show_no_mercy

The fundamental flaw in freetrader's argument is that no one who was a supposed witness of Jesus' supposed ministry wrote the gospel accounts. The gospels were written anonymously and didn't get their names until the 2nd century... and the first Christian to cite a narrative gospel cited a gospel that had Jesus as a phantom. There really isn't any evidence that Christians knew about narrative gospels in the first century. One might cite Papias, but while he names Mark and Matthew, he has no idea about any sort of narrative gospel - his Mark is simply a "logia" or sayings gospel like Thomas.

The first gospel written - Mark - is not history. I think the best description of it would be social/theological commentary. Mark has a demon named "Legion" who is cast into some pigs and then these pigs run several miles away into a lake and drown. How coincidental is it that Roman military units are called "legions" and one that was stationed in ancient Palestine had a boar as their symbol?

How could Jesus clear a military fortress of "money changers" during the biggest event of the year? How hard would it to be to clear food vendors from a football stadium by yourself during the Superbowl? A football stadium that also served as a military fortress (so this means there were armed guards everywhere)? Though this situation bears some striking resemblance to the Jews 100 years prior to Jesus that cleared their temple of Hellenistic influence. Jews celebrate this historical clearing of the Temple every year by the name of "Hanukkah" I don't think it's coincidence at all. Maybe an allegory showing Hellenistic/non-circumcision Judaism (i.e. Christianity) winning out over nationalistic Judaism, reversing the Hanukkah celebration.

Why is it that Jesus just so happens to meet a Pontius Pilate that's the exact opposite of how he's portrayed in Jewish (Philo and Josephus) literature? According to Philo, a contemporary of Jesus, Pilate executed troublemakers without trial. Yet according to the gospels Pilate is seen being patient and just, and finding no fault with Jesus and finally giving in to the angry mob's demands after much deliberation. Jesus also just so happens to meet his polar opposite during this trial who is oddly named "son of the father". Isn't Jesus the son of the father? How unlikely is it that Jesus, who is a "son" who is always praying to "the father" while being tried by "Bizzaro Pilate" meets his own polar opposite who is also called "son of the father"? And that the Jews chose to release the insurrectionist "son of the father" while crucifying the actual son of the father? Why is it that the first time Jesus prays to "abba" it's right before he gets arrested? Maybe the writer of the story is giving us a hint about what "bar-abbas" means? Maybe the writer is trying to show that the Jews chose "insurrection" (Barabbas) over peace (Christ)?

Why is it that Jesus gets betrayed by one of the "twelve" who is called "Judas"? Jesus just so happens to have twelve disciples just like Jacob had twelve sons and one of them is named "Jew" who betrays him. Could it be that Jesus' "twelve" represents the twelve tribes of Israel and "Judas" represents the Jews?

If Jesus really did perform all of his miracles and was insanely popular, why is it that when Josephus writes about wanting to investigate the three major philosophies of Judaism when he was 16 (around 53 CE) he mentions only the Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Essenes? Isn't this around the same time period that Christianity was supposed to be being preached by the apostles according to Paul's letters? Why does Josephus know about the Zealots led by Judas of Galilee who only had 4,000 members and he calls this a "fourth sect of Judaism" but never mentions Christianity? Why wouldn't Josephus know about a rock star miracle worker who was from his home town who was the leader of this new brand of Judaism? Christianity itself seems to be invisible to the historical record until after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.

If you posit the superstar Jesus who really did perform miracles in a relatively peaceful time period in Jerusalem you have to explain why history, the Pauline and Catholic epistles, are completely silent about miracle worker Jesus until basically the 2nd century.

Diogenes the Cynic

There was nothing unusual about attributing divinity or miraculous abilities to real human beings in the ancient world, especially to royalty (and remember, those who created the Jesus myth thought he was a king). That's something I think our friend, freetrader, appears to be unaware of.
Name one.

Thor Q. Mada

Listen, I am a simple idiot and I have seen a few Benny Hinn shows on television and he does real miracles. Period. I therefore conclude that he is at least the son of god. He is only second to David Copperfield though.

freetrader

ApostateAbe

The issue is not how Christianity became dominant. It is clear that different religions have become dominant at different times. Christianity is not made unique in history from having become dominant at one time and still dominating in some places.

