• Welcome to Religious Forums, a friendly forum to discuss all religions in a friendly surrounding.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Our modern chat room. No add-ons or extensions required, just login and start chatting!
    • Access to private conversations with other members.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

Jesus: The Missing Years in the East

FranklinMichaelV.3

Well-Known Member
As an aside, I would ask if Jesus were vegetarian how he could have practiced the Passover feast? I think Passover requires eating a hoofed animal. Also why would he participate in the sign of the twelve baskets of bread, five barley loaves and two fish? (John chap 6 and Mark chap 6) In that sign he multiplied fish, so people could eat them. Is there some way for vegetarians to fulfill the Passover requirement?

Nope, though the story of the multiple of fish is told twice with two different numbers of fish :(.

If Jesus did spend most of his time around Galilee I would think that his diet would have been closer to prescatarian?
 

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic ☿
Premium Member
Nope, though the story of the multiple of fish is told twice with two different numbers of fish :(.

If Jesus did spend most of his time around Galilee I would think that his diet would have been closer to prescatarian?

Does diet really matter when he told his disciples that they would metaphorically have to "eat his flesh and drink his blood?"
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
Crossfire said:
Does diet really matter when he told his disciples that they would metaphorically have to "eat his flesh and drink his blood?"
Shh! Don't tell the Catholics. They don't know about that!
 

Shermana

Heretic
Does diet really matter when he told his disciples that they would metaphorically have to "eat his flesh and drink his blood?"

If Jesus taught to break the dietary laws as many claim, Peter's vision would be utterly meaningless for one thing, and he would have been on trial for far more than just allegedly breaking the Sabbath (which he didn't).

And if the bread and wine is just a symbolic ritual metaphor, there's no physical diet involved except bread and wine.
 

oldbadger

Skanky Old Mongrel!
If Jesus taught to break the dietary laws as many claim, Peter's vision would be utterly meaningless for one thing, and he would have been on trial for far more than just allegedly breaking the Sabbath (which he didn't).

And if the bread and wine is just a symbolic ritual metaphor, there's no physical diet involved except bread and wine.

Hello again.....

It seems that Jesus was not a vegetarian, because he not only served and ate fish, but had a regular diet of meat. I only really know what G-Mark writes about this, but here it is, for any who are interested:-

MARK
2:15} And it
came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house, many
publicans and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his
disciples: for there were many, and they followed him.
{2:16} And when the scribes and Pharisees saw him eat
with publicans and sinners, they said unto his disciples,
How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and
sinners?

MARK
{7:18} And he
saith unto them, Are ye so without understanding also? Do
ye not perceive, that whatsoever thing from without entereth
into the man, [it] cannot defile him; {7:19} Because it
entereth not into his heart, but into the belly, and goeth out
into the draught, purging all meats?
{7:20} And he said,
That which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man.

MARK
{14:3} And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the
leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an
alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and
she brake the box, and poured [it] on his head.
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
As an aside, I would ask if Jesus were vegetarian how he could have practiced the Passover feast? I think Passover requires eating a hoofed animal.

This is probably taken from a Mithraic eucharistic rite in which a bull was slaughtered, and both meat and blood were consumed.


Also why would he participate in the sign of the twelve baskets of bread, five barley loaves and two fish? (John chap 6 and Mark chap 6) In that sign he multiplied fish, so people could eat them.

This myth is probably taken from an earlier Buddhist story:

Miracle of Loaves and Fishes

In the New Testament, Jesus feeds a gathering of 5,000 people using five loaves of bread and two fish. Twelve baskets of fragments remained after the feeding. (Matthew 14:13-21, Mark 6:31-44, Luke 9:10-17 and John 6:5-15)

Similarly in the Jataka 78 (Illisa-Jataka), the Buddha is said to have fed 500 disciples using just a few cakes. The number 500 occurs repeatedly in Buddhist scriptures, while the much larger number 5000 seems anomalous in the Bible, suggesting that the Biblical account was borrowed from the Buddhist account.


Parallels between Buddha and Jesus | Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother


Interesting that Paul also alluded to some '500 eyewitnesses' to the Resurrection, 'some of which are still living' according to Paul, but none of which Paul even bothered to interview for a first hand witness account of THE single most important historical event. Also, we have not a single peep from any of those alleged '500 eyewitnesses' (*cough*), either first or second hand, nor from any of their friends and neighbors, to whom the word would have spread like wildfire, about what they had seen with their own eyes. The entire story is in a sealed vacuum, a vacuum held only in the mind of one St. Paul.
 
