Ancient Confession Found: 'We Invented Jesus Christ'

by Watchtower-Free 223 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  jws

  The hypothesis requires a belief in the existence of the sort of duplicitious masterminds that I just find a bit too hard to swallow (it's a bit too much 'conspiracy hypothesis' for my tastes)....

  The Romans were a smart people. When you look at their technology, it often astounds me the things they invented in the ancient world. Inventing a religion isn't a stretch. Their own mythologies were borrowed and somebody adapted them for the Romans. You've gotta believe somebody knew they were spinning fables. And quite probably they were used to keep the masses happy.

  And we have (fairly) modern day examples of religions being invented. Take Joseph Smith and Mormonism. Or L Ron Hubbard and Scientology. Not to mention many other cults and sects.

  Covert operations do happen. The aid to Afghanistan was one example. The histories of the CIA and KGB are filled with covert operations. And propaganda. It's hard to find a government that doesn't use propagnda in some form, especially towards enemies. Some people feel the old testament is a work of Jewish propaganda to support their claims for territory.

  And sometimes these things do grow beyond their original scope and take on new life.

  The probblem I have with the contrived conspiracy is this. If it were plotted and planned, why is it such a mess? The Gospels don't agree with each other. They have different tones, different things occurred different ways. Unless the tales were started orally and then written down later, after already having drifted from retelling.
• 

  cofty

  Yes we know - xhippy

  Yes we know what?
• 

  DeWandelaar

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aSKN0xnfsA

  This seems to be the complete version of "Ceasar's Messiah"
• 

  adamah

  Designs said-

  Because christians gained too much power and that is always a threat to a status quo.

  Well, that actually wasn't until after the Roman emperor GAVE the Early Xian church power, declaring it as the official religion of the Roman Empire in the 3rd century. But that was MUCH LATER (two centuries) than when Atwill is saying the writing of the spin-off NT occurred (circa 70CE, AFTER the 2nd Temple was destroyed).

  OTWO said-

  I am not all onboard with the complete conspiracy but it does seem that the typology, re-use of the Old Testament events to tell a new story, was a fact.

  It certainly would explain the patchwork quilt nature of Christian theology, with a melding of pagan beliefs which are based on a superficial understanding of Judaism. It's no wonder that many knowledgeable Jews rejected it as a falsehood, as the presuppositions which Xianity is based off of require an ignorance of Judaism. It's no wonder many Jews smelled a rat and rejected it; it also explains why Hellenized Jews (who were less familiar with the religion of their ancestors) and non-Jew Gentiles were more likely to accept it.

  Even though the story may have been based on a real individual who was one of the hundreds who fit the profile of a charismatic who performed magic who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah, Jews didn't take the bait. Most modern-day Xians don't realize that there's far more Jews who died as martyrs than Xians who died, where you basically had to stand up in open court and CONFESS to being a Xian: it's no accident that we have the phrase, "confessing Christ", since the person was given every opportunity to demonstrate their allegience to the Roman emperor and be set free. Some 2nd century Christians (esp Gnostics) recognized that voluntary death was not martyrdom, but akin to suicide (which was viewed as violating the sanctity of life). They pledged allegience to Caesar, but were accused by hardcore believers as being traitors of the faith.

  (All of this is pointed out in Elaine Pagel's "Gnostic Gospels", which recounts the squabbles occurring between various Gnostic Xian groups and what eventually became the orthodox mainstream Xians. I checked out the book in ebook format, via Overdrive app, and recommend it.).

  Friendaroonie said-

  I admit I could be wrong about everything. No, im PROBABLY wrong about everything. Also there is no such thing as a historical fact.

  So it's not a historical fact that Islamic extremists flew two hijacked planes into the WTC on 9/11/2001?

  Or the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941?

  That's an absurd and indefensible statement to take....

  Adam
• 

  adamah

  jws said-

  The Romans were a smart people. When you look at their technology, it often astounds me the things they invented in the ancient world. Inventing a religion isn't a stretch. Their own mythologies were borrowed and somebody adapted them for the Romans. You've gotta believe somebody knew they were spinning fables. And quite probably they were used to keep the masses happy.

