46 ms·

We're Still Not Done with Jesus

64 points by diodorus 2y ago

sleepyguy 2y ago
https://archive.ph/CrwBy https://archive.ph/CrwBy
blogabegonija 2y ago
[dead]
Boogie_Man 2y ago
Nor shall we ever be
- nvahalik 2y ago
  As God intended.
  - milesward 2y ago
    [flagged]
ggm 2y ago
Historians of reddit have to deal with this on a recurring basis. It's hard when textual refs stop in Josephus and the accretion of centuries of editorial over ur-texts. Often times people seek to argue by comparison: "we have less evidence Darius or Julius Caesar existed" type arguments about the primacy of contemporary eye witness accounts, distinct from eg economic and architectural evidence. Fugitive Christians didn't have time to collate the "I was there" takes and now it's Analects.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - pstuart 2y ago
    > no one seems to care now. Indeed. They believe and that's that -- there's zero proof that would change their minds. I'm a non believer but would be willing to change my mind if there was compelling evidence.
    - adamtaylor_13 2y ago
      If you haven’t found compelling evidence, then you haven’t looked. I’m not being snarky. Look up a list of atheists who set out to disprove God. Once you start looking, it’s impossible to miss. What most people seem to mean by this is, “If God himself came down in a column of fire, then I’d believe.” Most folks can’t be bothered to actually dig into the real, ample evidence that exists. You like philosophical arguments? There’s philosophical arguments for it. You like astronomical or geologic arguments? There’s that too. Logic? Check. There’s so much evidence for Christ, it’s basically the only logically consistent worldview. I know I’ll get downvoted to hell for saying that (heh) but it’s true. There is not another logically consistent worldview beyond Christianity.
      - judahmeek 2y ago
        First off, you can't claim that Christianity is logical consistent until you find a way to resolve the Epicurean Paradox[0] and the question of how Sin/imperfection was introduced into our reality. If the Christian God was the only being who existed in beginning of time & everything that God created was also perfect, then which perfect being took the first imperfect action and how is it even possible for a perfect being to do something imperfectly? Secondly, I'd like to know what you think is not logically consistent with atheism/evolution. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurean_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurean_paradox
        adamtaylor_13 2y ago
        The Epicurean Paradox doesn't exist in the Christian worldview. Free Will as described in the Bible fully explains why and how a good, omnipotent God could allow evil. Perfect beings making imperfect choices isn't a contradiction, it's the very essence of free will. God valued authentic relationship over robotic obedience. Natural evils entered as consequences of this freedom exercised poorly, not as part of the original design. Christianity doesn't just acknowledge this tension - it provides the complete framework to understand it: creation, fall, and redemption. I’ll also go ahead and acknowledge that just because a being that exists outside of space and time knows something will happen, doesn’t CAUSE it to happen. So while our minds may not like the fact that God knew it would happen, it doesn’t mean he caused it to happen. You wouldn’t forgo the joy and wonder of having a child simply because you knew one day they might scrape their knee. By the way, a sincere thank you for engaging instead of downvoting out of disagreement. We need more of that!
drekipus 2y ago
> the first-century Jewish rabbi I don't know why they put rabbi there. Jesus is later rejected by Jewish teachings and is probably considered heretical. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_Jesus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_Jesus Although I really appreciate what Jesus adds to the religious stories as it opened it up to the world, in a sense of "everyone can be Christian" without the need for completely surplantting yourself with old laws and traditions (like circumcision).
- calebio 2y ago
  I think there's a decent case to be made that he was considered a "rabbi", or teacher in the time period prior to the destruction of the second temple, by a group of jewish folks. As far as I understand it, the more formalized, institutional rabbinic structure came after the destruction of the second temple.
  - VOIPThrowaway 2y ago
    That's the Christian viewpoint in that Christians view themselves as the valid continuation of the first convenient between god and the Hebrews.
    - calebio 2y ago
      Sure, but as far as I understand it, his followers were Jewish people, those followers called him Rabbi, so at that time... it was a "Jewish viewpoint".
