spamandham

Like you, I've read all early Christian literature I can find, as well as most of what the early church fathers wrote, and a good swath of scholarly analysis ranging the full spectrum. I have concluded that if there was a historical Jesus, he can not reasonably be extracted from the Gospels. The gospels are allegorical stories rooted in Jewish scriptures. They are the foundational myth of Christianity just as the Pentateuch is the foundational myth of Judaism. To the extent they contain history, it's incidental rather than central.

So then, back to what started this....now that we both know that neither is a troll wandering in off the street, why did you assert that Jesus was a carpenter?

kcdad

Because the term translated artisan was used to describe those that worked with their hands in skilled labor... there were no plumbers, or electricians (and few smiths) at that time so they either worked in wood or stone. The metaphorical language of Jesus leads one to either choice... "Peter the Rock" and "It is finished", etc.
I prefer the traditional carpenter interpretation only because it is more traditional... no other reason.

spamandham

You stated that you think the magical aspects of Jesus are there to puff the son of a carpenter up into a God. But if we want to understand at more than a superficial level *why* godlike attributes are attributed to Jesus, we have to ignore later traditions altogether, and instead look over the texts in the order they were written (to the extent we can figure that order out). As we do this, we have to be careful not to allow our understanding to be tainted by later texts and traditions.

In the earliest texts, we have no idea what Jesus' profession was, and it certainly isn't clear from the writings of Paul (excluding later texts) that he considered Jesus to have been a recent human of history at all. Even the gospels do not clarify what type of artisan Jesus was.

But interestingly, Mark (generally considered the earliest of the gospels), indicates that Jesus is "the artisan", whereas Matthew indicates he is the "son of the artisan". Something changed in the theological implications between the writing of Mark, and it's later rewrite, Matthew. The conclusion is that whether or not Jesus is "the artisan" or whether he is the "son of the artisan" has theological overtones. The is not the case of a carpenter being transformed into a god. Whether or not Jesus is the artisan, or the son of the artisan, is theologically important.

aa5874

The Pauline writers did NOT consider Jesus as human in the recent past. The Pauline writers considered Jesus as a God/man who rose from the dead in the recent past. And the resurrection of the God/man signified Salvation for mankind. See Galatians 1.1.

Now, in the Gospels, Jesus, the offspring of the Hloy Ghost of God, was described as a carpenter and the carpenter's son, but there is no external corroborative source for Jesus or his carpentry skill's or how an offspring of the Holy Ghost could be a carpenter's son.

The Dagda

The Eholy ghost then could be anyone, I think the gnostics tagged it then.

There was no Jesus. Just imaginary Messiahs who could not by definition exist in any Gospel. So the only Gospels that are canonical are outside of The Bible: that explains everything.

I am God only if I am not God.

Mortality denotes you are not The Messiah? Thus any Messiah that is mortal cannot be God by definition yes?

kcdad

Don't hurt yourself thinking too hard about this. Octavian (Caesar Augustus) was called, god, son of God, savior of the world, the one to be worshiped. Jesus and John come along during this time and teach a new way of living that has nothing to do with Roman imperialism or Hellenization of the Jewish traditions... in order to contrast what Jesus and John were teaching with the "known world" they called it the Kingdom of God. So Jesus becomes the replacement god, son of god, savior of the world, the one to be worshiped... in place of Caesar.

Did not the republicans make fun of Obama in the campaign calling HIM the Messiah???

kcdad

The Pauline writers couldn't decide what they were talking about most of the time... The Christos, was it a noun or a verb? Did it mean the anointed or the anointing?

aa5874

Romans 10:9 - The "Lord Jesus" is not a verb.

And the Pauline writers mentioned Jesus by name a couple hundreds of times even claiming that he was raised from the dead.

"Was raised" is not a noun.

They surely knew what Jesus had to do in order to provide salvation for mankind. Jesus must first RISE.

kcdad

you missed it didn't you? Salvation comes from "thy mouth". God apparently can do nothing at all until we speak... amazing

spamandham

If you don't think much about it, you'll end up with endless unexplained questions that require hand waving and speculation to get around. This is why an assumption of HJ is *not* the simplest approach. It's simple in the sense of requiring little thought, but it's more complex in that it requires vastly more hidden variables.

Based on your premise that the gospels are basically historical but with some magic trimmings, and knowing that Matthew is based on the written text of Mark (some promote a Q speculation, but that seems to me needless), explain why Mark refers to Jesus as "the artisan", but Matthew refers to him as "the son of the artisan".