I’m not religious and have plenty of issues with organized religion in general but I do support any Christians who aspire to live by the teachings Jesus actually preached. And it’s always good to see someone like this Reverend here, willing to call out conservatives who wear their supposed piety on their sleeves while espousing bigoted, selfish, reprehensible beliefs.
It’s so God damned rare these days. Literally the only positive religious group experience I have had my my adult life was the day after the first George Floyd riots, I spent 8 hours on emergency overtime at my dispatch center. The next day I was out in the area and a local mosque decided to go around cleaning up broken glass and boarding up looted stores because “our brothers and sisters are hurting”. I wish more people acted that way.
The only pastor from my parents church who had any interest in helping the community ended up getting ousted over a differing interpretation of some Bible verse or other. I had stopped going for almost a decade by then so who knows.
Now they’re more interested in remodeling and expanding the church building to make it more gaudy.
You know, like Jesus said when he helped the merchants at the temple maximize their earnings potential, “rule of acquisition #10, removed!”
Except that we really don’t know what those would have been, and there’s a pretty decent likelihood that many of the most popular sayings like “blessed are the poor” and “easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle then a rich man to get into heaven” were additions after Paul and what later becomes the canonical church shift their splinter of the tradition to start collecting money from people.
“Want salvation? Too bad you have all that money - maybe we can help you out with that.”
For example, in apocrypha that has a decent chance of also dating to the first century, it depicts a Jesus ridiculing the very idea of prayer, fasting, and charity as necessary for salvation, instead characterizing it as a birthright for all people and those who give money to the church as being like people who take off even their clothes to give to someone else in order to be given what is already theirs.
This is arguably an even more transgressive tradition and version of Jesus than the one Paul offered up, and was more in keeping with the pre-Pauline attitudes about “everything is permissible for me” and the resistance to his rights to profit as an apostle discussed in 1 Corinthians.
There’s a significant survivorship bias in modern Christianity - for example, a tradition that changed the prohibition on carrying a purse and collecting money from people when ministering (Luke 22:35-36 - absent in Marcion’s version which was likely the earliest copy) was more likely to survive and thrive than ones that had limited fundraising capabilities as originally directed.
So while yes, he may have been all about helping the poor and downtrodden, it’s also entirely possible that a lot of it is a load of BS meant to separate fools from their money by an organization claiming to do those things on people’s behalf (you’ll notice in the Epistles vs gospels that Paul, who is supposedly collecting money for the poor back in Jerusalem, mentions a gift of a nice aromatic in Philippians 4:18, and then in the gospels written later on there’s a scene where Jesus is given an expensive aromatic and chastises those who criticize him for accepting it rather than selling it and giving the money to the poor).
Personally, I prefer the nuance in something like saying 95 attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas: “If you have money, don’t lend it at interest. Rather, give [it] to someone from whom you won’t get it back.” There’s a bit more nuance in that this addresses not an obligation for everyone including those struggling with money to give to the poor via the church but rather the inherent wisdom of recognizing the diminishing returns on personal wealth for the rich and the value in directly enriching one’s environment rather than hoarding a resource you can’t take with you (the point of the parable in saying 63 in the same work).
So while I’m inclined to think that a historical Jesus probably was against hoarding wealth stupidly given the overlap between unique extra-cannonical and canonical sentiments, I’m quite wary that the extreme degree of bleeding heart asceticism we see promoted canonically is much more than a sales effort by a parasitic organization that went on to build the Vatican off its back.
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!
Also, given the highly contradictory nature of the Bible, that’s not saying much.
He also told people to sell their cloaks and go buy swords canonically at the last supper in Luke, explicitly going back on things he had allegedly said earlier.
My favorite interpretation of the Bible is basically it’s a collection of stories from medieval times. It was rough back then I mean if you fell in the mud, your life was over. You’re trapped and no one is helping you, your kindling won’t be warming your family tonight.
And then this dude comes along and a hand comes in view. You flinch at first, I mean why not kick a dog while he’s down? But no, the hand grabs your arm and pulls you out of the mud. Nobody saves your life! This man is, this good man is a saint! His story is written.
A few decades later another man collapsed in the sun and another nice guy gave him some water. His story is written.
Another few decades later a different guy is low a few cattle and sheep and his neighbor, maybe someone who was moving to Egypt, just fuckin’ gives you his whole flock. His story is yadda yadda yadda.
Jesus is just a collection of society’s niceties. Why else do you think these people were living for 900 years!? “Sonny boy your great great great great great great great grandfather from 50 years ago only survived because Jesus pulled him from the mud!”
In short - the stories of Jesus’ deeds was never just one person. I mean, literally the guy whose skeleton they have sure, but in terms of the Bible these stories existed long before Jesus came along, then more stories got added after him too, many attributed to him retroactively.
Both of your points are assumptions all of us, I would guess, were taught in graduate school. The earliest editors of “Gnostic” texts thought that they were dualistic, escapist, nihilistic, involving “esoteric ideas about aeons and demiurges,” as you yourself write.
As my former teacher at Harvard, Krister Stendhal, said to me recently about these texts, “we just thought these were weird.” But can you point to any evidence of such “esoteric ideas” in Thomas? Anything about “aeons and demiurges”?
Those first editors, not finding such evidence, assumed that this just goes to show how sneaky heretics are-they do not say what they mean. So when they found no evidence for such nihilism or dualism-on the contrary, the Gospel of Thomas speaks continually of God as the One good “Father of all”-they just read these into the text. Some scholars, usually those not very familiar with these sources, still do.
So first let’s talk about “Gnosticism”-and what I used to (but no longer) call “Gnostic Gospels.” I have to take responsibility for part of the misunderstanding. Having been taught that these texts were “Gnostic,” I just accepted it, and even coined the term “Gnostic gospels,” which became the title of my book.
I agree with you that we have no evidence for what we call “Gnosticism” from the first century, and have learned from our colleagues that what we thought about “Gnosticism” has virtually nothing to do with a text like the Gospel of Thomas-or, for that matter, with the New Testament Gospel of John which our teachers said also showed “Gnostic influences.”
Princeton’s Elaine Pagels to Ben Witherington III in an email debate
Except for the part when he called for his followers to take up swords and abandon their families (Matt. 10:34-36, among other passages).
And the part where he claimed that loving the Father took precedence over treating others with love and respect (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), which opens the door for all manner of inhuman atrocities and hate in the name of “loving God”
Matthew 10 is definitely more about conviction in the face of persecution, even from one’s own family, than literally taking up swords. Just a few verses earlier, 10:16, he specifically says to be harmless as doves.
You’re gonna have to find me an actual verse on that second part, as I interpret it, “loving the Father” goes hand-in-hand with treating others with love and respect.
Matthew 10 is definitely more about conviction in the face of persecution, even from one’s own family, than literally taking up swords.
“I come not to bring peace, but a sword” is pretty unequivocal. Plus, consider “He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one” (Luke 22:36).
You’re gonna have to find me an actual verse on that second part, as I interpret it, “loving the Father” goes hand-in-hand with treating others with love and respect.
And as others interpret The Greatest Commandment, “love your neighbor” only applies to people that share the same ideals or religion. After all, there are multiple references in the New Testament to “God’s elect” (Rom. 8:33, Matt. 24:22) implying that those that are not “chosen” are somehow lesser. And is not exactly a new issue, as theologians have argued about predestination and God’s chosen people for centuries Foster, Robert Verrell (1898). Systematic Theology. Columbia University, among many others.
It’s not exactly encouraging that the Son of God can’t even explain the most important commandments in a simple, unambiguous manner…
The Son of Man. I don’t believe that Jesus was uniquely divine, I think he was uniquely conscious of the divinity within everyone.
Religion is a centuries-long game of telephone. Jesus never wrote anything. Prophets are enlightened examples of humanity, but with enough time the message is bent and twisted by less enlightened examples. You don’t have to think he was some supernatural creature to agree with his message, and you don’t have to reject the message to recognize that greedy people exploit popular movements for personal gain.
Trying to dismiss the message by poking holes in the secondhand accounts of his fan club is misguided. I should know, I spent long enough indulging in the practice myself.
Religion is a centuries-long game of telephone. Jesus never wrote anything.
Then why the hell did you bother asking for chapter and verse? Classic apologetics fan; ask for an example or evidence and then equivocate when you get exactly what you asked for.
Trying to dismiss the message by poking holes in the secondhand accounts of his fan club is misguided
Considering that the only thing left of the “enlightened” prophet are the secondhand accounts of his fan club, I’m not sure exactly what you think “the message” is…
I’m dismissive of “the message” not because it’s easy to poke holes in the theology and historicity of the Christian bible (although it obviously is), but because there is no consistent theology or message that can traced anyone with any sort of reliability. If that’s all there is to glean from exhaustive apologetics and exegesis of “the teachings of Jesus,” I won’t bother to go to a religion or guess “WWJD” for that; there are plenty of better moral frameworks and more consistent belief systems out there.
To point out that, even after the game of telephone, it still doesn’t say what you claim it does.
How so?
You still haven’t claimed anything at all other than “WWJD is a good rule of thumb,” with which I disagreed and provided examples of why I believe that WWJD is not a good moral or ethical model.
Which of those moral frameworks encourages antagonizing the beliefs of strangers?
Plenty of religions and secular moral frameworks value truth and honesty over protecting the feelings of others. Do I particularly care if I change your mind? No, you are entitled to your own beliefs and that’s fine. However, I’ve seen enough evil done in the name of WWJD and “God’s love” that I’m not going to ignore the questionable (and IMO irresponsible) claim that WWJD is a good moral framework when it’s presented in a public venue where others might read it.
If you don’t want to be challenged on it, keep your religion to yourself.
Which of those moral frameworks encourages antagonizing the beliefs of strangers?
The parts when he says how they are going to hell? Or the part when he talked about a future time when his followers would murder those that opposed him.
How do you know what the nature of the original message was? We have some information that is dubious, unless you dug up an old scroll or something I don’t see what you have that we do not.
Neurology has shown that if you ask someone what their God thinks about x and what you think about x the same parts of the brain becomes active. I want you to please consider that. Is it possible that the “true” message is just what you want to be true?
Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, acted with mercy, and called out religious hypocrites. Whether he was a historic figure, or an allegorical one, those are behaviors to emulate. I don’t need some old scroll, or an originalist account. Jesus, as a memetic construct, personifies a collection of admirable behaviors. Historicity is irrelevant to “What would Jesus do?” as a moral hypothetical.
In Mark he healed the lepor after first yelling at him. In Matthew and Luke and Mark he then orders the lepor to go to a Pharisse and repent. In Mark he heals a women’s son so she would make him a meal. In Matthew as a demonstration of his power to a Roman leader. Again in Matthew he only heals a woman’s son after he grovels at his feet and called herself a racial slur. As for the tradition of feeding the multitudes it is pretty funny how the people who saw it (twice!) couldn’t remember it and Jesus has to remind them on the ship.
acted with mercy,
When? Certainly not in John with the Adultress, that was a seventh century forgery. Was it when he ordered the swine to die? Or cursed the fig tree? Or when he told people he talked in parables so they wouldn’t understand him and go to hell? Was it when he told people to only divorce in cases of adultery? Or when he told people they had to follow the law stronger than anyone else? Or when he told them to rip their eyes out for being horny? Or all the torture he gets up to in Revelations? Or when he told his followers that they will murder his enemies and cast the bodies in front of him at his feet?
nd called out religious hypocrites.
Cite an example. Because I am turning up blank.
Whether he was a historic figure, or an allegorical one, those are behaviors to emulate.
A con made up but sure why the hell not? If you ignore all the awful stuff and only pick and choose the few verses you like go ahead and do it. Buffet style morality.
Historicity is irrelevant to “What would Jesus do?” as a moral hypothetical.
Tell people that they should abandon their work and family depending on skydaddy to solve their issues for them.
Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”
“Nothing,” they answered.
He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one.
Luke 22:35-36
FWIW this is absent in Marcion’s version of the gospel which was likely representing one of the earliest surviving versions and I’m pretty much positive this is a later redactional addition (the part about taking a purse relates to taking money from people when ministering), but in terms whether there’s a canonical quote of Jesus literally telling people to take up arms, ask and ye shall receive.
It’s useful to look at the gospels through the lens of redactional layers.
So for example a later editor may have wanted to include Matthew’s rebuke of using swords as is mentioned in Mark and was originally omitted in first draft Luke, and then the editor thought they needed to explain why they had swords in the first place by having Jesus at the last supper command them to immediately go out and buy swords.
I’ll also add that in Matthew’s account that Jesus says at that moment to put away the sword because (loosely) “those who use the shall die by the sword”. And he later says, as if he couldn’t summon heaven’s army if needed.
An interpretation could be that it’s a display that these things must happen and Jesus went willingly, not forced because he was unarmed. When Jesus preached, it wasn’t with sword in-hand. And in Matthew he specifies they are trying to get the better of him by doing this in the middle of the night and assume he is unarmed (as always).
Also later in the Luke he literally says that the two swords by them “is enough” so they don’t go and sell their things to buy swords.
I’d advise everyone to be careful about picking specific verses since the chapter/verse system is something added later for simplicity, not how it was intended to be read.
You are aspired by the teaching that you should speak in metaphors so people don’t understand you and they will burn in hell? Or the teaching that you should abandon your family and means of survival depending on skydaddy? How about the teaching that you should love a person so much that even your own children you feel hateful to them by comparison?
Hahahaha… Look, next time you decide to try to dunk on someone on the internet make sure you know what the word they used, in this case, “aspire” actually means and how to use it in a sentence. That way you won’t embarrass yourself like you did just now.
Deflection won’t make the points I advanced go away. It will however slow down your ability to resolve the Cognitive Dissonance.
You haven’t read the NT, you haven’t studied it, you can’t deal with the verses that go against your notions of what it ought to say. No amount of deflection and wordplay will change these facts.
Hell isn’t a real big feature of the Bible. Jews started getting an idea of hell from the Greeks around the time of Jesus - there was Sheol before, but it wasn’t really “hell”. This idea of perpetual torment in a some sort of arrangement run by Satan is something that developed of thousands of years, and isn’t Biblical. The hell we imagine is mostly the creation of a late medieval poet :)
I’m not a Christian, but I think it might be helpful for you to read the Bible as a historical document. If you read it angrily, and just look up verses to disprove Christianity, then you work yourself up and don’t develop a better understanding of the text. You seem to be arguing with a lot of people in this thread as if they are religious when they are not. The fact that God is not real and that the historical Jesus was not the Son of God does not mean the Bible is stupid and garbage.
Right except Paul talks about hell 3x in the authentic letters. There was a concept of it around and yes it probably had Greek roots. Really not seeing what difference this all makes. This is Christian doctrine and just because people can point to the history of it doesn’t mean that suddenly people don’t believe it. I argue with people on the ideas that they present not the ones I would have liked them to.
The Bible is fucking stupid hot garbage. The books are propaganda that have almost nothing to do with real life events and provide multiple contradictiary ways to live that are somehow all terrible. You know it endorses the very worst behaviors. Who the heck cares if the Christians borrowed hell from someone else? They still have it. Paul grabbed and since the Gospels were all fanfics off his letters they have it as well.
Oh and Jesus never existed so you can drop that historical Jesus stuff.
