Most Christians read the New Testament and listen to their teachers about Jesus miracles believing that they are historical acts from the 1st century. Some go further and think miracles are still happening today, but what may come as a shock to most Christians is that Jesus wasn't the first or only miracle worker. In fact, there are several other miracle workers who were far more popular in the Greek and Roman world at the time the New Testament was being written. These Gods include Hercules, Ascepius and Isis, but that's not all. There were also several mortal men we call hero's who also "supposedly" performed miracles according to their sources. These hero's include Pythagoras & his disciple Empedocles, King Pyrrhus, Caesar Augustus, Vespasian, Apollonius of Tyana, Asclepiades, Moses, Elijah and Elisha. We literally go over the primary sources which you can go see for yourself. Many of these Gods and heroes raised the dead, gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, mobility to the crippled, and health to the diseased. This seems to be a well established trope within the broader Greek and Roman world from which Christianity was birthed.
Our goal is to level out the playing field of miraculous claims and show the Christians who insist on their Jesus being the only one to have performed such miracles, that they need to contend with the obvious fact that this isn't the case. The Greek and Roman world was flooding with tales of Gods and heroes who performed extra-ordinary deeds. I think this path of learning can help defang fundamentalism and help people appreciate the deeper meaning of these stories and why they were written in the first place. This documentary is setting out to place Jesus in his historical, cultural & literary context. Put another way, it would be odd if the stories of Jesus didn't have miracle tales. This is what you did to your hero's & gods at this time and place in the world.
We all are born, live a life which is often full of struggles, diseases and hard to get through, then we die. The miracle stories touch on the deepest issues all humans have to experience in some ways. We should recognize that the story is what is ultimately where the meaning is.
Interview:
No comments:
Post a Comment