> Let's see. The central myth of Christianity is that god took human
> form, and in that human form was tortured, crucified, and buried, and
> he resurrected several days later. Through suffering there is
> redemption, forgiveness, rebirth. If there's nothing sadomasochistic
> about that, then I'm Marie Queen of Romania. Doug
Ave Marie--
This list seems to return somewhat obsessively to this topic, so I might be permitted to repeat what I said about it six weeks ago. Just as we go to Marx in preference to later marxists in arguments about what marxism is -- and are rightly critical of those who tell us what the "central myths" of marxism are -- so we might go the originator of christianity.
Jesus/Yeshua/Joshua of Nazareth preached the imminence of the reign/kingdom of God, although of course he didn't invent the latter notion. (The late David Flusser of Hebrew University: "Jesus is the only Jew known to us from ancient times who proclaimed that the new age of salvation had already begun.") His crucifixion (the standard form of execution of political dissidents by the Roman army of occupation) was a fairly serious embarrassment for the "Jesus movement," hardly a matter to be celebrated. All of early christian theology ("the new testament") is an historico-political attempt to explain how such a thing could have happened (the medieval notion of "atonement" was a thousand years in the future), and how the preaching of the kingdom was still reliable. Early christians, people who "are turning the world upside down" (Acts 17:6), think they do not need to stake the meaning of their lives on the present socio-economic arrangement but rather on this world to come. They were rather greedy than sadistic or masochistic: they wanted it all, and forever. --CGE