dimbulb

So Jesus must be real because he doesn't conform to prophecy. AKA Inconsistency in the Bible equals credibility. :huh:

And I'm sure if the myth of Jesus conformed perfectly with prophecy then that would be proof positive also.

Of course, whether he actually existed must be established BEFORE anyone can evaluate whether his supposed existence was consistent with prior prophecy or not.

Cart-horse-cart

Crap

bacht

I would guess that the "kick start" for Christianity was the fall of the temple, and the two Roman wars with Jewish Palestine.

I can see the value of myth (I love the King Arthur stories), but making it concrete robs it of something.

fatpie42

Washing people's feet isn't something Jesus is described as doing very often and it's hardly the mark of someone moving for major social change.

Once again, being a religious teacher is not a sign that someone is moving for social change.

Once again, with the help of magic powers. Jesus is described as travelling in poverty so he would be relying on others to feed him, not the other way around. Except, of course, when he takes a local person's food and magically multiplies its quantity.

Sorry, wait a minute you think it was simple faith healing and therefore wasn't magical? Can you really raise people from the dead at their funeral through the use of faith healing/placebo? In any case, going around claiming to be a healer isn't a move towards social change.

What is your point meant to be? That Leni Riefenstahl was impressed by the strong feminist overtones of Nazism?

If we want to choose someone other than Hitler, we could always consider the many female supporters of Sarah Palin. Once again, just because someone has female supporters doesn't make them a feminist.

So the religious leaders of the time were all socialists and feminists too then?

Intriguing.

I find it very easy to imagine that Jesus was mainly concerned with men.

So you think Jesus intended to free the people of their rulers? Well, if he did intend that he was a massive failure. Am I to suppose that the other messiahs who actually made enough of a mark to be explicitly mentioned by Josephus were socialists and feminists too? After all, they would have wanted to free all the Jews, not just the men, wouldn't they?

Edit: Okay, I realise I'm being rather bitchy in this post and I think I ought to apologise for that. Basically I think the claim that Jesus was a socialist and a feminist is made far too often and has very little backing. If you can prove me wrong then I'd be very interested. You've already shown me something I didn't know before with the Queen of the South quote. However, most of what you have put forward doesn't really seem like the mark of someone aiming for major social change. It seems more that Jesus was expecting change to come from God (hence the anticipation concerning Jesus' second coming), while the changes in attitude he expected from people beforehand seem little different from patriachal and conservative ideas already present amongst religious Jews of the time.

WVIncagold

Thats it bury your head in the sand.

maryhelena

Camelot! In short, there’s simply not; A more congenial spot; For happily-ever-aftering than here; In Camelot..........

Indeed, making myth concrete robs it of its essence. And that, surely would be the case were Jesus of Nazareth to be a historical person. Plain, ordinary man without any mystery and romance. That’s why I said in my earlier post - put those mythological clothes back on him - naked he has no value whatsoever.

I do think that to say something is a myth is not to minimize it (not talking urban legends here). Human history is full of recorded myths. Whatever would have been the intent, the motivation, behind any particular myth - one thing is pretty certain. Myths seek to capture something about the human condition that cannot, or could not, be easily expressed in words. Words so often fail us. A picture is worth a thousand words. Hence myths could be seen as word pictures.

Undoubtedly, 70 CE was important - the apocalyptic end time! But was it the kick start for Christianity? Not sure about that.
Perhaps if one is going along with the historical Jesus position, if one is following the story of the carpenter’s son who was an itinerant preacher who was crucified - then perhaps 70 CE could be seen as a sort endorsement of Jesus’ end time prophecy about not a stone being left on another stone re the temple. Christians, seemingly, were in other places apart from Jerusalem - so apart from the temple’s destruction being proof positive of Jesus as a true prophet, I don’t really think the apocalyptic end in 70 CE did much expect move things along...

If one does not go with this story line, if like myself, one sees the whole gospel story as being in the realm of mythology - then its open season on just where and when Christianity got its kick start.

The gospels do tell us that age 12 Jesus was renowned for his understanding and answers to the teachers in the temple. A simple story line - but a far bigger admission. Knowledge, intellectual ability, education; these are the avenues to understanding. Its not that a 12 year old has such a superior intellect - its an admission that Christian ideas did not spring forth from a mind without a sound educational foundation. An educational background that no carpenter’s son would have been able to obtain.

