[Disclaimer] - I am not an American and I consider myself atheist, I am Caucasian and born in a pre-dominantly Christian country.
Based on my limited knowledge of Christianity, it is all about social justice, compassion and peace.
And I was always wondering how come Republicans are perceiving themselves as devout Christians while the political party they support is openly opposing those virtues and if this doesn’t make them hypocrites?
For them the mortal enemy are the lefties who are all about social justice, helping the vulnerable and the not so fortunate and peace.
Christianity sounds to me a lot more like socialist utopia.
There’s a real cognitive dissonance there. Their version of Christianity takes a back seat to politics because they’ve been told all these visions of grandeur about how “Jesus is coming back” and how they are the “sheep” and all those godless liberals are the "goats. They’ve been trained to look for reasons to feel persecuted even if they don’t come directly out and say it, even if they don’t realize it themselves. There’s a real “us vs. them” mentality in a lot of those types of churches and they’ll gladly go rub one out to stuff like where Jesus said to his disciples in one of the gospels that if people aren’t for him then they’re against him. Nevermind that one of the other gospels says the opposite. A lot of Christians I’ve come across just have this persecution fetish where any slight inconvenience or call for accountability from pretty much anyone (because their church won’t take them to task over things) turns into a ‘righteous’ cry to their lord about how the godless Philistines around them are normalizing oppression and sodomy and trans rights or whatever and these holy little Christian’s are the only beacon of hope in society even though they insist on treating anyone who isn’t like them like absolute garbage. I’m not a social scientist or anything like that, hopefully people smarter than me chime in. But conservatives treat equity in a community like a zero sum game, you know? If poor people are given a hand up by the government then it’s interpreted by these (at best) middle class Christians as an affront to their hard earned money. They worked for their income but “these filthy poors just get handouts at MY expense?” You can tell by their actions that they have absolutely nothing to do with Jesus regardless of how they try to present themselves. They’re full of crap and they deserve to be treated as such.
Source: Grew up in a very conservative farming community, did all the church stuff, then moved away and found myself.
Also, I know I abused quotation marks but my bad on any grammar or spelling errors or general incoherence. I treated myself to vodka for dinner.
I enjoyed your vodka-fueled walk of text. I’ve had a lot of the same observations of religious people in my state.
I have made similar observations in a rural area in Germany. Christian Traditions are highly valued. Christian Values do only apply to non-immigrants, people that work a lot and therefore are considered worthy and other conservatives in general. I consider myself a christian myself somehow and these people gave me the creeps. How can they go and listen to someone preaching about humbleness and being kind and whatever and afterwards keep on being racist and prejudiced against anyone?
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they are the “sheep” and all those godless liberals are the “goats”
How is that supposed to be a good thing…? Goats are way smarter than sheep, make better cheese, and can eat almost anything and climb trees and almost vertical surfaces!
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But being stubborn is much better than being obedient! (And don’t get me wrong, sheep cheese is good, better on average than cow cheese, but you clearly haven’t tried a good goat cheese…)
Honestly, it’s because conservative politicians found a group of people who are susceptible to manipulation and uncritical support of anyone and anything that their church tells them to be.
They worship supply side Jesus https://www.beliefnet.com/news/2003/09/the-gospel-of-supply-side-jesus.aspx
Abortion and the “southern strategy”.
Abortion access has been used for 60ish years as a wedge issue to drive religious people to the right wing party.
Yeah, conveniently that’s about the time that it got real offensive to be openly racist. Closet racists hated abortions as the new code. Then kids grew up learning AbOrTiOn StOpS a BeAtInG hEaRt and that it’s always murder. And here we are.
The gambit of American Christianity is just the wildest snarled mess of hair splitting bullshit one can hope to theologically take seriously (there are actual church splits over folding chairs vs pews).
“BROADLY” you can understand American Christianity as being one of two flavors, what you’re observing is Evangelical Christianity, which emphasizes a “born again” experience and a “personal relationship with God”, basically they all but come right out and say that they believe what’s convenient to their already existing worldviews because these are the Christians that derive from trying to preach a religion that holds the story of Exodus as a core myth to slave oligarchs and also to their slaves.
The other flavor of American Christianity is “Mainline Christianity”, this is not to mean mainstream, Mainline refers to how these are the denominations that found the most traction along rail towns. This is the group of denominations closest to what you consider to be what Christianity is meant to be, and they’re currently having severe retention issues because the evangelicals are making the mainliners’ younger members disgusted with Christianity altogether.
