Jesus the Jew (questions for Christians)

[ghoulslime]

Lily wrote

...each and every human is destined to become either a creature so perfect, so glorious as to be beyond any imagining, or a horror such as one meets only in nightmares, if at all. (I am paraphrasing but that is reasonably close.)

Which one were aiming for?

You crazy old coot! Every human is destined to be worm food. That's it, Lily. That's all you get. Suck it up! No Santa! No Leprechauns! Just death! Yours is coming soon. Why are you wasting your precious time fighting with atheists?

[lostsheep]

ghoulslime wrote

That's amazing! Once for his father. Once for his son. Once for some horny goat. My faith in Him has grown three sizes this day.

Jesus has three penises? Well, he is three in one I suppose.

[ghoulslime]

lostsheep wrote

Jesus has three penises? Well, he is three in one I suppose.

Yes, and I've heard it is incredible work to give god head.

[lostsheep]

Or maybe they form a circle jerk kind of thing, you know, the holy spirit on god on jesus on the holyspirit, then they switch it up after a while...

[Choobus]

but they all get together now and then to fuck humanity in the arse

[Sternwallow]

Kate wrote

Yes, and it was written that it would grow three times.

[Sternwallow]

Bovina wrote

Mark records:

"With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade" (Mark 4:30-32).

They may have expected a triumphant general marching in to overthrow all enemies but this parable makes it clear that the kingdom will begin like a tiny seed, that will eventually end up as a giant plant.

You twist God's word to suit your personal cockeyed point.

Admittedly, Mark's hyperbole here spoils the message. Anyone who knows that the mustard seed is not the smallest seed by a long shot or that mustard becomes not a shrub or bush with strong branches that a bird can land on, must stop and ask "what did he really mean by those wrong passages?" Perhaps Mark really meant "I wish that the plant whose seed really is the tiniest, would produce a huge bush of some kind large enough to be a bird refuge. I'll make up something about mustard even though it is not true. I'll leave it to zealots to scramble my words as they see fit."

What should it have changed? I think it is hard to look at world history wherever Christianity has reigned and not see some small improvements.

Was Christ's sacrifice not for all persons worldwide? Any "improvement" in the human psyche that would enable them all to swallow the JC KoolAid if they choose, must be evident generally, not just among the tiny group chosen by Christ to assept Him or free will is compromised. Slavery is still widespread. In some advanced Christian-permeated countries it is called marriage. Public executions are still practiced in sports arenas. Children are still regularly, institutionally, raped these last 2000 years. One might reasonably think that Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild, could have at least won out over child rape and gotten rid of it. After all, is not God the architect of each and every one of us, in charge of what sins can tempt us? Why did Jesus not eliminate child rape as a temptation, if only as a sign of "good faith"?

We don't (most of us) approve of slavery anymore, nor do we set men to killing each other in Shea stadium for our amusement. But far more to the point, the work of becoming like Christ starts over in each new human born. It isn't cumulative, where individuals are concerned. Each individual must be redeemed and, as CS Lewis pointed out, each and every human is destined to become either a creature so perfect, so glorious as to be beyond any imagining, or a horror such as one meets only in nightmares, if at all. (I am paraphrasing but that is reasonably close.)

Each individual starts with whatever complement of strengths and weaknesses God is alleged to have given him.

If he is simply not strong enough to avoid temptation, it is not his fault any more than a butter knife is at fault for being incapable of felling an oak tree during its short life time.

Bovina's own apparent inability to resist the temptation of hallucinogenic drugs is simply a built-in, God-given, weakness of character over which she has no control and thus no responsibility for. Only Jesus might give her that control but that would be a manipulation of her God-given, will. Bovina is stuck thinking that imaginary seven-headed dragon-beasts are real.

If Jesus grants him the necessary strength, then avoiding temptation is still not to his credit. Where is God's much advertized justice?

Bad hateful evil cow.