I'm posing a problem about something unique in history, something singular, for which there is no precedent: How did an insignificant Galilean whose public life was so short become made into a god? I emphasize that he was a Galilean because you could hardly find a less likely place from which to choose a candidate to become a god for Greeks and Romans. How do you explain that they would adopt this nobody (if he did no miracle acts or anything else of similar noteworthiness) as their God or their "only begotten Son of God"?

If they were "sold a bill of goods" the question is still: Who would waste their time selling them this bill of goods? Why would they? for what purpose? Why would they choose this insignificant Galilean and not someone of higher repute as their product? like Appolonius of Tyana, e.g.?

So this is the issue reframed. I will answer ApostateAbe from here as though he is addressing this reframed version of the question. It is not how did Christianity become dominant, but rather, how did this unlikely Galilean become adopted into the new foreign religion and made into its God. How could anything like this happen?


This explains nothing. There were plenty of other Jewish teachers and cultists running around preaching and trying to attract a following. Why didn't they get made into a god? Some were more popular than Jesus, it seems. Surely the new Greek religion forming should have adopted John the Baptist or James the Just, or how about Hillel -- and there are other Jews who should have been just as successful or more successful than JC, if the key to success was to expound upon Jewish traditions.

But then again, there is no reason to suggest that Judaism was superior to other religions of the period and that to be successful you had to be Jewish or teach Jewish tradition. There was nothing inferior about the Egyptian gods, the Phoenician gods, and so on. All of them were "rich in myth, history, theology and morality" and could have produced a successful messiah or savior figure.

So the connection to Judaism is no explanation how Jesus became elevated to godhood status.


Again, there were other monotheistic Jews with a following who would be just as likely or more likely than Jesus to be adopted as the messiah or savior figure.

Furthermore, there were other monotheistic religions, at least in Egypt and Persia, and probably other places too. The Zoroastrians claim theirs as the first monotheistic religion. If monotheism is the key, why didn't the new religion-creators adopt Zoroaster as their god and invent miracle stories about him instead of about the nobody Galilean who had far fewer credentials at the time? No, monotheism has nothing to do with answering the question posed here.


Actually we don't know that he did that. It might really have been his re-inventors who created the heaven-hell scenario. Certainly there were many versions of heaven and hell floating around, before and during the time of Jesus, so these ideas were not at all unique to him, assuming he preached such ideas.

Assuming he preached reward and punishment in the afterlife, many others did too, so this does not single him out to be more successful.

ON THE OTHER HAND, if he showed that he had real power in some way, that would make a big difference. Then any claims he made about life after death might carry some weight. But as long as he was just another run-of-the-mill hell-fire-and-damnation babbling preacher, with no evidence of having any power, why should he be taken any more seriously than all the others preaching the same sermon?

So there were others who did all the above, not just each of the above, but who did all of them in combination, so Jesus does not stand apart from them or show any uniqueness in this regard, and so we have here no explanation why he was chosen to be the messiah or savior figure for the new developing Greek/Roman religion to eventually replace polytheistic paganism.


You mean Hillel and others did not teach love and forgiveness already? This was a new preaching theme discovered by Jesus and unknown to all the other great teachers?

The best indication that Jesus was compassionate is found in the healing stories. If you remove these miracle cures from the historical Jesus, we have no more reason to connect him with the theme of love or compassion than any of several dozen other revered teachers and prophets and sages of that period. And his many sermons, mainly in the Gospel of John, on the theme of love are almost certainly literary compositions from 60+ years after Jesus and placed into his mouth by the Hellenizers who were ripping him out of his Jewish culture to sell him to the Greeks and Romans.

And the question we need an answer to (but are not getting) is: why did they choose this Galilean to serve as the mouthpiece for this new religion they were creating?


But they don't explain anything about the unique success of Jesus at achieving messiah or savior status. Unless of course you include the additional element that he had power to do miracle cures and even returned to life after being killed -- once this ingredient is added, then ideas about compassion and forgiveness and also judgment and heaven and hell take on a higher dimension of importance.


Muhammad had the advantage of a very long career of preaching, which is always necessary for a prophet or sage to accumulate a following and become recognized and become the object of myth-making. But how Jesus became such an object and was made into a god has not been explained.


