I think it's important to remember too that we have very little information about the actual nature of Jesus' ministry or his crucifixion. So it's very possible that Jesus *did* exploit his followers or otherwise behave in ways that we associate with religious frauds. Some of his teachings even seem a little suspect in that regard - telling people they needed to sell everything they own or that they should hate everyone else in comparison to him are both very cultish things! Similarly with the crucifixion, where even the gospels differ dramatically. It's unclear whether Jesus went defiantly or not and whether recanting would have been an option anyway for him. Both of these things make the liar thesis more probable, although the most likely explanation is a mixture of all three.
If Jesus had behaved that way, then we would expect to have some trace of it in our sources. For comparison, the Islamic hadith collections record innumerable examples of Muhammad deriving temporal benefits from his prophetic claims. So why is there nothing like that in the Christian tradition? One could say "well, the Christians wanted to make Jesus look good," but that doesn't seem to work: after all, the Muslims wanted to make Muhammad look good, and that didn't stop them from recording what they did. Similarly, one could claim that the gospels were written decades after Jesus' life, and so the exploitative happenings have been excised over time. But the hadith collections date to even longer after Muhammad's life, and they don't excise these events. One might even note that if a group sees a man as a morally exemplary prophet, they probably won't even regard his self-serving behavior as wrong, and so they'd have less incentive to exclude it.
The upshot is that if Jesus *did* behave in the manner associated with frauds, then it would be very surprising that we find not a trace of it in the sources. (The potential examples you have don't seem very strong; after all, Jesus is recorded as telling his followers to sell their goods and give the proceeds to the poor, not to give them to the "make Jesus rich" fund.)
I get what you're saying, but we don't have anything like the Hadith for Jesus, so it's hard to be confident about things one way or another. If we *did* have a significantly more detailed and comprehensive account of his teachings and lifestyle, who knows what we'd find? It's not plausible that Jesus was running some massive criminal enterprise or marrying tons of women or anything, but the general sort of self-enrichment that many cult leaders engage in would probably be low-level enough to escape scrutiny, especially in that time and place. I don't think anyone should argue that we have reason to think Jesus *was* doing those things, but I also think that, if he had been, we probably wouldn't know about it.
I'm not sure it *would* be low-level enough to escape notice. First-century Palestine was a desperately poor place, where most of the population had barely enough to live on. They were, unsurprisingly, scornful of cheats (see for instance the ceaseless hostility towards exploitative tax-collectors in the Gospels).
With that in mind, it's noteworthy that the New Testament does not record a single instance of somebody accusing Jesus of enriching himself. People *do* accuse Jesus of being a drunkard, and of consorting with sinners, and of blasphemy, and of being possessed by a demon, but they never accuse him of conning his followers. Why not? The Christians include all of these other accusations, so why not that one? If he had been running a racket, we'd expect some record of it, if only in the form of accusations by the scribes and Pharisees.
Ultimately, I think we can't be confident one way or the other about what sort of accusations or claims would survive into the present day. It's obviously some evidence in favor of his moral character that we don't have them, and it's unreasonable to think he was the Bernie Madoff of 33 AD or something, but we shouldn't assume Jesus was morally perfect on every issue where we don't have someone claiming the opposite.
I believe you don't give the lie option enough credence, although I myself am not attracted to it. The details of Jesus's life are hazy, it is possible that retracting his claims wouldn't have spared him his fate, or that he did try to retract his claims but it was too late. It is possible that he did seek temporal rewards and this is not recorded. It is also possible that he was lying for altruistic reasons- e.g. to lead a rebellion against the Romans who he saw as oppressors.
Buddhism rejects God, but something it has going for it is that it does not depend on miracles or faith. Buddha explicitly said you could verify for yourself his teaching is true, and that it was not a divine revelation. That falls apart a little with the claims to remembering past lives and his contact with gods and demons, but I think his stuff on the nature of mind and of suffering is pretty solid. Advaita Vedanta is another doctrine that does not require miracles or faith, and it's also completely centered on consciousness, which is pretty interesting, but I suppose it's not a world religion.
