Questions about Jesus

Factual Questions
1

Some background information first. I have never read the Bible. All that I know is from sermons given in church, Jack Chick tracts, other peoples witnessing, and movies. I have some questions that have been bugging me for awhile after watching the movie Dogma. Yeah yeah, I know it was just a movie, but I figured maybe it had a teeny bit of truth to it.

First off, did Jesus know he was the son of God from birth or was he told at a certain age? If so, did he accept it? Or (like it said in Dogma) did he reject it? If he was told at a certain age, what was that age. Teens? Twenties? Who told him?

Secondly, I was under the impression that Jesus knew he was dying for everyones sins. Or am I wrong? But if he knew, whats with the “Father, why have you forsaken me?” Did God tell him he’d come and save him?

I know this might all sound really silly, if you have for a fact read the Bible and know the story of Jesus. But I don’t. And reading the Bible doesn’t interest me right now. If you know the answers to these questions, please just post them. I don’t want this to turn into an ugly thread with people coming in and shouting that their faith is the only faith. I want this to be a nice thread that will teach me about Jesus. I’m NOT interested in joining any religion, I just want to know the STORY of Jesus.

Thank You.

~arachnidlove /X(…)/X\

2

It’s not clearly stated in the Bible, our only source of information on Jesus, so we don’t know. The Bible does say, however, that Jesus’ public ministry began at around the age of 30 following his baptism in the river Jordan.

Dogma was a fantastical movie with no basis in fact.

A frequent interpretation is that God so loved mankind (the ol’ John 3:16) that he submitted to all human frailties, including despair.

Well, the SDMB is about fighting ignorance, and the best thing you could do to understand the issues is read the Bible which, regardless of its validity, is the only source we have for this thing called Christianity (ignoring the Apostolic Fathers).

UnuMondo

3

Lifelong evangelical Christian answers:

It’s generally assumed that being 100% human as well as 100% God, He wouldn’t have known as an infant that His spirit was unadulterated. When would He have known it? Well, He seems to have indicated it quite strongly when at 12 He called the temple His Father’s house (capital F father).

I have NO idea what this is about. Dogma is a comedy written to make money by non-Christians. Indeed, the entire basis of Christianity is that Jesus retained his Godhood.

Yes, the point is that He went to the cross knowing that it would happen, and knowing why. His prayers at the garden of Gethsemene show this. He didn’t want to go, on a human level, and prayed for another way to get the job done, but submitted to the program.

For the first time, He felt separated from the Father, as He took on the sins of all humanity. It was a shock, even knowing the general idea ahead of time.

There’s no indication of that. It would have ruined the whole plan. Standard Christian theology says that Jesus was acting as the sin offering for all humanity, like the animals that would be killed in the temple.

4

Hey Cardinal, take a look at Psalm 22. We know Christ was fond of quoting Old Testament (the only scripture He had at the time. Many people think either Jesus was invoking this Psalm for His own comfort, or to strengthen His followers watching Him suffer of either he recited the Psalm and the New Testament writers only included the first lines.

Check it out. The Psalm mentione details of the curcifiction as well as deals with a man going through difficulties who come to God for deliverance.

