Writings of Jesus the Christ

First thread for me.

For Christians the new testament is the most important book of the bible in regards to the teachings of Jesus.

I have read the bible from a few different Christian perspectives C of E, Catholic, Born again, Jehovah's witness, I am possibly the most baptised individual on the planet. I have also read the books which were not included in the bible.

One thing is apparent to me. There was as much confusion about Jesus's teachings centuries ago as there is now.

My question is: with the message of the kingdom being a matter of life and death for us humans, why didn't Jesus write his teachings down himself?

He had 30years or so before he started his ministry so he had time, he certainly gained a sizable following so must have been well educated.

How can a Christian defend his/her faith when it is based on writings which are not authored by their saviour.

I am not saying that Christianity is a false religion per-say but I do not understand how anyone can be certain that their branch of the faith is truth and all others are false when it wasn't Jesus who wrote it and the different accounts we have were written long after he was reportedly crucified and varied considerably in content.

So with respect and agape always, why didn't Jesus write his message down himself?

Namaste

Originally posted by Threegirls
First thread for me.

For Christians the new testament is the most important book of the bible in regards to the teachings of Jesus.

I have read the bible from a few different Christian perspectives C of E, Catholic, Born again, Jehovah's witness, I am possibly the most baptised individual on the planet. I have also read the books which were not included in the bible.

One thing is apparent to me. There was as much confusion about Jesus's teachings centuries ago as there is now.

My question is: with the message of the kingdom being a matter of life and death for us humans, why didn't Jesus write his teachings down himself?

He had 30years or so before he started his ministry so he had time, he certainly gained a sizable following so must have been well educated.

How can a Christian defend his/her faith when it is based on writings which are not authored by their saviour.

I am not saying that Christianity is a false religion per-say but I do not understand how anyone can be certain that their branch of the faith is truth and all others are false when it wasn't Jesus who wrote it and the different accounts we have were written long after he was reportedly crucified and varied considerably in content.

So with respect and agape always, why didn't Jesus write his message down himself?

Namaste

Not to break your heart or anything, but Jesus isn't real and the bible is a made up book of fiction.

I dont think his intentionas were to rule like the rest as his influence would of needed FORCEFUL POWER TO push his ways/writings.

1 does think he made data but it was being passed around his closes trusted in order to send the hidden data to support the future.

reply to post by Threegirls


Explanation: S&F!

Your forgetting completely about the Torah!

Personal Disclosure: Here ... Please recalibrate and meditate on this ...

Have All 3 Abrahamic Faiths Conspired to Defraud the Torah? (by OmegaLogos posted on 11-1-2009 @ 10:46 PM) [ATS: Conspiracy in Religion Forum]

P.S. If you are going to believe in a Book of Laws then one had better uphold the least important of those laws as much as one upholds the most important laws! OR what's the point at all? Hypocrisy? maybe! Conspiracy? Definitely!

[Swanfilter]

I respect your opinion.

I neither agree nor disagree.

I no longer have an opinion on this, I know nothing.

Faith gave me more questions than answers or comfort. I still live a moral life, faith never altered my love of humanity. I just wonder whether the divisions brought about in Christianity could have been avoided if the message was clearly written by Jesus himself.

If the church had been more united then and now, the world might be different more peaceful so why not?

thought provoking words indeed!
i really don't think jesus set out to create a new religion at all,i think he just wanted his people(the jews)to organise themselves against the roman occupation. i think he wanted his people to remember who they were,and not be delivered back into bondage,as they were before.
jesus teachings were,and are beautiful,as are budda,and all the other teachers.
unfotunately,people warp the message for their own gain.
seek the truth friend,and remember,love is the law.

Assuming Jesus to have been a real person, I would guess that he did not write down his teachings because he knew that writings become rewritten to fit peoples' personal interpretations and biases.

Jesus gave his teachings orally to a select number of disciples who in turn, ought to have only passed on those teachings to other, initiated (that is important) disciples.