  - drekipus 2y ago
    That's fair. Thanks
- cherryteastain 2y ago
  How is it inaccurate? John 1:38 > Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted, Master,) where dwellest thou? John 3:2 > The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. John 20:16 > Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.
spiderfarmer 2y ago
[flagged]
- Reasoning 2y ago
  Strong atheistic countries like North Korea and China?
  - exe34 2y ago
    no, they said secular, like Sweden and Norway.
    - Reasoning 2y ago
      > I can’t wait till we talk about Jesus and God in the same way we talk about Hades and Zeus. > When societies cling too tightly to the faith traditions they’ve inherited—by accident of birth—they often impede critical thinking, open inquiry, and evidence-based governance. It's pretty clear he's talking about atheism. And a secular state is definitionally a state without a state religion. Sweden and Norway both had state churches until very recently. A closely related country, Denmark, still has an official state church. You can also look to Belarus, a secular state with a high rate of non-religiosity.
      - spiderfarmer 2y ago
        I'm talking about secularism. True separation of church and state at any level of government. This enables us to talk freely about religious belief and to educate our kids on how they have been exploited by many factions over the years. It doesn't limit your own spirituality. It also doesn't hand the keys to the country to one specific group of people.
        Reasoning 2y ago
        > Countries with strong secular foundations regularly top global indexes of well-being, prosperity, and social progress. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-... Only 1 of the top 5 countries in this list have neither blasphemy laws or a state church. 2 of them have both.
legitster 2y ago
[dead]
throw0101c 2y ago
> Pagels’s larger point is that the most improbable Gospel tales serve to patch a fractured narrative—using familiar tropes and myths to smooth over inconsistencies that believers struggled with from the beginning. "Familiar tropes and myths" is perhaps something you'd consider as the 20/21 Century literary critic, but I'm not sure a bunch of mostly peasants writing in the 1st Century would be. And it's not like they had anything to gain by writing and spreading about their beliefs: the early Christians were ostracized from their community(s) and persecuted. For the first ~300 years of the existence of Christianity there was probably little but trouble from believing in it, until roughly the conversion of Constantine (312) and later the Edict of Milan.
- onlypassingthru 2y ago
  Were first century peasants educated and wealthy enough to write? How good were the public schools back then?
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - throw0101c 2y ago
    > Were first century peasants educated and wealthy enough to write? "Peasant" would exist on a spectrum: some think Luke was a physician and thus literate. Peter was a fisherman and probably illiterate, but it was certainly possible to dictate someone who could write. Remember also that oral tradition was a thing as well in many societies: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40859393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40859393
  - myth_drannon 2y ago
    In Judea? Probably very high, some sources say up to 20% of men. It's was religious duty of every Jew to read the sacred texts and also to be able to write a Torah scroll(but most likely it was not mandatory). Father was to teach his son to write. Actually it was the initial reason for public schools, for orphans to learn read and write.
Ninjinka 2y ago
Many points in this article are presented as accepted fact, but are not (even among non-Christian scholars). Such as: > "Most important, there are the four Gospels, written in Greek some forty to sixty years after the Crucifixion is thought to have happened. These were composed somewhere far from Jerusalem, in a language that Jesus and his disciples would not have known, by writers who could not have been eyewitnesses. The claim that Jesus and his disciples "would not have known" Greek is historically inaccurate. Greek was the lingua franca of the Eastern Roman Empire and commonly spoken in Galilee and Judea alongside Aramaic and Hebrew. Coins, inscriptions, and documents from the period confirm its widespread use. And "writers who could not have been eyewitnesses"? Presumably this is referring to Mark and Luke only, because Matthew and John were two of the twelve apostles.
- krapp 2y ago
  As far as I know the scholarly consensus is that none of the gospels, including Matthew and John, were written by disciples, or anyone who lived within Jesus' lifetime. Obviously Christians believe otherwise.
  - red_trumpet 2y ago
