Whoa… hold your horses.
That sounds, quite literally, insane.
Whatever it sounds like, it is not *that *uncommon a thought. There are historians, who believe that Jesus was just a Jewish preacher who never intended to found a religion. Others later decided to carry the teachings attributed to him out into the world. Paul the Apostle was a prominent figure among these.
Actually I think this quote from The Gospel of Thomas makes this very clear:
Jesus is very clear that “God” does not reside in heaven (or the sea) and that priests who say so are misleading you. What Jesus is trying to explain is that what you think of as “you” (the suffering and separate little ego) is not true, and that once this is seen you will be saved/enlightened. This is the same insight as that of the Buddhas and the saints of the eastern religions.
Christianity is basically playing the role of the pharisees today and the historical Jesus would obviously not be a fan.
And if your argument is that “Well the Gospel of Thomas” was not included in the Bible… exactly, that’s my point. It’s not included in the Bible because it basically tears down the whole religion and mythology that Christianity is.
You do your pathetic argument no favors by posting demonstrably false things.
Ah!
I’m sleepy, no sleep at all last night, staying up so that I can watch American College Football* with my dad at 3PM EST. Is 10AM now.
Can you point me to any accepted source saying that the Gospels represent Jesus’ teachings more adequately than Paul’s writings do?
An accepted source? I can say this, and it is not just rabid anti-christians like me, there is some academic (I think, or at least people like Sam Harris** or Bill Mar** might mention this type of thing) that some people think Paul just made up his own “christian” teachings whole cloth, ie, he was aware that Jesus actually existed, but was not actually aware of any/many of the deeds and words of Christ. The reasoning is, as you pointed out, at that time, the words/deeds of Christ had not been accurately recorded and distributed. Paul just latched on to the “message” of Jesus as a huckster to spin his own message. Paul, actually, is quite elegant and has some really good thoughts. But how much did he really actually - know - about Jesus and the message of Jesus?
Short version: Paul claims to be an “expert” on Jesus and what Jesus thought/said/etc but since Paul - not once -mentions any specific words or deed of Christ, it is doubtful that he is really an expert on christ at all but using Christ as a “metaphor” to express ideas of love, divinity, sacrifice, etc, whatever. The Christian apologetic rebuttal is that “everyone knew” the stories of Jesus, even before they were written down, so Paul had no need or reason to make specific mention of Christs deeds or words. I find this explanation to be a bit hard to accept. I think Paul was just simply making stuff up.
Are you familiar with the Idea of Logos and Christianity? Basically, a logical explanation of Christ and Christs message/divinity? Technically, I think the Logos is the second part of god in the trinity, but, it has other/further connotations. Logos/logic is traced back to both Greek mythology and philosophy. Both John and Paul (John as in the Gospel of John and in the Book of Revelations) come down much more heavily on the “intellectual” nature of Christ. Where as Christ simply (for lack of a better term) said, feed the hungry and blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, be nice to those who try your patience… anyone can be nice to their friend. In other words, Christ was more like simple common sense and not as “Academic” or intellectual.
If the Logos interests you at all, well, Paul was heavily involved in it. So were Christian scholars at the time like Origen and I believe Augustine. I could be getting the exact people mixed up… the point is to concentrate on the debate between the “philosophy of Jesus” and the Philosophy of early church scholars.
influence of greek philosophy on early christianity
a lot to be found on google…
- IDK if you are interested in learning little trivia of life in the USA or not but college football for American Football is allways on a Saturday. And the professional League, the NFL, is on Sundays. Kind of like in European Football, Premiere league vs you favorite local club.
** Are you familiar with Sam Harris and Bill Mar? They are quite easy to find on both YouTube and Google. Some of Harris’s books are quite good actually.
Thanks Monty, it’s allways nice to see you contribute to one of my threads.
OK well that all actually sounds cool sounds interesting… but what does that have to do with Mohammed being an evil person with a twisted violent message who - actually - took slaves, killed people and made war? As opposed to Christ, who was never attributed with any of those types of actions/words.
You claim to despise Christianity as much as you despise Islam (and believe me, I feel ya on that) but you’re doing an awful lot of special pleading for Christianity in this thread.
Charlie Chaplin seems to agree
full speech
I really liked you post #65
Actually I’m not. I am making one central point (at the moment). Mohammed, specifically, advocates slavery, war, and violence. Participates in the same. Christ neither said not did anything like that. Christ said and did the opposite. This is not special pleading. The texts/founding figures are actually - significantly - different.
I’m not sure why you would disagree with this point.
Fair enough - Paul speaks in the name of Jesus and we do not know, how much he actually knew about Jesus’ teachings.
What I do not understand is why you are giving the four evangelists the benefit of the doubt, but not Paul? For all I know none of them were present when Jesus gave his teachings. The Gospels are younger than Paul’s letters, so there was more time for things getting distorted.
Do not get me wrong - I have no doubt that Paul’s writings contain a good deal of thought that was very much his own. But I believe that the Gospels too did change things around. Calling them more authentic only because they claim to contain actual quotes seems unjustified. (Tell me: What were the last words Jesus spoke before he died on the cross?)
We are digressing though. What we know (or believe to know) of the teachings of the NT to some extent is conveying a set of morals that we can relate to today. To a lesser extent it contains morals that we disagree with. People at all times have been cherry picking Bible quotes that supported the views that were popular at the time and explaining away the others.
