I believe it's the case that Sfardim and Standard Hebrew use -t plural and Ashkenazi pronunciation favours the -s plural.I'm anglicizing it, OK
-
Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:- Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
- Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
- Access to private conversations with other members.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!
Who is Jesus to Non-Christians?
- Thread starter Jacob Samuelson
- Start date
izzy88
Active Member
I accidentally submitted my comment prematurely; I have since edited it and added what I wanted to finish saying, so please go back and read the rest, if you would.
I don't think it refutes what I said, though. Jesus is still saying that he is unable to do anything unless the Father does it.
That plus the fact that they are clearly two distinct entities.
I mean, either G-d is G-d or He's not.
Num:23-19,
G-d is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent: hath He said, and shall He not do it? or hath He spoken, and shall He not make it good?
lukethethird
unknown member
It appears the quest for the historical Jesus and the holy grail continue...
Imagine; the story about the Son of God based on an historical figure with so called historical Jesus scholars devoted to coming up with new criteria with every new quest to support their forgone conclusions. Why the desperation to find Jesus a place in history? What's wrong with not knowing anything about which can't be known?
Imagine; the story about the Son of God based on an historical figure with so called historical Jesus scholars devoted to coming up with new criteria with every new quest to support their forgone conclusions. Why the desperation to find Jesus a place in history? What's wrong with not knowing anything about which can't be known?
izzy88
Active Member
I think I'll probably end the discussion here. You just keep citing Bible verses out of context and making me take the time to look them up and explain what the full context is, only for you to reject or ignore it and move onto another verse you've taken out of context, and I don't have time to keep playing that game.
Please do read Brant Pitre's "The Case for Jesus", though. Based on what you've said here I think you'll not only enjoy it but learn a lot from it (I certainly did), whether you end up finding it convincing or not.
All the best.
izzy88
Active Member
It's the modern obsession with empiricism; if you can't subject something to the scientific method, it's considered useless, meaningless, and some even claim it therefore doesn't actually exist. It's the new religious fundamentalism, Scientistic Zealotry. The whole thing is just painfully ironic.
Oddly though, empiricism has deeply Christian epistemological roots.
Jesus challenging His hearers: “Why do you not, on your own initiative, judge what is right?” (Luke 12:57). That's an appeal to think for oneself. (The phrase translated “for yourselves/on your own initiative” (ἀφʼἑαυτῶν aph' heautōn). St. Paul encouraged the same - in what is considered by scholars to be his first letter and the earliest extant Christian text - asking his followers to apply testability/a degree of empiricism: "Test all things; hold fast only to what is good" (1 Thessalonians 5:21)
Judge for yourself what's right, test everything and see that it's good first, before considering something worthy of belief - is basically Jesusine/Pauline.
As the Stanford Encyclopedia explains about medieval natural philosophers:
Scientific Method (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
During the medieval period, figures such as Albertus Magnus (1206–1280), Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), Robert Grosseteste (1175–1253), Roger Bacon (1214/1220–1292), William of Ockham (1287–1347), Andreas Vesalius (1514–1546), Giacomo Zabarella (1533–1589) all worked to clarify the kind of knowledge which could be obtained by observation and induction, the source of justification of induction, and the best rules for its application.[2] Many of their contributions we now think of as essential to science (see also Laudan 1968)...
During the Scientific Revolution these various strands of argument, experiment, and reason were forged into a dominant epistemic authority...
During the Scientific Revolution these various strands of argument, experiment, and reason were forged into a dominant epistemic authority...
izzy88
Active Member
That's exactly why it's so ironic. The uniquely Christian view of epistemology has essentially been adopted by the secular world and culturally-engrained to the point that most don't even realize anymore that it's rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition - and now it's being used to try to disregard its own origins.
I am an ex-Christian, I've read quite a bit.
No, I really don't understand where you are coming from. From my reading of that verse, even with the context, Jesus is saying he can do nothing without the Father. Is that not right? From that reading, it follows that your claim that Jesus doing miracles makes him G-d (as opposed to G-d working through other miracle workers) is false, because Jesus has already stated that he's doing the miracles with the Father. That as well as calling G-d one's father does not indicate divinity. So I genuinely don't understand your position here.
