One God Vs Three Gods - Proof The Bible Has Been Corrupted.

[Antlerman]

But, in a sense, this statement that I use to use, "I can't trust myself to make the right decisions" can be seen as a fallacy in my mind when I look at it and say, "Well, if I can't trust myself, how can I trust that I mistrust myself?" It really did change the way I think about that.

That's the sort of thing if you take literally can drive you insane. Maybe we could call that a "feedback loop" in language and reason. I'm sure there is an actual term in language for that. Oxymorom comes to mind, but there may be a better term for it.

[NotBlinded]

But, in a sense, this statement that I use to use, "I can't trust myself to make the right decisions" can be seen as a fallacy in my mind when I look at it and say, "Well, if I can't trust myself, how can I trust that I mistrust myself?" It really did change the way I think about that.

That's the sort of thing if you take literally can drive you insane. Maybe we could call that a "feedback loop" in language and reason. I'm sure there is an actual term in language for that. Oxymorom comes to mind, but there may be a better term for it.

Yes, it can drive one insane!

 

I like that...a feedback loop... In a more literal sense, it is the feedback we get from our decisions that brings the conclusion of "I can't trust myself" to understanding.

[freeday]

notblindedbytheblight:

 

incontinuing this discussion. i can see how you can read the gospels and say that Jesus was a man filled with the holy spirit, pointing people to the father. and i have broken out of the exclusivity shell that he is the only way. and antlerman makes a great point with the martyrs. but

 

in john thomas the desciple states to Jesus "My Lord and my God!" and Jesus replies "blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." he didn't say only worship the father in heaven. or i am no lord, only the one above.

 

and then you have peters confession of christ in matthew. he states "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." with his hebrew background, it could only be assumed he was talking of the messiah as reffered to by the prophets when saying christ. Jesus replies "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven."

 

there are other accounts of the desciples proclaiming his status as messiah, and none of them does he refute thier beliefs. so if he wasn't the one to save the world, shouldn't he have set the record striaght. or did the authors add this in after the fact to make thier message more believable. but if they added this in, why not just have Jesus saying dirrectly he is God.

[NotBlinded]

notblindedbytheblight:

 

incontinuing this discussion. i can see how you can read the gospels and say that Jesus was a man filled with the holy spirit, pointing people to the father. and i have broken out of the exclusivity shell that he is the only way. and antlerman makes a great point with the martyrs. but

 

in john thomas the desciple states to Jesus "My Lord and my God!" and Jesus replies "blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." he didn't say only worship the father in heaven. or i am no lord, only the one above.

 

and then you have peters confession of christ in matthew. he states "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." with his hebrew background, it could only be assumed he was talking of the messiah as reffered to by the prophets when saying christ. Jesus replies "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven."

 

there are other accounts of the desciples proclaiming his status as messiah, and none of them does he refute thier beliefs. so if he wasn't the one to save the world, shouldn't he have set the record striaght. or did the authors add this in after the fact to make thier message more believable. but if they added this in, why not just have Jesus saying dirrectly he is God.

Well...I have learned that most of the writters may have misunderstood his intentions. So, they wouldn't purposefully have changed Jesus' words, but injected what they thought was meant. Then there are those that tried desperately to link him to the OT. Not that they built an elaborate scheme in order to do so, but that they truly believed him to be what they understood the messiah of the OT to be. More than anything, I think he was misunderstood. Man cannot reveal God, so when Jesus said that God had revealed himself to be the Son of God, it would be natural that they would think he was the messiah. I don't think Jesus could have cleared it up any better because the same words are used to say different things. I also believe he was the son of God, but no more than anyone else. You are right, it would be natural for the person to think he was the messiah. I think he was trying to show them the wisdom in their own scriptures that they overlooked. He may have thought that Simon understood what he meant when he said that. Maybe Simon did, but the writers and the believers of a distant God did not understand. Jesus also said that the Kingdom of Heaven is in you. But somehow, these words were taken as a reference to a later date that happens after death.

 

I don't believe Jesus came back from the dead. There are many that do not believe he physically died that day. They say Pilate may have had him crucified before the Sabbath on purpose...so he wouldn't die. From what I understand, he was only on the cross for 3 hours. He may have layed in the tomb and was cared for for 3 days before he was well enough to rise.

 

I don't have all the answers, but I won't allow myself to reject everything or to accept everything. The truth is in the middle somewhere between interpretations and misunderstandings, IMO.

[freeday]

Well...I have learned that most of the writters may have misunderstood his intentions. So, they wouldn't purposefully have changed Jesus' words, but injected what they thought was meant. Then there are those that tried desperately to link him to the OT. Not that they built an elaborate scheme in order to do so, but that they truly believed him to be what they understood the messiah of the OT to be. More than anything, I think he was misunderstood. Man cannot reveal God, so when Jesus said that God had revealed himself to be the Son of God, it would be natural that they would think he was the messiah. I don't think Jesus could have cleared it up any better because the same words are used to say different things. I also believe he was the son of God, but no more than anyone else. You are right, it would be natural for the person to think he was the messiah. I think he was trying to show them the wisdom in their own scriptures that they overlooked. He may have thought that Simon understood what he meant when he said that. Maybe Simon did, but the writers and the believers of a distant God did not understand. Jesus also said that the Kingdom of Heaven is in you. But somehow, these words were taken as a reference to a later date that happens after death.

