No Robots

How long after Van Gogh's death was his first painting sold? Genius is usually neglected, if not hunted down and murdered.

He gambled that his lowly disciples would carry his thought forward.

This is an old debate around here. I think it is clear that the epistles take for granted the existence of the Gospels.

Elijah

Jesus isn’t really much of a teacher as he is a martyr. That’s his deal; sacrificing himself. A lot of what are considered his teachings aren’t teachings but responses to attempted ideological traps by the Pharisees. He knew the teachings were out there for anyone to find he was putting what he was taught into practice knowing that those who reside in the truth would recognize it. 1. The king sacrificing himself for the people like Codrus (Thanks J-D) 2. Not being afraid of his death like Socrates 3. Personifying an unknowable god’s emanation of wisdom/reason/logos from the Platonists. 4. And the messiah concept to wrap it all up from the Jews.

NoRobots (sorry if I overstep here) doesn’t recognize Jesus as the Messiah as much as a world teacher who was killed for going against the status quo. His saviorness (??) is found in his unified cosmos teaching that he thinks if people would accept would unify the world, but that Jesus is just one of many who have come to deliver that message. I think of his sacrifice as creating a meme to go against the meme of people worshiping living kings as gods (Caesar) and that is where the salvation lies.

The seditious nature of Christ is why there is such a play on words going on. That’s why earlier I was saying that you have to understand the reality of the situation to know what’s going on. The struggle today was the struggle then. The ending times stuff is ending the time when man is ruled by other men and beginning the time when god is the only ruler man knows.

As far as the miracles in the bible, the Jews had an unusual belief in mind over matter that Jesus is really trying to expand on. I don’t see a lot of teachings about Jewish faith out there; not as in belief but as in a mustard seeds worth could move a mountain, so it’s hard to comment on what exactly they believed.

But basically they may have believed in super powers. I don’t think all of them did but Jesus sure sounds like it. Now super powers don’t necessarily mean from supernatural sources. You could believe an alien landed and the sun reacts with the cells differently or a radioactive spider bites you and then bamb superpowered and never incorporate a supernatural understanding of the universe. With the Jews it was a mind over matter deal I think. Instead of letting the environment control your mental state, using your mental state to control the environment “overcoming the world”. Or collectively you could move the sea or call down fire on holy liars.

You could also look at the miracles as being allegorical or just blatant lies to make Jesus look like the messiah because some random poor dead guy is a hard sell to the masses without some type of catch as in the resurrection or miracles.

bacht

Well, that would explain some of your arguments. If the Gospels were prior to or contemporary with the epistles, that would change the weighting of the evidence. But that still wouldn't explain why non-Christian witnesses seem to have been oblivious to the whole thing. I'm not sure that even Christian believers were noticed at the time, probably they were just identified as Jews.

bacht

I don't see it. We know that people like the Zealots and Sicarii sought political change on the ground, using terrorist tactics. The NT material seems to describe the opposite: pacifist apocalyptics waiting for their messiah to manifest on the Day of the Lord. In all of Paul's writing I see nothing about challenging political authority, in fact he preaches the opposite.

You and No Robots are reading between the lines. You seem to disdain the actual writings of these early believers, and want to improve them.

No Robots

It is, in my view, utterly absurd to claim that the Gospels did not exist in some form prior to the epistles. Bear in mind, though, that I do not mean by the Gospels the written documents as we now have them. Rather, I mean proto-gospels, the oral and written literature from which our versions of the Gospels are derived. The claim that the Gospels are derived from the epistles is completely untenable.

You've answered your own question here: the earliest Christians were simply an inconspicuous part of the Judaism of the time. Subsequently, any chance for Christianity to establish itself within Judaism was wrecked with the Roman-Jewish war. That leaves only the Romans to take notice of the early Christians, which they most certainly do.

bacht

Well, an early dating for Gospel material would certainly be helpful for the Historical Jesus position. I assume this point has been discussed in other threads already.

Back on topic: what about the supernatural? Do you accept a resurrected Jesus? Feeding of multitudes? Exorcism of demons? Heavenly voices?

No Robots

Isn't the topic about what the early Christians believed? On that subject, I would have to say that all the early Christians were superstitious to one degree or another, with the exception of Christ himself.

bacht

My original question was: if the early believers were supernaturalists, why should we accept a naturalistic explanation for their experiences? If they followed visions and divine revelation, why not relegate Christ to the spiritual realm? Why should we make him concrete rather than a superstitious manifestation?

Elijah

Of course you don’t see it, you have a supernatural bias towards scripture and haven’t bothered to understand it in the context of reality/politically; preferring to stick to a Sunday school understanding of Christ. The whole concept of Christ is an attack on earthly kings by using a heavenly one/meme.

Your complaint about Jesus not being militaristic enough is the same complaint the Jews had, they were expecting a military leader instead of an ideological one to lead them to victory over Rome. But there isn’t a Jew alive then who wouldn’t be convinced today by the fact that almost every roman senator in America has to say they believe in Christ, a poor nobody Jew. Christ was conducting ideological warfare against Rome, not the regular old crap that’s been tried every which way to Sunday and failed.

Paul isn’t going to be obvious about speaking out against the authority any more then Christ is. If they were obvious about taking Rome down then the message would have never been allowed to spread much less be taken on as the State religion. From the Roman perspective it just looks like a Jew (who has been given you problems) dying willingly without reason.
No I disdain a child’s understanding of religion/Christianity coming out the mouths of educated adults. I realized that there is a bias towards a supernatural understanding of religion from skeptics but to go that’s the only understanding out there is nuts-o in my mind. You have to take the time to understand religion and the world around you correctly. Your choice, you can understand scripture supernaturally or rationally depending on if you want to understand it or mock it.

No Robots

Look, most everybody is superstitious to one degree or another, but that doesn't mean that everything that they experience, think and communicate is superstition.