    > Obviously Christians believe otherwise. Depends on the Christians. My Catholic school teachers in Germany taught us what you write.
    - michaelsbradley 2y ago
      Depends on the Catholics, too. Some who profess the Catholic Faith, educators and non-educators alike, find it scandalous that staff at a Catholic school teach their pupils such ideas. Others find it amusing, at best, that Catholic teachers impart any ideas re: Scripture that don't line up with areligious academic commentary.
  - ZephyrP 2y ago
    In the mid-2000s, I attended evangelical 'kids night'. Held each Friday at the dead-center of an unincorporated community in rural Colorado. The "cool" youth pastor who was responsible for these events told us "the Gospel's authors are anonymous, their names are totally traditional". I never had the sense that this view was in any way heretical or contentious, even in a strain of Christianity that strongly emphasized the historicity of the Bible.
KerbalNo15 2y ago
[flagged]
- MisterBastahrd 2y ago
  Knocking people into the ocean and throwing them a live preserver only if they ask for it is a hell of a way to prove that you're evil.
  - KerbalNo15 2y ago
    This is a deep topic. First, God is not the author of evil [James 1:13, Ezekiel 33:10-11]. You can read through Genesis 2-3 to get a good idea of why we're separated from God in the first place. God doesn't owe us forgiveness- as Creator he has every right not to save anyone. It's out of His grace that forgiveness/reconciliation is offered. A lot of people have trouble with the idea of a God who punishes/will punish their wrongdoings, but the central message of the Bible (back to that Ezekiel reference agin) is that God saves us *because He loves us* and that we are saved not simply from our own evil, but from *His just wrath*. How then is God a just judge, if He both promises to judge evil and refrains from punishing those who are forgiven? Their punishment is poured out on Jesus instead. That's the Gospel. He died willingly so that they can have life. If you believe, this is for you too.
    - MisterBastahrd 2y ago
      No, it really isn't. The problem isn't with the scriptures, it's with Christian interpretation of the scriptures. Anyone with any sort of knowledge of the Bible and the history of the people of the region knows that the god of the Bible was (a) part of a pantheon, (b) that was inherited from other cultures, and (c) evolved as time went on. That's not really up for debate with any serious students of history and religion. The old testament biblical "God" at the time that Genesis was written was NOT perfect, and nobody believed him to be that way. That came later. The Adam and Eve story just looked to tell a creation myth, and Genesis itself was cobbled together from multiple storytellers. It didn't say a single thing about damnation, which wouldn't even become a thing until Judea's hellenistic period. So, nah. You seriously are out of your element here with all the blinders you've put up for yourself.
corkybeta 2y ago
Mention of Richard Carrier was odd. The mythicist angle of Gospel accounts seems the least worthy of mention, even when the author encourages taking his work with the proverbial sodium. I like watching Tim O'Neill angrily refute everything Carrier says - he really doesn't like the guy.
Reasoning 2y ago
> In various texts, including Apocryphal works that date to around the same time as the Gospels proper, Joseph appears to suspect Mary of infidelity. This struck me as a strange statement to not explain further. Plenty of Christians interpret Matthew 1:19 to mean Joseph was going to divorce Mary because he believed she was unfaithful. > The consoling notion of divine impregnation was commonplace in the Hellenistic world, with countless tales of gods foisting demigods on virgins. Plutarch, for instance, described Rome’s founder Romulus as born to a divinely impregnated vestal virgin. The later is true but it's strange to use Plutarch as an example considering that at best he would have been writing Parallel Lives at the same time the Gospels were being written. > Those attributed to Jesus—described in language nearly identical to accounts of the Greek mystic and holy man Apollonius of Tyana, say—are neither more nor less convincing than others. Well "Life of Apollonius of Tyana" was written in the early 200ADs, approximately 100 years after the last Gospel was written. Once again, the point may be correct but the example given is confusing cause and effect. > A scholarly paradigm that has shone in recent years shifts the focus: the Gospels are now seen as literary constructions from the start. There were no rips in the fabric of memory, in this view, because there were no memories to mend—no foundational oral tradition beneath the narratives, only a lattice of tropes. The Gospel authors, far from being community leaders preserving