jjramsey

In Paul's case, he was persecuting the church and got a vision that he interpreted as a sign that he was going the wrong way.

Personal charisma, seeing what they thought were miracles, styling himself as Messiah, a new Moses.

jakejonesiv

IYO did Jesus fake the miracles? Maybe he hired stooges to pretend to be healed and kept a herd of trained suicidal pigs on hand to drown themselves on queue. Or maybe he had the Sermon on the Mount catered, and the disciples didn't see the delivery?

Jake

jjramsey

Judging from passages like Mark 6:1-6 and Mark 9:14-29, I'd say that the miracles that "really" happened were due things like the power of suggestion (which didn't work so well in Nazareth) or misunderstanding of natural phenomena (such as considering an epileptic "healed" when the seizure had passed of its own accord). Obviously, one could expect purely legendary miracle stories to pop in as well, especially the more spectacular ones. There is also the matter of selection biases, where the hits are usually remembered and the misses forgotten--with Nazareth being a notable exception. I suggest you nose around http://www.randi.org some time. People can fool themselves in a number of ways.

John Kesler

Mark 6 certainly doesn't seem like something that the gospel authors would make up. It's revealing how Matthew changed the story, so that the lack of miracles is punitive, because of, not due to, unbelief.

Matthew also claims that some "deeds of power" were done--just not many--while Mark acknowledges that healing "a few sick people" was the extent of Jesus' powers when he had to work with an unbelieving populace. It's interesting to note, too, that the saying about a prophet not having honor in his own country appears in Matthew 13:57, Mark 6:4, Luke 4:24, John 4:44, and Thomas, saying 31.

Doug Shaver

No man could have had that much charisma while going totally unnoticed in his own time. Miracle-workers were a dime a dozen in those days. It is not recorded that Jesus himself ever made any messianic claims.

I don't offhand recall any Christian writers comparing him to Moses, but maybe it didn't stick in my mind because up to now, I've never seen the suggestion it might explain his almost immediate deification (or quasi-deification, whatever).

jjramsey

Who said he went totally unnoticed? There is a big difference between being the subject of word-of-mouth rumors and being thought worthy of a historian's chronicle. Also, cult leaders who make outrageous claims are charismatic, but don't necessarily attract that many followers, nor do they necessarily attract that much attention unless they do something spectacular or horrific.

I keep seeing people make this claim, but I've never seen it back it up.

Actually, that's not quite true. Mark 14:61-62:

Now whether it is accurately recorded that Jesus himself ever made any messianic claims is another story, of course, but it was certainly claimed that Jesus made messianic claims.

Amaleq13

To add an example to jjramsey's response, Charles Manson had an undeniable charisma as far as his followers were concerned but it required a mass murder for him to become "known".

Doug Shaver

Shouldn't the burden of proof be on those who say he was noticed? His existence as a human being is not undisputedly attested by any writer known to have lived during the first century, and the only disputed attestation is Josephus's.

Yes, indeed. A man who claimed to be God might well be overlooked by a contemporary historian. My argument is that a man who inspired lots of Jews to believe he was in fact God would not have been so overlooked.

Nobody is claiming that Jesus did anything horrific. That leaves spectacular. Where did anybody get the notion he was God if he did nothing spectacular enough to attract lots of attention during his lifetime?

They're everywhere nowadays. Why think it was any different back then?
Richard Carrier summarizes the evidence here: Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: A Look into the World of the Gospels.

I stand corrected. Thank you. I should have remembered that one.

The mass murder actually occurred, and it is the only reason anybody nowadays knows the name of Charles Manson. Likewise for the events at Jonestown, and we might as well throw in Heaven's Gate. What did Jesus -- the man himself -- actually do, that we know about from dependable sources, to get himself worshiped as the son of God by a group of Jews within 20 years of his death?

The Bishop

Define "dependable".

Are you implying that because we don't know the specific identities of "Mark", "Matthew", "Luke", "John" and "Q" that we can't rely their undisputably first century work? To say they describe a man that they, at least, were all happy to worship as a God?

I haven't followed this particular argument, but I don't myself count four major and innumerable minor accounts of the man's life as evidence that he was "overlooked". It's difficult sometimes to understand this in this Christian hegemony world, but the fact that Christianity, whatever its origins, clearly spread around the ancient world like absolute wildfire would seem to be evidence that somehow the philosophy Jesus represented was such a major breakthrough in religious thought that it was almost overpowering. And the result is that today we know of many different accounts but at the same time, those accounts were written by converted Christians. The fact that they are Christians is just an side-effect of the fact that the philosophy is evidently a powerful one, but it doesn't automatically debar one from reading their accounts as historically based due to being (unlike for many mythological heroes) derived from eyewitness accounts or no more than two intermediaries before you get to someone who knew Jesus personally.

Of course you can't say that it's hard and fast proof, but then you have to look at other historical sources for 1st Century events, and judge them by the same criteria. There are undoubtedly people, believed to be historical figures, solely attested by historical accounts written 50 or even more years after the person's death by one or more people who had never met the person. This is what I meant by asking how you defined "dependable".

Amaleq13

As far as I can tell, all "the man himself" did was make an enormous impression on a small group of Jews to the point that they came to believe he had risen from the dead after being crucified.

The real work, IMO, was accomplished by the apostles as they convinced others that their "pernicious superstitious" was true.