A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Based on my understanding of non-religiously biased history, the character of Jesus Christ is an amalgamation of many Jewish prophets who preached a generally similar message.
One of the interesting things that sticks out to me personally that lends credence to the idea that the Bible is just kind of a bunch of half-remembered stories all mashed together is Barabbas- the guy that Pontius Pilate supposedly pardoned instead of Jesus.
In some versions, Barabbas is given the first name "Jesus"
And "Barabbas" could potentially come from "bar abba" in ~~Hebrew~~ Aramaic (although Hebrew "ben av" or "ben aba" is not far off) meaning "son of the father"
He was imprisoned and sentenced to execution due to taking part in an insurrection against the Roman empire.
The two characters- "Jesus, son of the father, and sentenced to death for sedition" and "Jesus, son of God, sentenced to die for claiming to be king of the Jews" sound a hell of a lot like they're referring to the same dude to me.
That's either one of the biggest coincidences in all of history, or someone heard two different versions of the same story and mashed them together.
Or maybe it's just sort of a 1st century version of the saying that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter."
It is obviously intentionally done to mimic the ritual sacrifice of the two goats on Yom Kippur, the day of atonement. Two goats were presented to the high priest, one was chosen by casting lots to be sacrificed on the altar and the other was cast into the wilderness, purifying the people of Israel of their sins. In the story, Jesus plays the role of both goats.
I mean, Hitler had an underling named Himmler. Sometimes coincidences happen.
This is what happens over time with people remembering history that they start to attribute a lot to a single person. More recent example of this is George Washington which is given more credit that he deserves for creating the US.
Then if Barabbas really was pardoned, to some of his acquaintances who didn't know the pardon, he was sent off to die, but then showed up later in the weekend.
Man...
What if this whole time the Bible was really just a story about how you need a Malcolm and a Martin to enact meaningful social change, if the ones in power treat both with equal heavy handed violence, the people's only choice is Malcolm?
This is pretty cool, but I’m struggling to find anything else that makes this claim using my Google fu. Can you help point me at something I can read about this?
Where did you get it?
You weren't kidding...
I looked everywhere and scoured the Dark Web and managed to only find this after great struggle:
There exist several versions of this figure's name in gospel manuscripts, most commonly simply Biblical Greek: Bαραββᾶς, romanized: Barabbās without a first name. However the variations (Biblical Greek: Ἰησοῦς Bαῤῥαββᾶν, romanized: Iēsoûs Bar-rhabbân, Biblical Greek: Ἰησοῦς Bαραββᾶς, romanized: Iēsoûs Barabbâs, Biblical Greek: Ἰησοῦς Bαῤῥαββᾶς, romanized: Iēsoûs Bar-rhabbâs) found in different manuscripts of the Matthew 27:16–17 give this figure the first name "Jesus", making his full name "Jesus Barabbas" or "Jesus Bar-rhabban", and giving him the same first, given name as Jesus.[b] The Codex Koridethi seems to emphasise Bar-rhabban as composed of two elements in line with a patronymic Aramaic name.[17][18] These versions, featuring the first name "Jesus" are considered original by a number of modern scholars.[19][20] Origen seems to refer to this passage of Matthew in claiming that it must be a corruption, as no sinful man ever bore the name "Jesus" and argues for its exclusion from the text.[21] He however does not account for the high priest Biblical Greek: Ἰάσων, romanized: Iásōn from 2 Maccabees 4:13, whose name seems to transliterate the same Aramaic name into Greek, as well as other bearers of the name Jesus mentioned by Josephus.[17] It is possible that scribes when copying the passage, driven by a reasoning similar to that of Origen, removed this first name "Jesus" from the text to avoid dishonor to the name of the Jesus whom they considered the Messiah.[22]
Etymology
Of the two larger categories in which transmitted versions of this name fall Biblical Greek: Bαῤῥαββᾶν, romanized: Bar-rhabbân, seems to represent Jewish Palestinian Aramaic: בּר רַבָּן, romanized: Bar Rabbān, lit. 'Son of our Rabbi/Master', while Biblical Greek: Bαραββᾶς, romanized: Barabbâs appears to derive ultimately from Jewish Palestinian Aramaic: בּר אַבָּא , romanized: Bar ʾAbbā lit. 'Son of ʾAbbā/[the] father', a patronymic Aramaic name.[17] However, ʾAbbā has been found as a personal name in a 1st-century burial at Giv'at ha-Mivtar. Additionally it appears fairly often as a personal name in the Gemara section of the Talmud, a Jewish text dating from AD 200–400.[23]
I'm not too sure where I first picked up the idea, for some reason I think it may have been one of the videos on the Useful Charts YouTube channel, but in general it all kind of fits together to me, and I of course kind of put my own little bit of spin into it myself. Unfortunately I don't have exact sources to cite directly to where I first heard this theory put together.
