Again, transferring him from physical Messiah to spiritual Messiah was forced on his followers by the fact of his public execution.
The Apostles held some weight, did they not? I’m not sure what you think is unique about the supposed resurrection of Jesus Christ to a public accustomed to resurrection myths.
There’s nothing in the NT to indicate they were that smart or crafty, and there just aren’t any documents of the time or earlier where people make themselves look like fools to promote a cause.
“Shit! They killed him! What do we do now?”
“Steal the body and tell people he rose from the dead. That seems to happen a lot to the other messiahs.”
Yeah-that took a lot of smarts and craft. :rolleyes:
Read Acts. Over the course of their lifetimes the apostles gained influence, but early on they were at risk. Stephen was stoned to death by other Jews for advocating a superior position for Jesus’s works. The Hebrews were really big on being a separate people: resurrection stories would not have been that readily accepted.
The other Messiahs I spoke of stayed dead. Who did you have in mind?
No, I’m pointing out that the religions which inspired Christianity were also built on claims of resurrection and promise of an afterlife. Do you also believe that Quetzalcoatl, Odin, Osiris, etc returned after death?
Shrug. It happens. Mind the list of beheaded European monarchs. Prior to beheading, each was an influential leader credited with making and enforcing policy up to and including method of worship.
Besides a popularity contest, what evidence do you have that your Messiah is the only one that was resurrected?
I am startled to discover that Christianity was inspired by Quetzalcoatl and Odin.
Osiris is a better choice, and no doubt you meant Tammuz, Baal, Adonis and Dionysus as well. No, I don’t. Why would I?
But your point is undermined by that, not strengthened. I’m possibly the most prolific poster in this thread who has claimed to have had similar experiences. I accept his story here, for the same reason, I assume, he accepts mine - it has a familiar “flavour” to it that strikes me as genuine.
However, unlike him, I never attributed it to a divine or supernatural source. I was and remain a non-believer in gods (though open to the notion that existing reality is worthy of worship in a purely non-supernatural way). In an argument from theology, I’d be the “con” side, not the “pro”.
Arguments from personal, mystic experience are simply not convincing to others. Even others who have had the same experiences, do not put the same interpretation on those experiences.
That being said, I’m sure that such experiences did have some significant influence on the development of religion. However, religions spread not because people have such experiences, but because they are capable of articulating to others and convincing people who have not had such experiences to join the religion - in short, that they are able to provide something meaningful to people. Descriptions of mystic experiences - which invariably sound either silly or lamely vague to people who have not had them (and which cannot be shared or predicted) - are very low on the totem pole of convincing techniques. It is only when mysticism provides the inspiration to someone who is otherwise gifted at convincing, that it has any sort of impact.
Religions have many aspects - they can provide a code of rules to live by, they can provide a mythological explaination for observed reality, they can provide rituals which provide a framework for living within, and they can, last and least, be an outgrowth of mystic experiences. The latter aspect does not sit easily or naturally with the former aspect.
Well, we’ve already been over the question of evidence. None that you’d accept, apparently. I am also unaware of any other contenders still present today.
Resurrection is a pretty popular theme, universal and timeless as well. Any people brought up believing in a resurrected god are primed to believe in new, trendy resurrected god. It’s kind of what Christian missionaries count on when they invade primitive cultures, no?
cough An entire religion sprung from a handful of people who claimed to have seen the resurrected Christ. It would seem that extraordinary claims are* all *that is necessary to convince huge numbers of folks to jump on a bandwagon.
No. Try reading Fox’s Book of Martyrs. Christianity has not been met with open arms in almost every place they’ve gone. Usually the missionaries have to arrive and stay long enough for people to get the idea they aren’t bad people after all, and then they can start building. The idea of an afterlife is fairly universal, so that is often met with indifference.
No-None that is better than the evidence for any other messiah of the time.
That doesn’t exactly go against my “popularity contest” comment, does it?
Let me see if I have your position clear:
Jesus proclaims himself the Messiah, then dies a dishonorable death. The disciples, instead of scattering to the winds, come up with a plot that eventually leads to a worldwide religion. Meanwhile all the other pretenders to the Messiahship die, but, since they weren’t popular enough, they remain known only to historians.
Is that a fair summation?
A claim that a man actually came back from the dead is a claim about a miracle.
A claim that someone has had a mystic experience is considerably less than that; and some, like me, although we believe such experiences happen (hey, it happened to me, or so at least I’m claiming), do not think they are in any way supernatural.
In short, the type of “brushes with the divine” we are talking about (mystic experiences) are not the same as claims of witnessing actual miracles.
Moreover, I would contest that mystic experiences are “extraordinary claims”. While the experiences themselves are wholly subjective, there is at least some phsyical evidence that they happen - in EEGs of people’s brains.
Where’s your evidence that anyone witnessed an “actual miracle” or a dead body return to life and walk about in mortal form? A *mystic experience *is a pretty generous assessment of an unsupported, unsubstantiated claim that hasn’t been replicated since.
That’s usually how history works-the victor gets the good publicity, and the loser gets forgotten.