My Jesus Hypothesis

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-07-19 09:24am

OK, i had this idea a few days ago and am unaware of any other people having this thought before me...

OK, is it possible that more than one Jesus got into the Bible?

I mean, it may address the points about how in one part he seems wise, knowlegable, pacifist, and forgiving, and in other bits he seems egocentric, and war spurring psycho, the whole selling your clothes for weapons thing as an example, noone will get to the father unless it's through me, yadda yadda.

I mean I was thinking about how the bible was written, like 70 years or whatever after Jesus was born, and apparently there were several Jesuses around at the time that occupied similar positions of "rebel leaders" or "possible messiahs" as the Jesus of the bible. Several of these Jesus followers could have embellished and outright lied to the people who wrote the story to make thie Jesus look more like the messiah, and there would be few contemporaries of Jesus still around to dispute it.

And so, the bottom line = multiple Jesuses in the bible?

Kitsune · Post by **Kitsune** » 2003-07-19 09:29am

Everything I read indacates taht there were bunches of different prophets wandering around the area of Isreal at that time. There is a firm possibility that the stories of several mesiahs got welded into one. I understand this has happened pretty often in the past but have no specific individuals.

Baron Scarpia · Post by **Baron Scarpia** » 2003-07-19 02:32pm

This is a common theory among historians who doubt the Biblical story.

The primary influence for Jesus seems to be "Yeshuah," a prophet who was stoned to death quite a while before Jesus was supposedly around. However, he had a cult of followers still active when Paul came onto the scene.

Now, if we take what the Gnostics said, Paul was a devious little liar who was out to make a name for himself and stick his thumb in the eyes of the Pharisees. His claim to have been a Pharisee whilst persecuting Christians is very doubtful, considering the Temple was run by Saducees at the time and he was from a region and background that indicate he would have been Saducee. Why would the Saducees charge a Pharisee with persecuting the Christians? The Pharisees, like Gamaliel, were the ones defending the messianic cults from Saducee persecution.

In that light, a possible scenario is that Paul, disenchanted with the temple heads, had developed his own philosophy but needed a vehicle for it. He also wanted a mouthpiece for his views, like how Plato used Socrates. So he finds this cult devoted to Yeshuah and hijacks their figurehead for his own purposes. Notice how his writings are long on philosophy but very short on details about Jesus. Those came much later, through the gospels, which didn't show up until decades after Paul had disappeared from the scene. Even the first gospels are vague, but get more embellished as time goes on.

There many aspects of other mystery religions that appear to have been adopted by Christians, such as several aspects of Mithralism and the Egyptian worship of Osiris. In particular, both Mithralism and Osirian worship have a resurrection story. Osiris was also born to a virgin, I believe. It was Mithralism (which had become popular with Roman soldiers) that celebrated December 25 as holiday, which Christianity adopted. It also had rituals very similar to the eucharist.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2003-07-19 03:12pm

Mithra

and

Osiris

and

Krishna

and

Jesus

for comparisons.

Pablo Sanchez · Post by **Pablo Sanchez** » 2003-07-19 08:32pm

There's the possibility that Jesus is a composite, and then there's the possibility that he was an actual person who was interpretted in several different ways.
[for example, one nativity story has him visited by shepherds, reinforcing his status a simple man to get peasant converts, and the other has him paid homage by great kings (from conveniently far off and unnamed lands) to make him more appealing to aristocrats]

I personally prefer to think that he was a person, because he seems like a fairly nice person considering his heritage and era; but the possibility of his non-existence has to be admitted.

Superman · Post by **Superman** » 2003-07-19 10:56pm

For one, he may not have even existed. Many scholars have made great cases for this. I will look for a reference to post here shortly.

Multiple Jesuses = Jesi?

lgot · Post by **lgot** » 2003-07-19 11:39pm

i think the most logical answer to the many different portraits of jesus is very logical: Four Different Books, Written by Four Different Writers, With Four different sources, For four different public in Four different social momments and groups.
Since we know that is truth, trying to bring a "Multi-jesus" to explain jesus is just adding a unecessary motivation...

jegs2 · Post by **jegs2** » 2003-07-19 11:49pm

lgot wrote:i think the most logical answer to the many different portraits of jesus is very logical: Four Different Books, Written by Four Different Writers, With Four different sources, For four different public in Four different social momments and groups.
Since we know that is truth, trying to bring a "Multi-jesus" to explain jesus is just adding a unecessary motivation...

I agree. Believe the Dead Sea Scrolls backed up a lot of what those four books contained. See my website for a nifty chart on development and history of the Bible. It's GeoCities, so I can't just post it here...

