A common point made by History Channel New Atheist types is that Jesus was one of many miracle-worker/holy-man types in Palestine, and just happened to hit at the right time with the right circumstances to explode into a global religion.
- Hanina ben Dosa: Pious Galilean healer around the time of Christ, although reports of him are from the Talmud.
- Theudas: A religious schismatic who brought his followers to the Jordan River, promising that it would divide for them, but his movement dispersed after he was captured and executed. Discussed by Josephus and mentioned in the Book of Acts when the Gamaliel explicitly juxtaposes the Jesus movement with the Theudas movement.
- The Egyptian prophet: Gathered thousands of followers on the Mt. of Olives to take Jerusalem by force. Josephus also discusses him, and Paul the Apostle was confused with him in Acts 21.
- The Samaritan prophet: Led followers to Mt. Gerizim, the Samaritan holy Mount, self-consciously mimicking Moses and promising redemption after they are led to buried relics (sound familiar?). Was killed by Pontius Pilate, probably shortly after Christ’s crucifixion.
- Judas the Galilean. Also referenced by Gamaliel and discussed by Josephus. Resisted Roman rule and the Roman census in particular.
- John the Baptist: Yes, he was Christian, but his movement was distinct enough that its absorption into Christianity was not a foregone conclusion for his disciples, and his movement can be seen as another somewhat independent example of the 1st-century itinerant holy man.
- A number of leaders who rose up in the fraught years before the Jewish War: Judas son of Hezekiah, Simon of Peraea, Athronges, Menahem son/grandson of Judas the Galilean.
Of course, many of these examples post-date Christ, suggesting that they could have been copycat holy men/healers/messiah claimants, but it is likely that Christ came out of an environment–with a highly religious Jewish population under a foreign yoke–that helped foment these Jesus-like religious, political, and social innovations.
Similarly, it has always been intriguing to me that all three of the iconic home-grown US religions–Seventh-day Adventistm, the Latter-day Saint movement, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, have their roots in 1830s upstate New York (us with Smith, and the others to the Great Millerite disappointment, although the Witnesses are more indirect). And then we have the Shaker revival and other budding NRMs that didn’t achieve takeoff but got their start in the same area.
But no, this isn’t going where you think. If God works through naturalistic means, there’s no reason to be surprised that Christ came out of an environment that formed many other Christ-type figures, and the same for Joseph Smith. The very fact that the principles that animated early Christianity were in the local air independent of Christ, and the principles that animated the early Church were in the air independent of Smith, undoubtedly helped explain the appeal and spread of these faiths. God can use sociocultural ferments. As a sidebar, this also helps explains why God allowed a non-restored Christianity to become ubiquitous pre-Smith, besides its inherent benefits: the spread of the restored gospel would have been much more uphill had it been completely made out of whole cloth, as if Smith had restored early Tibetan Buddhism in 19th century America.
Of course, we also have the Jesus-like and Smith-like figures that came after their inspirational prototypes. In these cases it’s easier to directly identify influences. There has been no shortage of people claiming to be Jesus, and it’s interesting how many people received plates or Smith-like revelations after Smith (most famously Strang, but also Gladden Bishop, James Brewster, Christopher Marc Nemelka, Mauricio Berger, Nemenhah, etc.). Say what you will about Smith, whether he was a prophet or not, the ancient-record-to-modern-religion approach was relatively unique before he came around.
A thought experiment that kind of bugged me when I was younger was what would have happened if Joseph Smith was born in 2000s America, his brother knocked on my door telling me that his brother discovered Gold Plates and that God had restored the Church. Such a movement wouldn’t have made it very far, and I certainly wouldn’t have given them the time of day, so why would 1830s New York be any different?
But it was, and that’s precisely the reason why it took off there. And it’s always been thus. It’s clear from the historical record that the Buddha was one of many traveling ascetics in South Asia at the time, and Islam was able to attract its core convert base in the religious turbulence of the Jewish/Pagan/Christian milieu and pilgrimage centers of the Arabian desert. Thousands upon thousands of new faiths have been born that didn’t make it out of the growing pains stage, but a small handful, to borrow a metaphor, were able to obtain good ground and sprout into global faiths, and the fact that they had good ground shouldn’t exclude us seeing God as the one preparing the ground.
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