This is interesting, but I don’t think it attempts to answer the question. I think there’s a correlation between people that can so passionately believe in a obvious bullshit, whether it be the Bible or Reaganomics/MAGA.
I mean if you’re looking for a nature answer you’re probably not gonna find it with me.
I don’t trust these people, I believe they wish harm on me, but I don’t believe in the slightest that there’s a facet to them as a fact of their biology or anything else of that unchangeable nature that makes them into these zealous lunatics.
A toxic community will begin to warp even the most innocent souls into something far more vile and ugly, and these places and churches have been incestuously reinforcing toxicity for hundreds of years now.
Grew up in a religious household with 8 years of private school operated by a religious institution in the states.
Never really believed and went full atheist around 13 years old.
Good feelings about something not on the bad list (usually something sexual) they take as a message from god. In other words, if they want something that benefits them, those feelings are used to justify their shit behavior because its some divine touch making them feel that way.
At least that’s been my experience. I wouldn’t trust them either.
Great answer!
Right wing Christianity is aesthetically and morally performative and in practical terms, absolutely fascist. The term “bleeding heart” as in the politically perjorative “bleeding heart liberal” is a reference to the image of the crown of thorns on the heart of Christ.
You’re talking about a group of people who intend to use the second amendment to destroy the first. Study the Crusades and you’ll see history repeating itself.
Study the holocaust for the same reason.
I think the question is backwards. I think Republicans market themselves as being the ‘christian’ party because they rely heavily on religious and emotional arguments to support their positions ( because they’re wrong )
To add to this, religious people are told from an early age to be credulous and believe in top down authority and not to question authority.
These “values” line up perfectly with authoritarians/assholes.
This is not just a Christian / Republican problem. Throughout history, authoritarians and religion have walked hand in hand.
Funny thing, Jesus was the biggest socialist world wide. He only lost his shit for real 2 times in the bible and both were because of capitalists.
Pretty ironic for the good 'ol Republicans. Evil fuckers.
As an American Christian who was a Republican as a stupid teenager, I will confirm that your description of Christianity (social justice, compassion and peace) is correct. There are a couple of factors that lead to it being the cudgel they’ve chosen:
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In the early 20th century, there was a fringe Christian belief called “dispensationalism” that gained power because southerners who had been solidly defeated in the Civil War thought that their defeat and the subsequent emergence of some tiny modicum of civil rights for Black people represented the end times; and the very faithful in the South pivoted from avoiding politics into being active in politics.
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In the 1970s and 1980s, a group of Republicans realized that they could use the Christian base in America to gain more power; so they created the myth of a “Christian nation” and set up Ronald Reagan as the “Christian candidate” against Jimmy Carter (who actually was a Christian, ironically).
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Republicans, as nominal conservatives, are trying to capitalize on an illusion of “restoring a lost America”—one which never existed in reality, but which has a strong nostalgia factor as a result of its presence in movies and TV shows set in the 1950s. It’s very enticing for baby boomers, who were very young during that time and thus have rose-colored glasses for it. This illusion includes Christianity as a cornerstone.
In short, Republicans warped the religion into something they could use to exert power. Something that evil people have been doing for 2,000 years (see also: the crusades).
If you’re interested in further reading about the topic, I recommend Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.
Was literally going to recommend that you read that book before I got to the end of your comment :)
It was a mind-blowing revelation when I read it a few years ago. I recommend it to anyone I can.
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one way fascism thrives is by co-opting the aesthetics of religion to further itself, and it does not limit itself to only one religion. other commenters have noted correctly that the dichotomy you perceive isn’t real; what you identify as the “fervent” are actually just “the most loud and outspoken.”
this is not to “no true scottsman” my way out of the situation. republican christians are christians, it’s just that they are also complicit in using their religion as leverage to gain power as white nationalists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvinism
You probably don’t want to read all that so here’s a what I think is the important take away as far as your question is concerned. American Christians have always been a bit different from the mainstream religion elsewhere. The largest Christian group to come to America in the early colonial period were called the Puritans. They believed that the English Reformation did not go far enough. They were staunchly anti-Catholic and were very upset that the Church of England had adopted so much theology and tradition from the Catholic Church.
