One of Jesus' prophecies goes like this... Matthew 16:28 “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” If Jesus is God then this must be true. What does it mean to taste/experience death? Every time I've been knocked out, I don't even feel the fists hit me and it's blank, no pain, nothing. Did it used to be different? My example isn't death, but it is pretty close. Any thoughts on this? Was Jesus wrong AGAIN or was he right AGAIN? Personally I believe we don't taste death but we experience the pain leading up to it obviously, if you're unfortunate to suffer before you die.
Oh I dunno. Does it matter if it was Jesus or Matthew? I mean, they're parables, right? Bringing this back to my comment about 'for the sake of discussion'. I can discuss the meaning of words in a book and philosophize about them. It's a wholly different matter to try to determine any kind of facts that might have actually happened two millennia ago. One is philosophy; the other requires facts, which we don't have. Wait a minute. Why must something Matthew said be true? That passage doesn't say Jesus said it; it simply attributes it to Matthew.
It is meant to report exactly what Jesus said. For the purposes of the thread, why not assume Jesus did say them, and debate from there? No. I can say Jesus existed, and we can leave it at that for this debate, rather than discussing if Jesus existed(which goes nowhere here). We can find truths from fiction. Matthew penned it.
Ah OK. You left out the context - the beginning part where it says: "And Jesus said". That's important. So Jesus is telling us that "some of you people I am talking to today will still be alive when the Son of Man arrives. I see at least two interpretations of that: 1. He's a comin' real soon. Some of you are not exactly spring chickens. 2. He may slouch about for a bit before making his way here, but some of you are effectively immortal until that happens.
The gospel of Matthew was written more than 70 years after the death of Jesus. Whoever "Matthew" was (assuming the writer is just one person), he was not directly reporting on anything he himself witnessed or heard. In fact, the first of the four gospels was Mark. Matthew and Luke appear to have relied heavily on Mark, but they added some of their own stuff as well. The last gospel to be written was John, which goes to some lengths to try to connect Jesus to past prophecies, lines of descent and the like from the Old Testament. What do you think the chances are that Jesus didn't say all the things that are attributed to him in the gospels?
It's the "taste death", did he just mean die? Or is it something that exists, that nullifies deaths sting. Did Jesus defeat death, and take its sting(experience) away?
James, you are falling at the first hurdle, to progress the dialog you need to assume some conditions otherwise we'll talk about something completely different to the topic at hand. I'm not debating if Jesus said this and that, I'm questioning a verse that he said. Whether you believe he said it or not is pointless, Christians believe he said all these things, and that's the perspective I'm coming from. So James, what happens when you die? Is death itself experienced somehow? or has it lost its sting...
Yes, this could be correct. My dad used to say "Jesus failed". This is sometimes something I wonder about... But at this point in time, I believe Jesus triumphed against mans greatest enemy.
davewhite04: Sorry. It seems I misunderstood what you were asking. It's easy to check the claim that something is or isn't in the bible, right? So if you're asking "did Jesus say this?" according to the bible, that's easily sorted. I thought you were asking about whether there's any independent evidence about what Jesus said or didn't say. No worries. It's objectively verifiable as to whether the bible claims that Jesus said this or that. Don't mind me. Are you still asking me what the bible says about this, or do you now want my personal opinion?
That is what textual criticism is, finding out what the original author wrote. Finding out what Jesus said and did is a different kettle of fish.
Ecclesiastes 9:5 is actually in agreement with neuroscience-based views that death results in the termination of consciousness: "...but the dead know nothing..." Of course (predictably), religious discourse responds to such literality by interpreting the passage a different way. Just as it treats that other issue -- the declaration of JC returning "soon" -- as cryptic metaphor. Invoking the "thousand years is one day to God" code (in 2Peter 3:8) to construe the event as occurring a couple of millennia later than the New Testament era. Or alternatively resorting to the "God's kingdom is within you" elucidation in Luke 17:21. Biblical ambiguity and inconsistency offer a cornucopia of hermeneutical diversity (or multiple escape routes). 2Peter 3:1-18: They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” For they deliberately overlook this fact [...] that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. Luke 17: Jesus answered, “God’s kingdom is coming, but not in a way that you will be able to see with your eyes. People will not say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ because God’s kingdom is within you.”_
Is that a bit like with Zen ,where some have said (to paraphrase possibly badly) that "you don't need to attain "enlightenment " you just have to realize you are already there"? Might there have been a link btw the original Christianity and Eastern mysticism? I think some have opined that those 40 days in the desert may have involved mind altering drugs and hallucinations(perhaps brought on by fasting)
Which is kind ironic, since that is essentially an acknowledgement that "God is all in your head"; i.e. everything attributable to God is actually doable on your own, without resort to any extant entity.
The gospels look pretty straightforward to me. If Jesus didn't "say" something, then the authors were unpaid geniuses.
