That would take a bit of doing. Domitian was born in 51 AD, Nero died in 68 AD. I would have thought that, on any view of reincarnation, the person reincarnated has to be dead before his sucessor is born. 
Not in this case. The Nero redivivus myth saw Domitian as Nero either reborn or in disguise. I guess it wouldn’t really match Eastern conceptualizations of reincarnation, though.
First off, let me say that since the bible is a large, complex work, you can make it support pretty much anything that you want, provided that you are willing to take it enough out of context. So for instance the KKK sees themselves as a “Christian” organisation that has biblical support. They do this though not because the bible actually supports their views, but because they take the bible completely out of context to support their views.
In fact I never cease to be amazed at the number of people that ignore the plain text reading of the bible and insert their own views into passages which the passages themselves do not support. So for instance the stuff with Elijah is obviously not talking about re-incarnation, if it is read in its proper context. One of the literary devices that the bible uses is that of “representatives”. Here people are described in the light of people from the past who had their same characteristics. It is used constantly when referring to the nation of Israel (commonly called Jacob or even Joseph, as in Psalm 80). The point is NOT that the entire nation of Israel is the reincarnation of Jacob, but that Jacob is representative of the nation of Israel. Another example is in Romans 5, where Paul describes Jesus as a representative Adam, in that he represents all humanity. Just as Adam’s sin effects all humanity, so too Jesus death brings the possibility of salvation to all humanity. There is no implication here that Jesus is somehow Adam re-incarnated.
It is in this same way that John the Baptist is Elijah. Elijah was regarded as the greatest of the OT prophets, and so in Malachi he is prophesying not that Elijah will be re-incarnated (difficult anyway since he never technically died), but that before the Messiah comes there will be a great prophet LIKE Elijah. And so when Jesus says that JtB is Elijah, this is what he means, that JtB is the prophet that Malachi predicted in the style of Elijah.
And while you may argue that the bible doesn’t directly condemn reincarnation (even though absence of evidence != evidence of absence) reincarnation does directly contradict stuff that the bible does talk about, namely resurrection. In biblical thought resurrection is fundamentally a bodily resurrection. Jesus resurrection, pointed to as the firstfruits and a prototype of our resurrection (in 1 Cor 15) is a bodily resurrection. This means that in biblical thought there is a fundamental link between the body and the soul. If you are re-incarnated into several bodies then that destroys the idea of having a unique body that is raised at Jesus return. If you are re-incarneted into several bodies, which, if any are raised. The bible is clear that at least one is raised. From this standpoint re-incarnation makes no sense.
So have a read of 1 Thesselonians 4:14-17
Here the idea is that we live, we then “fall asleep” (ie: bodily die) and then after that the faithful are raised when the Lord returns. There is simply no room in there for re-incarnation. The silence on people having multiple lives is deafening.
As well as this re-incarnation also tends to bring with it several non-biblical and I think rather cruel doctrines as well. For instance the idea of Karma is often brought in with re-incarnation. This is IMHO an incredibly cruel belief because it basically teaches that if anything bad happens to you it is because you deserve it. To the idea of Karma all suffering is a result of your actions either in this life or in a previous life. So if you get cancer, it is payment for something you did in a previous life. If your child dies, it is payment for something you did in a previous life. If you are starving and poor, it is payment for something you did in a previous life.
It removes any need for people to have compassion for those who are suffering, because if they are suffering it is because they deserve it. It also means that any attempt at helping people is fundamentally useless. It is God/the cosmos whatever that is making people suffer because of their previous bad actions. If you help them then Karma will just come back to them in some other way. Helping them only delays them paying their Karma debt. And this view of Karma is bourne out in countries where that is the overwhelming philosophy. So for instance in the predominately Hindu Nepal, while there is widespread poverty, there is little effort to really do anything about it, either from the rich or the poor themselves, because the poor suffering is seen as the will of the Gods, which is fixed and immutable.
This is certainly NOT the biblical view of suffering. In biblical thought people suffer for a variety of reasons, not all of which are their own doing, and their situation can be improved.
