The authors do not tackle the resurrection
John Dickson is a historian, an actual practicing working credentialed historian, with a PhD in Ancient History from Macquarie University and a visiting scholar gig at Oxford, yet he wrote this absurdity.
A survey found that only 49% of Australians say “Jesus was a real person who actually lived.” You mean 51% don’t?! The horror!
But, frankly, this new survey is also bad news for historical literacy. This reported majority view is not shared by the overwhelming consensus of university historians specialising in the Roman and Jewish worlds of the first century. If Jesus is a “mythical or fictional character”, that news has not yet reached the standard compendiums of secular historical scholarship.
Take the famous single-volume Oxford Classical Dictionary. Every classicist has it on their bookshelf. It summarises scholarship on all things Greek and Roman in just over 1,700 pages. There is a multiple page entry on the origins of Christianity that begins with an assessment of what may be reliably known about Jesus of Nazareth. Readers will discover that no doubts at all are raised about the basic facts of Jesus’s life and death.
But Professor Dickson doesn’t tell us what he considers the basic facts.
Or take the much larger Cambridge Ancient History in 14 volumes. Volume 10 covers the “Augustan Period”, right about the time that Tiberius, Livia, Pliny the Elder, and — yes — Jesus all lived. It has a sizeable chapter on the birth of Christianity. The entry begins with a couple of pages outlining what is known of Jesus’ life and death, including his preaching of the kingdom of God, his fraternising with sinners, and so on. No doubts are raised about the authenticity of these core elements.
Cool; what’s hiding behind that “and so on”?
There was a time when I was quite interested in the historical Jesus question, and read a fair bit about it. If I remember correctly, secular historians consider it reasonable to think the biblical account starts from a real person, although some argue it’s all or almost all (as opposed to just mostly or half or whatever) myth. It’s textual stuff – what is this account based on, what are the sources, which came first, that kind of thing. Did Tacitus really talk about Jesus? Did Jesus walk to Sepphoris when the mood took him and thus get exposed to city life and Hellenistic culture? It’s interesting, and it’s not as cut and dried as Dickson makes it sound.
Just for one thing stories about god-men were a genre at the time, so the fact that there’s a collection of stories about this one god-man isn’t particularly remarkable. It’s a bit like stories about men who metamorphose into women…
Not wanting to labour the point, but we could also turn to the compendium of Jewish history, the Cambridge History of Judaism in four volumes. Volume 3 covers the “Early Roman Period”. Several different chapters refer to Jesus in passing as an interesting figure of Jewish history. One chapter — 60 pages in length — focuses entirely on Jesus and is written by two leading scholars, neither of whom has qualms dismissing bits of the New Testament when they think the evidence is against it. The chapter offers a first-rate account of what experts currently think about the historical Jesus. His teaching, fame as a healer, openness to sinners, selection of “the twelve” (apostles), prophetic actions (like cleansing the temple), clashes with elites, and, of course, and his death on a cross are all treated as beyond reasonable doubt. The authors do not tackle the resurrection (unsurprisingly), but they do acknowledge, as a matter of historical fact, that the first disciples of Jesus “were absolutely convinced that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised and was Lord and that numerous of them were certain that he had appeared to them.”
Yes, and? Lots of people are absolutely convinced of lots of things that they’re wrong about. The fact that some guys 2000 years ago were absolutely convinced that another guy “was Lord” really doesn’t tell us anything much.
I have a friend (used to be closer with him than I am now) who’s an obnoxious know-it-all, and any time anyone would mention anything innocuous about Jesus (e.g. “Aramaic as spoken at the time of Jesus”), he would respond something like: “Assuming that he existed at all!”
I found it quite annoying, and said: “So you raise such doubts about any other obscure figures mentioned two or three times by ancient writers? I mean, sure, it’s possible that Jesus, or these others, were invented characters, but the burden on proof is on those that want to argue non-existence. Why do you make a fuss only about this one specific figure?”
He once responded: “Then maybe because Christians and most Western non-Christians tend never to challenge the historicity of Jesus, at least without the plain miracle part, virgin birth &c. I just hate it when in a documentation about something cultural and geographic in the Near East – nothing religious – they show a well and background voice says ‘this is the well where Jesus healed the three-eyed martian’. Well, or something the like.” And he followed it up with “Anyway, I don’t usually make a fuss of that” (though he usually does; this kind of doing-something-habitually-and-denying-it is rather typical of him.).
