Carrie

Assuming Mark wrote the first gospel and the other writers copied from him.

Mark (and the others) didn't really believe the story of Jesus was literally true history did they? Didn't they just write it as just that - a story, based on their interpretation of scriptures from the Old Testament?

If they didn't believe the story of Jesus actually happened, why did they write as if it did really happen?

Who was the intended audience? Were the gospel authors trying to convert people, or were they just writing a story about already generally accepted ideas?

I've read different books on this subject, but things are still not entirely clear to me.

(I'm trying to write a paper for my Christian husband to help him understand how the gospels came to be, so he can see they're just stories. Convincing Christians that the gospel stories are not true is a lot harder than convincing them that the Old Testament stories are not true).

Kryten

I think you should check out Peter Kirby's book recomendation thread. Supernatural religion by Cassels is also another great sourse for this information.
To cut a long story short, the Jesus myth is based in many other popular myths of the time. The then general public were used to these stories, so it seems to me that a story similar to older beliefs would have beed quite acceptable for them. Mithras is a good example of this. If you do a search on Google using a phrase such as Jesus myths, you should get many coming up.

Also check out these links to essays on the subject.

Here is a good essay for you to check out first.
http://www.bluehoney.org/Jesus.htm

This link discusses early Christian writings and may help balance things out for you.
http://www.geocities.com/inquisitive79/antiquity.html

Also look these guys up.
Attis of Phrygia
Dionysus/Bacchus
Horus/Osiris of Egypt
Krishna of India
Zoroaster/Zarathustra

I'm a bit new to this board and am sure there are other who will be of more help. Good luck in your endeavours.

Toto

No one knows. But it appears that the author may have just been writing a good story to illustrate some basic truths as he saw them.

This might be of interest: Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark

If you want people to take you seriously, avoid citing Acharya S. Also note that Mark does not contain many of the mythical elements that the full Jesus story does - no virgin birth, in particular.

MortalWombat

In "Liberating the Gospels" John Shelby Spong (building on earlier work by Michael Goulder) sees Mark not as a historical document, but rather as a series of lections that are broken down and read throughout the liturgical year.

From Earl Doherty's review of Spong's book.

The Evil One

In other words, Mark was written in order to convey spiritual truths rather than factual truths, and the factual "claims" in Mark are merely parable-type things to convey the spiritual truths?

So though "Mark" knew he wasn't telling the factual truth, he was, on a deeper level, telling the spiritual truth?

(I think that's what the Doherty quote above means... I think!!)

Malachi151

Here is my view of the whole thing, which also has scholarly support, but I'm not going to go diggin it up right now.

The story of Jesus is part of a larger cultural and political movement of the Jews and surrounding people's who were subjects of the Romans.

The ideas that are "presented by Jesus" in the Gospels actually have roots about 100 years prior to "Jesus" in Jewish culture and some of the ideas go back farther than that in Persian and Greek culture.

What was going on was that the Jews were oppressed. There was a "cultural revolution" among the Jews who recognized that some of the Jews were corrupt and working with the Romans in oppressing Jews.

"Jesus'" movement was a pascifistic protest movement against Roman oppression and Jewish wealthy elite corruption.

Whether Jesus was real or not the political movement was real. Jesus was the hero figure of the movement, the Gandi, if you will.

Now, I believe that the Gospels are based on some real events, and that the Jesus character may represent one or more people who protested against the Romans.

The story of the killing of Jesus was meant to rally support among the oppressed against the Roman oppressors.

Stuff like "Give unto Cersar what is Cesars'" was probably added later after the religion was adopted by the Romans.

So, the reason for the early support for the religion was not not purely religious in nature, it was a politicla movement, like modern day "political Islam." That was what gave it fire, and that was why the Christians were "persecuted," not for their beliefs, but for their political implications.

This was similar to the communist movement. The Romans called the Christians "atheists" you see. Religion and politics are linked, and have always been so. The religoius movement embodied the "soul" of a political anti-estanblishment movement of rebellion against the system.

Mageth

In addition to "Liberating the Gospels", I'd also recommend John Shelby Spong's Resurrection: Myth or Reality?. In the book, Spong explains how the Gospel writers used the Jewish practice of midrash to introduce different "motifs", if you will, from Jewish tradition into the Gospels to "bring" Jesus, and in particular the Easter account, into the Jewish tradition.

See the below link for a brief introduction to Midrash, though note the article is apparently not complete, and the website is rather ugly:

http://delited.tripod.com/Spong/midrash.htm

GakuseiDon

Hi Kryten. Perhaps everyone here is to polite to mention it, but using Archarya S as a source is a bad move. At least Doherty has credibility.

Many cases of resurrection from the dead, are handed down in the ancient mythologies. Mithras, the "Mediator" of Persia, is said to have risen after three days. So also, Quexalcote, of Mexico, Osiris of Egypt, and others.
Some of these, after their resurrection, ascended into heaven. Chrishna, after rising from the dead, and appearing to his disciples, ascended to Brahma, in heaven.

None of that is true, as far as I know. You'll find plenty of websites saying that, but no scholarly ones.

Carrie

- If the Jesus movement was a pascifistic protest movement against Roman oppression, I wonder why the Romans would have eventually adopted it as their state religion? I guess that was a long time later though.

- That Mark was written in order to convey spiritual truths rather than factual truths, and the factual "claims" in Mark are merely parables used to convey the spiritual truths - That makes sense to me. Do you think Jesus represented Israel, or something else?

- It also makes sense to me that the story of Jesus could be based on many real men. Weren't there like 3 other guys who claimed to be the Messiah, and they were all crucified? I'd like to know more about them.

THANKS YOU GUYS. This is very helpful.

CX

Nor any post resurrection appearances.