Diogenes the Cynic
No, all this shows is that you don’t really understand what the bible is saying. That is why it appears contradictory to you.
Joey Jo Jo.
For me the question is what did Jesus actually teach? Apart from what has been handed down by tradition and what has become popular in the last few centuries, what did Jesus actually teach. Figureing this out takes infoormantion from many sources and there’s not much doubt I won’t reslove it in this lifetime
Christianity has various doctrines and all Christians don’t agree but I do think that some major Christian doctrines are pointing in the wrong direction. They stress believing Christ is the Savior more than personal transformation. At the end of the day what we think about what happens in the afterlife doesn’t matter much. How our beliefs affect our day to day behavior with each other {love they neighbor} does matter. In other words if we love, truly and sincerely, our theology or lack of it, doesn’t matter much
I think Jesus was an example of what we can be in this life. He stressed that it isn’t about obeying a set of rules or sacrificing a goat, but actually being transformed from within. He changed the spiritual level of the world.
I haven’t figured out what the atonement means in light of that . I think it’s pretty obvious reading the NT that accepting Jesus as Savior isn’t enough, and there is a process of spiritual transformation we have to go through.
When Jesus says " I am the way" I translate it as “I am the example of what you must do to be saved.” “He who believes in me” means those who believe I am one with the Father and they can be also"
I have a few questions for you.
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Growing up I was never introduced to any sort of religion and I also had no idea who Christ was or that Christmas was much more than giving and receiving presents. Yet the idea of reincarnation seemed to be an almost logical assumption to make. Why do you think that reincarnation is not very prevalent today in America? One reason I can see is that Christians felt that it would be far to easy to judge others according to what we think of as their “past lives experience”. This is a huge problem to deal with since we have no idea what people deserve or do not deserve in their lives. Christ taught that you cannot simply place blame like that.
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How are there the huge number of concious beings alive today vs. the very small number of conscious beings that the world started with?
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How does Christ tie into your view of reincarnation and karma? To understand this , I would need to know how you consider people make it to heaven. Do we have to believe in Christ, do good (aka a report card), etc.? To me, it seems as if Christ is the person who got rid of karma. So under your beliefs, it would be the constant reincarnation and slow improvement until you finally find the truth?
Reincarnation does answer some very tough questions that otherwise would be incredibly hard to answer. One of the biggest reasons for needing reincarnation would be understanding why most of the world is in the terrible shape it is. I mean just look at other countries living standards. I guess I have always lived my life as if there was reincarnation, just that I really don’t know if I genuinely believe in it. I have always lived as if we are going to be every other person so that when you help someone you help yourself. And when you bring someone else down, you are really bringing yourself down. It made much more sense to me that way because it got rid of the whole need for God to put huge punishments on us and made complete sense of “you reap what you sow”.
Yopu’re basically just making things up. Matthew says no such thing, nor does he imply it.
Yes. The Bible contradicts itself.
Yes, for the most part, the Jewish eschatological view was that everybody would be physically resurrected on Judgement Day (a notion they got from Zorastrianism. Prior to the Babylonian exile, afterlife beliefs were all but non-existent). Nonetheless, Matthew’s Gospel reveals that beliefs about transmigration of souls or reincarnation were extant among the Hellenistic gentiles which produced the gospels.
Actually, doctrines of karma propose no such thing. You seem to have been taught a rather simplistic and cardboard version version of how karma is really conceived in Eastern thought but it’s also irrelevant to the fact that the New Testament does indeed hint that one or two of its authors were aware of some version of reincarnation. The NT was written by Greeks and a version of reincarnation existed in Greek philopsophy. It’s not so remarkable. The fact that it would contradict other parts of the Bible is just par for the course. The Bible is massively self-contradictory at virtually every turn. It’s a mistake to think that there is any such thing as a definitive “Biblical view” on anything. The Bible is a compilation of many different evolving, overlapping and contradictory views.
It’s exactly the same in Eastern thought but that’s really irrelevant to the converstaion.
