Did Jesus preach with intent to start a new religion?

[psychoslice]

No I'm looking for the truth in a book
The truth is there. One must get past the mistranslations and deception of Christendom to find it but it's there for any to see.
Problem is many do not want to see the Truth.

"The letter killith".........to me its looking past the words, for truth is not found in mere words, the true word is the Christ within all of us.

 

[jeager106]

"The letter killith".........to me its looking past the words, for truth is not found in mere words, the true word is the Christ within all of us.

Well, o.k. sounds very spiritual to me.

 

[outhouse]

Jews from around the Mediterranean sent tithes to the temple to fund the cult there, they maintained their dietary laws etc., they met in synagogues, and they studied their scriptures.

Not just Jews. Gentiles sent camel trains with gifts during Passover. You have done quite the homework.

Yes Hellenistic Jews in the Diaspora took the religion very seriously. There were also multitudes of Proselytes of all kinds that would never fully convert, as they did not want to follow all of cultural Judaism. It is these people in my opinion like Paul who founded the early movement. Remember Pauls Judaism has never been settled, it was debated from the get go, and it has never ended and debated today.

 

[outhouse]

Who are we to say that Jewish identity didn't mean anything when there were people willing to lay down their lives for it.

How the different cultures valued Judaism is not up for debate. We know monotheism to the one god grew dramatically during these periods.

My point is something you already admitted. Judaism belonged to multiple cultures. It was multi faceted.


Each culture needs more work to identify the relationship of Judaism in more detail.

 

[outhouse]

There were at least three or four major sects, but they still recognized each other as Jews and saw an attack on one group of Jews to be threatening to them too.

Not at all. One sect the Sadducees, were literally hated by all. We have evidence of not only Zealots hating some Pharisees, but we know Hellenistic sect of the Pharisees were using Roman muscle to steal from all people in the name of tithes.

This was also a period that witnessed the largest ever growth of "ger" Judaism had ever seen.

Judaism developed as a strong ethnic identity during the Exilic period, so diversity in the Roman period wasn't about to erase that; they knew how to live in diaspora and still be Jews.

True. But

Cultural born and raise Israelites who descendants went back to the exile, tended to be Israelites in Israel, and were oppressed by the Romans. Not to say there were not Jews in the diaspora, most tended to be Hellenistic Jews whom Christianity completely absorbed in a very short period.

And not to say rich Israelite did not want to become Hellenized Jews, as the richer ones absolutely did, as it offered their families the education and gyms the Romans offered, that Israelites who did not play ball would not get. But for the most part these were a vast minority.

 

[outhouse]

Why would the Romans want the Jews to be oppressed in the first place?

Money.

Romans were masters of squeezing their oppressed people just shy to the point of starvation.

This was the enemy of Israelites.

In 63 BCE the Roman general Pompey sacked Jerusalem and made the Jewish kingdom a client of Rome.

Judea under Roman rule was at first a client kingdom, but gradually the rule over Judea became less and less Jewish, until it became under the direct rule of Roman administration from Caesarea Maritima, which was often callous and brutal in its treatment of its Judean, Galilean, and Samaritan subjects.

 

[outhouse]

Nor is it clear that the Zealots were really a reaction to Roman oppression.

Really?

Jesus as a boy almost witnessed the fall of Sepphoris, when what 2000 Galilean brothers and family were killed and 6000 sent to become slaves? This would have been spiteful oral tradition against Roman oppression. What Crispus and his sons did left quite the mark on Galilean Jews.

I think your minimizing or highly glossing over that Roman oppression was actually war that had a devastating effect on Israelite cultures.


Then we have the fall of the temple by Zealots who hated the corrupt temple due to Roman oppression. The temple fed the Romans. Without the temple income, many Jews thought he Romans might go away.

Its probably why Jesus started trouble there. You also had Melqart on the temple coins that could have upset the more pious Jews that Zealots were known to be.


I have to ask you, you know how passionate pious Jews are. How do you think they would have felt having Hellenist pervert their religion and customs claiming to be Jews yet throwing laws out willy nilly in different communities.? Many would have looked at these Hellenist as perverting their religion.

This is the politics that bore Christianity.

 

[outhouse]

They were basically the ISIL of their time, thinking that with God's help they would throw off the yoke of the Romans and so pave the way for the Messiah and the End of Days

Yes.

But their geographic location also had a lot to do with it. Galilee under Antipas was not directly under the Roman thumb where they had more freedom then the direct Roman ruled areas.

This gave the Zealots two enemies, Hellenist who made their lives hell, and the Romans who places them in power.

 

[outhouse]

Even if you factor in the civil strive back in Rome, there's no way they could have expected to win without supernatural aid.

So true they were screwed without divine intervention, and searched their text and nit picked it every aspect of a coming messiah with a microscope.

Romans hated being there because these people were more stubborn then normal, and without the cash cow temple, maybe they thought they would leave.

