The Impossible Faith: Miraculous Origin of Christianity
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The Impossible Faith
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Or, How Not to Start an Ancient Religion
James Patrick Holding
http://www.tektonics.org/nowayjose.html
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[General Outline]
[The Shame of Crucifixion]
[Jewishness and Geography]
[A Physical Resurrection]
[Newness]
[Ethics]
[Tolerance]
[Touching History]
[More Than Martyrs]
[Human vs. Divine]
[Dissing the Classes]
[Women as Witnesses]
[Bumpkins as Witnesses]
[Minding Others' Business]
[An Ignorant Deity?]
[A Prophet Without Honor]
[Miscellaneous Contrarium]
[Invitations to Debunk]
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Over the years we have collected literally reams of information in
defense of the Christian faith. In that time we have dealt with, and
made use of, numerous sources informing of the social, literary, and
other background of the NT world. Now the time has come to piece
together some of these in a general defense of the faith. (We have
comments on some reactions to this piece from certain local yokels at
MetaFilter here.)
We have subtitled our piece, How Not to Start an Ancient Religion. The
background here is certain skeptical claims that Christianity was a
movement born of the adage that a sucker is born every minute, and
Christianity collected about a year's worth of suckers to start with.
As proof we are pointed to various figures and/or movements in history
-- Sabbatai Sevi, Zalmoxis, or Alex and his pet snake Glycon. We have
shown why each of these parallels is inadequate, but now it is time to
put together a comprehensive list of issues that we assert that
critics must deal with in explaining why Christianity succeeded where
it should have clearly failed or died out as did these others. Merely
saying it was "lucky" where Sevi, et al. were not will not be an
adequate answer -- and in fact, is the least likely answer of all as
we shall see.
Below I offer a list of 17 factors to be considered -- places where
Christianity "did the wrong thing" in order to be a successful
religion. It is my contention that the only way Christianity did
succeed is because it was a truly revealed faith -- and because it had
the irrefutable witness of the resurrection. I may add more factors as
my research continues. For now, this should be enough to keep the
skeptics busy if they aren't otherwise engaged in such scholarly
pursuits as looking for contradictions between numbers in 1 Kings and
1 Chronicles or digging up obscure and irrelevant pagan figures who
sold snake oil. Veteran readers will note that there is little new
actually reported in this article that is not found elsewhere on this
site; indeed much of what is below is taken verbatim from other
articles -- it is only the application that is new.
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Factor #1 -- Who Would Buy One Crucified?
1 Cor. 1:18 For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish
foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God.
1 Cor. 15:12-19 Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead,
how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But
if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: And
if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is
also vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we
have testified of God that he raised up Christ: whom he raised not up,
if so be that the dead rise not. For if the dead rise not, then is not
Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are
yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are
perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all
men most miserable.
With the exception of the Christ-mythers and conspiracy theorists (and
I put Muslims in this rank, where this issue is concerned!), few would
deny the historical reality of the crucifixion. But once that door is
opened, it brings about the first of our problems: Who on earth would
believe a religion centered on a crucified man?
As Martin Hengel has amply shown us in his monograph, Crucifixion, the
shame of the cross was the result of a fundamental norm of the
Greco-Roman Empire. Hengel observes that "crucifixion was an utterly
offensive affair, 'obscene' in the original sense of the word." (22)
As Malina and Rohrbaugh note in their Social-Science Commentary on
John [263-4], crucifixion was a "status degradation ritual" designed
to humiliate in every way, including the symbolic pinioning of hands
and legs signigfying a loss of power, and loss of ability to control
the body in various ways, including befouling one's self with
excrement. The process was so offensive that the Gospels turn out to
be our most detailed description of a crucifixion from ancient times -
the pagan authors were too revolted by the subject to give equally
comprehensive descriptions - in spite of the fact that thousands of
crucifixions were done at a time on some occasions. "(T)he cultured
literary world wanted to have nothing to do with [crucifixion], and as
a rule kept silent about it." (38) It was recognized as early as Paul
(1 Cor. 1:18; see also Heb. 12:2) that preaching a savior who
underwent this disgraceful treatment was folly. This was so for Jews
(Gal. 3;13; cf. Deut. 21:23) as well as Gentiles. Justin Martyr later
writes in his first Apology 13:4 --
They say that our madness consists in the fact that we put a crucified
man in second place after the unchangeable and eternal God...
Celsus describes Jesus as one who was "bound in the most ignominious
fashion" and "executed in a shameful way." Josephus describes
crucifixion as "the most wretched of deaths." An oracle of Apollo
preserved by Augustine described Jesus as "a god who died in
delusions...executed in the prime of life by the worst of deaths, a
death bound with iron." (4) And so the opinions go: Seneca, Lucian,
Pseudo-Manetho, Plautus. Even the lower classes joined the charade, as
demonstrated by a bit of graffiti depicting a man supplicating before
a crucified figure with an asses' head - sub-titled, "Alexamenos
worships god." (The asses' head being a recognition of Christianity's
Jewish roots: A convention of anti-Jewish polemic was that the Jews
worshipped an ass in their temple. - 19) Though confused in other
matters, Walter Bauer rightly said (ibid.):
The enemies of Christianity always referred to the disgracefulness of
the death of Jesus with great emphasis and malicious pleasure. A god
or son of god dying on a cross! That was enough to put paid to the new
religion.
And DeSilva adds [51]:
No member of the Jewish community or the Greco-Roman society would
have come to faith or joined the Christian movement without first
accepting that God's perspective on what kind of behavior merits honor
differs exceedingly from the perspective of human beings, since the
message about Jesus is that both the Jewish and Gentile leaders of
Jerusalem evaluated Jesus, his convictions and his deeds as meriting a
shameful death, but God overturned their evaluation of Jesus by
raising him from the dead and seating him at God's own right hand as
Lord.
The message of the cross was an abhorrence, a vulgarity in its social
context. Discussing crucifixion was the worst sort of social faux pas;
it was akin, in only the thinnest sense, to discussing sewage
reclamation techniques over a fine meal - but even worse when
associated with an alleged god come to earth. Hengel adds: "A
crucified messiah...must have seemed a contradiction in terms to
anyone, Jew, Greek, Roman or barbarian, asked to believe such a claim,
and it will certainly have been thought offensive and foolish." That a
god would descend to the realm of matter and suffer in this
ignominious fashion "ran counter not only to Roman political thinking,
but to the whole ethos of religion in ancient times and in particular
to the ideas of God held by educated people." (10, 4) Announcing a
crucified god would be akin to the Southern Baptist Convention
announcing that they endorsed pedophilia! If Jesus had truly been a
god, then by Roman thinking, the Crucifixion should never have
happened. Celsus, an ancient pagan critic of Christianity, writes:
But if (Jesus) was really so great, he ought, in order to display his
divinity, to have disappeared suddenly from the cross.
This comment represents not just some skeptical challenge, but is a
reflection of an ingrained socio-theological consciousness. The Romans
could not envision a god dying like Jesus - period. Just as well to
argue that the sky is green, or that pigs fly, only those arguments,
at least, would not offend sensibilities to the maximum. We need to
emphasize this (for the first but not the last time) from a social
perspective because our own society is not as attuned as ancient
society to the process of honor. We found it strange to watch Shogun
and conceive of men committing suicide for the sake of honor. The
Jews, Greeks and Romans would not have found this strange at all. As
David DeSilva shows in Honor, Patronage, Kinship and Purity, that
which was honorable was, to the ancients, of primary importance. Honor
was placed above one's personal safety and was the key element in
deciding courses of action. Isocrates gives behavioral advice based
not on what was "right or wrong", but on what was "noble or
disgraceful". "The promise of honor and threat of disgrace [were]
prominent goads to pursue a certain kind of life and to avoid many
alternatives." [24] Christianity, of course, argued in reply that
Jesus' death was an honorable act of sacrifice for the good of others
-- but that sort of logic only works if you are already convinced by
other means!
This being the case, we may fairly ask, for the first time in this
essay, why Christianity succeeded at all. The ignominy of a crucified
savior was as much a deterrent to Christian belief as it is today -
indeed, it was far, far more so! Why, then, were there any Christians
at all? At best this should have been a movement that had only a few
strange followers, then died out within decades as a footnote, if it
was mentioned at all. The historical reality of the crucifixion could
not of course be denied. To survive Christianity should have either
turned Gnostic (as indeed happened in some offshoots), or else not
bothered with Jesus at all, and merely made him into the movement's
first martyr for a higher moral ideal within Judaism. It would have
been absurd to suggest, to either Jew or Gentile, that a crucified
being was worthy of worship or died for our sins.
There can be only one good explanation: Christianity succeeded because
from the cross came victory, and after death came resurrection! The
shame of the cross turns out to be one of Christianity's most
incontrovertible proofs!
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Factor #2 -- Neither Here Nor There: Or, A Man from Galilee??
John 1:46 And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come
out of Nazareth?
Acts 21:39 But Paul said, I am a man which am a Jew of Tarsus, a city
in Cilicia, a citizen of no mean city...
