Jeffrey Gibson

"Was projected" by whom and when?

Are your really asserting that it was only at/after the fall of the Temple that Christians saw themselves as having been created as God's new chosen people?

When do you date Paul's letters?

Jeffrey

aa5874

But, the letter writer called Paul made no such claim. The writer said he was after the Apostles, that he was the last to see Jesus and he persecuted those who preached the gospel.

Based on the canonised Acts, Peter was preaching the forgiveness of sin by Jesus before Saul/Paul. And the church writers concur that Paul was after the Apostles.

Now, if Paul wrote fiction about himself, and the church writers wrote fiction about Paul, then there is no recourse since all we have about Paul, either comes from Paul or someone claiming to be Paul and the church writers

Paul himself was an invention, and a late one.


What is radical and humanistic about a religion that threatens people with eternal damnation, and demand that they give 10% percent or some portion of their income to God and His Son or face instant death. See Acts 5 for the outcome of Ananias and his wife Sapphira for God's money.

LogicandReason

The 'damnation' becomes an all too recognizable human imprint. I doubt the 'Kingdom of Heaven' crowd started with that in mind. But eschatological disappointment and the human impulse to dominate predicated its development. 'Hell' is not a Jewish concept either.

As for the monies, sophist sold their philosophies for money (to Schopenhauer's chagrin) - a trapping of all organizations to some degree.

Again, some of the sayings placed in the mouth of Jesus by Matthew in Chapter 5, such as the 'Civil Disobedience' underpinnings, were radical and humanist. What developed was not.

aa5874

But isn't 'damnation' and 'Kingdom of Heaven' all recognizable human imprint.

I don't think Civil Disobedience is radical. Josephus wrote about Jews who were engaged in such behaviour.

It was after Constantine that Jesus believers radically changed from the persecuted to the persecutors. Jesus believers then became inhumane or intolerant to other beliefs and at times inflicted death to other believers.

LogicandReason

Yes! Augustine and other post-Constantine Christians were terrors. Augustine even ate his own, like (anti-Semite) John Chrysostom and Julian. Religion and power...yikes!

LogicandReason

One further point, aa5874, I'm doing a terrible job of it but trying to communicate that the 'Kingdom of Heaven' and rest of 'teachings' attributed to Jesus were all Jewish in origin. The scene I offered above from Josephus very much reveals 'Civil Disobedience' as a Jewish behavior. The Gospels polemics are exegesis of Jewish scripture with a developing 'Daniel' eschatology and some Hellenistic elements (like Philo's 'Logos'). My main point is that Christian communities probably predate the 1st century, were Diaspora Jews, and that Jesus was later written into the story (from an oral tradition/legend).

aa5874

Well, the way I perceive it is that the expectation of the physical Messiah predated the spiritual Messiah or the physical Christ was expected by the Jews before the Jesus story tellers claimed Jesus was both the Son of God and Christ.

When Josephus is read, there are no indications that the Jews expected a Spiritual being on earth at any time to save the Jews from their sins or from bondage by foreign powers.

Josephus made commentaries on many books of the prophets and never made any commentary about any prophecy regarding any Messiah or Christ that was spirtual or was a God that would do away with the Jewish Temple and the Laws.

And, up to 135 CE, the expectation of the physical Messiah or Christ was still part of Jewish tradition with the appearance of Simon bar Kokchba.

It must be noted that the physical Messiah was anti-Roman in every way, but the spiritual Messiah asked his disciples and followers to pay taxes and honour the Emperors or Roman leaders.

The spiritual Messiah appears to be pro-Roman, he called the Jewish leaders vipers and broke their sabbaths. He speaks to them in parables that they might not understand him, so that they would remain in ignorance.

The spiritual Messiah was prophesied, yet he asked his followers to conceal his true identity from the Jews.

The spiritual Messiah did not say a negative word about Pilate or Roman occupation, but asked his followers, to turn their cheeks to their enemies, the Romans, bless them, the Romans, even when cursed. He asked the Jews to stay meek and poor, and to forgive 70X7, yet the spiritual Messiah beat and cursed the Jews in the Temple, he did not forgive them. There is no record that he harmed a single roman soldier.

The physical Messiah would kill a roman soldier once he had the chance.

The spritual Messiah appear to have originate outside of Judaea, to replace the physical Messiah that has been a failure.

dog-on

The writer of Mark in the second century.
Some time after Marcion learned to write...

bacht

Mark, or whoever he got the idea from.

spamandham

...by early Christians, sometime between 70CE and perhaps as late as mid-2nd century.

I made no claim in that regard. The claim (which is merely speculation by the way if that wasn't obvious), is that the time of Jesus' life was selected for symbolic reasons surrounding the fall of the temple, rather than for historical reasons involving a historical Jesus.

I don't date them at all, but I do reject the traditional dating of mid-1st century as effectively baseless.