AtheistGamer

If supernaturalism is true then how do we know that Jesus wasn't a great Sorcerer? After all we know nothing about his early life. He could have met a good Wizard during childhood and then went about to fool everyone for the lolz.

Also how do we know that he wasn't Buddha in disguise? After all his teachings mesh better with Buddism than with the OT.

Toto

If supernaturalism is true, then I am Marie of Romania.

Do you seriously want to discuss something here? Buddhism?

DCHindley

In the Jewish Toledoth Jeschu, he spends his youth in Egypt where he learns magical spells. Learning to properly pronounce the Tetragrammaton (in the schismatic temple at Heliopolis?), he is thwarted by a spell that causes him to forget it as soon as he leaves the precincts. To circumvent this inconvenience, he writes it down on a piece of parchment and sews it into an incision in his skin (or alternately, tattoos it onto his skin), and thus was able to retain the proper pronunciation when he left the temple precincts. It was on account of the "name" that he was able to accomplish his great miracles. Amen.

Modern fantasy game programmers are pikers at coming up with weird scenarios compared to the ancients. You should read up on the merkabah mystics and their ascents to the throne of God, the whole while hanging with Metatron, an angelic figure who used to be Enoch, touring the heavens, visiting the heavenly palaces, narrowly avoiding booby traps, and spinning spells and flashing passwords and symbols that cause the menacing guard angels to let them pass.

I don't think Buddha has a tradition of incarnations. Now, perhaps he is the supreme manifestation of Harvey Krishman, the Hindu god known for romping nekkid with the gopi (cowherd) girls. On the other hand, early Christian apocrypha has Jesus talk disapprovingly about "flute" girls, which I imagine (every night - mmmmm) serve the same function as nekkid gopi girls. Where is Abishag when you need her?

DCH

AtheistGamer

Budda is supposed to be the 9th incarnation of Vishnu. So maybe I should have said that Jesus could have been Vishnu in disguise. Early christian apocrypha wouldn't be quoted by christians. The whole point of this thread is to come up with ways to grant supernaturalism and still mess up the historical Jesus.

"The supernatural doesn't exist, but even if it did exist you would have to show how Jesus couldn't be a Scorcerer or Vishnu/Budda in disguise."

It's simular to saying that the big bang does not mean the universe began, and even if it did mean that it still wouldn't prove the existance of the God of the bible. It would only prove deism.

premjan

Buddha has a traditional of incarnations. The historical one is Gautama Buddha.

rcscwc

Why should Vishnu go about disguised?

mountainman

Disguised or unrecognised?

In regard to Buddha in the west the coins of Shapur's brother
bear Buddha's image in the mid third century BCE.

In regard to Jesus the Sorceror, read between the lines
of Deconnick and the standard interpretation of the
gJudas being an account of Judas, a daimaon amidst
the twelve daimons. None of the academic comments
that I have seen to date point out that not one of these
twelve daimons could face Jesus and look at him in the eye.

I regard to a genuine messiah, if he's Jewish he has not
yet arrived. If he is Hellenic, then he has been calumified
and written out of history --- Apollonius of Tyana.

If he is Roman, look no further than Constantine.

If he or she is to be living,
look inside ourselves.

Doug Shaver

We know it easily.

If supernaturalism is true, then God exists.

If God exists, then he inspired the writing of the Bible.

If the Bible is inspired by God, then Christianity is true.

If Christianity is true, then Jesus was not a sorcerer.

QED.

andrewcriddle

Vishnu became incarnate as the Lord Buddha in order to delude the demons by means of the teachings of Buddhism Buddha_as_an_Avatar_of_Vishnu

Andrew Criddle

DCHindley

I was thinking of the POV of Buddhists, not Hindus. Buddha was, of course, a Hindu himself, like Jesus was supposed to have been a Jew, but Christians maintain that the teaching or function of Jesus transcends the teachings or validity of Judaism. Gautama's teachings were supposed to have transcended the Hindu understandings of religious traditions relayed in the Vedas, and hence the Buddhists rejected them.

I believe Wicki refers to one Buddhist text that speaks of a Hindu diety as an pre-incarnation of Buddha. Unfortunately no citation was provided to double check, and allow me to put it into context. I doubt it was a universally held Buddhist belief.

But ... why on earth are you trying to "grant supernaturalism and still mess up the historical Jesus"? Are you a non-Christian theist of some kind, or are you suggesting that the power of a myth to communicate "truth" is more important than the historicity of the myth itself?

DCH