And just as an aside, there are those don’t consider Jesus’ teaching to be a particularly useful line of demarcation and don’t refer to the Tanakh as the ‘Old Testament’… because they don’t think that there ever was a new one
Sorry, I should have clarified Judaism as being the topic not the Old Testament which is the Torah and what modern Jews believe in. This is true and they do not believe Jesus was more then just a prophet.
Still I am well within my rights to point out that modern Christianity is based on Jesus Christ who modern Christian faiths believe in. I quoted from the New Testament about Jesus and how and why he had to die. I understand you want to clarify who was ultimately responsible his crucifixion. That story is also in the New Testament.
I may be off the mark because this is Lent and I go to Stations Of The Cross every Friday and repeat at every station of the cross "This is how it had to be so, I cried silently’, from Mary’s perspective. I don’t look at the bible as scholars do but as a lover of Christ. I look outside the box at the bigger picture. In many ways I feel the pain Jesus endured.
Christ knew and prepared for his death. He knew he would be betrayed by one of his own disciples. Listen to him answering Judas. He never once asked for his life to be spared. He was resigned to his fate as horrible as it was. I don’t believe any one person Jewish or Roman was responsible. It had to be to fulfill the New Covenant. A New Covenant in which the union between God and man will no longer be just in a national religion but in an interior and spiritual piety. This is fulfilled by the Gospels and in modern Christianity.
That’s all well and good, but it’s basically just unverifiable religious belief. Trust us, Perciful, we know what the doctrines are and what the theolgy is. The kinds of discussions we get into tend to take a historical-critical approach, not a devotional one.
The Torah is only the first five books of the Old Testament, by the way. The entirety of what Christians call the OT can be referred to as the Hebrew Bible or the Tanakh.
When faith contradicts facts, faith perforce must yield or become a fraud. You are free to believe in whatever symbolism, theology, cosmology or metaphysics you choose, but the simple facts of the matter are that the gospels’ account of what happened is highly unlikely at best, and clearly fictional in many instances. The passage you quoted makes no sense, that a beast like Pilate would meekly submit to the Jews, do their bidding, or object to executing a trouble maker is an absurdity. That the Jews wouldn’t have just stoned him to death if they felt he violated Jewish law is another.
Yes, I am not Jewish but have a Jewish friend of the new order that believes in Jesus. A Jew would not consider Jesus anything more then a man that did not make Messiah. Thanks and carry on with the discussion.
I would not have known that until you mentioned it. The Jews did stonings and the Romans were much more barbaric. Why did the Jewish priests not stone him to death? It would make sense. Why turn him over to Pilate, a Roman? Unless the Romans felt threatened by Jesus?
My impression of those I was with is that they are actually trying to combine the two. I’ve known some that said that Jesus wasn’t really God, but just the prophet who got closest to God.
I also want to point out that every single one of Jesus’s miracles has a counterpart in the Old Testament. It can almost seem like an amalgamation. Water to wine would have to equal turning bad water into good, but other than that, they’re actually all equivalent.
Well, except the whole coming back from the dead thing.
Judaism has several sects, including the Orthodox, Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist (and smaller ones like the Hassidim who I’d argue are distinct from the Orthodox but others have argued are a sub-set).
In any case, Christians are not a sect of Judaism.
As Dio has pointed out, the Jews didn’t stone him because he didn’t violate Jewish law. He violated Roman law by threatening their smooth control of their conquered territory. They didn’t “turn him over” to Pilate. Pilate had dominion over those under his control and one way or another was made aware or became aware of yet another Jewish trouble maker. And he dealt with that trouble maker like all the other Jewish trouble makers, requiring neither persuasion nor showing reticence.
The accounts of a trial (fictional) or a meek, tentative and bulled-by-the-nasty-Jews Pilate (also fictional) were created to placate the largely Roman audience under which early Christianity was operating. The Romans couldn’t be the badguys, but the Jews could. That’s why, for instance, Matthew created a blood-curse upon the entire Jewish people that led to massive suffering over the centuries. Instead of showing any hint that it was the Romans who were responsible for brutal administration of the territories they conquered by force of arms, he writes that Pilate says “I am innocent of this man’s blood. Look to it yourselves.” And the Jews reply “His blood be upon us and upon our children.”
It’s a story to absolve the Romans (counter to the facts) and make the message of early Christianity more receptive in the ancient Roman world.
Arguably, but one of the big impressive miracles in the story of Elijah involves somebody coming back from the dead before that prophet makes like Enoch by ascending into heaven instead of dying – and while the story of Elijah’s successor likewise has a quick “coming back from the dead” miracle play out before Elisha eventually keels over, someone else’s dead body revives on contact with that prophet’s dead body, and I think that deserves at least partial credit.
Otherwise, though, I’m curious as to precisely what you have in mind. Is parting the sea your counterpart to walking on water? Is turning a stick into a snake and then back to dead wood meant to parallel cursing a tree so it can’t bear fruit? Is there a full list somewhere?
Yes, Sorry I had to go to a funeral. It is called the 12 Tribes of Israel. He sends me a lot of emails with references that they seem to believe in Jesus.
I never looked at it that way. It does make sense in that Jesus would be considered a threat to Roman rule. I have read it and gone to Stations of the Cross for years and always was under the impression that God willed it not the Romans or The Jews. I know the Jews were mad at the movie ‘The Passion Of The Christ’ because they felt it put blame on them as a people but I never saw that. The bible makes it very ambiguous the way they keep passing Jesus back and forth like a hot potato. No one wanting to be responsible for making the order for him to die.
The New Testament was being written in Roman times and possibly they were afraid to come right out and blame them for fear of meeting with a horrible death?