 

I don't believe Jesus came back from the dead. There are many that do not believe he physically died that day. They say Pilate may have had him crucified before the Sabbath on purpose...so he wouldn't die. From what I understand, he was only on the cross for 3 hours. He may have layed in the tomb and was cared for for 3 days before he was well enough to rise.

 

I don't have all the answers, but I won't allow myself to reject everything or to accept everything. The truth is in the middle somewhere between interpretations and misunderstandings, IMO.

 

you say they may have misunderstood his intentions. the problem with that, is how can we 2000 yrs later think we know his intentions better than a person that was there to witness it, or heard it directly from someone who did witness it. also, if you start picking out what was misunderstood, what point do you stop. who is to say the whole book, the whole OT or NT is misunderstood. that is when you start creating your own religion. i am not trying to imply it should be an all or nothing attitude. and i do think the things can be interpretted differently, yet people can still stand on a common ground. i am not saying that you are wrong in your beliefs, i just can't seem to dismiss the idea of Jesus not being God. i think it is all a personal preference on how you feel towards religion.

 

 

do you have any links, or would you even recomend reading some of the agnostic gospells, gospell of judas, thomas etc... if these were authentic, it could provide some insight on what other opinions of Jesus were at the time.

[SkepticOfBible]

in john thomas the desciple states to Jesus "My Lord and my God!"

 

How is this proof of Jesus being God. Thomas is crying out in excitement. Kind of like us saying "Oh my God".

 

If it is proof of Jesus divinity, then it is vague proof

 

and look right below verses, what does it say?

 

30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may[a] believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

 

If there was any place for John to outrightly say that Jesus was God, it was here, by saying "Jesus is the Christ, God himself" or something or that sort.

 

Anyways, Freeday I am quite happy to see you looking at the Gospel with a open idea, and admitting that it is not obvious about Jesus divinity. Now hopefully you can understand the JW position or the catholic position of relying on tradition to interpretate scripture.

[freeday]

in john thomas the desciple states to Jesus "My Lord and my God!"

 

How is this proof of Jesus being God. Thomas is crying out in excitement. Kind of like us saying "Oh my God".

 

If it is proof of Jesus divinity, then it is vague proof

 

and look right below verses, what does it say?

 

30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may[a] believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

 

If there was any place for John to outrightly say that Jesus was God, it was here, by saying "Jesus is the Christ, God himself" or something or that sort.

 

Anyways, Freeday I am quite happy to see you looking at the Gospel with a open idea, and admitting that it is not obvious about Jesus divinity. Now hopefully you can understand the JW position or the catholic position of relying on tradition to interpretate scripture.

 

i wasn't saying that any one thing offers indesputable proof, i was just saying that when it is all looked at, it is easy to read and say that Jesus is God. i do like your spin on it, haven't seen it in that light yet. maybe that was a saying they used back in the day that is similiar to our OMG saying.

 

oh by the way, love the sig.

[♦ ficino ♦]

i guess i have a dependent personality.

I would say I have an addictive personality also.

 

Yes, I join in the confessional. I have a dependent personality and an addictive personality. Otherwise, I wouldn't still be on this site after two years!

 

[NotBlinded]

you say they may have misunderstood his intentions. the problem with that, is how can we 2000 yrs later think we know his intentions better than a person that was there to witness it, or heard it directly from someone who did witness it. also, if you start picking out what was misunderstood, what point do you stop. who is to say the whole book, the whole OT or NT is misunderstood. that is when you start creating your own religion. i am not trying to imply it should be an all or nothing attitude. and i do think the things can be interpretted differently, yet people can still stand on a common ground. i am not saying that you are wrong in your beliefs, i just can't seem to dismiss the idea of Jesus not being God. i think it is all a personal preference on how you feel towards religion.

Hi freeday!

 

I think that people back in those times were much more rigid and fundamental than they are today. Also, when science started not coinciding with the bible, people started to think more about what the bible can mean other than the literal meanings.

 

I want to start here with a saying from the Hindu Upanishad to describe Brahman (God). I'm going off of memory here, so it may not be exact.

 

"What cannot be seen with the eyes, but thereby that which the eyes can see, know that to be Brahman the Spirit. Not that which the people here adore.

 

What cannot be heard with the ears, but thereby that which the ears can hear, know that to be Brahman the Spirit. Not that which the people here adore.

 

What cannot be thought with the mind, but thereby that which the mind can think, know that to be Brahman the Spirit. Not that which the people here adore."

 

This is saying that God is formless consciousness. It cannot be seen, heard or thought, but it is what enables us to see, hear and think. What the people adore is forms. Their images, or thoughts, about what God is, are forms. One could even say idols. Jesus also speaks of this when he says the Kingdom of God (the formless) and the world, or earth (form). When God is taken as a literal thought or description, it is nothing more than "what people adore".

 

Also, we were earlier speaking of the messiah. Look at this here:

 

Isa 45:1 ¶ Thus saith the LORD to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him; and I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him the two leaved gates; and the gates shall not be shut;

 

Now look at it in Greek or Latin I guess (I don't know the difference!):

 

haec dicit Dominus christo meo Cyro cuius adprehendi dexteram ut subiciam ante faciem eius gentes et dorsa regum vertam et aperiam coram eo ianuas et portae non cludentur

Jerome's Latin Vulgate 405 A.D. Info

 

Notice the word christo. The Hebrew word for messiah is mashiach which was translated into Greek using christos and into English using christ. Cyrus didn't know the Torah or the Name of Yahweh.

