When I interact with people, I have one goal, Jesus's goal. The word "convert" should simply mean "turn", and people being turned to God the Father is a good thing
That's what I thought all along. Thanks for confirming.
I'm not saying I agree. To me this is exactly what the empire did not long after Jesus's death. And in the 4th century under Constantine, Church's transformation was complete. A movement that began as Jewish resistance to Rome, became Rome's official religion. A teacher who preached against wealth and power, became the spiritual justification for a hierarchical church that accumulated vast wealth and power. A message about inner transformation, became a message about institutional obedience.
If your pursuit of truth leads you to Islam, your keen grasp of issues will reveal to you the issues with Islam too
The Ebianites who believed Jesus was a human prophet, not divine, who continued to follow Jewish law, and who rejected Paul theology were declared heretics. Same thing happened later to the Marcionites, also declared heretics. Their texts were destroyed. Their communities were suppressed. James the Just who led the Jerusalem community for decades, was written out of the story in the NT. He barely appears. Paul is a hero, James is a footnote. The Ebianites eventually left Jerusalem. Some went to Arabia where their ideas influenced the development of Islam. If you read the Quran carefully, you'll see every slight influence. Jesus is revered as a prophet. He's not divine. He didn't die on a cross. He taught submission to God. The kingdom of God is both spiritual and political. So in a way, the original Jesus movement survived, but not as Christianity. It survived as a threat within Islam.
Later we have Medina in Arabia. There is a prophet Muhammad who is promising religious tolerance for all. All can practice their faith in peace. So it makes sense for a lot of these Jews, not all of them but a lot of them to join this early movement. At this point Islam Muslim is not a distinct religion. All these people are called believers because Muhammad himself is the final messenger of God. Abraham was the first. Then you had Moses. Then you have Jesus and now Muhammad is the very last. So all these three different traditions, the Christian tradition, the Jewish tradition and the Islamic tradition in the beginning were all just one religion, one idea which is to bring God to earth and make everyone understand that God is the true God. To create monotheism on earth, that's the origin of this new religion of Islam. And this is the constitution of Medina which is in the Quran and which we know to be historically true.
"God, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus are separate but equal": I understand your confusion seeing as the church doctrine is that they are not separate.
I'm not the only one confused by this church doctrine. This is the kind of logical paradox that has caused theological debates for 2,000 years, and we still don't have a clear answer. So, remember before the Council of Nicaea in 325, societies were paganistic or polytheistic. Then with emperor Constantine God became the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity is the weirdest idea in human history. The Holy Trinity is this; God is nothing and everything. And what this means is God is both real and not real. God is a symbol and reality itself. And because of this idea, people are now forced to think abstractly about the world. And it gives rise to money, nation state and science. Serves perfectly the imperial interests.
A movement that began as Jewish resistance to Rome
You seem to think of the Zealots, not the Christians.
A message about inner transformation
You seem to think that people turning to God the Father isn't about inner transformation. I didn't say "according to hierarchy", I implied only God the Father can judge.
The Ebianites who believed Jesus was a human prophet, not divine ... were declared heretics
Yeah. Christianity was all about Jesus being divine, they just didn't have a chance to produce an analytical formulation of it all at one time for 300 years. According to the gnostics, Jesus was divine too, and showed us the way to be partakers of divinity (as Peter says). If our goal is to be divine, of course Jesus also was divine in some sense. The student doesn't surpass the teacher, it suffices that the student be like the teacher. That just leaves us to understand what it meant for him to partake of the Spirit beyond measure.
If you read the Quran carefully, you'll see every slight influence. Jesus is revered as a prophet. He's not divine. He didn't die on a cross.
All Christians agreed Jesus died on a cross, as do all historians based on the hostile testimonies to that fact. Muhammad retconned a Jesus who didn't die on the cross, which I doubt the Ebionites ever concieved. He couldn't bear that Jesus was a good guy but that he came to die, so he invented some ahistorical narrative that was good enough Arabic that forced recitation of it carried it through the Dark Ages and across the continent. If you want the original Jesus, you look at all the historical facts, and you don't seize upon a minority report just for being the minority; you weigh everything and infer the best explanation, the one that fits all the facts.
