Reply to What am I if I think Jesus was the best moral teacher ever but am indifferent re his divinity?

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[quote=Anonymous]Yes, there are no contemporaneous accounts of Jesus, who was after all a poor carpenter from a humble family. History in that era was, as we know, about emperors and heroes. Jesus' own followers were by and large illiterate. Until a few decades later when Jesus and his message became "important" enough for officials like Josephus and Pliny to write about.

I wonder that 12/25 10:21 wants to toss out all four gospels and Paul, which together show that Jesus' teachings and the movement around him were strong and vibrant just 2-3 decades (Paul and Mark) after his death. Sure, if you disregard the several major narrative documents that appeared a few decades after Jesus' death then you're forced to rely on accounts from 80-90AD and later, and th historical links become more tenuous. But simply tossing out the earlier sources seems disingenuous.

It's also odd that some of you are trying to claim that all religion is about "controlling the masses." Who exactly created this fundamentally anti-Roman, anti-Temple ideology with the purpose of "controlling the masses"?  If anything, more historians would say that Christianity developed in revolt against the Roman conquerors, instead of as a tool used by them. But then there's also the tricky question around how Jesus was also opposed to the logical alternative leaders, the Temple lawyers and priests.

So who, exactly, developed this supposed "controlling ideology"? And how did it suddently appear as a significant movement, seemingly out of nowhere, by 55 AD?[/quote]

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