GakuseiDon

You've written this before, but never backed it up, except with a series of rhetorical questions. Do you have any sources so we can investigate this? Can you cite some Greek sources showing a "descending redeemer scenario" within Hellenistic philosophy, please? Who were the redeemers, and where did they descend to? (Remember, I'm interested in evidence, not rhetorical questions).

Gregg

Wow. And JMers are accused of speculation.

There is one small, tiny, miniscule problem with your logical explanation.

There's no evidence for it.

In the earliest Christian correspondence available to us, this underground seditionist Jesus does not exist. All evidence shows that from the beginnings of the Christian movement, Jesus was regarded not merely as Jewish messiah, but as the Son of God, as a divine figure whose death and resurrection reconciled the creation to the Father. There is no evidence of a gradual accretion of myth around a historical man.

Furthermore Josephus, the Jewish historian, despised the Jewish rebels and insurrectionists who had roused Rome's wrath against the Jewish nation, yet he does not list Jesus among their number. He says nothing about seditionist Jews attacking "in Jesus' name" or about Jesus' martyrdom being used as a recruitment tool. There is no corroborating evidence outside Christian literature for any of this.

Apparently the Romans, inventing their Christian religious counter-propaganda, had the foresight to also excise all mention of Jesus from letters, reports, and histories back in Rome and everywhere else, even if they were only concerned about rebellious Jews off in Palestine who would never see these things.

BTW you have Paul preaching after the destruction of the Temple, and Mark being written before the destruction of the Temple. This is the exact opposite of scholarly consensus. Now, in the case of the Bible and religious history I don't always agree with the scholarly consensus, but you do need to show a bit of evidence before making a claim like this.

Also, you have Rome continuing to spread the Christian faith after the destruction of the Temple. There is no evidence of this. Unless you think there was some elaborate long term conspiracy on the part of Roman leaders to slowly build up this new religion (even persecuting it at times to allay any suspicion they were behind it) so that 300 years or so later they could co-opt it and use it to impose a religious theocracy.

Gregg

http://jdt.unl.edu/lithist.html

This is a pretty interesting article, especially beginning with II.E. and going through III.A.

GakuseiDon

But it all seems to support the idea of a descent to earth. AFAICS, this supports me, and is against Doherty. :huh: Where is the "descending redeemer scenario within Hellenistic philosophy" that supports Doherty?

Clivedurdle

Excuse me, but I spy two "events"! One at Yom Kippur, one at Passech. Am I mistaken?

Koyaanisqatsi

I never said it wasn't speculation, nor do I see anything inherently wrong with it as a means to posit a possible scenario, but you're right, of course that absent any corroboration, that's all it would remain.

Well, there may not be "hard" evidence for it that I know of, but there is Mark and his preposterous trial sequence and the fact that Mark gets so many basic things wrong about Jewish messianic prophecy.

There's also the mocking of Jesus as a "King of the Jews" when he never claimed to be and when supposedly asked by Pilate, "the crowd" allegedly declared "we have no king but Caesar" that has been so touted on these boards. The problem is, then, if Jesus didn't claim to be "King of the Jews" and Pilate found him publicly innocent of all crimes (which would, of course, include the decree from Caesar that you have no King but him) and "the crowd" declares Jesus was not the "King of the Jews," then why do the Romans publicly mock him and dress him in kingly robes with a crown of thorns?

Nobody considered him the King of the Jews, yet here he is being publicly mocked as a King of the Jews by the people whose leader had just declared him not to be even a criminal, let alone guilty of claiming to be the King of the Jews.

If that aspect of the actual crucifixion of a man named Jesus had occurred (that Jesus was mocked by the Romans during the Passover festival on his way to being crucified), then Mark would have to account for it and indeed he does, except that his version makes no sense.

It would, however make perfect sense if Jesus were the captured leader of an insurrectionist movement and the Romans were making a public spectacle of him in those terms; as in, this is what happens to any of you who dare to think you could rise up against us; to be our equals; to have a King other than Caesar.

Speculation? Sure. Baseless? Not so sure, IMO, of course.

Of course he does! Not directly named as only a seditionist, but then back then there was no concept of a separation between Church and State. Indeed, just about everything Jesus and his small, special group of apparently very devoted followers does fairly reeks of an underground movement that would (as all movements did back then) include a religious base and ideology as a matter of course.

They are instructed by Jesus to hide from the soldiers and make no public waves that would get them arrested or shed light on themselves. Mark goes into great detail about how they will be persecuted for their association with Jesus and when the shit hits the fan and Jesus is arrested (an easy prophecy to make for an insurrectionist, as well as an easy prophecy to remake as a propagandist) they are to run to the hills, leaving everything behind them (including the women and children).

