Yeah I went through a phase of reading biblical history when I had my faith deconstructed, and you quickly realize how many different Christianities there were. As well as the political context for why these sort of ideas were able to spread in this specific part of the world at that time in history. I think the version of the story told in Jesus Christ Superstar actually does a decent job with the structures of authority and their conflicting interests. To me Jesus was likely a very charismatic “nobody” who gained a following by expressing sentiments that were kind of already floating around, until it caused a problem for the authorities who needed to keep the peace or risk Rome intervening. Whether Jesus actually said what’s in the Bible isn’t important, we know people thought he said that stuff and that it resonated strongly with many. We can infer things about people at the time based on what they ascribed to Jesus.
Whether Jesus actually said what’s in the Bible isn’t important, we know people thought he said that stuff and that it resonated strongly with many. We can infer things about people at the time based on what they ascribed to Jesus.
Eh, the above mentioned sect of Christianity claimed he was talking about indivisible properties of matter and naturalism as a greater wonder over intelligent design, with the sower parable (the only one with a 'secret ’ explanation in the first canonical gospel) as actually being about the naturalist origins of all life and the universe while inadvertently using the language of Lucretius’s “seeds of things” from 80 years earlier to do so (who even described failed biological reproduction as “seed falling by the wayside of a path”).
I think we too readily cede the authority over what a historical Jesus might have been trying to say to the revisionist version that snowballed into a beast torturing and executing people for even possessing competing versions of Christianity and directly accepting money in exchange for promises of salvation and propping up tyrants over the masses.
For example, here’s another saying from the above tradition:
Jesus said, “Let one who has become wealthy reign, and let one who has power renounce .”
Weird that the council of Nicaea at the prompting of an empire largely governed by those who were born into power and held it until death didn’t decide to canonize that tradition, no? But could you imagine the Roman empire maybe motivated to be executing a guy that was saying it?
Also weird that Paul seems vaguely familiar with this connection between gaining wealth and ruling in 1 Corinthians 4:8 as pre-existing his first letter to Corinth where he later accused them of accepting a different gospel from superapostles and where they later depose the presbyters appointed by Rome:
Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! You have begun to reign—and that without us! How I wish that you really had begun to reign so that we also might reign with you!
Yeah I went through a phase of reading biblical history when I had my faith deconstructed, and you quickly realize how many different Christianities there were. As well as the political context for why these sort of ideas were able to spread in this specific part of the world at that time in history. I think the version of the story told in Jesus Christ Superstar actually does a decent job with the structures of authority and their conflicting interests. To me Jesus was likely a very charismatic “nobody” who gained a following by expressing sentiments that were kind of already floating around, until it caused a problem for the authorities who needed to keep the peace or risk Rome intervening. Whether Jesus actually said what’s in the Bible isn’t important, we know people thought he said that stuff and that it resonated strongly with many. We can infer things about people at the time based on what they ascribed to Jesus.
Eh, the above mentioned sect of Christianity claimed he was talking about indivisible properties of matter and naturalism as a greater wonder over intelligent design, with the sower parable (the only one with a 'secret ’ explanation in the first canonical gospel) as actually being about the naturalist origins of all life and the universe while inadvertently using the language of Lucretius’s “seeds of things” from 80 years earlier to do so (who even described failed biological reproduction as “seed falling by the wayside of a path”).
I think we too readily cede the authority over what a historical Jesus might have been trying to say to the revisionist version that snowballed into a beast torturing and executing people for even possessing competing versions of Christianity and directly accepting money in exchange for promises of salvation and propping up tyrants over the masses.
For example, here’s another saying from the above tradition:
Weird that the council of Nicaea at the prompting of an empire largely governed by those who were born into power and held it until death didn’t decide to canonize that tradition, no? But could you imagine the Roman empire maybe motivated to be executing a guy that was saying it?
Also weird that Paul seems vaguely familiar with this connection between gaining wealth and ruling in 1 Corinthians 4:8 as pre-existing his first letter to Corinth where he later accused them of accepting a different gospel from superapostles and where they later depose the presbyters appointed by Rome: