Jesus Freaks
I don't have fond memories of the Jesus Freaks of the 1960s and 1970s. It seemed impossible to avoid them as they were determined to confront you, and though their goofiness was apparent once you were within, say, 10-20 feet of them, at which point they had begun asking you and telling you about Jesus, they weren't obviously appalling at a distance. They weren't physically distinctive as were the Hare Krishna's, for example. You had plenty of time to turn and run before you were noticed and possibly set upon by the Hare Krishnas, but the Jesus Freaks looked much like any other young, predominantly white, ambiguously hippie-type person you would find lurking in the streets. They didn't come to your home bearing copies of The Watchtower, but they were at least as annoying as those who did and you didn't have recourse to a door you could close on them.
I associate them with the debasement of the comfortingly ornate ritual and droning, sleep-inducing Latin of the mass as practiced by the Roman Catholic Church in the days of my youth. Suddenly, it was all gone. One was standing up, sitting down, kneeling, clasping hands, and called upon to sing as guitars were played and love of a very non-physical kind was lauded along with Jesus; priests raised chalices made of artillery shells, supposedly as an anti-war gesture, and one's participation in the--what was it? a celebration?--was in effect demanded in much the same manner as your parents demanded that you say hello to and kiss distant relatives at family gatherings.
Let's admit it. There's something about Jesus. Something about him which makes people--certain people at least--do things, think things not normally done in what I'll wistfully call "polite society." By that I mean a society in which people for the most part mind their own business, don't make spectacles of themselves, and leave other people alone. They don't ecstatically heal others or claimed to be healed themselves, don't do handsprings down the aisle at church or at meetings, don't hector other people walking down the street or knock on their doors to ask them if they've been saved or accept Jesus as their savior. They don't travel to distant lands to convert the heathens.
There's something about Jesus which makes people FREAKS.
This is the case even with philosophers, or kinds of philosophers. I'm now reading (or trying to read) something called Panentheism--the Other God of the Philosophers by John Cooper. Mr. Cooper is a "philosopher theologian" at the forebodingly called Calvin Theological Seminary. It's an occasionally interesting summary of the history of what he believes to be thinkers who were panentheists or contributed to panentheism, starting with Plato, moving through the various Neo-Platonists, glancing at the Stoics, touching upon Bruno and Duns Scotus, scanning Renaissance thinkers, moving along to Whitehead and Hartshorne. He then criticizes panentheism, because...Jesus. Somehow, Jesus and classical theism is better, truer to scripture, includes Jesus, and can be just as neo-platonic and philosophical and cosmos and evolution respecting as one might want.
I'm curious why even the most "philosophical" of Christian theologians (e.g. Teilhard de Chardin, Barth) include Jesus in their theology. The Jesus they refer to is some nebulous kind of love or spirit or force necessary in some sense to creation and humanity and the universe, and is something that just doesn't seem to be the Jesus described in the Gospels, the Acts, or even by Paul at his most mystic and mysterious.
My guess is they struggle to, and do whatever may be required to, incorporate Jesus into their explanation of the universe and God, despite what evidence we have of him, which doesn't amount to much. The rabbi, the wonder-worker must be transformed into something more worthy of philosophical thought and speculation; more of a universal God. This has probably been going on since the early Church when the Founders sought to merge pagan philosophy and Christianity.
Does it work? I don't think so. But it may make these theologians Jesus Freaks of a different kind, worshiping an abnormal, unusual, unexpected Jesus. Or perhaps they make a freak of Jesus.
I associate them with the debasement of the comfortingly ornate ritual and droning, sleep-inducing Latin of the mass as practiced by the Roman Catholic Church in the days of my youth. Suddenly, it was all gone. One was standing up, sitting down, kneeling, clasping hands, and called upon to sing as guitars were played and love of a very non-physical kind was lauded along with Jesus; priests raised chalices made of artillery shells, supposedly as an anti-war gesture, and one's participation in the--what was it? a celebration?--was in effect demanded in much the same manner as your parents demanded that you say hello to and kiss distant relatives at family gatherings.
Let's admit it. There's something about Jesus. Something about him which makes people--certain people at least--do things, think things not normally done in what I'll wistfully call "polite society." By that I mean a society in which people for the most part mind their own business, don't make spectacles of themselves, and leave other people alone. They don't ecstatically heal others or claimed to be healed themselves, don't do handsprings down the aisle at church or at meetings, don't hector other people walking down the street or knock on their doors to ask them if they've been saved or accept Jesus as their savior. They don't travel to distant lands to convert the heathens.
There's something about Jesus which makes people FREAKS.
This is the case even with philosophers, or kinds of philosophers. I'm now reading (or trying to read) something called Panentheism--the Other God of the Philosophers by John Cooper. Mr. Cooper is a "philosopher theologian" at the forebodingly called Calvin Theological Seminary. It's an occasionally interesting summary of the history of what he believes to be thinkers who were panentheists or contributed to panentheism, starting with Plato, moving through the various Neo-Platonists, glancing at the Stoics, touching upon Bruno and Duns Scotus, scanning Renaissance thinkers, moving along to Whitehead and Hartshorne. He then criticizes panentheism, because...Jesus. Somehow, Jesus and classical theism is better, truer to scripture, includes Jesus, and can be just as neo-platonic and philosophical and cosmos and evolution respecting as one might want.
I'm curious why even the most "philosophical" of Christian theologians (e.g. Teilhard de Chardin, Barth) include Jesus in their theology. The Jesus they refer to is some nebulous kind of love or spirit or force necessary in some sense to creation and humanity and the universe, and is something that just doesn't seem to be the Jesus described in the Gospels, the Acts, or even by Paul at his most mystic and mysterious.
My guess is they struggle to, and do whatever may be required to, incorporate Jesus into their explanation of the universe and God, despite what evidence we have of him, which doesn't amount to much. The rabbi, the wonder-worker must be transformed into something more worthy of philosophical thought and speculation; more of a universal God. This has probably been going on since the early Church when the Founders sought to merge pagan philosophy and Christianity.
Does it work? I don't think so. But it may make these theologians Jesus Freaks of a different kind, worshiping an abnormal, unusual, unexpected Jesus. Or perhaps they make a freak of Jesus.
Comments (389)
You clearly need to eat more special brownies.
Oh, boy, have you touched a good one.
So, what you'll notice about Jesus, just from a cognitive level in the sense that the brain desires conceptual frameworks with which to use as informational guides to action and behavior - which, is what concepts are actually for, mind you, and why they generate from consciousness - is that he checks all boxes normally reserved for individual exercise of executive function and exploration. What do I mean? We have in Jesus 1. a conceptual framework provided for us, no effort. 2. absolution of any failure to uphold the tenets of the frame work. 3. an ideal embodiment of the framework that we can constantly use to induce more action and thought both on the part of ourselves and others. 4. the open invitation of universal acceptance within the framework. 5. threats of punishment for those who reject the framework. 6. rewards for accepting the framework. 7. justifications for all bad phenomena (humans) and good phenomena (God). and 8. a definitive low-resolution explanation of all things in the universe. Or, stated another way:
1. Moral code without effort.
2. Forgiveness/Love for breaking the moral code.
3. A Hero myth.
4. Universal Human Unity.
5. Retribution.
6. Return On Investment
7. Knowledge/Righteousness
8. Coherence
All of these attributes map to the reward structures of the brain that are reinforced by strong emotion and experiential data. You can find more about that in neuroeconomic research. As far as I am aware, Christianity is the first and only religion to achieve this outline in practice.
Quoting Ciceronianus
Since the establishment of Christianity as Roman religion, it has informed every single intellectual pursuit thereafter until the past 100 years. Period. From the time that Augustine revived the Greek philosophical tradition onward, philosophy has been plagued by the smokescreen of Christianity. Kant, Newton, Kirekegaard, Descartes, Voltaire, Marx, Hegel, Engels, Nietszche, Hume, Mills, Bruno, Spinoza, all of them, have frameworks inspired heavily by Christianity, its tenets, or its claims, even the athiests. All except one. I'll let you take a crack at guessing that one, if you feel like having some fun.
Quoting Ciceronianus
You fuckin bet it has. What has happened as a result is that science revealed no God, confused the human race beyond any possible reckoning, and left its moral code to inform any remaining stragglers. As a result, endless war, genocide, domination, self-deprecation, and longing for a love that can never be fulfilled. We will never recover from this...
Quoting Ciceronianus
That's more like it. Say what you want about the religion in his stead, but if he existed, he was one badass guy. Imagine looking a Roman govenor in his face, at the heigth of Roman power, and saying " You've only what power I give you." There's a reason he's a Hero in this mythology.
I dunno. I ate all those special hosts and they never did me any good. Brownies would be tastier, though.
Gummy bears are also popular.
Prof Bart Ehrman, Dr Robert Price, Dr Richard Carrier, Dr Robert Eisenman, Dr Rod Blackhirst, Dr J Harrold Ellens, Dr Jan Koster and on and on it goes.
Books like Caesar's Messiah by Joe Atwill , Creating Christ by James Valliant and C. W. Fahy contain a lot of quite convincing evidence (in my opinion) to confirm that Jesus and all the people around him are made up fables, as are the gospels.
Bad for the teeth, though.
True.
It's remarkable, no doubt about it. What it's "achieved" is amazing. It's success is in part, I think, due to its tendency to assimilate so well. It assimilated the Roman Imperial State, much of pagan philosophy, much of pagan worship (through the cult of the saints and otherwise). It's assimilating still.
Yes, it served as the final point of Universal Unity the Western Roman government would ever attempt, with a good deal of success. But, the wave was not something that could stopped. Oddly enough, when the Western Empire fell, all that was left as far as culture was concerned for the tribes to build from was, you guessed it, Christianity. Thus, the entire Middles Ages were built around that, and by extension every society, economic model, scientific culture, educational institution, etc. thereafter.
There are at least two ways to interpret Scripture. (1) The traditional way of the theists or (2) the contextualized way of the university professor or modern biblical scholar.
The traditional method makes certain assumptions:
1. The texts are cryptic and symbolic
2. The texts are prophetic and homiletic
3. The texts are consistent
4. The texts are divinely inspired/given
All of this is from Kugel's "How to Read the Bible."
https://jergames.blogspot.com/2008/07/four-assumptions-created-bible-lecture.html
So, the reason a traditional theistic reader obtains such unusual results from scripture (whether it be through the midrashim of the Jew or the exegesis of the Christian) is because their fundamental assumptions vary greatly from your own.
There are very mystical descriptions of Christ in the Bible.
Logos here is often translated as Word but can mean variously reason, meaning, or even logic. For a contemporary Hellenistic Jewish perspective, look at Philo of Alexandria. For him the Logos is universal reason, the logic of the world, the laws of causality and physics etc., both that which understands them in man, and that which generates them in the world.
So, Christian Freedom from "death in sin" (see Romans 7) can quite rightly be interpreted as a death of autonomy and personhood as man reverts to a beast and is ruled by passion and social forces. Paul experiences this death while biologically alive, and experiences a ressurected personhood through Christ, the Logos. So, when Christ casts out the horde of demons who call themselves "Legion" in Matthew, this can be seen as symbolic of universal Logos defeating the inner demons of passion, desire, instinct, etc., the chains of causality resulting from man not fathoming what moves him.
Scripture is said to work on multiple levels, as story, as allegory, and as a vehicle for esoteric revelation.
Jesus himself speaks to this mystical heritage.
The "I am" as opposed to "I was" is intentional. Christ as Logos is omnipresent in time as causality is what dictates before and after. It is a principle that cannot grow old, as it is the ground for the concept of before and after.
Atheists like to complain about how religionists have hurt the world - they start wars, they torture disbelievers, they subjugate women. You have added to that list of atrocities doing handstands in church and pestering people in the streets. Oh, the horror, the horror.
Saw your correction - Bart Ehrman specifically does not belong to this group - he disagrees with the mythicists, as they are known and specifically debated against Robert Price. From Erhman's blog Oct 2016
I think the more reasonable position on Jesus these days is that there was a human being who was killed and who inspired the myths. I think the general view, even amongst atheists is that the mythicists position is vulnerable.
Presumably because their understanding is completely divergent from your own, strange though that may seem.
Quoting Ciceronianus
I think what you're not seeing is Jesus as archetype. I also think you need a bit more philosophical theology - that book you mention seems a good source for the same.
My spiritual orientation was formed around my teenage encounter with the popular Eastern mysticism of the 1960's - predominantly Krishnamurti, Sri Ramana Maharishi, and authors including D T Suzuki and Alan Watts. It provides a counter-cultural or alternative attitude to spirituality and religion. Within that milieu, the focus is not exclusively on Jesus - instead, Jesus becomes an archetype of the enlightened teacher (although also more than that, considering the sacrificial nature of Jesus' crucifiction.) But if you view such a being through the lens of comparative religion and anthropology, they're a type. The peripatetic, itinerant teacher/sage, who has realised and who embodies a salvific understanding, wisdom and insight. That helps to provide a broader context for the question, at least.
(Where this is probably irreconciliable with ecclesiastical Christianity, is the latter's insistence on the unique, once-for-all-time significance of Jesus Christ, which is obviously not acceptable to Buddhists and Hindus, even though Hindu sages, such as Maharishi, frequently quote or refer to Jesus. For a brief scholarly account of Jesus in the context of pluralism, see John Hick, Who or What is God?)
What's called the Gospel of John was the last of the Gospels written, by my understanding, and likely was written after the death of Paul. It's only in that Gospel that Logos is referred to, and it seems clear that the concept was borrowed from pagan philosophy. The other Gospels are quite dissimilar. Paul, of course, borrowed from pagan philosophy (and the ancient pagan mystery religions as well). He was born in Tarsus, well known as a center of Stoicism. The process of assimilation had already begun. Tertullian's peevish comment "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?" notwithstanding, the early Christians were eager to incorporate the pagan thought even then. The supposed correspondence between Seneca and Paul is an example of the Christian quest for acceptance by the pagan elite.
So, Christianity portrays Jesus as an archetype? I don't think so.
You see, this is my point. I'm quite certain that Christian philosophers theologians see Jesus differently than I do. I suggest, though, that they see Jesus differently than most Christians do, differently from how he is described in the Gospels.
Well, I wouldn't call them atrocities. I'd call the former preposterous, the latter annoying and hectoring. I'm not an atheist, by the way, though my conception of God doesn't inspire me to gymnastic feats or induce me to irritate others with my view of the divinity.
Well, I don't know the "traditional theistic reader" comes to the same conclusions as de Chardin or Barth (for example). I'm inclined to think that if they believe in Jesus, they believe in the Jesus of the Gospels. I get the impression Christian philosophers/theologians don't, or would rather think of Jesus as different from that Jesus in very significant ways.
Well yeah - this is part of the problem with many subjects. The Baptists down the road from me see a very different figure from the Catholics next door. The name Jesus is about all they have in common.
I have a friend who is a Catholic priest and he sees Jesus as a metaphor and an invitation for contemplative prayer. He has almost no interest in the story as fact - it is a teaching aid, like most holy books. The issue is people hold different levels of understanding - a shallow or deep faith. The same could be said for science, with its dogmatic materialists and more nuanced naturalists.
As if there were a single uniform interpretation of the Christian gospel. History says otherwise.
So, I take it, the Catholic priest doesn't believe the Gospels, or believes in them, or the Jesus they portray, only as metaphor. The sophisticated, knowledgeable Christian doesn't believe Jesus did what the Gospels say he did, or I suppose even said what they say he said.
The Jesus of the Gospels seems disposable. Why do they bother with Jesus? This is my question.
Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. Jesus turns water into wine.
What room is there for interpretation, here? "Well, he didn't really raise him from the dead, the Gospels just say he did."
That doesn't seem to be an interpretation, unless it's assumed the authors of the Gospels didn't mean what they said. What's the basis for that assumption? That seems to be an assertion that Jesus didn't raise Lazarus from the dead.
I used to ask this question. I think the answer is complex and hard for literal minded people like me to comprehend. The gospels are not 'disposable' - this is a reaction to, not an understanding of what is meant - the books suggest a truth above narrative and provide examples and teachings in a form for humans to engage with at their level of understanding.
Jesus can be seen to fit into in a bodhisattva story tradition. These day I'm more inclined not to resist or disparage this way of viewing things but find it fascinating that this is how humans make meaning. As long as Jesus isn't used as an excuse for fag hating; life denying, bad politics and the setting off of bombs (and let's face it this is where literalists have often ended up), I don't mind how his story is understood.
I am curious how Barth figures into your argument. He argued for a Pauline vision of the struggle between the spirit and the flesh that put the idea of an imminent God of nature outside of the crisis of faith. Grouping this hard-core Protestant with Chardin hurts my brain.
It seems to me that if the Gospels are believed to be suggestive, inspiring, thought-provoking (insert appropriate adjective) stories, something of Christianity is lost. In other words, Christianity becomes a religion in which Jesus isn't, or can't be, what the Gospels say he is/was, or is/was only what we want to think the Gospels say he is/was or what the Gospels should say he is/was or what only selected portions of the Gospels say he is/was. That seems to me to be a serious problem.
It's only a problem for concrete thinking. There's a vast and venerable tradition of allegorical understanding of Christianity, Judaism and other religious traditions - leading us into the mystical traditions of faiths, which often become wordless and contemplative rather than a focused list of who, what, where and when. The majority of people seem to prefer the list, as there is a special safety in the predictability of believing that a story is literally true. Personally, as someone lacking a sensus divinitatis, the entire matter is 'academic'.
Well, yes. There was some irony in my response.
This in response to your reference to "literal minded people."
I'm not a Christian, but my wife is Catholic so I've spent some time around the church. I was at a dinner party sitting next to my 30 year old son, a 20 year old Jewish woman, and another 35ish year old man. Somehow the subject turned to religion in general and transubstantiation specifically. I told them that Catholics believe that the wafer is the actual body of Christ and the wine is his actual blood. They said, "You mean symbolically." I said, no, literally. We talked about it for 10 minutes and I couldn't convince them not that the Catholics were correct, but that they actually believed it. Finally my wife came over and gave them the official word. Even then they kept arguing.
If you want to understand what other people understand about the world, you need to make sure you are in the same world they are.
Yes, and that particular world is often a patchwork quilt of words and emotions. In his mid 90's I asked my father what he thought about Jesus. His response - 'Jesus is whoever the preacher tells us he is.' Sometimes people don't reside in a world of their own.
There are facts (or purported facts) and then there's interpretation - what those facts mean, or even, did those purported events really occur, or are they symbolic? Critical scholarship shows many variations in the details of the accounts of miracles and the events of Jesus' life. Furthermore that many of the Gospels were written many years after the event.
In a way, you're appealing to a fundamentalist attitude to argue the point that the Gospels have a single unarguable meaning, when there are many ways of interpreting them.
Excellent point.
Quoting Tom Storm
[quote=Adam Frank; https://aeon.co/essays/materialism-alone-cannot-explain-the-riddle-of-consciousness]When I was a young physics student I once asked a professor: ‘What’s an electron?’ His answer stunned me. ‘An electron,’ he said, ‘is that to which we attribute the properties of the electron.’ [/quote]
As are they all.
One of my favorite southern Catholic writers is Flannery O'Connor, “Someone once told the Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor that it is more open-minded to think that the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is a great, wonderful, powerful symbol. Her response was, “If it's only a symbol, to hell with it.”
Not well known fact: Lutherans also believe that the bread and wine is literally the body and blood of Christ, during the acts of the Eurcharist. At the end of the Eucharistic service, the bread and wine remaining are no longer flesh and blood.
