How do you "know" that Jesus/Christianity is not just a crazy story?
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Anonymous
Seriously? You make it sound like there's no long history of supposed resurrection among holy figures. I'm sure Satya Sai Baba could "resurrect" someone as well. There's a long history of such tricks. And thousands of his acolytes would swear upon pain of death that he came back from the dead, too. As far as Jesus' resurrection, there's no evidence of it outside of the book his followers wrote. It's great that you've found something to hang your natural human impulse called "faith" on. Let's leave it at that, and not push it to include pseudo-historical claims for which there's no evidence. |
Anonymous
Let's start from here:
To which I responded:
...and...
...which prompted:
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Anonymous
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What's fascinating is that Christians who believe in the literal truth of the Bible can be utterly rational and critical when it's not their ox that's being gored:
http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Other%20Pagan%20Mumbo-Jumbo/sai_baba.htm |
Anonymous
| For what it's worth, I'm willing to concede that an actual person named Jesus existed, just as an actual person Satya Sai Baba exists. |
Anonymous
There's a brilliant treatment of this book which examines its claims chapter by chapter. If you want to learn more than you'll ever want to know about "the evidence" including early Church politics, Roman justice system, and the like, it's a great read: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/jury/ |
Anonymous
Hmm. Not so sure about that. In fact, your outline above explicitly includes "just a crazy story" as a possibility. These are options I.B.1 .2, and .3 |
Anonymous
Correct. OP wondered why SOME people don't think Jesus is just a crazy story. SOME people choose that conclusion from the available possibilities. Some choose "Jesus is Lord." |
Anonymous
But this seems circular to me. Q: Why do you choose to believe I.A? A: Because I believe I.A. Doesn't seem to advance the argument. |
Anonymous
Yes, IOW the mere fact that it's possible to express the option "Jesus is the Son of God" in English, then "choose" it doesn't answer the OP's question. |
Anonymous
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Came across this gem on the Internet:
It is impossible to survive crucifixion, so Jesus must have risen from the dead. 
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Anonymous
So you choose the "Jesus as myth" possibility. (I will address your other objection, the reliability of the Gospels and the New Testament, in a separate post, if I get the chance, though some bits will overlap.) Just a few thoughts: If the events recorded in the Gospels did not really happen, then several separate authors chose to engage in realistic literary fantasy, in very different styles, during the same time period. The four different styles are all different versions of collected eyewitness accounts, rather than literary flights. Specific people, locations, events, and non-anachronistic minutiae of daily life are everywhere. If the events recorded in the Gospels did not really happen, there should be some evidence of contemporaries refuting such wild tales, debunking the myth as it formed, because no myth comes ready-made and widely accepted. There was not enough time for a myth to develop. If the divine Jesus of the Gospels is a myth, who invented the myth? His close disciples, or a later generation? What was their motive? For their testimony to Jesus' divinity was not only the story of their time with him, but also his teachings, which were so radical, so outrageous, so beyond human imagination, they set the hedonistic, pagan Roman world on fire, while it got his followers killed, by the thousands and tens of thousands. There was Jesus the man, Jesus the divine, and Jesus the Word of God. That's a lot of myth to organize and disseminate and live and preach and stay faithful to. People generally end practical jokes under torture. And Jesus was not a Jewish civil disobedience mythical hero set up against the Roman "Man." Most of the Jews rejected him, for good reasons. Then there is the consistency of the "myth." We have about 500 different copies of the New Testament that date earlier than 500 A.D. The manuscripts are mutually reinforcing and consistent, and later discoveries (Dead Sea scrolls) have fortified earlier ones. No other ancient text is in as good shape. There is no evidence of a pre-"myth" Jesus. There were plenty of powerful, literate agents alive at the same time. All available contemporaries have a consistent recall. No other work of antiquity has as much staying power. Jesus' closest followers specifically denied the possibility of myth: "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty." 2 Peter 1:16 So they either told the truth, or lied. (hence, possibility of apostles as deceivers) It is one thing to speculate that the records of Jesus' life were the differently-authored, condensed tales of several different wandering "holy" men during the Roman empire. It is another to contrast that speculation against the available evidence, and common sense. |
Anonymous
A more likely explanation is that the several separate authors were merely writing down the lore that had been passed orally among adherents (you see this with Homer). If you were to ask four of your friends to write down a detailed synopsis of the first season of "The Sopranos" you'd likely see the same thing: people, locations, events, minutiae of daily life. Of course, there'd be discrepancies, but anyone who's played the children's game "Telephone" would expect as much. This seems especially likely given that the first Gospel (the "Book of Paul" was not written until forty years after Jesus' death). The further difficulty here is that no original manuscripts exist for the four books of the "gospels". There is probably not one book which survives in anything like its original form. There are hundreds of differences between the oldest manuscripts of any one book. These differences indicate that numerous additions and alterations, some accidental and some purposeful, were made to the originals by various authors, editors, and copyists. Even further, many biblical authors are unknown. When an author has been named that name has sometimes been selected by pious believers rather than given by the author himself. The four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, are examples of books which did not carry the names of their actual authors; the present names were assigned long after these four books were written. And—in spite of what the Gospel authors say—biblical scholars are now almost unanimously agreed that none of the Gospel authors was either an actual disciple of Jesus or even an eyewitness to his ministry.
