The immaculate conception. Why were people 2000 years ago more likely to believe that a young woman got pregnant due to a miracle from god than that she just snuck out at night, had sex with someone, and got pregnant? The latter is the kind of thing that must have been a commonly done thing for as long as people have been around to observe it…Literally, people of both genders sneaking off to have sex is something despite tribal or parental restrictions is a story as old as mammals.
The resurrection. Allegedly, only Jesus’s disciples actually saw him returned from the dead, and no one else. Why did basically all people 2000 years ago just not conclude “those guys stole the body and lied.” (and the boulder being moved actually points to several people working together to move a boulder at night, not some resurrected dude suddenly having superhuman strength)
Almost no one today believes in UFO videos - the alleged alien spacecraft is generally either too blurry to see anything or is blatantly obviously a cgi fake. Either way, the simplest explanation is the video is fake or the camera used was faulty or people are seeing a man-made, identifiable flying object.
*Could *these events have been miracles? Sure. Just like it *could *be that the universe never existed until 1 second ago, and everything you remember is a forgery created by God. That theory is not useful to your existence, any more than believing that some guy 2000 years ago did something that is considered impossible and you cannot observe happening now.
The immaculate conception. Why were people 2000 years ago more likely to believe that a young woman got pregnant due to a miracle from god than that she just snuck out at night, had sex with someone, and got pregnant? The latter is the kind of thing that must have been a commonly done thing for as long as people have been around to observe it…Literally, people of both genders sneaking off to have sex is something despite tribal or parental restrictions is a story as old as mammals.
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A teeny nit to pick. The Immaculate Conception does not refer to the Virgin Birth. It is a Roman Catholic doctrine first set out in the later 1800’s. To the RCC it means that Mary was born without the “stain” of Original Sin.
The Virgin Birth refers to May concieving and bearing a child without losing her virginity. The Holy Spirit caused her to become pregnant. And it seems later on she had other kids, as the Bible itself mentions Jesus as having brothers and sisters.
Rome, Greece, and many of the other cultures and religions popular at that time had entire pantheons of gods, goddesses, demi-gods, and folk heroes that were created by some great god or goddess having sex with a mortal. Many critics of Christianity think the virgin birth was tacked onto the Gospels more so because of those legends than earlier Jewish prophecies. So that didn’t seem that odd for a new cult of the time to say their messiah was descended from a god. As far as the resurrection goes, people didn’t do the kind of evidence gathering done now. Once something got out of living memory or geographically far enough away from original incident, anyone could embellish stories and it was difficult to contradict them.
Sign of the times. The supernatural and superstition was something that everyone believed in. No weirder than thinking one can predict the future by watching the flights of birds.
Why did anyone ever believe Zeus used his metamorphic powers to have his way with women? Or that Odin traded an eye for wisdom? Or that Atlantis ever really existed?
The notion that every reported event has to be impeccably documented and recorded is a modern one. And even so, there are still plenty of people willing to jump at the supernatural for otherwise explicable and effable events.
Its not really clear when the origin of many of the Jesus miracles started. Paul doesn’t mention the virgin birth (despite discussing Jesus’s birth from a human mother). And he arguably contradicts the idea of a bodily resurrection.
So I think the most likely scenario is that the first Christians didn’t believe either of the miracles you mentioned. They were added later, to make the story fit Scriptural prophecies, or theological ideas, and were believed because the people creating them “knew” that Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures, so they must’ve happened.
Also Corinthians 15:35 on, he rather strongly argues that resurrected bodies are not “flesh”, and his description of his visions of Jesus seem to imply Jesus wasn’t physically there.
There are multiple threads in Great Debates where Diogenese the Cynic argued this point (and argued it, and argued it and argued it). I found his case pretty convincing, but that’s probably the place to go if you want to see both sides argued at very great length
No one believed this about Jesus until centuries later. However, people believed this about OTHER deities in the Roman Empire, so it wasn’t a huge stretch.
The tomb story was made up. Much of his “life story” was made up by Jewish/proto-Christian scholars who wanted his arrival to match up with Isaiah’s prophecies from centuries before.
For the squeamish…
Modern historians think Jesus’s body was torn apart by dogs.
It’s unrelated to the resurrection. How Jesus Became God theorizes that people had hallucinations of Jesus after his death, and repeated the stories. People like Paul, who was pretty influential. The idea that Jesus “resurrected” came very, very early, within the first 10-20 years of the ministry. Maybe even sooner.
The idea that Jesus had a “body” was later, as Simplicio points out. 40-60 years, perhaps.
I hate debating with a spoiler box…but I don’t want to “out” the contents either…
Anyway, this is the first I’d ever heard of this idea, although, once taken into consideration, it makes perfect sense. Still, just for completeness, could you point to a cite?