Catholics believe that the body and blood remains body and blood, so... the priest consumes the remainder of the wine, and the remaining bread is kept in a monstrance, to be venerated. (Monstrance derives from Latin [i]monstrare[/I] to show.)
I don't either; I don't have fond memories of current Jesus Freaks either, though "freak" has fallen into disuse.
Jesus, I say as a profound heresy, has always been a construction of "the Church" wherever, whenever and whoever the church was at the moment to satisfy whatever need. "My Jesus" has become more and more obscure, verging on non-existence. The "Jesus" I like is similar to Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Workers. Day herself was a devout Catholic.
As saints and near saints go, Dorothy Day was likely much more tolerable than Mother Teresa. I'm very glad I didn't have to spend any time with Her Albanian Saintliness. Day didn't want to be referred for sainthood because, she said, "I don't to be dismissed that easily."
Somebody named Joshua existed (Joshua = Jesus). "Some one person" was the germ plasm of the Jesus the Church planted and grew. Who how when where why... big mystery.
Quoting Bitter Crank
:up: Almost analogous to my once-upon-a-time preference for The Nazarene contra The Christ. "The Devil's Advocate" Hitchen's The Missionary Position is still, as far as I'm concerned, the book on that old Albanian vampire and the zombie death cult that "beatified" her.
Yes, but that's because you are, as are so many here on the forum, an anti-religion bigot.
Again, I prefer irreligious freethinker (à la Epicurus, Lucretius, Epictetus, Spinoza, Hume, Russell, Dewey, Zapffe, Camus ... et al)
re: Tetrapharmakos + Deus, sive natura + Dionysus vs "the Crucified" :fire:
I think you take over thinking to a new level. I can give you a dozen more explanatory contexts to fit Jesus into. No, a hundred more. It is easy to do. And it misses the point, in a ,well, most superfluous way (there are, heh, heh, easier ways to miss the point).
It is not a question of what the brain needs or does. A person is not a brain. Just compare the two and you will find 3 and half to 4 pounds of gray squishy matter on the one hand, and a thinking, caring experiencing person on the other. Two mistake the one for the other is impossible.
The point you miss? Tell me, why are we born to suffer and die? It is meant as a reference, not to historical philosophy or theology, but to the foundational conditions of being human.
In my mind, one reason is the importance of tradition within Christianity. If to be a Christian means to have faith in the basic tenets of Christianity, I think it's often overlooked that one huge cornerstone holding up this faith is the tradition of Christianity itself. The crumbling of this cornerstone for myself was one of the main reasons for losing my own former faith.
There's a two-thousand-year-old theological tradition that has it's roots in the rather forceful emergence of a catholic, orthodox faith in the face of both persecution and a chaotic milieu of different strands of early Christianity, some of which are barely recognizable to us today as Christian. One element of that forceful emergence of catholicity was, as I'm sure you know, the creation of a canon.
What I came to realize later was that I was taught the singular, nearly ultimate importance of the canon (the Bible), when in reality, what really bound the whole thing together was the tradition that grew out of the emergence of a catholic faith; the canon was only one aspect. So it's almost this feedback loop where tradition venerates the Bible because of...the tradition that venerates it. The emphasis on the Bible of course could only reach it's modern heights once literacy was more prevalent, so of course, for hundreds of years, it didn't even play the role it does in modern Christianity. That's another example of the evolution of the tradition.
So it's true, as you say, that theologians sometimes have to do an awkward dance to fit Jesus into their theology; but in my mind, this is because of the underlying, sometimes unconscious, importance of the tradition of Christianity itself. If there wasn't this need to remain tethered to tradition, theology might look a lot like secular philosophy; anything might be on the table. But tradition keeps theology chained to itself. Jesus is part of the tradition; he was the genesis (but not the founder, arguably) of the whole thing, after all. So he must be kept in. And gradually emerging doctrines like inerrancy and divine inspiration served to tether theology to tradition even more tightly.
A side note is that John's inclusion in the canon was controversial, and I think largely responsible for Jesus's role in the evolving tradition, and Paul was also important (but how many of the Pauline letters were actually written by Paul is another question). Sorry for the ramble, hopefully that made some sense.
A person is most certainly a brain. You do realize that all functions you exhibit, including those which are subconscious, are produced by the brain?
Quoting Astrophel
I don't regard "suffer and die" as what I am meant to do, or that human life and consciousness is to be relegated to such as the decree of anyone or anything other than myself. We suffer as a function produced by the brain, we die because bodies are made of organic materials and elements that expire over time. Like all things do
People might not be Jesus freaks as such but may be simply looking for someone who fits the description of what to them is the ideal person and Jesus just happens to be it.
In the long run (2000 years) and in the short run (last 15 minutes) tradition is both brick and mortar, and the Bible, the writings of the saints, of reformers, hymns, liturgy and so on are more bricks in the edifice of Christianity. God is a piece of that tradition, older than Jesus.
There are days when beyond question I am not a believer. Other days my atheism wavers. I was too deeply immersed in Protestant Christendom (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church) to be anything but an ambivalent, wavering atheist.
Still, I am not a pissed-off-church-hating-atheist. From certain angles, religion is just plain weird and freakish. From another angle, it is a balm; maybe glorious. Another angle shows us its holy real estate function. It's a club--mostly they are easy to get into, though personally, I'd avoid joining hard boiled Baptists in so much as a wiener roast.
I'm not an atheist, but have lost pretty much all interest in the pointless battle between atheism and theism. I'm also not pissed off at the church and don't have any hateful feelings towards it. I really like studying religion and spirituality in general, in large part probably as an attempt at closure. But I do feel at the same time like it's leading me somewhere.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I'm with BC. A really good post. Thoughtful and well-written.
There's truth to that. The Jesus character has had enormous plasticity. Over two millennia, he has been pretty much what people wanted him to be. Portraits of Jesus are portraits of humankind: you have black jesuses, japanese jesuses, arabic ones, and even some blond ones... The Nazis made of him an arian. Philosophers see a philosopher in him. Some atheists too indulge in imagining him the way they would like, eg as a literary myth.
This plasticity -- which I believe stems originally from his own ambiguities -- is a significant part of his appeal.
Himself asked his disciples "Who do you think I am?" As if he was not quite sure.
Another part of his appeal is in his wisdom, and I think specifically in the inversion of values he so often practiced: money is worth nothing, your weakness is your strength, the use of love as a weapon, the exaltation of the poor, etc.
More likely because the answer would reflect something about them.
I saw that debate and its an old one. Bart has become far more anti-theist since then, check out some of his latest YouTube offerings.
Quoting Tom Storm
I subscribe to the more recent chat on this. For example, Joe Atwill's book presents Jesus and the disciples as satire. Parodies of characters who fought against the Romans. The Sicari.
Why would the rebel Jews, accept a Messiah who states things like 'render unto Ceasar that which is Ceasers and turn the other cheek and blessed are the meek etc.' These are all good for the Romans.
A jewish leader that tells the Sicari to stop fighting the Romans and accept their fate.
If they behave themselves, Jesus tells them they will get their reward in heaven, AFTER THEY ARE DEAD!
Then the jews get blamed for asking for this nice placid Jesus to be crucified and the Romans try their best to refuse! This is obviously Roman propaganda!
Josephus Flavius started as a Sicari but got captured by the Romans and turned traitor.
Atwill thinks he was involved in authoring the gospels and inventing Jesus.
Some of the more simplistic, interesting parallels he posits are:
The phrase 'fishers of men' being a parody of a battle fought by Titus Flavius on the sea of Galilea against a Jewish force led by a rebel called Jesus. Many of the defeated Sicari ended up in the water and the Romans were ordered to spear them, they literally went 'fishing for men.'
He parallels Josephus Bar Mathias (later Josephus Flavius ) as Joseph of Arimathea(a place never found.)
He parallels Judas Iscariot (with Sicari).
These are only the beginnings of the parallels and typological similarities he posits between the gospels and the books of Josephus Flavius. There was no historical Jewish messiah named Jesus Christ.
In Greek, even his name literally translates to Jesus(Saviour) Christ(Messiah), so his name is Saviour messiah. I'm sure the Sicari called all their rebel leaders 'saviour' and 'messiah' or chosen hero.
Both, I would think. The two are not mutually exclusive.
I don't think the Jesus Christ fable will ever be 'erased,' similarly, I don't think the fables of Hercules or Harry Potter will ever be erased, but yes, I think we have to correct the historically incorrect claim that the story of the life of the Christian messiah, (which I think is close to saying the word messiah twice) Jesus Christ, is a memorialisation of actual historical events.
That's not what real, professional historians say. It is instead what rabid, irrational haters of christianity say.
I bet the Romans kicked themselves when people started believing it and refused to recognise the divinity of the Emperor. "Guys, guys, we made the whole thing up... really, we did... "
For me personally, many of the tenets of Christianity are pernicious yes, many others are not. This is again for me, the same with all theism.
We each make our choice. Your professional historians are my cranks and purveyors of false history.
I am sure your choice is the exact opposite.
I am open to dialogue on any issue you care to raise to support your view. I predict that at the end of any such exchange, our positions are unlikely to have altered, even though both of us (as I certainly do) will state that we are open-minded and will accept evidence presented if its veracity can be established.
The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.
You have the order the wrong way around.
The Sicari refused to recognise the divinity of the Roman Emporer's that's true, that's why the clever Romans, with assistance, delivered their version of a divine roman emperor to the jews, disguised as their own pacifist messiah, dressed in sackcloth, for them to 'believe in.'
The Romans then also used this new cult to tame other rebellious peoples and eventually admitted it by adopting Christianity as their own.
The Romans were well-practiced at creating religious cults, building temples of worship and assigning priests, etc to spread and maintain the cult. They learned how from reading how the Greeks did it.
There are many well-recorded examples of them doing this for many of their Emperors.
There are extant examples of statues and archways depicting such.
The Christian cult is just their most successful one.
Many did, after all, accept the Roman emperor as their god or to bring things up to modern times, the Christian god's main representative on Earth. Everyone who accepts the pope (the final inheritor for the Roman emperors), continues to worship the legacy of the Roman Emperors. He is the pontif maximus, an old name for the Roman emperor and he still rules his flock from Rome itself.
Must be a burden for you, 'to hate.'
I think I see the argument. They got people to join their cult for the sport of persecuting them for being in it. Three hundred years later they made it official. Funny lot, those ancient Romans.
When I have asked them 'why do you accept being referred to as sheep?'
I get 'because it is reflective of a loving, caring shepherd.'
I then say but a shepherd looks after his sheep because they are his main resource for survival. He is clothed from them, fed by them, earns money by selling them.
That's why he loves them!!
It's that why the Christian leaders love you, you keep them fed, clothed, rich!!
They normally 'hate me' after that but not all, some raise a little enlightening eyebrow now and then.
I mean, have you ever heard anyone obsessing about whether Socrates or Buddha existed historically? Nobody seems to care about them... Why are the historical erasers not concerned about the Buddha's or Socrates' existence or lack thereof? Why is all the erasing attention going to that same guy Jesus, always, as if the Buddha or Socrates did not even not exist? That's not fair.
Well I think it was more to do with empire building and the conquest and subtle subjugation of other peoples rather than 'persecution for sport' (but they did engage is this also). The Romans did not really care who their conquered masses wanted to worship. In fact, they would fully support and help you maintain your local gods. BUT you had to include a statue of the emperor and accept him as overlord.
The jews would not comply with this, no matter how often the Romans slaughtered their rebellious risings. They would rise again a generation later. So, a more subtle approach was needed, enter the traitor Josephus Flavius. The very rich, very powerful Egyptian 'Alexanders,' strong allies of Vespasian, Titus and Domitian Flavius and The family of the Herods who ruled Judea after the Greek seleucid's were kicked out by the rebellious Jewish Maccabees. Let's create a saviour mssiah we could use to pacify the jews and other rebel tribes, in line with the old testament stories and the prophecies of Daniel.
Come to think of it, there are a few similar cases, such as Descartes. It always amazed me how much some philosophers bad-mouth Descartes, as if it was somehow required of them or appropriate. They still want to bury him centuries after his death. So I propose the following test of greatness in philosophy:
A great philosopher is one whose influence is so large that other, less gifted philosophers still try to nail his coffin for centuries after his death.
:rofl: It must seem that way to Christians. No, I for one would make similar arguments against other cults such as Mohamed and Islam or the Hindu pantheon or Odin or Zeus etc. It's just that Christianity and Islam have the biggest presence out there at the moment.
I also regularly comment about my concerns that the current way we do things is based on the historical writings of ancient Greco-roman musings. Regardless of whether or not a particular 'philosopher' existed. So I feel I am quite fair in the general hatred that I potentially attract from others but I don't feel alone. There is an 'atheist brother/sister/peoplehood' I can stand with.
There used to be a fashion for denying that Shakespeare existed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question
Quoting universeness
Rather careless of them not to have included that in their cult. They could have saved a lot of bother with just one verse, e.g. "And the heavens were riven with angels singing: 'Don't forget to celebrate the Emperor's birthday and refer to him as 'Divine'. A little statue on the mantlepiece would be appreciated as well. Jus' sayin'."
What is your take on Judaism? I note that you don't mention it here. Is that an oversight or do you make an exception for Yahweh?
BTW, I'm one of your fraternal atheists.
Good. I wouldn't want sweet baby Jesus to feel all alone in this....
Would have certainly saved a lot of human lives but it's an old dilemma. Do what I say and live or go against me and take the risk that you, your loved ones and everything that's important to you will be utterly destroyed.
Greetings brother!
I could chat for a long time on Judaism and its connection with Canaanite gods like El, Asherah, BAAL etc and Christianity.
How about the Judaic story of Lilith and her relationship with the garden of Eden 'snake' and its iconographic relationship with the 'flying snake' or dragon and Liliths' spat with Adam, way before Eve and her EVil and dEVil came on the scene.
All sorts of fascinating parallels in stories like the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the Roman Mithratic cults, The classical pantheon etc.
Humans have an enormous historical tendency to create and tell stories based on some natural event they personally witnessed or heard about and did not understand (perhaps the sun going all dark and red for a period of time) etc. The Chinese whisper factor will do the rest to make Pinocchio a real boy who actually lived, especially if it helps those in power, opiate the masses.
Like Hollywood today, storytellers borrow from the stories already available, to make new stories.
If I was born in the very early days of human existence, I would have looked up at the big lights in the sky and all the rest that was happening around me and grunted a whole lot of WTF's! at my fellows.
I don't think it would have been too long before I started to be comforted by G....O.....D.
Great Omniscient Diety. I just made that up btw, so please no one respond with "that's not what God stands for!" :naughty:
"By the rivers of Babylon, where we sat down, oh yes we will, when we remember Zion"
The Babylonians contributed their stories to a section of early people who they enslaved from those who settled around the areas in Caanan and The Levant etc historically 'penciled in' as Judea and Israel.
The history is a patchwork of mainly chiseled sources and extant artifacts. I'm sure it's pretty close to actual events but if you demand the rigour of something like the scientific method then you must declare all such historical evidence as 'lacking' in the area of proof.
Paul seems to be thinking of, if not the same idea, something quite close.
Of note, the word for "image" here can mean more "type" or "symbol." "Firstborn" can mean "has primary" as opposed to denoting creation. This seems like the same thread to me.
You're correct about the date of John, although it isn't totally clear which order the Gospels were written in, and Mark, Matthew, and Luke are thought to be more similar in part because they used the same source documents that were essentially notes taken on Jesus's sayings and doings, not because they are all earlier than John. John was perhaps written in multiple additions, and some scholars place it as far back as 55-60AD, earlier than other Gospels or Paul's death, but others have it being set down 30, even 50 years later.
Arguably, the non-Canonical Gospel of Thomas falls into this time period too, perhaps pre-dating all the other Gospels (this claim is based on the fact that 13 of its 16 parables are from the Synoptic Gospels, but they are all out of order, which might suggest having been copied from another source. Thomas is simply a list of sayings, not a narrative and is unfortunately lumped in with "Gnostic," which is misleading, although it also seems like Gnosticish sayings may have been added to the version of Thomas we have at a later date as well. What is of note is that some sayings are also more similar to John's more philosophical and mystical sayings. This makes sense either way, because the Gospels were clearly written for varying audiences originally.
It is possible none of the Gospels were written by the time Paul died. Mark is most likely to have been written earlier, but it would have been at the end of Paul's life.
This doesn't mean that much for theology because the NT is taken as a whole. Nor does it say much about Pauline theology for Paul, since he is obviously talking about something quite different from a physical death in sin here. It is a death of autonomy restored by Christ that allows his "inner self" to seek what he wants. Romans 8 goes into this in more detail, describing man and the world going through "labor pains" to give birth to a new form of man that lives in Christ and Spirit. If not the exact Logos concept of John, it would be close.
And while the Gospel of John might not have been set down in Paul's lifetime, John was around, as he is documented in the Synoptic Gospels and Book of Acts, and the opening of John shows remarkable similarities to the opening of Colossians. Even if John didn't write John, the fact that all the Gospels include him and were set down within a decade of Paul's death (for Mark at least), denotes that the role of John as an Apostle couldn't have just appeared and solidified in that short period. However, the epistles of John show as consistent Johnine take on Christianity, that suggests a standing tradition as far back as the very early church.
Which makes sense, since all documents of Christ's life have John there.
Keep in mind that it is a brain that manufactures this idea. When I look around the world and I see brains and nervous systems, these are massive clusters of axonally connected nerve cells, which are, my that perceptive event, also just this. So if you want to reduce the affairs of being a person to what a brain is and does, then this reduction applies equally your own reduction. There is no finer definition of circular thinking.
ALL that you have before you is what is. You are not in an explanatory matrix like a laboratory looking for causal bases of things. Causal explanations say nothing about the ontology of a something in the world. E.g., you cannot explain pain by describing neuronal complexities.
This kind of reductive thinking is what happens when people think that since science can make a cell phone it can therefore do philosophy. Science needs to know its place
Quoting Garrett Travers
No, no. You don't understand the question, which is forgivable since you haven't been properly educated in such things (not meant to be a unkind here. But it is simply a fact that philosophy is entirely neglected our culture's curriculum).
The question is about suffering qua suffering. Look at it. Put a lighted match to your finger and observe, to be a good scientist. You will find something qualitatively different her from the facts science generally deals with. Suffering is not a "fact" in the Humean sense.
Religion and Jesus? You have to step out of your comfort to se this. There you are, fingers blackened with gangrene, your children the same, each waking a moment nightmarish suffering as you yield to the black death....and so on. This is, of course, no fiction. Perhaps you'll be burned at the stake tomorrow. You raise your fist to heaven to no avail. Then you plead and beg, to no avail. You conditions screams for deliverance.
This is what Jesus is about, on the negative end of what we are.
But this has no analysis. Ask yourself, what is the existential foundation for these stories, that in the world that gives rise to them at all.
Because they are Christians. There is no Christianity without Jesus _Christ_.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Man is an end in himself. Consciousness is self-producing and self-informing. This is what Hume didn't understand in his "Problem of Induction," or so called. The concept of 'circular argumentatin' can be applied to the human mind, no more than what it can be applied to the earth. Nor are humans an argument. We are conscious. The human brain developed and emerged out of the crucible of 3.5 bill years of evolution to provide us with the capacities you are using to read this now. If that is a reduction to you, as opposed to some mind-body mysticism you may be working with, then I don't know what can help you understand. There is NOTHING more complex or advanced in all the known universe than the human brain, and the consciousness it produces.