What advantage has religion and geography? To the ancients, "much in
every way"! Political correctness was 2000 years in the future, and
the Greco-Roman world was rife with what we would call prejudices and
stereotypes -- which were accepted as "Gospel truth"! Say today that
"X are always brutes, gluttons, etc." and you will have half a dozen
civil rights groups ringing your doorbell. Say it in Rome and you'll
have everyone agreeing with you -- sometimes including the group
itself!
Jesus' Jewishness could hardly have been denied by the early
Christians, but it was also a major impediment to spreading the Gospel
beyond the Jews themselves. Judaism was regarded by the Romans and
Gentiles as a superstition. Roman writers like Tacitus willingly
reported (not as true, but in the frame of "some say...") all manner
of calumnies against Jews as a whole, regarding them as a spiteful and
hateful race. Bringing a Jewish savior to the door of the average
Roman would have been only less successful bringing one to the door of
a Nazi -- though the Roman may not have wanted to kill you; he would
certainly have laughed in your face, slammed the door, or given you a
violent noogie.
This is made quite clear by Judaism's own limited inroads in terms of
Gentile converts. To be sure, this is partly attributable to Judaism
not being much of a missionary religion. And yet if Christianity
didn't have some cards close to the vest, the Jewishness of Jesus even
by itself means that it never should have expanded in the Gentile
world much beyond the circle of those Gentiles who were already
God-fearers (i.e., Gentile proselytes to Judaism).
Let us stress again the points made by Robert Wilken in The Christians
as the Romans Saw Them. The Romans naturally considered their own
belief systems to be superior to all others. (57) They also believed
that superstitions (such as Judaism and Christianity) undermined the
social system established by their religion - and of course they were
right. However, the point is that anyone who followed or adopted one
of their foreign superstitions would be looked on not only as a
religious rebel, but as a social rebel as well. They were breaking
with the status quo, upsetting the apple cart, taking part in a 60s
style rebellion against the establishment. They upset the Roman
concept of piety and were thought to be incapable of it. In those
days, things were not pluralistic or "politically correct" and there
were no champions of diversity on the college campuses: Today,
atheists and theists can debate in a free forum, but back then one of
the camps would have the state (and the sword!) on their side - and in
the time we're talking about, that wasn't the Christians!
Those who adhered to superstitio therefore found themselves, as a
matter of course, associated with bizarre and extreme behaviors - as
the Christians did, and as Tacitus also reports of the Jews in his
Histories. And it went further: "(B)ecause superstition leads to
irrational ideas about the gods, the inevitable consequence is
atheism." (61) Since "superstitionists" bucked the established cosmic
order, their view of the universe was regarded as capricious and
irrational, and this eventually led to the charge by critics like
Crescens that Christians were actually atheists (68).
That's just a problem within the Gentile mission, of course. But both
there, and even within Judaism, Christianity had to overcome another
stigma, exemplified in our comparative quotes above. When Paul
mentioned that he was from Tarsus, he didn't do it so he could compare
notes about hometowns with the centurion. Being from a major polis
like Tarsus signified a high honor rating for the person who laid
claim to it -- only marginally matched today in our concepts of "being
from the right side of the tracks"! Christianity had a serious
handicap in this regard, the stigma of a savior who undeniably hailed
from Galilee -- for the Romans and Gentiles, not only a Jewish land,
but a hotbed of political sedition; for the Jews, not as bad as
Samaria of course, but a land of yokels and farmers without much
respect for the Torah, and worst of all, a savior from a puny village
of no account. Not even a birth in Bethlehem, or Matthew's suggestion
that an origin in Galilee was prophetically ordained, would have
unattached such a stigma: Indeed, Jews would not be convinced of this,
even as today, unless something else first convinced them that Jesus
was divine or the Messiah. The ancients were no less sensitive to the
possibility of "spin doctoring" than we are.
There are other minor extensions to this business of stereotyping.
Assigning Jesus the work of a carpenter was the wrong thing to do;
Cicero noted that such occupations were "vulgar" and compared the work
to slavery. Placing Jesus' birth story in the a suspicious context
where a charge of illegitimacy would be all too obvious to make would
compound the problems as well. If the Gospels were making up these
things, how hard would it have been to put Jesus in Sepphoris or even
Capernaum (and still take advantage of the prophetic "Galilee"
connection) -- and as skeptics are wont to say, wrongly, this would be
no easier or harder to check out than Nazareth. How hard would it have
been to take an "adoptionist" Christology and give Jesus an
indisputably honorable birth (rather than claiming honor by the
dubious, on the surface, claim that God was Jesus' Father)? Maybe
harder, since more people are less likely to notice one man than in a
small town with strong community ties. What it boils down to is that
everything about Jesus as a person was all wrong to get people to
believe he was deity -- and there must have been something powerful to
overcome all the stigmas.
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Factor #3 -- Getting Physical! The Wrong "Resurrection"
As we have shown here, the resurrection of Jesus, within the context
of Judaism, was thought by Gentiles to be what can be described as
"grossly" physical. This in itself raises a certain problem for
Christianity beyond a basic Jewish mission. We have regularly quoted
the dictum of Pheme Perkins: "Christianity's pagan critics generally
viewed resurrection as misunderstood metempsychosis at best. At worst,
it seemed ridiculous." It may further be noted that the pagan world
was awash with points of view associated with those who thought matter
was evil and at the root of all of man's problems. Platonic thought,
as Murray Harris puts it, supposed that "man's highest good consisted
of emancipation from corporeal defilement. The nakedness of
disembodiment was the ideal state." Physical resurrection was the last
sort of endgame for mankind that you wanted to preach.
Indeed, among the pagans, resurrection was deemed impossible. Wright
in Resurrection of the Son of God quotes Homer's King Priam:
"Lamenting for your dead son will do no good at all. You will be dead
before you bring him back to life." And Aeschylus Eumenides: "Once a
man has died, and the dust has soaked up his blood, there is no
resurrection." And so on, with several other quotes denying the
possibility of resurrection. [32-3]
Judaism itself would have had its own, lesser difficulty, albeit not
insurmountable: there was no perception of the resurrection of an
individual before the general resurrection at judgment. But again,
this, though weird, could have been overcome -- as long as there was
evidence! Not so easily in the pagan world. We can see well enough
that Paul had to fight the Gnostics, the Platonists, and the ascetics
on these counts. But what makes this especially telling is that a
physical resurrection was completely unnecessary for merely starting a
religion. It would have been enough to say that Jesus' body had been
taken up to heaven, like Moses' or like Elijah's. Indeed this would
have fit (see here) what was expected, and would have been much easier
to "sell" to the Greeks and Romans, for whom the best "evidence" of
elevation to divine rank was apotheosis -- the transport of the soul
to the heavenly realms after death; or else translation while still
alive. So why bother making the road harder? There is only one
plausible answer -- they really had a resurrection to preach.
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Factor #4 -- What's New? What's Not Good
Roman literature tells us that "(t)he primary test of truth in
religious matters was custom and tradition, the practices of the
ancients." (62) In other words, if your beliefs had the right sort of
background and a decent lineage, you had the respect of the Romans.
Old was good. Innovation was bad.
This was a big sticking point for Christianity, because it could only
trace its roots back to a recent founder. Christians were regarded as
"arrogant innovators" (63) whose religion was the new kid on the
block, but yet had the nerve to insist that it was the only way to go!
As noted above, Christianity argued that the "powers that be" which
judged Jesus worthy of the worst and most shameful sort of death were
180 degrees off, and God Himself said so!
Malina and Neyrey [164] explain the matter further. Reverence was
given to ancestors, who were considered greater "by the fact of
birth." Romans "were culturally constrained to attempt the impossible
task of living up to the traditions of those necessarily greater
personages of their shared past." What had been handed down was
"presumed valid and normative. Forceful arguments might be phrased as:
'We have always done it this way!'" Semper, ubique, ab omnibus --
"Always, everywhere, by everyone!" It contrast, Christianity said,
"Not now, not here, and not you!" Of course this explains why Paul
appeals to that which was handed on to him by others (1 Cor. 11:2) --
but that is within a church context and where the handing on occurred
in the last 20 years! Pilch and Malina add [Handbook of Biblical
Social Values, 19] that change or novelty in religious doctrine or
practice met with an especially violent reaction; change or novelty
was "a means value which serves to innovate or subvert core and
secondary values."
Even Christian eschatology and theology stood against this perception.
The idea of sanctification, of an ultimate cleansing and perfecting of
the world and each person, stood in opposition to the view that the
past was the best of times, and things have gotten worse since then.
The Jews, on the other hand, traced their roots back much further, and
although some Roman critics did make an effort to "uproot" those
roots, others (including Tacitus) accorded the Jews a degree of
respect because of the antiquity of their beliefs. In light of this we
can understand efforts by Christian writers to link Christianity to
Judaism as much as possible, and thus attain the same "antiquity" that
the Jews were sometimes granted. (Of course we would agree that the
Christians were right to do this, but that is not how the Romans saw
it!)
Critics of Christianity, of course, "caught on" to this "trick" and
soon pointed (however illicitly) out that Christians could hardly
claim Judaism and at the same time observe none of its practices.
