Easter: "central act of history" ??

[CanadianJohn2]

I was reading about Easter, and read this "the great central act of history, the redemption of the human race by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ".

I hadn't thought of Easter - or history - in that way. Certainly, for Europe, "everything" changed. But for the world? I'm thinking of the European discovery of the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries, or maybe the end of the Islamic Golden age in (about) the 12th century. I don't know enough about the far east to have an opinion.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

I don’t think I’d be able to stop myself from going up to the idiot with the megaphone and start challenging his untruths.

Shortly after my mum died I walked past, he was in full flow & there were also people from the church handing out leaflets with big grins on their faces.

I had to dive into the nearby shopping centre because if one of them had come up to me I would absolutely have told them what I thought of them & their god. Loudly & in detail.

Now I usually find it easier to avoid the area at his times.

I don't disagree. There is no compelling evidence to suggest that jesus - even as a regular guy- even existed. More likely some cobbled together stories which emanated from unstable political times.

I think most (though not all) historians now accept there was a historical Jesus, who preached for a few years in Galilee, had a following and was executed by the Romans. Everything other than that is down to the evangelising and mythologising of his early followers, and the particular circumstances that fostered the spread of Christianity.

Contemporary evangelical Christians seem largely unaware that there were significant numbers of self-proclaimed ‘messiahs’ within Second Temple Judaism. Jesus was far from unique. He just happened to be the one whose postmortem fandom was particularly successful.

I think that there was a Jesus - son of Mary and Joseph - none of that virgin birth nonsense - I judge people who don’t understand or use science that it is impossible. But the rest is just a myth or legend.

Given that it seem unlikely that Jesus as described ever existed, the story itself cannot be true, so I don't think it can be considered the central act of history.

Convincing people that the story is true may be a very significant act though. Just as convincing people to vote for Trump has had quite a notable impact...

Come to think of it, maybe the Easter story was not the central act of history, the act that changed the world. Maybe Hadrian was responsible for that, 100 years later. Had he not destroyed Israel and exiled or taken most of its population until slavery, ‘Christianity’ might never have grown beyond a quirky offshoot of Judaism. Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t most of the Christian Bible written after the Roman exile? Weren’t only one Gospel and Paul’s letters written before it?

So Hadrian takes away the Jews: Judaeans, Essenes, Samaritans, Nazarenes, the whole lot willy-nilly and enslaves them. Pretty grim situation. How do you sacrifice when there’s no Temple? How do you study Torah when study is banned? How do you avoid eating pork when it’s everywhere and you don’t get any choice? And your Nazarene compatriots are saying, “Hey, it’s OK, our Messiah’s coming back and he says you don’t need to do these things.” You know that the end of times, just before the Messiah comes, will be a time of terrible suffering - and you’re a slave or a displaced person and it feels like the end of times right now. And Judaism says that this is the only world you’ve got, so make the best of it, and you know you’re either dying or going to die, but your Nazarene compatriots are saying that if you believe in their Messiah you’ll go to this wonderful heaven with no suffering - when tomorrow comes.

Seems to me that Hadrian inadvertently ran a strong recruitment drive for Christianity. And that was the act that changed world history.

I watched on Easter Friday King of Kings on BBC2, it is still on iplayer. I found it quite interesting. I have a faith since childhood and believe that Jesus is the Son of God who was rescurrected and his ancension.

You may want to watch the movie some of you and see what you think.

About the discussion about the preachers, there are different types today. Many do not just preach strongly on hell. The Anglican church is quite a bit softer in style I think. I am a non denominational but attend an Anglican church today. If people are beavered then some church's do offer Beaverment cafe's for free and you may find this in other places as well. They are skilled and DBS checked.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00783nk/king-of-kings

When people look back at this week, they won’t remember Easter Sunday but will mark it as the week Trump threatened to blow up Iran. There are much more significant events in history than anything religious.

Even if we are all going to hell in a handcart, we can't enjoy a philosphical discussion along the way?

Anyway, why is Trump threatening to blow up Iran? It all boils down to religion in the end (and oil). The impending WW3 or world economical catastrophe didn't spring fully grown out of Trump or Netanyahu's heads. They are the result of influences over millenia. Jesus, Paul, Bar Kohba, Hadrian, Mohammed, the European Empires, the Industrial Revolution, Hitler, take your pick.

Ok. How does the torture/death/resurrection of a god in human form "solve" the moral failings of humans?

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand, surely? People believed Jesus was the son of God and the resulting religion shaped the world as we know it. It’s the year of our Lord 2026 after all 😂 Without Christianity we’d still be sacrificing children to get a good harvest. It’s nonsensical to suggest that the BELIEF in Jesus’ resurrection isn’t the single most influential event in history.

You sound very confused. Judaism, to give only one instance, considerably predates Christianity. No Jewish people were sacrificing their offspring to the sun god for a good harvest.