How did the historical Jesus become famous?

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Paul of Tarsus
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How did the historical Jesus become famous?

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Post by Paul of Tarsus »

As you should know some non-Christian scholars like Bart Ehrman and John Dominic Crossan do not believe that Jesus was anything more than a "small time" Jewish preacher. He never rose from the dead. Nevertheless, Jesus and his life inspired the world's largest religion. If Ehrman and Crossan are right about Jesus, then we must ask how Jesus became the lasting focal point of his followers. Why did the disciples preach that he was God's right-hand man and savior of the world if they knew he had suffered an ignominious death at the hands of the Romans never to be seen again?

The pieces of this puzzle don't fit together very well. It seems likely to me that Jesus would have been very famous in his day to inspire people the way he did. On the other hand, a very famous Jesus would have probably been noticed by the historians of the early first century, yet they say nothing about him.

Any thoughts on this issue would be appreciated.

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Re: How did the historical Jesus become famous?

Post #41

Post by Paul of Tarsus »

TRANSPONDER wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 8:56 amNo, miracles in the ancient histories are not thereby validated.
If we had evidence from Fox News and CNN that a miracle happened today, would you deny that the miracle occurred because you think miracles are the least likely events?

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Re: How did the historical Jesus become famous?

Post #42

Post by JoeyKnothead »

Paul of Tarsus wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 9:17 am If we had evidence from Fox News and CNN that a miracle happened today, would you deny that the miracle occurred because you think miracles are the least likely events?
"If"

Ever notice how theists' can't just put em up some means to confirm their god claims, they hafta trick us all into just playing along?...

"Now on that there, now ifn you'll just play along, I'm certain you'll come round to thinking dead folks really do hop em up, and set em them to calling em square dances all acrost the land!"

Please present the pertinent data from Fox News and CNN that you hope'll get folks to come around to your way of thinking.

Elsewise, expose yourself as one of em, the ,"But, but, but what if..." brigade.
I might be Teddy Roosevelt, but I ain't.
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Re: How did the historical Jesus become famous?

Post #43

Post by TRANSPONDER »

Paul of Tarsus wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 9:17 am
TRANSPONDER wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 8:56 amNo, miracles in the ancient histories are not thereby validated.
If we had evidence from Fox News and CNN that a miracle happened today, would you deny that the miracle occurred because you think miracles are the least likely events?
Any such claim in the news would be of great interest of course, but even if reported on a news show, it would still be an anecdotal claim with no way of checking it. Unless it can be investigated, like a plane crash. Even if you interview a lot of people who swear they saw it, there is no way of being quite sure what they saw, or whether they actually saw it or just heard it and reported it as what they saw. The fact is that even everyday events can be misinterpreted, even if we are inclined to let it go as it doesn't matter. But the more 'Extraordinary' a claim is, the more 'Extraordinary' the validation has to be.

However when it comes to the Gospel miracles, the unreliability of the claims can be seen when we have these 'Eyewitness' tales presented in court and they contradict. Any judge would have their testimony declared unsafe and might slap them with a perjury writ or two while she was at it.

As a p.s, the fascinating 'miracle' of Fatima is a nice test -case. Presented as a religious miracle and (alternatively) as a flying saucer event by UFO - enthusiasts. In fact, examination of the case shows that it is a fake -up by various interested parties, and in act nothing unusual happened at all. At least a fair case be made for that.

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Re: How did the historical Jesus become famous?

Post #44

Post by JoeyKnothead »

This entire OP is a fraud so big, we can't us no longer pick on the wimmins who get em them their breast imbigulations.


This OP starts off declaring this Jesus feller is 'historic'.

A common Christian trick - "Let's all just assume I speak truth, and that'll sure help me to get me around the fact I can't show me I do".

These are the liars who lie. These are the preachers who preach.

They wanna avoid the FACT that Jesus there can't be, ain't been, and never will be, shown to him ever to have him ever existed.

This is the lie about it.

"I need y'all to y'all play along with me here, where it is, I swear to God, Jesus really did him exist! Only I need me to all y'all pretend I'm being me honest about it!"

Can't show the man ever ate him a biscuit. Can't show the man ever did nothing, nor anything. Can't even show the man even knew him what a biscuit is, or that a honey's it a good thing to put on it.


Where does OP offer ANYTHING ALONG THE LINES OF EVIDENCE THIS JESUS FELLER EVER ONCE HIM EXISTED IN ANY FORM OF TIME OR SPACE ANY OF US KNOW ABOUT?

The liar lies, and the preacher preaches.

It's what they do!

"God hates you cause here it is, I am me, I do me it too!"

Bury these preachers in their lies! Bury em in them their challenge running away from ways. Bury these jerks who declare to speak for god's, but don't it beat all, they run away as cowards when ya challenge their claims.

Damn the preacher!

