It trivially follows that someone who is believed to be a false messiah will not be thought of a an "agent of God".
Jesus is the Proof that God Exists
- Thread starter Arne Saknussemm
- Start date
It trivially follows that someone who is believed to be a false messiah will not be thought of a an "agent of God".
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Lol! It's trivially wrong too. Jewish tradition is full of agents of God who were not the messiah.
Not ones who were accepted as such while claiming to be the messiah.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
Where did Jesus claim to be the Messiah?
what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? - John 10:36
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” - John 4
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” - John 4
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
There are no public admissions by Jesus of being the Messiah. Just the Son of God or man, whatever that was.
Seattle
Valued Senior Member
God, comes "down" in the form of Jesus and "agrees" to be crucified to pay for our sins. Who exactly is he "paying"...himself? He kills himself to "pay" for our sins. Acts that are defined a "sins" only because he says they are sins.
How about just not creating man capable of sin and/or not defining so many activities to be "sinful"?
Certainly isn't not necessarily to kill yourself to get your point across?
Someone was on drugs when they came up with this one.
How about just not creating man capable of sin and/or not defining so many activities to be "sinful"?
Certainly isn't not necessarily to kill yourself to get your point across?
Someone was on drugs when they came up with this one.
Attentional bias hard at work.
Again:
25 The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” - John 4
26 Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” - John 4
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
That wasn't a public admission. You do know the difference don't you?
Please tell.
/grabs popcorn
How could you not know about his affiliations and his background and insist that he is a skeptic? And your insistence that the people he interviewed are serious scholars? Did you even look at who they are?
They are all from the same creationist group and are well known for their diploma mill degrees and their creationist world view. Do you really assume I don’t know what they are just because you insist that an evangelical pastor and creationist apologist is a hard-nosed skeptic according to you? I did look into their background, as a matter of fact I have known about those clowns for quite a while and they are not reputable scholars outside their own little world where they bestow PhDs and other awards on each other. And just because Craig, once upon a time got a degree does not make him any less a religious zealot and creationist nut case either.
So no, you are not correct about your insistence that these guys are reputable scholars outside their narrow little world. And no, you do not have the right to tell me that I need to watch some ridiculous video before I dare open my mouth. Unlike them, my degrees are from real universities and my publications have been peer reviewed by REAL academics. Besides, spending a lifetime studying the bible is no recommendation. It just means that they are too narrow minded to do any other kind of studying.
Those are your assumptions and nothing but patronizing attitudes given voice. You know nothing about what I have and have not done in regard to religious studies. I simply stated my opinion about the veracity, reliability and all around legitimacy of the author, his sources and his ever so transparent agenda.
That kind of one-sided drivel really only works if you are preaching to the choir, the rest of us just laugh at the assumptions and the simplistic and overt agenda driven content of that book. But the video is actually funny. Looking at that dude and his self-important, patronizing attitude is laughable.
Really what? Listing the guys former achievements and insisting that those guys are serious scholars should make me accept your word that all is as you say? Again, the diploma mills they have created, where they get and give all kinds of degrees to each other—it’s a reciprocal system—and all those videos they do to make themselves look as if they were legitimate do not impress me. As long as they stick to religion, they don’t even bother me. When they start insisting that they have something to say in regard to science and especially evolution, then it gets funny.
And what about the mythology about suffering and god? That should impress me how again? You can believe what you want, but include me out. I don’t do fairytales and I really don’t see where they are supposed to be relevant to anything outside their confines…like in the real world.
Boy, you must think I am stupid, if you insist that this was not about ID and creationism. What else did that Craig guy talk, if not his creationist ideas? Just because he talked about the Big Bang, as if it is something out of his god’s cook book does not make it science it is still just another attempt to lure the unwary and scientifically uneducated and indoctrinate them with the usual creationist nonsense.
Yes, there was much debate in the early church and some of it centered on the idea that the Christ was not a man but merely a concept. Why don’t you stop trying to confuse the issue and actually study what those early bishops believed instead of telling me your version of what they thought? Irenaeus and Theophilus did believe that there was the divine word, but not that your Jesus existed as a man. And don’t try to confuse the issue by going on about “millions of people” either. Who cares what the rest of the world believed. That never was the issue. The point is that those who were actual followers of that new movement originating from Judaism and even more importantly high ranking religious specialist of the time denied that a man like Jesus existed.
Yeah, that’s cute. “Theophilus” means lover of god and is widely assumed to be a generic term for believers. Nobody knows who Luke addressed this to and the assumption most scholars accept is that he was a ranking Roman officer or official whom Luke wanted to either convert or at least influence.
Well, my friend, you may admonish me all you want about being quiet unless I agree with you. But, that’s not how this works in the world of academia. You have done nothing to convince me that Strobel is anything but yet another creationist trying to make money off people who want their beliefs reaffirmed. His sources are make-belief scholars who have long ago been debunked. It is just another one-sided argument under the guise of skepticism. He can play that card as long as he wants to, but it is meaningless as it is quite obvious that he is using that merely as a marketing tool.
And your belief in god is fine for you, but again utterly meaningless to me. I don’t need some invented figurehead to provide my life with meaning. Nor do I need to prove that I am open-minded by pretending that religion is anything else but a mental pacifier for those who choose to use one.