Even if, somehow, Jesus were a god, that would not make him the messiah, which is where our argument originally began. In Jewish theology, my main point of reference, the Messiah is not G-d, nor is he equal with G-d or anything such, so I'm just not even sure why this is a thing? Even throughout my years as a Christian I never really understood it, so why I left, I guess.
Perhaps, revolutions don't "like Saturn, devour their children" - to quote Jacques Mallet du Pan in 1793 - so much as their parents.
It remains a topic of abiding fascination to me that liberal secularism, so imbued in its origins with a pre-ordained set of uniquely Christian assumptions about reality (ranging from a grand myth of progress [which is secularised eschatology], an obsession with individual agency [de-sanctified doctrine of freewill], the appeal to human rights [natural law by the backdoor], empiricism etc.), has so thoroughly supplanted its progenitor and now denies its paternity, like a child refusing to believe that its genetic father is really their father.
Democracy and philosophy have classical origins in ancient Greece - but the "liberal" element in the "liberal democratic" worldview, as well as the empirical scientific mindset, is a cipher for Christian influence.
The implicit truth has not gone unnoticed, however, in those regions of the world subject to Western imperialism and cultural hegemonism for centuries. "Christianity spreads in two ways: through conversion and through secularisation" - S. N. Balagangadhara (professor of post-colonial studies at the Ghent University in Belgium):
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07329113.2013.773197
Balagangadhara (1994) examines religion as a phenomenon in the world and proceeds to provide an original theory of what religion is (which Asad does not), and he shows that the distinction between ‘religion’ and the ‘secular’ is made by and within a religion. Going further, Balagangadhara shows that Western culture has experienced various phases of ‘secularization,’ which is one of two ways in which Christianity has spread, the other being proselytization.
Building on Balagangadhara's earlier insights, de Roover, Claerhout, and Balagangadhara (2011) have recently argued that ‘secularization’ can be seen as the extension of Christian ideas into the general or commonplace attitudinal framework of a society, which then function as heuristic tools (topoi) for the development of theories. As those ideas spread, they lose their specific and ostensible Christian character, and mix in various ways. The Christian theology that informed them moves more to the background and becomes invisible. Christian commonplace attitudes are also extended to other societies according to what is assumed to be a universal framework.
Building on Balagangadhara's earlier insights, de Roover, Claerhout, and Balagangadhara (2011) have recently argued that ‘secularization’ can be seen as the extension of Christian ideas into the general or commonplace attitudinal framework of a society, which then function as heuristic tools (topoi) for the development of theories. As those ideas spread, they lose their specific and ostensible Christian character, and mix in various ways. The Christian theology that informed them moves more to the background and becomes invisible. Christian commonplace attitudes are also extended to other societies according to what is assumed to be a universal framework.
Part of what we're seeing today, for instance with Modi in India, is I think in many respects an understandable - from the perspective of other civilisations founded upon different religious and epistemic principles - rejection of the culturally conditioned Christian assumptions that modern liberals strive to dress up as "univeral values", as if they just magically popped into being from out of Christendom in Europe like a virgin birth.
Other civilisations can clearly see that they didn't and I think they're beginning to rightly tire of the pretence, now that Asia is economically and politically starting to outstrip the West in social advancement, such that they are today becoming more self-confident again in their own cultural heritages.
Last edited:
izzy88
Active Member
21 For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. 22 The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.
You're only factoring in the parts that agree with your preconceptions and ignoring the parts that don't - as I said, taking verses out of context.
What makes more sense, given what Jesus is saying here: that he's simply another prophet of God no different from any of the others? Or that he's describing the Trinity, that the Son and the Father are both divine, but that they also have a particular relationship to one another?
This is about interpretation, and to me the verses we've examined only make sense in the context of the Trinity. You, on the other hand, seem to reject the Trinitarian interpretation a priori, simply because you don't think it makes sense in itself, and so you read these verses with the bias already in your mind that they cannot be talking about the Trinity because you've decided already that the Trinity is nonsense.
Where, pre-New Testament, did anyone ever refer to God as "abba"? Jesus was the first in history to do so, which indicates that he was referencing a unique relationship that he alone had with the Father.
Did I not already address the fact that I never made such a claim? Yes, I did:
What I'm seeing here is two separate entities who cannot function one without the other. 'For the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so...'
'So' here being the key word linking these two concepts. The Father can do it, so also can the son. I'm seeing here that thus without the Father, Jesus could not do the things he does.
No I'm just reading it as it appears to me.
