Toto

Jewrassic Pork is now in the archives.

spamandham

Thanks! Once again, your magic mod powers have saved the day (although I'm guessing if I knew what the hell I was doing, I could have found that too)

Zed

You can find symbolism in ANYTHING. I don't buy it.

spamandham

That's true, but it's also true that symbolism plays a big role in religion, and particularly in period religions, where the usage of myth and symbolism were the norm.

Certain religious symbols are well established, and when we see them in an ancient religious text, it's silly to presume the author was not intending their usage, particularly when the story makes no sense at all from a literal perspective.

Why on earth would anyone literally curse a fig tree? Isn't that pretty stupid, particularly when the story goes out of it's way to state that figs were out of season? Do you really think the author intended to paint his hero as an idiot?

Zed

Do you have any evidence that the author did not intend the story to be taken literally, or that his intended audience did not take it literally?

What you're doing here is revising history based on the assertion that the gospel writers were smarter than they appear. Imagine someone saying: the Earth is flat. A simple explanation would be that that person is wrong. By your method, we would instead hypothesize this: no one could be that dumb as to assume the Earth is flat. He must have meant something else by "Earth" or "flat". There must be hidden symbolism.

Or he could just be ignorant. Where's occam's razor when you need it?

stephan huller

The answer to this 'difficulty' for the Marcionites (and related heretics) was simple - Jesus never claimed to be the Christ. He was the herald for another; hence the push back on giving a sign (the Samaritans say that the messiah has to perform THREE signs).

Re: the sign of Yona. Yona is also a diminutive of John cf. Simon bar Jona for this form.

Cege

According to the gospels, the Pharisees were able to observe themselves or at least learn first hand from actual observers that Jesus was making miraculous acts on an almost daily basis.

Prophets in Jewish history had allegedly performed many and various miracles, but they weren't considered to be the messiah based on miracles. I don't understand how a "sign" would have established to 1st century Pharisees that Jesus was the messiah or, (something that wasn't prophesied or expected) a member of a Godhead.

The signs that Jesus reportedly performed weren't convincing to the extent of establishing Jesus was God's Son or the foretold Messiah.

According to Paul's epistles, the signs and miracles weren't the convincing evidence either; resurrection from the dead and the ascent to heaven previous to returning for the saints and defeating the satanic earthly world were the final word.

spamandham

Yes. ....the well established symbolism of figs within period Judaism combined with the context of the parable right after Jesus has a run-in with the Pharisees, combined with myth being the primary mechanism used to transmit religious ideas in the culture that produced the texts, combined with the fact that taking the story literally paints Jesus as an idiot, combined with author explicitly telling us he teaches in parables.

Do you have any evidence that the author intended the story to be taken literally?

No, I'm applying what we know about history to the text, rather than treating it as a modern text. What you're doing is projecting the expectations of literalism common today into the past, when it was not common.

Occam's razor requires that you factor in what you know, rather than throwing what you know out the window and pretending facts were unknown instead.

Zed

Yes. The gospels clearly attempt to establish themselves as historical records by linking some of the events they tell with political, historical and geographical landmarks.

When someone starts his story by saying, "In the Nth year of the rule of King so-and-so," it's an unreasonable stretch to claim that the author intended his story as an allegory or a parable. Not to mention that the intended audiences and the immediate generations that followed in insisted on the historicity of the accounts in the few times when that was questioned.

When you say such and such story makes Jesus look like an idiot if taken literally, you're the one projecting your modern subjective (and baseless) expectations.

You presented no evidence other than a variety of "oh they couldn't have meant that literally" expressions of personal perspective. Give me textual evidence from the era that said, "Oh that Jesus story we wrote is an allegory."

Your reliance on the fact that Jesus used parables a lot is easily dismissed by anyone with basic reading comprehension, who would tell you the context clearly distinguishes between the parables and the main narrative. The text even states on multiple occasions, "Hey the following story is just a parable Jesus told," just for those not paying attention, or claiming the entire thing was intended as a parable.

spamandham

No reputable scholar will affirm this assertion, and neither does common sense. This is a pointless exchange.