[sigh] I understand the Bible just fine, dude, I assure you. The Bible is thick with contradictions. If you’d like, I can srart another thread itemizing some of the really good ones.
The problem is though how do you work out what Jesus actually taught. The bible really forms the only reliable source on what Jesus taught, and what his background philosophy was (ie: the OT). The documents that are undesputably written closest in time and place to the teaching if Jesus are in the NT (ie: gospels and some of Pauls letters). If we disreagard these, then there is no real way of knowing what Jesus taught. The only thing we really can do then is just make stuff up.
I think that Christianity teaches that having Christ as the saviour is the only way to personal transformation. And I think that theology is fundamentally important, regardless of what you believe. Jesus says that his followers are to worship God in “Spirit and truth” (John 4:23). How can we worship God in truth if we know nothing of what he is. Even in just saying we have to love each other, how do we know what love is without first understanding how God loves us?
I think that you are right thta there is a process of spiritual transformation that we have to go through. I think though that this process happens once we accept Jesus as our saviour. God then gives us his Holy Spirit which then transforms us over time into the likeness of Jesus. However without first accepting Jesus this process can’t happen.
And I don’t know what version of the NT you are reading, but the idea that it is God who saves, and that God’s slavation is enough is at the core of the NT, and inf fact the bible as a whole. It was the basis for the entire reformation, that fainth in God alone was enough, and that church rituals were no necessary for salvation. Large chunks of the NT are devoted to telling it’s readers to beware of the Judaisers who insisted that Christians had to follow the law (specifically circumcision) to be saved. It argues quite forcefully that faith in Jesus is ALL that is needed for salvation. Galatians for instance (which IIRC is one of the first NT books written and almost universally acknowledged to actually have been written by Paul) is pretty much entirely devoted to this point.
There is spiritual transofrmation in Christianity, but it comes as a result of salvation, not before or instead of. To argue otherwise is to put the cart before the horse so to speak.
Then I am afraid you are missing the point of what Jesus is saying. And if in general your method of reading the bible is just reading what you want the bible to say into different passages, then I don’t think you will ever really understand what Jesus taught. All you will learn is more about what you would like to be true.
Joey Jo Jo.
Reincarnation is such a non-issue in the Bible that the Oxford Companion to the Bible doesn’t even have an entry for it. Sorry, cosmosdan, dude.
The New Testament is by no means a reliable source for what Jesus taught. None of it was written by witnesses and much of the Gospel narratives are highly fictionalized. It is unlikely that Jesus said more than a fraction of what is attributed to him in the NT. Your pentultimate sentence above is completely true. There is no way of knowing what Jesus actually taught. To rely on the NT is to rely on faith alone. Don’t mistake faith for fact.
It’s presence as an idea is extremely brief and allusory, to be sure. It’s really only hinted at as a popular belief a couple of times and it’s not exactly expounded as doctrine. Still, iit’s not completely absent from the Bible, but it is admittedly insignificant.
Does the Bible state that reincarnation occurs? Absolutely not. But is it clear from some passages that many ancient Israelites believed in it? Definitely.
No, I am not. It is a legitimate literary device for which i have provided examples. But anyway lets have a look at the specific passage that we are talking about.
In the first passage Jesus says nothing specifically about JtB being the re-incarnated Elijah. It could just as easily be read as Jesus saying that John is the “Elijah” that Malachi prophesyed about. Since many expected an “Elijah” to accompany the coming of the Messiah, Jesus is just pointing out that by “Elijah” Malachi meant JtB.
Besides, do you really expect that every biblical prophesy about someone to come MUST use their exact name? Jesus is prephesyed about 1000s of times in the OT, yet he is rarely if ever called “Jesus” in these prophesies. He is given instead representative names, like “Immanuel” in Isaiah 7, which are representative of his character. Why then must Malachi call John “John the Baptist” if he is going to prophesy about him?
