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> Christ's morality is quite different from the golden rule and much more radical. "Turn the other cheek" is not the golden rule. I did not mean to suggest tha

> Christ's morality is quite different from the golden rule and much more radical. "Turn the other cheek" is not the golden rule. I did not mean to suggest that the golden rule is the core of Christianity, although it's certainly one facet of Christ's teachings which people erroneously consider to be novel. I offered it as one simple example of something within Christianity which is borrowed from elsewhere, and which is also wholly unremarkable. FYI, turn the other cheek is not what Jesus said. He said: > If anyone slaps you on your right cheek, turn to them your other cheek also. I was a Christian for a long time and the sort of mistake you’ve just made really does vitiate the faith’s proponents. Quick summary (Walter Wink would be spinning in his grave): left hand only used for wiping butt. Not for anything else. Right cheek slapped = back-handed slap with right hand. It’s not an attack, it’s a rebuke. Therefore turning the other cheek is a means to challenging the slapper as an equal. It’s the opposite of what you think it is: it’s sticking up for yourself and using the law to get the better of someone. Ditto the “go the extra mile” (any Roman could have any Jew or Gentile carry something for them for one mile, but no further — with a penalty if they did). Can’t remember the bit about the shirt off your back but it’s also a way to fuck with people. I'm not sure if you are a Christian or not but if you really believe that you have a personal relationship with an almighty being, I can't comprehend how you would not really be sweating the details on what he said during his time here on earth, and trying to understand it in its proper context. > Christ's morality is quite different from the golden rule You seem to be at odds with OP in a way that makes me believe you may be a Christian. OP talked about Christianity, which I would consider to be the synthesis of the teachings, texts, and traditions of Jesus and the early Church. You are specifically talking about Christ’s teachings only, which is suggestive of someone who believes in Jesus as mythical hero, since very few secular scholars would feel comfortable prescribing to Jesus the views offered in the synoptic Gospels without heavily caveating the gospels’ own complex origin story. Nonetheless: 1. I don’t want to presume anything of anyone reading this, so I will state the obvious: there is a secular consensus that Jesus existed in history. By which we usually mean: a person known as Jesus was at large in the same parts of the middle east as the Bible conveys during approximately the same time period, and he was likely a Jewish preacher (possibly a Rabbi), who was executed and ultimately his followers eventually formalised Christianity approximately a generation after his death, which eventually overtook pantheism, Mithraism and a host of other cults to become the prevailing religion in Rome a few hundred years after Jesus’ death. 2. The synoptic gospels were written between 40-100 years after the death of Jesus, and contain accounts of Jesus’s deeds which can be simply split into: legend (things we know cannot be true), contradictions (things the various books disagree amongst themselves about), theological copypasta (bits which are the same but which seem obviously lifted from different sources — e.g. Marcan priority sees the gospel of Mark written first, and the authors of Matthew and Luke drawing from Mark + a non-canonical source called the Q document). 3. Legend is a loaded term, so: large parts of the story are clearly legend. The massacre of the innocents is totally invented, as is the ridiculous census requiring Jesus’s parents to travel 200km to Bethlehem (all elements contrived to fulfil Jewish prophecy), as is his birthday (not mentioned in the Bible but 25th December is borrowed from Sol Invictus). Clearly to anyone who does not believe in fairy tales the immaculate conception and Christ’s miracles were also invented, and there is some evidence to suggest that some of his miracles (esp. Lazarus) were crafted to fit archetypes in other traditions. Ditto the immaculate conception and the notion of the “rises after death” God. 4. The only parts of the Bible that you can really read much into are the actual teachings, and that narrows the field enormously (particularly when the authors do this brilliant trick of repeatedly telling us people’s reaction to Christ’s teachings, but not the teachings themselves. “Everyone was super impressed!” “Oh what did he say?” “Errrr…”). 5. There are a few different interpretations of the teachings, ranging from “psychiatric disorder” (I’m not joking! There is a school of thought that Jesus had borderline personality disorder or something), to “magician” with much in between. The most compelling one to me is “apocalyptic preacher”. Most of the writings of the early Church and the behaviour of the early Christians indicate that they truly believed that the world was going to end, and apocalyptic cults were in vogue at the time. 6. So now we get to the morality of the man. Let’s see…

