Satan

[beeline]

Before newspapers and the internet -- unless you were super, super famous -- it would probably be hard to prove you existed. It'd be pretty much up to your family, friends, and neighbors to say "Ohhh, him...yeah, I remember him. Vaguely." Maybe scratch down some stories and hope they didn't vanish down the memory hole. (You think WE have a memory hole?) Ultimately, it was just some crazy Jew who brought the ruckus to his relatively-insignificant neighborhood, and was swiftly put down by a mid-level bureaucrat. Or so we can only surmise.

Unfortunately, what we can surmise wasn't even written down until at least 100 years after his death. So, plenty of time for myth evolution.

[FourthBase]

Before newspapers and the internet -- unless you were super, super famous -- it would probably be hard to prove you existed. It'd be pretty much up to your family, friends, and neighbors to say "Ohhh, him...yeah, I remember him. Vaguely." Maybe scratch down some stories and hope they didn't vanish down the memory hole. (You think WE have a memory hole?) Ultimately, it was just some crazy Jew who brought the ruckus to his relatively-insignificant neighborhood, and was swiftly put down by a mid-level bureaucrat. Or so we can only surmise.

Unfortunately, what we can surmise wasn't even written down until at least 100 years after his death. So, plenty of time for myth evolution.

Incorrect.

Mark was written only about 30 years after his death.
Matthew, 40. Luke, 50. John, who knows when.

(Those were in turn based on or informed by previous accounts, written or oral.)

Death, not birth -- that was probably where you erred.

[beeline]

OK, but that's still enough time for myth building, I mean, just look at Fox News, they retrofit history more frequently than Winston Smith. It's like they don't even pretend to remember what happened the day before yesterday, or what they said, or that they are directly contradicting it. Not that the gospel writers are sinister like Fox, but fervent believers tend to stretch the truth a bit. That's as true with Jesus Christ as it is with Babe Ruth, Ruth famously pointing to the seats where he would hit his next home run--it never happened, but it's in the collective consciousness, the myth.

And FWIW, I have no problem with Christ's message--love one another, love your enemy etc.--but I do not believe in any of the miracles or that he rose from the dead or any of the other supernatural events attributed to him.

[FourthBase]

OK, but that's still enough time for myth building, I mean, just look at Fox News, they retrofit history more frequently than Winston Smith. It's like they don't even pretend to remember what happened the day before yesterday, or what they said, or that they are directly contradicting it. Not that the gospel writers are sinister like Fox, but fervent believers tend to stretch the truth a bit. That's as true with Jesus Christ as it is with Babe Ruth, Ruth famously pointing to the seats where he would hit his next home run--it never happened, but it's in the collective consciousness, the myth.

And FWIW, I have no problem with Christ's message--love one another, love your enemy etc.--but I do not believe in any of the miracles or that he rose from the dead or any of the other supernatural events attributed to him.

Actually, Ruth did do pretty much that. Except it might've been more like pointing at the pitcher and telling him he was going to jam the next pitch down his fucking throat. Which, he did. Figuratively.

Yes, of course the Gospel writers stretched the truth. Unless one actually thinks Jesus walked on water. (But hey, maybe there was a sandbar, or maybe it was astral projection, etc. There are mundane explanations, there are even bizarre paranormal non-supernatural explanations that would be mundane to this board.)

It's the analogies and parables that reek of an actual dude, maybe a really bright semi-schizo manic-depressive, most of whose thoughts flew over the heads of most listeners, even as they marveled at his audacity and eloquence and sheer nuttiness and kindness, whose religious ideas weirded out and then enraged the local church, but who struck a chord with a tight loyal crew of people who knew him (who panicked at first and tried to hide him away) and the occasional straggler and beggar. I wager more than a few people here might know how that goes, know that feeling. Imagine there's no internet, and it's up to that crew to basically store what you said in their heads and on post-it notes, and 30 years later somebody finally puts it all down in a decent format, embellishing the truth here and there to varying degrees. Imagined it? Cool, lol, you now more or less know what it was probably like to be Jesus.