There is a prophet Muhammad who is promising religious tolerance for all.
Not what Muhammad did.
one idea which is to bring God to earth and make everyone understand that God is the true God.
If that were Islam, it wouldn't be objectionable. That's why I said to a different account, I don't think Islam means what you think it means.
we still don't have a clear answer.
You can get any clear answer to any question you ask on the subject. I know because I did. First, don't add things: the term "separate but equal" is not theological but comes from Jefferson. Then, go to the text: Jesus says he and the Father are two witnesses; John says the Spirit is a witness; and Moses says the testimony of three witnesses is one. That's all you need. If you recognize other paradoxes, you will recognize the most central paradox that unity always contains duality and duality always contains unity. You are one and you have many faculties and you see no paradox in this.
But instead you change paradox to contradiction. To say God is unity in one sense and diversity in a different sense is paradox, a good thing that teaches us nuance. To say God is nothing and everything in the same sense is contradiction, a conversation stopper that nobody proposes seriously. Your implication that the one leads to the other is illogical. We can criticize hierarchy and empire just fine without charging them with teaching contradiction when they don't.
No. That's not correct. The Gnostics were in agreement with the “proto-orthodox” Christians of their time about many things concerning Jesus. They saw him as an extension of God that had existed before the world was made, and who came to earth on a divine mission to bring salvation to humankind. But the Gnostics and the proto-orthodox disagreed with each other on several points including the nature of his being. And here we could also include the degree to which Jesus was a unique being rather than a model for others to follow. The Gnostics believe the whole purpose of Christ’s coming to earth had been to impart gnosis to people by awakening them to their true, divine nature, which had been covered over by the material world and forgotten. There is support for these views even in the canonical gospel of Luke, "And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." - Luk 17:20-21
We discovered at Nag Hammadi 13 leather-bound papyrus codices, over 50 texts, the voice of Jesus that had been silenced for over a millennium. What these texts reveal is simple, dangerously simple. The divine is not located somewhere else. And that includes Jesus himself. The divine is accessible where you are. There is a piece of the source expressing through you. The Gnostics called it the divine spark. A fragment of the original light not trapped in your body like a prisoner but radiating through your body like light through a window. The window is not the light. But without the window, the light does not enter the room. The church cannot teach you this because if you know how to access the divine directly, you do not need a building to find it. You do not need an ordained intermediary. You do not need to pay, confess, or beg anyone for permission to connect with what was always accessible.
All Christians agreed Jesus died on a cross, as do all historians
Not all. For instance Bart Ehrman disagrees. According to him "We don't know. we don't have any eyewitness accounts of Jesus dying on the cross. We have records that are from probably 40 to 60 years later. Our first author who mentions Jesus is the Apostle Paul and he's writing in the 50s. Jesus died around the year 30. So, the first time we have Jesus mentioned in any source is about 20 years after his death.". Ehrman also mentions the first depiction of Jesus, a drawing: Donkey-Headed Jesus in Ancient Roman Graffiti, is from late second or early third century. He continues by saying "And it's a much debated thing. People say they know what it is, but in fact, it's debated among experts what it actually represent. It's clearly Jesus on the cross with a donkey's head, and a a graffiti next to it. But no, it's much later. So the first reference to Jesus at all would our our first Christian writing is the book of first Thessalonians and it's usually dated to the year 49 or 50. Jesus died around the year 30. So it's about 20 years later.".
So we're told that the Romans crucified Jesus. We don't know why. We are told that the Romans killed Jesus. And crucifixion is when the Romans nail you onto a wooden cross. And it's an awful way to die because how you're dying is actually not through the bleeding. You got nails hammered to the cross. You're dying because you have no energy. So your head hangs low, which means you're suffocating slowly. And it takes about 3 days for you to suffocate to death. And so this is like one of the worst punishments that the Romans could ever inflict on you. And really there's only two sets of people that the Romans will use crucifixion as punishment. The first type are thieves and bandits. These are considered like the lowest type of people. The second type of people are rebels. People who are trying to overthrow the Roman state. So Jesus, in other words, was probably a rebel or the Romans considered him a rebel. But, neither is correct. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor couldn't find any fault in Jesus and didn't want to even kill him. Let alone agree to his crucifixion. So, I beg to disagree.
