Okay, so, I guess this is somewhat of a click-bait title; English words have multiple meanings, and no less so true of the word Christian than all but the most overloaded words.
Let me be clear who I am meaning to address: if you consider yourself a confirmed Christian in the vein of one of the arteries through space and time of the memeplex I call “the Hydra”…
Oh, that’s not clear at all, is it? Me making up my ludicrous proprietary babble and expecting you all to just follow along…
Well, I was planning to do an OP on what I meant by “Hydra” as a personal coinage… and then, just minutes before deciding to write this OP, what video pops up? Wow… Matt Baker, what a legend (subscribe to him if you haven’t already), went and drew a beautiful picture of it!
Meme (a word coined by Richard Dawkins in a book he published before I was born) is a word that has been overloaded to mean “silly funny click-baiting trolly or otherwise entertaining picture or video or sound clip that not only goes viral but has viral offspring” (or there or thereabouts)… but… I want to go back to Dawkins’ purist coinage… it is the analogue of “gene”. He explains it very well in his excellent book (which everybody should read) The Selfish Gene.
Clearly any one branch in Matt’s brilliant video contains a number of memes… and sometimes, memes work together in groups…
When genes work together in groups we can look at emergent things like animals.
Likewise, when memes work together in groups we can look at emergent things like ……….Memeplexes
I suggest that there is one memeplex of particular interest: YHWH worship.
I call it the Hydra… if you look at its action over history… how it has split and split and split and conquered and divided and separated and schismed and lost heads but grown back two for every one that has died away… how it has incited much violence between us.
Now… here’s what I wanted to talk about:
Before deciding (and I’d love to hear from any of you if you think you have a good reason to consider your particular twig on the tree superior in wisdom or doctrine to any other twig) in which vein of throbbing YHWH worship one should flow, wouldn’t it be wise first to establish that YHWH is even a real entity?
No… perhaps too strong, eh? None of you Christians ever want to talk about the Old Testament, do you? Only insofar as you think it proves Christianity true.
Perhaps, Christians out there, before you decided where on the Hydra your soul hung, it might be an idea to find out about the real life Jesus (if there was such a fella)… before publicly professing yourselves affirmed Christians with the Bible as your Book and the Lord Jesus Christ as your salvation and only path to be with YHWH-God…
For instance… what do we know about Jesus?
The earliest we hear about a confirmed flesh-and-blood fellow is in Roman post-war propaganda penned anonymously in Rome in Greek to an Eastern Roman audience:
Jesus, son of YHWH-God, incarnated among the Judeans with the message:
1. You’re a lot of ‘orrible oiks!
2. You’ve angered me!
3. You follow the letter of the law but you do not follow the spirit of the law!
4. Lay down your arms!
5. Love even your [Roman] enemies!
6. Follow the local [Roman] laws!
7. Pay taxes unto Lord Caesar!
In a Roman account after the war.
Josephus, slave of Vespasian, then an official Roman historian, tells us this in On the War, Book VI, Chapter V, Section IV:
But now what did the most elevate them in undertaking this war, was an ambiguous oracle, that was also found in their sacred writings; how “About that time one, from their country, should become governor of the habitable earth.” The Jews took this prediction to belong to themselves in particular: and many of the wise men were thereby deceived in their determination. Now this oracle certainly denoted the government of Vespasian: who was appointed emperor in Judea.
Exactly what to make of Mark (a name attributed that text much later) can be further clarified by a study of Mark 13 in the light of what Flavian Josephus tells us plainly.
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Bible: KJV
Book: Mark
Chapter: 13
1 And as he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here!
2 And Jesus answering said unto him, Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.
3 And as he sat upon the mount of Olives over against the temple, Peter and James and John and Andrew asked him privately,
4 Tell us, when shall these things be? and what shall be the sign when all these things shall be fulfilled?
5 And Jesus answering them began to say, Take heed lest any man deceive you:
6 For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
7 And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet.
8 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
9 But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them.
10 And the gospel must first be published among all nations.
11 But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.
12 Now the brother shall betray the brother to death, and the father the son; and children shall rise up against their parents, and shall cause them to be put to death.
13 And ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake: but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.
14 But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing where it ought not, (let him that readeth understand,) then let them that be in Judaea flee to the mountains:
15 And let him that is on the housetop not go down into the house, neither enter therein, to take any thing out of his house:
16 And let him that is in the field not turn back again for to take up his garment.
17 But woe to them that are with child, and to them that give suck in those days!
18 And pray ye that your flight be not in the winter.
19 For in those days shall be affliction, such as was not from the beginning of the creation which God created unto this time, neither shall be.
20 And except that the Lord had shortened those days, no flesh should be saved: but for the elect’s sake, whom he hath chosen, he hath shortened the days.
21 And then if any man shall say to you, Lo, here is Christ; or, lo, he is there; believe him not:
22 For false Christs and false prophets shall rise, and shall shew signs and wonders, to seduce, if it were possible, even the elect.
23 But take ye heed: behold, I have foretold you all things.
24 But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,
25 And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken.
26 And then shall they see the Son of man coming in the clouds with great power and glory.
27 And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.
28 Now learn a parable of the fig tree; When her branch is yet tender, and putteth forth leaves, ye know that summer is near:
29 So ye in like manner, when ye shall see these things come to pass, know that it is nigh, even at the doors.
30 Verily I say unto you, that this generation shall not pass, till all these things be done.
31 Heaven and earth shall pass away: but my words shall not pass away.
32 But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father.
33 Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.
34 For the Son of man is as a man taking a far journey, who left his house, and gave authority to his servants, and to every man his work, and commanded the porter to watch.
35 Watch ye therefore: for ye know not when the master of the house cometh, at even, or at midnight, or at the cockcrowing, or in the morning:
36 Lest coming suddenly he find you sleeping.
37 And what I say unto you I say unto all, Watch. """*/I’ve highlighted one very important verse: verse 30.
It’s clear as day that this ROMAN STORY invents a Jesus Christ from 70 years previous… and one of his messages is that The Son of Man (Himself) will come again… when, the disciples want to know? It’ll happen in your lifetimes, the approximately 35 year old Jesus says before he’s executed by the machinations of the evil Sanhedrin under Roman occupation… and this invented Jesus is of course predicting… the events of Vespasian razing the temple, stealing the holy texts, and enslaving many of what few survived, which had just happened, no less, at the time of publication of the (again I remind you): Roman story.
It’s a clear case of vaticinium ex eventu… that is, a prophecy written after the author already had information about the events being “foretold”.
Oh, and I love that verse 14 tells us that the Roman author is aware of “Daniel the prophet”. That gives the hint as to why 70 years cut in half was chosen for the Jesus character in the made-up story… to seem to be like the final week in the (already famous at the time [and misread as applying to the then future {despite being itself an example of vaticinium ex eventu}]) prophecy of seventy weeks.
So… if the earliest mention of a real-life Jesus is just some bogus Roman propaganda…
Wherefore should anybody believe a word of Christianity?
Don’t any of you realize that a story written in Judea by Judeans in a Judean dialect 35 years earlier MIGHT be considered “eye witness” but that a story written in Rome by Romans in a Roman dialect AFTER Vespasian sieged Jerusalem and ascended the Roman throne cannot seriously be used to determine the slightest thing about any real life Jesus? Especially when it’s such obvious Roman propaganda.