Roman
01-29-2007, 09:42 PM
Have you ever watched your kids after they played with other kids and lost, and then had rage about it? I would imagine that in the middle of rage they would explaim "I didn't want to win anyway; in fact I was the one who screw mysefl up, yes I deliberately did it because I wanted to lose". I am not sure if any of your kids did it, but I did it plenty of times. When I was so enraged over being "weak" I wanted to portray myself as insane INSTEAD of weak. I wanted to say "no I didn't lose because I was weak; I lost becaues I did it DELIBERATELY". I even do it now with women. If I begin to sense that I am turning a woman off by some "little things", I would hurry up and deliberately do a bunch of HUGE things to turn her off, such as name calling, swearing, etc. just in order to stage a scenario where I did it on purpose and consequently be able to tell to myself that she is turned off because of deliberate action on my part, as opposed to my being unattractive.
I believe that a lot of this theme is reflected in passion story in the gospels. The whole thing about Judas Escariot could have been made up by the enraged disciples who wanted to say the same thing. They were basically saying "no, the guards didn't find us, rather one of our own betrayed Jesus". What is even more telling is the graphic way in which it was portrayed how the disciples were trying to defend Jesus while Jesus kept telling them NOT to defend him. And even more graphic is whenever either Judas or the guards were procrastinating, Jesus kept telling htem "do what you came here to do". In fact in one of the gospels Jesus stepped out and identified himself before Judas Escariot ever had a chance to give him a kiss (but he gave him a kiss anyway, after the fact). And later in the court room, again the same theme: Ponte Pilate was trying to encourage Jesus to defend himself while Jesus was deliberately quite.
From this point of view I can explain easilly why Jews, rather than Romans, are portrayed as Christ killers. Even though, as a Christian, I believe in inerrancy of gosples, as a physicist I like to theorise a lot. So, lets consider hypothetic case where I will assume that Romans were the ones who wanted him dead, and the charges were NOT blashphemy (i.e. the ones Jews were charging him with) but rather the fact that he was stirring Jewish revolt against Rome. In this case, the crucifixion of Jesus is an example of victory of Rome over Jews. So the Jewish disciples who didn't want to admit that Jews (i.e. their team) was defeated by oposing team (i.e. Romans) decided to instead say that Jews defeated themselves, and thus they are no longer "weaker side". To further emphasize that point they portrayed Ponte Pilat as unwilling to kill Jesus and thus implying that they have gottened plenty of chances NOT to be defeated (i.e. they effectively won the game), they "simply" refused to accept these chances.
And now lets talk about the verse "his blood be upon us and upon our children". Remember, in first century Christians were presecutted by Rome as a Jewish sect -- in fact they were persecutted even more than Jews were. So, they didn't want to admit that they were persecutted because they were weak. Instead they wanted to say they (i.e. Jews) were persecutted because tehy called a curse upon themselves. In other words, Romans didn't defeat Jews but instead the Jews defeated themselves by that curse. Hence the verse.
So the bottom line is that, as first century Jews, the disciples of Jesus had a lot of temper tantrums over the fact that Romans conqured them so they decided to have a defense mechanism (i.e. denial) and say that they, Jews (i.e. passion scene) and they, desciples (i.e. Judas Escariot), and their own leader (Jesus Christ) did it to THEMSELVES and thus DENY that SOMEONE ELSE (i.e. Romans) CONQURED them because they were weak. That was the biggest driving force of the gospels.
And by the way, the entire theme of the New Testament is how it is okay to be weak, and how to LOVE your neighbor is more important than to be sophisticated (i.e. legalistic), which is also a perfect defense mechanism for someone weak. And a little bit of dramma (i.e. temple torn in two parts, etc) might also be a sort of defense mechanism, because it gets your attention away from the secular competition which you are so bad at.