Therefore this is a hurdle that Christianity could never overcome
outside a limited circle -- not without some substantial offering of
proof.
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Factor #5 -- Don't Demand Behavior
This is not one of the greatest barriers, but it is a significant one,
and of course still is today. Ethically, Christian religion is "hard
to do". Judaism was as well, and that is one reason why there were so
few God-fearers. Christianity didn't offer nice, drunken parties or
orgies with temple prostitutes; in fact it forbade them. It didn't
encourage wealth; it encouraged sharing the wealth. It didn't appeal
to the senses, it promised "pie in the sky by and by." This was a
problem in the ancient world as much as it is now -- if not more so.
It would not appeal to the rich, who would be directed to share their
wealth. The poor might like that, but not if they couldn't spend that
shared dough on their favorite vice-distraction (not all of which were
known to be "self-harming" and therefore offered an ulterior
motivation for giving them up). Again, this is not an insurmountable
hurdle; some Romans were attracted to the ethical system of Judaism,
and would have been likewise attracted to Christianity. But it is very
difficult to explain why Christianity grew where God-fearers were
always a very small group. Not even evangelistic fervor explains that.
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Factor #6 -- Tolerance is a Virtue
We have already alluded to the problem of Christianity being seen as
an "arrogant innovator." Now compound the problem: Not only an
innovator, but an exclusivist innovator. Many skeptics and
non-believers today claim to be turned off by Christian "arrogance"
and exclusivity. How much more so in the ancient world? The Romans
were already grossly intolerant (point 2 above); how much more so in
the context of another and very new faith playing the same game and
claiming to overthrow the social and religious order? How if a faith
came telling us we needed to stop attending our churches (and in fact
would prefer we tear them down!), stop having our parties, stop
observing the social order that had been in place from the time of our
venerated ancestors until now? As DeSilva notes, "the message about
this Christ was incompatible with the most deeply rooted religious
ideology of the Gentile world, as well as the more recent message
propogated in Roman imperial ideology" [46] (i.e., the pax Romana
versus the eschatology and judgment of God). The Christians refused to
believe in the gods, "the guardians of stability of the world order,
the generous patrons who provided all that was needed for sustaining
life, as well as the granters of individual petitions." Jews and
Christians alike were accused of atheism under this rebric.
Futhermore, because there was no aspect of social life that was
secular -- religion was intertwined with public life in a way that
would make legions of ACLU attorneys choke to death -- Jews and
Christians held themseles aloof from public life, and engendered
thereby the indignation of their neighbors.
That was bad enough, but Jews too would be intolerant to the new
faith. Jewish families would feel social pressure to cut off converts
and avoid the shame of their conversion. Without something to overcome
Roman and even Jewish intolerance, Christianity was doomed.
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Factor #7 -- Stepping Into History
Acts 26:26 For the king knoweth of these things, before whom also I
speak freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden
from him; for this thing was not done in a corner.
This factor is a large one, multifaceted and complex and with varying
levels of strength. Let's put it this way: If you wanted to start a
new religion with new and wild claims involved, do you claim, at any
point, to have connections that you don't have? If I claimed tomorrow
or even 40 years from now that my Aunt Nettie was resurrected, do I
dare say that she was put on trial before Clarence Thomas, was wanted
by my state governor for questioning, was buried in the intended tomb
of Tom Cruise? We have often individually considered the claims of
Christianity such as the burial in Joe of A.'s tomb, but let's now
consider collectively what we're dealing with. The NT is filled with
claims of connections to and reports of incidents involving "famous
people." Here's how one of our readers put it: Herod Agrippa -- this
man was a client king for the Romans over the area surronding
Jerusalem -- "was eaten of worms" as Luke reported in Acts 12:20-23.
Copies of Acts circulated in the area and were accessible to the
public. Had Luke reported falsely, Christianity would have been
dismissed as a fraud and would not have "caught on" as a religion. If
Luke lied in his reports, Luke probably would have been jailed and/or
executed by Agrippa's son, Herod Agrippa II (who held the same
position), because that was the fellow Paul testified to in Acts 25-26
(reported by Luke). And Agrippa II was alive and in power after Luke
wrote and circulated Acts; indeed he had access to all the needed
information and claims ("For the king knoweth of these things, before
whom also I speak freely: for I am persuaded that none of these things
are hidden in a corner. King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I
know that thou believest." [Acts 26:26-27] Did Agrippa execute Paul
for these statements? No, and he could not have if it was not true.
Rather Agrippa told Governor Festus, "This man might have been set at
liberty, if he had not appealed unto Caesar." [Acts 26:32])
"So what?" the skeptic may ask. So what? Now consider the domino
effect of making such claims. If claim #1 is proven false, that opens
the way to doubt others -- all the way up the line to the
resurrection. And it need not even be Joe of A's tomb in particular,
or Herod becoming wormburgers in particular. It can be any one of the
places where the early Christians and the NT made bold claim to some
influence or event in any city. People outside the area of Lystra may
not have known enough about what happened in Lystra, or wanted to
check it, but Christianity was making claims at varied points across
the Empire, and there were also built in "fact checkers" stationed
around the Empire who could say something about all the claims central
to Jerusalem and Judaea -- the Diaspora Jews. (And it gets worse; see
below!)
The NT claims countless touch-points that could go under this list. An
earthquake, a darkness at midday, the temple curtain torn in two, an
execution, all at Passover (with the attendant crowds numbering in the
millions), people falling out of a house speaking in tongues at
Pentecost (another "millions attend" event) -- all in a small city and
culture where word would spread fast (see below). Healings of
illnesses and dysfunctions, even reversals of death, in highly public
places. A truimphal entry into Jerusalem in blatant fulfillment of
Messianic prophecy.
In short, Christianity was highly vulnerable to inspection and
disproof on innumerable points -- any one of which, had it failed to
prove out, would have snowballed into further doubt, especially given
the previous factors above which would have been motive enough for any
Jew or Gentile to say or do something. This is not the way to start a
religion. You start a religion by linking to obscure and nameless
people. You don't talk of a synagogue ruler or a Sanhedrin member, or
even a centurion being in your history (even if you don't name them;
there were few enough of each of these that it would not be hard to
make a check). You stick with no-names like the woman at the well.
Such persons of course would have had to be interacted with anyway,
but the point is not their presence, but the presence of those of
greater social standing and notice, and the claims attached to them.
It is impossible that Christianity thrived and survived without having
its ducks in a row in this regard.
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Factor #8 -- Do Martyrs Matter, and More?
This is a standard argument, but in need of some fine-tuning. The most
important martyrs are those of the time of Jesus and shortly
thereafter. Admittedly there are few examples of this sort of
martyrdom that we may point to -- records of church tradition are our
only source for the martyrdoms of many of the Apostles; our best
witness is actually Paul himself, who testifies that he persecuted the
church with "zeal" -- using a word used to describe the actions of the
Maccabbeeans who killed when needed to clean things up.
But in fact we can broaden this argument further: persecution did not
automatically equal martyrdom, and this is yet another reason why
Christianity should not have thrived and survived. As Robin Lane Fox
writes, "By reducing the history of Christian persecution to a history
of legal hearings, we miss a large part of the victimization."
[Fox.PagChr, 424] Beyond action by authorities, Christians could
expect social ostracization if they stuck by their faith, and that is
where much of the persecution Fox refers to came from - rejection by
family and society, relegation to outcast status. It didn't need to be
martyrdom -- it was enough that you would suffer socially and
otherwise, even if still alive. DeSilva notes that those who violated
the current social values (as Christians indeed did!) would find
themselves subject to measures designed to shame them back into
compliance -- insult, reproach, physical abuse, whipping, confiscation
of property, and of course disgrace -- much more important in an
honor-and-shame society than to us. And the NT offers ample record of
such things happening [Heb. 10:32-4; 1 Pet. 2;12, 3;16, 4:12-16; Phil.
1:27-30; 1 Thess. 1:6, 2:13-14; 2 Thess. 1:4-5; Rev. 2:9-10, 13].
So it is: The Jews would dislike you, the Romans would dislike you,
your family would disown you, everyone would avoid or make sport of
you. Furthermore, men like Paul and Matthew, and even Peter and John,
gave up lucrative trades for the sake of a mission that was all too
obviously going to be nothing but trouble for them. It is quite
unlikely that anyone would have gone the distance for the Christian
faith at any time -- unless it had something tangible behind it.
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Factor #9 -- Human vs. Divine: Never the Twain Shall Meet!
Our next factor is related to the one above about resurrection, and it
is a problem from both a Jewish and a Gentile perspective. Earl
Doherty, a skeptic, has referred to the incredibility of "the idea
that Jews, both in Palestine and across the empire, could have come to
believe—or been converted to the idea by others—that a
human man was the Son of God....To believe that ordinary Jews were
willing to bestow on any human man, no matter how impressive, all the
titles of divinity and full identification with the ancient God of
Abraham is simply inconceivable." And so it would be: Unless it
actually happened, and that "human man" proved himself to be the Son
of God. Doherty's "fallacy" amounts to an argument in favor of
Christianity!
