Picture this:
You’re a fisherman at the start of the Iron Age living under Roman rule. You live hand to mouth in extreme poverty without any avenue of personal or economic advancement. Perhaps, you own a fishing boat and thus you are considered wealthy by your more impoverished and ignorant neighbors.
You’re approached by a traveling, itinerant preacher and ordered to give it all up and follow him.
You think ‘Give it all up? Give up the back-breaking toil dawn to dusk, the up-keep of the boat, nets, etc.; dealing with fishmongers, hiring fishermen, competing with other fishmen and boat owners … Give it all up for a life of wandering supplication? That might be a hard sell to your family, for sure.
Nevertheless, you drop your chores and take up ‘apostleship’ with the rabbi. He changes your name from Cephas to Simon-Peter.
Others join a grown rank of work-a-day peasant-folk who follow this Iron Age proselytizer.
A couple of years go by; your itinerant life-style is supported (somehow?) but the daily toil on a fishing boat is no more.
Then, the traveling preacher is arrested during a high Jewish holiday for sedition against Rome and is publicly executed by the Roman provincial government in a most grisly manner; crucifixion.
As a ‘disciple’ – uneducated, ignorant, superstitious and recently unemployed – you wonder what is your most likely next step; return to fishing and await arrest? Throw yourself on the mercy (Ha!) of the Roman authorities?
No, you declare that the preacher really was a deity – the son of god – with a message of love and peace for the world. No sedition here; no, sir! After all, the preacher said that his ‘kingdom’ (oh, boy…!) was not of this world! No sedition; ergo no imprisonment, torture or crucifixion.
(Gulp!)
The prospect of returning to a life of toil as a fisherman seems as undesirable as it is unlikely. You decide to go way out on a delusional limb and declare that you actually saw the ‘son of god’ after he’d died on the cross and had come back from the dead!
The grift worked for a time. Why not try to keep it going? At least to avoid a similar nasty end. Seems plausible.
There are a raft of other itinerant preachers doing likewise; Simon Magus, Apollonius of Tyana and many others, that bloke from Tarsus – a Pharisee – (hrumph!); Saul (or Paul – huh… another name change. Personal note; you’re meant to meet him next week in Jerusalem.)
When backed into a corner and asked if this story of the ‘son of god’, resurrection, et al. were true, you claim, with proper, righteous indignation that every word of your testimony is true.
Either that or suffer gruesome consequences…