There's also the perennial view to consider: the different religions are the same God speaking in different languages, highlighting different aspects of the Infinite. Such that it doesn't make sense to try to find a one true religion.
It's true that the most explicit claims in the gospels to Jesus being God are found in John. But Matthew seems to believe that Jesus was God. Throughout Matthew, there are examples of people (including Matthew himself!) worshipping Jesus. This is written by a Jew. Worship was only for God. That is a really, big, fundamental part of Jewish belief. Of course, if the resurrection and other miracles Matthew reports are true, it makes sense that Jesus was God. It also makes sense that Jesus did not frequently explicitly teach that He was God during His earthly ministry as it probably was just too strange ans shocking a truth to really be accepted prior to Him rising from the dead and then ascending into Heaven. But Christians very widely and very early believed that Jesus was God and worshipped Him as such. Keep researching and thinking!
"I think the Gospel of John is evidentially pretty useless because it was written so long after the events described. A later article in this series will investigate this claim more thoroughly."
I look forward to reading that. If the Apostle John actually wrote the Gospel of John, then even if he wrote it late in life (perhaps when he was in his 80s, assuming he may have been as young as 20 when he became a disciple of Jesus), then it is, of course, evidentially valuable. But the big question here is, did John write John? I just recently did a really in-depth study on this (prompted by a Bible study group I am leading where we are studying the Gospel of John) and then I made a 2-part video about it. I was surprised by just how much evidence there is for the Apostle John being the author. And the arguments against that are not really very good (I watched two Ehrman videos specifically devoted to arguing that John didn't write John, and I respond to the arguments I found in them). Here is a link to part 1 of my video:
It looks to me like you are off to a good start in your investigation of whether or not Christianity is true. It's a big topic, and since things like the possibility of eternal life are at stake, it's a very important one. I continue to pray for you regularly. So, if Christianity is true, you've got some supernatural help (this may be in the form of things like guiding your research some and other ways that are admittedly hard to detect - I'm not predicting supernatural help in the form of angelic appearances, although those more obviously supernatural types of help have happened in rare cases). I'll make a few comments (at least one) about some of the specifics you wrote about separately. Also, I've seen that you are in contact with some great Christians to help you in your research. I'm also available if you want to talk. Grace and Peace.
The gospels are vague and contradictory, but i don't think there is any evidence Jesus claimed he was God. As you indicated, only John might be interpreted that way, and that was much later.
The key figure imo is Paul, and Christianity is more about Paul than Jesus, as he is the one who took the reins from Peter, with whom he had big disagreements, although Peter had actually been Jesus' disciple while Paul never actually knew him.
What I find bizarre is that all that Paul claims he knows about Jesus comes from his miraculous encounter with him after his death and resurrection, and everyone seems to have taken his word about that!
The better question is, was Paul lying, or was he delusional or crazy, did he actually believe what he said?
And what made other people believe him, he must have been even more charismatic than Jesus.
It is Paul who taught that Jesus was God, and what his message was, and he disagreed with Peter who believed his message was for Jews, and that converts would be to that new brand of Judaism, not a wholly different religion that cast Judaism and its laws aside.
It is Paul you should be interrogating, not Jesus.
The gospels are vague and contradictory, but i don't think there is any evidence Jesus claimed he was God. As you indicated, only John might be interpreted that way, and that was much later.
The key figure imo is Paul, and Christianity is more about Paul than Jesus, as he is the one who took the reins from Peter, with whom he had big disagreements, although Peter had actually been Jesus' disciple while Paul never actually knew him.
What I find bizarre is that all that Paul claims he knows about Jesus comes from his miraculous encounter with him after his death and resurrection, and everyone seems to have taken his word about that!
The better question is, was Paul lying, or was he delusional or crazy, did he actually believe what he said?
And what made other people believe him, he must have been even more charismatic than Jesus.
It is Paul who taught that Jesus was God, and what his message was, and he disagreed with Peter who believed his message was for Jews, and that converts would be to that new brand of Judaism, not a wholly different religion that cast Judaism and its laws aside.
