Jesus Christ: the greatest story ever told?

[PearlSeeker]

The story of Jesus is the greatest true story told however and it started before the world began and is not finished yet.

Well, some of them are not less historical than Jesus...

Actually there are four stories from the first century about Jesus. Only the last story starts before the world began...

 

[IndigoChild5559]

Well it was taught by the first Christians (Jewish people) at Pentecost (Acts 2) so it comes from the beginning of the teaching of the gospel, and those who believed it then were also Jews, 3000 converts that day.

Acts, like the gospels, was written decades after the events. So much legend and myth has crept into the story by then that who knows what actually happened.

 

[dybmh]

But it was not Jesus that scheduled his death; it was God the Father.

If that's true then Jesus could have gone where ever he wanted. If that's true then Jesus was never in any danger. But that's not what the story says in John 7.

1 After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him.

If God had scheduled his death, then the ambitions of the Jewish leaders is irrelevent.

6 Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. 7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. 8 You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” 9After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee.10 However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret.

As you can see, according to the story, Jesus did not want to die yet. It wasn't the proper time. If he were leaving it to God ( the proper course of action for a Jewish prophet ) then he would not have gone in secret.

What became clear to Jesus, at some point after his baptism by John, was that he was called to fulfil the scriptures. One of the first things he did after his temptation in the wilderness was to read aloud in the synagogue from lsaiah 61:1,2. At the end of the reading, he announced, 'This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears'. [Luke 4:21]

How could Jesus have known that lsaiah 61:1,2, which excludes the judgement, should have come to fulfilment in his day?
There is only one way he could have known this, and that is through the Holy Spirit.

Even if I grant this as true, it doesn't prohibit Jesus from using other methods to determine a time to die that would benefit most people. Besides, if he was Jewish he would know about the pascal lamb, he would know that the first night of passover has special properties ( Exodus 12:42 ). So, no, the Holy Spirit is not the only way for Jesus to know when he was supposed to die. He could have planned to die on the first night of Passover for the specific purpose of effecting absolution for his disciples. This violates both the law prohibiting suicide and the law prohibiting looking for auspicious times. But none of that matters, in theory, on the first night of Passover.

On another occasion, Jesus was casting out demons, and some of the people present accused Jesus of casting out the demons by the power of Beelzebub, ie the chief of devils. Jesus replied by saying, lf Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand?

To correct their erroneous thinking, Jesus said: 'But if l with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you'. [Luke 11:20]

I think you're making an unfounded assumption here. Even if I grant that Jesus cast out demons using "the finger of God" rather than dividing the demon against itself ( which isn't clear in the story ), that doesn't mean that he couldn't have been looking for an auspicious time to die in order to save his disciples.

Seeking auspicious times does not come from satan, it's not evil, it's just prohibited for Jews. Take a look at Genesis 1:14. The luminaries "shall be for signs and for appointed seasons and for days and years." The Chaldeans were supposed to be skilled in this along with the polytheists. So, God created the luminaries, created the auspicious times, gave people opportunity to read these signs, but prohibited it for Jewish prophets.

 

[dybmh]

Of course once someone does become a Christian and see that Jesus is Divine that means that "echad" at Deut 6:4 is qualified. Jesus did say "I and the Father are one".

Making the "echad" in Deut 6:4 qualified is changing the text. The verse says, "... The Lord your God is one." Is one. Period. End of statement. End of verse. One is unqualified. It designates a unity without division.

You can apply that to "I and the Father are one." It's the same thing. It's unqualified so it communicates a unity without division. Had it said "I and the Father are one God" that would be qualified and communicate a compound one.

However I think the truth is that it would not matter if the word was echad or Yachid for Christians. The Lord is one Lord either way, compound or absolute unity without division and I'm sure if Yachid was used then Christians would be saying that the Lord is absolute unity without division and Jews would be saying, "Impossible, how could a trinity be that?"

Maybe you're right. And that would be further evidence that the trinity, God as a compound, is an innovation brought by Christian theology.

 

[dybmh]

I already gave you an example, the coming Day of the Lord.

I'm not familiar with this reference. Google is telling me it's from the New Testament. Sorry if i wasn't clear. An example is needed for a Jewish prophet in Tanach where events are coordianted to occur at a specific time in order to increase the benefits of the events. If "the coming Day of the Lord" comes from the NT, it won't serve that purpose.