Quoting Astrophel
My brain - yours as well - is designed to retrieve data corresponding to reality, with it to build coherent neworks of data that inform rudimentary behaviors and thoughts, then when enough data has been gathered, use those networks of data to formulate concepts that inform future actions and behaviors as a metter of executive function, and using that data we formulate values which inform all data networks gatherd in a feedback loop of information exchange. The human is the definition of explanatory matrix, and the only one we know to ever exist. Ontology, as far as my interests go on the subject, and maybe I'll do some writings tonight, is self-explanatory in all things, one merely needs to know what its functions are. Properties of actions, properties of function, in the case of humans, thoughts, and the relation between them contained therein.
Quoting Astrophel
I'm going to forgive this kind of statement, as a starter. If it happens anymore I'm going to inundate you with the content of my extensive philosophical training, that is still on-going in professional academia, as well as private, everyday pursuit. As far as suffering qua suffering, you're going to have to be specific about the point of exploration you'd have me analyze, as you could be meaning several things. Because, as it currently stands, we know suffering to be a function of the brain used to reinforce certain types of thoughts, granted it's not entirely clear why certain suffering functions are distributed as they are, but neuroscience is still young. As far as it not being a fact, such a thing is going to have to be qualified. I would take a look at this and get back to me on that fact business: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5521249/
Quoting Astrophel
As a former, life-long Christian, I am aware. I am also aware that it is not something that provided me with enough verification to accept as anything other than great ancient literature, which it is, and imprtant to digest for both philosophical reasons, as well as psychological. But, the outline I provided above is accurate in what it provides its users in function. The rational mind does not accept this kind of story as fact without it being imparted to you by your family and surrounding influences.
Well not being a philosopher and lacking in any qualifications in the field, I am quite limited in the philosophical terminology that I can call upon.
I would say, from the evidence of observing human behavior in my own lifetime and from human behavior recorded in the books I have read etc. My interpretation of such evidence suggests to me that the 'existential foundation' I refer to is human fear of that which they do not understand and therefore conceive as a potential threat. A natural reaction to such fear in the long term is to try to learn more about the phenomenon but meantime seek protection from potential harm by engaging in tribal or/and biological support and psychologically attempting to establish further support from imagined benevolent supernatural forces. I think that's what humans do and I think there is a great deal of evidence for it, both current and historical.
One has to maintain that there is a single uniform interpretation of this or that in religion/spirituality, otherwise one couldn't accuse others of having a "religious complex".
You yourself don't embrace the relativism that you espouse.
I think there is an important distinction between "a person is contained in or caused by," a brain and the idea that a person is a brain. Obviously a person, as a persistent entity through time cannot be defined as just the physical matter in their skull at any given time, since the composition of the matter, and its organization is constantly changing. In about a year, about 98% of the atoms in a human body are replaced. The fundemental parts that make up a brain have been parts of other brains before.
This is the old Theseus's ship issue.
Second, a brain doesn't exist without an enviornment. It needs a body, a body that is more bacterial cells than human ones. The brain can't live, and so can't think without these cells. Then you have the problem of how a person can come into being with no sensory input. I see no way for a person to not be caused by and emergent from a larger enviornment, not just the brain. Because if you look at the brain as an information storage and computational organ, what does it mean for it to have nothing to store and nothing to compute?
Information is isomorphic. If I am my thoughts and sensations, which are generated by the interaction of my brain and my environment, what does it mean that I can record these thoughts into language or images, and people can reconstruct them later? If a representation of thought isn't thought because it is made up of different material, what does it mean that a brain from six months ago isn't made up of the same material as it is today?
If a person is only a brain, how does it work that they can share, if only with the help of data compression, their experiences in a monologue, which can then be recorded as a sound wave on a magnetic tape, which can then be transformed into an MP3, which can then be transcribed into written script, which can then be written using DNA, since text and jpeg images have been stored using DNA? The protean nature of information seems to cause all sorts of issues for reduction to my mind, especially once you consider the view that fundemental physical entities (quarks, leptons, photons, etc.) can themselves be considered to be information (thus, "it from bit").
Not to mention the whole issue of Post-Kantian metaphysics and access to the noumenal, which I will ignore because I find it just leads to dead ends. Although, I think it is worth considering that the two value logic of correspondence definitions of truth that people utilize to support claims such as "a person is a brain," only work if there is someone to measure the correspondence.
Plus, if you can imagine that we could one day transport or at least clone conciousness into a machine, be it a fully digital one or a digital/organic hybrid, then a person can't be just a brain, a brain is just an instantiation of the information that makes up a person. They are an information process, but such processes are definitionally protean. They are made of physical elements, all information appears to be, but the exact composition isn't what matters.
By the same logic, people are already not only brains even in a reductive sense. The eyes are part of the brain. However, we have inorganic photoreceptors that can let blind people see (in a limited way), in which case, it appears we have something else becoming part of the brain. To argue against that, would be like saying an artificial heart valve, or a transplant from a pig, isn't part of the circulatory system once it is put into place.
+++++
On a totally unrelated note, if you want a weird Jesus take, I have been writing down notes in an idea that I believe is new:
The Trinity Reflects the Piercean Semiotic Triangle. Christ, the Logos, is a symbol. It proceeds from the Referent, which is the ground of being, the Father, which is the Object. The Holy Spirit is the Interpretant. Since being requires meaning, since pure unmitigated input is pure abstraction, which is no different from nothing (biting off Hegel here), it represents the essential requirement for being qua being.
I haven't shared any because I'm a little worried it will offend Christians, who aren't always kind to forms of Behemism, and because I haven't found a simple way to explain it. Also the exgesis on the Spirit part needs work.
I think you're right. They're an odd couple. It was a bad choice on my part.
Yes, and this is why there are so many of those ancient narratives: fear and hope. But take any narrative at all and you find it follows the rules of emplotment and development. There has to be dramatic content, jst as in life. A muthos is the memesis of a praxis (Aristotle). All eyes are on the actual human condition, therefore, the source of narrative content. One then asks, what is there in this one has to be afraid of, and hope for? Now we are talking philosophy.
What do you think it is?
One would think so. And the answer may be that they're "stuck" with him if they want to be known as Christians. But I think that the Jesus of the Gospels is largely ignored by them (just as the God of the Old Testament, that fractious fellow, is ignored). They just don't fit in the theology they construct, or if they fit do so awkwardly. They're embarrassing, in fact, if Scripture is is to be believed as it is written.
You're not defined by "just physical matter in their skull," the brain isn't just physical matter, it is a highly specific, highly structural, highly functional grouping of matter and chemicals that, not only regulates literally everything you do, but also produces consciousness that is capable of developing concepts to be used in behavioral mapping and value formulation. We quite literally are our brains, we just have other structures that correspond with it that comprise our entire system of sytems. A catena, of sorts. An interdependent system of systems with central control center that we call Human. As far as replication is concerned, this is true, we are replaced by cells with the same information contained in their DNA and different atoms, but those processes transfer over from one another. Theseus' ship is a good question to pose regarding humans, but the answer actually quite simple: no, we are not the same physical entity as previously seen in years prior, but yes all of the information contained in that matter has been transfered over to include one's thoughts, memories, behavioral inclination, and so forth. Theseus' ship, althought good philosophical exercise, does not apply to the human growth and regulatory cycle, as we are not mere matter, but living, self-perpetuating matter. Theseus' ship is broken by biology.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
It means that the function of consciousness has been instantiated within you to build concepts around data that the brain can use to inform future behaviors in association with experiential outcomes, and the values built over time through those networking experiences, memories, outcomes, and the emotions by which they are reinforced. No, information is not isomorphic for the human, information is ditributed across numerous domains of neural structures and cognition for analysis and integration. And as such, that data is never processed by two people at once in the same manner. I invite you, kindly, to look up some studies on neuroeconomics, the stuff will blow you away.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
By "two value logic of correspondence definitions of truth that people utilize to support claims such as "a person is a brain," only work if there is someone to measure the correspondence." Do you mean to say correspondence is somehow negated by conducting research that..... builds correspondence? And another thing I might ask, because most people I know have never considered it: have you ever considered the idea that correspondence theory and coherence theory are not mutually exclusive, but mutually necessary? I ask because you seem to be under the impression that I've confined myself to one framework.
I think it's significant that Christianity as a religion is in great part the creation of a man who never knew Jesus, and who disagreed with James the Just, said to be one of the brothers of Jesus, in many respects.
They were first and foremost, Christians, and then they began concerning themselves with doctrinal issues, if at all.
First comes a generalized religious/spiritual identity, and then, if at all, a look at the doctrinal tenets of said religion/spirituality.
I think it does. But they go to such great lengths in their efforts to make of Christianity what they want it to be, what they find to be intellectually acceptable, that Jesus, as portrayed in Scripture, seems less and less recognizable.
I am reading "God: An Anatomy"
https://www.amazon.com/God-Anatomy-Francesca-Stavrakopoulou-ebook/dp/B08XB6JHQT/ref=sr_1_1?gclid=CjwKCAiA6Y2QBhAtEiwAGHybPZIObGlgCxmcjvsgjv3KuzVTFx7qS3i28pvBXlw_xwM3s9SLoR4BXRoCWi8QAvD_BwE&hvadid=526980182549&hvdev=c&hvlocphy=9011457&hvnetw=g&hvqmt=e&hvrand=16822304529601009289&hvtargid=kwd-1232133270691&hydadcr=7500_9612629&keywords=god+an+anatomy&qid=1644422251&sr=8-1
It is in line with what you say. Of course not everyone agrees with her, but even her critics cannot dismiss her scholarship.
Is the claim here that information in brains can't be replicated in the way that information in MP3s or DNA can because it is more complex?
I'm not sure if that appeal to complexity gets you very far. You're still talking about classical information, and classical information doesn't have a cap on complexity wherein it loses its isomorphic properties at a given scale (it only does so for practical purposes vis-á-vis applied science), only issues with incomputability.
Your example also doesn't seem unique to humans. A computer doesn't go through the exact same physical processes every time it completes a the same task. RAM and processor use will be different. Hard drive memory is more consistent than animal memory, but the physical location of stored memory relative to the whole system does change fairly regularly. Everytime you move a file, the index used to access it changes. Duplication will change the physical composition of the file. Defraging will move around the physical locations of storage all over the place. The same thing is true, different things are happening every time the same jpeg is loaded, but I think it's fair to say that it is the same picture in certain terms.
Nor are other networks particularly less complex than a brain. The Big Four tech companies store 1,200 petabytes of information on the internet versus around 2.5 petabytes per brain. Total computation per second is orders of magnitude higher. Human brains drive those computations, adding more complexity. Cloud hosting would be similar to your example in that the same exact process is never occuring in two places at once, and of course the human brain is part of the network.
Which is just an example, the bigger issue is why the laws of information science/physics vis-á-vis information would be different in a nervous system.
I wasn't assuming anything on the epistemological front, just listing other common objections to "people are brains," that I feel are less fruitful because they tend to become debates over ontology.
The Jesus Freaks were a thing. They may still be around. I think they even called themselves "Jesus Freaks." Even Elton John referred to them in Tiny Dancer ("Jesus freaks, Out in the street,
Handing tickets out for God"), so they must have existed.
There is nothing in the empty void except that which we bring with us.
We have nothing to fear but fear itself. etc, etc.
All the horrible experiences the human race has memorialised since our civilisations began have surely screamed at us their main message:
THERE ARE NO GODS TO HELP YOU! HELP YOURSELVES OR PERISH!
We must accept this and build a fair, global civilisation with economic equality for all or perish as bad stewards of Earth.
Another species will emerge in time on Earth, if we cannot correct the historical
errors, which have led to our currently dangerous predicament.
I'm ashamed to admit I thought, for a very brief but delightful moment, you were referring to "Doris Day."
All we can do, is ask others to study this stuff. Perhaps we might even scream it from the pulpits of the internet and help move our species forward and out of the theistic fog and the fog of nasty political systems which only benefit and maintain a few rich and powerful demagogs who seem determined to destroy all of us without the acceptance that they will also be destroyed.
I don't see an issue here. Nietzsche's sister wanted to read her antisemitism and racialist theories into Nietzsche, but she clearly misunderstood him. Kaufman has great insights on Nietzsche writing a century later.
It's an issue for people embracing Sola Scriptura and denying contradictions in the Bible. They seem to not get that Jesus could have written a book. He could have issued systematic theology. He did not. Which to me would suggest that if you're a Christian, the logical conclusion is that God created different narratives that work on multiple interlocking levels of allegory to communicate to different people with different personalities and abilities. But that's just me.
It's their religion, they can do with it whatever they want.
No, more the structure of how data is actually integrated and anaylized, prioritized and distributed, and how that informs both your desires, and your disinterests, which ultimately govern your actions.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
This sentence is a very strange way to make an appeal to complexity fallacy. I didn't appeal to complexity, I said you relegating its complexity to mere matter is absurd, which it is. This is an appeal to complexity, your entire statement is predicated on it: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/logicalfallacies/Appeal-to-Complexity
It doesn't matter if you understand what I'm saying, or can only liken it to computer files, which the human mind created, the fact is the human brain is not mere matter, but as I described, which is concurrent with cognitive neuroscience today.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
They are a billion times more complex. Nobody on this site has time to convey this to you. The brain uses computing processes beyond anything we could ever imagine building right now, between chemicals, electrical functions, electromagnetic waves, and 86 billion neurons. You're completely off the mark on this. i implore you, as a fellow philosopher, go get aqcuainted with modern cog-neruoscience, you needs this information to inform your conclusions.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Gotcha. Yeah, it's not my interest, except for simply functionality and nature, beyond that it doesn't seem productive, philosophically.
Well, Christian propaganda, more likely. As Christianity spread, it was prudent for Christians to make the Jews the villains rather than the Romans.
Quoting universeness
He became a kind of pet of the Flavians, true. I'm not sure about him writing the Gospels and inventing Jesus, though. I'd be surprised if Tacitus used him as a source for his comments about "Christus" and his death at the hands of Pontius Pilatus. But, who knows? At least we got some confirmation of the existence of Pontius Pilatus when the so-called "Pilate Stone" was discovered. Sadly, I can never think of him without recalling Michael Palin's portrayal in The Life of Brian.
According to the web, Jesus would have been known in as Yeshua Ben Yussuf; Jesus - son of Joseph; which was a common name when he lived. Christ was not his name, it was the designation he gave himself.
Yes, even change it, or ignore it, as I think they did.
I'm not sure how that's the logical conclusion, but it certainly might be a way of making Scripture "one size fits all" if that's what you want it to be.
Massively, and I suspect willfully, misses the point. You have to think better about this: explain how it is that your material reduction of a person to brain activity escapes as a reduction itself, the same reduction? Observe the computer that sits before you: What are you experiencing, neuronal activity? How is neuronal activity experience as a computer? How does, a "computer" get inside this matrix of activity and make you aware of it? What is there in this relation you have with something that is out there beyond "you" that makes for the necessary EPISTEMIC connection? How does causal account in this relation translate into an epistemic account?
My guess is that you don't even know these issues exist. Rather typical.
Quoting Garrett Travers
By all means do some writings, but you will have to write about how this "the only one we ever know to exist" sits with phenomenological thinking. You likely think science is foundational, but this is because you have never read any continental philosophy.
Quoting Garrett Travers
A function of the brain? True. But to call it this is to give interpretation that is outside of the interpretative context of pain as such, as it stands before waking experience. We live in a world of possibilities, and among these events as brain functions is just one.
Look no further for a neuroscientific account for this. Not that this has no value for, say the treatment of schizophrenia or other disorders, but it has limited philosophical use. this is why Rorty, e.g., straddled the fence, putting Heidegger among the three greatest philosophers of the past century. Rorty was something of a pariah in analytic philosophy, but this was because he knew the problems that were being ignored. He once succinctly put it: " No one can explain how anything "out there" gets "in here." He knew Heidegger was right. Scienctific account need to be seen AS account in unison or contradiction with others, but in essence a "regionalized" thinking that has its own ontic place and relevance.
Look, don't inundate me with anything. I don't have the time. But make your point. And spare me the threat of your awesomeness. But thank you for that all the same. It did give me occasion to smile.
There is a fundamental tension in religion. On the one hand, there is the belief in immutability, and on the other, the historical evidence of continued change.
Christianity prior to the hegemony of the Church Fathers was without official doctrines. It was an "inspired" (the indwelling of spirit) religion. But even the attempt to establish the inalterable truth met with change from the very beginning. Rather than "the rock" on which the Church was built, it has been shifting sand.
So this structure makes the information different from information held in other systems? Is the argument that this change is an emergent phenomena only of nervous systems, or complexity in general?
Ironically, I have a degree in neuroscience. Perhaps I chose a bad example. My point was that the internet, a system joining billions of human brains, has those properties you appeared to ascribe to being unique to nervous systems in a system that, as a whole, holds more information and processes more computations.
It's a bit aside the point because there are loads of things nervous systems can do that human built devices can't, but having 86 billion neurons doesn't necissarily mean much in terms of nervous systems being unique (and I agree they are unique). The fastest super computer processes about 4,500 times as many computations as a human brain per second. There is a hard limit on the amount of information you can store in a given volume, since additional energy will result in a black hole, and its many orders of magnitude above that of a human brain. Black holes and super computers aren't self aware though. If various measures of complexity or computational power were directly tied to sentience, we wouldn't have the Hard Problem.
Maybe you meant this another way, but the claim that the human brain is not matter, not physical, is simply not a mainstream claim in neuroscience. The claim that it can't be explained solely by recourse to physics is common enough, but this in no way posits that physics works differently in relation to nervous systems.
If physical forces aren't the only thing at work in the brain (merely matter), what is it that makes it different? Some sort of Cartesian mind substance? Extra-physical forces?
But this is putting it all in a dismissive narrative about how all is lost and it is just up to us, and so forth. \
The matter gets interesting only when we examine what is there, in the ethical nihilism as a rejection of something. What is rejected, exactly? It is that there is an ethical foundation that lies in the deepest analysis of ethicality itself. What does this come to? One has to look at a given ethical problem, the anatomy of an ethical problem qua problem. This goes to the concrete circumstances of our prohibitions against causing others suffering through the many ways this can be achieved. At root, it is the pain itself, and the joy and pleasure: these rise to the surface of the discussion, for these are these existential foundations of ethics.
The question then is, what is pain? What is pleasure? What is falling in love? Being tortured?
A serious analysis of religion BEGINS here.
Do you have specific examples; a compare and contrast? I don't disagree, but the complaint seems a bit vague.
Quoting T Clark
Thanks.
Right, forgot an important caveat, it should be "if you're a Christian who believes the entire Bible is divinely inspired and accepts Sola Scriptura," then its logical. You need the premise that the Bible is the sole source of doctrine and that it is inspired for it to follow. Obviously Christians could also claim that the wrong books made it into the Bible, or that Satan edited them to create disagreements if they don't hold the Bible as fully inspired, or they could rely on tradition to solve discrepancies if they don't hold Protestant Sola, as the Catholic and Orthodox churches do. Non-Christians have none of these issues of course.
Tacitus suggested time was 56 AD - 120 AD
Josephus suggested time was 37 AD - 100 AD
I don't normally use AD and prefer BCE but based on the above, they may well have been contemporaries.
Quoting Ciceronianus
Joe Atwill and others do not claim he wrote the gospels and he invented Jesus, they claim he was likely involved in such along with many others. I think the current main suspect for writing the gospel of mark is the Egyptian, very powerful and very rich, Marcus Alexander.
