dog-on

Christianity added a new god and pretty much dropped the LoM and the GoA.

That's why this makes sense to me:

LXX -> Paul -> Ur-Mark -> Marcion -> Historicists -> Catholics
|_________________________________|

show_no_mercy

I agree with this except for the bolded part. Christians didn't use Hebrew scriptures, they used the LXX. Rabbinic Judaism is most definitely nationalistic/ethnic focused, while Christianity is super-Hellenized Judaism - a rejection of the nationalistic/ethnic Judaism. Thus the Christian abolition of "The Law". This is an especially important distinction because the nationalistic aspect of Judaism is what led to the continued rebellions of the first and early second centuries. Something that Christians, when writing their gospels, tried to distance themselves from. Which is why the Pharisees (proto-Rabbinic) are the main bad guys in the gospels whereas the Roman authority is always seen as supporting Christ[ians]. Why "Judaizers" is seen as a pejorative in the works of the church fathers.

I think this is what most people mean when they say that Christianity is a rejection of Judaism. For the majority of Jews, separating their religion from their nationality is nonsense.

No Robots

The position of scholars, and Jewish scholars in particular, is that the NT is as Jewish as the LXX and Josephus.

This is the supercessionist view of traditional Christian religion. Many scholars, including Jewish scholars, argue that Christianity is instead a movement within Judaism that was hijacked by non-Jews.

Well, like I said, you would have to radically denature the text to make it in any way non-Jewish. This is the traditional strategy of Christian scholarship. Many Jewish scholars reject this approach, and claim the NT as part of their own literary and cultural heritage.

There are two things going on here. There is the prophetic genius of Christ that shows mankind the way to authentic spiritual life. Then there is the superstitious imitation of Christ in the form of Christian religion.

dog-on

So, many of these same scholars probably will argue for a historical Jesus, as well...

Speculation, the proof is in the matzah ball...

Really? You don't see a text that rejects everything that makes Judaism, Judaism as an issue?


You miss the part where it says that OT God made a huge mistake and needed to correct it by sacrificing himself to himself.

Actually, this is the ridiculousness we are left with due to the massive interpolation of a historical Jesus into a previously gnostic idea.

Edit:

Doesn't the basic story make more sense this way?

In order to save us from the curse of the law, instituted by the creator, the unknown god sent his son as a ransom to be paid for the redemption of those living under the curse of the creator.

Makes more sense to me, anyway...

aa5874

The conception of Jesus of the NT was based on a non-Jewish translation of Isaiah 7.14.

This is Trypho the Jew in Justin Martyr's "Dialogue with Trypho" Jesus was falsely claimed to be Jewish, he could not have been born at all. Jesus was a myth placed in Judaea during the reign of Tiberius. The story of the creature Jesus was just backdated and was fabricated decades after supposed events.

Jesus of the NT could not have been human during the reign of Tiberuius, no Jew would have worshipped a man as a God based on the writings of Josephus and Philo.

During the time of Pilate, according to Josephus, the Jews would rather have their necks cut-off than allow effigies of the Emperor in the Temple.

During the reign of Gaius, according to Philo, the Jews did not worship Gaius as a God, while the authors of the NT are claiming that during the reign of the very Emperor that Jews in Jerusalem were worshipping a man as a God who was executed for blasphemy to obtain salvation.

Jesus as a man and worshipped as a God is just untenable and inconsistent with Jewish tradition. Even, internally, there are no records that any Jew worshipped Stephen, stoned to death for blasphemy, according to Acts of the Apostles, no Jew worshipped Peter, crucified for preaching about Jesus, and no Jew worshipped Paul who was beaten, jailed, stoned and crucified.


Jesus of the NT appears to have been first introduced as a sonof the Godof the Jews possibly sometime after the Fall of the Jewish Temple and the story was backdated.

No Robots

Yes, of course.

Yup. This reading of the evidence is the correct one, and provides Jews with tremendous assistance in the struggle against the heathens.