The claim that Islam is a religion that *causes *violence to a larger degree than other religions do is unconvincing to me. At the very least I would have to see solid evidence that societies dominated by Islam are more violent than others. In this thread no one has brought forward such evidence yet.
Oh, I agree with you, pretty much word for word. But at some point there has to be some “standard” as to what “Christian Doctrine” is. For an “Academic” definition of what that doctrine is, I think the starting point is the actual words of Jesus, even if we agree that they may not of been actually recorded properly, but, the starting point for doctrine, should be, I think, the “words” of Christ.
OK, you can reference this post and my response to it for a clarification of my terms or a moderation (acquiescence) of my initial claim
But isn’t that betraying your own point? Jesus, unlike Muhammad, did preach peace and love instead of violence- And what did that get him? Two thousand years of wars in Europe, slavery and brutality.
If one transcendental figure of a religion can tell you something directly and its practitioners can handwave it away like that, what change would a peaceful Islamic prophet make? Wouldn’t the exact same thing happen?
hmmm…
You my actually have a very good point here. I am not being “sarcastic” or giving in just because I can not think of a good rebuttal. I think your point is very profound.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not an absolute point. Without a doubt a different prophet would have made for a meaningfully different Islam. The truth is usually in a middle ground.
Ok, I’m (temporarily) signing off this thread. I don’t believe in “god”. I don’t believe in religion. The closest I can come is Buddhism, much of which I actually like/admire.
It was a very good point nonetheless.
“For I have come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law–”
“a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.'”
“Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
Jesus did not set aside the Old Testament. He chastised people for not killing their disobedient children:
(Really, you think you can avoid the 10 Commandments? “Thou Shalt Not Kill” is quite regularly used by Christian terrorists to justify their actions against abortion clinics.)
Now, some of my best friends as Christians. (Really.) I’m not anti-Christian. But yeah, they have to cherry pick their message as it best serves them. I have no problem with that; I’m an eclectic Neopagan after all. Cherry picking is kind of my thing.
But if your claim is that “if the religious text calls for violence then it is a violent religion,” then Christianity absolutely falls under that umbrella, even if you delete all of the Old Testament and Revelations. Swords are pretty violent.
Well if you want to state that Jesus was a ”better person” than Mohammed then I would absolutely agree. Jesus was a fully liberated human being, and as such a direct manifestation of divinity. He saw through the ego and from then on ceased to exist as a separate person, after that he was used by the Holy Spirit as a tool to heal people and spread the truth.
Mohammed on the other hand seems to have been a merchant turned military man or politician who may or may not have been enlightened*. Apparently he had some visions and was obviously very influential, but I would suspect based on his actions that he did not become fully liberated in that incarnation. And sure, if you compare a warlord politician with a healer, the warlord is not going to come out of it looking very good.
But when viewed in context, it does seem like if Mohammed was a reasonably good politician of his time. He gave women much more rights and introduced ideas and reforms that were beneficial to progress. Of course the reforms and ideas that were ”progressive” in the 600’s would be considered ”reactionary” today, but at the time it was a step forward.
And there can be no doubt that Mohammed is indeed the founder of Islam. The Koran was written shortly after his death by people who were close to him and the differences in the testimonies are relatively minor. Basically it is fair to assume that the Koran is an accurate description of what Mohammed was trying to communicate. Some of it even happens to be true!
When it comes to Jesus however, the story is very different. Nothing was recorded at the time and the stories and accounts vary immensely. The only documents as far as I know that have not gone through centuries of political editing is the Dead Sea scrolls, which contains the Gospel of Thomas and the almost destroyed Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
The problem for Christianity is that when understood properly, the teachings of Jesus that appears in these scrolls completely obliterate the mainstream Christian faith. And after the formation of Christianity, the people who were actually following the teachings of Jesus (the Gnostics) were persecuted and killed off. So if Jesus could be claimed to have formed a religion, that religion was effectively destroyed by the Christians, who ironically claimed to do it in the name of Jesus. Hence my reference to Nietzsche, who many people believe was the father or Nazism but who was in reality very much against anti-semitism and pretty much everything the Nazis would eventually stand for. As well as obviously dying well before Hitler and friends ever got around to creating that movement.
Cheers.
The premise of Christianity is basically that there’s a super powerful being in the sky and if you do what we tell you he will reward you after you die. Of course we can’t prove any of this to you so you have to have faith and take our word for it (but as you can see we have a very impressive office as well as official looking clothes so you can trust us).
The premise of Jesus was nothing of the sort. He tried to explain that we are all part of God and it’s only a matter of perception that creates the illusion that you are a separate being. But he didn’t expect us to believe it, he asked us to find out for ourselves, and in the mean time we can try to avoid being assholes to each other.
This is the same message as that of Gautama buddha and all enlightened beings through history: You are not what/who you think you are. It’s an investigation into the nature of consciousness and the universe, and it is highly practical and pragmatic. You’re not supposed to ”believe” it, you’re supposed to find out for yourself. The funny trick being that once the ”yourself” figures it out, it kind of disappears. Or rather, it understands that it was never real in the first place.
Out of the religions that are available today, I would say that Buddhism is probably the one that is closest to the actual teachings of Jesus.
- I use the word “enlightened” in the spiritual/buddhist sense of being liberated from the ego
Wow 
yeah, kind of puts a damper on the whole “peace and love” message, doesn’t it