The majority of scholars who study the Bible agree that there was a historical Jesus. I’m not saying “scholars” from my local Bible college, I’m saying that if you read articles on the Bible on JSTOR that is the going consensus. The degree to which he resembles the Jesus in the Bible is up for debate.
Which letters do you believe are correctly attributed to Paul? Can you cite those three examples? What are their soteriologies and descriptions of hell, and how do they compare with contemporary depictions?
I’m not sure that you are really “argue with people on the ideas they present” because you consistently rail against straw men. I don’t think you’re really interested in the history, I think you are just angry about religion. But as a fellow atheist, rallying against “skydaddy” makes us look like 14 year olds posting on r/atheism :)
“Christian doctrine” is extremely nebulous. Not every Christian in the 2nd century was reading the same texts. It’s difficult to get a consistent set of answers from Christians today what Christian doctrine is.
The majority of scholars who study the Bible agree that there was a historical Jesus
The majority of scholars who study the Bible believe the resurrection was a true historical event and that the gospel attributions are 100% accurate. I.e. a man named Marc wrote the first gospel. What’s the matter? The logical fallacy of Argument from Authority only works when you want it to work?
m not saying “scholars” from my local Bible college, I’m saying that if you read articles on the Bible on JSTOR that is the going consensus.
Right you gathered a bunch of True Scotsmen and now the plural of what they say has become data. Is something true because it is or because a lot of people say it is true? Does a lie become truth if really smart amazing people say it is?
The degree to which he resembles the Jesus in the Bible is up for debate.
Yeah something a lot of us have noticed. The total inability to keep the story straight. Ask 5 True Scotsmen scholars the same question about Jesus and you get 5 different answers that can’t all be true.
Which letters do you believe are correctly attributed to Paul? Can you cite those three examples?
Corthininas 6:9, these 1:8, Romans 2:5.
Romans
1 Corinthians
2 Corinthians
Galatians
Philippians
1 Thessalonians
Philemon
Not to be too whiny but you could have done this yourself.
What are their soteriologies and descriptions of hell, and how do they compare with contemporary depictions?
Who cares? I already explained this to you. Just because something is not in the Bible doesn’t mean it isn’t in Christianity. The Bible is a product of it, not a manual for it. The Trinity isn’t in there either. We know that Paul had a concept of it and the gospels writers added to it. I don’t even know why you are arguing this with me? Christians have an idea of hell. Do I agree it is for bad reasons? Yes, I am an atheist. You should be arguing with them.
m not sure that you are really “argue with people on the ideas they present” because you consistently rail against straw men. I don’t think you’re really interested in the history, I think you are just angry about religion. But as a fellow atheist, rallying against “skydaddy” makes us look like 14 year olds posting on r/atheism
Thanks for the advice Grandpa.
Christian doctrine” is extremely nebulous. Not every Christian in the 2nd century was reading the same texts. It’s difficult to get a consistent set of answers from Christians today what Christian doctrine is.
It’s really clear that you aren’t interested in learning. The scholars on JSTOR do not believe that someone named Mark wrote Mark. I would suggest getting a nice Oxford annotated Bible to get a good view of the scholarship, but I’m afraid that might upset you further. I think you are likely to reflexively dismiss any scholarship that isn’t “Christianity is a hoax.” Unfortunately, that makes it very hard to do any serious critical analysis. When I took my religious historiography class, it was very clear that starting with any sort of agenda is a bad idea.
“Which letters were written by Paul” is a big point of debate, and scholars differ greatly in their opinions. Considering that your views on history tend to not align with mainstream historical consensus, it’s a pretty important thing to establish.
I really like Bart Ehrman’s work myself - it’s pretty easy to find online and he writes in a style that is pretty accessible to a casual audience.
. I would suggest getting a nice Oxford annotated Bible to get a good view of the scholarship, but I’m afraid that might upset you further.
Lay off the personal attacks. I own a copy of the Oxford annotated Bible and studied the semetic languages as well as Greek. I planned to be a biblical scholar before I learned that God was a lie. Says so very much that you can’t produce evidence of your claim that Jesus was real instead you are reduced to basic logical fallacies and personal attacks while dismissively hinting that I don’t know anything. Give me any page of the OT and I can reliably translate about 80% of the words and tell you where it is from. Since we are apparently using knowledge as a weapon instead of evidence I am going to ask you if you can do the same.
See how crap this argument is? Am I right because I know Hebrew and Aramaic and a bit of Greek? Am I wrong because I don’t live on JSTOR? Stop with the no True Scotsmen and Argument from Authority. Produce your evidence for your god existing if you can’t I can dismiss him. On my side I see absurd claims told by liars that are inconsistent and so far the only fucking evidence you have produced is someone else said 20 centuries later on what they thought.
Unfortunately, that makes it very hard to do any serious critical analysis.
I am happy to do critical analysis. Go right ahead and make your point.
When I took my religious historiography class, it was very clear that starting with any sort of agenda is a bad idea.
I won’t apologize for caring about the truth.
Which letters were written by Paul” is a big point of debate, and scholars differ greatly in their opinions. Considering that your views on history tend to not align with mainstream historical consensus, it’s a pretty important thing to establish.
