It would be honest, but I think quite insane. Once again, we’re not talking about some general “God is in all of us” divine: we’re talking about someone who can say, “Yeah, I’m monotheistic, and also, I am God.” That would be a huge glaring mistake, and seemingly in total deviation from Judaism. To even make that mistake, it seems to me, Jesus would have to be a megalomaniac. Humble people just don’t mistakenly think they’re God - people who already sort of suspect (deep down) that they *might *be God, because the world revolves around them… those are people who could maybe, theoretically, accidentally think themselves God. And yet Jesus was incredibly humble… “mistake” doesn’t fit with His character any better than “liar,” in my opinion.
Well, I would doubt that Jesus would make a simple mistake and think himself to be God. I would expect that he would have had a vision/experience that would make him really and truly believe that he was God incarnate. Whether or not the vision was divine or merely a hallucination, it would have the same effect on his behavior, as he believed it to be divine.
Belloc Fan:
The Transfiguration (Matthew 17:1-9, Mark 9:2-8, Luke 9:28-36), observed by Peter, James, and John, occurs *after *He’s already claimed to be God. So these would have to be recurrent hallucinations, and hallucinations others saw (Jesus’ Baptism also included light, the voice of God, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove coming down from Heaven). These would also be auditory **and **visual hallucinations. Mild lunacy just doesn’t seem to fit: this doesn’t appear to be lunacy, and it certainly wasn’t mild.
I wouldn’t expect Peter, James, and John all to have the same hallucination on the mountaintop, no. I would think that maybe that story was a bit of a - well, story, similar to Mohammed’s story of splitting the moon in half.
Belloc Fan:
I think that the general consensus is that the earliest of Paul’s epistles are from around 51 A.D. And when he’s writing, he’s defending orthodoxy, he’s not advancing a radical new idea. What I mean is that he never tries to introduce people to Christianity by epistle - that would be an inefficient way to do it. So it makes sense that in the earliest days of Christianity, when they’re spreading the message, they’re doing it orally - in synagogues, in the streets, etc. The Book of Acts even describes all of this. Their emphasis was on building Christ’s Church, not giving historians some *primo *primary source documents. As the Church spreads geographically, it becomes inefficient to instruct everyone in person, so the epistles and eventually, the Gospels, are written.
How do we know that he’s teaching what Jesus taught?
quote=Belloc Fan We’re dealing with a large Church by the time of NT writing, filled with many people with personal experiences, people who talked with Jesus (before or after Resurrection). The rest were people who converted, having been told certain things about Jesus. If those things suddenly and radically changed, someone would have noticed. [Christianity wouldn’t have worked as a cult, b/c the Church was too spread out - so there’s no chance that they’d just go along with it because Paul or someone else said to: Paul’s letters even show that parts of the Church didn’t respect his authority]
(2) There were probably lots more writings that we don’t have. Not just other writers (which is certainly true - and many of them writing the Church considered orthodox but not Divinely-inspired), but other writings of the same authors. Things like notes, earlier letters (Paul mentions earlier letters in one of his epistles, but the letter just doesn’t exist anymore), and so forth.
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When the New Testament was being written, I would say that a great portion of those who had seen Jesus were dead. What was the average lifespan back then, 35, 40 years?
Belloc Fan:
While we’re left with the New Testament and certain early writings of the Apostolic Fathers, the early Church had pretty extensive fact-checking resources, and a lot on the line. These passed the muster of a much better informed Church, so we can safely accept them as orthodox.
Who checked these facts? How did they do it? How do we know that we can trust their word?
Belloc Fan:
What we can be sure of (based on what I just said) is that Jesus didn’t just claim to be a teacher or rabbi, and his followers suddenly and inexplicably turned Him into their God, and rejected the monotheism of their birth. Had Jesus not claimed to be God, He never would have been crucified, and no one would have ever converted from Judaism to Christianity (there wouldn’t have even been a need to convert).
Given the lack of education at the time, the political conditions, I don’t see how it would be difficult for a man who preached a message of peace and brotherhood to have his message greatly twisted. I mean, a similar situation happened with the cargo cults (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult)), most notably the John Frum cult. Looking at the expansion that the Cargo Cults went through, even with constant contact with Western civilizations reminding them that their newfound religion was false, I’d imagine that it would be rather easy for the same thing to happen 2,000 years ago.
I think what it essentially comes down to is the testimony of those few who wrote letters, gospels, etc. You view their testimony as trustworthy, but I do not. Testimony on its own is not really conclusive - we have all sorts of testimony on all sorts of issues (UFO technology possessed by the U.S. government, cult followers claiming that their leader works miracles, alien abductions, etc.).
