Byron wrote:Doesn't Jesus' omniscience vary depending on the gospel? In the synoptics (particularly Mark), he's a human, albeit one chosen by Yahweh for a special task: in John's Gospel, he's a superhuman god-man, the Logos in a human body, declaring himself "I am ..." this and that, knowing the future, and generally being badass and mythological.

Well yes and no. Each Gospel portrays Jesus in a certain way. Matthew portrays him as a Kingly Jew. Mark portrays him as the Chosen Servant, Luke portrays him as the Perfect Man, and John portrays him as God Man.

willhud9 wrote:

Byron wrote:Doesn't Jesus' omniscience vary depending on the gospel? In the synoptics (particularly Mark), he's a human, albeit one chosen by Yahweh for a special task: in John's Gospel, he's a superhuman god-man, the Logos in a human body, declaring himself "I am ..." this and that, knowing the future, and generally being badass and mythological.

Well yes and no. Each Gospel portrays Jesus in a certain way. Matthew portrays him as a Kingly Jew. Mark portrays him as the Chosen Servant, Luke portrays him as the Perfect Man, and John portrays him as God Man.

Isn't this kind of eisegetical? This is a later tradition as to what the intentions of the evangelists have been, etc. Tendencies can be found, sure, but as definite a statement as yours feels kind of unwarranted, except in the case of John.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

willhud9 wrote:

Byron wrote:Doesn't Jesus' omniscience vary depending on the gospel? In the synoptics (particularly Mark), he's a human, albeit one chosen by Yahweh for a special task: in John's Gospel, he's a superhuman god-man, the Logos in a human body, declaring himself "I am ..." this and that, knowing the future, and generally being badass and mythological.

Well yes and no. Each Gospel portrays Jesus in a certain way. Matthew portrays him as a Kingly Jew. Mark portrays him as the Chosen Servant, Luke portrays him as the Perfect Man, and John portrays him as God Man.

Isn't this kind of eisegetical? This is a later tradition as to what the intentions of the evangelists have been, etc. Tendencies can be found, sure, but as definite a statement as yours feels kind of unwarranted, except in the case of John.

Yes, it is quite eisegetical, but I feel it is an accurate one since it can be defended via each gospel account.

Zwaarddijk wrote:

willhud9 wrote:Well yes and no. Each Gospel portrays Jesus in a certain way. Matthew portrays him as a Kingly Jew. Mark portrays him as the Chosen Servant, Luke portrays him as the Perfect Man, and John portrays him as God Man.

Isn't this kind of eisegetical? This is a later tradition as to what the intentions of the evangelists have been, etc. Tendencies can be found, sure, but as definite a statement as yours feels kind of unwarranted, except in the case of John.

I tend to agree. Church tradition may have separated the synoptics and, along with John, given each a distinctive symbol and Christological position; but, in the case of the synoptics, this neat categorization feels like an imposition. John's Gospel's different as it's a dedicated theological fiction, which writes out Jesus of Nazareth and the sayings tradition and replaces it with Logos-man and "I am ..." declarations.

The synoptics offer different slants -- Mark's rough & ready messiah-adoptionist theology; Matthew's obsession with grounding everything in Hebrew scripture; Luke's mythological inventiveness -- but there's much cross-fertilization. Jesus is a kingly Jew in all three, for example: it's just that they have different ways of showing it, with Matthew mining the scriptures and Luke rolling out signs and wonders. Even here, it's more a question of emphasis than mutual exclusivity.

Byron wrote:Doesn't Jesus' omniscience vary depending on the gospel? In the synoptics (particularly Mark), he's a human, albeit one chosen by Yahweh for a special task: in John's Gospel, he's a superhuman god-man, the Logos in a human body, declaring himself "I am ..." this and that, knowing the future, and generally being badass and mythological.

John has more nature miracles and more instances of extraordinary knowledge than the synoptics, but these are not absent from the synoptics and both the synoptics and John imply that these things are available to all believers - not just Jesus. (For that matter Paul seems to suggest as much in 1 Corinthians 13:2 about what can be available to believers.)

The claim that "some Christians believe x" is pretty much empty without some sort of testable answer to the question "who exactly?"

Were there not battles fought and people killed because of the definition of the trinity?

Animavore wrote:

PeterI wrote:
At any rate this thread is all about pretending that the only acceptable idea of sacrifice comes from B-movie anthropology and ignoring the ways that thusia is used in the New Testament. There have been other threads devoted to creative ways of misunderstanding ideas about the divinity of Christ.

