>>> critical.montages Carrol wrote: "I do believe that there has been among
leftists (both atheist &
christian) a good deal of wishful thinking about the early church."
Gnostic Gospels are like bad "indie" films that some people feel obligated to champion (just because they are "indie"!) against the Synoptic Gospels, which are like good Hollywood films. Yoshie <<<<<>>>>>
pre-church: there was this dirty, funky hippie out of the back streets of galilee who threw the moneychangers out of the temple and called for folks to organize, not a bad story even if it is a fiction... Mh
^^^^^ CB; In some of the texts, supposedly Jesus was a carpenter, which would have been a skilled worker of the era, maybe.
Even if Jesus is fictional, from the standpoint of the classes involved in the saga of that era, it is interesting that someone in the category of carpenter would be chosen as the hero of the story by the storytellers. Not a slavemaster, not a merchant. What were the other types in the division of labor ? Masons ?
We know that enslaved African used songs based on the Bible to communicate regarding their political struggles for freedom from slavery in the U.S., Underground Railroad codes , etc. It is plausible that some of these early Christian texts are earthly political education in Aesopian language for some slaves in the Roman Empire. Nietszche has a correct insight that Christianity is a slaves' religion, literally in historical origin.