They saw him as an extension of God that had existed before the world was made, and who came to earth on a divine mission to bring salvation to humankind.
Like I said, he was divine, I suppose "extension of God" is orthodox enough. You are right that there were quibbles about the details.
And here we could also include the degree to which Jesus was a unique being rather than a model for others to follow.
Again, you're implying more than you say. If Jesus was a model that makes him unique by definition. The quibble is over the type of uniqueness, which you're not defining or defending.
The divine is not located somewhere else. And that includes Jesus himself. The divine is accessible where you are.
The divine is both Self and Other. To say I'm divine in a way Jesus isn't would contradict everything taught by every historical source, except a couple megalomaniacs. The fact that I'm divine logically entails that my model is divine in the same way. Plus, I am one with him. If you get around to stating the specifics you object to about Jesus's uniqueness, that would help.
Of course I could try to help you by guessing. You probably object to the formula "Jesus is God" because, while often usable, it's so simplified that it omits important doctrine that can get imbalanced by the omission. Now it's my belief that any attribute of deity is shared by Yahweh-Jehovah and Yeshua-Jesus, either as the same attribute in unity or as poles of a spectrum in duality. Would you object to that more technical definition? Is there something of the Father that is not of the Son, other than the Father-Son polarities themselves?
Bart Ehrman says, "I no longer go to church, no longer believe, no longer consider myself a Christian." I spoke of Christians.
1 Corinthians 15 is generally taken by scholars as evidence that a fixed oral creedal statement about Jesus's death, burial and resurrection, was "received" and circulating by 35-38 AD. Further, Jesus was tried by the Sanhedrin, which kept records, and those records were inferably used in compiling the Talmudic passage on the subject, Sanhedrin 43a; so that passage is evidence that documents were written immediately about Jesus's trial and death and were later expanded into the Talmudic form. Further, Pilate's notice was definitely written while Jesus was alive: "This is Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." That should probably be upheld as the most straightforward datable written document on the subject, quoted by all four evangelists, citing the original legal inscription.
We do know why Rome crucified Jesus, as Tacitus and Josephus and the Talmud agree: as a rebel against Caesar. The accused were executed with a public sign of their crimes, for the illiterate: thieves were crucified with empty moneybags, and rebels with crowns of thorns. The inscription further informed the literate. There's no doubt among the records. But the gospels add a further element of tension, which by its nuance indicates a mark of reliable history: namely that Pilate was afraid to convict Jesus formally (partly fearful for his wife's threats against him) but committed the quasilegal display of washing his hands to abdicate his authority and to devolve it to the crowd's wishes. Pilate technically agreed to the crucifixion by silence; he engaged the positive action of delivering Jesus to the soldiers, who knew what the crowd wanted and knew what Pilate was implying by his silence, namely that it was on them rather than on him.
There is no contemporary narrative where Jesus wasn't crucified. However, Muhammad had a vision 600 years later (since we're talking dates) that Jesus wasn't crucified, and convinced people of that (even though I'm told Islam permits Muslims who believe he was crucified). If one wants to take that approach, one is no longer learning from history but from spirit visions in a cave (almost Plato's) by a guy who took full advantage of lax child-marriage laws. His coalition is not held together by logic and reason but by force and fear. If you're interested in pleasing that group because of some ambiguous promise (such as the one about virgins, or maybe raisins), I would submit it's not the fullest, most rational approach to take, as there's much evidence that it will turn on you. But accepting Jesus for who he says he is, neither more nor less, is what unites you with him and protects you from all threats of all institutions (Rome included). Since you seem to be a truth pursuer, I trust you will see that creating a storyline about Jesus not being crucified is not pursuit of truth but merely upholding yet another narrative created to defend a group of people going their own way: the real pursuit of truth, like Jesus, affirms reality and rejects althist, because truth is greater than group cohesion and is in fact the only source of group cohesion.