It is Paul you should be interrogating, not Jesus.
Chapter 4 of this book might also be interesting to you, as it deals with Jesus' interpretation of afterlife like experiences and offers interpretations how his belief based on these might have influenced his actions. The book delves into the primary literature and is well cited.
One remark: the Son of Man *is* synonymous with divinity in the context of Jesus's time. This is because Daniel 7 attributes to him attributes only proper to God (for further support of this thesis, see Michael Heiser's work). This is the chapter which gave birth to "Two Powers in Heaven" theology in the Jewish community in the 1st century BC. It claimed that there was more than one person in the Godhead, precisely because of the peculiar relation between the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man. Indeed, only in this context does the accusation of blasphemy made by the high priest become sensible: merely claiming to be a messiah or a super-messiah (a son of man as you describe him) is not blasphemy in and of itself; however, claiming to be equal to God, which is, as I have pointed out, the entailment of one of the theological currents at the time, is.
If the Danielic Son of Man was understood to be a divine being, then this might be a distinction without a difference. And there's some evidence that this was the case:
I mean, the exact point I am making is that the concepts "God" and "the Son of Man" are not mutually exclusive. One could fail to be the Ancient of Days and still be God, because the Son of Man has divine qualities and can plausibly be thought of as God, as Heiser argues.
Furthermore, contrasting God from X does not therefore mean that X is not God, however unintuitive that may seem. For example, St. Paul contrasts God from Jesus in 1 Corinthians 8:6, yet, as you acknowledge yourself, it is plausible that St. Paul believed that Jesus was God.
“Furthermore, if Jesus was cynically lying, he would have backed down rather than get crucified.”
Joseph Smith didn’t back down. Maybe he was too committed to the bit.
(On John: I’ve been writing an essay on whether John makes explicit divinity claims today, so it’s fresh on my mind—l ended up taking the view that John only makes explicit divinity claims in the Prologue, and nowhere else (not even John 8:57), and there’s something like a 5% chance that the Prologue was a hymn appended to John after the original author finished writing (but only about 5%—most scholars don’t go for that view.)
Smith wasn't killed for his prophetic claims; he was killed by an angry mob after he became the tin-pot dictator of Nauvoo. He also derived temporal benefits from his claims (such as political power and multiple wives), which would have given him a powerful motive to stick to the script.
None of this applies to Jesus: he actually *does* seem to have been killed for his religious claims, and he derived no substantial material benefits from his ministry.
Also, do you not think that John 20:28 is a divinity claim? It calls Jesus "ho theos."
I think you are misinterpreting "Son of Man". It's not a hifaluting claim, it's a way of saying "person who is speaking to you right now", or "yours truly". "Man" translates "Adam". Everyone was considered to be a descendant of Adam by default, as opposed to being a descendant of Abraham or whoever, that would put you into a specific tribe.
Most scholars don't think that Jesus is using "son of man" in the idiomatic sense, to mean "human." He's using it as an eschatological title, alluding to the Book of Daniel (some scholars disagree, of course, but most read it this way).
I've been investigating Messianic Judaism for a while now. They point out that Jesus/Yeshua was a first century Jew talking to other first century Jews about first century Judaism (or perhaps Judaisms since there seem to have been multiple perspectives). As such they claim that reading his sayings in English from the background of a Greek philosophical perspective is taking them completely out of context and missing many allusions to Torah and other nuances. I find it a very interesting perspective and it seems to make sense out of some of Jesus's more bizarre sayings.
That view is crazy. Paul attests quite clearly to Jesus's having been born of David, and Carrier has to invoke bizarre cosmic sperm banks to explain that away.
I think it's important to remember too that we have very little information about the actual nature of Jesus' ministry or his crucifixion. So it's very possible that Jesus *did* exploit his followers or otherwise behave in ways that we associate with religious frauds. Some of his teachings even seem a little suspect in that regard - telling people they needed to sell everything they own or that they should hate everyone else in comparison to him are both very cultish things! Similarly with the crucifixion, where even the gospels differ dramatically. It's unclear whether Jesus went defiantly or not and whether recanting would have been an option anyway for him. Both of these things make the liar thesis more probable, although the most likely explanation is a mixture of all three.
