NOGO

There are, of course, many reasons. In this post I want to discuss one in particular which has to do with the title of "Son of God"

This is an essential concept in Christianity. The idea was that Jesus was the first to be given the title and he resurrect. So all who believe in him will also be called children of God and will resurrect at the end of the world. This concept is explained in Romans 8 and in many places in GJohn.

Therefore as a Son of God Jesus inherited life after death which believers get as heirs with Jesus.

So the question is this when did Jesus obtain this title of "Son of God" ?

Let us look at the Gospels and what they have to say about this.

I will ignore passing statements such as Mark 1:1

First, there is the matter of the virgin birth. This is definitely in reference to Jesus being the Son of God. We need not assume here that Jesus became the Son of God at his birth but we can definitely say that the intention of the authors was that Jesus was the Son of God right from birth. Luke 1:35 says so in Luke 1:35

"The angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God."

In many places in the Gospels demons refer to Jesus as the son of God. (Mt 4:3, Mt4:6, Mt 8:29, Mr 3:11, Mr 5:7, Luke 4:3 4:9 and 4:41). Demons seem to know what most humans were unable to see except for the disciples who knew him well.

John the baptist testified that Jesus was the son of God John 1:34 "I myself have seen, and have testified that this is the Son of God.". Since John died because Jesus we can assume that Jesus was son of God at or before he started preaching.

At Jesus' baptism the voice above says Mt3:17 " This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased."

Peter says that Jesus is the son of God (Mt16:16) when Jesus questions him.

So we can conclude that the Gospels portray Jesus as the Son of God during his life time.

Now we move to the Epistles.

Both Paul (Romans 1:4) and Hebrews (1:3-5) state that Jesus inherited the name of Son of God after his resurrection.

Compare this to John 1:14
"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth."

And Paul says it this way

Jesus was declared Son of God after his death and resurrection!

This discrepancy has far reaching implications.

In particular it shows why Paul and the author of Hebrews as well as all early Epistles have nothing to say about Jesus' life and never quote any of his teachings as most preachers do today. To early Christians, such as Paul, everything starts with the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus and not his birth.

In another thread on the "Earthly rulers" the following verse was discussed.

"So that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places". (Eph 3:10)

In view of this statement all of the references in the Gospels to demons knowing who Jesus was seem to be anachronistic,

Also, in the Gospels the teachings of Jesus are given a central role in the salvation process. The parable of the sower comes immediately to mind. (Mt 13:3) Yet as I have shown in the thread on the Lord's Supper Paul's version of the Lord's supper is about inspired sayigs being shared by believers gathered for this purpose..Paul claims that believers have access to God's/Jesus's mind because they have his spirit within them. It is also this spirit which makes them Sons of God.

This is only part of the puzzle but it sure does not help one believe in an HJ. One would expect a bit more consistency.

GakuseiDon

One thing I wanted to ask in the Lord's Supper thread, and which you mention here. If the inspired sayings played such a part, and Paul regarded them as coming from the Risen Christ, why doesn't Paul refer to them, beyond the Lord's Supper and divorce?

capnkirk

NOGO & GakuseiDon:

While the title of this thread refers to a historical Jesus, the body of the thread argues against a historical Jesus 'Christ'. The two terms are not interchangeable, in that the former 'could' have been a Jewish messiah who never claimed divinity and was crucified just like several other Jewish messiahs. Refuting the latter doesn't necessarily refute the former.

You mentioned the factor of the 'virgin birth'. Let's consider that factor in the following light: If Jesus' divinity was thrust upon him by others after his death, then those others would have reason and need to redefine him in ways that would preclude his being a Jewish messiah.

As a Jewish messiah required a bloodline claim to the Kingship that was to follow the overthrow of the Romans, what better way to blunt the claim than to invent the 'virgin birth'? If you remember, Jesus was supposedly of the 'House of David', but in patrilineal Jewish culture, Jesus' claim would be totally dependent on the legitimacy of his father's claim (i.e. Joseph). The virgin birth neatly removes Joseph from the genetic picture and Jesus from the claim of royal blood. Ergo: the Christians could then refute any claims that Jesus was the Jewish messiah while claiming by the same measure that he WAS in fact divine.