A small intro to him is:
Marcus Julius Alexander, the son of Alexander the Alabarch and brother of Tiberius Julius Alexander, was a distinguished and wealthy Alexandrian Jewish merchant
Atwill's book Caesars Messiah is based on 10 years of research. I am not convinced by all he has written in this book but I certainly found his general thesis compelling.
Of brains, as far as I know, yes. The result of 3.5 billion years of evolution selceting for the pinnacle predator, instead producing the source of morality and of self-recognition as functions of its brain. Meaning, the natural ethical machine that is consciousness, is in fact the what characterizes us as the pinnacle predator; yes I am saying pinnacle, not apex. The computation of brains is multifarious, not predicated on simple binary code, or basic, or anything like that. Chemical, electrical, electromagnetic, structural, processing in a network of billions of pathways. It's quite genuinely unbelievable. I contend that if we as a species can grasp what I'm discussiong with you, the nature of what we know to be ethics has the potential be altered forever in a way that is grounded in science, nature, and human cognition. The objective anchor that we've needed since Dostoevsky and Nietszche announced the death of God. I think this is that anchor.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Even those computers that can do more than what we can were created to do so by us, and can only achieve within the domains that we programmed to operate within. Furthermore, we still cannot produce A.I., general or otherwise, because of how advanced our brains are as opposed to our creations, which wasn't something developers expected to be confronted by. Computers like what you're describing lack all of the other functionality that the brain allows for, including awareness of self and concept creation, they are resticted to those functions. It isn't about speed, it is about the symphony of functions of the brain, all in network.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
Exactly.
Quoting Count Timothy von Icarus
No. There is no mind substance. I'm going to use a computer example just to illustrate, not to conflate, only to compare loosely to the concept I'm telling you abour. Computers have motherboards. On these motherboards, one can see with the naked eye all of its terminals, cpu, heatsinks, transformers, and best of all for this example, the curcuits. Now, you hit power to boot up, and as long as all those curcuits are connected, and all of the structures are intact, the computer boots up and you have an interlocking system of structures working together in tandem to provide your computers with all of its functions, powered by the curcuit. If, by chance, you were to take a needle, or a razor, and cut even one of those curcuits, the whole system shuts off. The structures remain intact, but without function any longer. Consider this when thinking about what the brain does, and how it produces what it produces, namely consciousness and concept generation. What makes it different is that it is a network of structures developed by genetics to operate as a whole. With humans, enough energy was able to be allocated for the development necessary to allow that system to apprehend the world it occupied with its senses. That is the basic gist of it. Want me to elaborate more on this?
Maybe true, but there were many others who also claimed such titles:
Dositheos the Samaritan, Simon bar Kokhba, Sabbatai Zevi, Simon the magician and that's before we look at all the other known leaders of the Sicari in the Ist and 2nd century CE. Most of them named, Jesus, Simon, Peter, John, Eleasar(probably the biblical Lazarus)
Even the first name of Barabbas was Jesus. In Hebrew, Bar means 'son of' and 'abba' means 'father.'
So the character Barabbas in the bible was a mockery/parody of Jesus son of the father.
I need a term that means less than "atheist" and more than "not a believer". "Agnostic" isn't it. "Atheism" is too loaded. "Agnostic" is too wishy-washy. "Not a believer" could mean 'not yet', 'not now', or 'not interested'. I am interested, and I was a believer, but I am not now. I have not achieved closure, which is a frequent annoyance. I don't like "spiritual", which sounds lame. (It's lame the way some people use the term, announcing that "we are not into church, we are spiritual". "Spiritual", unlike 'atheism' which is too loaded, isn't loaded enough.
"Church people" are all over the place, one finds. (Surveys have found this too.). Some active church members are devout creedal believers. Some active church members don't check all of the boxes as they say the creed. Some check only a few--maybe "God the Father". Some, a few, don't check any of the boxes--and are still active church members--just not creedal believers. Decreeded? Creedless Believers?
A name not mentioned in the bible at all!
Anything that is a threat is a lie, though.
Have you painted yourself into a misanthropic corner? Because non-Christians are no better
I understand the majority of what you state here from the individual meanings of the words you use and the context within which you use them but I am not so interested in this type of analysis. It is a very valid analysis I'm sure and certainly belongs on this forum, more than my approach does but I would refer you to members like Garrett Travers or fooloso4 to name but a few, for better feedback on the points you raise, than any that I can offer you.
Dorothy enters the shabby dining room of the Catholic Worker House of Hospitality in a full-skirted pastel dress with cuffed short sleeves singing Que Sera Sera.
Well, many people use this fact as evidence that the jews could not have written the gospels.
Why were the Gospels written in Greek? Perhaps because this was one of the main languages used in Rome and was used by the Flavians the Alexanders and the Herods.
As you say why are the Gospels not in Hebrew or Aramaic?
The dead sea scrolls are in Hebrew so why not the gospels?
Impressive. An honest answer. At any rate, if some time in the future you want to look analytically at nihilism, check out Wittgenstein's Lecture on Ethics. Perhaps Husserl's Ideas I. they don't talk about ethical nihilism, but they do give al discussion about foundations.
:up:
Why is that relevant?
Quoting universeness
Yeshua is Hebrew. Translated through Greek to English it became Jesus.
Why is not relevant?
who do you believe was the true Jewish Messiah, prophesied in the old testament from the list available? I choose none of them, including the fabled Jesus Christ.
Quoting T Clark
This makes your original point meaningless as the gospels were written in Greek so the character's name in Hebrew is not relevant to the gospels. Barabbas on the other hand is not a Greek name but it does have meaning in Hebrew.
Another point you should consider is that Ben Yussuf goes against the immaculate conception claim.
If the virgin birth is true then calling the character 'son of Joseph.' would be incorrect.
I don't understand your need to vehemently attack all angles of the Christian myth. It's seems to be an unbalanced position; a weird obsession. Of course, I've seen it a thousand times; nothing new.
Well, I disagree with your analysis of me and I am sure if I knew more about you, I would find some of your positions 'unbalanced' and 'weird' and 'obsessive,' and others would agree with me and others would agree with you and.......who would prove correct in the end, would depend on consequence.
It has been ever thus. We all have our dissenters, who cares?
Quoting universeness
I don't see why the fact that others had claimed to be the Messiah is relevant. Also, my post was a response to this from you:
Quoting T Clark
I'm not Christian and I don't have strong feelings either way. But the statement from your post is not correct. That says nothing about the divinity or historicity of Jesus Christ.
Quoting universeness
Information I found on the web indicates the King James version of the Bible was a translation from Hebrew and Greek sources.
Quoting universeness
We're not talking about immaculate conception, we're talking about the historicity of Jesus.
I'm not a theist, but the level of hatred for religion I see here on the forum bothers me. I think it calls into question the forum's claim of support for human rights and freedom of expression.
Ok, You don't, I do.
Quoting T Clark
Yes it is and yes it does. If you want a panto exchange then I can provide one for you until I get bored doing so. You just make statements you offer no reasoning worth rebuttle.
Quoting T Clark
I have already told you that the oldest manuscripts of the gospels are in Greek.
[joke] @Noble Dust's positions aren't unbalanced, weird, or obsessive, but he himself is.[/joke]
seems like you know him better than I.
I agree with @Noble Dust's evaluation:
Quoting Noble Dust
I agree with you and largely abstain from jumping in the ring.
I feel seen... :yikes:
I have debated many theists. I cannot speak for others but I have never been accused by any of them as having a 'hatred for religion.' I argue against the 'lack of evidence,' for the claims preached in religious doctrine. I also suggest that it is a pernicious act to use such unreliable data as the basis of a moral code or for informing political or social policy. I understand the comfort some individuals get from the idea of god but I will protest vehemently against those who manipulate such human fear to line their own pockets. It may be fair to accuse me of hating those who abuse people by stealth using religion as their main tool but accusing me of hating religion or theists would be wrong. As I said I am only speaking for myself.
Beyond doubt, Genesis borrows heavily from Summerian myths. The books of the OT are human inventions mixed with plagiarism. The whole monotheist thing could therefore be called a pagan hoax right from the start, if you judge by its history.
:rofl: Please try not to be so infantile. Put your big boy trousers on and then you will perhaps understand that not everyone on this forum cares very much about who you agree with. I for one, certainly don't.
Yes, I agree!
I can only judge by what I've seen here on the forum.
Quoting universeness
You sure seem to care.
Oh, I try my best not to give up on anyone, including you. Unless I am sure there is no space left to move within.
Just trying to help.
Ditto!
To me, the guy Jesus seems one of the best to come out of that tradition. He was certainly not the worst Jewish prophet ever. And to my mind, the Greco-Roman world did need a little injection of Semitic wisdom, which they got through him...
This little injection almost destroyed the Roman empire, as per Gibbon.
Bart being anti-theist has no bearing on my point. We were talking about how he views Jesus the man and I have seen most of Dr Ehrman's recent interviews (January 2022) wherein he maintains exactly the same position.
The most current views on Jesus (even from secular sources) is that he was a teacher of some kind who inspired some big myths. In fact over the past 50 years until now there has been a gradual consensus emerging that the mythicist view is very hard to justify.
I think this is what annoys me; the irony of a sort of fundamentalist proselytizing against the Christian myth.
I agreed with T Clark but this isn’t my position. I’ve read and continue to explore the literature myself. There’s a difference between a balanced, measured scholarship, and a mania resembling fundamentalism.
I’m not quite at the same point as you, but I know what you’re saying. None of the big three feel right, but I’m the closest to theism, without getting off track and going into detail. There’s a lot of malleability to these terms anyway.
Well this thread is titled 'Jesus Freaks,' not 'Please fill in your chosen Messianic character freaks.'
So my main focus for this thread has been Jesus.
As to your second point, I can only disagree and say that I think the influence of Christianity on Western Culture and the actions it performed 'in the name of' has been devastating.
Like all other corruptions, the Roman Empire was doomed as all such manifestations are for a myriad of reasons but they don't really fully die as long as their main tenets survive. The legacy of the Roman Empire is alive and doing well, in the guise of the Vatican.
The Roman empire was soon replaced by variants. Today we have the American empire, The Russian empire, The Chinese empire and various other smaller empire's within Europe etc. Some or all of these will probably object to the name empire but I don't see enough difference to call them something less emotive.
It is certainly possible to have a reasonable and civil discussion about the historical accuracy of the Bible, but you generally won't find that here on the forum. I agree with Noble Dust:
Quoting Noble Dust
Fire is fought with fire.
Good point
Is it?
Yes, that's true and it's why I posted a correction on him. I have not heard him state that he believes that the Jesus Christ described in the bible, never existed. He may well have been based on a human teacher-like character. As you say, many people think so, Including many atheists.
There is no proof however. I have no problem with Jesus the man, the teacher, even the mystic whose life was used as the base mold for the Jesus portrayed in the gospels but none of the supernatural piffle happened and the majority, if not all of the narratives he spoke in the gospels were invented by others.
I am sure there were thousands of people called Jesus during the time, the version in the gospels is placed, some of whom may well have been teachers of some repute.
So they say they are sooo speshal and they have the most powerful entity in the Universe on their side and they will go to heaven, happy forever, while the rest of us will suffer in hell, doomed. Okay then, if God is with them, who can be against them, right?
What is regarded as hateful, rightly so in my atheist opinion, is the Jesus myth theory -- or absence of theory to be precise, see below. It is a set of conspiracy theories not based on facts. So what are they based on?
What are semi-obsessive conspiracy theories usually based on, if not some form of irrational hatred or another? This is what I see here in @universeness: a prejudice.
Almost all scholars specialist of the era -- believers and non believers alike -- agree that it is far more probable that an actual historical predicator called Yeshua was at the onset of the stories written about "Jesus Christ", than otherwise.
And what is this "otherwise"? What is the mythicist theory of what actually happened at the onset of what will later be called the Christian era? Who (according to the mythicists) invented the Jesus myth, and wrote the Gospels and the Acts out of sheer imagination?
To me, that's where the debate becomes really interesting. What's the rival theory?
Mythicists often don't have one, and when they do, they don't agree with one another. And no particular candidate for authorship can withstand analysis. Why, the Gospels are diverse, contradicting each other. They are embarrassing for Jesus in many ways, not least in showing him executed by the state like a criminal. Stylistically, they are written in shabby Greek laden here and there with Aramean. None of the obvious suspects, generally reputed Greek writers, could reasonably have authored something as crude and foreign (from their viewpoint) as a synoptic gospel...
Jesus is not so easily buried.
I’m not sure what your point is. All I know is Fight Fire With Fire is a Kansas song.
Again, I don't accept that I am doing what you suggest. I am airing and exemplifying work done by individuals who are well qualified in the field and have researched the area and absolutely disagree with the claims made by Christian theists. I don't think your annoyance level should interfere with other people being allowed to hear rebuttals against the Christian claims.
They may have been. As I said, though, I don't see Tacitus relying on any work by Josephus for the little he (Tacitus) writes about the person known as Christus. Why would he? He wasn't particularly fond of any emperor, and certainly not Domitian or the Flavians in general. I doubt he'd look to their favorite as a source.
I haven't read Atwill. Those Alexandrians certainly were a busy bunch, weren't they? Both Jews and Greeks.
I can picture it! Imagine Rock Hudson working there when she arrives.
I wonder what his means.
Okay so you've been addressing the paucity of evidence in favour of Moses' historicity on some other thread. Understood.
Quoting universeness
Really? How do you know that those very same crimes wouldn't have been committed in the name of Jupiter or some other god, had not the Jesus character been invented by Josephus as you claim?
Stalin did not need a god to kill millions. Attila was not a saint either...
Maybe, I think knowing the mind of Tacitus or what his motivations were or why he did this or that can only be pure conjecture. But in the absence of proof, all we can do is turn to our own interpretation/opinion based on what we do know or have read about. Hopefully we remain willing to change position when any new stronger evidence is discovered and we don't simply ossify on even deeply held and treasured belief.
One problem is that a balanced, measured response can be too quickly labeled an attack. It has happened to me. Ehrman has been mentioned a few times. He has been slandered by some who are made uncomfortable by him. The situation is analogous to politics, where you have to be clearly with us or against us. I have been criticised for being and atheist and criticised for being a theist. It seems as though a decision is made as to which side you are on and what you say is the evaluated in that light.
A degree of interpretive freedom is not necessarily relativism.
It was a mess, or stew, certainly. It's unfortunate it turned out as it did. I like to speculate how Christianity would have turned out if, for example, the Arian view had triumphed, or if Pelagius had been preferred over Augustine. Possibly, much of the effort spent in trying to treat Jesus as one in being with the Father may have been avoided. I think the acceptance of that belief is one of the reasons it became so difficult to accept the Jesus of the Gospels.
That's why they say that one shouldn't talk about religion and politics in polite society. Add philosophy to that.
If you want polite society, ditch talk of religion, politics, and philosophy.
Far too much of antiquity is lost to us, unfortunately.
You granted me no such freedom.
Why unfortunately? We can fight, too.
I cant and if what you suggest was actually the case then I would be discussing the crimes humans have commited, in the name of 'Jupiter or some other god,' and I would still be advocating that the human race has to rid itself of such fables.
I did not claim the Jesus character was invented by Josephus alone.
Quoting Olivier5
Two wrongs don't make a right. The fact that I complain about those slaughtered in the name of God does not mean I excuse non-theistic reasons for slaughtering millions of people either. It's a bizarre projection to suggest.
:up:
Well, there's a lot I'd like to know that I think can't be recovered, so it may be just my own frustration and disappointment. I'd like to know better what the world was like before Christianity "triumphed."
A distinction should be made between the myth (in the modern sense of falsehood) that Jesus ever existed and the myth (in the ancient sense of a story with meaning and significance that goes beyond what is evident in bare facts). I see no reason to question the existence of Jesus but many reasons to question the existence of "the Christ".
Isn’t the point of ridding the human race of religious “fables” presumably to eradicate the types of suffering and injustice they’ve caused? Why pursue this when non-religious institutions result in the same atrocities? It’s no bizarre projection.
What do you think things may have looked like? In what ways do you think things might have been different?
The point of bringing in Stalin and Attila was to show that man never needed a theological excuse to kill man. Atheist regimes such as China are not less brutal than theocracies. Whether a god or another or none altogether is invoked by the murderers makes no difference to their victims.
Why of course. And that is a more interesting question about history, than the existence of Jesus. The question being (among others), how do you make a god out of a man, who most probably never ever wanted to be seen as a god?
So are you saying that you just can't conceive of a society built and maintained by human beings within which millions of people are not slaughtered in the name of theistic doctrines or non-theistic dictatorial/totalitarian/aristocratic/monarchistic/autocratic systems?
If you do hold such dystopian views and see no hope for the future of the human race then you might just as well count yourself amongst the antinatalists.
I hope you do have hope for a better future for us.
I’m saying none of that.
So let's campaign against both and advocate for something better!
Well, I suppose there is some use in knowing what you are not saying.
I agree. I don't have any money on this table. I'm not a theist, much less a Christian, but I think the way religion in general and Christianity in particular are addressed here on the forum is disrespectful and contemptuous. Often vehemence takes the place of reason. That includes parts of this discussion.
I have hope that there must be a simpler way to come to terms with one's Christian past than figuring out what the world was like before Christianity "triumphed."
Let me advocate, then, for indifference to religion in political matters and vice versa for religious institutions and theologians to leave politics alone. Or like one of my favorite itinerant preachers once put it: to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, to God what belongs to God.
It's hard to say. I think it's particularly hard to say how pagan religion would have developed, or even what it was like. I'm intrigued by the pagan mystery religions, particularly the cult of Mithras. We know very little of them except through Christian writers, who were antagonistic. We have some idea of certain of the practices of initiates of Isis from the perspective of non-Christians (through Apuleius). Beyond the remaining Mithraeums which provide some evidence, and some graffiti found it them, we have nothing from pagans describing the beliefs and rituals of its initiates. This may be because of oaths of secrecy which were very well kept, or because any records were destroyed. Early Christians found Mithraism particularly annoying as, according to them, it mimicked Christian rituals.
The Roman Empire was largely tolerant of the religious beliefs of its various peoples. It's persecution of Christians was nowhere near as extensive or prevalent as has been believed, and its annihilation of the Jewish state was more for political reasons than any religious reason. Rome didn't tolerate any challenge to its authority. The Romans were ruthless in the suppression of any perceived or actual danger (as in the case of Carthage as well as Judea),
Christianity was intolerant, however, and when it assimilated the Roman state, and the Empire became the Christian Roman Empire, pagan religion and culture was gradually extinguished. It was a slow process. Theodosius commencing in 381 C.E. outlawed pagan religious practices, branded as criminals those magistrates would wouldn't enforce anti-pagan laws, closed and destroyed temples, abolished pagan holidays, prohibited visits to temples, probably ended the Olympic Games; there was persecution of pagans before Theodosius I, but he really got things rolling. It was Justinian who finally closed the schools of philosophy in Athens.
In short, a way of living ended, and only one way of living was allowed.
I don't know how we come to terms with our Christian past, or if we can. Perhaps it's something like Original Sin is said to be, and is an unending proclivity of some kind.
Or more precisely and tragically: thousands of local cults and religious traditions ended, and only one cult and tradition was allowed.
I guess that was part of the plan: it was all managed as some grand administrative simplification in empire management. One empire, one emperor, one god. Saves a lot of sesterces and trouble.
At least SOME uniformity of creed had been sought by successive emperors for a long time. Sol Invictus was the main candidate for the role before the Constantine family took power. One of these late empire religious innovations like Mithra, it was originally a Syrian god who was actively promoted by emperor Aurelian as an official religion, alongside the traditional Roman cults, and as the main cult in his armies.
