Who is Jesus to Non-Christians?

[Vouthon]

@Thanda Further to our discussion about Jesus's teachings on personal wealth and temporal possessions, I note with interest that you are a member of the LDS church. Your denomination appears to have some rather progressive economic-collectivist practices in its ecclesial history, namely the 'United Order' and the 'Law of Consecration'.

My understanding (please correct me if wrong, as I would like to know more about this from a Mormon) is that these represented an attempt on Joseph Smith's part to return to the values of apostolic communalism and egality which prevailed within the early church in Jerusalem:


United Order - Wikipedia

In the Latter Day Saint movement, the United Order (also called the United Order of Enoch) was one of several 19th-century church collectivist programs. Early versions of the Order beginning in 1831 attempted to fully implement the law of consecration, a form of Christian communalism, modeled after the New Testament church which had "all things in common". These early versions ended after a few years. Later versions within Mormonism, primarily in the Utah Territory, implemented less-ambitious cooperative programs, many of which were very successful.

The Order's full name invoked the city of Enoch, described in Latter Day Saint scripture as having such a virtuous and pure-hearted people that God had taken it to heaven.[1] The United Order established egalitarian communities designed to achieve income equality, eliminate poverty, and increase group self-sufficiency. The movement had much in common with other communalist utopian societies formed in the United States and Europe during the Second Great Awakening which sought to govern aspects of people's lives through precepts of faith and community organization​

 

[RESOLUTION]

I will assume Jesus was an actual historical, although some find that controversial.

My view is that he was an 'agitator' with ties to those who became Zealots, expressing the dislike of the local Jewish populace with those in control. his religious message was pretty much in line with those of the Pharisees. He was one of a fairly long list of itinerant preachers of that time. I doubt that the historical Jesus saw himself as divine--that belief came later when Paul overturned things.

There is no evidence of a long list of itinerant preachers at the time of Christ. I am sure more than Christ would have been crucified or very little attention paid to Christ if there had been.
Yes Jesus existed and to say that is controversial would suggest that thousands of people who witnessed him and those who crucified him made up lies to undermine themselves and their religions.

Once he died, Paul took over the group of followers and invented a form of Christianity. Over the course of the next three centuries, the theology was invented to support these views, and the Roman empire's adoption of them. This involved labeling some texts as canonical and others as heretical. The difference wasn't decided until quite late (Arian Christianity is an example of a late version that disagreed with the orthodox views).

Paul was a Pharisee and he and the Sadducees held conflicting beliefs. But it was known that when the Messiah came he would tell them the truth. There are two places which confirm this. 15 The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;
18 I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.

19 And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.

Being a Pharisee and also taught in the law he knew the truth about the Scriptures when converted. The truth remains the same as told by the Apostles and Paul. Constantine the Great
was the person who caused Rome to dominate the Christian Church. But the true Church remains those which Christ called and the truth and foundation on which it was erected.
20 Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say, that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.

21 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.

22 Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship: for salvation is of the Jews.

23 But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the Father seeketh such to worship him.

24 God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.

25 The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.

The true Church is not a denomination it one born of Spirit and Truth.

Anyway, I see Jesus as a Jewish agitator trying to get people to go back to their old beliefs and to fight those who were seen as illegitimate rulers.

Jesus as Messiah showed the way to God. He came not to declare himself but to declare Gods truth. The truth he told has not changed. Love God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself That is the real Church

 

[Polymath257]

There is no evidence of a long list of itinerant preachers at the time of Christ. I am sure more than Christ would have been crucified or very little attention paid to Christ if there had been.

On the contrary, Josephus mentions quite a few. Many with very similar teachings to those attributed to Jesus.

 

[RESOLUTION]

On the contrary, Josephus mentions quite a few. Many with very similar teachings to those attributed to Jesus.

Please print the long list in Jerusalem during Jesus three years ministry and what religion now exists which remember them.

 

[Polymath257]

Please print the long list in Jerusalem during Jesus three years ministry and what religion now exists which remember them.

Um, why limit to three years? I'm talking about a LONG history, from about 150 years before Jesus to about 150 years after. Historic memories were longer then.

