…Abandoning the Godhead would have been a much greater sacrifice than crucifixion, and, is what any self-respecting Saviour would do.

4. With TRUE detachment, from the godhead, a Saviour would certainly have been fully God-Made-Man, and, transfiguration would be more meaningful. But, according to Christians, this NOT what happened. We have something in between, as above, in Oliver 1-3.

5. Instead, we have a faith-healer running against the aspirations of his own people, and, he is handed by the Jewish leader to Pilate for capital termination.

6. Think about it… A real God~Made~Man would not have a virgin birth, not been divine, and, achieve only a second best sacrifice. The “detatchment”, palingensiac transference and transfiguration are too weak. [ Jesus doesn’t move fully between rooms. He, like a good salesperson, he keeps his foot in the (heavenly) door (between nexuses)].

7. A real Saviour would have become a ordinary non-divine Man and been born the normal way [ happier parents too] and died, three score years and ten. Here, the detachment is perfect. The return to heaven, and, any future Earthly visit, a pure transfiguration. G.O.G. [Good One God]

8. Moreover, a real Saviour would eat Quiche. God~Made~Man needs to watch his cholesterol, though.

9. Lastly, a real Saviour’s sacrifice would be universal and not particular. So, the religionists are just burning rubber, because, the atheists are saved too. [No strings? Doesn’t seem fair, Sells?]

Epilogue. No gods, messiahs, virgins or saints were harmed during the writing of this Gospel of O. Pilate left being a Prefect and purchased a Chariot Wash in Rome. Herod, actually lost his Chariot license. He did not rein well and had so many accidents, he was known as, The King of Dings. The Virgin Mary sold the branding of her Hymn Franchise to an ancestor of Richard Branson. Mary Magdalene lived a very long life, and, ultimately ran a nunnery for Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. John the Baptist, became a water purifier but could not swim. He went in over his head and was never Essene again.

~Here endth the Gospel of O.~

I didn't accuse Oliver of being impolite but wilfully ignorant of historical fact. But now you mention it I was a bit disappointed to return to OLO after an absence and after only one post be called mentally ill. So much for breeding. I learn also that history is reliable apart from a short period in first century Judea.

Jesus, being the most influential man to have ever lived was a pretty smart guy and clearly got a lot of things right, his answers to

"Who is well off?"
"Am I just a material body?"
"Who is a good person?"

Ought to be tested in the world like all the other answers, but I don't hear non-believer's world views being responsibly, rationally challenged. The answers Jesus gave to these questions have no where been proven false, we are just unwilling to come to grips with it, and prefer to ride the sociological wave. Those, however, that find themselves cross wise to this get called mentally ill.

To prevent having to defend a world view that has simply been absorbed by our surroundings we make self serving and ludicrous claims like "Jesus never existed" and hope to get away with it, afterall so many of us now are ignorant of Christianity and history itself.

Pericles what for most of our history would have illicited a yawn saying "Jesus is a historical person" now has you demanding sources. Lol

We're in an eerie period of history.

But I'll give you what you want.

NT Wright in his recent study of the Resurrection concluded that the empty tomb and the post mortem appearances of Jesus are as firmly established as the Fall of Jerusalem in AD70 or the death of Augustus in AD14.

Will Durant, of the Durants, the Pulitzer prize winners for History;

"The Christian evidence for Christ begins with the letters ascribed to Saint Paul. Some of these are of uncertain authorship; several, antedating A.D. 64, are almost universally accounted as substantially genuine.

No one has questioned the existence of Paul, or his repeated meetings with Peter, James, and John; and Paul enviously admits that these men had known Christ in his flesh. The accepted epistles frequently refer to the Last Supper and the Crucifixion.... The contradictions are of minutiae, not substance; in essentials the synoptic gospels agree remarkably well, and form a consistent portrait of Christ. In the enthusiasm of its discoveries the Higher Criticism has applied to the New Testament tests of authenticity so severe that by them a hundred ancient worthies, for example Hammurabi, David, Socrates would fade into legend. Despite the prejudices and theological preconceptions of the evangelists, they record many incidents that mere inventors would have concealed the competition of the apostles for high places in the Kingdom, their flight after Jesus' arrest, Peter's denial, the failure of Christ to work miracles in Galilee, the references of some auditors to his possible insanity, his early uncertainty as to his mission, his confessions of ignorance as to the future, his moments of bitterness, his despairing cry on the cross; no one reading these scenes can doubt the reality of the figure behind them. That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty an ethic and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospel. After two centuries of Higher Criticism the outlines of the life, character, and teaching of Christ, remain reasonably clear, and constitute the most fascinating feature of the history of Western man."

Even the skeptical scholars of the so called' Jesus Seminar' don't doubt Jesus' existence they just think he was an iterant sage or something. They are on the extreme left of Biblical scholarship here, to go past this is what called the 'loony fringe', and I'm not going to waste my time anymore engaging with ideas that are X-File in character.

Relda you appear to be saying in part that the belief in god is a form of insanity. I would well agree as the belief is superstitious (bad things happen if you don’t believe eg damnation). So the belief in god is well and truly a paranoid superstition based on paranoid assumptions. The belief in Karma is exactly the same thing. I for one do not care if people believe in elves, fairies, Jesus or the Ester Hare. I don’t care if people smoke in the privacy of their own homes. What offends me is when God believers project their paranoid superstition onto non-believers and expect some sort of misguided respect for the arrogance of being self obsessed to the point of thinking such ridiculous concepts as gods should have a bearing on another’s life.

This is inevitably translated into crimes against humanity such as terrorism, misogyny, racism, corruption wether its from the Taliban shooting women for listening to music or mass murder and suicide at the orders of Jim Jones, the Oklahoma bombing, the inquisition or Tony Abbot unleashing the rabidity and corruption of Catholicism onto Australian women and families.

Martin, Paul wrote fiction, he certainly did not substantiate a word he said, he was not even of the alleged apostles generation. The only credible author of the Bible would be Jesus himself but even if a man was used as a muse to base the fictional character of Jesus in the bible it was some down and out criminal. The occult magical Jesus in the bible is based on the Roman deity of Chrisos (Persian-Mithras). Even if Jesus wrote it he still would have to prove god existed and was everything he said about him. In fact only God could have written the Bible personally to give it a speck of credibility. Even then God would have to prove he is god and that his assertions are true. How would a god know he created himself and the universe that they were not created by a greater god? Or a greater God is not man who created god?

" Even the skeptical scholars of the so called' Jesus Seminar' don't doubt Jesus' existence they just think he was an iterant sage or something. They are on the extreme left of Biblical scholarship here, to go past this is what called the 'loony fringe', and I'm not going to waste my time anymore engaging with ideas that are X-File in character. "

Martin this is a very telling statement, apparently to you the political is spiritual.

Let us test your hypothesis, I challenge you to prove YOUR GOD is not Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh was not the second coming of Christ.
You may be blaspheming for all you truley know.

West, the final sentence of my last post suggests a ‘belief’ or ‘non-belief in God’ as being unimportant – especially in terms of superstition or ‘bad things happening’.

Any obsession or blind hero-worship can translate to either collective or individual behaviour of insane proportions. I believe you correctly differentiate between the political and the spiritual –something foreign to religious zealotry