Soul Invictus

Someone want to PM Maguss55 to get his stance on this topic?

RED DAVE

A socialist (Jewish Leftist) take on JC:

Jesus Christ was a man,
A hard working man,
A carpenter bold and brave.
He told the rich
To give their money to the poor.
So they laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

Born in 05 BC in a barn in Gallilee;
Bathed in his unwed mother's tears.
He preached the gospel to the masses
And fought the ruling classes
And predated Marx by 1800 years.

Now Jesus had no wife
To mourn for his life.
He needed a bath and a shave.
But that foe of the proletariat
Judas Iscariot
He laid Jesus Christ in his grave.

Just had to get that out on a Monday morning. Sorry. (Not really.)

RED DAVE

lugotorix

Well, there is a Talmudic scholar who seems to think so. Hyam Maccoby (in The Mythmaker: St. Paul and the Invention of Christianity) suggests that he was the son of gentile converts to Judaism who followed the Noachide laws. He bases it in part on the traditions of the Ebionites (Poor Ones), an early anti_Pauline sect that he identifies with the remnants of the Jerusalem Church. He also bases it on the statements in Paul's epistles that the Torah is a burden that can be put down thanks to Jesus. Maccoby says this view would have been unthinkable for a first century Jew, for whom the Torah was a special contract with God, which gave the Jews a national identity during a time of foreign occupation.

To be honest, both of these views (that Paul wasn't born Jewish, and that the Ebionites were the remnants of the Jerusalem Church) are controversial. I'm not sure how accepted they are by most scholars. Maccoby does make a fairly convincing argument that Paul wasn't a Pharisee as he claimed in his letters.

Daniel

CX

Jesus didn't preach to the Gentiles. There's no evidence he ever intended to. That was Paul's idea after Xianity fell flat with the Jews.

long winded fool

Mark 16:15 "Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned."

On the contrary, there's no evidence that Jesus didn't mean for the good news to be preached to the Gentiles after his death, and there is evidence that he did. While it's true that He never intended to preach to Gentiles in person, His mission was to give his teaching to the lost Jews in order that they preach to the Gentiles. A baptized Gentile becomes a Jew. During his ministry he concentrated on the "lost sheep" but he clearly meant after his crucifixion for these same lost sheep to be born again and preach to all the Gentiles of the world in the hopes that they too will become baptized as true Jews and find their way back to the flock. The above verse, a portion of the last words Jesus said before ascending into heaven, shows that, according to Jesus, unbaptized people who don't believe are implicity meant to hear the word. Unbaptized people who don't believe are Gentiles.

Toto

Mark 16:9-20 is not generally accepted as authentic. It is missing from the most reliable early manuscripts, and appears to be an attempt to backdate the idea of converting the entire world to Jesus himself, rather than his followers.

Not to mention that anything allegedly said by the risen Jesus belongs to theology and cannot be considered history.

long winded fool

So then what evidence do we use to determine what his motives were, referencing CX's post? Logically, those who knew him would be likely sources for determining Jesus' motives and they seemed to think that Jesus wanted them to preach to Gentiles.

Toto

To start off with, we don't have any firm evidence that Jesus existed, or had followers who remembered what he said or had a clue about what he wanted them to do.

But if you want to assume that there is some historical core to the New Testament, the letters of Paul seem to show that the men closest to Jesus, being James, Peter, and John, were not interested in preaching to the gentiles, and left that to Paul who never met Jesus.

Any intimation in the Gospels or Acts that Jesus wanted to take his message to gentiles appears to be a later interpolation, as in Mark, or just a late version of the story, as in Acts.

