What if the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus never really happened, but were just invented out of literary models from older Greek and Jewish writing? What if this was done because it was thought the world would be a better place if people believed Jesus died for our sins and rose from the grave?
Plato writes: “What they will say is this: that such being his disposition the just man will have to endure the lash, the rack, chains, the branding-iron in his eyes, and finally, after every extremity of suffering, he will be crucified, and so will learn his lesson that not to be but to seem just is what we ought to desire …" (Republic 2.361e-2.362a). Maybe this passage in Plato’s Republic inspired the crucifixion story in the New Testament in the same way Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, and the Wisdom of Solomon did by way of haggadic midrash. Maybe the crucifixion and resurrection story about Jesus was one of those noble lies Plato spoke of in the Republic (see Republic Book 3, 414e–15c), told because it would make the world a better place if the masses believed it.
Plato apparently takes the idea of the noble lie from Euripides’ Bacchae, where Cadmus says “Even though this man (Dionysus) be no God, as you say, still say that he is. Be guilty of a splendid fraud, declaring him the son of Semele, for this would make it seem that she was the mother of a god, and it would confer honour on all our race." Maybe this is why Christians said Jesus was a God.
“The noble lie" would fit in with Jewish and Christian theology, where lying and deception were allowed if it served the purpose of God (see Exodus 1:18-20, Joshua 2: 4-6, 1 Kings 15:5, 1 Kings 22:23, 2 Kings 8:10, 1 Samuel 21:2, Jeremiah 4:10, John 7: 8-10, 2 Thessalonians 2:11, James 2:25).
Maybe a better world was a cause the original Christians would die for, even if they knew Jesus never rose from the dead. Paul would have been part of this conspiracy too, because he was never hunted down by his former employers when he deserted and joined the Christians.
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)"
If you’re saying there was some deliberate fabrication that occurred as each gospel or epistle was written with the intention of creating a religion, no. Paul is the most honest about having personal experiences then saying they have meaning. Call that fabrication if you want, we’ll never know. Later authors are claiming historical events, but that was normal for the time period. It was another generation before people started saying that those historical events were real. No doubt some knew they most likely were not real and others did not. As evidence, take any random website with false information and show it to people, some will say, OMG! everyone needs to know this!
I think you read too much into things. More likely, and this idea is trotted out by various authors like Bart E., is that things were just different back then. So nowadays we’d call plagiarism or writing something posing as some other person illegal or deceptive. But that’s just how they did things back then and they weren’t being deceitful. There WERE certain groups, well after the fact that were in fact out to create their brand of a religion and force others out. But that occurred hundreds of years after JC died and really is a sociological or political phenomenon, not really having to do with Jesus or Christianity per se.
That’s not to say much/most of what appears in the bible wasn’t just a reworking of pre-existing non-Christian stories. It’s just that it wasn’t done deceitfully.
I think you read too much into things. More likely, and this idea is trotted out by various authors like Bart E., is that things were just different back then. So nowadays we'd call plagiarism or writing something posing as some other person illegal or deceptive. But that's just how they did things back then and they weren't being deceitful. There WERE certain groups, well after the fact that were in fact out to create their brand of a religion and force others out. But that occurred hundreds of years after JC died and really is a sociological or political phenomenon, not really having to do with Jesus or Christianity per se. That's not to say much/most of what appears in the bible wasn't just a reworking of pre-existing non-Christian stories. It's just that it wasn't done deceitfully.Of course the Jesus story was all lies. Religion has always been all lies. Did Muhammad fly off into the sky on a winged horse, or was somebody lying? Did Apollonius of Tyana do all those miracles, or was somebody lying? Did Joseph Smith find golden plates from heaven, or was somebody lying? Did Jesus do all those miracles and rise from the dead, or was somebody lying?
Of course the Jesus story was all lies. Religion has always been all lies. Did Muhammad fly off into the sky on a winged horse, or was somebody lying? Did Apollonius of Tyana do all those miracles, or was somebody lying? Did Joseph Smith find golden plates from heaven, or was somebody lying? Did Jesus do all those miracles and rise from the dead, or was somebody lying?You have to take those one by one. Miracles by Apollo was a different time so that's one I can't answer. Joseph Smith is a rare recent case where we know an awful lot about the person and how the myth formed, so sure, lies, but he's not around for us to probe his brain and know how well he had deceived himself or how sincere his believers were. As for Jesus, we know there was mythic poetry being written at the time, so we can assume that was intended by the authors, it's the following generations that get interesting, because we know they believed all sorts of crazy things, so if they picked up these century old writings and tried to make sense of them, they could very well have believed it, therefore reporting it as truth was not a lie, just incredibly bad science. Same for Muhammad flying, the story says it's a dream, yet people believe it was real. I can't explain the psychology of a 7th century mind.