oral sayings for largely illiterate followers, were highly literate members of a small, erudite upper crust, distant in experience, attitude, and geography from any Galilean peasant preachers. That seems like an extraordinary claim to make. The Gospels were drawn from no oral tradition, really? So there was a complete disconnect between the practitioners of early Christianity, who obviously would have their own oral tradition, and the Gospels writers. And the early Christians then accepted the Gospels even though they had no relationship to their existing traditions? Or is the claim the Christianity didn't exist until the Gospels were created, in which case you have to contest with the Apocrypha and historical accounts of Jesus. The simplest explanation seems to be that the Gospels drew from early Christian oral tradition and now lost writings. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels# for an explanation "now lost writings".
helf 2y ago
[dead]
room271 2y ago
The article is polemical, which I don't mean as a criticism but simply as genre description. There is no attempt to engage with the scholarly consensus (or indeed any of biblical scholarship beyond the named author). The piece wants to explain why religion persists but even on this lens it is heavy on words but lacking in depth. A lot is asserted.
bjourne 2y ago
The most compelling evidence for the historicity of Jesus does not come from the gospels, but from Paul's letters. He claims to have met with Peter and James which he calls Jesus' brother and the leader of the Jerusalem congregation. We can assume that James did exist since Paul writes about disagreements he has with him. Paul had no reason to make up a figure that challenges his views. Moreover, if James did exist, it seems far-fetched to believe that he were able to assume the title "brother of Jesus" without actually being the brother of Jesus. People would have known whether his brother had been publicly executed or not. In a similar vein, the gospels have Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan. Various form of baptism were common among Jews at the time to purify themselves or cleanse them from sin. Why would the son of God need that? If Jesus was invented from scratch you would probably not include that story because it raises more questions than it answers.
- mystified5016 2y ago
  > Paul had no reason to make up a figure that challenges his views. Sure he would. Today we'd call James a strawman. A narrative fiction intended to argue against the author so that the author can pre-emptively debunk any argument from the actual audience. It makes a lot more sense if you consider the writing is intended to outlive the author. You have to present all possible arguments because there's no going back, republishing, or even talking to the audience. You see strawmen like this a lot in scriptures. It's a pretty obvious tool when you think about it. But I have no real reason to doubt James existing. The evidence I've seen is convincing enough that I don't doubt that a man named Jesus existed and did historic things. Whether he was a Messiah is a different question. Always remember that the Bible is a collection of stories. It was intended to be passed down orally and to the illiterate. Oral histories are always dressed up. Either intentionally or mutated through the generations, the stories become more memorable over time, and thus more embellished. It is unwise to treat any religion's scripture as a literal, factual, historical document. They aren't, none of them are. They're all stories meant to teach lessons, and not a technical manual.
  - bjourne 2y ago
    Well, you don't make up straw men that makes you inferior. Paul never met Jesus, James did and also was the leader of the (clearly) very important Jerusalem church. Paul knew and admitted that he lacked authority, hence he had to sell his ideas very hard to the readers of his letters. Nothing suggest that he intended for those letters to outlive him (the vast majority probably didn't) or become the backbone of a new religion. It just so happened. The Pharisees in the gospels are good examples of straw men, though.
akomtu 2y ago
The historicity of those events is a distraction. What matters is this is a symbolical story of how any soul can ascend from the prison of its own persona, with all its egocentric thoughts and desires, to the kingdom of heaven. Jesus most likely walked this path to prove it's possible, but it shouldn't distract you from the fact that this symbolical struggle and crucifixion is taking place in every human. It's also important to realise that this story isn't unique to Christianity. All major religions of the present and of the past tell the same message, using different symbols appropriate for the culture of the time. This message is, in fact, the only reason religions exist at all.