[Demigod79]

Lily wrote

I know what biblical criticism is; I have been reading it for 30 years. Demi, you haven't read widely enough. You are reading a far too narrow selection of scholars, so you aren't really hearing the full range of arguments. (I have not said that your guys aren't fine scholars. Bart Ehrman is also a fine scholar whom you should probably read. But he is ultimately wrong, I believe in the things that matter most.) You need to look at the first rate conservative scholars like N.T. Wright, Raymond Brown, F.F. Bruce, Richard B. Hays, James Dunn, Ben Witherington and a whole host of others who are careful historians and accept the historicity of most of the Gospel accounts. How did they come to their conclusions? You should know this, in order to test the reliability of the conclusions the "liberals" have come to.

It's funny you should mention Bart Ehrman. 'Misquoting Jesus' is one of the best books I've ever read. It was certainly a shocker to those who've read stuff from people like Bruce Metzger who argued that the bible was fantastically accurate. In the book he himself said he went for an inerrant approach to the bible but was forced to abandon it when it couldn't hold up to reason.

As far as the documentary is concerned, the BBC does a good job of covering subjects from all points of view. Before this documentary I watched a series on Jesus, which was fairly conservative and their show on the Gospel of Judas did a good job presenting arguments from both sides. Despite what you think I do listen to the other side as well and I frequently reject claims from the 'liberal' side when I think it's unwarranted (they had a show on King David which was highly speculative and I generally don't agree with it).

Lily wrote

They may have expected a triumphant general marching in to overthrow all enemies but this parable makes it clear that the kingdom will begin like a tiny seed, that will eventually end up as a giant plant. When? When the time comes. This lines up perfectly well with the prophecy in Ezekiel:

"I myself will take a sprig
from the lofty top of a cedar;
I will set it out.
I will break off a tender one
from the topmost of its young twigs;
I myself will plant it
on a high and lofty mountain.
On the mountain height of Israel
I will plant it,
in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,
and become a noble cedar.
Under it every kind of bird will live;
in the shade of its branches will nest
winged creatures of every kind. (Ezek 17:22-23)

The Gospels are full of these surprising revelations that overthrow what the Jews were expecting, in favor of something far grander and more lasting than an earthly kingdom.

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter what Jesus or the gospels claimed about the messiah or the kingdom of god, what matters is whether or not Jesus fulfilled the core messianic prophecies as foretold in scripture. The fact is that Jesus did not free the Jews, and neither did he establish the kingdom of god and peace on earth. In fact, concerning those two critical roles he was an abject failure, since the Jews were defeated by the Romans and kicked out of their homeland and world-wide peace is nowhere to be seen even today. As the narrator says, Christians turned Jesus' material failings into a 'spiritual victory' (he failed, but he really didn't :p ).

Lily wrote

What should it have changed? I think it is hard to look at world history wherever Christianity has reigned and not see some small improvements. We don't (most of us) approve of slavery anymore, nor do we set men to killing each other in Shea stadium for our amusement. But far more to the point, the work of becoming like Christ starts over in each new human born. It isn't cumulative, where individuals are concerned. Each individual must be redeemed and, as CS Lewis pointed out, each and every human is destined to become either a creature so perfect, so glorious as to be beyond any imagining, or a horror such as one meets only in nightmares, if at all. (I am paraphrasing but that is reasonably close.)

See, this is exactly why I stopped believing in Christianity. This kind of weak, speculative, and highly interpretive soft-ball reasoning. Jesus did not abolish slavery, he did not ban torture, and he certainly did not make the world a better place. I can see no radical change brought about by Jesus - most of the greatest achievements of human history (including the banning of slavery and torture) took place after the enlightenment, when religion was rejected as the supreme authority. Tell me specifically what Jesus achieved and how that makes him the messiah as foretold in scripture.

As for your comments about each person being so and so, I don't see what that has to do with Jesus' savior role. Anyone can try to make himself better by following the example of others, whether it's Jesus or Ghandi.