Where do you see any evidence that those who knew Jesus seemed to think that Jesus wanted them to preach to the Gentiles?

long winded fool

Well there's probably no evidence that can't at least be questioned on some level, but there is evidence that Jesus held Gentiles and Jews in equal regard. In fact, much of the New Testament seems to consist of Jesus berating the Jews as if they were the people most in need of help. A zealous Jewish religious authority of the day, the Pharisees, who advocated Jewish seperation from Gentiles, were often his prime target. Plus there's the famous verse in which Jesus claims that the man he'd found to have the most faith in Israel was a pagan:

Matthew 8:10-12

The Jews who think that their Judaism is their ticket into heaven are cast aside, as the Gentiles take their place in the kingdom. All the words of Jesus. While this doesn't necessarily mean that Jesus meant for the Gentiles to recieve his word, I think the quote contained in these verses at least strongly implies it.

Peter Kirby

Can we agree that Mark 16:9-20 is a bad place to start in determing anything about the historical Jesus? Were you even aware that the vast majority in conservative scholarship regards the Longer Ending to be an addition to the text?

I have to give the early Christians some credit. They didn't invent some stuff that would be highly useful for a growing Gentile church, such as a saying of Jesus during his lifetime that stated "I want you guys to go to different countries and get the pagans to hear the gospel." No. In that, they were reserved, realizing that such a directive could only have come from the risen Christ, as Jesus the man didn't preach or advocate preaching for the repentance of Gentiles.

You may already be aware of that which indicates that Jesus didn't extend his mission to non-Jews, or give instructions about doing so, thus leaving no clear precedent for those who preached to Gentiles to which they could appeal. The problem of whether the uncircumcised could be part of the Jesus movement was the subject of the first ecumenical council, described in Acts 15: "Some who had come down from Judea were instructing the brothers, 'Unless you are circumcised according to the Mosaic practice, you cannot be saved.' Because there arose no little dissension and debate by Paul and Barnabas with them, it was decided that Paul, Barnabas, and some of the others should go up to Jerusalem to the apostles and presbyters about this question." The first to preach to Gentiles were those based in Antioch of Syria, Barnabas and Paul, where there was a mixed community of Jews and Gentiles (Gal 2:11-14) and where they were first called Christians (Acts 11:26). [The Hellenists in Jerusalem were "probably Palestinian Jews who spoke only Greek."] St. Luke, when wishing to show how the apostle Peter received divine instruction to nullify dietary laws, does not dare to insert a story where Jesus taught this openly, but rather tells us of Peter falling into a trance while hungry, on a roof terrace for prayer, and seeing something out of heaven (Acts 10:9-16). [Mark 7:19 contains an evangelist's comment; if Jesus did actually declare all foods clean, that would obviously form part of the later debate on the subject and obviate the need for Peter to receive this vision.] In Romans, the closest that Paul gets to writing a systematic treatise, the "New Deal" of salvation for all who believe is explained for the Roman church. Near the conclusion, Paul says, "For I say that Christ became a minister of the circumcised to show God's truthfulness, to confirm the promises to the patriarchs, but so that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. ... But I have written to you rather boldly in some respects to remind you, because of the grace given me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in performing the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering up of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the holy Spirit." (15:8-16) Here Paul says that Jesus ministered to Jews, but that his ministry is especially to the Gentiles by the grace given to Paul by God, a direct revelation of Jesus Christ (Gal 1:12). If Paul was not the first to include non-Jews in the movement, he was the first to make a big point of it, which is the only way to explain the enormous significance attached to Paul, who didn't know Jesus according to the flesh, as an evangelist by the later church ("apostle to the Gentiles"), as well as the opposition by several Judean disciples to his ministry (and the activity of anyone who admitted the uncircumcised), and moreover his emphasis on his independence from those before him, i.e., "an apostle not from human beings nor through a human being but through Jesus Christ and God the Father who raised him from the dead." Historians recognize Paul as the main early proponent of including non-Jews in the group, a position which Paul had to justify in the face of opposition.

To say that Jesus "clearly meant after his crucifixion for these same lost sheep to be born again and preach to all the Gentiles of the world in the hopes that they too will become baptized as true Jews and find their way back to the flock" on the basis of the "above verse [Mark 16:15], a portion of the last words Jesus said before ascending into heaven" is to step entirely outside of the strictures of history, if not to be oblivious to the historical enterprise.

best,
Peter Kirby