ApostateAbe

Yeah, spin said so, too. I cherry-picked the elements to include in this gospel based largely on what I think is most relevant and most likely to be historical.

Solo

Everyone else ? When did I give you permission to speak for me, sister ? :huh:

Jiri

sschlichter

my post was meant to be funny - looking back it appears more rude than anything else - sorry about that.

It seems to me you are deciding what is relevant prematurely and independently of the text.

for example, Jesus refers to the son of man and you cited references. then you state that he does not identify the son of man. However, these passages clearly identify the son of man (matt 9:6, 11:19, 12:8, 16:13, 20:18, 26;2, 26:45, Mark 2;10, 8:31, 8:38).


this is different than cherry picking, it is replacing cherries with crab apples.

~steve

ApostateAbe

I know, it is next to impossible to distinguish between what Jesus meant to say and what his listeners understood him to say. If his followers thought that Jesus always meant himself as the Son of Man, then they will continue to quote Jesus as referring to himself as the Son of Man. I have chosen the theory that Jesus was referring to someone else, not himself, and he let his followers go ahead and believe that the Son of Man is himself, only because it is a little unlikely to me that Jesus referred to himself in third person for no reason. There are plenty of other occasions where Jesus is quoted using the first-person pronouns. That, and it is a little more dangerous to explicitly claim that you yourself are going to lead the apocalypse. That's a recipe for crucifixion. But, I would say it is an almost even bet. If other people think that Jesus meant himself when he said "Son of Man," then I will just change it.

sschlichter

the author of both texts you are reading believe that jesus is the son of man that jesus is referencing. The author of both texts also cite Jesus as saying other things worthy of crucifixion. It does not make any sense to me to pull that phrase out of the context of the authors intentions.

I can understand not trusting the author and trying to get around him to a historical Jesus - that is only logical. but ignoring the author and writing your own story makes you the author of a story about a fictitious man that you coincidentally called Jesus.

~steve

ApostateAbe

Well, I am not saying that you are wrong, but it is certainly a tough call. The position I took is sort of a compromise. I just found out that the Jesus Seminar thinks that the Son of Man was someone else, at least when Jesus was talking apocalypse, according to Wikipedia. I wonder what their reasoning was. The two problems I have in mind, 1) Jesus referring to himself in third person, and 2) that it is dangerous for someone without an army to identify himself as someone who is going to overthrow the state, those problems still stand. The fact that the synoptic gospels quote Jesus as linking the Son of Man to himself is a good counterpoint, no doubt about it. My hypothesis that it was the disciples, not Jesus himself, who made that link is grounded in the pattern that Christians would think of Jesus very highly, and they would make the quotes of Jesus reflect that. The gospel of John goes further than the synoptic gospels, making Jesus put himself on the same level as God (e.g. John 14:6).

sschlichter

IMO, that is why people stretch their imaginations to keep jesus mythical, because historical jesus is too hard to box up. if he is reduced then there is nothing behind the authors of the gospels at all (and no reason for the gospels to even exist), if he is increased then he tells the future, fulfills prophecy, and heals the sick. The former being improbable, the latter being impossible and the reason the Jesus Seminar re-interprets apocalyptic passages from jesus self-references.

I find it interesting that you see John 14:6 as claims to deity but not matt 4:6, 16:16, 14:33, 26:63, Mark 1:1, 3;11, and 12:35-37.

bacht

I don't think this is quite right. If Mark was the first gospel writer (as is usually assumed) he may have had his own reasons for this composition. Historical reporting is one possibility but not the only one. But since his subject is a unique person (Jesus) then why couldn't his book be a unique type or style of writing?

Before Mark there were apparently no historical descriptions of Christian origins, just faith documents and mutual support among believers who expected the end of the world. Maybe Mark came at a time when the original Christians were gone, and their message was being developed in new directions (eg. pushing the apocalypse into the indefinite future)

ApostateAbe

John 14:6 is a claim, perhaps implicitly, to deity, but more explicitly it is a claim to being an exclusive agent of God, the only path to God and to salvation, in addition to being the Messiah and the Son of God. That pattern is repeated throughout the gospel of John. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus certainly has a high status, being the Messiah and the Son of God, but he is not necessarily an exclusive agent. The Messiah and the Son of God are still significantly below God himself. But maybe that is only splitting hairs.

Solo

You probably won't see the irony of your quoting the likeliest genesis of historical Jesus.

Note that Cerinthus/Carpocrates/Ebionites did not believe Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost, but that he was brought into the world through sexual intercourse between Joseph and Mary and Christ - or the Holy Ghost - descended on him during baptism in mid-life. That at some later point, the Christian mystery hounds created a tale of the miraculous birth of a "baby Jesus", out of beliefs of midlife spiritual birth, in which men and women are born again of water and spirit, would not be at all surprising to someone who reads the texts carefully and thinks about what he or she reads.

When reading the gospels you need to realize - as a first thing - that they were written in riddles. Things in them do not have the ordinary meaning. A star is not a star, a great light in the sky is not in the sky. A babe is not a babe, but someone who has just received spiritual birth through an ecstatic experience. It is only when you begin to approach the writings with this frame of mind and connect the manifold threads, that the texts become meaningful. Example:

gThomas 4: Jesus said: "The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a little child seven days old about a place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last and they will become one and the same".

How on earth can one make some sense of this ? Well, one can start by observing that the gThomas saying correlates with the visits of the magi in Matthew and the shepherds in Luke. The wise magi in Matthew, are sent by Herod, and worship the babe, but keep their great joy to themselves and leave the land as they receive warning that Herod wishes to destroy the child. In Luke, the shepherds come to visit, and ascertaining the identity of the child, go around, sharing the saying which they were told concerning him. Could it be the saying in gThomas ? I wonder. Lk 2:21 mentions specifically the circumcision which comes at the end of eight days, and naming the baby Jesus.

So, who or what is this mysteriously hyper-wise baby ? Go back to Paul : Paul evidently might have known some sayings (possibly Jesus', possibly community, mint) about being like little children in order to enter the kingdom of God. Paul was incensed about the childish beliefs of the Corinthians concerning the gift of speaking in tongues: Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; be babes in evil, but in thinking be mature. 1 Cr 14:20. At any rate, Paul had his own logia about the mysterious effects of bump-ins with the holy spirit. 2 Cr 5:17 specifically says that those in Christ are a new creation. The old has passed away. Rom 6:4 speaks of newness of life.

This simply cannot be coincidence : the second birth of spirit, magical 'seven day old' babe which knows more than a grown man, new creation of the holy spirit, all point to the the magi / shepherds and Bethlehem but also.....
....to known phenomena associated with medical issues with temporal lobe function. One of the most commonly reported effects by subjects in post-seizure periods is a sense that life begins anew, - from scratch, as it were - but that one has received enormously important knowledge in the experience and a guide to the meaning to life from an impeccable source.

Jiri