Jesus was not manipulating events, He knew when He would die and prophesied it.

As I mentioned to RedemptionSong, if he knew when he would die, then there is no reason to avoid the Jewish authorities. Jesus should have been able to preach openly all over Judea without fear of death until Passover. But that's not the way the story goes. Jesus avoids the Jewish authorities because they wanted to kill him *prematurely* *before the auspicious time of Passover*.

He was the new Passover lamb that the first Passover lamb was symbolic of.

I disagree. He made himself into the Passover lamb by avoiding the authorities until the auspicious time when his death would benefit/save his disciples from sin. He waited until the right time to die, that's prohibited in Judaism. It's a detail that Christians who wrote the NT were likely not aware of. Christians at that time were probably not experts in Jewish law.

The whole law of feasts tells something about the coming Messiah.

The law of feasts? I'm not sure what you're referring to here. You might be right, it may be relevent, but you'll need to provide more details if you want to discuss it.

Parts of Ezek 39 reminds me of parts of Psalm 89:38-52

OK, I just read Psalm 89 ( from a Jewish translation ). I'm not seeing anything there that describes a Jewish prophet coordinating an event to occur at a specific time to render a specific result. It's not relevent to the discussion of auspicious times.

 

[Redemptionsong]

I would say that it will be impossible to not recognise Jesus when He returns. But His coming will be unexpected for most people.

Is recognition to be determined by the fact that Jesus Christ is 'pierced'? [Zech.12:10]

The appearance of the Lord may well be in the sky, for that is where the rapture takes place. [1 Thess. 4:17]

 

[Redemptionsong]

If that's true then Jesus could have gone where ever he wanted. If that's true then Jesus was never in any danger. But that's not what the story says in John 7.

1 After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him.

If God had scheduled his death, then the ambitions of the Jewish leaders is irrelevent.

6 Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. 7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. 8 You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” 9After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee.10 However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret.

As you can see, according to the story, Jesus did not want to die yet. It wasn't the proper time. If he were leaving it to God ( the proper course of action for a Jewish prophet ) then he would not have gone in secret.


Even if I grant this as true, it doesn't prohibit Jesus from using other methods to determine a time to die that would benefit most people. Besides, if he was Jewish he would know about the pascal lamb, he would know that the first night of passover has special properties ( Exodus 12:42 ). So, no, the Holy Spirit is not the only way for Jesus to know when he was supposed to die. He could have planned to die on the first night of Passover for the specific purpose of effecting absolution for his disciples. This violates both the law prohibiting suicide and the law prohibiting looking for auspicious times. But none of that matters, in theory, on the first night of Passover.

I think you're making an unfounded assumption here. Even if I grant that Jesus cast out demons using "the finger of God" rather than dividing the demon against itself ( which isn't clear in the story ), that doesn't mean that he couldn't have been looking for an auspicious time to die in order to save his disciples.

Seeking auspicious times does not come from satan, it's not evil, it's just prohibited for Jews. Take a look at Genesis 1:14. The luminaries "shall be for signs and for appointed seasons and for days and years." The Chaldeans were supposed to be skilled in this along with the polytheists. So, God created the luminaries, created the auspicious times, gave people opportunity to read these signs, but prohibited it for Jewish prophets.

Jesus was a Jew, and he did not seek his own death. There is a big difference between receiving gradual revelation of one's mission, and acting out one's own desires, or fantasies.

Is there evidence that Jesus did not actively seek his own death? Well, if one follows the narrative carefully, it is possible to see that, in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus actually asked whether he must suffer death.

Luke 22:42-44. 'Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.
And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground'.

Now, this doesn't sound to me like the prayers of a soothsayer, or of a man bent on making history by suicide.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Jesus was a Jew.

Yes, and he didn't believe that he is God or "the Father"

 

[Brian2]

Well, some of them are not less historical than Jesus...

Actually there are four stories from the first century about Jesus. Only the last story starts before the world began...

Each gospel story can still be the truth even if one starts in one place and another starts somewhere else.

 

[Brian2]

Acts, like the gospels, was written decades after the events. So much legend and myth has crept into the story by then that who knows what actually happened.

