This is a show that was made by National Geographic. I found this show particularly funny in some places, mainly because of the contradictions. So here are a few of those contradictions:
• According to the show, a fellow named Apollonius was not successful because he appealed to the upper classes. Evidently the peasants that followed Jesus had better marketing skills than the upper classes. Those peasants really knew how to organize! On the other hand, Christianity was evidently not successful until, you guessed it, Christianity made it to the upper classes with Constantine. OK, guys, can’t have it both ways. Does appealing to the upper classes make you successful or unsuccessful?
• According to the show, Simon Magus is virtually unknown today because he “lost the debate.” Evidently “history is written by the winners.” Well, that may be true, but it could also be true that Simon Magus was simply a guy who had some good magic tricks but didn’t change people’s lives.
• The narrator claims that Jesus’ crucifixion becomes a “rallying point” for his followers. Hmm, I thought that his resurrection became the rallying point!
• Simon bar Kochba is a rival of Jesus? The narrator claims that “like Jesus, [Simon bar Kochba] speaks out against Rome.” I was under the impression that Jesus spoke out against the Jewish leaders, you know, the scribes and the Pharisees! As far as I can tell Jesus never said anything about Rome, except , "Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's,” Matthew 22:21. They do finally get to that, in the show, but never do explain what they mean by saying “Jesus speaks out against Rome.”
• It’s not really a contradiction but I love the part where Jonathan Reed says he would have put money on Mithraism becoming the official religion of the Roman empire rather than Christianity. I’m not sure how Mithras slitting the throat of a bull is equivalent to Jesus shedding his own blood.
• The comparison with Isis is pretty funny also. The claim is that the pictures of Isis and Mary show a “stunning” similarity because both show mothers holding a child. Maybe both Isis and Mary are shown as mothers holding their child because they are both mothers with a child. Duh. And though the claim is that Isis worship offered a personal relationship with Isis just as Christianity offered a personal relationship with Jesus, how can this be a significant rival to Jesus when even Carole Fontaine admits that “one scholar has said that people adhere to the Isis cult but they are converted to the religion of Jesus.” She also notes that Isis worship didn’t require a person to change their way of life, whereas Christianity had specific rules about how one should live. Don’t these seem like pretty major differences?
• The biggest ‘rival’ to the “Jesus of the New Testament” is—wait for it—Jesus from the Nag Hamadi texts! In other words, the Gnostic Jesus. And I particularly like the part where they first say that the Gnostic Jesus was “less god-like and more human” and then proceed to relate the story about how Jesus comes out of his body and watches his crucifixion from the sidelines, mocking the Roman soldiers’ attempt to kill the immortal Son of God. How exactly does this portray Jesus’ “humanity” as “more appealing to the common man?”
These are just a few of the things I found odd and funny. Probably the biggest laugh was Peter with a Scottish accent, but I guess that isn’t really any funnier than Peter speaking English in the first place.
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Throughout this post, you are assuming that Jesus really was the Son of God. Sounds to me like the disconnect here is that the scholars on the show are not making the same assumption. So the only "contradiction" here, regarding many of your points, is that the people on the show disagree with you on a really basic matter of belief.
ReplyDeleteI mean, take your second point. You're saying that the reason Jesus was successful and Simon Magus wasn't is because Jesus was the real deal. Well, if that's the assumption you're working from, then sure, it makes sense that Christianity spread and Simonmagusism didn't. But if you don't believe Jesus was necessarily the real deal, then you have to find other reasons why his religion succeeded where Simonmagusism failed.
And I gather that's what the show is all about in the first place - finding logical reasons why Christianity won that don't involve assuming that it was because Christianity was the truest religion. Basically, the show comes at the issue from a secular point of view, and you come at it from a Christian point of view. So it's no surprise you think their reasoning is silly.
It sounds as though the producers of this program spent a lot of time studying history in order to come up with a list of fallen heros. They called them "Rivals of Jesus." They most likely knew the name of the show before they knew who the rivals would be.
ReplyDeleteI would expect any show produced by National Geographic to be well documented. It sounds as though the producers fell short in explaining why these fallen hero's were no contest for Jesus. It is no accident that we have never heard of those fallen hero's. Jesus introduced us to the holy spirit which works in our lives as today. I haven't heard of anything that compares to that.
In reply to blueshadows9:
ReplyDeleteIt is an historical fact that Simon Magus didn't have a long term impact on the world.
Yes, the show was trying to find logical reasons why Christianity "won" that don't involve believing that Jesus was divine. However, I don't think they found any logical reasons. I am still waiting to hear a good reason for Christianity succeeding that doesn't involve believing that it is true.
Well, first of all, other religions such as Islam and Buddhism and Hinduism, which you do not consider to be true, are also very successful, so truth is clearly not a necessary prerequisite for success.
ReplyDeleteAnd Methodism, which you presumably consider most true, is less successful than, say, Catholicism - so truth is not a sufficient prerequisite for success, either.
Third, I can think of several logical reasons why Christianity is so wide-spread that have nothing to do with its truth value. Christianity was imposed from the top down and with the use of violent coercion in many places, including Europe and South America. After that, it was just a matter of parents teaching their children the religion they already believed in. Yes, people often adopt religions they weren't born with these days, but in the past, social controls were tighter, and having children was therefore an excellent way to spread a religion.
Christianity (and specifically Catholicism, in the olden days of Europe) capitalized on this by encouraging people to have as many children as possible. Be fruitful and multiply, and all that. Every sperm is sacred. Never abort a pregnancy. Etc. The Quiverfull movement, in fact, is explicitly using fruitful multiplication as a tactic to spread religion. It is also trying to replicate the rigid social controls of the past through homeschooling, small business ownership, and discouraging daughters from going to college, so that children born to Quiverfull members will be more likely to follow in their parents' footsteps.
Islam spreads in much the same manner as Christianity - conquest and high birth rates. Not knowing the history of other religions terribly well, I'm not sure why they spread.
Why Christianity won out over its original rivals, I can't really say with certainty, not ever having studied the issue or even seen the Nat Geo show you watched. I don't know what the rivals were like. But I suspect a big component of Jesus' success was that he took a relatively successful existing religion and stripped away the ethnic component, making it accessible to non-Jews. He had a core group of Jewish believers whose pre-existing beliefs only had to be tweaked a little, and this group became highly motivated to spread the religion after the crucifixion, and then for some reason the Romans picked it up and imposed it on their conquered peoples.
I don't know, it makes sense to me. Also, by what mechanism does the "truth" of Christianity make it more likely to spread? That is, do you think Christianity is more logically convincing than other religions? Or is it more that you believe that it spoke to the people who heard of it?
I have to agree with blueshadow - very sensible analysis.
ReplyDelete