 

[Thanda]

@Thanda Further to our discussion about Jesus's teachings on personal wealth and temporal possessions, I note with interest that you are a member of the LDS church. Your denomination appears to have some rather progressive economic-collectivist practices in its ecclesial history, namely the 'United Order' and the 'Law of Consecration'.

My understanding (please correct me if wrong, as I would like to know more about this from a Mormon) is that these represented an attempt on Joseph Smith's part to return to the values of apostolic communalism and egality which prevailed within the early church in Jerusalem:


United Order - Wikipedia

In the Latter Day Saint movement, the United Order (also called the United Order of Enoch) was one of several 19th-century church collectivist programs. Early versions of the Order beginning in 1831 attempted to fully implement the law of consecration, a form of Christian communalism, modeled after the New Testament church which had "all things in common". These early versions ended after a few years. Later versions within Mormonism, primarily in the Utah Territory, implemented less-ambitious cooperative programs, many of which were very successful.

The Order's full name invoked the city of Enoch, described in Latter Day Saint scripture as having such a virtuous and pure-hearted people that God had taken it to heaven.[1] The United Order established egalitarian communities designed to achieve income equality, eliminate poverty, and increase group self-sufficiency. The movement had much in common with other communalist utopian societies formed in the United States and Europe during the Second Great Awakening which sought to govern aspects of people's lives through precepts of faith and community organization​

There is not much to add really. I think you have pretty right.

In the end we all dream of the same heaven. God himself has promised one heaven to the believers. So there is a sense that the inequities we see here on earth are, to a large an extent, a distortion of the true order of heaven. They are brought about largely by greed, laziness and selfishness. When those character flaws disappear the inequality, it is thought, will disappear too.

So those who approach God in honesty must at once recognise the equality of man. At once they must recognise their prayers are not more likely to be heard because they have more money. Or less heard because of their poverty. This explains, to an extent, why the poor are more likely to be believers than the rich - they are exalted while the rich are humbled.

Now the scripture says, "thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven, thy kingdom come". So of necessity the true followers of God will seek to mirror what they think is the true order of heaven here on earth.

The issue however is that in order to successfully implement communalism like the Law of Consecration, there must exist an equality of spirituality maturity. From that equality will flow the equality (or the desire for the equality) of material possessions. And unfortunately not all who join the church have the same spiritual maturity. For "Not every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord shall enter into the kingdom of Heaven".

 

[PearlSeeker]

Recent scholarship (i.e. Hurtado, Ehrman, Bauckham, Fletcher-Louis) has shed a considerable amount of light upon what first century Christians, the ones who produced the gospels and letters, believed about Jesus's divinity. There is now a scholarly consensus that "high christology" (Jesus as divine incarnation) represented the earliest stage of pre-pauline christology among the circles of disciples after Jesus's death.

Basically, they held that Jesus had personally pre-existed in spirit prior to his birth, existing with the Father before creation and was the Father's 'agent' of creation, the one through whom the Father created the cosmos. They associated this pre-incarnate Jesus with 'the angel of the Lord' in the Torah and the 'Word of the Lord' (mediated through Philo's platonic 'Logos', Judaized Platonism).

Jesus was, thus, placed on the "Creator" side of the Creator/creature divide. However, they did not yet - at that primitive stage - employ ontological language to describe the eternal relationship between the Son of God and God the Father, only Hebraic categories. It was when the church fathers interacted with Greek philosophy, from the second to fourth century, that they began to use it to more precisely - scientifically - delineate the actual nature of this 'relationship', through the language of three Divine Hypostases (Persons) in One Essence (ousia) and Being i.e. Trinitarian monotheism.

Paul does not elucidate this belief in any great depth, he mentions it in passing as something that his audience already takes for granted. Illustrative of this is the pre-Pauline hymn in Philippians 2:6–11, in which most scholars (including Ehrman and Hurtado) see the preexistent and divine Jesus described as first becoming “incarnate” as a man (vv. 6–8).

