teach the 12 apostles dialectical materialism via the coconut tree story
Learned how to write, so he could write his own definitive autobiography.
5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” 6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” 8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
Story says he knew how to write (historically, more dubious)
I wouldn't've cursed an innocent fig tree, that's for fuckin sure
Probably appeared to Paul in person before ascension, because fuck Paul sounds like a grifter.
I'm not religious, but I think about this a lot. Like, if Jesus was real but Paul was just a grifter and not "divinely inspired" it explains away a lot of the weird new testament doctrine.
paul was an agent of rome sent to subvert and coopt jesus' revolutionary anti-imperialist movement, beginning the process of transforming that message into one compatible with the ideological superstructure of the roman empire, a process that culminated with constantine and the council of nicaea after three centuries of murdering "heretics"
I think this theory is better if he wasn't specifically sent, but just a guy saying tons of shit to be famous/wealthy/etc. and Rome allowed his words to spread because they were less confrontational. These things were the "systemic" defense of an existing base-superstructure system.
he started off as a pharisee, a member of the comprador regime directly persecuting the early christians before his nominal conversion. so i agree, i'm not saying paul was like a roman equivalent of a cia agent or something. but he was part of the system, as you say.
Pharisees weren't really compradors. The actual compradors were the Sadducees. They were the ones who maintained the Second Temple and who collaborated with the Roman colonizers.
ah good point the pharisees were separatists, huh? to be fair, i didn't really give this whole thing very much thought before i posted
It doesn't really work though, since Luke-Acts is very much a defense of Paul (though not without some differences) and is probably the most politicallly radical of the Gospels
I'm not sure what you're saying here, unfortunately. I've read the Bible before but do not know enough about internal referencing to make any defense of my theory honestly. What does Luke defending him have to do with whether he was sent by Rome specifically or not?
I have no reason to doubt or argue any theory here, it just seems like you know something I don't and I want to learn it.
Ok, so, what we know of Paul's theology and life comes from 3 sources (more if we count outside the Bible with Clement 1 and the anti-Marcionite polemics (Marcion was an early Christian theologian who preached that Jesus was not the son of the Hebrew God but a "higher" god and threw out the entirety of the bible except Paul and a cut down Luke-Acts.)
Basically, what we know seems to be in direct opposition to Roman policy towards Jewish political movements of the time, and while Paul lead the Gentile church, he was himself Jewish. The Romans were not interested in co-opting Jewish millennial movements, and they were even less interested in allowing them to spread to Roman subjects or citizens. They had an uncompromising attitude to the "God Botherers" who adopted Judaism to a greater or lesser extent, confiscating their property and exiling them from cities.
This gels with Paul's writings on the Roman Empire in his letters (It's evil and bad and we're gonna destroy it with the power of god, but don't bring down the hammer on us, concentrate on building the community and keeping it unified, do a Utopian Socialism if you can but don't get weird about it.) and the effects of his teachings, which were persecutions of the community (though not as much as later tradition might suggest) and at least one deadly riot put down by Roman Soldiers. Finally, of course, he was imprisoned, and probably executed, by Rome.
Luke is clearly a Pauline Christian, but is substantially more hostile to the Roman Empire than Paul's muted opposition, and to the ruling classes in general. Luke is particularly hostile to the rich upper classes in the Empire, especially rich subject peoples that it clearly views as compradors. It is on the surface saying that the Empire is compatible with Christians, who are non-violent, pay taxes, are sometimes citizens etc, but then proceeds to tear apart almost every institution.
On the other hand, it's fairly sympathetic to individual Roman officials, portraying Rome as an unjust system that even just men cannot avoid interacting with, and must do so on it's terms, but without giving ground where rights or privilege can be demanded. Nevertheless it prepares early Christians for persecution.
You might ask, "Well maybe Paul is quieting down an already violent radical movement" but then why is he focusing on maybe a thousand already semi-pacifist Christians scattered over Asia Minor and the Levant when in Judea, which he avoids like the plague, there is a violent Zealot Revolution in the works and he is already a learned member of the specific sect it comes from. Why are you sending him to a group of people who hate him when he could march in and corrupt the guy's that are about to fuck up an entire Roman Legion?!
There's also the fact that most of Paul's odder statements, like banning women from leadership, are not by him at all. Only about half his epistles are actually by him or his immediate inner circle.
FWIW, I don't think Paul was a grifter, I think he was a former grifter who became a sincere convert after some weird shit happened to him, and unfortunately like Evrart in Disco Elysium he was just so slimy it drips off him onto the page.
personally i think the line between grifter and sincere convert is also quite blurry for this kind of thing. if someone's paycheck depends upon a particular belief, in due time they'll come to believe it sincerely. and then yeah, there's paul and there's the early paulist counterrevolutionary faction.
Guy who killed a bunch of christians until they became too popular: “g-guys! Trust me! I will invent catholicism and be the true successor of Jesus!”
Thinking about what would have happened to Catholicism if the Johannine Middle Platonists and mystics hadn't mostly supplanted Pauline Christology in the late 2nd century and it's not a good feeling.
