x, don't disagree with anything you said, but i was hoping you would touch on this and you didn't.
say the crucifixion and the disciples' actions following his death were fabricated. a compelling argument to the reliability that they aren't fabricated is that the movement took hold period. but not only did it take hold, it took hold quickly amongst religiously zealous jews that were essentially declaring treason on their faith and tradition by embracing the movement. That would be something akin to a bunch of midwestern white kids suddenly converting to Islam - there would have to be, if not a true reason, then at least a very compelling reason for something like that to happen.
Hey Landlord,
I think it's a fair point. And right there, that last line, is absolutely true. The only thing I might change is the noun "reason" from singular to plural. When you look at the spread of any religion in its historical context, you have to try to recreate a model of the conditions in which the meme spreads. This isn't always easy, but it's necessary, because whether you believe in a higher power or not, it's clearly a fact religions begin, spread, and go extinct.
I know I've talked a few ears off about this already, but take Buddhism (or Islam or anything, really) as a comparison. Siddhartha Goutama was, like Jesus, probably a real person. A lot more needs to be explained by saying he never lived than the core of his teaching survived time's onslaught with a lot of window dressing. I don't know that we face the binary of truth vs. fabrication in either case; more probably it is something in between. Siddhartha lived in a time of religious upheaval and confusion. He lived in northern India, what is now Nepal, at a time where asceticism and renunciation were common practice but neither the ascetics nor the traditional Hindu priests were responding to the needs of the time. His teaching of the "Middle Way" provided a better alternative than what anyone else was selling. Siddhartha didn't invent Nirvana, or Enlightenment, or contemplation (our more specialized word "meditation" does not have a counterpart in the original language), but nevertheless his movement contains all these things and grew popular largely as a reaction against the behavior of the priestly caste of his day. In fact, like Jesus, the Buddha did away with the caste system as well as gender differentiation altogether.
The New Testament paints a similar kind of picture. You find sectarianism everywhere. You have the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Essenes, the Zealots––all different, all contradictory, and to hear Jesus or Paul tell it, they weren't exactly model citizens of the Kingdom. The idea that a new sect of Judaism could emerge and take root in the area it started is not strange to me. I think the novelty of the story in Christianity––the character and social ideas of Jesus himself––were the main draw. Especially when compared against its historical background. The "You have heard it said . . . but I say unto you" sentence structure Jesus often uses seems to indicate Jesus was probably addressing an audience looking for something they didn't already have. They saw the mainstream religion of their time and place as corrupt, and the new faith as the antidote, not a form of treason. Let's not forget
Christianity was not one coherent thing, either. Paul spends half his breath trying to combat heresy in the first century alone, and we have plenty of historical evidence of 'false' gospels and letters, pseudepigrapha, and competing sectarian theologies.
Another problem is numbers. Namely, how do we know how fast the Christian church spread? The biblical figures are a bit unreliable for several reasons. The estimates I've seen are around a few thousand Jewish Christians in the first couple decades after Jesus, and then that number rises drastically when you throw in the gentiles 30-50 years after the crucifixion. It explodes when it becomes fashionable (and eventually legal) in Rome a few centuries later. The New Testament shows glimpses of feuding and persecution between Jews and Christians (and Jews and Jews, and Christians and Christians). It wasn't like a wholesale conversion. The "blood drinkers" with their "love feasts" were a controversial group, but they survived, adapted, and continued on. All religions I know of follow this pattern.
A little rambly here, but my point is I don't really see the "needs miraculous explanation" part of the story. Especially because the whole sequence of events outlined in the gospels is just a big black question mark. The truth is we don't know exactly what happened to make Christianity spread, but I'm sure historians could present multiple tenable hypotheses. Remember we are talking about the first century Roman Empire, where every imaginable kind of religion existed and was practiced. In American prisons today, Islam spreads rapidly. Does Islam have to be true for this to be the case? Of course not. But
something is happening indeed. History is filled with little implausible twists of fate. Should we be surprised by them? We are talking about humans and their deepest wishes and fears, after all.
