TedM

I primarily was addressing the reason for the virgin birth. But Paul also writes of Jesus pre-existing with God and taking on human form.

Phillipians 2:The virgin birth is just a simple solution to how someone 'in the form of God' could appear in all respects to be a human being. I'm sure you are right that there were various other opinions.

outhouse

Except early on the virgin birth didn't exist. And even then it was a mistranslation of OT prophecy of a maiden.

GMark makes no mention. And the later two gospels place Jesus divinity later then birth.

Again only GJohn uses birth as when he was divine



This goes to show how early on the beliefs were wide and diverse.

aa5874

I cannot understand why you take such a view when you know of no evidence that any virgin outside the NT has produced a child after being impregnated by an unknown and unseen God.

Now, over 1800 years ago Trypho the Jew claimed your answer was foolishness like the FABLES of the Greeks.

Dialogue with Trypho LXVII The conception of Jesus in the NT is mere Mythology. The Jesus cult started when people a fabricated story that the Jews killed the Son of the God of the Jews After the Temple fell and the Holy City was made desolate as predicted by the Words of the Lord in the books of the Prophets.

The story was fabricated To deceive the Jews and those who are called Christians BELIEVED the story was true.

Chili

Sorry Ted, it is very sloppy of you and Christians to to read/understand that Jesus was human and worse yet that Mary was human bcecause even son of man does not equal to human nor does woman mean human as opposite to it.

These guys were not stupid to write what they did, and one must always wonder first if we are reading it right with our own human condition blurring our view.

Chili

Your elaboration confirms what James is trying to tell you, wherein the Jesus cult was a diversion of the first Christian church that they may have called Judeans instead of Christians who ran away with Jesus instead of Christ.

This was a fatal error which is someting like worshiping the placenta instead of the child in the very idea to be worshiped as an end in itself.

jgreen44

I think the seeds of the terrestrial Jesus story are found in Josephus.

Contemporaneously with the date of the alleged composition of the gospels, the historian Josephus wrote that the calamity of AD 70 occurred because the then High Priest, Ananus was killed by fellow Jews.

"I should not be wrong in saying that the capture of the city began with the death of Ananus; and that the overthrow of the walls and the downfall of the Jewish state dated from the day on which the Jews beheld their high priest, the captain of their salvation, butchered in the heart of Jerusalem." (Josephus, The Jewish Wars, 4.5.2 318)

The Book of Hebrews refers to Jesus as the High Priest.

Therefore, holy brothers and sisters, who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, whom we acknowledge as our apostle and high priest. (Hebrews 3:1)

So we have the sacrificial system destroyed because the High Priest, Ananus, was butchered in the heart of the city. And where was the High Priest, Jesus, allegedly flayed and given the death sentence? In the heart of the city.

I say "allegedly" because while the death of the High Priest Ananus as well as the significance of that event is recorded by Josephus, the existence of the Christian sect and the death of its founder didn't rate so much as a footnote from the historian.

And then there is Josephus' other Ananus, Jesus ben Ananus. His tale is pretty much an outline of the arrest and trial of the later fictional character known as "Jesus of Nazareth".

Chili

Except that mythology is true and Danae was not a virgin [among many] but virgin proper as womb of God next to God and thus prior to human, to say that Jesus was not born [son of] man from men but of God and never from, but via instead as the fruit of her womb to make a distinction between begotten and created to be conceived again.

Sry this may sound too cryptic, but I make a distinction between woman proper and a virgin female in this, with woman being the womb of God prior to human as taken from man before human was created in Genesis 3, and hence no sin about woman; generic here as the womb of man prior to his own human condition.

Hence not born from but via as the first begotten reborn that confirms the virgin birth of the man in the image of God.

jgreen44

The destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple and their sacrificial system.

Because the destruction of Jerusalem, the Temple and the sacrificial system was a devastating blow to their beliefs.

The need to make sense of it all, to salvage some (spiritual) sense of purpose from the destruction, a purpose that would preserve their religion.

I see in the New Testament a replacement of Temple oriented Judaism and all that it entailed with a new age type of Judaism.

1) Jerusalem was utterly destroyed in AD70. A few years later arises the concept of the New Jerusalem, a (new age) spiritual city currently existing in heaven but which will also appear on earth when "all is accomplished".

2) The Temple was utterly destroyed in AD70. The gospels have Jesus referring to himself as the Temple (John 2:19) and Paul refers to each individual human beng as embodying "God's temple" (more new age thinking) (1 Corinthians 3:16-17).

John 2:19 Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 16 Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you? 17 If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him; for God's temple is sacred, and you are that temple

3) With the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, Jews were no longer able to follow the law as they once did. So some Biblical justification had to be found for this new reality. Enter Paul and all of his talk about the law being a curse. Now each believer had to work out his "own salvation in fear and trembling" (more new age thinking).

4) An authentic "proof text" was always kept in the Temple in Jerusalem, against which all other Torah scrolls would be checked. But after the destruction of the Temple this sort of proof-reading was no longer possible. Consequently, after AD 70 the textual basis of Judaism was de-emphasized in favor of a spiritual (new age) emphasis.

2 Corinthians 3:2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everybody. 3 You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
4 Such confidence as this is ours through Christ before God. 5 Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. 6 He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

5) Without the written law (verifiably authentic Torah scrolls), God was now revealed through the creation, including the personal revelations of individual mortal human beings.

Romans 1:19-20

what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.

Yes. 1 Cor 15 makes no differentiation between the nature of the appearances experienced by the disciples and the nature of the appearance experienced by Paul. Paul experienced a talking light. Not a flesh and blood Jesus, And the visions were inspired by Philo and a particular interpretation of Old Testament prophecy.

Probably developed out of Josephus' stories of the High Priest Ananus and Jesus ben Ananus.

The need to preserve Judaism. It kind of back fired on them.

TedM

I don't 'take such a view'. I am explaining why the idea of a virgin birth developed. Whether it was applied to a real human being or a made up human being is something that the story itself doesn't answer. Yet, you seem to think it does. I've never understood why you come to that conclusion. The need for a Savior after the temple falling could have been satisfied (perhaps) by 'making up' a person and applying things like the virgin birth to him. OR it could have been satisfied by applying things like the virgin birth to a real person who had previously lived.

TedM

Thanks jgreen. Well put.