The Puritans believed that the Bible is the complete revelation of God rejecting the papacy, the concept of continuing revelations, and the related concept of the Divine Right of Kings. They believed that individuals forged their own covenant with God and that their belief and acceptance was all that in required for their salvation. That sin is so pervasive in our corrupt world that it was unavoidable, no person can be “good” or worthy of salvation and so salvation is only available through God’s mercy. They believed that it was their role as Christians to fight against the corruption of the world by spreading their theology and enforcing their concepts of sin and redemption on each other and on the greater community. The narrative is that they fled Europe to avoid religious persecution. The persecution that they faced was that they were not allowed to make laws banning things like alcohol or “revealing” clothing that they considered sinful or forcing people to go to their churches.
They adopted most of there theology from a reformist movement called Calvinism that sought to expand the Protestant Reformation further stripping away the power of the clergy and empower believers to enforce theology. Calvinists adopted an extremely socially conservative interpretation of the Bible and supported strict adherence to their moral ideology and severe punishment for violations of their concept of morality.
The modern Christian movements that trace themselves back to that foundation are still the largest Christian groups in the US. In the 1960’s the Republican party began the “Southern Strategy” which was shift of political focus to conservative social issues and attacking secular institutions. Republicans used this strategy to unite the philosophical descendants of the Puritans under a political ideology that is strongly focused on conservative social issues and on pushing their concepts of religion and morality into all aspects of society enforcing adherence through government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
Prosperity theology is a newer theological concept that was popularized by Oral Roberts, has been embraced by the Republican party, and allowed the rise of the megachurch and celebrity preachers. Basically Prosperity theology gives an answer to the question of how you know that that someone is “living right” and a solution to the problem of evil. You know that someone is “living right” because God rewards their righteousness with material wealth. Evil exists as a punishment for the corruption of the secular world. Bad things primarily happens to the unholy but evil spills over to the righteous because secular corruption is so pervasive as to make sin unavoidable in our fallen world. Poverty is the primary form of punishment God visits upon the unholy.
You say you are from a predominantly Christian country so I assume that you are sufficiently familiar with the Gospels to recognize that this is a significant departure from the teachings of Jesus as presented in the Bible. I dare say that the departure is significant enough to be called an outright rejection of the teachings of the purported source of their morality and salvation.
Because during the Civil Rights era, the parties flipped ideologies and the new southern Republicans embarked on “the southern strategy” which led to the courting groups like hard-core Christians and racists into the fold.
Conservativism is not an ideology, it is narcissism wearing the skin of a stoic. They believe they are inherently virtuous, and therefore anything the conservative thinks, does, says, or wants will be righteous.
Christianity feeds this by reinforcing the idea that the conservative is personal friends with the Almighty Creator of the Universe and Final Arbiter of Absolute Justice. They claim to speak for the divine, and therefore they are divine.
This is all the justification a conservative requires for whatever they want to do. Bigotry? No, God is the one passing judgement. Selfishness? No, it is God’s plan for me to hoard wealth. Violence? My arm is the right arm of the Lord. And when I sin, I shall be personally forgiven by the only person who matters: myself.
It is not possible to be a hypocrite, because whatever the conservative does is justified by their identity. When they do something, it is good, and when they do not adhere to their own stated ideology, it is good. When the “other” does anything, it is bad because the other is not the self and the self is good. So therefore the other is evil.
When the other does the same thing as the self, it is bad when the other does it and good when the self does it.
You don’t have to be religious to be a conservative, but it helps.
If they actually were Christians, this would totally not be an issue. But they aren’t. They are trying to “look Christian” to get gullible voters. But most of them, if not all, are CINOs (Christians In Name Only), like Trump who had a road and church closed for a foto-op in that church where he held up a bible upside down…
Which is also true for the C level suite in Church as well.
Religion is just a vessel they occupy. Power is the end goal.
It’s always been the case the powerful push Christianity for their own causes without believing in it.
Christianity sounds to me a lot more like socialist utopia.
A lot of atheists end up with that impression, maybe from unfamiliarity. That Jesus was just a dope socialist who loved everyone.
But the religion has been absolutely shitty for pretty much as soon as he was dead (at least).
For example, the other day I saw someone cite Acts 4 as an example of how Christianity was a commune, where people pooled their assets.
It conveniently left out the part where Peter had an older couple who didn’t pay him everything they owned who were both struck dead after meeting privately and being confronted (allegedly killed by God). Which was a reference back to the book of Joshua where a guy kept some loot for himself and was outed and killed.
