Basically, it meant “don’t kill one of your own tribe”. In the OT, it was perfectly acceptable to slaughter someone else’s tribe.
Heaven & Hell (Open to Everyone)
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Basically, it meant “don’t kill one of your own tribe”. In the OT, it was perfectly acceptable to slaughter someone else’s tribe.
Saint Guinefort
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What about John 14:6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
Would that count as claiming a role in salvation?
Dutch Uncle
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Considering the Four Gospels were written 37 to 100 years after Jesus in time where writing was rare, I think there's a lot of room for error.
They do. Too bad so many “representatives” fuck everything up so badly.
Dutch Uncle
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Yes, but did he really say it that way? The Gospel of John was started around 70 AD and finished around 100 AD. Jesus is thought to have been executed on April 3, 33AD leaving a gap of over 37 years in an age without recording machines and mostly word of mouth. He could just as easily said "Listen to me and I'll help you find a path to God"...then it was embellished later.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel_of_John
https://www.gotquestions.org/what-year-did-Jesus-die.html
Saint Guinefort
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I was more operating in the discussion as if the Synoptic gospels truly were synoptic (as opposed to the more realistic decades later). Obviously I don't think anyone really knows what Jesus said in actuality. But for the purpose of addressing the point Domer was talking about I was going with the model of the Bible as true in regards to this (even if I don't personally believe it to be necessarily an actual correct quote).
Matthew, Mark and Luke made no mention of anything like John. John stands alone in that respect and came later than the earlier gospels.
Jesus believed the end was near and he was merely preparing people for that end. He did refer to himself as the messiah, but that had no meaning other than “anointed one”. The King of Israel.
They were also written by people who did not even speak the language of Jesus - Aramaic.
Dutch Uncle
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Considering the conditions and tech of the time, the message of Jesus can be seen to be true, but not necessarily verbatim recordings of his sermons.
Consider his most famous; the Sermon on the Mount. Were scribes using shorthand to write down the words or was the Biblical version simply what was most remembered about it?
Dutch Uncle
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Good point.
He did claim, or insinuate in various passages of Luke, Mark, Matthew to either be the son of God or the son of man.
But in the Hebrew tradition Jesus was speaking in, Son of God could be a human being who had the favor of God. King David was a son of God.
Son on Man in the Hebrew tradition was generally also thought to be fully human, but acting with God's agency.
It's not until John that Jesus claimed to be coequal and coeternal with God. But John was written after the Synoptic gospels and separate from them, so the author of John was writing with a different perspective and/or agenda
Back to the translation thing. I hear this all the time from Christians:
“The Bible is the word of God when correctly translated.” The problem lies in how to do that when it was written in ancient languages by many authors.
Here’s a perfect example that comes to mind when I think of translations in modern times.
In the movie, Wayne’s World, they’re laying on the hood of a car talking about some girl, Cassandra.
“Yeah, she’s a babe.”
“She’s a robo-babe”.
“If she was a President, she’d be Babraham Lincoln.”
Now, to us in America, robo-babe and Babraham Lincoln makes some sense and is funny. When they tried to translate Babraham Lincoln into Japanese for that audience, they couldn’t. It had no meaning.
The authors of Luke and Mathew were relying on earlier written material. Many New Testament scholars think parts of Luke and Matthew come from an earlier, but now lost, Gospel of Q.
Nobody was writing about Jesus in real time, of course. The apostles were likely illiterate Aramaic speaking peasants. It took literate, Greek speaking Hellenistic Jews like Luke, Matthew, and Paul to write down the oral tradition and summarize earlier, but now lost written sources.
Dutch Uncle
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Which adds weight to the argument of a non-literal Bible.
For sure.
We have our 21st century bias when we look back to antiquity.
People back then were not writing journalism, biography, or history, as we know it, at least for the most part. A few exceptions, here and there: Plutarch, Thucydides, et al.
I think the Gospels were stories intended to convey the message, meaning and essence of Jesus' life and ministry, but not neccesarily a historical biography of it
Dutch Uncle
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Agreed. There was also the lack of tech for maintaining accuracy. As you said, they focused upon the message. In later years, there was also a focus on standardizing the Church.
Centuries of making hand copies undoubtedly introduced errors and embellishments.
But it seems to me the core message basically managed to get through the two thousand years: live with love in your heart, do not be corrupted by sin, and have faith in salvation through Christ.
Dutch Uncle
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...or faith in God. Jesus was Jewish. A little syntax enhancement by later authors could easily have put more emphasis on Jesus and less on God.
It seems to me that Jesus, The Buddha, Confucious, and Lao Tzu set the bar really high.
It takes real commitment for even a decent person to clear that bar.
Most Trump ass-kissers aren't even trying to clear it.
Into the Night
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What god is that? IBDaMann is an atheist.