Jesus' Wide and Profound Effect Upon Humanity

"Don Winterstein" <dfwinterstein@msn.com> writes:
>DFW: If Jesus had not risen, would his once-cowering disciples have gone
>out boldly to spread the word and set the stage for Christianity to
>dominate the Western world?

ED: Every international religious and political movement starts out
small, with a few absolutely devoted and brave disciples. The earliest
Ba'hai's were killed in droves, ten or twenty thousand. Today there's six
million of them. The Mormons were driven out of entire states and their
leader lynched, but they number over 11 million today. Even Sun Myung
Moon spent time in a North Korean prison known for its high rate of dead
prisoners, yet miraculously survived and founded a church made out of
discarded boxes on a peer in South Korea, that later grew to become the
Unification Church and his financial empire that includes ownership of the
Washingtion Times.

Muslims argue that a single man, Mohammed, was contacted MIRACULOUSLY by
God, and his disciples were inspired to take his holy teachings seriously.
If there was no such miracle, then how do you explain the devotion of
Muslims, and the fact they grew to become a world religion, even taking
over Northern Africa a former Christian stronghold. (There are 900,000
Sunni Muslims in the world today, the second largest religious group in
the world, -- right beneath Catholics which number a hundred million more
and are the single largest religious group in the world. But then, the
Catholics did have a five hundred year head start. See adherents.com
for the numbers, which also shows that Jehovah's Witnesses outnumber
Southern Baptists, though the Southern Baptists have been around longer.
I guess the Southern Baptists just don't believe as sincerely or work as
hard as the Jehovah's Witnesses at "witnessing.")

Moreover, Biblical scholars have argued that we don't have the original
words of the original apostles, we have what people wrote about them, and
wrote about the early church, Luke admits he was collecting stories, so we
have later theological views, and a partisan history lesson. Also the
belief and expectations in a general resurrection of the dead and final
judgment of the world preceded Christianity. That may have provided the
spark for the story of Jesus' resurrection. Just look at Paul's earliest
letters, the earliest N.T. documents, Thessalonians 1 and 2, and the
expectations of the world's final judgment in them. Jesus' resurrection
is mentioned extremely briefly, what the very earliest Christians were
enthusiastic about was the soon coming final judgment and general
resurrection of the dead. While the earliest teachings of the apostles
might have been merely that Jesus was exalted and glorified in heaven by
God, but later the question of the story of how he explicitly got to
heaven came up, and so the story arose about Jesus being raised in a
"spiritual body" in 1st Cor., then the "empty tomb" story arose as seen
in the earliest Gospel, Mark (it was a typical motif in the ancient world
to represent someone going to heaven, by simply having their body vanish),
then later in Luke and John, the body was made "flesh," the raised Jesus
eats, is touched before going to heaven, and people "see" him rising up
there.

Also note that the story grew in other ways as well, from Mark to
Matthew/Luke and John. For instance in Mark a mere "young man" is at the
empty tomb, and Mark mentions another "young man" who followed Jesus at
his arrest, and had to flee away naked when the guards noticed him and
tried to grab his clothing. The later threer gospels delete the "young
man" stories entire in exchange for one or two glorious "angels." Also
note the way Luke's "angel" changes the heavenly message delivered at
Jesus' tomb, and think about why Luke's version of that message differs
from Mark and Matthew which both say that the raised Jesus "went before
you, to Galilee, for there ye shall see him." Luke's angel doesn't
mention that Jesus has gone before them to Galilee, because he has all of
his risen Jesus appearances take place in Jerusalem. So he alters the
message at the tomb so that it says nothing about where Jesus has "gone
to" or that they will "see him THERE." Thinks about that change for a
while and get back to me.

Oh, and the Dead Sea scrolls mention a human judge in heaven appointed by
God to judge the world, on a scroll written before Jesus' day. The
Melchizadek scroll I believe. The Dead Sea Scrolls also mention that the
final judgment of the world was predicted to take place within a
generation of the Teacher of Righteousness' teaching or death. Again,
such expectations preceded Christianity.

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>As I've said before, you're not going to get any better objective
>verification for the validity of Christianity than this impact it had on
>world history.

ED: I have written on that particular question:
"Jesus' Wide and Profound Effect Upon Humanity"
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/ed_babinski/experience.html#humanity

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>
>Yes, there were all kinds of messiness involved, all kinds of heresy,
>conflicts of all kinds--but the overriding effect historically was
>obvious.

ED: It won't be "obvious" until somebody starts lightning thermonuclear
candles to light Jesus' way back to earth, because apparently he's lost
it. The New Testament is older than the Old Testament was when the New
Testament was first written, and still no new revelations.

>
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Received on Sat Oct 23 00:10:43 2004