Granted in a theological, "end times" manner, but an astute reader can just as easily see that to be paramilitary "plan B" escape routing if the hammer comes down on their merry lot with Mark just twisting it around a bit to further downplay the "true" insurrectionist motives and planning of the original gangstas.

Beside the fact that such evidence is tainted, IMO (the victors write the history), all of that would be (more or less) in perfect keeping with a mythology around a martyrd leader.

There is abundant such evidence! The fact that Mark is supposedly written some forty years after his death is evidence of a gradual accretion mythos; the fact that Paul thirty years after Jesus' crucifixion can't convince the Greek believers that Jesus was bodily resurrected proves a gradual accretion of myth around an historical man, not to mention that Paul claims he was hung on a tree, while Mark details a crucifixion at least proves inconsistency, unless one employs apologetics to the "hung on a tree" imagery.

Not even those supposedly at the time believed that Jesus had raised bodily from the grave (such as Thomas, who inexplicably had to stick his hands in the wounds before he recognized the man before him as Jesus, which seems ridiculous; if my best friend had died and three days later showed up at my door, I wouldn't need to touch him to at least recognize it was the same person, however "ghostly").

Well, he does in an indirect way (Christus, I believe) and if you accept that there were Jewish rebels and insurrectionists as your quote demonstrates, then it's possible that such references were later removed under Constantine, or the like.

And don't forget that Josephus:

It could very well be that Josephus was either trying to protect his fallen leader under duress and consciously excised any connections to his own "shameful" allegiance afte being a turncoat and living large under Titus, or that he was just trying to protect his own ass by excising any such allegiance. After all, if Jesus were such a leader and Josephus was one of his insurrectionists when he fought in 66 he sure as shit wouldn't want his new Roman patrons to know such a thing.

See above.

There's more than enough, IMO, in just what I've outlined above and previously to at least justify reviewing the literature in light of this far more logical, realistic explanation of early events than to just say, "Jesus was God and the Jews killed him."

And, again, history is written by the victors and since Josephus was either forced to change sides, or willingly did so (which seems implausible) and wrote his histories while under the largess of the Romans, well...there's plenty of room in there for either of my scenarios (covering his fallen leader's ass, or covering his own).

It's even possible that Josephus may have been one of Mark's sources and was motivated out of a belief that the Sanhedrin did indeed conspire to betray Jesus (if he held such a belief) and that's why he hated them so in later life, helping the Romans to get those who, in his mind, had betrayed Jesus even after he fought to save them. It's not too implausible that while he was in prison, he was convinced by his jailors (i.e., tortured) that Jesus had been betrayed by the Sanhedrin and this was the first time Josephus heard this (or was tortued into believing) and that's what turned him against "the Jews" he had previously fought with.

But that doesn't necessarily mean he'd "give up" Jesus as the original leader of the revolt; indeed, it seems perfectly reasonable that if such a sequence happened, he'd not mention Jesus at all in this regard and under his then current circumstances and instead would focus on those he either previously believed or was forced to believe or had simply come to believe was the reason Jesus was betrayed to the Romans, just as Paul did and Mark did.

:huh:

I don't know. As you correctly pointed out, this is my speculation and since its about dead people and their possible motivations, granted, the sky's the limit, but at least it certainly makes sense if one is attempting to sift fact from fiction.

God's aren't real. There was no prisoner release ritual by the Romans. The very idea is preposterous. Pilate would not have presided over a trial involving a Jew committing blasphemy. The Sanhedrin wouldn't have tried to blackmail Pilate into killing Jesus for them, when they could have (and supposedly tried twice) at any time they chose by stoning. If Jesus really were their Messiah (a misnomer, since there are several) sent by their God then the Sanhedrin wouldn't even think of trying to kill him, for his presence would be the fulfillment of their entire belief system and it would mean they would be free from all tyrany, not just Roman tyrany.

Any reading of Mark (and certainly much of Paul) shows a decidedly pro-Roman, anti-Jewish slant and considering he supposedly writes his story at the same time the Jews are at war with their Roman occupiers, well....call me a conspiracy nut, but again it fits a hell of lot better than "Jesus was God and that's why the Jews killed him."

First of all, there clearly were insurrectionists during the occupation and if one in particular had developed a cult following and his martyrdom were used as a local recruitment tool or fuel, then it would initially be a local problem. It would only be when that problem escalated out of local control that any "official" reports would be filed and those would not be widely circulated to the general population like a Roman CNN.

