Not_Registered

Thank you Llyricist for speaking on behalf of Mageth.

Also, If there is a statement from GoT that shows Jesus denying that He ever claimed to be God that's all that matters. And, your assuming Thomas didn't have some ulterior motive. It's all speculation.

Mageth

Not exactly, though the inconsistencies are the basis of my argument; my reason, as stated, was to support the claim that the Gospel writers (including both the canonical and non-canonical writers) practiced "selective writing" (which is not surprising, as the Gospels are "faith documents" and not literal histories), including "sayings" that supported their view and excluding "sayings" that did not support their view. Thus, it is not unreasonable to assume that, if the Gospel writers knew of sayings where Jesus denied being God, they would not include those sayings if their "view" was that Jesus was God. (Indeed, the tendency for "selective writing" to support a particular viewpoint can be observed quite often in literature, both ancient and modern).

I did not "bring up" the GoT for the purpose of demonstrating that Jesus denied ever claiming to be God. It was mentioned in a bit of a "sidebar", the discussion about Sven and my claim that the Gospel writers, if they knew of such a "saying", would not likely have included it in their Gospels. Therefore, your "reasoning" is faulty.

The correct word is "moot". And you are wrong, as you have been multiple times on this thread, BTW.

Mageth

Thanks, Llyricist. You summarized it better than I could.

Mageth

Actually, I (and I think I can safely speak for Llyricist) are assuming that Thomas (and the authors of the canonical Gospels) did have ulterior motives. Indeed, that was a key element of the argument. So once again you appear to be wrong.

Llyricist

Wrong, the argument was made in response to your response about applying Sven's statement to anything, and it is dead on point, can't help it if you don't LIKE being wrong.
I am making no such assumption, and neither did Mageth. The point was that they ALL had some ulterior motive, in the case of the canonical gospels, it would be their belief the Jesus WAS God.

But since your whole point is nothing but a big IF, it is nothing but idle speculation regardless. And pointless at that, because it's been shown that even the premise that Jesus was accused of claiming to be God is an unsupported (EVEN BY THE GOSPELS) speculation.

Llyricist

You are welcome....dang your points seemed crystal clear to me.....

Not_Registered

Let's say the Gospel writers were liars. They could lie all the time. Doesn't matter if other people (GoT, etc.) don't have evidence to dispell the "lie" we are discussing which is the absence of Jesus' denial. To clarify, I could say 50 statements and you prove 49 of my statements to be lies. If you can't prove the 50th statement to be a lie and that's the one that matters then the other 49 don't matter. It means the 50th statement could be the truth. Doesnt mean it is the truth, but the fact that you caught me in 49 other lies means nothing to the 50th statement. Just because GoT and the other Gospels have discrepancies between them doesn't mean everything in the Gospels is a lie. Your just making a statement to which I say OK...that's great....doesn't mean much to the specific issue of Jesus' denail of saying He is God, but whatever.
Memo to Thomas: Thomas if you "proved" the Gospels wrong (meaning we trust you more...for whatever reason) in 100 categories, but don't have evidence that shows Jesus ever denied saying He was God then (in order to have some relevance in this discussion) you've got raise up from your grave, build a time traveling device, and go back to interview Jesus.

Llyricist

Let's not, let's say they had particular ideas they wanted to emphasise instead, as that is what is being pointed out.
We are not discussing any lie, we are discussing that the denial would be absent from books written by people that wanted to get across that Jesus was God, whether or not it happened. Further assuming your original premise that he was even accused of it in the first place.
To clarify? I think you meant to say obfuscate.
And nobody even claimed such a thing, only that the Gospel writers were known to exclude things that didn't fit the ideas that they wanted to get across, in the case of the canonicals vs GTh, the differences are fairly major, between the canonicals less so.
It means everything to that specific issue, because regardless of whether he denied it or not, the people wanting to get across the idea that Jesus WAS somehow divine, or God or whatever, WOULD NOT have included it.
This is just one huge non-sequitor, and strawman, nobody claimed Thomas "proved" the gospels wrong on anything, just that it illustrated that the gospel writers WILL EXCLUDE what doesn't fit their theology.

Not_Registered

To all that, Lilcyst, I say SO. Your whole argument of the gospels not including Jesus' denial is speculation. As Sven said:
So ya'll are just speculating that maybe it did happen (it being Jesus' denial) but just wasn't included in the gospels. I on the other hand have more substance to my argument because there is, TO MY KNOWLEDGE, no report of Jesus' ever denying He said He was God. Therefore, as an attorney might say, the burden of proof is on ya'll. Unless ya'll can supply me with some verse from the Gospel of Thomas or some passage from somewhere that shows Jesus' denial then my position is what stands because it hasn't been disproven and it is what we have today as fact. Fact being that there is no record, TO MY KNOWLEDGE (not claiming I know what Jesus said or didn't say)....I am saying there is no record, TO MY KNOWLEDGE, that reports Jesus' denial of divinity.