For starters you can go to the Bible itself with Mathew 27:16-17
16 At that time they had a well-known prisoner whose name was Jesus Barabbas. 17 So when the crowd had gathered, Pilate asked them, “Which one do you want me to release to you: Jesus Barabbas, or Jesus who is called the Messiah?”
I misspoke in my earlier comment, and I edited it accordingly, the language would have been Aramaic, which is what most scholars agree is the language Jesus mostly spoke, although it is a pretty closely related language to Hebrew. I speak neither Hebrew nor Aramaic so I kind of just have to take it on faith that some of the people I've seen discussing this online have some idea what they're talking about. You can kind of piece it together from some common bits of Hebrew "bar mitzvah" literally translates to something like "son of the commandments" and I believe in modern Hebrew, the word for father in "av" with "aba" being commonly used in some places/cultures.
There's also some that would say it comes from "bar rabban" (may be misspelling that) meaning "son of the teacher" instead of father, which you can compare to "Rabbi"
This comes from an era when people didn't really have official last names, depending on who you asked, Jesus could have been known by quite a few different names, Jesus the carpenter, Jesus son of Joseph/mary, the son of God, the teacher, the guy from Nazareth, the religious weirdo, the insurrectionist, of the house of David, etc.
I believe in modern Hebrew "ben" is more often used as the "son of" prefix. And those sort of patronymic names are pretty common in semitic languages, in Arabic you've probably heard a few people with "bin" in their name. It's basically the same idea as Irish/Scottish names that begin with mc/Mac/O', or names that end in "son"
As for Barabbas having been involved in an insurrection, going back to the bible we have Mark 15:7
A man called Barabbas was in prison with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising.
Israel experienced more than a few different Jewish uprisings/revolts/riots/insurrections/whatever name you wanted to call it. They weren't exactly happy to be under Roman rule, and there were always a bunch of different political or religious movements trying to do something about it and usually not having much success. It's not unlikely that Jesus is sort of a composite of several different folks making trouble for the Romans.
I'm no scholar, my knowledge on this doesn't really go a whole lot deeper than what I've said here, and I can't say how widespread this particular little conspiracy theory is in academic circles, I won't say that I'm totally sold on it myself, I'm very open to someone else saying differently, but it's something to consider, and it looks like a hell of a coincidence to just be a coincidence to me
Very interesting! As a Hebrew speaker, I can confirm "bar" is being used to indicate "son of" but not in spoken language, just in some exoressions which originate from Aramic, and some surnames (son of...) Btw, there is an Israeli actor with the surname "Barabba", who mentioned in an interview it's a name going back many generations.
I was hoping a hebrew-speaker would chime in to confirm that I at least wasn't too far off-base with that part. Talking about languages I don't know is always a little uneasy for me because every language has its own weird quirks and something is always lost in translation.
I mean, yeah...
The Bible wasn't some dude writing stuff down. It's a bunch of dudes over centuries writing stuff down, and doesn't include everything.
It was commone with the pre-christian religions for myths to work like that, and as Christianity co-opted different parts of those earlier religions to make conversion easier, people.kept making up stories about Jesus or saints like people used to make up stories about Zeus or Hercules.
If Jesus's 20s weren't conspicuously absent, it prob would have been pretty close to Chuck Norris. Just because those stories didn't stick around, doesn't mean they never existed.
I always thought of prophets as particularly charismatic mentally ill people. Jesus may not have set out to start a cult, but like, delusions of grandeur and distorted self-image in someone charismatic and intelligent usually ends in a cult. In his lifetime they were basically anarchist hippies (at least as recorded by the bible), but like all cults, today the center has rotted and it's just toxic brainwashing.
This sort of thing happens all the time, good intentions getting twisted over time.
Iirc the reason you’re not allowed to depict Muhammad, for example, was because Muhammad didn’t want pictures of to be used to worship him. He didn’t want to be deified basically.
Cut to today and his followers will literally kill anyone that even tries, even those outside of the religion, due to their worship of Muhammad, something that he clearly never would have wanted. It literally goes against the reason he had the rule in the first place.
The "prophet" Isaiah is a good example:
Isaiah 20:1-4
1 In the year that Tartan came unto Ashdod, (when Sargon the king of Assyria sent him,) and fought against Ashdod, and took it;
2 At the same time spake the Lord by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot.
3 And the Lord said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia;
4 So shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptians prisoners, and the Ethiopians captives, young and old, naked and barefoot, even with their buttocks uncovered, to the shame of Egypt.
This is actually what i sorta believe. Thats jesus was just a smart guy amongst stupid people.
Like people be all dirty and getting the plague and hes like "bruh go wash youself in the river, you dirty as fuck, thats why you keep getting sick".
Then next minute they get better and theyre all like "omggggg the messiahhhh"
E's not the messiah, e's a very naughty boy!!!
I say he is the messiah! I should know, I've followed a few!
But a narcissistic one. He did believe he was the son of the fucking god lol.