Psalms 22:1
My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?
Far from my deliverance are the words of my groaning.
Psalms 22:2
O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer;
And by night, but I have no rest.
Psalms 22:3
Yet You are holy,
O You who are enthroned upon the praises of Israel.
Psalms 22:4
In You our fathers trusted;
They trusted and You delivered them.
Psalms 22:5
To You they cried out and were delivered;
In You they trusted and were not disappointed.
Psalms 22:6
But I am a worm and not a man,
A reproach of men and despised by the people.
Psalms 22:7
All who see me sneer at me;
They separate with the lip, they wag the head, saying,
Psalms 22:8
“Commit yourself to the LORD; let Him deliver him;
Let Him rescue him, because He delights in him.”
Psalms 22:9
Yet You are He who brought me forth from the womb;
You made me trust when upon my mother’s breasts.
Psalms 22:10
Upon You I was cast from birth;
You have been my God from my mother’s womb.
Psalms 22:11
Be not far from me, for trouble is near;
For there is none to help.
Psalms 22:12
Many bulls have surrounded me;
Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me.
Psalms 22:13
They open wide their mouth at me,
As a ravening and a roaring lion.
Psalms 22:14
I am poured out like water,
And all my bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax;
It is melted within me.
Psalms 22:15
My strength is dried up like a potsherd,
And my tongue cleaves to my jaws;
And You lay me in the dust of death.
Psalms 22:16
For dogs have surrounded me;
A band of evildoers has encompassed me;
They pierced my hands and my feet.
Psalms 22:17
I can count all my bones.
They look, they stare at me;
Psalms 22:18
They divide my garments among them,
And for my clothing they cast lots.
Psalms 22:19
But You, O LORD, be not far off;
O You my help, hasten to my assistance.
Psalms 22:20
Deliver my soul from the sword,
My only life from the power of the dog.
Psalms 22:21
Save me from the lion’s mouth;
From the horns of the wild oxen You answer me.

5

Dear God,

Please forgive the horrendous spelling and puncuation in the above post…

:slight_smile:

6

Start with a presumption that the Gospel stories are valid history, told with a polemic, intent-to-evangelize slant. (I say this because there is some passable evidence that at least one of the two Nativity stories is pious fiction – “the Secret Origins of Jesus” à la Marvel Comics.)

Jewish tradition expected the coming of a Messiah – a man who would drive out the conquering and occupying powers and re-establish the Kingdom, and then rule righteously over Israel, cowing those potential oppressors whom he did not conquer.

According to Luke and Matthew, both of Jesus’s parents had apparitions from an angel (Gabriel, spelled out once and implied the other, IIRC) informing them that He was the kid to do that job, essentially, and that God was going to cause Mary to conceive Him without the usual babymaking technique. Note that both are descended from David – of fairly humble births themselves but “royalty” in the sense of descended from the royal family.

Various events confirm this – Mary goes and visits her elderly cousin Elizabeth, also pregnant (with John the Baptist), and is recognized as bearing the Son of the Most High; after Jesus’s birth, He is taken to the Temple and offered up in the traditional ceremony by which the firstborn is dedicated to God, and Zechariah the priest and Anna the prophetess are given prophetic insight into who He is. And three Magi (Mazdist wise men from Persia or Mesopotamia) show up to honor the newborn King of the Jews (which ticks off Herod, who thought that was his job).

So the assumption that He grew up with some awareness that He was destined to be the Messiah. As time went on, however, He recognized that what God wanted Him to do and what people’s expectations of the Messiah were, were at radical variance. Hence all the parables about “the Kingdom of God is…” – this is the guy they expect to be the restoring warrior King teaching something quite different about conquering self and making God King of your heart.

Jesus’s own awareness of what He was up to is somewhat questionable – but it’s clear that He willingly took the road that led to the Cross; there are several points where He has obvious choices and does what ends up leading Him there. John has the depiction of Jesus that is most “God-in-human-form” of the four, and he records Jesus as saying, “If I am lifted up, I will draw all men unto me” with John’s editorial comment that he was speaking of being “lifted up” on the Cross. As newcrasher notes, Eli eli lama sabachthani was a direct quote from the first verse of Psalm 22, which is eerily foreboding of what actually happened to Jesus according to the Gospels.

IMHO, Jesus, whom Scripture records as having undergone every human temptation and feeling, is here handling the “dark night of the soul” experience – the feeling of despair and total doubt of God – without which He would not have had the understanding of how a human can feel that – and conquering it by the use of that Psalm, even as He is suffering and dying.

Contrary to assumptions, Jesus did not know He’d be resurrected – He had faith that God was going to pull a cosmic rabbit out of His hat, somehow – enough faith to willingly go to the Cross in obedience to His will.