Consider the same influence on "the Eucharist". The central sacrament of the Christian church and faith is that of the Eucharist (Holy Communion), and conventional orthodoxy on the strength of the gospels cites Jesus as the founder of it, and thereby founder of Christianity. In the light of the preceding distinctions, let us examine this more closely.

In the first three gospels, familiar texts portray Jesus founding the Eucharist at the Last Supper, and the respective accounts are virtually identical. John (written much later), however, does not mention the incident in his account of he Last Supper, but instead attaches the Eucharistic idea to a quite different phase of Jesus’ life, his preaching in Galilee in the Capernaum synagogue (see John 6:53-58). In the three Synoptic Gospels, Jesus is represented as performing a ceremony, but not as instituting a rite to be observed by his followers in perpetuity. It is left to the reader to surmise that this story provides a historical or etiological origin for the rite. In John, Jesus does not even perform a ceremony; he merely expresses some ideas, dark and cryptic even to his disciples, some of whom are disturbed by them (see John 6:66).

Chronologically, the first assertion of the Eucharist as a regular sacrament, and the first reference to the Eucharistic idea of a salvific power in the body and blood of Jesus is found in Paul’s Epistle (I Corinthians 11:23-30). This reference predates any of the gospels and actually points to Paul as the founder of the Eucharist. It cannot be considered coincidental that this rite bears a startling similarity to the pagan rites of the mystery religion of the god Attis (prominent in Saul/Paul's hometown of Tarsus).

So, as you see, there is a danger in regarding HJ and HJC as interchangeable terms. While close inspection of the gospels creates questions that make it difficult to accept the existence of HJC, those same conflicts and inconsistencies can be argued to support the hypothesis that they are signs of flaws in an editing effort aimed at bringing the gospels (depicting HJ as a political messiah) in line with the Christ in Paul's letters and points to Paul as the Inventor of Christianity (and to Paul's followers as the NT redactors). If correct, it would make Saul's Damascus Road Experience the event of Jesus' conversion to Xtianity, not Paul's.

Amaleq13

By "Jewish messiah" do you mean the messiah traditionally expected (i.e. warrior/priest)?

capnkirk

Yes, I mean the messiah traditionally expected, but the translation of messiah is simply anointed one.

In Hebrew culture, only the head priest and the king were anointed, so the prophesied messiah would be a leader (of royal blood) who would, after freeing Israel of the yoke of foreign occupation and establish the "kingdom of god" (a common OT term for the Kingdom of Israel) as its monarch. The (unprophesied) methodology of this feat would necessarily require (in some combination) the functions of both king and chief priest.

However, for most people, the term "warrior/priest" doesn't very well describe "king" and/or the "ordained keeper of the Temple". True, some of the messiah candidates were warriors, but others were not. Jesus would have fallen into the latter category.

NOGO

Paul claims that all of his letters are inspired from Jesus.

Paul's letters were probably read to the Christian community at the Lord's supper. One can think of Paul's letters as his controbution to the Lord's supper.

Why does't Paul actually spell out exact phrases received from Jesus?

As I explained in the Last Supper thread Paul claims to know Gos's mind because he has God's spirit in him. He never claims to have conversations with God.

Let me throw a couple of questions back at you.

The fact that Jesus instituted the Lord's Supper just before his death and the issue on divorce are two things which coincide with the Gospels. If Jesus was a man who initiated both of these then why does Paul claimed that he received this information directly from Jesus?

If you answer to the above is to say that Paul says that he received information from the Lord but in fact he means that it came from Jesus through others THEN whouldn't that also apply to all of his letters and if not, why not?

Paul tells his followers to love one another, yet he does not attribute this command to Jesus. Why?
There are many other examples like this one where Paul fails to quote Jesus in support of his statements.

... and then there is the subject of this thread ....

NOGO

My purpose was to show discrpancies between the Gospels and the Epistles. Whether there was an actual man called Jesus is a definite possibility but Paul did not know anything about him.

