Jesus and the Fig Tree

[greatcalgarian]

And when they where perplexed at the strange question, Jesus, as he walked, stood on the banks of the River Jordan, and stretching out his right hand, he filled it with seed and sowed it upon the ground. And thereupon he poured sufficient water over it. And looking at the ground before them, the fruit appeared...

And when they where perplexed at the strange question, Jesus, as he walked, stood on the banks of the River Jordan, and stretching out his right hand, he took a fig-tree and planted it in the river. And on the water, the roots spread out and fruit appeared...

Papyrus Egerton 2 is a codex fragment of an unknown gospel, found in Egypt and published in 1935/1987. It is one of the oldest known fragments (around 200), it is neither "heretical" nor "gnostic", it seems to be almost independent of the synoptics and it represents a johannine tradition independent of the canonical John. Additionally it tells us an otherwise unknown miracle story!

Unfortunately, Jesus did not curse the fig tree, but brought life, and fruits with his miracle power.

 

[john313]

that makes perfect sense for someone who supposedly loved all life to spread life rather than curse it.

Unfortunately, Jesus did not curse the fig tree, but brought life, and fruits with his miracle power.

it is fortunate for me since i never believed he actually cursed a tree for not having fruit out of season.

 

[profet]

This story is completely in character for Jesus. It was just another manifestation of Jesus' extreme impatience to people (and things apparantly) who were not fulfilling their roles in life.
Was this an innocent fig tree? Yes it was. But then, were not most of the Pharisees arguing about trivial semantics with him just doing what their fathers had rabbis had taught them to do? Arguing about trivial bits of the Judaic law was and still is what most rabbis do for fun. But Jesus didn't say " ha ha... rabbis will be rabbis." He lashed out and called them hypocritical vipers and said Jerusalem was going to be desolated and said that Israel would never see the messiah until they learned how to welcome a messenger of God properly.
Jesus got severly pissed-off when people did things half heartedly and since Matthew said he was with his disciples, I'd venture it was yet another display to them that they should not do things half-heartedly either. I can almost hear Jesus saying "Not in season is an excuse. you're a damned fig tree... where are the figs?!?!"
I would urge you to completely ignore anyone who starts babbling about the resurrection and divinity. You are right for questioning it. For all we KNOW, Jesus was not God, but rather a carpenter who saw wisdom in the mannerisms of early Buddhist missionaries in the levant and became convinced that this was the spiritual practice the Jews needed to follow within their own religion. He threatened the power structure of the state religion and was killed after which his disciples deified him to comete with other religions in a
The question you need to ask is. "So he's not a God. Are his teachings still relevant anyway?"
I would say they are, and whether he is a God or not is COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT and I believe he would say the same thing.

 

[Melody]

Melody--

Um, I beg your pardon, but is your analogy supposed to demonstrate anything of significance? Surely you aren't suggesting that simplicity implies unreliability in all cases, simply because you were able to come up with one example of simple, unreliable literature and one example of complex, reliable literature..... :sarcastic:

I thought it was pretty clear but let me try again. Relying on something as truth just because it's simple and easy to read, doesn't mean it has anything to do with truth. It just means it's simple and easy to read.

Can simple be the truth? Sure...but that's not what Kat said. She said she prefers to believe the simple version *because* it is easier to understand despite the fact that two books of the bible (and this is a biblical debate, no?) talk about *Jesus* and the fig tree...not Peter.

 

[Melody]

Why are mark and luke more reliable than anything else? why do you assume that jesus was changed to peter and not the other way around.

Educate me. Please show me where I can find other accounts of Peter and the fig tree.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but it was my understanding that the books chosen for the Bible were chosen because they can be corroborated by other Scripture. If something is mentioned in a scroll, but cannot be corroborated in other scrolls, the book was excluded.

So please point me to the corroborative works that back up Peter and the fig tree.

 

[Melody]

I was trying to figure out how to relate the Gnostic bible to the aromatherapy and essential oils, and the other two Gospels to trade books on the chemistry of essential oils and medical journals, but no matter how hard I tried to establish the correlation, I could not see any.

Perhaps because I didn't make it simple enough?