They infect C&A every time they're allowed to get away with ignoring challenges to their claims. They infect C&A every time they're allowed to post their preachings in a section of this site meant to get to the truth.


But I'll give it this "if"..

If only the theist could show they speak truth, well how bout that!
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Re: How did the historical Jesus become famous?

Post #45

Post by JoeyKnothead »

I invoke the law of the feathery bull.

OP has made an assertion that this Jesus feller existed.

I CHALLENGE OP TO SHOW HE SPEAKS TRUTH!.

Or lacking such, we get to holler out 'LIAR' every time he posts.


That last bit there, that's based on the whole bible promoting thing, and how it is, the bible ain't it none proud about us atheists. Calling us evil and all such as that. So really, I just said that as an extreme example, and fully expect otseng'd run me out to the woodshed Ifn I did. And I'm here to tell it, you don't want you no otseng running you out to the woodshed.
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Re: How did the historical Jesus become famous?

Post #46

Post by JoeyKnothead »

The liar lies.

And the preacher preaches.

And how bout that?
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Re: How did the historical Jesus become famous?

Post #47

Post by TRANSPONDER »

It's perhaps inevitable but we seem to have three threads running here.

(1) the process by which Jesus (and the Church) became such a huge thing and, in time, the state religion of the Roman world; and after that the Western world and Philippines. True, Islam had half of that off them, but it was quite a success - story, nonetheless.

(2) trying to prove that the Jesus story is true or at least believable.

(3) trying to put the rationale and thinking - methods of atheism on the spot.

Well, I'm ready for all of those.

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Re: How did the historical Jesus become famous?

Post #48

Post by William »

TRANSPONDER wrote: Mon May 10, 2021 8:34 am How do we know...really....that the disciples preached any such things? The assumption is that Acts tells us about the disciples' actions after the crucifixion, but can we really trust it? It is evidently the work of Luke and you couldn't trust him any further than you could kick him. I will be only too glad to give the many examples of his fabrication and alteration. But I'll just mention one - the angelic message at the tomb (and I'll remind you that John has no such thing) is that Jesus has gone to Galilee as he has told them (after the Last Supper Mark 14. 28). But Luke alters that to 'remember how he told you when he was still in Galilee..?' (24.4).

He alters the message because he doesn't want the disciples being told to go to Galilee. He wants them to stay in Jerusalem and found the Church in Jerusalem, not to go and preach to all nations. Why? Because he had become aware of Paul's letters and that made it clear that Paul was the one to do the mission to the gentiles and not the disciples at all. Acts is a sequel to Luke's gospel to show that Paul had the mission, admittedly being rubber stamped at the council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), which is also based on a huge rewrite of Paul doing a deal with Peter and James (Galatians 2.7-10) and we only hear what Paul has to say about that, too.

Without going too deep, the way I'd argue it is that the Church doctrine that Jesus taught that he would be resurrected and would save everyone is recorded in the Gospels, the disciples becoming Apostles but really it being Paul's mission to set up the Gentile church as in Acts, and Paul's letters pass on the teachings of the apostles.

And of course Church Traditions about how the apostles died for their faith proves the resurrection.

No. The order of events is Crucifixion, yes, I have reason to believe it. Jesus dead and stayed dead and the disciples knew it. But being Pharisee Jews (oh yes), they believed in an eventual resurrection and it was evidently Peter who first had a vision of Jesus in heaven and telling the others who also believed that Jesus was in heaven (in the spirit) and would soon return to 'accomplish all things' as he had failed to do. As you know, they are long dead and still no Jesus. Their belief was delusional.

It was also not to the liking of the Romans or their colleagues, the Sadducee -run Sanhedrin and their paid informers, of whom we may suppose Saul was one. Because though a Jew he was also a Roman, and the Apostolic movement was seen as subversive. I won't go into just how and why Paul changed his mind (but the vision on the road to Damascus is Luke's invention - Paul says nothing at all about that) but he tells us that there were a succession of appearances of Jesus to the apostles and finally to him (1.Cor. 15.5) and that was visionary, as it was to First Peter, then the others, 500 at once, finally James and (belatedly) to Paul.

This isn't the (Gospel) appearances of Jesus first to Mary (according the Matthew, though Luke contradicts that) then to Simon (only in Luke - because he read that Paul says so) then to the '11' (according to Luke but only ten according to John as supposedly Thomas wasn't there. And of course only 9 because James wasn't there if (as Paul's letter says) he only 'finally' saw Jesus.

It's clear that these are visions after the events sometime after crucifixion and burial and no support for the resurrection -accounts, which are invented and contradictory. Yet the disciples did believe that Jesus (in the spirit) had gone back to heaven and would come in their lifetimes and Paul came to believe (or at least teach) this, too and we get the sense of urgency; this could happen at any time. We still get the urgent warnings, 2000 years after he should have returned.
I also won't go into Paul's teaching that Jesus was a man and not a god and that the subsequent Christian teaching turned Jesus from God's chosen Messiah into God being present in a man over the evolution of 4 gospels, but rather point out that it was Christian thought that built on Paul and in what we see Jesus teaching and is not what Paul taught, much less what the Jewish apostles taught, and nothing to do with what Jesus taught, whatever that was as I can promise you that not a word of the Gospels is actually anything that Jesus said..