And it would be no better in the Gentile world. The idea of a god
condescending to material form, for more than a temporary visit, of
sweating, stinking, going to the bathroom, and especially suffering
and dying here on earth -- this would be too much to swallow!
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Factor #10 -- No Class!
"Neither male nor female, neither slave not free." You might be so
used to applauding this sort of concept that you don't realize what a
radical message it was for the ancient world. And this is another
reason why Christianity should have petered out in the cradle if it
were a fake.
Malina and Neyrey note that in the ancient world, people took their
major identity from the various groups to which they belonged.
Whatever group(s) they were embedded in determined their idenitity.
Changes in persons (such as Paul's conversion) were abnormal. Each
person had certain role expectations they were expected to fulfill.
The erasure or blurring of these various distinctions -- stated
clearly in Paul, but also done in practice by Jesus during his
ministry -- would have made Christianity seem radical and offensive.
Note that this is not just to those in power or rich; it is an
anachronism of Western individualism to suppose that a slave or the
poor would have found Christianity's message appealing on this basis.
For one thing, even from a Western perspective, joining the group did
not do anything to alleviate their condition in practical terms. For
another, in the ancient world, it would have been foreign to the mind
to not stand in some sort of dependent relationship. "When ancient
Mediterraneans speak of 'freedom,' they generally understand the term
as both freedom from slavery to one lord or master, and freedom to
enter the service of another lord or benefactor." [163] It would also
not have occurred to such persons as a whole that their situation
could be changed, since all that happened was attributed to fate,
fortune, or providence. [189] You did not fight your situation, you
endured it, and to endure it was the most honorable thing. [Hence the
joke of Job's wife saying, "Job, get a job!" is funnier than we
think!] In other words, it was not a matter of whether you were in
service to another, but who you were in service to!) Shattering these
social distinctions would have been a faux pas of the greatest order
-- unless you had some powerful cards to play.
By the same token, a Christian's Jewish neighbors would be no happier.
Strict observance of the Torah became Judaism's own "defense
mechanism" against Roman prejudices, their way of staying pure of
outside infuences. A convert who ceased to observe the law, and began
to associate with Gentiles, would receive a double-whammy --
especially with memories still fresh of the era of Antiochus, when
Jews were forced to "convert" to Hellenism. He had in essence given up
"spiritual showering"!
Christianity turned the norms upside down and said that birth,
ethnicity, gender, and wealth -- that which determined a person's
honor and worth in this setting -- meant zipola. Even minor honor
signs like appearance and charisma were dissed {2 Cor. 5:12).
The group-identity factor makes for another proof of Christianity's
authenticity. In a group-oriented society, you took your identity from
your group leader, and people needed the support and endorsement of
others to support their identity. Christianity forced a severing of
social and religious ties, the things which made an ancient person
"human" in standing. (It did provide its own community support in
return, but that hardly explains why people join in the first place!)
Moreover, a person like Jesus could not have kept a ministry going
unless those around him supported him. A merely human Jesus could not
have met this demand and must have provided convincing proofs of his
power and authority to maintain a following, and for a movement to
have started and survived well beyond him. A merely human Jesus would
have had to live up to the expectations of others and would have been
abandoned, or at least had to change horses, at the first sign of
failure.
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Factor #11 -- Don't Rely on Women!
This one has been brought up many times, but it bears repeating and
elaboration. If Christianity wanted to succeed, it should never have
admitted that women were the first to discover the empty tomb or the
first to see the Risen Jesus. It also never should have admitted that
women were main supporters (Luke 8:3) or lead converts (Acts 16).
Many have pointed out that women were regarded as "bad witnesses" in
the ancient world. We need to emphasize that this was not a
peculiarity as it would be seen today, but an ingrained stereotype. As
Malina and Neyrey note, gender in antiqutiy came laden with "elaborate
stereotypes of what was appropriate male or female behavior." [72]
Quintilian said that where murder was concerned, males are more likely
to commit robbery, while females were prone to poisoning. We find such
sentiments absurd and politically incorrect today -- but whether they
are or not, this was ingrained indelibly in the ancient mind. "In
general Greek and Roman courts excluded as witnesses women, slaves,
and children...According to Josephus...[women] are unacceptable
because of the 'levity and temerity of their sex'." [82] Women were so
untrustworthy that they were not even allowed to be witnesses to the
rising of the moon as a sign of the beginning of festivals! DeSilva
also notes [33] that a woman and her words were not regarded as
"public property" but should rather be guarded from strangers -- women
were expected to speak to and through their husbands. A woman's place
was in the home, not the witness stand, and any woman who took an
independent witness was violating the honor code.
It would have been much easier to put the finding of the tomb on the
male disciples (as seems to have been emphasized, based on the 1 Cor.
15 creed, though that serves a different purpose of establishing that
the church's leadership was a witness to the Risen Christ, not so much
an avoidance of the female witnesses), or someone like Cleophas or
even Nicodemus, find the tomb first, or to mediate the witness through
Peter or John. But they were apparently stuck with this -- and also
apparently overcame yet another stigma.
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Factor #12 -- Don't Rely on Bumpkins, Either!
But before you go out and join NOW, we have more. It wasn't just women
who had a problem. Peter and John were dismissed based on their social
standing (Acts 4:13) and this reflects a much larger point of view
among the ancients. We have noted above the problem of having Jesus
hail from Galilee and Nazareth. This was as much a problem for the
disciples as well -- and would have hindered their preaching. The Jews
themselves had no trust in such people, if we are to believe later
witness in the Talmud: of men such as Peter and John, called "people
of the land," it was said: "...we do not commit testimony to them; we
do not accept testimony from them." Though this is a late witness, it
represents an ancient truism also applicable in the ancient world as a
whole. Social standing was intimately tied to personal character.
Fairly or unfairly, a country bumpkin was the last person you would
believe. Only Paul may have avoided this stigma among the apostolic
band. (Matthew may have as well, if he were not a member of a group
despised for different reasons: a tax collector!) Very few messengers
of Christianity would have been able to avoid this stigma.
There's another complexity to this factor: Christianity held none of
the power cards. It was not endorsed by the "power structure" of the
day, neither Roman nor Jewish. It could have been crushed merely by
authority if necessary. Why wasn't it, when it made itself so prone to
be in the business of others? You think no one would care? Don't be
sure:
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Factor #13 -- You Can't Keep a Secret!
The group-oriented culture of the ancients leads to a shoring up of
yet another common apologetic argument. Apologists regularly note that
Christian claims would have been easy to check out and verify.
Skeptics, especially G. A. Wells, counter by supposing that no one
would have cared to find out such things. The skeptics are very wrong
-- they operate not only against the natural human tendency to
curiousity, but also against a very important group-oriented social
structure.
Do you value your privacy? Then stay in America. Malina and Neyrey
note that "in group-oriented cultures such as the ancient
Mediterranean, we must remember that people continually mind each
other's business." [183] Privacy was unknown and unexpected. On the
one hand, neighbors exerted "constant vigilance" over others; on the
other hand, those watched were constantly concerned for appearances,
and the associated rewards of honor or sanctions of shame that came
with the results. It's the same in group-oriented cultures today...if
you ever wonder why we have trouble spreading "democracy" you need
look no further than that 70% of the world is group-oriented.
Think of this: We complain of the erosion of privacy, but know as well
that it is a compromise for the sake of social control. The ancients
would not have worried about not having adequate measures in place to
stop a terrorist attack -- because such measures of surveillance were
already present. Control comes not from indiviuals controlling
themselves, but from the group controlling the individual. (This is
also why we have a tough time relating to the ancient church's ways of
fellowship!) Pilch and Malina [115] add that strangers were viewed in
the ancient world as posing a threat to the community, because "they
are potentially anything one cares to imagine...Hence, they must be
checked over both as to how they might fit in and as to whether they
will subscribe to the community's norms." Missionaries would find
their virtues tested at every new stopping point!
Ancient people controlled one another's behavior by watching them,
spreading word of their behavior (what we call "gossip"), and by
public dishonor. Critics who ask what Pharisees were doing out in the
country watching Jesus' disciples crack grain, and consider that
improbable, are way off track. "...[T]he Pharisees seems to mind
Jesus' business all the time," [183] and little wonder, since that was
quite normal to do. (Philo notes that there were "thousands" who kept
their eyes on others in their zeal to ensure that others did not
subvert the Jewish ancestral institutions -- Wright, Jesus and the
Victory of God, 379.)
So now the skeptic has another conundrum. In a society where nothing
escaped notice, there was indeed every reason to suppose that people
hearing the Gospel message would check against the facts -- especially
where a movement with a radical message like Christianity was
concerned. The empty tomb would be checked. Matthew's story of
resurrected saints would be checked out. Lazarus would be sought out
for questioning. Excessive honor claims, such as that Jesus had been
vindicated, or his claims to be divine, would have been given close
scrutiny. And later, converts to the new faith would have to answer to
their neighbors. Checking the facts would provide "grist for the mill"
(since it would be assumed it could help control the movement). If the
Pharisees checked Jesus on things like handwashing and grain picking;
if large crowds gathered around Jesus each time he so much as sneezed
-- how much more would things like a claimed resurrection have been
looked at!
