xaxxat

I've heard it mentioned that the total sayings of Jesus would barely fill 2 or 3 pages. Is this a correct assessment? Doesn't that seem like a really low total considering the length of his ministry and his love of lecturing?

Tristan Scott

You are looking at the sayings of Jesus that were chosen for the NT. The Gospel of Thomas is considered to be a compilation of sayings of Jesus, and it is more than a few pages.

Anyways there were many purported sayings of Jesus that were not considered suitable for the Christian mantra in the 4th c.

storytime

Were his sayings those of his own or did he reflect on those of past prophets? My opinion from reading is that he didn't say anything that hadn't already been said. His gloom and doom forecasts for the Jews was the same propaganda given by prophets before him. Except for his declaring himself god in the flesh. This however could be seen as his being the mouth of god and the same as given prophets before him. All priests were "the mouth of god" in their speaking the things of God, and so being were god in the flesh of Jews.

Tristan Scott

Many of the sayings attributed to Jesus were from others. His turn the other cheek saying was from Hillel, in fact Jesus really appears to be parroting much of Hillel's teachings.

I guess I missed the saying where Jesus declared himself "god in the flesh". Do you have a cite?

storytime

The saying "I in He and He in me", is that of "God in the flesh." The inference was "the words" by which the prophet was "the mouth" of God. (Malachi)

"Son of God" might also be seen to hold authority as in the mouth of the prophet. And all males as sons of Jacob were sons of God.

Petergdi

Really? Where does Hillel say anything of the sort?

There are some quotes which are kind of similar, but their outlook wasn't really very alike. Jesus almost certainly regarded Hillel as a play-actor. This may seem harsh, but Jesus was pretty harsh about that sort of thing.

Peter.

Toto

Passing on third hand information like this can create problems. I suspect that the origin of this claim is the conclusion by the Jesus Seminar that only 18% of the words attributed to Jesus are authentic to Jesus.

We only know about what Jesus is alleged to have said, or the (short) length of his ministry, or his love of lecturing, from the gospels, which are not reliable sources of information in any case.

Does this mean that Jesus didn't say a lot, or that what he said was not memorable and most of it is lost to history? Or that the gospel writers did not construct a coherent narrative?

No Robots

I wish there were a way to make this comment a favorite. Outstanding!:thumbs:

Nero's Boot

Jesus was also a xenophobe. He was also completely ignorant about fig trees in winter.

--cosmic wisdom? HAH! NB

mountainman

In addition to the canonical gospels there are located within the new testament apocryphal gospels, acts, correspondence, etc a further series of sayings of Jesus, such as:

"Why are you asking me"?