Steven Carr

I was right .

You didn't have a shred of evidence that the Galileans killed by Pilate were any more violently seditious than another Galilean famously killed by Pilate, despite your claim that any Galilelan killed by Pilate must be presumed to be a violent insurrectionist. This is not so. You didn't have to be a violent Galilean to get killed by Pilate.....

Nor does Jesus ever say anything about violence or sedition in the passage. As pointed out, he doesn't regard the people killed as any worse than anybody else. There just is nothing about giving up violence in the passage. It is a simple turn or burn threat.

One amusing feature of Wright's Resurrection, is that Wright claims that Jesus preached against violent sedition, while on page 410 , Wright claims that Jesus thought of himself along the lines of one of the martyrs of the incredibly violent Maccabean revolts..... 'Israel's god would raise him from the dead, vindicating him after his suffering. That description, of course, would fit the martyrs in 2 Maccabees pretty closely.....'

And on page 411 , Wright says that violent seditionists were regarded as the very people to be favoured by God with resurrection 'Just as it would have been small comfort in the short term to the followers and associates of the Maccabaean martyrs, or any of those who died in the struggle for YHWH's kingdom during the first centuries BC and AD....' '.....they are at home there, giving solid evidence , like 2 Maccabees, of a belief in bodily resurrection for those who died in obedience to Israel's god.'

I guess one person's martyrs are the same person's violent seditionists, depending upon whether Wright approves or disapproves.

As Wright thinks God is guiding history, a violent revolt which fails is a horrible thing which Jesus warned people about 30 years before their children started it.

While a violent revolt which succeeds was a struggle for YHWH's kingdom which produced martyrs that Jesus modelled himself after (consciously or subconsciously).

There is no methodology here. It is pure after-the-fact rationalisation.


Why do you think a 2nd Temple Jew like Jesus would (according to Wright) think that the 'martyrs' involved in a violent seditious revolt like the Maccabean revolt would be resurrected by God?

Steven Carr

The answer is a very clear 'yes'. The message of the passage is that all are sinners and all deserve natural disasters. People who die that way are not *worse* sinners , but they are sinners.

"Repent or you will perish likewise'.

All will die, but not all will die in natural disasters. If you repent, you will not die in a natural disaster like those poor people in Siloam.

Steven Carr

That is indeed the normal meaning of repent.

Why would second Temple Jews, convinced that people would be resurrected by God if killed in violent rebellion during the Wars of the Maccabees, why would such Jews think that violent rebellion was against God's plans?

CJD

Please. I just proffered a decent historical example of how "repent" was used in a manner entirely different than the one you would like to straight-jacket it with. And the best you can come up with is ignoring it. Good one. The whole point is that it's not either/or (either "religious" or "political"). It cannot be bifurcated.

Your other comments I will attend to shortly ("I was right." Hmph. What nerve.)

Moreover, pharoah, I'm glad you can appreciate what I am saying, but you missed my point if you thought I said the warning was political and not religious; it was both. And I can only assume that Steven begrudgingly agrees, but would rather not publicly do so. "Sinners" does not clue you in on what you think it does, for "sinners," to the first-century Jew, does not mean what we moderns think it does (the whole bit about private sins versus a religious experience, etc.). "Sinners" quite clearly meant "those pagan dogs", namely, the "nations", or "Gentiles"; even worse was when and Israelite was condemned as a "sinner" — this meant he/she was cut off from the covenant and no better than the "rest."

I am saying that I just explained the normal sense. I am asking that you and others (like Carr) would not normalize their own experiences (or their own run-ins with evangelical Christianity) and project them onto the text.


CJD

gregor

CJD complaining of other's eisegesis. Ironic.

CJD

Heh. She's a green-eyed monster, gregor; be careful …

Steven Carr

Sorry. I didn't ignore your point. I just missed it.

Josephus names the action that somebody should repent of doing.

I'm sure Jesus also thought the people he was addressing should repent of the actions that they had done. I don't know how you could repent if you had done nothing wrong.

Now how does that go any way at all to showing that 'repent' means 'turn away from violent sedition' as you claimed it did, when you wrote ' "That unless you repent, that is, unless you quit going about trying to bring in the kingdom of god in the way you think it ought to be brought in (namely, through violence and sedition), you too will face the wrath of the magistrates."

It just means Jesus thought they had done bad things, and should turn back to God.

CJD

Okay, you think I'm over-reaching. That's fair. But I still think it fits the socio-cultural milieu. I'm expanding — just like each of us do every day when we pontificate about this ancient text. You're content with standing at the threshold. I don't disagree with what you've said, I'm just saying it's that plus a little bit more, and I think it's plausible and not at all that far fetched too (the whole event and its characters — Pilate (a vindictive and unpopular-with-the-Jews magistrate; the Galileans (well-known insurrectionists); the Temple — it's rife with political elements to my mind).

What "bad things" do you have in mind, if not "attempting to bring in the kingdom" wrongly (looking at dirty pictures; drinking too much; what)?

CJD

Steven Carr

Jesus could hardly have been advising to give up violent, Maccabean-style revolt and sedition.

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~sben0056/pass...surrection.htm

'Possibly the strongest point against it is that there is no evidence in Jesus’ day for violent or Zealot activity. There was indeed some unrest in the years immediately after the death of Herod the Great in 4 BC, but little during Jesus’ adulthood and ministry. He would have been an isolated figure of political protest. The real unrest which escalated into the Jewish Revolt began only in 44 AD.'

CJD

I'm not sure what you're saying. Do you mean to say that not a single act of nationalistic violence occurred during the first 43 years of the first century?

I gather it doesn't take much for one to see the difference between various kinds of civil unrest. Consider the following from Antiquities (18.3.2 60–62):

This is the kind of action that gets people killed, unnecessarily. There's a better way, so Jesus, and it's the way of suffering servanthood. This was the way the remnant would go (as spoken of by those prophets so long ago).

The way I get "repent" to mean, among other things, "turn from your way of bringing in the kingdom and adopt my way, my agenda" is simple: the prevailing agendas were twofold: compromise or zealotry. Both were very active in the first half of the first century. For Jesus to say "repent" in response to an event rife with political and religious machinations, especially in response to an event where blood was spilt, is all-too-telling: it is as I described it above. At least it's more plausible than a simple "turn-or-burn" threat.

Why do you suppose he wanted the people to, despite their open eyes, see not, and, despite their open ears, hear not (Luke 8:10)? Could it have anything to do with the often inevitable implosion (both politically and religiously) that accompanied messianic movements? Don't think for a second that Jesus supposedly wandered around because he was some sort of Cynic, a laconic cowboy lost in thought; he moved from place to place because he and his movement would have been squelched otherwise (before its time, at any rate).

Best,

CJD