A couple of decades after the first visions of a risen Jesus, a Jewish zealot called Saul decided he’d seen him too. He came to imagine a vision he’d had in his head was this same Jesus, who then revealed to Saul – all entirely within his head as he admits – what his death and return from the dead really meant. Paul, as he renamed himself, announced that God had decided Jesus was a good man and returned him to life after his execution. In doing so, God made Jesus his Son (you can read all this poppycock in Romans 1:3-4). Jesus was now a life-giving spirit, the Saviour Christ: 1 Corinthians 15:45. (Maybe though Jesus always had been this; it’s kind of confusing, but in Philippians 2:6-8 Paul seems to think Jesus was some sort of quasi-divine being from the get-go. Take your pick. Whatever.)
Memetic selection ensured the survival and perpetuation of Paul’s bizarre idea, one that was, after all, not unfamiliar to the Hellenised people of the first century. The superstitious embraced and transmitted it without knowing a thing about any itinerant Jewish preacher.
The next stage of Jesus’ evolution came twenty or so years later, when a believer we now know as Mark decided to write a back story for this Christ. He created his story using Jewish scripture, Paul’s ideas and the rules of the sect to which he belonged. Who knows if Mark believed Jesus had ever been a real person who trudged around Palestine preaching the good news about the end of everything, but in Mark’s story he had him do just that. He decided, crucially, that he wouldn’t have Jesus become God’s adopted son at the time of his spiritual resurrection. Instead, Mark had him become God’s son at his baptism (Mark 1.10-11).
This wasn’t quite good enough for the next two cultists who attempted a Jesus narrative. While they plagiarised much of Mark’s story, they changed details and made up more for Jesus to say and do. Importantly, where Mark had avoided suggesting Jesus’ resurrection appearances had occurred in the real world, Matthew and Luke showed no such reticence. Their Jesus(es) showed himself not in visions but in the flesh. It’s likely Matthew at least knew he was creating a symbolic, literary representation of others’ visions.
At the other end of the story, Matthew and Luke invented largely incompatible birth stories for their hero. For Matthew, Jesus was the Messiah from the time he was born, fulfilling all the prophecies Matthew borrowed to create his nativity story (he doesn’t: the Messiah, according to the very ‘prophecies’ Matthew manipulates is not divine but a human warrior).
Luke, on the other hand, is determined to push Jesus’ divinity even back further. For Luke, Jesus became divine when God magically made Mary pregnant; Luke’s Jesus is quite literally God’s son (Luke 1.35). Unfortunately, Mary forgot all about being impregnated by the Holy Semen Spirit later on in Luke’s ridiculous story. Nevertheless, Jesus’ status had evolved again; he’d become God’s son from the very moment of conception.
Even this was not good enough for the next version of the Jesus’ story. The writers of the fourth gospel decide to make him eternal and part of God himself. Plundering Greek philosophy and Paul’s ruminations from Philippians, they declare Jesus the ‘Logos’; the Word or aspect of God responsible for the creation of everything (John 1:1-5). And despite this being as far from an itinerant peasant preacher as it’s possible to be, even more gullible folk came to believe it.
Jesus’ evolution was still not complete, however. The council of Nicaea in 325 decided that Jesus was ‘begotten not made’ (whatever that means) – but couldn’t quite decide whether being the Logos and the Son of God actually made Jesus God Incarnate. It wasn’t until the Council of Constantinople in 381 that a collection of bishops decided Jesus was, after all, officially part of the Godhead. The apocalyptic preacher from the backwoods finally became God the Son, a mere 350 years after he lived (if indeed he did).
Jesus has continued to evolve ever since, becoming all things to all people; a God pliable enough to be whatever his followers want him to be: Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Evangelical, Mormon, fringe cult. He’s evolved into a schizophrenic deity capable of being both meek and mild and bellicose; best buddy and chief executioner; Christian Nationalist, socialist and capitalist, gay and anti-gay, pro-family and anti-family; anti-abortion and pro-gun; environmentalist and iconoclast; the one who promotes a prosperity gospel and the ‘One True God’ known (only) to a select few. Every contradictory manifestation is supported by the Bible, the Church or tradition. Every one is non-existent and ultimately pointless.