Since Paul's letters were written in the 50s, and this doctrine is already an assumed, uncontested belief at that point, scholars date the hymn to the 30s CE - not long after Jesus's death, giving it time to disseminate this widely.

As Hurtado has noted: "we have evidence from ancient Jewish sources (especially apocalyptic texts such as 1 Enoch) that the “preexistence” of eschatological figures was a Jewish theological trope. This evidence suggests that Jesus’ preexistence could well have been an almost immediate corollary of the conviction that God had exalted him uniquely to heavenly/divine glory".

The early Christians took this established tradition - which they applied to Jesus in the aftermath of their mystical resurrection experiences of the glorified/ascended Jesus - and did something with the ideas of incarnation and exaltation that no Jewish author had ever done before with Enoch, Melchizedek, Adam or Moses: they accorded Jesus an active role as co-eternal divine agent with God the Father in creation (incarnation) and claimed that God the Father now willed that Jesus be given cultic worship in the same context as that owed to God the Father himself (exaltation), both of which were a “novel mutation” within Second Temple Judaism according to the scholars.

1. Is Paul's quotation of Christologic hymn without any interpolation?

2. Divine pre-existing mediator Word/Son was already known in Hellenistic Judaism (Wisdom of Salomon, Philo). This is more likely Paul's source than fishermen desciples from Galilee (Nazarenes).

3. From the Gospels only late Gospel of John mentiones the Word and claims the Word = God (but in the same gospel are also parts that show subordinate position of Jesus).

 

[dybmh]

Um, why limit to three years? I'm talking about a LONG history, from about 150 years before Jesus to about 150 years after. Historic memories were longer then.

I'd like a few examples if you don't mind.

 

[Aupmanyav]

Well, John the Baptist was one. Perhaps he tried to enlist Jesus in his group, but Jesus had other designs.

 

[dybmh]

Well, John the Baptist was one. Perhaps he tried to enlist Jesus in his group, but Jesus had other designs.

I'm looking for examples that show the previously mentioned time span 150 BC to 150 AD. A contemporary of Jesus isn't exactly helpful for this.

But thanks anyway

 

[Rival]

I'm looking for examples that show the previously mentioned time span 150 BC to 150 AD. A contemporary of Jesus isn't exactly helpful for this.

But thanks anyway

PSEUDO-MESSIAHS - JewishEncyclopedia.com

Might help a little.

 

[dybmh]

PSEUDO-MESSIAHS - JewishEncyclopedia.com

Might help a little.

from the link.

"The pseudo-Messiahs begin to appear with the end of the Hasmonean dynasty" -- But it doesn't list one. The earliest appears to be mid 1st century a contemporary of Jesus.

 

[Vouthon]

I'm looking for examples that show the previously mentioned time span 150 BC to 150 AD. A contemporary of Jesus isn't exactly helpful for this.

I usually pull most of my own examples directly from primary texts such as Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls (i.e. "Teacher of Righteousness") and occasionally the Talmud, as they are some of our best documentary evidence for the Second Temple era in Judea.

Somewhat earlier on in the thread, I noted a number of such prophetic and/or messianic claimants.

My personal favourite is the rather charming but also moving tale of the prophet (not Messiah claimant) Honi the Circle-Drawer, whose career is dated to around the years 65-67 BCE, during the tenure of the Hasmonean monarch and High Priest Hyrcaus II. He was a reputed miracle-worker in the midst of a rebellion led by Hyrcanus's younger brother Aristobulus, which resulted in the former allying with the Nabateans in exile to regain his throne from the usurper.

Josephus hails Honi as a "righteous man" (dikaios aner) as well as one "beloved of God" (theophilis).

Antiquities 14.2.1 21

Now there was one named Onias [Honi in Hebrew], a righteous man and beloved of God, who, in a certain drought, had once prayed to God to put an end to the intense heat, and God had heard his prayer and sent rain. Now seeing that this civil war would last a great while, he had hidden himself, but they took him to the Jewish camp and desired that just as by his prayers he had once put an end to the drought, so he might in like manner call curses down on Aristobulus and his supporters.​

And when, having refused and made excuses, he was nonetheless compelled by the mob to supplicate, he said, "O God, king of the whole world! Since those that stand now with me are your people, and those that are besieged are also your priests, I beseech you, that you will neither hear the prayers of those others against these men, nor to bring about what is asked by these men against those others."

Whereupon the wicked Jews that stood about him, as soon as he had made this prayer, stoned him to death.

But God punished them immediately for their barbarity, and took vengeance on them for the murder of Onias…He did not delay their punishment, but sent a mighty and vehement storm of wind that destroyed the crops of the entire country, until a modius of wheat at that time cost eleven drachmae.​

Here is a passage about the same prophet from the Mishnah (from the translation of Herbert Denby, Oxford University Press, 1933):

Mishnah Taanit 3:8​

They sound the shofar because of any public distress -- may it never befall! -- but not because of too great an abundance of rain.

Once they said to Honi the Circle-Drawer, "Pray that rain may fall."

He answered, "Go out and bring in the Passover ovens [made of clay] that they be not softened."

He prayed, but the rain did not fall. What did he do? He drew a circle and stood within it and said before God, "O Lord of the world, your children have turned their faces to me, for I am like a son of the house before you. I swear by your great name that I will not stir from here until you have pity on your children."

Rain began falling drop by drop. He said, "Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain that will fill the cisterns, pits, and caverns."

It began to rain with violence. He said, "Not for such rain have I prayed, but for rain of goodwill, blessing, and graciousness."

Then it rained in moderation, until the Israelites had to go up from Jerusalem to the Temple Mount because of the rain. They went to him and said, "Just as you prayed for the rain to come, so pray that it may go away!"

He replied, "Go and see if the Stone of the Strayers has disappeared."

Simeon ben Shetah sent to him, saying, "Had you not been Honi I would have pronounced a ban against you! But what shall I do to you? You importune God and he performs your will, like a son that importunes his father he performs his will. Of you the Scripture says, 'Let your father and your mother be glad, and let her that bore you rejoice.' "​

In both accounts, there are some interesting parallels to Jesus that have been noted by the Jewish New Testament scholar Geza Vermes in his Jesus the Jew.

Honi and Jesus were both famed miracle-workers, martyred because they offended persons in powerful positions of privilege, who subsequently whipped up mob violence against them, ultimately resulting in their execution - by crucifixion in Jesus's case and stoning in Honi's - at or near the Pesach / Passover festival.

Moreover, Honi was a man of peace and conciliation - again much like Jesus - and this is illustrated by his refusal to take sides in the civil war but to pray for both factions, such that he asked God to answer neither of their prayers for victory over the other in battle: "I beseech you, that you will neither hear the prayers of those others against these men, nor to bring about what is asked by these men against those others".

Meatier still, Honi is accused by Simeon ben Shetah - described elsewhere as a head of the court (Mishnah Hagigah 2:2), who had during his tenure sentenced eighty women to be stoned to death (Mishnah Sanhedrin 6:4) - of "importuning God, like a son that importunes his father", which may remind you of that other Son of God fellow

 

[dybmh]

interesting parallels to Jesus

According to Wikipedia, Honi The Circle Drawer is buried in Galilee. Why is that?

----------------------------

@Rival , from the pseudo-messiah link, "Menahem, the son of Judas the Galilean" -- that's another Galilee connection.

Galilee was the first to be exiled and the last to be repopulated. Archeological evidence puts the date when Galilee was repopulated at approx. 150 BCE, the end of the Hasmonean dynasty when all these messiah claimants were rising up ( per Josephus apparently ).

 

[Rival]

According to Wikipedia, Honi The Circle Drawer is buried in Galilee. Why is that?

----------------------------

@Rival , from the pseudo-messiah link, "Menahem, the son of Judas the Galilean" -- that's another Galilee connection.

Galilee was the first to be exiled and the last to be repopulated. Archeological evidence puts the date when Galilee was repopulated at approx. 150 BCE, the end of the Hasmonean dynasty when all these messiah claimants were rising up ( per Josephus apparently ).

I wonder if it could be in any way comparable to 'The Burned Over District'?

