IQ & Atheism

[Joseph Tracy]

Crossan too speaks of the remarkable parallels between the ideas of  
the cynics and Jesus teachings, but once Jesus was killed the  
continuation of the community and vision fell into dispute and moved  
in different directions  with Paul,  the gospel writers, the later  
Johanine community , and a guy named Iranaeus all moving toward a  
theology that was heavily influenced by the Pharisees and their skill  
at interpreting Jesus through scriptural texts even to the point of  
fabricating implausible fictions like the birth in Bethlehem.  Part  
of this  Pharasaic theology is the whole idea of a cosmic battle  
between good and evil, God and Satan, and the importance of ritual  
purity in determining divine favor, which also plays out  in the rise  
and fall of empires. Some of these ideas came from Persia and the  
Zoroastrians who allowed the rebuilding of the temple and were fairly  
benign in their dealings with the Jews.

As far as satire there is a gnostic text that I heard Elaine Pagels  
refer to as probably a rather harsh satire of the bishops'  
christianity and their exaltation of martyrdom.
On Mar 1, 2010, at 7:36 PM, Robin Landseadel wrote:

>
> 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.