(Of course, ancient historians tell us extremely little about Jesus, but that’s a different question.)
And yes, if I would see such a documentary, I would also be annoyed, but I don’t watch such things often enough to care.
What? He once responded with a long and detailed paragraph, complete with interpolated qualification, and you remember it verbatim? Speaking of textual sources and how much we can trust them…
The wonder of Google Chat, which records our conversations for posterity. Who needs Watergate tapes anymore?
Actually not. The burden of proof is on the person who argues something exists, not the ones who don’t accept that. Just like with Bigfoot, Nessie, ETs, etc, the burden of proof is on the person asserting the positive.
OK, technically you’re right. But Bigfoot, Nessie, ETs, etc. are all things that don’t correspond with our typical experience of reality. The existence of some random person does. As a historian, I assume that if a roughly contemporaneous source mentions a person, he or she probably existed. The farther in the time the earliest sources are from the person, the more skeptical I would be. So, first-century sources mentioning Jesus: I assume he existed, unless proven otherwise. Ninth-century sources mentioning King Arthur: I assume that he didn’t exist, unless one can prove it to me.
I’m not in any way a historian, and I never quite finished David Fitzgerald’s three-volume work “Jesus: Mything In Action”, but what I did read seemed quite solid on the points that we don’t even have consensus on what it means to say “Jesus existed”. He sets out one reasonable nonreligious interpretation of that phrase, and then proceeds, in minute detail, to show why he thinks the evidence is against it being true. I’ve read that knowledgeable people are less impressed than I might be, but I think he deserves credit in particular for framing the question reasonably.
Now that I look it up on Amazon, I see that he has an earlier (and shorter!) work, “Jesus: Nailed on the Cross”, that sounds entertaining. I also see that the Kindle price for each of the three volumes of JMiA is priced at 666 cents; well done.
Surely that’s far too sweeping. What do you mean by “a person”? If a roughly contemporaneous source mentions a person who can fly, do you figure he or she probably existed? If a roughly contemporaneous source mentions a person who agrees with everything the source says, does that strike you as a little too convenient? If a roughly contemporaneous source mentions a person while telling a story, do you figure the person probably existed?
That doesn’t sound to me at all like how historians evaluate contemporary sources.
Depends how. If it says “Oh yeah, there was his guy Bob, who lived in such-and-such place, and by the way he could fly”, then I’d assume that Bob probably existed (but obviously he couldn’t fly; nobody can). If it just says no name, and literally no attributes other than supernatural ones, then no, I would assume that such a person didn’t exist.
Jesus is an interesting case. The sources other than the Gospels hardly give any information at all, other than that he was executed. The Gospels more-or-less agree on a general story outline, but that outline contains both believable elements (born in Galilee; preached and had some followers; was executed in Jerusalem) and unbelievable elements (performed miracles; came back to life; some of them have virgin birth).
Sackbut, David’s earlier book is “Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All”, and it’s pretty good, but limited in scope — in his 3-volume “Mything in Action”, written ten years on, he goes into much greater depth and his thinking has evolved.
The Jesus-myth theory is my pet topic. I’ve been researching it diligently for years and I’ve written quite a bit about it. What it comes down to is this: what did the first Jesus-worshipers believe? All we have to go on is the written sources, and over the centuries those have all been filtered and redacted by theologians who struggled to adapt them to follow evolving church doctrines as the religion grew in power. But it seems clear that the earliest Christian sources all are consonant with a belief in a celestial savior deity Christ. That’s the Jesus the first Christians worshiped. The very earliest document which clearly describes a human Jesus is the gospel of Mark — written a lifetime after the events it describes, and completely unbelievable as any kind of biographical or historical account. Instead it seems to be made up of allegorical retellings of Jewish scripture.
Basically, Jesus-as-human was a later development.