 

This quote here is from the book Why Christianity Must Change or Die, by John Shelby Spong, Preface, pg xi:

But mashiach meant not some abstract belief about Jesus' essence but rather the belief that Jesus was the life through whom the word of God had been spoken and the will of God had been lived out, a life in which the reality of God was experienced as present in history. In a striking way, the Jews had broadened their concept of messiah so that even Cyrus of the Persians was called mashiach in the book of Isaiah (45:1), because the Jewish people discerned that the will of God was being accomplished in history through the life of this man who knew neither the Torah nor even the name of Yahweh.

He goes on to say (same reference):

The Bible never says in a simplistic way that Jesus is God. Jesus prays to God in the gospels. He is not talking to himself. Jesus dies on the cross. It makes no sense to say that the holy God died. The Bible only says that what God is, Jesus is; that God is met in Jesus; that to see Jesus is in some sense to see God.

John Shelby Spong is an Episcopal Bishop of Newark, NJ. I just got the book last night, so I'm not too far into it yet. I would recommed this book even though I haven't read it all. I did skip ahead a little...yep...I cheat sometimes! But I will go back and read what I skipped in this book. I found where Paul was someone that saw Jesus as being 'adopted' by God...oh heck, I'll type it. (p75, 76)

In his epistle to the Romans, written about the year 58 C.E., or some twenty-eight years after the life of Jesus, Paul began to develop explanations for his Christ experience. He had never visitied Rome to which he was writing. The people there were strangers who needed to understand why he was so concerned to come to visit them (Rom. 1:1-15). God, he said to them, had "designated" Jesus "Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead" (Rom. 1:4). Please note the strange and, from the point of view of later Christian orthodoxy, the disconcerting elements that are present in this early Pauline statement. "God", by which Paul presumably meant the creator Father, "designated" Jesus to be "son of God." God was the one who was doing the designating. Jesus was the one who was being designated. There was here no sense of divine equality or of what later came to be called incarnation.

 

Second, Paul declared that God made this declaration "in power" and according to the "spirit of holiness." The Holy Spirit, we need to note, was not yet a separate and distinct aspect of God in the mind of Paul.

 

Third, this designation of Jesus as God's divine son took place, Paul said, by his "ressurrection from the dead." So for Paul it was the Easter experience, which came after the crucifixion, that constituted the basis for the God claim that he was making about Jesus. Paul seemed not to know of miracle stories or of a divinely initiated virgin birth. In this first strata of theological thinking where the God experience in Jesus was being explained, we find a point of view that later came to be called "adoptionism." This means that just some six years before Paul's death it was still his understanding that God had adopted Jesus into the being of God. This was certainly not for Paul an expression that was conducive to later trinitarian thinking. Even this adoptive status was not conferred upon Jesus until the resurrection, Paul was saying. The exaltation of Jesus into heaven, which was Paul's concept of what Easter meant, and the divine designation of Jesus as God's son were thus, in the mind of the earliest New Testament writer, simultaneous experiences. Presumably Jesus was not thought of as God's son prior to that moment. It certainly becomes obvious in this text that the later developing creedal doctrines were far removed from this Pauline understanding.

So, it wasn't uncommon for someone to be known as the messiah. What was uncommon was that the understandings of some turned the teachings into something they weren't. That is why it is hard to discern the truth in there. But, if you can keep your mind open (I know you are) to other ways of understanding, the essence is still there. It's okay to dismiss what sounds incredible, or to try to look at it another way. It's just a story that speaks about God, such as the Upanishad. I know I said this before, but I'll say it a little different this time. If the story becomes God, that is what people adore.

do you have any links, or would you even recomend reading some of the agnostic gospells, gospell of judas, thomas etc... if these were authentic, it could provide some insight on what other opinions of Jesus were at the time.

I would say read everything you can, but you have to read it by dropping the literal understanding of it. I have read the gospel of Thomas and yes, you will find where Jesus said, "Turn over a rock and you will find me." I believe this one was not accepted because of its Gnostic ideas. Read up on the Esscenes and the Gnostics.

 

Here is a link that has some answers to the questions you proposed here:

 

About the Historical Jesus. It also has links at the bottom to take you to many links that explore the historical Jesus theories.

[freeday]

i guess i have a dependent personality.

I would say I have an addictive personality also.

 

Yes, I join in the confessional. I have a dependent personality and an addictive personality. Otherwise, I wouldn't still be on this site after two years!

 

 

at the rate we are going, we are going to have to start us a recovering poster site to deal with our addictions.

[freeday]

notblindedbytheblight:

 

wow, i have read that before, but that book seems to explain it much better. i will have to pick it up. this is very interesting information. i didn't think the word messiah was used so loosely. i will try to find the hebrew translation of isiah and see if it uses the word messiah. since the dead sea scroll would be the oldest translation (i think anyway) the latin may be mistranslated. who knows. i think the latin translation is the youngest we have of the new testament. the greek being the older one. but if you think about it. how many times did you hear when the year Y2K came that the messiah was coming. i think people are always wanting to predict his coming. if i was a repressed and persecuted person, i would want a messiah to come and save me. this could have been some of the influence during Jesus' time period. isreal was always under someone elses rule during that time frame. i have always used this explination for why Jesus was crucified, but maybe i have it the wrong way. maybe that is why christianity came about. but i do love the idea of a personall savior. speaking of which.

