Arius was trying to roll Christianity back to its more Jewish roots, away from the Roman empire. His followers may not have been aware of that.
I don't know of any evidence for that interpretation. There has been a lot of controversy over Arius' motives ever since the work of Gregg and Groh, but I haven't heard of a theroy that he was trying to re-Judaise Christianity. Rather, it seems more reasonable to think that he was trying to adhere to the more subordinationist theology of his teacher, Lucian of Antioch, which owed a lot to Origen and, ultimately, Justin Martyr - whilst also rejecting the doctrines of eternal generation and the divinity of the Son, which Origen also taught. Arius probably regarded these as unacceptable innovations. But I don't think that it's necessary to attribute to him a desire to get back to Judaism to explain this.
In any case, whatever Arius was thinking of, by no means all "Arians" agreed with him or took their ideas from him. In fact, there are several incidents in the fourth century when "Arians" stated that they had nothing to do with Arius. Arius himself, the Homoians, and the Anomoeans - all branded "Arians" by their opponents - had quite different understandings of the relation between the Father and the Son and different reasons for holding these understandings. So the array of views of this sort of thing among Christians even as late as this date was complex.
Certainly the Pharisees and Sadducees would have thought it to be blasphemous, and they were the only two groups in Israel who had any significant political influence. They asked him if it was acceptable to heal on the Sabbath, so as you can see, they were quite conservative, there; the fact that Jesus is the "Lord of the Sabbath" would either downplay God, or put himself as God.
I don't exactly follow your argument here or see what you're trying to demonstrate. The Pharisees didn't have any political power at all. Also, there were plenty of people who had political influence but who weren't Pharisees or Sadducess - for example, priests who weren't Sadducees. But this again is an area we know very little about. We know quite a lot about the Pharisees, because of the later rabbinical literature, but very little about other groups in Palestinian Judaism of the time, so it would be rash to make such clear-cut statements about their power or influence as you do here.
I'm not sure what the issue of healing on the Sabbath has to do with what we were talking about before: the verse about being lord of the Sabbath comes from a story about eating grain on the Sabbath, not one about healing. Also, it's only the Pharisees who are represented as debating with Jesus about these things, not the Sadducees. In any case, questions such as those about healing on the Sabbath were perfectly common in religious and scholarly debates at this time. As I understand it, most Pharisees (at least) thought there was nothing wrong with healing on the Sabbath, per se. In the story where Jesus heals on the Sabbath (Mark 3:1-6), he does nothing to break the Law, because healing
by merely speaking would have been quite acceptable. The Pharisees and others debated what
actions one was permitted to do on the Sabbath. If Jesus had bandaged the man, that might - under some interpretations - have counted as "work" and been considered unacceptable, but just speaking to him broke no Sabbath regulations.
I still don't think that the "lord of the Sabbath" saying is strong enough to bear the interpretation that you place on it. The preceding verse states that the Sabbath was made for man; the obvious conclusion is that
everyone is the lord of the Sabbath. The argument that Jesus uses in this passage wouldn't make sense if he were claiming some kind of special power or authority over the Sabbath. The argument is intended to show that anyone may be justified in breaking Sabbath regulations if the situation calls for it. (It is, incidentally, a rather weak argument, especially the appeal to David - in the story Jesus appeals to, David wasn't breaking the Sabbath regulations at all, whereas in this incident Jesus' disciples are, although not very seriously. So the precedent doesn't really hold up.)
When Ezekiel says the "son of man", he is referring to the descendants of Adam as the human race. When Jesus says "son of man", he is clearly referring to himself only.
It's not all that clear, really. Certainly the Gospel writers seem to think that "Son of Man" is always a reference to Jesus, but it's less obvious that Jesus himself intended it to mean that. Even if he did regard this as a title for himself, it doesn't follow that he
always used it in that sense. And, finally, even if he did, it doesn't follow that he meant it to exalt himself. It could basically have overtones of "mortal man" (I think this is its meaning in Ezekiel, where it is always used to address Ezekiel himself). As I say, in the passage in question Jesus is arguing that people can override Sabbath regulations, and that the Sabbath is made for man (in general). If he then adds that "the Son of Man is lord of the Sabbath", it seems that he is lord of the Sabbath simply because he is a human being, on the basis of the preceding argument.
Of course it
might mean something more. I'm simply saying that you can't assume that it does.
There is actually at least one example of both being interpreted as prophecies. I mean, come on; how can look you at Wisdom 2:12-20 and not believe that this is referring to Jesus?
It's a description of a righteous man who is not very popular, and whom the wicked plan to make suffer at the end of his life. That fits Jesus and plenty of other people too. If, say, there were some bits in there about crucifying him, or that he would be from Galilee and have twelve disciples, or something more specific to Jesus, you might have a better case. But you can't point to something as vague as that - which, again,
is not presented as a prediction of a future event at all - and
conclude that it's a prophecy. I think that the only reason someone would believe a text like that to be a prophecy of Jesus is if they
already believed, on other grounds, that the Old Testament (or the apocrypha, in this case) was full of such prophecies and they were seeking them out. There's no compelling reason
in the text itself to inspire such an interpretation.
Balogna. If anything, the anti-Christians were trying to re-interpret the Bible to make them out as allegories instead of prophecies.
Who are you thinking of here? As far as I can tell, anti-Christian writers such as Celsus typically insisted on taking the Bible far too literally, to make it seem like everything in it was crude nonsense. Christians such as Clement of Alexandria or Origen responded to such arguments by interpreting the Bible allegorically (just as pagans interpreted the poets allegorically) to show that in fact it wasn't crude or nonsensical but taught profound truths. And they, in turn, interpreted the poets literally and ridiculed them for teaching crude nonsense. So everyone read their own holy books allegorically and other people's literally, to the benefit of the former and the detriment of the latter.
We recently looked at this in one of my theology classes. Luke's passage by no means suggested that they never lived in Bethlehem. Saying that they do not agree on a lot is odd, considering that they don't even cover the same events for the most part. Luke is mostly looking at Mary and Joseph, whereas Matthew is mostly focusing on Jesus and his heritage.
Well.. Luke does say in 1:26 that Mary was in Nazareth when she conceived Jesus; and then he explains in 2:4-5 why she and Joseph later went to Bethlehem, so the natural reading seems to be that they were living in Nazareth and only visited Bethlehem for the purposes of the census. There are of course other discrepancies, such as the fact that Luke dates Jesus' birth to AD 6 (when Quirinius was governor of Syria) whereas Matthew dates it to around 4 BC (before the death of Herod). But this sort of thing is perfectly common among ancient historians and isn't really to the point.