I was leery of “How Jesus Became God” because of the reviews – no, not the evangelicals’ reviews, but some of the reviews by people who are willing to engage with the concept but were critical of the details of Erhman’s scholarship. Also by the price. I’ll see if the local library system has a copy…
Yes and no. Most of the traditions we follow are based on the writings or beliefs of Paul/Saul who came along after the crucifixion. Of the 11 people who knew Jesus best (its safe to throw Judas out of the mix) only Mathew and John are thought (in tradition) to have directly written their Gospels. We could debate that one forever but it would take another thread in another forum to really do it justice. Mark was a follower of Peter and Luke a follower of Paul.
Maybe its the Lutheran or the skeptic in me that says it but the Bible/New Testament we have today was formed well along in the development of Christianity; 3rd (possibly 2nd) century through the 5th or later. Those who had been part of the original Jesus movement were well gone by then and what had started as a journey of personal redemption for Jews had grown well beyond that. And what writings we have were chosen, and probably edited, as much for political reasons as historical reasons.
One thing we can say for sure it that if followers of Peter and his thinking had won out during the First Council of Nicaea, we would be looking at a whole different church than most we see today.
What I find amazing is how many of our traditions (Peter being crucified upside down and the “boyhood” stories of Christ) come more from the Apocrypha than they do the actual Bible. That one has always made me go “hmmm”.
(Don’t get me wrong; I love the Bible and consider it the inspired word of God - a tool for us to hear Him in our hearts today. But the literal word? Never could get there myself.)
In modern times, if you tell someone it’s 72F outside, they can go check on that from other sources. 2,000 years ago, information was spread through it’s presentation. So there were some very good salespeople spreading the word, and they didn’t feel they needed to second source the information because they were convinced of the presentation. It’s taking advantage of people’s natural human nature to be trusting. Why do people today pay thousands of dollars to a stranger who knocks on their door offering to pave their driveway, when everyone is told not to deal with these scam artists? Because it’s all about the presentation and the salesmanship of the message. Going to save you money, going to do a great job, I’m only in town for a couple of days with my crew giving it a time limit. Religion does the same thing which is why they want you to come to church each week to get another sales speech. Why don’t these people just Google before they hand over money to a stranger at their front door? It’s because they are taking advantage of human nature being able to sell them.
The better question is why do we need religion? And it’s because it’s the best way to control the population without saying you are controlling them.
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Why did anyone “believe” in the stories about Jesus from the start?
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To give a serious answer: in the 1st century there were a decent number of teachers, preachers, and philosophers, wandering around, attracting followers, and seeking to spread their teachings. Many of them were reported to have some supernatural abilities or stories attached to them. So in this sense, there’s nothing unusual about Jesus attracting a following.
What is unusual about the early Christian movement was that it rapidly grew larger and spread farther than most others, that its members were unusually devoted, and that this remained true despite generations of violent persecution by the Romans. This is what demands explanation.
For one, Jesus’s teaching was entirely revolutionary and filled his followers with drive and energy that the other movements did not have. However, if Jesus did actually perform miracles and was resurrected and many people witnessed it, that could also help explain it.
Except that those closest to the so-called miracles remained remarkably unimpressed by them. The early Christians were more successful with those further away with no direct experience.
Christians did have a big advantage in their doctrine. Why believe in another cult? Maybe your parents did, or the temple virgins were cute, or they had good ceremonies. Only Christianity threatened you with hell if you didn’t sign up. Big winner. Later on, having rulers forcibly convert their subjects helped also. Earlier religions were more ecumenical.
Joseph doesn’t much seem to believe Mary’s story – until he sees an angel IN A DREAM who confirms it. Because if an angel appears unto you IN A DREAM, well, that’s serious business, right? I mean, if you were told what to do by an angel IN A DREAM, wouldn’t you get right to work on it?
Well, no, you presumably wouldn’t. But we’re flatly told that uneducated folks back then would react thusly to a dream [del]where the hot dog was eating me[/del] with an angel in it.
The first thing one should do is to disabuse oneself of the notion that the people of the ancient world were somehow silly or stupid. The Mediterranean world around the time of Christ was an incredibly advanced place.
But it was a very different world from ours in terms of mindset. You sort of get a feel for it when you read a bit of ancient history. A lot of the time, I think, “belief” doesn’t even comes into it. More like, and I say this with love, swimming in an ocean of bullshit so dense that after a while you don’t even know that you’re wet.
Old cults, new cults. Superstitions, oracles, miracle workers. Auspices and divinations. Visions and dreams. And, on a more down-to-earth level, constant Imperial propaganda so thick that you could spread it on a sandwich. Trying to get the straight dope from anyone about anything in this time and place feels like pissing into the wind sometimes. The stories about Christ don’t particularly stand out in this respect. In a way, you *expect *the bullshit. An ancient religious text without bullshit would be bizarre indeed.
And, again, I say that with love. The ancient Greek and Roman religions are fantastically advanced in their own way. The Gospels are fantastically advanced in their own way. But it’s not in a “just the facts, ma’am” sort of way. And that was never, and was never supposed to be, I think, the selling point.
None of this is particular to Christianity. To find out what allowed the cult of an obscure Jewish carpenter to become the dominant religion of the Roman world, you need to look at other sides of the story.