What the Heck did Jesus Mean?

reply to post by windword


Is this the same Flavian-inspired, mythical Matthew that "wrote" that the mythical Jesus said to his followers, "I am with you always." then, mythically, ascended to Heaven?

reply to post by ALightBreeze


I have to say that your Flavian information has given me pause and has provided a new education to Jewish history. Sadly, I was completely ignorant to the "Siege of Jerusalem" and the horrific commentary on "Cannibal Mary," when I started this thread.

Your theory puts a morbid twist on Jesus' claim of the violence in the kingdom of heaven, in retrospect, and I can see the ugly and sadistic satire of the dehumanization of the Jewish people by Roman rule.

Portraying the Jewish messiah as being a symbol of the desperation of a mother, driven to insanity and into cannibalism of her baby son as a possible mockery of story of the "Last Supper" and the Eurcharist, if true, shows the disdain and disgust that Roman rulers had for ordinary people and their struggles to live their lives in peace. It paves the way for the a logical assumption that same disdain for indigenous, simple people throughout history still pulses through the onus of religions and governments under the guise of love and care, and their (TPTB) hatred is encapsulated in your theory.

I hope that your theory is incorrect, because it is such a sad commentary to believe that so many, who pinned their hopes to "Christ" are being mocked by the very people they give their support to. I do believe in a 'Christ Consciousness" and think that the teachings of Jesus present a path to enlightenment, as well as the teachings of Buddha, Lao Tzu and others.

reply to post by windword

You will get it figured out, Friendly One, you are bright, open minded. The Breeze-Atwill conclusions hopefully will continue to help you find out exactly what this crazy, illogically historically inaccurate, mythical Jesus was trying to say.

Good luck to you, Sir!

reply to post by lonewolf19792000

Good heavens. You and I actually agree on something for a change.

What in the world is ATS coming to?

reply to post by ALightBreeze


Attached is a list of holes in Joseph Atwill's theories.

This one is my particular favorite...

The question is asked [21], "...how did a religion that began as verbal traditions in Hebrew or Aramaic change into one whose surviving Scripture is written almost entirely in Greek?"

Aside from neglecting scholarship that finds Semitic roots behind NT texts (though no doubt the Flavians did convenient research to ensure this?), it ignores the point that expressing its texts in the lingua franca of the day (Koine Greek) is exactly what we would expect from a missionary faith.

It is a better question why Titus published in Greek material that was intended to target people who mainly spoke Aramaic and Hebrew.

www.tektonics.org...

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by adjensen

 

Look, I've asked you directly to show passages in the Hebrew Bible that support reincarnation as a tenet of the Jewish faith. I'm tired of your games of ignoring those requests, and deflecting with completely irrelevant questions.

I hate to get between the bodies in a lovers' quarrel, but does something have to be in the Old Testament for Hebrews to have believed in it?

We know that there were different sects within Judaism, just as there are in any religion: the Zealots and the Essenes are familiar to most Christians from Sunday School.

Surely it is possible that one or more of these sects held to a belief in reincarnation? They might have got it from the Egyptians, or the Greeks, or the Persians, or even come up with it themselves. It's not such a bizarre idea, after all; it appears in many cultures.

Believing in reincarnation would not make them cease to be Jews, after all.

Hello, old friend

No, it would not, and it isn't my point that no one could have claimed to be Jewish and had a belief in reincarnation.

But we do know what mainstream Judaism taught, and that was resurrection, not reincarnation, and the texts that we have are those of that mainstream, and Christianity is derived from that mainstream, as well. With that in mind, instances in the text that "could be read as supporting reincarnation" can only be done so through eisegesis, because if a passage could be read as referring to resurrection OR reincarnation, it wouldn't refer to reincarnation without some very clear explanation, because mainstream Jews didn't believe in it, and may not even have known what it was.

Thus, "this is Elijah" cannot mean "this guy, who you know as John, is actually the soul of Elijah, reborn in this new fellow", because that would make no sense to an audience that understood the concept of resurrection, not reincarnation, while the physical presence of both Moses and Elijah during the transfiguration required no explanation, because it was clearly an instance of resurrection.

So, yes, while I can accept that there may have been some small number of Jews who saw things differently (as the Sadducees did,) I can't believe that the result would be a Christianity with reincarnation as a core concept, and references to it buried throughout the Hebrew Bible. That would be something akin to some small sect of Christians believing in the Norse gods, and one drawing the conclusion that all Christians believed in Thor, because every mention of lightning in the Bible is a nod to him.

reply to post by windword

What did Jesus mean in this cryptic statement about Heaven being under attack?

