Who did more - Jesus or his publicists?

[marco]

Jesus advised his friends not to mention his miracles. But they did. Jesus hid for 30 years, then emerged into publicity and his deeds were reported by people who didn't see him. His life was attached to bits and pieces of Scripture and his forefathers could be traced back to Adam - thanks to fantastic research work.

So should we credit Jesus for Christianity or thank his publicists for doing a great job?

[marco]

So should we credit Jesus for Christianity or thank his publicists for doing a great job?

Jesus walked with a pronounced limp and suffered from hay fever. He rarely changed his clothes since he was forever moving around from town to town. He had a scar on his left cheek partially concealed by a thick growth of beard.


Yes, it would be interesting if we had these details about Christ but we have nothing, except a few wise words, as if Jesus was just a microphone. So Jesus, whether he lived or not, is the construct of many people. It is of course ludicrous that one of these worthies attempts to trace Jesus back to Adam and then God, but this simply shows the enthusiasm his writers had for the job.

It would seem that an otherwise dusty mendicant has been elevated through the work of later scribes. The big question is why.

[Mithrae]

Jesus walked with a pronounced limp and suffered from hay fever. He rarely changed his clothes since he was forever moving around from town to town. He had a scar on his left cheek partially concealed by a thick growth of beard.


Yes, it would be interesting if we had these details about Christ but we have nothing, except a few wise words, as if Jesus was just a microphone. So Jesus, whether he lived or not, is the construct of many people. It is of course ludicrous that one of these worthies attempts to trace Jesus back to Adam and then God, but this simply shows the enthusiasm his writers had for the job.

It would seem that an otherwise dusty mendicant has been elevated through the work of later scribes. The big question is why.

I imagine you would know better than most of us what we have of Socrates. Some of the legends surrounding Pythogoras are just as magical as those surrounding Jesus. Yes, some academics question whether Socrates existed too. And there's a slim possibility that those academics are correct. But I reckon that in many cases like this it's more likely that the men just became partially eclipsed by their own wisdom and legends. If the insights of Pythagoras seemed almost incomprehensible to his peers and superhuman to his younger contemporaries, would that mean that he was "just a microphone"? If a gospel actually said Jesus had a scar on his left cheek, would it be regarded as evidence of authenticity or some post hoc accommodation to an obscure scriptural reference?

[marco]

Jesus walked with a pronounced limp and suffered from hay fever. He rarely changed his clothes since he was forever moving around from town to town. He had a scar on his left cheek partially concealed by a thick growth of beard.


Yes, it would be interesting if we had these details about Christ but we have nothing, except a few wise words, as if Jesus was just a microphone. So Jesus, whether he lived or not, is the construct of many people. It is of course ludicrous that one of these worthies attempts to trace Jesus back to Adam and then God, but this simply shows the enthusiasm his writers had for the job.

It would seem that an otherwise dusty mendicant has been elevated through the work of later scribes. The big question is why.

I imagine you would know better than most of us what we have of Socrates. Some of the legends surrounding Pythogoras are just as magical as those surrounding Jesus. Yes, some academics question whether Socrates existed too. And there's a slim possibility that those academics are correct. But I reckon that in many cases like this it's more likely that the men just became partially eclipsed by their own wisdom and legends. If the insights of Pythagoras seemed almost incomprehensible to his peers and superhuman to his younger contemporaries, would that mean that he was "just a microphone"? If a gospel actually said Jesus had a scar on his left cheek, would it be regarded as evidence of authenticity or some post hoc accommodation to an obscure scriptural reference?

When as a boy I learned that Mithridates had an "oatmeal complexion" he came alive. I think simple physical description is important. If we want to compare Christ with Socrates, there is no problem in taking them both as historical figures. But people want more from Christ and it is this extra for which his publicists are responsible.
Alexander jumps from the history pages through reports of his battles; his sarcastic put-down of General Parmenion gives him blood; his claim to be son of Zeus is just a myth which we disregard. However, it is the mythical side of Christ that we are supposed to accept - Christ is the myth of corpse-raiser, older than Abraham, multiplier of fish and luxury wine-maker. Remove the myth and the historical residue is just a wandering minstrel.

As for the mystical Pythagoras, the details of the hypotenuse are a theorem whereas the hypostatic union is a theory.

