(September 18, 2019 at 7:39 am)Gae Bolga Wrote: To continue on a categorically appropriate Natural Explanation™ for resurrection beliefs, we can turn to Heb 2:14, and John 12:27.
Quote:Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,
Quote:“Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.
It get's more explicit in Heb 2:17-18
Quote:Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.
He -had- to have a body, and be a man. Not because a body went missing, but because these beliefs (not the totality of historic christian or proto christian beliefs), which became the orthodoxy......said so. This was the purpose, this was the work, this was how it worked. These things had to be true for their religion to be true.
The explanation for these beliefs, their deconstruction, is not in an event or in human psychology (specifically)...or even in myth. It's in the assumptions required for a piece of sympathetic magic to work under a specific view of supernatural mechanics.
A fun example of why this is important, for people unfamiliar with sympathetic magic works.
Imagine that you're at a witches cauldron, and the spell calls for a blue footed booby's leg. Well, none of those lying around. So you substitute a chicken leg.
Will the spell perform as advertised? Not in the sympathetic view, which is defined by ritual or sacrificial objects/acts/events correspondence, imitation. Their sympathetic substance as a mechanism for supernatural effectiveness. As above, the man sacrifice had to be a man, not a blue footed booby or a chicken, or it wouldn't be man-effective. I mean, sure, maybe you could trade a chicken leg for one toddlers sins, however small that list was, but you're not going to cover -my- debt with that.
It's a reasonable explanation. I can't know if this is the correct way of looking at this, but nevertheless it's a good case against that which modern Christian apologists defend. Unfortunately, I suspect that they'll just brush such explanations off as not in line with the nebulous "scholarly consensus" and so won't even think this is worthy of being addressed. Also, because it's not the type of explanation that today's Westerns tend to have much familiarity with.