By the way, I am Christian, and I believe in the literal interpretation of the bible. So my personal belief is that it was factual and any kind of hint on temper tantrum is coincidental. Now why were I saying something I don't agree with? Well, as a physicist, I believe in exploring many different theories, both the ones with which I agree with, and the ones I don't. Just like in math there are several geometries based on different axioms, each being self consistent. So, I have Christian theories, Jewish theories, atheist theories, etc. For personal reasons I chose to stick with Christian theories. However, in this particular post I would like to explore atheist version. So, according to the theory presented in this post, Christianity have miserably failed, and a lot of what was written in the New Testament was a defense mechanism of the disciples. But at the same time I have a lot of other theories where it isn't the case. But I will save it for a different post.
I believe that a lot of this theme is reflected in passion story in the gospels. The whole thing about Judas Escariot could have been made up by the enraged disciples who wanted to say the same thing. They were basically saying "no, the guards didn't find us, rather one of our own betrayed Jesus". What is even more telling is the graphic way in which it was portrayed how the disciples were trying to defend Jesus while Jesus kept telling them NOT to defend him. And even more graphic is whenever either Judas or the guards were procrastinating, Jesus kept telling htem "do what you came here to do". In fact in one of the gospels Jesus stepped out and identified himself before Judas Escariot ever had a chance to give him a kiss (but he gave him a kiss anyway, after the fact). And later in the court room, again the same theme: Ponte Pilate was trying to encourage Jesus to defend himself while Jesus was deliberately quite.
From this point of view I can explain easilly why Jews, rather than Romans, are portrayed as Christ killers. Even though, as a Christian, I believe in inerrancy of gosples, as a physicist I like to theorise a lot. So, lets consider hypothetic case where I will assume that Romans were the ones who wanted him dead, and the charges were NOT blashphemy (i.e. the ones Jews were charging him with) but rather the fact that he was stirring Jewish revolt against Rome. In this case, the crucifixion of Jesus is an example of victory of Rome over Jews. So the Jewish disciples who didn't want to admit that Jews (i.e. their team) was defeated by oposing team (i.e. Romans) decided to instead say that Jews defeated themselves, and thus they are no longer "weaker side". To further emphasize that point they portrayed Ponte Pilat as unwilling to kill Jesus and thus implying that they have gottened plenty of chances NOT to be defeated (i.e. they effectively won the game), they "simply" refused to accept these chances.
And now lets talk about the verse "his blood be upon us and upon our children". Remember, in first century Christians were presecutted by Rome as a Jewish sect -- in fact they were persecutted even more than Jews were. So, they didn't want to admit that they were persecutted because they were weak. Instead they wanted to say they (i.e. Jews) were persecutted because tehy called a curse upon themselves. In other words, Romans didn't defeat Jews but instead the Jews defeated themselves by that curse. Hence the verse.
So the bottom line is that, as first century Jews, the disciples of Jesus had a lot of temper tantrums over the fact that Romans conqured them so they decided to have a defense mechanism (i.e. denial) and say that they, Jews (i.e. passion scene) and they, desciples (i.e. Judas Escariot), and their own leader (Jesus Christ) did it to THEMSELVES and thus DENY that SOMEONE ELSE (i.e. Romans) CONQURED them because they were weak. That was the biggest driving force of the gospels.
And by the way, the entire theme of the New Testament is how it is okay to be weak, and how to LOVE your neighbor is more important than to be sophisticated (i.e. legalistic), which is also a perfect defense mechanism for someone weak. And a little bit of dramma (i.e. temple torn in two parts, etc) might also be a sort of defense mechanism, because it gets your attention away from the secular competition which you are so bad at.
By the way, I am Christian, and I believe in the literal interpretation of the bible. So my personal belief is that it was factual and any kind of hint on temper tantrum is coincidental. Now why were I saying something I don't agree with? Well, as a physicist, I believe in exploring many different theories, both the ones with which I agree with, and the ones I don't. Just like in math there are several geometries based on different axioms, each being self consistent. So, I have Christian theories, Jewish theories, atheist theories, etc. For personal reasons I chose to stick with Christian theories. However, in this particular post I would like to explore atheist version. So, according to the theory presented in this post, Christianity have miserably failed, and a lot of what was written in the New Testament was a defense mechanism of the disciples. But at the same time I have a lot of other theories where it isn't the case. But I will save it for a different post.