Why? I am sorry but why? If I disagree with scholars on one thing does that mean I must on all things? Do I have to sit here with serial killer obsession levels building up thousands of claims of consensus and rate them on how much I agree with them and why? Tell me the reason. I won’t to know the exact reason why I am required to do that. Maybe some biblical scholar can answer it for you.
Christianity has hell which letters of Paul are forgeries and which are not is independent.
I really like Bart Ehrman’s work myself - it’s pretty easy to find online and he writes in a style that is pretty accessible to a casual audience.
He is alright. Listen to his podcast and have almost all of his books. Not sure what name dropping is doing for you but whatever.
I suspect that you attended a fundamentalist Bible college and have had little exposure to mainstream academic scholarship. I do find it hard to believe that you are fluent in Greek, because you don’t appear to be fluent in English (forgive me if it is not your first language). I have at multiple points explained that I am not religious for example. I do not believe in God.
We would laugh if a creationist claimed that citing scientific studies was an “argument from authority.” By arguing against mainstream historical consensus, you make it easy for Christians to dismiss everything you say. If you “care about the truth” you should be aware that it is very hard to come to the truth if you have strong emotional biases.
I generally avoid using podcasts for historical research :) Ehrman’s books have awesome footnotes, reading one of his books usually adds ten to my TBR list.
I understand being angry at Christianity. I’m a queer person and live in a very religious place. I can’t use the fucking bathroom legally because of Bible thumpers. But we have to do better than Tony Evans when we study history.
I’m not religious and have plenty of issues with organized religion in general but I do support any Christians who aspire to live by the teachings Jesus actually preached. And it’s always good to see someone like this Reverend here, willing to call out conservatives who wear their supposed piety on their sleeves while espousing bigoted, selfish, reprehensible beliefs.
It’s so God damned rare these days. Literally the only positive religious group experience I have had my my adult life was the day after the first George Floyd riots, I spent 8 hours on emergency overtime at my dispatch center. The next day I was out in the area and a local mosque decided to go around cleaning up broken glass and boarding up looted stores because “our brothers and sisters are hurting”. I wish more people acted that way.
The only pastor from my parents church who had any interest in helping the community ended up getting ousted over a differing interpretation of some Bible verse or other. I had stopped going for almost a decade by then so who knows.
Now they’re more interested in remodeling and expanding the church building to make it more gaudy.
You know, like Jesus said when he helped the merchants at the temple maximize their earnings potential, “rule of acquisition #10, removed!”
Relevant link. https://youtu.be/ANNX_XiuA78?si=2eZJ1t5Gn5bmj52K
Except that we really don’t know what those would have been, and there’s a pretty decent likelihood that many of the most popular sayings like “blessed are the poor” and “easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle then a rich man to get into heaven” were additions after Paul and what later becomes the canonical church shift their splinter of the tradition to start collecting money from people.
“Want salvation? Too bad you have all that money - maybe we can help you out with that.”
For example, in apocrypha that has a decent chance of also dating to the first century, it depicts a Jesus ridiculing the very idea of prayer, fasting, and charity as necessary for salvation, instead characterizing it as a birthright for all people and those who give money to the church as being like people who take off even their clothes to give to someone else in order to be given what is already theirs.
This is arguably an even more transgressive tradition and version of Jesus than the one Paul offered up, and was more in keeping with the pre-Pauline attitudes about “everything is permissible for me” and the resistance to his rights to profit as an apostle discussed in 1 Corinthians.
There’s a significant survivorship bias in modern Christianity - for example, a tradition that changed the prohibition on carrying a purse and collecting money from people when ministering (Luke 22:35-36 - absent in Marcion’s version which was likely the earliest copy) was more likely to survive and thrive than ones that had limited fundraising capabilities as originally directed.
So while yes, he may have been all about helping the poor and downtrodden, it’s also entirely possible that a lot of it is a load of BS meant to separate fools from their money by an organization claiming to do those things on people’s behalf (you’ll notice in the Epistles vs gospels that Paul, who is supposedly collecting money for the poor back in Jerusalem, mentions a gift of a nice aromatic in Philippians 4:18, and then in the gospels written later on there’s a scene where Jesus is given an expensive aromatic and chastises those who criticize him for accepting it rather than selling it and giving the money to the poor).
Personally, I prefer the nuance in something like saying 95 attributed to Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas: “If you have money, don’t lend it at interest. Rather, give [it] to someone from whom you won’t get it back.” There’s a bit more nuance in that this addresses not an obligation for everyone including those struggling with money to give to the poor via the church but rather the inherent wisdom of recognizing the diminishing returns on personal wealth for the rich and the value in directly enriching one’s environment rather than hoarding a resource you can’t take with you (the point of the parable in saying 63 in the same work).
So while I’m inclined to think that a historical Jesus probably was against hoarding wealth stupidly given the overlap between unique extra-cannonical and canonical sentiments, I’m quite wary that the extreme degree of bleeding heart asceticism we see promoted canonically is much more than a sales effort by a parasitic organization that went on to build the Vatican off its back.
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:
when people say “the teachings Jesus actually preached”, they usually mean “the canonical teachings from the bible”.
Which is a pet peeve.
Also, given the highly contradictory nature of the Bible, that’s not saying much.