64 points by diodorus 2y ago

sleepyguy 2y ago

https://archive.ph/CrwBy https://archive.ph/CrwBy

blogabegonija 2y ago

[dead]

Boogie_Man 2y ago

Nor shall we ever be

nvahalik 2y ago
As God intended.
- milesward 2y ago
  [flagged]

ggm 2y ago

Historians of reddit have to deal with this on a recurring basis. It's hard when textual refs stop in Josephus and the accretion of centuries of editorial over ur-texts. Often times people seek to argue by comparison: "we have less evidence Darius or Julius Caesar existed" type arguments about the primacy of contemporary eye witness accounts, distinct from eg economic and architectural evidence. Fugitive Christians didn't have time to collate the "I was there" takes and now it's Analects.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
[flagged]
- pstuart 2y ago
  > no one seems to care now. Indeed. They believe and that's that -- there's zero proof that would change their minds. I'm a non believer but would be willing to change my mind if there was compelling evidence.
  - adamtaylor_13 2y ago
    If you haven’t found compelling evidence, then you haven’t looked. I’m not being snarky. Look up a list of atheists who set out to disprove God. Once you start looking, it’s impossible to miss. What most people seem to mean by this is, “If God himself came down in a column of fire, then I’d believe.” Most folks can’t be bothered to actually dig into the real, ample evidence that exists. You like philosophical arguments? There’s philosophical arguments for it. You like astronomical or geologic arguments? There’s that too. Logic? Check. There’s so much evidence for Christ, it’s basically the only logically consistent worldview. I know I’ll get downvoted to hell for saying that (heh) but it’s true. There is not another logically consistent worldview beyond Christianity.
    - judahmeek 2y ago
      First off, you can't claim that Christianity is logical consistent until you find a way to resolve the Epicurean Paradox[0] and the question of how Sin/imperfection was introduced into our reality. If the Christian God was the only being who existed in beginning of time & everything that God created was also perfect, then which perfect being took the first imperfect action and how is it even possible for a perfect being to do something imperfectly? Secondly, I'd like to know what you think is not logically consistent with atheism/evolution. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurean_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicurean_paradox
      - adamtaylor_13 2y ago
        The Epicurean Paradox doesn't exist in the Christian worldview. Free Will as described in the Bible fully explains why and how a good, omnipotent God could allow evil. Perfect beings making imperfect choices isn't a contradiction, it's the very essence of free will. God valued authentic relationship over robotic obedience. Natural evils entered as consequences of this freedom exercised poorly, not as part of the original design. Christianity doesn't just acknowledge this tension - it provides the complete framework to understand it: creation, fall, and redemption. I’ll also go ahead and acknowledge that just because a being that exists outside of space and time knows something will happen, doesn’t CAUSE it to happen. So while our minds may not like the fact that God knew it would happen, it doesn’t mean he caused it to happen. You wouldn’t forgo the joy and wonder of having a child simply because you knew one day they might scrape their knee. By the way, a sincere thank you for engaging instead of downvoting out of disagreement. We need more of that!

drekipus 2y ago

> the first-century Jewish rabbi I don't know why they put rabbi there. Jesus is later rejected by Jewish teachings and is probably considered heretical. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_Jesus https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_views_on_Jesus Although I really appreciate what Jesus adds to the religious stories as it opened it up to the world, in a sense of "everyone can be Christian" without the need for completely surplantting yourself with old laws and traditions (like circumcision).

calebio 2y ago
I think there's a decent case to be made that he was considered a "rabbi", or teacher in the time period prior to the destruction of the second temple, by a group of jewish folks. As far as I understand it, the more formalized, institutional rabbinic structure came after the destruction of the second temple.
- VOIPThrowaway 2y ago
  That's the Christian viewpoint in that Christians view themselves as the valid continuation of the first convenient between god and the Hebrews.
  - calebio 2y ago
    Sure, but as far as I understand it, his followers were Jewish people, those followers called him Rabbi, so at that time... it was a "Jewish viewpoint".
- drekipus 2y ago
  That's fair. Thanks
cherryteastain 2y ago
How is it inaccurate? John 1:38 > Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye? They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted, Master,) where dwellest thou? John 3:2 > The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. John 20:16 > Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

spiderfarmer 2y ago

[flagged]

