Amaleq13

What I meant by "actual historian" is one who is specifically trained in an accredited program as an historian.

Should you be on the list?

aa5874

It is found in gMark that John the Baptist is the fore-runner to Jesus. Jesus is the one that is called "greater than JTB, who will baptise with the HOLY GHOST.

Mark 1.7-8 The baptism of Jesus by JTB was to recieve that HOLY GHOST.

Solo

How do you know the info about the Spirit descending on Yeshu and God adopting him did not originate with Yeshu ? Mark could have heard it second hand ? Look at who saw the heavens open in verse 1:10)

Jiri

Clivedurdle

The two horses are these.


Mark relating an actual event where a bloke called Jesus gets baptised by JB but adds in the god and dove stuff. That is not a story in my understanding of the term story.

A story of a godman being revealed to the world at a sacred place. You wrote you see this as a story!

So any beliefs for example that this alleged real Jesus was having his sins washed away are meaningless if we are discussing a character in a story - my reference to the paint colours of the set are to this second scenario.

Amaleq13

It also isn't my horse as far as this discussion is concerned.

patcleaver

Yes, This needs to be said once in a while.

Solo

That may be a suggestion of Mark to dramatize the prophetic property of the Holy Schnaps. It has nothing to do with Jesus' motives of going to JtB to get baptized. He was not prophetic; JtB was. According to Mark, Jesus went to JtB - period. But once he washed up inside, hey...what do you know, he got a dose of God's own patented Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor to cheer him up. Bet it was a complete surprise to him !

Jiri

gurugeorge

You know Jiri, I think we're pretty much on a similar wavelength, except I think it's tendentious to think of it as psychosis - I think it's a natural capacity of the human mind to see visions under certain circumstances, it's just the mechanism that produces dreams activating in waking reality. There may be links to mental illness (e.g. predisposition either way) but there have been plenty of very clever, rational people who have had visions too.

But whatever, you are one of the few people here who I think actually sees the matter straight - it's experience that's at the root of it all, it's not just people manipulating concepts.

aa5874

Based on gMark, JTB was expecting Jesus to show up, it was certainly prophesied.

Mark 1.2-3,

Solo

I knew someone in my neighbouhood who in mid-sixties participated as a volunteer in a study of effects of sleep deprivation in Prague (at the Krc Institute). He was 21 or 22 at the time. He began hallucinating after 48 hours and developed a fever, with violent shaking. They took him out of the chmber and sedated him. He walked out of the hospital in a week in apparently good shape. He was a competitive athlete in excellent health. Three months later he had his first seizure and became deeply delusional. His EEG was normal: no epileptoid form. I remember my mom (who knew everything about our neighbouhood) telling me about him just before I left for Canada. I related to her that I had difficulty seeing anything was wrong with Radek. He seemed completely normal. She said to me: the doctors can't find anything wrong with him Mrs Kratka tells me. He seems perfectly normal and healthy. Then all of a sudden he becomes excited; he has a fever, talks incessantly and gets seizures. Apparently this lasted about eight or ten years. Then his condition completely disappeared. He worked as an architect, was married (happily, my mom said) and had two kids. He died in his mid 40's in a motorcycle accident.

Life is a mystery. Human mind is a mystery. Mental illness is a mystery. Jesus Christ is a story of a certain kind of mental illness, so-called, I believe.

Aainst all expectations, I got plugged into Jesus Christ . At the time, I was observed by other people to have been mentally ill. People who knew me. People who knew I was irreligious. These people saw me screaming in the streets and noticed my jeans reeked of urine. Friends who visited my apartment in those days saw a mess, dozens of open books strewn on the floor, dirty clothes and dishes everywhere, bizzare scribblings of things that I had seen and that were coming upon this world. They found a letter to the pope in which I addressed him as the Keeper of the Keys (in English) and in which I introduced myself as the Apostle, warning him of the disaster that was sent to reveal in the name of the Light that I was passing into. I called the Reagans 'Adam and Eve of the Armaggeddon', who were triggering a Nuclear Holocaust.
Six weeks after it all started I was 30 pounds lighter, exhausted and frightened by reading what evidently I wrote "under the influence". A telephone bill came for three thousand dollars. I rememered calling numbers which I construed from sentences in Cat's Cradle, which were going to lead me to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I made hundreds of phone calls in the middle of the night, waking strangers around the continent with questions about "the Baptist". The recalls came with a horrendously scarry feeling that I was insane. I looked at the phone bill and the things I wrote - it was obviously works of someone who was out of his frigging mind. My brain had bad chemicals, just like the guy from The Breakfast of Champions.

Fast forward twenty years: On a visit to Montreal I ran into my ex-girlfriend with whom I was breaking up at the time I went off the deep end in 1984. She was one of the witnesses of my apostolate. I was walking with my 7 year old son. We sat down in a cafe, talked about this and that, and I kind of felt the big unspoken question as she kept glancing at my boy on the chair who was bored and fidgeting. "Yes, he really is mine" I finally said to break the ice. "So, the thing resolved itself", she said, seeking re-assurance. "What thing ?" I pretended not to understand. "Well, your Jesus-is-the-Light thing", you know ?!! Well...it's kinda managed as you can see, I said,......naw, I am still crazy as a bed-bug ! We were laughing our heads off as she recalled some of the things I did then.

You bet. It comes from personal brushes with the supernatural. The only serious problem I see with the gospels is that they lack in humour.

Jiri