Last edited:

Shermana

Heretic
the Buddha is said to have fed 500 disciples using just a few cakes.

It's actually 500 people with water to drink from one "jar" which he purchases, and this "Jar" may be in reference to a large container that could easily satisfy 500 people, like a 50-100 gallon vat or so, of a similar size of the wine jars in Jesus's wine story. "24 pennies" for a little jar of water would be the most expensive jar of water of all time, that better be a diamond plated jar, the word for "penny" I believe is a translation for a coin of large value. And I don't believe it was Buddha himself who did this but his incarnation as a young disciple, the "Pupil of the Gildmaster", a different character altogether regardless if the story is about his soul in a previous form. And we have no way of knowing which stories come from 400 BCE or the much later ones that go up to even the 1890s (AD). This could have for all intents and purposes been a copy of the Christian story instead, assuming that the "jar" was just a very expensive, tiny jar he bought. And the story doesn't seem to relate it as anything miraculous but simply doing him a favor. The context is clearly just about him doing them all a big favor.

http://archive.org/stream/jatakatales00fran/jatakatales00fran_djvu.txt

14 THE LITTLE GILDMASTER

Later, one rainy and windy day, the wind blew down
a quantity of rotten branches and boughs and leaves in
the king's pleasaunce, and the gardener did not see how
to clear them away. Then up came the young man with
an offer to remove the lot, if the wood and leaves might
be his. The gardener closed with the offer on the spot.
Then this apt pupil of Gildmaster Little repaired to the
children's playground and in a very little while had got
them by bribes of molasses to collect every stick and leaf
in the place into a heap at the entrance to the pleasaunce.
Just then the king's potter was on the look out for fuel to
fire bowls for the palace, and coming on this heap, took
the lot off his hands. The sale of his wood brought in
sixteen pennies to this pupil of Gildmaster Little, as well
as five bowls and other vessels. Having now twenty-four
pennies in all, a plan occurred to him. He went to the
vicinity of the city-gate with a jar full of water and supplied
500 mowers with water to drink. Said they, " You've done
us a good turn, friend. What can we do for you ? " " Oh,
I'll tell you when I want your aid," said he ; and as he went
about, he struck up an intimacy with a land-trader and a
sea-trader. Said the former to him, " To-morrow there will
come to town a horse-dealer with 500 horses to sell." On
hearing this piece of news, he said to the mowers, " I want
each of you to-day to give me a bundle of grass and not to
sell your own grass till mine is sold." " Certainly," said they,
and delivered the 500 bundles of grass at his house. Unable
to get grass for his horses elsewhere, the dealer purchased
our friend's grass for a thousand pieces. Only a few days
later his sea-trading friend brought him news of the arrival
of a large ship in port ; and another plan struck him. He
hired for eight pence a well appointed carriage which plied
for hire by the hour, and went in great style down to the
 
Last edited:

LegionOnomaMoi

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I have a question regarding Aramaic primacy: the oldest books of the New Testaments are letters from Paul to Greek congregations. Why in the world would Paul write to Greek-speaking congregations in Aramaic? It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. :confused:

The Gospels were written later. I find it likely that Paul's letters to Greek congregations might have "established" Greek as the lingua franca of 1st C. Christianity.
Pe****ta Primacy, Palistinian Prophet, & why Jesus didn't speak Syriac
 

nash8

Da man, when I walk thru!
Are you kidding? The world is a sensationalist carnival gone wrong at the moment. Besides, as I mentioned, the Buddhists have no agenda to reveal anything. From their point of view, the scrolls are about St. Issa their friend and teacher, not Jesus the godman savior of the world in the flesh who floated away into the heavens.

Lol, what's wrong with carnivals? And they don't have an agenda to reveal anything, but I would argue that they now do not have to fear for their lives in revealing information that they have to those that ask.

