TedM

Spin, thanks again for trying. In response let me make some statements because I AM still unclear as to how this relates to my original post:

1. I don't care what Christians have done with the OT. I also don't care what the original intention of the OT writers was. I also don't care what Jews thought in the period of Daniel.

2. I DO care what ideas were floating around at the time of Jesus with regard to the expectations of someone to visit earth from God. I don't care if you call him the 'Anointed', the 'Christ', 'Savior', 'prophet', 'Messiah', 'Christos', or 'Crisco Oil'!. The TERM is not something I care to get hung up on. I don't even care if there was an expectation of 10 different beings to come to earth -- one as a king, another as a priest, another as the deliverer of judgement, another as a savior, etc..

3. I don't care what the majority of the Jews, or their Jewish scholars consensus was about these things.

I only care to know what ideas were being discussed and considered. From this perspective it appears to me that your objections are completely missing the point of my OP. The link I gave to hundreds of ancient writings, and the link I gave to the Jewish Encyclopedia seem to provide plenty of support for my contention that the Jewish culture at the time of Jesus was open to many different concepts and interpretations of scriptures with regard to the end times and a "Messiah" type of figure,including the type that would at least make plausible the idea that followers of a person they thought was so wonderful as to possibly be a prophet or Messiah could have applied some of these interpretations and concepts to him DESPITE the fact that he had been killed, due to the unusual circumstance of his being killed during Passover, since animals were killed during passover to help SAVE (Messiah as Savior) people from their sins.

Perhaps your #4 above was enough to lead to the interpretations adopted by early Christians.

Can you address what you think I need to know more clearly now?

TedM

Thanks Jay. And, thanks for being polite too.

That's interesting. You say that the Jews created Christianity. And, that their need to have assurance that God still favored them and could save them was greater than their repulsion of the method they devised for God to use. Was there not an alternative that was less repulsive?

Since you say that the Romans (and not archons in the sky) killed their Savior, this implies that they created a human sacrifice as a solution to their problem. Doesn't that imply that the ideas within the culture were supportive of at least a partially-human sacrificial Savior? If so, didn't those ideas have to come from their interpretations of scriptures related to the 'Messiah', 'Savior' (whatever one wants to call it/them) to come?

Lastly, would you agree that if Nero really did persecute Christians your theory can't be true? Or might the story of Jesus preceded the Temple destruction because things were still bad enough to need a savior?

jakejonesiv

We don't find the divine agent dying and resurrecting for the benefit of the believers in the Jewish scriptures. The very fact that the Jewish response to the Christian gospel was overwhelmingly negeative indicates that it was foreign to Judaism. The very positive response from Gentile converts indicates that it was amenable to the pagan mind.

Pauline Christianity began as an individual salvation cult, in which the souls of those who joined the god by faith accrued the salvic benifits of his cosmic deeds. This is directly from the pagan mysteries. It is being "in Christ". It has not been demonstrted that this central concept, the mystical union of Christ and the believer, occurs anywhere in Judaism.

Let me repeat this, because it is crucial. The concept of the indiviual's salvation by being _in_ the god (Romans 6:3, Eph 2:6) was not derived from Judaism.

Judaism by contract emphasised the national salvation of Israel, and the benefits from God were viewed corporately.

All this, salvation by blood only is totally foreign to Judaism. It has more to do with the bloody Tauroctony than the scape goat.The Mythaic priests were "washed in the blood" of the bull, and the Mithraites ate a sacred meal, which Justin identified as a demon inspired counterfeit of the Eucharist. But Judaism totally opposed the consuming of blood.

And any man from the house of Israel, or from the aliens who sojourn among them, who eats any blood, I will set My face against that person who eats blood, and will cut him off from among his people." Lev. 17:10.

The idea of drinking the blood of Christ, even figuratively, did not originate in Judaism. Not that I am limiting the comparision to Mithraism. The Mystery cults were the fad religion of the Roman emipire in the earliest centuries CE, and Christianity arose in the same envirionment, side by side with the others.