Now as for the fact that the great majority of historians and religious scholars believe there really was a human Jesus at the beginning of the story, who are these “experts” to whom generalists and specialists in other areas defer? Who devotes a lifetime of study to Jesus, finds employment at private Bible colleges and writes books put out by Christian publishers? Devout Christians do. Those are the “authorities” when it comes to Jesus. There are also a few “independent scholars” who don’t owe their livelihoods (and eternal salvation) to their unwavering obedience to Christian doctrine, and to me, they make a strong case that the belief in a living, breathing, walking, talking Jesus came many years after the origin of Christianity.
Why? Since the source is clearly wrong about one thing, why assume it’s accurate about the other? Why assume anything about Bob, why not suspend belief and disbelief?
I’d put a virgin-born miracle worker who came back from the dead then floated up to his new home in the sky more in the ET, etc., category than the random person one.
That’s a key issue — the sources are nowhere as contemporaneous as people think. Paul’s a couple decades after the purported death of Jesus, didn’t know him, and relates almost nothing about his life. Mark was maybe another decade after Paul. Matthew and Luke are a decade or 2 later still and are derived from Mark. John is a very late rewrite of the tale. And all those sources are preaching, not history, so are questionable. References by actual historians are even later and essentially just report that Christians were around and what they believed.
Looking at the Biblical sources, people have noticed the odd thing that the earlier they were written, the less they seem to know about Jesus. In much of Paul’s writing, he could very easily be talking about a being that lived in the spiritual realm. Then Mark’s stories turn out to almost all be rewrites of Old Testament stories and stories from Homer, which indicates he knew nothing about an actual life of Jesus. Subsequent gospels grow the legend.
There is an excellent summary of this here:
https://www.jesuspuzzle.com/jesuspuzzle/puzzle1.htm
So why is the existence of Jesus so well accepted in academia? Mostly inertia. It’s been assumed for about 2,000 year, so to a lot of people it just seems crazy to question it. If you take a fresh look at the evidence, it seems less crazy.
You raise good points.
(I had started writing my comment, got distracted several times, and by the time I finished and posted it, it was mostly redundant. Oh well.)
Historians have often been tempted to think there was a historical Robin Hood, a historical King Arthur, etc. This was treated seriously but is now mostly considered ridiculous.
Adam and Eve, Noah, etc., were all almost universally considered historical until a couple hundred years ago.
Jesus’s historicity is likely to be reevaluated as well, so what some highly respected book from Cambridge says will not be the final word on the matter.
More often they only give the information that Christians believe he was executed. Even when they simply say he was executed, they’re likely just assuming what the Christians claim is correct.
Some Christians believe things like that there are existing Roman records of the trial and execution or at least that it is implied that some historians had access to and checked such records. The former is untrue and the latter is very unlikely. When ancient writers say things like “Christians worship a man executed as a criminal by Rome” they’re just repeating what Christians were saying.
Tim O’Neill’s History for Atheists site has a lot of info on the “Jesus myth” (O’Neill is an atheist and a historian):
https://historyforatheists.com/jesus-mythicism/
TLDR version: The overall consensus among historians is that there was a first century preacher called Yeshua of Nazareth who founded the Christian religion. “Jesus mythicism” is a very fringe belief.
Jesus/Yeshua didn’t “found the Christian religion” – that came after. Saying there was a first century preacher called Yeshua of Nazareth isn’t really saying all that much – there were probably lots of such preachers, even ones called Yeshua of Nazareth.
Jesus was not a Christian, he was a Jew.
He is recorded as saying his mission “was to the Jews, not the Gentiles”.
Paul, who never knew Jesus, invented Christianity out of whole cloth.
Christians are, in fact, Paulines. They follow the teachings of Paul.
Not to forget that there multiple conflicting Christian religions at the time. To even suggest that all early Christians believed any unified things is questionable?
Adam and Eve mythicism, Noah mythicism, Moses mythicism, etc., were all fringe beliefs.
I think it’s initially reasonable to assume Jesus started as a real person and stories grew around him…until you read the stories about him in the order they were written. Then you see it starts with a bunch of stories about an apparent spiritual entity who had recently been revealed to Paul and others and only later, with Mark, becomes a story about about someone who had been on earth. Well, that’s odd, isn’t it? Now it begins to look like euhemerism (“an approach to the interpretation of mythology in which mythological accounts are presumed to have originated from real historical events or personages”). Zeus and other mythological figures had phases where some people started assuming they had lived at some point in history — “Euhemerus argued that Zeus was a mortal king who died on Crete”.
