RE: MERGED: The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Part 1) & (Part 2)
December 15, 2014 at 1:19 pm
So over the past few days after finals I was bored and decided to look into this to see if any of this was even possible to support. I first checked contemporary roman historians. Fortunately, the time we are interested in is the gold and silver age of Rome, and there are a lot. However there's nothing of interest to this topic. So I widened the search to satirists, poets, commentators, any writers I could find. My cutoff was people who had been adults at the time in question. No mention of these events or of the person of Jesus specifically or of any of the events in the gospels. None.
So I resigned to that and just did a more general reading, including my personal research notes from when my major was classics. And this was more helpful, although no direct evidence of Jesus. This did tell about the general area and culture from which the cult of Christianity sprang. There's a few mentions of apocalyptic cults, of insurgents, and of small rebellions. Apparently these were all fairly common.
So why do I personally believe that there was a preacher at the beginning of Christianity who acted as a charismatic leader and a model for the Jesus of the gospels? After all, I could find no contemporary mentions of the man and several documents which directly contradict the implications of the bible.
Really my belief is from the circumstantial evidence. It seems more likely that Paul would have based his religion on a pre-existing cult than making one up from scratch. And as there were other churches it makes it more likely. I tend to think that Paul thought his revelation was genuine. And as such it is far more likely that Paul saw something he more or less expected to see rather than something he just made up. After all, when people report being abducted by aliens their reports are often very similar to pop culture depictions and almost never as something never conceived of by human beings.
So I resigned to that and just did a more general reading, including my personal research notes from when my major was classics. And this was more helpful, although no direct evidence of Jesus. This did tell about the general area and culture from which the cult of Christianity sprang. There's a few mentions of apocalyptic cults, of insurgents, and of small rebellions. Apparently these were all fairly common.
So why do I personally believe that there was a preacher at the beginning of Christianity who acted as a charismatic leader and a model for the Jesus of the gospels? After all, I could find no contemporary mentions of the man and several documents which directly contradict the implications of the bible.
Really my belief is from the circumstantial evidence. It seems more likely that Paul would have based his religion on a pre-existing cult than making one up from scratch. And as there were other churches it makes it more likely. I tend to think that Paul thought his revelation was genuine. And as such it is far more likely that Paul saw something he more or less expected to see rather than something he just made up. After all, when people report being abducted by aliens their reports are often very similar to pop culture depictions and almost never as something never conceived of by human beings.