But the "exotic" part would be little different in many ways than what is claimed about Jesus now buy scholars who see in him a Hellenistic philosopher. Egypt was thoroughly Hellenized (and Romanized) by this point. It had been a part of the Greek Empire since Alexander the Great (and the library of Alexandria connected to Greece since before the city itself). By Jesus' time the ancient Hieroglyphic alphabet was already dying out and the Greek-based Old Coptic script taking its place. People who wish to see in Jesus the exotic Eastern wisdom of old frequently don't know what India and Egypt (among other places) were like during his time:
"The latest hymns of the Rig Veda and the earliest sections of the Upanishads, both of which came to be Hindu scriptures, contain the first recorded concepts of metaphysical absolute in Indian Religion. However, the first systematic philosophical expression of absolutism- belief in an impersonal, ultimate reality which pervades and explains the entire universe- was the Buddhist Nāgārjuna's exposition of the doctrine of Śūnyatā in the second century CE."
Reat, N. R. (1994). Buddhism: a history. Jain Publishing Company.

Jesus is so frequently portrayed as knowing traditions that didn't exist until after he died.

But you also know as well as I do, that the first systematic philosophical expression of absolutism, was most likely "spoken" well before the first time that it was written down and recorded into a "formal tradition".

If Śūnyatā was indeed a Buddhist philosphy that stemmed from the Buddha, then the concept could have been around since 600 B.C. at the latest. Being a Buddhist concept, and Nāgārjuna, being a Buddhist, would have had to be exposed to the concept before he conceptualized it, or at the least, used some Buddhist practice that allowed him to come to realize the conceptualization of the concept. This would mean that the practice would have been available to others within the "religion", therefore allowing others to come to the same realization far before he did, perhaps without out conceptualizing it as a distinct philosophical thought.

Śūnyatā - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

However, what would be even more interesting to me, especially considering your post about scholarly discussion about Jesus being a Greek philospher, would be the term Logos.

The term Logos, seems to be used by many ancient Greek philosophers to denote some type of "universe pervading" ultimate reason, far before Jesus' time. And considering your post that that Jesus' might of had a strong Greek influence, it would make sense that this would be a logical "descriptor" for someone popular within Greek philosophical circles, who they sought to deify.

Logos - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On another note, from my readings on the two terms, they have two totally different meanings for me atleast. The Buddhist conception of the ultimate reality seems to conceptualize, nothingness, while the Greek conceptualization seems to conceptualize oneness.

While I would agree that they are both conceptualizations of the "ultimate reality", they are viewing the concept from two different perspectives.

You're confusing stupidity with knowledge. I don't need a spoon-fed commercialized, internet-educated "mystic" to tell me about any traditions or reality. The fact that you can spout on and on about Eastern practices you learned from Wikipedia, physics you learned from youtube, and historical Jesus studies you make up doesn't amount to much.

Hey now, all that I have learned about anything has come from Wiki, youtube, and my own stuff that I make up lol. Are you insulting my intellectual integrity. ;)

I call it 'foaming at the mouth'. The very fact that you are now defensive is indicative of your ignorance. An intellectual like yourself should know better than to indulge in ad hominem attacks; it's just plain stupidity. And the 'logic' you applied to Yeshua and Buddhism based on academia, is erroneous, because you place intellectual knowledge about Reality above direct experience via intuitive insight. I'm not saying that one is better than the other, but factual knowledge makes sense only when seen in the light of Reality itself.


You are obviously placing intuitive insight as the more important of the two.

I see you have changed "I" to "we". Are you now wrapping the group around you for increased security and authority?

Ad-hominem attacks are bad mkay. You said so yourself in the above post.

Your comments continue to indicate your ignorance, and how you continue to nibble around the edges, rather than to pierce right to the heart of the matter.

Veiled ad-hominem attack.


Leave your academic baggage filled with dead facts and get in touch with your breath. When will you understand: factual data is not reality. Thinking that it is, is leading you to the wrong conclusions.

You just said in the post above that factual data is no more or less important than intuitive insight, but then you say that factual data is not reality.

You still don't get it, Legion, and I refuse to discuss it with you any further:

You say this, then subsequently post another paragraph.

Research and scholarship are based on the source, not the other way around. You are a creature of academia, and it's got you enslaved. Get thee to the nunnery, or at least to your QiGong instructor, so you can learn to see, rather than just think.

For accusing someone of using ad-hominem attacks, you sure do use a lot of them yourselve. :yes:

It's intellectual types like you that eventually break down in a heap, sobbing on their meditation mats because their academia, reason, logic, and analyis all come to a dead end and fail them.

LOL, really? That's like the 4th ad-hominem attack that you've made. Atleast when Legion makes an ad-hominem attack, it posts something of intellectual value with it. Why don't you post some of your meditational techniques you use to gain this intuitive insight that you claim to have?