For Paul everything starts with the death and resurrection. From that point Jesus appeared to various people and after that communicates with them through inspiration. Everything Paul says fits into this picture.

capnkirk

True, Saul never met HJ (nor any of his disciples) until after the crucifixion. What I would like to attempt is to place your most insightful observations into a larger context.

What I am proposing (with no claim of originality) is that there WAS a HJ who was just that (not HJC), and that his followers knew him as HJ. The Pharisees would have been his (passive) supporters, and the Roman quisling High Priest (acting as Head of Secret Police) hires thugs to persecute the followers of ANY popular figure that posed a threat to Roman interests, and any messianic claimant definitely qualified. One of these hired thugs is Saul of Tarsus, a gentile from a pagan city in Hellenistic Cilicia, come to Jerusalem to seek his fortune. Wanted to become a Pharisee, but failed. Sent by the High Priest (HP) to covertly kidnap some high-value Jewish Xtian leaders in Damascus, but on the way there had an epiphany... ...where the chasm that separates the parallels between Jesus' death and (alleged) resurrection, and the dying (sometimes sacrificially) and resurrected savior gods whose pagents were vivid memories...is bridged. Jesus' followers were wrong! Jesus had sacrificed himself to wash away the sins of the world. Jesus is somehow just like Attis, Osiris, and the many faces of Baal (Tarsus was named for Ba'al-Taraz). At that instant Xtianity was born. After being chased out of Damascus (his original mission had been compromised) by the King's minister, he hides out in Arabia for a while, maybe to avoid facing the HP. When he goes back to Jerusalem and tries to share his epiphany with Jesus' disciples (the Jerusalem 'Church'(TJC)), they soon come to regard his radical views as heretical. Meanwhile, Saul/Paul begins his ministry in earnest, traveling to the various Jewish enclaves in Hellenistic Greece and Asia Minor, and sending Epistles back. He eventually gets back to Jerusalem, where TJC incites the 'faithful' to riot against Paul. Paul (as a Roman citizen) is carried back to Rome to face charges. While there he wrote some more letters, and was beheaded (62 CE); Nero sends troops to Judea to quell insurrection (messiah Benjamin the Egyptian) HP executes James, leader of TJC.. Jerusalem falls. Another insurrection (led by messiah Manachem) begins in 67 CE that results in the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and begins a period of savage reprisals from Rome.

Outside Judea, Paul's faction has spread across gentile Medeterranean civilization, albeit different groups were already beginning to diverge philosophically. A prototype GMark was circulating, and being edited to 'spin' the account to better reflect Paul's Christology (editing necessarily limited, too many already in circulation). 80 CE (or later): Few copies GMatt made before editors did a more extensive job than was possible with GMark. 90+ CE: Luke (who traveled with Paul) writes GLuke, the most Paulinist G thus far. 100+ CE: Luke writes Acts (playing down the rift between TJC and Paul, in order to preserve Paul's need to demonstrate continuity between Judiasm and Xtianity). 120+ CE: GJohn appears, HJ completely obliterated; replaced by full blown gnostic sacrificial man/savior/deity.

The preceding is a loose narrative of a scenario that may give NOGO's observations a larger context. It doesn't even matter if some of the details are wrong, there is considerable evidence to support a much more thorough examination of this exegesis.

Dean Anderson

...but two of the four gospels go out of their way to provide geneaologies (albeit conflicting ones) showing that Joseph had royal blood from the line of David (and fudge the number of generations to make a significant 3x14). If the intent was to remove Joseph from the picture then why would they do that?

gregor

You ask why make up geneologies.

Well, you have two premises. (1) Jesus was originally an unknown preacher from the outback of Gallilee, whose parents were nobodies. (2) You are now writing 60 years after his death and you want to convert others by making Jesus appear to be all things to all people. So, perhaps you both make up a geneology that no one can refute, and you also make him the fulfillment of Isaiah's pseudo-prophesy by a virgin birth.

Hey, if I'm sitting in Corinth, I don't know that Jesus was not of the house of David. I also probably have no access to Isaiah, but
I recall there being something in that story about a "young woman" conceiving a child.