The legions of course were the source of the emperor's power. It was particularly important to limit religious heterogeneity in the legions. You have to know to which sodding gods you sacrifice a bull before the battle...
They were on the look out for something like this.
One big difference between the gospel of Thomas and the other versions is that in Thomas, the kingdom of heaven is said to have come into existence and that most of us are too distracted to notice the change. That message is starkly at odds with those waiting for the end of "this cosmos."
One of those options became doctrine while the other option was thoroughly erased from memory (except for the bits left in buried pottery).
So, is the will to erase exhibited here related to the views of the winners of these barely seen conflicts or the result of politics, where some win and some lose and so it goes?
It's possibly because of the claim that Christ was the Word incarnate; the one true Son of God, and that he literally died for our sins. No such claims are made about the other figures you mentioned.
There was a recent discovery of some writings circa 381 CE. A discussion that appears to have taken place on something translated as "The Philosophy Forum". Some participants who called themselves Mithraeums were complaining the Christian members of hate fueled attacks on them. There was also accusations of a "war on Mithramas" and allegations that they would forbid saying "merry Mithramas".
Just goes to show how little things change.
Jesus would have been horrified to learn that he had been deified and the Son made the same ousia as God the Father.
Caesar had proclaimed himself a god. It was not such a stretch for gentile followers of Jesus to make him a god. The "king of the Jews" was not simply a matter of religion, which was often broadly tolerated, but of political power and authority.
They existed; they were here in Australia in the early seventies; I'm not sure they referred to themselves as "Jesus Freaks", but they were certainly referred to here as such. I'm not sure if they were the same, but there were also the Children of God.
That claim is not without controversy. It is true that the earliest surviving gospels are in Greek, but there is also purported to be evidence that earlier copies in Aramaic or Hebrew were the originals. The Old Testament was, for the most part, written in Hebrew with the excepted parts in Aramaic.
The Gnostic Valentinus came within a few votes of being elected Bishop of Rome.
By this token, all the pharaohs ought to be historically suspect...
I think the reason why this kind of negationist argument tends to focus on Jesus is simply his historical importance at the root of the most popular religion on earth. They are trying to kill the father, à la Freud.
Such would be an 'assist,' an improvement on the status quo, in many countries. Although every citizen must be attentive to political matters regardless of their theological leanings.
Quoting Olivier5
This I don't agree with as Caesar was a tyrant and a butcher and a criminal and does not deserve to be given anything.
If God does not exist then your suggestion is moot.
If it does exist then it must explain its horrific abuse of its own creation.
But there are always such claims. As soon as someone produces an authenticated copy of the gospels, dated to a time before the Greek manuscripts and they are written in Aramaic or Hebrew. I will react accordingly. I think the Romans destroyed all Jewish literature before the Greek gospels were invented so as to remove all evidence that countered the content of their Gospels. According to Atwill, even the term Gospel in Rome meant 'good news of great victory,'
I think that's why the dead sea scrolls were found hidden in a cave in the desert, because the Romans were teaching future despotic regimes the important tactic of book burning.
Politics are inherently dirty. Power forces you to do horrible things. E.g. Obama was a butcher and a criminal too: he killed many innocents with his policy of assassinating terrorist leaders. And yet we (at least I) forgive him, because we know that's part of the job.
A point Jesus made several times is that one cannot expect a king to behave honestly and morally. That is just an unrealistic expectation. This includes (I guess) the warrior messiah figure hoped for by many Jews at the time. Any such warrior messiah would have been just another butcher. Same old same old.
This is a pretty radical stance about the amorality of politics, but confirmed by Machiaveli. Politicians cannot possibly apply conventional individual ethics, their job is far more complicated than that.
If you don't give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, he might just take it, willy nilly... Sorry but taxation cannot be made optional.
The zealots who revolted against Rome a generation after Jesus ended up killing many many Jews and burning the Temple. They thought they were pure but in fact, they were just mass murderers of their own folks.
So the separation between church and state is also desirable because one cannot judge a king with the same moral standards used to judge day to day activities. A king is always amoral, if he is a real king.
God of course is even higher above the law than any king. If He exists and intervenes in human history, my guess is He must have killed a lot of innocent people... But then, his job is even more complicated than Obama's.
I recognise the issues you describe but I don't agree with your conclusions.
The dilemmas you describe all happen because we got human interaction all wrong from the beginning.
This is the lesson we must learn.
We came out of a 'law of the jungle' situation and tried to create a better way.
Many individual humans started to work together for their common good.
But we could not maintain the harmony, the lessons, fears, traumas we experienced in the wild were too strong. So we were more driven by antagonism towards others compared to maintaining harmonious relationships.
We progressed mainly through chaos. Destroy and conquer and then rebuild better, stronger.
But we have learned since that this approach causes the imbalances you describe.
We cant change the past but we can do things differently in the future.
I want to focus on creating a better future. I don't want to ossify because of our 10000 years of tears and bloody slaughter.
No more kings, gods, rich, poor, nations, tribes, ethnicity, cultural divide, money, etc
One species on one planet, looking out towards the vastness of space, developing the technology needed to leave the nest we call Earth.
This must be our approach or we deserve to perish and the Earth will hopefully, eventually produce another sentient species who will take over our stewardship.
The Earth is perfectly capable of surviving us, as it did the dinosaurs.
Good luck with that.
Thanks, will you do your best to help?
The state usually makes only a rather mediocre effort in anything, hence the result of the state and the church being together is that secularization is rampant. At least in the West (as there is no religious police around).
Americans are religious because the various churches don't belong to the state and they have to compete for members. But when the church is part of the state and gets tax revenue, it doesn't have to compete. It basically rests on it's laurels. So anyone who wants atheism, agnosticism and overall secularization to advance should promote state religion and the church being part of the state.
Also, I am appreciative of cultural diversity, and would NOT like to contribute to an effort to erase it. I prefer a messy Darwinian system, with its in-built potential for conflict but creative, evolutive and adaptative, to a uniform, rational, central-command system where everybody is forced to fit the same mold. Because to me, these kinds of grand systems always fail in the long run.
So no, I will not help to try and make a perfect world, but count me in for trying to make it a bit better.
The absence of a religious police implies that the state is leaving people make their own religious choices. The UK is not a theocracy today because it does not sanction unbelievers, in spite of its monarchs having created and headed their own cult in centuries past.
And secularization is not rampant in the UK or in France: while Christian cults are dying of boredom, Islam is rising.
A few of the Emperors after Constantine were Arians--Constantius II and Valens--even though Arian "lost" at the Council of Nicea. The Trinitarian faction ultimately won out around 380 C.E., and that's when the real fun began.
Mention of terms like Messianic has no relevance to my viewpoint. I am advocating teamwork, I never invoke 'hero' concepts as being part of the solution to the problems the human race currently have.
I am advocating practical solutions not 'perfection' or 'utopian' nonsense. These terms are used to distract the determined. They are presented as unobtainable goals.
Quoting Olivier5
I have no problem with cultural diversity but it should never overrule the common good of others.
If you prefer a 'messy Darwinian system,' then that suggests you approve of a 'survival of the fittest,' and a 'chaotic' approach to progress and development which in my opinion, aggravates our problems and is not part of the solution.
'Quoting Olivier5
In my opinion, this is not the most harmful position I have heard of but it is also not going to help much.
You offer sticking plasters for gaping wounds.
The date ultimately chosen for celebration of the birth of Christ was believed to be the birthday of Mithras, and also of the god Sol Invictus. Since nobody actually knew the date of Jesus' birth, it was chosen as the date of his birth as well. "Shepherds watched" while Mithras was born, according to one legend. So, some claim that Christmas is actually Mithras' birthday, and Christian celebrations of that date borrow from the Roman Mithras cult. Of course, Christmas is celebrated close to the time of the Roman Saturnalia, a pagan celebration of the god Saturn over a number of days in December during which gifts were exchanged by people and roles were reversed--slaves treated as masters, that sort of thing.
The early Christians, e.g. Tertullian, thought that demons, knowing of the coming birth of Jesus and what his worship would entail, inspired Mithraists to engage in parodies or mockeries of the eucharist and baptism. It seems that Mithraists took part in a sacred, communal meal of bread and wine. Some reliefs show crosses marking the bread shared in the Mithraic feast.
I don't think we have enough information about the Mithras cult to determine whether or by how long it preceded Christianity, but I think Christianity borrowed significantly from the pagan mystery cults. We see several similarities between Mary and Isis as well. It's an interesting study.
That is precisely your mistake: you consider human death and sufferings as problems in need of a solution. But from God's (or nature's, same idea) POV, these things are solutions to the problems of life. They are part of a self-regulating system. Without death and suffering, life would be next to impossible.
Quoting universeness
That made me laugh. Who could possibly be the "others" in this context? People without a culture? :-) Cultural diversity is not something confined to certain folks and not others.
Quoting universeness
I don't think so. Yours is a naïve messianic attitude longing for some perfect resolution of our contradictions, neglecting the value and dynamic utility of those contradictions.
Sol Invictus was chosen by Aurelian to be the "chief" Roman god. But yes, the last half of the third century C.E. was a tough time for the Empire. There was a good deal of fragmentation and the barbarians were threatening. Aurelian was a great general and mastered the situation, but his reign was short. Diocletian created the Tetrarchy--two chief emperors, each known as Augustus, and junior emperors, called Caesar, administered the East and West. Centralization was important, and unity all-important.
Indeed, the context is that of the crisis of the third century, during which the empire almost exploded. In this context, the smartest emperors kept trying to promote one unique (or integrative) cult in order to forge a more common polity. What the chosen cult happened to be was irrelevant. Mithra, Sol, the cult of the emperor had one commonality: what was sought was unity. Constantinus was just more effective than others in pursuing that goal, hence Christianity as we know it.
A common practice. In large part it is war by other means, the vanquishing of their gods by assimilation. But there is also the tendency to borrow stories and practices that are found to be appealing, and making them our own. The Mithraic iconography of bull, lion head, snake, rock, and radiance can all be found in the religions of far more ancient cultures.
A depressing view that I am glad I don't share. The Universe is vast and has plenty of space and resources for new life.
Quoting Olivier5
Laughter is a very subjective emotion, isn't it? If a culture demands, for example, that women cannot hold positions of authority then that is not conducive with the notion of 'common good,' so it would not be allowed inside or outside of such a culture. Its nothing to do with the culture of others. It is about establishing basic human rights regardless of cultural imperatives.
Quoting Olivier5
I understand your opinion but I think it's nonsense and in my opinion, your opinion makes your views part of our problems and not part of the solution. There is nowhere left to take our exchange so thank you for the exchange.
It's a biological fact that pain evolved as a warning system for animals. The system is universal and complex. It exists for a reason: because it is beneficial for your survival.
So one who sees pain as a fundamental, existential problem is like someone who would complain that a fire siren is too loud, or that the lighthouse beam should be less blinding. But if the lighthouse beam was less intense, sailors could miss it on a foggy night and ground their ship, and if the fire siren was too low, some people wouldn't hear it. These things are alerting you of a possible danger. They NEED to be deranging, blinding or loud for your own good.
This is not a depressing view, it is a realist, science-based view. People who can't feel pain exist; it is a (thankfully rare) genetic condition, and a handicap.
As for death, you've heard of entropy? That's the god of death in thermodynamics, which underpin life as we know it.
You can only self-repair for so long apparently. Especially in the animal kingdom. Animals move, so they have moving parts, which as any engineer will tell you, are parts that erode due to friction forces. Eg the animal's articulations will get old.
The rare cases of apparent eternal life of an organism are observed in plants, eg those that clone themselves forever. Plants have no moving parts, it's comparatively easier (but still quite rare) for them to beat death.
For all we know, the whole universe will probly die sometime very far in the future, in one final collision between super gigantic black holes. It will become, finally, one. One black hole.
How's that for a depressing thought?
But as one of my favorite rabbis once pointed out, unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.
He said that theologically, but it works biologically. Or at least, since it's a biological metaphor, it is evidently meant to make some sense at biological level. And to me it recalls the idea that parents must die for their children to live. If a field of grass or wheat was eternal, it would have no room for new individuals. All the available space would already be taken. For reproduction to kick in (with its significant evolutionary advantages, because children can be different from their parents) there needs to be death. Ecologically speaking, parents need to die to make room for their children to live.
Hey, maybe our universe, in dying billions of years from now, will produce many baby universes too... :-)
l hadn't thought of "render unto Caesar" as another way of saying separation of church and state. That makes sense to me.
I don't know if what you say is true, but it is an interesting way of looking at things.
I went to a Methodist church when I was a kid, but I'm not a member of any religion now. I've never paid much attention to Christian church history. This discussion has been eye-opening and interesting. Your posts in particular have been helpful.
Thanks.
You started a really interesting discussion. Thanks.
You're quite welcome. The subject fascinates me. I think there are still many Christians who don't know aspects of Christianity's history. For example, I know Catholics, or former Catholics, who were surprised to learn Jesus had brothers. I don't remember it ever coming up either. I suppose Holy Mother Church in her wisdom decided it was one of many things her flock shouldn't be told, but I think they could be explained away if needed. They may have been children of the long-suffering Joseph from a prior marriage (he may have been a widower when he married his surprising wife Mary).
Then there are the torch bearers, Cautes and Cautopates, one with torch up, one with torch down. Representing sunrise and sunset? Maybe. And then there are the seven levels of initiates: Corax, Nymphus, Miles, Leo, Perses, Heliodromus and Pater, each with their own symbols. Do they represent the known planets (gods)? Maybe. A curious cult, to which I'm drawn, oddly. Probably was a Pater in a past life.
It is of course a modern interpretation of the saying. His parables have a way of being timeless, maybe due to their simple, real-life setting. They lend themselves to modern reinterpretations quite easily, a plasticity which is part of his appeal I think.
Placed back in its historical context though (since this thread has touched on history), the question he is asked in this episode is what we would today call a wedge issue, revelatory of broader allegiances and positions, divisive, hotly debated. The question is explicitly about taxes raised by the Roman empire: should a law-abiding Jews pay taxes to Caesar? It points to broader attitudes toward the empire, and more generally towards gentilles. Predictably, there were two (rabbinical) schools: the House of Shammai, who was clearly xenophobic as the Torah frequently is, and the House of Hillel, who preached tolerance, friendliness and commerce with gentilles as the most rational and lawful approach.
These two rabbinical houses also argued on plenty other things. Generally Hillel is more easy going in his interpretation of the Law, while Shammai is very strict.
When things heated up, the House of Shammai ended in an alliance with the zealots who warred against Rome, after killing quite a few Hillel-followers, who preached tolerance of the empire, as narrated in the Talmud.
What followed is described in Josephus' War of the Jews. In short, the Roman legions won, after a long and grueling siege of Jerusalem. The last battle was fought for the temple, which burnt as a result. A massacre.
In a pre-war context, the question about Roman taxation is best understood as a wedge issue between the two rival poles of the rabbinical universe at the time: the Houses of Shammai and of Hillel, ie between ultra-nationalists on the one hand and more congenial, outward-looking political realists on the other. And Jesus is coming down on the side of Hillel.
(as he nearly always does; he was aligned on Hillel on most issues)
In his response, I guess he meant something like: "Your money is as impure as Caesar. Money and power are the same thing: they are this world that you need to renounce to become holly. So pay your taxes."
Or in modern parlance: God is not about whether or not you should pay your taxes. You should pay your taxes.
Again, thanks for your input.
I have been reading about the Ugaritic mythology. The influence on the development of Judaism is quite apparent. Here is a quick introduction: "The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan":
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cana/hd_cana.htm#:~:text=Ugaritic%20mythological%20tablets%20describe%20the,goddesses%20of%20the%20Canaanite%20pantheon.&text=The%20god%20El%20was%20viewed,good%2Dnatured%2C%20beneficent%20being.
The high god "El" from Ugaritic culture is one of the names of God in the Hebrew Bible. It is found in the name Israel. Beth El (House of God) is the name of numerous synagogues, cemeteries, and hospitals.
Indeed. One of the fascinating things about Christianity is so often the more ardent the faith, the more ignorant the believer. Faith holds everything together for many people. The Bible is not understood or read. Which is why Isaac Asimov said "Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.' I've certainly met a number of atheists who reached their position after reading the Good Book.
It's not hard to find evidence for the proposition that ignorance and religion are familiar bedfellows. I've known a number of Thai and Vietnamese Buddhists who have had religious stories told them as children, but have never read a canonical word. Their faith is as threadbare as the faith of any Baptist...
Yeah, the whole idea of the human mind is incredibly fascinating, being experiencing itself everything emerging from... no one really knows.
I think I also see the source of confusion here. What you're referring to as unique to the brain is generally called complexity, which is amorphously defined, but generally has to do with how networked a system is, as well as its lying somewhere between too much order and too much chaos. Going back to the example, supercomputers might have more computational power than a brain, but they are orders of magnitude less complex.
The information content is something different from complexity and is directly tied to the amount of energy in a system:
https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0064475
You might appreciate this. It has a neat introduction on information as entropy that's done pretty well. The whole "information content of the universe" thing is just neat napkin math to serve as food for thought. My point was that information in human brains wouldn't be exceptional, since that's a function of the amount of entropy in a system.
Any information can be coded as something else. The entire phase space of a human brain could be documented in an unrealistically large library without violating the laws of physics. So claims about the uniqueness of brains are off in that sense.
But a near endless library documenting a brain wouldn't be concious, you need the actual interaction and network. Arguably, that could also be configured in some other manner, but realistically the point is moot outside thought experiments.
This is all good stuff, yes, complexity (structurally) and networking (data accrual). Dan Dennett really covers this stuff thoroughly in a series of books: Consciousness and Content, Consciousness Explained, and Freedom Evolves. Which all have laid the groundwork of modern cognitive neuroscience, from a philosopher! I am fundamentally talking about what is called the "many-drafts theory," but I would tweak the jargon a bit myself.
No, because they are not claimed to be gods or God today; it is what is claimed about Jesus today that determines the focus of attention, not what was claimed in ancient times.
I take your point about the popularity of Christianity and it's global dominance, but since it is those interested in western philosophy who are, in this context here at least, attacking it, I think its dominance in the west is the salient point. It could be seen as a kind of Freudian slaying of the father, a rebellion against authority; I have noticed that the most vehement critics of Christianity are often those who were schooled in it when young and probably enjoyed (or didn't enjoy) a period of fervent belief.
"El" is also cognate to "Allah" (= "the El"), BTW.
"Elohim" is the plural. It means "gods" but is generally translated as "God" or "God and angels" to hide its polytheist origin.
An interesting point in itself from a 'scientifically rigorous' standpoint. This is the kind of 'mistake,' that we find all over religious fables, that helps confirm their status as folklore. There is no sunset or sunrise. It looks like there is to us but it's actually Earth's rotation that causes this effect.
Is it not also true that El also translates to 'the' in English. Like El Toro in Spanish is The Bull in English.
Sooooo True. I have read both Old and New testaments twice(although I would call them bad rather than good books). I was atheist after watching Carl Sagan's Cosmos, when I was around 13. The Old Testament would make a better TV serial than Game of Thrones, when it comes to mass violence, intrigue, sex, and supernatural BS. But then this would probably be true for accurately depicted series on the Mahabharata (not the recent, cleaned up TV version) or the Iliad and the Odyssey.
I think that's another skewed view, the 'global' importance the West suggests the bible has. The Quoran, The Mahabharata, The shen manuscripts in china etc are just as important and influential within the cultures that created them.
