Colt
Well-Known Member
Son of God is a reference to his divine nature. Prior to the trial by the Sanhedrin Jesus made other statements that were considered references to preexistent divine origins.
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If Christ wasn't the messiah, what was he?
- Thread starter rubi
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Ella S.
Well-Known Member
I saw this when I went to like the posts in my birthday thread and I couldn't resist giving an answer.
This may seem a bit inflammatory, and I don't mean it to be, but I think the historical Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef is probably best conceptualized as a doomsday cult leader.
There seems to be good reason to believe that Yeshua taught that the world was going to end soon. By "soon" I mean before his followers died. The fact that his followers started to die of old age seemed to shock Paul and make him rather nervous, leading him to create a speculative exegesis to fix the issue.
Some of the sayings in the Bible might have come from Yeshua, but that's hard to discern definitively. This is mostly based on what we know his early followers taught, based on Paul's writings to them. These ideas do seem to have made it into the gospels, although I personally have my doubts that any of the gospels aside from maybe Mark had any direct line to Yeshua or the followers he had in life.
What I do think I can say is that Yeshua had a tight knit group of highly devoted followers, including ones who uprooted their entire lives in order to follow what they believed were his teachings. If Mark was inspired by their accounts of him, then it seems to have been an extremely abusive relationship where Yeshua essentially forced them to sell all of their belongings and follow him around, moving from place to place. He's even depicted as calling his followers fools and saying that none of them understand his true teachings.
Which sounds extremely similar, if not identical, to the Modus Operandi of many modern cult leaders, and by "cult" I mean the BITE model of cults.
It would explain to me why Yeshua's legacy was so much greater than other messiah claimants at the time; he was more charismatic and had a better understanding of how to run an effective group. Plus, he emphasized the importance of evangelism and conversion with direct spiritual threats, something that most other messiah claimants might have been hesitant to even think of doing due to how supremely messed up that is to do.
With further speculation, other messiah claimants might have done so out of genuine (but mistaken) religious fervor, out of a desire for attention, or out of a need for praise. Yeshua, on the other hand, seems to have done it for the sake of dominating his followers financially, psychologically, and spiritually. He seems like he was probably a sociopath who figured out why the other messiah claimants were failing and took advantage of the situation to push his own group.
I could be wrong. This is a Sherlock Holmes style chain of induction which, in reality, makes the conclusion unlikely rather than certain. It seems to be the most plausible answer to me, though, at least at the moment.
This may seem a bit inflammatory, and I don't mean it to be, but I think the historical Rabbi Yeshua ben Yosef is probably best conceptualized as a doomsday cult leader.
There seems to be good reason to believe that Yeshua taught that the world was going to end soon. By "soon" I mean before his followers died. The fact that his followers started to die of old age seemed to shock Paul and make him rather nervous, leading him to create a speculative exegesis to fix the issue.
Some of the sayings in the Bible might have come from Yeshua, but that's hard to discern definitively. This is mostly based on what we know his early followers taught, based on Paul's writings to them. These ideas do seem to have made it into the gospels, although I personally have my doubts that any of the gospels aside from maybe Mark had any direct line to Yeshua or the followers he had in life.
What I do think I can say is that Yeshua had a tight knit group of highly devoted followers, including ones who uprooted their entire lives in order to follow what they believed were his teachings. If Mark was inspired by their accounts of him, then it seems to have been an extremely abusive relationship where Yeshua essentially forced them to sell all of their belongings and follow him around, moving from place to place. He's even depicted as calling his followers fools and saying that none of them understand his true teachings.
Which sounds extremely similar, if not identical, to the Modus Operandi of many modern cult leaders, and by "cult" I mean the BITE model of cults.
It would explain to me why Yeshua's legacy was so much greater than other messiah claimants at the time; he was more charismatic and had a better understanding of how to run an effective group. Plus, he emphasized the importance of evangelism and conversion with direct spiritual threats, something that most other messiah claimants might have been hesitant to even think of doing due to how supremely messed up that is to do.
