Civil Commotion

I’ve long believed that the literary Jesus is akin to Paul Bunyan, obviously not a real person but grounded in the life of an actual human being around whom some distinctive characteristic caused fantastic tales to accumulate. I think that, mainly, because I can more easily imagine a man whose life is exaggerated by admirers — like the lumberjack who was the prototype for Paul Bunyan — than a son of god who is invented out of thin air.

But a growing number of bona fide serious-minded scholars now believe just that — that there never was a Jesus, that every bit of the orthodox Christian narrative is fiction.

When lined up in the order in which they were composed, the accounts of the life and works of Jesus reveal that he was originally worshipped as a celestial being who never had a body, never had a ministry or disciples, and never appeared in person to anyone. Later writings brought him “down to earth” in physical form, adding increasingly fantastic story elements as time went on, in tales which were carefully set in a time and locale conveniently inaccessible to verification. While Christian writings all show signs of continual reworking as the theology evolved (an activity that continues to this day!), there are no independent accounts of Jesus or any of his supposed disciples from the entire century during which the religion supposedly began.

I conclude that the figure of Jesus was invented by one faction in a diverse religious landscape in an effort to create an “apostolic succession” of authority – “our priests were taught by priests that were taught by followers of Jesus Christ himself, in person”. But even if I’m completely wrong about that, it is undeniable that the only evidence that exists for a living, breathing, walking, talking Jesus is weak, contradictory, or simply fraudulent.

The full paper, by Peter Nathnagle, is here.

Well … who knows? I am not a Christian, I believe Abraham was a madman and his god the invention of a deranged mind, and that all the thousands of other gods are probably inventions, too. What is more, I think a set of ethical teachings grounded on Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son is perverse and deserves contempt.

So I don’t actually have a dog in the fight over Jesus’ historicity. But insofar as questioning the historicity of Jesus bespeaks a decline of Christianity’s influence in our shared life, I think it’s a good conversation to have.

How much suffering, death, and loss must happen before Christians are willing to admit that, when it comes to the machinations of men, God is nowhere to be found. The only gods at work in the affairs of men are those who are very much earthly. If God is indeed on their side, then Christians have no response when secularists say that their God is a violent, bloodthirsty megalomaniac.

Bruce Gerencser

Gerencser knows what he is talking about. I have said exactly that bit about a bloodthirsty megalomaniac, and a dozen more variations of it — e.g., Why on earth do you want to spend eternity with a sociopath who would drown all of humanity? — and am invariably met with a blank stare or, in the rare case, indignation. Seriously: Evangelicals don’t have thoughts; they have rules they follow, clichés they repeat — and that’s it.

Though it appears as a comment on a blog post about (at least nominally) an unrelated topic, Jeri Massi makes an observation about fundamentalist ‘family values’ that jibes nicely with something I’ve said repeatedly over the years:

For some odd reason, Fundamentalism considers itself family friendly, but it consistently pushes for families to break apart …

You need only to keep in mind that the 1st-century Christian church was a despised cult, and it required total, unmixed devotion in order to survive. With respect to family, fundamentalist Christianity teaches exactly what Scientology teaches: The group comes first, and your family can make-do with the leftovers.

Unfortunately, as the number of ‘nones’ increases and churches compete for an ever-diminishing pool of believers, that stringency is seeping into once-mainstream evangelical denominations such as the Southern Baptists. It is not merely an odd, unhappy coincidence that evangelicals have the highest divorce rate — and every other pathology — in society; it is a direct and predictable consequence of what is taught in their churches.

Back in the long ago, in those dark and forbidding days before the invention of the fax machine, every engineering firm in Orlando, Florida, had somebody on staff who was known as ‘the runner.’ The runner was an older teen or young 20-something — a college kid, basically — who drove around town delivering blueprints, plans, reports, et cetera; it was a sort of private mail system that companies maintained.

For some curious reason known only to the gods, the children of prominent people empowered to grant contracts had an uncommon aptitude for running. The children of councilmen and the county engineering staff were universally considered to be brilliant runners — even the really stupid ones.

Then came fax machines, which made it possible to send a report to a client via the telephone lines, and then e-mail, and runners were basically discarded.

What do you know? The Donald, famous orange nutjob, thinks the answer to our cybersecurity problems — and maybe even unemployment problem — is to bring back private couriers.

President-elect Donald Trump told reporters on Saturday that messages “should be sent via courier like in the old days” to ensure security.

“It’s very important, if you have something really important, write it out and have it delivered by courier, the old fashioned way because I’ll tell you what, no computer is safe,” Trump responded when asked about the importance of cybersecurity, according to pool reporters.

In view of the amount of business now conducted by e-mail, I’m picturing the downtown streets of Anytown, USA, clogged by grim-faced Pinkerton men with fedoras and revolvers and titanium briefcases handcuffed to their wrists.