As Peter N says above, most theological “scholars” would lose their career if they even considered mythicism as viable, so it’s not a surprise virtually none do.
I saw “Batman and Jesus” at the infamous MythCon V in 2017, and I think they got it right (i.e. historical Jesus is possible but unlikely). And attending that event was quite the eye opener!
I spoke with the director (of the movie), and he was confused by what was going on in “the atheist community” as he had naïvely expected unity against a common enemy.
I’m uncomfortable with some of the “scholars” involved (bizarre posts, and I’ve heard Price has gone full QAnon now!?!), but the film was very creative and funny.
Skeletor has it exactly right. The early first-century Christian writings — the letters of Paul, 1 Clement, and the Book of Hebrews, all speak of Jesus as some kind of celestial being. And the gospel of Mark, which for the first time portrayed Jesus as a human being, makes no sense as history, and not even as fiction — it’s allegory. Not even intended to be read literally.
Once upon a time there were identical twins of dubious parentage. One was killed on a cross. Incredible stories were fabricated about the surviving sibling. Years later questions arose about whether this person existed at all. Probably not. Merry Christmas, dipshits. :P
I still love Mortin Smith’s Jesus the Magician, which makes a credible (if unsuccessful) case for Jesus as a real person who went about doing faith healing until he got in trouble–not for sedition, but for practicing magic. According to Smith, he was basically executed for witchcraft.
It IS interesting how Mark focuses on the purported healings and has Jesus doing homely things like spitting on a fistful of dirt in order to “heal” people. Smith says such “healers” were not uncommon–what else did people have back then? And we all know how legends can grow up around such people.
It’s a fascinating book, even if you don’t ultimately buy the argument–a good intro to textal criticism full of elegant writing and acerbic wit.
twiliter@23
Brings to mind Philip Pullman’s novel “The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ”.
Lol, that’s enough eggnog for twiliter.
Or is it?
The Apostle Thomas was also known as “the twin”. Well, the twin of whom — some nobody? Well, a lot of ancient sources think he was the twin of Jesus.
Which brings us to the famous Doubting Thomas story. The risen Jesus appears to 10 of the Disciples, with Judas, um, no long a member of said group, and Thomas off doing whatever. So then Thomas joins them later, after Jesus has left, and they tell him they’ve seen Jesus, and he’s like, “What? No way!”
Now remember that they’re apparently twins. One twin is dead, then someone who looks just like him visits…while the living twin is conveniently not there. Then later the living twin is there, but the deceased twin is gone. So is this just the same person all along?
Of course in the Gospel of John they do finally meet face to face. Historical event? Or had rumors arisen that the purported resurrected man was a twin, so a story was concocted to refute that claim?
Unity behind the Christ myth theory? I don’t see why he’d expect that. It’s a solid, non-ridiculous theory that shouldn’t be dismissed, but it’s not an article of faith. I’d expect atheists to be more open to it, but I’d expect many of them to still find the theory that it started with a real person better.
I don’t think Price is QAnon at all. He’s conservative and liked Trump, but he doesn’t seem to have gone down that rabbit hole.
“As Peter N says above, most theological “scholars” would lose their career if they even considered mythicism as viable, so it’s not a surprise virtually none do.”
Who cares what “theological scholars” think? I care about what historians think. The academics who study the evidence for the historical Jesus in much the same way they’d study the evidence for someone like Spartacus. Many of whom are atheist or otherwise non-Christian (see Bart Ehrman for example). And the vast majority of them have concluded based on this evidence that the guy most likely existed.
Sure you’ll find people online who argue otherwise. You’ll also find people online who argue against the existence of Ancient Rome.
Anyway, happy midwinter/midsummer feast to all.
@Skeletor #27
Apologies, I wasn’t clear. The “Batman & Jesus” director/writer (Jozef Richards) did not expect the internecine mess: MAGA/Green-Frog/Sargon vs. Liberal/Progressive vs. Feminists vs. etc. And he was a little disappointed that none of the atheist camps cared all that much about mythicism.