The second passage (Matt 17) is much more revealing. In Matthews chronology JtB is dead JtB is dead at this point (being killed in chapter 14). Nevertheless Matthew unswervingly calls the vision “Elijah”, even though according to the re-incarnation theory he would be more rightly be a hybrid of both Elijah and JtB. This very strongly implies that there are two different souls for Elijah and JtB, and that the same soul that was in Elijah was NOT re-incarnated into JtB.
To your understanding of it, yes. I maintain that the bible in not inherently contradictory.
Besides if you start with the assumption that something is contradictory then it ends up being a self-fulfilling prophesy. I start declaring something contradictory, then I interpret it in a way that is contradictory, and then I have proven my premise.
Care to provide some examples so that we have something concrete to discuss? I remain skeptical
I acknowledge that Karma is not a necessary part of re-incarnation, but it does quite commonly follow from a re-incarnation worldview. Besides the voew of Karma I posted is the logical endpoint from the assertion that “all suffering is the result of actions in this life or a past life”. You may assert that there is other random suffering not directly brought about by our own actions in our lives, but then you flow into other problems of weighing Karmic suffering against random suffering, ect. So for instance if being good results in 2x units of suffering, yet being bad results in 1x unit of suffering as punnishment, then why be good?
And merely saying “The bible is contradictory” is not an argument, it is a statement. Care to provide any evidence that it is true? I would ask have you ever tried reading the bible assuming that it does actually fit together in some way, or did you just start from the assumption that it is conradictory and go from there?
Your posting history on biblical matters suggests otherwise
Besudes I have seen those lists of “contradictions”, and they almost entirely rely on distortions and taking things out of context. I remain unconvinced.
Joey Jo Jo
I have heard and read John 9 is reference to the idea of pre-natal sin. ( “Was this man not just born bad, but conceived bad?”)
That it was a not unknown belief that someone could sin (against the mom, causing her undue pain) in the womb.
Well, the Oxford Companion does says that having John dictate the basis for the Gospel of that name is the most likely hypothesis. Thus, for most intents & purposes- the Gospel of John was 'written" by one of the Apostles, very much a witness. We have had this argument before, of course. I rely upon the general consensus of experts in the field, written in a highly respected, multi-authored peer-reviewed book. And, even so, I (nor the experts) don’t claim this is certain- just “the most likely hypothesis”. You never seem to qualify your statements, you state very highly debated hypothesis as fact. And, indeed, the above statement is VERY highly debated, and it takes a lot of hubris to state any such thing so baldly as fact. Frankly, we don’t know. That’s about all scholars are sure of.
And, IF Mark is written by “Mark the interpreter of Peter” then it is possible that it is that Mark refered to in Acts 12:12. It’s certainly possible then that “Mark” was a witness to some of the things in the Gospels.
The authorship of Matthew and Luke is frankly unknown. Tradition could be correct, but it’s doubtful.
astorian- it’s far from “clear”. Possible, I’ll grant, and certain passages- if viewed in a certain way- do lend themselves to that hypothesis. But “clear”? :dubious:
The overwhelming consensus of experts in the field is that all four authorship traditions of canonical Gospels are completely spurious. I don’t bother to qualify my statemenst because I’m not stating anything that isn’t regularly taken for granted and asserted without argument in the field.
I think there is a fair bit of wisdom in this. It may even be the case that the Israelistes believed that the soul existed in some sort of pre-incarnate state, like in Mormonism. That the guy sinned in a past life is not the only explaination, and IMHO it is not even the most likely.
But anyway regardless of what you think is behind the disciples question, Jesus explicitly rejects both options as the cause of this guys sin, so basing a theology of re-incarnation on that passage is spurious at best
Joey Jo Jo
I don’t think that the right adjective is “overwhelming”. It is true that the majority (as in >50%) opinion is that the authorship traditions are spurious, but there is a sizeable dissent from the majority opinion. Part of the problem is that in theological circles (and in academic circles in general) the majority simply ignores the minorty, because they can. But despite how much they ignore them it is still true that not all experts agree on the reliability of these traditions. And just because a group of experts say they spurious (even if they are the majority), it doesn’t make it necessarily true.