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Factor #14 -- An Ignorant Deity??
Scholars of all persuasions have long recognized the "criteria of
embarrassment" as a marker for authentic words of Jesus. Places where
Jesus claims to be ignorant (not knowing the day or hour of his
return; not knowing who touched him in the crowd) or shows weakness
are taken as honest recollections and authentic (even where miracles
stories often are not!). This is a lesser cousin of the crucifixion
factor above -- if you want a decent deity, you have to make him fully
respectable. Ignorance of future or present events paint a stark
portrait that theological explanations about kenotic emptying just
won't overcome in the short term. You have to have a trump card to
overcome that seeming two of spades; otherwise critics like Celsus
have more axes to grind.
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Factor #15 -- A Prophet Without Honor
Mark 6:4 A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and
among his own kin, and in his own house.
We have already noted above that Jesus died a dishonorable form of
death, and came from a locale with a low "honor rating". There is more
to this matter of dishonor, but so as not to be appearing to stack the
deck, let's look at some other places where Jesus endured disgrace --
and thereby also offended the sensibilities of his contemporaries:
The mocking before his execution -- this was no mere game of dress-up,
but a calculated insult to Jesus' honor and his claim to be King of
the Jews. Doing this, and challenging Jesus to prophesy, was a way of
challenging, and negating, Jesus' honor. By the thinking of an
honor-based society, Jesus should have met the challenge and shown
himself to be a true prophet or king.
The charges themselves -- on the surface, Jesus openly committed
blasphemy and pled guilty to sedition. "Those who elected to follow
such a subversive and disgraced man were immediately suspect in the
eyes of [Jews and Romans]." [DeSilva, 46]
The burial -- Byron McCane has written in an article The Shame of
Jesus' Burial in which he argues that Joseph of Arimathea had clear
motives, even aside from being a disciple of Jesus, to arrange for the
burial: It fits the requirement of Deut. 21:22-23 to bury one hung on
a tree before sunset, and as a Sanhedrin member Joseph would have this
concern and want to makr arrangements. On the other hand, that Jesus
was buried in Joseph's tomb -- and not in a tomb belonging to his
family -- was itself dishonorable. The lack of mourners for Jesus was
also a great dishonor.
It should be fairly noted that McCane does not regard all that is in
the Gospels as reliable. He indicates as well that Joseph was not
really a disciple of Jesus, just a Sanhedrin member doing a duty. It
perhaps may not occur to McCane to suppose that Joseph used such a
duty as a pretext to get hold of Jesus' body before another Sanhedrin
member with less respect for Jesus did so. But in any event, even with
the Gospel accounts considered fully accurate, they "still depict a
burial which a Jew in Roman Palestine would have recognized as
dishonorable."
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Factor #16 -- Miscellaneous Contrarium
In this section we will be placing miscellaneous notes about teachings
and attitudes of Jesus and early Christianity which were contrary to
what was accepted as normal in the first century. Some of these will
to some extent overlap with factors above (especially newness, #4).
Because this section was added later than 1-15, there is no parallel
to it in the three "other religion" essays below.
From Malina and Rohrbaugh's Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic
Gospels and the one on John as well:
Jesus taught people to break even with family, if needed, for the sake
of the Kingdom; he also indicated a highly inclusive assembly (Matt.
8:11-12) in a highky inclusive society. Christianity itself, as we see
above, had beliefs which would have alienated others. Was it worth the
price? "Given the sharp social stratification prevalent in antiquity,
persons engaging in inappropriate social relations [JPH note: mixing
slave and free, rich and poor, etc.!] risked being cut off from
networks on which their positions depended. In traditional societies
this was taken with deadly seriousness. Alienation from family or clan
could literally be a matter of life and death, especially for the
elite [JPH note: Christianity had more than the usual number from this
area!], who would risk everything by the wrong kind of association
with the wrong kind of people. Since the inclusive Christian
communities demanded just this kind of association across kinship
status lines, the situation depicted here [Matt. 10:34-36] is
realistic indeed. The alienation would even spread beyond the family
of origin to the larger kinship network formed by marriage..." [92]
"Association" included being seen eating with persons of lower social
rank [135]. "Such a departure from the family was something morally
impossible in a society where the kinship unit was the focal social
institution." [244]
Relatedly, leaving the family usually meant forsaking material goods,
in line with Jesus' demand to the rich young ruler (Luke 5:11). This
is also a problem: "Geographical mobility and the consequent break
with one's social network (biological family, patrons, friends,
neighbors) were considered seriously deviant behavior and would have
been much more traumatic in antiquity than simply leaving behind
material wealth." [313] Now relate this to Peter and Co. leaving all
behind!
In his teachings Jesus often made reversals of common expectations
that would have grossly offended the majority. The "Good Samaritan"
parable is an example -- we all know that Samaritans were despised
people; that would have been offensive enough! But few realize that
the victim was also drawn up as someone broadly hated: The victim (and
the Samaritan as well) were traders, who often grew rich at the
expense of others, and were despised by the masses who saw them as
thieves and would actually have sympathized with the bandits who
robbed them! Jesus completely reversed the stereotypes (see item 2
above) in a way that would have shocked most of his listeners. [347]
(To say nothing of extending the category of "neighbor" to such
people!)
A similar reversal: the invitation to, and acceptance of, Zaccheus
(Luke 19). By dining with Zach, Jesus indicated fellowship with one
whose values he shared. The crowd was dismayed, because tax collectors
were stereotyped as "rapacious extortioners." Zach's pronouncement,
often understood to mean he is now paying back what he has stolen,
actually means he has been paying back already anyone he discovers he
has cheated (even before he met Jesus!) and Jesus' fellowship is
therefore understood as saying, "I believe him" -- whereas the crowd
does not. [387] (Of course this has applications for Matthew as well.)
We may not think much of Mary sitting at Jesus' feet while Martha does
the housework; we may even sympathize, but the ancients would not
have. Because a woman's reputation depended on her ability to run a
household, Martha's complaint would be seen as legitimate -- and Mary
herself, because she sat and listened rather than help, was "acting
like a male"! [348] This example would have been shocking to the
ancients. So likewise Jesus' encounter with the Samaritan woman [John,
98-9] -- speaking to her in public (especially as a social deviant),
and using the same drinking utensil, would have offended common views
of purity and ingroup-outgroup relations.
The theme of being "born again" was a real shocker! [John, 82] When
one was born, one's honor status was considered fixed at birth. Only
extraordinary circumstances allowed for a change in honor status.
Being born again would mean changing one's honor status in a very
fundamental way, "a life-changing event of staggering proportions."
Preaching a "new birth" would have been inconceivable!
From N. T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God [369-442]:
Touching cherished symbols can be a risk and a half! Think of how
people react when someone burns Old Glory -- and now apply that to
some things that Jesus did which "implcitly and explicitly attacked
what had become the standard symbols of the second-Temple Jewish
worldview" and thereby subverted the unique Jewish ethos that was
perceived to have given Israel its unique identity:
The general attitude towards pagan powers like Rome was revolution.
Jesus advised instead "turning the other cheek" and carrying the
soldier's pack an extra mile. The difference is one of Malcolm X
versus Martin Luther King, in a time when X's methods were highly
favored.
Keeping the Sabbath strictly was a Jewish distinctive; Jesus' actions
of healing and plucking corn on the Sabbath violated now the actual
law, but the rigourous interpretation favored of it by those wishing
to preserve and emphasize this distinction. (See related item here.)
Jesus' dispensing with ritual handwashing (like the "stickler" Sabbath
observance, not a rule of the law, but a rigorous interpretation of
it) violated perceptions of purity.
Jesus' command to follow him, rather than bury the dead, violated one
of the most ingrained sensibilities of the day to care for the family
and attend to their burial needs (important both in Jewish and
non-Jewish contexts).
Jesus' demonstration in the Temple was a symbolic "acting out" of the
destruction of what, to many Jews, was Judaism's central symbol: the
place where sacrifice and forgiveness of sins was effected; a place of
great pretisge and honor before non-Jews; the central political symbol
of Israel. Not all Jews agreed with this assessment (the Essenes for
example considered the Temple apparatus corrupt and probably would
have sympathized with Jesus here), but for Jesus to say it would be
destroyed, and by pagans at that, would have been profoundly offensive
to many Jews, especially those who considered it security against
pagan invasion.
An interesting parallel in modern times may be found here.
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Factor #17 -- Encouraging People to Check the Facts for Themselves
A reader (who goes by "Jezz" at TWeb) has suggested this new point.
Encouraging people to verify claims and seek proof (and hence
discouraging their gullibility) is a guaranteed way to get slammed if
you are preaching lies. Let us suppose for a minute that you are
trying to start a false religion. In order to support your false
religion, you decide to make up a number of historical (i.e.,
testable) claims, and then hope that nobody would check up on them. In
other words, despite the advice given in factors #7 (i.e., don't make
up historical claims) and #13 (i.e., that people will check out your
claims), you've decided to take a punt and hope that people will be
gullible enough to join your religion. What is the most important
thing to do, if you have made up claims that are provably false? Well,
of course, you don't go around encouraging people to check up on your
claims, knowing that if they do so you will be found out!
