I know you know all this and more, but I thought you might need to know that we don’t know whether the Jesus of the bible walked this earth.
So for your Monday reading, why not this
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I want them to now do Batman.
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Haha.
At least we know where and when Batman was born
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I remember singing “I Love to Tell the Story” over and over again.
You must admit the Bible thumpers are great song writers. The tunes are easy to remember and not hard to play on the piano.
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They are. I think that’s how they have been successful for long.
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Screw their words!
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Mind your language 🙂
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I thought maybe I’d learn something new, but it’s more or less a simplified version of what what’s been known by biblical scholars and theologians for quite some time – a radical religious (mostly) nonviolent peace activist who may or may not have lived in the 1st century C.E.
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Barry I am sending some fundamentalists your way to settle this with you.
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Too much reading (and boring at that) so I’ll take your word for it … 😛
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You can take my word and even bank it
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No. The Jesus of the NT never walked the actual physical earth. There was prob a “Joshua” rabbi who rabble roused trying to get the Jews to take their country/regional homeland back from Roman control. But he was executed for his sedition… and there is no evidence that he actually rose from the dead. Stories for disappointed and disillusioned Messianic Jews at the time to “explain” why their Hopes and his promises never came to fruition.
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Given that Joshua/ Jeshua was a common name, there must definitely have been one among them so confused to think himself god like we have seen many others after.
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A good jewish/Israelite Joshua would never have confused himself with the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. If there was a joshua/Jesus rabbi/rabble rouser who was the base for the “story built up by accretion”, he himself would have been the first to pick up stones to execute anyone who claimed such nonsensical blasphemy.
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I think there’s enough evidence that a person named Yeshua (of which “Jesus” would have been the Greek translation) actually lived & died in the early first century.
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Further, Yeshua was one of the most common male names in that period. (Actually, the Greek translation is “Iēsous”).
I wrote a post in 2016 (What’s in a Name, Part 1) and outlined the changes in his name.
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Excellent, Nan!
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There is ample evidence that guy named James died 100 years ago. As James is a common name, how do we come from James to the specific James?
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It’s like a game of Telephone, and the further one gets away from the original whisperer the more interesting the story gets. Whoever wrote the story down was probably borrowing from oral tradition, and who ever copied the story each time would be making tiny corrections until by now Jesus could very well have been a traveling salesman named Isaac who sold shoes and fell in a well.
The sad thing is, people still literally go to war over this. “My god is bigger than your god”…
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Yes, exactly like a “telephone game” without question. The oral tradition must have been the first source. However scholars are now sure they’re are others based on how the stories are placed in each of the first four gospels. There’s the “Q source” which Matthew & Luke must have copied from, and the other sources, “M” and “L” which scholars have hypothesized were used individually by ‘M’atthew & ‘L’uke separately. It makes sense that there must have been a number of sources since we know that none of the gospel writers were actually eyewitnesses or even knew any eyewitnesses. It’s a great detective story!
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This is the saddest part.
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Ain’t that the truth!
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There were a LOT of rabble rousers in 1st century Judaea, in fact before and after the 1st century, especially in the Galilee. That area of Judaea was actually known as a hotbed of insurrection and anti-Roman activity. There are some scholars that believe Jesus was in fact one of these insurrectionist, you know, like Trump and he was eventually executed for sedition, hence the crucifixion. There were also a fair number of “messiahs”, self pro-claimed pretenders to the throne of David, that tries – unsuccessfully – to rid the area of Rome. They all ended up on a cross.
Ouch!
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Why did you find it necessary to bring trumps name into it?
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It wasn’t “necessary” per se, just seemed appropriate under the circumstances since Trump is, after all, an insurrectionist.
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Delusional.
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Oh yeah, he’s definitely delusional. Just listen to him talk about his business career, his entrepreneurial experience, etc. He is way out there.
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This is a well-honed and succinct version of the “real” Jesus story. He was a Jew; born a Jew, lived his whole life as a Jew, and was even buried as a Jew (if you believe he was actually buried. Personally, I do not. Even a superficial understanding of the nature of Pilate would convince one that he was left on the cross until his bones literally fell off. Also, who’s this “Joseph of Arimathea” that shows up and Pilate allows him to take the body for burial. No way that happened.) There are comments by him as to how important “scripture” is (it could only have been Hebrew scripture since “Christian” scripture didn’t exist yet) although he referred to it as The Law, which Jews would have characterized it. I don’t believe he thought he was “god” (he makes reference to god as a separate entity e.g., No one will know the day or hour of the coming of the new kingdom, not even the son but only the father”.) He MAY have thought he was the messiah since the messiah is supposed to be a human, not a super-human or god.) Besides, the title “Son of God” had nothing to do with being a deity. It was from 2nd Samuel 7 where god makes a covenent with David saying “I will be your father and you will be as my son.” It was a title for the messiah.
Good stuff here though. I have some family members I’m going to have read it. (They’re tired of hearing it from me!) Thanks!
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Nothing to add to improve your comment.
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You make some EXCELLENT points! Maybe it was all in the article, but as I said, way too long for me. Your “condensed” version was much more appealing!
I have to admire the writer, however, for his/her obvious research.
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It’s also presented in an easy to read manner
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Mon Dieu! Are you suggesting that Jesus wasn’t the man he’s been made out to be?
This is shocking news.
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I should change the header to shocking news!