  And we have (fairly) modern day examples of religions being invented. Take Joseph Smith and Mormonism. Or L Ron Hubbard and Scientology. Not to mention many other cults and sects.

  Covert operations do happen. The aid to Afghanistan was one example. The histories of the CIA and KGB are filled with covert operations. And propaganda. It's hard to find a government that doesn't use propagnda in some form, especially towards enemies. Some people feel the old testament is a work of Jewish propaganda to support their claims for territory.

  Yeah, people are as duplicitious and deceptive then, as now: we may have technological improvements that allow greater ease of communication, travel, etc, but the machinations of men's hearts and desire to control others hasn't really changed.

  And sometimes these things do grow beyond their original scope and take on new life.

  And if there's a grain of truth behind Atwill's hypothesis, it's likely that it ended up going to a place where no one could anticipate. Same thing happens today, as the example of arming and training the Taliban to fight the USSR led to the emergence of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden, and 9/11. So many more examples than that, where the best-laid plans result in unintended consequences....

  The problem I have with the contrived conspiracy is this. If it were plotted and planned, why is it such a mess? The Gospels don't agree with each other. They have different tones, different things occurred different ways. Unless the tales were started orally and then written down later, after already having drifted from retelling.

  I don't know if Atwill is claiming that the Roman conspirators wrote Mark or "Q", rather than the ENTIRE Gospels? But that's what I was getting at with the evil geniuses (duplicitous masterminds) comment: JRR Tolkien was a professor of ancient languages at Cambridge (IIRC), and he spent decades creating non-existent languages (eg Elvish) which actually had a coherent syntax, etc for his characters to speak, with internal consistency in his accounts. That's hard to do with extant theology in 70CE, esp when it wasn't as easy to conduct research as it is now with the WWW, etc.

  Even overlooking the need to overcome the various styles of writing in Gospels, supposedly one of the contributors to the project was a Jewess mistress. Like I said earlier, the Gospels aren't consistent with each other, so the single source hypothesis seems unlikely to me.

  Adam
• 

  Apognophos

  I'm skeptical, but maybe the Romans (or a Roman agent by the name of Paulus) altered the writings to add stories like "Pay Caesar's things to Caesar". They could have started off as actual teachings by a real Yeshua and then been distorted in the following 20+ years after his death. This would seem more plausible to me than a whole-cloth invention of Jesus.
• 

  caliber

  I admit I could be wrong about everything. No, im PROBABLY wrong about everything. Also there is no such thing as a historical fact.

  So it's not a historical fact that Islamic extremists flew two hijacked planes into the WTC on 9/11/2001?

  Or the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec 7, 1941?

  That's an absurd and indefensible statement to take....

  Adam

  ******************************************************************

  But the further you go back before the age of electronic's, photography or before the written word could be

  read by most common folk, things get much more hazy . Also with these modern (above ) events do we truly know

  all the who's, what's and why's besides when's ? As with the Kennedy shooting there may be a huge number of

  historial facts ... but only 50 plus years later have the true facts come out such as the one missing bullet. The more distant

  you get in time will multiply these problems...is this not true ?

  Individual facts such as time and place may be known ... but what about motive and intent ? What is the true picture and reality

  for the way these events unfolded ?
• 

  adamah

  Caliber, I was objecting to the outlandish and extreme claim, "there is such thing as a historical fact".

  However, I realize friendaroonie was likely taking that position to see if he could convince TEC to budge from her equally-absurd claim of being able to obtain absolute perfect knowledge via being personal BFF with Jesus, the one who KNOWS with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY.

  Adam
• 

  itsibitsybrainbutbigenoughtosmellarat

  LARSINGER WILL BE SO UPSET
• 

  cofty

  OK I watched the video (while I made spicy carrot and lentil soup)

  Very interesting!

  There is a big problem to be solved about the gospels though. The synoptics were not all written by the same hand.

  PS - That female narrator's voice was so bloody annoying. It sounded like she was trying to sell holidays at a health spa.