DaveWoo, thank you for putting that more clearly than I did. I didn’t mean to say that Jesus didn’t say anything of value about morality. He just didn’t come to bring new ideas. The things he said had been said by others before.
BUT, he also said (as you mentioned) that he was God, and that he had power over life and death. I don’t think you can separate one from the other. If he was a nut or a liar, then the moral insights he supposedly taught were probably meaningless.
Toecutter,
It’s an interesting time line, but the gospels were written too soon after the events for **that]/b] much legend to have grown up.
Well, you can separate one from the other because the validity of his teachings doesn’t depend on his divinity. We were talking about the circumstances of the vigin birth.
So, a looney guy who says he is the son of god may very well be a great preacher who[bold}believes[/bold} he’s the son of god and predicts that those who follow him will join him in his father’s kingdom. It’s called faith and is different from history or religion. I don’t know of any religious belief that doesn’t involve the supernatural
renee
Unless the Bible is made up of a lot of half-truths, exaggerations, lies, and frenzied ravings, in which case the fourth possibility is: Jesus was just this guy, you know? And it was others who attributed to him his divinity, his quotes, his life’s adventures (his blue eyes, his sandals, his sheep that followed him around).
Sometimes I think his life was much simpler than everyone ever considers:
He’s born, he’s a regular kid. He observes the world, he figures some stuff out. He watches people and how they work against each other, he feels there is some injustice, he gets to be 20 or so, and starts suggesting to people that if everyone was nicer to each other we’d get along just fine. People view him as a troublemaker, trying to upset the system. Jesus carries on with his life, still being outspoken about his ideas, earns a bit of notoriety. Eventually he catches the notice of some influential Romans who target him, suppress him, and kill him.
All divine, miraculous, omniscient, and otherwise attributes claimed of him are not true. All quotes are extrapolations, or even complete fabrications.
Zealots are everywhere, and they need something to believe in.
I say ‘Life of Brian’ has some very clever truths within.
The whole bit was just disinformation cooked up by an enemy (I’d tell you which one if I weren’t so ignorant of history.) of the Romans to make them look bad theologically. . .and also to bolster its own troops through getting across to them that Allah was on their side.
Then people starting writing books about these fictional characters (as authors are wont to do) and the story was soon made into a movie, and well people’ve been lookin’ at the video now for nigh onto 2000 yr. . .'cause their other hero’s’ve never panned out very well. . .and like, how can one live a respectable life without a hero of godlike proportions anyhow? Godzilla didn’t come till later, otherwise he coulda filled the role. . .and, being a reptile (I think), it woulda been easier to believe a parthenogenic birth in his case.
Ray (Adam and Eve coulda told ya all that would come to pass, but ya never asked 'em.)
Like most people, I first heard of this idea during adolescence.
I’m pretty sure this whole “Was Jesus the bastard child of a Roman soldier” thing began with Strauss’ “Life of Jesus”. This was a notorious book produced during the hyper-rationalism of the Victorian era. Victorian-era scientism, the belief that scientific method can explain everything, encouraged Strauss to try to interpret the gospels in a “rational” way.
When Freud came along, pseudo-psychological interpretations were offered on this point. Roughly, that Jesus’ break from traditional Judaism was a form of rebellion and outrage at his own
lack of a father: “My real father never loved me so why should I love this stand-in called G-D?”. If anything, these theories prove that rationalsim and scientism can produce the same sort of
essentializing crap as theology. Anyway,as biologists are fond of saying, “Nothing is 100% true, even in biology.”
I’m a bit late to the party (actually, my first post in about 2 years), but as the token Muslim here I thought I’d mention that the Islamic party line is that, indeed, Jesus was born of the virgin Mary.
Well, for those determined not to believe that Jesus was, in fact, the Son of God, and want to know the “real” father, read
Matthew 13:54
“And when Jesus came into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue. They were astonished, and said, Where did he get such wisdom and such mighty works? Is this not the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother’s name Mary? Are not his brothers called James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? Do not his sisters live among us?”
Even if non-Christians don’t believe Jesus was God’s son, I don’t see why they shouldn’t accept what his friends and neighbors believed. The people who knew Jesus from his earliest childhood obviously believed that he and his siblings were the children of Mary and Joseph the carpenter. That theory should satisfy any skeptic. There’s no to go searching for Roman soldiers, and whatnot!
Incidentally, those who’ve tried to compare Jesus to Muhammad should know that Muhammad himself, while not accepting Jesus as divine, DID believe in the Virgin Birth.
And this was right where C.S. Lewis lost me when I was reading Mere Christianity. Such a theory doesn’t allow for the possibility that the historical Jesus didn’t say all the things that the Gospels say he did. Nor does it allow for the possibility that the Gospel writers were working from biased sources, were at least a decade or two removed from the events, and could likely have been adding their own embellishments to further their own purposes.
Anyway, back to the OP, I think it’s pretty clear that the most obvious candidate for Jesus’ father is Joseph.
That’s a valid point, but once you go there, then it calls into question everything about Jesus, not just his claims of divinity. Owhat basis can you believe that Jesus really did say all of these wise teachings reported in the Gospels, but didn’t say the stuff about being the Son of God reported in the Gospels? What makes one more believeable than the other? Couldn’t the Gospel writers have been just as willing to make up the Sermon on the Mount as anything else?
The way I see it, if you accept part of his teachings as being things he actually said, you have to accept the rest of it as having been said, too, unless you have evidence to show he didn’t.