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The part of this entire thing that fascinates me, is that people who revere Jesus forget that he wasn’t a ‘white man”, and the god we worship was a Jewish god. Even as a kid, immersed in Catholicism, I puzzled over that. Jesus was born and raised as a Jew, his mom was a Jewish lady.
following the bible as if it were real has become the equivalent of regarding “Lotd of the Rings’ as our go-to bible. And maybe in a few hundred years Frodo and Sam will be our new Messiahs…
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Jesus will make everyone white as snow and as such he must have been white. The rest about his being Jewish and most likely brown are details only the godless are concerned with
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It’s not that they had forgotten that he was a Jew, it’s that they were taught that Jesus changed everything; abrogated the “Old Testament” (i.e., the Hebre Bible) by dying on the cross for the salvation of others. This was one of the ways they “de-Judaized” (if you will) scripture. This is a ridiculous notion since, according to the Hebrew Bible (which Jesus would have been fluent in, the “New Testament” hadn’t yet existed) the Messiah was not a supernatural being, he was a man, which Jesus would have known. If fact, he realized that he was not the Messiah the moment he was arrested in Gethsemane since god was supposed to begin the wars of retribution against the Romans where no weapons were necessary since god would have wiped out the enemies of Israel himself. This is where the Catholic Church relies on the teachings of Paul whom never met Jesus, doesn’t seem to know almost anything about him, and “Hellenized” his teachings into the nonsense we call “Christianity” today.
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Now tell a Christian Jesus even if he lived wouldn’t have been a Christian by any stretch of imagination.
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I do it all the time. Very simply, if you want to be a follower of Jesus, you have to be Jewish, period. Not only was he born, raised, and died as a Jew, he specifically told people they needed to adhere to the Law themselves. He’s quite adamant and clear on this issue.
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Thing is … Christians are essentially following PAUL. They THINK they’re following Jesus, but are totally misinformed.
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Yes, and they don’t even know that, as you point out. How then, is it possible to invest so much faith into something you know so little about? I’ve asked that question also, many times, never got even a decent answer.
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I once had someone tell me they believe in the bible but they hadn’t read it. Your question is appropriate: how invest so much into something one knows so little about
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Hear the word of the Lord, Who speaks to you about consciousness:
https://wordpress.com/view/consciousofthewordofthelord.wordpress.com
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How does this link answer the question of the ethnicity of Jesus, if he lived?
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You should be focusing on the consciousness and words of Christ, not the colour of His skin. If you focus on the consciousness of Christ, He will teach you about your consciousness.
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What does that even mean? What do you know about the “consciousness of Christ’? How did you come to know this? [Why do I have a feeling that Pot is going to be a part of this somehow?]
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Where did you get the feeling that cannabis was part of this?
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Consider this: you can come to know the consciousness of Christ by reading and understanding the words of Christ. Words are an image of consciousness.
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No, I don’t believe that to be true, at least regarding Jesus. There’s so little we actually know about Jesus of Nazareth and much of it is shrouded in fable and mythology. We’re not even sure of which “words” he actually said vs those that were put into his mouth by others and we know that words were placed in his mouth by others that never even met him. (See the Jesus Seminar for the few identified sayings of J of N.) Furthermore, if there is one thing I am sure of about him it was his Jewishness. As I have said numerous times, he was a Jew; born, raised, preached, attended the Temple, died, etc. He also stated the absolute sanctity of the Law a number of times in scripture and went to his death over his claim to be the Jewish Messiah (which, of course, he was not.) If you’re not Jewish, (or practice that faith), you are not a follower of J of N, period end of story.
[P.S. the cannabis comment was a joke.]
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To follow Christ is an act of consciousness. No more is the flesh of Christ with us, so we have no physical body to follow (this is not to say we are not taught to be wise with our material bodies). Instead, we follow the Lord in our hearts and minds. We imagine the Lord is with us at all times, and so the Lord is with us at all times. We act according to this. We act with kindness and love, because the Lord is with us. To follow the Lord in your consciousness is to do as the Lord does, because the Lord is in your thoughts. If the Lord is in your thoughts, then you will behave in accordance with that. Your behaviour then affects the image of consciousness that is the world we shape.
Consider that the world is an image of consciousness. The thoughts you sow are reaped on Earth. You are conscious of what you desire and so you move towards what you desire. If you attain what you desire in consciousness, then what you desire is now visible in light.
Jesus has said that the eyes are the lamps of your body. Think for a moment about the fact that you can see images in your mind. You see images in your mind much like what your eyes see of the world around you. These visions in consciousness are the visions of the inner rooms. If we wish to visit a place, we see the place in our inner rooms, we then go to the place in light and matter. So the seed of consciousness you had of the place has now been reaped on the Earth. Fulfilling desires is to bring your inner rooms to light. When we desire sin, we make the world more sinful by bringing sin to light.
So we must desire Christ, who keeps the thoughts between our ears clean and holy. With clean and holy thoughts, we have consciousness brings light to the world (for you know that the world is an image of the thoughts that made it).
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Oh yes! You would make a fine preacher indeed! Totally indoctrinated into the foibles and fables related to a Jewish guy that some folks living several thousand years ago tried to turn into a “god.”
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Just like a preacher Daniel has to conceive of and create his own theology since he nor anyone else could ever truly know the “consciousness of Christ” in any way. Like all “religion” (I’m sure he’ll have some other characterization) it is simply a creation of his own doing.
Whatever gets you through the day Dan.
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