maryhelena

Oh, my - down to quoting opinions of Doherty now.....:hysterical:

Oh my - dead Messiah - wave the magic wand and bring him back to life again.......It's unreasonable. It's nonsense. It's theological mumbo-jumbo. It's laughable.

Ted, you are blaming some Jews for the christian idea that salvation value was found in a human flesh and blood sacrifice. This idea is such an abomination that it needs to be rejected wherever and whenever it is presented. To put this idea on the table for discussion is an affront to those at that table.

Ted, what you see as a "highly reasonable idea" - I find to be irrational, immoral and anti-humanitarian.

Your fascination with this idea, your OP for this thread, of a human flesh and blood crucifixion/sacrifice having salvation value - is, to say the least, disturbing.

Jayrok

I can see the symbolism between Passover in the OT and the crucifixion in the NT. Passover celebrates the exodus from Egyptian bondage and God's offer of the promised land (OT). For the NT, the bondage the believer can escape from is the Law and the promised land is the freedom one can receive via salvation in Jesus.

I think it is simply a literary device to further show Jesus emerging from the scriptures. Passover wasn't really about atonement, but it represents how the blood of the lamb of God can deter death (or cause death to passover whoever is covered by the blood of the lamb). And also the event served as a great backdrop for the scene since Jerusalem was very crowded during the Passover festival. Holding the crucifixion at Passover kills two birds with one stone.

I don't know. I think the Hebrew scriptures clearly point to the suffering servant being Israel. I don't see the transition point from the nation itself being the one punished for sins and exiled, etc., to the chosen messiah taking on the punishment for the nation. They were already punished for their sins of idolatry, all through the prophets.

They were conquered, enslaved, and exiled. Why would there then be an additional need for the messiah to be beaten and punished for the same sins? I just don't see that when I read the prophets. Instead, I see God promising them, through the prophets, that they will not be in exile forever. He promised to gather them and bless them. The messiah wasn't necessarily an important part of that redemption.

My view of the separation of the NT and OT is the idea of the new covenant. But that is another discussion.

Was a prophesied Messiah who also saves from sins in vogue during the time of Jesus? Perhaps not during the time of Jesus, but it was in the next century or so.

TedM

Ok. I still think you don't understand what I'm talking about. You have not demonstrated that you do.

stephan huller

I have always wondered if self-sacrifice can really be classified as a 'sacrifice.' Isn't it more of a suicide? I think the reason why you might have such a difficult time seeing it Ted is that you emphasize Jesus's humanity. If Jesus was originally held to be God it is difficult to get around the idea of humanity overcoming God to kill him. Therefore it is quite reasonable to assume that the suicide interpretation was developed somewhere quite early.

We see the line crossed in Lucian's depiction of Polycarp (= Peregrinus). What Christianity later held up as a 'martyrdom' was really a para-suicidal fixation. One wonders if the same thing was at work with respect to God. Take for instance the Philonic interpretation of 'created in his image.' Philo takes this to pertain to Adam Kadmion (= the world) rather than the Adam made of the earth. To this end, the symbol of God being destroyed on the Cross is at once a sign of the end of the world, the apocalyptic interest of Christianity generally being thought to at the core of the nascent religion.

maryhelena

Your right on that - I don't ever want to understand how a salvation value in a human flesh and blood crucifixion/sacrifice can be attempted to be justified or demonstrated. But I certainty do understand how theology functions - clouds the eyes and warps the mind.....

andrewcriddle

Hi Jake

I think you are confusing the Tauroctony, the central myth of Mithraism, with the Taurobolium, the bloody baptism of the priests of Cybele.

Andrew Criddle

spin

So meaning is of no importance to you, except that you get to rehearse your conclusion.

The good one is the new one, if it hadn't dawned on you. You need the old one for self-justification, but it is still the fruit of theft. It's a bit like the fact that, when the Ottomans turned the church of the Santa Sofia into a mosque, they felt uneasy about the implications, so eventually one sultan had to build something better, building the Blue Mosque in the same area satisfying his religious honor. And there is this unease that remains because of the Santa Sofia.

Yes, TedM, you are stuck with the illicit fruits of your religious heritage, so you gotta make the most of it.

Any nonsense to arrive at your conclusion, but ignoring the content of your terminology just means you miss out the fact that you are misusing it. A messiah is specifically a person who will save the Jews through military intervention at the head of an army. Forgetting that part just indicates that the term is only essential to the dogma for its historical necessity.

Oh my god, TedM, the circularity of this is amazing. You will say or do anything. Many of the texts you refer to are not future, such as Isaiah 9:6 and Ps 22:16. You are just making that up and you are just accepting apologetic eisegesis that invents messianic passages. No commitment.

It doesn't matter the size of the shoe when you get it onto the last: you will beat it into shape, sparing no manipulation to force it to fit.

Post hoc justifications are a waste of time.

I don't want your thanks here. You just wasted my time showing that you were doing what I didn't want to have to waste my time over: you utterly lack of commitment to any of your so-called messianic references in the HB and will simply drop anything that is inconvenient to your conclusions. "Oh, that one didn't work. Whatever. There are many more, so why should I care?" There is a reason why I wanted you personally to present your best shots: they would be your responsibility and you would have to be involved. You wouldn't be able to just drop them. But you have demonstrated that you are not prepared to responsibly present examples of messianism in the HB, understood at the time, yourself.

I don't want your thanks. I want you to admit that you will use anything to try to force your religious prejudices or pacify your apologetic obligations. It doesn't matter what anachronism you use, if someone at some time said something you can throw, you'll use it.

You will not look at your lack of logic and methodology and see that you are doing your intelligence a disservice. You just keep bouncing back here to this freethought forum with yet more of your fallacious religious rationales. How about a little freethought, TedM? That's the purpose of the forum. Can you do that?

spin

Whoa thar, kimosabe! Where did you get this notion that Polycarp was Peregrinus Proteus?

stephan huller

i've written about this on and off for the last ten years. there are numerous parallels. but i guess you could start with something Detering asked me to write seven years ago

http://www.radikalkritik.de/Huller_Peregrin.htm

I can refine this basic identification. Peregrinus is clearly Ignatius but Ignatius is a title not a name and Polycarp is the fiery one who matches Peregrinus's obsessive interest for a fiery death. The figure of Herod ties Peregrinus and Polycarp too.

stephan huller

Ignatius = Nurono = Seraph = god/angel