Where do I begin? Okay this is the gist of the thread. "Was the God Jesus spoke to the God of the Old Testament?". Jesus was born Jewish he was brought up as a Jew and embraced the Jewish religion. He seemingly knew he was special and by all accounts(birth,miracles) he was. Being Jewish he obviously felt if his father was God it must be the god of the old testament. What if it wasn't? What if the Jewish god was a fraud? an angry but powerful miser? I mean he didn't do anything the Greek Titans/Gods did before him, who created them? Why did Jesus have limited contact with his father? Was it a one night stand(Zeus) or was he actually the only son of a God so powerful no other gods even knew he or it existed? Jesus seemingly wondered around trying to make sense of what his purpose was, but what if it was just to live? The thing is, none of the Jewish teachings predict Jesus no matter how you swing it. Being brought up a Jew combined to knowing he was special he must of thought "i must be the messiah". This clearly wasn't the case, as the hogwash that is the old testament says the messiah would usher in world peace, which clearly didn't happen. What did happen is that the world became more and more violent, at times even the old testaments god chosen people were disgustingly killed for no reason other than being born. Jesus didn't know who he was, do you?
He was a character in a cheap novel. He probably didn't exist. If a man called Jesus existed he obviously wasn't the son of God (and by other readings he was God himself). This is like arguing about who was "Archie" of the comic book series "Archie".
If you want to take that attitude create a thread discussing if he existed otherwise shut up with your unoriginal drivel.
I don't want to create such a thread. You asked if I knew who Jesus was. I do. It appears that the problem is that you don't know. Did you run out of peace and kindness today? Perhaps you are cranky from making the world a better place earlier today? Love your fellow man. Walk a mile in his shoes. Peace.
It's funny how the mention of Jesus results in immediate mockery(by parasites). I wonder who will have the last laugh.
It's not your place to judge as I recall. Lead by example. Love your neighbor. Jesus wouldn't approve of your attitude I'm afraid.
I think he knew exactly who he was. Being of his time and location, how else could he he explain it to those around him? Now, being of your time and your location, do you know who you are?
What do you mean by this? What's going to happen for there to be a ''last laugh''? Afraid of what and why?
Conflate all the evangelicals alive today and the result might be somebody's "Jesus" in two thousand years.
The world in Jesus' time was more violent than today, not that I'm defending the idea that Jesus brought peace, but even according to Christians, that premise might not yet be complete. All can be explained as God working in mysterious ways. Looking for internal consistency in religious ideology is a fool's game, ad hock rationalization is the rule. In other words, you can biblically justify almost anything you want, even genocide and slavery.
Everything is God according to you Bowser. You may confuse Davewhite04 telling him he is God. Even Dave's God's freewill is GOD. Some daisy
Are you sure about that? Here's a few of his ideas: The messiah God The son of God Prince of peace The son of man The lamb of God As for me, I have a few names but you can call me Dave.
Jesus may have known who he was, a Jewish theologian, or he may have been delusional, or he may have spoken in poetic language which few understood. But do we know who he was? Almost certainly not. Everything we think we know has come through the psyche of Paul. And Jesus may not have been all that unique. Blessed are the cheesemakers.