Could elaborate or re-word this 'cause I can't make sense of it as it currently stands, please?

I am saying that many people in this thread appear to have a theory of sacrifice which involves the idea that some sort of magical benefit comes from personal loss, or the death of some animal or person. This is a very common feature of movies, tv programs and novels written by people who seem unable to come up with any genuinely interesting religious beliefs for the "primitive" people they portray.

There is not and has never been a single orthodox theory of the atonement, although before Anselm the ransom theory was fairly popular in both the east and the west. None of the usual theories seem to me to be particularly close to the pop-culture idea of sacrifice, though it is possible to confound them with somewhat humourous results.

Jews in late temple times seem to have understood sacrifice as having value in connection with obedience to God. (see Psalm 51 for instance) Paul frequently uses sacrifice as a word for obedience to God, or doing God's work (Romans 12:1, 15:16, Philippians 2:17, 4:18). This is also found in Hebrews (13:16) and probably also in 1 Peter (2:5). Also note that Paul writes about Christ's death in terms of obedience more often than he writes about it in terms of sacrifice.

Thanks.

PeterI wrote:John has more nature miracles and more instances of extraordinary knowledge than the synoptics, but these are not absent from the synoptics and both the synoptics and John imply that these things are available to all believers - not just Jesus. (For that matter Paul seems to suggest as much in 1 Corinthians 13:2 about what can be available to believers.)

The claim that "some Christians believe x" is pretty much empty without some sort of testable answer to the question "who exactly?"

Not absent, no, but John's both more explicit, and more systematic (as it's a dedicated theological fiction, rather than a reworking of a sayings tradition with theological commentary & narrative).

Paul can be appallingly unorthodox at times.

Byron wrote:

PeterI wrote:John has more nature miracles and more instances of extraordinary knowledge than the synoptics, but these are not absent from the synoptics and both the synoptics and John imply that these things are available to all believers - not just Jesus. (For that matter Paul seems to suggest as much in 1 Corinthians 13:2 about what can be available to believers.)

The claim that "some Christians believe x" is pretty much empty without some sort of testable answer to the question "who exactly?"

Not absent, no, but John's both more explicit, and more systematic (as it's a dedicated theological fiction, rather than a reworking of a sayings tradition with theological commentary & narrative).

I'm not so sure about that. The way practically all of John's miracle stories work out to illustrate what he is teaching, sometimes almost like acted out parables, is a little too neat, but the way John's Jesus uses metaphors in his discourses can not be his invention because some of those metaphors, and similar ones are present to a lesser extent in the Synoptics and even a bit in Paul. I would take it as practically certain that Jesus used bread as a metaphor for knowing and doing God's will.

PeterI wrote:I'm not so sure about that. The way practically all of John's miracle stories work out to illustrate what he is teaching, sometimes almost like acted out parables, is a little too neat, but the way John's Jesus uses metaphors in his discourses can not be his invention because some of those metaphors, and similar ones are present to a lesser extent in the Synoptics and even a bit in Paul. I would take it as practically certain that Jesus used bread as a metaphor for knowing and doing God's will.

John undoubtedly incorporated sayings traditions into his Gospel. What's different is the extent of his rewrite: Jesus' sayings aren't just interpreted or edited: they're rewritten from the ground up, into a whole new style, with John's human-Logos declaring "I am ..." such and such. It's a brilliant theological fiction, and I'm sure John included historical material in it, but it's a world away from the parable-declaiming Jewish apocalyptic prophet of the synoptics.

Byron wrote:

PeterI wrote:I'm not so sure about that. The way practically all of John's miracle stories work out to illustrate what he is teaching, sometimes almost like acted out parables, is a little too neat, but the way John's Jesus uses metaphors in his discourses can not be his invention because some of those metaphors, and similar ones are present to a lesser extent in the Synoptics and even a bit in Paul. I would take it as practically certain that Jesus used bread as a metaphor for knowing and doing God's will.

John undoubtedly incorporated sayings traditions into his Gospel. What's different is the extent of his rewrite: Jesus' sayings aren't just interpreted or edited: they're rewritten from the ground up, into a whole new style, with John's human-Logos declaring "I am ..." such and such.

While I don't suppose the discourses in John's gospel to be exact quotes, I do think Jesus must have made high christological statements about himself of at least the Pauline/Ebionite sort. The type of high christology found in Paul's letters must pre-date Paul's conversion and I think the hypothesis that the disciples came up with this within months of Easter (together with all that hangs on it) highly improbable. It took more than a generation for a later development like incarnational christology to emerge and ages longer to for it to get near-universal acceptance.

