storytime

He condemned their greed and lack of care for the poor people. "Honor thy father and thy mother" seems to be the appropriate advice Jesus gave to the Pharisees. He probably also told them "a penny saved is a penny earned".

"the eye of a needle" is a metaphor describing the difficulty of the rich to part with their wealth. Jews in those days are portrayed as greedy tightwads concerned only with personal advantage, not being their brothers keepers. Jesus condemned their attitude toward their fellow Jews, not their wealth. In another scene Jesus tells his own disciples to "make use of the money" they earned. Now, what could Jesus have been thinking? I bet he was thinking of Scot Trade or any number of secure investments that would advantage the groups expanding security. Have you by chance seen the Clark Howard show? He's a Jew who advises people on market trends and saving money, iow's "make use of the money". Jesus would probably tell you that Howard is more righteous than a Pharisee.

ApostateAbe

Toto, I can explain how I know, but the explanations are built on probabilities that the hyperskeptics dismiss as speculative. It is not about giving the ancient documents authoritative respect. It is about fitting the most probable explanations to the contents of those documents. For example, I do not accept the Testimonium Flavianum as truthful. But I do accept a reconstruction of the text that Josephus was originally either neutral or negative toward Jesus, based largely on the citation of Josephus by Origen (he claimed that Josephus believed that Jesus was not the Christ). I give very limited respect to both Origen and Josephus, but I fit the most probable explanations to the evidence. The hyperskeptics, however, tend to think that the Testimonium Flavianum is completely fabricated, either because they see Christians as nothing but dirty liars or because evidence of at least some untruth is reason to conclude complete untruth. For that reason, they think the inauthenticity of the Testimonium Flavianum is reason to strongly suspect inauthenticity of Josephus' mention of James as the brother of Jesus. They argue that Origen said that Josephus believed that Jesus was not the Christ, not because Josephus said anything about Jesus, but because Josephus believed someone else to be the Messiah. They have improbable explanations for improbable theories, but they don't care, because they seem to treat judgments of relative probability as pulled out of the air, and one possible explanation is as good as another.

aa5874

Again are you not the person who admitted that you have problems with Christians or religious beliefs of Christians?

Please do not accuse other people of things that you may be guilty of.



The "TF" 18.3.3 precedes AJ 20.9.1 so any reference to "Jesus called Christ" in AJ 20.9.1 is inherently linked to the TF. And further, without the TF, "Jesus called Christ" becomes ambiguous in AJ 20.9.1.

Now, since Josephus mentioned many persons called Jesus how can it be ascertained that only one had a brother called James and that this Jesus was believed to have no earthly father?

Bullmoose Too

A fictional character most ceratinly can not be anything anyone wants. Ever hear of canon?

If you disagree with the canon you could write fanfiction but that is not official and will not be recognized as the original, therefore true, work.

So this Jesus that this preacher speaks of is nothing more then a fanfic Jesus. Much like all Jesuses.

spamandham

Do you consider the Jesus project to have been hyperskeptical? By their analysis and judgement, every single quote they investigated was in the end deemed to be inauthentic.

That should not come as a surprise, since ancient authors rarely actually preserved quotes. Instead, it was commonplace for the authors to use quotes as a literary device that meant "this is what I think he would have said".

spamandham

The Hebrew prophets are characters in fantastic stories. If those stories have some vague basis in reality, surely that reality has not been preserved.

bacht

Well we might say that, but what about turn-of-the-era Jews? Josephus seems to read his bible fairly literally. Didn't Pharisees et al assume that Elijah and the others were real people?

Toto

Are you confusing the Jesus Project with the Jesus Seminar? The Jesus Seminar examined various saying, and found only 18% to be authentic by some fairly unskeptical standards.

The Jesus Project is in suspense now, but has not passed judgment on the sayings of Jesus.

There are other scholars who have found that virtually every saying of Jesus could be derived from the philosophers of the time, but this doesn't mean that Jesus couldn't have said the same thing, assuming that he existed.

aa5874

But, one can only assume Jesus lived and then assume they know what he said based on their own assumptions of who he was.

If it is assumed that Jesus was just a carpenter how much of that 18% would be left? Perhaps another assumption will help.

ApostateAbe

Clarify or correct what you mean per Toto's post, thanks.