He also told people to sell their cloaks and go buy swords canonically at the last supper in Luke, explicitly going back on things he had allegedly said earlier.
also the canon has changed over the centuries.
My favorite interpretation of the Bible is basically it’s a collection of stories from medieval times. It was rough back then I mean if you fell in the mud, your life was over. You’re trapped and no one is helping you, your kindling won’t be warming your family tonight.
And then this dude comes along and a hand comes in view. You flinch at first, I mean why not kick a dog while he’s down? But no, the hand grabs your arm and pulls you out of the mud. Nobody saves your life! This man is, this good man is a saint! His story is written.
A few decades later another man collapsed in the sun and another nice guy gave him some water. His story is written.
Another few decades later a different guy is low a few cattle and sheep and his neighbor, maybe someone who was moving to Egypt, just fuckin’ gives you his whole flock. His story is yadda yadda yadda.
Jesus is just a collection of society’s niceties. Why else do you think these people were living for 900 years!? “Sonny boy your great great great great great great great grandfather from 50 years ago only survived because Jesus pulled him from the mud!”
In short - the stories of Jesus’ deeds was never just one person. I mean, literally the guy whose skeleton they have sure, but in terms of the Bible these stories existed long before Jesus came along, then more stories got added after him too, many attributed to him retroactively.
That sure sounds like something somebody who’s never seen a bible and who doesn’t have a basic knowledge of any time before 50 AD might believe.
I studied the Bible pretty extensively in college, but thanks. How dare people try and have fun ideas.
Again with the Gnostics? Haha. How is the thesis going? Wishing you luck!
Umm I was just being friendly not expressing a view on the Gnostics
WWJD is actually a great moral role of thumb, the problem is that so few self-proclaimed Christians follow his teachings.
Except for the part when he called for his followers to take up swords and abandon their families (Matt. 10:34-36, among other passages).
And the part where he claimed that loving the Father took precedence over treating others with love and respect (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), which opens the door for all manner of inhuman atrocities and hate in the name of “loving God”
Matthew 10 is definitely more about conviction in the face of persecution, even from one’s own family, than literally taking up swords. Just a few verses earlier, 10:16, he specifically says to be harmless as doves.
You’re gonna have to find me an actual verse on that second part, as I interpret it, “loving the Father” goes hand-in-hand with treating others with love and respect.
“I come not to bring peace, but a sword” is pretty unequivocal. Plus, consider “He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one” (Luke 22:36).
And as others interpret The Greatest Commandment, “love your neighbor” only applies to people that share the same ideals or religion. After all, there are multiple references in the New Testament to “God’s elect” (Rom. 8:33, Matt. 24:22) implying that those that are not “chosen” are somehow lesser. And is not exactly a new issue, as theologians have argued about predestination and God’s chosen people for centuries Foster, Robert Verrell (1898). Systematic Theology. Columbia University, among many others.
It’s not exactly encouraging that the Son of God can’t even explain the most important commandments in a simple, unambiguous manner…
The Son of Man. I don’t believe that Jesus was uniquely divine, I think he was uniquely conscious of the divinity within everyone.
Religion is a centuries-long game of telephone. Jesus never wrote anything. Prophets are enlightened examples of humanity, but with enough time the message is bent and twisted by less enlightened examples. You don’t have to think he was some supernatural creature to agree with his message, and you don’t have to reject the message to recognize that greedy people exploit popular movements for personal gain.
Trying to dismiss the message by poking holes in the secondhand accounts of his fan club is misguided. I should know, I spent long enough indulging in the practice myself.
Then why the hell did you bother asking for chapter and verse? Classic apologetics fan; ask for an example or evidence and then equivocate when you get exactly what you asked for.
Considering that the only thing left of the “enlightened” prophet are the secondhand accounts of his fan club, I’m not sure exactly what you think “the message” is…
I’m dismissive of “the message” not because it’s easy to poke holes in the theology and historicity of the Christian bible (although it obviously is), but because there is no consistent theology or message that can traced anyone with any sort of reliability. If that’s all there is to glean from exhaustive apologetics and exegesis of “the teachings of Jesus,” I won’t bother to go to a religion or guess “WWJD” for that; there are plenty of better moral frameworks and more consistent belief systems out there.
To point out that, even after the game of telephone, it still doesn’t say what you claim it does.
Which of those moral frameworks encourages antagonizing the beliefs of strangers?
How so?
You still haven’t claimed anything at all other than “WWJD is a good rule of thumb,” with which I disagreed and provided examples of why I believe that WWJD is not a good moral or ethical model.
Plenty of religions and secular moral frameworks value truth and honesty over protecting the feelings of others. Do I particularly care if I change your mind? No, you are entitled to your own beliefs and that’s fine. However, I’ve seen enough evil done in the name of WWJD and “God’s love” that I’m not going to ignore the questionable (and IMO irresponsible) claim that WWJD is a good moral framework when it’s presented in a public venue where others might read it.
If you don’t want to be challenged on it, keep your religion to yourself.
The parts when he says how they are going to hell? Or the part when he talked about a future time when his followers would murder those that opposed him.
How do you know what the nature of the original message was? We have some information that is dubious, unless you dug up an old scroll or something I don’t see what you have that we do not.