Women were told to be silent and subservient (in spite of ‘heretical’ sects and texts of Christianity where Jesus was instructing female disciples and they were acting as teachers - ironically the only extant sect that claimed Jesus was talking about Greek atomism and naturalism was one of these).
The religion was canonized right after the emperor of Rome converted, so guess what was canonized? A bunch of shit about how patriarchal monarchy is the divine plan. The saying attributed to Jesus about how someone who succeeded in life should rule and should only hold power temporarily obviously gets excluded and eventually the collection of sayings is punishable by death for even possessing it.
Even a lot of that stuff about “blessed is the poor” was probably from Paul who was separating fools from their money. Originally there’s sayings about how those ministering shouldn’t collect money, but this gets straight up reversed in a later edition of Luke and you can see Paul in 1 Cor 9 arguing that he is entitled to make a living off ministering and encouraging donations “for the poor in Jerusalem.” But then elsewhere we see Paul was accepting expensive fragrant offerings from people. But that’s ok, as then in the gospels you see Jesus keeps an expensive fragrant offering and yells at the people who criticize him for not selling it and giving the proceeds to the poor.
It’s a bunch of feel good BS to con people out of their money. I don’t think it was always that from the very start, and probably even had some interesting things going on initially, but almost immediately after Jesus is out of the picture the errant early tradition gets morphed into a traditional cult where power and wealth consolidates at the top and it preaches subservience and obedience and self-hatred so you beg for the idea of salvation and trade all that you have for a promise the people you turn everything over to can’t fulfill.
So why would a group that wants power and wealth concentrated and to destroy democracy in favor of patriarchal authoritarianism be attractive to Christians? Because they’ve been being fattened up for that slaughter going on near two thousand years at this point.
Also: Jesus was made up by these early Xtian founders. He wasn’t a real person.
Yeah, and even if he was to some degee based on a real person every single detail recorded about him is clearly false as can be demonstrated to be literary devices, copied from somewhere else, or just clearly impossible. It makes a lot more sense he was invented whole cloth, if early Christians believed he was a real person they sure made up a lot of stories about him - and the most devout Christian will have to agree with that because of the endless apocrypha and insertions.
He was like Santa Claus for the masses at the time.
Look, there are some basic precepts of New Testament Christian thought (don’t be an asshole) that are good things. It gets rather muddled quickly after you mall be away from that.
Yeah, like how scientology has some good stuff in it like try to improve yourself and the world but then they force a path that doesn’t lead in that direction and use it all as an excuse to take money from you.
The first thing we really know about the early church is Paul walking around collecting money and telling people things they wanted to hear, like you don’t need to chop off your foreskin to get saved - and saved from the horrors of an event they very clearly taught was coming in their lifetime.
How they managed to keep such an obvious scam going for almost two thousand years is honestly the most impressive miracle
There are no mentions of Jesus outside of the bible until a lot years after his supposed death. Complete invention.
Almost no one respectable in the scholarship, including atheist scholars, thinks that’s the case.
And it would be the only instance I’m aware of where someone at the nascent stages of a cult made up a leader and immediately had major schisms around what that made up leader was saying.
Literally the earliest Christian documents we have are of a guy who was persecuting followers of Jesus suddenly going into areas where he had no authority to persecute, literally “if you can’t beat them, join them,” and then telling people not to pay attention to a different gospel “not that there is a different gospel” or to listen to him over alleged ‘super-apostles.’
The next earliest document is a gospel that’s constantly trying to spin statements allegedly said in public by Jesus with secret teachings that only a handful of their own leaders supposedly heard.
Not long after that is a letter from the bishop of Rome complaining his presbyters were deposed in the same place Paul was complaining about them receiving a different gospel, and how young people should defer to the old and women should be silent (so we know the schism was supported by the young and women, who just so happen to be at the center of a competing tradition which has extensive overlap with Paul’s letters to Corinth).
For all of the above to have occurred within just a few decades of a made up person would be even less believable than that said person walked on water. Personally, I don’t believe either of those scenarios.
P.S. Carrier is a history PhD, not a biblical studies PhD, and a bit of a pompous moron. For example, he managed to miss one of the most interesting elements of early Christianity regarding the Gnostic references to cosmic seeds because his head was so far up his own rear that he couldn’t see past a (straight up bizarre) theory they were talking about a cosmic sperm bank. Nope - it has to do with Lucretius’s “seeds of things” but that’s a long discussion for another comment. Point is, I’d be wary of taking anything he says too seriously.