If Jesus had behaved that way, then we would expect to have some trace of it in our sources. For comparison, the Islamic hadith collections record innumerable examples of Muhammad deriving temporal benefits from his prophetic claims. So why is there nothing like that in the Christian tradition? One could say "well, the Christians wanted to make Jesus look good," but that doesn't seem to work: after all, the Muslims wanted to make Muhammad look good, and that didn't stop them from recording what they did. Similarly, one could claim that the gospels were written decades after Jesus' life, and so the exploitative happenings have been excised over time. But the hadith collections date to even longer after Muhammad's life, and they don't excise these events. One might even note that if a group sees a man as a morally exemplary prophet, they probably won't even regard his self-serving behavior as wrong, and so they'd have less incentive to exclude it.
The upshot is that if Jesus *did* behave in the manner associated with frauds, then it would be very surprising that we find not a trace of it in the sources. (The potential examples you have don't seem very strong; after all, Jesus is recorded as telling his followers to sell their goods and give the proceeds to the poor, not to give them to the "make Jesus rich" fund.)
I get what you're saying, but we don't have anything like the Hadith for Jesus, so it's hard to be confident about things one way or another. If we *did* have a significantly more detailed and comprehensive account of his teachings and lifestyle, who knows what we'd find? It's not plausible that Jesus was running some massive criminal enterprise or marrying tons of women or anything, but the general sort of self-enrichment that many cult leaders engage in would probably be low-level enough to escape scrutiny, especially in that time and place. I don't think anyone should argue that we have reason to think Jesus *was* doing those things, but I also think that, if he had been, we probably wouldn't know about it.
I'm not sure it *would* be low-level enough to escape notice. First-century Palestine was a desperately poor place, where most of the population had barely enough to live on. They were, unsurprisingly, scornful of cheats (see for instance the ceaseless hostility towards exploitative tax-collectors in the Gospels).
With that in mind, it's noteworthy that the New Testament does not record a single instance of somebody accusing Jesus of enriching himself. People *do* accuse Jesus of being a drunkard, and of consorting with sinners, and of blasphemy, and of being possessed by a demon, but they never accuse him of conning his followers. Why not? The Christians include all of these other accusations, so why not that one? If he had been running a racket, we'd expect some record of it, if only in the form of accusations by the scribes and Pharisees.
Ultimately, I think we can't be confident one way or the other about what sort of accusations or claims would survive into the present day. It's obviously some evidence in favor of his moral character that we don't have them, and it's unreasonable to think he was the Bernie Madoff of 33 AD or something, but we shouldn't assume Jesus was morally perfect on every issue where we don't have someone claiming the opposite.
I believe you don't give the lie option enough credence, although I myself am not attracted to it. The details of Jesus's life are hazy, it is possible that retracting his claims wouldn't have spared him his fate, or that he did try to retract his claims but it was too late. It is possible that he did seek temporal rewards and this is not recorded. It is also possible that he was lying for altruistic reasons- e.g. to lead a rebellion against the Romans who he saw as oppressors.
Buddhism rejects God, but something it has going for it is that it does not depend on miracles or faith. Buddha explicitly said you could verify for yourself his teaching is true, and that it was not a divine revelation. That falls apart a little with the claims to remembering past lives and his contact with gods and demons, but I think his stuff on the nature of mind and of suffering is pretty solid. Advaita Vedanta is another doctrine that does not require miracles or faith, and it's also completely centered on consciousness, which is pretty interesting, but I suppose it's not a world religion.
There's also the perennial view to consider: the different religions are the same God speaking in different languages, highlighting different aspects of the Infinite. Such that it doesn't make sense to try to find a one true religion.
Just intuitively, Christianity makes more claims than ancient Judaism (it assumes it) so doesn’t that mean that it’s more likely because it’s simpler?