Even today, one does not get recognition unless one has had ones work ‘peer reviewed’. Perhaps the carpenter’s son was the exception, the brilliant mind, the child prodigy, a genius. Or, perhaps more likely, early Christianity arose within an intellectual environment - not fishermen and tax collectors and tent makers.

The Christian myth makers are not simpletons - good gracious, they have kept the whole world fascinated for 2000 years!

Those early Christians had a story to tell. A story that would be so unbelievable, to Jewish ears, that it would need to be told in the form of a myth; told symbolically, told in a parable. There really was no alternative. The messiah, discerned by those early Christians, was not Jewish. Their mythology made the messiah Jewish. The reality that they faced was something entirely different. (as outlined in my above post). The reality was a flesh and blood messiah that would liberate the Jews from bondage to the Law by building a spiritual temple. But the individual that was perceived to have opened their eyes was not Jewish but a son of a king that they would have viewed negatively. No way was the real story going to sell. The Herodians were in enough disrepute that nothing good was going to be seen as coming from that source.

The kick start for early Christianity - to my way of thinking - most likely came from within a Herodian/Hasmonean circle.

bacht

I think you're assuming a lot about the motivations of Jews and early Christians. The Jews did not consider the law of Moses as bondage (maybe some of the Hellenized Jews did) and they certainly didn't sanction the creation of a new cult using their scriptures and terminology. This idea of ritual vs pure spirituality is as old as Christian apologetics, and it really is getting tired.

The fall of the temple and the end of Jewish political power meant the end of a millenium of religious and cultural tradition for Palestinian Jews. They could no longer control the scriptures or practice the Mosaic sacrificial cult. Two wars with Rome including disturbances in several Hellenistic cities reinforced negative attitudes towards the Jews, and imo Christians exploited this (think of how N Americans co-opted native symbols and terminology - even today there are still controversies about sports teams with names like the Indians)

As for the gospels many here including myself are very skeptical of their worth as history or even folklore. The more I learn, the more Mark and the others seem like pure invention to me, or some sort of Christian apologetic, justifying the "passing of the torch" from the Jews to the gentiles (of course Judaism carried on but this is downplayed in the Christian origins mythology)

maryhelena

Regarding my reference to 'bondage' in regard to the Law......obviously, I'm here, using this term from a Christian, not a Jewish, perspective.

"Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us............He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus....." Gal.3:13,14.

Hence, this new cult of Christianity was given, through the Jesus mythology, Jewish roots - but simultaneously it was set free......

I suppose one could say, on one level, that by giving the mythological Jesus of Nazareth Jewish roots, the gospel story in effect highjacked Jewish scriptures for other than a Jewish cause......

Judaism, of course, being unwilling to buy into the story......

maryhelena

edited:
sorry about this - post got posted twice.....

bacht

Yes, I think if I had been a Jew living around the mid-2nd C I might have found the situation somewhat bewildering: not only were my country and my people shattered and dishonoured, but some upstart gentiles were going around talking about Abraham and some kind of invisible messiah.

Paul is problematic. If you believe that he was expecting the Parousia very soon then most of his teaching is irrelevant, since it was only a temporary situation while the gentiles were being gathered for the final judgment.

If you believe that Paul was consciously founding a new institution that would rival or surpass Judaism then he has lot to answer for, including whether he had any real appreciation for the Law.

Elijah

The washing of the feet isn’t meant to be the literal social change he is bringing about there. It’s symbolic. He’s trying to spread a servitude meme.

John 12:13 "Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”

It’s ideological warfare.
That was in reference to him serving the people but I don’t know how many religious figures push an ideology that they don’t suspect will lead to some social change.
I would have a hard time believing that should be taken literally as him manufacturing bread and fish from thin air.
No, but somebody can be mistaken for dead or it could just be a legend to make him seem more special.

Don’t know anything about her. She could have thought that the social change that he was going to bring would benefit women or maybe she didn’t care about helping women. The point I was trying to make was that if Hitler or Jesus or anyone’s message is going to help women then they are going to attract female followers.