I think Jesus lifestyle was one to not feed the roman machine. By giving up everything, they had nothing to take or tax. If he could have got enough people together at Passover he might have succeeded in having the temple destroyed by using the power of the people 36 years earlier then the other Galilean Zealots who ended up finishing it.

 

[Dissily Mordentroge]

How could anybody possibly know?
Threads such as these are, at best, conduits for baseless speculation and, at worst, an invitation to banal preaching.

Well said. Given the multitude of alterations, misinterpretations and deletions inflicted on scripture by the early church we cannot be sure. One thing though I suggest we can know is Jesus asserted no priesthood or religious authority was required as intermediary between The Almighty and the individual. An extremely threatening doctrine for the early Roman church and even today for most branches of so called Cristianity. Douglas Lockhart's " The Dark Side of God: A Quest for the Lost Heart of Christianity" has some interesting comments on this idea.

 

[truthofscripture]

Again, the church, or true church are the people, no matter where they are, of course it can be a building, but that organization can never be the Church.

Realize also that Jesus created no church. That is a mistranslation. Most English translations are deliberately incorrect. The word originally used is ecclesia, and it means people and/or congregation, not church.

 

[oldbadger]

To establish a few suggestions for debate can we assume Jesus was a Jew?
Him being a Jew He would have been well educated in Jewish Law.
This is presented in the N.T. when Jesus was a boy and it was witnessed that He had great
knowlege of Jewish law.
"And Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit. News about Him spread through all the surrounding district and He began teaching in their synagogues and was praised by all."
Lk. 4:16-24.
In my reading/studying of the Christian bible I have yet to see anything specific that suggests He intended
to start a religion different than the Jewish faith.
There is no doubt Jesus had Jewish roots and echoed the plea of former prophets before Him
to repent and return to God. That would be parochial, to follow Jewish law.
" I have come only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." Matt. 15:24
It is indesputable that a new religion was born out his teaching, His life and His death & resurrection.
His intent was to bring people back to God and to draw all people to Himslef. John 12:32
His purpose was to reform the existing religious institution that would abolish the corruption
of the existing religious hierarchy.
Anyone can feel free to post here if they like unless the staff prohibits such.

Hi.....
I don't think that Jesus wanted to start a new religion. The story as written in G-Mark shows that he picked up the 'movement' which John the Baptist dropped at the point of his arrest. Jesus only wanted the true Jewish ways and laws to be upheld........... which the corrupted, hypocritical, quisling and Hellenised Upper classes (Priesthood) had mostly discarded.
The working people liked the meetings where he healed and spoke, but they weren't prepared to give much towards his movement........... a bit like us folks today, really. I a last-ditch attempt to influence many, he went to one of the great feasts at Jerusalem to appeal to the hundreds of thousands of visitors. He was arrested for demonstrating and picketing............

Paul picked all this up and manipulated it into Christianity.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Well said. Given the multitude of alterations, misinterpretations and deletions inflicted on scripture by the early church we cannot be sure. One thing though I suggest we can know is Jesus asserted no priesthood or religious authority was required as intermediary between The Almighty and the individual.

No. What we can know is that later apologists fashioned and/or copied and/or redacted narratives that may convey such a theology.

 

[Thanda]

How so? Your explanation needs credible sources, because there are very few credible scholars that take that position.

May I just say, Outhouse that this seems like a very ironic statement seeing that up until this point (where you posted this) you have made numerous statements which you describe as historical or taken from historical studies (though you have rightly stopped short of positively claiming they are historical fact) for which you have not provided a single source.

Furthermore I have watched a few "historical Jesus" shows on discovery and the like. The feeling I always come away with is that these historians don't really have all that much information to go on and so they are forced, as it were, to make major assumptions - because falling short of that they will have to admit that they actually don't know; or worse yet they will be forced to rely on the bible for information which they are obviously loathed to do.

Much of what you say comes from these assumptions. You have never met Jesus and you have no idea about his thoughts, feelings and intentions. Yet you claim to know that he did not want to start a new religion. You claim he just wanted to continue Judaism as it always was. Now again, unless your historical sources have more information on Jesus intentions than is in the Bible, it appears that you are wrong about that. Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, the Messiah, the Good Shepard etc. It is clear from Judaism today does not agree with that assessment. Therefore Jesus' followers could not possibly have followed his teachings without breaking away from what most Jews viewed as the true religion. His radical teachings left his followers with no choice but to start a new church and new religion. In fact in Matt 16 he explicitly says he will build a new church. And in Matt 18 he gives power to bind on earth and in heaven to a group consisting of fishermen and other commoners. This is a direct affront on the Establishment.

A modern example of this is Mormonism. I am Mormon. We Mormons believe we're christian. But we also be that the Bible is not the only word of God and we believe that man's ultimate destiny, if he is worthy, is to be a Gods and Goddesses. This is a direct challenge to some of the foundations of modern Christianity. As such, many Christian denominations do not accept us as Christians.

The episode in Acts where the Apostles decide it is not necessary for converts to be circumcised in order to become followers of Christ is one of the clear examples that a new religion had in fact emerged. Interestingly, Jesus is not recorded as having said a single thing about the necessity for circumcision in order for people to follow him.

