MagisterCultuum
Great Sage
I believe he has stated he is agnostic.
Does he wants us to be ignorant of the universe, our solar system and our planet? Why didn´t God teach us the basic laws of physics and mathematics, enabling ancient people to make wondrous improvements to the benefit of mankind?
It seems suspicious that the book of God only includes the knowledge that you could expect the ancient people of the region to know and imagine...
I've seen you write this before, but it puzzles me a bit.
There certainly weren't any secular Jews back then. The Temple would have been the ritual center for all Jews. I realize there were sects like the Essenes living in self-isolation, but their basic doctrine & rituals probably weren't much different. Judaism was geographically far-flung, but not so much as it became in the centuries since. I do accept that Christianity was a sect of Judaism in it's earliest form.
I've always viewed Judaism as more continuous. No doubt, the destruction of the Temple changed Judaism allot, but if there wasn't a huge mosque (actually 2) standing on the Temple mount, it would have been rebuilt by now. The cohenim would be running services there & sacrifices & other Temple rituals would have resumed. We still preserve & learn ancient Hebrew, the Torah, the Tanach, the Talmud. We still observe the holidays (with some added since) & laws.
I brought this up in the 1st Ask a Theologian thread when I asked you your opinion of the validity of the term, "Judeo-Christian." Judaism & Christianity are sooo different that that term seems meaningless to me. Clearly, Christianity was born from Judaism, but it went it's seperate way so vigorously that it's hard to see any Jewish influence in it today.
This is a touchy subject for us. There are the "Jews for Jesus" or "messianic Jews" as they call themselves that are funded largely by Christian groups hoping convert Jews. There are Christians who dress up as observant Jews & even learn Hebrew & observe Jewish law as an Orthodox Jew would to gain entry to Jewish congregations & communites where they try to proselytize. This actually happens quite often. There is a Black congregation in New York that preaches from street corners that they are the real nation of Israel & that White Jews are perpetrating a fraud by usurping their ancestry. We Jews in the West are a tiny minority trying to emerge from centuries of harsh persecution so the idea that Christianity & Judaism are basically branches of the same thing feels like the same old missionary shtick, a threat, whether real or perceived.
Plotinus - you said in the first Ask a Theologian thread that if you believed, you'd probably be a liberal-minded Anglican. I may have completely missed this and you wrote about this previously, and if so I apologize, but what stops you from believing?
I find it interesting that you rationalize and explain certain questions (I was just re-reading your thoughts on textual biblical inconsistencies for example) better than most devout Christians could. You don't seem to think that it is completely impossible that God or Christ exists. Is it that for you the evidence against seems greater than the evidence for a Creator?
I've seen you make this claim before, and it's always struck me as a little odd. What's the reasoning behind it? I understand being skeptical of the miraculous events in the Gospels (If you don't believe in God, then believing that God would raise someone from the dead is obviously hard to believe), but why believe that it is "unlikely" that a specific claim was made, when there is evidence showing that he did, and none declaring that he definitively did not? Is this based on the scholarly....distrust of the Gospel of John? But there are passages in the other Gospels that at the very least imply that Jesus is God. (Mark 2:1-12 springs to mind) and many others that show a Father-Son relationship that is supposed to be far beyond any general "we are all God's children" sort of thing. For instance: In Matthew 11:27, Jesus claimed that no one knows the Father but the Son, and those to whom the Son has chosen. He publicly forgives sins on behalf of God in not just John, but in Mark and Luke as well. To be honest, the idea that Jesus was just claiming to be the "Son of God" in a general sense, or even in a "I'm a special prophet guy" way seems rather at odds with the evidence.
I'm afraid I don't understand why you're saying what you are. I'm sorry if you've had to discuss this, or something similar to a great extent before, and I'll understand if you don't want to touch it anymore.
Nor does it make any sense, given the (later) doctrines of Mary's virgin conception and Jesus being God.
Lord Malbeth said:This is out of a more curiosity then anything really. I've read through this thread, which, might I add is very informative, and I'm started to wonder. What exactly are your beliefs, if you don't might me asking. I realized you're not a Christian, Jew, Muslim, etc, but are you Theistic, Deistic, Agnostic, Atheist, etc.? Anyway, just wondering, not meaning to pry.