And the sticky end sof Paul and James and indeed the other apostles are traditions, which is to say made up stories or guesswork at best. Acts ends around AD 60 because that is all that Luke could glean from Paul's letters. The tradition that Peter went to Rome is handy for the Vatican, but is dubious, despite their efforts to prove that Peter was the first Pope.

So in the end, we don't know how any of the disciples died (you cannot trust Acts on this) and if they died for their Faith that Jesus had resurrected, it was not a faith that he had appeared in the resurrected body on the Sunday, because those stories are demonstrably concocted and Paul's list of Apostles who had visions of Jesus is nothing to do with resurrection -night.
I myself think it is best to avoid presuming motives re the various biblical authors.

I have done so myself, especially with Paul [because his message is so different from that of Christs, in many ways] but have come to the realization that the Bible is a conglomerate of the writing of authors who had specific interpretations of The World and the beliefs formed through the differing world views are distinct enough to trigger conflict.

Essentially theism is specific to two main subjects. "The Creator(s)" and "Afterlife" and beliefs about those subjects come one from the other...depending on the direction one enters into theism from.

Something went down re the "Character of Jesus" and I think it fair enough that some of the stories attributed to him [even in non biblical gospels] have to be true, truish, plain silly, and obviously fabricated....sorting out which fits where, is for the individual to delight in [or not].

I am such an individual who delights in such activity.

But what made Jesus famous was not any of those things but all of those things.

And specifically what made Jesus famous was The Bible.

And behind that, was The Machine - because The Bible did not just appear out of thin air. There was machinery involved.

Question being..."Who owed the machinery which produced the Bible?"
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The answer is clearly seen in the historic records.

Which itself reaches back into the fog of pre-history and grabs whatever nightmare or fairytale comes from that hidden thing...and reveals it to the world...like a mirror image of sorts.

Human beings are harsh on themselves, [on each other] and this is seen within the structures of their theist belief systems [not those alone of course - there is atheist expression equally as harsh] and the whole reason for that [ and why I think we could cut us some slack] is because we find ourselves landed on this huge Island of a Planet like some freakish god-scientist's petri dish [only its not flat, but curved] with nary another similar freakish god-scientist's petri dish within sight.... and it is blimin' dangerous and always ends in the death of the human form... "harsh"...so....
...of course our stories are going to reflect that fact.
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[Matthew 7.1]
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Re: How did the historical Jesus become famous?

Post #49

Post by TRANSPONDER »

Yes. You are touching on innate and atavistic feelings of humans and why they develop feelings of reverence for figures in religions (and not only that). I have some ideas about this, but I'll leave it to the anthropologists.

What I do is not assign Motives to the authors of the gospels - not at the outset, but look at what the internal evidence tells us about how the gospels were written. That tells us something about the order in which they were written. For example, if the man -god events and teachings in the gospels came first, how could Paul have taught a human messiah that wasn't God?

It has to be the gospels building on Paul with Christian doctrines. That explains the much more human Messiah of Mark becoming the incarnated God of John.
Jesus as a religious figure evolves before our eyes.

I already pointed up the invention of the contradictory Nativity -narratives to fulfil a scriptural need. I also have started to argue the concoction of contradictory solid body resurrection - stories to fill out the visionary resurrections that the apostles and Paul had (and weren't considered good enough). This tells us about the purposes and intent of the writers and we can see their motives. So it's valid to say what they were.

There's much more of this,. I already mentioned the alteration by Luke of a resurrected Jesus going to Galilee to a Jerusalem church that would kick -start Paul's mission. I can also mention the clear invention of Jesus' declaration at Nazareth with an attempt to murder him, added to the Synoptic 'rejection at Nazareth' and shifted to the beginning of his mission. There is much, much, more of this.

These things are clear - if you look. It seems that for 2000 years, nobody has.

The point being that whatever the reason for the spread of Christianity and the fame of Jesus, it wasn't because the Gospel accounts were true.

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Re: How did the historical Jesus become famous?

Post #50

Post by William »

It is not a question the OP topic is asking. "Are the Bible Stories about Jesus True?"

True, part true, not true at all...are not the reason why "historical Jesus became famous". That some folk think they are true, part true, or not true at all is just the reaction to the fame building machinery.

What is the consequence of that machinery building the mythology, and is it all that bad really? How does the fame of this one individual icon affect/effect the individual?

I would rather be a theist than not, just for the extra adventure and mystery...on top of the adventure and mystery we are already involved within. [as per my last post].

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