Birth Of Christianity - What Actually Happened?

[Mutate]

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate all the replies.

[VacuumFlux]

Jesus wasn't the first deity to come back from the dead. Way back in Egypt, that was one of the big deals with Osirus. Then there's Mithras, etc. Even the idea of the trinity is not unique to Christianity.

 

I haven't read quite about these predecessors as I'd like (if it's not true, why should I spend that much time and energy on it when I have other things to do?), so I'm just going to cite Wikipedia:

 

Jesus compared to other god myths

Other resurrected gods

 

Also keep in mind that as humans we LOVE stories. We try to make sense of the world through them, even when there's no sense to be had. It's the same reason we personify difficult concepts or create mnemonic devices. It's very comforting to shove our world into a beginning-climax-resolution plot line.

[oddbird1963]

(btw - to go on a tangent - does anyone not get this "the gospels must be true because they're so similar - but they can't have been copied from the same document because they're so different". Although now that I've written that, I can see, if they give the same story but from an obviously different point of view/wriitng style, that argument could be valid.)

 

But anyway...when Jesus died, if he didn't prove himself by appearing ressurected, why did the disciples carry on the religion? How do they do it with enough conviction to attract so many more converts - ones willing to die? How did it rise to the level it was at when Constantine made it legit?

 

 

Mutate,

 

 

I just finished reading a book by Retired Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong called "Resurrection: Myth or Reality?" In the book he speculates that the resurrection story was not created until about 6 months after Jesus's death at the Feast of Booths (or is it Feast of Tabernacles?) when Peter began to connect the scriptures associated with that celebration (out of Psalms and Zachariah) to the ministry of Jesus. At some point, in Galilee after returning to the life of the fisherman, he had an epiphany that the deceased jesus had been taken up into the life of God and his life, which exalted humanity above the ritualistic and constrictive points of law, represented a new understanding of the nature of god.

 

Spong's view was that the resurrection account started out as a spiritual resurrection. Jesus had been taken down from the cross by the romans and placed in a common grave - lost to history. But in a way that was very powerful to peter, jesus lived on spiritually as the suffering servant, wounded for our transgressions. This is what lead up to the events related in acts chapter two. Peter and the disciples traveled to Jerusalem about six months later and began to relate this new insight in a powerful way.

 

Only later did the authors of the gospels compile what the church had begun to do to that story into writing. Using a form of illustrative storytelling called "Midrash," they drew from old testament passages and applied them in story format to show that Jesus is the fulfillment of the old testament who extended the love of god in the OT through his exemplary life. Mark was the earliest and simplest midrash on the life of Jesus with Matthew, Luke, and John representing elaborations and retelling of that story to correspond with the culture and climate of the original receiving audiences.

 

Thus, the "similar and different" does not necessarily represent valid eye-witness testimony in the same sense as comparing similar police eyewitness reports of one event in one location with one another. What the gospels show is just more and more elaborate retellings of a story until the story is morphed into something much more complicated and legendary than what actually happened. Remember, the writers of the gospels never knew Jesus. They are not eyewitness accounts. There are glaring inconsistencies that cannot be resolved among the gospels. They are a combination of myth and/or midrash, not a coroner's report or a newspaper expose.

 

Whether Spong's speculations bear up under scrutiny, he does allow one to see the gospel story's in a new light , not in the same old way of christian apologists who would oversimplify a story into historical record that was never able to be such.

[Mutate]

Karen Armstrongs books about this are good. Very simple. I liked the way "the bible" raced you through Luther, Calvin, Darwin, Clarence Darrow, giving you the facts on each.

[Guest Marty]

Armstrong's "History of God" is another real good book. Another good one, though not by Armstrong, is "History of the Devil". I forget who wrote that one.

[Midnight-mindwanderings]

I have a really good website to check out. It is really long but absolutely fascinating. I do not claim that it is exactly truth, but it puts an entirely different spin on how it all happened that makes a lot of sense and is backed by archeology.

 

http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm

[Dagan]

Thanks for your questions, Mutate. They are questions I wonder about too.

 

Personally I think one reason why Christianity caught on so fast was because it appealed to women and the poor -- a huge demographic in any era of history, and back then, an ignored demographic. The gospels describe several women who were among Jesus' disciples, and some were even the heroes of a few stories, pretty unusual considering women were second-class citizens in Jewish culture. As well, the women named in Paul's letters and in the gospels and Acts all seem to be women of stature, i.e. women with money, and I believe female Roman citizens were allowed to hold property. They were likely important pillars of the first churches outside Jerusalem.

