Christianity is historically puzzling

There are two particularly puzzling features of Christianity, at least to me.

1. How can we make sense of Jesus' message which is both aggressive:

Matthew 10:34-36: "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household."

but also pacific:

Matthew 5:38-39, "You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also."

2. How did a religion which seems so contradictory, which was espoused by a failed Jewish itinerant preacher and which was largely rejected by his own people sweep to dominance in the entire Roman Empire within a span of less than 300 years?

These are questions which have been discussed for hundreds of years.

I find the terms of the debate also interesting: it's a prototype of the current culture wars. On the one hand we have a still-powerful theological community emotionally invested in Christianity's claims; on the other hand we have scientific/historical attempts to discern the truth of the historical Jesus and to track the real historical dynamics which led to Constantine and the First Council of Nicaea (325 CE).

It takes real moral courage to peer beneath the mythologising texts of the Gospels to seek kernels of rational truth - the results are not an easy read for believers. The authors I trust most seem to be almost 'on the spectrum' in their committment to truth and their unwillingness to compromise in order to 'avoid giving offense'.

For the historic Jesus I went with Ed Sanders (who favours the apocalyptic prophet model). His book is almost like a thriller or a detective story, and he paints a compelling figure of Jesus. A lot of what Jesus said and did makes sense if he truly believed the Kingdom of God was actually going to arrive - in some transcendent sense - in a matter of days or just a few weeks at most. And Jesus did plainly believe that.

Amazon link

Sanders soft-pedals the resurrection, stating only that something real to the apostles must have occurred. It's plain that Sanders sees this as a sequence of visions for the profoundly emotionally-disturbed followers of Jesus following the crucifixion, as was recounted for Paul.

As far as I can tell, all the post-crucifixion narratives are non-historical. Here is what Bart Ehrman has to say:

"To sum it up, not only during war but also in times of (relative) peace the Romans publicly humiliated and tortured to death enemies of state precisely in order to keep the peace. Jesus was condemned not for blasphemy, not for cleansing the temple, not for irritating the Sadducees, not for bad-mouthing the Pharisees, not for … well, not for anything but one thing. He was crucified for calling himself the King of the Jews.

Only Romans could appoint the King. If Jesus thought he himself was going to be the King, for the Romans this would have been a declaration of war (since he would have to usurp their power and authority to have himself installed as king) (I’m talking about how Romans would have interpreted Jesus’ claim to be king, not what he himself may have meant by it). They may have found it astounding, if not pathetic, that this unknown peasant from the rural hinterlands would be imagining that he could overthrow Roman rule in Judea.

But Romans didn’t much care if someone was a megalomaniac, a feasible charismatic preacher, or a bona-fide soldier in arms. If the person declared “war” on Rome – which a claim to being the King amounted to – the Romans knew how to deal with him. He would be publicly tortured and humiliated, left to rot on a cross so everyone could see what happens to someone who thinks he can cross the power of Rome. There was no mercy and no reprieve.

And there was no decent burial, precisely because there was no mercy or reprieve in cases such as this. After the point was made – after time, the elements, and the scavengers had done their work – the body could be dumped into some kind of pit or common grave. But not until the humiliation and the punishment were complete.

Yes, it’s true that in Jesus’ day, the country was not in armed rebellion against Rome. There was a general peace. But this is the very reason *why* there was peace. Would-be offenders – insurrectionists, political enemies, guerilla warriors, rival kings, enemies of the state – were brought face to face with the power of Rome in a very gruesome way, and most people, who for as a rule preferred very much not to be food for the birds and dogs, stayed in line as a result."

This seems to be the consensual view amongst scholars of the historical Jesus. Note that:

"Mark is the sole source for Joseph of Arimathea. The other three just copy. Mark uses two sources for Joseph. The first is a fictive recreation of Priam, who in Homer seeks the body of Hector. The second is Gen:4-6, where Joseph the Patriarch ask Pharaoh for permission to bury Jacob (Israel). Arimathea is an invented name: in Greek: Ari is best, math is teaching/doctrine, aia is place. So, Best Doctrine Town."

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I'm about to move on to my second area of puzzlement. Here I choose as my guide this:

Amazon link

From the description:

"How did Christianity become the dominant religion in the West? In the early first century, a small group of peasants from the backwaters of the Roman Empire proclaimed that an executed enemy of the state was God’s messiah. Less than four hundred years later it had become the official religion of Rome with some thirty million followers. It could so easily have been a forgotten sect of Judaism.

Through meticulous research, Bart Ehrman, an expert on Christian history, texts and traditions, explores the way we think about one of the most important cultural transformations the world has ever seen, one that has shaped the art, music, literature, philosophy, ethics and economics of modern Western civilisation."

I may have more to say later once I've had a chance to read it.

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Incidentally, do you think Razib Khan is being brave in making these interesting remarks about the origins of a similarly monotheistic religion?
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