Clivedurdle

Thomas, look at Hebrews in comparison! Washed in the blood of the lamb etc.

This religion is not centred on a sombre last supper tableau, it has some terrifying motifs, including ritual cannibalism, human sacrifice and eternal torment in hell fire.

Thomas II

Ok,go on...Bring up some of these cases...Develop this a bit more...

DramaQ

Of course, none of it is "real". I thought the point here was to determine if Christians had a strictly spiritual belief in "body and blood" that got very confusing after a PHYSICAL Jesus was introduced into the belief system.

I was born and raised Catholic and went to 12 years of Catholic school. Yeah... I did a bit of communion. In hindsight (emphasis on the "sight") I can tell you that most of the "satisfaction" was in following everyone else, being part of a group and a ritual, and trying as hard as possible to not actually think about the meaning (if any) behind it all.

Meanwhile... back at the "did the blood become too real for some" debate...

Clivedurdle

I suppose this might relate to traditions we were brought up in! Mine is Assemblies of God, where we had Ribena and Matzos!

We also had loads of blood of the lamb, sacrifice for sins, written in the lambs book of life etc.

AoG did not as the main churches do go through the Bible on some sort of annual basis with set readings, but constantly reinforced themes, you were expected to be able to follow the preacher and flick back and forwards through the Old and New Testaments to follow the arguments and the references in the OT to jesus.

What this results in is a very strong feeling about certain key terms, and interestingly a gut feeling that as xians since the alleged death have had to deal with jesus in their hearts, maybe that is true of all xians throughout history!

The nutty pentes may actually be very useful because of how they study the Bible for the mythicist case! It is not the same way as the mainstream Baptists like Spurgeon etc. Hebrews, Revelation, classic bits of Romans etc are constantly repeated and referred back, like Melchizadek for example.

Eikonoklast

I think the Eucharist possibly leads to the cross. They're two symbols that go hand in hand

The Eucharist is actually visionary plants (different mushrooms, marijuana, etc).

The death of the myth based character Jesus on the cross is symbolic of ego death (the sense of loss of ego and freewill when one has attained the mystical state induced by ingesting these plants), followed by resurrection (regaining of one's ego after the effects have subsided).

DramaQ

Ah, matzo men, eh?

I can see why you're raising the question of the connection of the Eucharist and the cross.

In an Catholic upbringing you never think of a problem with it. The cross IS the sign of the sacrifice. Or rather the tool of it.

I never occured to us that it's so not-Jewish. That all the language about blood-sacrifice and lambs and so on do not FIT with the cross image at all.

It's a very odd merger....

fwiw, you're average Catholic seems to be much more in tune with Paul's spin on the Christ. (Ironic given their appeal to the authority of Peter as "first Pope"). All the earth-bound, parable-telling, do-unto-others stuff is gravy, but the real meat is the "personal savior" stuff. In short, if it turned out that there was no HJ, it wouldn't change their belief system all that much. imho.

Clivedurdle

Absolutely!

I do not see why mythicists are having such a hard time, to me it seems the natural position of most catholics and pentecostals!

In some ways it enriches matters by allowing people to get high on their fantasies of God.

The historicists are the heretics!

DramaQ

heheheh... well, that's an interesting way to put it.

I doubt all Christian groups would agree, and if I remember my youth correctly, Catholics were not the most popular brand of it out there....

dq