 

[Vishvavajra]

True, those "historical Jesus" shows just end up floundering in speculation for the better part of an hour, since we have no information on Jesus that could be properly called historical. What exactly he taught is also open to question, since we only have the word of Paul (who came to know him through mystical experience, not in person), people who came after Paul, and later the Gospels, which have already been filtered through an established tradition and retroject that tradition's principles onto Jesus himself.

That's not to say that the core of early Christian teachings didn't originate with Jesus, or that he never said any of the stuff that he's portrayed as saying in the Gospels, but it does mean we have to keep in mind our only sources are indirect and have their own agenda.

When it comes to Jesus the mythic, religious figure, we can say a great deal. When it comes to Jesus the man, we can try to make educated guesses, but we'll also have to be content with never knowing much of anything for certain.

 

[jeager106]

Realize also that Jesus created no church. That is a mistranslation. Most English translations are deliberately incorrect. The word originally used is ecclesia, and it means people and/or congregation, not church.

Can you cite a source for this mistranslation for my information please.

 

[jeager106]

No. What we can know is that later apologists fashioned and/or copied and/or redacted narratives that may convey such a theology.

With respect. Could you please cite sources about your statement for my personal education on this subject.

 

[outhouse]

May I just say, Outhouse that this seems like a very ironic statement seeing that up until this point (where you posted this) you have made numerous statements which you describe as historical or taken from historical studies (though you have rightly stopped short of positively claiming they are historical fact) for which you have not provided a single source.

There are very few facts that could ever be stated.

Much is stated as plausible or most plausible.

Furthermore I have watched a few "historical Jesus" shows on discovery and the like. The feeling I always come away with is that these historians don't really have all that much information to go on and so they are forced, as it were, to make major assumptions - because falling short of that they will have to admit that they actually don't know; or worse yet they will be forced to rely on the bible for information which they are obviously loathed to do.

There are a lot of grey areas. There is a lot we will never know.

Here when the evidence is so weak for the historical man himself, educated guesses is as good as its going to get. And these guesses are better then the ignorant or the apologetic guesses.

Much of what you say comes from these assumptions.

True.

You have never met Jesus and you have no idea about his thoughts, feelings and intentions

And not one writer on the NT ever met him either.

Not only that these authors know less then I do, as they are giving you a single sides theological version of events. As to where I understand pieces of the whole picture that had no clue of.

Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, the Messiah, the Good Shepard etc.

NO he did not.

The unknown authors far removed from his life wrote that he said these things. But they had an theological agenda to write what they did, I on the other hand, am after the truth here.

. His radical teachings left his followers with no choice but to start a new church and new religion.

This is a rather naive view. One he taught nothing radical. And the people who wrote about him were not ever his followers.

But we also be that the Bible is not the only word of God

That's a personal choice.

It has no accuracy nor credibility in any historical study. It only guarantees inaccuracy as your forcing an opinion beyond what credible evidence posits.

 

[outhouse]

One thing though I suggest we can know is Jesus asserted no priesthood or religious authority was required as intermediary between The Almighty and the individual.

There is plausibility here.

I think Johns teachings Jesus took over, was that the poor peasant class who did not have the money required to worship in the temple, did not need money to be able to be devoted and worship the one god concept.

Jesus was a traveling teacher who took Johns message to the road. Jesus may have learned not to repeat Johns mistake of gathering large crowds.

He brought his message to the dinner tables, and to the public squares where people would hear his parables and message. He very well could have gone to synagogues as well. The problem is these small Aramaic villages may not have even had such a place, and from what we know, houses served this purpose if large enough. But nothing here is new, it was typical Galilean Aramaic Judaism. Jesus was not the only traveling teacher nor the only holy man, and as far as we know, he did this for a very short time before getting himself killed.

 

[Thanda]

There are very few facts that could ever be stated.

Much is stated as plausible or most plausible.



There are a lot of grey areas. There is a lot we will never know.

Here when the evidence is so weak for the historical man himself, educated guesses is as good as its going to get. And these guesses are better then the ignorant or the apologetic guesses.




True.



And not one writer on the NT ever met him either.

Not only that these authors know less then I do, as they are giving you a single sides theological version of events. As to where I understand pieces of the whole picture that had no clue of.




NO he did not.

The unknown authors far removed from his life wrote that he said these things. But they had an theological agenda to write what they did, I on the other hand, am after the truth here.




This is a rather naive view. One he taught nothing radical. And the people who wrote about him were not ever his followers.




That's a personal choice.

It has no accuracy nor credibility in any historical study. It only guarantees inaccuracy as your forcing an opinion beyond what credible evidence posits.

Outhouse, I really think you missed the entire point of this thread. This thread is not about whether Jesus did or didn't exist, or what he said or didn't say. There is an underlying assumption in the OP that Jesus words as recorded in the NT are factual. What he is asking is whether any of what he is reported to have said and done justified the creation of a new religion. My argument was that it did. What is your argument?