What was Jesus like?

Discussion in 'Religion' started by davewhite04, Jan 18, 2019.

  1. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    You're talking about one violent act in a lifetime. You can't generalize that.

    As for interpretations, I was talking about His message, not His actions. Since He advocated both peace and violence, you can't take both literally unless you concede that His words can't be trusted.
     
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  3. sweetpea Valued Senior Member

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    My bold.
    '' but the fact is''
    Another ''fact'' about another fictional character is... Gandalf in Lord of the Rings. He smote the baddies as well. I reackon in two thousand years from now, the Lord of the Rings will be the chosen book of a new order of believer in Gandalf the grey.
     
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  5. davewhite04 Valued Senior Member

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    I think the passages that have been posted shows that Jesus wasn't perfect, in fact he was very much a man.

    What is more important? Words you say, or the actions you commit? By law, it's actions.
     
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  7. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Actually, I think you can. I'd say that's kind of the point of the Bible and the scriptures. They are parables - lessons. They're not an exhaustive accounting of life events, they're important highlights. They're meant to be taken as representative cases.
     
  8. kx000 Valued Senior Member

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    He also says perfect love drives out fear, and live by the sword die by the sword. Aswell, the first commandment is thou shalt not kill. And in revelation the sword of mouth is prince of the power of the air.
     
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  9. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Hmm, and there was something about the meek inheriting the earth, wasn't there? (Like that would ever happen.)
     
  10. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    And if you look at all of the highlights of Jesus' life, the violent ones are a small minority. It's dishonest to characterize Him overall as violent.
     
  11. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    We're not talking about law. We're talking about what Jesus was like (see topic title). What He was like is not defined by one or two actions. It's defined by a lifetime of behaviour.
     
  12. davewhite04 Valued Senior Member

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    Violence is not one of the Ten Commandments

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  13. davewhite04 Valued Senior Member

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    You are right, I swayed off topic into an area I didn't want to go to.

    The law killed him so I thought it was appropriate.

    Anyway, what do you think Jesus was like?
     
  14. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    The testaments are the highlights.

    You don't take highlights of highlights.

    I don't see anyone who did.
    I saw people pointing out that is wasn't completely foreign to him.

    And anyone's - especially Jesus' - life is multi-faceted.

    You don't reduce a life to a single pass/fail number.
     
  15. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    Kapyong said, "Jesus said he brought violence, not peace."
    That's what I'm saying.
     
  16. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    Strictly speaking, I think He's a fictional character. He's depicted in the Bible as a man who often gave cryptic answers, so it isn't always clear what His positions were.
     
  17. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, and that doesn't contradicting anything I said.
    Kapyong came up with an example of a time when Jesus was not completely pacifist. That indicates that you can't sum his life up as wholly pacifist - but it certainly doesn't suggest that his life was wholly violence-filled either.
     
  18. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    Kapyong added, "not peace," which explicitly excludes peace. My guess is that he unintentionally overstated his case.
     
  19. Yazata Valued Senior Member

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    I don't know. (And not being a Christian, the question isn't all that important to me.) What we have are some very early interpretations of his life, seemingly written by people who never met him. We can write with some assurance about what one faction (the Pauline) of very early Christians thought about Jesus. Pushing beyond that point to the man himself, is very hard. The many attempts to reconstruct the so-called "historical Jesus" have never been able to reach agreement.

    But I can speculate about the broad outlines. I suspect that the historical Jesus was far more... Hebrew... than later portrayed in Christianity. Jesus was almost certainly a man of his times. And as an ancient Hebrew, I expect that he would have been totally aghast at any suggestion that he was God in human flesh, God's avatar or whatever later Christian theology says he is. Equating any man with God would have sounded like the worst sort of blasphemy to his ears. If Jesus returned today, he would almost certainly reject the Christianity that's arisen in his name.

    I don't take most of the material in the gospels as narration of literal historical fact. Instead, the gospels seem to me to be written so as to portray Jesus as wandering around fulfilling what Jews of the time took to be prophecies of the messiah. So particular events aren't necessarily included because they really happened that way, but because each event in the story fulfills a prophecy.

    For example, Jesus was undoubtedly born, because everyone is born. But not necessarily in Bethlehem, since that town (kind of a Jerusalem suburb) was the site of Davidic prophecies of the coming messiah. It might be true that Jesus was from Galilee because so much of the story takes place there. The story of the trip by Mary and Joseph south to Bethelehem prior to Jesus' birth was probably just intended to portray that particular Bethlehem prophecy being fulfilled.

    I think that the model for Jesus is the OT prophets. He does differ quite a bit from those figures, but he's several hundred event-filled years later.

    Except to fulfill the prophecies and head to Jerusalem, where he met his end.

    As portrayed, Jesus seems to me to have a direction. He was always preaching the coming of the Kingdom of God and implicitly, the realization of the messianic prophecies that people associated with that. Then finally, he set off to Jerusalem to set it all in motion.

    I'm inclined to think that his crucifixion really happened. Mainly because it's so contradictory to the thrust of the rest of the story that the early Christians wouldn't have included it if they didn't have to. God's instrument on Earth, the long-expected messiah, being executed. That execution does suggest that the authorities did take him seriously, which suggests that lots of people were hailing him as the messiah, who would set things right and overthrow all the established powers, both Roman and Jewish.

    The subsequent history of Christianity revolves around rationalizing the death of the messiah, without having to deny that he had been the messiah, as the bulk of the Jews concluded. Jesus had risen from the grave! He had descended to Hell and vanquished Satan! Jesus' death was all part of a divine plan, an atoning sacrifice, like the lamb on the temple altar. And on and on, we all know the story from there.
     
    Last edited: Jan 23, 2019
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  20. davewhite04 Valued Senior Member

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    Exactly.

    He didn't condone violence: Matt: 2652 “Put your sword back in its place,” Jesus said to him, “for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.

    And take his words with a pinch of salt, most people didn't understand him. For example:

    Matt 10:33-35 But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father in heaven. 34 Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, buta sword. 35For I have come to turn ‘A man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

    What did he mean? Considering the prefix sentence about denying him I suggest he meant that people would turn away from people who follow Jesus both then and now.
     
  21. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Hang on.
    Jesus said A Thing about himself.
    Jesus saying A Thing about himelf does not necessarily mean it sums up his entire life (though he might have meant it that way).

    But, more to the point, Kapyong simply citing the incident does not suggest in any way, that Kapyong is ruling peace out as it applies to Jesus' life.

    The strongest case that can be formed here is that Kapyong asserts (with one example) that Jesus spoke (once) about being violent, and therefore that Jesus, by his own admission, clearly does not always have peaceful intent.

    Methinks it is you who are overstating your case.
     
  22. davewhite04 Valued Senior Member

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    Thanks. That seems a far more accurate possibility, and I enjoyed reading it

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    I don't think the vanquishing of Satan is in the gospels

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    My Father said "Jesus failed", and I agree.
     
  23. sideshowbob Sorry, wrong number. Valued Senior Member

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    But that is not what Kapyong said.
     

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