Is the NT and specifically the gospels a tragedy? Maybe the bible is a tragicomedy where the key actor dies but for some unknown reason is forced to resurrect? Maybe to spite the audience? Or to reassure them life is not all bleak?
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It’s the carrot in front of the donkey – something we all wish could be true, that death need not be the end of us. The hero of the piece says, “It’s easy! All you have to do is believe in me! See, I believed in me, and I did it!“
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The curtain falls and the hero who died in the last scene is shown walking. And then people believe take it for a fact
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Could have started out as a play. After all, the Greeks had run Palestine for the 300 years before Jesus was said to have popped up.
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Closer to 200, but who’s counting?
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OK, we’ll split the difference – Rome broke up the Ptolemaic empire in 30 BCE, 60 years before JC and the Pips.
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Maybe we took these shit seriously and it was just a tragicomedy
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The book of Job most certainly is. That’s hilarious.
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Oh yes. It sets a new low record on how to treat those you consider the most faithful friend
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Did you see the Coen brothers’ version, “A Serious Man?” They certainly thought it was a comedy.
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Is that the one set in Italy with Sir George Clooney?
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No, it’s not, I just saw. Bless Google. I’ll keep an eye out for it.
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Didn’t theater start with Dionysian mystery plays? That would be about birth, death and resurrection. It’s been widely pointed out that the resurrection story is hardly original.
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The theater, or theatre, started with tribal hunters regaling their tribe with stories of the hunt before a campfire at night. But yes, formal theatah, dahling, began with the Greek plays of Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides. It was Sophocles whose plays most frequently examined the relationship between mortals and the divine order.
(Euripides is a fun name to say after a drink or two!)
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I’ve always been partial to Euripides – and I don’t mind a drink or two.
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Between the Greek tragedies and a battle story like that found in the Gita , which is older?
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Christcultists don’t agree there is no originality to their story
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It’s a tragedy that so many people think this tripe is real.
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that’s the greater tragedy, that they believe it is real
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The story has some traits typical of greek mythology. A motive often found in heroic myths is that the hero has a special birth (often as the son of a god) with dangers and special events around his birth. We find that in the NT. Then there is a series of more or less magical heroic deeds and travels. He dies in a tragic way, goes down into the underworld, is then resurected and ascends to the realm of the heavenly deities. You find all of these motives in the Heracles myth, for example (and there are other examples of these same patterns). Heracles is born as the son of a god (Zeus) and a mortal woman. Hera is giving trouble when he is born. He performs heroic and partially magic deeds, dies tragically, and finally ascends to the Olymp.
All of these motives and the same general pattern of the storyline can also be found in the Jesus story. He is the son of a god and a mortal women. There are difficulties, special signs and events, as well as dangers around his birth. He performs miracles etc. He dies tragically, goes down to the realm of the dead, is resurrected, ascends to heaven and becomes a god.
It obviously follows a greek plot, the typical plot of a greek half god/hero story. Note that Jesus goes down to the realm of the dead before being resurrected, but in the old Jewish religion, there was no concept of an underwold. So there is undeniably a strong greek/roman influence here in the way the story was composed.
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Very well put nannus.
Maybe we should start looking at it as a play and not anything about redemption
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That’s also the monomyth, a la Joseph Campbell.
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Campbell said that a mythology is inevitably bound to the society and time in which it occurs and cannot be divorced from this culture and environment, which could explain why we are beginning to slough off the Judaic/Christian myths – had the Church, backed by the power of the State, not kept them alive, they likely would have been gone already.
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“Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
— John F. Kennedy —
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Indeed, the hero in all his many forms 🙂
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The original ending of the earliest gospel (Mark), before apologist tacked on verses 9-20.
It does read like a tragedy
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Mak – you might have a special interest in this: Evangelical Missionary Matthew Durham Sentenced to 40 Years in Prison for Molesting Children
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I think I saw this yesterday or the day before.
These godcultists have good excuses for their crimes. The devil made me do it
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No, it was ‘Luke’ —
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Throughout movie history, they’ve chosen the wrong actors to play Jesus – it should have been Swarzenneger. I can envision him looking down from the cross, saying, “Ah’ll be back!”
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Hahahaha.
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