7

Actually, I believe Kevin Smith still considered himself a Catholic.

8

<hijack>

How sad that Dogma constitutes so much of my age group’s consciousness about religion. I know people who think everything in there is true. I have no doubt that if more people had read it, Charles Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According To Christ’s Childhood Pal, Biff would have the same effect.

9

And don’t assume that arachnidlove has correctly understood Dogma anymore than he has correctly understood the Bible.

10

I’m amazed that people are worried about someone basing their religious beliefs on Kevin Smith but nobody’s said a word against Jack Chick.

11

For another perspective on Jesus read the Koran. There is some history also given on John the Baptist as well as Mary and her mother.

12

Jesus never unambiguously said that he was divine.

There is, in fact, a longstanding religious tradition which venerates The New Testament but believes that Jesus was merely human. There are allusions to this in The Acts of the Apostles, where St. Peter ducks out of the public baths rather than encounter such a person. A prime expression of this view of The Bible is the Unitarian-Universalist Church. “Unitarian” means one does not accept the doctrine of The Trinity, in which Jesus is God the Son.

There are passages in The Acts of the Apostles and The Epistle to the Hebrews which seem to say that Jesus was God.

Just as it is not absolutely clear from The Bible that Jesus believed himself to be God, or in some special sense distinct from other people “God’s son”, so too it is not clear when he might have come to this belief. In modern times, theologians have increasingly interpreted scripture as saying that his realization was gradual, and perhaps even evolved during the period described in The Gospels. Sorry: I don’t have a good site for this off hand.

It was my impression too that Kevin Smith is still a Roman Catholic. Speaking as a Catholic who saw Dogma, I’d say the film combined sound theology with fantasy, and threw in some satire about the Catholic Church too. For instance, Smith was on sound ground as a Catholic in saying that Jesus may have had siblings. As a fantasist, he threw in the existence of Muses. As a satirist, he poked fun at the way some Catholics misinterpret and misuse the idea of indulgences.

13

arachnidlove, just a recommendation that you do get around to reading the Bible. The book has been at the center of Western culture for almost two thousand years. You don’t have to read all of it at once. Read the first five books of the Old Testament, and the four gospels of the New Testament. Each of those books can be read in 1-2 hours time, tops.

As others have said, it’s a crying shame when one’s main sources about Christian theology include Kevin Smith’s Dogma hi-jinks and Jack Chick tracts.

14

There are other gospels other than the canonical ones found in the bible. The Infancy Gospels of Thomas have Jesus creating living sparrows from clay, causing people to die or to be blinded, and subsequently healing them.

“And as the Jews were counselling Zacchaeus, the young child laughed greatly and said: Now let those bear fruit that were barren and let them see that were blind in heart. I am come from above that I may curse them, and call them to the things that are above, even as he commanded which hath sent me for your sakes. And when the young child ceased speaking, immediately all they were made whole which had come under his curse. And no man after that durst provoke him, lest he be maimed.”

From this, it would appear that there was never a moment he didn’t know his origins. This is corroborated in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy of the Saviour.

"1. We find (1) what follows in the book of Joseph the high priest, who lived in the time of Christ. Some say that he is Caiaphas. (2) He has said that Jesus spoke, and, indeed, when He was lying in His cradle said to Mary His mother: I am Jesus, the Son of God, the Logos, whom thou hast brought forth, as the Angel Gabriel announced to thee; and my Father has sent me for the salvation of the world. "

Also, the history of Josephus has historical relevance in establishing Jesus’ identity.

http://wesley.nnu.edu/noncanon/gospels.htm

15

No, he wasn’t–not if he meant that Mary had given birth to other children. Catholic canon insists on Mary’s perpetual virginity; according to this, she only had one child, Jesus, whose conception was miraculous and did not violate her virginity.

It’s sometimes said that Joseph may have had children from a previous marriage, thus explaining the references in the NT to Jesus’s brothers and sisters (who would be half-brothers and sisters in this telling of it). Other times, those references are explained as misinterpretations of the original Greek text–that is, the terms “brothers” and “sisters” should be understood as figurative references to cousins or other relatives from outside the immediate family.