georgespencer 6y ago
• Scapegoatism. He preached and encouraged a belief that people need not atone for their sins themselves. Pretty ghastly stuff. As Christopher Hitchens said, even if you served my prison sentence for me, you couldn’t absolve me of the crime itself on a moral level. It’s by this scapegoatism that we know Christians must accept that Hitler, murderer of 6 million Jews and Roman Catholic, is very possibly in heaven, whilst Bill Gates — agnostic atheist who has done as much for mankind as anyone you’d care to mention — is destined for hell. But, the good news is for our argument that whilst this is obviously utterly immoral and disgusting, the idea of sins being cast on to symbols of purity is by no means novel. It is present in many traditions and religions, and predates Christianity. As does the notion of the "dies and rises again" superhero. • Beatitudes. Lots of people inexplicably consider these to be fairly radical. The concepts and morality within are echoed in Buddhism (which, uncomfortably for “JESUS WAS TOTES RADICAL!” fanbois, predates Jesus by centuries), and of course the Old Testament (he’s basically just remixing Psalms ffs — “For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar.“) but if you subscribe to Marcan priority it’s a bit sad to see that in Mark the reaction is so bad that Jesus says “Lol tough crowd, nobody is appreciated in their hometown”, when everyone is like “????”, and when the story is repeated in Luke he still sheepishly says that, but the reaction of the assembled congregation becomes “omg radical huge this guy is incred!!!” — a likely interpolation unfortunately. So people didn’t consider it especially radical when he said it, and it’s all stuff from other religions and texts. (You have a really, really hard time ahead of you if you’re going to try to claim that an illiterate Jew who lived for 30 years nearly 100,000 years into mankind’s existence had anything especially interesting to say.) • Turn the other cheek. As discussed above, this is widely misunderstood. It wouldn't have been that radical for Jesus to be a pacifist. Most of the Old Testament is either God saying "BE NICE TO EACH OTHER FFS" or "Ugh OK let's kill them all but only because I said so" (uncomfortable scene where he has bears kill teenagers for mocking a bald guy notwithstanding). • Universal judgement and coming apocalypse — everyone at the time had a big hard on for apocalyptic cults, so this is not novel. He tells his followers to sell all their stuff which I guess is pretty radical? In the same way as Scientology pursuing years-long vendettas against apostates is ‘radical’? (I.e. it’s totally fucking immoral?) • Obviously he calls a Canaanite woman a dog and was pretty dickish towards Samaritans (even a charitable interpretation of the “good” Samaritan must be balanced against Jesus telling the bois to not spread the word to Samaria at all (or any Gentiles), but I expect you’re not looking for examples of him being a radical douchebag and just examples of the novelty of what he said, right? Anyway, fast forward the 50-90 years we need to get to any written accounts of Jesus which aren’t the hilarious bundle of contradictions we find in the synoptic Gospels, and where we would hope to see the impact of Jesus and his mega radical ideas… and you get to Josephus and the Antiquities & Tacitus. In terms of proving Jesus the Radical, the first mention of Jesus from Josephus is pretty good for your cause: > About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. The bad news is that literally nobody considers this to be authentic. It looks like it’s from several hundred years later, when Jews were trying to really boost Jesus’s street cred. It may as well be written in red crayon over the original text, it's so obviously fake. The other two references are just “Jesus was this dude’s brother” type things. No indications of his radical nature. Tacitus mentions that he was executed and that Christians were antagonising Jews and cheesing people off. There are multiple other sources which suggest that Christians were agitators in Rome and generally not well-liked, but it’s fascinating that for all the radical wisdom Jesus allegedly preached, he made very little impact on those around him until he was the subject of significant posthumous interpolation and rewriting. Folks who try to draw conclusions about Jesus’s teachings in the year 2020 really need to consider them in the context in which they were written (you can’t know whether or not he said it, so view them through the lens of “person writing to try to perpetuate a religion for some reason in the year AD 50”. It makes things a lot easier. Jesus didn't say or do anything interesting, let alone anything suggestive of his being God. Very open to being shown areas I'm wrong if you're comfortable rooting your analysis in the proper historical context.