(Imagine that as a halo.)

p.s. The board went down just as I hit submit, and I had that feeling we all probably have in that moment, "Fuck, I hope the text doesn't disappear, because how in the fuck am I going to remember all that I just wrote, how I wrote it, what I said, that one turn-of-phrase that was just spot-on and I was so self-smitten with...now I have to try to conjure up that same mental groove, remember exact phrases, remember what my fucking point was...fuck!" And that's just for something you yourself just typed five minutes ago. Know that feeling? Cool, now you probably know a fraction of what it must have been like for Jesus's crew trying to do all that for an entirety of the dude's spoken words, 30 or more years after the fact.

[FourthBase]

Not sure how germane this is, but I figured while we're on the subject...I wrote this a little while back, before I was even aware that stuff like this could be turned into a Cracked article, which I may yet do someday, or let someone else do:

Four of the weirdest things Jesus does in the gospels

1) He curses a fig tree to death for not having any figs left for him to snack on when he goes looking for some -- even though it wasn't fig season at the time. Must've been a weird moment for his posse to witness.

2) He sits down and stares at people as they drop coins into the synagogue treasury. Must've been kind of weird for them. Imagine some dude today staring at people making deposits at an ATM.

3) He spits in a dude's eyes, and sticks his fingers in another guy's ears...it's unclear if he spat on his fingers first, and since there's no Greek equivalent of "wet willy", perhaps we'll never know. Miracle or not, that's pretty weird. Something you might expect from, like, John Belushi.

4) He lets a woman break open and pour an entire vessel of scented oil over his head at dinner, and when his crew protests that the ointment was worth a small fortune and could've been sold to help the poor, he says, "Let her be. Why are you hard on her?" This weirdness seems to be the event that pushes Judas over the edge.

Honorable mention: He transfers the mental demons of two guys into a herd of swine, says "Go!", and the herd of swine rushes over a cliff and into the ocean and drowns. Miracle? Depends on your faith. But to an unsuspecting onlooker, it probably just looked like some dude scaring a bunch of pigs to death.

Now look, if you think I'm being flippant or blasphemous, just know that it's not only me who thinks Jesus was a little weird: "When his own people heard of this, they went forth to get control of him, for they said that he was out of his mind." See, it wasn't just crowds of infidels or cabals of priests who looked at Jesus funny. The dude did some weird shit by anyone's standards. By the way, I personally like Jesus. The very worst one can say about him can be summed up by Pilate, in response to cries for Jesus to be crucified: "Why? What harm has he done?" Indeed. He shouldn't have been executed, regardless of a divine plan or death wish. It's a shame that his murder is usually all anyone remembers of him.

[JackRiddler]

OK, but that's still enough time for myth building, I mean, just look at Fox News, they retrofit history more frequently than Winston Smith. It's like they don't even pretend to remember what happened the day before yesterday, or what they said, or that they are directly contradicting it. Not that the gospel writers are sinister like Fox, but fervent believers tend to stretch the truth a bit. That's as true with Jesus Christ as it is with Babe Ruth, Ruth famously pointing to the seats where he would hit his next home run--it never happened, but it's in the collective consciousness, the myth.

And FWIW, I have no problem with Christ's message--love one another, love your enemy etc.--but I do not believe in any of the miracles or that he rose from the dead or any of the other supernatural events attributed to him.

Actually, Ruth did do pretty much that. Except it might've been more like pointing at the pitcher and telling him he was going to jam the next pitch down his fucking throat. Which, he did. Figuratively.

Yes, of course the Gospel writers stretched the truth. Unless one actually thinks Jesus walked on water. (But hey, maybe there was a sandbar, or maybe it was astral projection, etc. There are mundane explanations, there are even bizarre paranormal non-supernatural explanations that would be mundane to this board.)