I think Wrede got the messianic secret backwards. The purpose of the secret in Mark is to make it clear that while Jesus's messianic claims were the formal reason for being crucified by the Romans, they weren't the reason why he got in trouble - the Jerusalem authorities did not know about Jesus's claims until after he had been arrested.

Byron wrote:
It's a brilliant theological fiction, and I'm sure John included historical material in it, but it's a world away from the parable-declaiming Jewish apocalyptic prophet of the synoptics.

While Jesus certainly is an eschatological and apocalyptic prophet in the Synoptics, he is also already in Mark the messiah who gains his kingdom by being crucified.

Peter.

PeterI wrote:While I don't suppose the discourses in John's gospel to be exact quotes, I do think Jesus must have made high christological statements about himself of at least the Pauline/Ebionite sort. The type of high christology found in Paul's letters must pre-date Paul's conversion and I think the hypothesis that the disciples came up with this within months of Easter (together with all that hangs on it) highly improbable. It took more than a generation for a later development like incarnational christology to emerge and ages longer to for it to get near-universal acceptance.

Paul keeps repeating that he got his gospel direct from the heavenly Christ, only mentions the historical Jesus on a smattering of occasions, formed his own power-base away from Jerusalem, and is in conflict with the Jerusalem church over the direction of the Jesus movement. Elements of the high Christology may well have preceded him, but there's every indication that he invented loads of the theology himself.

The comparison with Mark is particularly instructive. That sayings-grounded gospel has Jesus as a son of God, in the sense of someone chosen by Yahweh for a special task (it's strongly implied that Jesus is adopted at his baptism): Jesus is the Son of Man, the harbinger of the end times, etc: what's absent is Paul's semi-Platonic imagery. We'll never know exactly what Jesus thought of himself, or how his self-conception shifted: but the synoptic Jesus has a lot more in common with contemporary Jewish mystics like Honi the Circle Drawer, and moral purists like the Hasidean, than he does Paul's heavenly Christ.

I think Wrede got the messianic secret backwards. The purpose of the secret in Mark is to make it clear that while Jesus's messianic claims were the formal reason for being crucified by the Romans, they weren't the reason why he got in trouble - the Jerusalem authorities did not know about Jesus's claims until after he had been arrested.

Another explanation, which I prefer, is that Jesus never made the claims, and the early church was covering its ass over the absence of this tradition.

While Jesus certainly is an eschatological and apocalyptic prophet in the Synoptics, he is also already in Mark the messiah who gains his kingdom by being crucified.

Peter.

In Mark, certainly: how much of this stretches back to the historical Jesus is a thornier question.

It also depends on the authorship of all the gospels. Tradition tells us John's Gospel was written near the end of John's life. If John died around 90 BCE then the authorship of John falls just before. For sake of argument, I am going to say 85 BCE. Depending on the authorship of the synoptic gospels which fall anywhere from 35 BCE-100 BCE in traditional authorship than John's Gospel seems to have been written last. John probably wanted to spice the gospels with a bit of theological flair

Johannine authorship is unlikely, though. Traditions attached to anonymous works in the 2nd Century don't outweigh textual criticism and theological development. It's not impossible that "John" wrote the Gospel, but it's not likely, either. The sky-high Christology is alien to Jesus' Jewish context, and the Gospel's rabid and generalized attacks on "the Jews" speak for themselves. The abandonment of the parablic sayings tradition for the "I am ..." tradition surely settles the matter.

willhud9 wrote:It also depends on the authorship of all the gospels. Tradition tells us John's Gospel was written near the end of John's life. If John died around 90 BCE then the authorship of John falls just before. For sake of argument, I am going to say 85 BCE. Depending on the authorship of the synoptic gospels which fall anywhere from 35 BCE-100 BCE in traditional authorship than John's Gospel seems to have been written last. John probably wanted to spice the gospels with a bit of theological flair

You mean 'CE' don't you?

Jesus died for nobody's sins; he did not die on the Cross. He escacped against all odds as he had prophesied. He migrated to India and died there very peacefully and naturally.

paarsurrey wrote:Jesus died for nobody's sins; he did not die on the Cross. He escacped against all odds as he had prophesied. He migrated to India and died there very peacefully and naturally.

Ooh...look...

More made up pig-shit.

Another worthless bump.

alive4now wrote:Jesus died for our sins, but he was only dead for three days.

How did you know that Jesus was only dead for three days? One who clinically dies for even one day; dies for ever I think.