Toto

Chili digression

Toto

I think that "teacher" was used as a title, not with the expectation that Jesus would be running a classroom in finding eternal life.

And you realize that this is a story, or perhaps a parable, or a Zen koan. There were no "rulers" following Jesus around the countryside of Galilee asking dumb questions. The meaning of this is that the followers need to do more than follow the Jewish laws in a legalistic fashion, but have to commit their lives.

CuriousToo

Toto, the scripture does not say Jesus was being followed by the young ruler. A "story or a parable"? Which is it. You do not know scripture enough to defend your position. One thing you did acknowledge is that Jesus did walk around the countryside. If you know everything, then please tell us. Don't twist words to prove your point.

Toto

What is the difference between a story and a parable? How did I twist any words?

You say that Jesus referred him back to the 10 commandments - but did you notice that Jesus did not get them right? What do you think that means?

CuriousToo

A story can be true or false. A parable is an example used to get a point across. What did Jesus get wrong about the ten commandments?
If we cannot agree about everything, can we agree to mutual respect? I respect the fact that you do not "believe", will you respect that I do? If you are going to interpret or comment on scripture, please read it first, cause I'll call you on it. I don't know everything but I know some stuff.
These are very interesting times to live in. I would really like to know what you believe. Do you believe that when someone dies that is it?

Toto

Sorry - I was thinking of another passage. Jesus here gives 5 of the 10 commandments. In the parallel passage of Matthew, he lists

It is in Mark that he adds another commandment: I respect your right to hold your opinion. You can challenge anything I write - this is a debate board, and that's part of the fun.

I think that when someone dies, that's it for their body and mind, and there is no soul that survives. They only survive in the effect they have made on other people in society. But that's a subject for another forum. Please keep this discussion on topic.

storytime

What did Jesus get wrong about the ten commandments?

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me". Jesus made himself the one to follow when God had already established his word of law for the people of Israel to follow. The law as the word of God was also the light that led the way.

Jesus said all who believed in him would never die. The serpent in the garden told Eve basically the same thing when he said, "ye shall not surely die.."

By all accounts of OT law for Jews, Jesus committed blasphemy by leading people away from God and causing them to follow himself as "a man".

Solo

Religions, (and their Ersatz), my friend, are necessary, because people will never agree on the purely intuitive concepts, like God or Humanity. Here is a famous excerpt from a trial of a Soviet dissident:

Judge: And what is your profession, in general?
Brodsky: I am a poet and a literary translator.
Judge: Who recognizes you as a poet? Who enrolled you in the ranks of poets?
Brodsky: No one. Who enrolled me in the ranks of humankind?
Judge: Did you study this?
Brodsky: This?
Judge: How to become a poet. You did not even try to finish high school where they prepare, where they teach?
Brodsky: I didn’t think you could get this from school.
Judge: How then?
Brodsky: I think that it ... comes from God.

Joseph Brodsky was not promoting the idea of sin. He was simply critical of the Soviet-style of situational ethics which he praphrased as "in its immediate effects, it's bad, but from a larger sense - well, it may even be good". He, as many dissidents, sensed an enfeebled sense of commitment to self as a moral being - a very Russian kind of lament. During the Stalinist purges, and this detail is strictly omitted in the western history books dealing with the era, there were long lineups at the GPU/NKVD office buildings in the large cities, by conscientious citizens ready to denounce their neighbours as spies and saboteurs.

Would Lev 19:17 apply here ? That would make Jesus a sinner by simply being a clairvoyant fatalist. Incidentally, how does you talk to people who have no understanding of morality - i.e. "sin", in Jesus conceptual toolbox ?

Help me out : I can't think of one instance of the gospel Jesus not answering a criticism of his teachings. I believe you assume "sin" accrued from his not exercising the power of God (cf. Mt 26:53).

I must admit I too consider it a failing of Jesus not to have cared to redeem the swine (as well). But I suspect that was the storyteller's lack of moral fibre in construing a zero-sum thaumaturgy to obscure an older story of the Gerasene demoniac in which Jesus was asked to leave the region when he transgressed against Lev 19:26 (practicing witchcraft).


This I find a puzzling charge. What you seem to be saying is that Jesus was guilty of failing to perform the opera also for the tone-deaf. Which of course leaves the question why God creates the faithless and the fairness of his judgment under such circumstances. The sin here would be God's: his insistence on judgment of those whom he disqualifies from understanding (eg. in hardening the Pharaoh's heart in order to do some pestilence work on Egypt in retribution for an offence he himself created),

I don't think this would be perceived as sin in the communities where Jesus operated.

Yes, the Markan account should be read as disrespectful, and would most certainly have been offensive to the Jewish communal sensibilities.

And if the stories do have a historical footprint ?

Then Jesus would have been perceived as a sinner and blasphemer likely for (in order of increasing severity):

1) public disrespect to his mother,
2) violating Lord's sabbath (and possibly kashrut laws),
3) forgiving sins,
4) practicing witchcraft (Lazarus is transparently a remake of an older story)

Add to that preaching of himself as a herald of the imminent coming of God's kingdom to Israel which would be treason to Rome.

Jiri

xaxxat

Well, if sin is transmitted by the blood and all humans are fallen, he'd be born in sin like all of the rest...

No Robots

Just as a side note, here is how Christ's great philosophical counterpart, Spinoza, deals with this:

To those who ask why God did not so create all men, that they should be governed only by reason, I give no answer but this: because matter was not lacking to him for the creation of every degree of perfection from highest to lowest; or, more strictly, because the laws of his nature are so vast, as to suffice for the production of everything conceivable by an infinite intelligence.--Ethics I, appendix.