I'm sick and tired of this.. please be advised: the following is a rant!

[Gilligan]

If Jesus had schizophrenia with delusions, why did the first Christians die slow and horrible deaths for something they would have KNOWN to be a lie (Virgin birth, sinless life of Jesus, His death and resurrection)? People will die for what they think is true but really isn't. But no one will do so for what they know is a lie, including the disciples.

Why would the ones who died have known? In the first century gods were everywhere, unsophisticated people believed every one of them. Men are said to be gods by official doctrine. Caesar and Augustus were both deemed to really be gods by imperial policy, would the gullible find it hard to believe that another from some exotic eastern fringes of the world was also a man who is a god? Imperial Rome was also a most cosmopolitan place. Cults of all sorts from all parts of the empire, death cults, resurrection cults, cults of local deities from the east and west, foreign deities granted elevated status by association with roman deities, foreign deities granded respect because they have particular traits that cater to particular emotional needs, permeat the lower reaches of the entire society to ensnare the gullible, the insecure, the wishthinking, and down right foolish.

Given 1st century sophistication of truth finding, only those who lived within perhaps 1 life time of 1st century of 1AD could reasonably have gone to the origin of the myth and pieced together what had happened to a obscure preacher of no import in his own life time. At the beginning of most religions and cults, when the cult was still on the fringes, most of the converts would have been the uneducated, the uncultured, the impressionable, or the emotionally or psychologically troubled elements of society. Would they have bothered to check if the straw they think they grasped was based on reality? And in the 20th and 21st centuries, how many people have died for what are patently rediculous lies? Heaven's gate? Jim Jones? Branch Davidians? And how many of those would have become heroic martyers had circumstances existed to catapult one of these to the status of religion?

Only once a critical mass of hysteria has been achieved, could slightly more skeptical and educated people be gradually entrained into the mess. By the time increasing amount of skepticism would have been needed to defy prevelent conventional "wisdom" and verify the basis, the resources available for an ancient to check the real life history of some long dead preacher, obscure in his own life time, would have been gone.

They would have known because they would have had first hand knowledge of whether it was true or a lie. It would not have been hearsay. If the disciples stole the body, they OBVIOUSLY would have known. If the Jews or Romans did so, they would have displayed the body around Jerusalem in order to prove Jesus didn't rise from the dead, and Christianity would have died on the spot. And the early Christians would not have been willing to be tortured and died if either scenario happened, because they would have KNOWN the resurrection didn't happen.