by Muddy Waters 23 Replies latest watchtower bible
"I will not accept Jesus as Hitler, evil man. Reading the New Testament requires some level of sophistication."
Yuck.....Band listen to yourself man....
Band you are such a smart, logical guy, then you talk about religion and its like hearing someone else talk.
"The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows."
The canonization was a political process.
Exactly! And would you trust today's U.S. Congress to decide which books belong in the bible and which books do not? Because that is exactly what happened in the time of Constantine. Our view of Jesus today is the view that Constantine and his chosen bishops wanted us to have. There were many other gospels about Jesus that may have given us a bigger picture of what kind of MAN he really was. Those are now lost to the ages, all because he wanted the controversy to stop.
This forum is short on the arts and humanities.
I don't this forum ever claimed to be about the arts and humanities. And if you don't involve science, and math, and history when looking at the bible, all you will have is blind faith.
Just facts:
Jesus teached how to treat a slave and not how to abolish slavery.
Jesus said if you want to be neutral to him you are an enemy.
He used very screwed illustrations like cannibalism and self injury.
He used hell of eternal fire as coersion.
snare, how many of Band's posts have you read, to not know that she's a woman? Personally, I agree with almost everything she said. When people read the gospels and point out inconsistencies in the same way that they blog about plot holes they caught while watching The Avengers, they are missing the point, which is that the gospels were supposed to tell us the kind of things Jesus said and the kind of things he did. Whether he was wearing a purple or scarlet robe is trivial. I don't think that the non-literalness of the gospels exempts their message from criticism, though.
But my main point was that the gospels do not tell us much about any actual man that may have lived. Look at how Jesus wanted to preach only to the Jews, but then in one passage he mentions another flock (John 10:16). Most non-JWs think that this clearly refers to Gentiles, but preaching to Gentiles was something that was pushed by Paul, not the early Christians that preceded him. Considering that this statement occurs only in John, the last gospel written, it's the kind of thing that led me to question whether I should be attempting to model my life on a Jesus who is probably a composite of a rabbi, a messiah claimant and rebel, and a bunch of talking points that other people wanted to have him say as Christianity was taking shape around the fading memory of a man executed by the Romans and whose closest followers were more or less illiterate.
"I will not accept Jesus as Hitler, evil man. Reading the New Testament requires some level of sophistication. First, how do you know he did the bad things if you negate the good things. The gospels are not histories but works of faith. I am almost finished reading Bart Ehrmann's latest book on how Jesus became God. The Church Fathers knew there were descrepancies in the gospels yet felt the faith was better explained by the four gospels than a single uniform gospel. You are reading on a superficial level. It is your right. The canonization was a political process. Constantine wanted the controversy to stop." - BotR
How do you know if he really existed?
How deep do I have to read to understand?
Do you know how where these " early Christian figures" and what church did they founded?
I'll give you a hint;
St Irenaeus of Lyon
St Ignatius of Antioch
Tertullian of Carthage
St Anthony of the Desert
St Athanasius of Alexandria
St Jerome of Pannonia
Until circa 1,000 their was only one church, then they split into two. After that, 500 years past until Luther founded another one. since then, we have over 30,000 flavors and counting.
“Every sect is a certificate that God has not plainly revealed his will to man. To each reader the Bible conveys a different meaning.” - Robert G. Ingersoll (1833 – 1899)
Respectfully,
Ismael
Apognophos, I couldn't have said it better myself!
My apologies band, not sure why I assumed you were male.
Apog... we find the charachter distasteful, inconsistancies simply devalue the credit of the stories.
" the gospels were supposed to tell us the kind of things Jesus said and the kind of things he did"
said...like?
"The servant who knows the master’s will and does not get ready or does not do what the master wants will be beaten with many blows."
"Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace on earth! No, rather a sword lf you love your father, mother, sister, brother, more than me, you are not worthy of being mine"
did...like?
"behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region and cried out to Him, saying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Son of David! My daughter is severely demon-possessed.” But He [Jesus] answered her not a word. And His disciples came and urged Him, saying, “Send her away, for she cries out after us.” But He answered and said, “I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Then she came and worshiped Him, saying, “Lord, help me!” But He answered and said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and throw it to the little dogs.”
I find this man unpleasant. You can call it an unsophisticated view, or akin to critisizing a poor movie if you wish, it doesn't change the verses that I see and find blatantly simple to intepret.
We will never agree. But it interesting to hear you explain such issues.
Until circa 1,000 their was only one church,
Woops! Try again.
There were dozens of varieties by the end of the 2nd century.
To paraphrase the Geico commercials: "15 minutes on Wikipedia could save you endless embarrassment when posting to the web."
snare, we are in fact in agreement, if you look at my first post in this thread where I agreed with the article that MadGiant linked to. I was just taking a different tack in pointing out that I don't even believe that Jesus said most of the things attributed to him.
The linked blog that Mad Giant provided the link to really got me thinking, though I should add that it also reinforced and confirmed some of the thinking I've done over the years about Jesus and his teachings.
One example is Jesus strict teaching on divorce. Even his disciples questioned marriage once Jesus basically told them that divorce in all cases except adultery was prohibited. This teaching has caused the Watchtower to come up with all kinds of odd procedures in cases of divorce.
For example, the unfaithfulness has to either be admitted to or proven.
When I was an elder, we had a sister who knew her husband was unfaithful. But he would not admit it, and we told her that someone had to witness him, say, coming out of his mistresses' residence at night.
So this unfortunate woman had to wait until someone saw her husband effectively commit adultery.
All because of Jesus teaching.
And I vividly remember sitting at that meeting with this sister and thinking 'this just isn't reasonable'.
And that's not even the worst it gets. How about women that are abused physically? Well, as long as he's not cheating on them, they can't divorce and remarry, all because of Jesus' teaching on divorce.
