steve_bnk

Why should the gospels make sense as anything but fragmented embellished tales meant as religious literature in a largely illiterate age and reflecting the author's spin?

I look at the gospels as creative literature written by different men with different slants on the movement at different times.


I just watched the 1998 movie Elizabeth about Elizabeth I.

Great movie and on the wiki page I read the list of outright diversions from and literary license taken from known history such as open questions on her love relationships. Her alleged affair with a married man at court was central to the movie.

In kind I see the gospels as a docu-drama, based on real events and hyped for effect. From a PBS show on Christianity John plus the Acts are in the form of an action adventure story of the times.

In part one the hero dies saving the clan/tribe/world...Part Deux the movement fights on with the good fight battling evil. Inspiring docu-drama or the growing believers,

I don't see how one can expect to find a consistent theology in the gospels, that did not come until the RCC invented it.

As a novel it is a tragedy, the hero dies. The premise is not original. A human of divine birth dies in the cat of saving the group or r tribe and goes back to heaven.

It makes sense, you can't have a dvinity wandering around on Earth, spoils it for everybody else. But a dynasty can arise claiming authority by means of a line originating in a son of a god.

The RCC bases its authority as the popes being an unbroken line going back to Peter as first Bishop Of Rome appointed by JC as 'the rock of his church'. Peter was not a physical offspring of a deity or son of a deity but the same idea.

The gospels makes perfect sense to me as docu-drama. An action thriller mystery complete with demons, parnormal, devils, temptations, and gods,. It is not how we today will take a crical view, it is how people who read and heard the story would react, Perpas like a moden movie audince as a rough analogy?

We have not changed all that much. Post Lord Of The Rings NZ was overun by fans in Hobbit dress with furry feet. Literature as escapism into anoter reality.

The gospel promise of eternity regardless of your lot in life is the greatest litererary escape of all time.

aa5874

The Jesus story is not a tradegy.

Jesus did NOT really die and was predicted to resurrect or survive three days later in the Gospels.

Jesus taught his disciples that he would be killed and then resurrect.

Mark 16:6 KJV1. Jesus taught his disciples that he did NOT want the outsiders to be converted.

2. Jesus claimed his disciple Peter was Satan.

3. Jesus taught his disciples NOT to tell any one he was Christ.

Mark 9:31 KJV The Jesus story was simply anti-Jewish propaganda that was later eventually believed by Non-Jews.

There is really no real evidence that the Jesus story in the short gMark was intended to be the basis of a new religious cult.

jgreen44

I certainly agree that the Jesus story is anti-Jewish propaganda. But with the word "simply" you are indicating your belief that this (anti-Jewish propaganda) is the only purpose for the composition of the Jesus story. Is this really your belief? And, if it is your belief ....what was the point of writing such an elaborate piece of propaganda? Who was the intended audience?

aa5874

Anti-Jewish propaganda must imply the propaganda was intended for the Jews.

It appears that initially there was no elaborate story. It was the later authors who fabricated elaborate stories about the conception and post resurrection.

The long gMark added 12 Verses with post resurrection visits.

The author of gMatthew added 12 Chapters of elaborate "detailed" fiction.

We have the short gMark story filled with incoherent parables and implausible miracles.

We have a character Jesus, the Son of God, who claimed he would be killed, Resurrect and then come in the clouds of heaven.

It is extremely clear to me that the Gospel attributed to Mark was composed before the Jesus cult was started.

People of antiquity started to believe the story that Jewish Temple Fell and Jerusalem was made desolate because the Jews killed the Son of God and that was mostly when the Jesus cult began sometime in the 2nd century or later.

Aristides' Apology The Gospel, the Good News, in the earliest Jesus story is NOT that Jesus was crucified.

The Gospel, the Good News, was that the Kingdom of God was at hand.

Mark 1:15 KJV The Jesus story is extremely easy to understand.

People of antiquity started to Repent AFTER the gMark story was believed to be true.

It would appear that the short gMark is the story that initiated the Jesus cult.

U]MARK 13[/U] People of antiquity believed the Son of Man was soon coming back as found in Daniel and the short gMark.

The authors of the long Mark, gMatthew and gLuke Believed the early story of Jesus in the short gMark.

jgreen44

I am going to assume you mean that Jews concocted the gospel story as a means of explaining the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple in AD 70 and that this explanation was, by it's very nature, anti-Jewish because it blamed the Jews for what had happened.

I agree with this too. I think the Jesus character morphed into the ideal of the "new" Jew who understood what God really wanted so as to avoid yet another calamity like 70 AD. Unfortunately, this Jew evolved into someone so new that he ended up requiring his own separate religion.
What does this mean in relation to your theory of Jesus?

I agree. The story is largely patched together from OT motifs and anecdotes.

After the Jewish wars, all or most of the witnesses to Pre-70 AD Judea were either dead or enslaved in some foreign country. Post-70 AD provided a perfect environment for myth making.



Meaning, despite the destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem there was still a chance for repentance and the redemption/success of the Jewish nation.

When understood in its proper historical context, yes, it is. Unfortunately, Christian churches teach a kindergarten version of ancient history. No one is ever going to hear the historical truth in a church.

I agree. gMark was popular literature meant to explain to the Jews what had just befallen them. Jesus was a sort of Captain America figure meant to symbolize to the survivors of the Jewish wars what a Jew could be and should be.

mountainman

It makes little if any sense that if the Jesus story was simply anti-Jewish propaganda why it was produced in the Greek language and not the Hebrew language.

Can there be any dispute that in the 4th century the Jesus story was used as an anti-Hellenistic political and religious manifesto by which the Hellenistic [pagan] religions and the Greek intellectual tradition were almost entirely subverted and suppressed?




Be careful what you say steve_bnk.




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

Toto

Everyone knows that the theology of the Christian church was a late development, and continues to develop.

mountainman

Everyone also knows that the Christian church did not invent the gospels.





εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

Toto

The Christian church did write the gospels, or at least Christians did.

outhouse

proto christians at best :huh: