aa5874

I also found some originality in John 11. Jesus would bring a dead man back to life after being dead for 4 days.

This is John 11.38-44 Jesus must have been regarded as a Hero by Lazarus.

Yellum Notnef

Oh dear! That good ol' Fenton Mulley is the only thing standing in the way of your Jesus the genius utopia and the book sales of Brunner.

What's with the weird phrasing? I'm not a Southern plantation owner in 1825. You can post whatever you want. All I said was this is the wrong place for you to find agreement about Jesus the Genius. I think that's rather obvious.

Btw, your new name is Toby.

Fenris_Wulf

It is interesting to see what sayings were placed in the mouth of Jesus as an example of what the writers considered great philosophy. Things like the "golden rule" are fairly obvious as is the reduction of Jewish tradition to loving god and neighbor. But given the ability to mine many philosophic traditions why did the writers choose the ideas they did?

bacht

Well, the first point is that there are no sayings of Jesus in the epistles, supposedly written by eyewitnesses (John, James, Peter). If his closest followers had nothing to report it doesn't say much about Jesus' impact as a teacher.

When we get to the gospels it's not clear what Christ's message really is. He talks in some places about the kingdom of Heaven, in other places about the end of the age, in other places about traditional Jewish ethics (mainly Matthew), in other places about universal salvation including gentiles (mainly Luke).

By the time we get to John's gospel Jesus is beyond human teaching, he's a supernatural being whose person is the focus of everything he says and does ("I am the branch", "before Abraham was I am" etc).

The basic question is: were the sayings meant to be provisional until the imminent Parousia, or did Jesus have a new system in mind for this world? Obviously the church emphasized the latter and used Paul to fill out their dogma. But if the presence of John the Baptist is a clue it would seem that everyone in the gospel stories expected the new age at any time, and didn't forsee a continuation of this world with a new version of Judaism or syncretism as their praxis.

No Robots

To get an understanding of Christ's rhetoric, you should probably look into the literary genre of Apocalypse. Christ's teaching of his doctrine is laced with apocalyptic imagery, as one would expect in that time and place.

No Robots

Maybe I'm just following the Master's advice, and working among the sick. And I don't mean that as blame-worthy. Face it, we've been made sick on all the talk about Christ. It is thoroughly understandable that people would grasp onto mythicism as a way of making people SHUT THE FUCK UP about Christ. However, in my view, it doesn't make sense to substitute one poisonous lie for another. So, if we really want to cure ourselves of Christ-sickness, then we have no alternative but to seek the truth about him. And I have no qualms about propounding what I consider to be the truth about Christ here in the home of the new poisonous lie about him.

storytime

There is also the question of why Paul said he did not build on another man's[Jesus'] foundation - Jesus excluding Gentiles, while Paul thought to include Gentiles in what he said was "my gospel". What authority and from which Jews did Paul have in creating a new religion for Gentiles?

bacht

So Jesus didn't really expect the end of the world, he just talked like that because it was the style of the day?

storytime

According to the bible you read, what do you think is the truth about Jesus Christ?

No Robots

That's my impression, yes. It might help if you were to cite some passages.