[Mithrae]

When as a boy I learned that Mithridates had an "oatmeal complexion" he came alive. I think simple physical description is important. If we want to compare Christ with Socrates, there is no problem in taking them both as historical figures. But people want more from Christ and it is this extra for which his publicists are responsible.
Alexander jumps from the history pages through reports of his battles; his sarcastic put-down of General Parmenion gives him blood...

For my part I really couldn't even begin to guess which of those copies of copies of second- or third-hand reports of Alexander's alleged conversations give him blood. However I note (not for the first time, though I don't think I posted it previously) that your style of argumentation seems to be strikingly similar to that of C. S. Lewis in his well-known essay on biblical criticism, merely with opposite - but equally subjective - conclusions:

• In what is already a very old commentary I read that the fourth Gospel is regarded by one school as a ‘spiritual romance’, ‘a poem not a history’, to be judged by the same canons as Nathan’s parable, the book of Jonah, Paradise Lost ‘or, more exactly, Pilgrim’s Progress‘. After a man has said that, why need one attend to anything else he says about any book in the world? Note that he regards Pilgrim’s Progress, a story which professes to be a dream and flaunts its allegorical nature by every single proper name it uses, as the closest parallel. Note that the whole epic panoply of Milton goes for nothing. But even if we leave our the grosser absurdities and keep to Jonah, the insensitiveness is crass – Jonah, a tale with as few even pretended historical attachments as Job, grotesque in incident and surely not without a distinct, though of course edifying, vein of typically Jewish humour. Then turn to John. Read the dialogues: that with the Samaritan woman at the well, or that which follows the healing of the man born blind. Look at its pictures: Jesus (if I may use the word) doodling with his finger in the dust; the unforgettable nv vuz (13:30). I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage – though it may no doubt contain errors – pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors, or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn’t see this has simply not learned to read. . . .
  
  
  There are characters whom we know to be historical but of whom we do not feel that we have any personal knowledge – knowledge by acquaintance; such are Alexander, Attila, or William of Orange. There are others who make no claim to historical reality but whom, none the less, we know as we know real people: Falstaff, Uncle Toby, Mr. Pickwick. But there are only three characters who, claiming the first sort of reality, also actually have the second. And surely everyone knows who they are: Plato’s Socrates, the Jesus of the Gospels, and Boswell’s Johnson. Our acquaintance with them shows itself in a dozen ways. When we look into the apocryphal gospels, we find ourselves constantly saying of this or that logion, ‘No. It’s a fine saying, but not his. That wasn’t how he talked’ – just as we do with all pseudo-Johnsoniana. We are not in the least perturbed by the contrasts within each character: the union in Socrates of silly and scabrous titters about Greek pederasty with the highest mystical fervor and the homeliest good sense; in Johnson, of profound gravity and melancholy with that love of fun and nonsense which Boswell never understood though Fanny Burney did; in Jesus of peasant shrewdness, intolerable severity, and irresistible tenderness. So strong is the flavour of the personality that, even while he says things which, on any other assumption than that of divine Incarnation in the fullest sense, would be appallingly arrogant, yet we – and many unbelievers too – accept him as his own valuation when he says ‘I am meek and lowly of heart’. Even those passages in the New Testament which superficially, and in intention, are most concerned with the divine, and least with the human nature, bring us fact to face with the personality. I am not sure that they don’t do this more than any others.
  
  https://normangeisler.com/fernseeds-elephants/

On what basis should the subjective opinions of one highly educated, extremely eloquent person be accepted or another highly educated, extremely eloquent person dismissed?

Much as I respect the learning of both C. S. Lewis and yourself, ultimately for the layman what both arguments seemingly boil down to is "I like the gospel characterization" or "I don't like the gospel characterization." I don't see any objective standard in play here, let alone a justifiable objective standard, and if anything I have highlighted precisely the opposite: At least one of your own chosen examples of a potential descriptive idiosyncracy would certainly, if it had appeared in the gospels, be dismissed as an allusion to an obscure scripture!

[JehovahsWitness]

JOHN 14:12

"He that exercises faith in me, that one also will do the works that I do; and he will do works greater than these."

The fact that Jesus disciples did more to publicize his message than Jesus himself is another of the many examples of the fulfillement of biblical prophecy. Jesus foretold that his disciples would do "greater works" than he did.


