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One detail: what was his real name? "Jesus" is Greek; no Jew would use the name -- they hated Greeks. Greek was the literary language of the time, so that's what got written down. But what did his family and followers call him? Joshua? Esau?
One day he smashed his thumb with a hammer and yelled, "God damn it."
That's when he decided to give up carpentry and become a story teller.
and healer, and magician, and stay unmarried but had a prostitute for a pal..while taking 12 fishermen away from their families and jobs to follow him.... the list goes on..
He may have been, but the unreliable evidence which we do have suggests otherwise. It presents more a picture of a religious idealist, angry with cozy arrangement between the Sanhedrin and the Romans, who then targeted not the Roman masters, but rather their cooperative puppets. Along with John, Jesus would have viewed the High Priests as sell outs who forfeited their right to their position by accepting comfort and support from Rome. It appears that Jesus was out to overthrow the Temple faction, without overthrowing the Romans..a hopeless task.
Perhaps....
One may readily see that much of the New Testament was re-write, designed to squeeze the life of Jesus into the prophecies concerning the Messiah. The most stunning example of their clumsiness in this regard is found right at the beginning of Mathew where the author traces 450 years of begats in order to link King David and Joseph the carpenter, fulfilling the prophecy that the Messiah would come from the house of David. Then in the very next paragraph, we get the story of the virgin birth, which completely severs Jesus from blood relations with Joseph, and thus also with David.
That the producers of this gospel failed to grasp the immense contradiction being presented, certainly suggests multiple authors working at cross purposes and probably at different times. You say that you employed a mash-up of the four gospels, but it seems probable that each gospel was a mash-up in itself.
I agree we will never really know and I agree over throwing the Romans was a hopeless task.
Let me explain it this way, when i read the account of Christ and I read it as a myth that was meant to be examined as testimony I imagine that instead of reading a book Luke, John, or Matthew are at the bar just telling me a story about some guy they knew. This is what a testimony is after all a story someone tells you. If a book is written in the format of a testimony thus you must not necessarily believe the narrator at all times. Sometimes you can assume that he is lying or exaggerating things just like a stranger telling you a story at a bar would. (Sorry for the long intro but it will help the rest of this make sense... hopefully)
So following this logical and using its lens to examine the bible I make 3 assumptions as I read the account.
1 - Jesus is not divine and has no special powers. (ex. Ive never seen a dude walk on water why would I believe a testimony)
2 - No one else has special powers everyone is a human limited by the knowledge and culture of the Iron age Middle East.
3 - Jesus is corruptible just like every other person.
Now with all this in play as I go through the bible I hear a story about a Iron age Rabbi that ran an organization with lots of hall marks of a cult like abandoning families to follow a holy teacher, giving up wealth, and dedicating one entire life soul, body, and mind to the holy teacher. Further this holy teacher showed them a bunch of cheap parlor tricks. The holy teacher was so narcissistic and egocentric that anytime anything other then him comes up he tells you how unimportant it is compared to him and tells you to give up everything just to worship him and serve him. Further he is reckless and his delusions of grandeur like thinking he is himself a god as well as his corrupt nature like soaking himself in a years wages worth of perfume in one sitting in front of a bunch of people who gave everything up to obey and follow him.the picture is clear. I do not see a wise loving guy. I see Charles Manson or Marshall Applewhite ... come to think of it didnt they think they were Jesus haha they sure as hell wanted to be him.
One detail: what was his real name? "Jesus" is Greek; no Jew would use the name -- they hated Greeks. Greek was the literary language of the time, so that's what got written down. But what did his family and followers call him? Joshua? Esau?
and healer, and magician, and stay unmarried but had a prostitute for a pal..while taking 12 fishermen away from their families and jobs to follow him.... the list goes on..
I agree with you 100% on these points my friend. I guess I made the documentary to examine Jesus as a character in a book while also assuming that as a character he was just human and corruptible. Through that lens examining the bible I put together my documentary. So what do you think motivated Jesus the biblical character.
I don't think we have enough reliable information about his attributed life in the New Testament. The books of the NT weren't even finalized for something like three centuries, and some were taken out. In order to go with the ones that were included, without considering those that were removed, one must believe that the deciders' opinion of the included books confers some greater truth upon them. I believe that the deciders had motivations other than a search for ultimate truth.
Not that history ever fails to contain biases--it does, and we must always seek them--but this would be in the category of works done for a primary purpose (codifying theology and orthodoxy) that is other than historical accuracy. I'm not even sure historical accuracy factored in. So I don't really have an opinion. I have a bunch of guesses, but those are of even less value than the NT for the purpose. I don't think it's invalid for people to try, just that I don't feel any of my efforts there would illuminate anything. Your own documentary probably does a better job of that than I'm ever likely to do.
I think there's reasonable doubt whether he existed, and especially whether the accounts of him given in the New Testament can be believed. I consider them suspect; they should be evaluated like any other work of ancient Near Eastern literature, no more special than Tacitus or Xenophon.
And that's not even addressing the supernatural stuff, which is a matter of faith; if one believes it, one believes it on faith, but history is about evidence and interpretation rather than faith. I don't have a problem with whatever people take on faith, so long as they don't try to assert that "because I believe this" suffices as objective supporting evidence.
Not that I am aware of. What is often misplaced today is that crucifixion was the Roman "pour encourager les autres" penalty for minor criminals and up. It left a decaying body and evidence of great suffering. What there is in Roman sources is references in Tacitus to "Chrestus". Problem: in the timeframe in question, Christianity was a very minor religion. From the Roman perspective, it was a weird but not terribly important cult of freakazoids. Further problem: as I understand it, some Roman sources were preserved by monastic Christian sources with motives to embellish.
What we do know is that Rome controlled what we would later call Palestine (a term based upon 'Philistia,' be it noted please), not without some unrest, during what is attributed to be the life of Jesus of Nazareth. We may fairly say that ultimate political and civil authority of the day was Roman, and to the extent that Romans commented on early Christianity, they did so from the point of view of an empire at the apex of its prestige and power.
All religions are control and fairy stories, the more I think about what we got taught in church and school it makes me wonder if its a form of child abuse to fill small heads with such fantasies of unbelievable silly stories, Id rather believe Harry Potter.
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