Lily wrote

The Jewishness of Christianity could scarcely be de-emphasized. As I pointed out earlier, the demographic evidence seems to suggest that most Jews converted to Christianity. (However, historical demography is notoriously a slippery subject) The worst of the demonization of the Jews qua Jews probably started later, as Christianity spread beyond the nations of the diaspora. Ancient literature is somewhat helpful helpful on this subject. The Germanic tribes had a very strong "comitatus" ethic which made disloyalty to the king (really, dirty tribal leaders with grandiose notions) the most serious of betrayals. I see a lot of that thinking driving attitudes towards the Jews at a later period. Of course, by the time the Middle Ages come around, there was a real fear that tolerating those who had betrayed Christ (thus, rejecting God) would, if tolerated, call down God's wrath on the whole nation. But this is a subject for someone else to speak to. I am not up to anything more than these gross generalities.

Despite that, it has to be recognized that the bible does contain some amounts of anti-semitism and that this has invariably led to persecution of the Jews throughout Christian europe. Whether it was supposed to happen or not is a different matter but Jesus calling the Jews sons of Satan doesn't exactly help.

Demigod79 wrote

It's funny you should mention Bart Ehrman. 'Misquoting Jesus' is one of the best books I've ever read.

Did you read the intro? p. 7 to be exact? He lost his faith when he found out that the Bible wasn't dictated by God and not that "it couldn't hold up to reason." It couldn't hold up to his notion of what it should be. This is a problem only for fundamentalists. He didn't understand what inerrancy means and this is fairly common among the less educated or unthinking. You would think that somewhere along the way he might have noticed that the Bible doesn't claim inerrancy for itself and that the claim might have a meaning other than the facile meaning he rejected.

You're missing the point. It doesn't matter what Jesus or the gospels claimed about the messiah or the kingdom of god, what matters is whether or not Jesus fulfilled the core messianic prophecies as foretold in scripture. The fact is that Jesus did not free the Jews, and neither did he establish the kingdom of god and peace on earth.

Uh, yes, he did. You need to understand what that means. I suggest actually spending time with the New Testament and not the skeptics you've been reading.

In fact, concerning those two critical roles he was an abject failure, since the Jews were defeated by the Romans and kicked out of their homeland and world-wide peace is nowhere to be seen even today. As the narrator says, Christians turned Jesus' material failings into a 'spiritual victory' (he failed, but he really didn't :p ).

The narrator is wrong. Until he understands what Jesus came to do, anything he has to say can only be correct accidentally. There is nothing new here. This is has always been the Jews' argument.

See, this is exactly why I stopped believing in Christianity. This kind of weak, speculative, and highly interpretive soft-ball reasoning. Jesus did not abolish slavery, he did not ban torture, and he certainly did not make the world a better place.

You are missing the point. He came to redeem you. This will enable you to do your part to make the world a better place, until he comes again to put an end to human history.

can see no radical change brought about by Jesus - most of the greatest achievements of human history (including the banning of slavery and torture) took place after the enlightenment, when religion was rejected as the supreme authority.

This is completely untrue. You need to read some history. I would start with Rodney Stark. He is a sociologist and, I think, a skeptic but he has some incredible insights into how Christianity spread and what it has accomplished.

As for your comments about each person being so and so, I don't see what that has to do with Jesus' savior role. Anyone can try to make himself better by following the example of others, whether it's Jesus or Ghandi.

You can't make yourself better by your own efforts. It is impossible. Jesus is not a visual aid for self-improvement. He is your redeemer; the one who gives you the power to grow and become worthy of entering heaven.

Despite that, it has to be recognized that the bible does contain some amounts of anti-semitism and that this has invariably led to persecution of the Jews throughout Christian europe. Whether it was supposed to happen or not is a different matter but Jesus calling the Jews sons of Satan doesn't exactly help.

While I am just as sorry as I can be for anyone who has been persecuted for any reason, the problem is that everyone who rejects God is a son of Satan. It doesn't help the erring to pretend otherwise.

So, anything else or have we pretty much exhausted the subject for now?

[nkb]

So, where does Satan live, Lily?

[Smellyoldgit]

nkb wrote

So, where does Satan live, Lily?

[Choobus]

Would Jesus be able to defeat robocop if he had help from muhammed?

[Kate]

nkb wrote

So, where does Satan live, Lily?

