Freethought & Rationalism Archive

JP2 · 03-17-2010, 03:56 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by show_no_mercy

Quote:

Originally Posted by StarryNight

Muslims have told me that Paul took the idea of Jesus as the Son of God to the Greeks and sold it to them as a literal statement, wheras earlier interpretations coming from within the Jewish tradition has been that "Son of God" meant saint or blessed person, or something like that. As the Greeks had a family of Gods the idea was assimilated quite easily, and it spread from there via Byzantium to the West.

True or poo?

This is from the Jewish Encyclopedia

Quote:

The Pious as Sons of God.

The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha contain a few passages in which the title "son of God" is given to the Messiah (see Enoch, cv. 2; IV Esdras vii. 28-29; xiii. 32, 37, 52; xiv. 9); but the title belongs also to any one whose piety has placed him in a filial relation to God (see Wisdom ii. 13, 16, 18; v. 5, where "the sons of God" are identical with "the saints"; comp. Ecclus. [Sirach] iv. 10). It is through such personal relations that the individual becomes conscious of God's fatherhood, and gradually in Hellenistic and rabbinical literature "sonship to God" was ascribed first to every Israelite and then to every member of the human race (Abot iii. 15, v. 20; Ber. v. 1; see Abba). The God-childship of man has been especially accentuated in modern Jewish theology, in sharp contradistinction to the Christian God-sonship of Jesus.

The pagan term "son of God" was a title given to Roman emperors. IIRC since Julius Caesar was deified, emperors who took his name (Caesar) were his "sons". Thus they were "sons of god". To Greeks and Romans, if Jesus was called "son of God" this would imply his kingship.

Yeah "son of god" is a title with a number of meanings, and there's no indication in the NT outside of the first chapters of gMatthew and gLuke that the early Christians believed that Jesus was literally conceived by God.

However, as other have already pointed out, there's certainly no reason to believe that Paul was the originator of this belief or that it was he who sold it to "the Greeks" (I suppose he means Gentile Christians?). As a general life rule, it's probably best to disregard any Islamic beliefs you come across concerning the nature of Jesus or early Christian history.

Chili · 03-17-2010, 05:49 AM

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Originally Posted by Chili

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

It seems more like true poo.

Once Paul was a Jew.

It is poo alright but Jesus was also born of a Jew and one just cannot be both son of God and Jew.

. . . in the same way as one cannot be both a Catholic an a Christian, with Judaism/Catholicism being the means to the end that itself ends in Jerusalem or Rome. The purification prior to this 'crucifixion' takes place in Galilee (purgatory as we call it) where this reborn son of man is mandated to annihilate the exterior Jew/Catholic and have him crucified by the very religion that caused him to be the imposter wearing the cloak of his religion that caused the rebirth to start with. This 'cloak' is something we cannot hide from and therefore later is Jude or Paul as the traitor who both occupy the faith of Peter who so becomes the meter of faith into the thousand year reign exposed.

The problem that so called Christians/ Muslims will have is that they will never know that which has to be crucified to arrive at the end and know the difference between 'That [which] I AM' and 'that which I pretend to be.'

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