I just like the film’s premise, that over time fact and fiction merge, and become cultural mythology.
Robert Price abruptly ended his second Irreligiosophy (sp?) interview with a conspiratorial tantrum. So my confirmation bias subsystem immediately accepted the QAnon rumor (I actually have no idea if it’s true, but it wouldn’t surprise me).
#10 Peter N
Bear in mind, there are also non-religious historians supporting the Jesus-as-human theory.
We tend to believe what we want to believe, and there are lots of people who want to believe in the eternal life promised in the New Testament.
I used to know a bloke who previously was training to be a Jesuit priest, but quit before taking his final vows. He subsequently lived the life of a classic rake and libertine. But he said that when eventually on his death-bed he intended to repent of it all and embrace Christ as his Lord and Saviour.
He said: “Why not place a bet, when there’s only one horse in the race?” I thought it a fair question. The one horse either 1. wins or 2. fails to finish. If it wins, he would be greeted by St Peter, and after a stint of a few thousand years in Purgatory (which I understand some Pope obligingly later abolished) he would be admitted to Paradise.
Otherwise: death in my view has very little going for it. But it’s one redeeming feature is that you can never, ever know that it has happened to you. Some people report near-death experiences, but in order to report these they need functioning brains. Knowledge requires a functioning brain. It’s a case of ‘this train terminates here’ followed by lights out; followed by no lights to go out or ever light up again.
@25+26 Should have gone with triplets, to solve the trinity algebra. Once upon a time, blah blah… ;)
The vast majority of historians also thought much of the Old Testament contained solid history until recently. The Israelites were in Egypt in large numbers, a historical figure named Moses led them out, the Israelites conquered Canaan, a Davidic dynasty was established, King Solomon was a major player on the Middle Eastern stage, etc. Most now consider those stories extremely exaggerated at best and outright fabrications at worst. Israel and Judah were 2 small Canaanite groups that formed an alliance that didn’t hold for very long.
Which modern historians are seriously examining the life of Jesus? Most historians seem more interested in the rise of Christianity rather that seriously evaluating the evidence for the historical Jesus. The gospels and epistles are the only evidence, and they’re religious documents, not Plutarch.
Ehrman is a terrible example. His book on the subject, Did Jesus Exist?, was absolute garbage. I was excited for it to come out because I respect Ehrman’s other work a great deal and thought he could lay out the very best case for Jesus being a historical figure. Instead he did things like just accept that the gospels had a historical core, so he treated them as 4 independent historical sources, then he threw in the proposed Q source as a 5th independent source, then he tossed in M (a proposed source for additional material in Matthew) and L (the same for Luke), so now the 4 gospels are 7 independent sources of information. WTF? Look at the reviews for the book. Most are shocked at its poor quality in comparison to Ehrman’s other work.
And Plutarch himself is considered not all that reliable, much given to story-telling, embroidering, etc. Same for Herodotus but even more so. I had thought Thucydides was more hard-nosed and skeptical but then I read an essay by Mary Beard on the ways he’s unreliable.
But, again, what is meant by “the guy”?
One of the triplets, obviously. :P
I have to agree with YoSaffBridge here. As GW rightly points out, we know for a fact that humans exist and that some of them start religious sects. We also know that the idea of an historical Jesus did indeed arise somehow. The idea that a mythical figure was reinterpreted as a historical person doesn’t strike me as a more obvious default assumption or “null hypothesis”.
Let’s distinguish between:
• Jesus₁: A first century preacher with no special powers who enjoyed a modest following for a few years before he was executed and gone forever.
• Jesus₂: A divine miracle worker who gathered a vast following, was resurrected and walked among his disciples for up to 40 days after his death before ascending to heaven like a superhero etc.
How much evidence for Jesus₁ should we expect if he did exist? If he was like almost everyone else alive at that time, the answer is most likely zero, and I think it’s a bit of a bait and switch to argue that Jesus₁ couldn’t exist because Jesus₂ could hardly avoid being more widely noticed. Btw. claims of alleged miracles attributed to various healers, gurus, cult leaders (including Jim Jones), etc. whose existence have never been in doubt are as common as dirt even today.
