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Jesus was a man thought to be born in the town of Bethlehem in Palestine on the presumed date of 0 A.D. His family was natural, consisting of a mother, father, brothers and sisters. His mother was not a virgin before his birth and God did not impregnate her by supernatural means for the conception of Jesus. The Virgin Birth was a doctrine added later by paganized scholars in an effort to win converts with a reformulated Christianity among paganized Gentiles in the Roman Empire.
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Jesus was a man chosen by God to deliver his message for mankind. The message encompassed a philosophy of conduct for moral human behavior, known as the “Way”. The Way can be summarized as follows: As best one can, love your neighbor, love your enemies and strangers, promote equality, oppose war, be a peacemaker, be humble, oppose economic and social inequalities, be merciful, be charitable, share the bounties of the earth, care for the sick and distraught, avoid cruelty and do all this as a collectivity over time to complete the mission of Jesus to create the kingdom of God on earth.
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Jesus recognized that men and women of all classes and races had the ability to make moral decisions on their own and opposed and even mocked the hierarchy and authority of the Jewish priesthood. The followers of the Way were happier and more loving knowing they would be rewarded in the next life despite the cruelties of this life and their oppressors would be judged and punished by God. Jesus leveled the moral playing field, making the small contribution of a poor woman to his treasury worth more than the large contributions of the wealthy. She is worth more in the sight of God, and therefore better, than the wealthiest contributor.
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Jesus taught men and women to live in the spirit of a loving God, not the Jewish god of wrath. He broke entirely with Jewish tradition by embracing all of mankind and his thoughts had nothing in common with the pagan religions of his time.
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Jesus recognized the end of the world was not near and for that reason turned the implementation his message over to followers and appointed Peter to be leader of his movement. When asked about the end of days or the apocalypse, Jesus asserted that that information was not revealed to him by God and only God would know that.
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Jesus did not believe in the Devil, which was a pagan insertion to the Judaic religion. Jesus used the concept of the devil as a metaphor to explain what in his era could not be explained, e.g., the source of sickness and disease, the source or economic and social inequality and the source of cruelty in the world. Each of these he condemned in turn. These sources were not specifically revealed to him in God’s message.
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At the age of 12, Jesus was recognized as a brilliant student after his discussions and arguments with priests in the temple. He was obviously gifted. After that time commenced the dark or unexplained years (around 18 in total) during which Jesus traveled, studied and learned before entering the ranks of the followers of John the Baptist. There he was immediately seen to be the chosen one of God to deliver God’s message to mankind and he emerged as a full blown teacher of the Way. His mission began.
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Jesus was an itinerant preacher and traveled throughout Galilee and later Judea bringing the message of God that had been entrusted to him to whomever would listen. He invited all, without distinction, to join him in spreading this message to the world.
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Jesus preached a revolutionary synthesis of monotheistic and egalitarian principles conveyed to him by the one God. His growing popularity among the masses and continual criticism and mockery of the Jewish priesthood caused grave concerns among the highest priests, who saw respect for them and their authority being eroded. During the Passover season, after the pageantry of Jesus riding a donkey into Jerusalem as the portended messiah of Hebrew scriptures, an act that stirred great excitement within the Jewish population, the high priests suffered consternation and conspired to bring false charges against him, even in violation of the law of Moses.
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Jesus was crucified by the Romans upon the instigation of the Jewish high priests. In the very end, by his last words, Jesus recognized that he was never more than a man in the service of God by saying: “Father, why hast thou forsaken me?” And, in conformity with the message God had delivered to him, he prayed for his persecutors: “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
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God’s message of the Way as the means to peace and prosperity on earth was wildly popular among early Christians even while some sought to distort its doctrine to serve the ends of hidden agendas. Paul introduced the pagan notions of resurrection and divination early to help build a church among gentiles instead of serving humanity. These acts opened the door to an eventual stampede of efforts to corrupt the story of Jesus for the purpose of serving secular and worldly interests, in particular then, the Roman Empire. The Romanized authors of the New Testament tinkered this way and that to integrate pagan conceptions into the story of Jesus, handed down initially by the oral testimony of witnesses, which by 325 A.D. resulted in a pantheon of Christian deities, including The Father, The Son, The Holy Spirit, The Virgin Mary, the angels, the Devil, and the saints. All in the style of known pagan religions. This process culminated in the “Book of Revelation”, the ultimate pagan fantasy.
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Early Christianity experienced a rapid rate of growth; however, the rate of growth declined significantly the more that pagan concepts were integrated into the story of Jesus by Romanized scholars. Nonetheless, the absolute number of Christians continued to grow in the Roman Empire through 450 A.D. The message of the Way continued to appeal to the masses of the Roman Empire in spite of paganization and the Way remains, for the average Christian, the core message of Christianity in all it various versions to this day.