Not in a short period of time. In the case of recognized successful religious leaders, such as prophets and gurus etc., a public preaching career of at least 20 years is necessary for their preparation and accumulation of their followers. If you can cite an example of a very successful guru or prophet who gained long-lasting widespread recognition but did all his public preaching in less than 5 years, you would shoot a large hole in my theory, especially if you can come up with 3 or 4 examples.


Again, only if they have the extended period of time to achieve it.

Diogenes the Cynic

You should probably know that "healing" in 1st century Palestinian Judaism did not mean literally curing anything, but referred to ritualistic acts of "spiritual" healing. It was thought that physical illness was caused by spiritual impurity. Spiritually "unclean" people were rejected by the community, and to interact with them -- even to physically touch them -- was considered an act of impurity in itself. To "heal" a someone was not to physically cure them, but to spiritually "cleanse" them and accept them back into the community. In Mark, when Jesus first "heals" a leper, the disciples are shocked not that he healed a leper, but that he touched a leper.

According to Mark, Jesus was performing these ritualistic healings without authority.


Having said that, there is no evidence that anyone called Jesus a miracle worker, oreven a healer until at least 40 years after the alleged crucifixion. There are no such claims in the earliest layers of Christian iterature, nor is there any evidence of an oral tradition to that effect.

It's possible that Jesus was a faith healer, but there were, and still are, lots of faith healers how attract big crowds. Exorcists too. You can go to Taiwan and watch shamans routinely cast out demons for a fee.

The insistence that there is anything amazing or inexplicable about the character of a 1st century Jewish preacher being later mythologized into a God by Gentiles is misbegotten. Christianity was originally a Jewish sect which, from the scant evidence available to us, appears NOT to have viewed Jesus as a miracle worker or a god, but as a teacher and possibly an apocalyptic prophet. It was only after this cult began to get exported to the Gentiles (probably driven by hallucinatory fantasies of a psychotic named Paul), that the cult began to acrete the supernatural aspects endemic to Hellenistic and Roman religions.

What would have been appealing about it to some Gentiles was not so much the miracle stories (every cult had miracle stories -- all with the exact same amount of evidence as Jesus...some with marginally more), but the promise of immediate class subversion. Pauline Christiamity was most popular with the lower classes and with slaves. What they liked about it was the promise that Jesus would return in their lifetimes to kick all the rich people in the ass and reward the poor. "The first shall be last and the last shall be first" was the message that resonated to those on the bottom of a stratified class system. For this reason, Paul's cult had some success taking purchase as an underground, sort of white trash cult, but it was still only one cult among many, and not extraordinarily popular (nor very well regarded) until Constantine "converted" to please his crazy mother.
It took several decades before there is any evidence that Jesus cults began to accrete miracle traditions. I think something else you're missing is that the people who believed them did not do so because they had any means of verifying the miracles attributed to Jesus. It's not like they had any access to evidence, and there weren't any witnesses. It's not a possible for them to have seen any proof of anything, therefore their mere belief cannot be held out as de facto verification of the historical truth of the claims. They were credulous people living in credulous times. They believed lots of supernatural claims. That wasn't what attracted them to the cult. What attracted them to the cult was what it offered to GIVE them -- its social subversiveness and promise of imminent reward.

gdeering

So the whole point boils down to your contention that there must have been miracles otherwise this insignificant nobody who never said anything original or noteworthy - and was a little fish in a sea of similar prophets and magicians - could never have amounted to anything.

OK, so why did God make such an uninteresting son?

If you take miracles seriously, then you take God seriously – and once again, God seems to be pretty puny and impotent – which I can’t believe given his earlier descriptions by the Jews. It's also clear from the Gospels that Jesus' miracles are considered ho-hum by the jaded miracle-fatigued populace of Palestine. It's part of this word of mouth that became the Gospels. If the supernatural is all you have then you need to prove the supernatural, and show that it was limited to Jesus.

Please when proving the supernatural you could help me by describing Jesus' unique miracles. I was really surprised when I started reading about the number we can trace back via the OT. I find the whole Midrash issue fascinating.

How many ideas coalesced into a figure with a Greek name (we don't know his name, but we can guess via the Greek). Did God really decide that this convoluted hodgepodge was the best way to show the world his NEW path to salvation?

