Jesus' Wife?

[Valmy]

Of course he's married. His wife helps him run the taco truck.

If my name was Jesus I would buy one of those abandoned churches and the sign out front would say 'Jesus dwells within'

[FunkMonk]

Happy Jesus' wife, happy eternal life.

[Valmy]

There are faster ways to kill yourself then to create fictional character that offends local authorities so they saw you in half, or behead you.

Yeah I am pretty sure Jesus was a real dude who existed and who had followers. It seems a bit bizarre to create a person and movement simply because you want to piss off both the Jews and the Romans in the 1st century.

But, you know, Jesus didn't write any books like Caesar did.

[Tonitrus]

I will wait for Siege, our resident Jewish expert, to weigh in.

[Malthus]

Celibacy in Judaism is, basically, considered really weird for adults. Not a desirable state of affairs at all.  Paul, of course, held that it was - and in doing so, he went against all Jewish precedent.

Well yeah God ordered you people to be fruitful and multiply. Yet I see less than 10 children Malthus.

Hey, I multiply all the time. Ten tines ten is one hundred!

[Valmy]

Hey, I multiply all the time. Ten tines ten is one hundred!

The mitzvah to plant fruit trees and memorize the multiplication tables has been fulfilled! Well done sir

[dps]

The Gospels claim he was, and go out of their way to show him confounding the "experts in the law" of the day with his learning. See: Luke 10:25, and the Parable of the Good Samaritan.

Sometimes he is an expert on the law. Other times he is the defier of the law. Depends on what the point the Gospels were trying to make.

Ya gotta know the rules to know when to break the rules.

[Valmy]

Ya gotta know the rules to know when to break the rules.

I was trying to say his relation to the law suited the spiritual message the writer was trying to convey. Naturally the Son of God would know his own rules. But sometimes he is explaining and teaching the law. Other times he is not.

[Berkut]

Ya gotta know the rules to know when to break the rules.

I was trying to say his relation to the law suited the spiritual message the writer was trying to convey. Naturally the Son of God would know his own rules. But sometimes he is explaining and teaching the law. Other times he is not.

I would say that more as sometimes he is doing whatever the writer needs him to do to further the writers point, and other times he is doing something else the writer needs him to do to further some other writers completely different  point.

It is like reading Star Wars fan fiction.

[Valmy]

I would say that more as sometimes he is doing whatever the writer needs him to do to further the writers point, and other times he is doing something else the writer needs him to do to further some other writers completely different  point.

It is like reading Star Wars fan fiction.

Again that is not the way they thought of it. They are trying to communicate that this guy is a really marvelous spiritual leader who exemplifies all that is good. The same way that bad Roman Emperors are not bad because they are bad administrators or generals, they are morally corrupt.

Or is it worth discussing this issue with you? You pretty much straight up ignored my last post to just keep jeering along

[The Minsky Moment]

"Son of God" had a particular meaning in Hellenistic (and pre-Hellenistic) era Jewish literature.  It mean identification with the Davidic dynasty - David and his descendants are often described as "son of God" in an adoptive sense.  I.e. "Son of God" is a messianic claim not a claim of divinity.  This also dovetails with the two of the more credible historical claims in the Gospel - the crucifixtion and label "King of the Jews"

The problem with the gospel accounts in terms of accurately describing the message is that they transform a messianic claim which likely was made either by Jesus himself or by his advocates, with a series of theological claims that are unlikely to have been made at the time.

[Valmy]

"Son of God" had a particular meaning in Hellenistic (and pre-Hellenistic) era Jewish literature.  It mean identification with the Davidic dynasty - David and his descendants are often described as "son of God" in an adoptive sense.  I.e. "Son of God" is a messianic claim not a claim of divinity.  This also dovetails with the two of the more credible historical claims in the Gospel - the crucifixtion and label "King of the Jews"

The problem with the gospel accounts in terms of accurately describing the message is that they transform a messianic claim which likely was made either by Jesus himself or by his advocates, with a series of theological claims that are unlikely to have been made at the time.

True. But I think the theological leap came from the fact he got crucified instead of doing the sorts of things Isaiah said he was supposed to. So it all had to be re-interpreted later. Well also the Greeks got their mitts on the story and understood it differently.

[Berkut]

I would say that more as sometimes he is doing whatever the writer needs him to do to further the writers point, and other times he is doing something else the writer needs him to do to further some other writers completely different  point.

It is like reading Star Wars fan fiction.

Again that is not the way they thought of it. They are trying to communicate that this guy is a really marvelous spiritual leader who exemplifies all that is good.

I think they are trying to communicate that this "guy" is whatever they needed him to be at the time they were writing whatever it is they were writing. My point here is that their goal was not so much to convince anyone that Christ was the Son of God and should be worshipped, but that people should listen to whatever it is they are trying to tell them. That might be that he is the Christ, and it might be that you should be nice to prostitutes, and it might be that you really should pay your taxes.

There is nothing here that is clearly driven by what they actually think happened, as opposed to what message they want to send. What happened, or what characteristics Christ had, is completely malleable  - he is just a stand in for whatever the writer wants to say.

In other words, for any particular writer, is they wanted to say "One ought to think proposition X" then it just so happened that Jesus said "X is really great!". There isn't any sense that the writers might have thought ~X, and changed their mind because of what they learned about Jesus'.

[Berkut]

The problem with the gospel accounts in terms of accurately describing the message is that they transform a messianic claim which likely was made either by Jesus himself or by his advocates, with a series of theological claims that are unlikely to have been made at the time.

Indeed - which is why I think the argument about whether Jesus actually existed or not pretty much misses the point.

Whether he did or did not exist, it seems very clear that assuming some person did exist who people generally mean when they talk about "Jesus", he likely would be as surprised by his supposed characteristics as any modern reader is reading about them.

Which is why I think the only reasonable answer to the question of whether he existed in the form described by Christianity is clearly "not in any meaningful sense". If there was such a person at all, it is certainly clear that those who eventually wrote the dominant story about who he was and what he was, did so without any particular concern about his actual characteristics, but rather what they wanted him to be at the time they wrote about him.

[Razgovory]

Poor Berkut.