That must be why theism is on the wane in some of its traditional heartlands such as the USA.
The more educated people become, the more they will question the validity of supernatural claims.
It's a natural effect of increased intelligence. Very few scientists are theists.
Perhaps I am just not following the 'irony' of your chosen handle or your choice of representative Icon.
You suggest a god that has no self-belief and you use a Hollywood actor in a bad film as your profile pic.
Then you seem to defend theism.
Go figure!
After I had finished watching Cosmos by Carl Sagan and an RE lesson I had in year 1 in secondary school. I sat up in my bed in the dark at night after a bad dream. I was 'annoyed,' that the dream scared me (I was only 13). I sat for ages thinking about 'stuff.' I took a torch and shone it under my chin whilst looking in a mirrored wardrobe for effect. I then called god lots of bad names and challenged him to send his enforcer (satan) to come and 'sort me out.' I said I would even accept a clear warning (because I was scared, just in case!) and if I got such, then I would accept its existence. I eventually fell asleep and woke up in the morning as one usually does.
Since then, I have repeated this, especially during/after traumatic situations like the death of a loved one etc. There is nothing in the empty darkness except the fear we bring with us.
All the hallucinations reported by others including NDE stories are just 'interrupted and corrupted' info packets in the brain or bad wiring etc.
I request that all theists out there or those who are scared of the supernatural. Use all of the will power you have to call upon/pray for/invoke these forces now, to manifest the powers at their command and destroy me before 8 am tomorrow morning. If I post a message tomorrow then this does provide some evidence of that such forces do not exist. It doesn't count if I get 'sorted out' by a messed-up human who claims the supernatural is working through them. My destruction must be by supernatural means not natural.
I have agreed this with groups of individuals in the past btw and I am still here.
Gods have no power because they don't exist.
I don't want to post expletives on this site so just accept that in my mind I am using every expletive I can muster against all god fables and supernatural claims.
Why don't you try it for yourself, if you are not too scared to. Watch a really scary horror film based on the supernatural first. I've done that too, many times, especially after a few single malts!
Post to you tomorrow guys!! :naughty: :strong:
That's about the best I can do. Put my own life and risk of eternal torment (come ahead you demons, science will smash you) on the line.
And in many other names. A list from Wikipedia with their meanings in Hebrew:
Abdiel – Servant of God
Abiel – God my Father
Abimael – A Father sent from God
Adbeel – Disciplined of God
Adiel – Witness of God
Adirael – Magnificence of God
Adriel – Flock of God
Advachiel – Happiness of God
Ambriel – Energy of eloGod
Ammiel – People of God
Ariel, Auriel – Lion of God
Armisael – Mountain of Judgment of God
Azael – Whom God Strengthens
Azazel – God Strengthens
Azrael – Help of God
Barakiel, Baraquiel – Lightning of God
Barachiel, Bardiel – Kindness of God or Ray of God
Bethel – House of God
Betzalel – Shadow/Path of God
Bithiel – Daughter of God
Boel – God is in Him
Chakel – Wisdom of God
Chamuel – He who Seeks God
Cassiel – Speed of God
Denzel – Fortress of God
Daniel – Judgement of God
Elad – God Forever
Eliana – My God Answers
Elijah (Elias) – Whose God is Jah, God Jah
Elisha – Salvation of God
Elishama – My God Hears
Elishua – God is my salvation
Eliezer – My God Helps
Elimelech – My God is King
Elizabeth – My God is Oath
Elkanah – God has Possessed, or God has Created
Emmanuel – God is with us
Ezekiel – God will Strengthen
Ezequeel – Strength of God
Ezrael – Help of God[2]
Gabriel, Gavriel – Strong Man of God
Gaghiel – Roaring Beast of God
Gamaliel – Reward of God
Hamaliel – Grace of God
Hanael – Glory of God
Harel – Mountain of God
Immanuel – God with us
Imriel – Eloquence of God
Iruel – Fear of God
Ishmael, Ishamael – Heard by God, Named by God
Israel, Yisrael – Struggles with God
Jekuthiel – God will support
Jerahmeel – God's exaltation
Jeremiel – God's mercy
Jezreel – God will sow
Joel – Jah is God
Jegudiel – Glorifier of God
Katriel – Crown of God
Kazbiel – He who lies to God
Kushiel – Rigid One of God
Lee-El, Lee-el, Leeel – For God
Leliel – Jaws of God
Lemuel – Dedicated to God
Mahalalel – The blessed God
Malahidael – King of God
Matarael – Premonition of God
Michael – Who is like God? a question
Mishael – Who is what God is? a question
Nathanael, Nathaniel – Gift of God
Nemuel – Day of God
Othniel – Hour of God
Peniel, Penuel, Phanuel – Face of God
Priel – Fruit of God
Rachmiel – God is my Comforter
Ramiel/Remiel – Thunder of God
Raphael – God is Healing
Raziel – Secret of God
Rameel – Mercy of God
Reuel – Friend of God
Sachiel – Price of God or Covering of God
Sahaquiel – Ingenuity of God
Samael – Venom of God
Samiel – Blind God, epithet for Baal or the Demiurge
Samuel – Name/Heard of God
Sariel – Command of God
Sealtiel – Intercessor of God
Shamsiel – Lonely Conqueror of God
Shealtiel – I asked God [for this child]
Suriel – Moon of God
Tamiel – Perfection of God
Tarfiel – God Nourishes
Tzaphkiel – Beholder of God
Tzaphquiel – Contemplation of God
Uriel – Sun of God, Light of God or Fire of God
Uzziel – Power from God
Verchiel – Shining of God
Yophiel – Beauty of God
Za'afiel – Wrath of God
Zadkiel – Righteousness of God (rabbinic)
Zagzagel – Splendor of God
Zaphkiel – Knowledge of God
Zeruel – Arm of God
Zophiel – Watchman of God
Zuriel – Rock of God
I wish you a long, happy and healthy life. If you end up having one I don't imagine it will be to do directly with my wishing you it. But every little helps.
Thanks, fellow Earther!
Funny, I just read through a summary of that in Karen Armstrong’s “A History Of God”, although she didn’t mention a similarity between Hillel and Jesus. The next chapter is on Christianity, though, so we’ll see. Any references on that specific topic you’re aware of?
It is interesting to see how many gods became one. So effective was the transformation that most do not see it even though traces of it remain and can be seen if one does not read the texts assuming monotheism.
Why all the different names for God in the Hebrew Bible? The following passage from Exodus addresses the problem:
(Exodus 3:13-15)
The gods of their ancestors are unified into one nameless God of Israel. But the god of Israel is not the only god:
(Exodus 20:3).
Just about everyone today calls when the sun comes up sunrise and when it goes down sunset, even though we all know the sun is not moving and the earth is rotating. 1,600 years ago in Rome, people did not know the Earth rotates.
I took a quick look and did not find an etymological connection between the Spanish 'el' and the deity El. Nor did I find a connection between the English 'the' and the Greek 'theos' from which we get such terms as theology. But yes, 'el' translates to 'the'.
I think this to be connected to such things as the advent of the messiah, the kingdom of God or Heaven on Earth, and teachings from the sermon on the Mount such as:
(Matthew 6:19-21)
and:
As to the political situation - its complicated. With Paul it is clear that there was an expectation that the world was about to end. The promise that the kingdom of God is at hand has been understood in both a geopolitical sense and in a non-political sense the of a new life for those who are saved.
Gotta run, but one thing I want to explore is what exactly it means that gods "became one". The literature I've read and am reading seems to assume a certain willful, conscious decision to equate gods or discard certain ones out of convenience. I feel that I'm reading modern scholar's inherent modern, secular biases in their accounts. I think we have to try to put ourselves in their shoes as best we can in order to attempt some grasp of how these things were changing. I guess I'm asking a question of ancient psychology, which is impossible to answer. I assume through their lived experience, the ancients felt (maybe intuitively?) that they had unlocked a key to reality when these syncretic moments happened. More later.
Ok, you asked...
An interesting question that crops up when you consider Jesus as a historical man rather than as the son of God, is the question of his sources and influences.
As was amply commented on, the Qumran sect aka the Essenes were probably a major influence, traceable through the bread and wine sharing ceremony and other things e.g. the ideological proximity with John the Baptist. The Essenes were a sect, ie the core group lived in the desert, outside of society, and hated the temple establishment. Though there might have been people living in cities and villages, in society, that had essenian sentiments.
So there were other groups than the rabbis -- it's complicated -- but to make it clear, the rabbis were teachers (and students) of the Law, both in its written and oral tradition. So they teach. When Jesus is addressed as "Rabbi", it means "Teacher".
During his education, however short, it is natural to assume that Jesus would have been taught scripture by a rabbi or another, or several, each with his own interpretations and inclinations. He would have been exposed to these arguments and disputes between rival rabbinical schools. These issues are described in some length in the Talmud, although very little original material from Hillel himself has been preserved (destruction of Jerusalem etc.). But we have a reason able idea of where the fault lines with Sammai were.
And so, apparently when Jesus in the Gospels is asked a question by a Jew who is not from his entourage, a random passerby, another rabbi, etc., oftentimes the question can be traced back to the opposition between Hillel and Shammai -- it is as if the questioner was trying to position Jesus on the Hillel-Shammai axis, which structured the rabbinical world at the time, by using the main issues debated among them.
By comparing the Talmud and the Gospel, we can surmise that Jesus was influenced by Hillel. Because he nearly always come down on the side of Hillel on this type of questions (except on divorce where he sides with Shammai in forbidding it).
For another indication, one of the very few quotes by Hillel preserved by the tradition, from Pirkei Avot (Teaching of the Elders, a Talmudic section) is:
"[I]My humiliation is my exaltation; my exaltation is my humiliation.[/i]"
Compare with Matthew 23:12 - For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
This made me think of something I've come across in a couple of places. The first is from Jaynes' "The Origin Of Consciousness In The Breakdown Of The Bicameral Mind." Jaynes contends that people in the ancient world were not self-aware in the way we are. He explicates the stories in the Iliad and Odyssey as evidence of this. I find it unconvincing, although there is some interesting stuff. The second is the work of Christopher Lasch, a social critic who had a Freudian slant on human sociology and psychology. I remember being struck by his idea that the structure of the family has a strong influence on the structure of our minds. As families changed as we went from an agrarian society to an industrial one, our minds also changed.
What these two sources have in common is the idea that we can't necessarily assume we can understand what and how people in the past thought or felt. Understanding how other people think requires us to try to put ourselves in their shoes. This can be a more and more difficult task the further we get from their time and culture.
I think that what we find in the modern Bibles are versions of older stories that have been altered and edited to reflect beliefs that differ from their sources. The bias is not that of contemporary scholarship but that of those editors and compilers who selectively changed older mythologies to comply with their beliefs.
Religion and politics go hand in hand. Many of the stories in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) come from the Ugaritic/Canaanite stories. YHWH was originally a minor god, subordinate to El, the high god. YHWH, the god of the Israelites, subsumed and supplanted him. It is telling that the land promised to the Jews in Exodus is Canaan.
We should also look at how a corporeal God is reinterpreted, so that the parts of the body, and significantly the sex organs, become merely metaphorical expressions of an incorporeal God. A recent book on this: "God: An Anatomy", by Francesca Stavrakopoulou. The book is written for the general public but the scholarship is reliable. A couple of short reviews give some sense of what the book is about:
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2021/10/god-an-anatomy.html
https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/5869/book-review-god-an-anatomy
Since you are reading Armstrong: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/25/books/review/god-francesca-stavrakopoulou.html
And for those who prefer videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx9Gj67r1Dc
Yes. The distinction made between the things (or share) to be paid to Caesar and the things (or share) to be paid to God, stems from a cosmology where this world, the kingdoms of men, is seen as deeply corrupt, and put in opposition to the Kingdom of God.
Of course God cannot tolerate the corruption of a world He created, so ultimately, any time now, the big kaboom on the end of days ought to happen. That's basically the messianic script.
In the meantime, we have to tolerate the world as it is, and pay our taxes. There is a share to be paid for Caesar -- perhaps seen as the devil's or the demiurge's representative on earth, or simply as the most powerful and most corrupt king in a corrupt world -- and a share for God.
If you want to live in this world, you must pay Caesar's share.
If you want to be on the right side of things when the big kaboom happens, and live forever, you must pay God's share.
This is a probable mythical or metaphysical exposition of the saying but in summary the idea is that religion should be about a search for spirituality, not about whether or not taxes should be paid to this guy or to that guy. It's about making the distinction between temporal and religious matters, be it as it may be a religious view point / argument for it.
I am in agreement with what you say. I see this as a belief or hope or expectation that stems from powerlessness. It is a shift away from earlier views of the power of our god to protect us from and vanquish our enemies. When our side lost it was because we lost god's favor and had to restore it. Some saw the messiah as a warrior. But here it is the weak who will inherit the earth. It is an acknowledgement of powerlessness against the forces of Rome. The battleground has shifted to heaven from earth.
I agree. There's a rather thick book I once read about the way the messiah concept evolved and diversified prior and after Jesus: The Scepter and the Star: Messianism in Light of the Dead Sea Scrolls, by Johnny J. Collins. The thesis is that it all started as you say from the hope for a Davidic Mesiah, i.e. a rightful Jewish king successful in battle, restoring the fame and glory of Israel in the faces of nations. This is a long-sought situation in the Bible: rightful king, rightful people, success in battle granted by God in exchange.
The problem is that he never came. Most kings after David were disappointments, and the rare and few who were walking in the path of God often lost spectacularly and tragically all their holy wars...
It's always the same story: a prophet exhorts a Judea or Israel king to be holly and revolt against the heathens, God will surely help! And the king listens (the fool) and gets devastated in battle and/or siege, losing much blood and treasure to the Babylonians, the Arameans or the Romans in the process, if not his head...
It's the time of empires. Judea is a small place, it cannot hope to remain independent for long from some tutelage or another.
God is neutral now, He doesn't seem to hate the heathen so much after all.
The time of empires means that the 12 tribes must mix up with the nations, with heathens, make business with them goyim, often live under their rule even, and pay taxes to them.
And the Torah says very little about how to deal with that. Moses didn't foresee the problem. We're in uncharted halakhic territory. Basically the Torah prevents a good Jew from mixing up (marrying, eating, etc.) with goyim, so as to preserve his purity.
So the situation is a scandal. Force never worked. A new paradigm appears: what Collins calls the Priestly Mesiah: a saint messiah, a holly man or perhaps not quite a man, who would be able to summon the angels to fight against them goyim.
Collins traces the figure of a priestly messiah to Daniel, who calls him the one like a son of man (Daniel 7.13). It's a different expectation from the Davidic Messiah, and Collins' thesis is that the "Son of Man" in the Gospel is close to this kind of priestly messiah figure.
Thanks for the info. I was looking for specific sources, though, from the literature; some books if they exist. Or is this your own surmise?
What didn't you buy about it? If the physical world is evolving, I assume consciousness is as well (and I'm not a materialist).
Quoting T Clark
Yes, this is what I'm getting at.
Surely both parties here have biases. There's no debating that fact. How can we know what it felt like, mentally, emotionally, at the time when different gods were being combined with one another? What I'm saying is that religious leaders weren't having summits where they agreed on who to combine with whom. Sometimes the literature reads that way (a crude characterization on my part, but you get the idea).
Quoting Fooloso4
Yes, I've just recently read up on this stuff.
Two further complications with Christianity:
First, if Jesus was the messiah, the promise was broken. He died.
Second, the messiah comes to be regarded not as a man sent by God, but God.
At first it was believed that the promise would still be fulfilled in that generation. Then the next generation believed it was the one. Eventually the idea of a second coming at some unspecified time took root.
That their god had dies was in stark contrast to the older notion of the power of god to vanquish the enemy. But the claim arose that this was all part of the divine plan, like the kid on the playground who says he wanted to loose the fight.
With Paul the battleground shifted to to an internal struggle against sin. As political circumstances changed power and wealth once again regained prominence; although a powerful clergy with a great deal of ostentatious wealth still paid lip-service to the virtues of the weak and poor.
Many such sources exist, the connection between Hillel and Jesus was first noted in the academic literature at the end of the 19th century and it's now a well-researched topic. It was already mentioned in the Jewish Encyclopedia (1913?). I was pointed at it by a rabbi.
Eg:
Halakic (legal) controversies between Bet Hillel, Bet Shammai and Jesus, by Bradford, Johnnie Edgar
https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/handle/2152/30177
(Haven't read it, but that's the kind of thing I am talking about)
Yes, but the issue is whether, the biases of scholars altered the original sources as found in the Bible, or if the Bible is an alteration of its sources. For some this may make no difference. They are guided by what inspires them, but others are interested in the history and development of Jewish and Christian religion.
Quoting Noble Dust
I cannot cite examples but it is not unreasonable to think that certain beliefs became the norm through the work of priests and scribes. We do see in several places in the Hebrew Bible different accounts bound together, sometimes more skillfully than others. Consider, for example, the two stories of the beginning. In the story of the flood we are told both that there are two of each kind on the Ark and seven. More recently we find the Midrash on the Torah, Pirkei Avot, for example, which includes sayings of Hillel. The rabbis debated together and recorded what was said. The Councils at Nicaea were summits that establish orthodox Christian theology.
No, I'm asking whether the scholars are projecting modern ways of thinking unto the ancient past, and questioning whether that's an appropriate projection.
The problem here is it feels like us modern secular and atheistic readers are imagining the whole of ancient religion to be some sort of farce wherein the religious elite were crafting ways to maintain control over their population with full knowledge that it was all bullshit. I don't think this was the case; I think this is the modern projection we engage in too often.
I came to the book skeptical. It seems like a pretty radical proposition. But I was willing to be convinced. His use of the Iliad and Odyssey as evidence for the ancient lack of self-awareness associated with what he called a bicameral mind. To me, it's a weak argument. What I call a Malcolm Gladwell argument. (That's not a good thing.)
Quoting Noble Dust
If I remember correctly, you made a similar comment about understanding the Tao Te Ching. Wasn't that you? I don't think my awareness of the difficulty of understanding minds from different times and cultures means that we can't succeed.
No, I don't think so. Their claims run counter to modern ways of thinking, but it may be that we can never free ourselves from time and place.
Quoting Noble Dust
That is not the impression I get from what I read. I do think the problem of rule and leading the people, but I don't think they thought of the mythology they created as bullshit. It was, rather, a way of making sense of things.
Maybe I'm reading my own biases into what I'm reading. My interests aren't purely historical either, so that may be part of it. "A way of making sense of things", yes, but I'm still not satisfied with that. I guess I'm trying to incorporate a more general philosophy of religion angle, which is not easy when you're dealing with ancient peoples. I need to re-read some other auxiliary material to try to synthesize the thoughts I'm having.
I think you are missing the point! God should know! It's supposed to be omniscient, so you would think it would teach its prophets a little bit of science so they wouldn't make so many mistakes.
But I suppose it cant because it does not exist!
This is precisely the problem I see with the mythicists: they want us to believe that the authors of the Gospels were liars, insincere, manipulative. I don't think so. To me the evangelists tried to write accurate accounts, by and large. They made mistakes no doubt, they exaggerated many things, but they didn't sit every morning at their desk saying: "Hey, I'm gona bullshit a few more naïve readers today."
Yeah, your correct. There is no etymological evidence. It's the same for the claim some people make that Evil and Devil come from Eve. The suggestion was that evil simply means to act like Eve and disobey god. Devil was simply a supporter of Eve(women getting the blame again). But the etymological evidence for the origin of the word evil does not support these claims. However, I don't think etymological evidence offers a complete picture of the origin of every word. I have often read things like 'is thought to have originated from....'