Neurology has shown that if you ask someone what their God thinks about x and what you think about x the same parts of the brain becomes active. I want you to please consider that. Is it possible that the “true” message is just what you want to be true?
Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, acted with mercy, and called out religious hypocrites. Whether he was a historic figure, or an allegorical one, those are behaviors to emulate. I don’t need some old scroll, or an originalist account. Jesus, as a memetic construct, personifies a collection of admirable behaviors. Historicity is irrelevant to “What would Jesus do?” as a moral hypothetical.
In Mark he healed the lepor after first yelling at him. In Matthew and Luke and Mark he then orders the lepor to go to a Pharisse and repent. In Mark he heals a women’s son so she would make him a meal. In Matthew as a demonstration of his power to a Roman leader. Again in Matthew he only heals a woman’s son after he grovels at his feet and called herself a racial slur. As for the tradition of feeding the multitudes it is pretty funny how the people who saw it (twice!) couldn’t remember it and Jesus has to remind them on the ship.
When? Certainly not in John with the Adultress, that was a seventh century forgery. Was it when he ordered the swine to die? Or cursed the fig tree? Or when he told people he talked in parables so they wouldn’t understand him and go to hell? Was it when he told people to only divorce in cases of adultery? Or when he told people they had to follow the law stronger than anyone else? Or when he told them to rip their eyes out for being horny? Or all the torture he gets up to in Revelations? Or when he told his followers that they will murder his enemies and cast the bodies in front of him at his feet?
Cite an example. Because I am turning up blank.
A con made up but sure why the hell not? If you ignore all the awful stuff and only pick and choose the few verses you like go ahead and do it. Buffet style morality.
Tell people that they should abandon their work and family depending on skydaddy to solve their issues for them.
FWIW this is absent in Marcion’s version of the gospel which was likely representing one of the earliest surviving versions and I’m pretty much positive this is a later redactional addition (the part about taking a purse relates to taking money from people when ministering), but in terms whether there’s a canonical quote of Jesus literally telling people to take up arms, ask and ye shall receive.
But then in Luke 22:49-51 when they try to actually use those swords:
Which is also missing in Marcion’s version of Luke.
It’s useful to look at the gospels through the lens of redactional layers.
So for example a later editor may have wanted to include Matthew’s rebuke of using swords as is mentioned in Mark and was originally omitted in first draft Luke, and then the editor thought they needed to explain why they had swords in the first place by having Jesus at the last supper command them to immediately go out and buy swords.
I’ll also add that in Matthew’s account that Jesus says at that moment to put away the sword because (loosely) “those who use the shall die by the sword”. And he later says, as if he couldn’t summon heaven’s army if needed.
An interpretation could be that it’s a display that these things must happen and Jesus went willingly, not forced because he was unarmed. When Jesus preached, it wasn’t with sword in-hand. And in Matthew he specifies they are trying to get the better of him by doing this in the middle of the night and assume he is unarmed (as always).
Also later in the Luke he literally says that the two swords by them “is enough” so they don’t go and sell their things to buy swords.
I’d advise everyone to be careful about picking specific verses since the chapter/verse system is something added later for simplicity, not how it was intended to be read.
You are aspired by the teaching that you should speak in metaphors so people don’t understand you and they will burn in hell? Or the teaching that you should abandon your family and means of survival depending on skydaddy? How about the teaching that you should love a person so much that even your own children you feel hateful to them by comparison?
Hahahaha… Look, next time you decide to try to dunk on someone on the internet make sure you know what the word they used, in this case, “aspire” actually means and how to use it in a sentence. That way you won’t embarrass yourself like you did just now.
Deflection won’t make the points I advanced go away. It will however slow down your ability to resolve the Cognitive Dissonance.
You haven’t read the NT, you haven’t studied it, you can’t deal with the verses that go against your notions of what it ought to say. No amount of deflection and wordplay will change these facts.
Hell isn’t a real big feature of the Bible. Jews started getting an idea of hell from the Greeks around the time of Jesus - there was Sheol before, but it wasn’t really “hell”. This idea of perpetual torment in a some sort of arrangement run by Satan is something that developed of thousands of years, and isn’t Biblical. The hell we imagine is mostly the creation of a late medieval poet :)
I’m not a Christian, but I think it might be helpful for you to read the Bible as a historical document. If you read it angrily, and just look up verses to disprove Christianity, then you work yourself up and don’t develop a better understanding of the text. You seem to be arguing with a lot of people in this thread as if they are religious when they are not. The fact that God is not real and that the historical Jesus was not the Son of God does not mean the Bible is stupid and garbage.
Right except Paul talks about hell 3x in the authentic letters. There was a concept of it around and yes it probably had Greek roots. Really not seeing what difference this all makes. This is Christian doctrine and just because people can point to the history of it doesn’t mean that suddenly people don’t believe it. I argue with people on the ideas that they present not the ones I would have liked them to.
The Bible is fucking stupid hot garbage. The books are propaganda that have almost nothing to do with real life events and provide multiple contradictiary ways to live that are somehow all terrible. You know it endorses the very worst behaviors. Who the heck cares if the Christians borrowed hell from someone else? They still have it. Paul grabbed and since the Gospels were all fanfics off his letters they have it as well.
