See post 32.* You can buy it and the other apocryphal texts in any well stocked Catholic bookstore. *
and later: Oddly the first Gospel may be Thomas (likely not written by Thomas at all) which apparently contains quotes and sayings first put down to pen only a few years after the Crucifixion, or even during His life.
Right, but to counter that you had many religions that had similar beliefs, i.e. some god coming down as a flight of birds or a shower of light and scrumping some human woman and giving birth to another god, goddess, hero or whatever. This is basically in that tradition. Why did they believe it? Why do people believe anything? Because it fit their world view and seemed plausible to them and explained something within that model to them or fit a story tradition they grew up with.
A LOT of people believe in UFOs and all manner of, to a non-believer, crazy shit today…magic crystals, hokey medical cures, ghosts, bigfoots (bigFEET, to paraphrase from The Lord of the Rings), ancient aliens…you name it and there are plenty of folks who believe it. Hell, spend a night watching History Channel or TLC/Discovery or even sometimes the (ironically named, at least sometimes) Science Channel and you’ll see some weird shit folks believe that’s no more incredible than believing that gods/God scrumps human women and make them pregnant or that folks dead for 3 days can resurrect and ascend into heaven.
I think you have to look at them in the context of the prevalent world view at the time…where they fit in perfectly. Just like the world view today can conceive and believe in aliens, magic crystals and moon hoaxes.
It’s not really a fair comparison. Today, these things compete with modern science, and we live in an atmosphere of skepticism. At the time of Christ, there was no modern science, and certainly no atmosphere of skepticism.
Also, moon hoaxes and UFO videos don’t usually come packaged in the same box set with the best ethical and moral teaching on the market. A couple of millennia ago, well, sometimes they sort of did. That might sound as strange as a bacon-ice cream sandwich* to some of us, but I guess people used to like it.
I’d tune in to the History Channel more often it they had Sermon on the Mount quality programming mixed in with their weird stuff.
(*Bracing myself for comments praising the culinary values of the bacon-ice cream sandwich.)
That is all true but what I was referencing in
is that many of the traditional stories were carried through the centuries without any written record really. From oral tradition to later (early 1800s?) Sunday School stories and illustrations. My grandmother, as a little girl, always wondered where those various stories came from. With various finds in this century we now have the written source, in many cases, but its something I always found curious.
Now if we can only find the “Q” or “Sayings” Gospel in an early written form!
People didn’t have movies and novels to fill their imaginations, so they told tall stories, and with less education and no internet to quickly spread news across vast distances, many were inclined to believe them.
Or, you know, it was made the state church of the Roman Empire in the fourth century. :rolleyes:
Once upon a time there were a million Samaritans. If things had played out differently, there might be a handful of Christians living as oddballs in the Levant along side them.
It’s luck, a devotion to proselytizing, and a good story that carried Christianity.
Edit: Better said by others.
Why did they believe it ? one form of proof of their conviction was to suicide… The others then said “see those people who volunteered to be fed to the lions, they believe in this so strongly that…”
But that includes suicides who didn’t personally witness any miracles performed by Jesus, right? They believed strongly, and so died for the cause – and now yet other people who never actually saw anything miraculous believe in fourth-hand hearsay, and so go to their deaths in front of yet more impressionable folks…
One of the underrated “what if” moments in the history of Christianity is “what if the guy who threw that spear at Julian had missed?”.
The early days of Christianity as the dominant Roman religion wasn’t all smooth sailing. Julian the Apostate, nephew of Constantine and Roman Emperor from 361 to 363, had one heck of a go at reversing the Empire’s path to Christianity and return it to the pagan religion and customs of old. Then, unfortunately for him and pagans everywhere, he went on a ham-fisted military adventure in Persia. There, he had an unfortunate run-in with a pointy object, ending his reign and his reforms before either properly got going.
Later, Theodosius got to do his thing instead, and the rest is history. But what if Julian had ruled into old age? Maybe the whole story would have turned out different.
On the other hand, it’s also a very good bet that Christianity was a social force with enough momentum that everything would have all turned out more or less the same way it did anyway, even if Constantine hadn’t had his vision before the Milvian Bridge in the first place. Who knows for sure, really?
I think it’s exactly the same thing. People’s ability to be credulous hasn’t really changed that much, and I think the percentage of folks who are skeptical (of things both in and out of their world view) has gotten better, but still isn’t exactly universal. Look at the percentages of Europeans (or even Americans) who think 9/11 was a US government conspiracy and you’ll see exactly the same dynamic involved, IMHO at least.
Not sure what this has to do with anything, to be honest. I’m making a statement more about why people believe stuff that is within their world view, regardless of whether it comes with morals or ethics attached. To me, it’s all about the ability of humans to be credulous about things that correspond to their world view and being unable to use whatever passes for a bullshit detector on stuff they have a strong belief in. The folks who think the Kennedy assassination was a US government conspiracy believe it because to them that corresponds to their world view, and so they aren’t skeptical of the narrative. The folks who lived 2000 years ago didn’t think a gods/God impregnating a human female was that far fetched because that narrative had been with them and their society for a long time. Like I said, to me it’s all the same and stems from the same source…humans being human.
How do you know this is true?
And this?
If you believe in UFOs and far-fetched conspiracy theories today, you’re being silly. But you didn’t have to be silly to belive in miracles, holy men, astrology or prophets 2000 years ago. That’s the difference.
I’ll just say something about this, too (even though this sort of goes against what I just posted… but hey, I’m nothing if not inconsistent):
So, you’re an early Christan. Do you believe that Jesus walked on water and healed the sick? Do you believe that his mother was a virgin, and that he rose from the dead? Well, maybe you do, and maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re genre-savvy enough to recognize all that as the sort of stories that always get told about holy men.
But maybe you let that slide, because other parts of the message appeal to you. Maybe the tall tales isn’t what makes you stick with your religion when the next round of persecutions come around.
Healed the sick? You do know how powerful the placebo effect it, right? I have no doubt at all Jesus could heal the sick, even if he was just a mortal man. Mother was a Virgin, sure why not? No real medicine, no biologists.
NewRalph124c, who are you and what have you done with the old Ralph124c? I am genuinely curious.
It’s the Second Coming (of Ralph)!
(though I kinda wish he’d just incremented the number after his name to Ralph124d)
Seems like he devolved back into the old Ralph124c: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=753930&page=2
Glad you’re not dead! We were worried about you.
Biggest re-branding disaster since NewCoke.