As far as contemporaries refuting such wild tales, what would such a refutation look like? Of course the few references to early Christianity made by non-Christian contemporaries don't spend a whole lot of time going through point-by-point Enlightenment-style refutations. I'd suggest that's what you'd expect given a) any such references survived countless centuries under Christian stewardship; and b) it's entirely plausible that any such contemporaries would give credence to most fantastic stories they heard. They'd merely ascribe them to evil forces. Such is life in a bronze age society. After all, by the 17th century one of the most popular genre of books were fantastical travel accounts, telling tales of sea-monsters, and giants with their eyes and mouths in their chests. And that was a millennia and a half later.
Who invented the myth of any given Indian guru? It's a process of accretion. There's a guy. He does amazing things. He gets followers. They talk to one another Holy men in India draw hundreds of thousands of followers who fervently believe that their guru is some incarnate god. They'd gladly die for him. But set that aside. The real success of Christianity came after it was adopted as the official state religion. Biblical scholars know that there was subsequent "editing" of what we think of as the Bible: Lots of interpolation going on--meaning subsequent insertion of text to "clarify", merging of texts, etc... Whole books were added/deleted as "authoritative". This was done by groups of individual men over the course of centuries. It's possible to argue that the men who engaged in this editing and revising were "divinely guided", but we run into a circularity if we try to use the end result to prove the existence of the divine editor-in-chief. By the numbers, most modern Protestants, and Protestant churches historically, accept exactly sixty-six books, thirty-nine books from Hebrew, which they call the Old Testament, and twenty-seven books written in Greek, which they call the New Testament. Protestants use and accept these books; therefore, there are sixty-six books in the Protestant canon. Roman Catholics include fifteen more books or parts of books, and that is their canon; Greek Orthodox churches use most of these books, and these comprise their canon. The Jewish tradition is that of the Hebrew Bible only, of course, corresponding to the thirty-nine books of the Protestants. East Syrian Christians include fewer books than other Christians in the New Testament, while the Ethiopian churches use quite a few more books in both the Old Testament and New Testament. There are numerous other ancient texts that weren't included but could have been.
It's possible you've got the causality backwards, early Christians weren't persecuted for believing in Christianity; they believed in Christianity because they were persecuted. Early Christians find their closest modern-day analogy in Palestinians living in the occupied territories in modern-day Israel. The radical splinter-sects of Islam that appeal to the poor and downtrodden in such places often bears as little resemblance to the "bourgeoisie" Islam of middle-class American muslims as the emerging cult of Christianity did to Judaism at that time. So the answer to the question, "Why would they cling to such beliefs??" requires an alternative. The very same motivation led Buddhists to set fire to themselves during the Vietnam War, and we don't hold such things up as irrefutable evidence of the truth of Buddhism. More eloquently put:
Much of what we see as biblical "uniqueness" is actually the result of political and social chance and circumstance. Christianity happened to take root and thrive in a geographical area that became more technologically advanced than other parts of the world, and it also enjoyed favored status from governmental institutions that suppressed opposition to it. In such circumstances, it is no wonder that the adherents of this religion would take advantage of the favored status to propagate their religion as extensively as possible, or as you put it "set the world on fire". Again, it's possible that it was only through the intervention of some divine force that Western civilization rose and maintained its preeminence in geopolitical affairs--after all, if Ögedei Khan hadn't died when he did, and the Mongol hordes hadn't turned back from the gates of Vienna, we'd probably be arguing about Mohammed setting the pre-Islamic world on fire. The growth and prosperity of any institution will always be the result of many factors, so it is naively simplistic of Christians to believe that their religion has thrived only because it is the "true" religion. Sections of the Zoroastrian Avesta are older than even the oldest parts of the Old Testament and so are many of the Hindu Vedas. To argue that the length of time a religion has survived is somehow an indicator of its truth, would make many religions "true religions." The history of religion is that they arise out of political and social circumstances of the times, thrive, decline, and die. There is no reason to believe that the same will not happen to Christianity and other ancient religions that have survived for centuries.
