bacht

Dude ya gotta lay off the hate-mongering. I know it's politically correct to dis the West but at least try to use some balance.

We're all the same animal species, imperfect humans with greed and lust and ignorance and occasional brilliance. Flags and myths can be manifold, but at the end of the day we all have the same needs and fears.

Solo

I noted here several times - and even though to me personally this was a revelation of highest order, which blows away the conventional interpretations of Paul - no-one has responded either by disputing my reading, or saying -:constern02:: huhuh, how come no-one has stumbled on this before ?

So let me repeat : the authentic Paul did not believe Jesus was innocent or blameless or was put away by lawless men as Peter claims in Acts 2:23.

Even though he never elaborates on the charges against Jesus, Paul is consistent about the correctness of the crucifixion: Jesus was crucified legally; it was a just requirement of the law (dikaioma tou nomou) (Rom 8:4) and no man is justified before God by the law (Gal 3:11). That this rule was inclusive of Jesus of the flesh is attested by 2 Cor 13:4 '...he was crucified through weakness'.

The true understanding of Jesus and his mission however is only available to the spiritual man. If the rulers of the age had that understanding (i.e. one that Paul and his saints had) they would have not crucified "the Lord of glory". They would have understood that Jesus was faithfully fulfilling his servant's task of restoring the man-God relationship, and was internally unaware of being made sin in the eyes of men (2 Cor 5:21). Therefore from the Pauline standpont he was.... not innocent but beyond judgment, beyond law ! Paul (the authentic one) was definitely not preaching that Jesus was murdered, as the unknown interpolator of 1 Th 2:15 witlessly asserts.

This teaching has been profoundly misunderstood because of the later gospel portrayal of Jesus and the "regal mantle" he was made to live up to. Even Mark, who remained true to most of Paul's theology and rejected the Davidic pedigree attributed to Jesus, could not conceive of the trial by Sanhedrin except as a lawless farce .

Jiri

bacht

Sounds like you're going with the HJ idea of a real guy being executed by the state. When I read Paul I'm thinking about the spiritual Christ, the one "at the right hand of God" in heaven, where he remains until the Parousia.

To me Paul's conception of Christ's death is 'legal' in a higher-plane sense: the Son, the Word, while guiltless, voluntarily submits himself to death for the sake of redeeming mankind. The spiritual forces against him, the archons, did what they do best: oppose God and his followers. In terms of the Mosaic sacrificial system there's a certain logic to it: God's spotless firstborn is chosen for God's purposes as a final atoning offering.

If you try to bring the HJ into Paul's letters it gets tricky since Paul says very little about this person (maybe nothing, depends how you read it). I guess the principle is the same: an innocent man allows himself to be abused and killed for a higher purpose. This is timeless martyr stuff, but then you've got to explain how this Galilean fellow ends up as almost equal to the Creator :huh:

show_no_mercy

Exportation to non-Jews.

I think it would be more unexplainable if Jesus - the supposed "king" of the Jews - had not been deified by pagan converts to Christianity. Non-Jews have hundreds of years of tradition of worshiping human kings as gods.

bacht

Sure, I can see that, the apotheosis of a Hebrew criminal. This is religion after all, it doesn't have to be perfectly logical, and as you say the gentiles already had a tradition of divinization.

spin

Perhaps, you didn't get the notion that the sacrifice of Jesus is that it has to be legal. If it's not legal then it's invalid for the purpose of redeeming humanity. He has to have divested himself of his power and become weak: he has to be able to represent everyone and he has to suffer as would anyone, otherwise it would be a meaningless gesture. (Besides, you cannot meaningfully crucify a divinity.)

The legality of his crucifixion and his weakness reflect in no way upon his reputed innocence or blamelessness.


spin

Solo

Paul's conceptual framework is mystical, no doubt about that. But I believe that Paul's references actual historical event of crucifixion irrespective of the cosmic designs which he believed were revealed to him by God through risen Jesus.

Paul seems weird to most people because they think he was speculating about such matters in a detached manner - as they are. But I believe he was not just speculating - he had a serious health challenge which he was self-interpreting as 1) preview and promise of "life in Christ" during his euphoric highs he believed he would acquire after death, and 2) preview of eternal damnation and the end of the world, when his psychosis turned into a nightmare of persecutory delusions and hyper-anxiety.

That assumes Paul imputed messianic self-consiousness to the earthly Jesus. I don't think that was the case - Paul's Jesus was sent in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin. He was crucified in weakness. The cynic in me suspects Paul realized that if Jesus truly proclaimed valid teachings from God on earth, he (Paul) would have been out of a job of a top-dog apostle.



I am not trying to "squeeze" a historical portrait of Jesus out of Paul. I am saying merely there are good reasons to believe that he referenced an actual historical figure.

To Paul, Jesus accomplished his mission in flesh by doing what God told him to do. To earn what Christ did, i.e. life everlasting, the letter-readers of Paul were enjoined to do what God told Paul they were to do. If that sounds strange it is not my fault. :huh:

Jiri

Rick Sumner

I'm not sure that this is necessarily true. What about Psalms of Solomon 17?

As it became more and more obvious that Rome could not be stopped, it would appear that--at least to some Jews--the role of the Messiah changed with the realities of their new world.

While I think talking of "Judaisms" in the plural is just stupid (never developed the taste for that. . .too much ad hoc for me), I also think that once we move away from what the defining characteristics of Jewish belief or soteriology are, we are loathe to speak of homogenity.

In other words, all Jews believed there was a covenant. But that doesn't inherently mean that all Jews had the same expectation of what the "Messiah" would be. To be sure, the "Jesus faction" was probably a niche group that got lucky in scoring Paul, but the seeds for that niche group to pop up doesn't have to be as opposed to the Israel of its day as you (and moreso Diogenes) make it appear.

regards,
Rick Sumner

spin

I don't see what you want from Psalms of Solomon 17, which seems to be a "times are bad, what about the messiah?" type psalm.

Pompey's already done his thing in Ps 17, so Rome's already there, yet still the plea is for the messiah: "see, lord, and raise up for them a king..."

I don't mind the notion of heterodoxy, which I assume was the case when we have various positions such as the Pharisees, the Sadducees and perhaps more peasant style movements -- which the descriptions of the Essenes and the fourth way seems to hint towards. But still we need some hint that a different sort of messiah might be possible, but there's no sign of it. Despite Josephus's refusal to use the term, we have some idea that his avoidance hints at his knowledge of what the term actually means. Is there any hint in any Jewish literature about a different sort of messiah?

I know there is the metaphor of the Jews in general as the suffering servant, but that's nothing overtly to do with messiahship.

But we need some Jewish hint to the contrary though, don't we?

I call it as I see it."Akiba, grass will grow in your cheeks and still the son of David will not have come."


spin

IamJoseph

:constern01:

The ultimate chutzpah! Deicide [sic] is not a charge against all Jews - like 'Jews are born of the devil' [sic] is also not against all Jews. As if it is possible for wide eyed kneeling christians before someone crucified on a cross in agony - with 2000 lashes per frame, and beedy eyed Jews sniggering in the background [ala Mad Mel's Passion] - to NOT blame Jews. As if this blatant attrocity can be acknowledged by christianity when its core doctrine rests on this premise. You think! Shall we check history? :banghead: