[Disclaimer] - I am not an American and I consider myself atheist, I am Caucasian and born in a pre-dominantly Christian country.
Based on my limited knowledge of Christianity, it is all about social justice, compassion and peace.
And I was always wondering how come Republicans are perceiving themselves as devout Christians while the political party they support is openly opposing those virtues and if this doesn’t make them hypocrites?
For them the mortal enemy are the lefties who are all about social justice, helping the vulnerable and the not so fortunate and peace.
Christianity sounds to me a lot more like socialist utopia.
The story as I understand it (explained by Neil Stephenson in Snow Crash ) was that living Jesus preached universal mutuality: Love your neighbor as yourself. Everyone is your neighbor. The myth of the empty tomb was to show that it was the people’s religion, independent of temples and priests.
But then…
A disorganized movement was too much for the people (or more likely the apostles wanted sociopolitical power) so they created a myth of the resurrection and the founding of the church. Zombie Jesus has way different opinions than living Jesus.
If there really was a post-crucifixion Jesus, it was likely an impostor, a show. But Church tradition teems with miracles and hagiographs with only the word ofnthe Church itself as evidence.
Not the most accurate information in there. He messes up the Sumerian stuff a bit too. Better than the average person, but roughly what you’d expect being found in a fictional work.
The myth of the empty tomb likely had more to do with a divide over physical resurrection. You can see this in 1 Cor 15, a debate over whether physical resurrection was believed or not. The group denying it was associated with both female disciples and later Thomas, so you see in Mark the women “totally saw the empty tomb, they just didn’t tell anyone.” Just like Thomas in John “totally saw the physically resurrected Jesus and believed.”
The other group was instead of having a Jesus where you needed to eat his flesh and drink his blood to embody him, portraying a Jesus saying “Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him.” They were also talking about there being non-physical twins (‘Thomas’) for physical originals, such that resurrection was mechanically the recreation of the physical in non-physical form, with a first Adam that was physical but a second Adam that was spiritual (this idea appears as early as 1 Cor 15, only about two decades after Jesus was dead, in what Paul is arguing with to position a physical resurrection as plausible).
Yeah, what a coincidence that Jesus had to come back from the dead to appoint the people claiming to have seen him do so as the proper torch bearers to carry on his message. Not at all suspicious.