 

just thought of something, if Jesus isn't God, can he still save you from your sins. Jesus had the authority to forgive people of thier sins according to the gospells. if he isn't God, how does he have the ability.

 

sorry for the many questions, but i am learning a lot, and the arguement that the Jews have does nothing for me.

[NotBlinded]

notblindedbytheblight:

 

wow, i have read that before, but that book seems to explain it much better. i will have to pick it up. this is very interesting information. i didn't think the word messiah was used so loosely. i will try to find the hebrew translation of isiah and see if it uses the word messiah. since the dead sea scroll would be the oldest translation (i think anyway) the latin may be mistranslated. who knows. i think the latin translation is the youngest we have of the new testament. the greek being the older one. but if you think about it. how many times did you hear when the year Y2K came that the messiah was coming. i think people are always wanting to predict his coming. if i was a repressed and persecuted person, i would want a messiah to come and save me. this could have been some of the influence during Jesus' time period. isreal was always under someone elses rule during that time frame. i have always used this explination for why Jesus was crucified, but maybe i have it the wrong way. maybe that is why christianity came about. but i do love the idea of a personall savior. speaking of which.

 

just thought of something, if Jesus isn't God, can he still save you from your sins. Jesus had the authority to forgive people of thier sins according to the gospells. if he isn't God, how does he have the ability.

 

sorry for the many questions, but i am learning a lot, and the arguement that the Jews have does nothing for me.

Hi there,

 

If I remember correctly, the word sin in Greek means to miss the mark. When one sins, they are turning away from their very being...which is God. To not understand this and to see God in forms that are created in their minds, they are sinning. Yes, understanding that Jesus was trying to show you the way to 'know' God can save you from your sins because all other little sins result from looking to the world of form to fulfill you. You can't find who you really are by identifing with any form. That includes material items and thought forms. Your very essence is the formless God. So, Jesus cannot directly save you from your sins by believing that he can somehow take them away from you. You already have that power to do that yourself by recognizing who you are. In this way...you have hit the mark in the bullseye!

[freeday]

Hi there,

 

If I remember correctly, the word sin in Greek means to miss the mark. When one sins, they are turning away from their very being...which is God. To not understand this and to see God in forms that are created in their minds, they are sinning. Yes, understanding that Jesus was trying to show you the way to 'know' God can save you from your sins because all other little sins result from looking to the world of form to fulfill you. You can't find who you really are by identifing with any form. That includes material items and thought forms. Your very essence is the formless God. So, Jesus cannot directly save you from your sins by believing that he can somehow take them away from you. You already have that power to do that yourself by recognizing who you are. In this way...you have hit the mark in the bullseye!

 

ok, i think i can go with that. maybe when he told the cripple his sins were forgiven, it was because of his faith. not that Jesus himself was forgiving them. then i would ask, if he wasn't God, why could he perform so many miracles, but the apostles could do miracles too. and we know they were not God.

 

we are gitting down to the nitty gritty here. the reserection. this must prove that he is God. wouldn't you think. i feel sure you are going to say that it was a story added later to help with the messiah perception. just asking. i know paul doesn't talk about the virgin birth. does he talk about the reserection. i will look tonight and see if i can find anything.

[SkepticOfBible]

There is one thing I notice that trinitarions christians always do is compartmentalise Jesus and God(or doubleThink for those 1984 fans). In general they will say that Jesus is god, however whenever they start describe God and Jesus in one sentence they will seperate the two entity to make sense of it.

 

However if they look back at what they are saying, and instead of try using God instead Jesus or vice versa, one can see how weird it starts to sound like. Below are two of my example with the filter.

 

http://forums.jewsforjesus.org/showthread.php?tid=9

 

Jesus Christ from Nazareth is the glory of Israel. Jesus is the pride and joy of Israel. If anyone deserves a pat on the back, it’s him. God Himself says that He is well please with His boy. What an honor, what more could anyone hope for than to have the acceptance and glory of God bestowed on you? Christ’s spirit existed before Christ came in the flesh. He was in heaven, and was sent by God to the lost sheep of Israel. The lost sheep of Israel that were “found” as he was sent, to gather from the four corners of the earth, all those that would be passed over through faith in the Christ.

 

Is now translated as

 

God from Nazareth is the glory of Israel. God is the pride and joy of Israel. If anyone deserves a pat on the back, it’s God. God Himself says that He is well please with Himself. What an honor, what more could anyone hope for than to have the acceptance and glory of God bestowed on you?God's spirit existed before God came in the flesh. God was in heaven, and was sent by himelf to the lost sheep of Israel. The lost sheep of Israel that were “found” as God was sent, to gather from the four corners of the earth, all those that would be passed over through faith in God.

 

Perhaps the most absurd one IMHO is the following

 

The need is for us so that we can have access to God. Y’shua came as one of us so that the debt of the likes of us could be taken away and eliminated so that we can have fellowship withb God.

 

Translation.

 

The need is for us so that we can have access to God. God came as one of us so that the debt of the likes of us could be taken away and eliminated so that we can have fellowship with him.

 

In short God sent himself so that he can mediate with himself on behalf of the people.

 

The Trinity sounds really confusing to me, when compared to what bible says about Jesus and God. I find the JW approach treating Jesus as a seperate entity more logical.

 

That was my 2 cents on this part.

