What were Jesus and early Christians like?

[DeistPaladin]

John's gospel wasn't written as chronology of Christ's life, actually none were intended as a chronology.

You keep saying that but it doesn't make it so.

The Gospel of John uses language like "this day he did this, the next day he did that, the third day he did something else". This is the language an author uses to communicate the order of events over a passage of time.

And frankly, for a book said to be "The Word of God", my standards are apparently higher than yours. I believe the very being that gave me sense, reason and the capacity to communicate should be expected to understand three basic elements of good communication which are "clarity", "brevity" and "consistency". These are not qualities of the Bible. To write a book that jumbles the events around for no reason is, at best, confusing, and at worst, a sign of being a terrible writer. Yet this doesn't stop Christians from making one feeble excuse after the next for their vaunted scriptures, from "it's not supposed to be a chronology" to "oh, picky, picky, picky; it's not supposed to be perfect". The Word of the very Creator of the universe and the very being that endowed us with reason, to quote Shakespeare, "should be made of sterner stuff".

There is no time designated between the time Jesus starts his ministry and John testifies to his previous encounter with Christ.

Did Jesus start his ministry (1) after JtB was put in prison or (2) before JtB was put in prison?

So how do you feel about revising much of ancient history because a timeline was not written into those ancient accounts, do we call all we have fiction because timelines were not established with absolute accuracy as you demand from the Gospels.

Historical accounts written by God is held to a higher standard than historical accounts written by humans.

Furthermore, we do have standards from stories from more ancient times and whether or not they're considered reliable or not. We don't use "The Iliad" to understand what happened during the Trojan War. We don't use the grade school song about "Davy Crocket, King of the Wild Frontier" as a reliable biography of the man. Historians do make an effort to separate fanciful folklore and sectarian mythology from our understanding of real events.

All four gospels show the division of Christ and the priest, scribes and pharisees, all laid the blame on them for the crucifying of Christ. Your story holds no water on many accounts.

But none of the other three refer to "The Jews" as a separate rival sectarian group. Christianity did emerge as a separate sect eventually from Judaism. Texts that refer to "The Jews" as a rival sect are clearly written once this separation had taken place. Forgive the tautology of my explanation, "they refer to them as separate when they became separate" but you seem a little slow to grasp the idea.

John himself says, as you noted above, he was sent to introduce Christ as the Savoir.

Only in Christian mythology. Josephus tells us nothing of the kind.

I've heard some tales before but this is as ridiculous as it gets. All four gospels tell of John being the messenger to announce Christ, it's made very clear in each one.

But my point is that tale got better with the telling.

GOSPEL OF MARK: JtB baptized Jesus and told everyone he was just a forerunner of Jesus. JtB got out of the way, being arrested, and then Jesus took the stage.

GOSPEL OF MATTHEW: JtB recognized how awkward it was baptizing his better but Jesus ordered him to do it anyway and JtB complied. JtB was arrested and Jesus took the stage.

GOSPEL OF JOHN: JtB was totally Jesus' bitch boy! We won't mention the baptism at all, because that's really theologically awkward with JtB baptizing his better. Jesus didn't have to wait for JtB to exit the stage. In fact, Jesus started his own rival ministry, stole some of John's disciples, kicked John's ass at his own game and John was cheer leading for Jesus the whole time.

The progression is not lost on you, I hope.

John nor Jesus could help that some men would not listen to the message given that Jesus was the Christ.

Really? A cult leader tells his followers to follow another man. In fact, that's the whole point of his ministry. In the Gospel of John, JtB does everything but get down on his knees and suck Jesus' cock in front of all his followers. And you're telling me it's perfectly believable that his followers said "meh, what does our rabbi know?"

This, by the way, is one of many reasons why I reject Islam. According to Islam, Jesus was Mohammad's forerunner. The Muslim Jesus told everyone to be monotheists and wait for the great prophet to come. Three years after the Muslim Jesus flew up into the sky to go to Heaven, along comes the heretic Paul who tells everyone, "pay no attention to what Jesus said and instead worship him as your lord and savior, thereby committing blasphemy in the highest order since that would be idolatry." And all of Jesus' followers went "duh, OK."

When you understand why the story of the Muslim Jesus seems silly to you, you understand why the Christian story of the Christian John the Baptist seems silly to me.

Tell me if Christ was so insignificant how is it that Christianity ever made it, it over took the Roman empire and then the world, this happened through a handful of believers. With a world full of other gods to choose from and the carnal pleasures afforded people through them, Christianity shouldn't have stood a chance, yet it raced to the forefront in short order.

Why do cults take off at all? Why did everyone commit suicide when Jim Jones told them to drink the Kool-Aid? Why does anyone follow a religion made up by a bad science fiction writer? Why did anyone follow David Koresh with all his crazy claims? Why did people give up all their worldly possessions to follow Bagram Shri Rashnish? None of these cults and their popularity require any supernatural explanation.

An absolute perfect description of all the other religions, however not Christianity.

A more perfect example of special pleading would be hard to invent.

By the way to read anything with critical thinking at the forefront means one is looking to dismiss it before one begins, so sure the message is lost on the reader, bias has that tendency and/or result.

Um, no.

That's not "critical thinking" at all.

Holocaust deniers, 9/11 Truthers and Global Warming Conspiracy Theorists are not "skeptics", however much they claim to be. Reading history or an "official account" with the mind-set that "it's not true" is not critical thinking. Critical thinking is where you're open-minded to claims but you don't accept them as true either until they've met the burden of proof, with mundane claims being accepted with testimony and outlandish claims being accepted with extraordinary evidence.

I'm not letting you get away with calling skepticism a "worldview" and drawing a false-equivalency between that and your religious view, with a flippant "you see it your way, I see it mine." They are not both equally rationally valid. Faith is believing things without reason and against all reason. Apologetics is about finding reasons to believe things people already believe without reason and against all reason. At best, it is inherently irrational and, at worst, inherently dishonest.