You ever see a greek eagle? Yeah, that’s what.
A lot of modern Pagans think of the Grain God (under whatever name) as, indeed, dying for us (i.e. for humans, who practise agriculture): He grows, is cut down at the harvest to save the people from starvation during the winter, and is reborn in the seed-time.
I’m not sure how to respond without turning the thread into a debate. Your points are valid but I do think that, according to the authors of the Gospels, Jesus’ contemporaries understood him to be claiming to be divine and equal to God.
So why did the soldiers fall to the ground when Jesus said that? Regardless of what was actually said, the evangelist seems to be implying that the words said gave the impression of the Tetragrammaton.
Mark seems to have thought that claiming to be the Messiah (which is what Jesus’ “I am” was in reference to) was blasphemy, but it wasn’t. It’s just one of many aspects of Jewish law that Mark got wrong.
I think that the author of John did. I’m not convinced at all the the synoptics did, and even less so that Jesus himself did.
Wait…what? Here’s the relevant quote:
Jn 18:3-8 (NRSV): So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, ‘For whom are you looking?’ They answered, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ (Gk the Nazorean) Jesus replied, ‘I am he.’ (Gk I am) Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. When Jesus (Gk he) said to them, ‘I am he’, (Gk I am) they stepped back and fell to the ground. Again he asked them, ‘For whom are you looking?’ And they said, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ (Gk the Nazorean) Jesus answered, ‘I told you that I am he. (Gk I am)
Why did the soldiers fall to the ground if Jesus was just saying that He was the Messiah? John seems to think that there’s something special going on with those words.
I suppose I wasn’t clear on which evangelist said that, but I didn’t know, myself.
Ok, yeah, like I said, John probably thought Jesus was God. They weren’t falling out of shock at the content of his words, per se, John is trying to suggest that they fell at the power of his presence. Essentially John does see this moment as a revelation of Jesus as the Logos, and the Logos is manifested literally in Jesus’ words. The Logos knocks them over. John wants his audience to know that Jesus could have killed them all if he wanted, but chose to go willingly.
I will grant that John is very clear on the point of Jesus’ divinity, while the synoptics are much less explicit. Paul’s letters are also pretty clear on the point. The epistles of Peter do not state it quite as explicitly, and wherever the Johannean comma comes from, it does not appear to be authentic (and, in fact, it does not appear to have been manufactured for Erasmus as one might suspect). Revelation (AD 96) also claims that Jesus is divine.
Perhaps they took the words of Jesus reminding them that the psalmist called their fathers god, had a different meaning to the ‘word’ god than we do today. If Jesus said he would return with His angels while some standing there were still alive (as Matthew and Mark state) then that makes Revelations not true. If Jesus did return in glory with His angels no one wrote about that, so either Jesus was wrong,misquoted, or the writers wanted that to happen. People are still awaiting for His return,just as the Muslims are waiting for Muhammad.