Dharma

can you really defend your stance?

we must remember that the myth of Christ is more European :

1) virgin birth...i.e. Christ is NOT descended from Abraham, since he does not have a paternal lineage from the Jewish one.

2) Christmas (December 25) has no equivalent in Jewish religion but has equivalence in European religion.

3) Easter is named after a pre-Christian Goddess with the same name and Jewish religion doesn't have an equivalent holiday on that date.

4) cross is held sacred...cross, swastika are all held sacred in Christian and pre-Christian religions but NOT Judaism.

5) the name of God is "Christ" not "Yah" or "Elohim"...again giving away Greek-Roman religion.

6) Goddess worship, not popular in Judaism, but takes the form of the Rosary and worshipping Mary the mother of God...

7) Sunday worship...again a holiday for pre-Christian Europe NOT Jews.

Perhaps Jesus himself was a Romanized Jew or adopted Jew of unknown ancestry which is why Jews rejected him since he was thought of as some kind of traitor or Roman stooge of unknown lineage (thought of as a bastard)...but was a high spiritual attainer who combined Judaic practice and other non-Judaic religions practiced at the time and was given the Greek spiritual title of the "Christ" or "Christos".

Chili

Exactly and once Jesus, who was know to be the son of Joseph (read reborn Joseph), became a Christ he was no longer a Jew . . . wherefore Jews are not Christians as long as they are Jew.

The same is true with Catholics who are not Christians until Christ is born unto them. After this they enter the Gospels and follow the footsteps of Jesus who showed us the way through purgatory. Purgatory ends when they become a Christ just like Jesus did and are therefore no longer Catholic but Christian.

Based on this analogy is it impossible for Catholics or Jews to enter heaven as Jew or Catholic (Peter was defrocked just prior of ascension) but only as Christ with no temples in the New Jerusalem. Conversely neither Catholics nor Jews can go to hell as Catholic or Jew but only as heretics who claim to have found a passage to heaven all on their own and these are the Christains going to church these days proclaiming to have found this 'ideal' they worship until they die. "Midheaven" is purgatory until they die nonetheless and therefore hell on earth (read all about this in Rev.14:6-12).

This requires an new (?) perspective on the concept eternal which is life along our intuit right brain where time-as-such is not know because that is where the incarnate Thousand Year Reign is found.

freigeister

Well, precisely.

Christ didn't believe in "god". He was an atheist in the same sense that Spinoza was an atheist: both rejected the anthropomorphic god of the superstitious mob, but upheld the wholly abstract principle of the Absolute. Spinoza did use the word "god", but defined it carefully so as to avoid any confusion with the god of superstition. Christ avoided the word "god" altogether, preferring "Father" or "Spirit." Judaism is in essence atheism. Jews (and Christians) were generally considered atheists in ancient times. The Shema Israel (Deut. 6:4) is usually translated as "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is the only God;" however, it is more accurately translated as "Hear, O Israel, Being is our God, Being is One."

Christ didn't believe in his, or anyone else's, divinity. He did play on a certain amount of ambiguity, but he was never confused in his own mind on the question. All his statements are perfectly comprehensible when understood as the language of mysticism. I would suggest looking at the statements of another mystic, Meister Eckhart, for comparison.

The word "Christian" is not made meaningless if applied universally. It simply means that all people's lives are, to one extent or another, conditioned by Christ's influence. In a similar way, all people's lives are conditioned by American global hegemony; making us all, in a sense, Americans.

Toto

This is more indication that Jesus Christ is a dim mirror, in which you see your own reflection, darkly.

If you go to www.biblegateway.com and search for mentions of "God" in the gospels, you will get 260 hits. The Jesus portrayed in the gospels was not an atheist. He clearly believed in a supernatural God who had commandments, required worship, and provided for his followers militarily and materially. And if the gospel account is not correct, we don't know anything about what he might have said.

e.g.

Matthew 4:4
Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ [ Deut. 8:3] �

Matthew 4:10
Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ [ Deut. 6:13] �

Matthew 5:8
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

Matthew 5:9
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.

Matthew 16:23
Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."

Matthew 19:6
So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.

Matthew 19:26
Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

Matt 22:29
Jesus replied, "You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead–have you not read what God said to you, 32 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead but of the living."


Again, if you are going to mush these meanings together, it is impossible to talk about anything. Atheism was a term of abuse for most of human history. Jews would have stoned atheists as heretics. Christians did burn atheists at the stake.

And I guess that we are all Coca-Cola too.

Anat

Prophetic Judaism is all about morals, about bringing God's message about what should or shouldn't be done. And my point was that on many questions Judaism and Christianity disagree on what the correct action would be.

Vorkosigan

The word "Christian" is not made meaningless if applied universally. It simply means that all people's lives are, to one extent or another, conditioned by the Christ's influence on the earth. In a similar way, all people's lives are conditioned by the moon's gravity; making us all, in a sense, large masses of rock and dust orbiting the earth.