Let's look at some of the misrepresentations of Jewish blood sacrifice in Christianity.

Without the shedding of blood there is neither "covering" nor "forgiveness" of sins. (Romans 3:15, cf Heb. 9:22).
This is one of Christianities greatest misrepresentations of Judaism. It was used to justify the bloody mystery rites when Judaism was encountered.In Judaism, blood sacrifice could only cover the most minor of sins, the unintentional. Not to mention that the OT forbade human sacfifice. Indeed, the vicarious atonement is rejected in Ezekiel chapter 18.


According to Cicero, some 40 years before the supposed birth of Jesus, we have reference to pagan allegorical eating and drinking of the divine substance as common knowledge.
“When we speak of corn as Ceres, and of wine as Liber, we use, it is true, a customary mode of speech, but do you think that any one is so senseless as to believe that what he is eating is the divine substance?” Marcus Tullius Cicero, De Natura Deorum , 3.16.

No disrepect to Christians, but not long from Cicero’s time, they would be “so senseless” to take this literally.

Jake Jones IV

TedM

Thanks for your response. So you essentially agree that a flesh/blood crucifixion was NOT so repulsive to many Jews as to fail to explain the origins and spreading of Christianity, correct? Ie, many Jews could have accepted the concept DESPITE what traditional Jews may have thought about human sacrifice. Do you think that ideas regarding the coming "Savior", "Messiah" (call him what you want), within the Jewish culture at that time were sufficiently flexible to allow the Christian interpretations to be applied to that crucified human? Do you think that the timing of the crucifixion (during Passover) along with the idea that animals were sacrificed for sins could also have been a 'point of argument' that helped influence those Jews that accepted it?

spin

You still haven't responded to my post #62. You made the claim that there were messianic prophecies in the Hebrew bible and failed to provide any of these so-called prophecies, except for one that I responded to in #62 by indicating that it certainly was not a prophecy about the messiah, but a discussion about current events, as frequently seems to be the case with Hebrew "prophets".

You don't care about a lot of things, mainly the bases for your argument in the o.p.

You don't care about the majority of the Jews, yet it is the Jews who you are attempting to use in your theory. I guess you are hoping that it is the minority of Jews that you leave room to hook your theory on.

You don't care what the particular term is, but it is only the messiah that regards the expectation that you are toying with.

You don't care what the original intention of the OT writers was, so obviously you don't care anything about your notion of prophecies because you don't have any, if the writers weren't writing predictions concerning what you don't want to call the messiah. Here then, you grab onto the phenomenon of repurposing fragments of the Hebrew bible, first by Jews speculating about the messiah, then you ignore the fact that they were speculating about the messiah because it doesn't fit your speculation about the savior Jesus, who you want to hook into the messianic speculation regardless. You don't see anything wrong in the process you have embarked upon.

The whole basis of your theory doesn't fly, tying together things that you don't show an understanding for. Let me go back to your o.p. and give it another look:

This is a mixture of wrongheadedness and assertion. It telegraphs that it is a christian rationalizing without understanding his premises and willing to manipulate his material in order to reflect a desired conclusion.

mountainman

The target market was the 95% pagan citizens of the Roman Empire, who the authors refer to as "Gentiles" in some cases and as "Greeks" in other.


You are assuming that they were given a choice.

TedM

If the majority of Jews were interpreting scriptures the same way the Christians did then we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we?

Too obscure. Do you mean because I used the term Messiah in my OP that I have limited the context since the Jews of the time had a very narrow conception of what a Messiah could or couldn't do? If so, ok. I'm not sure from your comments if you think there was an expectation of a different kind of Savior to come, or not. Was there? Did that come from Hebrew scriptures ? The same ones that Christians say are 'Messianic'? Still need more clarity.


This just doesn't sound very coherent. IF they were speculating about a Messiah that saves from sin, what difference does it make?

I simply can't tell yet what your thoughts are about the link I gave you to hundreds of allegedly Messianic passages according to ancient Jewish sources. On what grounds do you dismiss it? Because they reflected thoughts of ancient Jewish 'speculators' and not the 1st century 'majority'? Because they were passages about a future 'Savior' and not a future 'Messiah'? Please clarify what the problem is.