Reasoning 2y ago
Strong atheistic countries like North Korea and China?
- exe34 2y ago
  no, they said secular, like Sweden and Norway.
  - Reasoning 2y ago
    > I can’t wait till we talk about Jesus and God in the same way we talk about Hades and Zeus. > When societies cling too tightly to the faith traditions they’ve inherited—by accident of birth—they often impede critical thinking, open inquiry, and evidence-based governance. It's pretty clear he's talking about atheism. And a secular state is definitionally a state without a state religion. Sweden and Norway both had state churches until very recently. A closely related country, Denmark, still has an official state church. You can also look to Belarus, a secular state with a high rate of non-religiosity.
    - spiderfarmer 2y ago
      I'm talking about secularism. True separation of church and state at any level of government. This enables us to talk freely about religious belief and to educate our kids on how they have been exploited by many factions over the years. It doesn't limit your own spirituality. It also doesn't hand the keys to the country to one specific group of people.
      - Reasoning 2y ago
        > Countries with strong secular foundations regularly top global indexes of well-being, prosperity, and social progress. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-countries-in-the-world https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/happiest-... Only 1 of the top 5 countries in this list have neither blasphemy laws or a state church. 2 of them have both.

legitster 2y ago

[dead]

throw0101c 2y ago

> Pagels’s larger point is that the most improbable Gospel tales serve to patch a fractured narrative—using familiar tropes and myths to smooth over inconsistencies that believers struggled with from the beginning. "Familiar tropes and myths" is perhaps something you'd consider as the 20/21 Century literary critic, but I'm not sure a bunch of mostly peasants writing in the 1st Century would be. And it's not like they had anything to gain by writing and spreading about their beliefs: the early Christians were ostracized from their community(s) and persecuted. For the first ~300 years of the existence of Christianity there was probably little but trouble from believing in it, until roughly the conversion of Constantine (312) and later the Edict of Milan.

onlypassingthru 2y ago
Were first century peasants educated and wealthy enough to write? How good were the public schools back then?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > Were first century peasants educated and wealthy enough to write? "Peasant" would exist on a spectrum: some think Luke was a physician and thus literate. Peter was a fisherman and probably illiterate, but it was certainly possible to dictate someone who could write. Remember also that oral tradition was a thing as well in many societies: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40859393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40859393
- myth_drannon 2y ago
  In Judea? Probably very high, some sources say up to 20% of men. It's was religious duty of every Jew to read the sacred texts and also to be able to write a Torah scroll(but most likely it was not mandatory). Father was to teach his son to write. Actually it was the initial reason for public schools, for orphans to learn read and write.

Ninjinka 2y ago

Many points in this article are presented as accepted fact, but are not (even among non-Christian scholars). Such as: > "Most important, there are the four Gospels, written in Greek some forty to sixty years after the Crucifixion is thought to have happened. These were composed somewhere far from Jerusalem, in a language that Jesus and his disciples would not have known, by writers who could not have been eyewitnesses. The claim that Jesus and his disciples "would not have known" Greek is historically inaccurate. Greek was the lingua franca of the Eastern Roman Empire and commonly spoken in Galilee and Judea alongside Aramaic and Hebrew. Coins, inscriptions, and documents from the period confirm its widespread use. And "writers who could not have been eyewitnesses"? Presumably this is referring to Mark and Luke only, because Matthew and John were two of the twelve apostles.