But I accept that without etymological evidence such claims are pure conjecture.
I just calls them as I sees them. I don't have a dog in the fight. Or maybe I do; I am an atheist. However, I have spent an entire lifetime as an internal auditor for a bank, and if it helped me in honing any of my faculties, it is the ability to spot errors.
That is my calling on this forum: to point out errors in reasoning. I very much work on eradicating erroneous reasoning and false argumenting. Whether it helps the atheists, the theists, or the environment, or cockroaches, is not my domain of worry. My domain of worry is to point out false reasoning, that's all.
And by George, this website is a gold mine for doing just that.
That's quite a stretch for an argument.
Also, @Ciceronianus's reference was not to the Christian God, it was to Mithra, a Persian god with many followers in Rome.
He died miserably, thinking he had failed. But then, as he had himself theorized, a bizarre thing happened: his weakness became his strength. From his defeat came his fame. We only remember him today because he died on that cross.
That's the martyr script, which he stumbled upon. It is indeed different from the Messiah script(s). I see it as a realist variation, without the angels and the trumpets, a variation where the just loses to the unjust in the end, but where, by his or her struggle and sufferings, the just testifies loudly of the scandal that defeat of justice is, and in doing so helps spread a thirst for justice. Martyr means "testimony bearer".
This martyr script will be applied again and again by his followers during the persecutions, to great publicity effect. It was used by Gandhi (drawing from another tradition). One could argue it works better than the messiah script, which proved a recipe for disasters.
I suspect it was his followers who created this script. The death of their messiah created a crisis. Some probably saw this as evidence that they were wrong, that Jesus was not their messiah. But others came up with this story because they had to maintain hope. It was not the end but a new beginning.
Gandhi was not a martyr. Peaceful disobedience is not martyrdom.
Or that he helped theorize, if you consider the non-violent 'show the other cheeck'.
Coming back to the premises of 'separation of church and state' during the age of empires.
Of course there was no such thing yet, but the Jews had lived through a period where this principle applied to a degree, under the Persian emperor Cyrus who let let rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. This is seen as a blessed period and Cyrus is called 'messiah' in the Bible (ie indeed: anointed by God) for it.
After Alexander the Great, under the Seleucid, greek efforts to subjugate the Israelites cult led to much upheaval and ultimately the restoration of independence under the Hasmoneans for a century or so, until they argued with one another. The Saducees (priests) vying for one Hasmonean king, the Pharisees for his brother. After some bloodshed, one of them called on Pompey for help. Pompey was just finishing off Mithrades at the time in Asia Minor. He seized the occasion to grab the Levant for the Roman republic.
This was very fresh history back then (-63).
Since then, the Jews had tried to reestablish the Cyrus system: we pay you Romans taxes, and you leave our religion alone. It worked for a while, the Romans were prudent not to entice revolt.
So the question put to Jesus and his response to it has to do with the current deal, that is, we pay our taxes to Caesar SO THAT we can pray our God as we wish. The separation spoken of here between Caesar and God can be seen as a deal made by the conquered with the conquerer, to protect the religion of the weak against the religion of the strong.
A national religion like Judaism could only survive the age of empires by delinking itself from politics. Otherwise, if national gods intervene in politics and war, like it was thought during the bronze age, then the conclusion must be that Jupiter won, and Yahweh lost.
Jesus was part of this evolution towards a religion which accepts that temporal powers will be different from religious authorities. But historically it's an evolution that was forced on Israel by the bitter experience of imperialism. By 'what belongs to Caesar'.
Gandhi spent a lot of time in jail, together with many other Congress leaders. The Brits were not Pontius Pilates, but the struggle for independence involved some massacres (eg the Amritsar massacre) and some cases where people voluntarily exposed themselves to violence from British cops for hours. It's not martyrdom indeed, but the idea is very similar: the weak testifies of a scandal by facing the strong in a totally asymmetric manner.
I don't think Gandhi gave his life to be a symbol to his people. I think he risked his life as part of a tactic to gain freedom for his people. There's a big difference.
Yes, yes. I know I'm being a nitpicker. I shouldn't go off on a tangent.
What does this mean? This is the kind of thing I'm talking about in this thread.
Clearly, but I don't think Jesus intended to die on that cross either... My guess is he was expecting a miracle or divine intervention, hence the "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?"
Agreed.
The Messiah was to bring about the Kingdom of God (Heaven) on Earth. Before the mission was completed he died. In order to maintain hope in the promise of the Kingdom his followers had to make sense of the fact that he died before the mission was completed. In order to do this they had to create a narrative in which his death was not the end, but the beginning as God had planned.
What do you think of the idea that Jesus was influenced by Greek philosophy? I mean Hillel must have been influenced by it. So perhaps Jesus was influenced by Greek thought through Hillel? I find a lot of his teachings similar to Stoicism and Cynicism. Buton Mack’s book The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins along with John Dominic Crossan’s book The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant both suggest that he was a Jewish Cynic.
This is the kind of modern projection I’m talking about.
I don't think so. There's a taboo on heathen books at the times, they were not considered worthy of study by a lawful Jew.
"Cursed is the person who raises pigs, and cursed is the person who teaches his son Greek wisdom." (Sota 49b, BQ 82b, Men. 64b)
So learning Greek was not necessarily for the religiously-inclined, more for businessmen, and also for girls of rich families. Greek was recognised by the rabbis as a beautiful language for poetry and hence would add to a young woman's attractiveness. But it was not okay for boys.
I seriously doubt Hillel (a fortiori Jesus) read Plato.
This said, Greek was the first language in which the Jewish Bible was translated. So they were some learned Jews who could speak Greek, notably in Egypt. E.g. Philo of Alexandria.
The question is the extent to which these projection distort. The sayings attributed to him were all written after the fact of his death. To what extent were they projections? To what extent did the distort?
This might be regarded as impious, but piety is not the measure of the accuracy of historical truth.
Heaven on earth? Where are you getting that from?
I'm talking about the fact that "creating a narrative" is a post-modern concept, which you're projecting unto Jesus's disciples.
Note that Heaven is in parentheses. Matthew is the only one who who uses the term kingdom of heaven. More common is kingdom of God, which Matthew uses as well. There is no consensus as to what the difference may be.
A narrative is not a post-modern concept. Either man creates narratives or they are given to us. Are you claiming they come directly from God?
This is what I suspected. You're using the gospel account as a source for the expectations of Jesus' followers prior to his death, and then you argue that we can't rely on that same account because it's a post hoc narrative.
You probably just need to stick with religion scholars.
"Creating a narrative", not "narrative". No, I'm not claiming a narrative comes from God. I Think you're completely misunderstanding me.
The expectation of the coming of the messiah does not originate with the followers of Jesus. His followers believed he was the messiah. What seems to have originated with them is the story of the death of Jesus being an essential part of a larger plan.
A narrative must have a source. The idea that man invents narratives is not a new idea. Consider the problem of false prophets and false messiahs.
Yea. It's really obvious that your knowledge of the Jesus cult doesn't come from religion scholarship. It comes from Matthew. :lol:
There are different perspectives one can assume when interpreting these stories. I'm not as well versed in the NT as the OT, but take the Adam and Eve story. To the traditionalist (a believer in the holiness of the text), it tells us (if Christian) all sorts of hidden truths and even contains the need for Jesus, who will die for our original sin and find us a path to heaven. To the modern religious scholar, he likely sees a patchwork of texts sewn together from an ancient culture that says nothing about Jesus, The Fall of Man, or many of the other things we've read into the story. You then have this odd breed of fundamentalists, a modern group likely reacting to scientific progress, who insist that the story is about literal snakes and magic apples that existed at a certain spot on the planet and they go out looking for evidence of it. They refuse to yield the floor to science and double down on their literal claims.
I think the best interpretation of Genesis is that it was understood by the ancients as etiological folklore, offering an explanation for where the world came from, why men paired up with women, why snakes had no feet, why people have to work so damn hard and things like that.
I think the worst way to interpret it is as if to pretend it were written today and then impose our views on it. The written word back then and all the stories they told were doubtfully for the same reasons we use them today, which is to accurately document and archive information for the public record. These folks were trying to figure out how their world worked and they came up with all sorts of fantistical tales, none of which they really took literally. If they meant for them to be taken literally, they wouldn't have had multiple different stories describing the same events.
This is the type of assumption I’m critiquing. It just doesn’t make sense.
Believe whatever you want frank if that gives you some kind of perverse satisfaction, but the truth is far from what you imagine.
You asked about the phrase Kingdom of Heaven. If comes from Matthew. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
Reference to "the Jesus cult" suggests you have a particular theory of the early Jesus movement that you accept. Based on what?
I'll show you mine if you show me yours:
A few of the texts and scholars I have read that have informed my views include:
The anthology: The Historical Jesus in Context
Elaine Pagels
Bart Ehrman
There are others, but these come to mind at the moment.
Prior to the Church Fathers establishing the Catholic Church Christianity was pluralistic. The authority of personal inspiration was not questioned.
This is what you said:
"The Messiah was to bring about the Kingdom of God (Heaven) on Earth."
What caught my attention was your reference to heaven, as if they expected the Messiah to bring heaven to earth.
That wouldn't have made sense to anyone in the 1st Century. That's your own misunderstanding of the gospel account.
What they actually expected was a warlord who would throw off Roman domination.
Quoting Fooloso4
It's frequently referred to as the Jesus cult.
Sorry, I'm at work but, I'll try to go into more detail later.
This is what Jesus' Jewish followers would have understood based on messianic tradition. What we find in the gospels is something quite different.
Quoting frank
What are your sources of religious scholarship that inform what you imagine to be your superior knowledge?
Read this: https://jergames.blogspot.com/2008/07/four-assumptions-created-bible-lecture.html
Modern day literalism is very much a product of our scientific mindset. We record data accurately and it makes no difference whether there is any underlying meaning to what we report. If we were artists, we'd be realists. Our ancient ancestors were not such realists. They were overwhelmed creatures trying to figure out how the world worked.
Taking folklore literally is the great failing of fundamentalism, which is a modern invention. Only in today's world where ancient folklore gets confused for modern science would people actually go out and look for the remnants of Noah's Ark.
Speaking of which, how could the authors of the ancient texts have taken the text literally when it is entirely inconsistent, consisting of two entirely separate stories?
:meh:
Just to be sure you guys aren't talking around each other, there are two meanings of the term "cult" in the religious context. The first is one where we talk about an overly abusive religious leader who takes advantage of his adherents like a Charles Manson or David Koresh.
The second occurs in the context of religious scholarship and it is not pejorative. It refers to the rituals, prayers, sacrifices, and construction of monuments within a religious context. The cult of Yahweh for the ancient Jews would include their method of prayer, sacrifice, and building of temples.
Yes, I’m a aware of all of this and I’m not advocating literalism.
Just to be clear: The underlying theme of this topic is about how to come to terms with one's Christian past, right?
Eventually Christianity became a true cult as its Jewish members had more in common with gentile Christians than with their fellow Jews.
This thread seems to have taken on a life of its own, and I think the theme you mention has become a part of it. But when I commenced it, I was noting what I felt to be the fact that sophisticated Christian apologists, theologians, or philosophers, though they include Jesus in their thought and work, do so in a way which I think ignores or is sometimes contrary to the Jesus depicted in Scripture--what he supposedly did and said. I wondered why, in that case, they included him in their work, and by implication whether their philosophy or theology should be considered "Christian," or whether it really isn't Christian at all, or only nominally so.
@frank
This is why I asked him to provide sources. He has not. The two different ways in which the term is used does not tell us specifically what was believed and practiced, how widespread it was, and whether it referred to some specific group of followers rather than all . At what point did the Jesus cult distinguish itself from the Jewish followers of Jesus and become a separate religion? Were they mostly those who were Jewish or gentile? Did they hold the same animosity toward Jews as Christians did over time?
Although frank considers it proper to attack me (he seems to have been nursing a grudge for quite a while) he has not said anything to demonstrate his knowledge of the historical situation.
I wasn't attacking you. Sorry you took it that way.
It is difficult to separate the original from what some people made of it because the reports we have that have survived time and erasure are also responses to whatever was said and done. We will never get the direct feed.
Because of that, I think of it as two tracks of development that may cross paths in some places but cannot not be resolved into one: There is the uncertainty of the origins that point to a variety of sources: There are the theological edifices that were built afterwards. The "looting: of pagan thought and practices can be cogently investigated in the latter case. I think a different register is needed for exploring the former.
With that said, I do share one element of why you wanted to separate the two. I grew up in a church environment and was shocked when I actually read the New Testament for myself the first time. Hearing the words of Jesus was getting a different message outside of the bottle it was shoved into.
It seemed so, at least me me when you said:
Quoting frank
But you added a cute picture of a non-human primate, so I'll move on.
He suffered. Martyrs are supposed to die, for a cause, and Gandhi did not. True.
But he shamed some oppressors with the suffering he imposed on his own self.
The same that shook the world is the common thread between Gandhi and martyrdom.
That's why he said, "The age of martyrdom is dead -- it's been murdered by a new generation of passive-aggressive politicians."
Others may have argued the same, and if I left them out, sorry, my apologies. I just read two posts in this entire thread, and they were precisely the posts that resonated with me.
If one takes a minimalist approach to the historical accuracy of scripture, believing the aim of the work is predominately theological, then the details of the literature become of less relevance. That is, if one admits (and many do) that the facts and details of the works are only mechanisms to make points, then objections as to historical or factual inconsistency become irrelevant.
By way of example, the books of Judges following Deuteronomy tell of all sorts of historical details, describing Saul, David, and Solomon and all sorts of wars they engaged in. What is attributed to those extremely failed characters is inconsistent with who they appear on the pages, but from a thematic perspective you can summarize their tales as examples of divine justice being imposed on the sinners and success being bestowed on the believers. It's a theological book about justice and divine intervention onto the world, not a historical work of any significance, clearly spun to present a desired narrative.
So, if you're looking for factual truth in the Scripture, or even of a search for factual truth among the apologists and theologians, you're looking for something the religiously motivated are not looking for. They are looking only for the themes and theology and they too are spinning those narratives in a way that makes them applicable to today's world.
Why they chose the Bible as their mechanism for such mental gymnastics likely has a historical basis, but I'd argue their odd enterprise has been successful in finding meaning in the world.
I write this in another Jesus thread. Perhaps this might be helpful:
My rough theory is thus...
Jesus may have actually been a part of the pharisees, in a more liberal sect like Hillelites. He was also influenced by the John the Baptist movement, and consequently became more of an apocalyptic miracle-working teacher.
His interpretation of Jewish law (halacha) represents that of a Hillel-influenced pharisee (more inclusive, less strict, ethics-oriented). His ability to hold his own and quote at will against other pharisees also to me (if ANY of this is true) seems to give more credibility here. An illiterate peasant with no training, would probably not be able to do that. However, I do recognize this can all be interpolation and perhaps he quoted nothing, and was just a sort of local miracle-worker with later sayings. In this case, he would have represented more the "am ha-aretz" or "people of the land" in perhaps contradiction to the pharisees.
His apocalypticism represents the influence of John the Baptist. Thus his Son of Man imagery, and Kingdom of God being at hand
His goal was to show he was the messiah by "cleansing" the Temple of foreign influence (including the Sadducees, the priestly/elite party that ruled the Temple and more aligned with political Roman status quo of Rome rule over Judea). He probably hoped for a miracle to occur and perhaps thought he would somehow make it through any punishment like crucifixion. He didn't, he died.
His actual brother James took over the sect after he died and led this reformist pharisee/apocalyptic hybrid in Jerusalem. Hillelite pharisees and some zealots (extreme anti-Romans/Saducees) in Jerusalem probably sympathized with this group as well. Ananus I believe was related to Caiaphas, and remembered Jesus opposing him, and thus makes sense that he would want to destroy the remnant of this reformist/rebellious group that represented an affront to the current authority, and the family of priests that were running the Temple.
He was assassinated in 1948.
Quoting god must be atheist
Gandhi and Martin Luther King risked their lives and were killed. They did not intend to die. That was my point. They didn't intentionally sacrifice themselves. I wasn't clear enough.
Agreed. I've been impressed by this whole thread. Great discussion.
Thanks for the kind words.
-------
Just to be clear, my point was NOT to try and mock Jesus or anybody else, or to say that he was 'just another rabbi'. I have a lot of respect for the man, for his creativity, his witt and his courage. His immense influence, too.
Hillel might have been a nice guy but he didn't change the world. Jesus did try a little harder.
My take is to try and understand better what Jesus said and did by placing it in a historical context, and trying to plot his influences. I do this out of respect for him, in an effort to understand him better, as I would do for any philosopher I like.
My interest in Jesus is that of a lapsed Catholic and someone interested in Rome and its empire, including the pagan religions popular in it, and in their extermination and assimilation by Christianity. I know very little of the Jewish factions which existed while Jesus is said to have been alive. What you say seems feasible, but I don't know enough to critique it.
Fair enough. I find it an interesting puzzle. It would have been interesting if the emperor Julian were to have not died after three short years as emperor. He was trying to reverse the course of the Christian spread. He was the last pagan Roman emperor.
I think Greco-Roman religion had a fatal flaw in that the gods themselves were not ethical, but capricious. Thus mystery-cults and religions that provided an ethical-oriented deity made more sense. Add to it the apocalypticism of a sort of "goal" and you have this inbuilt, very appealing worldview. It was the world's greatest "just so" story. Paul and his disciples embellished it, and the Church Fathers promoted it. They overtook other "just so" stories like the Gnostics, and killed off most of the original Jewish Jesus Movement around Jerusalem, and that was that. Proto-Orthodoxy (which became the basis of Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christianities) became the main religion of the land in Europe.
I think that Holy Books present a problem for those who consider them fundamental to their religious beliefs. The problem is that the more one disregards them, or interprets them, or treat them as metaphorical, the less "holy" they seem to be. They're not factual, they're not fundamentally the word of God, they aren't anything, really, but what one wants them to be. They're convenient. In that case they become little more than suggestive, subject to the whims of their interpreters. They can be made to sanction most anything.
As far as Jesus is concerned, the New Testament is all we have along with the apocrypha (and short snippets in Roman sources). If what they say about his isn't true, then it isn't true. If what they say about him is true, then it's true. If we take the position that it isn't true, just how "holy" are these writings, and what of those who wrote them? Did their authors deliberately write falsehoods, or make things up, or credulously record whatever they heard from others? Were they inspired to do so by God?
If they're true, though, then they're (pardon me) inconveniently true for those who would rather not believe he worked miracles, or said that we can come to God only through him, or that he was the Son of God, or was resurrected, or ascended into heaven, or would return to judge the living and the dead riding a white horse, etc.
Very interesting. Some think it was too late to do anything significant, but perhaps he could at least have managed to keep paganism going for a time if only among minorities. By the way, if you haven't read Gore Vidal's novel Julian, I recommend it highly.
Hadrian did that. I mean, the region was devastated by Hadrian's legions circa 130 AD, with millions of deaths. Jewish presence was purposefully erased from the area. Hence the Jewish Christians disappeared together with the Essenes, the Saducees and scores of other groups, and what was left was gentile Christians on the one hand and rabbinical Jews on the other.
True, could have been holding off the inevitable. But if he was successful, what an interesting change in history. Tolerance might have had more of a premium (but perhaps not the violence of those Roman games.. only medieval torture!).
Quoting Ciceronianus
Yes I have. Excellent read. He has so many great historical fictions, but that's my favorite.