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No Christian has ever persecuted another for the observance of the Way either in belief or conduct, whereas they have massacred one another in the hundreds of thousands over nonsensical differences of interpretation of pagan insertions in the story of Jesus, such as the nature of the Trinity or the substance/symbolism of the Eucharist. A pagan Christianity was tailor made for branding one’s opponent as a heretic over some meaningless conception and going to war.
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The views of Jesus espoused by early Christians, including the equality of men and women, his pacifism and his condemnation of the rich and hierarchies, were wildly popular without force of arms and gave the masses the means to combat the intolerable cruelties of the Roman system. When persecution failed to stem the swirling tide of the Christian movement, Rome took notice and began the gradual co-optation of the story of Jesus by Romanized scholars in the writing of the New Testament until Constantine, a pagan emperor, convened and paid for the Council of Nicaea, in 325 A.D., at which time the paganization of the story of Jesus was codified and made official within the Roman Empire. It should be noted that the Arch of Constantine, constructed after Constantine’s alleged conversion to Christianity, has not one Christian symbol on it but many pagan ones.
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After the testing of paganized Christianity by the Roman Empire for its effectiveness in maintaining Roman oppression and exploitation, this Christianity was made state religion of the Roman Empire by the Edict of Thessalonica in 380 A.D., which ordered all subjects of the Roman Empire to profess the faith of the bishops of Rome and Alexandria. To the contrary, Jesus left the moral decision of faith to each individual.
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Modern Christianity is adulterated by pagan ideologies and harmful to humanity. Jesus invited men and women to embrace the Way as the standard for their conducts and did not demand it. But to transgress it is sin. There is room for error and consequences to pay.
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The Way is the path to peace and prosperity on earth and to God’s indescribable rewards in the hereafter. The one God chose Jesus to extend his invitation to all men and women to join him if they accept the conditions of his invitation.
This is my vision of truth and historical development of Christianity. I am not a Biblical scholar or professional historian. I offer it from “out of the blue”, so to speak.
So Jesus was a nice guy who told all of us to be nice people.
Hard to believe now, but in the context of the Roman Empire/slave society/conquerors that was a revolutionary idea. You might want to knock on your neighbors’ doors and tell them that much. Common decency has great social value.
Nice is nice Tom. All the world’s social problems result from not being nice. Nice is no small thing. That Jesus was nice is his most attractive feature. But why did they have to depict him as so argumentative? Was it because the Jewish religion had little niceness in it?
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Jesus foresaw that his followers - your “nice guys” - would be persecuted for his sake, and, guess what, they were. Just why would the authorities persecute such nice guys? There is obviously a lot more going on than is dreamed of in the “nice guy” view.
Well the stories of Jesus were written after his followers were persecuted, so I don’t know about Jesus foreseeing such.
As to more going on than just being nice, from the stories we have, that’s for sure. But how sure are we about the stories?
The only reason the Christians believe Jesus was legitimately chosen/fathered/whatevered by God is because of His miracles, most notably the Ressurection, which you appear to deny. If you’re rejecting anything supernatural ever happening in the man’s life, on what grounds are you justifying the “chosen by God” part? Do you actually mean there’s a God, and He chose Jesus for some purpose, or is it just your way of saying Jesus’ teachings were super-awesome?
I am waiting for someone to explain how Jesus, as a man, received this message if not spiritually from God and to tell me what other purpose the message would have other than for deliverance to humanity as a code of conduct.
About your last question, we know that Jesus’ views were bringing him into conflict with the Jewish hierarchy and the priestly class, so much so that they arrested and crucified him. It would take less than a genius even to predict that his followers, spouting the same views, would be persecuted. This is a natural and plausible explanation.
The last thing I would want to do is pop your pretty Jesus bubble. I like your Jesus.
But your picture of the Jewish Jesus killers is not accurate. The Romans crucified Jesus. And I don’t think it had anything to do with offending the Jewish hierarchy. The Romans hung many Jews on the cross … for insurrection against Rome … like Jesus.
But I suppose your are right about his followers being persecuted. They were Jews. And the Romans sure did trash the Jews … and destroyed their temple.
Which is why, writing after the fact, the gospel we call Matthew put that prediction in the mouth of Jesus.
“And Jesus went out from the temple, and was going on his way; and his disciples came to him to show him the buildings of the temple. But he answered and said unto them, ‘You see all of these things, do you not? Truly I say unto you, there shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down’” (Matthew 24:1-2).
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AFAIK Jesus is not recorded as urging violent insurgency against Rome. His recorded conflict is primarily with the Jewish hierarchy. But I should modify: Jesus was crucified by Romans at the instigation of that hierarchy. Jews were punished badly by the Romans in 70 A.D. for the acts of their insurgent community. I agree that Matthew’s account of Jesus’ foresight was a non-historical addition to hype his story as more than a man, a divine. But it seems quite natural for Jesus to see that his followers would be persecuted for his sake since his message was also clearly anti-Roman in meaning as well as anti-Jewish hierarchy.
Methinks you hit the nail on the head with this one Tom.