Just as we don’t have to have a significant new prophet (though other believers might argue that point with you), we don’t have to have a real miracle worker to make a religion, so please tell me since there are no witnesses, what’s the difference between a real miracle and a word of mouth legend. We have plenty of the latter, but I’ve never seen the former verified.


Gregg

Amaleq13

That smells like bullshit. That you follow it not with a scholarly reference but an attempt to shift the burden to "disprove" it certainly does not improve the smell. Did you just make it up? Or read it in some apologetic tract?

It is also a red herring since it is Paul's preaching rather than that of Jesus which is ultimately responsible for Christianity. Was Paul's ministry too short to be credible?

This is also red herring since, based on Paul, the early success of the movement had nothing to do with any ministry by Jesus.

The story of the living, miracle-working, prophet only became central to the faith after belief in the risen Christ was already established.

I think you are correct that the events which resulted in Christianity are unique in history but you are clearly incorrect to claim that this requires one to assume Jesus actually had magical powers. You've got too many logical errors.

spamandham

If you make the "problem" unique enough, of course it's going to look to be unique. But all you've really done is begged the question. Because although there may be no other examples that are exactly like Christianity, there are numerous examples substantially like it.

How many personality cults have been formed throughout history? Hundreds? Thousands? 10's of thousands? Christianity is just one more of this innumerable list.

How many of these cults attribute miracles/magic to their founders? 80%? 90%? I don't know, but surely the number is quite high, and Christianity is just one more of them.

How many cult religions have grown at the same estimated rate as Christianity? If we accept the work of Rodney Stark, most of them...at least early on. So Christianity is just one more.

...and on and on. Unless you go out of your way to artificially make Christianity seem unique the way you have done, it's origin is quite ordinary and requires no explanation.

Diogenes the Cynic

I'm surprised we haven't heard how incredible and unique it was that people were willing to die for their belief in Jesus yet. That usually goes hand in glove with this "rapid spread" angle.

freetrader

Diogenes the Cynic:

Yes they could. The point is that Jesus had to have done something noteworthy in order to be remembered and written about later. If a man never does anything unusual or important or noteworthy, then won't he be forgotten, i.e., by history, by later generations?

In the process of stripping this and that out of the Jesus story, you need to still leave something there, probably a tad more than just the name, so you grant some element of the original picture that leads to him being remembered and written about later. If you eliminate the whole picture, everything about him, then what is left to serve any later purpose? Why is anyone talking about him? Why are the St. Pauls or other Hellenizers saying anything about him?

You could suggest that he was a very good speaker or something, without agreeing to the miraculous element. But you still must grant that he had some unusual feature or capability that made him worth remembering later and being written about.

And in the argument here, if you say only that Jesus might have been a good speaker but that is all, then perhaps you've shown how he got written about later (though there were doubtless many wonderful speakers who were totally forgotten), so granting that it's enough to get him notice in the record ("a footnote in history"), you still need more in order to explain how he got made into a god, i.e., you have to come up with more than just the suggestion that he was a good speaker.

No doubt there were thousands of good speakers, and even though many of them might be remembered for this alone, still this by itself is not enough to cause them to become deified and mythologized and made into an object of worship. Even if the direct acquaintances of Jesus never deified him or worshipped him, still it did happen later. So the question is: how did he come to be finally deified and made the object of mythologizing. How did that process happen?

If no one who knew him directly gave him any such special recognition, then he was just an ordinary person with no importance. So then, how does such an ordinary person eventually get mythologized and transformed into a god? Who was it who decided to transform this nobody to make him into a god? Why did they choose Jesus for this role?

For this to make any sense, there had to be some point where he became noteworthy in some way in his original setting, or he had to do something to make an impression on some one so he would stand out as special or noteworthy. And once he becomes noteworthy, then we can speculate that the religionizers or Hellenizers took notice of him and thought, "Let's make this character our god, let's do a makeover of him and put him into our holy book and say he did miracles and was the son of God." But to do this, they needed something there in the first place, some original figure who was noteworthy enough for them to take such notice of him. What was that noteworthiness?


Assuming that's true, what was incipient to it? How did the cult originally see Jesus? Was he just one more member of the cult with no special position? If so, then why was he later chosen by the Hellenizers to become the new Christian god? Did they barge in on a meeting of the cult and just cast lots to choose which of the cultmembers to make into a god?