Hethrir · Post by **Hethrir** » 2003-07-20 12:29am

I didn't think the Alexandrius and Vulgate were in the King James?

jegs2 · Post by **jegs2** » 2003-07-20 12:43am

Hethrir wrote:I didn't think the Alexandrius and Vulgate were in the King James?

Vulgate isn't.

SyntaxVorlon · Post by **SyntaxVorlon** » 2003-07-20 12:50am

So does this mean that in a way, Life of Brian was...accurate, in a sense??

Baron Scarpia · Post by **Baron Scarpia** » 2003-07-20 01:20pm

lgot wrote:i think the most logical answer to the many different portraits of jesus is very logical: Four Different Books, Written by Four Different Writers, With Four different sources, For four different public in Four different social momments and groups.
Since we know that is truth, trying to bring a "Multi-jesus" to explain jesus is just adding a unecessary motivation...

Actually, the evidence indicates that the earliest gospel, Mark, and another, now lost, gospel (dubbed "Q") were the basis for Luke and Matthew. Luke and Matthew lifted a great deal from Mark and Q, as can be seen by the copying of many passages. But they diverge at many points and embellish a great deal. John, it seems, is a little more out there, perhaps based on the earlier gospels but with a lot of variations, or perhaps based on other, earlier sources. We also know that somebody embellished John after it was written, as the earliest manuscripts of it don't contain many verses that have since been added. The most notable of these is the line wherein John claims to be a first-hand witness to the events. It's not in the original. This is important, because fundies like to point to this line as some sort of proof that the gospels are first-hand documentary accounts. However, most scholars agree this is not the case, and that the gospel authors were never witnesses to the events which they are writing about.

lgot · Post by **lgot** » 2003-07-20 02:48pm

of course, Once I saw also a text that pointed that Lucas gospel had a great number of verses similar to Mark and another deal with Mathew (If I am not mistaken)...But that also means they used another source. Mathew probally collected the street legends and Lucas and Mark probally colected the impressions, the "corruptions" of that legends (and therefore the earliest gospel as Mark) to their texts. It also good to point that the gospels do show the social evolution of the hebrew reformist movement of jesus, his process of exclusion of the hebrew groups, his process of search for new supporters and stablishment as new religion as the different authors do change Jesus to represent each of that different momment. So even if they used the same source, they used the then to represent different meanings...

Darth Gojira · Post by **Darth Gojira** » 2003-07-21 07:46am

Rye wrote:Mithra

and

Osiris

and

Krishna

and

Jesus

for comparisons.

You forgot Dionysus.

Post by **LadyTevar** » 2003-07-21 08:33am

jegs2 wrote:
Hethrir wrote:I didn't think the Alexandrius and Vulgate were in the King James?
Vulgate isn't.

So, since it's not in my KJV, what are the Alexandrius and Vulgate?

Tsyroc · Post by **Tsyroc** » 2003-07-22 01:23am

SyntaxVorlon wrote:So does this mean that in a way, Life of Brian was...accurate, in a sense??

Except for the spaceship...I think.

"Romans go home".

Kurgan · Post by **Kurgan** » 2003-07-23 10:46am

Not sure what you're talking about, because the "Vulgate" (vulgar... meaning common, as in the common language) is the Latin translated collection of Biblical books (from the original Hebrew/Greek) which was the project headed by Saint Jerome.

As the Alexandrius, perhaps you're referring to the manuscripts from Alexandria (used as a basis for translation)?

The KJV as you know, is an english translated protestant Bible from 1611, comissioned by King James. It used what (at the time) were the earliest known manuscripts. Of course the RSV centuries later used even earlier discovered manuscripts for reference.

The whole "Jesus was a copy of earlier pagan saviors" is an old argument. There's enough significant differences between them to dismiss most of that out of hand, but the notion continues to be a popular one with some people. Now that is not to say that converts might tend to interpret their new religion in light of their old, colored by old traditions. And I find it more likely that these other saviors were based on real life personages as well, rather than just "made up" and Jesus was simply a copy of them.

Hethrir · Post by **Hethrir** » 2003-07-24 06:10am

LadyTevar wrote:
jegs2 wrote:
Hethrir wrote:I didn't think the Alexandrius and Vulgate were in the King James?
Vulgate isn't.
So, since it's not in my KJV, what are the Alexandrius and Vulgate?

The Vulgate (different from the Vaticaus) is a Latin Catholic translation with sections of the Apocrypha mixed in. The Alexandri(n)us (a few different spellings are out there) are the texts from Alexandria and look like they came from Egypt. My mistake, the Alexandrius is in the KJ, but the Vulgate are not. The Vulgate are in some later versions such as NIV.

It gets so awfully confusing with all the similar names ...