I think you read too much into things. More likely, and this idea is trotted out by various authors like Bart E., is that things were just different back then. So nowadays we'd call plagiarism or writing something posing as some other person illegal or deceptive. But that's just how they did things back then and they weren't being deceitful. There WERE certain groups, well after the fact that were in fact out to create their brand of a religion and force others out. But that occurred hundreds of years after JC died and really is a sociological or political phenomenon, not really having to do with Jesus or Christianity per se. That's not to say much/most of what appears in the bible wasn't just a reworking of pre-existing non-Christian stories. It's just that it wasn't done deceitfully.Of course the Jesus story was all lies. Religion has always been all lies. Did Muhammad fly off into the sky on a winged horse, or was somebody lying? Did Apollonius of Tyana do all those miracles, or was somebody lying? Did Joseph Smith find golden plates from heaven, or was somebody lying? Did Jesus do all those miracles and rise from the dead, or was somebody lying?Wow that's a real dumb response. So tell me, when you were seven years old, and were out playing on a hot sunny day, and you looked down the street and saw Sally apparently walking on water, and you ran and told your Mom, did she punish you for telling a filthy lie? She must have judging by your post. Or did she explain that you were deceived and what you saw was an illusion?
I doubt any of the bible writers deliberately lied about what they wrote, though they did exaggerate and dramatize, probably in an effort to get others to accept their stories. They thought they were true and they didn’t question it. They believed what they thought they saw and what other people told them. They were not trained in critical thinking or the need for it. They had an excuse for being gullible. People in the 21st century do not. If anything, people today are deliberately ignorant–somethingthat was not the case in biblical times. They were genuinely ignorant.
Lois
There is plenty of evidence, I think, even today, of people using, what amounts to “lies” as a way of influencing mass behavior. Just look at our political campaigns. Are these “liars” all simply unaware of their distortions, due to a paucity of critical thinking? Or, are some of them, well aware of the “deceptions” they are using.
There is plenty of evidence, I think, even today, of people using, what amounts to "lies" as a way of influencing mass behavior. Just look at our political campaigns. Are these "liars" all simply unaware of their distortions, due to a paucity of critical thinking? Or, are some of them, well aware of the "deceptions" they are using.Both, I'd say. What makes con men so effective is that they believe the crap they say. In other cases, I'm sure they know they're lying, but rationalize the lies as being "easier" than explaining their perspective.
There is plenty of evidence, I think, even today, of people using, what amounts to "lies" as a way of influencing mass behavior. Just look at our political campaigns. Are these "liars" all simply unaware of their distortions, due to a paucity of critical thinking? Or, are some of them, well aware of the "deceptions" they are using.Both, I'd say. What makes con men so effective is that they believe the crap they say. In other cases, I'm sure they know they're lying, but rationalize the lies as being "easier" than explaining their perspective. I think that's true of the people who promoted Christianity after the bible writers. The later followers knew they had a highly profitable and useful bill of goods to sell. But I think the original bible writers were writing what they thought was true and were simply mistaken about its validity and implications.. They couldn't have known that Christianity would be sold to the highest bidder and used against billions of people. It was a true Pandora's box. Lois
There is plenty of evidence, I think, even today, of people using, what amounts to "lies" as a way of influencing mass behavior. Just look at our political campaigns. Are these "liars" all simply unaware of their distortions, due to a paucity of critical thinking? Or, are some of them, well aware of the "deceptions" they are using.Both, I'd say. What makes con men so effective is that they believe the crap they say. In other cases, I'm sure they know they're lying, but rationalize the lies as being "easier" than explaining their perspective. I think that's true of the people who promoted Christianity after the bible writers. The later followers knew they had a highly profitable and useful bill of goods to sell. But I think the original bible writers were writing what they thought was true and were simply mistaken about its validity and implications.. They couldn't have known that Christianity would be sold to the highest bidder and used against billions of people. It was a true Pandora's box. Lois I think that the original writers could not have foreseen, as you say, the impact of their writings on the future of humanity, but they did, I imagine, expect to have some sort of impact on their local and contemporary audience. We can't really know their particular motivations or beliefs about what they were writing. But based on human behavior, it seems to me to be, as reasonable a hypothesis, as not, that some of them did not devoutly believe what they were writing so much as they sought to impact others' beliefs.