Suppose, for example, you are starting a new UFO cult, where the
faithful will be taken up into a UFO that is waiting for them. Such a
cultist would usually follow advice from factor #7, and make sure the
UFO is somewhere where people can't go and check up on it (e.g.,
assert that the UFO is hiding behind the Moon). But suppose you
ignored this advice, and instead asserted that the UFO was waiting in
a cave in a mountain not far from the city. The last thing you would
do is encourage people to go to the cave and check out your claim -
thereby discouraging the very gullibility that your cult's survival
depends on. If you wanted to attract people to join your cult, you'd
have to do the direct opposite - discourage your potential recruits
from checking it out (perhaps by throwing in a clause "If anyone goes
to the cave before their time, they will not be taken.")
Throughout the NT, the apostles encouraged people to check seek proof
and verify facts:
1 Thessalonians 5:21 Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.
And when fledgling converts heeded this advice, not only did they
remain converts (suggesting that the evidence held up under scrutiny),
but the apostles described them as "noble" for doing so:
Acts 17:11 These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that
they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the
scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
As if the apostles weren't making things hard enough for themselves by
making extraordinary and testable claims in a social environment where
it was difficult to keep secrets, they increased the odds
significantly by actively encouraging people to check out their
claims. Encouraging people to verify claims and seek proof is a
guaranteed way of ensuring that your fledgling cult is a flop -
unless, of course, those claims hold up under the scrutiny that your
encouragment will undoubtedly generate.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----
We may well add more factors at a later date, but for now, we have
enough to pose our central challenge. Christianity, as we can see, had
every possible disadvantage as a faith. As I have recently noted, some
religions thrive by being vague (Rastafarianism) or by having only
philsophical demands, or demands beyond verification (Buddhism,
Hinduism). Others staked a claim to survival by isolation (Mormonism)
or by the sword (Islam). Christianity did none of these things and had
none of these benefits, other than a late flirtation with the sword
when it was already a secure faith and it was being used for political
purposes, as indeed any religion could be -- not as a means of
spreading the Gospel. Every disadvantage, and none of the advantages.
We have seen that ignorance and apathy will not serve as adequate
explanations. The claims of Christianity were not that difficult to
figure intellectually, and anyway, what Christianity had to offer
would not appeal to the ignorant -- or else would be balanced out by
the many things that would have made the ignorant suspicious and
mistrustful. Apathy where social matters were concerned is a product
of our times, not the ancient world. Skeptics cannot smugly appeal to
these as explanations.
I have been told that one critic has made the desperate suggestion
that one or more of these factors may not have applied to all people
at all times in this context. This is an absurd response -- the
factors are centered on values and judgments inherent to the period,
social mores that don't just turn on and off like a light switch. The
critic would have to prove that there was a temporary lull in a
sufficient number of factors (for even one of two of these are more
than enough to have put people off the new faith) for Christianity to
catch converts -- and then document and explain the lull, and why it
apparently reversed itself yet again. Bottom line is that such an
explanation is a counsel of despair.
Finally, the critic is confounded by the fact that -- as has been
observed by Stark and Meeks -- Christianity as a movement was
top-heavy in the social status area. Since 99% of the people were poor
and/or wretched, of course any movement would take most of its people
from that group, but Christianity had an unusual number of the rich
and the powerful in its ranks for its size. As Witherington notes,
quoting E. A. Judge (Paul Quest, 94):
...the Christians were dominated by a socially pretentious section of
the population of big cities. Beyond that they seem to have drawn on a
broad constituency, probably representing the household dependents of
leading members.
These are the people who would be most affected by these factors and
least likely to believe; they had the most to lose and the least
(tangibly) to gain by becoming converts. Rodney Stark has shown in The
Rise of Christianity why the movement continued to grow once it got a
foothold, but this does not address how it managed to get a foothold
in the first place. So how did it happen?
I propose that there is only one, broad explanation for Christianity
overcoming these intolerable disadvantages, and that is that it had
the ultimate rebuttal -- a certain, trustworthy, and undeniable
witness to the resurrection of Jesus, the only event which, in the
eyes of the ancients, would have vindicated Jesus' honor and overcome
the innumerable stigmae of his life and death. It had certainty that
could not be denied; in other words, enough early witnesses (as in,
the 500!) with solid and indisputable testimony (no "vision of Jesus
in the sky" but a tangible certainly of a physically resurrected body)
and ranks of converts slightly after the fact (the thousands at
Pentecost) who made it harder to not believe than to believe. Skeptics
and critics must explain otherwise why, despite each and every one of
these factors, Christianity survived, and thrived. A consistent
witness, one that was strong enough to reach into the second century
in spite of these factors, is the only reasonable candidate. Skeptics
will need to find a better excuse than, "They was just stupid"!
Russ
Absurdity.
Josef Balluch
In a message sent 'round the world, ohoe poured fuel on the fire with
the following:
[ snip an unbearably long dissertation ]
> Skeptics
> and critics must explain otherwise why, despite each and every one of
> these factors, Christianity survived, and thrived. A consistent
> witness, one that was strong enough to reach into the second century
> in spite of these factors, is the only reasonable candidate. Skeptics
> will need to find a better excuse than, "They was just stupid"!
It's all in the marketing. Create the problem, and sell 'em the
solution.
Regards,
Josef
We cannot learn without pain.
-- Aristotle
Mark Richardson
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>-----
>
>The Impossible Faith
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
<snip>
Too long for the newgroups (>300 lines) post a URL -
Post a summary - if its interesting i will consider reading more.
--
Mark Richardson mDOTrichardsonATutasDOTeduDOTau
"My name is Mark I am a recovering Skeptic
(AKA Muddy Boggs, AKA Donald R. Alford AKA ...)
debater. It is 034 days since I last tried to argue
with him."
You too can quit! Take the pledge!
Doc Smartass
news:a5a860fc.04042...@posting.google.com:
> Subject: The Impossible Faith: Miraculous Origin of Christianity
For the record, "Mundane" is spelled
M-u-n-d-a-n-e
not
M-i-r-a-c-u-l-o-u-s.
HTH, HAND, SYLB.
--
Dr. Smartass
BAAWA Knight of Heckling -- a.a. #1939
Q: Why did the chicken cross the Moebius strip?
A: To get to the other...er, um...
[seen on a math jokes site]
Son of man
in the Buddha's Palm is truly miraculous!
http://bellsouthpwp.net/c/h/christ-son-of-buddha/
Son of man
Christ in the Buddha's Palm is miraculous!
Peter Jason
Let us embrace simple common sense and forget tribalism, culture,
lemming-like herd following and brown-nosing one's peers, to face the cold,
bitter truth .....VIS:
Faith is just a personality disorder.
"Son of man" <thepupp...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message
news:POZic.7664$oN1....@bignews5.bellsouth.net...
Bryn Fraser
<pa...@colonel.com.au> writes
>Let us EXPUNGE all the flim-flam about this topic.
>
>Let us embrace simple common sense and forget tribalism, culture,
>lemming-like herd following and brown-nosing one's peers, to face the cold,
>bitter truth .....VIS:
>
>Faith is just a personality disorder.
>
And Religion is just routinized mass psychological aberration...
There's science for you...
>
>
>
>
--
Bryn Fraser
Bartlett for President!!!
Colin Day
Russ wrote:
> Now, there we have something new: Proof through Demonstrable
> Absurdity.
>
Credo quia absurdum. We believe because it it absurd.
Tertullian
Colin Day aa #1500
Therion Ware
On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 11:05:25 GMT in alt.atheism, Colin Day (Colin Day
<cd...@sc.rr.com>) said, directing the reply to alt.atheism
>
>
>Russ wrote:
>> Now, there we have something new: Proof through Demonstrable
>> Absurdity.
>>
>
>
>Credo quia absurdum. We believe because it it absurd.
Heh.
You believe all absurd things, or only those that, for one reason or
another, attract you?
--
"Do Unto Others As You Would Have Them Do Unto You."
- Attrib: Pauline Reage.
Inexpensive VHS & other video to CD/DVD conversion?
See: <http://www.Video2CD.com>. 35.00 gets your video on DVD.
all posts to this email address are automatically deleted without being read.
** atheist poster child #1 ** #442.
Firelock
> In a message sent 'round the world, ohoe poured fuel on the fire with
> the following:
> > and critics must explain otherwise why, despite each and every one of
> > these factors, Christianity survived, and thrived. A consistent
> > witness, one that was strong enough to reach into the second century
> > in spite of these factors, is the only reasonable candidate. Skeptics
> > will need to find a better excuse than, "They was just stupid"!
>
> It's all in the marketing. Create the problem, and sell 'em the
> solution.
Part of it is the law of large numbers as well. Think of how
many cults failed to thrive - thousands! - chances are at least,
one was going to make it. When someone wins the lottery,
their individual chances were vanishingly small, but there
were enough people trying that *someone* was going to win.
Christianity, along with cults like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism,
and Bhuddism, just happened to be one of the lucky ones to make
it into the modern day.