It's the analogies and parables that reek of an actual dude, maybe a really bright semi-schizo manic-depressive, most of whose thoughts flew over the heads of most listeners, even as they marveled at his audacity and eloquence and sheer nuttiness and kindness, whose religious ideas weirded out and then enraged the local church, but who struck a chord with a tight loyal crew of people who knew him (who panicked at first and tried to hide him away) and the occasional straggler and beggar. I wager more than a few people here might know how that goes, know that feeling. Imagine there's no internet, and it's up to that crew to basically store what you said in their heads and on post-it notes, and 30 years later somebody finally puts it all down in a decent format, embellishing the truth here and there to varying degrees. Imagined it? Cool, lol, you now more or less know what it was probably like to be Jesus.

(Imagine that as a halo.)

p.s. The board went down just as I hit submit, and I had that feeling we all probably have in that moment, "Fuck, I hope the text doesn't disappear, because how in the fuck am I going to remember all that I just wrote, how I wrote it, what I said, that one turn-of-phrase that was just spot-on and I was so self-smitten with...now I have to try to conjure up that same mental groove, remember exact phrases, remember what my fucking point was...fuck!" And that's just for something you yourself just typed five minutes ago. Know that feeling? Cool, now you probably know a fraction of what it must have been like for Jesus's crew trying to do all that for an entirety of the dude's spoken words, 30 or more years after the fact.

Do I know that feeling? Fuck yeah. This is a monster post. Thank you.

.

[AhabsOtherLeg]

.
If a Satan existed who wanted to lead the Earthlings into hell, he could not serve his mission better than to present himself as the small-minded and jealous Jehovah of the Old Testament, god of the Abrahamic religions.

If a Satan existed who wanted to lead the Earthlings into hell, he could not serve his mission better than to present himself as the small-minded and jealous rational atheist of the 21st century, the apotheosis of antitheological rehetoric.

"The Beast does not look what he is. He may even wear a comic moustache."

[Occult Means Hidden]

[
Incorrect.

Mark was written only about 30 years after his death.
Matthew, 40. Luke, 50. John, who knows when.

(Those were in turn based on or informed by previous accounts, written or oral.)

Death, not birth -- that was probably where you erred.

No, no. It is claimed that they were written at that time. Especially later "copies" purport to be copies of earlier works, not making it necessarily so. Earlier fragments have different stories and endings before the first uniform and complete full text of gospels appeared on the scene in 150 AD or so. Fragments do indeed originate from mid first century but again, are wildly divergent, incomplete, or even make no reference to Jesus. Essentially making them very different texts.

[Nordic]

I love RI because I can check out a thread titled "Satan" and hear all about Jesus instead. And somehow it all just works.

[slimmouse]

I love RI because I can check out a thread titled "Satan" and hear all about Jesus instead. And somehow it all just works.

Images often say it simplest.

[Nordic]

1) He curses a fig tree to death for not having any figs left for him
to snack on when he goes looking for some -- even though it
wasn't fig season at the time. Must've been a weird moment for his
posse to witness.

Low blood sugar. Obviously.

[8bitagent]

God. Satan. Christ. It's all #occult to me, which I aint down with. We are our own higher powers, kindness/warmth/good reigns. Fuck Arabhamic faith, fuck the occult, fuck false idols.

[Julian the Apostate]

I view Jehova, Christ, Lucifer, and Satan as four distinct beings, all of whom play roles in our lives at one point or another. Jehova would be associated with power, authority, justice, strength and establishment. Christ, with mercy, compassion, humility. Lucifer with, knowledge, wisdom, pride, recklessness, and "flashiness" or bling. Satan, with evil, challenge, adversity, difficulty, and vice. These all correspond to both the Greater Arcana of the Tarot and also with the sephirot on the tree of life, although I haven't fully fleshed that part out yet.

[ShinShinKid]

Interesting discussion. On this point of my journey, I see Yeshua as an Essene. There is a great book about it. Anyways, about the OP...
Goro Adachi is on quite the riff lately about this stuff...

http://www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/

[Belligerent Savant]

.

A bit of a tangent from the interesting thoughts on this topic, but when I hear the words 'Satan' I tend to be taken back in time briefly to the days of my mid-teens and my mullet, listening to this:



Of course, some of the realities of our world render such words and imagery relatively quaint in comparison.