Amedeo

Today I asked myself whether the Pauline doctrine of redemption (the sacrifice of the God-Man) requires the persisting existence of Jesus.

According to the Gospels, Jesus not only resurrected but also ascended into Heaven [the Sky above, or beyond the Sky]. It was the whole God-Man that ascended, not the soul of Jesus, or the divinity of Jesus.

Theoretically, Jesus could have died again of old age, so that, at that time, the Divine Jesus would have joined his Father... and eventually the Son of Man would be resurrected like everybody else at the end of time. But the Gospels themselves, as in the Parable of the Weeds, Jesus says of himself (Matt.:13-40+), "As the weeds are pulled and burnt in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the fiery furnace , where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father."

So, the Kingdom of Heaven, or Kingdom of God, is the Kingdom of the father, but Jesus will be there as administrator and judge, BEFORE the Final judgment and the weeding out. Hence, the parable implicitly fortells his ascension into heaven: he has to be in heaven before the end of the world. (Unfortunately his prophesy that the end of the world would occur within one generation did not materialize; hence, there is no reason to believe in his escatology -- his doctrine of the last things, the Kingdom included. So, the implicit fortelling of his own ascension is null and void.)

The whole story of Jesus the Messiah is something he constructed and preached. He must have believed he was the Messiah and that he came to prepare Israel for the imminent end of the world. He was as sure of this end as he was of his being the one who would send out his angels to weed out the evil ones.

Like others, I have always been puzzled why, in the Gospels, Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man [a human creature] and never as either King or as Messiah. He was a God-Man by the implication that God Mary to conceived him, and he was called the son of God by heavenly voices and by others. At the most we have his assertion that "I and the Father are one" (if it was really he that made this assertion, or perhaps it was one of the Greek interpolations).

What is strange is that jesus referred to himself as the Son of Man precisely in contexts where he would be operating as a god or as the son of God (as in aforementioned parable).

The expression, "son of man" occurs in some books of the Bible and especially in Ezechiel, but it does not seem to mean more than "human creature" or pehaps " true man" in the sense that Andros and Vir differ from Anthropos and Homo.
There is at least a superficial contradiction between the idea of "son of man" and "son of God" (in whose function Jesus would be the administrator of the heavenly kingdom).

To go back to the Pauline doctrine of salvation: If salvation is due to the atonment of the God-Man on the cross, how can there be salvation unless the God-Man remains dead? Aside from the fact that it would be the MAN, not the God, that underwent death, the temporary death of Jesus is not an accomplished sacrifice. A temporary death (though accompanied by great pain) is not basically different than going to sleep. In fact we resurrect every morning. (According to the Gospel reports, the resurrected Jesus did not show signs of decay... while supposedly preserving the spear-wound at his side.) To Paul, the resurrection proved that jesus conquered death -- which only a god could do, and he forgot the fact that the resurrection invalidates his doctrine of redemption from sin.

Once Paul is refuted, there is no foundation left for the CHURCH of Jesus Christ (that is the church of the Gentile converts). Gentile Christianity rested and rests on Paul's illogical mind. (But, as I stated in another post, the endeavor to convert Gentiles FOR A LIMITED PERIOD OF TIME had to do with Jesus the King. The Pauline doctrine of universal salvation was the bait at the end of the hook. The Gentiles got taken and Theodosius established Christrianity the religion of the Roman empire.)

Let Jesus the messiah be returned to his People. His real messiahship ended with his death and with the non-fulfilment of his prophesy about the end of the world.

Amedeo

Matt:1
"A record of the genealogy of Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham:
Abraham was the father of Isaac,......
and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ." [See also the different genealogy in Luke:13, who is uncertain and says, "Now Jesus... He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli, ...]

Matthew states in no uncertain terms that Jesus was a descendent of King David (wherefore Jesus is the legitimate king of Jerusalem and Judaeah...) Jesus the king was born under Herod, on or before 4 B.C.

Luke is intent on speaking of Jesus the messiah (Christ), who was born of an unwed mother, Mary, wherefore Joseph received a dream message that God caused Mary to be pregnant. Jesus the Messiah was born in Bethlehem during the Roman census (?around 6 A.D.?)

(Sorry, I am not going to repeat my posts that show that the Gospels are TWO interwoven biographies: of Jesus the king and Jesus the Messiah.)

Diogenes the Cynic

Moving this to GRD for consistency.

DtC, Moderator, BC&H

Newton's Cat

Jesus, King of the Jews was, in my opinion, a fictional character used by the the original author as a vehicle for his criticisms of contemporary Jewish society. I suspect that the original story took the form of a play. Later someone founded the CULT we now call Christianity by interpolating into the text the character Jesus Christ, Son of God.

Joseph Smith founded Mormonism, Hubbard founded Scientology, etc.

Someone founded Christianity.

IESOUS CHRISTOS = OSIRIS SET CHOUS (CHOUS means "grave")

Ergo - Christianity has its origins in the Egyptian myths of Osiris and Set.

What people need to look for is two individuals who actually existed:

Paul - and whoever used his writings to create the CULT that became Christianity.

I've said this before - I'm convinced that ALL references to Jesus Christ and Christianity in Romans and Mark are later interpolations or additions.

If Hubbard can use anagrams (Xenu Etrawl, one of Scientology's major "Gods", anagrams to WE R LUNATEX) then why not the founder of Christianity? In the 70s I was personally acquainted with someone who founded his own cult (EMIN). Initially he called himself LEO IV - which is, of course, an anagram. His followers did not seem to be aware of this ... and considered it to be of no significance when they were told.

TySixtus

Christianity will adapt.

Unfortunately, people don't seem to be bothered by this. It causes them no cognitive dissonance whatsoever to learn that their religion has changed.

Liberal Christians are by nature dealing with a meta-narrative. They don't really care what "happened". They care about what it "means".

Ty

Solo

Sorry but I disagree. The liberal churches are of course the ones emptying the fastest. The only ones growing are the evangelicals. Catholicism would not survive if it gave up its conservative theological stance, and noone knows it better that Vatican. John XXIII. was an aberration. The church is back to the gibberish of Trident mass.

Christianity is not Judaism. It does not have national identity. Christ is to Christianity in religion, as UFO's are to Roswell N.M. in tourism. You can't just say, O.K. ok, so it wasn't quite a UFO and quite extraterrestials that came down here, but come on in to Roswell for the thrills anyhow.

Jiri

Biff the unclean

We are already in a condition where we totally lack an historic Jesus.

Christians insist that all professional historians accept historic Jesus as a fact…the lack of evidence for Jesus is the same as for (insert uncontested historic figure)…Jesus mythers and Jesus fictioners are all fools and idiots…etc. If it could be reasonably established that Christianity did not begin with a real historical Jesus nothing would be different than it is now.