[NotBlinded]

Hi there,

 

If I remember correctly, the word sin in Greek means to miss the mark. When one sins, they are turning away from their very being...which is God. To not understand this and to see God in forms that are created in their minds, they are sinning. Yes, understanding that Jesus was trying to show you the way to 'know' God can save you from your sins because all other little sins result from looking to the world of form to fulfill you. You can't find who you really are by identifing with any form. That includes material items and thought forms. Your very essence is the formless God. So, Jesus cannot directly save you from your sins by believing that he can somehow take them away from you. You already have that power to do that yourself by recognizing who you are. In this way...you have hit the mark in the bullseye!

 

ok, i think i can go with that. maybe when he told the cripple his sins were forgiven, it was because of his faith. not that Jesus himself was forgiving them. then i would ask, if he wasn't God, why could he perform so many miracles, but the apostles could do miracles too. and we know they were not God.

 

we are gitting down to the nitty gritty here. the reserection. this must prove that he is God. wouldn't you think. i feel sure you are going to say that it was a story added later to help with the messiah perception. just asking. i know paul doesn't talk about the virgin birth. does he talk about the reserection. i will look tonight and see if i can find anything.

Hi freeday,

 

Yes! (first paragraph)

 

Since I'm kinda tired and in an awful mood, I'm gonna cheat alot and let the quotes below do most of the speaking for me about the resurrection. My mood will improve so my thinking can become more clear later and I can give you the response you deserve. I apologize.

 

Resurrection as Spiritual Metaphor

Orthodox Christian doctrine holds that Jesus Christ literally rose from the dead after three days - but was that the way that Christians originally believed things happened? Many have argued that the letters from Paul, whose works pre-date the gospels, depict a spiritual and metaphorical resurrection rather than a literal rising from the dead.

 

Tom Harpur writes in the Toronto Star:

 

Paul couldn't be clearer, in his oft-quoted peroration in 1 Corinthians 15 on the resurrection of the dead, that Jesus' resurrection — and hence our own one day — was categorically and supremely a spiritual "event." He's so insistent on this, goes to such great lengths to expatiate upon it, and thunders it home with such eloquence that it's truly astounding how would-be Bible champions can read it and not comprehend its meaning. The entire passage is pure Platonism throughout. Paul says plainly that this describes the resurrection of the dead, Jesus' and ours, for they are identical: "It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption. It is sown a natural, (or physical), body, it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body ... and as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly." In case this is not completely transparent, he then lays it down as emphatically as possible: "Now this I say ... flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption ... we shall all be changed!" Paul, whose genuine epistles date much earlier than the Gospels, never mentions an empty tomb. Why not? He knew nothing of it. For him, the resurrection was an entirely spiritual matter. He knew nothing of the later resurrection stories in the Gospels about Jesus eating fish or walking about talking to fishermen. All of that was added as the demand for a more literalistic, made-for-the-lowest-common-denominator version imposed itself upon the original story. How might Christianity have turned out if the focus had been not on a Jesus who rose literally from the dead but, rather, who was resurrected spiritually and metaphorically to his followers?

From here

 

So, yes, the literal understanding did come later.

 

And this:

 

From City of God, by E. L. Doctorow

Pagels, working from the scrolls discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, finds that the early Christians were profoundly divided between those who proposed a church according to apostolic succession based on a literal interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection and those who rejected resurrection except as a spiritual metaphor for gnosis emotionally, mystically achieved, as knowledge beyond ordinary knowledge, a perception beneath or above the everyday truth....So there was a power struggle. Gnostic and synoptic contested with competing gospels. The gnostics, who said no church was needed, no priest, no episcopate, were routed, inevitably, having no organization, given their views. While the institutionalist Christians were understandably concerned that their persecuted sect needed a network to survive, with rules of order and common strategies for survival, the concept of martyrdom, for example, being created to make something positive from their terrible persecution, it is also true that the struggle for Jesus was a struggle for power, that the idea of an actual resurrection, which the institutionalists put forth and the gnostics ridiculed, provided authority for church office, and that the struggle to define Jesus and canonize his words, or interpretations of his words by others, was pure politics, as passionate or worshipful as it may have been, and that with the desire to perpetuate the authority of Jesus continuing in the Reformation and the creation of the Protestant sects, in which a kind of residual gnosis was being proposed in protest against the sacramental accumulations of a churchly bureaucracy, what is now Christianity, with all the resonance that it has as a belief and a rich and complex culture, is a political creation with a political history. It was a politically triumphant Jesus created from the conflicts of early Christianity, and it has been a political Jesus ever since, from the time of the emperor Constantine’s conversion in the fourth century throughout the long history of European Christianity, as we consider the history of the Catholic Church, its Crusades, its Inquisitions, its contests and/or alliances with kings and emperors, and with the rise of the Reformation, the history of Christianity’s active participation, in all its forms, in wars among states and the rule of populations. It is a story of power.

 

You would like this website I think where I got the last quote. It has wonderful pictures and is very fair and honest in what is states. http://www.sacredsites.com/middle_east/isr...cred_caves.html

[freeday]

There is one thing I notice that trinitarions christians always do is compartmentalise Jesus and God(or doubleThink for those 1984 fans). In general they will say that Jesus is god, however whenever they start describe God and Jesus in one sentence they will seperate the two entity to make sense of it.

 

However if they look back at what they are saying, and instead of try using God instead Jesus or vice versa, one can see how weird it starts to sound like. Below are two of my example with the filter.

 

http://forums.jewsforjesus.org/showthread.php?tid=9

 

Jesus Christ from Nazareth is the glory of Israel. Jesus is the pride and joy of Israel. If anyone deserves a pat on the back, it’s him. God Himself says that He is well please with His boy. What an honor, what more could anyone hope for than to have the acceptance and glory of God bestowed on you? Christ’s spirit existed before Christ came in the flesh. He was in heaven, and was sent by God to the lost sheep of Israel. The lost sheep of Israel that were “found” as he was sent, to gather from the four corners of the earth, all those that would be passed over through faith in the Christ.

 

Is now translated as

 

God from Nazareth is the glory of Israel. God is the pride and joy of Israel. If anyone deserves a pat on the back, it’s God. God Himself says that He is well please with Himself. What an honor, what more could anyone hope for than to have the acceptance and glory of God bestowed on you?God's spirit existed before God came in the flesh. God was in heaven, and was sent by himelf to the lost sheep of Israel. The lost sheep of Israel that were “found” as God was sent, to gather from the four corners of the earth, all those that would be passed over through faith in God.

 

Perhaps the most absurd one IMHO is the following

 

The need is for us so that we can have access to God. Y’shua came as one of us so that the debt of the likes of us could be taken away and eliminated so that we can have fellowship withb God.

 

Translation.

 

The need is for us so that we can have access to God. God came as one of us so that the debt of the likes of us could be taken away and eliminated so that we can have fellowship with him.

 

In short God sent himself so that he can mediate with himself on behalf of the people.

 

The Trinity sounds really confusing to me, when compared to what bible says about Jesus and God. I find the JW approach treating Jesus as a seperate entity more logical.

 

That was my 2 cents on this part.

 

you are right, it is very confusing. i have always looked at it as 3 seperate entities. somewhat like different roles of God. how he transforms himself to do what he wants. but it is very confusing. why would God pray himself. this is why i look at it as seperate roles. as playing the role of the son, this is what he would do. but what it all boils down to, is that if you believe Jesus is God, you have to have some trinitarian approach, or it creates more than one God to worship.

[freeday]

notblindedbytheblight:

 

i have been very reluctant and skeptical of historical facts of Jesus. it is starting to add up now. i just always wonder, why would someone make that shit up. just for political power. this just doesn't seem right to me yet. i will do some searching on it. but this weekend i am going to the preseason colts game, so i don't think i will have time to look stuff up. will look monday if i have time. hope you get to feeling better.

[freeday]

1 corrinthians 3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Peter,

 

this is a letter from paul that dates back to 55 ad, supposedly before the gospells. i think this contradicts what was said in the 1st paragraph. i would take this a literal and not allagoric.

[Sawu]

in john thomas the desciple states to Jesus "My Lord and my God!"

 

How is this proof of Jesus being God. Thomas is crying out in excitement. Kind of like us saying "Oh my God".

 

If it is proof of Jesus divinity, then it is vague proof

 

and look right below verses, what does it say?

 

30Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. 31But these are written that you may[a] believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

 

If there was any place for John to outrightly say that Jesus was God, it was here, by saying "Jesus is the Christ, God himself" or something or that sort.

 

Anyways, Freeday I am quite happy to see you looking at the Gospel with a open idea, and admitting that it is not obvious about Jesus divinity. Now hopefully you can understand the JW position or the catholic position of relying on tradition to interpretate scripture.

 

i wasn't saying that any one thing offers indesputable proof, i was just saying that when it is all looked at, it is easy to read and say that Jesus is God. i do like your spin on it, haven't seen it in that light yet. maybe that was a saying they used back in the day that is similiar to our OMG saying.

 

oh by the way, love the sig.

 

Unfortunately the bible disagree's:

 

Numbers 23:19 is plain enough: "God is not a man, that He should lie; neither the son of man, that He should repent."

 

1 Samuel 15:19, "The strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for He is not a man, that He should repent."

 

Christ's claim to be god is falsified by the old testament itself, christ was a son of man, yet here it clearly states that god is not a man. You can't believe one or the other, and since the "sciptures" in paul and christ's time were just the old testament, such a major doctrine would have already been hammered out in the old testament.

[NotBlinded]

1 corrinthians 3For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance[a]: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, 5and that he appeared to Peter,

 

this is a letter from paul that dates back to 55 ad, supposedly before the gospells. i think this contradicts what was said in the 1st paragraph. i would take this a literal and not allagoric.

I'm not quite sure that would contradict that paragraph. Paul obviously was of the understanding of original sin, so he thought that people were born sinful. The 'sins' of the people is what killed Jesus. He died because of their blindness to God. They would not have killed him if they would have listened to Jesus. This is where he dies for 'our' sins. His resurrection was told about the only way a follower of the Jewish religion knew how. He used the Bible and the language of the time to tell the experience he had.

 

Paul had an experience and tried to put it to words. Notice how all writers after Paul try to take what he said and work it into their own understanding. Paul has Jesus being with God at the ressurection. Mark takes that and moves it to the Baptism by John. Jesus was now God at Baptism. Matthew comes along and moves it to the conception. Jesus was now God before birth. Jesus couldn't be the clean, sacrifical lamb coming from the act of sex, so Mary becomes a virgin. When it was discovered that women also contribute to the forming of the child (18th century), the church gives Mary a status of being born from a virgin. Also, Paul never met Jesus, so he was basing his understanding off the stories of other followers and his personal vision.

