RE: How would you regard good evidence for a God you don't now believe in?
January 11, 2015 at 4:00 pm
(This post was last modified: January 11, 2015 at 4:12 pm by Mudhammam.)
I have no idea who or what Jesus was or did in the circle of cultists that came to be understood as "orthodox" or "traditional" Christianity. We have a one-sided picture of what Christianity looked like in the middle of the first century and we know it was multifaceted because that one side says as much. The figure in Paul known as Jesus Christ (Yahweh saves/anointed one) is earlier than the Jesus that taught and performed miracles in public, and I'm inclined to believe the former Jesus is a celestial myth beginning to be vulgarly understood for a practical, individual faith, whereas the earthly myth of Jesus later developed in the Gospels represents ideas already taught in churches early in their growth, placed in the mouth of the new fully created celestial-earthly synthesis of a figure Jesus. Whether or not a crucified man who resembles anything in such pictures is doubtful, and of really little importance except for those who came to identify with the Roman church and its familiar sects.
I'm not sure exactly if you're still responding to me, but I do think Jesus said many wise things in the same that way that Musaeus of Athens did. The God-man Jesus represented, at least his significance mostly lies in performing the same mechanism, that Wisdom or Logos did to the Jews or Greeks, and he's seen to be identified with them. The difference is that Jesus was also represented as a man, and became a personal force for each individual that could speak the language and feel a connection with the "Good News." A brilliant, original invention that probably started with Hellenistic Jews, most notably Paul and the writer of Mark's Gospel, and the "Brothers of the Lord" in Jerusalem perhaps led by a James, and not a carpenter's son from an unknown farm or village called Nazareth.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza