Chaucer

Actually, Vinnie, as an historicist (I voted "Strongly Agree" in the poll), I would have to agree with Spin here. One has to keep in mind that it's primarily popular culture that has taken one of the four ways in which Jesus's "son-ship" of God is explicated and made that (effectively) the only way. But in Thomas, it is Jesus's implied association with the Gnostic God who is God of the spiritual and thus separate from the God of the material that makes Jesus at all a God's descendant, thus making Jesus's material father still conceivably Joseph; in Mark, it is Jesus's baptism that makes God proclaim Jesus as a God's adoptive son, thus making Jesus's material father still conceivably Joseph; in Matt./Luke, it is God's active inception of Jesus in Mary transfiguring the moment of Jesus's conception that makes Jesus a God's son, thus being unique in proactively removing Joseph as a father at all; and in John, Jesus's spiritual birth precedes his material birth, his spiritual birth being practically synonymous with cosmic creation, thus not necessarily gainsaying any of the earthly aspects of his material earthly birth eons later.

Note each of these explications as to what it is that makes Jesus a God's son is separate and apart. It's only subsequent traditions that have sought to place the Matt./Luke explication as dominant while sometimes attempting to synthesize that with the other two explications (two rather than three since the Thomas explication never became canonical), and sometimes not. Each text attempts to show a way all its own by which one can conceive of this remarkably spiritual trendsetter as uniquely sprung from God directly. But each way remains highly symbolic, perhaps consciously allegorical(?) -- and unique.

As to the genealogies, I frankly find them pretty suspect anyway, especially since they don't appear in either Mark, or in the parallel-sayings material in Matt./Luke, or in Thomas. The thought has occurred to me that the reason such genealogies were generated in the first place can be traced to the awkward matter of Jesus's family having in fact supposed him insane(!), something that is glanced at in both Mark (Chapter 3) and Thomas (Saying 99). Hence, some frantically sought to counter all that by either stressing this notion that this man only descended from the most pedigreed of the pedigreed, or that his mother was extremely sympathetic with her eccentric kid after all and even "pondered all these things in her heart"(), or that his real father created him even before King David (), or that his later adoptive father was God through baptism and hence the one that really counted(!), and so on and so forth.

Candidly,

Chaucer

Celsus

If we enter 2, 3, 5 or 6 can we fill in the blank with something appropriate? (Like "and he was an 8-ft tall lizard")

Vinnie

God could have used Joe's junk.

Vinnie

Toto

The Jews of the time didn't seem to notice Jesus. Later Jewish commentators as far as we know seem to have accepted the notion that Jesus lived, without investigating it - or, more likely, they knew that a stronger argument against Christianity would be that he was a bastard son of a hairdresser and a Roman soldier.

In the 20th-21st century, it would seriously undermine Christianity if it were found that Jesus didn't exist as a real person. In the 3rd century, probably not.

Vinnie

*Vinnie throws Birth of the Messiah at Chaucer* hardcover edition, btw.

We can make an exception if God is the non-biological biological father. Besides, God can perform transfusions and use Joe's junk. That is obviously what the author meant. Read between the lines. High context society.

Vinnie

dog-on

I voted 7.

Even if there was a historical core to the hero of the gospel stories. The character described in those gospels, most certainly, never existed.

Vinnie

That statement is incapable of being falsified or demonstrated. There is limited evidence either way. We have very few writings from the period that could be expected to mention Jesus. Many Jews presumably knew of Jesus and his quest to destroy the one ring of power because of his ministry which may have been preceded by several years of following the Baptist. His movement grew more after he died, however.

Vinnie

Toto

Nonsense. It can be falsified by finding one writer from the time who knew Jesus.

There is limited evidence, and no evidence that any Jew noticed a historical Jesus.

We know that later Christians went out of their way to save any material that did.

spin

Is that an abandonment of the step-son story? :constern01:


spin

_Naturalist_

Maybe there was a preacher who became famous, and eventually grew mythological. But if so, he was just a human being, and certainly not the son of God.