Back in my movement atheist days I got sucked into the mythicist camp for a while. I even wrote a very long (!!!) article on my old webside laying out the mythicist case as presented by the likes of Earl Doherty and Robert Price. I later came to see this as a mistake and still do. I no longer have Doherty’s book The Jesus Puzzle, but I seem to remember him taking a lot of liberty with some of his quotes. E.g. in one place he claims to show that, according to Paul and his companions, the very existence of Jesus was a divine secret that has resided with God since the dawn of time and has only recently become known through divine revelation (not memories of a person who had walked the Earth a couple of decades earlier). Yet if you read some the verses in context, it’s clear that the “secret” Paul is talking about was that salvation is for gentiles as well as Jews. And while it is certainly true that Paul doesn’t have a lot to say about the historical Jesus, it isn’t exactly nothing either. E.g. I seem to recall Doherty going to some lengths to explain away references to Jesus being “born of a woman” etc.
There are similar problems with the common mythicist argument that virtually every alleged fact about the historical Jesus is copied and pasted from the Old Testament. Sure, there are some obvious cases, e.g. Jesus last words on the cross being identical to Psalms 22:2, but many of the examples provided can be explained at least as well by the same kind of “retrofitting” we’re used to from woo-peddlers of every kind, where cherry-picked quotes from the Bible, Nostradamus, horoscopes, alleged “psychics” etc. are reinterpreted as describing current events. As one of the hosts of the Reasonable Doubt podcast (like Bart Ehrman, hardly Christian apologists) put it, the biography of Jesus, as laid out in the Gospels, is such a lose fit to the supposed “prophecies” about him in the Old Testament, that if “Mark”, “Matthew”, “Luke”, and “John” had made him up out of whole cloth to fit the prophecies, you’d think they’d be able to do a much better job.
Also, I recall seeing it argued, they wouldn’t have had him crucified, because that was a shameful and degrading form of execution, so the biographers wouldn’t have included it if they could have helped it. It was an undisputed fact about him therefore they couldn’t airbrush it out so the only thing they could do was make it all part of god’s plan.
Bjarte – I think all I’m saying is let’s not overstate it, along with the original “it’s funny that this guy thinks the fact that it’s written down in books=evidence” objection.
Fair enough. I should add that, like Skeletor, I wasn’t impressed by Ehrman’s Did Jesus Exist?. I’m just not overly impressed by any of the mythicists books I have read either. I have heard atheists argue that the alleged non-historicity of Jesus was the strongest argument against Christianity, which I think is a serious mistake (so if conclusive evidence for the existence of Jesus₁ were uncovered tomorrow, that would indeed validate theism, the miracles, the resurrection etc. etc.?). There are so many better arguments against Christianity in particular and theism in general, that the Jesus Myth theory should rank very low on our list.
Jesus’, an amalgamation of several preachers, some of whom may actually have had a similar albeit common name, and whose collected work was eventually used by some people to start a religious sect, is “mythical Jesus”, in my view. Only a single preacher with a similar enough name and appropriate biographical attributes who preached much of what is ascribed to him counts as “real Jesus”.
This kind of discrepancy is what I was talking about in regard to the Fitzgerald book and the lack of coherency over the phrase “Jesus existed”. There’s no particular reason that the choices are limited to “single preacher” or “they made up the whole thing”.
I agree it’s not all that important a question. I wouldn’t base criticism of Christianity on it. But I wouldn’t hide my views on the topic, either.
Movies have been made, and books written about the life and death of Jeshua bar Joseph, aka Jesus Christ. It’s not a bad yarn, even in the various Hollywood versions. If Yeshua never even existed, it has to be the greatest folk-tale ever.
But one phrase from the Sermon on the Mount hit me at the time I first read it as a teenager as a bolt from the blue: The Kingdom of God is within you. That was thrown into the Sermon almost as an afterthought, but could have been derived from Buddha, who lived in India C 550-450 BC, or else from the Chinese Taoists, and transmitted to Jeshua via travellers on the Great Silk Road. It also intrigued Leo Tolstoy, who wrote a book about it; see link below. I have never heard a parson preach a sermon based on it, except the stock evangelical interpretations, which have never done much for me. But as a long-time student of the Japanese martial art of Aikido I find it still has resonances today. The warrior who is scared of being beaten probably will be. One must enter a duel with complete inner calm, and indifference to the outcome, if one is to win. As the man said, the Kingdom of God is within you.
