Jan, I don't think you were ever a Witness, is that correct? The WT went to great pains to try and hide this simple teaching. We were all very duped.
They created a jumble of "Ransom Sacrifice" & "Paying back what Adam lost" jargon that sounded religious without really saying much.
Just more of the WT hiding key biblical themes in plain sight as usual.
Why did Paul call Jesus, “the firstborn from the dead”?
by Doug Mason 20 Replies latest watchtower bible
-
Sea Breeze
-
Phizzy
The problem for serious Christians comes with deciding how much of the Bible is literal, and how much metaphor and Parable etc.
Most sensible Christians agree that the Adam and Eve story is metaphorical, or a parable, but if so whence cometh Sin ? Perhaps Jan or someone could explain ? Certainly the concept of Sin as expounded by Paul and later N.T writers was not in early Judaism in that sort of form, so the whole concept is somewhat mired in doubt. And for a lot of the development of the Doctrine of Sin we have to wait until St Augustine of Hippo, and read what that old windbag has to say.
But Paul's saying Jesus was the Firstborn from the dead I do not see as a problem, or strange, within Paul's Christology.
-
jhine
Sea Breeze , you are correct , l have never been a JW . I am a life long Anglican .
I came onto this forum when l started to find out a bit about the Watchtower and l wanted to get ideas about how to counter witness .
Phizzy, yes many Christians do see the A+E story as metaphorical. I remembered reading something about A+E in Jewish theology. A bit of Googling found this.
" Adam is not just the name of the first human . It is the name of all humanity. In Scripture the word ' man " has four appellations, one of them being Adam . The other three are ish , enosh and gever . In particular the word Adam is used to describe a person with advanced intellectual capacities .
The fact that Adam and Eve's children found people to marry would kinda indicate that there were other people around ! .
As to original sin l have thought about it and the short answer is " no , I can't at the moment give an explanation "
I think of like an IT wizz ( God) creating a perfect programme ( our genes )and a rival putting a virus into it .
That is no help to anyone else l know : ) .
And as to how it actually happened l don't know. However l am going to look at other people's thoughts about it .
Jan
-
Rattigan350
Jesus was the first one resurrected from the dead to immortal life.
-
jhine
Phizzy , l have given this some thought and done a lot of Googling and tbh l can't find anything to explain exactly how in a practical way sin came into the world , the actual mechanics of it .
Jan
-
Terry
Paul (who came along after Jesus' death) spoke and wrote first about him.
(1 Cor. 15:20)
Mankind, in God's eternal emergency plan (in view of Adam's failure) needed a proxy government to stand in on behalf of all future sinners descending from Eve and Adam's sexual union. It is in that frame we must read Paul's words.
Humans know they will die. They are the Walking Dead, as it were.
Media vita in morte sumus (Latin for "In the midst of life we are in death")
Humans are born when their mother gives birth.
(Counting 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. the firstborn is literally born first. Duh.)
Only a dead person who returns to life can be said to be born from the dead.
Since Lazarus was resurrected by Jesus it is reasonable Jesus cannot be firstborn from literal death if Jesus dies and comes back to life AFTER Lazarus.
Jesus preached to these walking dead and chose from among them a selection of humans to rule with him in his future Kingdom.
It is among these select (elect) members Jesus will be the FIRST of that Kingdom to die and be brought back to life in celestial spirit form. The sacred secret, as it were, is the identity of those 144,000 harvested who shall rule for 1,000 years.
All OTHER Humans 'harvested' from death must stand up (anastasis) in a resurrection.
Presumably for further judgment. (I say 'further' because death itself manifests the judgment of God already.)
Two distinct resurrection categories would seem to apply in God's sacred secret.
1. The resurrected government (no further judgment)
2. The resurrected humanity who ARE further judged. (To fail that subsequent judgment requires the 'lake of fire' absolute obliteration. -
Phizzy
Jan, if we cannot know when Sin first occurred and how, how can any religion claim we are " all sinners" and " born in sin" ?? I think both of those statements are WRONG. But then, I am not a Bible believer, I would very much like someone with real Bible knowledge, not a JW or other Bible literalist, explain from Scripture, as you say, the " mechanics" of it. Obviously Paul's writings don't count, he had his own ideas on Sin and whence it came, but they make no sense if the Adam and Eve story is just a metaphor, as it surely is.
If there is no " Sin" then Jesus died for what ?
And if like the Apostle Paul, you believe Jesus was resurrected to life in Heaven, of what significance is this ?
-
Anony Mous
It seems to be somewhat contradictory of a story though. If it’s interpreted as written, Paul was wrong. Jesus was not the first resurrected, not even to heaven.
Jesus was seen conversing with Moses and Elijah in the transfiguration while Jude mentions Michael disputing with the Devil over the body of Moses, who are considered in both biblical and Jewish lore to have been resurrected to an afterlife as well (eg 2 Kings chapter 2).
Likewise Enoch seemed to be sin-free and although at that point in history the concept of heavens and resurrections or even sin did not exist yet in Jewish lore, he was taken by God because the original text can be interpreted as saying he was free of blame. The concept of sinners not being able to coexist in the presence of God was known (the stories of Aaron and Moses, tabernacle and the presence of god meaning the absence of even the priests) so it makes sense that Enoch was considered free of sin. According to the Jewish Midrah, I believe 8 total figures of scripture are said to have entered heaven “alive” or without dying.
The Pauline doctrine however wants to establish a Christianity with strong Jewish overtones which is different than the gospel message. You can really split those two sets of stories (and John of Patmos and the so-called apocrypha would be a third version of more Miracle and Doomsday Cult Christians) into their own versions of Christianity. In the more Jew-centric versions, Jesus is simply the same person, the return of Moses etc, that is what Jews expected of a Messiah. However the more standalone version of Christianity in the gospels has Jews asking whether he was Moses or Elijah throughout the gospel, Jesus sort-of denying it but not really and the story of the transfiguration story kind of tried to suppress the idea altogether.
Suffice to say, reconstructing 1800-1900 year old religious sects to figure out what they each believed while history did its best to compound them into a single religion is really hard.
-
Phizzy
" Suffice to say, reconstructing 1800-1900 year old religious sects to figure out what they each believed while history did its best to compound them into a single religion is really hard."
It is ! and of course the old JW view, and that of many Bible believers, that there was a uniform and united belief system accepted by the Apostles and others in the 1st Century is nonsense. There were various groups who followed Jesus, and disagreed on Doctrine.
The Apostle Paul was of course very different in his beliefs to those of the the Christians in Jerusalem, and he is at pains to point this out, in his genuine writings. This is obscured by the fictional Acts of the Apostles and by later writings pretending to be by Paul.
What he meant by " Firstborn from the dead" is probably as stated in previous Posts on this Thread, but would the other Christian groups have agreed with him ?
-
Doug Mason
The term “firstborn” is a single word and it refers to rank, it does not relate to being born, as the following shows:
“Jesus Christ was resurrected on Nisan 16, 33 C.E., the day when the Jewish high priest offered up the firstfruits of the barley harvest. This fits in accurately with Jesus' being the ‘firstfruits’ in the resurrection of the human dead. (1 Cor. 15:20) This put Jesus Christ in the first ‘rank.’ Just as in the Jewish barley harvest there were afterfruits to be reaped, so too there must be afterfruits in the resurrection: of the dead. But since Jesus Christ ranks first, Paul called him ‘the firstborn from the dead, that he might become the one who is first in all things.’”—Col. 1:18. (The Watchtower, June 15, 1979)