Nay-Sayer

Please elaborate....

Dharma

That varies by biblical interpretation as to what scriptures constitute Christianity and what did Jesus REALLY mean when he said "I have come to fulfill the Law", which if interpreted to mean the Mosaic laws, would justify many immoral and moral things, not to mention the many contradictory things Christ himself said.

Dharma

since when did the Jews worship their King? If the Jews are fundamentally right, than Christians are fundamentally WRONG.

Nay-Sayer

Your theory is fine and dandy but I'm speaking in terms of practical application. Christians are quick to trumpet that Jesus was without sin. If that's true then the only possible meaning of that is Jesus did not break the Mosaic Law. Chrsitians, who take every opportunity to break the Mosaic Law [to the letter or in the spirit of], do not follow Jesus' example. Now, I realize that there are some Christians out there who follow the Law of Moses, but these groups are the exception and NOT the rule. The vast majority of Christians, in practice, do not follow the example of Jesus....

Skeptical

I wasn't really talking about those sort of minor issues. I wasn't even really talking about Jesus. What I was talking about was the Christian religion as it has come down over the ages. My point is that it seems fundamentally contradictory to base a religion (Christianity) on the foundations of another religion (Judaism) while simultaneously claiming that the followers of the foundational religion were fundamentally wrong about one of the most important events (if not the most important) in their history.

As it see it, the Christian religion tries to both venerate and desecrate Judaism at the same time. This seems to me to involve a fundamental contradiction. See my pont?

Skeptical

That's not exactly my point. My concern in this thread is not really directly related to Jesus, more to the Christian religion as a whole. The teachings of Jesus are not really relevant to my point in this thread. But, I agree that Christianity as it is almost universally practiced over the ages bears little resemblance to what Jesus is reported to have taught and preached.

I think this is highly debatable. That is the traditional Christian interpretation, but that doesn't make it so. EP Sanders makes a powerful argument in "Jesus and Judaism" that Jesus wasn't trying to "move in a different direction" in a general sense, although he was certainly saying and doing things that were different from some groups within Judaism. (although certainly not all) The differences between Jesus' teachings and those of other groups within Judaism in 1st century Palestine have been vastly exaggerated by later Christian apologists.

I also think it is highly doubtful that Jesus said anything about being a "son of god" or being sent to save the world from its sins. That is a particular spin that was given post mortem, and it most likely was a Pauline invention.

In any case, my point is even if Jesus was trying to move in a "new direction", the direction as interpreted by later Christians was so non-Jewish that the only logical course of action would have been a complete break with Judaism. If the Jews were so wrong on the Messiah, then why should any of their other traditions be trusted? But the early and modern Christians did not make this break and in fact in their words and deeds often seem to prefer the OT to the NT. The whole business seems very schizophrenic.

Skeptical

But they weren't expecting anything like what Christians claim about Jesus!

Sorry to shout, but that is my central point. There is nothing that I am aware of in either the OT or other Jewish sources about Messianic expectations that can reasonably be applied to what Christians claimed for Jesus. (yes, I'm aware of all of the "prophecies" taken out of context from the OT that Mat believed related to Jesus, so let's not get sidetracked into that)

On the contrary, all of the Jewish traditions up to that time expected the Messiah to be an earthly ruler in the tradition of David, not a "son of God" come to "save the world from its sins". In fact, that very concept seems to me very non-Jewish. As far as I know, Jews always talked to God directly, they didn't need someone else to save them from their sins, that was what God did.

The only traditional Messianic tradition that Jesus definitely fulfilled was that he was Jewish. He might have been of the line of David, but other than that he didn't meet any of the other criteria. So, by traditional Jewish standards up to that point, he clearly wasn't the Messiah. If he _was_ the Messiah, then the Jewish tradition was so horribly flawed it seems to make no sense to continue to follow those traditions from the Christian POV.

Dharma

Well Christians make up a new theology where the sin offering is no longer the lamb, but his whole self...i.e. the final sin offering after which man has to offer no more. Atleast that's the Catholic version.

Johnny Skeptic

I beg to differ with you. If Jesus was actually conceived by the Holy Spirt, he could not possibly have been Jewish, but rather was made to look Jewish by the Holy Sprit. Not only that, if he had actually genetically been from the line of David, he would have had a sinful nature.

neilgodfrey

Christianity does indeed both venerate and descrate Judaism. You might be interested in getting a hold of Jeffrey Siker's "Disinheriting the Jews: Abraham in early Christian controversy" (1991).

Essentially the idea is that given the culture of the time earliest Christianity needed to be able to claim roots in antiquity to establish any credibility as "true". But also in keeping with the culture of the day it was quite comfortable in applying allegorical meanings to these ancient texts in order to establish its own distinct identity.

So it needed the Jewish literature as its foundation. It also needed to hijack that literature from the Jews by plying its own allegorical spin.