Walt Smith
Firelock on DALNet
Dave
>
> The Impossible Faith
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> Or, How Not to Start an Ancient Religion
> James Patrick Holding
>
> http://www.tektonics.org/nowayjose.html
>
> [An Ignorant Deity?]
> [...]
>
Stupidity is appealing to morons. It makes them feel at home.
Susan Cohen
"Firelock" <firel...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:d98390c0.04042...@posting.google.com...
>
> Christianity, along with cults like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism,
> and Bhuddism,
You do not know what the definiteon of a cult is.
Susan
L. Raymond
The formal dicitonary definitions (Websters) include "formal
religious veneration", "a system of religious beliefs and ritual", "a
great devotion to a person, idea or thing", and "a system for the cure
of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator". Everything
in the list Firelock gives fits the first three definitions perfectly,
and if one stretches "disease" to fit such things as "sin" or "bad
karma", they all fit the fourth definition as well.
That you imply the things he lists are not cults suggests you use
*only* the definition which soothes your ego, namely the one that
removes the Big 3 from the area of cults: "a system regarded as
unorthodox or spurious". However, anyone who thinks this one does not
apply to Christianity, Judiasm or Islam is mistaken, for they are all
three spurious.
--
L. Raymond
Bryn Fraser
<fla...@verizon.net> writes
Superstition...?
>
>
--
Brian Fraser Lovett-White
Martin Edwards
wrote:
You can't spell "definition".
******Martin Edwards.******
Come on! Nobody's going to ride that lousy freeway
when they can take the Red Car for a nickel.
Eddy Valiant.
www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/1955/
Pat Harrington
"Son of man" <thepupp...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:<POZic.7664$oN1....@bignews5.bellsouth.net>...
Pat Harrington
"Son of man" <thepupp...@bellsouth.net> wrote in message news:<QQZic.7665$oN1....@bignews5.bellsouth.net>...
Colin Day
Therion Ware wrote:
>
> On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 11:05:25 GMT in alt.atheism, Colin Day (Colin Day
> <cd...@sc.rr.com>) said, directing the reply to alt.atheism
>
>
>
>
>>
>>Russ wrote:
>>
>>>Now, there we have something new: Proof through Demonstrable
>>>Absurdity.
>>>
>>
>>
>>Credo quia absurdum. We believe because it it absurd.
>
>
> Heh.
>
> You believe all absurd things, or only those that, for one reason or
> another, attract you?
I was quoting Tertullian, an early Christian. I wasn't stating my own views.
Colin Day aa #1500
Son of man
news:7517a083.04042...@posting.google.com...
> It STILL sounds like another one of your euphemisms for masturbation.
Hey, guess who it is once again?
Well whaddya know! Pat Harrington!
2Corinthians:12:7: And lest I should be exalted above measure through the
abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh,
the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.
Mark Richardson
wrote:
>
I think "someone elses religion" is a good practical definition.
Mark.
--
Mark Richardson mDOTrichardsonATutasDOTeduDOTau
"My name is Mark I am a recovering Skeptic
(AKA Muddy Boggs, AKA Donald R. Alford AKA ...)
debater. It is 035 days since I last tried to argue
Dixit
Mark Richardson wrote:
> "My name is Mark I am a recovering Skeptic
> (AKA Muddy Boggs, AKA Donald R. Alford AKA ...)
> debater. It is 035 days since I last tried to argue
> with him."
So Mark Richardson actually does not understand that this argument _ad
hominem_ that he posts every day is just more logically fallacious
argument, argument directed at the character of the person mentioned,
instead of at what the person has said? Tsk tsk. Richardson needs some
remedial instruction concerning the principles of valid argument (logic).
Virgil
wrote:
As Mark is not trying to convince anyone of anything, except possibly
that his name is "Mark", he is incapable of of committing a fallacy.
Arguments may be fallacious. Expositions cannot be.
Pat Harrington
You only exalt yourself. Nothing or no one else would.
Susan Cohen
"L. Raymond" <badda...@mylinuxisp.com> wrote in message
news:408d3d16...@news.mylinuxisp.com...
> "Susan Cohen" <fla...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Firelock" <firel...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:d98390c0.04042...@posting.google.com...
> >>
> >> Christianity, along with cults like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism,
> >> and Bhuddism,
> >
> >You do not know what the definiteon of a cult is.
>
> The formal dicitonary definitions (Websters) include "formal
> religious veneration", "a system of religious beliefs and ritual", "a
> great devotion to a person, idea or thing", and "a system for the cure
> of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator".
If that's all it says, then it's woefully inadequate.
Everything
> in the list Firelock gives fits the first three definitions perfectly,
> and if one stretches "disease" to fit such things as "sin" or "bad
> karma", they all fit the fourth definition as well.
>
> That you imply the things he lists are not cults suggests you use
> *only* the definition which soothes your ego,
What makes you think it has anything to do w/my ego.?
No, I use the one that the US uses in making a distinction between religion
& cult.
(Somewhere are specific guidelines, so the government knows who is/not
liable for taxation. THere was a huge ruckus many years ago when the Moonies
were selected as a cult rather than a religion)
None of the big 3 fit it.
Susan
Firelock
Note that I left a word out of the above, typing too quickly:
I meant to write "Christianity, along with *other* cults like..."
Susan Cohen
"Martin Edwards" <Big...@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:408d4ce6...@news.btinternet.com...
> On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 16:36:46 GMT, "Susan Cohen" <fla...@verizon.net>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Firelock" <firel...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:d98390c0.04042...@posting.google.com...
> >>
> >> Christianity, along with cults like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism,
> >> and Bhuddism,
> >
> >You do not know what the definiteon of a cult is.
> >
> >Susan
> >
> >
> You can't spell "definition".
You can't figure out a typo when you see one.
Susan
Susan Cohen
"Mark Richardson" <mark.ri...@die.spammers.die> wrote in message
news:m1er8017q2cpf574s...@4ax.com...
> On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 16:36:46 GMT, "Susan Cohen" <fla...@verizon.net>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Firelock" <firel...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> >news:d98390c0.04042...@posting.google.com...
> >>
> >> Christianity, along with cults like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism,
> >> and Bhuddism,
> >
> >You do not know what the definiteon of a cult is.
> >
> I think "someone elses religion" is a good practical definition.
Funny, but I'm serious.
Then again, I suppose you are, too....
Susan
Susan Cohen
"Dixit" <d...@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:vajjc.44126$w96.3611917@attbi_s54...
How is "making fun of someone" the same as "debating him"?
Susan
>
>
• R.L. Measures
firel...@hotmail.com (Firelock) wrote:
• The term "cult" should be reserved for organizations that use cultic
control tools -- such as forcible genital surgery for children. Such
procedures are a psychological leash to restrain members from exiting the
cult.
--
€ R.L. Measures, 805-386-3734, www.somis.org. + in adr = spam trap
Lars Eighner
<+r-2704040...@192.168.1.100>,
the lovely and talented • R.L. Measures
broadcast on alt.atheism:
> • The term "cult" should be reserved for organizations that use cultic
> control tools -- such as forcible genital surgery for children. Such
> procedures are a psychological leash to restrain members from exiting the
> cult.
Who died and made you language god?
--
Rev. Lars Eighner, ULC, Atheist #1965 eig...@io.com http://www.io.com/~eighner
"I hope I never get so old I get religious." --Ingmar Bergman
Roger Pearse
Actually you weren't (although it's a common error) : he said, Certum
quia absurdum: it is certain because it is absurd.
He was not discussing reason. <http://www.tertullian.org/quotes.htm>
All the best,
Roger Pearse
L. Raymond
>> The formal dicitonary definitions (Websters) include "formal
>> religious veneration", "a system of religious beliefs and ritual", "a
>> great devotion to a person, idea or thing", and "a system for the cure
>> of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator".
>
>If that's all it says, then it's woefully inadequate.
No, actually this covers it all, except the very specialized,
legalese description you seem to want to use.
>
> Everything
>> in the list Firelock gives fits the first three definitions perfectly,
>> and if one stretches "disease" to fit such things as "sin" or "bad
>> karma", they all fit the fourth definition as well.
>>
>> That you imply the things he lists are not cults suggests you use
>> *only* the definition which soothes your ego,
>
>What makes you think it has anything to do w/my ego.?
Because you choose to use a very specific definition which excludes
your own personal cult. It comes across very much as an attempt to
remove yourself from the taint of the word, which is widely regarded
as having negative connotations.
--
L. Raymond
Martin Reboul
". R.L. Measures" <+r...@somis.org> wrote in message
news:+r-270404...@192.168.1.100...
> In article <d98390c0.04042...@posting.google.com>,
> firel...@hotmail.com (Firelock) wrote:
>
> > "Susan Cohen" <fla...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:<yUajc.40139$Aq.1...@nwrddc03.gnilink.net>...
> > > "Firelock" <firel...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > > news:d98390c0.04042...@posting.google.com...
> > > >
> > > > Christianity, along with cults like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism,
> > > > and Bhuddism,
> > >
> > > You do not know what the definiteon of a cult is.