If Jesus was a model that makes him unique by definition
Yeah, we have totally different definitions of "model" in this context. To me Jesus identified himself as the representative of humanity, the fully realized human being, the prototype of what humanity can become. Let me explain, I think I mentioned this before, but anyway... Jesus frequently uses a word to refer to himself in Aramaic as "Bar Nasha" or "bar enash". And this also appears throughout the canonical gospels. This has been translated as son of man. In English, it sounds like a claim to humanity, perhaps a humble counterpoint to son of God. Scholars have debated its meaning for centuries, spinning elaborate theological explanations. But in Aramaic, Jesus called himself Barnasha. And Barnasha doesn't mean son of man in the genealogical sense. It's an idiom that means the human being. Or more accurately, the human one, the representative of humanity, the fully realized human being, the prototype of what humanity can become. My point, Jesus wasn't claiming to be uniquely divine in a way that separated him from the rest of humanity. He was claiming to be fully human in a way that revealed what all humans could become. He was the pattern, the template, the demonstration model. When he said the barna has authority to forgive sins, he wasn't claiming exclusive divine power. He was demonstrating human potential when fully aligned with the divine. This understanding transforms the entire gospel message. Every time Jesus said Barnasha, he was pointing to human potential, not divine exclusivity.
You probably object to the formula "Jesus is God" because
Now it's my belief that any attribute of deity is shared by Yahweh-Jehovah and Yeshua-Jesus
It's your belief and that's fine. It's not mine.
Bart Ehrman says, "I no longer go to church, no longer believe, no longer consider myself a Christian."
That's exactly my experience and I didn't even know of Bart Ehrman when I decided to stop going to church. Today Bart Ehrman calls himself a historian of early Christianity. That's one of the main reasons I decided to look into his work.
We do know why Rome crucified Jesus, as Tacitus and Josephus and the Talmud agree: as a rebel against Caesar
Rome saw Jesus as someone who was threatening their power, their authority, their control over the region. Whether Jesus actually was trying to start a rebellion or whether the Romans just perceived him that way, we don't know.
But accepting Jesus for who he says he is, neither more nor less, is what unites you with him and protects you from all threats of all institutions (Rome included).
This sounds like a statement from Hebron Los Angeles Christian Mission. Their Mission Statement: “To share Jesus’s call and true path with all people willing to follow him.”. This church has placed its mission statement on its website’s home page next to its welcome message. Visitors don’t struggle to find the church’s purpose and get a feel for the organization immediately. Language like “Jesus is calling us to walk closer to him” is beautiful. It probably works on some people.
That's what I thought all along. Thanks for confirming.
I'm not saying I agree. To me this is exactly what the empire did not long after Jesus's death. And in the 4th century under Constantine, Church's transformation was complete. A movement that began as Jewish resistance to Rome, became Rome's official religion. A teacher who preached against wealth and power, became the spiritual justification for a hierarchical church that accumulated vast wealth and power. A message about inner transformation, became a message about institutional obedience.
The Ebianites who believed Jesus was a human prophet, not divine, who continued to follow Jewish law, and who rejected Paul theology were declared heretics. Same thing happened later to the Marcionites, also declared heretics. Their texts were destroyed. Their communities were suppressed. James the Just who led the Jerusalem community for decades, was written out of the story in the NT. He barely appears. Paul is a hero, James is a footnote. The Ebianites eventually left Jerusalem. Some went to Arabia where their ideas influenced the development of Islam. If you read the Quran carefully, you'll see every slight influence. Jesus is revered as a prophet. He's not divine. He didn't die on a cross. He taught submission to God. The kingdom of God is both spiritual and political. So in a way, the original Jesus movement survived, but not as Christianity. It survived as a threat within Islam.
