aa5874

But the sacrifice of a man to God is completely foreign to Jews and what is even more ABOMINABLE and NON-HISTORICAL is that a man was promoting this act on the JEWISH PASSOVER.

The ritual of the Eucharist, the symbolic sacrifice of a man to the Jewish God, appears to be highly implausible among Jews of the 1st century before the Fall of the Temple.

spamandham

It's implausible because certainly the last supper is not historical! You yourself agreed that the author probably put the words into Jesus mouth, necessarily implying that the gospels are not intended as history reports.

Yet you then turn around and form a position that depends on high reliability of the account. Your putting the cart before the horse and assuming that the last supper is essentially historical (maybe even including transubstantion :constern01.

Even if there was a historical core to Jesus, the guy riding in to Jerusalem on a donkey is not him.

aa5874

And Jesus was riding two donkeys simultaneously in gMatthew 21.27.

ApostateAbe

It is not about whether or not the last supper according to Paul is accurately historical. The issue, as you expressed it, was:

What's the Eucharist all about? "Do this in memory of me". Obviously the explanation put into the mouth of Jesus makes absolutely no sense at all. "Spin around in circles 4 times and slap your ass in memory of me" makes as much sense. The author had no idea why they were doing this bread/wine ritual (or the real reason for it was embarrassing perhaps) and so he made up this silly "and that's why we celebrate the Eucharist" explanation.

And, you made this seeming nonsense into a comparison for the evolution of the baptism ritual. But, neither ritual is especially nonsensical, and they each can be explained with a little intuition without anything extraordinary.

show_no_mercy

Why was Jesus' baptism by John only embarrasing to Christians after Mark was written?

ApostateAbe

It was embarrassing, I presume, ever since Christians regarded Jesus as the best person in the world (and the better of John the Baptist), which is reflected in the ideology of the gospel of Mark. But, the embarrassment becomes a motivation to adjust the history only after years of receiving ridicule from the Baptists and losing adherents to them.

Toto

The embarrassment only comes with the doctrine that Jesus was born without sin, since John was baptizing for either the remission of sins or as an outward sign that sin had been removed.

This does not necessitate that the original baptismal scene be historic, or that it was changed only in reaction to ridicule by the followers of John.

show_no_mercy

Why does it take whenever Matthew - John was written to address this? Unless Mark was written like in 40 CE or something.

ApostateAbe

That seems like a good objection. Mark was sourced from myths, and I figure myths take time.

ApostateAbe

Yes, that seems like a reasonable analysis.