Danielos said:How come the Bible doesn´t contain any unique "Godly" knowledge?
No, the doctrine of the immaculate conception states that Mary was conceived without sin, not that she was conceived virginally. Either way, I dont see any contradiction in stating that a person is divine and that that person has ancestors divinity and descent arent mutually exclusive categories, or at least no more mutually exclusive than divinity and humanity in general.
Maternal descent?how can the child born from the Virgin Mary have any father - let alone one descending from David?
Because God didnt write it, of course. What else do you expect me to say?
Well, even most believers in the Bible don't believe it was actually God who wrote it, but humans.
Yeah, silly question, perhaps. But I thought the Bible are the "inspired words" of God.
Why would you think that? I would say that the fact that the Bible doesn't strike us in the way that we would expect something written by God - as the quote you give says, quite rightly in my view - gives us good reason to think that it wasn't.
Obviously, Christians who believe the Bible to have been inspired typically think not that God just used its human authors as instruments (although some ancient Christians did think that, and no doubt many modern fundamentalists do too), but that they wrote the words, inspired by their experiences of God (or something like that). Personally I don't see much reason to believe that either, even from a Christian viewpoint, but it's obviously more reasonable than thinking that God is literally the author of the text.
Interesting. Are there other instances in the literature of the day where teachers, who don't claim to be the Messiah or anything, pronounce that others sins are forgiven? (Aside from forgiving sins committed against each other, of course) I can't find any, but I'm genuinely curious if you know of some.Biblical scholars don't just assess the evidence on the basis of whether its miraculous or not, but also on the basis of criteria of historical criticism. Remember that when we read the Gospels we are reading very complex texts. They are not the work of single authors who just decided to sit down and write a Gospel, whether as authentic memoirs or as works of fiction. There was a long process of oral transmission of the material before it ever got written, and also at least some of the Gospel authors used earlier, written texts as sources. So when you read any Gospel you are hearing a number of different voices at once:
Jesus himself, and whatever it was that he originally said or did.
The people who originally witnessed it and told it to other people.
The subsequent generations of Christians who told and re-told the story.
The authors who first wrote down the story (perhaps).
The author of the Gospel itself.
Subsequent editors or redactors of that Gospel (perhaps).
In such a complex situation, you cant assume that any given passage is authentic (i.e. is precisely what Jesus said or did) until proven otherwise. On the contrary, what you have to do is consider which of those various voices it is most likely to represent, and how it might have been shaped by the subsequent voices down the line, as it were. The most important tools of biblical criticism form criticism and redaction criticism evolved to perform precisely that task.
Now in the case of claims to divinity, theres plenty of reason to suppose that these either originate with the later stages of composition (and do not go back to Jesus) or that Jesus original saying was not a claim to divinity, and has been interpreted as such at a later stage. Take the controversy stories of Mark 2:1-12 that you mention. For one thing, many scholars think that this section of Marks Gospel is taken from an earlier text containing controversy stories, so already theres an extra editorial layer in between the text as we have it and Jesus himself. More importantly, the narrative as it stands is wildly implausible, mainly because the actions and sayings attributed to Jesus would not have aroused the heated opposition that the text describes. Saying Your sins are forgiven was actually a perfectly normal circumlocution for God forgives your sins. It wasnt a claim to divinity at all. Healing somebody simply by speaking was not a violation of Sabbath law at all; what mattered was not whether one healed or not, but how one did it. And most crucially, Pharisees and other scholars argued with each other constantly about the law, its interpretation, and its application, but they didnt try to murder each other over it. There are stories of Pharisees with far more radical or dismissive attitudes to the law than Jesus who didnt get either lynched or crucified. So surely the most reasonable explanation of these stories is that they have been re-interpreted by later Christian generations: they inherited stories of Jesus debating with other teachers about the law and similar matters, and they re-interpreted them as stories of Jesus claiming to be superior to the law, perhaps even claiming to be divine, and of the Pharisees and others hating him for it and plotting to put him to death. This reflected not the actual situation of Jesus himself but the situation of those later Christian communities, especially in their relations with non-Christian Jews. So the supposed evidence of Jesus claims to divinity is really only evidence that later Christians thought him divine, and re-interpreted traditional material to reflect this belief.
