Posted: May 01, 2015 10:53 pm
Oldskeptic wrote:Stein wrote:Free wrote:Ducktown wrote:
I also find it interesting how reverently HJers refer to their good news hero.
Personally, the world would have been better off if the guy hadn't existed at all. From his form of Judaism, came Christianity, which then helped to spawn Islam.
These Abrahamic religions are responsible for Islamic extremism we see in the world today, as well as other atrocities depicted throughout history.
Exposing a human Jesus as opposed to some magical water-walking god has a far better chance of educating with the truth those who claim that the embellished life of this man are all facts. The Jesus Mythicism position only promotes the mystery of Jesus, and does absolutely nothing to discredit what billions believe to true.
History paints a far better picture of a mere man who's life was embellished to support a religious movement; a religious movement that is directly and indirectly responsible for the death and destruction of humankind en masse, and who's influence is responsible for the subjugation and oppression of some of the greatest secular minds in history, all in the name of some god.
And that is why, as an atheist, I support historicity.
This is very cogent. Thank you. I do think it important that we divorce the knee-jerk cultural assumptions surrounding Jesus the rabbi's false "divinity" from the true historical figure who was human only. I also blame many religious institutions directly for much of the misery wreaked in Christianity's -- or Islam's, etc. -- name.
That said, made-up gods like Odin, Zues, etc. could not be more irrelevant to what we're focused on in this thread. As I've made very clear, that's simply not at all the category that Jesus ever belonged to, whatever the deluded religious hysterics may say, day in and day out. Jesus is not some ludicrous wizard with a wand! He's a social rebel.
So the real question is whether or not a real Jesus is any more necessary to a functioning society than a Gandhi, a Franklin, a Pericles, a Confucius, a King, a Mandela, or a Gotama, etc. Those are all figures who center their activities on strengthening the moral claim that is on society to assuage unnecessary and gratuitous suffering. Without figures like these, the weak today would be even more at the mercy of the strong than they already are. Of course, the weak are hardly well off today! But -- sometimes -- there is a healthy sense of shame when the strong make their abuse of the weak too overt for society to stomach. Hypocritical or not, society does have a breaking point, and if that point is reached, the strong have to -- sometimes -- do a small tap dance in reverse. Not too often, of course, but the fact is they feel it incumbent on them to pay a bit of lip service to egalitarian notions very occasionally. That sense of caution on their part is partly due to the sensitizing that figures like a King or a Gotama have achieved for the rest of us. Partial only, yes. But better than nothing.
If we dispense with any kind of serious regular airing of the guiding principles of the Gandhis, the Jesuses, the Franklins, etc,, which is infinitely more important than anything in their boring biographies, the response from the powerful, while stepping into such a vacuum of growing ignorance on the history of consciousness raising, will quickly generate utter selfishness and callousness as even more the new "cool" than it is now with the abuses of the Tea Party goons. And once that happens, the 99% will be so much at the mercy of the 1% that it will make the financial meltdown of 2008 seem like a walk in the park.
Respectfully,
Stein
Well now I have to retract something I just said. "No one here participating in this discussion has had anything good let alone reverent to say about Jesus." And explain to you that these benevolent guiding principles of Jesus are probably as much embellishments as the miracles of Jesus. Far from being a wise sage, Jesus, in my opinion, was more likely to have been a petulant charismatic deranged dooms day cult leader, more along the lines of Charles Manson or Marshal Applewhite than Gandhi or MLK.
Years ago, before I had heard of what he had done, I did something similar to what Thomas Jefferson did with the New Testament. I separated all the good things that Jesus said supposedly in the synoptic gospels from the nasty things he supposedly said and came up with two distinct personalities, not, in my opinion, reconcilable with each other.
Even leaving out the miracles from either profile, I found that the nasty Jesus was much more believable to have been an actual person than the benevolent Jesus. This is part of the reason that I consider a historical Jesus more likely than not.
Not withstanding my agreement that scripture should not be used as evidence for or against a historical Jesus I find a core of truth in the nasty Jesus of the synoptic gospels. significant signs of a cult and cult leaders are present in this Jesus:
Absolute authoritarianism without meaningful accountability.
No tolerance for questions or critical inquiry.
Unreasonable fear about the outside world, such as impending catastrophe, evil conspiracies and persecutions.
There is no legitimate reason to leave, former followers are always wrong in leaving, negative or even evil.
Followers feel they can never be "good enough".
