"The whole religious complexion of the modern world is due to the
absence from Jerusalem of a lunatic asylum."
--- Havelock Ellis
On 12/26/2017 7:51 AM, Lawrence Crowell wrote:
Written to somebody else:
Jesus as portrayed in the Gospels most likely never actually existed.
Jesus is a character in mythic narratives. There may of course have
been a number of men like Jesus, or Jeshua (Joshua), at the time.
There may have been itinerant rabbis who went around giving parishas
similar to what forms the Gospels have Jesus saying. There may have
been somebody who declared themselves the "I AM" to the temple priests
or Sanhedrin, which of course is bound to cause trouble. What do we
ordinarily think of people who go around saying they are God? The
mythic character then was developed to be the most miraculous, say by
raising the dead as did Elijah etc and then resurrecting himself after
sacrificing Himself to Himself through suicide by cop. The biblical
character of Jesus is then a sort of compilation of midrash and tales
told at the time, which now define this mythic character of Jesus.
Of course Jesus was further defined by Saul of Tarsus, which is where
we start to get the authoritarian Jesus. The other epistles of Paul,
Peter and John all elevate Jesus to a higher level. Then in the Book
of Revelations Jesus appears as a towering figure Who's tongue is a
slashing sword. He commands angels to pour out 7 plagues from bowls,
where it might be imagined the scribes writing in the name of John
were smoking lots of bowls.
LC
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