Burned-over district - Wikipedia

 

[dybmh]

I wonder if it could be in any way comparable to 'The Burned Over District'?

Burned-over district - Wikipedia

There's Hot springs in Galilee... just say'n...

 

[Vouthon]

According to Wikipedia, Honi The Circle Drawer is buried in Galilee. Why is that?

----------------------------

@Rival , from the pseudo-messiah link, "Menahem, the son of Judas the Galilean" -- that's another Galilee connection.

Galilee was the first to be exiled and the last to be repopulated. Archeological evidence puts the date when Galilee was repopulated at approx. 150 BCE, the end of the Hasmonean dynasty when all these messiah claimants were rising up ( per Josephus apparently ).

The scholar Vermes has argued that: "a distinctive trend of charismatic Judaism existed during the last couple of centuries of the Second Temple period" and that it would appear to "have had Galilean roots".

The closest cognates to Jesus are actually the miracle-working prophets Honi and Hanina. The pseudo-messiahs - such as Menahem ben Judah - were much more martial, violent figures that don't share all that much in common with Jesus other than the fact that some Jews of the era considered them to be the prophesied messiah.

Menahem (A.D. 66), for example, "broke open king Herod's armory, and gave arms not only to his own people, but to other robbers also" and became a "barbarously cruel, insupportable tyrant" [Jewish War 2.433-450].

Jesus is the only one we seem to know about from the period who combined moral, sage-like wisdom teaching (like you might find in the Pirkei Avot) and halakhic disputations about the law, with alleged miracle-working prophecy and messianic claims.

So he had his feet in all three camps - sage, healer-prophet and messianic claimant (or attributed).

The exception to that general rule is Jesus's actual teacher John the Baptist, who also fulfilled at least the first two roles (wisdom sage and prophet, although without the healings/miracles) and potentially the third. Josephus's account of John:


Josephus on John the Baptist - Livius

[18.116] Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod's army came from God as a just punishment of what Herod had done against John, who was called the Baptist.

[18.117] For Herod had killed this good man, who had commanded the Jews to exercise virtue, righteousness towards one another and piety towards God. For only thus, in John's opinion, would the baptism he administered be acceptable to God, namely, if they used it to obtain not pardon for some sins but rather the cleansing of their bodies, inasmuch as it was taken for granted that their souls had already been purified by justice.

[18.118] Now many people came in crowds to him, for they were greatly moved by his words. Herod, who feared that the great influence John had over the masses might put them into his power and enable him to raise a rebellion (for they seemed ready to do anything he should advise), thought it best to put him to death. In this way, he might prevent any mischief John might cause, and not bring himself into difficulties by sparing a man who might make him repent of it when it would be too late.

[18.119] Accordingly John was sent as a prisoner, out of Herod's suspicious temper, to Macherus, the castle I already mentioned, and was put to death. Now the Jews thought that the destruction of his army was sent as a punishment upon Herod, and a mark of God's displeasure with him.​

 

[Vouthon]

@dybmh

The scholar James G. Crossley provides a useful overview of the material situation in Galilee during the late Second Temple period, which could help explain why the region might have been such a hotbed of radical religious activity and social upheaval:


Does Jesus Plus Paul Equal Marx Plus Lenin?: Redirecting the Historical Jesus - Oxford Scholarship

The Jesus tradition did not just emerge spontaneously. In fact, we only need to cover some of the key points from the socio-historical work on first-century Galilee to begin to understand why the movement emerged when and where it did.

By the time the Jesus tradition was developing, Galilee had witnessed the building and rebuilding of the key urban centres, Tiberias and Sepphoris, with significant socio-economic consequences. Further south in Judea, the Jerusalem Temple had become an extensive building project.

Such urbanization can extract surplus from the countryside and is a key feature of the kinds of commercializing activity that John Kautsky believes underlay peasant unrest and the emergence of millenarian or utopian groups in aristocratic or agrarian empires, with calls for change ranging from the reactionary to the revolutionary.80

It is also linked in with a general argument concerning socio-historical change: significant economic change (perceived or otherwise) and the dislocation of peasant land is a major factor in peasant unrest and reaction, with help often (but not exclusively) coming from outside the peasantry.81 The labour and materials had to come from somewhere and so people would have faced the possibility of dislocation (cf. Josephus, Ant. 18.36–8).