 

Can you see the progression of the story as if falls into other people's hands? Paul saw and felt something he tried to tell about and people backfilled the information in order to make it fit in their minds and undertanding of the only religion they knew. Paul also did this. His God was the god of Israel and when he spoke of being with God or Jesus rising to be with God, he did this with the understanding that god was in the top layer (the sky) of a three-tiered universe. Jesus wasn't joined with God until he was resurrected by God to join God in the sky. What he experienced, he spoke about the only way he knew.

 

Paul knew that what was in Jesus was in all people. They only had to hear and understand what Jesus had to say.

 

To my knowledge, 1 Thessalonians is the oldest letter Paul wrote. I just read through it and it is compatable with God and Jesus being separate. Paul did not see them as being one other than in knowing that Jesus had accessed his connection to God.

 

What is very important when reading the bible is to understand, the best we can, the time, place and understandings of the people writing it. We can't take the entire thing and try to put it together in a coherent way, because it can't be done. It can't be read in ignorance and then expect to walk away with the truth. We have to understand the chain of events that led to each person's story. We have to understand when it was wrote and what they believed when they wrote it. We have to understand that they are just stories as seen through the eyes of the ones that read a prior story and based their story on what they understood someone else's story to be. We have to understand that they are just stories.

 

If it is possible to remove all the additions by believers, then the real essence of who Jesus was and what he stood for comes to light. If we can understand that when Jesus appeared to the disciples after death and proclaimed that Jesus lives as being a story about what they felt after he died and his teachings were alive in these men (they didn't die with Jesus), then the story has a profound understanding. The words used to describe this event was told the best way they knew how and others interpreted it in a different way. When words are put to feelings, they degrade the feeling. Especially when the words are mistaken for the feelings.

[freeday]

notblindedbytheblight:

 

sorry it has taken so long for me to respond. have been real busy hear lately. i read through 1 thes agian. i have not looked to confirm that it is thought to be the oldest of pauls, but i trust you. in reading it, you continously notice that paul separates God the father and our Lord Jesus Christ. the letter is very vague. either he kept it short and to the point on purpose, or he didn't have a full understanding of Jesus. this would suggest you are right. when people first hear of the good news, they want to spread it. sometimes without having a full understanding of it.

 

just asking. he continously uses the adjective Lord before Jesus. do you have any clue of what the meaning of this word was in that time. this might help us out. i tried searching but couldn't find it. i will say in the new testament, there are hundreds of verses were Lord is reffering to God.

[Legion]

I don't know if his is an appropriate thread to post this. I am a part-time collector of triads and trinities. Here are a few that I have found so far...

 

Christian Trinity: Holy Spirit Father Son

Hindu Triad: Vishnu Brahma Shiva

national power: political economic military

U.S. government: legislative judicial executive

Freud: id superego ego

biology: genes metabolism membranes

human identities: sexual ideal social

 

If any of you guys have any others, I would love to hear about them.

[NotBlinded]

I don't know if his is an appropriate thread to post this. I am a part-time collector of triads and trinities. Here are a few that I have found so far...

 

Christian Trinity: Holy Spirit Father Son

Hindu Triad: Vishnu Brahma Shiva

national power: political economic military

U.S. government: legislative judicial executive

Freud: id superego ego

biology: genes metabolism membranes

human identities: sexual ideal social

 

If any of you guys have any others, I would love to hear about them.

I have one more...

 

Cause, medium and effect.

[NotBlinded]

notblindedbytheblight:

 

sorry it has taken so long for me to respond. have been real busy hear lately. i read through 1 thes agian. i have not looked to confirm that it is thought to be the oldest of pauls, but i trust you. in reading it, you continously notice that paul separates God the father and our Lord Jesus Christ. the letter is very vague. either he kept it short and to the point on purpose, or he didn't have a full understanding of Jesus. this would suggest you are right. when people first hear of the good news, they want to spread it. sometimes without having a full understanding of it.

 

just asking. he continously uses the adjective Lord before Jesus. do you have any clue of what the meaning of this word was in that time. this might help us out. i tried searching but couldn't find it. i will say in the new testament, there are hundreds of verses were Lord is reffering to God.

I'm not sure. It could have pagan origins or he could be using it as in reference to 'master' or 'ruler'.

 

 

I'm still looking.

 

 

Ohhhh....read this:

 

Jesus: King and Lord

The question of Paul's Christology has regularly been raised in terms of whether or not Paul thought Jesus was "divine", and if so in what sense. This is important, but not more important than the prior question: did Paul think that Jesus was Messiah, and did he make this thematic in his theology?

 

For generations now the received wisdom has been that Jesus' Messiahship plays little or no role in Paul's thinking. Granted, he uses the word Christos all the time, but most have reckoned that it had become for him a mere proper name, with only one or two occurrences, such as Romans 9.5, where the old Jewish meaning peeped out of hiding. This essentially dejudaized reading of Paul's use of Christos gained its apparent force from a history-of-religions argument, explicit or implicit: since Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles, and since the Gentile world was looking for a cult-figure, a Kyrios, a Lord, there would have been no interest in a Jewish Messiah, and Paul himself had in any case left far behind such Jewish notions, bound up as they were with a narrow ethnocentric theology. 5 Alternatively, it is easy to suggest that, because the notion of messiahship carried overtones of violent military struggle, Paul wanted nothing to do with it.

 

I have argued elsewhere that this construal is entirely wrong. 6 It makes better sense of passage after passage to understand Christos as specifically "Messiah", the king of Israel, who sums up his people in himself, so that what is true of him is true of them.