georgespencer 6y ago

• Scapegoatism. He preached and encouraged a belief that people need not atone for their sins themselves. Pretty ghastly stuff. As Christopher Hitchens said, even if you served my prison sentence for me, you couldn’t absolve me of the crime itself on a moral level. It’s by this scapegoatism that we know Christians must accept that Hitler, murderer of 6 million Jews and Roman Catholic, is very possibly in heaven, whilst Bill Gates — agnostic atheist who has done as much for mankind as anyone you’d care to mention — is destined for hell. But, the good news is for our argument that whilst this is obviously utterly immoral and disgusting, the idea of sins being cast on to symbols of purity is by no means novel. It is present in many traditions and religions, and predates Christianity. As does the notion of the "dies and rises again" superhero. • Beatitudes. Lots of people inexplicably consider these to be fairly radical. The concepts and morality within are echoed in Buddhism (which, uncomfortably for “JESUS WAS TOTES RADICAL!” fanbois, predates Jesus by centuries), and of course the Old Testament (he’s basically just remixing Psalms ffs — “For though the LORD is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar.“) but if you subscribe to Marcan priority it’s a bit sad to see that in Mark the reaction is so bad that Jesus says “Lol tough crowd, nobody is appreciated in their hometown”, when everyone is like “????”, and when the story is repeated in Luke he still sheepishly says that, but the reaction of the assembled congregation becomes “omg radical huge this guy is incred!!!” — a likely interpolation unfortunately. So people didn’t consider it especially radical when he said it, and it’s all stuff from other religions and texts. (You have a really, really hard time ahead of you if you’re going to try to claim that an illiterate Jew who lived for 30 years nearly 100,000 years into mankind’s existence had anything especially interesting to say.) • Turn the other cheek. As discussed above, this is widely misunderstood. It wouldn't have been that radical for Jesus to be a pacifist. Most of the Old Testament is either God saying "BE NICE TO EACH OTHER FFS" or "Ugh OK let's kill them all but only because I said so" (uncomfortable scene where he has bears kill teenagers for mocking a bald guy notwithstanding). • Universal judgement and coming apocalypse — everyone at the time had a big hard on for apocalyptic cults, so this is not novel. He tells his followers to sell all their stuff which I guess is pretty radical? In the same way as Scientology pursuing years-long vendettas against apostates is ‘radical’? (I.e. it’s totally fucking immoral?) • Obviously he calls a Canaanite woman a dog and was pretty dickish towards Samaritans (even a charitable interpretation of the “good” Samaritan must be balanced against Jesus telling the bois to not spread the word to Samaria at all (or any Gentiles), but I expect you’re not looking for examples of him being a radical douchebag and just examples of the novelty of what he said, right? Anyway, fast forward the 50-90 years we need to get to any written accounts of Jesus which aren’t the hilarious bundle of contradictions we find in the synoptic Gospels, and where we would hope to see the impact of Jesus and his mega radical ideas… and you get to Josephus and the Antiquities & Tacitus. In terms of proving Jesus the Radical, the first mention of Jesus from Josephus is pretty good for your cause: > About this time there lived Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man. For he was one who performed surprising deeds and was a teacher of such people as accept the truth gladly. He won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. He was the Christ. And when, upon the accusation of the principal men among us, Pilate had condemned him to a cross, those who had first come to love him did not cease. He appeared to them spending a third day restored to life, for the prophets of God had foretold these things and a thousand other marvels about him. And the tribe of the Christians, so called after him, has still to this day not disappeared. The bad news is that literally nobody considers this to be authentic. It looks like it’s from several hundred years later, when Jews were trying to really boost Jesus’s street cred. It may as well be written in red crayon over the original text, it's so obviously fake. The other two references are just “Jesus was this dude’s brother” type things. No indications of his radical nature. Tacitus mentions that he was executed and that Christians were antagonising Jews and cheesing people off. There are multiple other sources which suggest that Christians were agitators in Rome and generally not well-liked, but it’s fascinating that for all the radical wisdom Jesus allegedly preached, he made very little impact on those around him until he was the subject of significant posthumous interpolation and rewriting. Folks who try to draw conclusions about Jesus’s teachings in the year 2020 really need to consider them in the context in which they were written (you can’t know whether or not he said it, so view them through the lens of “person writing to try to perpetuate a religion for some reason in the year AD 50”. It makes things a lot easier. Jesus didn't say or do anything interesting, let alone anything suggestive of his being God. Very open to being shown areas I'm wrong if you're comfortable rooting your analysis in the proper historical context.