QUESTION What are the "greater works" Jesus refered to in John 14:12?

• ANSWER The "works" associated with preaching and publicizing the good news of the kingdom . Although first century Apostles did indeed perform miraculous feats, it is simply an assumption that "greater works" means more miracles. Jesus was in fact refering to "works" associated with the preaching of the good news and the publicizing of his message. Jesus earthly ministry only lasted 3 and a half years and was almost exclusively to his Jewish compatriots but Mat 28:19, 20 indicates Jesus envisioned the preaching work he started being taken to a (greater) global scale, preaching to millions worldwide, educating them as to divine standards.
  
  The Aposles and in particular the Aposle Paul was chosen by Jesus to spearhead this work in the first century and Jehovah's Witnesses have risen to continue that work in the 20th and century 21st centuries*

* NOTE In 2018 Jehovah's Witnesses spent 2,074,655,497 hours preaching the Good News, conducting 10,079,709 bible studies. A total of 281,744 individuals dedicated their lives to Jehovah God and were baptized as His Witnesses

SOURCE: https://www.jw.org/en/publications/book ... nd-totals/

FURTHER READING How do Jesus's disciples do "greater Works " than Jesus himself?
https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/201998320







NOTE All posts I write represent my personal faith based beliefs as one of Jehovah's Witnesses

[JJ50]

I think Jesus would be astonished at the stories written about him well after he was dead and gone. He probably would not recognise them as having anything to do with him. It was his publicists who created the faith, not Jesus, imo.

[marco]

Much as I respect the learning of both C. S. Lewis and yourself, ultimately for the layman what both arguments seemingly boil down to is "I like the gospel characterization" or "I don't like the gospel characterization." I don't see any objective standard in play here, let alone a justifiable objective standard, and if anything I have highlighted precisely the opposite: At least one of your own chosen examples of a potential descriptive idiosyncrasy would certainly, if it had appeared in the gospels, be dismissed as an allusion to an obscure scripture!

Thank you for a well-considered answer. Coincidentally I was going to mention Jesus scribbling in the dust as an instance of portrayal through minutiae. I don't agree that descriptive details characteristic of novels were anachronistic in the early centuries. Virgil's imaginative portrait of Dido's self-immolation is touching, and as informative as perhaps the final scene in Ishiguro's Remains of the Day - "my heart was breaking."

And yes, when we consider what we've read in Scripture we do move into subjectivity since we are not drawing mathematical conclusions. I am put off by the weight of miraculous detail brought to the picture of Christ; Michelangelo does a much better job here. Rub away the angel choirs, the Annunciation, the wedding feast, the amazing Ascension.... and below we have a poor mendicant preacher. His apotheosis comes through later adulation. Those placed in a palatial authority on the shoulders of Christ had a vested interest in upholding the myth as truth. I don't doubt that Christ lived, and suffered the "extreme penalty" as Tacitus puts it, but I think he is largely the enlarged picture painted by later scribes.


When I recall the words of hymns my boyhood sang I am more convinced that Christ is largely mythical.

[marco]

The fact that Jesus disciples did more to publicize his message than Jesus himself is another of the many examples of the fulfillement of biblical prophecy. Jesus foretold that his disciples would do "greater works" than he did.

Yes, it does rather reduce Jesus when we realise that much of what has been attributed to him comes from the imagination of his biographers. Take the imaginative genealogy, for instance, or the invention of Magi and angels at his birth. But pagan authors also invented: the Roman King Servius Tullius is said to have flames coming from his head as a boy, marking him for future kingship.

If one believes the miracles attributed to Christ, then it's not true that the exaggerated stories about him were greater than raising the dead. If he performed no miracles, then yes, the later tales are bigger than he was.

[1213]

Jesus advised his friends not to mention his miracles. But they did. Jesus hid for 30 years, then emerged into publicity and his deeds were reported by people who didn't see him. His life was attached to bits and pieces of Scripture and his forefathers could be traced back to Adam - thanks to fantastic research work.

So should we credit Jesus for Christianity or thank his publicists for doing a great job?

If publicists only reported what Jesus did and spoke, and if Christianity is based on the teachings of Jesus, then I think credit should go to Jesus. But obviously also the publicists have done important work.