aa5874

Even in the earliest gMark it is claimed the disciples had either Betrayed, Abandoned or Denied Jesus and that the visitors to the Empty Tomb Fled trembling and told NO-ONE anything because they were AFRAID.

The very FIRST Canonized Jesus story did NOT say that the resurrection was good news.

It was the Complete opposite.

The visitors were TERRIFIED and ran away DUMB-struck.

Mark 16.6-8 The original Jesus story in gMark was MANIPULATED and Interpolated as we can see in the Codex Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

The arrest, crucifixion and death of Jesus and the Empty tomb was TERRIBLE news.

Duvduv

Then you are suggesting that a whole story was written about this Jesus figure for followers to see he was originally a failure?! Why would they write and disseminate such a story to their own followers?

sotto voce

Are theists necessarily liars?

Chili

It was bad news because he went back to Galilee again and so made hell known on earth, as if he was torn between heaven and hell in a lukewarm kind of way.

Chili

I do not agree with this line in post 8 and see it as a ticket to hell: The concept "repent and believe" is just opposite to "believe and repent" and therein is contained the difference between heaven and hell.

Chili

Different Jesus known as James in Matthew and Mark.

They wrote the prevailing error in Matthew and Mark as seen from 2 different perspectives and then in Luke they added the necessary good stuff to end up with a working Gospel in John.

Chili

Not necessarily liars, but wrong for sure as the word 'theist' belongs to theology and they are necessaily wrong as students for sure.

Chili

Actually a very good question and is there so you might catch the hint that to save your life in the gospel is to be a slave to it for the rest of your life.

To lose your life for Jesus and for the gospel makes you what is known as a saved-sinner and lands you right at Galations 5:4 in the EXHORTATION TO CHRISTIAN LIVING as follows:

Any of you who who seek your justification in the law have severed yourself from Christ and fallen from Gods favor"

In other words: Christians should never be seen in a church, which then is the paradox of paradoxes and they will built warships to defend that point of view . . . wherein 20.000 denominations stand united as 'the army of the Lord' set on fire to spread the good news that leads one to hell by degree depending on the strenght of the wine poored in the cup of God's anger (Rev.14:10).

Duvduv

I am awaiting aa5874's response to my question because he was the one who proposed that the end of GMark presents a failure of the Jesus figure to his followers.

Diogenes the Cynic

According to some prominent HJ scholars like Ehrman and Crossan, it was the assault on the Temple.

The "good news" was basically that the son of Man was coming back NOW, that there was about to be a reversal of the social order and the advent of the Messianic age, the "Kingdom of God." It was necessary to get all squeaky clean and baptized and repent, sell your house for a dollar and give the dollar to a leper because God was about to kick ass like saturday at the latest.

Crossan and Ehrman both think that the assault on the Temple was an attempt to bring about the Kingdom. They have different definitions of the "kingdom," Crossan thought it was a sapiential, utopian kingdom, and that Jesus was trying to remove the Temple from standing between people and God, creating what Crossan calls an "unbrokered kingdom" of radical egalitarianism - a sort of BTO "Share the Land" vision of hippie commie idealism.

Ehrman thinks takes a more prosaic view that Jesus was a real apocalypticist who really thought that the Son of man was going to drop from the sky once he started tearing up the Temple. Ehrman does not think Jesus saw himself as the Son of Man, but just a herald for him (ala Elijah/JBap).

Either way, the attack on the Temple would have been an attempt to bring about the kingdom.

Personally, I have a hypothesis that HJ, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, took his own disciples by surprise when he started knocking over tables, that he'd told them the Kingdom was coming, but not that he was going to do THIS shit in the Temple courtyard during Passover when the Romans had a zero tolerance policy for anything that looked like it might cause a riot. I think his boys scattered, said they never heard of him, and nobody was more surprised that Jesus was when the Messiah didn't come and he found himself nailed to a cross outside the gates like any other scumbag.