Sad but true.
Quoting Paine
Makes you wonder, doesn't it, how much the Christian religion has to do with what it purports to worship.
Mine as well.
I think it's the opposite.
I know what you mean. And, a good deal of the ritual involved in the worship of the traditional gods seems devoted to keeping them happy enough not to smash us, or abandon us, and induce them to do favors for us. Traditional Roman religion seems almost legal in its devotion to rules; if you got one step wrong during the ritual, you had to start all over again. More than that seems to have been involved in the mysteries.
It seems that most looked to philosophy for ethics. Epicureanism and Stoicism were quite popular among the elite during the Empire.
That's interesting. If you mean that they're more inspiring to us for being metaphors, I think I understand. But is their effect on us, or some of us, what makes them "holy"?
But what you say hasn't been borne out. What has happened is the opposite, which is that the more they've been interpreted, the more they've been venerated. Jewish interpretation of the Torah has been imaginative for thousands of years and it continues to define a culture.
Take a look at the midrash, if you're interested: https://jewishcurrents.org/midrash-the-stories-we-tell/
It's a lawyer's nightmare to be sure, where documents that talk about snakes and gardens are later learned to actually be foretelling of the rising of Christ thousands of years later. What cures this problem is that the interpreters are a select group and what they say perseveres. It's not terribly different from Constitutional analysis and how we treat that document as sacred, but we've long passed worrying about only the words in that document.
We say what we say and then we link it back to a divine command from some sacred ancient past writing for a mark of legitimacy. I don't find that troubling. Anchors keep us from drifting out at sea.
The emperor wears no clothes, but the truth is there was never such an actual naked emperor, so even that time honored saying isn't rooted in reality.
Yes agreed. The Bar Kochba rebellion may have represented an irrevocable split between the Jewish Christians and other Jews, especially ones supporting Bar Kochba. Thus, you probably see total separation in synagogues by this time. You pretty much explain it there with the only ones left being rabbinical Jews and gentile Christians in that region.
No, they're sometimes metaphors for what's inside you. Jesus screams on the cross and then asks why God has abandoned him. It's odd that they kept that detail in there after all these years.
And that's just one line. Christianity is amazing.
Right. Ethics was its own prescriptions and science of human behavior, separated out from the gods. Philosophy developed perhaps as a result of having a religion where metaphysics was lacking. The gods were capricious. They did what they wanted. Gods weren't moral. Humans could be more moral than a god, but gods could demand things that you must do to make things go well for you. Well, these kind of contradictions could create opportunities for a more coherent and complete religious system. Greco-Romans were able to fill the existential cracks with philosophy. This was really only amenable to the elite. The majority of poor people had their capricious gods, household alters and such, but here you have a religion that can provide a little more existential fulfillment without the intense literacy and understanding needed to grasp the major philosophies. Thus, Christianity's ability to shapeshift as simple "salvation" and "charity" for the poor and "theology" for the literate and academic oriented, became a great two-pronged approach.
That would seem to make them "holy" not because of what they are, but because of how they came to be interpreted centuries after they were written by people in different circumstances under different influence.
It is, yes.
Quoting frank
On that we agree, though not perhaps for the same reasons.
Brave and noble goal. I tried to read the New Testament, and got to a point a few times, where they started to quote Jesus, like when he goes out to sea with the fishermen. I got excited. Unfortunately the text did not say anything beyond words. My recollection: Fishermen: "We worship God, our God." Jesus: "FOOLS! YOU MUST WORSHIP GOD! FOOLS!" That was about the size of it. The passages I read (which was not many) and in which Jesus spake, there was nothing of any importance or revelation. It was a bit disappointing for me.
The most compelling resurrection story I read was in a book titled "Saint Saul A skeleton key to the historical Jesus" An incredibly riveting book.
My bad. I don't know history. I failed high school history five times. I can't memorize dates, names, etc. So i gave up all efforts at one point.
So Gandhi was murdered, therefore he IS a martyr. I stand corrected. By suffering I meant his self-imposed hunger strike. That's about all I now about his life. And that he made love to (at least one) American woman, whom Elaine of Seinfeld fame visited a few times, as an effort to give back via a volunteer job, except Elaine could not abide by looking at the large thyroid gout on the neck of the woman, who was in her eighties or nineties at that time.
My take on this is that might be the only real thing in that NT :lol:. I would say that Jesus may have thought something was going to happen to save him.. Didn't happen. Jesus was looking for a miracle.. The whole "seeing Jesus after he died" and "empty tomb" thing were embellishments of disciples that had their movement stamped out too early. Oddly parallels can be seen in the Lubavitch Jewish community today in Brooklyn. A vocal minority there think that even though their beloved rebbe is dead, they think he really didn't "die" but is in sort of stasis and will come back to reveal he is the King Messiah. Now that is some ironic shit!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chabad_messianism
Some scholars of religion have made comparison with the development of early Christianity[94] and some have sought to describe Chabad messianism as "halakhic Christianity".[citation needed]
Anthropologist Joel Marcus writes:
Thanks :D.
I think it is an open question if when Maimonides denied the physicality of God and interpreted all physical aspects of the divine, whether this elevated the status of the "holy" or whether something primitive and fundamental was lost. That as a result we became something less human. That in the process we literally lost touch. What it meant to be made in God's image made us strangers to both what it means to be human and to be a god. The sacred was diminished when the tangible and immediate experience of being alive were downplayed in favor of an imagined transcendence.
Importantly, the Roman supression of the Bar Kochba revolt killed millions of Jews and left Palestine unrecognisable, "ethnically cleansed". So what may have been left of the Ebionites or any other Jewish Christian sect in Palestine at the time was simply killed by the Romans with the rest of the nation.
I think the evolution of the religion required a move towards the incorporeal. There are just too many theological problems with positing an actual location of God. Interestingly though, the Mormons believe in a corporeal anthropomorphic god, so if you actually do think there was a loss with this theological change, there are still religions out there for you.
Critical to religion holding value is personal acceptance of the tenants and I don't think many of the modern mindset could actually actually accept the ancient perspectives of God.
Agreed. Interestingly, it is known that the "Jerusalem Church", was headed by a series of Jesus' brothers, followers, and relatives (first James, then Simeon-both Jesus' brothers, the last was Judas, the son of Jude, another of Jesus' brothers, which would make him his nephew). All were considered "Jewish Christians". The cutoff from the Jewish Christian leaders and the gentile Christian leaders in that church is exactly demarcated at the Bar Kochba Rebellion's defeat in 135 CE. So yes, I believe this did represent a breaking point between the last remnants of the original followers/traditions and the Proto-Orthodox Gentile Church that became "Christianity". They were removed as other Jews in a sort of ethnic cleansing.
Ironically, a strong contingent of scholars remained, not in Judea proper (that was forbidden for a while) but in the Galilee area around Caesarea and Tiberius. The Mishna was compiled there in 200 CE and the Jerusalem Talmud around 400 CE. So there was still a small presence allowed there, more as academic enclaves, but important ones.
From what I gather, the term "holy" is incoherent to you in any other sense though.
That is, if holy only means that which is consecrated by God, and you reject such a thing can occur, then we must define the term how we use it.
I'm not trying to trash talk the Rebbe :wink:. However, I can't resist bringing up the parallels with the very small number of Messianists in that group and the early Jesus followers for natural responses to the death of very charismatic leaders. I don't think the group was intentionally following the Christian model, and that's why I find it fascinating. I think this is actually one outcome that presented itself to the early followers of Jesus after his death. What do you do when you think your leader was ASSUREDLY the messiah? You make the move that he didn't really "die" or he was "resurrected".. Maybe the "first" in what will be the End Times, when EVERYONE will be resurrected! So While this group does represent a sort of weird deviation from the usual Jewish understanding of the role of the messiah, it is also a good thing in (possibly) shedding light on how the early followers of Jesus responded to his death. Does that make sense?
It is not as if incorporeal version are free of theological problems. It could be argued that "theology" is part of the problem. Why should God conform to human reason?
For citation:
2 Chronicles 36:23
Ezra 1:1
Isaiah 44:28 and 45:1
I think the same thing happened to Shia Islam. They're waiting for some guy.
In a way, the same thing applies to Jesus: the messianic and son-of-god 'mythology' has come at the expense of the message. What the man had said became largely irrelevant once he was made a god. His idealization trumped his ideas; his exaltation was his humbling (Matthew 23:12).
Today he is best characterized as just another empty idol. Which of course has been the official rabbis' view him all along but I think it's a bit unfair.
Muslims, as is well known, did not make of Jesus a god. For them he is a prophet, ie a human being inspired by Allah. In fact he is one of the most important if not the most important of all of Allah's prophets, after the top boss Mohamad. Isa ben Mariam (Jesus son of Marie) is the most frequently cited guy in the Qoran. Peace be upon him -- literally, in that you don't pronounce his name in an muslim context without adding 'la isalam'. Eg: "Jesus, peace be upon him, was the son of Mariam, peace be upon her." It can get tedious.
Little is reported of his message in the Quran except universal love and kindness, and then the miracles, once again more 'newsworthy' than the philosophy ... Many Quranic miracles by Jesus are not from the canonical gospels, like the miracle of the table (a bit like the multiplication of fish and bread, but with a table coming from the sky with delicious food on it). Or the story that when Jesus was a child he fashioned birds out of clay, then he breathed on them and they flew away... So cute.
:up: exactly. I see interesting parallels.
Yep, interesting how these things take the same form. I don't think its intentional.. just how groups create an escape hatch for what "has" to be a sure thing.
I think there's more to it than that. It's about a fulfillment of prophecy, the idea that where we're headed is better than where we are.
Think about the character of a culture that fully believes that; that therefore lives it.
Yeah I can see what you mean. I'm just saying, that prophecy cannot NOT be fulfilled for them, and there is the result. It's THIS guy cannot NOT be the one. How can that be so, we were so feeling it! haha
Yep.
What else?
In that case we may speak of them as being contingently holy, or holy at some point or to some person, sometime, maybe not now but maybe in the future. They become holy, then; they aren't holy themselves. Sometimes, in fact, they aren't holy, if they don't have the requisite impact on the particular reader.
It's called "holy" before its impact (explosion) you see. I can't remember if it killed that rabbit, though.
What about the ordinary folks?
True. Shakespeare is called profound whether it affects you or not.
If Shakespeare or some poet has an impact on you, are you a passive, blank slate which is blown to tiny bits by the words?
I don't know if I'd hang too much on the way people talk about holiness.
"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."
Because the meaning of words changes over time, this can lead to confusion if we don't know the etymology and cultural history. The change is not necessarily from the literal to the metaphorical and vice versa. Sometimes, the referent changes. For example, the thing that used to be called "soap" two thousand years ago in India is not what used to be considered "soap" for the past several hundred years in Europe (ie. soap in the form of hard bars), and again, the word "soap", with the relatively recent popularity of liquid soap, now has a different range of referents.
If you read an old Indian text and it says something like "permeat your thoughts with goodwill as you permeat soap with water", what do you imagine by that? Back then, they had bath powder, which, prior to use, had to be mixed with water and thoroughly kneaded, like dough, to get a dough-like substance with which then people washed themselves.
"I slipped on soap" would not be a coherent sentence to a person back then, nor is it for modern people who use only liquid soap.
Then, of course, translation issues. Things can get lost and added in translation. For example, in my native language, the word for "moth" is the same as one of the words for "witch". In my native language, just from a sentence that means "At night, we sat at the fire, and sometimes, [witches] would visit us", it's not clear whether the word refers to witches or moths. Context is needed.
If the reader doesn't have a broad knowledge of etymology and cultural history, they miss out on such things and instead look for alternative explanations (such as the literal-metaphorical distinction) which only lead them astray.
Do give three examples where you think an ancient text was intended as metaphorical by the ancient writers.
We can then work through which explanation is more likely in each case.
What Ciceronianus said has been borne out -- for those who don't already believe.
It is sometimes said that one must read sacred texts with faith, and that if a faithless person reads them, such a person will not profit from them.
This is my experience as well. If I read and try to understand a sacred text that I don't already believe in, the text becomes more and more trivial to me. I have seen that when people who already believe read their sacred texts, their faith increases, their sense of the sacredness of the text increases.
That's not why. The reason the text has inconsistent accounts of the same stories is because it was pieced together from various writings by a single editor. That's the prevailing theory among religious scholars and there's substantial support for that theory.Quoting baker
The creation story (story #1 dealing with the 7 days of creation). The creation story (story #2 dealing with the Garden of Eden). The ark story (story #1 dealing with 2 of each animal coming aboard). The ark story (story #2 dealing with 7 clean animals coming aboard and 2 unclean animals coming aboard).
That's four stories if you want to get started there. It's clearly etiological folklore.
Quoting baker
I don't know what you mean by "profit from them." There are people with PhDs in religious scholarship who don't believe the texts are sacred. I don't think they would agree they've not profited from their efforts.
True. I've seen the same phenomenon with believers reading Mein Kampf.
Where do you date the theory of the incorporeality of God? Philo is 1,000 years before Maimonides, but it might be sooner. I point this out because I think it's a pretty ancient concept.
I was addressing your point about those old stories not being taken literally by their writers.
If they believed God is very powerful (and they apparently did), then I think it's likely it seemed entirely realistic to them that God would create the world and everything on it in seven solar days. I see no reason to think they didn't take the creation story literally.
Same with creation by God's word.
The decisive factor here is that they believed that God is very powerful.
Which part do you mean? About Eve being made out of Adam's rib, or Adam and Eve being the parents of humanity?
As for the rib story, on account of their belief that God is very powerful, I, again, see no problem with taking it literally.
Also, if "rib" had a special meaning that is now lost to us, this adds another possible explanation for literal reading.
As for the second one, if Adam is taken to mean 'male ancestors of humanity' and Eve 'female ancestors of humanity', as we can gather from the context, there's no problem. The word "Adam" can be a personal name, or it can be a general noun meaning 'man' or 'human'. "Eve" cal alsobe a personal name, but the word literally means 'living being'. There are a few unspoken steps in this story (esp. the one about how incest was avoided). I can imagine they can be filled in if we would have more knowledge about origin narratives in those times (e.g. it seems most illustrative to explain the origin of a species by focusing on one couple).
You need to be more specific. Are you talking about the size of the ark and how to build it; the actual number of animals; logistic problems with having so many different animals in one place; ...?
And beavers used to be considered fish and thus suitable to be eaten on Fridays in the Catholic Church. Nowadays, we call it "etiological folklore", back then, it was science or common knowledge (and something else was considered "etiological folklore", although they probably didn't have this term for it).
Given the kind of knowledge of the world they probably had back then, it seems entirely plausible to me that the biblical stories were entirely realistic to them (!) and that they didn't take them metaphorically.
Profit spiritually, in terms of being closer to God, having a better understanding for God, having a better reverence for God.
How do you think those people have profited from their efforts? In the sense of having a theme for their academic research and obtaining tenure?
No, it's their source that is holy, and because of their source, they are holy in and of themselves.
However, whether a particular person can recognize them as holy or not depends on this person's purity "of heart" or lack thereof.
I don't know. As far as I'm aware, the records we have relate only to persons of status, wealth and power when it comes to such things.
Thank you. That was a pretty nasty rabbit.
Sometime between the Babylonian exile and the Second Temple. But Maimonides thought it necessary to make such ideas clear.
That's deriving a theme from the story, but it doesn't show the historicity of the events. The point I've made is that there are inconsistent accounts in the Bible that render historical accuracy impossible, so unless you're willing to posit the ancients were incapable of identifying those inconsistencies, you have to conclude the purpose of the stories was not to convey factual accuracy, but it was to convey a particular theme, exactly as you've noted.
Read the account of how Saul meets David. David plays the harp for him and they know each other well and then a chapter later he hears tale of this man David and insists upon meeting him, not knowing who he is. Interesting amnesiac event.
The temple housed God, so the incorporeality question wasn't fully resolved, but obviously the tension had begun regarding that issue.
Rather than saying then, that they are contingently holy, we could say that, since the human contribution, both in virtue of creation and reception, is essential to holiness, that they are potentially holy. This ties in with the idea that God needs us as much as we need God.
As an aside on a somewhat different but related tangent, have you seen the Amazon Prime series American Gods? The premise there is that gods are created by the human imagination and that they have a real existence and life as long as there remain those who worship them.
Sounds like the infinite regress of Marvel superhero origin stories.
I don't think such questions are ever really resolved though. While it may be that most today will understand this figuratively, the idea of God's presence is still common. When pressed some may deny that it is a physical presence and appeal to something like energy, which they think is non-physical.
Some disputes that come up on the forums from time to time: divine personalism, divine simplicity, whether God is the supreme being or not a being but the ground of being.
And to turn this back to the topic: whether God and Jesus are one and the same ousia.
You heard of Homer's works. The Iliad and the Odyssey were not written by Homer, but by a different guy with the same name.
The ancient world was vast. Stretched out. If Saul met one particular David who played the harp, he could possibly want to meet all the Davids that played a harp. There were not too many types of instruments, and Davids were a-plenty much like today. So.... this is an explanation to negate the amnesia-theory.
I admit I just admitted my ignorance by reducing the character of David to Harp playing, first name and geographical location. There must have been other attributes to David there, which most likely made him unique in the context.
Yes.
What do you mean by "showing the historicity of the events"? Showing that Eve was created out of Adam's rib?
And you take things like that as evidence that the writers of the Bible "didn't really take those things literally"?
The issues you describe are issues concerning the transition from oral culture to written culture. These issues aren't specific to the Bible.
It's perverse to suggest the ancients weren't interested in factual accuracy. If anything, the fact that they kept multiple less or more diverging accounts (witness testimonies) of the same event that indicates that factual accuracy is what they cared about.
Witness testimonies usually differ one from another to some extent, such is the nature of witness testimony. In matters that depend on witness testimony, the most one can do is record whatever witness testimony is available, and leave it at that.
One doesn't have to be religious in order to understand how at least some of the religious concepts work. (Nor does such understanding make one religious.)
You objection only holds as long as we take for granted that god does not exist (so there's no source of holiness).
The more I engage with you the more I get the impression that you are a contrarian; someone who just likes to argue for the sake of it.
No, that's _you_ don't know whether God exists. Doesn't mean everyone else is the same as you.
Oh, for crying out loud.
You keep taking for granted your own stance, your own experience, and you hold it up as the arbiter of reality _for_ _everyone. You elevate your own "I don't know whether God exists" to "We don't know whether God exists". What on earth makes you think you can speak on behalf of other people like that?!
How could anyone know that God exists (as opposed to feeling or believing deeply that he does)? Do you know that God exists? If not then how do you know that others know, or even could know, that God exists? If you want to claim that you or others know, or could know God, then it is on you to explain how that could be possible.
Remember, knowledge is generally defined as being capable of demonstration to others. Even if it were possible to "know" that God exists (in the sense of being absolutely convinced of it) how could the "knower" demonstrate her knowledge to others?
Apart from that there, are simply no claims made by the major Western religions that it is possible to know God; it is acknowledged to be a matter of faith in view of human limitation. To claim that God can be known is considered to be a gnostic heresy. And the Eastern conceptions of God are totally different such that it is thought that knowing the essence of the self just is to know God.
In any case, when I tell you I don't believe it is possible to know God and why I think that, I am telling you my opinion; you don't have to agree, you can go on believing that you know God or that others do, or that it is possible that others do; or whatever, so all this talk of me imposing my opinion is childish and tantrum-like; I am not imposing anything on you, I'm just telling you what I think and why.