Moreover, I see Jesus' advice to always forgive the person who errs against you and says, "I repent", provided it is an honest repentance, as much better (Matt. "Good" beggars who forget their goodness as soon as they get what they want are not pointed out as bad examples. The evil beggar is not helped or reproved. The anecdote Carrier gives has a very good point, but it is far from complete and does not have the breadth that Jesus' examples do. Musonius never addresses the issue of a superficially "good" beggar. Certainly Jesus and his disciples weren't doing background checks before giving alms to the poor. And who could deny Jesus gave money to the poor (MT 19:21)? Of course the entire reason Jesus came was to give something very important no one deserved (LK 5:32 Rom. Even better if you could influence this person to change, such as Jesus' infamous "eating and drinking with sinners, publicans, and tax collectors" (Mark 2:13-17), where he was criticized quite frequently for him to compare himself to their hypocritical criticsms regarding John the Baptist on this issue (MT 11:16-19).
So although commendable, it's better to help not a bad or good man, but a man willing to change: a point very well illustrated and emphasized in the Gospels.
In John 6 he anticipates that the Jewish crowd's excitement is only like the seeds thrown before a wind - fleeting emotions that change at the whim of the moment.
Perhaps it's a pity we don't have these clever one-liners in the Bible, but when it boils down to it, a blind man being cured from his blindness isn't going to remember the clever quotes or jokes, but.the fact that he can now see! That Jesus gave to those who wouldn't appreciate it is amply demonstrated in stories like the healing of ten lepers only one of whom returns to thank Jesus (LK 17:11-19), and his response shows that he developed a thick skin to this, though apparently sometimes these could become too distracting in their impious self-centeredness (MT 15:24). "Musonius," Herodes said, "ordered a thousand sesterces to be given to a beggar of the sort who was pretending to be a philosopher, and when several people told him that the rascal was a bad and vicious fellow, deserving of nothing good, Musonius, they say, answered with a smile, 'Well then he deserves money'." (Fragment 50)ĭoes Musonius' charity to someone who happened to be a "bad and vicious fellow" while retorting with a somewhat clever joke mean that this "sets him above Jesus as a more human and interesting teacher"? A legend about Aristotle has him doing the same: he gives money to someone who was known as a "bad man," and upon being asked why he gave money to this "bad man," Aristotle replied, "I gave him money not because he's bad, but because he's a man." But what makes him so admirably human is his sense of humor, a classic case of which, an example that in my opinion sets him above Jesus as a more human and interesting teacher, I will produce here: There are uncertain tales of his endurance of jail and torture. He maintains that a joke by Musonius, with a moral subtext, is an example of moral superiority over Jesus: CharityĬarrier's first example already starts on the wrong foot. But it's a bit subjective to say who should've been venerated over whom, when both were respected sages. Obviously Jesus isn't exclusively the only person who ever had good ethical instructions - many of his tenets can be observed through natural wisdom. Aurelius' Meditations, a work not much bigger than what we have from Musonius' teachings, has many more ethical and moral instructions of an even higher degree than Musonius' writings. It's hard to place Musonius on the high pedestal that Carrier does.
So clearly he couldn't have made the impact Jesus did, whose Jewish cult survived despite persecution. Yet Musonius was forgotten! Despite having been the teacher of a philosopher, Epictetus, who himself taught one of the more famous and well-respected by pagan or Christian emperors: Marcus Aurelius. He exemplifies the sort of man who should have been venerated and made the founder of a world religion, but was not, yet he was the moral superior in my opinion to Jesus-not perfect, but admirable within the context of his own day. The main points are basically that Musonius' morality is better and that his instructions are clearer. The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:16-31).The Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30).The Parable of the Wedding Feast (Matthew 22:1-14).