Is there evidence that a single person ever made any claim about him? This doesn't seem to say anything about whether he did "magic tricks," but rather says there's no evidence about anything he did. So if this proves he never did any "magic tricks," then it also proves he never did anything else either, certainly nothing noteworthy. And if that is so, then the Hellenizers would not notice him and would not choose to make him into a god, and so there would be nothing about him in the Christian religion they invented or in the New Testament they wrote to promote the new religion.

And yet, there is much about him in the religion they invented, especially in the New Testament collection of writings they handed down. So what happened? How did he get slipped in to the writings when there was nothing noteworthy about him? Who made the decision to sneak him into the holy book, and why? Why did they choose him?


If there are other accounts attesting to miracles he performed, then maybe it's true. We have to consider each alleged case. You don't disprove one case by citing a different unrelated one.

It can be understood how miracle fictions and myths evolve around a highly celebrated figure who rises to power over decades of clawing his way to the top and claims to be a god and is worshipped as a god by the greatest Empire on the planet and can order anyone's head to be cut off who challenges his claim. It's more difficult to explain how such stories accumulate around a nobody whose public life is sharply ended after only 1-3 years.


Assuming that is correct, the question (still not answered by anyone) is: Whoever made up those miracle stories -- why did they choose Jesus as the character to perform these miracles? I.e., these fictional miracles they invented -- why did they choose an unlikely or even unknown Galilean nobody as the character to do these acts?

Why didn't they choose Hillel or John the Baptist or Apollonius of Tyana, all of whom were more widely recognized (assuming Jesus had no reputation for doing any miracles or being important in any way).


You already know the answer to that -- you have the same evidence I have. We accept as evidence documents written long after the event. Of course it's not proof -- for most events we have to settle for less than 99% probability. Some events for which there is evidence, even evidence of eye witnesses, are still less than 50% probable. You know there are many cases where it is disputed whether an event took place, where there is evidence but not enough to convince everyone.

I don't know if we have in any document a quote of someone claiming literally to have "personally seen" Julius Caesar being assassinated, but that doesn't mean there were no witnesses or no evidence of witnesses to the event. If it says in a document from the general period that something happened and someone saw it, that is evidence that it happened and was seen, but no, it's not proof. If the document is from 200 years later, that is less reliable than from a document only 50 years later. And so on.

The evidence we have that Jesus did miracles is not the best evidence there could be. But it's as good as evidence we have for many other events which we believe. We always wish we had better evidence than what we have.


I don't remember contending any such thing. But to set the record straight, yes, historical figures can accrete supernatural claims. But to do a leap of faith from this to the dogma that all reports of miracle acts in the past have to be fictitious accretions is even more specious.


Wait -- what "mission"? Mission to accomplish what? How do you know he had a "mission"?


Why did he use the term "Christ"? How could this obscure Greek term (Hebrew concept) resonate with his hearers? If you look it up in a lexicon, it's use is almost always from Christian literature, not from Homer or Plato or other Greek source. So why didn't Paul come up with some concept from Greek mythology instead of a name like "Christ"? How did using this alien concept help him promote his "mission"?


This isn't Paul you're describing, but Matthew and Luke (and Marx?). But either way, why did they inject the unlikely Jesus figure into the picture? How did this unknown dead Galilean serve as a tool to communicate these ideas about justice and vengeance and smiting the rich? A better figure to use would have been Spartacus, and no doubt there were dozens more examples of heroic figures of the Greek/Roman world from which they could have chosen their savior figure. And if it had to be a Jew for some reason, there were other Jews also who would have been a better choice (though it's hard to understand why you'd expect Greeks/Romans to accept a Jewish hero more than one of their own culture).


The question is not why they believed it. The question is: Why did the promoters, the Hellenizers creating this new religion for the Gentiles, choose an unlikely unknown figure as the center hero for this new religion? They could just as easily have picked a beggar randomly off the street.


But where did he get such a message in the first place? Why Jesus? If it had to be a Jew, why not Hillel? Why not invent miracle stories about Hillel and say he was murdered and was the Son of Man soon returning in glory? someone with more recognition and respect? Or why not a Greek or Roman, who would command more respect among the audience being targeted? Why pick a nobody Galilean who had no credentials whatever?