The Roman empire basically adopted Christianity in the same way the FBI tweeted a celebratory tweet on MLK day.
Polymorph into a bird and fly the fuck away. Jesus knew magic, man USE IT.
At which point? I'm guessing the crucifixion but it'd be a sick way to end the sermon on the mount or wrecking the temple.
When the fuzz started breathing down on his neck, peace out on those roman fools.
I probably would have existed since I'm pretty sure the Jesus everyone talks about is pretty much a myth (probable) or an amalgamation of traits from other real people (possible).
there were probably a lot of cool Judean resistance fighters that we'll probably never know anything about
Didn’t non biblical/christian romans attested to Jesus’ crucifixion? He was real, but he was Joseph Smith/L Ron Hubbard plus 3000 years to obfuscate his activities
I don't know nearly enough to wade into the discussion but I've definitely seen credible scholars say that he was certainly a real guy and other credible scholars say that he was certainly not a real guy sooo
As a true centrist I think half of Jesus existed. The crucifixion must've looked real weird
I mean there were thousands of guys calling himself the messiah back then. Thousands of guys getting crucified for the same thing. Jesus being one of the thousands isn’t far fetched. I’m just curious how he managed to be more charismatic than the others. There’s more evidence to suggest he’s just a guy than there is evidence to suggest his existence is purely fictional
i know little myself but "certainly not a real guy" does not seem like a serious position (nor does "Certainly a real guy" for that matter but less so)
what i've heard is that if jesus were any other guy, the level of information we have about him would be considered enough to assume he very likely existed in some form. but since he's the guy people get real weird about proving or disproving
From what I've read (and it's been a while) I don't recall ever reading non biblical accounts of Jesus from the time of his supposed life. We know that a church that appears in the bible during the time of Jesus was built some time after he allegedly died so that's already... problematic. Some scholars have pointed out that Jesus got a lot of juice in the years after he was shooting bushes with laser eyes and raising the dead and then resurrected by his dad who is also himself - but to me that's like saying since I see a lot of Garfield movies, comics and coffee mugs in 2024 that therefore Garfield is or was a real cat because no one was pimping Garfield before he entered the zeitgeist as a character beloved by the commonfolk.
I dunno. Just my opinion.
About his life, I don’t think there are any independent, contemporary records of it. But I believe there were politicians or historians briefly citing Jesus’ death shortly after it happened but before it became a worldwide phenomenon.
There were no churches when Christ was around, do you mean the temple in Jerusalem? Anyway the difference between Jesus and Garfield is that Garfield is borrowing from cultural concepts of a cat in a comedic context, more likely than not fake. Jesus is part of the miracle worker, messiah, and religious reformer/restorer movements at that time. Although he could be an amalgam, it makes more sense for him to be at heart at least one guy that inspired all that followed.
In my head, temples and churches are interchangeable. So yes, probably the temple.
But to your overall point, I suppose it's possible to be a single person. But if I were trying to start a religion (which I tend to think is all bullshit anyway) I think the invention of a person like Jesus along with his story, and then punching up a script to send out to the masses - all of it is just too perfect and fantastical. Which I guess those of us who aren't believers would all nominally agree to. I dunno. I'm rambling about something I honestly almost never think about.
But yeah. I suppose there could have been one dude they retrofitted the narrative to.
Thanks for responding!
Miracle workers then and now are a dime a dozen. For example, here's the pagan version of Jesus who was a little younger than him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_Tyana. He's similar enough to Jesus that various pagans had written polemics on how he had cooler miracles than Jesus.
Every historical epoch will have their version of Joseph Smith or L Ron Hubbard. It just seems ahistorical that for this particular case of a miracle worker, people just made him up instead of doing the usual thing of attributing miracles to themselves. We all laugh about Joseph Smith sticking his head in a fucking hat to read a bunch of text. Imagine if Joseph Smith made up a guy who stuck his head in the fucking hat instead. Why would anyone bother listening to Joseph Smith instead of trying to chase after the imaginary dude?
I would have not tried to reform the local religious institution. that's a surefire way to get got.
I'm more of a lay-in-the-cut complainer and eye roller. gesture subtly toward the guy in the big hat with my chin and mutter, "this fuckin' guy."
live to be like 85, smokin' fat doinks, carve some shit outta wood maybe.
Use my knowledge of advanced prosthetics (omniscience) and carpentry (trade school) to construct a set of breakaway arms and legs, hiding my real limbs in a secret compartment in my cross.
I wouldn't have gotten executed, skill issue tbh
Oh yeah they had like a bunch of soldiers with spears and swords and shit? Yeah well just don't get caught loser
I'd have just killed all the soldiers with my divine power or whatever
honestly i think he did pretty good
i guess it'd be nice to try to explicitly say communism is cool constantly but idk if it would matter much in the end
I would have stopped the splitting of the Judean People’s Front with the People’s Front of Judea.
I'd have them all crucified for splitting with The Popular Judean Front