By passing on an oral teaching solely to those with proper preparation in understanding (initiates), the teachings of Christ could have been passed on without distortion and misunderstandings.

I believe that would have been his intention and I also believe that such schools of initiation and a true teaching of Christ do exist in the world.

It is unfortunate how these teachings have been distorted and used for personal gain over the years. Jesus not having written them down himself ought to make the true seeker wary of such writings and, perhaps, lead him/her to look for a more direct source/line to his teachings.

The New Testament is not entirely useless but it can only take one so far.

Religion always brings the bashers as always...

There are claims that Jesus did infact write books and scripture. Who knows.

I look at it a bit differently than you. If I wrote something extremely important and 10 other people wrote about me and this important topic who would you read? Of course you would go to the source.

Now combine that with this idea. If I fed a hungry person he wouldnt be hungry right? For now yes, but if i taught that hungry person to grow crop or raise livestock then that person would not be hungry now or in the future.

Jesus taught through living, and his Apostiles followed as witness and testimony to teach people, not to "fix it now" like to many are used to in this current life.

It is not important of who wrote about the word, as it is in understanding the meaning.

The Christian religion is an enormous journey into the world of fabrication and assumption. Of course this is just my opinion but I believe we can understand quite a bit about this cult by examining not only it's crimes against humanity, but also it's undeniable process of thievery. Christianity and all Monotheistic cults have been destroying that which came before them since the beginning. If you look at early civilizations and their systems of religious belief you will most certainly find that Christianity either completely annhilated everything in it's path or simply demonized the gods and goddesses. Or like the egyptian and sumerian allegory that it has stolen it has adopted earlier customs and beliefs in order of conquest by integration. Even one of the greatest philosophers of all time, Friederich Nietsche, called Christianity, in his book, The Antichrist, a "meak religion" and also "self-hating", even masochistic. He was right wasn't he? Deny the now in order to achieve the non-existent? Please open your eyes so that we may topple the false towers of yesterday, clean up the rubble and dust of today, and eventually taste the fruits, we ourselves have cultivated.

Deny the deniable...

reply to post by Threegirls


Jesus Christ is the word.

reply to post by randyvs


Is this a proven fact? Or is this again, an opinion bottled and processed through blind faith? I'm not trying to start a religious battle of meaningless words on here just posing a question. Of course at the end of the day your beliefs will rest unscathed as well as mine.

Originally posted by Threegirls
why didn't Jesus write his message down himself?

Because his immediate and urgent business was with the people who were standing and sitting right in front of him.
So he did the obvious thing and talked to them.

Originally posted by Swanfilters

Not to break your heart or anything, but Jesus isn't real and the bible is a made up book of fiction.

There are very few, if any, serious academic scholars of the Jesus period who think he didn't exist at the very least as a person who had a messianic movement that formed around him. Even the Jewish histories of the time refer to him and Josephus, the greatest Jewish born historian of the generation immediately after Jesus, talks about him. There were plenty of people alive in the time of Josephus for whom Jesus was a part of their living memory.

The question of Jesus' divinity is of course a matter of faith. I'm an agnostic who was raised Jewish, so I don't believe in it. But, having studied the history of the early Christian church extensively, I can say I am quite certain a man named Yeshua Ben Yoseph lived and died at about that time and had a messianic movement that formed around him. In fact, he wasn't even remotely unique in that period for having followers think he was the messiah. It was kind of a big problem for both the Jews and the Romans, because these guys kept popping up every few years and in many cases they had many, many thousands of followers.

For our histories it gets a bit confusing because it seems that the stories of many of these other would be messiahs has gotten a bit con-fused with that of the Jesus story, so you see some events from this guy's or that guy's history also popping up in the four gospels.

