spamandham

Your speculation that Jesus was a peasant is based on nothing. It is inconsistent with the evidence that a religion formed around him. You have not explained who the authors were, or why they wrote. You have not even identified the genre of the gospels.

You have not explained how this insignificant peasant rapidly transformed into a god in the minds of early Christians. You have not explained why Paul knows nothing about him.

Your speculation has no explanatory power at all, and is completely worthless. It is worthy of no consideration, and can not even be critiqued because it's nothing but vaguary.

Elijah

It’s based on the tradition of him being the son of a carpenter. Technically he was an artisan if he practiced the craft but still of a lowly class. If you have some other evidence of him being something more then present it.

The imitation of his self sacrifice took off in Rome and made believers of the empire that took over the world. Paul knows nothing about Jesus because he didn’t know Jesus as everyone knows. There were no writing of Jesus at the time Paul is composing his letters and he had only met with the early apostles so what are you expecting him to be able to speak about his life with any confidence?

I don't have a problem seeing how a person of lowly status sacrificing his life can make believers, I don't see why you do.

Elijah

What I'm saying has nothing to do with it being real or historical it has to do with the intent of the author and what he is trying to say. He isn't writing a cartoon for entertainment. Your understanding of the religious concepts need to be understood with a more mature understanding of reality and not reduce what you think the writer is trying to say to a cartoon. Your understanding of the words in scripture are not compatible with an educated person's understanding of those concepts. You need to understand the political aspects of what is going on in the world and in the story; also you need to be familiar with the types of philosophy that was being taught at that time so you don't reduce everything to nonsense.

aa5874

You appear to be totally confused, now. You are all over the place. You have already claimed your Jesus is from your imagination and now you want to imagine that you know or can determine the intent of the authors.

Well, what was the intent of the author who claimed Jesus was the offspring of the Holy Ghost and WITNESSED by Mary, his so-called Mother?

Elijah

Depends on your understanding of holy ghost. Is it similar to the spiritual entity found in a wisdom tradition or the Tao or more like the cartoon Casper? The author for me means she had some type of connection or displayed that aspect of the universe.

spamandham

That tradition is not credible. Modern scholarship has dismissed it.

...and yet no-one who actually witnessed it thought it important enough to record? You're speculation has a giant hole in it that you simply ignore.

Paul joins this Jesus religion, and spreads it to gentiles far and wide, yet knows nothing about the man Jesus other than he was crucified? This actually seems reasonable to you?

I would expect him to know something salient about Jesus - anything. Paul is totally oblivious to any of Jesus' teachings in addition to any salient aspects of Jesus' life or ministry. Paul uses the authority of the OT on moral points where he could instead defer to the authority of Jesus. Does that make sense to you, particularly when you consider that Paul's audience is Gentile rather than Jew?

Because that idea doesn't fit the evidence, isn't derived from it, and makes no historical sense.

If we're just going to invent history rather than weigh the evidence, can we at least invent plausible history? For example, you might claim Jesus was a rebel leader whose name was not actually Jesus. This would make historical sense, as well as fitting the evidence. His contemporaries didn't write about him, because they were killed too. Paul didn't write details of his life, because Paul was obfuscating the real identity of the leader. etc. It would also explain why he was crucified and given a mock triumphal entry, and why a religion formed.

I don't think this is the best explanation of the evidence, but it's better than the absurd simultaneously insignificant/ultra-important peasant idea!

spamandham

Upon what have you based your assumptions of the intents of the authors?

aa5874

You are the one who understands the meaning of "holy ghost". The only available evidence of Jesus indicate that he and the holy ghost were one. Your Jesus was a holy ghost, too. ( See the church writers for confirmation of the evidence that Jesus and the holy ghost were one.

Amaleq13

What happened to the first generation gentile believers?

Amaleq13

According to the texts, Jesus' original followers didn't make him the basis of a new religion. He was more like the basis of a call for improved Jewish piety.

The notion of a charismatic man making such a profound impression on a small group of followers that they continued to revere him beyond his death is certainly not unreasonable. Neither is the notion that their reverence could be turned into a new religion among a new group of eager seekers of "truth" with the right guy selling it with the right spin.