success of the recent "Iron Man" movie can be related to the wonderfully ironic way this problem is solved at the end of that movie.

Anyways, to relate it to the problem at hand, when we assume an historical Jesus and figure out if people related magic to him, we may just be enlarging and enhancing the myth instead of getting at the truth. With that caveat noted, please do proceed.

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

Amaleq13

[comicgeek]This was explained in an old issue (70's?) as the result of his "super-hypnotism" ability enhanced by the Kryptonian glass (from his spaceship) he used to make the glasses. IIRC, he was not aware of this ability or the impact it had on others.[/comicgeek]

Sorry to screw up your analogy with trivia. Feel free to pretend that explanation was never offered since, as far as I know, it has never been mentioned again in the series.

Ben C Smith

Wait a minute. You once had the audacity to imply that the X-Files were uncool, and now you pull this truly obscure and trivial comic book datum out??



Ben.

Amaleq13

I have no illusions about the lack of coolness involved in my vast knowledge of comic book lore, Mr. Smith (if that is your real name).

And I am repentant.

PhilosopherJay

Thanks Amaleq,

Actually, this is quite interesting. At least, one of the Superman authors recognized the problem and tried to find a solution. In the original television series in the 1950's, they often handled the problem by having a close-up of Clark Kent looking at the camera after fooling Lois into believing he was not Superman and smiling knowingly or winking. It meant something like, "You and I know the truth, but we won't let her in on the secret, will we?"

Warmly,

Philosopher Jay

mountainman

So was Constantine the "Perry Mason" of the fourth century lavish publications industrialists in that he had Clerk Jesus Kent as a front man on the new and strange emperor cult team? What does the C14 tell us? Where are the public opinion polls of the common people of the epoch of christian origins (other than Eusebius) and what do they tell us about the issues in the public mind, and in the media of antiquity (other than death and taxation and the option to seek refuge in the desert)

Best wishes,


Pete