With further speculation, other messiah claimants might have done so out of genuine (but mistaken) religious fervor, out of a desire for attention, or out of a need for praise. Yeshua, on the other hand, seems to have done it for the sake of dominating his followers financially, psychologically, and spiritually. He seems like he was probably a sociopath who figured out why the other messiah claimants were failing and took advantage of the situation to push his own group.
I could be wrong. This is a Sherlock Holmes style chain of induction which, in reality, makes the conclusion unlikely rather than certain. It seems to be the most plausible answer to me, though, at least at the moment.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
"In Judaism, the Messiah is not considered to be God or a pre-existent divine Son of God." Messiah - Wikipedia
The Temple already existed during the time that Jesus preached.
Israel is not a nation of Jews only. Israel signed the Convention (Universal Declaration of Human rights) on 3 July 1990 and ratified it on 4 August 1991. The Applicability of Human Rights Conventions to Israel and to the Occupied Territories* | Israel Law Review | Cambridge Core
seekandfind
Member
He was born a reguar person. Thats not inconsistant. It was a human dying for humans- perfect balance of justice.
Mk 3:21 in Greek says "those near him". Different bibles translate that as family, relatives, friends. The scriptures arent specific who. Its safe to say some didnt know who he was or believe it if they had heard. Mary and Josepgh clearly knew and believed.
Another spiritual master and teacher. Why overcomplicate things?
Hey cOLTER, hope you’re having a good day.
Yes, Jesus was / is divine.
But as I’m sure you are aware, divine doesn’t mean being God; it means being of or from God.
So the Earth is divine…angels are divine…the institution of marriage is divine.
Regarding his pre-existence, you’re right on!
In his prayer to his Father the night before he died, @ John 17:5, he implied he had been existing “before the world began.”
So had millions of angels.
Brian2
Veteran Member
Don't forget also that His early followers taught that He rose from the dead and they saw Him alive.
Brian2
Veteran Member
Nevertheless the OT has the Messiah as the Son of God. The Divine part is what they seem to have stumbled over.
The Temple existed in Jesus day and was soon after destroyed. This is something from God considering the curses in the Law as true---exile and destruction if the Jews went too far astray.
Jesus rebuilds the Temple, but not the Temple of stone that was destroyed. Jesus is now rebuilding the Temple---House of God----where God lives, and that is the Church, the worldwide community of believers in whom and in which God lives.
Of course Israel is a nation.
rubi
Member
average common people.
abroad and especially in the Holy Land. because then there is a continuance in the native spoken language
common sense. if there is a commandment to teach your children the Torah, the commandments, and their rules, the oral part of the Torah, it is logical to assume that one would want to learn the original language, especially if she/ he would want to avoid mistranslation and more over if she/ he would want to avoid misguide other people. make sense it would be a social requirement, to quote the source in the original language
rubi
Member
fact: the word of God was given to the Jewish people alone. you won't find a single gentile prophet after Balaam from the time of Moses and in Mount Sinai only the Jewish people were present.
I'll argue that whatever attitude the Jewish people had towards gentile culture, it wasn't enough in the eyes of God. There are several places in the ancient Testament that tell about the encounter of the Jewish people with foreign cultures and indicate how God sees it. It is understandable when you consider Judaism as a monotheism which means not only the belief in one God but in the lack of any other God. In that perspective that foreign culture, if not taken in proper framing, might influence the general public and it is the RABBIS' job to protect them from leaving God's true religion, save them from the worst potential future and foresee the outcome of such encounters in similar situations. also, your post indicates there is a difference in the way it was treated in the times of Moses and the prophets' time.