Oh and Jesus never existed so you can drop that historical Jesus stuff.
The majority of scholars who study the Bible agree that there was a historical Jesus. I’m not saying “scholars” from my local Bible college, I’m saying that if you read articles on the Bible on JSTOR that is the going consensus. The degree to which he resembles the Jesus in the Bible is up for debate.
Which letters do you believe are correctly attributed to Paul? Can you cite those three examples? What are their soteriologies and descriptions of hell, and how do they compare with contemporary depictions?
I’m not sure that you are really “argue with people on the ideas they present” because you consistently rail against straw men. I don’t think you’re really interested in the history, I think you are just angry about religion. But as a fellow atheist, rallying against “skydaddy” makes us look like 14 year olds posting on r/atheism :)
“Christian doctrine” is extremely nebulous. Not every Christian in the 2nd century was reading the same texts. It’s difficult to get a consistent set of answers from Christians today what Christian doctrine is.
The majority of scholars who study the Bible believe the resurrection was a true historical event and that the gospel attributions are 100% accurate. I.e. a man named Marc wrote the first gospel. What’s the matter? The logical fallacy of Argument from Authority only works when you want it to work?
Right you gathered a bunch of True Scotsmen and now the plural of what they say has become data. Is something true because it is or because a lot of people say it is true? Does a lie become truth if really smart amazing people say it is?
Yeah something a lot of us have noticed. The total inability to keep the story straight. Ask 5 True Scotsmen scholars the same question about Jesus and you get 5 different answers that can’t all be true.
Corthininas 6:9, these 1:8, Romans 2:5.
Not to be too whiny but you could have done this yourself.
Who cares? I already explained this to you. Just because something is not in the Bible doesn’t mean it isn’t in Christianity. The Bible is a product of it, not a manual for it. The Trinity isn’t in there either. We know that Paul had a concept of it and the gospels writers added to it. I don’t even know why you are arguing this with me? Christians have an idea of hell. Do I agree it is for bad reasons? Yes, I am an atheist. You should be arguing with them.
Thanks for the advice Grandpa.
Fine. 99%
It’s really clear that you aren’t interested in learning. The scholars on JSTOR do not believe that someone named Mark wrote Mark. I would suggest getting a nice Oxford annotated Bible to get a good view of the scholarship, but I’m afraid that might upset you further. I think you are likely to reflexively dismiss any scholarship that isn’t “Christianity is a hoax.” Unfortunately, that makes it very hard to do any serious critical analysis. When I took my religious historiography class, it was very clear that starting with any sort of agenda is a bad idea.
“Which letters were written by Paul” is a big point of debate, and scholars differ greatly in their opinions. Considering that your views on history tend to not align with mainstream historical consensus, it’s a pretty important thing to establish.
I really like Bart Ehrman’s work myself - it’s pretty easy to find online and he writes in a style that is pretty accessible to a casual audience.
Lay off the personal attacks. I own a copy of the Oxford annotated Bible and studied the semetic languages as well as Greek. I planned to be a biblical scholar before I learned that God was a lie. Says so very much that you can’t produce evidence of your claim that Jesus was real instead you are reduced to basic logical fallacies and personal attacks while dismissively hinting that I don’t know anything. Give me any page of the OT and I can reliably translate about 80% of the words and tell you where it is from. Since we are apparently using knowledge as a weapon instead of evidence I am going to ask you if you can do the same.
See how crap this argument is? Am I right because I know Hebrew and Aramaic and a bit of Greek? Am I wrong because I don’t live on JSTOR? Stop with the no True Scotsmen and Argument from Authority. Produce your evidence for your god existing if you can’t I can dismiss him. On my side I see absurd claims told by liars that are inconsistent and so far the only fucking evidence you have produced is someone else said 20 centuries later on what they thought.
I am happy to do critical analysis. Go right ahead and make your point.
I won’t apologize for caring about the truth.
Why? I am sorry but why? If I disagree with scholars on one thing does that mean I must on all things? Do I have to sit here with serial killer obsession levels building up thousands of claims of consensus and rate them on how much I agree with them and why? Tell me the reason. I won’t to know the exact reason why I am required to do that. Maybe some biblical scholar can answer it for you.
Christianity has hell which letters of Paul are forgeries and which are not is independent.
He is alright. Listen to his podcast and have almost all of his books. Not sure what name dropping is doing for you but whatever.
Once again, I am not religious.
I suspect that you attended a fundamentalist Bible college and have had little exposure to mainstream academic scholarship. I do find it hard to believe that you are fluent in Greek, because you don’t appear to be fluent in English (forgive me if it is not your first language). I have at multiple points explained that I am not religious for example. I do not believe in God.
We would laugh if a creationist claimed that citing scientific studies was an “argument from authority.” By arguing against mainstream historical consensus, you make it easy for Christians to dismiss everything you say. If you “care about the truth” you should be aware that it is very hard to come to the truth if you have strong emotional biases.
I generally avoid using podcasts for historical research :) Ehrman’s books have awesome footnotes, reading one of his books usually adds ten to my TBR list.
I understand being angry at Christianity. I’m a queer person and live in a very religious place. I can’t use the fucking bathroom legally because of Bible thumpers. But we have to do better than Tony Evans when we study history.