No Robots

Christianity was and is Judaism.

jakejonesiv

Hi Jeffrey,

In the passage that No Robots mentioned, the the high priest is said to have rent his clothes, and said, He has spoken blasphemy; what further need have we of witnesses? behold, now you have heard his blasphemy. Matthew 26:25.

Can you tell me exactly what was considered blasphemous in Jesus' alleged statement in Matthew 26:64?

I don't see a claim to be the God of Israel, so if you could help me out, I would appreciate it.

Thanks,
Jake Jones IV

jakejonesiv

Oh no, it is not.

jgibson000

No doubt, at least originally.

But this assertion is hardly an answer to my question about the validity of your claim that all NT writings were written to (ethnic) Jews.

So I ask again: were the Galatians to whom Paul wrote ethnically Jewish? Were their parents Jews? Were the Thessalonians Jewish? Were their parents? Was Theophilus, the stated recipient of GLuke and Acts, a Jew?

JG

jgibson000

This is exactly what I deal with -- though for the Markan parallel to Matt. 26:25 -- in my article in the Van Oyen/Shepherd volume, a earlier draft of which is available here. (You'll have to join the group to access it)

The thesis argued there is that

... for Mark, what lies at the heart of the blasphemy charge -- what offends the High Priest’s and the Sanhedrin’s sensibilities and makes them feel that the God of Israel has been denigrated and insulted -- is not what Jesus claims about himself, but that it is Jesus who is making Messianic claims.

That's because it's not there!

Jeffrey

No Robots

It is his catchword "Son of God" that is found to be blasphemous. But his understanding of what this means is different from that of his accusers. Here is what Christ means by "Son of God":

I am more than God and I am my own creator. When I came into being, all things came into being; I was the cause of myself and of all things, and if I so willed, I would not be and all things would not be. If I were not, God also would not be.—Meister Eckhart

This is the mystic's identification of himself with the Absolute.

But Christ does not attempt to refute or instruct his accusers:

Socrates and Christ both refused to oppose the will and the power of their adversaries; they felt obliged to carry out the latters' will and went even further, in tragic defiance heaping up guilt for the benefit of their accusers.... The greatness of Christ's self-sacrifice (like that of Socrates) is that he finds himself guilty because the others have found him guilty according to their view of things.—Constantin Brunner / Our Christ, p.285

jakejonesiv

Aha! Mark cast his story of Jesus trial and condemnation before the Sahendrin on the trial of Zacharias, the son of Baris, by a Zealot Sanhedrin. Josephus, B.J. 4.334-344.

Very good.

Jake Jones IV

jgibson000

If, as you say, the accusers understood hUIOS TOU QEOU in it's "messianic" sense and not as Jesus (not Christ) reputedly understood it, then they have no reason to accuse him of Blasphemy. They wouldn't have known what he was claiming. Besides that, Jesus is reported in the Gospels as working from what the High Priest means by XRISTOS, not what he means by it.

Sorry, but are indulging in rank eisegesis, and really really bad rank eisegesis at that..

:banghead:

So .. our understanding of what Jesus says is to be guided not by the historical critical method, and not by what 1st century Judaism shows us was the meaning and understanding that Jews had of the Jewish titles XRISTOS and hUIOUS TOU QEOU, but by the "teachings" of a 13th Century German Dominican?

Leaving aside the question of how whacked out this claim is and how much it is an abandonment of the canons of historical research, how do you know that this is so? Why shouldn't we take the ravings of Catherine Emmrich, another Christian mystic who reputedly told us what Jesus "actually meant", as more authoritative that Eckhart?

This is one mystic's identification. That's it's Jesus', let alone what Jesus is up to in his response to the High Priest, is something you are reading into the text.

Sorry, but let's call a spade a spade here. This is utter crapolla.

JG

Gamera

Joan of Arc was an historical figure in early modern times, yet we have little information about her killers. Why? it didn't matter to her followers or opponents.

Jesus was an historical from the classic period and we have little information about his killers. Why? it didn't matter to his followers or opponents.

That's how history works. Only stuff that matters to somebody at the time gets recorded..

No Robots

The kings who came to the Christ-child in the manger arrived too late; they met the ox and ass, the experts, incapable of seeing anything. And as to the unreliability of the experts when it comes to evaluating higher spirits, is it necessary to say any more after what has been said, after all the criticism applied to these critics by the lofty spirits, after all the criticism applied by Socrates and Christ? There is a moral here—but critics learn nothing. Geniuses may do what they will with the erudite critics; the latter will go on regarding themselves as their favourite devotees in precisely the same way that certain fops react to beautiful women. Nor have all the historical gaffes made by the learned and expert critics, which they themselves are obliged to gaze upon and relate, succeeded in giving them a horror of being learned and expert critics. They recount how they were made to shut their mouths as if it had nothing to do with them, and as if they hadn't got into a tight spot. Their own age gives them credit, and cannot see that they are the same people as before and that they are carrying on their old profession. So it is the same as in Christ's life: Christ still suffers most at the hands of the scholars! They still carry on their mockery of him, dressing him up with a stage sceptre and purple robe, and undressing him again. Thus we have not yet succeeded in finding any reason for speaking any better of the learned men than Christ did; we mark well their sheer nonsense, and we do not see that they have any claim to be spared. Learned criticism does not see Christ the Genius; criticism's express purpose seems to be to show that the genius is not recognized by the world. The way the Christ of the gospels is treated by the historicocritical method is the most grandiose demonstration of this.—Constantin Brunner, Our Christ, Appendix on Criticism