How Did God Crucified Establish Civic Idealism?

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
User avatar
John T
Posts: 1567
Joined: Thu May 15, 2014 8:57 am

Re: How Did God Crucified Establish Civic Idealism?

Post by John T »

Can anyone cite any sayings of Jesus that supports Secret Alias interpretation that God came to earth to be crucified?

I'm still waiting. :popcorn:

****************

Alias, once again is all over the map without citing any scripture. Then he attacks me for simply asking that he provide a source other than Alias says so.

First he says God came to earth to be crucified. Then he says Jesus came down from heaven to be crucified for his Father (God). Then he says a lessor god (demi-urge) crucified himself. Then he says God clearly comes to earth to make the Jews see the divine plan.

Just how many different Gnostic variations of god does the demiurge of Marcion and Alias contain?

Too many heresies, too little time to sort them all out for Alias.

John T
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
Secret Alias
Posts: 18362
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: How Did God Crucified Establish Civic Idealism?

Post by Secret Alias »

This "I am not listening but answer my questions" game is as old as the forum. The evidence is clear and provided.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Ulan
Posts: 1505
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2014 3:58 am

Re: How Did God Crucified Establish Civic Idealism?

Post by Ulan »

It's one of these annoying JohnT games all over again, including his lack of engaging any arguments. And yes, I'm talking about him now and not with him, as he refuses any real discussion. I tried.
Last edited by Ulan on Sat Jun 09, 2018 10:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Ben C. Smith
Posts: 8994
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 2:18 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: How Did God Crucified Establish Civic Idealism?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

The T stands for "troll."
ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
Ulan
Posts: 1505
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2014 3:58 am

Re: How Did God Crucified Establish Civic Idealism?

Post by Ulan »

@Stephan: I think your questions become that broad now that you would need a whole book to tackle them. We are looking at a process. You are right with the point that we are looking at a story that is mostly about Jews and featuring Jews. We have this discussion because the actual message of the gospels is far from clear. That's what Christianity has priests for, I guess, to filter and interpret these messages in one specific way so that the believers don't get confused. I do not think that any of the gospels we look at now have been written as they are from scratch. They all look reworked, some of them probably over and over. With these reworks, new ideas were transported, but they often enough didn't really replace older ideas, but were just added, with old ideas slightly adapted. Especially gMark seems to speak in riddles and allusions. These allusions didn't even seem to work for the other gospel writers anymore, so there's even less chance they work for us.

Yes, the temple doesn't play any prominent role anymore in ancient Christian discourse. Why should it. Most of the discussions we get to look into are at least a century removed from that event. It's obvious that the quotes in gMark dance around this subject and, most of the time, don't even mention what the quote is actually about. I'm just starting from the quotes the gospel starts with. The gospel doesn't really have much of an introduction, just a couple of sentences that are taken from the OT, and I only assume here that they want to set the tone somehow and tell us what it's all about, in a rather opaque way. With the dating, I don't have that much of an issue. The temple question seemed to have been open until after the Bar Kokhba revolt. I guess, only then the realization settled in that the temple was truly gone, probably forever. But I'm not really interested in dragging that dating question into this thread again.

If you look at the gospels, you can see the messages about sacrifices shift. See the Barabbas episode. I think it's rather common to interpret the scene in gMark as being modeled on Yom Kippur. But look at the sacrifices here. If this is Yom Kippur, Jesus Christ is not the sacrifice for the sins of the people. It's Barabbas who is freed. He is the one to carry all sins of Israel into the desert to die. Jesus Christ here is the sacrifice for the cleansing of the temple. We find the scene in all four canonical gospels, but everyone makes something completely different out of it. Either the other gospel writers/editors didn't understand what Mark wanted to tell us, or they didn't agree with it. And if we assume the latter, this may just have been a shift in the meaning of the sacrifice we talk about here. It's a gradual process.
User avatar
Ben C. Smith
Posts: 8994
Joined: Wed Apr 08, 2015 2:18 pm
Location: USA
Contact:

Re: How Did God Crucified Establish Civic Idealism?