 

As well, early Christianity was a bit like a hippie commune, judging by passages in Acts and Paul's letters, which talk about how those with more were supposed to help those with less, and how everyone was equal in the "body of Christ" and all that. That's pretty cool. No drugs though (at least none mentioned in the bible.)

[chefranden]

Those are interesting points but theyre just not enough to settle my mind. I've spent my life believing it was because he was the son of God. I need something solid.

 

There isn't any silver bullet for this zombie that I know of. Keep studying and arguing from both sides until one side or the other makes sense you can live with.

[chefranden]

I just don't get why so many gentiles wanted to join, even to be willing to die. What attracted them to it so much.

 

What attracted millions to Islam? What attracted millions to Mormonism? What attracted millions to Scientology?

 

 

People want to believe something. It's kind of like when a duckling sees his mama.

 

Early Christianity was not a monolith. There were many gospels you never read and never will because the loosers got burnt. Paul didn't like the 12 and boasted that he was uncontaminated by their teaching. IMHO it was Paul that got the thing rolling and the original 12 seem to have drifted off except for Peter. There isn't much evidence that the 12 stuck to their guns.

 

And people will die for anything they get riled up about including football. Muslim suicide bomber = true religion?

[Antlerman]

But anyway...when Jesus died, if he didn't prove himself by appearing ressurected, why did the disciples carry on the religion? How do they do it with enough conviction to attract so many more converts - ones willing to die? How did it rise to the level it was at when Constantine made it legit?

What the mistake here is to assume that the stories of the disciples "carrying on the message" is not a myth itself. That whole apostolic succession thing was a much later fabrication of the creators of the 'orthodox' traditions clamoring for authority over their respective congregations citing 'linage' back to the direct followers of Jesus. That's a created myth.

 

When you look at the writings of the NT, you see layers of earlier and later writings. And its in the later writings that you see the myth of the disciples emerging, particularly in the pseudepigraphal writings of "Paul's" so-called pastoral epistles. It's all about promoting later bishops who claimed succession to Jesus through the mythical apostles.

 

So what created the religion, if the story of the early church is really just a later origin myth? That's a really good question. The answer lies in understanding the society and the stage for novel social movements that had a sort of universal appeal. Mystery religions were popular in Asia Minor, where peoples displaced from their home lands and their gods would create mini-religious cults. The Jesus movements, a social movement of Stoic-like flavors mixed with Jewish religious appeal culled off some of these aspects of the mystery religions and created this Cosmic Christ figure out of this novel Jesus character out of the cultural crossroads of the Galilee region, which allowed them to lay claims to the popular Jewish religion of the region without having to undergo the rigors of legalistic conversion to the religion (ie, undergoing adult circumcision).

 

In short it had gentile appeal because it allowed them to become Jewish without having to observe strict observance of dietary and social laws. The apostle Paul, being the religiously zealous opportunist had a change of heart after seeking to squash these "law-compromisers" who claimed it wasn't necessary to commit fully to the Mosaic law, when he realized they were making powerful inroads in conversions! So, he had his 'revelation' that this was better, that more people could be brought to God, to Israel, through this way! So he converted, and the writer of Luke, many years later creates this myth story of Paul getting struck off a horse with a blinding white light, etc...

 

Then you have still other communities who were not connected to the Christ Cults of Asia Minor. You had very Jewish Christians that did not see Jesus as some Cosmic Being. Those would likely be the leaders of the Jerusalem church, named as Peter and James, whose became the basis for later apostolic characters in stories created by later mythmakers. They did not see eye to eye with the likes of Paul, and this fact can be seen in Paul's actual writings. Then you have yet still other various groups spawned out of this social subculture movement who imagined Jesus as a founding figure like Elijah and Moses in attempts to validate their movement to critics from with Judaism.

 

And so forth, until you have much later church councils polish it all up and make it fit their own myth of origins, having it look like it all began with the stupendous divine character Jesus, who broke through space and time, taught disciples his secret knowledge, died for the world, commissioned them to carry his message forth to the world, who then wrote Gospels that were handed to the overseers of the churches, and all preserved by God's Holy Spirit for the prosperity of mankind! Myth! A wonderful, molded and shaped story in the image of those who wished to establish a religion, 200 years after the supposed objects of their myths lived.

 

Does this help?