Later we have Medina in Arabia. There is a prophet Muhammad who is promising religious tolerance for all. All can practice their faith in peace. So it makes sense for a lot of these Jews, not all of them but a lot of them to join this early movement. At this point Islam Muslim is not a distinct religion. All these people are called believers because Muhammad himself is the final messenger of God. Abraham was the first. Then you had Moses. Then you have Jesus and now Muhammad is the very last. So all these three different traditions, the Christian tradition, the Jewish tradition and the Islamic tradition in the beginning were all just one religion, one idea which is to bring God to earth and make everyone understand that God is the true God. To create monotheism on earth, that's the origin of this new religion of Islam. And this is the constitution of Medina which is in the Quran and which we know to be historically true.
I'm not the only one confused by this church doctrine. This is the kind of logical paradox that has caused theological debates for 2,000 years, and we still don't have a clear answer. So, remember before the Council of Nicaea in 325, societies were paganistic or polytheistic. Then with emperor Constantine God became the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity is the weirdest idea in human history. The Holy Trinity is this; God is nothing and everything. And what this means is God is both real and not real. God is a symbol and reality itself. And because of this idea, people are now forced to think abstractly about the world. And it gives rise to money, nation state and science. Serves perfectly the imperial interests.
You seem to think of the Zealots, not the Christians.
You seem to think that people turning to God the Father isn't about inner transformation. I didn't say "according to hierarchy", I implied only God the Father can judge.
Yeah. Christianity was all about Jesus being divine, they just didn't have a chance to produce an analytical formulation of it all at one time for 300 years. According to the gnostics, Jesus was divine too, and showed us the way to be partakers of divinity (as Peter says). If our goal is to be divine, of course Jesus also was divine in some sense. The student doesn't surpass the teacher, it suffices that the student be like the teacher. That just leaves us to understand what it meant for him to partake of the Spirit beyond measure.
All Christians agreed Jesus died on a cross, as do all historians based on the hostile testimonies to that fact. Muhammad retconned a Jesus who didn't die on the cross, which I doubt the Ebionites ever concieved. He couldn't bear that Jesus was a good guy but that he came to die, so he invented some ahistorical narrative that was good enough Arabic that forced recitation of it carried it through the Dark Ages and across the continent. If you want the original Jesus, you look at all the historical facts, and you don't seize upon a minority report just for being the minority; you weigh everything and infer the best explanation, the one that fits all the facts.
Not what Muhammad did.
If that were Islam, it wouldn't be objectionable. That's why I said to a different account, I don't think Islam means what you think it means.
You can get any clear answer to any question you ask on the subject. I know because I did. First, don't add things: the term "separate but equal" is not theological but comes from Jefferson. Then, go to the text: Jesus says he and the Father are two witnesses; John says the Spirit is a witness; and Moses says the testimony of three witnesses is one. That's all you need. If you recognize other paradoxes, you will recognize the most central paradox that unity always contains duality and duality always contains unity. You are one and you have many faculties and you see no paradox in this.
But instead you change paradox to contradiction. To say God is unity in one sense and diversity in a different sense is paradox, a good thing that teaches us nuance. To say God is nothing and everything in the same sense is contradiction, a conversation stopper that nobody proposes seriously. Your implication that the one leads to the other is illogical. We can criticize hierarchy and empire just fine without charging them with teaching contradiction when they don't.
No. That's not correct. The Gnostics were in agreement with the “proto-orthodox” Christians of their time about many things concerning Jesus. They saw him as an extension of God that had existed before the world was made, and who came to earth on a divine mission to bring salvation to humankind. But the Gnostics and the proto-orthodox disagreed with each other on several points including the nature of his being. And here we could also include the degree to which Jesus was a unique being rather than a model for others to follow. The Gnostics believe the whole purpose of Christ’s coming to earth had been to impart gnosis to people by awakening them to their true, divine nature, which had been covered over by the material world and forgotten. There is support for these views even in the canonical gospel of Luke, "And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you." - Luk 17:20-21
We discovered at Nag Hammadi 13 leather-bound papyrus codices, over 50 texts, the voice of Jesus that had been silenced for over a millennium. What these texts reveal is simple, dangerously simple. The divine is not located somewhere else. And that includes Jesus himself. The divine is accessible where you are. There is a piece of the source expressing through you. The Gnostics called it the divine spark. A fragment of the original light not trapped in your body like a prisoner but radiating through your body like light through a window. The window is not the light. But without the window, the light does not enter the room. The church cannot teach you this because if you know how to access the divine directly, you do not need a building to find it. You do not need an ordained intermediary. You do not need to pay, confess, or beg anyone for permission to connect with what was always accessible.
