sschlichter

I understand what you are saying. Are you not aware that you have not supplied a motive - you only supplied your theory on what the authors did. What was possibly gained?

~Steve

sschlichter

What is the relevance of an early rising? (whihc is not true but moot to our discussion). You felt that the bodily death of christ was not conceived by Mark or Paul? Yet, here it is.

You are incorrect about Paul. He stated that Christ was crucified bodily and publicly. Romans alone is overwhelming evidence to this. do you need references?

Elijah

This is why I said I didn't feel like repeating myself.

Are you sure you understand what I'm saying? Even if you didn't there is no reason for a dead messiah push to be this difficult for you to figure out the motive of.

sschlichter

A motive answers the questions why.

let's look for a motive in your reply...

No motive here.

How was this going to work out. Were the Jewish leaders that crucified him supposed to step down once they read the account. This is not a real motive.

As I asked, if preserving the reputation of the group that followed him then why make the group that followed him look like the keystone cops as the gospels portray the disciples of Christ. also, why do this at the risk of your own skin?

Chili

Nice lines steve and see how every one allows for the escape to the mythical Jesus.

Notice that the son of man will be handed over to show that reason was no part of the argument in the mind of Jesus = Jesus volunteered (see "it is finished" in John).

The chief priest represent the philosophical underpinning of Judaism wherein Jesus has to die and so end his dual nature in effort to become fully Man = fully God "(my Lord AND my God" by Thomas after faith and reason was cucified = wounds and perceptive mind).

The law experts are the Saduccees who really force Judaism to anihilate the religious remains of Judaism in the mind of Nathan (instead of Joseph (?)). We can see this was the trail of filthy rags (Gal.2:17) or placenta after rebirth that was orignated by religion (if that is not too graphic for this thread), but needs to be removed to end the yo-yo effect of born again Christians in effort to gain permanence on earth instead of just having intimatons of that = what exists in the imaginaton must exist in reality as well.

For your own satisfaction you may wish to compare Mt.27:11 "Are you the king of the Jews?" and Jesus responded, "As you say," with Jn.18:37 where Jesus came into this word to testify to truth and then Pilate said, Truth!, what does that mean?" = truth in this world for which Jesus had no answer in Matthew.

Elijah

All right I guess you really don’t get it. I thought you were just being difficult.

In a normal rebellion with a messiah type leader, the rebellion can be defeated if you can kill the leader. The whole cut the head off and the snake dies idea that you should be familiar with. Around the time of Jesus, the Kingdom Judah is being controlled/occupied by a far superior military power found in the Roman Empire, so any thought of rebellion should be prepared to be easily defeated. This is what the motivation for promoting a dead messiah is, because there is no threat of that leader being killed by Rome and extinguishing the rebellion.

The plan actually takes it a step further and plants a meme of self-sacrifice into his followers so that every time one of them was killed or martyred themselves it fueled the faith in Jesus as the messiah. It’s basically a rebellion that can’t be defeated because the king is already dead and everyone who dies in his name helps spread the message. Do you have a problem still seeing the motive here? If you do please elaborate on what the difficulty is.
No the leaders weren’t supposed to step down, that’s absurd. The idea is to get people to worship a dead king, so that the living kings don’t have the power to sway/control the people.
Not familiar with the keystone cops. John looks fine and the disciples bolting on him in the end may have just been what happened so there was no way to write that they were more heroic then they were or understood more then they did. The story of Peter fighting the Romans and saving Jesus probably wouldn’t have been accepted.

Are you now asking why promote a messiah at all? Because the world was in pretty bad shape and they were looking for someone to lead them out of it even if that meant promoting a dead guy as their leader. Some people are willing to put their own safety aside to try and help the world by doing whatever they think they can do to help.

sschlichter

ok, so you are assigning self-sacrificing motives to those who, after being deluded by a false messiah, decided to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and concoct a death / resurrection scenario that either happens to fit OT messianic prophecy or that they can convincingly make appear to fit OT messianic prophecy so that they can throw off the yoke of the Roman empire. Part of that overaching plan included the teachings to submit to civil authorities (Rom 13:1-5).

In this plan of rebellion disguised as submission where those involved wanted to save face for those initially fooled by the false messiah, they threw everyone off the trail by portraying themselves as weak, thick headed, and self serving (examples, Matt 17, 18, Peter's failure and restoration, all disciples fleeing).

In the process of throwing off roman rule via command to never resist roman rule, the authors also found it necessary to totally alienate the Pharisees and every other facet of power in Judea.

I think I understand your theory now.

