Yeah, this is more or less my guess. It would explain some of the minor anomalies between the Gospels. You probably couldn’t swing a cat in Judea, or anywhere within a few hundred miles of same, without hitting some young rabbi/preacher proclaiming he had the hotline to God. One guy died and was buried; another took his place, prompting the beginnings of the “Resurrection.” (Think of this as my “Jesus of Sherwood” theory ;))
Maybe 2,000 years from now people will debate there was really a Cecil Adams. I mean, none of us even know what he looks like now. Just sayin’…
The hypothesis of a new Messiah figure being taken to be a dead Messiah “risen from the dead” is actually given plausibility by Mark 6:14-16:
If nothing else, this suggests that such a line of belief was possible. If Antipas really thought that Jesus was John the Baptist risen from the dead, then maybe somebody else could have been seen as Jesus risen from the dead.
I’m not arguing for this or saying it’s likely, but it’s not crazy. Mark at least shows that people were capable of thinking that way.
None of the above, with the underlined possibility closest. The italicised option would be correct if “supernaturally powerful” were replaced with “intelligent, educated and charismatic” and “doing miracles” were replaced with “powerful teaching, hypnosis, and spiritual cures.”
You know how even today there are many people who claim some kind of personal divinity, God-given insights, or miraculous healing abilities? If Jesus existed at all, I think he was probably someone just like that. On the surface a charismatic visionary, but underneath a drug-addled lunatic.
I’m with Guanolad. Jesus would be the leader of a small sect. He would probably be no different then most leaders of most sects.
Sects have existed for thousands of years. Some are succesful and evolve into religions. I think the historical Jesus, if he existed (and wasn’t largely made up by Paul) was something in between a travelling rabbi and that he hadn’t yet amassed a big cult, just about a dozen cult members.
There is some info on the web about characteristics of cult leaders in general. They don’t paint a very rosy picture. Cult leaders usually are socially maladapted, delusional, or psychopaths. If they weren’t, most would prefer to rise to power in the more secure way of climbing up in an established organisation, religious or government. Or they would be a succesful priest/motivational talker and then it would be a real career. Paul was much better at that then Jesus was.
I don’t see why Jesus would be an exeption to the rule that most travelling free lance preachers and small-time sect leaders have some kind of personality disorder. It is lucky for them and their needy followers that their respective disorders fill a mutual need, however unhealthily.
If I were to diagnose Jesus with a personality disorder based on the Bible, I’d end up with Oppositional Defiant Personality Disorderwith a lot of idealism, and delusions of grandeur.
Jesus fit the bill with his delusions of being able to walk on water, cursing a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season; and of being cleverly ambiguous of saying he was the returned Eliah, or the son of God.
The fact that he argued with rabbi’s as a kid and that he ran away from home as a youth fits the picture. His more violent outbursts “All those who don not want me to be their king, bring them before me and I shall kill them” and the rather illogical attack on the temple also fit.
A slightly unstable but really nice guy, probably a bit of a rabble rouser. By his actions in the Bible it seems clear he was really into social justice. I don’t think he ever claimed to be God.
I’m not sure all 20th-century American sects should be painted with the same broad brush. Extrapolating from there to 1st-century Palestine is moot. Anyway, early Christianity was largely derived from Paul, who never even met Jesus, and the Gospels were largely written when Jesus was already dead: It may be wrong even to label Jesus a “sect leader.”
IIRC, Jesus never claimed the ability to walk on water. Others claimed that others witnessed it.
Which brings me to my answer, expecting to find a guy who keeps a lot of powdered mushrooms on hand: he sprinkles some into water to make the stuff as intoxicating as wine; he ups the dosage to flip impressionable folks into suggestible ones – including impressionable-but-uptight folks who (a) suffer from psychosomatic illnesses built around religious hang-ups, and who (b) just need to relax while being forgiven by a reassuring hypnotherapist playing authority figure from on high – and he goes all-out when a cocktail of bona fide hallucinogens are called for.
He’s also got a lot of broad flat mushroom caps that look kinda like pita bread and kinda like human flesh, which he sets aside for when his followers will break bread and drink “wine” after his death – when they’ll sit around, zonked out and having a stream-of-consciousness discussion about what they all want to see most right then.
I’d be at least as interested to go back and see what we’d find with Saul of Tarsus, aka Paul.
The path of Christianity changed first when Jesus died and then when Paul spread the story. When Jesus died, his followers took that liability and turned it into a key to everlasting life - a value proposition that could appeal to people. And Paul is the one who “marketed” this value proposition and put Christianity on its path of explosive growth.
So Jesus may have been an unwashed street preacher who had the personal misfortune of dying because he disrupted local governance, but Paul was the one who took the spin that emerged from Jesus’ death and went big with it. I wonder more about what Paul was like…
I think it would likely prove impossible to find him in the first place.
Where and when are you going to look, and what are you looking for?
An end of days preacher around say 20-30 CE roaming about Judea? Ha! Just turn the corner and you’ll find two.
We know that the little that is written about his life in the bible is either outright fabrication or unlikely to be accurate. Even if one of these preachers played the larges role in what eventually came to be the mythological Jesus of the bible, it might not be possible to single him out.
This is false. There are two sections where Josephus talks about Jesus. Indeed, the one almost certainly has been edited by later Christians. However, there is another, where Josephus talks about the stoning of James, the brother of Jesus, where the mention of Jesus is just a throwaway to explain why James would be important.
Not to mention that John almost certainly has as it main source- the Apostle John himself.
That, and the Jerrys win WWII, no matter how you changed history.
I’d expect to find a philosopher who was very charismatic, and who hinted at the idea that he was divine. I’d expect to find a guy who really believed he could heal, and was not afraid of lepers or other sick people, and - unusually - a charismatic who didn’t use his abilities for cynical ends. He sacrificed himself, secure in the knowledge that God the Father would swoop down and save him.
:dubious: 