Joey Jo Jo
The only dissent comes from a tiny minority of conservative religionists who assume their conclusions a priori and don’t back them up with evidence. They are not “experts,” they are religious believers and they are perfectly welcome to participate in debates or contribute to journals all they want. They just aren’t able to contribute anything that holds up to scrutiny. Their opinions are dictated by their faith, not by methodology.
I think the problem is that academic theology is split into two camps. On one hand you have almost entirely liberal Christians or atheists making up the larger side, and on the other you have the smaller camp of almost entirely evangelical making up the smaller group. These two groups rarely interact with each other, and I think the larger reason for that is the unwillingness of the majority to consider minorty opinion.
If you think that academia in general is the disspassionate search for truth, then I think you need a reality check. Academia across all disciplines is greatly effected by the politics and individual agendas of those that participate in it. This is not just a problem in theology, but across all academia. So for instance the stories of scientists trying to get their theories accepted is full of stories of persecution of the minorty by the majority, even when the work has no religious implication. The persecution of Maxwell by Lord Kelvin is one famous example of this, but there are many more.
Therefore I can’t believe that you are so nieve as to claim that evangelical scholars are free to participate in whatever they want. You don’t think that editors of journals would filter out papers that disagreed with their own personal views? That editors wouldn’t refuse to publish work that discreditied theirs? Get real! Note that this is a problem across academia, not just theology.
Secondly, your attack of the minority opinion as “conservative religionists who assume their conclusions a priori and don’t back them up with evidence” is pretty meaningless, since there is a strong ideological bias on the majority side as well. You could just as equally argue that the majorty form their opinion based on their own materialist worldview. If the majority represented a range of Christian opinion then your criticism might have merit. As it is it just smacks of you saying the other side is wrong because they disagree with your sides obviously correct theological beliefs.
Thirdly, your faith in “experts” from an epistemological point of view is quite fascinating. In essence you are little different to the conserviative Christian you deride, except you have replaced the priest who tells you about God with the “expert” who tells you about God. If you just take someones word for it, instead of examining the evidence for yourself, then you have just as much faith as the conservative Christian, you just have placed it somewhere else
Joey Jo Jo.
I agree. That’s why I’m here to try and set the record straight.
But seriously, Some beliefs that are “based on the Bible” are a little ridiculous. Pulling out one passage and letting snakes bite you during church is a streching it a little. The Bible is not clear no matter how often people say, the “plain” text. People will stress certain passages and fit them together while explaining away any passage that seems to contradict their interpretation. They make choices on what is literal and what isn’t based on their preconcieved notions. It’s a pretty human thing. It’s up to the individual to decide how reasonable their own interpretation is. My own interpretation has changed since I started reading it 30 years ago. You’re welcome to disagree but I don’t see your particular interpretation any more reasonable than my own.
Obviously you say. Ignoring the plain text reading you say. It seems to me that in this case that’s what you are doing. I’ve heard this explaination before.
The plain text doesn’t say someone like Elijah , but Elijah.
Again the plain text as you put it says John was Elijah, not just like, Elijah.
There is a passage that at a glance supports your proposition.
speaking of John in
You would read this and say it supports your position. John was like Elijah. I can just as easily say It’s speaking of reincarnation. The spirit and power of Elijah is speaking specifically of the spirit of Elijah in the new incarnation of John. Neither claim is more valid than the other.
that’s funny. Isn’t that the same arguement atheists use?
That would be your interpretation not actual biblical thought. {which is what exactly?} I’ve alreadt dealt with the two resurrections in a previous post.
read it. This illustrates my previous point. Is it possible that those passages are representative of some spiritual principle. I mean is it a real trumpet we’ll hear?
You might also notice that the author believes that Jesus is returning soon and he will be one of those caught in the air upon Christ’s return. I suppose that could be true if he is reincarnated.
Like Christianity there are several versions and varied beliefs when it comes to Karma. Don’t mistake your misunderstanding for the complete picture. In fact Karma is also mentioned in the Bible in it’s simple form.
You will reap what you so. Those who live by the sword will die by the sword and