IQ & Atheism

[Robin Landseadel]

On Mar 1, 2010, at 10:57 AM, Joseph Tracy wrote:

> Your knowledge is quite accurate. In the decades leading up to the  
> imperial political endorsement of those bishops favoring  
> incarnation/ Gospel of John as definitive theology , which occurred  
> at Nicaea  there were strongly divergent views and differing written  
> gospels. According to John Crossan and several other scholars the  
> theology of incarnation-messiah-sacrificial lamb-resurrection  came  
> from converted Pharisees who used their scriptural expertise to  
> shape the theological interpretation of this charismatic Jesus  
> figure. The Pharisees already believed in a messianic deliverer and  
> "that good bodliy resurrection" as Deuce called it, and they had a  
> literacy which is likely to have been rare among Jesus's followers.  
> So even though Jesus warned against the ideas of the Pharisees. it  
> was converted  Pharisees like Paul who shaped the religion most and  
> carried over certain theological ideas.

Guess I've already re-distributed my little posting on the Greek  
Cynics enough times, but in short—Burton L. Mack's got a baliwick akin  
to but not Identical with John Crossan. Mack points to Cynic sources  
for the Christian Myth, particularly the part that sounds suspiciously  
close to Hippies, that part of the emerging  cultural matrix that spun  
out satire, Pynchon's principle modus operandi.

I dunno, but I suspect there's something about heresy in there too.