It's true that the most explicit claims in the gospels to Jesus being God are found in John. But Matthew seems to believe that Jesus was God. Throughout Matthew, there are examples of people (including Matthew himself!) worshipping Jesus. This is written by a Jew. Worship was only for God. That is a really, big, fundamental part of Jewish belief. Of course, if the resurrection and other miracles Matthew reports are true, it makes sense that Jesus was God. It also makes sense that Jesus did not frequently explicitly teach that He was God during His earthly ministry as it probably was just too strange ans shocking a truth to really be accepted prior to Him rising from the dead and then ascending into Heaven. But Christians very widely and very early believed that Jesus was God and worshipped Him as such. Keep researching and thinking!
You wrote:
"I think the Gospel of John is evidentially pretty useless because it was written so long after the events described. A later article in this series will investigate this claim more thoroughly."
I look forward to reading that. If the Apostle John actually wrote the Gospel of John, then even if he wrote it late in life (perhaps when he was in his 80s, assuming he may have been as young as 20 when he became a disciple of Jesus), then it is, of course, evidentially valuable. But the big question here is, did John write John? I just recently did a really in-depth study on this (prompted by a Bible study group I am leading where we are studying the Gospel of John) and then I made a 2-part video about it. I was surprised by just how much evidence there is for the Apostle John being the author. And the arguments against that are not really very good (I watched two Ehrman videos specifically devoted to arguing that John didn't write John, and I respond to the arguments I found in them). Here is a link to part 1 of my video:
https://youtu.be/QutcxZVloxo
It looks to me like you are off to a good start in your investigation of whether or not Christianity is true. It's a big topic, and since things like the possibility of eternal life are at stake, it's a very important one. I continue to pray for you regularly. So, if Christianity is true, you've got some supernatural help (this may be in the form of things like guiding your research some and other ways that are admittedly hard to detect - I'm not predicting supernatural help in the form of angelic appearances, although those more obviously supernatural types of help have happened in rare cases). I'll make a few comments (at least one) about some of the specifics you wrote about separately. Also, I've seen that you are in contact with some great Christians to help you in your research. I'm also available if you want to talk. Grace and Peace.
The gospels are vague and contradictory, but i don't think there is any evidence Jesus claimed he was God. As you indicated, only John might be interpreted that way, and that was much later.
The key figure imo is Paul, and Christianity is more about Paul than Jesus, as he is the one who took the reins from Peter, with whom he had big disagreements, although Peter had actually been Jesus' disciple while Paul never actually knew him.
What I find bizarre is that all that Paul claims he knows about Jesus comes from his miraculous encounter with him after his death and resurrection, and everyone seems to have taken his word about that!
The better question is, was Paul lying, or was he delusional or crazy, did he actually believe what he said?
And what made other people believe him, he must have been even more charismatic than Jesus.
It is Paul who taught that Jesus was God, and what his message was, and he disagreed with Peter who believed his message was for Jews, and that converts would be to that new brand of Judaism, not a wholly different religion that cast Judaism and its laws aside.
It is Paul you should be interrogating, not Jesus.
The gospels are vague and contradictory, but i don't think there is any evidence Jesus claimed he was God. As you indicated, only John might be interpreted that way, and that was much later.
The key figure imo is Paul, and Christianity is more about Paul than Jesus, as he is the one who took the reins from Peter, with whom he had big disagreements, although Peter had actually been Jesus' disciple while Paul never actually knew him.
What I find bizarre is that all that Paul claims he knows about Jesus comes from his miraculous encounter with him after his death and resurrection, and everyone seems to have taken his word about that!
The better question is, was Paul lying, or was he delusional or crazy, did he actually believe what he said?
And what made other people believe him, he must have been even more charismatic than Jesus.
It is Paul who taught that Jesus was God, and what his message was, and he disagreed with Peter who believed his message was for Jews, and that converts would be to that new brand of Judaism, not a wholly different religion that cast Judaism and its laws aside.
It is Paul you should be interrogating, not Jesus.
