The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Please don't get mad at me. Crisis of faith inquiry

Has anyone here heard of this documentary? “Caesar’s Messiah” )Site Link :open_mouth:

youtube.com/watch?v=0aSKN0xnfsA <Full Documentary - Caesar’s Messiah under different YT Title

I’m new to the faith and being ignorant of Christian history this matter concerns me. It makes me wonder when 85% of the new testament was written by the Roman Saul/Paul, who never knew the living Jesus. And his testimony tells us to obey authorities as if they’re set there by God himself. Turn the other cheek, love our enemies, as slaves obey our masters, work twice as hard as asked to. When Jesus testimony was that of a radical, a revolutionary who stood against the authorities that sought to stand between us and God. In the temple or in the secular realm.

What do you all think of this information? Is it valid? Is it refutable?
Thank you. I have to admit I’ve been depressed since I happened on it. And I thought I was into religious history. Until now.

I guess I’m saying that I don’t want to worship a Caesar. Or a lie. :frowning:

Hi Sunflower, and welcome!

I haven’t watched the video, but thought I’d mention in passing that “love your enemy” and “turn the other cheek” were said by Jesus, not by Paul. Also “give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.” The authorities that Jesus opposed were the religious leaders of his day, not the Romans.

Sonia

Paul was a Jew (a Pharisee) first, a Roman second. He was quite happy to disobey and antagonize authorities when they stood between him and his mission to preach Christ. As for seeing the living Christ, Paul claims that he did see him on the road to Damascus, an event that changed his life utterly and forever.

I find it fascinating that Paul’s critics don’t seem to notice that this hated and misunderstood man laid the foundation for the greatest civilization the world has ever seen, and is still loved, loathed and debated 2000 years after his death. Not bad if was nothing but a crank, eh?

One more thing. If a certain argument or theory depresses you, that itself might be sufficient reason to reject it. Why eat food that makes you sick? Truth is life-giving, not depressing. My hope in the goodness and universal grace of God makes the sun shine more brightly, which is a very good reason for believing it’s true.

Hello old chap :slight_smile:

I think the documentary is enormously selective and sensationalist. It has no scholars who disagree with the thesis to speak.

Paul was beheaded by the Romans. The early Christians were persecuted in their thousands by the Romans. I think New Testament is nuanced in its view of the Romans. Jesus in my view is not pro Roman. He is dealing with the circumstances and results of the oppression of his people under Imperial powers throughout the Gospels. However neither is he pro-Zealot – he doesn’t see violent insurrection as they way forward and understands acutely and correctly that if the people of God turn to violence their end will be violent (hence his heart breaking lament over Jerusalem).

Paul enjoins us to obey the authorities; Jesus enjoins us to resist, them where we have to, non-violently. I think the Romans do play a big part in Jesus death – although he is condemned as a blasphemer by the Sanhedrin, anxious about losing their power, he is crucified by a Roman governor anxious about losing his power, as a rebel. And both the Sanhedrin and this particular Roman governor did lose their power; the Sanhedrin for supporting the Zealtots, and Pilate for being too brutal and fomenting unnecessary unrest. I think there are many instances where the Gospel narratives are critical of Roman power while commending individual Romans. What are the powers that Paul talks about as being lead in triumph at the death of Jesus – these are the powers of oppression that Jesus triumphs over – they are the powers within of hatred and self seeking but also the powers without (as Ghandi realised in order to struggle with the latter we must struggle first with the former). And of course the Book of Revelation is very critical of the Roman Empire – the mark of the Beast is often identified as meaning the Emperor Nero (and some even identify the false prophet with Flavius Josephus).

When Rome became the Christian Empire – Christianity lost a lot of its vitality and innocence. But there is no reason to read back the motives of the Christian Emperors – most of who were not models of mercy pity and loving-kindness and did merge the kingdoms of Christ with Caesar – into the early Church. Central Josephus was an important propaganda tool for the Christian Emperors – and it was at this time that the Testament of Josephus was interpolated into Josephus’ genuine writings to suggest that he had actually become a Christian. But this was a forgery.

Hope that helps

Dick :slight_smile:

Well said Allan.
Paul was discipled in Antioch for 14 years by christians who walked with Jesus before he began his ministry to the gentiles. He has contact with the disciples and has visions directly from God. He wasn’t isolated from God or witnesses of Christ. He started his ministry after the age of 60 with all the wisdom accrued as a trained scholar and priest and leading to his ministry as an apostle. He was ready. :mrgreen:

My 2 cents - I’m no expert, but it seems to me that a convincing case could be made that the Roman empire twisted Christianity in order to pacify the masses. And so I’m wondering if what these scholars are finding is merely the evidence of this. Because in my deconstructions of my own beliefs, I have found so many things that the average American Christian believes really are not grounded in the Bible, but are instead very similar to what could be called Platonic thought (thinking specifically of the idea of Heaven as a place that’s “out there” and the similarities between this and Plato’s idea of the cave of delusion). I have read a number of things by scholars that have indicated that the Biblical Jesus stood against empire - it would not make sense for empire to have invented this. But for empire to have twisted this into a system of beliefs that could be easily pacified because its adherents only cared about the minimal entrance fee for access to a place “out there” - that makes more sense.