> >
> > Note that I left a word out of the above, typing too quickly:
> > I meant to write "Christianity, along with *other* cults like..."
> >
> control tools -- such as forcible genital surgery for children. Such
> procedures are a psychological leash to restrain members from exiting the
> cult.
That's how Tacitus described the Christians, in his early account of their
adventures in Rome...
BTov
as long as it is not mass debating
> Susan
> >
> >
Susan Cohen
> firel...@hotmail.com (Firelock) wrote:
>
> > "Susan Cohen" <fla...@verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:<yUajc.40139$Aq.1...@nwrddc03.gnilink.net>...
> > > "Firelock" <firel...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > > news:d98390c0.04042...@posting.google.com...
> > > >
> > > > Christianity, along with cults like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism,
> > > > and Bhuddism,
> > >
> > > You do not know what the definiteon of a cult is.
> >
> > Note that I left a word out of the above, typing too quickly:
> > I meant to write "Christianity, along with *other* cults like..."
Note that this does not change my answer.
> >
> . The term "cult" should be reserved for organizations that use cultic
> control tools -- such as forcible genital surgery for children.
And another one trying to redefine a word to fit his own personal
prejudices.
Such
> procedures are a psychological leash to restrain members from exiting the
> cult.
>
> --
> ? R.L. Measures, 805-386-3734, www.somis.org. + in adr = spam trap
Susan Cohen
> "Susan Cohen" <fla...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >> The formal dicitonary definitions (Websters) include "formal
> >> religious veneration", "a system of religious beliefs and ritual", "a
> >> great devotion to a person, idea or thing", and "a system for the cure
> >> of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator".
> >
> >If that's all it says, then it's woefully inadequate.
>
> No, actually this covers it all, except the very specialized,
> legalese description you seem to want to use.
Or, rather, the practical, working, real-world definitition that sane people
use.
or are you saying that every person who is Xian, Muslim or Jewish needs to
be saved/deprogrammed?
Susan
Susan Cohen
>
> Because you choose to use a very specific definition which excludes
> your own personal cult.
You are at best mistaken, since not only do I not belong to a cult, I was
protesting the incorrect use of the word on behald of *all* the religions
named.
It comes across very much as an attempt to
> remove yourself from the taint of the word, which is widely regarded
> as having negative connotations.
It only comes across as such to those with an agenda of applying said
negative connotations to those religions.
Susan
Susan Cohen
"NOT BTov" <dkas...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:bd24d00f.04042...@posting.google.com...
> "Susan Cohen" <fla...@verizon.net> wrote in message
news:<MXtjc.86597$L31....@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>...
>
> >
>
> as long as it is not mass debating
And the phony rev keeps projecting....
Susan
>
> > Susan
> > >
> > >
Firelock
> In article <d98390c0.04042...@posting.google.com>,
> firel...@hotmail.com (Firelock) wrote:
> > Note that I left a word out of the above, typing too quickly:
> > I meant to write "Christianity, along with *other* cults like..."
> >
> control tools -- such as forcible genital surgery for children. Such
> procedures are a psychological leash to restrain members from exiting the
> cult.
Yes, and?
FlamingoMike
Snipped.........ditto........
>>
>>? The term "cult" should be reserved for organizations that use cultic
>>control tools -- such as forcible genital surgery for children. Such
>>procedures are a psychological leash to restrain members from exiting the
>>cult.
children" label?
--
"Hot patootie, bless my soul! I really love that rock n' roll! "
Eddie 'Rocky Horror Picture Show
102:0:4 (1) Pungenday, 45 Discord 3170
L. Raymond
Yes, absolutely. Those people are genuinely frightening. They
believe countless things for which there is not only no proof, but
often in the face of direct evidence to the contrary. I find Jews,
outside of Israel, that is, the least scary because they have no
agenda to take over the world. The various sects of the Christian and
Moslem cults are sick; the cognitive dissonance required to cling to
their tenets would drive anyone insane to a greater or lesser degree.
>> >What makes you think it has anything to do w/my ego.?
>>
>> Because you choose to use a very specific definition which excludes
>> your own personal cult.
>You are at best mistaken, since not only do I not belong to a cult,
>I was protesting the incorrect use of the word on behald of *all*
>the religions named.
They were all cults, as well as religions, so your defense was not
required.
>> It comes across very much as an attempt to
>> remove yourself from the taint of the word, which is widely regarded
>> as having negative connotations.
>It only comes across as such to those with an agenda of applying said
>negative connotations to those religions.
No, I'd say it comes across as such to anyone who objects to people
trying to redefine words from distaste.
--
L. Raymond
Susan Cohen
But that's not what's going on here.
The real distate is yours, as is shown in this post.
Susan
>
>
> --
>
> L. Raymond
L. Raymond
>
>But that's not what's going on here.
>The real distate is yours, as is shown in this post.
This is your best? "I know you are but what am I?"
This saddens me, Ms. Cohen. Having read several of your posts which
have been cross-posted to alt.atheism, I never wrote you off as
someone who reacts simply from emotion and is incapable of actually
debating or defending a point. Perhaps I just missed those messages.
--
L. Raymond
Susan Cohen
> "Susan Cohen" <fla...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> >
> >But that's not what's going on here.
> >The real distate is yours, as is shown in this post.
>
> This is your best? "I know you are but what am I?"
No, it isn't the best I can do - it's the only response you deserved.
And you know it yourself, or you wouldn't have snipped the proof - i.e.,
your post.
> This saddens me, Ms. Cohen. Having read several of your posts which
> have been cross-posted to alt.atheism, I never wrote you off as
> someone who reacts simply from emotion and is incapable of actually
> debating or defending a point. Perhaps I just missed those messages.
No, you just misjudged your own "superiority".
Susan
Chris
> Josef Balluch <josef....@sympatico.can> wrote in message news:<MPG.1af617e61...@206.172.150.13>...
> > In a message sent 'round the world, ohoe poured fuel on the fire with
> > the following:
> > > Skeptics
> > > and critics must explain otherwise why, despite each and every one of
> > > these factors, Christianity survived, and thrived. A consistent
> > > witness, one that was strong enough to reach into the second century
> > > in spite of these factors, is the only reasonable candidate. Skeptics
> > > will need to find a better excuse than, "They was just stupid"!
> >
> > It's all in the marketing. Create the problem, and sell 'em the
> > solution.
>
> Part of it is the law of large numbers as well. Think of how
> many cults failed to thrive - thousands! - chances are at least,
> one was going to make it. When someone wins the lottery,
> their individual chances were vanishingly small, but there
> were enough people trying that *someone* was going to win.
> Christianity, along with cults like Islam, Judaism, Hinduism,
> it into the modern day.
>
> Walt Smith
> Firelock on DALNet
The lottery isn't a good parallel, because in that case, there isn't
anything preventing you from winning except your lucky draw of the
number. In other words, you have just as good a chance as the next
person at winning, and the laws of probability state that if enough
people play, someone will win. The same does't go for religions and
cults. There are preventative measures that have to be
overcome--claiming luck doesn't do anything for you. All "successful"
religions will, in some way, be able to show reasons WHY they
succeeded.
God bless
Adam Marczyk
news:26d21e60.04051...@posting.google.com...
And Christianity certainly had some advantages going for it - free
no-effort salvation, exemption from the onerous Old Testament laws, the
group cohesion all new cults enjoy, and so on. Combined with a healthy dose
of luck (and it *did* have luck), it survived while most of the other
messiah religions born in Judaea around that time flamed out and vanished.
But none of this points to a divine origin, any more than the thriving
success of Buddhism or Islam or Mormonism - all of which have prospered
despite severe initial persecution - means that those religions are true.
--
"We have loved the stars too fondly | a.a. #2001
to be fearful of the night." | http://www.ebonmusings.org
--Tombstone epitaph of | e-mail: ebonmuse!hotmail.com
two amateur astronomers, | ICQ: 8777843
quoted in Carl Sagan's _Cosmos_ | PGP Key ID: 0x5C66F737
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Chris
And to that, I simply refer you back to all 17 reaons your argument
fails. You have to overcome all of those . . . just not gonna happen.
Bucephalis
cults if it weren't for Constantine. In Christianity he saw a single
all-powerful god that would choose him and his successors as the god's
chosen representatives on earth. And built in was the reincarnated
god-made-man that would reach the lower to middle classes the Empire
depended on. All existing major religions have near their beginning a
powerful ruler or rulers that saw a way to use the religion to entrench
their power and position with heavenly authority. Religions that turn
away the rich and famous have short existences.
Adam Marczyk
I have no further patience for Robert Turkel's self-important boasting and
gratituitous rudeness toward those who believe differently, I'm afraid.
However, as long as we plan to argue by references to websites, here is an
article that more than adequately overcomes all of his fretting about the
difficulties nascent Christianity faced:
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/brian_holtz/impossible_faith.shtml
This sentence is particularly worth quoting:
"Turkel assumes that if anyone could have had good reason not to believe
the gospels, then nobody would have been gullible enough to believe them.
He fails to realize that the same evidence could have differing
persuasiveness to different audiences, and that a religion will survive
merely as long as some audience finds it believable."