It is a misreading to see the NT as a rejection of Judaism. Rather, it is part of the struggle of prophetic Judaism against priestly/Pharisaic/rabbinic Judaism. Here's how Hyman Gerson Enelow puts it:

As a matter of fact, the student of the Jewish people knows that throughout history there have been two leading types of Jews; on the one hand, the physical Jew, on the other, the spiritual Jew. The Jew belonging to the first class has Identified Jewry with racialism. To him, Jewish affiliation Is a matter solely of descent, with Its accidents and prerogatives. Not Infrequently this idea has gone with a certain pride of race, and even degenerated, as such things will, into chauvinism. The Jew of the second type, on the other hand, has identified Judaism with spiritual distinction and purpose. He also has been proud of his descent, of the Jewish past; but all this has spelt for him spiritual obligation and responsibility, without which physical appurtenances would mean nothing. There has never been a time when these two classes have not been represented in Israel, and their concurrence explains many a Jewish conflict and tragedy. But it is from the second class I have described that have sprung all the idealists of Israel, with their passions and exaltations, with their spiritual visions and valor; out of it has come the immortal and unequaled idealism of the Jewish people. Needless to say, the supreme representatives of this latter class were the men known as the Prophets of Israel. They were the chief idealists of the people, which means that they interpreted in terms of spiritual idealism both the past and the purpose of Israel. It is they that gave to the people the true meaning of the choice of Israel, and namely, in ideal terms, in terms of consecration and of righteousness, and they construed the religious tasks of the people in terms of spiritual elevation and ethical practice. To them everything else was as nothing in the balance against the moral and spiritual ends: the sacrifices, the temple, the state, the priests, kings, and politicians were nothing as against the people's consecration to spiritual and ethical ends. Such, on the whole, was the attitude and activity of the Prophets. And that is why, after the fashion of idealists, the Prophets criticized their people so often and so severely. But did they hate their people? Never! They loved it even unto death. They beheved in it. That is why they sought to correct it. And they comforted it, and wonderful pictures they drew of its future restoration and its fixed part in the future glories of mankind. Such were the Prophets. They were the pattern Jews of the spiritual type.

This type of Jew Jesus, in his own way and In his own age, exemplified.

--A Jewish View of Jesus, p. 53-55.

This is, again, part of the heathen misreading of the text.

Gnosticism, too, is a Jewish movement, an attempt to hold on to the Jewish spirituality of the NT against the misreadings of the heathen.

Nah, that's just heathen gibberish. It makes more sense to say that, once again, the bearer of spiritual truth is murdered by the upholders of convention.

bacht

Or, the God of Abraham dropped the Law and added a new covenant with the gentiles (as per Christian rhetoric)

What makes sense to me is that religion defies logical analysis

Toto

This is also not true, unless by "comparable" you mean "compares favorably." While there are no surviving works by eyewitnesses who knew Alexander, the surviving biographies are based on accounts by people who knew him. There are also contemporaneous accounts from his enemies. For Jesus, there is no literary evidence that can be connected to anyone who knew him personally or heard him speak. That's why the historicists who try to use the gospels as a literary source have to postulate "oral tradition" as a source. But this is not literary evidence.

Describing the personality of a historic figure is a much more difficult task that describing his existence or his position in history. I can see that the evidence for Alexander's true personality might be obscure and unreliable. (But who knows George Bush's true personality when you come down to it?) This in no way implies that the question of the existence of Alexander has the same amount of uncertainty as that of Jesus.

aa5874

Jesus of the NT was falsely propagated as Jewish but it is not Jewish tradition to sacrifice a man to a God for salvation.

Jesus believers claimed Jesus was sacrificed for the sins of Jews, yet Clememt of Alexandria called similar sacrifices an act of murder, where humans were sacrificed to pagan gods.

Excerpts from Clement of Alexandria in "Exhortation to the Heathen."

Jesus was not Jewish at all. Sacrifice of that kind, like that of Jesus, was human butchery, just like the sacrifice of heathen.

Meatros

I'm not so sure about this one. I mean, if all the stuff in the NT happened, then why wouldn't historians at the time take notice? After all, wasn't there darkness during his crucifixion, saints jumping out of their graves, an earth quake, all followed up by a band of people pulling off miracles in his name after his supposed death?