I never said it was restricted. Just hard to come by.
It’s not subjective, it just lacks dispositive data, and I have not said it was impossible for Jesus to have been literate, just unlikely.
Christians don’t think Jesus knew God, they think he was God, therefore they couldn’t have said he was illiterate, or given him any human weakness at all.
Unlikely based on your** speculation**.
You mean Jesus in human form had no weaknesses? What was the purpose of him fasting, or being tempted, or going through physical pain on the cross? :eek:
You are incorrect in that statement, Dio.
DtC is correct here. It is basic Christian beleive that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. He could feel pain.
Unlikely based on what we know of the ancient world.
Not according to Christian theology, no. Jesus was God. God has no weaknesses. His body was human, but not his mind. His body felt pain, but he still had the mind of God.
My response was sarcastic.
If Jesus was fully human and fully divine, does this mean he could read at birth or had to be taught? 
Not all cultures are alike.
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If he had the mind of God, then I guess he could read! :o
Either Jesus had the same basic neural functions as everyone else or he didn’t.
So if Christians want to claim that Jesus was God in human form and could feel pain, then his brain would be pretty similar to everyone else’s.
He would have had to develop his cognitive processes - such as learning to walk, to talk, to jump, to read and so forth and so on. You can’t claim he felt pain while claiming the he was cognitively superior because he had God’s mind.
It means he had the mind of God and never had to be taught anything.
Culture didn’t have that much to do with it, It was about resources and time.
If he had the mind of God, sure. But you don’t believe that, do you? Neither do I.
You can’t say he felt pain and could be tempted
while saying he had the mind of God and knew everything.
That’s neurologically impossible.
Tell that to the Japanese.
No being fully human, he did feel pain and was tempted. Being divine, he resisted.
Only if you think the mind is purely physical.
For the record, I’m an atheist, I don’t believe Jeus was God, but you made a statement that early Christians would be more likely to say he was illiterate. That’s not the case if they thought he was God. If you think that’s contradictory with being “fully human,” then welcome to the club, I think the Christ mythos is riddled with contradiction, but what you and I think isn’t the issue. You made a statement about what early Christians would think. Early Christians, like modern Christians, thought that Jesus had the mind of God.
That’s what I mean about the difference between mind and body. In Christian theology, Jesus was capable of feeling and understanding the suffereings and temptations of the flesh (and in some strains of Christian thought, that was actually the POINT of his becoming human - in order to really understand human suffering) , but having the mind of God (and the mind is non-physiological in Christian theology), he was capable of not giving into it, and of still being omnsicient.
I made the statement that it would have been decent PR if he were illiterate. They could’ve capitalized on that. Christianity was for the poor man. Anyway, the literacy of Jesus seems to be a non issue to Christians. It also doesn’t seem likely that so many would take up his message and say he was the son of God if the man were illiterate.
Dio is saying that knowledge is some kind of phenomenon because it is of the mind.
Incorrect. Knowledge is acquired. You can’t argue that Jesus had the same brain processing as the rest of us and then say he just “knew” everything at birth.
Unless Jesus had some kind of freakish selective neuropathy, that makes no sense. I never learned in all of my forced Bible studies (my dad is a Christian) that Jesus was born knowing how to read. It was as if a little “humanoid filter” was placed on Jesus. And yes, my dad was Evan-freaking-gelical.
Did Jesus ever have an erection?
No, seriously.
Since we’ve gone beyond literacy rates in first-century Palestine to speculating about Jesus’ neural functions, I think this thread is by now well into GD territory.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I just go wherever Dio leads the discussion. He’s making the rules. That being said, I’m done here.