hezekiah jones

Originally posted by Pantera
Probably not every hotel room...

Howdy stranger!

wade-w

He means a joint.

Thor Q. Mada

I personally think jesus, if he ever existed was illerate. Otherwize how come he never put as much as one letter on paper or whatever??
Everything about him has been written by others long after his launching into the sky.

Pantera

Hello! Good to see some familiar faces still around.

(Apologies to the mods)

RuthlessLogic

First, an inability to write doesn't necessarily equate with an inability to read. Second, it's not as if paper was handy back in the day. You didn't just head over to the CVS to buy a comp notebook. Parchment was scarce, costly to produce, and generally unavailable to all but the scholars.

The oral tradition was such that Jesus would likely have heard the Torah on a daily basis. Moreover IF the Bible is to be believed (yeah, I know....) Jesus was a rabbi. This alone would have given him access to the Torah, the Prophets, AND the Writings, which collectively make up what we call the OT.

Of course, there is much speculation as to whether Jesus was Kohein or not, but given the political geography of the period, it wouldn't have been necessary. The Kohanim were primarily Sadducees and Jesus - as a middle class Jew - would have likely been much more sympathetic to the Pharasaic POV that the Torah belonged to all Jews, rather than just a priestly class.

However, in many ways, the whole question of whether HE refuted the OT is irrelevant. Almost everything we believe/know about Jesus is informed by Paul and he wasn't interested in the Historical Jesus at all. Almost the entire NT is based on HIS prosyletizing; HE is the true progenitor of modern Xianity. ::shudder:: He was the Greek-born son of wealthy Jewish parents, who were also Roman citizens and was hated by populist, pharasaic jews. For Maude's sake, he worked as a hired gun for the Saducees and was involved with the murder of St. Stephen.

However, being a Jew hated by Jews made him an outcast and on his way to Damascus, he has his fabled "conversion' (roughly 35 c.e.) after which he trots off to study with the Essenes for 3 years. Upon his return to Jerusalem, he found that the community STILL didn't trust him and he was eventually exiled to Tarsus (his birth city) to be a missionary. On his way there, he stopped in Antioch for several years to teach. A dispute over the content of his teachings lead sect leaders to recall him to Jerusalem: Paul wasn't emphasizing strict adherence to Jewish law. This lead to a schism between James (aka Jesus' brother) and Paul...the main point here being that James actually KNEW Jesus and Paul never did.

Anyway, yada yada, long story long, Paul went back out and continued to promote Jesus as "God" (much sexier than Jesus as political militant!). He had to, in order to win adherents of other divinity cults, and it is at this point that some of the more miraculous pieces came into play (virgin birth, etc.). In doing so, he also relaxed the entry requirements in order to make it easier for Greeks and other pagans to join. He himself, pointedly acknowledges in 2 Cor. 11:4-5 that he is promulgating a different Jesus than the community in Jerusalem.

My point is that Paul is the one who claimed Jesus to be the Christ : he took the Jewish term "messiah" to mean the same as the Hellenistic "Christ". Jesus himself never claimed to be a Messiah - much less THE Messiah. Thus, the whole Jesus-as-literal-God thing has it's roots in PAUL's actions and claims and most of what's written in the NT about Jesus' "divine," phophecy-fulfilling origins was created and advanced by Paul. And he wasn't even that original about it! All of the major defining characteristics of Jesus have a Midrashic source - that is, they call upon the divinity tales of earlier, OT writings. The life story of Jesus, as we read it, is nothing more than the retelling of Torah stories - look at the parallels between Jesus' life and that of Moses, Josuha, Elijah, and Elisha.

For instance: Look at the Loaves & Fishes story. It's a retelling of Moses' miraculous manna from heaven. The commandments at Mount Sinai parallel the beatitudes at the Sermon on the Mount. The 12 disciples reference the 12 tribes of Israel. The wandering of Jesus for 40 days is a midrashic reference to Moses wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. Midrashic themes can also be found in the accounting of the tragic death of Jesus on the cross. Jesus is linked to the sacrificial blood of the lamb of Passover and the scapegoat of Yom Kippur.

It's all a load of Pauline crap. Jesus was nothing more than a militant Jew who wanted to overthrow Rome and the Sadducees.