I have quite a number of gnostic literature in my personal library and it's fascinating reading.

 

[greatcalgarian]

Educate me. Please show me where I can find other accounts of Peter and the fig tree.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but it was my understanding that the books chosen for the Bible :bounce because they can be corroborated by other Scripture. If something is mentioned in a scroll, but cannot be corroborated in other scrolls, the book was excluded.

So please point me to the corroborative works that back up Peter and the fig tree.

Read Richard Carrier's article
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/NTcanon.html
An interesting excerp as below:

<H3>XVI. Eusebius, the First History of the Church, and the Earliest Complete Bibles

The first Christian scholar to engage in researching and writing a complete history of the Christian church, Eusebius of Caesarea, reveals the embarrassing complexity of the development of the Christian canon, despite his concerted attempt to cover this with a pro-orthodox account. Two things must be known: first, Eusebius was either a liar or hopelessly credulous (Richard also resort to either or technique of arguement, not very clever of him to do this)(see n. 6), and either way not a very good historian; second, Eusebius rewrote his History of the Church at least five times (cf. M 202, n. 29), in order to accommodate changing events, including the ever-important Council of Nicea, where Arianism, the view that Christ was created by God and not entirely identical to God (the greatest advocate of this was Eusebius' contemporary Arius, after whom the doctrine was named, but the idea was not entirely original to him), was decisively declared heretical, and for the first time in history this decision had the full backing and enforcement of the Roman Empire. Eusebius was an Arian until that day, and, not desiring to lose his position in the church, he abandoned his Arianism. We may never know what effect this had on his final revision of his history--but any view he may have taken about the canon that was pro-Arian was certainly expunged. This may reveal once again how doctrine more than objective scholarship affected Christian choices concerning canonical texts.

</H3>

My satire way of answering your question, no offence meant, apology given here if it is not to any one taste, and moderators, please remove this posting if it is offensive:​

http://ca.geocities.com/greatcalgarian/​

However, I still managed to inspire through my holy ghost, thousands and millions of preachers who are doing excellent job and are pretty convincing and manage to gather my frock of sheep together with my proper direction of the early Church Fathers and as well as the Pope. However in the early days from AD500 to AD1800, my loyal disciples have to resort to various very violent, bloody and cruel actions, in order to keep me alive, and give no mercy and let go my wrath on all those infidels, even among the believers themselves. They fought, killed each other, and burnt each others gospel (Ebionitism, Gnosticism, Hellenisticism, Marcion, Montanus, not to mention Muhammad, my last prophet, who managed to gather a considerable frock of sheep for me, who worship me five times a day instead of only once on Sabbath day, which makes me feel very good) until the winner emerged. By AD 200, 20 of the 27 books of the New Testament seem to have been generally regarded as authoritative. The 39th festal letter of St. Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria listed as canonical the 27 books that remain the contents of the New Testament. What a big relief for me when that was finally done. I have to work really hard to direct the holy spirit to the right persons to guide them to reach the correct decisions on which gospels to throw away, and which to include in the bible.

Sometimes it really surprised and amazed me that my creation could be so imaginative and productive. Look at what GnosticBasilides wrote (Nag Hammadi) in Exigetica around AD135, and AD144Marcion's faith and Gospel, Montanism in AD156, Talmud in AD200, Justin, Tatian, Terullian, Theophilus, Serapion, Essenes, Dionysius, Athenagoras, Irenaeus, all telling different stories. I copied MaoTzeTong policy of &#30334;&#33457;&#24320;&#25918; (may be he copied mine, I am not very sure, because time frame has no meaning for me as I was the past, I am the present, and I shall be the future), and then with my holy spiritual inspiration, by the process of evolutionary process of survival of the fitest, I finally became what I am today, very very similar in the Eastern and Western Canons after around AD500.

 

[Betho_br]

On the path to Jerusalem, there stood the fig tree, akin to the depiction in the Parable of the Sower. Over three years of His ministry, Jesus treaded that route, gaining intimate familiarity with it. His discerning eye noted that the fig tree, though shielded by the Mitzvah from being harvested for the first three years, bore no fruit during His visitation, withering away just as described in the Parable of the Sower.