A Roman Catholic can believe in either of those two alternative interpretations and be in keeping with church canon–just so long as they hold to the doctrine of Mary’s perpetual virginity.

(Of course, most Protestants believe that Mary was virgin only up until Christ’s birth, and that afterwards she had relations [and other children] with Joseph.)

16
  1. Jesus knew that He would rise from the dead.
    Cf. mt 12:40; Mr. 16:21; 17:9; 20:19;; Mk 8:31; 9:31; Lk 18:33; Jn 2:18; a few others.
  2. Jesus knew and stated himself to be the Son of God.
    John 3:16, a few others. cf a concordance (they have one online…google ‘bible gateway’); the transfiguration (peter’s confession) the man healed from blindness. when the awareness of it came to Him, no one can say.
  3. not to put too fine a point on it, but Jesus may have quoted from Ps. 22 (KJV Bible) just to fulfill prophecy. (that is my own interpretation of why He did it; showing ‘from the scriptures’ just what was happening…kinda. like i said, just MY interpretation) He did know that he was going to be crucified and why…see pt 1 references. Also, i can’t remember which Gospel, but it says, more or less “Jesus, knowing that for this cause he had come into the world…” right around the time of the last supper. also, during the last supper, Jesus tells why His Body will be broken, His Blood shed for the remission of sin…etc…
17

Okay, a big thank you to those who have answered my questions. For the record, I was baptized Catholic. I went through my first communion, but never went further than that. I DO NOT base my religous beliefs on Jack Chick and * Dogma*. I’m just saying, those are some of the experiences I’ve had with the stories of the bible. I also mentioned sermons from church. I understand that Dogma is only a movie. Like I said in my original post, but I was thinking maybe it had a TEENY bit of truth. I understand there was no 13th apostle named Rufus too and many other things from the movie.

I’ll come clean. I have attempted to read the Bible many times, but the Bible my family has just befuddles me. I get confused and then disinterested. All the stories of Jesus I learned as a child have left my memory. Add that to my teenage angst years of constantly rejecting any religion, I’ve become lost. I thought about asking a priest about my questions, but I really don’t feel comfortable doing that right now.

BTW. My questions popped up from listening to System of A Downs’ songs “Chop Suey” and “Forest”.

One more thing, ** Wendell ** I’m a female :wink:

18

May I suggest that you start with a children’s book of Bible stories? That’s a pretty standard thing for most regular churchgoer’s to learn the basics of the Bible from. I think that it would be useful to an adult who wants to learn the core narrative of the Bible.

Sorry about getting your sex wrong. I never did work out this male and female thing. Every once in a while someone tries to tell me about where babies come from, and I say, “Oh, I know about the stork bringing them.” Then they say that it’s more complicated than that and try to tell me about it, but I always get confused and never have understood what they’re talking about.

19

If these matters interest you at all, you should continue trying to read the Bible, and not rely on second-, third-, and fourth-hand interpreters (inlcuding us) to figure it out for you. It is only this way you will be able to form your own opinions about what it says, what it means, and what it is.

I was really amazed to discover, when I first read the Bibly seriously in college, how little is actually in there compared to all the stuff that has been accreted onto it in the last 2,000 years. So much of what we think we know about the Bible is in fact from extra-Biblical sources, like Milton’s Paradise Lost. Equating the serpent in the Garden of Eden with Satan, for instance. Not from the Bible. In Genesis, it’s just the serpent, the most “subtle of the wild creatures.” The connection is the work of interpreters.

So don’t give up trying. See for yourself.

(BTW, not that it matters, but I’m an atheist.)

20

I wrote:

> . . . for most regular churchgoer’s to learn . . .

AAAAAHHHHH!!! Of all the things that annoy me in posts, the biggest is people who don’t know the difference between a plural and a possessive. And then I go and make that mistake myself.