I would give you examples of the arguments above, I think you should read the entire chapter of Joshua 23
I'll also want to make a distinction between the way rabbis and prophets (Elisha, for example) addressed the non-Jewish culture and the way they addressed the actual human being Elisha and Naaman (a commander of the armies of Aram kingdom)
I feel there is a lot that I didn't answer. please let me know what I missed.
rubi
Member
by the looks of it, he did say that he came from heaven.
rubi
Member
It sounds like things are very complicated already
did he say that he was the Messiah? depends on who I'm asking.
did he say that he was God? depends on who I'm asking.
did he say that he was a prophet? depends on who I'm asking.
did he encourage Jews to follow God's commandments as written in the Torah? depends on who I'm asking.
how do you think the story of him being the son of god folded? I mean how people could have known that this is true, while in plain sight his mother got pregnant while being engaged, something that doesn't shine brightly over him, if you know what I mean.
Colt
Well-Known Member
Oh I agree, he came down from Heven and returned to heaven. Like the "Son of man" in Enoch which was the tittle that Jesus chose, but the story of the immaculate conception out of wedlock was added latter.
Colt
Well-Known Member
The agreement with Abraham was to live on in his descendants and missionaries of monotheism to all people, not a self described "chosen people" and a nationalist political ideology. The so-called Israelites intermarried with the Canaanites; a detail left in the edited scripture books. The priest class would later claim that their writings were Gods Word. Where God is depicted as talking was in fact the authors talking in preacher speak. And so sincere Jews are marooned on an island of vastly exaggerated historic fiction. This intransigence has only lead to suffering and a separatist ideology. This also lead to inflexible expectations of the form and function of an exclusively Jewish Messiah that remains MIA! The Gospel of the Kingdom was for ALL people, not a theologically arrogant few! That is why Jesus was so hated by his own! IMOP
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Well I listen to what other spiritual masters and higher sources have to say too. I am not very reliant on the Bible only.
I think those type of questions are not very important in the end . What matters is the quality of our hearts to find peace and love in this life and the next.
Aupmanyav
Be your own guru
An existing Judaic temple was destroyed after the death of Jesus. A Christian Church is not a Judaic temple.
It has its own God (not YHWH) who has a son born to a virgin (that is what Christians believe).
Christianity is an imposition on people who were once proud pagans. Now the pagans think that it is their religion.
It is an example of Stockholm Syndrome. What has West to do with shephards and carpenters of Israel?
Brian2
Veteran Member
Yes that is interesting in itself considering the promises of punishment in the Law of Moses. (fulfilled promise/prophecy)
God showed the Jews what sort of Temple He wanted and now God is building His own Temple consisting of people in whom God dwells.
Same God even though the Jews don't see it that way.
So you just say "The Jews disagree so they must be right" but that has nothing to do with actually looking at the OT and at Jesus and seeing that Jesus is the promised Messiah.
The proud pagans accepted Christianity and now it is their religion if they still choose to believe in Jesus.
Maybe you swayed by the spirit of Nationalism and proud Indian Hinduism in India at the moment and secretly agree that Muslims and Christians should not be allowed to preach their religions.
Ella S.
Well-Known Member
Yes, good point. We know that, in the case of Paul, these appearances were almost certainly a form of transient mystical psychosis, since the language he uses to describe it is the language typically associated with visions and prophetic dreams.
Given how he was accepted as somewhat authoritative in his time, and perhaps even earned the respect of James and Peter, I wonder how much the resurrection could be attributed to bereavement hallucinations that were interpreted through a spiritual or supernatural lens. It's not unheard of for cultists to believe they're still receiving messages from their leader after the leader has passed on, after all, and that's often due to religiously interpreting normal grief experiences.
Supporting this is the fact that we know there was significant disagreement in early Christianity regarding whether Jesus was resurrected in a physical body or a spiritual one, with many Gnostics going so far as to say that Jesus never returned to the material world at all and merely projected himself into the minds of his followers. This was a narrative that was heavily condemned by Christian heresiologists, so most believers today are completely unaware of these groups, but there is some reason to believe that this Gnostic interpretation may predate the gospel accounts.
