Clivedurdle

But seriously, is the concept of perfection a later addition? What about Mary and the immaculate conception?

Clivedurdle

What about "without blemish"? I thought the sacrificial lamb was specially chosen, and aren't there requirements about priests?

Is the concept of perfection a further confusion between the Christ and an alleged human? (Perfectly dead?)

jakejonesiv

According to the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 19, eternal life was attainable through keeping the commandments.

A rich young is said to come to Jesus, and asks what he must do to obtain eternal life (v 16). After denying being God or even good, Jesus' answer was to keep some variation of the commandments (vs. 17-19). Jesus is not reported to have said anything about believing in himself, killing a perfect man for the sins of others, or killing "Himself" on a cross, or some mixture of god and man. None of that. Just keep the commandments.

The rich young man replies that he had done exactly that (v. 20).
Alleged Jesus does not dispute the assertion.

But the young man aspired higher, to a state of perfection. The implication here is that perfection is a higher ambition than sinlessness.

So why did Jesus have to allegedly die on the cross? There is no justification given for this in GMatthew. Remember all the arguments of Jesus and the Pharisees? Well, the issue wasn't that the Pharisees were wrong, they just needed to be better Pharisees.

It is obvous that we have here major disagreements between two Christian factions on the method of salvation, the "Petrines" of Matthew (keep the commandments) and the "Paulinists" of the epistles (believe in Jesus).

One side believed that perfection was obtainable by ordinary mortals through their own efforts. The other side beileved that perfection was only attainable by a divine being, and mortals had to believe in order to share in the god's attributes.

Jake Jones

agator

Just for clarity, the Greek word used here is teleios;It means having reached its end, i.e. complete, by ext. only,means perfect. It comes from the word telos, meaning continually, custom, customs, end, ends, finished, fulfillment, goal, outcome, sum, and utmost.

There are 13 (Greek words alone) that have something to do with perfect, but the closest word IMO, to what we percieve as "perfect" would be

G299b
amōmos; which means above reproach, blameless, unblemished, or without blemish.
As used in Ephesians 5 or 1 Peter 1.