You meant to say “agree” so I fixed that for you. :slight_smile:

Heck, even other radical Jesus Myth proponents (up to and including the nearly insane theories of the popular anti-Christian apologist Acherya S) think this guy is so hugely wrong he’s going to give Jesus Myth theories generally a bad name. :laughing: (Or rather a worse name, since hardly any scholars even among the super-sceptical ones follow any theory that Jesus didn’t exist.)

He tried this back in 2005, and was not even worth refuting; updated it in 2011, not even worth refuting. Now he’s putting out a sequel. Well, hey, if he wants practically every scholar of every ideology everywhere to jump on him that badly, maybe he’ll get his wish this time – people seem to be paying more attention because the sensationalism itself is news. :unamused: No doubt he’s willing to trade in whatever remaining scholarly credit he has for the brief monetary influx from people buying his book, but it needlessly upsets people.

Even if I was a complete atheist, I would still believe on the evidence that Jesus existed, went around making claims of some kind of divinity that his followers promoted afterward (I’d say even claims of ultimate divinity), got handed over to the Romans by the Jewish religious authorities on trumped up charges, was executed on Pilate’s authority for political expediency reasons, was crucified to death, buried on the sundown right before the sabbath in a tomb with Temple Levite guards to protect against stealing the body (yet otherwise somehow outside the direct power of the Sanhedrin to secure the body better), and then the body went missing anyway, after which the guards were first told as a panicked first response by the Sanhedrin to incriminate themselves as having fallen asleep so the disciples could steal the body, after which the Sanhedrin quietly dropped that weak story but then were stuck with not lending their authoritative weight to another explanation without decisively recovering the body which they never did, although they did assign a young hotshot rabbi, disciple of Gamaliel, to find out what happened to the body – who then after a couple of years of prosecuting the people claiming the body was resurrected, completely turned around under mysterious circumstances and started claiming he himself had met the bodily risen Jesus, becoming an ardent follower and apologist for the cause he had originally persecuted.

As an atheist I might be stuck trying to account for the disappearance of the body (though I might suspect some disciples somewhere had something to do with it, even if not the major apostles), and I might be stuck trying to account for the reported subsequent appearances of that body, but I’ve studied the situation enough to know that even a rank atheist can reasonably accept very much of the Gospel and Acts accounts as historical.

(In fact I make it a self-critical practice to approach matters for apologetics as a reasonable atheist, since that’s probably the extreme feasible opponent. Unreasonable atheists, or unreasonable anyones, aren’t going to seriously consider a reasonable argument until they change their attitude or have it changed for them, so there’s no point for me looking at it from that perspective, although I still do sometimes just for the practice. :slight_smile: )

So the Christian religion was all some big government conspiracy theory? And it worked?

Why didn’t the film talk about the Rothchild family? Every good government conspiracy has the Rothchild family raking in the profits. They had to be involved in this grand conspiracy somehow.

The Word is under attack. I left atheism behind for Christianity 4 years ago because I started to see a worldwide powerful and systematic attack on the Word of God and as an atheist I couldn’t understand why anyone would bother, so I researched it for over a year. I was still perplexed so I went online and read the Bible. Now I’m a Christian after 39 years as an adult atheist. I immersed myself in the Word because I found it to be refreshing and full of life, truth and Spirit. We will see more attacks on the Word of God as It looks like they’re just getting warmed up. The Bible explains what’s going on just a few pages into it.

When Jesus testimony was that of a radical, a revolutionary who stood against the authorities that sought to stand between us and God. In the temple or in the secular realm.

What do you all think of this information? Is it valid? Is it refutable?
Thank you. I have to admit I’ve been depressed since I happened on it. And I thought I was into religious history. Until now.

When you say Jesus was “a radical revolutionary who stood against the authorities” , this sounds like a description the History Channel or A&E might use. According to Jesus his kingdom was not of this world and he had a mission which had little to do with fighting secular governments but everything to do with reconciling us to God.
Nothing Paul said contradicted Jesus if you make an effort to learn. Yes Paul didn’t meet Jesus in the flesh but he was among Peter and James and many other Apostles and Disciples. Peter called Paul “a beloved brother” and Luke and Paul traveled together. In Acts 15 Paul met Peter and James and others in Jerusalem.
This is a technique used by bible critics called divide and conquer, try to separate the teachings of Jesus and Paul.

I’m new to the faith and being ignorant of Christian history this matter concerns me. It makes me wonder when 85% of the new testament was written by the Roman Saul/Paul, who never knew the living Jesus.

But he was accepted by the other Apostles (Acts 15) and Peter called Paul “beloved brother.” Also Paul often traveled with Luke and Barnabas and was close with Timothy.
Luke was well accepted and he wrote extensively about Paul in Acts.