…he was what we’d now call an atheist? Moreover, what if it was the religious powers that did it?
Here’s what I’m thinking - Let’s say you’re a member of the priestly caste with power over the citizens of your town. Along comes this guy who’s really getting popular, and he’s saying stuff like the kingdom of god isn’t up there, it’s in you, it’s here and now, let me help you, not those guys over there, etc.
That would be quite a threat to the caste. How would you handle this, especially since word of mouth was so important? One way would be to kill him THEN proceed to gaslight the population into believing, no no no, he actually was saying exactly what we’re saying, and it was the big bad Romans who killed him. So words are put into Jesus’ mouth, twisted, and a whole narrative is established whereby he’s the son of god, etc. agreeing with the ones in power.
The flaw is that the gospels tell that Jesus did not agree with the religious dominant powers, the Pharisees and Sadducees.
The gospels have been written full of invention and plagiarism, so much that nothing can really be told about the true Jesus. for instance, some elements may have been directly taken from Mithra religion.
Other idea : At this time crucifixion was reserved to slaves. A common no roman criminal was hanged.
Last idea, the gospels were written by opponents of the traditional forms of Judaism.
And, even if he was a revolutionary, Jesus put himself as a traditional : " I did not come to destroy but to fulfill . … Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy , but to fulfil. … Do not think that … "
Bookstores religious sections are full of religious books written by today’s religious scholars about Jesus and Christianity. The viewpoint of some of these scholars is quite different than the NT’s perspective and not embraced by the religious sectors.
It was not just Mary and Jesus leading a Christian Gnostic movement. There were many Gnostic movements at the time. The Jewish Gnostic movement was Greek and Egyptian thinking in the Jewish religion. There was no Christianity the way we know it at that time. There was only the Jewish Christian movement (Gnostic). Paul brought the Christian movement to life after the crucifixion. But remember Paul was also Jewish. In Rome for example the Jewish Christian movement of Gnostic also included a lot of Egyptian beliefs. Point being there were a lot of different thoughts on what Christian meant at that time-period.
We don’t know how popular Jesus was. James, his brother may have been more popular in the religious circles. Jesus as a religious leader may have been made popular by Paul. And Paul may have been working for the Roman government. The forward-thinking today is that Paul may have tried to kill James. James ran the Jewish Christian movement and James’s is hardly covered in the NT.
Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi Hellenistic Pharisee Gnostic Christian. The fact that Jesus was a Pharisee means he was part of the rich and upper caste. Jesus also wore a purple robe. An item worn by the rich. The Pharisees were a social movement and a school of thought in the Holy Land of Hellenistic law-making and Greek-style legislative bodies. They were the rich and powerful and controlled the temple politically for a long time and were now in heavy decline. They were deists whose belief in the existence of a supreme being was recognized as a creator who does not intervene in the universe. Who may have existed in the beginning but then went away never to return. Or one could say, more of an atheist who uses the creator for political reasons to control the masses. The problem was that the Romans took control of Israel and did not back the Pharisee the way the Greeks did. Jesus understood that if he took control of Israel that he needed to change the way the Sadducees scribes operated.
Jesus was a politician setting up to take Herod Antipas job as the leader of Galilee and Perea. Herod wanted to kill Jesus. He killed his cousin, John the Baptizer. But he had a problem going after Jesus because Jesus was a Roman citizen. Jesus’ father was Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera. A roman soldier of very high status who got the honorary name of the Roman emperor “Tiberius”. Thus, Pantera was connected to the highest levels of the Roman Empire.
Lucius Aelius Sejanus, chief administrator of the Roman Empire who worked for the Roman Emperor Tiberius and was sort of like second in command. Sejanus had been killing off Tiberius’ family so that there would be no heirs to the Roman Empire. He didn’t want to have to many revolts after he assassinated Tiberius and became emperor. The Jewish Sadducees priests would more than likely started a revolt to leave Rome. Jesus was to step in and keep Israel from revolting after the assassination. The problem took place when Tiberius found out about Sejanus’ plan to assassinate him and had Sejanus killed.
Luke may have been working for the Sadducees priests to report on the Christian movement. Paul may have been a spy for the Romans.
After assassination attempts the plotters and their families are all killed. This put Jesus in a tough situation. If he claimed his Roman citizenship his family would have been killed. Now did the crucifixion take place. If it did, was it Jesus on the cross? And was it to save his family because of his connections with Sejanus?
In the early sixties the Vatican put together a strike team of highly skilled priests they could send to stop anybody from disagreeing with Catholicism views. Mainly radio personalities from contesting the bible. These priests were allowed to study the data at the Vatican. This project backfired on the Vatican because many of the priests turned on the Vatican. One major claim was that Jesus was not crucified. The Vatican then made all existing and new priests declare that they believed in the crucifixion to be a priest.
The priestly class was in cahoots with the Roman elite, and it wasn’t a secret. The gospels appear to be a subversion of that, to me, and some scholars. Also, I don’t think Jesus was ever an actual person, so, there’s that.
It wasn’t until 381AD that the Catholic Bishops figured out how to use the gospels to control people. They did basically the same kind of thing that had been rebelled against in the first century, made them confess every Sunday.
Mike, look at when the Nicene Creed was finalized. The one that says, “He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;”
Great ideas here. I do believe Jesus was an actual person, mostly because Bart Erhman said so, he’s a scholar I trust. I’m just fascinated by the idea of how ideas, or the people who espouse them, can be fought. It’s kind of relevant to what we see today. The Repubs are trying to gaslight americans into believing the opposite of what’s true about Jan 6. And it’s sort of working with a large class of people. So now project say 500 years into the future, and Drumpf is some kind of hero. So that’s what I envisioned with Jesus, except that he was only a “bad guy” for the bad guys.
This movie has some fun with the idea that Batman could turn into a religion. I’m not sure I follow your Drumpf analogy. There’s nothing corrupt about Jesus.
Oh no, the analogy was just a public figure who through mass-gaslighting is turned into someone he’s not. (moron turns into a hero, atheist/humanist turns into a theist).
And this is sort of taken up in a great novel by Gore Vidal called, you guessed it, “Messiah”.