 

What the older history-of-religions argument failed to reckon with was the Jewish understanding that, precisely because of Israel's status within the purposes of the creator god, Israel's king was always supposed to be the world's true king. "His dominion shall be from one sea to the other; from the River to the ends of the earth" (Ps. 72.8). 7 "The root of Jesse shall rise to rule the nations; in him shall the nations hope" (Isa. 11.10, cited Rom. 15.12). Paul endorsed this train of thought, and he believed it to have been fulfilled in Jesus. He knew, of course, that Jesus was very different from the other Messiahs who flit through first-century history, but it is precisely part of the characteristic tension of his whole theology to claim that this crucified Jesus was and is the Jewish Messiah promised in scripture. Nor was this a hindrance to the Gentile mission, but rather its starting-point. What the Gentiles needed and longed for, whether they knew it or not, was the Jewish Messiah, who would bring the just and peaceful rule of the true God to bear on the whole world.

 

Romans 15.12, where the Isaiah passage just mentioned is quoted, is in fact right at the final climax of the long argument of Romans. This is often ignored, partly because Romans 12-16 often receive short shrift from expositors already exhausted by the previous eleven chapters, but also because of the assumption that Messiahship is irrelevant to Paul's theology. The quotation, however, closes the enormous circle that began with Romans 1.3-4, where Paul looks for all the world as though he is giving a deliberate summary of what his "gospel" actually contains.

 

This passage, too, is often marginalised, and for a similar reason: expositors are eager to get into what has been seen as the real meat of Paul's argument, and the fact that the passage is so obviously messianic has caused it to be set aside by those who suppose Paul to have been uninterested in messianism. On the face of it, though, the text appears to summarize what Paul means by "the gospel", and at its heart we find the Davidic Messiahship of Jesus. The phrase "son of God", though pregnant with other overtones too, has Davidic Messiahship as its primary meaning, with echoes of Psalm 2.7 and 2 Samuel 7.14 in the back ground. The resurrection has installed Jesus of Nazareth as the Messiah of Israel, and therefore also the Lord to whose allegiance the world is now summoned. That is the burden of his song, the thrust of his euangelion. However scandalous to Jews and foolish to Gentiles, this is the royal announcement that, from Paul's point of view, fulfils the prophecies of scripture, and subverts the imperial gospel of Caesar. I propose that this reading of Romans 1.3-4, though always in fact exegetically the most likely, receives substantial support when we set it in the wider context of Paul's gospel seen as a royal proclamation aimed at challenging other royal proclamations.

 

If Jesus is Messiah, he is of course also Lord, Kyrios. The proper contexts for this term, too, are its Jewish roots on the one hand and its pagan challenge on the other. Taking them the other way round for the moment: the main challenge of the term, I suggest, was not to the world of private cults or mystery-religions, where one might be initiated into membership of a group giving allegiance to some religious "lord". The main challenge was to the lordship of Caesar, which, though certainly "political" was also profoundly "religious". Caesar demanded worship as well as "secular" obedience; not just taxes, but sacrifices. He was well on the way to becoming the supreme divinity in the Greco-Roman world, maintaining his vast empire not simply by force, though there was of course plenty of that, but by the development of a flourishing religion that seemed to be trumping most others either by absorption or by greater attraction. Caesar, by being a servant of the state, had provided justice and peace to the whole world. He was therefore to be hailed as Lord, and trusted as Savior. This is the world in which Paul announced that Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, was Savior and Lord. 8

 

We shall presently examine a key passage, Philippians 3.20f., in which that claim is made in all its starkness. We must note here the Jewish context within which Paul uses the word "lord" of Jesus. At one level, he is drawing on the biblical portrait of the truly human one. In 1 Corinthians 15.25-8, he combines Psalm110.1 and Psalm 8.7 in order to predicate of Jesus the Messiah that which Psalm 8 says of the human being. God has put all things under the feet of the human figure; so too of the Jewish Messiah. But the Lordship that Jesus has thereby attained is not simply that promised to humans in the beginning. In several passages, when Paul ascribes Lordship to Jesus, using of course the word Kyrios, he has in mind the Septuagintal use of the word in place of the unsayable Tetragrammaton,YHWH. 9 One of the best examples is in Philippians 2, where Paul declares, through a deliberate quotation of Isaiah, that what YHWH had claimed as unique was now shared with Jesus. "To me, me alone," says YHWH, "every knee shall bow, every tongue swear". Maybe, says Paul, but now "at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow." 10

 

Paul's most frequent language for Jesus, then, remained rooted in his Jewish traditions, asserting on the one hand that Jesus was the Messiah, long promised in the prophetic scriptures, bringing Israel's destiny to its god-ordained climax, and on the other that Jesus was Lord, both in the sense that he had embodied God's appointed destiny for the human race and in the sense that in him Israel's unique God had become personally present, accomplishing that which in scripture only God can accomplish. Simultaneously, and precisely because of the inner dynamic of just this Jewish tradition, Paul was announcing that Jesus was the true King of Israel and hence the true Lord of the world, at exactly the time in history, and over exactly the geographical spread, where the Roman emperor was being proclaimed, in what styled itself a "gospel", in very similar terms. The mainstream Jewish monotheistic critique of paganism, of all its idolatry and immorality, found in Paul's day a more focussed target, and in Paul's theology a sharper weapon.

 

From here: http://www.ctinquiry.org/publications/wright.htm Paul's Gospel and Caesar's Empire

 

This is a must-read!