Thanks. I am done for the night.

jakejonesiv

Ted, if you cannot understand spin's clear and logical analysis of your arguments, it is good you decided to get your rest.

I have watched as you have, across multiple threads, made any argument to support a narrative consistent with the historical existence of supernatural Jesus as portrayed in the gospels. Hence the insitence that the blood sacrifice was an inevitible and logical growth from Judaism. That is the only thing consistent in your arguments. You are arguing to a predetermined conclusion, and that is the only thing you care about.

Any reasoning or imagined scenerio that supports the Jesus of the gospels as a real historical possibility you are for, and anything that mitigates against that possibility you either "do not care about" or "do not understand."

Well, OK, no problem. That is what Apologists do. Many go to seminary and learn a great deal about ancient history and Greek. But it is a mountain laboring to give birth to a mole hill, because the answer is predetermined--that given by mainstream Christian theology.

The difference is that you are doing this without any inkling of the subjects you are talking about and reaching your cherished conclusions by any other means than offering relevant evidence.

Best Regards,
Jake Jones IV

spin

I've asked you, TedM, several times to supply specific messianic passages from the Hebrew bible. It's not a difficult task. Instead, you do the devious passing off of the matter to some link. If you cannot post representative examples, it only seems to indicate that you don't have much faith in the issue. I want you to present examples that you will stand behind, not just crib from elsewhere, happily discarding this one and that because someone has compiled a hundred claimed messianic passages. We know that the most famous ones are simply bogus, such as Isa 7:14 and Ps 22:16. So, present your examples, please. (That's now at least five times I've asked you.)

Well, after having wiped out the majority of Jews from your speculation, you are left conjecturing about a theoretical minority. This is not a basis for a stable argumentation.

Ok.

Paul obviously speculated about a dying savior, an idea that his contemporary Jews from Jerusalem didn't seem to accept, as he indicates they stuck with their Jewish practices. This makes Paul's speculations seem novel.

Regarding a non-messianic savior, beyond Paul all you have is speculation.

But there is no evidence for savior expectation, as there was for messiah expectation. You said it yourself: "The Jews expected a Messiah from God". Now you don't care about the messiah, just a savior, but then you don't have any savior expectation up your sleeve, do you?

Perhaps you could suggest a method of finding out.

Yet again I have to say it: messiahs don't die before freeing the Jews. A dead messiah is no messiah. That's just the way it goes. Poof, TedM.

You vaguely specified one messianic reference in Isaiah 9. I asked you to supply specific messianic passages and that non-reference was all you supplied. Links are cheap. If you want to get serious, you have to vet the rubbish before pointing me to it. You still have not responded to my post #62 which shows you that Isaiah 9:6 is not a messianic reference. I took the time to respond in some depth to your claim stated thus:

I did address it and your response was... nothing.

Do your job, TedM. Supply specific messianic references or give up.

What are they and what makes you think they are what your sources claim them to be?

Sadly, you've done little but evade issues. You don't care about this or that. You can't even deal with the fact that you thought the messiah was just some dude who saved the Jews from their sins. Not a glimmer of understanding what the messiah is. It's just a name substitute for most christians, apparently including you.

TedM

Well I'm up so will respond. The items I said I don't care about are IMO irrelevant to the argument I set forward in the OP. For example: I said I don't care about the original intention or meaning of the OT scriptures that Christians now say were Messianic. The reason I don't care is because they weren't written in Jesus' day. All I care about for this discussion is what ideas were floating around at the time of Jesus. That is all that is relevant because I'm writing about the reactions we might or might not expect from the Jewish community to a Passover crucifixion of Jesus.

I intend to respond to your very good post from earlier today when I get a bit more time.


Yeah I keep hearing people say that, and with few exceptions those people never provide any evidence. When that happens I dismiss them as being uninterested in having a real discussion.

Your accusations that I am basically an apologist are not useful here.