Jesus was a religious reformer

[Strato]

All that he is reported to have said and done, grew in the telling, exploiting superstition. Add the huge Pauline spin. That just tells a great deal about the control-freak self image and mid-life crisis, Damascus road epilepsy pathology and Hellenized, Platonized intellect concerning "Pharisee of the Pharisees" (studied under Gamiliel!), Saul of Tarsus. Paul was the greatest spin doctor in history.

But it's safe to say Jesus reinforced the fundamental assumptions of monocultural late Bronze Age Middle Eastern monotheism from Zoroaster to Judaism: spirituality is real, we have a soul, God, Satan and angels exist, the Law of Moses stands, sin is certainly real, like karma, etc.


But I accept he was out to expose and denounce the powerful Pharisees' and Sadducees' exploitation and tyrrany over the common people. I hate fascists too, myself. And for, and with, Jesus, God was on your side.

But as an original, courageous thinker, Jesus can't hold a candle to Socrates, or Strato, that other Greek, either.

[DanDare]

Any evidence for this or just "IMHO" without such? Do you think there even was this purported Jesus dude?

[Loki]

How does one report what someone supposedly said 50 years previously when they weren't there and there is no record?

Paul never met any supposed Jesus or anyone who had. The "Pauline spin" you refer to is more like "Pauline fantasy".

Why do you have such a hard on for Strato? Why do you completely ignore other Greeks who have had vastly more influence on the world, like say Thales or Democritus?

[Strato]

Absolutely. Democritus the atomist, naturalistic philosopher (460-370BCE.). Burn candles to the guy. Thales of Miletus, around 585BCE. Seminal naturalistic thinker. Both predate Strato, though he articulated his atheism. Anyway, maybe for a similar reason Dan Hicks gives me a hard on.

Paul knew Peter and others of the original followers. The gospels got doctored over time, not so sure about the Pauline epistles though.

[Loki]

I'd need to see some evidence to support your contention that Paul knew Peter, or any of the original disciples, or that any of them wrote the gospels which bear their names.

I am not aware of any but am also not a biblical scholar.

[Seamus]

But as an original, courageous thinker, Jesus can't hold a candle to Socrates, or Strato, that other Greek, either.

Jesus (if he existed) was a devout Jew who founded a small Orthodox Jewish sect. His teachings contain no new ideas on any level.


The religion which is now called Christianity has little if anything thing to do with some poor little first century Rabbi who was crucified by the Romans

Matthew 5:17-19

King James Version (KJV)

17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
18 For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.
19 Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven: but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

[DanDare]

A different approach would be to take the modern scriptures at face value and ask the question "what kind of person do these describe now". Then the reality or otherwise of the central character becomes irrelevant.

[yrtemmyscirtemmysa]

If there ever was a man claiming to be the messiah (christ) then that man is a lunatic simply because it contradicts the prophecy passages of the tanakh, christians usually misquote the wrong passages on the OT, proverbs I think, giving the impression that its a man who dies for our sins and not the messiah who liberates their people by using force.

[StrangeControl]

Whilst there is not a shred of archaeological evidence for the biblical Nazareth, I refuse to entertain any factual truthfulness to any of the 'holey' stories &/or characters in the main monotheistic religion, or anyone one of the thousands upon thousands of franchised factions it has.



That and becasue... well.... choose any one of the thousands of other factual errors/mistakes/omissions and hollow assertions made by simple folk clearly making primitive observations (only) of the observable universe around them.



Also the lack of extra-biblical, archaeological, genealogical, evolutionary, geographical evidence that's missing, .....Not to mention that The New Teste had no authors living during when all of this allegedly happened. Not one? not one. Not one extra biblical account of the day Jerusalem was over-run by zombies.....matthew 27 - 52-53 Really? not one other person?... who was not involved in god(inc Pty Ltd) wrote about this strange fucking day?

But then only about 70-120 years later did the kind folk at god(inc Pty Ltd) and its zombie-christ subisiduary think to remind us and write it all down verbatim, edited, translated re-edited, re-translated itx about 1000 times (but still the inerrant word of god and to say otherwise is evil and wrong cause the bible tells you so...???...really?

Well ain't story telling come along way ...i'm ranting again.

[Strato]

Mr. Black, that would be interesting. Obviously an important subject, surely relevant here. I'll try to be concise. What I'm attempting is hermeneutics, as the term is used in theological colleges. Criticism, which is perfidious heresy to fundamentalists. I did another Hermeneutics at Deakin in philosophy (Dilthey).

It would appear that this Jesus perceived the Rabbinical oligarchy as only interested in power. What's new? He told listeners they could be OK with Yahweh, I'm guessing, by faith. And that the Pharisees were "white washed tombs full of dead mens' bones," endlessly interpreting the proscriptive Law. Conservative. That that's not right, man made. Josephus mentions Jesus.

So someone existed who challenged the status quo. Cool. And he was crucified for it, by the occupying Romans. The Romans crucified thousands on various crosses. Hitchens calls the Roman, a culture of sadism. A teacher, martyr. So a movement started, a huddle, around probably illiterate followers who'd known this beloved quasi spiritual reformer, with Peter as their nucleus. And it seems they superstitiously believed Jesus would soon be back, from the dead. The Jesus cult.

Then Saul of Tarsus "pharisee of the pharisees," scholar (studied under Gamiliel), autocrat, is recruiting Roman soldiers to help him zealously put down the heresy, had a moral and a career crisis event, maybe an epileptic episode (like Ellen G. White), on the road to Damascus. Saul was from a Hellenised town, and he wrote in Greek. So he calls himself Paul (Grecianised name), did his tough missionary journeys and wrote his epistles back to the churches he'd started (think of John Wesley). Their content and prose, and the influence he's had on European thought and history, makes him the single greatest spin doctor in history. It's not really about Jesus at all. It's more about Saul of Tarsus. I read "Nature Via Nurture," Matt Ridley. I think how that applies. And acknowledging of course, those who wrote the other letters and later doctorings of the gospel fabrications. But I wonder, if there was no Christianity, would there even be an Islam? Bad memes.

But this ideal of Jesus, the perfect bloke, the logos, I heard, was Platonism dressed up for the modern age. Which is Platonism melded with that old middle-eastern monotheism, Judaism (erhhh!). Jesus and Paul still affirmed the old assumptions: we have a soul, there is a God, a devil (Zoroaster?) angels, sin, like karma, is real etc. So they clearly can't hold a candle to the great Greeks, such a more attractive culture, probably the geography.

Paul maybe got Latin. Bright, motivated (driven), guy. Jewish, naturally! He was executed in Rome. Martyr.

Me, I'd like to know, and I reckon others may have scholarly light on this topic.