This is from the first thing that came up on google for Hitler and women. I don’t know how accurate it is.

Hitler's outspoken anti-feminism drove large numbers of women to join left-wing political groups. In October, 1933, the Nazis opened the first concentration camp for women at Moringen. By 1938 the camp was unable to accommodate the growing number of women prisoners and a second one was built at Lichtenburg in Saxony. The following year another one was opened in Ravensbruck.

Yea. Don't you don’t think it was a feminist issue to see a women as the vice president? The only reason she was put on the ticket was to pull that string on women after the Hillary fall.
No, I’m saying female/male equality isn’t anything new, if he was trying push it.

I prefer awesome! Also you should try to make sure and get your head around the sign of Jonah bit in that passage if you want to understand how the faith in Christ spread the way it did.
I can easily imagine it as well but I just don’t think that’s the case. While he doesn’t directly say I have come to free women there is no reason to believe that if he did that passage would have remained thru all the edits. Just like the anti-authority issue is played down, because it wouldn’t have survived the edits or Rome wouldn’t have let the message spread.
Well Christianity is still a work in progress. Who knows how Christianity ends up or its final impact on the world will be. You can’t expect a few words and a sacrifice to change the world instantly and rid of us our rulers. It takes time and it’s not like the message hasn’t been confused/altered by the authority and used to oppress the people so a major reform is obviously needed if Christianity is going to fulfill any type of salvation for the world.

Now you can look at America as progress, which is supposed to be a Christian nation, where the leaders serve the people instead of the other way around. In my mind though that is more of an illusion just to keep the people working and from revolting.

I don’t know enough about the other Jewish messiah claimants; we would have to analyze what we know about them individually. It’s easy to imagine revolts against empires that don’t concern or involve the women as seen in the fundamentalist Muslim struggle against us. But the story of Jesus looks very feminine IMO, with even his mom playing the role of Abraham sacrificing her child to establish a new covenant, but instead of dragging him up there, she just raised him to know what needed to be done.
I didn’t notice anything rude, but thank you very much for such a kind overture, it’s much appreciated. Now let’s see if I can go look back at my post and try to make it sound less jerky.

If the socialist/feminist version of Jesus is made often then maybe you should consider it. The feminist position is more debatable then the socialist issue but you do have plenty of support for that position in the form of people who agree that “Jesus was not Spartacus” Pope Benedict. But is that really the side you want to be on? The side of the ruling majority who use the faith people have in Jesus to oppress/control them?

I’m not going to prove this one way or another to you. You are just going to have to pick what you think is the more likely scenario. Either the women were, following him, ministering to him, anointing him, remained to witness his sacrifice and are credited as the first to speak of a resurrection, because they were believers in his message or they were following him why? What evidence is there that he was a sexist or fascist to you?

As for where he expected the change to come from. Obviously he expected god or the natural order of things to help spread the faith after his death. He’s the “grain of wheat” that falls and dies to bare much fruit. His death is the beginning of the growth of the vine/faith but it would be god/nature/fate that does the actual growing of the faith/vine.

I don’t know if his view was that different from other Jews in regards to authority, it seemed to be in conflict of the Jewish authority in the story but that would be expected. I think of Jews as following a tradition of standing up to Earthly authority. For me, Jesus being shown with Mosses and Elijah is trying to say that, like them, he is trying to stand up to the earthly authority; not with an earthly army but the word of God.

Jesus’ plan is more sophisticated/ideological/confusing than Moses’ republic or Elijah trying to clean house and get a good king in. What they do have in common, (as you pointed out), is that (at the present moment) they have all failed in freeing the people completely. Moses’ law that was supposed to free them from the need of rulers, was just used by religious authority to oppress the people later. Elijah’s good king concept can’t hold up because eventually the good ones die and the ambitious ones take their place.

So Jesus has to try something new. I don’t know how many failed messiah attempts he was familiar with at the time, but he seems to have planned for failure so that when he is defeated he wins. Establishing the meme that the only good king is the dead king. Eventually as the people move to serving a spiritual king the earthly kings lose their power until they are eventually powerless. Brilliant plan… wish I could see it actually work though.