• kava@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    this a naive and reductionist view of christianity. it was actually a quite revolutionary and radical movement. god himself became human and lost faith. as zizek puts it, christianity is the most athiestic religion.

    jesus was a radical figure trying to kick the romans out of judea - which is why he got executed. he was against the organized religion and the power structures of the time. a few decades after, there was a jewish revolt and the jews controlled jerusalem for a few years. the Romans sent a large army, captured it, and decided to deal with the “jewish question” by making judiasm illegal and scattering the jews

    paul, christianity’s don draper, who wrote half the bible and the earliest works of the bible, came up with all sorts of fantastic stories (3 day resurrection, immaculate birth, etc) and modified the story to make it friendlier to roman gentiles (pontius pilate washed his hands in the bible and didn’t want to kill jesus. in reality he killed thousands of jews a year. he wouldn’t have given jesus a second thought)

    so christianity went from a jewish cult to a fast-growing religion and that spread across the empire until eventually Constantine himself converted

    christianity is the story of the tenacity of the jewish people and the soft power they managed to propagate throughout the empire even after the empire tried to stamp them out. it’s the story of a small desert people conquering the roman empire against all odds

    you reduce it so something so simplistic and naive and it’s sad. people should learn the full story.

    • Thirdborne@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I really don’t see there’s specific evidence for what motivated Jesus, what his goals were or even anything he actually said. Maybe he was a real specific person, but for sure he would have been much less than how the stories portray him. We can say this for certainty because the gospels contradict each other in the specific events of his life.

      You seem to be creating your christian narrative out of wishful thinking just because you want to see it that way. Very normal Christian thinking on your part.

      I hate this need to for legend and superstition to justify value systems. It’s so easy to manipulate people with this mentality. Look at Qanon. Just believing anything that affirms their prejudice fears. When the leader comes along who can codify and canonize the belief system it’s going to be a disaster for civilization.

      • kava@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        You feel such a strong desire to prove wrong you don’t realize you’re talking to an atheist. I’m talking about historical Jesus.

        I think a good book is Zealot by Reza Aslan, if you’re interested in early Christianity. Did you know Jesus had a brother, James? And he was an important leader in early Christianity?