Not all. For instance Bart Ehrman disagrees. According to him "We don't know. we don't have any eyewitness accounts of Jesus dying on the cross. We have records that are from probably 40 to 60 years later. Our first author who mentions Jesus is the Apostle Paul and he's writing in the 50s. Jesus died around the year 30. So, the first time we have Jesus mentioned in any source is about 20 years after his death.". Ehrman also mentions the first depiction of Jesus, a drawing: Donkey-Headed Jesus in Ancient Roman Graffiti, is from late second or early third century. He continues by saying "And it's a much debated thing. People say they know what it is, but in fact, it's debated among experts what it actually represent. It's clearly Jesus on the cross with a donkey's head, and a a graffiti next to it. But no, it's much later. So the first reference to Jesus at all would our our first Christian writing is the book of first Thessalonians and it's usually dated to the year 49 or 50. Jesus died around the year 30. So it's about 20 years later.".
So we're told that the Romans crucified Jesus. We don't know why. We are told that the Romans killed Jesus. And crucifixion is when the Romans nail you onto a wooden cross. And it's an awful way to die because how you're dying is actually not through the bleeding. You got nails hammered to the cross. You're dying because you have no energy. So your head hangs low, which means you're suffocating slowly. And it takes about 3 days for you to suffocate to death. And so this is like one of the worst punishments that the Romans could ever inflict on you. And really there's only two sets of people that the Romans will use crucifixion as punishment. The first type are thieves and bandits. These are considered like the lowest type of people. The second type of people are rebels. People who are trying to overthrow the Roman state. So Jesus, in other words, was probably a rebel or the Romans considered him a rebel. But, neither is correct. Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor couldn't find any fault in Jesus and didn't want to even kill him. Let alone agree to his crucifixion. So, I beg to disagree.
Like I said, he was divine, I suppose "extension of God" is orthodox enough. You are right that there were quibbles about the details.
Again, you're implying more than you say. If Jesus was a model that makes him unique by definition. The quibble is over the type of uniqueness, which you're not defining or defending.
The divine is both Self and Other. To say I'm divine in a way Jesus isn't would contradict everything taught by every historical source, except a couple megalomaniacs. The fact that I'm divine logically entails that my model is divine in the same way. Plus, I am one with him. If you get around to stating the specifics you object to about Jesus's uniqueness, that would help.
Of course I could try to help you by guessing. You probably object to the formula "Jesus is God" because, while often usable, it's so simplified that it omits important doctrine that can get imbalanced by the omission. Now it's my belief that any attribute of deity is shared by Yahweh-Jehovah and Yeshua-Jesus, either as the same attribute in unity or as poles of a spectrum in duality. Would you object to that more technical definition? Is there something of the Father that is not of the Son, other than the Father-Son polarities themselves?
Bart Ehrman says, "I no longer go to church, no longer believe, no longer consider myself a Christian." I spoke of Christians.
1 Corinthians 15 is generally taken by scholars as evidence that a fixed oral creedal statement about Jesus's death, burial and resurrection, was "received" and circulating by 35-38 AD. Further, Jesus was tried by the Sanhedrin, which kept records, and those records were inferably used in compiling the Talmudic passage on the subject, Sanhedrin 43a; so that passage is evidence that documents were written immediately about Jesus's trial and death and were later expanded into the Talmudic form. Further, Pilate's notice was definitely written while Jesus was alive: "This is Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." That should probably be upheld as the most straightforward datable written document on the subject, quoted by all four evangelists, citing the original legal inscription.
