RE: How did the myth of Jesus' resurrection originate?
January 10, 2014 at 12:39 pm
(This post was last modified: January 10, 2014 at 12:39 pm by Minimalist.)
Quote:Of the story I find credible that Jesus was born, was working-class, that he became after he was thirty or so some sort of a charismatic leader to a lower-class, probably uneducated bunch, after having become a John-the-Baptist groupie. That the oratorical sway went to his head, to a degree, as is often the case with new celebrities, however small the celebrity may be. That he went to Jerusalem for a Passover, got into a fight in the Temple over something trivial, thereby both insulting the Temple cult and damaging the lawful and proper businesses of a couple of the scores of moneychangers and a birdseller or so of the dozens of them. That upon a proper complaint by the merchants and the Temple he was arrested and, it being the Holy Day and the Jewish courts thus were not in business, he was processed in a magistrate's proceeding wherein the eyewitnesses identified him as the perp. He was promptly handed over to the Romans, who did whatever passed for a judicial proceeding, and he was promptly executed. The removal from the cross was because he only committed property crimes and insulted the Temple, and notwithstanding the latter the Jewish authorities would not deny a Jew the proper burial, not let him be accursed for hanging overnight. This proves it was not for sedition. The temporary entombment, etc., I have laid out elsewhere in this thread. That's all I find credible, and much of that little I have inferred; the rest is invention.
As far as "is it possible" is concerned it is hard to oppose much of the early part of that.
The whole "money-changer" thing though reeks of xtian influence which seems to derive from Hellenistic ideals much of the time. Even Aristotle spoke against money lenders but would a Jew going to the temple who knew that the temple tax had to be paid in the half-shekel coin have been so upset? Moreover, if he had only committed property crimes why the sudden rush to violate every rule in the book by holding a trial on Passover? They couldn't have locked him up for a night and then dealt with him? And why would the Romans have given a rat's ass, either way? A common criminal like that did not need the expensive and public spectacle of a crucifixion. A simple sword thrust would suffice.
I use the euphemism of The Great Xtian Paradox for this: "Jesus was so dangerous and had so many followers that it was absolutely vital for the Jews to violate their own rules to hold a arrest him and hold a trial on the High Holy Day yet at the same time he was so insignificant that not a single writer alive at the time paid the slightest attention to him."
So I'll grant you that your version is "possible." Will you grant mine that this story was written later to make the Jews look like the bad guys to a Greco-Roman audience which already has a piss-poor opinion of them?