Prophecy: I foresee someone saying well your argument is speculation too because you dont know and blah blah blah. Well duh....there are only a few absolute truths and this isn't one of them. As a matter of fact anything historic isn't. You can almost never prove that something never happend. For instance ya'll can't prove that George Washington never climbed to the top of Mt. Everest. All you can do is prove what happend. I can prove Washington was President...because he WAS. I can't prove something he didn't do because he didn't do it. That type of logic is erroneous. I can almost always say something happend that didn't happen. Obviously I can't say somebody did something that some else did. I can't say that Billy Bob wrote this reply, because I did. But I can say that Billy Bob said he hates dogs. What can Billy Bob say. All he can say is I never said that and obviously he has no proof of that. Anyway, there has to be a point where the scenatio, situation, event, or whatever is excepted as fact otherwise we would have no history. We have to at some point say that well no one can prove that aliens come to Earth every 100 years so we will dismiss that theory. We have to at some point say well no one can prove that chickens ever had human feet so we will dismiss that theory. And at some point we have to say that no one can prove that Jesus ever denied divinity so we must dismiss that theory (the theory that Jesus ever denied divinity -- to be clear). Most of the time things that can be proved can't be proved for a reason...because they never happend. Aliens don't come to Earth every 100 years, but ya'll probably have some delusional defense for that.

Amaleq13

Sorry to bump a buried post but this is the first chance I've had to revisit this thread so I didn't get to repond before the firestorm broke out. I breezed through most of it looking for substance and I apologize if I repeat someone because I missed a nugget.

Many Christians make this same assumption and you probably have heard it claimed many times.

In the earliest version of the story, Mark (11:18) tells us that the "scribes and chief priests" decided to "destroy" Jesus after they hear him criticize the way they were running the Temple. When he is basically kidnapped and put on "trial" apparently before the Sanhedrin, we are told that many conflicting testimonies were offered against Jesus but there are only two specific charges leveled. The first is that he was (falsely) accused of threatening to tear down the Temple. In Mark 13 he does predict that the Temple will fall but he doesn't say he, personally, would bring it down. To this charge, Jesus says nothing. The text seems to imply that the priests had to ignore this charge given Jesus' silence and the conflicting testimony. The second charge has, I think, been misrepresented here so I'll quote it directly:

"Again the high priest asked him, and said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am: and ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven."(Mk 14:61-62, KJV)

It is this response that is identified as blasphemous and this response that supposedly warranted a death sentence.

Jesus claims he is "the Christ", "the Son of the Blessed", and implies himself to be a "Son of man" figure straight out of Daniel. Of these three, only the third was problematic for the priests. It is not blasphemy but it is certainly an indirect threat to their power base. Judaism does not consider it blasphemous to claim to be the Messiah. They are waiting for the guy to show up so that really wouldn't make much sense. Likewise, Jewish scholar Geza Vermes has shown (Jesus the Jew) that claiming to be "Son of God" was not blasphemous but actually a common title given to holy men. The priest clearly understood Jesus' final comment to be a reference to Daniel and the divine judgment associated with the "Son of man" depicted there. Jesus was basically repeating his early condemnation against their Temple practices and going on to warn that they would suffer divine judgment as a result. Claiming to be the Messiah was not blasphemy. Claiming to be the Son of God was not blasphemy. Hell, I've yet to see any evidence that claiming to be God was considered blasphemy! Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, provides an example that suggests such claimants were simply considered insane.

If you are looking for Jesus claiming to be God, you are not going to find it in any of the Gospels except the Fourth. There you will find Jesus identify himself with God's self-identifying "I am" from the Hebrew Bible. If that statement could be relied upon as reliably attributable to Jesus (and I don't think it can), it would certainly have qualified as claiming to be God. I think we should note that this only occurs in the latest and most theologically developed Gospel and that it runs counter to everything else Jesus is depicted as saying. Throughout the Synoptics, Jesus consistently refers to himself and God as separate entities. The Gethsemane passages alone require us to assume Jesus was insane if we read it has portraying him praying to himself to let himself avoid the crucifixion but eventually giving in to whatever he might will.

Regardless of the charges brought against him, the vast bulk of the Gospel stories clearly portray Jesus as describing God as a separate entity from himself.

If Jesus was crucified, he either was guilty of sedition or had been framed by the high priest for that charge. If he was framed, it was because he criticized the practices of the high priest and/or represented a threat to that power base and was obtaining a following.