Jesus. Liar, Lunatic or Lord

I think one problem is that we're approaching this from our viewpoint(as is Lewis in a very bad argument as per usual for him). A viewpoint honed by a different philosophy and worldview that has arisen in the last 200 years. So people may describe him and others like him as deluded or liars. The "ah sure he must have known he was spinning porkies, how could he believe otherwise?" principle. You could level that accusation at someone today, much more easily than at a person 2000 years ago.

Their worldview was very different. The vast majority were theists, who filtered reality through their cultural idea of God or Gods. God or Gods were simply accepted. Look at some of the great thinkers back then, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch etc. Measured scientific men of the time. They mention gods as a background hum. Basically cos it was. So a man steeped in a religious worldview, one that was even more pervasive than the Greek or Roman mindset(and theirs was pretty pervasive), will truly believe in this stuff. As will his peers if someone stands out as giving a better explanation of something that cant be explained. If you have people like Jim Jones or Ron Hubbard today, or people like suicide bombers with waiting virgins in a world where we all have so much more info and worldview at our fingertips then it's much more likely then. Plus much more likely that such a person would actually believe in this with no ulterior motive.

An example of differing worldviews. Autobiography. Its everywhere today. The book shops heave with them. The Greeks and Romans and others wrote about a lot of stuff, but no autobiographies. Very little reference to "I". The first we would recognise as one would be from Augustine of Hippo. It may seem strange to us that Plato or Cicero didnt write one, but they didnt. Not in the form we know.

The slighest change makes a big diff. Look at the mayans/aztecs. They had the wheel, but only fitted it to kids toys. Never made the leap and they were hardly thick.

sparkfire wrote: »

But why were people put to death for having Christian beliefs? Surely if they did not believe he was the son of God then they would have renounced their beliefs when threatened with death.

Again see above. Their worldview was very different. They believed they were dying for something much bigger than themselves.

Jakkass wrote: »

A man walking around claiming that He was the Son of God, and that He was His Father? A man who said that He would return to judge the world? A man who said that if people were not connected to the Father through Him they would be cast into the fire?

All of Jesus' message has to do with His Father. If God doesn't exist, things start to look a little out of place surely?

Maybe. OK my humble? My contention would be that this part was added and polished later(and then the trinity bit had to be fudged to get it to work). He claimed to be a prophet, a continuation of the Prophets in the Torah. A few confused him with Joshua(Yeshua even sounding the same). He calls himself the son of man more times than the son of god. One part(which looks like an addition IMHO) where he is asked directly he replies "who do you think I am?". Again at his trial by the Jewish council he repeats it, but it seems too pat.

The trial itself is interesting, where the people are given a choice between setting free him or Barrabas. For a start the Romans never did that. They were consistent in not officially recognising local religious festivals, unless it was a fit for Rome, which Judaism was not. The real interesting bit is the choice. Barrabas means son of the father. Strange name. To me it reads like another later addition. An allegorical choice between the spiritual jesus or the revolutionary terrorist jesus. Even better his full name is Jesus Barrabas. "Ah here now" springs to mind.

Spurious. That is not reliable evidence, merely hearsay. In my opinion, nothing written before the mass use of the printing press can be trusted in it's authenticity. That's about 1500 years after this occurred.

Again another different worldview. A literate one. In oral cultures stories are transmitted very well. The Koran is a good example. There are people who even today can speak the koran letter perfect and its not a small book. Julius Caesar noted this in his Gallic chronicles(AKA "How I kicked the Frenchies arses one year. Im great I am") when discussing the celts and the druids. He noted that while writing was a bloody great idea, those from purely oral cultures had much better memories. They had to have as all their culture and rites and history had only one way of transmission, oral. Potential druids had to show amazing memory feats. They underwent memory training, much like Muslims in faith schools. Their stories were cross referenced with each other and their audience and changes were noted and stamped out(sometimes violently for a major faux pas). Yes there would have been some drift of course, but a lot less than we may think. We forget that for much of history this is how people got their info. Troubadors in medieval europe brought news to their world through an oral tradition, song. And they were considered accurate even by the literate of the time. Even when we look at our view of "accurate" which itself has drift too BTW, a pure oral tradition is still valuable as evidence.

aidan24326 wrote: »

That's kinda what I've always thought. And I do think if Jesus could be alive today he would surely be absloutely flabbergasted at what now exists in his honour.

I agree. I reckon he would be shocked at how his particular local Jewish message was changed too. By all sides.

Chinese whisper experiments have shown how unreliable the spoken word is as a means of comunicating information accurately.

Like I said above though, these experiments are done on people from a literal culture. Its like asking someone from an oral culture to read. They may well earn it but they wont be as good at it as someone exposed from an early age. Try the same experiments with say devout Muslims who have memorised the koran and hadeeth. Id put money you'd get a different result. Look at music and how its transmitted. CD/digital is a better medium than say tape. You can copy the former ad infinitum and it'll be the same every time. With tape the copy of a copy degrades and its not as good as the original. You can still hear the song though.