[Demigod79]

Lily wrote

Did you read the intro? p. 7 to be exact? He lost his faith when he found out that the Bible wasn't dictated by God and not that "it couldn't hold up to reason." It couldn't hold up to his notion of what it should be. This is a problem only for fundamentalists. He didn't understand what inerrancy means and this is fairly common among the less educated or unthinking. You would think that somewhere along the way he might have noticed that the Bible doesn't claim inerrancy for itself and that the claim might have a meaning other than the facile meaning he rejected.

Yes, he lost faith in the idea of the bible as a text dictated by God. It simply required too much contortion of logic to be credible. He then deduced correctly that the bible was a work of man and went on from there. I don't see any other way he could have taken it.

Lily wrote

Uh, yes, he did. You need to understand what that means. I suggest actually spending time with the New Testament and not the skeptics you've been reading.

Again, you're missing the point. It's not the new testament that's important in establishing the Jesus' messianic role, but the old testament. If Jesus was truly the Jewish messiah then he needed to have fulfilled the core messianic prophecies contained in the old testament. Until this is firmly established any talk about the new testament is pointless.

Lily wrote

The narrator is wrong. Until he understands what Jesus came to do, anything he has to say can only be correct accidentally. There is nothing new here. This is has always been the Jews' argument.

And it's the old testament that spells out what Jesus had to do to be the messiah. I ask you again, tell me specifically how Jesus fulfills the core messianic prophecy laid out in the old testament. What part of the old testament predicts a dying-and-rising fully-man, fully-god carpenter who'll redeem the sins of all mankind?

Lily wrote

You can't make yourself better by your own efforts. It is impossible. Jesus is not a visual aid for self-improvement. He is your redeemer; the one who gives you the power to grow and become worthy of entering heaven.

I don't see how believing in such a person is necessary for self-improvement. It's never been a requirement for me at any rate (in fact, I only really began to grow intellectually when I let go of Jesus). For you to say that believing in the savior of your own religion is the only way people can improve shows a high level of arrogance and self-righteousness (...which is normally a trait of fundamentalists).

Lily wrote

While I am just as sorry as I can be for anyone who has been persecuted for any reason, the problem is that everyone who rejects God is a son of Satan. It doesn't help the erring to pretend otherwise.

The Jews never rejected God, they rejected Jesus' claims to be God. Considering that there was no precedent for God coming down to earth (all past messiahs were always human beings) they had every reason to reject the claims of Jesus.

Demigod79 wrote

Yes, he lost faith in the idea of the bible as a text dictated by God. It simply required too much contortion of logic to be credible. He then deduced correctly that the bible was a work of man and went on from there. I don't see any other way he could have taken it.

Read what I wrote again. No sane, educated person, not in AD 136, not in AD 1225 not in AD 2009 has ever believed that God dictated the Bible. That is what seriously uneducated, foolish people might think, I guess. I have run into some wacky fundamentalists in my time but I have never met one who said he believed that God dictated the Bible.

Again, you're missing the point. It's not the new testament that's important in establishing the Jesus' messianic role, but the old testament. If Jesus was truly the Jewish messiah then he needed to have fulfilled the core messianic prophecies contained in the old testament. Until this is firmly established any talk about the new testament is pointless.

I have a revelation for you. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. That is all he needs to do to establish that he is God and fully capable of telling you and Bart and all the rest that he is the Messiah promised by God in the Old Testament.

And it's the old testament that spells out what Jesus had to do to be the messiah. I ask you again, tell me specifically how Jesus fulfills the core messianic prophecy laid out in the old testament. What part of the old testament predicts a dying-and-rising fully-man, fully-god carpenter who'll redeem the sins of all mankind?

This is fundamentally wrong. I will sum up for you something Mark Shea has written that I think you would do well to read and think about. You and your Jewish narrator have got a checklist in mind and you are are checking off what Jesus fulfilled and what he did not-- as though every first century Jew had an agreed-upon set of "Messianic Verses" in the Old Testament against which all messianic claimants were measured. This is absurd, of course. The prophecies were never straightforward declarations that the messiah would do this, this, this, this, and this. Indeed, if they were declarations of that sort, then all any Jew of the first century would have needed to do was follow Jesus around and check them off, as Jesus fulfilled them. Indeed, they would/should have known in advance everything Jesus was going to do!