That would be evidence that Rome couldn't control it's empire, so, initially at least (as the movement grew) any reports would likely be first century equivalent of "top secret" and "your eyes only" or the like.

The "excising" would, of course, occur after the "decision" to go with Mark's propaganda and would be easy enough to accomplish; all it would take is to simply destroy any letters or State correspondence that mentioned him, particularly if there were such a propaganda effort under way.

And, again, it is the victors who write the history and since such a movement would have been local and the locals were eventually almost entirely wiped out and Jesus supposedly instructed his followers that they would be persecuted in his name and to flee when the shit hit the fan, any later mentioning of Jesus as an insurrectionist leader could just as easily be expressed as a religious prophet/messiah.

That's what a messiah meant to the Jews, anyway; a warrior of God, basically, that when he came meant the destruction of Jewish enemies paving the way for Jehovah's arrival. The connotations at their real life base are identical between "insurrectionist" and "messiah" to a first century Jew that had, as mentioned, no separation between Chruch and State.

No, I left Paul primarily out because that's a different aspect of my theory and have Mark writing at the time most say he wrote; 70 C.E. I have no way of knowing if that means he actually wrote around 65 C.E. or 75 C.E., but the time frame is right as either a precursive, last ditch attempt or a coincident propaganda effort that went hand in hand with the Jewish-Roman war, the first century equivalent of dropping propaganda pamphlets as we still do whenever we are at war.

I believe I have and I believe there is more, such as with Paul in the 60's, but again, I don't feel like getting into that right now. Suffice it to say that Paul's blaming of "the Jews" for Jesus' crucifixion falls right in line with a propaganda effort at shifting the focus off of the Romans and onto the local enemy of the Romans ("the Jews").

Not directly after. Again, I posit that this came more as a surprise; a tool that presented itself back to the later Romans. They saw that the non-Jews (the ones it wasn't necessarily intended for) took to it and then eventually decided to use it to there advantage, culminating finally a couple hundred years later with Constantine's "conversion" of the entire Roman populace, turning the Roman Empire into the Holy Roman Empire, basically.

Close, but again, I don't think it was a long term conspiracy; more a happy coincident that was then later seen as a perfect conditioning slave theology. They created Frankenstein for a specific purpose that didn't work the way they intended, forgot about him and then "resurrected" him when they found evidence of his myth spreading elsewhere the way they had originally intended locally.

And as for Romans persecuting Christians, there is no evidence that they did so because they believed in a resurrected Jesus. For all we know, these "Christians" were the remaining insurrectionists and the use of the term "Christian" to a Roman soldier back then could very well have meant "terrorist" just as "Shiia" or "Islamist" today connotes in Iraq.

Again, the victors write the history and the victors in this case were the Romans and lo and behold, we have a passion narrative that puts the blame on the Jews for killing their own savior, while inexplicably exonerating the actual Christkillers; the Romans.

So, clearly history was written or re-written by the victors; the question I have is why and I think my theory, while admittedly currently lacking any "hard" evidence (I'm just an armchair speculator ), certainly addresses that far more than any other plausible explanation for the events depicted by Mark, IMO.

:huh:

Clivedurdle

Would someone comment?

Was the veil said to be rent in two at the crucifiction to make something fit an idea already in existence of something that had happened on the day of atonement?

(Please note - I have not mentioned where this temple is.... but we do have a clear record of when!)

mountainman

The religious order called Zoroastrianism was invented and
implemented by the king of kings Ardashir c.224 CE, one hundred
years prior to Nicaea, by means of his absolute military power.

So we dont need imagination for a precedent in considering the
question "Did Constantine invent christianity"? Neither do we
need a conspiracy, when the act is quite explainable via the
political abuse of absolute military power.

Gamera

A cross isn't a tree. That's the critical issue. If Jesus died in a shipping accident, the proponents of the JM would claim that he died on a tree because, you see, a ship is made of wood.

It's almost impossible to have a story element that a JMer can't find an mythic or textual antecedant to, so their analysis is useless.


Paul might of. But if he did, he wasn't following the claimed mythic antecedant, vitiating the JM claim.

I can accept this, but this seems to undermine the JM considerably by introducing unknown historical developments that cannot be accouted for in the development of the myth.


I think Occam's razor applies here. We have the texts we have and they say what they say. To propose that the Jerusalem apostles didn't believe in a crucified Christ, while having no evidence of that, seems to me a thin reed to build a theory on.

Gamera

A closet drama isn't a narrative, so somebody had to do a lot of rewriting. Got any ideas who the genius was?