It is of some significance that there was a full-scale revolt against Rome in 66–70 CE, accompanied by reports of great hatred levelled at Sepphoris and Tiberias (Life 30, 39, 66–8, 99, 374–84), as well as a period that gave us prophetic and millenarian figures such as Theudas and John the Baptist. It is in this context of social upheaval that we can contextualize the emergence of the Jesus movement and the earliest Palestinian traditions.

In terms of the context of the earliest Palestinian tradition, the rebuilding of Sepphoris and the building of Tiberias, or, further south, the major extension of the Jerusalem Temple, we can at least suggest that the socio-economic situation would have been significantly changed and not everyone would have perceived social and cultural changes in traditional lifestyle for the better, as the Gospel tradition and its intense interest in issues of rich and poor (see chapters 3 and 4) may well attest.

And, of course, not only did early first-century Galilee witness some significant socio-economic changes but also Palestine of the first-century witnessed some monumental changes, culminating in the two major revolts against Rome. From this, to at least some degree, emerge Christianity and the consolidation of Judaism among the rabbis. These developments should not simply be restricted to the revolts themselves but were part of the thinking that emerged from a series of significant socio-political changes intersecting with specific cultural traditions already present in first-century Palestine...

What we have seen throughout is how people in and around the Jesus movement interacted with the social upheavals of Galilee and Judea, as well as the Roman empire more broadly. The earliest Palestinian tradition pitted the kingdom of God against Rome, attacked wealth and privilege, supported the poorest members of society, and saw Jesus as an agent of the kingdom in both present and future.
​

 

[Aupmanyav]

Haha, Vouthon, you know all this and still consider Jesus the son of God!
Excellent, but still we have just three names, Honi, John and Menahem.

 

[Vouthon]

Haha, Vouthon, you know all this and still consider Jesus the son of God!
Excellent, but still we have just three names, Honi, John and Menahem.

Allow me to introduce you to "The Teacher of Righteousness"

He was a Zadokite priest who appears to have founded the Qumran community, which produced the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Teacher of Righteousness

TEACHER OF RIGHTEOUSNESS (Heb. מוֹרֶה צֶדֶק moreh ẓedek), the organizer of the *Qumran community or *Yaḥad .

To the community which he organized, the voice of the Teacher of Righteousness was as the voice of God; the reward of ultimate salvation and victory is held out to those who "listen to the voice of the Teacher of Righteousness" (CD 20:28, 32).

The Zadokite Admonition, in the form in which it has survived, apparently dates from a period after the death of the Teacher of Righteousness: an interval of indefinite duration runs "from the day when the Unique Teacher was gathered in until a Messiah stands up from Aaron and from Israel" (CD 20:1). It has been suggested that "Unique Teacher" (moreh ha-yaḥid) should be emended to "Teacher of the Community" (moreh ha-yaḥad), but this is probably unnecessary.

If the Unique Teacher is identical with the Teacher of Righteousness – and it is difficult to think that anyone else could have been so designated by the community – he was evidently thought of as a preparer of the way for the messianic age but not as a messianic personage himself.

Later in the Zadokite Admonition the "star" of Amos 5:26 and (more especially) Numbers 24:17 is "the Expounder of the Law [doresh ha-Torah] who is to come to Damascus" (CD 7:18ff.). This coming Expounder of the Law is mentioned also in 4Q Florilegium, in an interpretation of II Samuel 7:11–14. In both of these passages he is to be accompanied by the Davidic Messiah, called "the prince of all the congregation" in CD 7:20 and "the shoot of David" in 4Q Florilegium.

Since Torah is to be sought from the priest's lips (Mal. 2:7), this coming Expounder of the Law may be the great priest of the new age who will act as colleague to the great king; he may also be tentatively identified with the Teacher of Righteousness who is to stand up in the latter days (CD 6:11).​