The point he makes about the only evidence for JC’s reality as a person is other people much later pointing at each other and saying “he said so”.
If, as he said, any real evidence beyond hearsay can be produced it might he credible.
They aren’t much later on. A number of the texts are composed within decades of his death. It’s much later in that we have copies, and they definitely had some edits along the way, but they are pretty early.
There’s arguably much better evidence a historical Jesus existed than a historical Pythagoras, for example. Do you doubt Pythagoras existed?
Or even Socrates - we only have two authors claiming to have direct knowledge of events around what he said, and the earliest fragments of their writings comes from the same collections of texts as early Christian writings, and the only full copy of Plato is centuries older in production than the earliest full copies of both canonical and extra-canonical texts.
What evidence for Socrates or Pythagoras do we have beyond hearsay?
Which text do you think was written within decades?
Ok that’s fine, but please examine the differences in motivation.
Let’s say Plato etc are indeed made up. There’s little money to be made or social control gained via their fictitious being.
Let’s go further down that path.
The ideas and examinations of nature, and the basic sciences of understanding our universe, even if done by one or more people under the guise of some fictional characters are still incredible foundations for rational thinking over the next two and a half thousand years. Again: advancing understanding and what we know as ‘science’, not direct social control and making money off the punters.
Religion… well… That’s something else.
There are huge profits to be made from telling people stuff about how various magical creatures can inflict punishments, heal illnesses and forgive bad behaviour.
The motivations are clear. Humanity hasn’t changed a crumb in several thousand years.
Follow the money.
The historicity of Jesus is that there was a Christian movement that was suppressed by Rome. But I’m not sure we can verify, even, it was led by an apocalyptic prophet. There were no texts before Mark, as the movement was entirely word of mouth, and as per all games of telephone, evolved with each retelling.
What scholarly consensus does assert is the scripture is not univocal, inspired or inerrant, and the narrative bends with every era to affirm the morality of the time. This is to say, it’s not a source for right or wrong, but a tool used to give authority to external beliefs. Whether that is to justify charity and compassion or to justify genocide against gays and Palestinians is up to the individual.
But I’m not sure we can verify, even, it was led by an apocalyptic prophet.
I completely agree - Paul is certainly apocalyptic, but something like the Gospel of Thomas has very different ideas, such as:
The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us, how will our end come?”
Jesus said, "Have you found the beginning, then, that you are looking for the end? You see, the end will be where the beginning is.
Congratulations to the one who stands at the beginning: that one will know the end and will not taste death."
Jesus said, "Congratulations to the one who came into being before coming into being.
- Gospel of Thomas saying 18-19a
You see a similar notion opposed in the Epistles:
As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here.
- 2 Thessalonians 2:1-2
Among them are Hymenaeus and Philetus, who have swerved from the truth, saying resurrection has already occurred. They are upsetting the faith of some.
- 2 Timothy 2:17-18
(It’s worth noting that while 2 Timothy is classically considered to be forged, it is the only disputed letter to have the same relative amount of personal reference as Paul’s undisputed letters - he happened to talk about himself a lot like a covert narcissist is prone to, and that may offer another perspective on authenticity that’s been missed by scholarship to date.)
There were no texts before Mark, as the movement was entirely word of mouth, and as per all games of telephone, evolved with each retelling.
That’s a spurious claim based on an argument from silence and at odds with Papias’s description of a sayings work we don’t have, as well as a number of scholars estimating the date of a early core for the Gospel of Thomas, which Paul even seems to quote from as among the collection of resources in Corinth, potentially even as a written document.
Even an earlier form of Mark probably predated the version of Mark we have today. And the Pauline Epistles are documentary evidence that predate Mark (and likely even informed it).
What scholarly consensus does assert is the scripture is not univocal, inspired or inerrant, and the narrative bends with every era to affirm the morality of the time.
While the first part is true, the second is a gross oversimplification. The morals of some people at the time. For example, there was a massive women’s speech movement going on in the first century that the church was opposing, including regarding women’s speech in early Christian circles. So the scriptures that are misogynistic in the NT don’t necessarily reflect the broader morals of the time so much as the reactionary morals of a select few controlling that version of the narrative.
Same with how Jesus was suddenly talking about marriage being between a man and a woman in a gospel whose extant version is dated after 70 CE, relevant to gay marriage having become an institution in Rome after Nero married two men in the 60s CE, but much less relevant in the 30s CE when he was allegedly saying it.