Well neither really as I don't believe Jesus said any of these things, but going with the reading as I see it; I'll be honest, I can't make heads nor tails of it. Jesus seems to be saying that while he and the Father are working together, Jesus needs the Father in order to achieve anything. He then sets himself up level with the Father, which to me is the odd part as he's saying in the same breath that he can do nothing without G-d.
Yes, I do reject the Trinity a priori because I'm not a Christian. The Gospels include a lot of things that don't make much sense in Jewish theology and some things which are downright opposed to it, so yes I reject the Trinity view as I believe in what Christians call a Unitarian Monotheism.
I said the Jews refer to G-d as father. There's a famous prayer called 'Avinu Malkeinu' (Our Father, Our King).
But if you want Tanakh verses specifically, there's but one in Isaiah 63:16:
Look from heaven and see, the dwelling of Your holiness and Your glory; where are Your zeal and Your mighty deeds? The yearning of Your heart and Your mercy are restrained to me.
For You are our father, for Abraham did not know us, neither did Israel recognize us; You, O Lord, are our father; our redeemer of old is your name.
Why do You lead us astray O Lord, from Your ways, You harden our heart from Your fear? Return for the sake of Your servants, the tribes of Your heritage.
Last edited:
Recent scholarship (i.e. Hurtado, Ehrman, Bauckham, Fletcher-Louis) has shed a considerable amount of light upon what first century Christians, the ones who produced the gospels and letters, believed about Jesus's divinity. There is now a scholarly consensus that "high christology" (Jesus as divine incarnation) represented the earliest stage of pre-pauline christology among the circles of disciples after Jesus's death.
Basically, they held that Jesus had personally pre-existed in spirit prior to his birth, existing with the Father before creation and was the Father's 'agent' of creation, the one through whom the Father created the cosmos. They associated this pre-incarnate Jesus with 'the angel of the Lord' in the Torah and the 'Word of the Lord' (mediated through Philo's platonic 'Logos', Judaized Platonism).
Jesus was, thus, placed on the "Creator" side of the Creator/creature divide. However, they did not yet - at that primitive stage - employ ontological language to describe the eternal relationship between the Son of God and God the Father, only Hebraic categories. It was when the church fathers interacted with Greek philosophy, from the second to fourth century, that they began to use it to more precisely - scientifically - delineate the actual nature of this 'relationship', through the language of three Divine Hypostases (Persons) in One Essence (ousia) and Being i.e. Trinitarian monotheism.
Paul does not elucidate this belief in any great depth, he mentions it in passing as something that his audience already takes for granted. Illustrative of this is the pre-Pauline hymn in Philippians 2:6–11, in which most scholars (including Ehrman and Hurtado) see the preexistent and divine Jesus described as first becoming “incarnate” as a man (vv. 6–8).
Since Paul's letters were written in the 50s, and this doctrine is already an assumed, uncontested belief at that point, scholars date the hymn to the 30s CE - not long after Jesus's death, giving it time to disseminate this widely.
As Hurtado has noted: "we have evidence from ancient Jewish sources (especially apocalyptic texts such as 1 Enoch) that the “preexistence” of eschatological figures was a Jewish theological trope. This evidence suggests that Jesus’ preexistence could well have been an almost immediate corollary of the conviction that God had exalted him uniquely to heavenly/divine glory".
The early Christians took this established tradition - which they applied to Jesus in the aftermath of their mystical resurrection experiences of the glorified/ascended Jesus - and did something with the ideas of incarnation and exaltation that no Jewish author had ever done before with Enoch, Melchizedek, Adam or Moses: they accorded Jesus an active role as co-eternal divine agent with God the Father in creation (incarnation) and claimed that God the Father now willed that Jesus be given cultic worship in the same context as that owed to God the Father himself (exaltation), both of which were a “novel mutation” within Second Temple Judaism according to the scholars.
Last edited:
izzy88
Active Member
Yes, they are two separate persons, yet at the same time they are dependent on each other. But your interpretation of the 'so' statement seems mistaken, to me. How I read it is that Jesus is saying "as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so do I," meaning simply that he is capable of doing the exact same things that the Father does which implies that, like the Father, he is divine.
And again, what does that sound like he's describing but the Trinity? He and the Father are two distinct persons, while simultaneously being interdependent and inseparable.
And am I right to assume that you're saying you don't believe the Gospels are historical? If so, why are you arguing against what Jesus says here and trying to make sense of it within a Jewish context if you don't even believe he actually said it???
And if you don't believe the Gospels are historical, why do you reject that they are describing the Trinity even though you yourself admit that you can't make sense of it otherwise???
Why can't the Gospels be describing the Trinity, and you simply reject that they're reliable historical accounts? Wouldn't that make much more sense than what you're trying to do here?
I respect and appreciate your honesty.
As I understand it, the sense in which the Jews refer to God as their father using the Hebrew "avi" is meant in a formal sense, not a familial sense, whereas the Aramaic word Jesus uses - "abba" - holds much more intimate familial connotations.
I'm not willing to die on that hill, though; this specific issue isn't something I've put a lot of time into researching, so it's possible that the Hebrew "avi" and the Aramaic "abba" aren't really that different; but from the little amount I've read on the subject, that is claimed to be the case.
It's all Greek to me!
I'm just bored
izzy88
Active Member
That actually made me laugh out loud. Cheers.I'm just bored
It's all Greek to me!
Haha, that was a witty one!
So it appeared as well to many Jews and perhaps a few 'God-fearers' (Noahides) in the first century - I'm sure
Hurtado actually hypothesizes that it was the 'cultic devotion to Jesus' of early Christians which originally provoked St. Paul, then "a Pharisee...concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless" (Philippians 3:5-6), into persecuting the Nazarene sect prior to his Damascus Road experience:
Paul’s “Persecution” of Jewish Jesus-Followers: Nature & Cause(s)
Paul says his aim was to “destroy” the Jewish ekklesia (Gal. 1:13). The word “destroy” (portheo) used here typically was used to describe the ravaging of a place or people by an invading army or other pretty serious, even violent actions (e.g., 4 Maccabees 4:23; 11:4)....
Paul says his strong actions against the ekklesia sprang from his being a superlative “zealot” (Gal. 1:14).
- I’d suggest that (what he judged inordinate) Jesus-devotion could well have seemed an infringement upon the unique place of God in the eyes of a particularly vigilant Pharisee such as Paul. There may have been additional factors, but it seems to me fully cogent that Jesus-devotion was involved.
- To my mind, this also tallies with how Paul describes his own change-experience that moved him from opponent to adherent of the young Jesus-movement: a “revelation of [God’s] Son” (Gal. 1:16). That is, the cognitive import and content was christological, a “revelation” of the high status/significance of Jesus. He doesn’t say that the experience involved a shift of view about a supposed Temple-criticism or Torah-laxity by Jewish Jesus-followers, or overcoming a prior objection to their converting pagans.
- The most reasonable inference, therefore, is that what he came to accept and affirm robustly in all his letters (christological claims and linked devotional practices) was likely central in/among the things that he had previously found sufficiently offensive to demand his vigorous efforts to “destroy” the Jesus-movement. In an essay published years ago, I cited additional Pauline textual data as well that point in the same direction
- To cite here another piece of evidence, in 2 Corinthians 3:12—4:6, Paul describes fellow Jews who reject the Jesus-movement. He says that they have veiled and hardened minds that prevent them from seeing (what he sees now) “the glory of the Lord” (3:18), who is Jesus (4:5), “who is the image of God” (4:4). Nothing there about Torah-laxity, or Temple, or anything other than the christological issue: Paul and fellow believers perceive Jesus’ high significance, whereas others (including particularly fellow Jews) don’t. That sounds like “Jesus-devotion” is the critical issue.
I imagine they must have been especially shocked by the early Christians' modification of the shema:
1 Corinthians 8:6
6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
6 yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
The above statement is not thought by scholars to have been composed by Paul, rather they believe he was referencing an already well-known creed of the primitive church, which tells us that the earliest Christians had already come to regard Jesus as a pre-existent divine agent of creation co-eternal with God, here incorporating him into the shema.
I don't blame other Jews of the time for going, "Say whaaaa....?"
dybmh
ויהי מבדיל בין מים למים
In today's practice it's not a frequently offered prayer. But, it is repeatedly said/sang on Yom Kippur, but, interestingly, not on Shabbos.
I wonder if that's how it was back then as well? { he says pulling at chin }
I am actually rather thankful for this, as I don't really see G-d as a father figure and never really have. King, Master or Creator works better for me, because it reveals G-d's Majesty.