What Did Jesus Actually Do?

[Spartan]

Sure sounds like it to me. You refuse to accept scholastic findings about them. You insist on wishful thinking about them. You disparage Thomas, which is authentic and extremely important in the exegetical process. You completely dismiss proper exegesis. In the process, you miss out on what they might be trying to tell you. I’m not at all convinced that you know what the “real thing” is — or care, just so long as what the apologists tell you agrees with your confirmation bias. You don’t appear to want to explore information that may be new to you; you’re too busy building walls around what you believe to be true.

That's nonsense. You don't have good scholarship on your side. You have sophomoric, recycled, liberal horse manure as your authority.

 

[steveb1]

I disagree. The fact that anything was written about him in that time and culture is amazing. The majority of actual written material was usually reserved for oral decrees, imperial documents, etc. illiteracy was the order of the day and writing materials were expensive.

Added to that are quotations that originate less than 7 years after the crucifixion. In all likelihood Jesus was an actual, historic figure. But likely not as presented in the gospels.

Except that nothing was written about him in that time and culture. For real history we need something written by eyewitnesses and there are none. Paul wrote about a celestial Jesus who never had an earthly history and that's why Paul never cites any examples of Jesus's supposed historical ministry.

There are no verbal citations of Jesus within seven years after his purported death. The earliest source we have is I Thessalonians which was not written until 25 years after the supposed crucifixion, and it contains not a single citation of Jesus's example, miracles, exorcisms, parables or teachings.

 

[oldbadger]

It should be easy to tell me why he is the most famous man in the world that people are talking about him 2,000 years later, without needing an elaborate backstory.

That's a bit of a joke.
You challenge folks to tell you about the fame of Jesus, but in the very Opening Post you belittle the 'It was Paul' answers that will come.
You wrote:-

.... but have at it anyway

If you haven't figured out that Paul took a comparatively small movement to clean up a corrupted Priesthood and Temple in to a massive system of human control then you've never really been interested anyway, and you certainly don't seem interested now.

You can explain it if you want, but from dealing with other posters it looks as though I will stay unconvinced. My point here is not that Jesus did nothing at all - there must have been some reason people wrote about him - but I want to know what he did that should propel him to such fame for so long a time.

So you don't really want to know about the historicity of Jesus at all? In your OP that's what you requested.

You already accept that Jesus was a real person with a real mission, because you wrote in your OP:

He was born, he preached, he was executed.

And although a pathetic and inaccurate precis of his life, at least we can start with some foundation.
The simple fact is that Jesus picked up the Baptist's mission and carried on for about a year before he got stopped as well. But that campaign against Temple and Priesthood corruption, greed, treachery and more continued to build after Jesus's time in to a series of extreme uprisings.
But Jesus is not remembered for that; his campaign got redirected in to an amazing form of human control which lasted two millenia. Previously the ultimate control of people was the threat of a slow agonising, tortored, demeaning death on a cross, but the new system took this to a whole new level...... the agony of fire for eternity. Who could face that?
And so the name of a good man who wanted proper justice for the common people of the Palestine provinces got turned in to 'Christianity'.

But you didn't want to hear about it...... you're stuck fast with your rhetoric, maybe?

I can explain in a few sentences what makes Stalin,............

I explained in a para or two, the simple basis of how the name 'Jesus' became so famous (although he never had that name....... his was probably Yeshua BarYosef) and now you boast that you can explain Stalin's fame in a few sentences?

Oh yes! I think that some of us will want to enjoy that....... The story of how a man came out of the misty depths of the Soviet Socialist Republic to become one of the most powerful leaders in human history. In a few sentences, please!

As soon as you like............

 

[Rival]

That's a bit of a joke.
You challenge folks to tell you about the fame of Jesus, but in the very Opening Post you belittle the 'It was Paul' answers that will come.
You wrote:-

If you haven't figured out that Paul took a comparatively small movement to clean up a corrupted Priesthood and Temple in to a massive system of human control then you've never really been interested anyway, and you certainly don't seem interested now.


So you don't really want to know about the historicity of Jesus at all? In your OP that's what you requested.

You already accept that Jesus was a real person with a real mission, because you wrote in your OP:

And although a pathetic and inaccurate precis of his life, at least we can start with some foundation.
The simple fact is that Jesus picked up the Baptist's mission and carried on for about a year before he got stopped as well. But that campaign against Temple and Priesthood corruption, greed, treachery and more continued to build after Jesus's time in to a series of extreme uprisings.
But Jesus is not remembered for that; his campaign got redirected in to an amazing form of human control which lasted two millenia. Previously the ultimate control of people was the threat of a slow agonising, tortored, demeaning death on a cross, but the new system took this to a whole new level...... the agony of fire for eternity. Who could face that?
And so the name of a good man who wanted proper justice for the common people of the Palestine provinces got turned in to 'Christianity'.

But you didn't want to hear about it...... you're stuck fast with your rhetoric, maybe?


I explained in a para or two, the simple basis of how the name 'Jesus' became so famous (although he never had that name....... his was probably Yeshua BarYosef) and now you boast that you can explain Stalin's fame in a few sentences?

Oh yes! I think that some of us will want to enjoy that....... The story of how a man came out of the misty depths of the Soviet Socialist Republic to become one of the most powerful leaders in human history. In a few sentences, please!

As soon as you like............