Chapter 4 of this book might also be interesting to you, as it deals with Jesus' interpretation of afterlife like experiences and offers interpretations how his belief based on these might have influenced his actions. The book delves into the primary literature and is well cited.
https://books.google.com.au/books?id=MGSLDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false
One remark: the Son of Man *is* synonymous with divinity in the context of Jesus's time. This is because Daniel 7 attributes to him attributes only proper to God (for further support of this thesis, see Michael Heiser's work). This is the chapter which gave birth to "Two Powers in Heaven" theology in the Jewish community in the 1st century BC. It claimed that there was more than one person in the Godhead, precisely because of the peculiar relation between the Ancient of Days and the Son of Man. Indeed, only in this context does the accusation of blasphemy made by the high priest become sensible: merely claiming to be a messiah or a super-messiah (a son of man as you describe him) is not blasphemy in and of itself; however, claiming to be equal to God, which is, as I have pointed out, the entailment of one of the theological currents at the time, is.
To me, when one reads the passage, it seems like Jesus is saying he's the son of man rather than God himself.
If the Danielic Son of Man was understood to be a divine being, then this might be a distinction without a difference. And there's some evidence that this was the case:
https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/biblical-research/article-abstract/24/3/331/252607/Why-the-Danielic-Son-of-Man-Is-a-Divine-Being?redirectedFrom=fulltext
Apologies for the paywalled paper; perhaps you can access it somehow.
I mean, the exact point I am making is that the concepts "God" and "the Son of Man" are not mutually exclusive. One could fail to be the Ancient of Days and still be God, because the Son of Man has divine qualities and can plausibly be thought of as God, as Heiser argues.
Furthermore, contrasting God from X does not therefore mean that X is not God, however unintuitive that may seem. For example, St. Paul contrasts God from Jesus in 1 Corinthians 8:6, yet, as you acknowledge yourself, it is plausible that St. Paul believed that Jesus was God.
“Furthermore, if Jesus was cynically lying, he would have backed down rather than get crucified.”
Joseph Smith didn’t back down. Maybe he was too committed to the bit.
(On John: I’ve been writing an essay on whether John makes explicit divinity claims today, so it’s fresh on my mind—l ended up taking the view that John only makes explicit divinity claims in the Prologue, and nowhere else (not even John 8:57), and there’s something like a 5% chance that the Prologue was a hymn appended to John after the original author finished writing (but only about 5%—most scholars don’t go for that view.)
Smith wasn't killed for his prophetic claims; he was killed by an angry mob after he became the tin-pot dictator of Nauvoo. He also derived temporal benefits from his claims (such as political power and multiple wives), which would have given him a powerful motive to stick to the script.
None of this applies to Jesus: he actually *does* seem to have been killed for his religious claims, and he derived no substantial material benefits from his ministry.
Also, do you not think that John 20:28 is a divinity claim? It calls Jesus "ho theos."
But did Smith have an opportunity to recant to avoid persecution?
I think you are misinterpreting "Son of Man". It's not a hifaluting claim, it's a way of saying "person who is speaking to you right now", or "yours truly". "Man" translates "Adam". Everyone was considered to be a descendant of Adam by default, as opposed to being a descendant of Abraham or whoever, that would put you into a specific tribe.
What? No. Jesus says the son of man can foregive sins and describes other authority that he has.
Most scholars don't think that Jesus is using "son of man" in the idiomatic sense, to mean "human." He's using it as an eschatological title, alluding to the Book of Daniel (some scholars disagree, of course, but most read it this way).
I've been investigating Messianic Judaism for a while now. They point out that Jesus/Yeshua was a first century Jew talking to other first century Jews about first century Judaism (or perhaps Judaisms since there seem to have been multiple perspectives). As such they claim that reading his sayings in English from the background of a Greek philosophical perspective is taking them completely out of context and missing many allusions to Torah and other nuances. I find it a very interesting perspective and it seems to make sense out of some of Jesus's more bizarre sayings.
That view is crazy. Paul attests quite clearly to Jesus's having been born of David, and Carrier has to invoke bizarre cosmic sperm banks to explain that away.
Price is, I think, a crank, and his view is rejected by almost every historian.
Yeah, I'll write more about the generic resurrection argument later.