krapp 2y ago
As far as I know the scholarly consensus is that none of the gospels, including Matthew and John, were written by disciples, or anyone who lived within Jesus' lifetime. Obviously Christians believe otherwise.
- red_trumpet 2y ago
  > Obviously Christians believe otherwise. Depends on the Christians. My Catholic school teachers in Germany taught us what you write.
  - michaelsbradley 2y ago
    Depends on the Catholics, too. Some who profess the Catholic Faith, educators and non-educators alike, find it scandalous that staff at a Catholic school teach their pupils such ideas. Others find it amusing, at best, that Catholic teachers impart any ideas re: Scripture that don't line up with areligious academic commentary.
- ZephyrP 2y ago
  In the mid-2000s, I attended evangelical 'kids night'. Held each Friday at the dead-center of an unincorporated community in rural Colorado. The "cool" youth pastor who was responsible for these events told us "the Gospel's authors are anonymous, their names are totally traditional". I never had the sense that this view was in any way heretical or contentious, even in a strain of Christianity that strongly emphasized the historicity of the Bible.

KerbalNo15 2y ago

[flagged]

MisterBastahrd 2y ago
Knocking people into the ocean and throwing them a live preserver only if they ask for it is a hell of a way to prove that you're evil.
- KerbalNo15 2y ago
  This is a deep topic. First, God is not the author of evil [James 1:13, Ezekiel 33:10-11]. You can read through Genesis 2-3 to get a good idea of why we're separated from God in the first place. God doesn't owe us forgiveness- as Creator he has every right not to save anyone. It's out of His grace that forgiveness/reconciliation is offered. A lot of people have trouble with the idea of a God who punishes/will punish their wrongdoings, but the central message of the Bible (back to that Ezekiel reference agin) is that God saves us *because He loves us* and that we are saved not simply from our own evil, but from *His just wrath*. How then is God a just judge, if He both promises to judge evil and refrains from punishing those who are forgiven? Their punishment is poured out on Jesus instead. That's the Gospel. He died willingly so that they can have life. If you believe, this is for you too.
  - MisterBastahrd 2y ago
    No, it really isn't. The problem isn't with the scriptures, it's with Christian interpretation of the scriptures. Anyone with any sort of knowledge of the Bible and the history of the people of the region knows that the god of the Bible was (a) part of a pantheon, (b) that was inherited from other cultures, and (c) evolved as time went on. That's not really up for debate with any serious students of history and religion. The old testament biblical "God" at the time that Genesis was written was NOT perfect, and nobody believed him to be that way. That came later. The Adam and Eve story just looked to tell a creation myth, and Genesis itself was cobbled together from multiple storytellers. It didn't say a single thing about damnation, which wouldn't even become a thing until Judea's hellenistic period. So, nah. You seriously are out of your element here with all the blinders you've put up for yourself.

corkybeta 2y ago

Mention of Richard Carrier was odd. The mythicist angle of Gospel accounts seems the least worthy of mention, even when the author encourages taking his work with the proverbial sodium. I like watching Tim O'Neill angrily refute everything Carrier says - he really doesn't like the guy.

Reasoning 2y ago

> In various texts, including Apocryphal works that date to around the same time as the Gospels proper, Joseph appears to suspect Mary of infidelity. This struck me as a strange statement to not explain further. Plenty of Christians interpret Matthew 1:19 to mean Joseph was going to divorce Mary because he believed she was unfaithful. > The consoling notion of divine impregnation was commonplace in the Hellenistic world, with countless tales of gods foisting demigods on virgins. Plutarch, for instance, described Rome’s founder Romulus as born to a divinely impregnated vestal virgin. The later is true but it's strange to use Plutarch as an example considering that at best he would have been writing Parallel Lives at the same time the Gospels were being written. > Those attributed to Jesus—described in language nearly identical to accounts of the Greek mystic and holy man Apollonius of Tyana, say—are neither more nor less convincing than others. Well "Life of Apollonius of Tyana" was written in the early 200ADs, approximately 100 years after the last Gospel was written. Once again, the point may be correct but the example given is confusing cause and effect. > A scholarly paradigm that has shone in recent years shifts the focus: the Gospels are now seen as literary constructions from the start. There were no rips in the fabric of memory, in this view, because there were no memories to mend—no foundational oral tradition beneath the narratives, only a lattice of tropes. The Gospel authors, far from being community leaders preserving oral sayings for largely illiterate followers, were highly literate members of a small, erudite upper crust, distant in experience, attitude, and geography from any Galilean peasant preachers. That seems like an extraordinary claim to make. The Gospels were drawn from no oral tradition, really? So there was a complete disconnect between the practitioners of early Christianity, who obviously would have their own oral tradition, and the Gospels writers. And the early Christians then accepted the Gospels even though they had no relationship to their existing traditions? Or is the claim the Christianity didn't exist until the Gospels were created, in which case you have to contest with the Apocrypha and historical accounts of Jesus. The simplest explanation seems to be that the Gospels drew from early Christian oral tradition and now lost writings. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels# https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synoptic_Gospels# for an explanation "now lost writings".

