spin

No-one can know the mind of god. Stick with Jesus's mind, or try to use yours to talk about what you can know.

You need to stop projecting your desires and inventing your own version of the word of god.


spin

tradewinds

I believe the possibility that Jesus was a man. It seems he was critical of many of the Jewish high priests; however, I think he honoured the old profits. It has occurred to me that Jesus used his heavenly father as a phrase, which included all those who would live according to how Jesus believed the people should honour god.

Nowhere did Jesus say he was god, but he said no one reaches the father but through him and he said he was the door.

This does sound as if Jesus was saying he was someone special, then I fully agree, a copy of a copy of a copy is not going to reveal what was actually was said. I agree, if one wants to be a biblical scholar one should study it in depth. I see it more no different than one wishing to study the classics, impractical from my perspective, but that is a free choice.

I believe that when the Roman Empire began to lose its armed defense it changed Christianity into a self-serving mental defense system. Jesus was defied in the Roman church and much of what is christian religion is the creation of these Roman framers, such as the trinity, the equal divinity of Christ and the Holy Ghost. I believe all this was a political move and an intelligently apt one!

Even with the Reformation, the basic tenants of the godhead did not change in most denominations. The Church is built of the fall of the Roman Empire and that is where someone knowing all about the bible needs to look next. What purpose did the Church serve and who benefited?

Deus Ex

Notice a few verses down where Jesus is stating that the generation of followers that he is talking to will not pass away before these events take place.(I know that you will try to claim that Jesus was 'talking' to the current day reader instead of his audience; like an actor stopping in the middle of a show to speak to the camera)

The synoptic gospels are full of failed apocalyptic utterances placed on the lips of Jesus by anonymous authors. Another example would be Matthew 10:23

Keith&Co.

Dude. You say god doesn't hate. The Books quotes Him to say that HE hates.
You are wrong.
And all your attempts to suggest that there's an alternate interpretation of what's written just make you look desperate.

You say that atheists keep changing the topic when you 'prove' that they're wrong. Seems more likely that you just keep asserting shite until they get tired and wander off.
My atheism was not connected to anything i read in The Books. It is, however, a never ending source of amusement to see the various Faithful shoehorn varying interpretations into what's actually written.

My experience is that this is a coded transmission. What most of the Faithful mean when they say something like this is not actual research. They want me to keep an open mind for as long as it takes to agree with them.

Eldarion Lathria

The word I think you are searching for is unbellyfeel. It does not mean hate, it does not mean 'love less than'. It means not have an open skulled, pop eyed, slack jawed, uncritical acceptance of. Jesus said "Whoever does not unbellyfeel his mother or father, is not worthy to be called my disciple." Jesus wants you to bellyfeel him, and by extension his interpreters, the clergy.

You must not only talk the talk, but goose-step the goose-step.

Eldarion Lathria

spin

There is nothing to discount or favor that possibility.

If Jesus existed then if he actually used the words the writers have put in his mouth.... you're half way to putting your own flesh on the Jesus tradition.

If you start with Paul, who knew either nothing or next to it about a human Jesus, you don't have any bones to put flesh on. Paul's writings were written long before the gospels were -- plenty of time for the development of Jesus traditions once Paul's Jesus had become popular enough to stimulate tradition development. A real source is not necessary for tradition development as seen by the accidental creation of a figure called Ebion who Tertullian believed was the founder of the Ebionite movement; this Ebion gathered tradition in christian literature although he didn't exist. It is sufficient for Paul's Jesus to build a sufficient following for him to stimulate more tradition with material mined from the Hebrew bible to add weight and authority. This would lead to the foundation of the gospels.

Starting with the gospels would seem the wrong place to look at the origins of christianity.

This is all reasonable conjecture but without any basis in fact. As you can shape data so could early christians who ended up with a version of Jesus that suited them, just as you did.


spin

dog-on

Everything written about Jesus, in both the Epistles and the Gospels, discount that possibility.

What I want to see is the data that favors that possibility.

Awmte

I have to wonder, are spin's posts completely invisible to IBelieveInHymn? Just for easy reference…

spin

2000 years of belief in the contents of these documents should convince you otherwise!


spin

dog-on

and GWB was elected (at least once)...