Being religious is not a sign of open-mindedness. It’s just something you choose to belief. And as patronizing and condescending as you are, you certainly do not make a good advertisement for open-mindedness.
Boom goes the dynamite! +1
53 They took Jesus to the high priest, and all the chief priests, the elders and the teachers of the law came together.
...
55 The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. 56 Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree.
...
60 Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, “Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?” 61 But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer.
Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”
62 “I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” - Mark 14
...
55 The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. 56 Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree.
...
60 Then the high priest stood up before them and asked Jesus, “Are you not going to answer? What is this testimony that these men are bringing against you?” 61 But Jesus remained silent and gave no answer.
Again the high priest asked him, “Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?”
62 “I am,” said Jesus. “And you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” - Mark 14
Is that "public" enough?
And even more reason why Jews would not accept, or at least admit to accepting, miracles from Jesus as an "agent of God":
21 But how he can see now, or who opened his eyes, we don’t know. Ask him. He is of age; he will speak for himself.” 22 His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders, who already had decided that anyone who acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. - John 9
Why would they be concerned with people acknowledging Jesus was the Messiah? Unless be made a "public" announcement, how could they possibly know? :bugeye:
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
In a secret meeting with the Pharisees? No..that wouldn't be a publically-made claim.
Didn't catch that public announcement. Perhaps you can search Google for that one next. lol!
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Where did it say the meeting was secret, or even with Pharisees?
Again, why would the Jewish leaders be concerned with people acknowledging that Jesus was the Messiah, especially to the point of consequences being known, if it were not generally known that Jesus did claim to be the Messiah? Are you saying that people he did make the claim to were somehow incapable to telling others?
It is not like they had a public media like we do. Most news was word of mouth. Are you really this obtuse?
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Arne Saknussemm's posts seem to argue that Jesus' purported miracles constitute proof that Jesus was indeed God in human flesh, or whatever Christians imagine that he was. The thing is, the great majority of the people to whom Jesus preached, and among whom it is said he performed his miracles, remained unconvinced. And they were in a much better position to know about that stuff than contemporary people are. So Arne's "proof" apparently wasn't tremendously persuasive, even among those who unlike us were actually present on the scene.
The New Testament appears to be a compilation of writings that were considered authoritative by the early congregations that Paul founded in Asia Minor, or were descended from those Paul founded. That's why Paul's letters represent such a large fraction of the NT.
The original center of early Christianity was in Jerusalem, apparently headed up by Jesus' brother James. This headquarters group seems to have adhered more closely than Paul to Jewish tradition and law, but was largely wiped out in the Jewish Wars with Rome around 70AD. We know from his letters that Paul's relations with the Christians in Jerusalem were prickly.
And it's very interesting that the New Testament has nothing at all to say about the initial spread of Christianity into Egypt, another historical center of early Christianity and the place where gnosticism became particularly prevalent a century or so later. The NT's silence suggests to me that the first evangelists in Egypt might have been rivals of Paul's, people that Paul's early community disagreed with for some unknown reason and didn't really want to talk about.
In the “trade” we dismiss this as an ontological argument to support the teleological assumptions. It’s the usual creationist/ID way of running around in circles to prove they are standing in a square box—one they are trying to secure with razor wire.
Something else we could add to this is that as the power over Palestine lay in Roman hands and the area had already been under Hellenistic influence it makes sense that those who wrote and edited the bible were mostly interested in their home turf. Hence, they wrote for their immediate audience, Romans, Greeks and the various peoples they encountered in Hellenized space.
In the end we all know that the bible, like all other religious texts, was written by men, for men, about men; men who were at least peripherally aware of the socio-political dynamics of their environment. Egypt was too far away for that and was thereby able to develop its own religious history. Also, as christianity was by no means a monolithic religious tradition, splinter groups arose quickly and developed into what today are the various orthodoxies. Today, we mirror the ancient world insofar as all those thousands of Christian denominations are still not in agreement over the interpretation of their sacred text and what their doxa is supposed to be. Doctrine is manipulated to fit whatever the agenda dictates—and there are many agendas out there. Case in point, Westboro Baptists, creationists, Liberation theology, and so on and so forth.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
The people and the later Christians definitely believed Jesus was the Messiah. That's where the gospels came in, particularly the book of Matthew, to establish with scripture how Jesus' life fulfilled OT prophecies. But this all came decades later. Jesus' life was edited and embellished to prove to the Jews he was the Messiah. Whether Jesus announced that to the people remains unknown. He DID make a big deal out of being the Son of Man who would come in his kingdom to save his followers and burn up all the nonbelievers. Not exactly the gentle Lamb that many brag about Jesus being.
So you want to pick and choose what parts of the Bible you lend credence. "Son of Man" is germane while "Messiah" is not? That is the same cherry-picking you would criticize a Christian of doing. And if it "remains unknown" you cannot very well make proclamations like "There are no public admissions by Jesus of being the Messiah." Seems you are only backpedaling into your default religion-bashing now.
Actually, if you bothered to read the accounts of Jesus, they consistently show the story of a man who slowly buys into his own mythos under the pressure of those around him.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
The assertion that the gospels are an embellished accounts containing inserted events was already made in my first post. I guess you forgot about that in your desperate attempt to prove me wrong about something..anything! lol!
Yeah, you just take the self-serving liberty of proclaiming what was and was not embellishment.