Jesus the Messiah?

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I am not sure what you are asking for. So here are a couple of comparative articles that contrast the old and new testaments in relation to Christ.

http://www.faulkner.edu/admin/websites/ ... tproph.htm

Another good example, which does a reasonable job of going from verse to verse is here

http://www.biblestudy.org/prophecy/old- ... illed.html

Also if you wish to criticise my position, then simply labeling the the new testament as false is not adequate.

Congregations getting the collective noun 'flock' is not one of coincidence.

That is what I am asking for, as AngelRho has already alluded too I have a very definite bias. So if you have a counter argument lets hear it!

Oh, please. Quit being a sore loser. You don't even post here enough for us to get anything but a whiff of your character these days anyway.

Sorry, Dent. I used up all my argumentative time and energy over in "Christians I have questions" or whatever. I'm letting someone else take this one.

The "bias" in question was a reference to a predisposition to believe vs. a predisposition NOT to believe. I could quote scripture all day long about what the Bible itself has to say about how stories got around about the empty tomb about what it was/wasn't. The short answer: You can either believe the disciples, or you can go with the stories that the religious leaders propagated in response.

This kind of stuff isn't new. It's been around for millennia. I just have too much work to do at the moment to get very deep into it. Maybe later. It's more amusing stirring up the hornets' nest that is the "Gay Marriage" thread!

I'm personally skeptical that a historical person along the lines of Jesus ever existed, never mind fulfills prophecies X, Y and Z, but how is a belief along those lines any sillier than what we think of as the Judaism of today? By that I mean, of course, the preoccupation with the Talmud...no such thing existed in Judaism prior to the destruction of the Temple, and the final version of the document wasn't set until a few hundred years later.

At one time Jews who rejected the Talmud were almost as numerous as those accepted it. And the Karaites may or may not have a point...despite being on the losing end of history, big time. I mean, what exactly "justifies" the Talmud and its position as holy books in Rabbinical Judaism?



In sum, Christians probably ignore a great deal to get to their Messiah, and most Jews probably ignore a great deal to exalt the Talmud. Don't see how either side is really in a position to claim superiority over the other.

Sorry about the wait. I wanted to answer this question when I could answer it thoughtfully, which is usually not late at night when I usually check my e-mails.

C.S. Lewis put forth this argument: when someone makes such an outrageous claim as that of being the Messiah, there are three possibilities. a) the person is lying, b) the person is insane and really believes it, or c) that they're telling the truth.

Let's say that Jesus was a con artist, and the people he allegedly healed in New Testament literature were planted there for the sake of illusion. To pull of something so elaborate, at least some of the disciples would have had to be in on it.

The trouble with this is that a lot of the Jesus' early followers were put to death for their beliefs, sometimes in pretty horrific ways. Simon Peter was most likely crucified, James son of Zebedee was put to death, Andrew was crucified, Thomas was killed by a lance, James Alphaeus was stoned (with rocks, not LSD), and on and on. People, to be willing to die for these kinds of beliefs, had to have really believed it. If they were just trying to extort money or get attention, none of them would have behaved this way.

Then there's the idea that Jesus was insane. After all, there are a lot of people with delusional disorders who have believed that they were the Messiah. But this doesn't explain the miracles attributed to Jesus or the apostles being willing to die for their belief in him being the Messiah. Most people would probably have known that he was not quite there from the beginning.

You already know where I'm going with this.

ChrisVulcan, the problem with your reasoning about this is how easily people are fooled by faith-healing today. You don't need that much for a scam given that the people pretty much want to believe what you are telling them. Committing to Jesus being unable to falsify miracles basically also commits you to a large number of miracles BEYOND what you really likely want to accept. Beyond what most of your opponents are willing to EVER accept. We already reject Benny Hinn's faith healing. Why should Jesus, who lived thousands of years before we could ever investigate, be better?

Yeah, but the people who probably would have been in on it dying for preaching this idea? Obviously people want to believe what they're being told, because people are gullible creatures. The thing is that people who fall for faith healers today tend to be just that: gullible. The people that Jesus ministered to were people who were living under brutal Roman rule, often working-class people. They had seen a lot of cold hard reality and would be quite unamused by your typical faith-healer.

You know, that's a lot of assumptions for ignorant fishermen. I mean, the people who fall for it today are "often working-class people". Even further, I am unsure of what justification you can use for the varied messiahs in Israel at the time, or even historical cults throughout Rome without actually assuming that these people probably were gullible. I also don't see how you can assume that there was all of this "great evidence" without at the same time assuming that mainstream Jews were just total idiots. As it stands, I would suspect that the working class of those days would be most likely influenced, as "seeing cold hard reality" doesn't mean that one loses magical thinking.

Right or Wrong, Pharisaic Judaism is the form of Judaism that survived.

ruveyn

Which proves what?

Like all survival in the face of adversity, it proves the ability to last despite forces and conditions acting against it. A proof of persistancy and toughness, if you will.

ruveyn

Or that human gullibility is a very persistent character feature. Astrology has probably existed longer than any of the current religions including the Jewish religion. Which says little about its sanity.

In my experience, people who are drawn to modern-day faith healers or televangelists tend to be have fragile personalities. For instance, my aunt, who was bipolar and emotionally delicate, was a big fan of Benny Hinn. People doing hard physical labor in Roman Judea were generally not your fragile type.

Another thing, people like Benny Hinn will almpost only "heal" people who are not obviously disabled (people with diabetes, for example). Jesus, on the other hand, healed people with obvious and grotesque diseases, like leprosy.

And you say this with all of the background of a historian, yes? The people in Judea were of course going to have some degree of fragility, they were divided, they were occupied by a foreign power who disagreed with them, and frankly, it is hard that there was no "fragility" given that Jesus wasn't the only Messiah of the day. This isn't to say "there were multiple messiahs conglomerated into one", but rather this is to say "look, these non-fragile people are already engaging in the 'fragile' cultic behavior". So... y'know, I just don't find this credible.

Even further, let's even do comparison:
Which seems more likely, the extremely absurd case where a perfect God creates a world that evolved, rather than one that actually was intelligently designed. That He creates a world FILLED with all sorts of evils. And that he then incarnated himself and died on a cross, which by many Christian theologies, is to save us from his judgement....
OR
That these Judean fisherman were more emotionally fragile than you guessed? After all, they also were more superstitious than us moderns, as people who are not that fragile still end up thinking all sorts of miracles occur in those less educated parts of the world.

I am going to have to side with option 2. It preserves a LOT more of our intuitions. Even further, there are better attested claims of "spiritual forces" than the Christian text ANYWAY, so if I reject most of those, including modern miracle claims coming from various religions, why should I accept Christianity? Why should YOU accept Christianity given that you can't accept many of the miracle claims floating about from so many different groups?


We don't have original records, so we don't know what Jesus really did or really didn't do. A few embellishments and we end up having grotesque and obvious diseases healed.