The group/leader is always right.
The group/leader is the exclusive means of knowing "truth" or receiving validation, no other process of discovery is really acceptable or credible.
Extreme obsessiveness regarding the group/leader resulting in the exclusion of almost every practical consideration.
Individual identity, the group, the leader and/or God as distinct and separate categories of existence become increasingly blurred. Instead, in the follower's mind these identities become substantially and increasingly fused--as that person's involvement with the group/leader continues and deepens.
Whenever the group/leader is criticized or questioned it is characterized as "persecution".
Dependency upon the group/leader for problem solving, solutions, and definitions without meaningful reflective thought. A seeming inability to think independently or analyze situations without group/leader involvement.
Hyperactivity centered on the group/leader agenda, which seems to supercede any personal goals or individual interests.
Increasing isolation from family and old friends unless they demonstrate an interest in the group/leader.
Anything the group/leader does can be justified no matter how harsh or harmful.
http://www.culteducation.com/warningsigns.html
And as I have learned and experienced, from growing up in a cult called Mormonism and then studying it, if the mantel of leader/prophet ect... is passed on the successors tend to increase and invent good myths surrounding the founder, and if possible bury anything derogatory.
Perhaps my acceptance of a historical Jesus stems from my personally experiencing the creation of a perfect religious mythical figure based on a severely flawed historical figure.
I do remember a thought-provoking post by an historicist in the old FRDB forum, ApostateAbe, showing that the textual data does contain ingredients that certainly smack of cult behavior. So it's not surprising that others notice the same thing.
Personally, I view the historical Jesus as part of a continuum, not any kind of climax or end point. I generally view history itself as a sequence of snapshots, in which all public or semi-public figures interact with those snapshots. To use another image, those snapshots could be said to record a sequence of images of an 8-ball in a game in which the ultimate goal involves greater and greater scope for those whose lives start out harshly circumscribed and abused -- moving the 8-ball in the direction of greater scope for the hitherto left-out, that is. The snapshots thus reveal a sawtooth pattern -- one of fits and starts -- in which those most cruelly used by society are slowly but surely given grudging respect, even though there are frequent painful setbacks along the way.
Figures like Enmetena or Solon or Gotama or Jesus or Ulpian or Locke or Gandhi, etc., tend to zero in on one or two areas of unfairness, while tacitly accepting others. This is why none of them can be said to be perfect. For instance, Solon relieves families crushed by debt, but does not appear uncomfortable with the prevailing treatment of defeated enemies in battle, nor with the subservient status of women. By contrast, Jesus interacts pretty openly with women as virtual equals and asks for due consideration for one's enemies, but seems untroubled by slavery. By contrast, Gandhi abhors slavery and pushes back strongly against the divisiveness in opposed religious factions and against any form of violence but is comfortable with caste divisions. And so it goes. The effective impact of figures like these involves the areas where they make a worthwhile difference, because that is where they move the 8-ball ahead, not those areas where they leave the 8-ball neither ahead of nor behind the place where they find it.
Your other remarks here are also quite pertinent --
"And explain to you that these benevolent guiding principles of Jesus are probably as much embellishments as the miracles of Jesus. Far from being a wise sage, Jesus, in my opinion, was more likely to have been a petulant charismatic deranged dooms day cult leader, more along the lines of Charles Manson or Marshal Applewhite than Gandhi or MLK."
As a matter of fact, the latest scholarship for both canonical and non-canonical texts allows scholars to place certain reflections and actions that have been traced to Jesus along a sliding scale from most likely to least likely. This sliding scale is not geared to vague preferences for one idea over another. It's based, to a considerable extent, on philological analysis of a range of detectable textual strata that is pretty evident in the written record, independent of expressed meaning or intent. Different idioms, from the most colloquial to the most self-consciously literary, from probably oral to elaborately scripted, become apparent on closer scrutiny. It is with respect to those pericopes that fall squarely between most likely and least likely where the greatest uncertainty and disputes lie.
Again, linguistic style has tended to weigh more in the most recent scholarship than actual content, although that has been engaged to a degree. The thing is, though, that more recent trends have moved more and more toward aspects of linguistic style to determine authenticity rather than what this or that scholar might wish Jesus to have done/said. Also, the contextual bundling of certain pericopes in similar textual strata weigh more than ever before in today's scholarship in determining authenticity. If the dubious textual circumstances, for example, of the "scary" post-Resurrection appearances vis-a-vis the similarly dubious textual circumstances, for example, of the virgin birth stories bear certain uncomfortable bibliographical similarities, then it makes sense for scholars to judge _both_ sets of pericopes with equal suspicion. Or if the textual circumstances for the saying "the last shall be first", with its consistent context of more colloquial textual material in more than one text, bears a certain resemblance to the similarly consistent colloquial context for "give up your life to preserve it", then it makes sense to assess these two as part of a nexus of similar pericopic material, rather than in isolation.
