stephan huller

I am interested in this. What is the evidence for ongoing sacrifices? When do they think it ended? The Samaritans continue to sacrifice lambs and there is no requirement for a temple in the Pentateuch. Are you saying that the temple continued to exist after 70 CE or that - like the modern Samaritans - Jews continued to sacrifice something (= lambs)? The temple was destroyed in 70 CE.

maryhelena

Perhaps there are three issues here:

1) The Jerusalem below.
2) The Jerusalem above.
3) A link between them.

A human sacrifice, a crucifixion, an execution, on earth, has no rational or moral value. It can only be interpreted as such from a philosophical or theological perspective i.e. within the Jerusalem above. Thus, your OP is upholding this premise. The crucifixion is earthly but it's value is perceived to be a spiritual, an intellectual or philosophical value. The sacrificial offering is made in the heavens...

If one rejects an earthly sacrifice, one is, in effect, breaking the link between matter and spirit, between body and mind. Yes, of course, our minds have their own 'mind' - we can think stuff up that has no connection to reality. But that is our second nature, as it were. Our fundamental nature is the link, the cooperation between these two elements of our human nature. And it's that fundamental, raw, linkage that allows for our minds to sometimes go a wandering...

So, with the JC sacrifice issue - first must come what you have outlined above. A physical earthly human sacrifice, crucifixion, execution. The perceived value, the theological/philosophical value, is offered in the heavens. It's value is understood intellectually, philosophically. Human sacrifice has no earthly value. Value only comes about within an intellectual, spiritual, context.

That's step one as it were....

Step two - which is where Earl seeks to go.......is that once step one has been made then we can let our minds go a wandering....The Jerusalem above can be a parallel to the Jerusalem below. Intellectual sacrifices of outdated mental images can be 'crucified' - that's the story of intellectual evolution. The problem for Earl, his "missing piece", is that one can't get to step two before we take step one...

(and no, as I'm sure anyone reading my posts knows only two well.....JC is not historical - so there is no historical crucifixion of that gospel figure. But there was a historical figure executed by Rome - the last King and High Priest of the Jews, Antigonus, in 37 b.c.)

outhouse

intricate Italian or written to, around 63-64 with excellent greek grammer, with a position to prevent apostasy.

this authors christology is highly mythical, I can see why mythers use it as its christ highly divine in nature.


I mean really this book deal with christ job as mediator with god and humanity, how you or others can read way more out of it to me is imagination abuse.


your acting like this work represents all christians and applying this unique theology not typical of hellenistic scripture or epistles, as a standard of christology

TedM

I think one could get to step two without taking step one--as long as crucifixion is an earthly thing they can imagine it being heavenly, and would not require a specific earthly human example since they already had the animal sacrifices serving a theological role.

So, I think Earl's interpretation is theoretically possible, but I do not see the evidence for it that he sees. I have not yet analyzed his response to the OP.

Clivedurdle

Are we looking at some very muddled platonic cave thinking, grafted onto Judaism?

We are stuck in the shadows of the cave, when the reality is out there in the bright sun. How might we be saved from this?

An anointed sun of God sacrifices his blood for us in the new Jerusalem.

The Gospels are a later move in this chess game of the relationships between the mortal and the immortal, but one that does not quite work, because for Yahweh's saviour to save us according to the gospels, god must be with us, and the sacrifice gets moved to earth, from where the sacrifice should have taken place - in the heavens in the holy presence of the El Shaddai.

And there is something historical in this wondrous centuries long philosophical debate between Greek and Jewish and Persian ideas?

It isn't the fault of Alexander's Tutor is it?

maryhelena

Ted, it's a very big jump from animal sacrifices to a human sacrifice i.e. JC on the cross. A very big step. Is not the theology supposed to be around the idea that it's the human sacrifice that has the ultimate value?

Once one rejects a human element in all of this and goes for a purely spiritual sacrifice - then one is leaving reality behind and opting for pure speculation. One has to retain some reality or one ends up only offering another vision. A battle of the visions.....

Ideas are great - but they need to have some connection to reality if they are going to be of any benefit, of any value to living in the here and now.

It's not all spiritual, it's not all pie in the sky.

Sooner or later, Earl is going to have to come back down to earth. His purely spiritual take on the NT storyline is wanting. He might well have, as I've said before, half of the picture. A purely intellectual, Jerusalem above, type of interpretation. That's great. But that is step two. The other half of the picture, step one, requires a very strong dose of reality. Historical reality.

Here is a quote from Wells regarding physical, earthly, crucifixion.




Yes, one can debate whether or not 'Paul' had any specific earthly crucifixion in mind. What we should not be doing is denying the obvious. That ideas have to have roots in our environment, in our physical reality, if they are to be of value in living our life. We don't just live in our minds, in some spiritual nirvana - we have to place our two feet squarely on terra - firma before we can ever hope to reach for the stars...

Clivedurdle

But isn't the whole point of xianity the joining together of the spiritual and the real - God with us, a new heaven and earth?

This is a completely theoretical exercise as it is trying to make a chimera of the universe - not only fully god and fully man, but a conjoining of god and the universe - the bride of Christ, the pangs Paul talks of.


But this xian utopia needs no reality, like all other utopia and cities floating in the skies. In fact the reality comes afterwards in xianity, with people trying to build beautiful churches, and much later, with William Blake building Jerusalem, and ideals of human rights, equality, etc.

Clivedurdle

The rituals make it real. The Eucharist - transubstantiation is precisely about Jesus becoming real!

TedM

I don't see it as a big step. The concept of sacrificing valuable animal life for the sins of the people had existed for hundreds of years. If things aren't working so well, you step it up a notch and sacrifice something of even more value--human life. But, why do this if you can see it as already having occurred via scriptural revelation? :

I think Isaiah 53 makes the step a lot smaller. It is a Messianic passage and I think was seen so even if it was originally interpreted to be discussing the suffering of Israel for their own sins. Over time this passage came to be seen as Messianic--and as applying to an actual human being. Whether that change in interpretation came in response to an actual human being being killed or due only to the evolution of ideas over time we cannot say.

maryhelena

Great! The "joining together of the spiritual and the real" - a "new heaven and earth". We should not be having to choose between them - love and marriage and all that.....

Seriously though...if that is what we perceive to be the christian ideal - a 'marriage', a connection, between body and spirit, between reality and spirituality - then lets also allow those early christians the same perspective. It was never all one or the other; spirituality, intellectual and philosophical ideas work hand in glove with physical realities. We should not be shortchanging ourselves.

Earthly realities matter now - and they mattered to those early christians. JC, so the story goes, was hell bent on demonstrating that earthly realities were of primary concern. If one wants to go so far - that is what he gave his life for....the rest, the spiritual type nirvana - that's just the cherry on the cake....

Bring me my chariots of fire!
I will not cease from mental fight;
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.