As for the OP's question about what did Jesus actually say, there's a lot of scholarship that has been done to try and tease that as best as possible from the text of the gospels and there are some good ideas about the few lines that were probably from him for certain, and others that at least seem to ring true. I'd suggest reading some of the very serious scholarship on the Jesus period. A good place to start might be the works of Elaine Pagels, who has written many top scholarly (and popular) books on the subject, then mine her bibliography for others. If I had my old syllabus for my Emergence of Christianity college class I'd try and copy it for you, but that was a long time ago.

reply to post by Threegirls


Jesus did not write down his teachings because he is alive and will speak to you any second of the day. You have to come to him consciously and seriously. You have to ask him to enter into your life. He will tell you everything you want to know TODAY. The Bible is the word recorded from old, but Jesus is not dead. His words can enter your heart now.

This is a big misconception about Jesus today. As for him not physically writing the words from back then - my opinion is that he was very driven in his physical revelations for everyone. He had an oral message to pass about and the strongest oral ministry ever. He took disciples for a reason, because he knew what would come of his life, and that he would have to teach in his way which was not by writing words down.

But if you are seeking Jesus' true words because you feel like they've been diluted - ask him to teach you. That is the best part about Jesus Christ.

reply to post by kalunom

It is unfortunate how these teachings have been distorted and used for personal gain over the years. Jesus not having written them down himself ought to make the true seeker wary of such writings and, perhaps, lead him/her to look for a more direct source/line to his teachings.

nice post - in my opinion the 'gospel of thomas' probably gives a truer flavour of Jesus's teaching than the new testament - i don't see him as a unique individual (except in the sense that we all are) but rather as part of a pattern of comunication stretching throughout history - a consistent message but dependant on time, place and people.

Hope.
What is there to write about?
You can see in the Book of Acts that there was a theological debate about whether or not there was a resurrection.
If there is a resurrection then there is reason for hope.
That's pretty basic and you don't need a whole book on it.
If it is in your heart to be good to have that next life, then the spirit will be there for you.
If you only want what this life has to offer then no amount of books will help you.

reply to post by Threegirls

I still live a moral life, faith never altered my love of humanity

In my humble atheist opinion that is all that matters.

It is not about whichever God we happen to subscribe to or not, but about how we treat each other as people.

There is only one passage in the Bible in which Christ is said to have written something, and it's never really explained what he wrote nor why. A tantilizing mystery that has always gnawed at me.

John 8:3-11 Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?” This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear. So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground.

Thank you all for your replies.

I will reread consider and undertake the proposed research.

I can accept that Jesus DID exist, was very influential and was able to write. He certainly had time before his ministry to contribute literature for his peers to contemplate. The oral tradition at a time that the written word was in use would have been best suited for initiates only. The likelihood of distortion over time of such an important message was too great a risk for an educated man as Jesus was to take if indeed he is the only route to salvation.

I have sought to understand Jesus' teachings and truly have asked for guidance from him/holy spirit. The only truth I have found is that we are bound to each other in this life and should treat our global family as we wish to be treated. I do believe that life continues after the shell of our body is discarded, not for the few but for all.

I do think Jesus did write some literature and will explore this avenue further. I would like to know if his writing were indeed safe guarded by a trusted few for future generations. I understand that if such were found they would be viewed sceptically as they probably should be, if it surfaced at this time it may be seen as deception.

That is a huge problem at the moment, all we do know is that deception is rife inside and outside the Christian religion. The only thing I cannot fathom is the consequences of the deception. Control is the likely goal.

I have much to consider, back soon.

Originally posted by Ophiuchus 13
I dont think his intentionas were to rule like the rest as his influence would of needed FORCEFUL POWER TO push his ways/writings.

1 does think he made data but it was being passed around his closes trusted in order to send the hidden data to support the future.

Hi and thanks for your reply,
I also do not think he wanted to rule.

Do you think his data is still around? It doubtless would be rejected if it surfaced today by most Christians, unless it agreed with what they already believed.