But Jesus didn't write the bible, it was mostly written over a hundred years after the fact. I believe Mathew is the closest at 80 years and John was 300 years later. We have no way of knowing whether Jesus actually did say anything of the sort. The Nicean Council was mostly a political one so Constantine could solidify his power by utilizing the top heavy hierarchy of a fledgling branch of Christianity.
We only have the Nag Hammadi library because of "heretics" preserving it in secret.
Wish it were easier to find dispassionate, objective historical analysis of how the Bible was assembled and written. If one searches for any such information the results are an inundation of pro-bible sites trying to retcon the writings to as close to the alleged existence of Jesus and his followers as they can.
The thing is that while Jesus could walk on water, Chuck Norris could swim thru land. Which one is more impressive?
The Chuck Norris meme isn't an antique, it's something we're all ashamed of being part of after finding out he's a crazy person.
Pfft you might be, that just makes it funnier to me. Chuck Norris is an actor and a white guy who knows karate. That's already like the height of unseriousness, add poo-brained conservatism and it's comedy gold. Like have you ever watched an interview with him. He is 100% that guy who talks about his hands being registered weapons but has never been in a fight as an adult. The point of those memes was that he was a washed up joke.
What did he say/do? I'm out of the loop on this one
Big shock, the 84 year old white dude famous for playing a Texas Ranger is very much a conservative republican
The first person to coin the word meme was Richard Dawkins in his book 'the selfish gene'. He also postulates in the same chapter that religion is a particular form of a meme. So you're one hundred percent correct!
I rather think it's plausible Jesus was a figurehead with the (already by then well established) messianic archetype applied to him who was hyped up by some Judeans as propaganda to incite their people to try to cast off their Roman rule. But then the notion really got out of hand some time after the original context was lost.
Given the prior number of Jewish prophets and messiah claimants (not to mention Apollonius of Tyana who also readily leaps to mind) there were probably several attempts at this, but only one made it to this level of popularity.
A lot of what was written about Jesus was done hundreds of years when he allegedly lived, but done in a way that appears to be written at the same time he was alive. Do he's really more of a shit post that people thought was real.
Chuck has a great shot at becoming the messiah of a new religion then cause the holy book of Norrisism has already been written, it's called Chuck Norris Facts.
Jesus could come back from the dead, but could death come back from Chuck Norris?
Skibidi Jesus
I think you have your logic backwards.
When Chuck Norris stepped on the water it knew better than to let him sink.
Chuck Norris yelled at the river and 700 fish came out to feed his friends. Nobody dared ask where the loaves came from.
Chuck Norris was killed by crucifixion. It took him 3 days to kick Satan's ass and break out of hell. Now, he's out for payback!
Chuck Norris said "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one cometh to the Father except through me. And if you come back in, I'll hit you with so many rights you'll be begging for a left."
Gospel of Chuck 4:20; “Nikko was easy. Now it's your turn. One night you'll close your eyes, and when they open I'll be there. It'll be time to die.”
Probably the most entertaining part of Mortal Engines was a scene from the museum of history where they revealed the Minions to be some kind of revered ancient deity
What if we live in a simulation and all of humanity's historical religions were real, with the key term being "were"?
At some point the simulation owner got rid of them (maybe out of necessity or maybe they just got bored and wanted something new) but kept all the written and verbal history associated with them. Literally just deleted everything we would now consider "mythical" and called it a day.
That's why we don't have skeletons but we do have stories. They just ripped all the assets and scripts out and now reality throws a fuckton of errors whenever a particle interacts with the infinitely small, now-undefined space that used to be a minotaur.
I plan to think about this way too hard next time I get baked.
I figure it was an argument of "my legendary tribal chief was SOOO great, he..."
Which led into a conversation of "Which super hero would win?".
My tribes legendary chief was so great, he made bread, wine, and fish, just when everyone needed it... He is so wonderful they tried to kill him, but he came back three days later, not even sick.
It's because he's part super hero, you should hear about his dad. People were so loyal to his dad they'd almost sacrifice their own children to him. He was so great he'll save us, you'll see.
Hanina ben Dosa was a first century Jewish miracle worker from Galilee. He was one of many who supposedly did a lot of the same things as Jesus, miracle healings, casting out demons, made it rain, etc, but wasn't an apocalyptic with a messianic complex.
Anyway.. there was a snake in town that had bit and hurt people. When he heard of it he went to the snakes hole and put his foot over it. The snake bit him and the snake died. The people came up with the first Chuck Norris meme. "Woe to anyone who is bitten by the snake, but woe to the snake that bites Hanina ben Dosa."
John Cena had reached meme status
Imagine the miracles today if he has to do it....turns water into 🍷 wine....yeah dude. That's a sweet microbrew! Oh wait, it's just cambucha but very fast!
Finally a shower thought that isn’t just trying to redefine words or concepts! Thank you!