Diogenes the Cynic

It got a black bead from the Jesus Seminar. Can you name a serious NT scholar who thinks the saying is authentic? The entire Gospel of John is regarded as the latest written and the least historical. I don't think there's a single red or pink saying in the entire book.

mata leao

diogenes...B.S> Jesus Christ as the way to salvation is central to the teachings of the entire mainstream Christian church then and now.

Diogenes the Cynic

That teaching didn't come from any HJ.

mata leao

whoa brother........PROVE it!

911

Unfortunately what makes no sense to you at all makes perfect sense for me.

You do not guess. Your belief is the truth. What you do not believe or no longer believe; discard.

"Seek and ye shall find" Jesus said.

Diogenes the Cynic

I don't have the burden but since you ask....

John is a very late book with a much different theology than the synoptics or with any of the most primitive Jesus sayings. The discourses attributed to Jesus in GJohn are too long and complex to have survived oral tradition (which means they can't be authentic) and they depart significantly from the kind of theology espoused by Jesus in the earliest traditions like Mark, Thomas and Q. No claim of personal divinity is found in any of the core sayings tradition.

Claiming to be God was also fundamentally un-Jewish as well as anti Messianic. Jesus could not have claimed to be both Messiah and God. They are a contradiction in terms.

GJohn was not written by an apostle or an eyewitness of HJ, the sayings within it don't match the theology of the earliest sayings, and the idea that a Jew would claim to be God is a patent absurdity. The apparent claim to divinity in GJohn did not come from the same author or authors as the sayings in Q, Mark and Thomas, whether that author was HJ or not.

Now what is your proof that HJ a.) existed and b.) ever claimed to be God?

ETA, the specific claim that Jesus was a way to salvation is also based on assumptions that are completely unJewish and anti-Messianic. The Jewish Messiah is not a redeemer of sins and can't save anybody's soul. Judaism also has no concept of "original sin," hence. nothing to be "saved" from except one's own bad deeds and no way to redeem one'self except by one's own righteousness, Christian salvation theory would have been gibberish to a bunch of Galileean peasants.

Helpmabob

911 - We are al in error in some way (all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, but God doesn’t annihilate us for this). But they were not in error in this case if they recognised that the one who stood before them was in fact God.

Some have replied to the thread topic along the lines that Jesus was a myth, but there are other threads where the existence or otherwise of Jesus is covered. I think it would be in the interests of enlightening discussion if we could focus solely on what Jesus was teaching here. What He said plays a large part in determining whether or not He lived and told the truth.

Diogenes the Cynic

No, existence has to be established first. If, hypothetically, you could ever even get that far, then you have the task of determining what he said or didn't say. Proving the existence of HJ would not prove that the gospels are an accurate record of what he said. In fact, we know that they can't be, if for no other reason than because they are written in Greek and Jesus would have spoken Aramaic.

John A. Broussard

Please explain.

Are you saying that what a fictional character is reported as saying will demonstrate that that character actually is NOT a fictional character?

This is very difficult to follow.

I look forward to your answer.

freigeister

The question is whether or not it is permissible to have any discussion on this board where the historicity of Christ is not challenged. The argument for mythicism intrudes itself everywhere here and prevents any discussion other than about itself. Would it be acceptable to the mythicists here to allow a mythicism-free thread to exist?