If we can’t entirely understand the Bible and unravel it’s mysteries after 2,000 years then who is it that is really narrow minded the Bible or the 40,000 sects which cannot agree upon one Book?
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Jesus was Narrow Minded
- Thread starter Thief
- Start date
If we can’t entirely understand the Bible and unravel it’s mysteries after 2,000 years then who is it that is really narrow minded the Bible or the 40,000 sects which cannot agree upon one Book?
stvdv
Veteran Member
Hence I added that they should add "In my opinion"
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Jesus is the Lamb of God, "slain from the foundation of the world"
The lamb that the Hebrews had to eat in Egypt was a perfect young
male, taking into the household for three days. This would have led
to a bonding with that animal. Then it was slain - and the Hebrews
had to eat every bit of it - leaving nothing behind.
People want to partake of the nice bits of what Jesus said and did.
There's some harsh, judgmental and difficult to swallow portions
to this man that people just gloss over. And miss out.
Faithofchristian
Well-Known Member
Nope not at all, Just people narrow minded having no common sense or the understanding or knowledge what is being said by Christ Jesus
As it is people would rather criticize things that they have no understanding or knowledge of, by this shows people ignorance
As it is people would rather criticize things that they have no understanding or knowledge of, by this shows people ignorance
A Vestigial Mote
Well-Known Member
I do understand where you are coming from, I do. Your point that they didn't have the tools to examine evidence as critically as we do today is not lost on me. They didn't have the width and breadth of story, experience, the thoughts of nearly as many others to springboard off of, nor many reasons to even start to question in general. But isn't that the same primordial soup where what we call "closed-mindedness" today is generally thought to stem from? A person steeped in some form of ignorance, given ample time to run around talking at the walls of their echo chamber? What you're describing is a giant echo chamber composed of an entire race of people, all ignorant of the actual details of a great many things.
So you want to say that Jesus was very "open-minded" for the time? Okay, maybe he was. But I am of the opinion that stating to know things you don't actually know is a symptom of closed-mindedness. Stating with confidence things for which you have no business being confident in (at any time) is closed-minded.
As a child, most influences around me were theistic. I lived in an extremely small town. And yet, I never once truly believed. The only thing I actually may have had that tended even the slightest bit toward "atheism" was my parents' non-committal attitude toward the organized aspects of religion. They kept their faith personal to themselves, for the most part, as a family it wasn't really discussed much, and I honestly didn't have that many questions about that stuff because I didn't care. I was loved at home, had a good environment, and lived nearly worry-free as a kid. But something always nagged me about the things I would hear and be told by others. Just an idea that there was something not quite right about it. And when we would go to church (pretty seldom - holidays and special occasions mostly, and when my parents were feeling particularly guilty over the amount of time that had passed since our last attendance), none of anything being said resonated with me one iota. I honestly couldn't call to mind a single sermon I heard throughout my entire childhood, or relay to you a single moment I spent in church in my younger years. It was just super boring, that is literally all I remember.
Would you like to claim that, as a child I had access to the "scientific method" and was even then "standing on the shoulders of philosophical giants?" I can assure you, that's nowhere near the truth. I learned basic math, some science, history, etc. like anyone else in American school curriculum during the 70's/80's. The most you could claim is that my parents (pretty humble people, in all honesty) had the luxury of not having to strictly believe and adhere to religious doctrine because there weren't many pressures coming at us all the time. We pretty much kept to ourselves, and were "Christians" as far as anyone knew - hell, I even identified as "Christian," though I can say I knew pretty much nothing about what it meant to really be one in practice. Knowing what I know now, I would probably describe my parents as deist. They believe, but they're probably not entirely sure who or what "god" is. We had a bible in the house, but I honestly don't remember if anyone ever opened it with intent.
My point being - given mostly their own thoughts to toy with, it is possible for a person to come to the conclusion about "gods" that it is all just a waste of time. That is not outside the realm of possibility at all. To say it is is actually the more foolish stance to be taken. If theism pervaded every aspect of my life can I say I wouldn't have believed differently? No, I can't say that for sure. But I would have been no more correct in my thinking processes had I been that much more fervent in belief - that much I know for certain. And I definitely would have been what I consider "closed-minded".
There is a debate amongst scholars regarding the cultural homogeneity versus heterogeneity of Galilee in the 1st century CE, and one's 'take' on that question is decisive for how we view the social context in which Jesus was raised and operated.
