What was the motive for this fairy tale?

[outhouse]

Meaning...many say it was a lie...so what were the reasons for the "lie".

Please supply sources, for those who make this claim.


Historians think it could be true.

 

[1robin]

So why did the Apostles and Disciples make up this lie about Jesus? What did they gain by it? Aside from the miracles, it isn’t a very remarkable story like you see in other myths. Peter denied him three times, Judas betrayed him and committed suicide, Jesus was arrested,humiliated, and executed. Then the author of Scripture even says that he cried out “Father, why have you forsaken me”?

If you were trying to make Jesus look like a Superhero, why would you write that?
Also, the Authors of the New Testament didn’t get rich off of it. From the research I’ve done, 11 of the twelve were persecuted and killed for what they believe. St. Paul didn’t benefit from preaching the Gospel and converting from a persecutor of Christians to becoming the persecuted and eventually a martyr.

So what benefit is there in making up such a story. The Disciples fled like cowards when it was time for Jesus to get executed. The story doesn’t make them look that good. The women were more courageous than them. It was the women who were at the foot of the cross, the women who went to the tomb, and the first people Jesus appeared to were women who had more faith and courage than the twelve that were with him and witnessed his works and were anointed to do the same works. In fact, Peter, the head of the Apostles, was the one who appeared most cowardly after Judas of course.

So what did they have to gain by making up such a story? They didn’t get rich from the story. They suffered and got killed for it. There are many accounts of the early Christians getting fed to wild animals and lit on fire and impaled on poles. They didn’t crack. They weren’t benefiting from believing this “lie”.

IT is also interesting that the enemies of Jesus didn’t call his miracles a hoax. They accussed him of being a magician and using demonic forces to work miracles, but they never denied that the miracles happened. If it is a fable, it is an extremely unique one.

This is a very very good point. Let me just add a note or two to it.

1. The apostles unlike 99.99999999999% percent of religious authors knew the facts of the matter. They knew for a fact whether Christ had risen or not, whether the body was around to ever be found or not, whether many of the miracles had occurred, whether he had appeared to them after death, etc........
2. Virtually all other religious figures believed what they claimed but had no way to know. It is uncommon but history is full of people who would risk death for what they believed was true but could not have known for a fact.
3. The apostles would have had to invent a lie, they knew very well was unpalatable to the nation they lived in and the most powerful empire on earth. They gained nothing earthly for the lie but suffered life long torment for it and some lost everything.
4. As perhaps the greatest expert on testimony and evidence in history said (Simon Greenleaf):

As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and resolution. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unflinching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted; and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency. It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error. To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict, from without, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with no hope of future peace, no testimony of a good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or in the world to come.

"Such conduct in the apostles would moreover have been utterly irreconcilable with the fact that they possessed the ordinary constitution of our common nature. Yet their lives do show them to have been men like all others of our race; swayed by the same motives, animated by the same hopes, affected by the same joys, subdued by the same sorrows, agitated by the same fears, and subject to the same passions, temptations, and infirmities, as ourselves. And their writings show them to have been men of vigorous understandings. If then their testimony was not true, there was no possible motive for its fabrication."
Testimony of the Evangelists by Simon Greenleaf

5. Add to this if it was a lie they had a very simple way out. They could have easily said he rose spiritually. That would have been palatable to the Jews, it would have avoided having to get a body out of a tomb guarded by Rome, and having to have even his enemies admit to meeting after his death.


If they were not motivated by the truth of the matter there is no secondary motivation known to us that can satisfy a reasonable man.

 

[columbus]

So why did the Apostles and Disciples make up this lie about Jesus? What did they gain by it?

I see no reason to think anyone made up a lie, beyond the common embroidery to a legend. I just think that Jesus' closest disciples did not tell Saul/Paul the whole truth because it would have gotten them killed and Paul is the main creator of Christianity.

Put the stories into the context and timeline of the 1st century. Jesus was born around 0 CE and was crucified around 30 CE. Judea was a hot bed of violence and revolt. About 40 years after Jesus died the Romans destroyed the Temple. About 35 years after that they crushed Judea completely. That is now referred to as the Diaspora.

Jesus, the apostles, Paul and everyone suffered the ancient Chinese curse of "living in interesting times".

I believe Jesus was a combination of social reformer and freedom fighter/terrorist. He annoyed the Jewish powers enough to get brought to the attention of Pilate. The case was weak(Pilate tried to pawn Jesus off onto Herod), but by the end of the day Pilate had Him crucified. It is what Romans did to insurrectionists.
Of course Peter denied Him. Admitting that he knew Him would land him up on a cross as well. Why Judas Iscariot turned Him over can't be known. But Judas trying to push Jesus into taking a more active role as Messiah makes more sense than a handful of coins.
But then Jesus is dead. His cause isn't, the disciples still want to free Judea from pagan Roman empire. In their minds, Jesus lives on. Then along comes Saul, asking questions. They know perfectly well that Saul is a Roman operative who kills people like Jesus and them. They are hardly going to tell him about Jesus' ministry overthrowing Roman power. So they just tell him about the new and improved ethics and the apocalyptic teachings. He goes about spreading his garbled version of Christ's message. They go on fighting their hopeless battle against Rome, and die the violent sorts of deaths terrorists usually do.

Tom