Post by Ben C. Smith »

Ulan wrote: Sat Jun 09, 2018 10:52 pmI do not think that any of the gospels we look at now have been written as they are from scratch. They all look reworked, some of them probably over and over.
Hear, hear.
If you look at the gospels, you can see the messages about sacrifices shift. See the Barabbas episode. I think it's rather common to interpret the scene in gMark as being modeled on Yom Kippur. But look at the sacrifices here. If this is Yom Kippur, Jesus Christ is not the sacrifice for the sins of the people. It's Barabbas who is freed. He is the one to carry all sins of Israel into the desert to die. Jesus Christ here is the sacrifice for the cleansing of the temple. We find the scene in all four canonical gospels, but everyone makes something completely different out of it. Either the other gospel writers/editors didn't understand what Mark wanted to tell us, or they didn't agree with it.
The Barabbas episode is one of the most frustrating ones to me. So many seeming clues (the ones you have pointed out here, the "son of the father" possibility, several overlaps with seditious bits from Jewish history, the story's easy use as heightening Jewish guilt, and so on, including rather many wild, wild speculations which come across as less likely than that Barabbas was Martian spy), and yet a solid grasp of the underlying meaning, purpose, and source(s) of the episode eludes me.
ΤΙ ΕΣΤΙΝ ΑΛΗΘΕΙΑ
Ulan
Posts: 1505
Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2014 3:58 am

Re: How Did God Crucified Establish Civic Idealism?

Post by Ulan »

Yes, the connection of the Barabbas scene with the insurrection is completely unambiguous here, as Mark spells it out in plain words, even twice, so you don't miss it. It's also one of the scenes that marks the gospel as "not to be mistaken as literal history".
User avatar
John T
Posts: 1567
Joined: Thu May 15, 2014 8:57 am

Re: How Did God Crucified Establish Civic Idealism?

Post by John T »

Secret Alias wrote: Fri Jun 08, 2018 6:29 am Here's what Christianity comes down to for me -

1. God comes to earth and is crucified
2. Because of (1) the ideal 'kingdom' viz. the ideal republic is now spread out on the earth
Please try to remember, I didn't make that claim, Alias did. All I did was ask him to provide some proof supported by the sayings of Jesus to support his non-traditional interpretation of the gospel.

Is his understanding from a little known protestant denomination? If so, which one?

The point being, Alias can make up his own version of Christianity but he can't have his own facts.

So, if there is anyone left here that wants to have a serious conversation about Alias claim that the gospel is really founded on points 1. and 2., then let's have it.

But surely you understand why I will not respond to the trolls and their smart-aleck comments.

Well, I'm still waiting. :popcorn:

V/R

John T
"It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into."...Jonathan Swift
Secret Alias
Posts: 18362
Joined: Sun Apr 19, 2015 8:47 am

Re: How Did God Crucified Establish Civic Idealism?

Post by Secret Alias »

All I did was ask him to provide some proof supported by the sayings of Jesus to support his non-traditional interpretation of the gospel.
So you think that if don't provide Jesus recorded as saying "I am a god who has come down from heaven to be crucified" my point is disproved! The point is that the gospel of John and the Pauline epistles contain clear evidence that the narrative was taken to be about this. But you have such a facile understanding of Christianity that you suppose that Jesus 'is really speaking' in the gospel rather than an author determining what he will reveal about this character to his audience. If Jesus doesn't acknowledge that he was the Christ or avoids saying what he is up to it is unreasonable to suppose that - like a bad guy in a Bond movie - that he's going to have a soliloquy somewhere revealing his secret ambitions. The best we can get is John and Paul. Sorry but that's how the cookie crumbles. If the gospel was written in a clear cut manner we wouldn't have theology as a field of study.
“Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote
Giuseppe
Posts: 13732
Joined: Mon Apr 27, 2015 5:37 am
Location: Italy

Re: How Did God Crucified Establish Civic Idealism?

Post by Giuseppe »

The best we can get is John and Paul.
proto-John is so evidently anti-Jewish that a scholar can claim it with extreme certainty.

The Devil’s Father and Gnostic Hints In the Gospel of John

I can't think that she is wrong on this point. In order to assume that proto-john was not anti-Jewish, you should persuade me to become a conspiracy theorist (sic) against the same academia as institution* (sic), and only after you should persuade me to consider your theories about a presumed proto-John that is not anti-Jewish.

* Even in a field - the exegesis of the Fourth Gospel - where fortunately the apologists defending the historicity of Jesus doesn't influence the research (given that even they assume that John is of zero value to prove the historical Jesus).
Nihil enim in speciem fallacius est quam prava religio. -Liv. xxxix. 16.
Post Reply