Yes, obviously Jesus could be descended from David provided he has at least one human parent.
However, you're also confusing the doctrine of the virgin birth with the doctrine of Jesus' divinity. They are not the same thing. I see no contradiction in believing that Jesus was God while also denying that he had two human parents in the normal way. So even if you thought that Jesus had to be descended from David via his father, you could still believe that Jesus was God and that he was descended from David. The problem, if there is one, is with the doctrine of the virgin birth, not the doctrine of Jesus' divinity, and the latter does not require the former.
It has been asserted that that genealogy given in Matthew 1 is that of Joseph, and the genealogy given in Luke 3 is that of Mary, with verse 16 more properly reading "the father-in law" of Joseph. (This also explains why they are so utterly different genealogies. I mean, I don't expect you to believe that this is the complete genealogy all the way back to Adam, but that there were no records, no living people who remembered his grandfather's name correctly?)Theortically you can believe anything you want; however, there's no sound basis for any theory that Jesus - in whatever way - descended from David. The only reason for this unfounded theory is that the Judaic messiah is supposed to be from the house of David; given the early judeochristian belief that Jesus was the messiah, i.e. Christ(-os/-us), there had to be a connection here. It seems however, there isn't really, despite efforts to prove the contrary. (Other than that, I don't feel nor purport to transfer any confusion.)
Fair enough, but what about Jesus then? I know his primary purpose where to teach theology, moral and philosophy, but couldn´t he at least given humanity some scientific insights? It was a man who was able to perform miracles and resurrect people, yet he still didn´t seem particularly interested in teaching humanity any advanced medicine. But I guess, since the mortal life is a pretty dull waiting for the brilliant eternal life in heaven, that might have been expected.
Interesting. Are there other instances in the literature of the day where teachers, who don't claim to be the Messiah or anything, pronounce that others sins are forgiven? (Aside from forgiving sins committed against each other, of course) I can't find any, but I'm genuinely curious if you know of some.
You say that there were Pharisees who had far more radical or dismissive attitudes towards the Law than Jesus did, and got away with it. But how then do you explain Jesus' crucifixion? (Or do you believe that didn't happen? That sounds like rather an odd thing to make up, though) Was there anything claimed by individual Pharisees that was anything as radical as Jesus claiming to be God? You say that the Pharisees had diverging views and arguments without killing each other over them; fair enough. But doesn't that make the argument that Jesus claimed to be God all the stronger? Because if it wasn't his talk about the Law that offended them, and he didn't preach violent rebellion, what's left? Gruesomely killing a man for healing crippled people? That doesn't seem to fit. I'm curious as to what you think it was that Jesus did, that prompted his execution. (Or if you don't believe that happened, I guess I'm curious as to where you think that story came from)
But isn't the Gospel of Mark typically dated to around ~70AD? How much distortion could really take place during such a relatively short period of time? And I'm also curious about why Mark is dated at this period, as far as I can tell, it's because of Jesus' prediction that the Temple will be destroyed is read as a later insertion. But that seems to me like it starts with the assumption that he simply could not have made that prediction at the time in which he lived.
I'm also curious, if you have time, as to why most modern scholar seem so skeptical of the validity of the Gospel of John, as compared to the Synoptic Gospels. Why is it seen as so markedly different, or significantly less reliable than the others?
Theortically you can believe anything you want; however, there's no sound basis for any theory that Jesus - in whatever way - descended from David. The only reason for this unfounded theory is that the Judaic messiah is supposed to be from the house of David; given the early judeochristian belief that Jesus was the messiah, i.e. Christ(-os/-us), there had to be a connection here. It seems however, there isn't really, despite efforts to prove the contrary. (Other than that, I don't feel nor purport to transfer any confusion.)
But I think it counts as a reasonable theory, even if it's not 100% historically proven.
The reason I mention Tolkien, is the fact he uses this arguement for the Istari in the Lord of the Rings. They were sent by the Valar to convert the peoples of Middle-earth to the good side through words and small acts of 'magic' alone, not by force, knowledge, or fear.