Personally, I don't believe the Gnostic interpretation is the older one as some historians have argued, but it is pretty clear to anyone who isn't already Christian that there was no resurrection. People don't come back from the dead and myths aren't reliable sources for extraordinary events. As such, there is such an extremely low prior probability of a resurrection that believing these early claims would commit the Base Rate Fallacy.
Figuring out what actually happened requires sifting through quite a large number of unreliable sources and that's part of the reason why historians are still so divided on what the historical Yeshua was like to this day. Obviously, no serious historian gives credit to the resurrection, but the fact that his followers claimed one just demonstrates the low quality of historical evidence we have to work off of.
Due to this, I'm not sure I would assert the above narrative in a debate thread since any position on a historical Yeshua is shrouded in speculation, simply due to the nature of the evidence being interpreted. It's fair to question whether there was a historical Yeshua at all, given that the savior narrative is common to "cargo cults," although I think there is strong evidence that he was real to some degree.
However, as speculation for a Q&A thread and an honest account of what I think is the most plausible alternative, this is far more in accordance with the evidence than Jesus being divine or the messiah, in my opinion. It at least serves as a good enough starting point for understanding the historical Yeshua who inspired the mythical Jesus Christ, so long as one is willing to modify this interpretation further in light of new evidence or superior argumentation.
So, yes, the resurrection is important to note because it shows just how out of touch with reality early Christians were. That seems likely to be caused by the way they were conditioned to interpret the world around them through a religious lens, which seems to have been heavily influenced by their charismatic leader. We would expect followers to attribute extreme feats to their cult leader, since this is incredibly commonplace in cults, so the resurrection fits quite neatly into this interpretation.
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Because he was Jewish? Or some other reason?
There is a notion of karet, as you probably know; being cut off entirely. I'll take you to another extreme: I don't think any rational religious Jew honestly believes that a year after Hitler committed suicide he found his way to heaven. So why do you think that Jesus did, given the way he is viewed in Judaism?
Brian2
Veteran Member
I hear it is not likely that a whole group of people at the same time experienced the same hallucinations and especially with the hallucination speaking and giving scriptural evidence that the Messiah was to suffer, die and rise again.
The heresiologists did leave us a lot of information about Gnosticism I hear, and a lot of it was accurate.
Gnostics had a negative attitude to the physical world and our physical nature and reject the God of the OT who created the physical universe.
That would mean that they would reject any OT prophecies about the Messiah and His bodily resurrection.
Orthodoxy has witnesses that Jesus rose bodily and OT prophecies about that.
That sounds like a strange fallacy. So if something is deemed unlikely to have happened, people are said to have committed a logical fallacy if they believe it happened. But I guess many skeptics seem not consider believing what they consider to be unlikely (such as the resurrection) and would rather believe that people lied about it, because that is the more logical thing and lies are common.
All sounds a bit safe and bland for me. "I won't believe that because it is unlikely".
If you are a non Christian with that sort of thinking (which may even have infected a whole generation), then your god, if you manage to believe in a god, is going to be one who sticks to your rules of what it can or cannot do I guess.
Well your mind is made up on the resurrection and what Jesus and His God could do or could not do.
I personally hate history that brings skeptic presumptions to the Bible and starts off with the idea that it is not true and tries to work out what "really" happened from that point of view.
It is circular reasoning from the start, reasoning based on a preconceived belief. It is never going to say that the supernatural elements in the Bible might be true and is going to put the writing of prophecies to a date past the time that the prophecies were fulfilled.
It's no more than skepticism disguised as history imo.
I would say that a resurrection in that day and age was equally as unlikely to have happened as it is today, unless of course Jesus had conditioned His followers to think that a resurrection is possible by raising a couple of people from the dead. (The OT resurrections and other supernatural stuff would also help of course) It is just a preconceived belief to say that all this supernatural is BS from the start and I suppose readers of the modern historians who do such things have also been conditioned themselves to think along those lines and so automatically accept what they say without much serious thought.