The Historical Jesus

[The Grand Nudger]

The issue I have with comparing the Gospels to Moby Dick is that Herman Melvil never even once made the claim that his story was true. Nor is there any significant number of people alive today who think that Captain Ahab was a real person. If you're going to make a comparison I think it should be more Apples to Apples in order for it to be effective. 

Let's imagine that I wanted to create a version of Abraham Lincoln who raised people from the dead and fought vampires. If I tried to spread Lincolnism today, beyond taking advantage of a small handful of lonely and imaginative people, how well would Lincolnism stand up to criticism? Would if my Lincolnites were being persecuted or killed for their faith? How many of them do you think would be willing to die for something that can so easily be proven false? 

In 200 A.D. denying that Jesus performed miracles was almost impossible. There were simply too many eye-witness accounts that had been passed down by parents to their grand children (and on to their grand children as well). The Jews had every reason to want to dis-credit Jesus, but they couldn't assert that the miracles weren't real so they just had to call him a sorcerer and leave it at that.
If Jesus performed no miracles then why did so many people believe in him? And why were so many people convinced that he was able to cast out demons? How did his word spread across Rome, Greece and even Israel when it was being met with so much resistance? Why were so many people willing to die for the idea that their life had been touched by the Holy spirit? 

Why were there so many people willing to face death or imprisonment for their faith? How much more opposition could a believer of any story encounter? How much opposition would prove that, at the very least, their beliefs were sincerely held?

For a guy who was hanged on a cross and bled out in front of thousands of jeering spectators (gods aren't supposed to bleed you know). For a guy whom many believed to be a god the crusifixion would represent the defeat of said god, would Thor allow himself to be sacrificed by his own people? What about Zeus? No one was expecting the son of God to allow something like this to happen. Every rational person was thinking at that time, "If Jesus is more than just a sorcerer, then why wouldn't he come down from that cross? Why not summon an army of angels? Why not use a miracle in front of all these witnesses to prevent yourself from experiencing any more pain, or humiliation?"

  Who among us would be willing to face that amount of pain and humiliation if we had the power to simply snap our fingers and become Superman?

         For the skeptic, the crucifixion would mark the ultimate cap-stone to Jesus legacy. He lived, people say he performed a few miracles, and then he died by the people he was trying to save. In the end he was proven to be a fraud, he was proven not to be the son of God. And so an execution, that would've ended any other cult leader's career; somehow managed to be the most talked about miracle in history; the empty tomb.


Why did the disciples go from being depressed, after Christ's crucifixion, and giving up on spreading the gospel to being willing to risk their lives for Jesus?
What explains Paul's conversion from a man who wanted to kill Christians to a man who was willing to die for the testimony of Christ?

"Would you believe that a christian life was a good life, if there were no christ?"  Well if it were proven that Christ couldn't do miracles then I would probably try to keep the morals but I would retreat to Daoism. I like Lao Tsu's teaching a lot so it's my second favorite religion.

There we go, it doesn't matter at all.  It's not on the basis of your belief in christ that you think a christian life is a good one.  You'd live the way you live even if there were no christ.   I get that, I'd live the way I live even if there were.

You can extend that observation to alot of things.  People would die for christ, even if there were no christ.  You probably don't extend this inference to, say, islam.  Why do you think they would "die for a lie"?  

At any rate, the stories of roman persecution are largely fabrication written by later chistians to justify a pogrom that they were engaged in.  In mere reality, rome was a truly multicultural society - and christianity was invited into the fold even as it damned and denigrated the people and culture it sought to replace. Think about that for a minute.  It wasn't until christians inserted themselves into the squabbles of the roman nobility and who should be king that they managed to get themselves afoul of the competing families.  It all ended well though, as above, when they captured the state through said families they executed any dissenters.  

Odin hung himself on the world tree pierced with a spear in order to gain the secrets of magic - and all of the norse gods die in the end fighting side by side with us.  Sedanta got whacked protecting one damned cow. Prometheus got the business for helping out out with fire.  Quetzalcoatl threw himself into the sun for us - that's what all the human sacrifice was about, trying to match his sacrifice and keep the world from ending.  Our gods and heroes tend to be helpers.  IDK if a lincoln cult would work...but it would have much better evidence than the jesus cult...and people do believe alot of strange things so why not.  Christianity was a small handful of lonely and imaginative people once, too.

Ultimately, though, none of this matters to the historical jesus, who performed no miracles and did die.  The god in the flesh who rose from the dead isn't history - it's religion.