motorhead

I'm with Roland. If John is an eyewitness account, how does the Pope square John's gosepl with the conflicting accounts and differing details in the Synoptic gospels?

Chili

That is actually very easy if you consider that Matthew and Mark's Jesus' never ascent to heaven but go back to Galilee for some more purification. This is what makes them a tragedy instead of a comedy.

Now had they upset the temple first, sin would have left them and he would have been 'saved' instead of being a 'saved sinner,' which of course is the paradox to overcome for which you must remember that freedom from the law is freedom from sin . . . which is not to say that one can walk away from it to be free and therefore the upset is part of the show.

I have always argued that the apparent contractions are there to be explored to the point that in the end they will compliment each other.

lars_egarots

I was Catholic for at least 18 years but have never heard this before. However going to heaven (saving souls) was very important.

Chili

To this I would say that American Catholicism is constantly on guard for preying wolves and that makes the urgency to save souls a built in defense mechanism for that. Apart from this is it sure contrary to the "thief in the night" parable.

Just consider that the ego is created by conjecture only after the body was formed in Gen.2 and is therefore without sustance to remain a phantasm for life. It is built on the blank slate (there called TOK) for us to decorate and embellish with whatever we can get our hands on in effort to give it a self worth even without substance . . . which in the end becomes a liability because we are feeding the wrong image no matter who we are or who we pretend to be.

It is this image that they crucified in the gospels and it was the cross that Jesus carried with the concept sin adding weight to the argument so it would bear him down into eternity with poor Veronica bleeding for the sins of his world.

Doug Shaver

There is nothing I would consider proof, but that doesn't mean there is no support for it whatsoever.

Practically everybody, Christian or not, takes it for granted that Jesus actually existed. On that assumption, the proposition that the author of John's gospel was one of Jesus' disciples, or at least an acquaintance of one of his disciples, is a plausible inference from certain facts.

Whether it is the best inference is another issue entirely. I think the evidence against eyewitness authorship far outweighs the evidence for it, and that seems to be the judgment also of most NT scholars. But just because it's a majority viewpoint doesn't mean dissenters don't have an evidentiary leg to stand on.

Chili

You mean everybody in America don't you? . . . and I don't think that many Catholics think that a book that begins with talking snakes is worth studying no matter what the pope thinks. They would say that he is just doing his job and they want him to do a good job.

bacht

Actually I think most people around the world who have heard of Jesus assume that he was a real person, maybe a prophet or teacher rather than a divine being.

Chili

But so was 'the' Buddha and many more like him, and you do not really think that people believe that some people rise from the grave after they have been dead and buried do you?

The Mackenzie River Indians here in Alberta walked into the ground and that is not easy either. I actually like it better and made it my last line in an essay on "Tay John."

Chili

Not being a bible reader I just happened to stumble across Matthew 21:13 where Jesus cleaned out the temple saying to them: "My house shall be called a house of prayer," while in John Jesus promised to "destroy it and raise it up in three days." It even adds that it took 46 years to built and also the modifier that Jesus was talking about his own body.

Surely people, it doesn't take much to figure out that Joseph was 46 old when these words were [said to be] spoken and that Joseph now was called Jesus as 'the way' when Christ was born unto him.

The difference in the timing of this event between Matthew/Mark and John is to show that ascension cannot follow in Matthew and Mark because this Jesus put religion first in his life now as an empowered believer ready to take on the world and clean it up for christs sake so that he may come again.

Obviously then, there is nothing synoptic about the Gospels who are very much linear in purpose to show the need for the religious cleansing of Judaism as 'a way' first so that a NT can now be a new frontier in Christendom (except in the eyes of Jesus worshipers who were given free hunting rights again after the great Reformation).

To this I would say that it is never too late to change, but where does one begin?

Transient

It would be best for you to start at the very beginning, which is at the end in fact, the end of the very beginning, or you might say, the beginning of the very end.
Tackling in this way you will be able to affect the change that you desire without affecting the outcome, which is important.
If you manage to effect change, try to leave a signature mark so that we can also detect your entry point so that we may follow.
Not many have succeeded so best of luck.