- Jan 12, 2012
- 27,286
- 113
I like history...There are roughly 32-34 accounts of Christ in the ancient world outside of scripture, spoken so matter of factly that it is plain to anyone who reads Greco/Roman Histories that these things happened and were recorded...The debate then wasn't "whether" these things happened but rather by what "means" these events happened.....We are left with few options...
1.) He was a sociopath schooled in illusions that would put Penn Gillette to shame...
2.) He was in league with Satan and through dark arts conjured illusions
3.) He was the greatest writer of all time, so much so that a version of Prodigal Son parable surfaces nearly every year in film and literature..
4.) Or He was exactly who He said He was....
My "faith" (based on evidence via written records from numerous sources, many having no "dog in this hunt" as it were) is that option 4 is the only logical conclusion I could come to...
Anything else kind of reminds me of 9/11 conspiracy theories...."No....What happened, you see, is he died and his followers stole his body...Right? Oh and then they kind of held it up and Peter moved Jesus's mouth from behind and he threw his voice so it appeared that Jesus spoke to about 500 people...Oh and then they took the body and waylaid Saul on the road to Damascus...See they had another dude slip some peyote in Saul's drink and when he started tripping Peter held up Jesus from behind like a Charlie McCarthy dummy and moving His mouth saying "Saul, Why do you persecute me???? Change your name to Paul and travel 20,000 miles of Roman road telling folks about me and my words...."
Now that, in my opinion, requires a leap of faith...
Or one can take the non historical, non evidence based approach and say "Ah..That's just a bunch of made up stories by simple desert dwellers..."
I (for once in a very great while) was trying to stay focused on one relatively small point!