Chili

Until the messiah was born unto Joseph (by way of rebirth as in "born from above"), Jesus was not known nor was there a need for Jesus to be known as the way to the end wherein Jesus is the sin nature (or human condition) of Joseph the upright Jew.

So I recognize the name Jesus as the human identity of Joseph who was a Jew indeed but here send his Jewish identity to be crucified by the faculty of reason (the Romans under Pilate) while convicted by Judaism itself . . . which then is an inner journey by way of enlightenment and no more.

Joseph was a real Jewish person and Jesus just a stage in the transformation of Joseph's mind who so became God.

It is wrong to deny Jesus because of the dual identity as saved sinner of which the sinner had to die to set the saved identity free.

Chili

I would say that if Siddharta Guatama can become a Buddha it is not so hard for this Joseph character to become a Christ[ian]. Maybe the problem here is that too many of us think that we are Christians but not God.

Sapho

Hmmm, Ive been saving some mushrooms, when I take them Im going to read some of Chilli's posts, and see if they make any sense then.

JohnG

I think he's saying Jews represent sin (Joseph the Jew was rightfully crucified), and Christians represent salvation (Jesus was "born").

oy vey

Solitary Man

I think you may be onto something here...

mens_sana

I think I'll save my mushrooms for something worthwhile.

Chili

Jews do not represent sin and Christians do not represent salvation.

Joseph was never crucified but the sin nature of the man was crucified while the sins of Joseph-the-man as Jew were the actual cross that Jesus carried.

So here we have the human nature of Joseph (his ego identity) carry away its own guilt as the cross whereupon this pretender (imposter) gets crucified . . . and Judaism is the religion that made this possible. :notworthy:

The salvation that Christians represent is the antichrist in my view and never part of the argument.

Jesus was never born. Joseph was reborn and was a new creation because the long lost identity (the image of God) after which he was formed was reborn in his conscious mind (the vacant stable) as firstborn or only begotton son of the father (the ego or persona is not formed and remains a phantasm in the imagination of man= illusion and can therefore die by itself in the first death to set this firstborn idenity free).

So nobody was born but the image of God (the reality of being firstborn) was reborn in the mind of Joseph who here now started his second go-around in life beginning in Galailee and on into Jerusalem = purgatory and heaven on earth.

JohnG

That's an interesting decoding of the story. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I would think it's possible that the character Joseph in your outline could be fictional as well. It wouldn't matter whether he was real or not, the whole story is just a vessel to carry the philosophy and to promote the Christian doctrine. To outline a separation from progressive Jewish thought that was happening at the time.

No?

Chili

Well of course this Joseph could be fictional but the story is real and needs a body to hang it on. If you want Joseph to be fictional let's call him Sue, for al I care, except that part of the story is told by the name change from Joseph to Jesus to John the Baptist, beheaded and later returns as John of the Cross who eventually retired in Patmos . . . or not, which doesn't really matter because metamorphosis does not need a name for it to happen but does need a well focussed religion to bring it about and that is what this story is showing us.

The Christian doctrine is completely wrong and is just a repeat of the problem that the Gospels tried to correct with the method that Jesus presented. I hold here that Jesus was 'the way from rebirth to heaven in 42 months' and not 40 years of wandering in the desert and still die nonetheless.

Yes it is true that the wole story is the vessel but it is also true that the vessel must exists before the story can be told, and let me now add here that the Judaism shown in Matthew was not compete and needed an overhaul because resurrection did not follow the crucifixion which is tragic because that in itself converts Matthew in to a tragedy instead of a comedy.

So therefore, it was obvious that a new [improved] way had to be introduced and that is where Jesus of Nazareth (from the city of God) becomes the Efficient way of the Formal Cause (the faith of Peter and the way of Paul)

Catholic doctrine, yes, but never Christian doctrine.

mountainman

By bring Buddha into it, you appear to be talking about the condition of the embodied soul, the condition of all humanity as living beings within the form of the human body. That essentially, through some "gnostic/ascetic pathway" (8-fold etc), self-realisation is an individual's task. And that the "self-awareness" of such a sage is well beyond the domain of "external religion". (ie: external "religious" sociological phenomena; association with being "christian", or "muslim", or "theosophist", or "atheist", or "academic", or "scientologist", etc)

The Indian Brahmins presented in Philostratus say they consider themselves to be "gods" because they are "good men". (Greek = "CHRESTOS"). They were also healers, and ascetic adepts.