But that's a good thing. It is the beginning of understanding. And no, this comes to you not from YouTube, though you might learn a few things there, rather than having your nose buried in dead academic journals and then coyly trying to impress us here with quotations in Greek, which no one understands, but looks impressive and 'intellectual'.

So what's the difference between your appeals to essene.org from Legion's appeals to academic sources? While they have some very good information on their cite, they are OBVIOUSLY biased with anger. Have you read the outrage with which they speak concerning Paul, as well as other ideals that they don't personally hold? And this doesn't come from any intellectual knowledge, but from my own intuitive insight. Any group that speaks with such outrage on subjects that don't really matter, don't hold any weight with me.

We only know the unknown Hellenistic authors did who were paralleling Jesus divinity with that of the emperors according to modern scholarships.

How exactly do we "know" that they were paralleling the divinity of the emperors.

Pe****ta Primacy, Palistinian Prophet, & why Jesus didn't speak Syriac

Can you cite that reference in Greek please? ;)
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
And we have no way of knowing which stories come from 400 BCE or the much later ones that go up to even the 1890s (AD). This could have for all intents and purposes been a copy of the Christian story instead.....



The New Testament mentions the feeding of the multitudes on four separate occasions, and fish is listed as one of the items present. However, the church father Irenaeus, in his great thesis Against Heresies (180-188 AD), wrote: "He there, seeing a great crowd had followed Him, fed all that multitude with five loaves of bread and twelve baskets of fragments remained over and above." Irenaeus makes no mention of fish. In a later text, Irenaeus again says, "Our Lord after blessing the five loaves, fed with them five thousand men."

How do we explain this discrepancy? Our oldest existing Greek manuscript of the New Testament, the Codex Sinaiticus, can be found in the British Museum. It was written in 331 AD. We have no New Testaments from before this time. It is possible that early copies of the gospels made no mention of fish being fed to the multitudes, while later copyists added this symbol in order to enhance the miracle.

Yahoo! Groups
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
Lol, what's wrong with carnivals?

All glitter; empty calories. "gone wrong" implies that advertisement does not match Reality, so it's falling apart.

And they don't have an agenda to reveal anything, but I would argue that they now do not have to fear for their lives in revealing information that they have to those that ask.

No. The issue is not safety for their lives, but revealing writings about their dear friend Issa to the mob, who they know wouldn't believe they are authentic anyway, and proceed to viciously tear them apart in public, in addition to protecting them from theft, as they have now reported other items missing from the monastery.


You are obviously placing intuitive insight as the more important of the two.

They both have importance, but intellectual knowledge by itself has no meaning. The insight must come first, in order to illumine the factual data and make sense of it.

Ad-hominem attacks are bad mkay. You said so yourself in the above post.

Veiled ad-hominem attack.

For accusing someone of using ad-hominem attacks, you sure do use a lot of them yourselve. :yes:

LOL, really? That's like the 4th ad-hominem attack that you've made.

Sorry, I cannot agree with you. Turning the mirror back on the person initiating an ad hominem attack is not an ad hominem attack itself, though it may appear as such. He initiated the attack, when he clearly had a choice to simply address the content of my post instead.

Why are you defending him? If he wishes to pursue a defense, he's perfectly capable.



You just said in the post above that factual data is no more or less important than intuitive insight, but then you say that factual data is not reality.

It isn't. Factual knowledge ABOUT the world becomes transformed by intuitive insight. The world is still there, but we no longer see it through conceptual filters. We see it as it actually is.

"When I began my study, mountains were just mountains, and trees were just trees. During my study, mountains were no longer mountains, and trees no longer trees. When I realized my enlightenment, mountains were once again mountains, and trees once again trees."
from Zen

You say this, then subsequently post another paragraph.

Yup!

Atleast when Legion makes an ad-hominem attack, it posts something of intellectual value with it.

Except for the fact that the conclusion so derived is erroneous. I see. So an intellectual is making the mistake of launching ad hominem attacks. Not too intellectual, is it?


So what's the difference between your appeals to essene.org from Legion's appeals to academic sources? While they have some very good information on their cite, they are OBVIOUSLY biased with anger. Have you read the outrage with which they speak concerning Paul, as well as other ideals that they don't personally hold? And this doesn't come from any intellectual knowledge, but from my own intuitive insight. Any group that speaks with such outrage on subjects that don't really matter, don't hold any weight with me.