So keep in mind scripture only reflects morals of a select few of the time (and at the time of various edits).
Anyone attempting to make the ‘everyone agrees’ argument about a religion instantly loses all credibility, like if you can’t understand why that’s a fallacious argument then you’ve got zero chance understanding the evidence.
“Most credible scholars, including most secular scholars agree” is different from “most people agree.”
You might want to actually look into why they agree before talking about understanding evidence.
For very obvious historical reasons there has long been a huge bias in this field of study, it’s currently very clearly still a hot water issue with most scholars not wanting to cause problems for themselves.
Regardless the old consensus is rapidly changing, even the faithful are having to accept that more and more of the Bible is clearly not based in history for a multitude of reasons. You can try and be snarky all you like but I’ve looked at a lot of the debates and the reality is the argument for a historical Jesus is very weak and the argument for a mythic creation is pretty good.
It’s a bunch of feel good BS to con people out of their money.
Would it be an assholish move to point to the religion of Jesus himself in this context? I believe it would, and thus I won’t.
Not at all. There’s a very good case that the historical Jesus was extremely outspoken about the grift of Temple Judaism.
Not only do you have tidbits like him prohibiting carrying anything (including sacrifices) through the temple after throwing out the merchants in Mark (theologically problematic given he isn’t dead yet and supposedly that’s what invalidated the need for animal sacrifices, so you see this line left out when Matthew copies from the passage).
But you have one of my favorite apocryphal lines:
Jesus said, “The messengers and the prophets will come to you and give you what belongs to you. You, in turn, give them what you have, and say to yourselves, ‘When will they come and take what belongs to them?’”
- Gospel of Thomas saying 88
(The work also uniquely has a parable about a son inheriting a treasure in his parent’s field, selling it not knowing a treasure was buried within, and then the person he sells it to finding the treasure and lending it out at interest - and I can’t think of better description for the grift of selling salvation for tithes than “lending a buried treasure out at interest”.)
Which is again in the vein of another part of Mark left out of the other Synoptics, when he responded to a complaint about eating from a crop on the Sabbath with “was the Sabbath made for man or man for the Sabbath?”
So out of the many things I’m not sure about a historical Jesus, at very least “dude wasn’t a fan of the religious grift” was one I’m pretty sure of, particularly when both early canonical and heretical sources agree about the subversive position.
The story as I understand it (explained by Neil Stephenson in Snow Crash ) was that living Jesus preached universal mutuality: Love your neighbor as yourself. Everyone is your neighbor. The myth of the empty tomb was to show that it was the people’s religion, independent of temples and priests.
But then…
A disorganized movement was too much for the people (or more likely the apostles wanted sociopolitical power) so they created a myth of the resurrection and the founding of the church. Zombie Jesus has way different opinions than living Jesus.
If there really was a post-crucifixion Jesus, it was likely an impostor, a show. But Church tradition teems with miracles and hagiographs with only the word ofnthe Church itself as evidence.
explained by Neil Stephenson in Snow Crash
Not the most accurate information in there. He messes up the Sumerian stuff a bit too. Better than the average person, but roughly what you’d expect being found in a fictional work.
The myth of the empty tomb was to show that it was the people’s religion, independent of temples and priests.
The myth of the empty tomb likely had more to do with a divide over physical resurrection. You can see this in 1 Cor 15, a debate over whether physical resurrection was believed or not. The group denying it was associated with both female disciples and later Thomas, so you see in Mark the women “totally saw the empty tomb, they just didn’t tell anyone.” Just like Thomas in John “totally saw the physically resurrected Jesus and believed.”
The other group was instead of having a Jesus where you needed to eat his flesh and drink his blood to embody him, portraying a Jesus saying “Whoever drinks from my mouth will become like me; I myself shall become that person, and the hidden things will be revealed to him.” They were also talking about there being non-physical twins (‘Thomas’) for physical originals, such that resurrection was mechanically the recreation of the physical in non-physical form, with a first Adam that was physical but a second Adam that was spiritual (this idea appears as early as 1 Cor 15, only about two decades after Jesus was dead, in what Paul is arguing with to position a physical resurrection as plausible).
Zombie Jesus has way different opinions than living Jesus.
Yeah, what a coincidence that Jesus had to come back from the dead to appoint the people claiming to have seen him do so as the proper torch bearers to carry on his message. Not at all suspicious.