Honestly, you're overthinking it: That part is easy enough, but everything between you've managed to overcomplicate. Yes. We should take a moment to recall your earlier exploration of "What was Jesus like?"↗ Perhaps we might revisit a suggestion↗ that Jesus emerging through post-Essene influence is actually the sort of thing a usurpation of the Hebrew experience would downplay. There are two elements about that point begging attention; first is the emergence through post-Essene influence, and then there is also the point of usurpation itself. There are three sentences in the paragraph quoted above: 1) That's kind of a broad claim that, by its construction, cannot be validated. 2) If, for instance, Jesus emerging through post-Essene influence isn't quite subtle enough for scholars who wouldn't waste their time on you or me, we might also recall that, while we need not particularly dispute the idea that Jesus came up thinking there was something special about himself, the textual indicators are scant°, and the most suggestive, Lk. 2.41-52↱ is a literary curiosity. In any case, the other thing we know about Jesus as a child is that He fled to Egypt in his early years, and later returned to Nazarene, his parents guided by angels, cf., Mt. 2↱. Matthew (13.55-56↱) and Mark (6.3↱) both include a synoptic tale in which we learn that Jesus had four brothers and an unknown number of sisters. More directly, he is the eldest son among many siblings, and also existentially scandalous in a family not without means and apparently guided by angels; it is uncertain what his time with John the Baptist actually meant, but I'm of the opinion that we cannot underestimate the effect of hearing voices in one's head; I came across a note on the crowd also hearing, in Matthew's telling, but I'm uncertan which translation that relies on. At any rate, Mark 1.12 (RSV)↱ tells us the next thing that happened is that the Holy Spirit immediately (εὐθύς) "drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness". "Being brought up a Jew", and, "knowing he was special", reads thinly inasmuch as many figures of history and legend can be described according to upbringing and a vague pretense of believing themselves better than others. To the other, returning to the Passover story from Luke, what Jesus said to his parents was, "Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?" Did he know he was special? Well, his parents told him stories and believed themselves guided by angels. Did he know he was illegitimate? Yeah, try reading Lk. 2.49 in the tone of a petulant teenager mouthing off to his parents; he knew he was scandalous. Meanwhile, we actually have a record of Jesus hearing voices that drove him into the desert, and it's not oppositional propaganda. 3) We're quite a ways past that, and while folks are free to question whatever definitions and explanations the faithful put in front of them, balbutive that relies on one's own definitions doesn't happen. Peace just doesn't pop up ex nihilo because Jesus died on the Cross, or rose again three days later, or any of that. Unless you actually know what that peace means, all you're doing is asserting your dissatisfaction with an expectation of reality according to Christian belief; to a certain degree, even in an atheistic critique, that expectation would be to the beholder. In any case, the discussion among believers I hear is well past that; and, in any case, there is some manner of vanquishing the enemies of God and Christ involved, and that clearly isn't over and done with. Returning to the question of the God of the Old Testament, the only question of doubt is injected into the usurpation. It is pretty clear, throughout, the answer is yes. What makes you think you or anyone else would understand the will of God? The Lord of the Old Testament only ever acknowledged a mistake once, when repenting of a kingship after Saul failed to complete genocide (1 Sam. 15.11↱); animals are to be set aflame in sacrifice because it creates a sweet savor, a pleasing odor, a sweet-smelling oblation unto the Lord. Once upon a time, I could hear atheists, for instance, asking, "God's will? What kind of God wills tragedy?" Or, perhaps, "God is good? How is what happened good?" The answer, of course, is unsatisfactory, that what counts as good or tragic to us is not necessarily relevant to God. The quickest way around this is to just do what the religious people do, and judge as if one knows God's will. Meanwhile, this is the God who once smote a man for raping a woman who was obliged to have sex with him (Gen. 38.10↱), and the long-term lesson isn't really about rape, is ostensibly about disobeying God; that it is reduced in its Christianist usurpation to a warning against masturbation does not help the matter. There is an idea in these beliefs that nothing happens withoug God's will, permission, authority, &c. If God is good, then what comes of His will is good. That you or I or anybody else might fail to comprehend why it is good remains precisely irrelevant to God. "No reason other than being born"? You seem to have missed the point. Of every reason I might have to not want to be a Jew, I usually say lox, which, of course, is a joke; but of existential envy I cannot possibly imagine what it must be like to reconcile God's will with such catastrophes as the Nazi Holocaust. After all, "no reason other than being born", when one is Jewish, pretty much equals, "Because God says so." For whatever reason, God needed this or that to happen, and most days, it is easy enough to accept that God is not extraneous. To the other, this is the freaking Holocaust. Suffering inflicted for no other reason than being born? Welcome to Jewish history. But, this much is true: Where do you begin? The point at which we begin is arbitrary, so you will begin where you begin. Jesus didn't know who he was? Well, that would be perfectly human, but the idea of such frailty made the faithful so uncomfortable they enshrined heresy while maintaining the standard of heresy, and invoked a square circle to justify themselves. ____________________ Notes: Weigle, Luther, et al. The Bible: Revised Standard Version. New York: Thomas Nelson, 1971. University of Michigan. 5 May 2019. http://bit.ly/2rJddky
I like the quote attributed to Gandhi that he probably didn't say in these exact words but they make the point anyway, "I like your Christ but I don't like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ".