People who do not want to believe the truth of the gospels are all too happy to bring in skeptic reasoning into the study of the books and claim that the opinions these historians have about the historicity of the books and the date of writing and authorship are true.
They do the same with the OT books.
So if you think the whole Bible is doubtful that is your opinion.

 

[Brian2]

Is recognition to be determined by the fact that Jesus Christ is 'pierced'? [Zech.12:10]

The appearance of the Lord may well be in the sky, for that is where the rapture takes place. [1 Thess. 4:17]

I think it will be a dramatic event and not something that happens in secret.

 

[rational experiences]

If unnatural human thinkers first take themselves out of work to being at home.

You'd be a more rational thinker. Mutual living life. Human.

You'd think.

You'd know humans are dominion on earth. Highest greatest life form as bio type. You'd respect life. And others human rights.

Instead you're at work lying for organisational self gain.

Mother and father humans first....are who we think upon. First humans. Not doing anything wrong. Healthy happened to be loving.

Baby man grows up gets brain prickled changed....loses his mind status.

Father's origin human spirituality removed. Via burning gases. Normally cold clear voiding burning.

Fall down attacked him as input of burning earth gained star mass. By spirit. Just gases. Wasn't any piercing liar science group. Why you are a scientist now.

As humans thinking about a special human man baby as an adult...himself. just human men. Status... already was evilly living as a man king and lord with lots of brothers.

Before machine metal sciences.

As organised community is a liar.

How would you like to be heavenly bodily pierced brother. What are you satanic man theist thinking about secretly today?

UFO sun mass dusts into metals above. Knows what's he is theorising about.

Is the part of the conversation he isn't sharing with the public. His rights to cause it to anyone he says now who deserves it.

Theme Jesus piercing in a dead humans past now. The exact answer now. Data story from the past.

In a national human countries list sacrificed dna....who do you think should get the attack now as human man? Special human as said by special humans?

 

[joelr]

How does the ideas of a couple of scholars with fanciful ideas about the non historicity of Acts convert into the source definitely being not historical?

Fanciful ideas by a couple scholars?

In scholarship Acts has been all but discredited as a work of historical fiction. The peer-reviewed works are now seen as the majority consensus in the field. There are also many papers on the topic. The evidence is vast and overwhelming, Acts is a literary creation just like the Gospels.

Richard Pervo, The Mystery of acts, and Acts: A Commentary.
Thomas Brodie, The Birthing of the NT, The Intertexual Development of the NT Writings
Dennis MacDonald, Does the NT Imitate Homer? Four Cases From the Acts of the Apostles
John Dominic Crossan, The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus
Clare Rothschild, Luke-Acts and the Rhetoric of History:An Investigation of Early Christian Historiography
Loveday Alexander, Fact, Fiction and the Genre of Acts
P.E Satterthwaite, Acts Against the Background of Classical Rhetoric in the Book of Acts in it's Ancient Literary Setting


There are conservatives who protest but none who have made logically valid arguments that this is anything but fiction.
There are so many direct parallels to other fiction and is essentially a re-write of the Elija-Elisha narrative in the OT Kings literature, casting Jesus and Paul in the principal roles.
Dennis McDonald points out the use of The Shipwrecks of Odysseus and Paul but the most copied is the Septuagint.

There is a blog post based on some of the info from just Carriers book:
The Book of Acts as Historical Fiction
In closing, we can see that Acts, just like the Gospels in the NT, is not at all reliable in terms of having any historical merit. There are numerous parallels found throughout suggesting that there were many literary sources used for its contents, and Luke was inventing the material contained within, while adding some historical peripheral details (demonstrably obtained from Josephus) to add local color to the stories he was writing as most authors of fiction are known to do. Other than those less relevant peripheral details, the actual events described within it are entirely unrealistic, not corroborated by any independent evidence, and are exactly what we’d expect to find in an ancient novel of the period in question.


Acts is written by Luke who is known in academia as not a real historian but rather a writer of fiction.
As Carrier describes -
"So we know Luke is making a lot of things up in order to deliberately sell a fake history, for purposes of winning an argument against doubters (both within and without Christianity, as his opponents included, for example, Christians with very different ideas about the nature of the resurrection).

