Fictional characters are whatever authors write them to be.
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2026
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Jesus was not even real.
See the work of Presinger. He researched magnetic brain stimulation and could get people to see religious imagery. His historical research showed a correlation between saints with visions and events that suggest traumatic brain injury. At a higher level, he suggested humans developed a region of the brain that can do this with deal with the anxiety of mortality while evolving more intelligence.
Or just was right person happen to be in right time in right place if you believe in simulation theory.
Mental illness is a social construct anyway. There was a time when homosexuality was considered a mental illness. The point being there is no objective way to call someone who lived 2000 years ago mentally ill without defining what is meant by the term in the context of the time.
Jesus was 50% terrorist, 50% delusional.
Jesus was Jewish as we all know. But he was not the main Jewish faith. He was part of the Baptist cult. As his friend/family John the Baptist. When John gets executed, Jesus radicalized.
It's a story old as time, someone in a movement gets killed and the movement becomes far more radical. That happened with the Baptist cult which were opposed to the mainstream Jewish faith of the moment. Jesus took the leadership role with his friends, and was probably delusional about the whole thing.
I had a religious studies professor who reckons that Jesus, Buddha, and Muhammad had midlife crises that spurred them to start their ministries. I think they were all around 30 years old and life expectancy was shorter back then
Probably not; he didn’t try to start a religion.
A better question would be around Moses.
Paul of Tarsus had a lot to say about appearing to be mentally ill because of what he believed, though.
he didn’t try to start a religion.
Uhhh. He definitely did.
Really? Looking at it from one angle, he was a Jewish Rabbi, teaching a continuance of the existing religious teachings, but rejecting tradition for tradition’s sake.
Looking at it from another angle, he claimed to have always been the God people were already worshipping.
At no point did he call people to new religious practices. Everything he taught came straight out of the Tanakh, with bits from the Talmud (but mostly repudiating the Gemara portion of the Talmud in favour of stricter interpretations of the Tanakh).
The only point at which you could argue he was starting a new religion would be after his death and resurrection — at which point the main order to his disciples was still, according to the bible, to share the core truths of the Jewish teachings and religion with the rest of the world.
Christianity becoming a distinct religion happened over time between a time 50 years later and Constantine decreeing it the official religion of the Roman Empire.
Paul m, if I recall my Sunday school lessons, had a vision; mentally stable people don’t have visions without substances or fevers or the like. Also he was a bit of a bastard before that too.
Unfortunately, we know so little about the person whom the biblical Jesus is based on that it would be really hard to say. Keep in mind that the myths about him in the Christian bible were written well after he was claimed to have died.
The earliest written of the Gospels is likely Mark. And it may have been written by someone with either first or second hand knowledge of Jesus, around 70 CE. Which would be a few decades after the claimed death of Jesus. So, the author (or authors) were dealing with memories at least a few decades old. And they were likely an adherent to this messianic cult, which means they were not exactly objective in their writing.
To be fair. A historical Jesus person might have never existed. But, several authors of books in the Bible did. They were probably several con men who realized that they could collaborate to coalesce their respective cults by coopting the prophecies of Jewish religion. Thus gaining more power. The strategy took off and even today Christianity survives by pure syncretism. Absorbing groups and beliefs to stay palatable to the widest audience possible. Same strategy that has proven successful for mormoms, which are basically Christian fanfic.
As the old adage says, the difference between a cult and a religion is the number of members.
Way back I remember reading an essay that had a figure called the Teacher of Light, cult leader in the middle of the desert that taught by allegory. When he died his followers wrote an allegorical autobiography, and who we think of as jesus is just the ToLs character stand-in.
Of course the essay could have been talking out it's ass, but it makes more sense to me than xtianity.
A historical Jesus person might have never existed. But, several authors of books in the Bible did. They were probably several con men who realized that they could collaborate to coalesce their respective cults by coopting the prophecies of Jewish religion.
That's possible, but I think it's far more likely that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John didn't exist than that Jesus didn't exist.
I have never heard anyone say Jones, Koresh or Hubbard were mentally ill. They were very talented con artists.
lol maybe you're not listening very hard then because they get called nuts all the time and for good reason
mass suicide isn't a con and neither is sending a fleet of ships crewed by rank amateurs around the mediterranean in search of gold you claimed to have buried in your past lives a la hubbard. whether he genuinely believes in the existence of the gold or doesn't, it reveals something deeply wrong about him.
They go hand in hand. Narcissistic personality disorder plus antisocial personality disorder is what makes them so charismatic.
I really think the only difference between a religion and a cult is wether the founder is alive or not.
Iirc is defined by size.
If the biggest religions were only believed by a few hundred/thousand people they'd be treated like nothing more than the cults they are.
Well, your first two examples started sects of established religions. And they were also cults.
Scientology amounts to a religion in a sense, though it's just a very large cult that barely fits the usual concept of religion.
But, yeah, if you buy into Jesus having done what's said in the bible and/or believed by christians, dude was starting a sect at least. I've seen people debate if what he was teaching was really "just" a reformation of judaism, or an intentional schism intended to start something new-ish, but the story of the new testament is of a charismatic cult leader building a sect.
Regardless of one's faith in said charismatic cult leader, he didn't do much that Koresh didn't try. Managed to do a bit better than koresh or jones in that there was no mass suicide (and waco was that to an extent).
I guess people are extremely uninformed still even when this could all be cleared up by a quick NT refresher and a 5-min Wikipedia dive, lol, but: he didn't "start" anything more than something close to a revivalist movement, as he was just a very vocal, very driven, very well-read and deep Jew. Then the Romans killed him and used his image for their own imperialistic objectives, establishing a new polytheistic religion with a "man-god" at its core (Jesus didn't even want to be called "good"! All men of understanding know only the Father is truly good, everyone else has a bit of darkness and light in them), basically culturally appropriating Judaism and turning it into something bizarre and nonsensical (sorry to all my Trinitarian homies here). And the US, the new Rome, and every other Western empire in between has done the same.
I’d bet it’s safe to say the sumbitch doesn’t even exist!
Yup people hear a story of this fucker doing magic and his mother being a "virgin" yet people think he was real.
He's as real as Gandalf is.
I mean, most people who say they're Jesus are mentally ill, so...
The guy in the corner named Jesus:
The Christos is whatever you want the Christos to be, just craft one to your preferences.
Marcion's Christ different from gPhilip's Christ, different from Qur'an Christ which is different from St Ignatias' Christ and on it goes.
I'd avoid the novel mundane Markan derived Christology from peeps like Ernest Renan that's gone viral in the US, Ehrmanism I think..the most pointless of all the Christos' to choose from, better with Netflix Christology.
Add to the list Joseph Smith. But I think he was possibly a merely a pedophilic sociopath rather than having eg schizophrenia.
There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus was a cult leader who pissed off the authorities and got himself into trouble. He tore families apart and caused great strife to those around him during those times.
Being charitable and assuming that much of what he did was good and has been misreported since, it is a shame that a genuine cult took over after his reported death. The fact that this became a worldwide religion is horrific and has set back human development by millennia.
From what I recall there were multiple fairly popular prophecies about what a diety or sign from the heavens were supposed to look like and Jesus recreated a number of them in the form of miracles. Doesn't really speak to his mental status, he coulda been delusional in his insistance of his diety status or he could have been a grifter, or it could all be legit or whatever.