Stalin was the Dictator of the USSR, a very large federation of countries united under a new, untried political system. While head of this system, Stalin led the country during wartime, massacred millions of his own people and led to the genocide of thousands of Ukrainians during a famine. Stalin came from a humble background so his rise to power in a country not his own is often considered remarkable by historians, whether for good or ill.

I'm not looking for super amazing detail, just a synopsis really. The above paragraph gives anyone a good idea of why Stalin is famous, regardless how or why he got there.

 

[sojourner]

That's nonsense. You don't have good scholarship on your side. You have sophomoric, recycled, liberal horse manure as your authority.

Sure sorry you feel that way. Too bad for you, your theological and scholastic assessment has no street cred.

 

[sojourner]

Except that nothing was written about him in that time and culture. For real history we need something written by eyewitnesses and there are none. Paul wrote about a celestial Jesus who never had an earthly history and that's why Paul never cites any examples of Jesus's supposed historical ministry.

There are no verbal citations of Jesus within seven years after his purported death. The earliest source we have is I Thessalonians which was not written until 25 years after the supposed crucifixion, and it contains not a single citation of Jesus's example, miracles, exorcisms, parables or teachings.

You’re mistaken. Q was likely an early oral collection, some of which get us back to 7 years following the crucifixion.

1 Thess. Was written 12 years following, not 25.

Yes, we need eyewitnesses; they did not. Still, the fact that things were written at all that closely after his death is very, very compelling.

 

[oldbadger]

Stalin was the Dictator of the USSR, a very large federation of countries united under a new, untried political system. While head of this system, Stalin led the country during wartime, massacred millions of his own people and led to the genocide of thousands of Ukrainians during a famine. Stalin came from a humble background so his rise to power in a country not his own is often considered remarkable by historians, whether for good or ill.

I'm not looking fur super amazing detail, just a synopsis really. The above paragraph gives anyone a good idea of why Stalin is famous, regardless how or why he got there.

So you don't have much of a clue about how Stalin came to power, nor about how the Soviet system worked.

You had better stick to the Jesus story

 

[Rival]

So you don't have much of a clue about how Stalin came to power, nor about how the Soviet system worked.

You had better stick to the Jesus story

Uh, what? I have read books upon books about Stalin. I just told you I am looking for a summary. Tell me what Jesus did that should make him the most famous man in the world.

For goodness sake this shouldn't be hard.

If someone is the most famous person in the world, what they did to get there should be pretty hardcore.

 

[Spartan]

Sure sorry you feel that way. Too bad for you, your theological and scholastic assessment has no street cred.

Go tell your nonsense to somebody who believes you.

 

[sojourner]

Go tell your nonsense to somebody who believes you.

Right back at ya, Skeezix.

 

[Goodman John]

In my view, Jesus was a man like any other- conceived and born naturally, but possessed of more enlightenment than most contemporaries courtesy of the spirit within him, that of the Christ. I don't believe Jesus/Christ taught us anything that hadn't been covered in at least one or more religions up to that point, but he did serve to bring it all together in one neat package. Likewise I don't believe he performed any 'miracles'- in my view, these were entirely normal events that were blown far out of proportion or made up of whole cloth to support the 'Jesus as Divine' narrative.

But where Jesus can, on the one hand, be considered just one of many such enlightened men found throughout history he had one advantage over his contemporaries: a coterie of disciples who, post-crucifixion, were not likely to want to give up their 'rock star' status as having been personally connected to The Man. So a new religion was built up around Jesus, with the Apostles the feature act as the star of the show was now dead or otherwise unavailable. And so began the long slog over whose ideas were going to determine the direction of this new faith, a battle which- in many respects- continues to this day.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

Well, then here's for you:


Richard Dawkins vs. Ravi Zacharias


Dawkins: “What do I think about God? The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomanical, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” – Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion


Ravi Zacharias responds: “Now, he (Dawkins) just finished telling us God’s a fictional character! That’s half of the point. The other half of the point is what he thinks about humanity. He goes on to say that basically, he believes in the goodness of humanity without God watching over. Either I’m confused or he is. If God doesn’t exist and all these descriptions apply, then who did these things? Who wrote the Old Testament if God didn’t inspire the words? That would be his answer. And who ordered all these things? That would be humanity. Why are you (Dawkins) so positive about humanity and so down on God when it was humanity who manufactured the God that you deny?” And who killed all those people throughout history – hundreds of millions of them, if God is fictional? It was humanity. And you – Dawkins – believe humanity is ‘good’! Atheists….

Well, you see, I don't think very much of this argument, for some pretty straightforward reasons. As pointed out by Zacharias, Dawkins knows God to be a fictional character. Whose fictional character? Why, ours, of course. And there have been many versions of gods throughout human history. Some have demanded (fictionally, of course) some pretty horrendous things. Others, not so much. It’s not every god that craves human sacrifice, for example. And as we can read in our history, some societies, like the ancient Greeks, were as fond of actual thinking as they were of their pantheon of gods.


The problem, for many of us atheists, who also enjoy philosophy (and that includes Dawkins), is that we see religion as basically handing over our thinking caps to the priests, and letting them do the thinking for us. (Or rather, we see it more as the priests demanding and getting our thinking caps, usually through methods involving fear or force by forming alliances with tribal leaders and kings.) And this, we think, is where a good deal of the bad we find in humanity comes from. Not all of it, certainly, but a good deal.


And we therefore believe, and say out loud, that humans would probably be a good deal better off without many of our religions, and without all of our priests.