Do you suppose they deliberately chose a nobody? Was this intentional because a famous figure of high repute would be disadvantageous in some way? But then you have to assume all the Hellenizers came together and agreed on this one obscure person to make into their god. Without such a consensus, the different Hellenizing factions would have arbitrarily chosen different savior figures, and we'd have at least a dozen "christs" today, or scores of them, rather than just one. Why isn't there a Saul Christ and a David Christ and a Judah Christ and an Andrew Christ and a Simon Christ and a Matthew Christ and so on, all claimed to be the One True Messiah born in Bethlehem? How did all those Hellenizers happen to pick the same Galilean Jesus figure who stood out no more than an ordinary shepherd or peasant gathering wheat in the field?


There was plenty of apocalyptic literature to satisfy people's need for such visions of the future, without cluttering up the picture with the Jesus figure. And there were already-established hero figures to meet their need for a savior who would sweep down and rescue them out of their misery. Why not give them Elijah or Enoch, who had once been "taken up" from earth and would soon return to take the faithful with them? Or pick a hero from Greek or Roman mythology. To choose Jesus the Galilean for this makes no sense.


Good, all the more reason to give them Enoch or Elijah or Hillel or John the Baptist or Spartacus or Hercules or any of dozens of other better choices than Jesus the Galilean. How about Socrates? He was sacrificed for our sins. Make up miracle stories about him -- those unskeptical gullible Gentiles would have bought that better than the Jesus hero -- if they had chosen Socrates for their messiah, Christianity would have conquered the world much faster and farther.


This answers why they believed Paul, but it does not answer why Paul chose to offer them this Jesus figure instead of choosing someone of wider repute and higher standing to serve as the redeemer figure in his preaching.

Did Paul himself believe his own message? Did he really believe Christ resurrected? If so, why did he believe it? He must have heard this from others who believed it. Who were they?

On the other hand, if he did not believe it, then why did he choose the Jesus figure to be his Christ? Why didn't he come up with another more noteworthy person to be his "Christ" who would be more credible and acceptable to those who are hungering for a savior symbol?


I'm not asking why Greek Gentiles believed it. I'm asking why the particular Galilean Jesus figure was chosen as the symbol offered to them to believe in. Why didn't the ones preaching to them offer them a more suitable savior figure than this one?

As to the Palestinian Jews, it is likely that many of them did believe it. Like the ones from whom Paul gained his information about the resurrection.


There is evidence, which you're already aware of. Just because it's not the most scientific evidence doesn't mean it isn't evidence. There are many levels of evidence. I agree there could be more and better evidence for the miracles and the resurrection, just as there could be better evidence for many things that were probably true but for which we don't have the best evidence possible. There's evidence that Agamemnon and Achilles traveled to Troy in a boat, but no witness present wrote it down -- and yet it could very well be true, based on the written evidence we have from centuries later.


You mean the healing stories. Probably the Mishnah writers and many others did not believe the stories. Things happen that not everyone believes. That doesn't mean they didn't happen or that no one at all believed them.


We can distinguish between stories that are more likely to be true and ones that are less likely. Some are like "add-on" or "me-too" stories which were invented to supplement (in the story-teller's mind) the earlier authentic stories, but they end up eventually being more a detraction from the original stories. Just because there are fictional stories in the accounts does not mean all the stories are fiction, or all the miracle stories. The reasonable approach is to discern the difference between what is credible and what is fictional, or to assign higher probability to some reports and lower probability to others. The story of the corpses rising and invading Jerusalem is obviously on a very low degree of probability compared to the miracle healing stories.


Absolute impossibility would only be something contradictory, like 2=3, up=down, etc. For all else, it is just a matter of higher and lower probability. "Impossible" in a practical sense might be something with a .0000000000001% probability. That some healings have happened which were done outside the confines of known medicine is highly probable. I'll guess over 90% probable.

On the other hand, when more details are added, about specific healers and specific dates and specific victims who were healed, the probability goes way down. But it's still over 50% in some cases. To absolutely rule out all such healings ipso facto, no matter what, is unscientific and irrational. To say the probability is low in many or most cases -- yes, it might be low in most cases. It's not easy to precisely calculate the probability of such things.


If this is a way of saying nothing can ever happen that is unexplainable within the currently-known science, you are certainly mistaken.