This already warns us not to trust anything he has added to the story found in Mark and Matthew: we should assume it is, like those, a convenient fabrication invented for some purpose, unless we can find sufficient evidence to believe otherwise. .....

despite his pretense at being a historian, preface and all, Luke's methods are demonstrably nonhistorical: he is not doing research, weighing facts, checking them against independent sources, and writing down what he thinks most likely happened.He is simply producing an expanded and redacted literary hybird of a couple of previous religious novels (Matthew and Mark), each itself even more obviously constructed according to literary conventions rather than historiographical.

Unlike other historians of even his own era, Luke never names his sources or explains why we are to trust them (or why he did), or how he chose what to include or exclude. In fact Luke does not even declare any critical method at all, but rather insists he slavishly followed what was handed to him - yet another claim we know to be a lie (since we have two of his sources and can confirm he freely altered then to suit his own agenda)."

 

[joelr]

I would say that it will be impossible to not recognise Jesus when He returns. But His coming will be unexpected for most people.

The return that every generation says is coming when they are alive except for thousands of years they have been wrong over and over.

It's also a rip-off of a Persian myth.

 

[Redemptionsong]

Yes, and he didn't believe that he is God or "the Father"

Jesus believed that he was the Son of his heavenly Father. This is why Christian theology states that Jesus Christ, on earth, was fully man and fully God.

 

[Redemptionsong]

I think it will be a dramatic event and not something that happens in secret.

I'm sure you're right!

 

[muhammad_isa]

Jesus believed that he was the the Son of his heavenly Father. This is why Christian theology states that Jesus Christ, on earth, was fully man and fully God.

Yes, Jesus believes that he is a son of God.
..but that is NOT why creeds state that he is fully man and fully God.
That stuff was all decided by men, through a series of councils.

 

[Redemptionsong]

Yes, Jesus believes that he is a son of God.
..but that is NOT why creeds state that he is fully man and fully God.
That stuff was all decided by men, through a series of councils.

The Church concluded, from its study of the scriptures, and from the teaching of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus Christ was fully man and fully God.

It happens to be the only conclusion that incorporates all of scripture in a comprehensive theology.

 

[muhammad_isa]

The Church concluded, from its study of the scriptures, and from the teaching of the Holy Spirit, that Jesus Christ was fully man and fully God.

It happens to be the only conclusion that incorporates all of scripture in a comprehensive theology.

No .. these decisions about what somebody should believe, was by no means anywhere near unanimous.

We start off with the shema, which Jesus fully endorsed, but "the church" evolved
into what it is today by men's decree.
That's OK.
..but God will decide between us all in the end. We should be very careful not to mislead others, by stating men's opinions as absolute truth, when we don't really know that.

 

[Redemptionsong]

Acts, like the gospels, was written decades after the events. So much legend and myth has crept into the story by then that who knows what actually happened.

Thus is absolute rubbish, yet l hear it repeated time and again by people who are not prepared to study the text of the Bible in the light of Roman history.

Flavius Josephus wrote a detailed account of the Jewish war against Rome. He was actually an eyewitness to the events he describes. These wars took place between Jewish rebels and the Roman army between 67 CE and 73 CE.

The most tragic part of the war occurred when Jerusalem was surrounded, during a pilgrim festival in 70 CE, and hundreds of thousands (Josephus puts the figure above 1 million) of Jews found themselves surrounded and trapped within the city. The subsequent seige and destruction of the city was brutal. The temple was levelled, and the defenders, who were initially starved, were then killed in battle or taken as slaves.

In Rome today, there stills stands an arch, dedicated by Titus, to this victory.

Why is the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple so important to the dating of the Gospels?

It's important because it's a major historical event that would not have gone unnoticed by people or historians. Yet (surprise, surprise), it doesn't get a mention in the book of Acts!

Luke, the author of Acts, mentions various uprisings in Israel against the Romans, as well as other significant historical events, yet there is nothing about the Jewish wars.

There is, of course, a simple explanation for this absence of history. The answer is that the wars hadn't taken place when the book of Acts was written! This means that the book of Acts was written before 67CE. And, since Acts was written after the Gospel of Luke, we can conclude that Luke's Gospel was written even earlier, probably within 25 years of the crucifixion. This means that many of the eyewitnesses would have been alive, and could have verified the account.