Chili

Or maybe the idea that people didn't live long in those days is just our way to justify our medical expenses.

Menopause is not just a woman's thing but I will agree that fundamentalist Christians are not affected by it. Yes I know the story but that is just his own parable. The message here is that we must run away from God if salvation is to come our way, like Jonah and others.

Christ was born and they called him Jesus. The question becomes "who is Jesus and to whom was Christ born that he would be called Jesus."

Chili

The "man" is "man in the image of God" and the "certain man" is empowered to be in pursuit of the image of God.

True, but maybe you are only using a small part of your mind.

Lugubert

Chili,

My "your inventing a new meaning for an established word" referred to your interpretation of "menopause".

You persevere by writing "Menopause is not just a woman's thing but I will agree that fundamentalist Christians are not affected by it."

"Menopause" is derived from the Greek meniaia 'menstruation' (and, of course, 'pause'). Very obviously, it can affect only women, Christians or not.

If you mean something by "Or maybe the idea that people didn't live long in those days is just our way to justify our medical expenses.", you'd better spell it out in a comprehensible way. For example, when I pay a medical bill, I need no other justification than that the visit/treatment was needed, and I certainly don't think of the shorter average life span 2000 years ago.

Chili

Hi anders, I read your post but like mine better.

CX

Because it's inconvenient to the modern Xian worldview. According to Liddell & Scott, MISEW means "to hate". There is no other meaning. (Liddell & Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, Abridged edition, p.448). "love less" is simply unsupported apologetic based on a particular world view.

As a side note I would not generally rely on a biblical concordance for accurate definitions of the original Greek. Strong's is reasonably good, but even then some definitions are a product of theological interpretation rather than secular linguistic scholarship. Ditto with NT Lexicons.

dmarker

LOL! The "you are only using 3% of your brain" has been debunked.

pierneef

Man, some tortured attempts to have "hate" mean something else. Its a bit like Jesus' siblings werent really siblings even although the words mean that in all other contexts, but here he really means cousins, or something. None of the alternative meanings suggested would have been beyong Jesus to say. If he had meant any of the alternatives why would he not have said what he meant ? Why would he choose to use such an explosive phrase to suggest something else ? How would he have known that his listeners would think: "Well, when the lord uses hate in the context of one's family, he always means.....thats his way of talking ". Oh, and does this imply that everything else that Jesus said also potentially meant something else ? Where do you apply this standard ?

I am not confused at all by the text. In my view those who see Jesus as crafting a theology during his life, and using words that would be taken as divine, are creating their own problems. There is no evidence whatsoever from the Gospels that Jesus had either that intention of those sensibilities. That was done to his life and to his sayings by those who came after him and used his life as a basis to craft a religion. Jesus was operating within his own Jewish context, at a time when great controversy was raging about aspects of Jewish law, and its inappropriateness to a country that was experiencing increasing poverty under Roman occupation. He certainly wasnt the only teacher making those kinds of challenges, and neither was he the only one who got into trouble.

He was making his case, and to do so, he used hyperbole. That was his style. He was a pretty fiery guy, and like all people who used hyperbole, he probably thought from time to time "That was a bit strong, but at least I have got them going !" You need only open the text at almost any point and you will see this fiery language flowing from him:

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law--a man's enemies will be the members of his own household." (Matthew 10:34-37).

And do not call anyone on earth “father,� for you have one Father, and he is in heaven. (Matthew 23:9)

All things are possible to him who believes" (Mark 9:23).
He went on to say: "if you have faith as a grain of
mustard seed (which is little or no faith at all, of
course) you will say to this mountain, 'Move from here
to there,' and it will move, and nothing will be
impossible for you" (Matthew 17:20)

"My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34).

I think it does Jesus and his teachings a great disservice to dwell on his words in this precious fashion, and to play the game "What he really meant to say was..." as if anyone could possibly blessed with that knowledge. He said "hate", he meant it when he said it; he was trying to get a point across in as strong a fashion as he could, and he sure didnt mean "love a little less" or "hate but only for ten days" or anything like that.

Chili

So was it still a hyperbole then? or was the word hate a bit strong but spoken just to get their attention?

pierneef

I am conscious of the fact that no one can really know the answers to these questions, and that we are all forming our own conclusions based on what we have read and learnt. That proviso is important for me because it does still permit some rigor and discipline in one's approach.

This is what I mean. We have the texts. We know that they were written based on sources and not direct witness (all scholars I have read agree on that). We also know that they are quite heavily edited and redacted, so they do not come, pure as snow from God's mouth. They are an account of a life of great significance, but the words themselves are words, as fallible as words in any other book. Because there is a fair amount of surviving evidence of the political and competitive way the four gospels were elected and presented, their divine origin is most unlkely (even if you believe in that sort of thing).

So we have an imperfect text. It appears from the works of Crossan and other scholars, that the narrative part of the Gospels may have come from a separate tradition/sources, than the sayings. For example, we have in the Gospel of Thomas a text that is probably as old as the earliest gospel, and consists only of sayings. Whether there was a written source that predates Thomas is unclear, but a written source for the Gospels has been reconstructed as Q.

The Jesus Seminar has spent years working on distinguishing the sayings of Jesus that are most and least likely to be authentic.

http://religion.rutgers.edu/jseminar/complete.html#Luke

On Luke 14.26, the conclusion is pink.

The Five Gospels: Robert Funk, The Jesus Seminar, p 353

Red=Jesus undoubtedly said this or something very like it
Pink = Jesus probably said something like this
Gray= Jesus did not say this, but the ideas contained in it are close to his own
Black: Jesus did not say this; it represents the perspective or content of a leter or different tradition.

If you read the book you will see a hell of a lot of gray, which is to be expected, given that no one was running after Jesus writing down what he was saying. So a pink is pretty good.

Based on that, my own discipline is as follows: unless it is necessary, one should make as few interpretations as possible that suggest that the meaning is anything other than what is intended. All of those interpretations are opinions and therefore sources of error, and a good scholar seeks to limit sources of error. If it had been a grey saying that would allow more latitude.

So, guided by the scholars, I conclude that it is pretty likely that he said it, and there is no reason to believe he meant anything else (except the Church's discomfort)

Now to your question:

Based on the many examples from the Gospels that are rated red and pink, it does seem as if Jesus used this kind of language very frequently. It can almost be called his dominant style. It is confronting and cutting at times. It showed a passion or anger at what he found unacceptable about the Galilee in which he lived. It was probably intended to shock. He was giving harsh choices in what he saw as a dire context. Salvation wasnt simply a nice option, it was the alternative to destruction. This was a message filled with urgency. (All of this is taken from an understanding of the society at the time, excellently described in the numerous books by Dominic Crossan).

So I cannot judge whether it is too strong or not, because I dont do what the church tries to do, and take Jesus' words out of their time and context, and make them sound like universal truths for all time (which to me is "mission impossible" and "mission unnecassary"). They were probably quite appropriate to the situation, is all I can say.

Chili

Thanks for your time is all I will say.