One of the theories, as explained by Richard Carrier and it has a name that I forget at the moment, is that Christ was first a purely non-corporeal type god. Paul’s earliest writings seem to confirm this and Paul’s later writings probably weren’t written by the same Paul. I’m less familiar with the earlier evidence of the messiah, but take your pick, OT, other nearby cultures, etc. Then, those stories were formalized into stories like the book of Mark, where the spiritual god is made into a real person. This isn’t so much a “lie” as a form of literature that existed at the time. I think the person who wrote it assumed people would know of this type of writing and not expect they would think he was writing historical fact. Nor would he have known of the psychology of people just a couple generations later that would find his story and believe it.
Later, when the discipline of theology began to develop, even those writers put in statements that they couldn’t know for sure what was true. Nor could they expect that later Kings would be stupid enough to dismiss their statements of uncertainty and believe Jesus was coming back within their lifetimes and kill anyone who disagreed with them. It’s not until 1,000 years later that we finally get church leaders admitting that they don’t believe the gospels and don’t care, they just want the power. IMO, Christianity is maintained today by lies and deception, but it was not founded on them.
There is plenty of evidence, I think, even today, of people using, what amounts to "lies" as a way of influencing mass behavior. Just look at our political campaigns. Are these "liars" all simply unaware of their distortions, due to a paucity of critical thinking? Or, are some of them, well aware of the "deceptions" they are using.Both, I'd say. What makes con men so effective is that they believe the crap they say. In other cases, I'm sure they know they're lying, but rationalize the lies as being "easier" than explaining their perspective. I like your signature line: “There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on me’." ― Philip K. Dick Might that refer to the IPhone 11?
There is plenty of evidence, I think, even today, of people using, what amounts to "lies" as a way of influencing mass behavior. Just look at our political campaigns. Are these "liars" all simply unaware of their distortions, due to a paucity of critical thinking? Or, are some of them, well aware of the "deceptions" they are using.Both, I'd say. What makes con men so effective is that they believe the crap they say. In other cases, I'm sure they know they're lying, but rationalize the lies as being "easier" than explaining their perspective. I like your signature line: “There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on me’." ― Philip K. Dick Might that refer to the IPhone 11?Actually, that's basically now.
There is plenty of evidence, I think, even today, of people using, what amounts to "lies" as a way of influencing mass behavior. Just look at our political campaigns. Are these "liars" all simply unaware of their distortions, due to a paucity of critical thinking? Or, are some of them, well aware of the "deceptions" they are using.Both, I'd say. What makes con men so effective is that they believe the crap they say. In other cases, I'm sure they know they're lying, but rationalize the lies as being "easier" than explaining their perspective. I like your signature line: “There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on me’." ― Philip K. Dick Might that refer to the IPhone 11?Actually, that's basically now. Oh, I was thinking of when our phones become independent conscious entities. :)
And on a lighter note, I went snooping on the site recommended by CT and found some more damning evidence on Ken Hamm. Apparently he’s now in league with a Southern separatist group, the “League of the South” (never heard of them BTW) who advocate for an all white Xtian country with their own interpretation of the Constitutuion. This is a page right out of the Klan playbook and Hamm is speaking, or has spoken already to these Knights of the Invisible Empire. Again with the melding of fundamentalist Xtian thought and white supremacy. I wonder how he’ll portray his mannequins in the “Ark” exhibit?
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/warrenthrockmorton/2014/09/12/ken-ham-headlines-institute-on-the-constitution-conference/
Cap’t Jack
.... I wonder how he'll portray his mannequins in the "Ark" exhibit? Cap't JackNoah and most of his family will, no doubt, be portrayed with blondish hair and blue eyes. (The guys might have crew cuts.) (BTW, genetic studies suggest that all current blue-eyed people descended from a single individual, and that the mutation for blue eyes occurred 6,000 to, no earlier than, 10,000 years ago.)
Is the Pope Catholic!
I think Christianity was based on ignorance and error. The lies and deceptions came later when churches were established and when people started questioning the claims. By then a lot of people had a lot to lose if the story was not shored up with lies and deception. Their pot of fool’s gold was being attacked.
Lois