helf 2y ago

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room271 2y ago

The article is polemical, which I don't mean as a criticism but simply as genre description. There is no attempt to engage with the scholarly consensus (or indeed any of biblical scholarship beyond the named author). The piece wants to explain why religion persists but even on this lens it is heavy on words but lacking in depth. A lot is asserted.

bjourne 2y ago

The most compelling evidence for the historicity of Jesus does not come from the gospels, but from Paul's letters. He claims to have met with Peter and James which he calls Jesus' brother and the leader of the Jerusalem congregation. We can assume that James did exist since Paul writes about disagreements he has with him. Paul had no reason to make up a figure that challenges his views. Moreover, if James did exist, it seems far-fetched to believe that he were able to assume the title "brother of Jesus" without actually being the brother of Jesus. People would have known whether his brother had been publicly executed or not. In a similar vein, the gospels have Jesus being baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan. Various form of baptism were common among Jews at the time to purify themselves or cleanse them from sin. Why would the son of God need that? If Jesus was invented from scratch you would probably not include that story because it raises more questions than it answers.

mystified5016 2y ago
> Paul had no reason to make up a figure that challenges his views. Sure he would. Today we'd call James a strawman. A narrative fiction intended to argue against the author so that the author can pre-emptively debunk any argument from the actual audience. It makes a lot more sense if you consider the writing is intended to outlive the author. You have to present all possible arguments because there's no going back, republishing, or even talking to the audience. You see strawmen like this a lot in scriptures. It's a pretty obvious tool when you think about it. But I have no real reason to doubt James existing. The evidence I've seen is convincing enough that I don't doubt that a man named Jesus existed and did historic things. Whether he was a Messiah is a different question. Always remember that the Bible is a collection of stories. It was intended to be passed down orally and to the illiterate. Oral histories are always dressed up. Either intentionally or mutated through the generations, the stories become more memorable over time, and thus more embellished. It is unwise to treat any religion's scripture as a literal, factual, historical document. They aren't, none of them are. They're all stories meant to teach lessons, and not a technical manual.
- bjourne 2y ago
  Well, you don't make up straw men that makes you inferior. Paul never met Jesus, James did and also was the leader of the (clearly) very important Jerusalem church. Paul knew and admitted that he lacked authority, hence he had to sell his ideas very hard to the readers of his letters. Nothing suggest that he intended for those letters to outlive him (the vast majority probably didn't) or become the backbone of a new religion. It just so happened. The Pharisees in the gospels are good examples of straw men, though.

akomtu 2y ago

The historicity of those events is a distraction. What matters is this is a symbolical story of how any soul can ascend from the prison of its own persona, with all its egocentric thoughts and desires, to the kingdom of heaven. Jesus most likely walked this path to prove it's possible, but it shouldn't distract you from the fact that this symbolical struggle and crucifixion is taking place in every human. It's also important to realise that this story isn't unique to Christianity. All major religions of the present and of the past tell the same message, using different symbols appropriate for the culture of the time. This message is, in fact, the only reason religions exist at all.