As Mark Shea puts it,

The New Testament makes plain that the prophecies of Messiah were not so much revealed by the Old Testament as they were hidden there. This is precisely why St. Paul writes that the New Covenant was "veiled" until the gospel took away the veil (2 Corinthians 3:14). It is also why he declares the gospel was "not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God's holy apostles and prophets" (Ephesians 3:5). In short, Paul insists the deepest meaning of the Old Testament was seen only after the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

This is why nobody before these events says, "Why, it's plain from Scripture that the Messiah will be born of a virgin, rejected by the chief priests, handed over to Gentiles, crucified with thieves, risen, ascended, and that he will abrogate the circumcision demand for Gentiles as he breaks down the barrier between man and woman, slave and free, Jew and Gentile." Even the disciples themselves, close as they were to Jesus, make it clear they did not anticipate the crucifixion, much less the resurrection, one little bit-even when Jesus rubbed their noses in it (Mark 9:9-10). As John says, they did not understand from the Scripture that the Messiah had to rise from the dead, even while they were standing in the mouth of the empty tomb gawking at his graveclothes (John 20:1-10).

...

There is then, both clarity and obscurity concerning the messianic message of the Old Testament in the time of Christ. Certain texts (like the prophecy of Nathan concerning the covenant with David) are clearly understood by most Jews to be messianic. Yet at the same time, other passages are never dreamed of as referring to a Messiah until after Jesus of Nazareth's astounding career is over. Nobody, apparently, understands Psalms 69 and 109 beforehand as a prophecy of the Election of Matthias to the office vacated by Judas, nor understands the unbroken bones of the Passover lamb as a prophetic image of Christ's unbroken bones, nor sees in advance that Isaiah 53 bears witness to the crucifixion and resurrection. If they had, says St. Paul, they would never have crucified the Lord of Glory (1 Corinthians 2:8). All these things are only seen after the fact as eerily prophetic of Christ and his Church. They fill out the picture dimly sketched by the more widely acknowledged messianic prophecies, but only in hindsight.

This is why, rather than viewing their Hebrew Bibles as a source of proof texts to be strung together into a checklist, the early Christians see the Old Testament bearing inspired witness to the extraordinary man who had dwelt among them. They did not, for instance, read "Zeal for thy house will consume me" in Psalm 69 and then decide "Let's believe Jesus cleansed the Temple because of this verse." On the contrary, Jesus cleanses the Temple first (John 2:13-16) and then afterwards his disciples remember the verse and are struck by how it "fits" the event. This happens again and again in the New Testament. The disciples are as surprised as anybody else when Jesus heals the sick or raises the dead. They do not foresee the miracles of Christ by reading the Old Testament. Rather, the ministry of Christ happens and they then see an uncanny connection between what Jesus does and the weird way in which it fits the Old Testament. When Jesus is sold for 30 pieces of silver or his hands and feet are pierced on the Cross, the apostles do not discover this by sticking their noses into the book of Zechariah or Psalm 22. Rather, after Jesus is raised, they remember that these things were written and, blinking their eyes in amazement, say "It was staring us in the face all along and we didn't see it!" The Old Testament is not the basis of their belief in these things, it is the witness to these things.

I don't see how believing in such a person is necessary for self-improvement. It's never been a requirement for me at any rate (in fact, I only really began to grow intellectually when I let go of Jesus). For you to say that believing in the savior of your own religion is the only way people can improve shows a high level of arrogance and self-righteousness (...which is normally a trait of fundamentalists).

It isn't necessary for self-improvement. It is necessary for salvation. You can become all sorts of nice but it won't do you any good, until your debt is paid. You can't pay it. Jesus can and did.

The Jews never rejected God, they rejected Jesus' claims to be God. Considering that there was no precedent for God coming down to earth (all past messiahs were always human beings) they had every reason to reject the claims of Jesus.

I hope you have a better idea now why this is not something I can agree with. Read the New Testament with fresh eyes and an open mind. Read Shea. Maybe it will all make sense for you.