Were the Gospels written to flesh out Paul's mythological Jesus? Of course not.
The Gospels tell a story that no one in his right mind would make up — certainly not if you're trying to found, or support, a religion.
Of the many elements of the story that no one would fabricate, three really stand out to me:
1) The cross — If you've got to explain how your founder died, you wouldn't make up his execution as a criminal. And you wouldn't risk making an enemy of the government by making them look bad.
2) The women at the tomb — If you wanted to pass a story off as truth, it wouldn't star the town drunk as the witness. That's about how that society viewed the testimony of women. They would not have fabricated the women as being first to the tomb.
3) The Twelve — If you wanted to found a religion around the surviving apostles, you wouldn't make them look like buffoons. For three years they didn't understand a word Jesus said, and when He rose from the dead, they didn't believe it. You can spin up an explanation as to how this isn't fatal to the new religion, but no one would tell a story like this if they didn't have to.
There are many elements of the Gospel stories that simply don't need to be there. Why explain them away? Just don't make them up. Unless they're not made up.
10 comments:
Does every element of the Book of Mormon need to be there? How about Scientology?
Sorry, I don't understand what you're asking. You'll have to expand on your comments a bit.
I'm asking whether Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard invented elements of their religions that did not need to be there. If so, why should we think that an element is more likely to be true if it does not need to be there? Don't many elements of invented religions look irrational?
Still not 100% sure I understand what you're asking.
I don't know much about Scientology or Mormonism. What part of their central teaching is as big of a hurdle as an executed felon?
Do you have any reason to think that people who invent religions usually apply the kind of logic you have suggested the authors of the gospels would have applied if they were fabricating stories?
I think we have to assume people are as rational as the average Joe unless we have evidence to the contrary.
Re your previous comment, I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not talking about adding unnecessary details (adding color, fleshing out the story) but putting things into your story that make it harder to believe.
It's like founding a political party with Benedict Arnold as the patron saint. Maybe you can make an argument for why he was a true patriot and the perfect model, but why go through that. You'd just pick a person whose name isn't an instant turn off.
If you're fabricating a religion, would you explain to everyone why it's ok that your founder was sent to the electric chair for murder, or would have him shot by people who were too shallow to see his greatness?
Would you make your job harder than it needed to be?
I realize that every situation is unique, but based on the available evidence I would say that people who invent religions and the people who embrace newly invented religions tend to defy conventional notions of rationality.
As you say, every situation is unique. What evidence is there that the people of that era were open to such a handicapped religion?
I am not aware of any evidence that is specific to that era, however, it seems to me that at all times and places there have been people who are open to new religious beliefs regardless of how bizarre they might seem from our perspective. I don’t know how one would go about developing some empirical criteria to identify specific religions that are too bizarre either to be invented or to be embraced. The fact that Christianity spread so quickly might itself be considered evidence that people of that era were open to such a religion.
I'm asking whether Joseph Smith and L. Ron Hubbard invented elements of their religions that did not need to be there. If so, why should we think that an element is more likely to be true if it does not need to be there? Don't many elements of invented religions look irrational?
I think what Vinny seems to be saying here is that the mere inclusion of elements in the story which defy our expectations does not provide any evidence that the story is historical. It's the kind of thing that story-tellers have done for years in order to make their tales seem more 'real'.
The reversal of expectations is a classic narrative device used to make fiction more compelling, and it's precisely the sort of thing you find in mythology.
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