[Mendacious]

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After Jesus died, Jesus's followers (none of whom was previously impressive in the slightest) by all rights should have disbanded, lucky to have their skins intact, as Jesus at this point was not a popular guy. Instead, they claim he was resurrected, and at great cost to themselves and without any financial backing or incentive became absolutely devoted zealots with his ressurection as the foundation of their belief. His conclusion was that the only explanation was the disciples truly believed in the resurrection.


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This professor has obviously never heard of cognitive dissonance. Classic psychology study by Leon Festinger:

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In the course of his investigations Festinger, a trained psychologist, actually infiltrated the cult himself and was thus a first hand witness to the groups behaviour in the wake of the non-fulfilment of their doomsday prophecy.

Given the reality of Earth's survival the dissonance of the thought between prior belief and failed fulfillment was typically rationalised by the cult members not so much through dismissal of the original prophecy as through modification of that prophecy. That is to say that the cult members tended to accept that the aliens had actually saved the entire world as their route to ensuring the survival of the cult.


Festinger suggested that to rationalize, or change beliefs and asttitudes, was an easier route to resolve the stress associated with cogitive dissonance than a complete dismissal of their individual acceptance of the original prophecy.

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That is an interesting explanation, but I think it suffers somewhat because the disciples entire course of action seems to flow from actually witnessing a resurrected Christ, rather than just some rationalizing paradigm shift. It was the resurrection itself and not Jesus's teachings which seemed to spur them on. Secondly, it is not clear at all that they had any agenda prior to the death of Jesus other than that they were followers of Jesus. Something about his death (or ressurection) seemed to inspire them and set them on a new level. Moreover-- and admittedly I think this is a lot less "historically" established, but I do not believe that either Jesus or his disciples went around proclaiming he was the son of God for any length of time prior to his execution. I think this largely came after. I don't think being the son of God was at all essential to Jesus ministry during his life.