[QUOTE=FinnAgain;Besides, if you really want to believe that a new covenant superseded an old one then you need to believe that God is a liar and a fraud who reneged on promises made and the very concept of a Divine Covenant is a serving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.[/QUOTE]
Finn, That made me laugh. Shipping and handling may apply… I don’t believe God is a liar. I know the Jews have every right not to believe Jesus was Messiah because he did not fulfill the guide lines to be Messiah. Still many of Christan faith do believe because of this thing called faith. “Through faith man achieves the good of his rational nature”. Pope John Paul II.
Now I understand that Jesus was crucified by the Romans and not stoned to death by the Jews. I also did not know Pilate was exiled for his brutality.
I have been doing some digging to find out what happened to Pilate. This is taken from the link below and has the most historical backing. Some sites say he was thrown in two rivers but there was nothing to back it up.
"We will never know what happened to Pilate after his dismissal. There is an old tradition, however, that Pilate committed suicide on his return. If true, it may have been because he had fallen into disfavor, although there is no reason why he should have. The Christian author Eusebius, who tells the story, thinks that the former governor felt remorse for the execution of Jesus (History of the church, 2.7.1). The Ethiopian church, however, thinks that Pilate became a Christian and was martyred. These Christians have canonized the governor of Judea, whose saint’s day is June 25. The tradition of Pilate’s martyrdom was known in the West, where people thought that he died at Vienna in France, where his tomb was incorrectly identified. Maybe, this legend is an echo from the banishment of another ruler of Judea, Herod Archelaus.
Finally, there is a mysterious text known as the Acts of Pilate, a kind of report about the death of Jesus, in which the governor of Judea shows genuine sympathy to those weeping Jews who desire Jesus not to be crucified. Of course, Pilate must have reported about the incident. All governors wrote letters to the emperor, and will have boasted the crucifixion of a pretender. Unfortunately, the Acts of Pilate we possess, are not the original report but a fifth century fabrication.
However, the original was accessible in the second century. It is quoted twice in the First Apology of Justin the Martyr, who had to explain Christianity in front of the emperor. He says:
And after Jesus was crucified they cast lots upon his vesture, and they that crucified him parted it among them. And that these things did happen, you can ascertain from the Acts of Pontius Pilate.
There are these words: ‘At his coming the lame shall leap as an hart, and the tongue of the stammerer shall be clear speaking: the blind shall see, and the lepers shall be cleansed; and the dead shall rise, and walk about.’ And that he did those things, you can learn from the Acts of Pontius Pilate.
It is very unlikely that Justin, whose life was at stake, would have invented a fake report. Besides, the statements attributed to Pilate are not incredible: Pilate would have been a strange pagan if he did not believe reports about miracle workers, and would have been a strange governor if he did not mention these stories in his letter to the emperor. Moreover, the first statement is at odds with the gospels, which state that Jesus’ garments were divided before the crucifixion; a Christian would not write a thing like this. All this suggests that Pilate did indeed write something that Christians felt to be proof of their belief, and that the pagans felt they had to destroy, forcing a devout Christian to write a replacement".
Well, of course Christians can have faith that Jesus was the messiah. That’s the whole point of Christianity if I understand it correctly, and all folks are entitled to their religious views.
The point I was making is that I find Dual-Covenant Theology to be far more palatable and, quite frankly, friendly/civil/respectful than claims that all the Jews are damned, or missed the boat, or that God lied to them, or what have you.
Because they used him as a source. Matthew and Luke were not independent reporters. They copied from Mark.
Not now, but he gets off scott free in the Gospels, and even in early Christian tradition, he was often lauded, not villified. Apocryphal texts such as The Gospel of Peter, and the Acts of Pilate exonerate him from the crucifixion, and one of the early orthodox churches canonized him as a saint.
Those tax collectors were Jews, and even so, Jesus partied with them and told people to pay their taxes
Lauding of Rome? No. Circumspection and glossing, yes. The Gosepls are careful not to say that Rome’s authority was illegitimate.
I’m saying that since this highly dubious story of a trial originated with the same author who originate the equally dubious story of Pilate (a guy who the contemporary Jewish historian Philo accuses of the utmost and most casual brutality, saying that he routinely executed people without trial, and dealt with crowd protests by simply having soldiers go into the crowd and indiscriminately slaughter people) feeling sorry for a Jewish rabble rouser at Passover. I’m saying that Mark is simply not a credible source for the story (and Mark has a lot more credibility problems than just his passion narrative in any case).
Josephus and Philo. After the annexation of Judea in 6 CE, the Jewish high priests were appointed and deposed by the Romans at will. As a result, they were disliked and distrusted by the populace and seen as collaborators with the Romans. They did not have any ability to pressure or intimidate Pilate, having no popular support, but even if they’d had the ability to whip up crowds, we know that Pilate had dealt the angry mobs before by simply by having his soldiers attack them and start killing people indiscriminately until they were subdued. he wasn’t intimidated by mobs.
There is no evidence for this, and the internal evidence in the book would argue against it.
Perhaps (he was at least from the Pauline movement), but Paul never met Jesus either.
Other than the Epistles of Paul, Mark is the earliest known Christian text. While hypotheses about Markan source texts certainly exist, there is no substantial evidence for them other than Paul. The general consensus is that Mark’s sources were from oral tradition, a possible written sayings tradition the Hebrew Bible and his own imagination.
That’s because they copied him, as I’ve already said.
It contradicts both the definition of God and the definition of the Messiah.
Even a new covenant would not account for the different definitions of God and the Messiah, though.
According to the NT Jesus didn’t consider himself anymore divne than any one else.When accused of blasphmey He referred to the psalmist,and said "Why do say I blasphenme because I call God my father, when your fathers did?’
He was also quoted by Mark and Matthew as saying He would return in Glory with His angel while some of the ones standing there at that time listening to Him were still alive. there is no record of that happening, so it must not have happened, and people have been waiting for over 2,000 years for Him to come back; just as the Jews have been waiting for over 4,000 years for a Messiah, and the Muslims are still waiting for Muhammad to return.
The term “elohim” literally means "mighty ones’ and is occasionally used to refer to human dignitaries who are to represent God by fairly & wisely applying His Torah Law. Psalm 82 is God judging His human representatives as failing their responsibilities.
When his enemies accused him of blasphemy for claiming Deity, Jesus turned it around on them that God Himself delegates His authority to His people so why do they attack him? However, I could give you many NT passages where JC makes unique Divine claims which set him over the rest of humanity & shows that he thought of himself, if as not God, then as the next best thing. You keep going back to this one passage which does not prove what you think it does.
It is a matter of intrepratation. One can change it to suit their own beliefs. Being that it was written by humans we can take it with a grain of salt.
Jesus is quoted as saying many times, My Father and Yours, He taught them to pray to ‘Our Father’, the fact that He was quoted as praying to 'The Father", and only 'The Father knows, etc. shows he did not feel he had the power of the Father.
It is a matter of believing in the author of the writings. Or what one wants to believe.