Elijah

Whether he was a false messiah or the true messiah is irrelevant but his followers considered him the true messiah so their faith carried on after his death. How the resurrection story began I’m unsure. It could have been visions that were exaggerated as his legend grew or it could have been a way to try and get control of the group by saying that you had a vision of Jesus that snowballed into a bigger deal or it could have been simply added to fulfill prophecy to make him seem more messianic with no other motivation. Regardless is was the martyrdom that started the faith off and what they imitated to push the faith.

I’ll just assume no one on the board has watched someone sacrifice their life for a cause like that but it’s not hard to imagine seeing that type of event having an impact on the person and their faith in that cause. Now when the time comes to either face their own deaths or back down and run away, some of his followers want to honor him or just simply imitate him with a self-sacrifice of their own, like Stephen in Acts. This imitation of his sacrifice causes some of those who witness it like Paul to receive the faith in the cause as well because someone willing to die for it gives the cause credibility and makes it seem like those willing to die were in the know. What they assume they know is that the dead can be raised again but in reality it’s just simple monkey see, monkey do.

And yes obviously part of the plan was to submit to the roman authorities because doing otherwise would doom the movement. You see Christianity like an ideological Trojan horse they are trying to inject into the idea of authority.
They don’t consider themselves fooled by a false messiah, they consider him to be the true messiah. If you think that the disciples wrote the synoptics then I guess this could be seen as a very minor problem. But since they are considered to have been written after their lifetimes, then the story that was actually thought to have occurred, would be what was written down, not what Peter wanted to see himself do in the story. This is a manufactured problem here.
You sound like you don’t think that never resisting authority to overthrow roman rule was a good idea. Which would be crazy since it wasn’t too long before Roman Emperors themselves were exalting a Jewish carpenter as their lord so it’s not like you can’t look back and say the plan didn’t work at all.

Why would anyone care about alienating the Jewish religious authority of the time if they are trying to establish a spiritual authority to replace them? Do you think it would have been wiser to blame Pilate? Another manufactured problem.
Sounds like you’re getting closer; thanks for trying. Understanding Christianity isn’t the hardest thing but it does seem to require a desire to understand it, instead of just looking to argue against it.

sschlichter

I do not think it is. Had the actual eyewitnesses made up the story, it is hard for me to conceive them making up themselves as entirely inadequate, especially, if their aim was to start a 300 year plan to overtake Rome.

had someone else made up the story, it is equally as hard to conceive of the characters in the story remaining inadequate. In fact, the story made up would be better served with an ascension without a crucifixion. Why have Jesus killed at all?

it is a long time. it was inconceivable to everyone that Christianity would overtake the empire in 300 years. If conceivable now, it is only because of Christ's example.

because they would have you killed as they did your leader. Why include constant haranging of the Pharisees by Jesus when you could easily exclude and make less enemies? What possible reason for not leaving them alone?

Elijah

How do you think the disciples should have been portrayed? Do you think that the gospels came out of one homogenous group lead by Peter so that he had the power to say what the story was going to be about or how he was portrayed? If the event happened in history then the story is going to have to take that into account. I just don’t know what you expect… Peter coming to the rescue or dying with him or able to understand him better? It’s just not logical to expect a better story written about the disciples then actually happened unless you are starting with some serious assumptions about the nature of how the story appeared.

Why have Jesus killed at all in the story? Is that what you are asking? He was killed in real life would be the obvious answer. The story where Jesus starts whooping everyone’s ass and takes over Rome by sword probably isn’t going to be believed by too many folks.
I don’t know how many people conceived it the way it happened but it was part of an idea to establish a new kind of kingdom with Christ as king and infiltrating/converting Rome with that idea was accomplished regardless of it being part of the original plan or just how things worked out. I agree that it’s unlikely that they had that in mind in the beginning. More likely that the kingdom they were building would overtake that empire when big enough but Christians obviously took the opportunity when given to try and convert Rome instead of defeat it.
Well they did get Stephen to so you got me there. But the gospels are written later when the story is spreading outside Judah and the Jewish religious authority aren’t the threat but Rome still very much is. Someone has to be blamed and if it’s between the religious authority who can’t do much beyond incite a crowd to stone you in a few areas or a legion of soldiers with spears; I’d go with the religious authority who had to rely on Rome to do their dirty work in the first place. This is again you trying to manufacture problems when it’s not necessary. Who do you think should have been blamed… without going they shouldn’t have had him killed or whatnot?

You seem to be starting with a premise of the gospel writers can just write whatever they want without regard to what happened and even in that premise you seem to be ignoring basic plot structure requiring an antagonist. If something is written that you wouldn't have written about yourself, (with only selfish and cowardly motives in mind), it doesn't necessarily mean that something is amiss.