amorphous_constellation
Well-Known Member
But, like Jesus, the early martyrs were put to death, not by each other as in a human sacrifice cult, but by unbelieving authorities who were trying to stamp out the new religion.
Yeah but the gospel writer puts it as 'the kind of death that would glorify god.' That doesn't say anything about a merit in trying to survive the opposing authorities. The 'opposing authorities' might have been considered a 'static condition,' for all such a position would care. I think we can even find a number of early christian martyrs who actually wrote in a such a morbid way, that they looked forward to it.
I guess I'd hypothesize that the attitude surely cannot be very far from, if shows any real distance at all, the relationship between the priest-figure and the victim, in a human sacrificial cult to be clear, where the victim was sent to some altar. It must have been pervaded by the same sense of almost obligation, that again, I thought Jesus was supposed to put an end to. But this is all not exactly the topic of the thread
Though perhaps it gives background to the situation of John, were he made immortal in the mythology, to point out that stark contrasts were possible, where different and rare personalities seem favored. If God / Jesus really did experience some kind of special 'love' for an individual, then why couldn't he make that individual immortal? Furthermore, perhaps this would produce a certain jealously in the other disciples - which would produce a special test for them to overcome