Of course, many in this thread are already quite familiar with much of all this, but in addition, the more colloquial and apparently oral the stratum, the more frequently one can perceive Aramaic linguistic structures that clash with the Koine Greek. These and other characteristics as a package are where the singular pericopes exclusively common to Matt./Luke come in. Is it really coincidence that these particular pericopes found only in Matt./Luke just happen to be the same pericopes in which most of the oral/colloquial/Aramaic etc. markers apparently abound?
Those pericopes common to Matt./Luke are sometimes so colloquial and also so countercultural in their general tone as to clash with the more elaborate and self-consciously written woo surrounding them. This is another factor that helps modern scholars measure certain degrees of likelihood among the more colloquial pericopes in Matt./Luke. In fact, it seems invariably the case that the most extravagantly written narrative material, involving virgin births and/or post-death zombie walks and/or generating booze at the drop of a hat, etc., etc., stems from textual antecedents at a polar opposite from those for the most colloquial sayings.
Christians don't like hearing this, but the fact is, these textual associations among the various strata strongly suggest that the most extravagant magic woo stems from a very late phase in the textual history, while the most colloquial sayings stem from very likely the earliest phase of all, especially those that Matt./Luke have in common.
When we take a look in isolation at the sayings common to Matt./Luke -- often termed the Q sayings for reasons not immediately relevant here -- a very definite concentration of consistent themes and concerns duly emerge:
http://eyler.freeservers.com/JeffWritings/jbcq002.htm
This is not entirely the portrait of a blameless peacenik, of course, but it doesn't really suggest a Charles Manson either. It suggests something in-between.
Obviously, sentiments like we see here from John the Baptist are not exactly savory. And there are definitely some sentiments here from Jesus as well that aren't much better. To say that one must actually hate one's parents (the Luke 14 section) hardly seems a desirable sentiment, for instance, even though some recent translators do suggest that "scorn one's parents" or "deny one's parents" may be closer to the intended sentiment in the original Koine Greek. And saying that one should only give to those who have already (the Luke 19 section) doesn't exactly impart a rosy feeling either.......... Now it's true the very worst stuff from Jesus -- like that hair-raising "bring here my enemies to kill them"(!) -- isn't found here. So it's more likely he didn't say quite that. But the somewhat unsavory stuff that is still in these Q sayings/pericopes is, while not as noxious as Bring my enemies here, still ..... well ..... unsavory.
That said, at the same time, it is striking that practically all, not just a small portion but practically all, of the most socially radical material also appears in this Q material as well. It's here that we have stuff like Love your enemies (in the Luke 6 section), the last shall be first, whoever is humbled will be raised, etc., etc. What emerges from this earliest apparent stratum is a guy who's hardly perfect but whose chief preoccupation, by maybe 60% or so, is dealing more equably with those who have gotten the short end of the stick, so to speak. The percentages of savory to unsavory here are actually not much worse than, say, the proportion of Gandhi material that defends the caste system, or the energy that Jefferson spent on maintaining slaves, or Solon's indifference to women. All this does not make stuff like "scorn your parents" at all O.K., of course, but it does help place a figure like Jesus, warts and all, pretty much in the middle of that select number who did at least try to make some improvement in the lot of their fellow man, while being neither perfect nor impeccably wise themselves.
Even the most multiply attested stuff in Q is a mixed bag as well. If we restrict the number of these Q sayings to the least possible, to only those sayings that appear in these Q passages _and_ the GMark _and_ GThomas, we are left with only seven sayings * . And these sayings too show a mixed bag, neither a Charles Manson type nor anything impeccable.
Cheers,
Stein
* Luke 11
21 When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace:
22 But when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armour wherein he trusted, and divideth his spoils.
33 No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it in a secret place, neither under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that they which come in may see the light.
Luke 12
2 For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known.
10 And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven.
Luke 13
18 Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it?
19 It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and was a tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.
30 And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.
Luke 19
26 For I say unto you, That unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him.