A better argument is that the same texts often make the Romans out pretty clearly to be jerks in several other places, and some of the Apostles were not really well-disposed towards them. Given that, it’s perhaps unlikely that they would somehow single out Pilate for ahistorical kindness.
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Certainly to this Christian, I would have to argue that we are the true inheritors of Judaism, not those now called Jews. So you may as well call it two branches of the same fundamental faith (and then Islam is basically a branch, however disliked, of Christianity).
The New Testament is not one homogenous text. You can’t compare perceived inconsistencies from other, later authors than Mark and try to use it to say that “the text” therefore contradicts itself. Mark and the synoptics evry consistently circumspect about the Romans and very careful not to blame them for the crucifixion or call them evil. Jesus heals a Roman soldier’s boy toy, tells people to pay their taxes to Caesar and a Roman Centaurian calls Jesus the son of God at the crucifixion. Nothing was “singled out” about Pilate, and it flatly isn’t plausible that he could have been pressured by his own lackeys into killing a guy he didn’t care about. Mark and the synoptics were not looking to trash the Romans, or blame them and looked for every opportunity gloss them or excuse them.
Moreover, crucifixion was against Jewish law, and the priests could not have legally asked for it. Not only that, but they could have stoned him themselves if they wanted him dead. Not that they had any reason to want him dead since he violated no Jewish law. Crucifixion was an exclusively Roman form of execution used in the provinces exclusively for crimes against the Roman state.
Everything detail of Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin (a trial that John says nothing about) is factually erroneous or wildly implausible. So is the idea that Pilate would been at all chariable to a Jewish troublemaker during passover, or that he could have been pressured or intimidated by the priests who were his own hand-picked flunkies. Moreover, those priests themselves did not represent the will of the Jewish populace, but were regarded with hostility and suspicion by it.
We have no record of what any of the apostles thought about the Romans (or anything else), by the way. The story about Pilate being reluctant to kill Jesus does not come from the apostles, it comes only from Mark, who neither was an apostle, nor knew any apostles.
How do you explain the fact that Christian theology contradicts everything in Hebrew scripture (i.e the “Old Testament”), then?
And yet, the other Gospels are substanially in accordance with Mark on this. Have you read them?
Secondly, you’ll note that Pilate doesn’t exactly get off lightly. He’s not what you’d call a figure much lauded in the Christian tradition. Tax collectors for Rome, and Roman military/tax policy as a whole, are generally seen as quite vile cheats and frauds. In fact, I see not so much a lauding of ROme but rather a significant ambiguity. They didn’t neccessarily like Roman rule, but acknowledged the Romans are legitimate rulers as well. The two are not impossible to reconcile.
Yes, I know. I don’t believe I claimed otherwise, anywhere, at any time. I can certainly believe, however, that the chief priests, anxious to smooth over troubles with powers far greater than Pontius Pilate, broke the official law. I can also believe the account is mistaken. In fact, I don’t believe I mentioned it at all. Have you confused me with someone else?
I have seen several accounts of the exact place of the priests, but I have not seen a source which claims they were chosen particularly by the Romans. Those which I have seen do imply their position was an uncertain one.
I appreciate your knowledge, butI would argue you are partly wrong there. He probably did come into contact with apostles at some point, and certainly listened to Paul. Moreover, there were numerous early Christian texts and accounts he probably condensed. FInally, his text is not substantially different from the other gospels.
It does not contradict everything, not by a long shot. But more importantly, a new Convenant superceded the old.
Yes, That is it. He says it has nothing to do with the European movement. They not only try and convert ethnic Jews they try and convert anyone that will listen. I had to tell him in a nice way I was not interested in any more e-mails about it. it seems to be big down south.
No, that’s a horrible argument. We have the actual history, Pilate was not a reluctant executioner, he did not deal kindly with trouble makers, he was not operating at the behest of his servants, the priests, but was their superior. Pilate was given to using brutality and excessive force to maintain smooth Roman control. Pilate was in fact so brutal that he was removed from power and exiled by Rome, a punishment considered more extreme than death itself.
Claiming, then, that Pilate wasn’t whitewashed and portrayed with fictional reticence and fictionally being bullied by the Jewish priests and fictionally being a merciful kind of fellow, is self-serving sophistry. The facts of history are quite clear. Whether or not (and as Dio has already pointed out, the answer is ‘not’) a unified text written long after the fact was to be internally coherent, it still wouldn’t change the fact that it’s falsified by the actual historical record.
I already linked to a cite. The priests served at the pleasure of their Roman masters.
Of course it contradicts everything. Otherwise please explain how many of the Mitzvot you are still bound by. And how much Jewish theology you kept intact. Do you believe that Salvation is nonsensical and totally unnecessary? Do you believe that God is Unity and God can no more have a Son than he can have a Second Cousin Twice Removed? Do you believe that everybody in the world can be equally righteous in God’s eyes, regardless of who or what they believe in, as long as they follow just a few simple rules? How about the concept that God is not a liar, a fraud and a trickster and if God makes a covenant with you on Tuesday He doesn’t then go and change it on Thursday and tell you to stuff it?
We both know the answer to those questions, so why say such silly things?
You didn’t inherit Judaism. You inherited a separate religion that was taken from some of the teachings of someone who was a Jew. Claiming that you are the ‘true Jews’ is an insulting absurdity. Just because (some of the probable/possible) teachings of someone who was a Jew were used to found a totally different religion doesn’t make the new religion the old one, or the old one invalid. Not any more than you’re a fake Christian and the Mormons are the real Christians or you’re all fake Christians and Scientology is the One True Path.
Besides, if you really want to believe that a new covenant superseded an old one then you need to believe that God is a liar and a fraud who reneged on promises made and the very concept of a Divine Covenant is a serving suggestion, read the fine print, void where prohibited, not valid in Judea, shipping and handling may apply.