That’s some evolution.
rejectingjesus, 
You lay it our so clearly, yet we know the True Believers™ will fight it tooth and nail. I mean, goodness gracious, we can’t have REALITY interfere with what the “heart” feels now can we?
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We certainly can’t. Speaking of which, our resident True Believer seems to have shaken the dust off his Jesus sandals and has left us in peace at last.
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I’m sure Don is off studying up on the Jewish perception of their messiah so he doesn’t look completely ignorant next time it comes up. 😂
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We’ll not hold our breaths.
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So, the little fundamentalist church I grew up in (and sadly, spent most of my life in) was big on the fact that Jesus, the gospel, and the scriptures were “revealed by God.” This revelation made Christianity unique. It wasn’t the product of people. It was of God.
We were also taught that the Catholic church was the Great Whore of Babylon. So our church history stopped at Paul and began again with Martin Luther.
Learning about these church councils where many of the things I believed were hammered out by committee was a great blow to my spiritual foundation.
It was a shock to learn that what was scripture and what was not hadn’t been revealed, it had been hammered out in committee. Committees of the proto-Catholic church which I’d been taught to distrust viscerally.
Even the Trinity, which I had been taught to read into scripture, wasn’t in scripture but invented in similar councils.
And on and on. So much was invented or decided in political councils not by prophets or apostles but by bishops and priests and other political operatives.
But there’s a nice fairy tale about revelation from God and God’s perfect word and the Holy Spirit guiding everything. So let’s just believe the fairy story. Life’s easier that way.
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It is easier, but less honest and less free. Like you, I prefer not being fed a series of lies and make believe.
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I find it a good procedure to take the edicts of councils as theology by committee. And like most things committees decide, theology made by committees is suspect. Too much politics.
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The PBS youtube channel Be Smart just released a video on the flood that Don thinks was the biblical flood. Video is here: https://youtu.be/cxxLU8ZtMH4
And when I say “flood” I mean a series of at least 25 floods that occurred over a 2,000 year span at the end of the last ice age.
The Missoula Floods were caused when huge lakes formed behind ice walls at the end of the ice age. Eventually, the ice walls would break releasing what are the largest known floods in Earth’s history. After each flood, the ice walls would reform and new lakes would form until the walls would break again.
The cycle averaged about 55 years. With each cycle flooding the area anew. The PBS video says this happened at least 25 times, the Wikipedia articles says at least 40.
So, our intrepid Noah would be building new arks every 55 years for about 2,000 years. Each time the flood would be so violent it would undoubtedly kill Noah, his family and all the animals. But good for him for sticking with it despite all those setbacks.
Just how word of Noah’s exploits got from pre-historic Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana all the way to the pre-historic Levant is truly miraculous.
The wiki page on the Missoula Floods can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missoula_floods
I think we can all agree that floods happened in history (and pre-history). Therefore Noah’s flood must have happened. That’s just science.
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I did not say the Missoula Flood was the biblical Noah’s flood. I said that such a flood indicated it was possible to flood a significant geographical area rapidly. It also indicated that the climate conditions – rapid climate change that was happening at that time – allowed this flood and others like it to happen.
I think the biblical flood was regional and was associated with the rapid climate change that was happening in the period of time of the Bølling–Allerød and Younger Dryas about 14,000 years ago. (Just for reference, the civilization that build the structures at Gobekle Tepe and others in that area was present during this period, just as native peoples were present in the Pacific Northwest at the time of the Missoula Floods, and remembered them, passing down those memories orally to the modern age.)
That places the flood reported in the Bible and in other Near Eastern records in the time of rapid climate change that included floods, rapid rise in sea level, and enormous weather events. That all was before written language but not before the ability of humans to record events. Gobekle Tepe is testament to that. In fact, the events that seem to be depicted on the stones at Gobekle Tepe may refer to the flood or associated events. Gobekle Tepe is certainly in the right location.
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