On the one hand, you have Professors John Dominic Crossan, Robert W. Funk, Marcus J. Borg and Burton Mack who argue for a Galilee that was very hellenized much like @Jainarayan argued. So the idea is not without basis in the scholarship and its a valid standpoint to take. Robert W. Funk, for example, writes of a “Galilee, whose inhabitants, because they were often of mixed blood and open to foreign influence, were despised by the ethnically pure Judeans to the south.” Conservative Jewish towns, like Nazareth and Capernaum which Jesus often frequented, were in close proximity to largely hellenized cities such as Tiberias and Sepphoris.
The Hasmonean dynasty in Judea only conquered Galilee in c. 103 BCE and then settled it with Jewish colonists. So it had only been 'Judaized' for about a hundred years before the birth of Jesus, meaning that it didn't have a terribly old Jewish heritage.
Undoubtedly, there was some ethnic prejudice towards the Galilean Jews on the part of the Judeans and this comes across in the gospel narratives themselves. The Galileans were viewed as being lax in observance of the mitzvot or laws of the Torah. The Talmud provides us with an illuminating anecdote in this respect, in which Yohanan ben Zakkai, a Pharisee of the first century, found himself assigned to a postion in Galilee for eighteen years, in which he was asked only two questions of Jewish law, causing him to cry out, "O Galilee, O Galilee, in the end you shall be filled with wrongdoers!"
However, a lot of this might be unfair slander from the more elitist Judeans. There is abundant archaelogical evidence attesting to the fact that Galilean Jews adhered to the purity laws. Stone vessels are common and mikvehs, for water purification after a woman has a period or a man has a seminal emission, have been discovered in in most Galilean sites, particularly around synagogues and even domestic dwellings.
For this reason, we have another cohort of scholars - including E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985); John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991, 1994) and Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet: Critical Issues in Feminist Christology (New York: Continuum, 1994) - who have stressed the strongly Jewish 'settler' or frontier culture of Galilee. Gentiles were not a particularly big or influential demographic. It needs to be remembered that Galilee, unlike Judea, was not a Roman province - it was a client state with semi-autonomy from Rome under the Herodian Tetrarchs, effectively a Jewish monarch. Galilee’s population included some Gentiles, of course, but their numbers appear to have been negligible.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Matthew 15
A Canaanite woman from that vicinity came to him, crying out, “Lord,
Son of David, have mercy on me! My daughter is demon-possessed
and suffering terribly.”
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged
him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.”
He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.”
The woman came and knelt before him. “Lord, help me!” she said.
He replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.”
But you omitted the end of the story in Matthew where he praises the woman for her "great faith" and does as she asks.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
That's very true. She had to pass the test of having faith
in a man who was so bigoted towards her.
In other scenarios Jesus said things like
"Before Abraham was, I am"
and
"a greater than Solomon is here"
and
"Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood...."
and
"They will dash you to the ground, you and the children within"
and
"let the dead bury their dead"
and
"I will strike her children dead"
and so on, so on.
Firstly, the "I am" sayings don't originate with Jesus himself. There is a consensus among scholars in that regard, which is why most of them come from the last gospel to be written, John. They reflect much later theological disputes over christology.
Secondly, the last quotations are about Jesus lamenting the coming destruction of Jerusalem and it's temple by the Romans and weeping over the innocents who are to perish in the war, because they didn't adopt the peaceful approach to messianism Jesus stood for in favour of armed uprising (which is why he weeps over the fact that they didn't "make for peace" with the Romans but we're going to choose violence instead).
The passage in context:
As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another;
Thirdly, the episode with the Syro-Phoenician woman is fascinating because the woman 'wins' the argument and becomes a model of tenacity. The Gospel writers included it for a reason
If the story had ended where you left it off, then it would have been the candidate for the one occasion where Jesus really does seem to be narrow-minded but it actually ends with him refusing to ignore her as requested by his disciples, carrying out her request and in Matthew making her, a Gentile pagan, a model to his Jewish disciples.
Your final quotation doesn't come from Jesus at all but from the author of the Book of Revelation writing in about 98 CE. I'm not sure where you are going with that.
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PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Yes, "Jesus wept."
But there's a good argument from faith that He sent the Romans
against Israel. There's a lot of stuff in the Old Testament that Israel
would exist only till the Messiah came. There would be the curse
against Israel because it "did not know the time of its visitation."
That curse would continue for millennium afterwards, the Jews
being in exile in countries that would be "their graves."
This was the punishment for not accepting Jesus narrow way. A
"way" which Jesus said "few would find."
I see that as narrow minded - it's a narrow way.
An argument "from faith" is not what I'm discussing here.
I'm not, personally speaking, interested in talking about the Jesus "of faith" (which varies between denominations anyway), because that isn't the purpose of the thread. The OP asked simply about Jesus himself, meaning I presume, the historical Galilean preacher, and so that is my focus.
I can assure you that in the Tanakh, there is not "a lot of stuff that Israel would exist only till the Messiah came". That is simply inaccurate, as any of the Jewish posters on RF would be able to tell you. The Messiah is predicted as restoring Israel and gathering it's diaspora together.
The historical Jesus expected, likewise, "to restore the kingdom to Israel" (Acts 1:6). Unfortunately he died, and after his death later Christians came up with theologies of supersecession and replacement, even and most shamefully deicide, but these are not to be attributed to the historical Jesus himself.
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PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
The Patriarch Jacob was probably the first to mention the end of
Israel with the coming Messiah. Speaking to his son Judah (the
one who offered himself for his brother) Jacob said that a line of
monarchs would rise from his line - meaning a Hebrew nation.
And that line would end with the Messiah, so too would this new
nation.
There TWO sets of prophecies concerning the Messiah, he would be:
1 - King who restores Israel
2 - Redeemer, the lowly man of sorrow, riding upon a donkey.
The bible is clear about this, those who accept their need of a
Redeemer will reign with him as King.
And the Gospels tell us there were times when the Jews really
reached out to Jesus, but he rejected their overtures because
they wanted this king, not someone to redeem them. They found
the way of Jesus, and of John the Baptist, too narrow.
Prestor John
Well-Known Member
Do you have any evidence of these assessments?
Faithofchristian
Well-Known Member
Ok, can you explain why Jesus said to the woman ( “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.)
What was the reason for this, People back during that time use many terminologys for other people that were not of their own people.
For instance, People would call a someone from another country a barbarian, to day we look at this as slander against another person or people. But it was the custom of people back 2000 years ago to call someone from another country A barbarian, Meaning a Foreigner.
So back at the time of Jesus people would reference another person or people from another land or country as dogs or Barbarians.
So anyone who was not a Canaanite, would also be in reference a dog.
And anyone who was not of Israel, would also be in reference a dog.
So it goes both ways.
To day people look at things back 2000 years ago, being slanderous towards other people, but it was common back then.
No more than to day to reference a person or people as being animal, then 2000 years from now people would probably look at this as being slanderous towards other people.
Every generation uses words to describe other people by, no more than people did back 2000 years ago used words to describe other people which was not of their own people and country
So it was custom back 2000 years ago to reference other people who was not of Israel as dogs or anyone who was not a
Canaanite to be called dogs.
As a Foreigner would be called a Barbarian.
It was only in reference of someone of another land or country to be called a Barbarian ( Foreigner)
So maybe if people spent some time to search out to see why people back 2000 years ago used different terminologies for people of another land or country, instead of pointing the finger.
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PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
I think most people would see that as an insult "back then" too.
IMO Jesus was testing the woman. There numerous cases where
people came to Jesus and he provoked them like this. Example:
The Jews came to Jesus. It was obvious they believed SOME of
what he said and did. "How long do you have us doubt, if you are
the Messiah tell us plainly" and Jesus said "You are not of my sheep...
I and God are one."
When people wanted to make Jesus king he told them they had to
eat his flesh and drink his blood. "My flesh is real food and my blood
is real drink"
And when someone wanted him to come and heal their daughter
he said "Except you see signs and wonders you won't believe."
There's more of these I am sure. But the point was, Jesus tested
their faith. And ultimately, that's what our experience with God is.
Faithofchristian
Well-Known Member
Maybe if you understood the translations of the Greek and Hebrew Languages. You would understand how people back then used different terminologies for things.
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
I am sure they did. But it's the testing of our faith. Jesus said
that "offenses will come."
The Jews knew that the Messiah must come from Bethlehem
and be of the tribe of Judah, like David was.
But they could point to the "fact" that Jesus came from the
worse town in the worse province -Galilee of the Gentiles.
And this meant he was most likely not of the tribe of Judah
either.
But Jesus held his peace. He tested people's love for his
Word.
Faithofchristian
Well-Known Member
"Has not the scripture said, That Christ comes of the seed of David, and out of the town of Bethlehem, where David was?"
John 7:24
PruePhillip
Well-Known Member
Yes, and the Jews used this very text to "prove" that
Jesus was not the Messiah. It is not recorded that
Jesus ever attempted to set the record straight.
Those who "hearts burned within us" soon enough
would have learned the truth about Jesus' birth.