I've read your interesting posts and you gave a number of informative links. You have offered some hypotheses for which there may be, or may not be, a modicum of evidence, beyond mere theological conjecture, that there was a real historical Jesus who actually said only some small, approximately one-fifth, of the things the Biblical Jesus is recounted as having said. Thus the picture the New Testament paints of an extremely narcissistic Jesus, and a rather horrible person judged by modern standards, may be very unreliable. I except fully that that may be the case, though I tend to think that if there was a real Jesus, for which the evidence is considerably weaker then the devout generally acknowledge, our knowledge of such is quite sketchy, unless of course we are prepared to take the Bible, on faith, as an accurate account.
I thank you for pointing out that it's possible that the Biblical account is very inaccurate.
The thread I started, somewhat tongue in cheek, is only concerned with the Jesus of the New Testament. That Jesus exhibited pathological narcissism quite similar to Donald Trump's narcissism. Therefore, I hypothesized that many of the super natural miracles attributed to Jesus in the Bible may have had their origin largely in pathological lies told by the Biblical Jesus. Of course, if there was no Biblical Jesus Christ, but instead another Christ only very poorly described in the New Testament, then the narcissistic character in the New Testament might simply be the result of clerics' or religion promoters' imaginations. That wouldn't, I would think, necessarily rule out narcissism and pathological lying as being a contributor to the, under those circumstances, "fake news" of the New Testament. But it wouldn't rule it in either. I suppose the New Testament account could be the sincere work of honest , truthful, well-meaning, and mentally sound clerics who were under the misconception that Christ was an asshole, and therefore described him as such.
I ordered it moments ago.I thank you for giving me a chance to quote the post below.
I do really respect you or anyone who is able to finish reading all the books, page by page, word by word, in the NT, including Revelation.
Here is a book I am currently scanning/reading.
"
The Moral Ecology of Markets
Assessing Claims about Markets and Justice
Daniel Finn
Saint John's University, Minnesota
"
http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521677998
This is something Oddtrader brought to the discussion.
Agreed. Consequently, Either the Biblical description of Christ as a horrible narcissist or the claim that he willingly died on the cross is wrong.
* In his letters, Paul drew heavily on his knowledge of Stoic philosophy, using Stoic terms and metaphors to assist his new Gentile converts in their understanding of the revealed word of God.[37]
* Paul asserted that he received the Gospel not from man, but directly by "the revelation of Jesus Christ".[Gal 1:11–16] He claimed almost total independence from the Jerusalem community,[3]p.316–320 (possibly in the Cenacle), but agreed with it on the nature and content of the gospel.[Gal 1:22–24] He appeared eager to bring material support to Jerusalem from the various growing Gentile churches that he started. In his writings, Paul used the persecutions he endured to avow proximity and union with Jesus and as a validation of his teaching.
* Death
The New Testament does not say when or how Paul died. The date of Paul's death is believed to have occurred after the Great Fire of Rome in July 64, but before the last year of Nero's reign, in 68.
Paul's death is described in a number of sources:
I Clement (95–96 AD) suggests that both Paul and Peter were martyred.[84]
There is an early tradition found in the writing of Ignatius, probably around 110 AD, that Paul was martyred.[85]
Dionysius of Corinth, in a letter to the Romans (166–174 AD), stated that Paul and Peter were martyred in Italy.[86] Eusebius also cites the Dionysius passage.[87]
The Acts of Paul, an apocryphal work written around 160, describes the martyrdom of Paul. According to the Acts of Paul, Nero condemned Paul to death by decapitation.[88]
Tertullian in his Prescription Against Heretics (200 AD) writes that Paul had a similar death to that of John the Baptist, who was beheaded.[89]
Eusebius of Caesarea in his Church History (320 AD) testifies that Paul was beheaded in Rome and Peter crucified. He wrote that the tombs of these two apostles, with their inscriptions, were extant in his time; and quotes as his authority a holy man of the name of Caius.[90]
Lactantius wrote that Nero "crucified Peter, and slew Paul." (318 AD)[91]
Jerome in his De Viris Illustribus (On Illustrious Men) (392 AD) states that Paul was beheaded at Rome.[92]
John Chrysostom (c. 349–407) wrote that Nero knew Paul personally and had him killed.[93]
Sulpicius Severus says Nero killed Peter and Paul. (403 AD)[94]
A legend later[when?] developed that his martyrdom occurred at the Acquae Salviae, on the Via Laurentina. According to this legend, after Paul was decapitated, his severed head rebounded three times, giving rise to a source of water each time that it touched the ground, which is how the place earned the name "San Paolo alle Tre Fontane" ("St Paul at the Three Fountains").[95][96] Also according to legend, Paul's body was buried outside the walls of Rome, at the second mile on the Via Ostiensis, on the estate owned by a Christian woman named Lucina. It was here, in the fourth century, that the Emperor Constantine the Great built a first church. Then, between the fourth and fifth centuries it was considerably enlarged by the Emperors Valentinian I, Valentinian II, Theodosius I, and Arcadius. The present-day Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls was built there in 1800.[95]
* Remains
Caius in his Disputation Against Proclus (198 AD) mentions this of the places in which the remains of the apostles Peter and Paul were deposited: "I can point out the trophies of the apostles. For if you are willing to go to the Vatican or to the Ostian Way, you will find the trophies of those who founded this Church".[97]
Jerome in his De Viris Illustribus (392 AD) writing on Paul's biography, mentions that "Paul was buried in the Ostian Way at Rome".[92]
In 2002, an 8 foot long marble sarcophagus, inscribed with the words "PAULO APOSTOLO MART" ("Paul apostle martyr") was discovered during excavations around the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls on the Via Ostiensis. Vatican archaeologists declared this to be the tomb of Paul the Apostle in 2005.[98] In June 2009, Pope Benedict XVI announced excavation results concerning the tomb. The sarcophagus was not opened but was examined by means of a probe, which revealed pieces of incense, purple and blue linen, and small bone fragments. The bone was radiocarbon-dated to the 1st or 2nd century. According to the Vatican, these findings support the conclusion that the tomb is Paul's.[99][100]
* Muslim views
Paul has been criticized by certain medieval Muslim writers, as well some modern ones. The main criticism revolves around the claim that Paul misrepresented the original teachings of Jesus.
Sayf ibn Umar claimed that certain rabbis persuaded Paul to deliberately misguide early Christians by introducing what Ibn Hazm viewed as objectionable doctrines into Christianity.[154][155] Ibn Hazm repeated Sayf's claims.[156] Rabbi Jacob Qirqisani also believed that Paul created Christianity by introducing the doctrine of Trinity.[154]
Paul has been criticized by some modern Muslim thinkers. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas wrote that Paul misrepresented the message of Jesus,[157] and Rashid Rida accused Paul of introducing shirk into Christianity.[158] Mohammad Ali Jouhar quoted Adolf von Harnack's critical writings of Paul.[159]
* Jewish views
Main article: Paul the Apostle and Judaism
See also: Messianic Judaism
Jewish interest in Paul is a recent phenomenon. Before the positive historical reevaluations of Jesus by some Jewish thinkers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he had hardly featured in the popular Jewish imagination and little had been written about him by the religious leaders and scholars. Arguably, he is absent from the Talmud and rabbinical literature, although he makes an appearance in some variants of the medieval polemic Toledot Yeshu (as a spy for the rabbis).[160]
* Among the critics of Paul the Apostle was Thomas Jefferson, a Deist, who wrote that Paul was the "first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus."[180] Christian anarchists, such as Leo Tolstoy[181] and Ammon Hennacy,[182] take a similar view.