Just to touch on the question of the pre-myth Jesus: there are countless uncanny similarities between the Jesus as described in the books of the Bible and various pre-existing myths. The New Testament story of a virgin-born, miracle-working, dead-and-resurrected savior-god was not unique to Christianity. Such figures abounded in the pagan religions that preceded Christianity. Even the famous golden rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) had its counterpoint in the ethical teachings of other religions that required its adherents to believe that they should not do to others anything that they would not want done to them. As far as contemporaries go, there are three interesting religious founders dating back to those times. In fact, we know even more about them than we do about Jesus. For example, one can read the account by Philostratus of Apollonius of Tyana who also lived during the first century, and performed a similar ministry of miracle-working, preaching his own brand of ascetic Pythagoreanism--he was also viewed as the son of a god, resurrected the dead, ascended to heaven, performed various miracles, and criticized the authorities with pithy wisdom much like Jesus did. There were other books written about him immediately after his death but--as one might imagine given the Christian stewardship of the written works of the ancient world--none survived. Another fascinating case is that of Peregrinus, nicknamed "Proteus." You can read a about fascinating story told about him by the skeptic Lucian in his satirical work, "The Death of Peregrinus." Lucian knew Proteus personally, and he gives us a look at what the story of Jesus might have been had a skeptic been around to give us a different account. After his death--by self-immolation--people reported that he was, like Jesus, risen from the dead, wearing white raiment, and that he ascended to heaven in the form of a vulture. From all of this one thing should be apparent: the age of Jesus was not an age of critical reflection and remarkable religious acumen. It was an era filled with con artists, gullible believers, martyrs without a cause, and reputed miracles of every variety. In light of this picture, the tales of the Gospels do not seem very remarkable In regards to "staying power" The Jewish Pentateuch has much greater "staying power" than the Christian Bible, which kind of piggy-backed on the credibility of the former. But as before, the Zoroastrian Avesta pre-dates even the so-called "old testament" (the term which I can't imagine is not offensive to Jews), and the Vedas as well. So the fact that they've been around a long time doesn't privilege them as "the Truth". Unless by "book of antiquity" you mean to limit it to the Western world. Actually, thinking about it, one might argue that the Avesta or the Vedas have *more* credibility rather than less, given that they've managed to survive for millennia while facing active suppression by the world's two hegemonic religions: Christianity and Islam.
Do you think the closest followers of modern gurus like Satya Sai Baba think his supernatural powers were a "myth"? Of course not. One of the real treasures of the field of cultural anthropology is that we can actual *see* such mythologies come into being. There's a well-developed body of work that details exactly how such charismatic movements coalesce that we can use to understand how similar movements did in the ancient world.
Fair point. There's no reason the four books that Jesus couldn't have been referring to a single person who existed. |
Anonymous
Not to beat a dead horse (especially since he has since "ascended to heaven") but I'm curious: are the hundreds of thousands of adherents to the Sathya Sai Baba "telling the truth", or "lying"? Were the followers of Mohammed telling "the truth" or "lying"? There's little doubt the folks who wrote the gospels 40 years after Christ died fervently believed what they were writing, as did the later Christians who "clarified" the texts. You know as well as I do that the human capacity for magical-thinking presents an obvious third possibility. |
Anonymous
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Fascinating treatment of the politics of the early Church and the eventual emergence of what we think of as Christianity from a multitude of "christianities" on BBC's "In Our Time":
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008jglt |
Anonymous
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All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53:6 One of over three hundred prophecies about the Messiah Jesus and written hundreds of years before his birth. These prophecies are like fingerprints that attest to the veracity of the New Testament account of the Messiah, since most historians and theologians agree they were written long before the first century. Most of the common people of Israel were not aware of these prophecies at the time or that they were actually being fulfilled in their day, but many religious and political leaders were and tried to stop their fulfillment, even going so far as to murder the first born male of every family in Bethlehem when Jesus was born. From our perspective in the 21st century the time span may not seem all that relevant given that it all happened thousands of years ago, but consider the fascination that many people have with Nostradamus who is somewhat closer to our time and consider that his predictions were also hundreds of years before our time. Now there are only a few of his vague predictions that even come close to resembling anything that has happened in our time and perhaps to World War II. And still, many people believe in them. The Old Testament account in the Bible has more than a hundred prophecies that indicate a single person and his first arrival. There are even more about his second coming. And many people today are not even aware of them. The odds that all these prophecies describe Jesus are greater than anything Nostradamus has ever predicted. It is the closest thing we have in history to evidence of God, because there is no way that the various prophets living in different times could have all foreseen so plainly what was to happen in Jesus's time. Here are some other prophecies fulfilled about Jesus or by Jesus himself, all written centuries before his birth. "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son..." Hosea 11:1 See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Zechariah 9:9 In that day the deaf will hear the words of the scroll, and out of gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind will see. Isaiah 29:18 Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Isaiah 35:5 Dogs have surrounded me; a band of evil men has encircled me, they have pierced my hands and my feet. Psalm 22:16 They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing. Psalm 22:18 I offered my back to those who beat me, my cheeks to those who pulled out my beard; I did not hide my face from mocking and spitting. Isaiah 50:6 He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. Isaiah 53:7 He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, though he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth. Isaiah 31:5 So they paid me thirty pieces of silver...I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the LORD to the potter. Zechariah 11:12, 13 |