No Robots

Thus, in all the Gospels it is by no means easy to fix the actual utterances of Jesus. This much, however, the sympathetic and unprejudiced student can do. He can sense those teachings and those sayings that most surely represent the spirit of Jesus.

I say, he can sense them. It might be objected that this means the introduction of too much intuition into historic study — too much subjective treatment. Yet, is not this what we have to do, and are wont to do, in the study of any personality? There are certain central, fundamental facts on which every personality is built. A sincere and consistent personality is an expression of such central facts. They form the spirit of the personality. They form its core, its character, and we can usually guess particulars from those central truths, from that spirit. In the case of Jesus that was supremely true. No one was ruled more completely by the central truth of his life than he, and it does not require overmuch wisdom to determine what is likely to have expressed his spirit, to have harmonized with the ethical and spiritual purpose of his life — in a word, what in all likelihood formed an authentic part of his teaching.—A Jewish View of Jesus / Hyman Gerson Enelow, p. 65-6.

dog-on

Indeed, but perhaps you missed the joke. My bad....

lpetrich

Yet you quote him as if you agree with him.
Evidence?

The Talmud is claimed to be a body of law passed down orally from Moses, which means over 1000 years without any effort to write it down. I suspect that that claim is an after-the-fact rationalization and an attempt to give it authority. Such bogus authorship claims were almost absurdly common in Hellenistic Jewish and early-Xian religious literature.

Evidence? Like a totally independent account of what Jesus Christ had been like. Oh wait, there isn't any.

No Robots

The answers are there:

At the bottom of superstition's most ridiculous dispute over Monarchianism or Hypostasianism (the One God or the Three Gods, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit proceeding from the Father) there lies the profound truth that no one knows the Father (the Cogitant) except the Son and he to whom the Son reveals it by the Holy Spirit. Translated into our language this means that even the spiritually receptive person "whom the Father draws" has need of the productive genius.--Constantin Brunner / Our Christ, p. 339.

maryhelena

What with Easter being around the corner - the issue of the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth is, once again, on centre state. Historical Jesus theories, while stripping Jesus of his mythological clothes, hang on to this one big event - an event that has become the very symbol of Christianity - the Cross. And also its biggest stumbling block!

Christ crucified; a stumbling block to Jews, foolishness to Gentiles - and yet the power and the wisdom of God - so says Paul...

The whole gospel crucifixion scenario, taken literally, is, to any rational person, abhorrent. If then, there is any wisdom in the story line, it is wisdom that results from an interpretation of the story, an interpretation of the mythology of the dying and rising god - not in an actual historical event. (That the story line for the gospel dying and rising god involves a crucifixion - that simply reflects the ‘popular’ method of execution of the time).

No doubt there were many men crucified by the Romans who were called Jesus - a most popular name at the time. Weeding out a particular Jesus from such a collection of crucified men would be an insurmountable task. A more productive route to identifying the early beginnings of Christianity, is to acknowledge that the crucifixion is just as much part of the Jesus mythology as is his Virgin Birth etc....

No crucified historical man lies at the beginning of Christianity; no physical resurrection from the dead - these are mythological ideas. Mythological ideas that the early Christians developed as vehicles to hold their developing spirituality/theology. If then, one wants to find the people, find the early Christians, one has to put their mythology aside and look for such people within their own historical setting - not the ‘historical’ setting they have used to contain their view, their interpretation, of things.

In effect, the gospel story line, taken literally, is one very big stumbling block to discovering what actually happened at the beginning of Christianity. The gospels need to be pushed aside in order to get behind the story line - until that happens, Christ crucified, will remain the biggest stumbling block to any advancement of a historical nature.

No Robots

I do agree with Cartledge that there is some similarity between the literary evidence for Alexander and that for Christ.

The history of the origin of the Talmud is the same as that of the Mishnah—a tradition, transmitted orally for centuries, was finally cast into definite literary form.--"Talmud", Jewish Encyclopedia.

See the quotation above from Enelow.

show_no_mercy

I don't even think I'm going to respond to you anymore unless you start writing your own responses. This is a discussion board, not a fucking bookclub. What you're doing is the equivalent of preaching; but instead of only responding with quotes from the bible, you respond with quotes from your own personal holy scriptures.

But according to this author, we can tell the "true" meaning of what Jesus meant by WLC's "inner witness of the holy spirit" or some bullshit.

What a non-answer.

aa5874

What......?

Three Gods........?

The Holy Spirit......?

The Cogitant.........?

The profound truth........?

What answers......?

No Robots

The Trinity of Christian religion.

See "Holy Spirit" in the Jewish Encyclopedia.

The principle of absolute thought.

dog-on

and here is the smoking gun.

This is another reason why I believe that the Christian god is NOT the Jewish god.