We do know why Rome crucified Jesus, as Tacitus and Josephus and the Talmud agree: as a rebel against Caesar. The accused were executed with a public sign of their crimes, for the illiterate: thieves were crucified with empty moneybags, and rebels with crowns of thorns. The inscription further informed the literate. There's no doubt among the records. But the gospels add a further element of tension, which by its nuance indicates a mark of reliable history: namely that Pilate was afraid to convict Jesus formally (partly fearful for his wife's threats against him) but committed the quasilegal display of washing his hands to abdicate his authority and to devolve it to the crowd's wishes. Pilate technically agreed to the crucifixion by silence; he engaged the positive action of delivering Jesus to the soldiers, who knew what the crowd wanted and knew what Pilate was implying by his silence, namely that it was on them rather than on him.
There is no contemporary narrative where Jesus wasn't crucified. However, Muhammad had a vision 600 years later (since we're talking dates) that Jesus wasn't crucified, and convinced people of that (even though I'm told Islam permits Muslims who believe he was crucified). If one wants to take that approach, one is no longer learning from history but from spirit visions in a cave (almost Plato's) by a guy who took full advantage of lax child-marriage laws. His coalition is not held together by logic and reason but by force and fear. If you're interested in pleasing that group because of some ambiguous promise (such as the one about virgins, or maybe raisins), I would submit it's not the fullest, most rational approach to take, as there's much evidence that it will turn on you. But accepting Jesus for who he says he is, neither more nor less, is what unites you with him and protects you from all threats of all institutions (Rome included). Since you seem to be a truth pursuer, I trust you will see that creating a storyline about Jesus not being crucified is not pursuit of truth but merely upholding yet another narrative created to defend a group of people going their own way: the real pursuit of truth, like Jesus, affirms reality and rejects althist, because truth is greater than group cohesion and is in fact the only source of group cohesion.
Yeah, we have totally different definitions of "model" in this context. To me Jesus identified himself as the representative of humanity, the fully realized human being, the prototype of what humanity can become. Let me explain, I think I mentioned this before, but anyway... Jesus frequently uses a word to refer to himself in Aramaic as "Bar Nasha" or "bar enash". And this also appears throughout the canonical gospels. This has been translated as son of man. In English, it sounds like a claim to humanity, perhaps a humble counterpoint to son of God. Scholars have debated its meaning for centuries, spinning elaborate theological explanations. But in Aramaic, Jesus called himself Barnasha. And Barnasha doesn't mean son of man in the genealogical sense. It's an idiom that means the human being. Or more accurately, the human one, the representative of humanity, the fully realized human being, the prototype of what humanity can become. My point, Jesus wasn't claiming to be uniquely divine in a way that separated him from the rest of humanity. He was claiming to be fully human in a way that revealed what all humans could become. He was the pattern, the template, the demonstration model. When he said the barna has authority to forgive sins, he wasn't claiming exclusive divine power. He was demonstrating human potential when fully aligned with the divine. This understanding transforms the entire gospel message. Every time Jesus said Barnasha, he was pointing to human potential, not divine exclusivity.
No, I object to the understanding of this within the Christian communities. Jesus never said he was God. Bart Ehrman explains this in his book: "How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee".
It's your belief and that's fine. It's not mine.
That's exactly my experience and I didn't even know of Bart Ehrman when I decided to stop going to church. Today Bart Ehrman calls himself a historian of early Christianity. That's one of the main reasons I decided to look into his work.
Rome saw Jesus as someone who was threatening their power, their authority, their control over the region. Whether Jesus actually was trying to start a rebellion or whether the Romans just perceived him that way, we don't know.
This sounds like a statement from Hebron Los Angeles Christian Mission. Their Mission Statement: “To share Jesus’s call and true path with all people willing to follow him.”. This church has placed its mission statement on its website’s home page next to its welcome message. Visitors don’t struggle to find the church’s purpose and get a feel for the organization immediately. Language like “Jesus is calling us to walk closer to him” is beautiful. It probably works on some people.