Or as old Charlie Marx was fond of saying: “Nothing human is alien to me.” (nb: no reference there to Groucho..)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/43302/43302-h/43302-h.htm
Omar
As many others have pointed out, I think the various texts of the New Testament are best understood as attempts to settle theological disputes among rivaling groups of Christians at the time. To a Jewish audience well versed in the Old Testament all these references to the arrival of “God’s Kingdom” etc. could only be understood as obvious doomsday prophecies. In the earliest Christian text, such as Thessalonians, Paul and his companions refer to (from memory) “we who are still alive” when the Lord arrives etc., obviously expecting the Apocalypse in their own lifetime. By the time we get to the Gospel of Mark, written a couple of decades later, it’s said that (once again, from memory) “some who stand here today” will live to experience the Apocalypse. Matthew and Luke both copy Mark and include the same line (according to John only one of those present would be alive when the Son of Man arrived to bring about the end of the world), but by the time we get to Luke it’s already clear that the prophecy has failed, hence the reinterpretation “God’s Kingdom is within you”. I believe it was Carl Sagan who identified the three most common rationalizations when doomsday prophecies fail:
1. It was our faith that prevented the catastrophe.
2. We meant [date] according to some other calendar.
3. The apocalypse really did happen, but on a spiritual level.
Anything except:
4. We were wrong.
By the time we get to 2. Peter, written much later, it’s apparent that people have indeed started complaining and asking awkward questions, and there is need for some serious damage control (as well as some serious well-poisoning against the troublemakers):
Which makes Yeshua bar Joseph aka Jesus Christ just another in the long tradition of hellfire preachers extending back into the OT and forward to the present day. (After the French sociologist Emile Durkheim: what the congregation worships is itself, and its own cohesion: the truth behind the stock phrase ‘the family that prays together, stays together’; with ‘family’ as wide as you like. Believing is the means to belonging. )
The Book of Daniel (164 BC) begins it in the Jewish tradition. If it was designed to unite the Jews by scaring the bejasus out of the whole bloody lot of them, it seems to have worked. It is said that wherever you have three Jews, you have four opinions, and squabbling amongst themselves is definitely kosher. But Yeshua bar Joseph was concerned with heading off a futile rising against the power of Rome, which militants finally brought to fruition in the series of revolts between 66 and 135 AD, resulting in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD.
This was what Yeshua was clearly trying to prevent, as being to him and his band clearly futile. It is the looming reality behind The Sermon on the Mount.
He started “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven; Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted; Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth;” and so on in that vein.
Then on through turn the other cheek and let ‘any’ have whatever they want of your stuff, clearly honoured far more in the breach than in the observance down through Christian history, and winding up with the Lord’s Prayer.
But in spite of all that, the Romans had him marked as a troublemaker and did him in anyway. The Christian historiographers and hagiographers responded not by blaming Rome. No. They did their level best to pass the responsibility and blame for it all onto the Jews, not the Romans. Hence the unlikely “Then answered all the people, and said, His blood be on us, and on our children.” Matthew 27:25, KJV
This has been the justification for every pogrom and purge since, Including in greater part, the Nazi Holocaust.
Hector Avalos, a biblical historian and an atheist, mentioned in his book The End of Biblical Studies that following historical research methods not influenced by religious faith, that there is more support for the historicity for the existence of King Arthur than there is for the existence of Jesus. It doesn’t take long for fiction to become “fact,” as was observied in the 19th century with the rise of Mormonism. People believe the stories, pass them off as fact and even though the Book of Mormon reveals that in Moroni God chose the angel that failed composition 101, wihin a decade it was considered to be a solid religion by many, and that Jesus appeared to the natives in America after his resurrection. Or something.
Just dropping by to say hello, eh?
As you do, when you are a supernatural being from the fifth dimension; and beyond.
What hope do future digital-archeologists and historians have, when we can’t collectively agree right now on what is “truth” amongst the last 24 hours of digital media, e.g. the evidences for Santa are overwhelming?