The "cryptic" part is understanding the word βιάζεται (biazetai), which is translated several different ways, according to which version you look at.
The word is a particular morphology in the Greek for the word which is the action (verb) form of force.
What I like to do is to see how that writer uses that same morphology, and looking at Matthew 10, I find it used in the phrase, "Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?", where the word with the same morphology is sold.
So the same way as "to sell" is used towards the sparrow, "the use of force" is applied to The Kingdom.
Another example of this morphology is found in Matthew 9:17
Neither is new wine put into old wineskins; otherwise, the skins burst, and the wine is spilled, and the skins are destroyed; but new wine is put into fresh wineskins, and so both are preserved."

Again in Matthew 7:19
Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

This is not an exact conclusion, and I would need to find more examples (which you just have to physically look for) to make a convincing argument. But this may be already something easily understood by context and not really in dispute.

reply to post by Deetermined

. . . scholarship that finds Semitic roots behind NT texts . . .

"Semitic" is a broad group of languages and does not mean Hebrew, which is just one of many that were spoken from Asia Minor to Afghanistan, and to Egypt and Ethiopia.

reply to post by NOTurTypical

Here is a good explanation I found. Apparently when the Greek text is translated into Hebrew it clears up quite a bit:

Here

Are you aware of any surviving examples of letters, or other written documents (not of a religious nature, like rabbinical commentaries and copies of OT scripture) in Hebrew in the time of Jesus?
I realize there is a place in the Gospels where it said that the inscription of "King of the Jews" was placed on the cross, but what that writer called "Hebrew" was the common dialect of Aramaic in that region, and not actually Hebrew, but was associated with Jews, sometimes called Hebrews. Unless you have that same placard, then it is not the evidence I am talking about. I mean evidence that Hebrew was a normal conversational language.

Originally posted by Astyanax
reply to post by lonewolf19792000

 

Good heavens. You and I actually agree on something for a change.

What in the world is ATS coming to?

Miracles still happen .

Here are other uses by Matthew that I found where he uses that same verb form as in 11:12 for "suffers violence".

He knew what they were thinking and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand.

”Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad, and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit.

With them indeed is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah that says: ‘You will indeed listen, but never understand, and you will indeed look, but never perceive.

yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away.

Just as the weeds are collected and burned up with fire, so will it be at the end of the age.

Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas?

Do you not see that whatever goes into the mouth enters the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?

On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

See, your house is left to you, desolate.

Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left.

”You know that after two days the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.”

The verb form indicates the present tense, so if the translation seems to be indicating past or future, it is artificial to fit modern phraseology.

reply to post by adjensen

So, yes, while I can accept that there may have been some small number of Jews who saw things differently (as the Sadducees did,) I can't believe that the result would be a Christianity with reincarnation as a core concept, and references to it buried throughout the Hebrew Bible.

Well, that clarifies the position, and – I should think – pretty much ends the argument. Or should; but methinks it will continue. You can't lock love out.

reply to post by Akragon


But everyone IS meant to understand. We are all meant to repent and learn from the Holy Spirit. But we choose to disobey, because we do not understand.

It is only the one who obey the son that will know the kingdom of heaven. And sadly most don’t obey the son.

But I still promise you Paul obeyed the Christ, and his words are highly misunderstood by the church.

reply to post by windword


Good question. S & F from me for getting me thinking this early on!

For some outside the box thinking, how about the use of "heaven" as allegory (popular at the time). As in heaven being Earth (as in human society). Put in that context, Jesus is right and heaven is under attack every single day......

I went through Matthew again and found another example of his use of this particular Greek word morphology that is used in 11:12, where it is translated as "suffers violence", where you can see how he uses it in other verses.
This is the last one that is not just a repeat of basically the same thing as what is in another verse I already gave.

and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.

So you have the object of the clause being the Messiah and something was going to be done to him, while he is passive in the process, with someone else doing the action.
Now I have a blog that is dedicated to doing this exact thing, which is to compare different verses that uses the same morphology of the Greek word. I do that (keep the blog) mainly because I am not aware of anyone else doing it. I find this comparison making useful to better understand what is going on in the text, so I record the results of my serches so I can use them later in an organized sort of way which this type of blog affords, with the way the pages are linked to each other and how the search engine works.
There are an awful lot of different morphologies, and a testament to that is that before yesterday I did not yet even have a page for this particular one. Now I do, and if anyone wants to see all these examples from Matthew in an easy to view manner, you can go to the page. ReadingTheBibleInGreek

Originally posted by Flavian
reply to post by windword

 

Good question. S & F from me for getting me thinking this early on!

For some outside the box thinking, how about the use of "heaven" as allegory (popular at the time). As in heaven being Earth (as in human society). Put in that context, Jesus is right and heaven is under attack every single day......

Wrong location, we're in hell or sheol i should say. This is the world of the Dead. All those zombies walking around out there that do not know theyre already dead. Catholics got the concept of purgatory backwards, we don't die and go there, we're born there and have to die in Christ to get out. I've been having this thought alot lately.