The anger over Paul, which also comes from atheists and Christians as well, is about the debasement of truth, and his operating under the color of divine authority to persuade millions onto the wrong path. Paul was a charlatan with his own selfish agenda. If you are unaware of this, some research is in order.

My references to sites other than the standard ones which continue to provide the same old drivel, is meant only to flesh out the picture, and to show, where I can, how some of the later 'teachings' are add-ons designed to falsely enhance the message. Those sites, for the most part, do respect intellectual input along with the intuitive mind.

Would you feel no anger if you learned that some (many) people are being misled by teachings operating under the color of religious authority, and which eventually only lead to misery and pain? That is the nature of Paul's glittering carnival approach. It has no enduring value. Paul is a charlatan carnie-barker.
 
Last edited:

Shermana

Heretic
Do you believe the episode of Peter's vision of the Unclean animals was also interpolated or part of the original text?

How would Peter even understand the concept of "unclean" animals if there was no basis or reason for separating animals into such categories?

Irenaeus most assuredly mentions that one.
 

crossfire

LHP Mercuræn Feminist Heretic ☿
Premium Member
However, what would be even more interesting to me, especially considering your post about scholarly discussion about Jesus being a Greek philospher, would be the term Logos.

The term Logos, seems to be used by many ancient Greek philosophers to denote some type of "universe pervading" ultimate reason, far before Jesus' time. And considering your post that that Jesus' might of had a strong Greek influence, it would make sense that this would be a logical "descriptor" for someone popular within Greek philosophical circles, who they sought to deify.

Logos - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

On another note, from my readings on the two terms, they have two totally different meanings for me atleast. The Buddhist conception of the ultimate reality seems to conceptualize, nothingness, while the Greek conceptualization seems to conceptualize oneness.
Emptiness is not nothingness. Interconnectedness is not the void.

While I would agree that they are both conceptualizations of the "ultimate reality", they are viewing the concept from two different perspectives.
Both perspectives are contained in John 1. Everyone just has their own lens of interpretation. I was surprised when a Chinese poster said that the Chinese version of John 1 uses the word wuji for the word "theos," and the word taiji for the word "logos."

Does the fact that the Chinese concept of wuji and taiji precedes the Gospels by centuries mean that the western writers got their ideas of theos and logos from the east? Does the Chinese view that taiji comes from wuji when wuji vibrates and rests {like when we speak a word} mean that this is where the Greeks got this idea? No, it does not. It does indicate, however, that Jesus and the gospel writers did have interesting lenses through which they viewed reality.
 
Last edited:

oldbadger

Skanky Old Mongrel!
We have no New Testaments from before this time. It is possible that early copies of the gospels made no mention of fish being fed to the multitudes, while later copyists added this symbol in order to enhance the miracle.

OK...... so 'evangelical vigour' over the centuries has added to the accounts. But........ somehow this 'vigour' didn't find its way evenly throughout the whole record!

The record shows Yeshua having good tasty meat dinners with his fisherman, publican and sinner friends in Capernaum and with his friends and Simon the Leper in Bethany.

As for Yeshua organsing that great picnic on the East shore of Lake G, a big crowd has become 5 regiments of men without including their women and children! G-John shows a much smaller group. The vast majority of those picnic folks left by boat:-
JOHN:- {6:23}(Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberias nigh unto
the place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks:) {6:24} When the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither his disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus. {6:25}

It would take well over 200 boats (similar to the 9 meter one found in the lake bed) to take 5000, without their families! On the side.....I feel certain that Yeshua did organise this feast.

But this question of whether Yeshua could desert the Temple for years (without obeying the demand to attend) still thrives. So..... did God make clear demand to the Jews that they attend the Tabernacle on a regular basis? Is it because the Tabernacle was erected within the new Temple that that the requirement passed from Tabernacle to Temple? Did God warn destruction to those Jews who did not attend regularly? Could Yeshua have ignored such instructions if he believed that the priesthood had turned 'evil' in some way? Did Yeshua feel that the Jewish God had forsaken the Temple?

Lastly, is it possible for me, a gentile, to grasp the significance of such situations? Since the Temple was lost to the Jewish people they have not been able to attend either, so have they broken Jewish Law? Questions, questions......
 

godnotgod

Thou art That
OK...... so 'evangelical vigour' over the centuries has added to the accounts. But........ somehow this 'vigour' didn't find its way evenly throughout the whole record!

.

Ultimately, then, how can we then trust anything in the 'record' as there are numerous examples of additions, revisions, and outright deceptions?
 
Top